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11179	----	SEEING EUROPE WITH FAMOUS AUTHORS EDITED BY FRANCIS W. HALSEY CONTENTS OF VOLUME VI Germany, Austria-Hungary and Switzerland Part Two VI. HUNGARY--(_Continued_) HUNGARIAN BATHS AND RESORTS--By H. Tornai de Kövër THE GIPSIES--By H. Tornai de Kövër VII. AUSTRIA'S ADRIATIC PORTS TRIESTE AND POLA--By Edward A. Freeman SPALATO--By Edward A. Freeman RAGUSA--By Harry De Windt CATTARO--By Edward A. Freeman VIII. OTHER AUSTRIAN SCENES CRACOW--By Mènie Muriel Dowie ON THE ROAD TO PRAGUE--By Bayard Taylor THE CAVE OF ADELSBERG--By George Stillman Hillard THE MONASTERY OF MÖLK--By Thomas Frognall Dibdin THROUGH THE TYROL--By William Cullen Bryant IN THE DOLOMITES--By Archibald Campbell Knowles CORTINA--By Amelia B. Edwards IX. ALPINE RESORTS THE CALL OF THE MOUNTAINS--By Frederick Harrison INTERLAKEN AND THE JUNGFRAU--By Archibald Campbell Knowles THE ALTDORF OF WILLIAM TELL--By W.D. M'Crackan LUCERNE--By Victor Tissot ZURICH--By W.D. M'Crackan THE RIGI--By W.D. M'Crackan CHAMOUNI--AN AVALANCHE--By Percy Bysshe Shelley ZERMATT--By Archibald Campbell Knowles PONTRESINA AND ST. MORITZ--By Victor Tissot GENEVA--By Francis H. Gribble THE CASTLE OF CHILLON--By Harriet Beecher Stowe BY RAIL UP THE GORNER-GRAT--By Archibald Campbell Knowles THROUGH THE ST. GOTHARD INTO ITALY--By Victor Tissot X. ALPINE MOUNTAIN CLIMBING FIRST ATTEMPTS HALF A CENTURY AGO--By Edward Whymper FIRST TO THE TOP O THE MATTERHORN--By Edward Whymper THE LORD FRANCIS DOUGLAS TRAGEDY--By Edward Whymper AN ASCENT OF MONTE ROSA (1858)--By John Tyndall MONT BLANC ASCENDED, HUXLEY GOING PART WAY--By John Tyndall THE JUNGFRAU-JOCH--By Sir Leslie Stephen XI. OTHER ALPINE TOPICS THE GREAT ST. BERNARD HOSPICE--By Archibald Campbell Knowles AVALANCHES--By Victor Tissot HUNTING THE CHAMOIS--By Victor Tissot THE CELEBRITIES OF GENEVA--By Francis H. Gribble LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS VOLUME VI Frontispiece THE MATTERHORN KURSAAL AT MARIENBAD MARIENBAD, AUSTRIA MONASTERY OF ST. ULRIC AND AFRA, AUGSBURG MONASTERY OF MÖLK ON THE DANUBE ABOVE VIENNA MEMORIAL TABLET AND ROAD IN THE IRON GATE OF THE DANUBE QUAY AT FIUME ROYAL PALACE IN BUDAPEST HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT, BUDAPEST SUSPENSION BRIDGE OVER THE DANUBE AT BUDAPEST STREET IN BUDAPEST CATHEDRAL OF SPALATO REGUSA, DALMATIA MIRAMAR GENEVA REGATTA DAY ON LAKE GENEVA VITZNAU, THE LAKE TERMINUS OF THE RIGI RAILROAD RHINE FALLS NEAR SCHAFFHAUSEN PONTRESINA IN THE ENGADINE ST. MORITZ IN THE ENGADINE FRIBOURG BERNE VIVEY, LAKE GENEVA THE TURNHALLE, ZURICH INTERLAKEN LUCERNE VIADUCTS ON AN ALPINE RAILWAY THE WOLFORT VIADUCT BALMAT--SAUSSURE MONUMENT IN CHAMONIX ROOFED WOODEN BRIDGE AT LUCERNE THE CASTLE OF CHILLON CLOUD EFFECT ABOVE INTERLAKEN DAVOS IN WINTER [Illustration: THE KURSAL AT MARIENBAD] [Illustration: MARIENBAD, AUSTRIA] [Illustration: THE MONASTERY OF ST. ULRIC AND AFRA, AT AUGSBURG IN BAVARIA] [Illustration: THE MONASTERY OF MÖLK ON THE DANUBE ABOVE VIENNA] [Illustration: MEMORIAL TABLET AND ROAD IN THE IRON GATE OF THE DANUBE] [Illustration: THE QUAY OF THE FIUME AT THE HEAD OF THE ADRIATIC] [Illustration: THE ROYAL PALACE AT BUDAPEST] [Illustration: THE HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT AT BUDAPEST] [Illustration: THE SUSPENSION BRIDGE OVER THE DANUBE AT BUDAPEST] [Illustration: STREET IN BUDAPEST] [Illustration: THE CATHEDRAL OF SPALATO Burial-place of the Emperor Diocletian] [Illustration: REGUSA, DALMATIA] [Illustration: MIRAMAR Long the home of the ex-Empress Carlotta of Mexico] [Illustration: GENEVA] [Illustration: REGATTA DAY ON LAKE GENEVA] [Illustration: VITZNAU, THE LAKE TERMINUS OF THE RIGI RAILROAD] [Illustration: THE RHINE FALLS NEAR SCHAFFHAUSEN] VI HUNGARY (_Continued_) HUNGARIAN BATHS AND RESORTS[1] BY H. TORNAI DE KÖVËR In Hungary there are great quantities of unearthed riches, and not only in the form of gold. These riches are the mineral waters that abound in the country and have been the natural medicine of the people for many years. Water in itself was always worshiped by the Hungarians in the earliest ages, and they have found out through experience for which ailment the different waters may be used. There are numbers of small watering-places in the most primitive state, which are visited by the peasants from far and wide, more especially those that are good for rheumatism. Like all people that work much in the open, the Hungarian in old age feels the aching of his limbs. The Carpathians are full of such baths, some of them quite primitive; others are used more as summer resorts, where the well-to-do town people build their villas; others, again, like Tátra Füred, Tátra Lomnicz, Csorba, and many others, have every accommodation and are visited by people from all over Europe. In former times Germans and Poles were the chief visitors, but now people come from all parts to look at the wonderful ice-caves (where one can skate in the hottest summer), the waterfalls, and the great pine forests, and make walking, driving, and riding tours right up to the snow-capped mountains, preferring the comparative quiet of this Alpine district to that of Switzerland. Almost every place has some special mineral water, and among the greatest wonders of Hungary are the hot mud-baths of Pöstyén. This place is situated at the foot of the lesser Carpathians, and is easily reached from the main line of the railway. The scenery is lovely and the air healthy, but this is nothing compared to the wondrous waters and hot mire which oozes out of the earth in the vicinity of the river Vág. Hot sulfuric water, which contains radium, bubbles up in all parts of Pöstyén, and even the bed of the cold river is full of steaming hot mud. As far back as 1551 we know of the existence of Pöstyén as a natural cure, and Sir Spencer Wells, the great English doctor, wrote about these waters in 1888. They are chiefly good for rheumatism, gout, neuralgia, the strengthening of broken bones, strains, and also for scrofula. On the premises there is a quaint museum with crutches and all sort of sticks and invalid chairs left there by their former owners in grateful acknowledgment of the wonderful waters and mire that had healed them. Of late there has been much comfort added; great new baths have been built, villas and new hotels added, so that there is accommodation for rich and poor alike. The natural heat of the mire is 140 degrees Fahrenheit. Plenty of amusements are supplied for those who are not great sufferers--tennis, shooting, fishing, boating, and swimming being all obtainable. The bathing-place and all the adjoining land belongs to Count Erdödy. Another place of the greatest importance is the little bath "Parád," hardly three hours from Budapest, situated in the heart of the mountains of the "Mátra." It is the private property of Count Kárólyi. The place is primitive and has not even electric light. Its waters are a wonderful combination of iron and alkaline, but this is not the most important feature. Besides the baths there is a strong spring of arsenic water which, through a fortunate combination, is stronger and more digestible than Roncegno and all the other first-rate waters of that kind in the world. Not only in northern Hungary does one find wondrous cures, it is the same in Transylvania. There are healing and splendid mineral waters for common use all over the country lying idle and awaiting the days when its owners will be possest by the spirit of enterprise. Borszek, Szováta, and many others are all wonders in their way, waters that would bring in millions to their owners if only worked properly. Szováta, boasts of a lake containing such an enormous proportion of salt that not even the human body can sink into its depths. In the south there is Herkulesfürdö, renowned as much for the beauty of its scenery as for its waters. Besides those mentioned there are all the summer pleasure resorts; the best of these are situated along Lake Balaton. The tepid water, long sandbanks, and splendid air from the forests make them specially healthy for delicate children. But not only have the bathing-places beautiful scenery from north to south and from east to west, in general the country abounds in Alpine districts, waterfalls, caves, and other wonders of nature. The most beautiful tour is along the river Vág, starting from the most northerly point in Hungary near the beautiful old stronghold of Árva in the county of Árva. All those that care to see a country as it really is, and do not mind going out of the usual beaten track of the globe-trotter, should go down the river Vág. It can not be done by steamer, or any other comfortable contrivance, one must do it on a raft, as the rapids of the river are not to be passed by any other means. The wood is transported in this way from the mountain regions to the south, and for two days one passes through the most beautiful scenery. Fantastic castles loom at the top of mountain peaks, and to each castle is attached a page of the history of the Middle Ages, when the great noblemen were also the greatest robbers of the land, and the people were miserable serfs, who did all the work and were taxed and robbed by their masters. Castles, wild mountain districts, rugged passes, villages, and ruins are passed like a beautiful panorama. The river rushes along, foaming and dashing over sharp rocks. The people are reliable and very clever in handling the raft, which requires great skill, especially when conducted over the falls at low water. Sometimes there is only one little spot where the raft can pass, and to conduct it over those rapids requires absolute knowledge of every rock hidden under the shallow falls. If notice is given in time, a rude hut will be built on the raft to give shelter and make it possible to have meals cooked, altho in the simplest way (consisting of baked potatoes and stew), by the Slavs who are in charge of the raft. If anything better is wanted it must be ordered by stopping at the larger towns; but to have it done in the simple way is entering into the true spirit of the voyage. THE GIPSIES[2] BY H. TORNAI DE KÖVËR Gipsies! Music! Dancing! These are words of magic to the rich and poor, noblemen and peasant alike, if he be a true Hungarian. There are two kinds of gipsies. The wandering thief, who can not be made to take up any occupation. These are a terribly lawless and immoral people, and there seems to be no way of altering their life and habits, altho much has been written on the subject to improve matters; but the Government has shown itself to be helpless as yet. These people live here and there, in fact everywhere, leading a wandering life in carts, and camp wherever night overtakes them. After some special evil-doing they will wander into Rumania or Russia and come back after some years when the deed of crime has been forgotten. Their movements are so quick and silent that they outwit the best detectives of the police force. They speak the gipsy language, but often a half-dozen other languages besides, in their peculiar chanting voice. Their only occupation is stealing, drinking, smoking, and being a nuisance to the country in every way. The other sort of gipsies consist of those that have squatted down in the villages some hundreds of years ago. They live in a separate part of the village, usually at the end, are dirty and untidy and even an unruly people, but for the most part have taken up some honest occupation. They make the rough, unbaked earth bricks that the peasant cottages are mostly made of, are tinkers and blacksmiths, but they do the lowest kind of work too. Besides these, however, there are the talented ones. The musical gipsy begins to handle his fiddle as soon as he can toddle. The Hungarians brought their love of music with them from Asia. Old parchments have been found which denote that they had their songs and war-chants at the time of the "home-making," and church and folk-songs from their earliest Christian period. Peasant and nobleman are musical alike--it runs in the race. The gipsies that have settled among them caught up the love of music and are now the best interpreters of the Hungarian songs. The people have got so used to their "blackies," as they call them, that no lesser or greater fête day can pass without the gipsy band having ample work to do in the form of playing for the people. Their instruments are the fiddle, 'cello, viola, clarinet, tárogato (a Hungarian specialty), and, above all, the cymbal. The tárogato looks like a grand piano with the top off. It stands on four legs like a table and has wires drawn across it; on these wires the player performs with two little sticks, that are padded at the ends with cotton-wool. The sound is wild and weird, but if well played very beautiful indeed. The gipsies seldom compose music. The songs come into life mostly on the spur of the moment. In the olden days war-songs and long ballads were the most usual form of music. The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were specially rich in the production of songs that live even now. At that time the greatest gipsy musician was a woman: her name was "Czinka Panna," and she was called the Gipsy Queen. With the change of times the songs are altered too, and now they are mostly lyric. Csárdás is the quick form of music, and tho' of different melodies it must always be kept to the same rhythm. This is not much sung to, but is the music for the national dance. The peasants play on a little wooden flute which is called the "Tilinko," or "Furulya," and they know hundreds of sad folk-songs and lively Csárdás. While living their isolated lives in the great plains they compose many a beautiful song. It is generally from the peasants and the musical country gentry that the gipsy gets his music. He learns the songs after a single hearing, and plays them exactly according to the singer's wish. The Hungarian noble when singing with the gipsies is capable of giving the dark-faced boys every penny he has. In this manner many a young nobleman has been ruined, and the gipsies make nothing of it, because they are just like their masters and "spend easily earned money easily," as the saying goes. Where there is much music there is much dancing. Every Sunday afternoon after church the villages are lively with the sound of the gipsy band, and the young peasant boys and girls dance. The Slovaks of the north play a kind of bagpipe, which reminds one of the Scotch ones; but the songs of the Slovak have got very much mixed with the Hungarian. The Rumanian music is of a distinct type, but the dances all resemble the Csárdás, with the difference that the quick figures in the Slav and Rumanian dances are much more grotesque and verging on acrobatism. VII AUSTRIA'S ADRIATIC PORTS TRIESTE AND POLA[3] BY EDWARD A. FREEMAN Trieste stands forth as a rival of Venice, which has, in a low practical view of things, outstript her. Italian zeal naturally cries for the recovery of a great city, once part of the old Italian kingdom, and whose speech is largely, perhaps chiefly, Italian to this day. But, a cry of "Italia Irredenta," however far it may go, must not go so far as this. Trieste, a cosmopolitan city on a Slavonic shore, can not be called Italian in the same sense as the lands and towns so near Verona which yearn to be as Verona is. Let Trieste be the rival, even the eyesore, of Venice, still Southern Germany must have a mouth. We might, indeed, be better pleased to see Trieste a free city, the southern fellow of Lübeck, Bremen and Hamburg; but it must not be forgotten that the Archduke of Austria and Lord of Trieste reigns at Trieste by a far better right than that by which he reigns at Cattaro and Spizza. The present people of Trieste did not choose him, but the people of Trieste five hundred years back did choose the forefather of his great-grandmother. Compared with the grounds of which kingdoms, duchies, counties, and lordships, are commonly held in that neighborhood, such a claim as this must be allowed to be respectable indeed. The great haven of Trieste may almost at pleasure be quoted as either confirming or contradicting the rule that it is not in the great commercial cities of Europe that we are to look for the choicest or the most plentiful remains of antiquity. Sometimes the cities themselves are of modern foundation; in other cases the cities themselves, as habitations of men and seats of commerce, are of the hoariest antiquity, but the remains of their early days have perished through their very prosperity. Massalia,[4] with her long history, with her double wreath of freedom, the city which withstood Cæsar and which withstood Charles of Anjou, is bare of monuments of her early days. She has been the victim of her abiding good fortune. We can look down from the height on the Phôkaian harbor; but for actual memorials of the men who fled from the Persian, of the men who defied the Roman and the Angevin, we might look as well at Liverpool or at Havre. Genoa, Venice herself, are hardly real exceptions; they were indeed commercial cities, but they were ruling cities also, and, as ruling cities, they reared monuments which could hardly pass away. What are we to say to the modern rival of Venice, the upstart rebel, one is tempted to say, against the supremacy of the Hadriatic Queen? Trieste, at the head of her gulf, with the hills looking down to her haven, with the snowy mountains which seem to guard the approach from the other side of her inland sea, with her harbor full of the ships of every nation, her streets echoing with every tongue, is she to be reckoned as an example of the rule or an exception to it? No city at first sight seems more thoroughly modern; old town and new, wide streets and narrow, we search them in vain for any of those vestiges of past times which in some cities meet us at every step. Compare Trieste with Ancona;[5] we miss the arch of Trajan on the haven; we miss the cupola of Saint Cyriacus soaring in triumph above the triumphal monument of the heathen. We pass through the stately streets of the newer town, we thread the steep ascents which lead us to the older town above, and we nowhere light on any of those little scraps of ornamental architecture, a window, a doorway, a column, which meet us at every step in so many of the cities of Italy. Yet the monumental wealth of Trieste is all but equal to the monumental wealth of Ancona. At Ancona we have the cathedral church and the triumphal arch; so we have at Trieste; tho' at Trieste we have nothing to set against the grand front of the lower and smaller church of Ancona. But at Ancona arch and duomo both stand out before all eyes; at Trieste both have to be looked for. The church of Saint Justus at Trieste crowns the hill as well as the church of Saint Cyriacus at Ancona; but it does not in the same way proclaim its presence. The castle, with its ugly modern fortifications, rises again above the church; and the duomo of Trieste, with its shapeless outline and its low, heavy, unsightly campanile, does not catch the eyes like the Greek cross and cupola of Ancona. Again at Trieste the arch could never, in its best days, have been a rival to the arch at Ancona; and now either we have to hunt it out by an effort, or else it comes upon us suddenly, standing, as it does, at the head of a mean street on the ascent to the upper town. Of a truth it can not compete with Ancona or with Rimini, with Orange[6] or with Aosta. But the duomo, utterly unsightly as it is in a general view, puts on quite a new character when we first see the remains of pagan times imprisoned in the lower stage of the heavy campanile, still more so when we take our first glance of its wonderful interior. At the first glimpse we see that here there is a mystery to be unraveled; and as we gradually find the clue to the marvelous changes which it has undergone, we feel that outside show is not everything, and that, in point both of antiquity and of interest, tho' not of actual beauty, the double basilica of Trieste may claim no mean place among buildings of its own type. Even after the glories of Rome and Ravenna, the Tergestine church may be studied with no small pleasure and profit, as an example of a kind of transformation of which neither Rome nor Ravenna can supply another example.... The other ancient relic at Trieste is the small triumphal arch. On one side it keeps its Corinthian pilasters; on the other they are imbedded in a house. The arch is in a certain sense double; but the two are close together, and touch in the keystone. The Roman date of this arch can not be doubted; but legends connect it both with Charles the Great and with Richard of Poitou and of England, a prince about whom Tergestine fancy has been very busy. The popular name of the arch is Arco Riccardo. Such, beside some fragments in the museum, are all the remains that the antiquary will find in Trieste; not much in point of number, but, in the case of the duomo at least, of surpassing interest in their own way. But the true merit of Trieste is not in anything that it has itself, its church, its arch, its noble site. Placed there at the head of the gulf, on the borders of two great portions of the Empire, it leads to the land which produced that line of famous Illyrian Emperors who for a while checked the advance of our own race in the world's history, and it leads specially to the chosen home of the greatest among them.[7] The chief glory of Trieste, after all, is that it is the way to Spalato.... At Pola the monuments of Pietas Julia claim the first place; the basilica, tho' not without a certain special interest, comes long after them. The character of the place is fixt by the first sight of it; we see the present and we see the more distant past; the Austrian navy is to be seen, and the amphitheater is to be seen. But intermediate times have little to show; if the duomo strikes the eye at all, it strikes it only by the extreme ugliness of its outside, nor is there anything very taking, nothing like the picturesque castle of Pirano, in the works which occupy the site of the colonial capitol. The duomo should not be forgotten; even the church of Saint Francis is worth a glance; but it is in the remains of the Roman colony, in the amphitheater, the arches, the temples, the fragments preserved in that temple which serves, as at Nîmes,[8] for a museum, that the real antiquarian wealth of Pola lies.... The known history of Pola begins with the Roman conquest of Istria in 178 B.C. The town became a Roman colony and a flourishing seat of commerce. Its action on the republican side in the civil war brought on it the vengeance of the second Cæsar. But the destroyer became the restorer, and Pietas Julia, in the height of its greatness, far surpassed the extent either of the elder or the younger Pola. Like all cities of this region, Pola kept up its importance down to the days of the Carlovingian Empire, the specially flourishing time of the whole district being that of Gothic and Byzantine dominion at Ravenna. A barbarian king, the Roxolan Rasparasanus, is said to have withdrawn to Pola after the submission of his nation to Hadrian; and the panegyrists of the Flavian house rank Pola along with Trier and Autun among the cities which the princes of that house had adorned or strengthened. But in the history of their dynasty the name of the city chiefly stands out as the chosen place for the execution of princes whom it was convenient to put out of the way. Here Crispus died at the bidding of Constantine, and Gallus at the bidding of Constantius. Under Theodoric, Pola doubtless shared that general prosperity of the Istrian land on which Cassiodorus grows eloquent when writing to its inhabitants. In the next generation Pola appears in somewhat of the same character which has come back to it in our own times; it was there that Belisarius gathered the Imperial fleet for his second and less prosperous expedition against the Gothic lords of Italy. But, after the break up of the Frankish Empire, the history of medieval Pola is but a history of decline. It was, in the geography of Dante, the furthest city of Italy; but, like most of the other cities of its own neighborhood, its day of greatness had passed away when Dante sang. Tossed to and fro between the temporal and spiritual lords who claimed to be marquesses of Istria, torn by the dissensions of aristocratic and popular parties among its own citizens, Pola found rest, the rest of bondage, in submission to the dominion of Saint Mark in 1331.[9] Since then, till its new birth in our own times, Pola has been a failing city. Like the other Istrian and Dalmatian towns, modern revolutions have handed it over from Venice to Austria, from Austria to France, from France to Austria again. It is under its newest masters that Pola has at last begun to live a fresh life, and the haven whence Belisarius[10] sailed forth has again become a haven in more than name, the cradle of the rising navy of the united Austrian and Hungarian realm. That haven is indeed a noble one. Few sights are more striking than to see the huge mass of the amphitheater at Pola seeming to rise at once out of the land-locked sea. As Pola is seen now, the amphitheater is the one monument of its older days, which strikes the eye in the general view, and which divides attention with signs that show how heartily the once forsaken city has entered on its new career. But in the old time Pola could show all the buildings which befitted its rank as a colony of Rome. The amphitheater, of course, stood without the walls; the city itself stood at the foot and on the slope of the hill which was crowned by the capitol of the colony, where the modern fortress rises above the Franciscan church. Parts of the Roman wall still stand; one of its gates is left; another has left a neighbor and a memory.... Travelers are sometimes apt to complain, and that not wholly without reason, that all amphitheaters are very like one another. At Pola this remark is less true than elsewhere, as the amphitheater there has several marked peculiarities of its own. We do not pretend to expound all its details scientifically; but this we may say, that those who dispute--if the dispute still goes on--about various points as regards the Coliseum at Rome will do well to go and look for some further light in the amphitheater of Pola. The outer range, which is wonderfully perfect, while the inner arrangements are fearfully ruined, consists, on the side toward the town, of two rows of arches, with a third story with square-headed openings above them. But the main peculiarity in the outside is to be found in four tower-like projections, not, as at Arles and Nîmes, signs of Saracenic occupation, but clearly parts of the original design. Many conjectures have been made about them; they look as if they were means of approach to the upper part of the building; but it is wisest not to be positive. But the main peculiarity of this amphitheater is that it lies on the slope of a hill, which thus supplied a natural basement for the seats on one side only. But this same position swallowed up the lower arcade on this side, and it hindered the usual works underneath the seats from being carried into this part of the building. SPALATO[11] BY EDWARD A. FREEMAN The main object and center of all historical and architectural inquiries on the Dalmatian coast is, of course, the home of Diocletian, the still abiding palace of Spalato. From a local point of view, it is the spot which the greatest of the long line of renowned Illyrian Emperors chose as his resting-place from the toils of warfare and government, and where he reared the vastest and noblest dwelling that ever arose at the bidding of a single man. From an ecumenical point of view, Spalato is yet more. If it does not rank with Rome, Old and New, with Ravenna and with Trier, it is because it never was, like them, an actual seat of empire. But it not the less marks a stage, and one of the greatest stages, in the history of the Empire. On his own Dalmatian soil, Docles of Salone, Diocletian of Rome, was the man who had won fame for his own land, and who, on the throne of the world, did not forget his provincial birthplace. In the sight of Rome and of the world Jovius Augustus was more than this. Alike in the history of politics and in the history of art, he has left his mark on all time that has come after him, and it is on his own Spalato that his mark has been most deeply stamped. The polity of Rome and the architecture of Rome alike received a new life at his hands. In each alike he cast away shams and pretenses, and made the true construction of the fabric stand out before men's eyes. Master of the Rome world, if not King, yet more than King, he let the true nature of his power be seen, and, first among the Cæsars, arrayed himself with the outward pomp of sovereignty. In a smaller man we might have deemed the change a mark of weakness, a sign of childish delight in gewgaws, titles, and trappings. Such could hardly have been the motive in the man who, when he deemed that his work was done, could cast away both the form and the substance of power, and could so steadily withstand all temptations to take them up again. It was simply that the change was fully wrought; that the chief magistrate of the commonwealth had gradually changed into the sovereign of the Empire; that Imperator, Cæsar, and Augustus, once titles lowlier than that of King, had now become, as they have ever since remained, titles far loftier. The change was wrought, and all that Diocletian did was to announce the fact of the change to the world. Nor did the organizing hand of Jovius confine its sphere to the polity of the Empire only. He built himself a house, and, above all builders, he might boast himself of the house that he had builded. Fast by his own birthplace--a meaner soul might have chosen some distant spot--Diocletian reared the palace which marks a still greater epoch in Roman art than his political changes mark in Roman polity. On the inmost shore of one of the lake-like inlets of the Hadriatic, an inlet guarded almost from sight by the great island of Bua at its mouth, lay his own Salona, now desolate, then one of the great cities of the Roman world. But it was not in the city, it was not close under its walls, that Diocletian fixt his home. An isthmus between the bay of Salona and the outer sea cuts off a peninsula, which again throws out two horns into the water to form the harbor which has for ages supplanted Salona. There, not on any hill-top, but on a level spot by the coast, with the sea in front, with a background of more distant mountains, and with one peaked hill rising between the two seas like a watch-tower, did Diocletian build the house to which he withdrew when he deemed that his work of empire was over. And in building that house, he won for himself, or for the nameless genius whom he set at work, a place in the history of art worthy to rank alongside of Iktinos of Athens and Anthemios of Byzantium, of William of Durham and of Hugh of Lincoln. And now the birthplace of Jovius is forsaken, but his house still abides, and abides in a shape marvelously little shorn of its ancient greatness. The name which it still bears comes straight from the name of the elder home of the Cæsars. The fates of the two spots have been in a strange way the converse of one another. By the banks of the Tiber the city of Romulus became the house of a single man: by the shores of the Hadriatic the house of a single man became a city. The Palatine hill became the Palatium of the Cæsars, and Palatium was the name which was borne by the house of Cæsar by the Dalmatian shore. The house became a city; but its name still clave to it, and the house of Jovius still, at least in the mouths of its own inhabitants, keeps its name in the slightly altered form of Spalato.... We land with the moon lighting up the water, with the stars above us, the northern wain shining on the Hadriatic, as if, while Diocletian was seeking rest by Salona, the star of Constantine was rising over York and Trier. Dimly rising above us we see, disfigured indeed, but not destroyed, the pillared front of the palace, reminding us of the Tabularium of Rome's own capitol. We pass under gloomy arches, through dark passages and presently we find ourselves in the center of palace and city, between those two renowned rows of arches which mark the greatest of all epochs in the history of the building art. We think how the man who reorganized the Empire of Rome was also the man who first put harmony and consistency into the architecture of Rome. We think that, if it was in truth the crown of Diocletian which passed to every Cæsar from the first Constantius to the last Francis, it was no less in the pile which rose into being at his word that the germ was planted which grew into Pisa and Durham, into Westminster and Saint Ouen. There is light enough to mark the columns put for the first time to their true Roman use, and to think how strange was the fate which called up on this spot the happy arrangement which had entered the brain of no earlier artist--the arrangement which, but a few years later, was to be applied to another use in the basilica of the Lateran and in Saint Paul Without the Walls. Yes, it is in the court of the persecutor, the man who boasted that he had wiped out the Christian superstition from the world, that we see the noblest forestalling of the long arcades of the Christian basilica. It is with thoughts like these, thoughts pressing all the more upon us where every outline is clear and every detail is visible, that we tread for the first time the Court of Jovius--the columns with their arches on either side of us, the vast bell-tower rising to the sky, as if to mock the art of those whose mightiest works might still seem only to grovel upon earth. Nowhere within the compass of the Roman world do we find ourselves more distinctly in the presence of one of the great minds of the world's history; we see that, alike in politics and in art, Diocletian breathed a living soul into a lifeless body. In the bitter irony of the triumphant faith, his mausoleum has become a church, his temple has become a baptistery, the great bell-tower rises proudly over his own work; his immediate dwelling-place is broken down and crowded with paltry houses; but the sea-front and the Golden Gate are still there amid all disfigurements, and the great peristyle stands almost unhurt, to remind us of the greatest advance that a single mind ever made in the progress of the building art. At the present time the city into which the house of Diocletian has grown is the largest and most growing town of the Dalmatian coast. It has had to yield both spiritual and temporal precedence to Zara, but, both in actual population and all that forms the life of a city, Spalato greatly surpasses Zara and all its other neighbors. The youngest Dalmatian towns, which could boast neither of any mythical origin nor of any Imperial foundation, the city which, as it were, became a city by mere chance, has outstript the colonies of Epidauros, of Corinth, and of Rome. The palace of Diocletian had but one occupant; after the founder no Emperor had dwelled in it, unless we hold that this was the villa near Salona where the deposed Emperor Nepos was slain, during the patriciate of Odoacer. The forsaken palace seems, while still almost new, to have become a cloth factory, where women worked, and which therefore appears in the "Notitia" as a Gynæcium. But when Salona was overthrown, the palace stood ready to afford shelter to those who were driven from their homes. The palace, in the widest sense of the word--for of course its vast circuit took in quarters for soldiers and officials of various kinds, as well as the rooms actually occupied by the Emperor--stood ready to become a city. It was a chester ready made, with its four streets, its four gates, all but that toward the sea flanked with octagonal towers, and with four greater square towers at the corners. To this day the circuit of the walls is nearly perfect; and the space contained within them must be as large as that contained within some of the oldest chesters in our own island. The walls, the towers, the gates, are those of a city rather than of a house. Two of the gates, tho' their towers are gone, are nearly perfect; the "porta aurea," with its graceful ornaments; the "porta ferrea" in its stern plainness, strangely crowned with its small campanile of later days perched on its top. Within the walls, besides the splendid buildings which still remain, besides the broken-down walls and chambers which formed the immediate dwelling-place of the founder, the main streets were lined with massive arcades, large parts of which still remain. Diocletian, in short, in building a house, had built a city. In the days of Constantine Porphyrogenitus it was a "Káotpov"--Greek and English had by his day alike borrowed the Latin name; but it was a "Káotpov" which Diocletian had built as his own house, and within which was his hall and palace. In his day the city bore the name of Aspalathon, which he explains to mean "little palace." When the palace had thus become a common habitation of men, it is not wonderful that all the more private buildings whose use had passed away were broken down, disfigured, and put to mean uses. The work of building over the site must have gone on from that day to this. The view in Wheeler shows several parts of the enclosure occupied by ruins which are now covered with houses. The real wonder is that so much has been spared and has survived to our own days. And we are rather surprised to find Constantine saying that in his time the greater part had been destroyed. For the parts which must always have been the stateliest remain still. The great open court, the peristyle, with its arcades, have become the public plaza of the town; the mausoleum on one side of it and the temple on the other were preserved and put to Christian uses. We say the mausoleum, for we fully accept the suggestion made by Professor Glavinich, the curator of the museum of Spalato, that the present duomo, traditionally called the Temple of Jupiter, was not a temple, but a mausoleum. These must have been the great public buildings of the palace, and, with the addition of the bell-tower, they remain the chief public buildings of the modern city. But, tho' the ancient square of the palace remains wonderfully perfect, the modern city, with its Venetian defenses, its Venetian and later buildings, has spread itself far beyond the walls of Diocletian. But those walls have made the history of Spalato, and it is the great buildings which stand within them that give Spalato its special place in the history of architecture. RAGUSA[12] BY HARRY DE WINDT Viewed from the sea, and at first sight, the place somewhat resembles Monte Carlo with its white villas, palms, and background of rugged, gray hills. But this is the modern portion of the town, outside the fortifications, erected many centuries ago. Within them lies the real Ragusa--a wonderful old city which teems with interest, for its time-worn buildings and picturesque streets recall, at every turn, the faded glories of this "South Slavonic Athens." A bridge across the moat which protects the old city is the link between the present and past. In new Ragusa you may sit on the crowded esplanade of a fashionable watering place; but pass through a frowning archway into the old town, and, save in the main street, which has modern shops and other up-to-date surroundings, you might be living in the dark ages. For as far back as in the ninth century Ragusa was the capital of Dalmatia and an independent republic, and since that period her literary and commercial triumphs, and the tragedies she has survived in the shape of sieges, earthquakes, and pestilence, render the records of this little-known state almost as engrossing as those of ancient Rome. Until I came here I had pictured a squalid Eastern place, devoid of ancient or modern interest; most of my fellow-countrymen probably do likewise, notwithstanding the fact that when London was a small and obscure town Ragusa was already an important center of commerce and civilization. The republic was always a peaceful one, and its people excelled in trade and the fine arts. Thus, as early as the fourteenth century the Ragusan fleet was the envy of the world; its vessels were then known as Argusas to British mariners, and the English word "Argosy" is probably derived from the name. These tiny ships went far afield--to the Levant and Northern Europe, and even to the Indies--a voyage frought, in those days, with much peril. At this epoch Ragusa had achieved a mercantile prosperity unequalled throughout Europe, but in later years the greater part of the fleet joined and perished with the Spanish Armada. And this catastrophe was the precursor of a series of national disasters. In 1667 the city was laid waste by an earthquake which killed over twenty thousand people, and this was followed by a terrible visitation of the plague, which further decimated the population. Ragusa, however, was never a large city, and even at its zenith, in the sixteenth century, it numbered under forty thousand souls, and now contains only about a third of that number. In 1814 the Vienna Congress finally deprived the republic of its independence, and it became (with Dalmatia) an Austrian possession. Trade has not increased here of recent years, as in Herzegovina and Bosnia. The harbor, at one time one of the most important ports in Europe, is too small and shallow for modern shipping, and the oil industry, once the backbone of the place, has sadly dwindled of late years. Ragusa itself now having no harbor worthy of the name, the traveler by sea must land at Gravosa about a mile north of the old city. Gravosa is merely a suburb of warehouses, shipping, and sailor-men, as unattractive as the London Docks, and the Hotel Petko swarmed with mosquitoes and an animal which seems to thrive and flourish throughout the Balkan States--the rat. The old Custom House is perhaps the most beautiful building in Ragusa, and is one of the few which survived the terrible earthquake of 1667. The structure bears the letters "I.H.S." over the principal entrance in commemoration of this fact. Its courtyard is a dream of beauty, and the stone galleries around it are surrounded with inscriptions of great age. Ragusa is a Slav town, but altho' the name of streets appear in Slavonic characters, Italian is also spoken on every side and the "Stradone," with its arcades and narrow precipitous alleys at right angles, is not unlike a street in Naples. The houses are built in small blocks, as a protection against earthquakes--the terror of every Ragusan (only mention the word and he will cross himself)--and here on a fine Sunday morning you may see Dalmatians, Albanians, and Herzegovinians in their gaudiest finery, while here and there a wild-eyed Montenegrin, armed to the teeth, surveys the gay scene with a scowl, of shyness rather than ill-humor. Outside the café, on the Square (where flocks of pigeons whirl around as at St. Mark's in Venice), every little table is occupied; but here the women are gowned in the latest Vienna fashions, and Austrian uniforms predominate. And the sun shines as warmly as in June (on this 25th day of March), and the cathedral bells chime a merry accompaniment to a military band; a sky of the brightest blue gladdens the eye, fragrant flowers the senses, and the traveler sips his bock or mazagran, and thanks his stars he is not spending the winter in cold, foggy England. Refreshments are served by a white-aproned garçon, and street boys are selling the "Daily Mail" and "Gil Blas," just as they are on the far-away boulevards of Paris. CATTARO[13] BY EDWARD A. FREEMAN The end of a purely Dalmatian pilgrimage will be Cattaro. He who goes further along the coast will pass into lands that have a history, past and present, which is wholly distinct from that of the coast which he has hitherto traced from Zara--we might say from Capo d'Istria--onward. We have not reached the end of the old Venetian dominion--for that we must carry our voyage to Crete and Cyprus. But we have reached the end of the nearly continuous Venetian dominion--the end of the coast which, save at two small points, was either Venetian or Regusan--the end of that territory of the two maritime commonwealths which they kept down to their fall in modern times, and in which they have been succeeded by the modern Dalmatian kingdom.... The city stands at the end of an inlet of the sea fifteen or twenty miles long, and it has mountains around it so high that it is only in fair summer weather that the sun can be seen; in winter Cattaro never enjoys his presence. There certainly is no place where it is harder to believe that the smooth waters of the narrow, lake-like inlet, with mountains on each side which it seems as if one could put out one's hand and touch, are really part of the same sea which dashes against the rocks of Ragusa. They end in a meadow-like coast which makes one think of Bourget or Trasimenus rather than of Hadria. The Dalmatian voyage is well ended by the sail along the Bocche, the loveliest piece of inland sea which can be conceived, and whose shores are as rich in curious bits of political history as they are in scenes of surpassing natural beauty. The general history of the district consists in the usual tossing to and fro between the various powers which have at different times been strong in the neighborhood. Cattaro was in the reign of Basil the Macedonian besieged and taken by Saracens, who presently went on unsuccessfully to besiege Ragusa. And, as under Byzantine rule it was taken by Saracens, so under Venetian rule it was more than once besieged by Turks. In the intermediate stages we get the usual alternations of independence and of subjection to all the neighboring powers in turn, till in 1419 Cattaro finally became Venetian. At the fall of the republic it became part of the Austrian share of the spoil. When the spoilers quarreled, it fell to France. When England, Russia, and Montenegro were allies, the city joined the land of which it naturally forms the head, and Cattaro became the Montenegrin haven and capital. When France was no longer dangerous, and the powers of Europe came together to parcel out other men's goods, Austria calmly asked for Cattaro back again, and easily got it. In the city of Cattaro the Orthodox Church is still in a minority, but it is a minority not far short of a majority. Outside its walls, the Orthodox outnumber the Catholics. In short, when we reach Cattaro, we have very little temptation to fancy ourselves in Italy or in any part of Western Christendom. We not only know, but feel, that we are on the Byzantine side of the Hadriatic; that we have, in fact, made our way into Eastern Europe. And East and West, Slav and Italian, New Rome and Old, might well struggle for the possession of the land and of the water through which we pass from Ragusa to our final goal at Cattaro. The strait leads us into a gulf; another narrow strait leads us into an inner gulf; and on an inlet again branching out of that inner gulf lies the furthest of Dalmatian cities. The lower city, Cattaro itself, seems to lie so quietly, so peacefully, as if in a world of its own from which nothing beyond the shores of its own Bocche could enter, that we are tempted to forget, not only that the spot has been the scene of so many revolutions through so many ages, but that it is even now a border city, a city on the marchland of contending powers, creeds, and races.... The city of Cattaro itself is small, standing on a narrow ledge between the gulf and the base of the mountain. It carries the features of the Dalmatian cities to what any one who has not seen Traü will call their extreme point. But, tho' the streets of Cattaro are narrow, yet they are civilized and airy-looking compared with those of Traü, and the little paved squares, as so often along this coast, suggest the memory of the ruling city. The memory of Venice is again called up by the graceful little scraps of its characteristic architecture which catch the eye ever and anon among the houses of Cattaro. The landing-place, the marina, the space between the coast and the Venetian wall, where we pass for the last time under the winged lion over the gate, has put on the air of a boulevard. But the forms and costume of Bocchesi and Montenegrins, the men of the gulf, with their arms in their girdles, no less than the men of the black mountain, banish all thought that we are anywhere but where we really are, at one of the border points of Christian and civilized Europe. If in the sons of the mountains we see the men who have in all ages held out against the invading Turk, we see in their brethren of the coast the men who, but a few years back, brought Imperial, Royal, and Apostolic Majesty to its knees ... At Cattaro the Orthodox Church is on its own ground, standing side by side on equal terms with its Latin rival, pointing to lands where the Filioque[14] is unknown and where the Bishop of the Old Rome has even been deemed an intruder. The building itself is a small Byzantine church, less Byzantine in fact in its outline than the small churches of the Byzantine type at Zara, Spalato, and Traü. The single dome rises, not from the intersection of a Greek cross, but from the middle of a single body, and, resting as it does on pointed arches, it suggests the thought of Périgueux and Angoulême. But this arrangement, which is shared by a neighboring Latin church, is well known throughout the East. The Latin duomo, which has been minutely described by Mr. Neale,[15] is of quite another type, and is by no means Dalmatian in its general look. A modern west front with two western towers does not go for much; but it reminds us that a design of the same kind was begun at Traü in better times. The inside is quite unlike anything of later Italian work. The traveler whose objects are of a more general kind turns away from this border church of Christendom as the last stage of a pilgrimage unsurpassed either for natural beauty or for historic interest. And, as he looks up at the mountain which rises almost close above the east end of the duomo of Cattaro, and thinks of the land[16] and the men to which the path over that mountain leads, he feels that, on this frontier at least, the spirit still lives which led English warriors to the side of Manuel Komnênos, and which steeled the heart of the last Constantine to die in the breach for the Roman name and the faith of Christendom. VIII OTHER AUSTRIAN SCENES CRACOW[17] BY MÉNIE MURIEL DOWIE Cracow, old, tired and dispirited, speaks and thinks only of the ruinous past. When you drive into Cracow from the station for the first time, you are breathless, smiling, and tearful all at once; in the great Ring-platz--a mass of old buildings--Cracow seems to hold out her arms to you--those long sides that open from the corner where the cab drives in. You do not have time to notice separately the row of small trees down on one side, beneath which bright-colored women-figures control their weekly market; you do not notice the sort of court-house in the middle with its red roof, cream-colored galleries and shops beneath; you do not notice the great tall church at one side of brick and stone most perfectly time-reconciled, or the houses, or the crazed paving, or the innocent little groups of cabs--you only see Cracow holding out her arms to you, and you may lean down your head and weep from pure instinctive sympathy. Suddenly a choir of trumpets breaks out into a chorale from the big church tower; the melancholy of it I shall never forget--the very melody seemed so old and tired, so worn and sweet and patient, like Cracow. Those trumpet notes have mourned in that tower for hundreds of years. It is the Hymn of Timeless Sorrow that they play, and the key to which they are attuned in Cracow's long despair. Hush! That is her voice, the old town's voice, high and sad--she is speaking to you. Dear Cracow! Never again it seems to me, shall I come so near to the deathless hidden sentiment of Poland as in those first moments. It would be no use to tell her to take heart, that there may be brighter days coming, and so forth. Lemberg may feel so, Lemberg that has the feelings of any other big new town, the strength and the determination; but Cracow's day was in the long ago, as a gay capital, a brilliant university town full of princes, of daring, of culture, of wit. She has outlived her day, and can only mourn over what has been and the times that she has seen; she may be always proud of her character, of the brave blood that has made scarlet her streets, but she can never be happy remodeled as an Austrian garrison town, and in the new Poland--the Poland whose foundation stones are laid in the hearts of her people, and that may yet be built some day--in that new Poland there will be no place for aristocratic, high-bred Cracow. During my stay in the beautiful butter-colored palace that is now a hotel, I went round the museums, galleries, and universities, most if not all of which are free to the public. It would be unfair to give the idea that Cracow has completely fallen to decay. This is not the case. Austria has erected some very handsome buildings; and a town with such fine pictures, good museums, and two universities, can not be complained of as moribund. At the same time, I can only record faithfully my impression, and that was that everything new, everything modern, was hopelessly out of tone in Cracow; progress, which, tho' desirable, may be a vulgar thing, would not suit her, and does not seem at home in her streets. About the Florian's Thor, with its round towers of old, sorrel-colored brick, and the Czartoryski Museum, there is nothing to say that the guide-book would not say better. In the museum, a tattered Polish flag of red silk, with the white eagle, a cheerful bird with curled tail, opened mouth, chirping defiantly to the left, imprest me, and a portrait of Szopen (Chopin) in fine profile when laid out dead. For amusement, there was a Paul Potter bull beside a Paul Potter willow, delightfully unconscious of a coming Paul Potter thunderstorm, and a miniature of Shakespeare which did not resemble any of the portraits of him that I am familiar with. Any amount of Turkish trappings and reminiscences of Potocki and Kosciuszko, of course. As I had no guide-book, I am quite prepared to learn that I overlooked the most important relics. In the cathedral, away up on the hill of Wawel, above the river Vistula (Wisla) I prowled about among the crypts with a curious specimen of beadledom who ran off long unintelligible histories in atrocious Viennese patois about every solemn tomb by which we stood. So far as I was concerned it might just as well have been the functionary who herds small droves of visitors in Westminster Abbey. I never listen to these people, because (i) I do not care to be informed; and (ii) since I should never remember what they said, it is useless my even letting it in at one ear. The kindly, cobwebby old person who piloted me among those wonderful kings' graves in Cracow was personally not uninteresting, indeed a fine study, and his rigmaroles brought up infallibly upon three words which I could not fail to notice: these were "silberner Sarg vergoldet" (silver coffin, gilded). It had an odd fascination for me this phrase, as I stood always waiting for it; why, I wondered, should anybody want to gild a good solid silver coffin? At the time of my first visit, the excavation necessary to form the crypt for the resting-place of Mickiewicz[18] was in progress, and I went in among the limey, dusty workmen, with their tallow candles, and looked round. In return for my gulden, the beadle gave me a few immortelles from Sobieski's tomb, and some laurel leaves from Kosciuszko's; and remembering friends at home of refinedly ghoulish tastes, I determined to preserve those poor moldering fragments for them. Most of my days and evenings I spent wandering by the Vistula and in and out of the hundred churches. My plan was to sight a spire, and then walk to the root of it, so to speak. In this manner I saw the town very well. The houses were of brick and plaster, the rich carmine-red brick that has made Cracow so beautiful. On each was a beautiful façade, and pediments in renaissance, bas-relief work of cupids, and classic figures with ribands and roses tying among them, seeming to speak, somehow, of the dead princes and the mighty aristocracy which had cost Cracow so dear. In the Jews' quarter that loud lifelong market of theirs was going forward, which required seemingly only some small basinfuls of sour Gurken and a few spoonfuls of beans of its stock-in-trade. Mingling among the Jews were the peasants, of course; the men in tightly fitting trousers of white blanket cloth, rich embroidered on the upper part and down the seams in blue and red; the women wearing pink printed muslin skirts, often with a pale blue muslin apron and a lemon-colored fine wool cloth, spotted in pink, upon the head. They manifested a great appreciation of color, but none of form, and after the free dress of the Hucal women, these people, mummied in their red tartan shawls--all hybrid Stewarts, they seemed to me--were merely bright bundles in the sunshine. In the shops in Cracow, French was nearly always the language of attack, and a good deal was spoken in the hotel. I had occasion to buy a great many things, but, according to my custom, not a photograph was among them; therefore, when I go back, I shall receive perfectly new and fresh impressions of the place, and can cherish no vague memories, encouraged by an album at home, in which the nameless cathedrals of many countries confuse themselves, and only the Coliseum at Rome stands forth, not to be contradicted or misnamed. But it became necessary to put a period to my wandering, unless I wished to find myself stranded in Vienna with "neither cross nor pile." The references to money-matters have been designedly slight throughout these pages. It is not my habit to keep accounts. I have never found that you get any money back by knowing just how you have spent it, and a conscience-pricking record of expenses is very ungrateful reading. So, when a certain beautiful evening came, I felt that I had to look upon it as my last. Being too early for the train, I bid the man drive about in the early summer dark for three-quarters of an hour. To such as do not care for precise information and statistics in foreign places, but appreciate rather atmosphere and impression, I can recommend this course. In and out among the pretty garden woods, outside the town, we drove. Buildings loomed majestically out of the night; sometimes it was the tower of an unknown church, sometimes it was the house of some forgotten family that sprang suggestively to the eye, and I was grateful that I was left to suppose the indefinite type of Austrian bureau, which occupied, in all probability, the first floor. Then we came to the river, and later, Wawel stood massed out black upon the blue, the glorious gravestone of a fallen Power. All the stars were shining, and little red-yellow lights in the castle windows were not much bigger. Above the whisper of the willows on its bank came the deep, quiet murmur of the Vistula, and every now and then, over the several towers of the solemn old palaces and the spires of the church where Poland has laid her kings, and so recently the king of the poets, the stars were dropping from their places, like sudden spiders, letting themselves down into the vast by faint yellow threads that showed a moment after the star itself was gone. Later, as I looked from the open gallery of the train that was taking me away, I could not help thinking that, just a hundred years ago, Wawel's star was shining with a light bright enough for all Europe to see; but even as the stars fell that night and left their places empty, so Wawel's star has fallen and Poland's star has fallen too. ON THE ROAD TO PRAGUE[19] BY BAYARD TAYLOR I was pleasantly disappointed on entering Bohemia. Instead of a dull, uninteresting country, as I expected, it is a land full of the most lovely scenery. There is everything which can gratify the eye--high blue mountains, valleys of the sweetest pastoral look and romantic old ruins. The very name of Bohemia is associated with wild and wonderful legends of the rude barbaric ages. Even the chivalric tales of the feudal times of Germany grow tame beside these earlier and darker histories. The fallen fortresses of the Rhine or the robber-castles of the Odenwald had not for me so exciting an interest as the shapeless ruins cumbering these lonely mountains. The civilized Saxon race was left behind; I saw around me the features and heard the language of one of those rude Slavonic tribes whose original home was on the vast steppes of Central Asia. I have rarely enjoyed traveling more than our first two days' journey toward Prague. The range of the Erzgebirge ran along on our right; the snow still lay in patches upon it, but the valleys between, with their little clusters of white cottages, were green and beautiful. About six miles before reaching Teplitz we passed Kulm, the great battlefield which in a measure decided the fate of Napoleon. He sent Vandamme with forty thousand men to attack the allies before they could unite their forces, and thus effect their complete destruction. Only the almost despairing bravery of the Russian guards under Ostermann, who held him in check till the allied troops united, prevented Napoleon's design. At the junction of the roads, where the fighting was hottest, the Austrians have erected a monument to one of their generals. Not far from it is that of Prussia, simple and tasteful. A woody hill near, with the little village of Kulm at its foot, was the station occupied by Vandamme at the commencement of the battle. There is now a beautiful chapel on its summit which can be seen far and wide. A little distance farther the Czar of Russia has erected a third monument, to the memory of the Russians who fell. Four lions rest on the base of the pedestal, and on the top of the shaft, forty-five feet high, Victory is represented as engraving the date, "Aug. 30, 1813," on a shield. The dark pine-covered mountains on the right overlook the whole field and the valley of Torlitz; Napoleon rode along their crests several days after the battle to witness the scene of his defeat. Teplitz lies in a lovely valley, several miles wide, bounded by the Bohemian mountains on one side and the Erzgebirge on the other. One straggling peak near is crowned with a picturesque ruin, at whose foot the spacious bath-buildings lie half hidden in foliage. As we went down the principal street I noticed nearly every house was a hotel; we learned afterward that in summer the usual average of visitors is five thousand.[20] The waters resemble those of the celebrated Carlsbad; they are warm and practically efficacious in rheumatism and diseases of like character. After leaving Teplitz the road turned to the east, toward a lofty mountain which we had seen the morning before. The peasants, as they passed by, saluted us with "Christ greet you!" We stopt for the night at the foot of the peak called the Milleschauer, and must have ascended nearly two thousand feet, for we had a wide view the next morning, altho' the mists and clouds hid the half of it. The weather being so unfavorable, we concluded not to ascend, and descended through green fields and orchards snowy with blossoms to Lobositz, on the Elbe. Here we reached the plains again, where everything wore the luxuriance of summer; it was a pleasant change from the dark and rough scenery we left. The road passed through Theresienstadt, the fortress of Northern Bohemia. The little city is surrounded by a double wall and moat which can be filled with water, rendering it almost impossible to be taken. In the morning we were ferried over the Moldau, and after journeying nearly all day across barren, elevated plains saw, late in the afternoon, the sixty-seven spires of Prague below. I feel out of the world in this strange, fantastic, yet beautiful, old city. We have been rambling all morning through its winding streets, stopping sometimes at a church to see the dusty tombs and shrines or to hear the fine music which accompanies the morning mass. I have seen no city yet that so forcibly reminds one of the past and makes him forget everything but the associates connected with the scenes around him. The language adds to the illusion. Three-fourths of the people in the streets speak Bohemian and many of the signs are written in the same tongue. The palace of the Bohemian kings still looks down on the city from the western heights, and their tombs stand in the cathedral of St. John. When one has climbed up the stone steps leading to the fortress, there is a glorious prospect before him. Prague with its spires and towers lies in the valleys below, through which curves the Moldau with its green islands, disappearing among the hills which enclose the city on every side. The fantastic Byzantine architecture of many of the churches and towers gives the city a peculiar Oriental appearance; it seems to have been transported from the hills of Syria.... Having found out first a few of the locations, we haunted our way with difficulty through its labyrinths, seeking out every place of note or interest. Reaching the bridge at last, we concluded to cross over and ascend to the Hradschin, the palace of the Bohemian kings. The bridge was commenced in 1357, and was one hundred and fifty years in building. That was the way the old Germans did their work, and they made a structure which will last a thousand years longer. Every pier is surmounted with groups of saints and martyrs, all so worn and timebeaten that there is little left of their beauty, if they ever had any. The most important of them--at least to Bohemians--is that of St. John Nepomuk, now considered as the patron-saint of the land. He was a priest many centuries ago [1340-1393] whom one of the kings threw from the bridge into the Moldau because he refused to reveal to him what the queen confest. The legend says the body swam for some time on the river with five stars around its head. Ascending the broad flight of steps to the Hradschin, I paused a moment to look at the scene below. A slight blue haze hung over the clustering towers, and the city looked dim through it, like a city seen in a dream. It was well that it should so appear, for not less dim and misty are the memories that haunt its walls. There was no need of a magician's wand to bid that light cloud shadow forth the forms of other times. They came uncalled for even by Fancy. Far, far back in the past I saw the warrior-princess who founded the kingly city--the renowned Libussa, whose prowess and talent inspired the women of Bohemia to rise at her death and storm the land that their sex might rule where it obeyed before. On the mountain opposite once stood the palace of the bloody Wlaska, who reigned with her Amazon band for seven years over half Bohemia. Those streets below had echoed with the fiery words of Huss, and the castle of his follower--the blind Ziska, who met and defeated the armies of the German Empire--molders on the mountains above. Many a year of war and tempest has passed over the scene. The hills around have borne the armies of Wallenstein and Frederick the Great; the war-cry of Bavaria, Sweden and Poland has echoed in the valley, and the red glare of the midnight cannon or the flames of burning palaces have often gleamed along the "blood-dyed waters" of the Moldau... On the way down again we stept into the St. Nicholas Church, which was built by the Jesuits. The interior has a rich effect, being all of brown and gold. The massive pillars are made to resemble reddish-brown marble, with gilded capitals, and the statues at the base are profusely ornamented in the same style. The music chained me there a long time. There was a grand organ, assisted by a full orchestra and large choir of singers. It was placed above, and at every sound of the priest's bell the flourish of trumpets and deep roll of the drums filled the dome with a burst of quivering sound, while the giant pipes of the organ breathed out their full harmony and the very air shook under the peal. It was like a triumphal strain. The soul became filled with thoughts of power and glory; every sense was changed into one dim, indistinct emotion of rapture which held the spirit as if spellbound. Not far from this place is the palace of Wallenstein, in the same condition as when he inhabited it. It is a plain, large building having beautiful gardens attached to it, which are open to the public. We went through the courtyard, threaded a passage with a roof of rough stalactitic rock and entered the garden, where a revolving fountain was casting up its glittering arches. THE CAVE OF ADELSBERG[21] BY GEORGE STILLMAN HILLARD The night had been passed at Adelsberg, and the morning had been agreeably occupied in exploring the wonders of its celebrated cavern. The entrance is through an opening in the side of a hill. In a few moments, after walking down a gentle descent, a sound of flowing water is heard, and the light of the torches borne by the guides gleams faintly upon a river which runs through these sunless chasms, and revisits the glimpses of day at Planina, some ten miles distant. The visitor now finds himself in a vast hall, walled and roofed by impenetrable darkness of the stream, which is crossed by a wooden bridge; and the ascent on the other side is made by a similar flight of steps. The bridge and steps are marked by a double row of lights, which present a most striking appearance as their tremulous luster struggles through the night that broods over them. Such a scene recalls Milton's sublime pictures of Pandemonium, and shows directly to the eye what effects a great imaginative painter may produce with no other colors than light and darkness. Here are the "stately height," the "ample spaces," the "arched roof," the rows of "starry lamps and blazing cressets" of Satan's hall of council; and by the excited fancy the dim distance is easily peopled with gigantic forms and filled with the "rushing of congregated wings." After this, one is led through a variety of chambers, differing in size and form, but essentially similar in character, and the attention is invited to the innumerable multitude of striking and fantastic objects which have been formed in the lapse of ages, by the mere dropping of water. Pendants hang from the roof, stalagmites grow from the floor like petrified stumps, and pillars and buttresses are disposed as oddly as in the architecture of a dream. Here, we are told to admire a bell, and there, a throne; here, a pulpit, and there, a butcher's shop; here, "the two hearts," and there, a fountain frozen into alabaster; and in every case we assent to the resemblance in the unquestioning mood of Polonius. One of the chambers, or halls, is used every year as a ball-room, for which purpose it has every requisite except an elastic floor, even to a natural dais for the orchestra. Here, with the sort of pride with which a book collector shows a Mazarin Bible or a folio Shakespeare, the guides point out a beautiful piece of limestone which hangs from the roof in folds as delicate as a Cashmere shawl, to which the resemblance is made more exact by a well-defined border of deeper color than the web. Through this translucent curtain the light shines as through a picture in porcelain, and one must be very unimpressible not to bestow the tribute of admiration which is claimed. These are the trivial details which may be remembered and described, but the general effect produced by the darkness, the silence, the vast spaces, the innumerable forms, the vaulted roofs, the pillars and galleries melting away in the gloom like the long-drawn aisles of a cathedral, may be recalled but not communicated. To see all these marvels requires much time, and I remained under ground long enough to have a new sense of the blessing of light. The first glimpse of returning day seen through the distant entrance brought with it an exhilarating sense of release, and the blue sky and cheerful sunshine were welcomed like the faces of long absent friends. A cave like that of Adelsberg--for all limestone caves are, doubtless, essentially similar in character--ought by all means to be seen if it comes in one's way, because it leaves impressions upon the mind unlike those derived from any other object. Nature stamps upon most of her operations a certain character of gravity and majesty. Order and symmetry attend upon her steps, and unity in variety is the law by which her movements are guided. But, beneath the surface of the earth, she seems a frolicsome child, or a sportive undine, who wreaths the unmanageable stone into weird and quaint forms, seemingly from no other motive than pure delight in the exercise of overflowing power. Everything is playful, airy, and fantastic; there is no spirit of soberness; no reference to any ulterior end; nothing from which food, fuel, or raiment can be extracted. These chasms have been scooped out, and these pillars have been reared, in the spirit in which the bird sings, or the kitten plays with the falling leaves. From such scenes we may safely infer that the plan of the Creator comprehends something more than material utility, that beauty is its own vindictator and interpreter, that sawmills were not the ultimate cause of mountain streams, nor wine-bottles of cork-trees. THE MONASTERY OF MÖLK[22] BY THOMAS FROGNALL DIBDIN We had determined upon dining at Mölk the next day. The early morning was somewhat inauspicious; but as the day advanced, it grew bright and cheerful. Some delightful glimpses of the Danube, to the left, from the more elevated parts of the road, accompanied us the whole way, till we caught the first view, beneath a bright blue sky, of the towering church and Monastery of Mölk. Conceive what you please, and yet you shall not conceive the situation of this monastery. Less elevated above the road than Chremsminster, but of a more commanding style of architecture, and of considerably greater extent, it strikes you--as the Danube winds round and washes its rocky base--as one of the noblest edifices in the world. The wooded heights of the opposite side of the Danube crown the view of this magnificent edifice, in a manner hardly to be surpassed. There is also a beautiful play of architectural lines and ornament in the front of the building, indicative of a pure Italian taste, and giving to the edifice, if not the air of towering grandeur, at least of dignified splendor.... As usual, I ordered a late dinner, intending to pay my respects to the Principal, and obtain permission to inspect the library. My late monastic visits had inspired me with confidence; and I marched up the steep sides of the hill, upon which the monastery is built, quite assured of the success of the visit I was about to pay. You must now accompany the bibliographer to the monastery. In five minutes from entering the outer gate of the first quadrangle--looking toward Vienna, and which is the more ancient part of the building--I was in conversation with the Vice-Principal and Librarian, each of us speaking Latin. I delivered the letter which I had received at Salzburg, and proceeded to the library. The view from this library is really enchanting, and put everything seen from a similar situation at Landshut and almost even at Chremsminster, out of my recollection. You look down upon the Danube, catching a fine sweep of the river, as it widens in its course toward Vienna. A man might sit, read, and gaze--in such a situation--till he fancied he had scarcely one earthly want! I now descended a small staircase, which brought me directly into the large library--forming the right wing of the building, looking up the Danube toward Lintz. I had scarcely uttered three notes of admiration, when the Abbé Strattman entered; and to my surprise and satisfaction, addrest me by name. We immediately commenced an ardent unintermitting conversation in the French language, which the Abbé speaks fluently and correctly. I now took a leisurely survey of the library; which is, beyond all doubt, the finest room of its kind which I have seen upon the Continent--not for its size, but for its style of architecture, and the materials of which it is composed. I was told that it was "the Imperial Library in miniature,"--but with this difference, let me here add, in favor of Mölk--that it looks over a magnificently wooded country, with the Danube rolling its rapid course at its base. The wainscot and shelves are walnut tree, of different shades, inlaid, or dovetailed, surmounted by gilt ornaments. The pilasters have Corinthian capitals of gilt; and the bolder or projecting parts of a gallery, which surrounds the room, are covered with the same metal. Everything is in harmony. This library may be about a hundred feet in length, by forty in width. It is sufficiently well furnished with books, of the ordinary useful class, and was once, I suspect, much richer in the bibliographical lore of the fifteenth century. On reaching the last descending step, just before entering the church, the Vice-Principal bade me look upward and view the corkscrew staircase. I did so; and to view and admire was one and the same operation of the mind. It was the most perfect and extraordinary thing of the kind which I had ever seen--the consummation, as I was told, of that particular species of art. The church is the very perfection of ecclesiastical Roman architecture; that of Chremsminster, altho' fine, being much inferior to it in loftiness and richness of decoration. The windows are fixt so as to throw their concentrated light beneath a dome, of no ordinary height, and of no ordinary elegance of decoration; but this dome is suffering from damp, and the paintings upon the ceiling will, unless repaired, be effaced in the course of a few years. The church is in the shape of a cross; and at the end of each of the transepts, is a rich altar, with statuary, in the style of art usual about a century ago. The pews--made of dark mahogany or walnut tree, much after the English fashion, but lower and more tasteful--are placed on each side of the nave, or entering; with ample space between them. They are exclusively appropriated to the tenants of the monastery. At the end of the nave, you look to the left, opposite--and observe, placed in a recess--a pulpit, which, from top to bottom, is completely covered with gold. And yet, there is nothing gaudy or tasteless, or glaringly obtrusive, in this extraordinary clerical rostrum. The whole is in the most perfect taste; and perhaps more judgment was required to manage such an ornament, or appendage--consistently with the splendid style of decoration exacted by the founder, for it was expressly the Prelate Dietmayr's wish that it should be so adorned,--than may on first consideration be supposed. In fact, the whole church is in a blaze of gold; and I was told that the gilding alone cost upward of ninety thousand florins. Upon the whole, I understood that the church of this monastery was considered as the most beautiful in Austria; and I can easily believe it to be so. THROUGH THE TYROL[23] BY WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT I left this most pleasing of the Italian cities (Venice), and took the road for the Tyrol. We passed through a level fertile country, formerly the territory of Venice, watered by the Piave, which ran blood in one of Bonaparte's battles. At evening we arrived at Ceneda, where our Italian poet Da Ponte[24] was born, situated just at the base of the Alps, the rocky peaks and irregular spires of which, beautifully green with the showery season, rose in the background. Ceneda seems to have something of German cleanliness about it, and the floors of a very comfortable inn at which we stopt were of wood, the first we had seen in Italy, tho' common throughout Tyrol and the rest of Germany. A troop of barelegged boys, just broke loose from school, whooping and swinging their books and slates in the air, passed under my window. On leaving Ceneda, we entered a pass in the mountains, the gorge of which was occupied by the ancient town of Serravalle, resting on arcades, the architecture of which denoted that it was built during the Middle Ages. Near it I remarked an old castle, which formerly commanded the pass, one of the finest ruins of the kind I had ever seen. It had a considerable extent of battlemented wall in perfect preservation, and both that and its circular tower were so luxuriantly loaded with ivy that they seemed almost to have been cut out of the living verdure. As we proceeded we became aware how worthy this region was to be the birthplace of a poet. A rapid stream, a branch of the Piave, tinged of a light and somewhat turbid blue by the soil of the mountains, came tumbling and roaring down the narrow valley; perpendicular precipices rose on each side; and beyond, the gigantic brotherhood of the Alps, in two long files of steep pointed summits, divided by deep ravines, stretched away in the sunshine to the northeast. In the face of one of the precipices by the way-side, a marble slab is fixt, informing the traveler that the road was opened by the late Emperor of Germany in the year of 1830. We followed this romantic valley for a considerable distance, passing several little blue lakes lying in their granite basins, one of which is called the "Lago Morto" or Dead Lake, from having no outlet for its waters. At length we began to ascend, by a winding road, the steep sides of the Alps--the prospect enlarging as we went, the mountain summits rising to sight around us, one behind another, some of them white with snow, over which the wind blew with a wintry keenness--deep valleys opening below us, and gulfs yawning between rocks over which old bridges were thrown--and solemn fir forests clothing the broad declivities. The farm-houses placed on these heights, instead of being of brick or stone, as in the plains and valleys below, were principally built of wood; the second story, which served for a barn, being encircled by a long gallery, and covered with a projecting roof of plank held down with large stones. We stopt at Venas, a wretched place with a wretched inn, the hostess of which showed us a chin swollen with the goitre, and ushered us into dirty comfortless rooms where we passed the night. When we awoke the rain was beating against the windows, and, on looking out, the forest and sides of the neighboring mountains, at a little height above us, appeared hoary with snow. We set out in the rain, but had not proceeded far before we heard the sleet striking against the windows of the carriage, and soon came to where the snow covered the ground to the depth of one or two inches. Continuing to ascend, we passed out of Italy and entered the Tyrol. The storm had ceased before we went through the first Tyrolese village, and we could not help being struck with the change in the appearance of the inhabitants--the different costume, the less erect figures, the awkward gait, the lighter complexions, the neatly-kept inhabitations, and the absence of beggars. As we advanced, the clouds began to roll off from the landscape, disclosing here and there, through openings in their broad skirts as they swept along, glimpses of the profound valleys below us, and of the white sides and summits of mountains in the mid-sky above. At length the sun appeared, and revealed a prospect of such wildness, grandeur, and splendor as I have never before seen. Lofty peaks of the most fantastic shapes, with deep clefts between, sharp needles of rock, and overhanging crags, infinite in multitude, shot up everywhere around us, glistening in the new-fallen snow, with thin wreaths of mist creeping along their sides. At intervals, swollen torrents, looking at a distance like long trains of foam, came thundering down the mountains, and crossing the road, plunged into the verdant valleys which winded beneath. Beside the highway were fields of young grain, prest to the ground with the snow; and in the meadows, ranunculuses of the size of roses, large yellow violets, and a thousand other Alpine flowers of the most brilliant hues, were peeping through their white covering. We stopt to breakfast at a place called Landro, a solitary inn, in the midst of this grand scenery, with a little chapel beside it. The water from the dissolving snow was dropping merrily from the roof in a bright June sun. We needed not to be told that we were in Germany, for we saw it plainly enough in the nicely-washed floor of the apartment into which we were shown, in the neat cupboard with the old prayer-book lying upon it, and in the general appearance of housewifery; to say nothing of the evidence we had in the beer and tobacco-smoke of the travelers' room, and the guttural dialect and quiet tones of the guests. From Landro we descended gradually into the beautiful valleys of the Tyrol, leaving the snow behind, tho' the white peaks of the mountains were continually in sight. At Bruneck, in an inn resplendent with neatness--we had the first specimen of a German bed. It is narrow and short, and made so high at the head, by a number of huge square bolsters and pillows, that you rather sit than lie. The principal covering is a bag of down, very properly denominated the upper bed, and between this and the feather-bed below, the traveler is expected to pass a night. An asthmatic patient on a cold winter night might perhaps find such a couch tolerably comfortable, if he could prevent the narrow covering from slipping off on one side or the other. The next day we were afforded an opportunity of observing more closely the inhabitants of this singular region, by a festival, or holiday of some sort, which brought them into the roads in great numbers, arrayed in their best dresses--the men in short jackets and small-clothes, with broad gay-colored suspenders over their waistcoats, and leathern belts ornamented with gold or silver leaf--the women in short petticoats composed of horizontal bands of different colors--and both sexes, for the most part, wearing broad-brimmed hats with hemispherical crowns, tho' there was a sugar-loaf variety much affected by the men, adorned with a band of lace and sometimes a knot of flowers. They are a robust, healthy-looking race, tho' they have an awkward stoop in the shoulders. But what struck me most forcibly was the devotional habits of the people. The Tyrolese might be cited as an illustration of the remark, that mountaineers are more habitually and profoundly religious than others. Persons of all sexes, young and old, whom we meet in the road, were repeating their prayers audibly. We passed a troop of old women, all in broad-brimmed hats and short gray petticoats, carrying long staves, one of whom held a bead-roll and gave out the prayers, to which the others made the responses in chorus. They looked at us so solemnly from under their broad brims, and marched along with so grave and deliberate a pace, that I could hardly help fancying that the wicked Austrians had caught a dozen elders of the respectable Society of Friends, and put them in petticoats to punish them for their heresy. We afterward saw persons going to the labors of the day, or returning, telling their rosaries and saying their prayers as they went, as if their devotions had been their favorite amusement. At regular intervals of about half a mile, we saw wooden crucifixes erected by the way-side, covered from the weather with little sheds, bearing the image of the Savior, crowned with thorns and frightfully dashed with streaks and drops of red paint, to represent the blood that flowed from his wounds. The outer walls of the better kind of houses were ornamented with paintings in fresco, and the subjects of these were mostly sacred, such as the Virgin and Child, the Crucifixion, and the Ascension. The number of houses of worship was surprising; I do not mean spacious or stately churches such as we meet with in Italy, but most commonly little chapels dispersed so as best to accommodate the population. Of these the smallest neighborhood has one for the morning devotions of its inhabitants, and even the solitary inn has its little consecrated building with its miniature spire, for the convenience of pious wayfarers. At Sterzing, a little village beautifully situated at the base of the mountain called the Brenner, and containing, as I should judge, not more than two or three thousand inhabitants, we counted seven churches and chapels within the compass of a square mile. The observances of the Roman Catholic church are nowhere more rigidly complied with than in the Tyrol. When we stopt at Bruneck on Friday evening, I happened to drop a word about a little meat for dinner in a conversation with the spruce-looking landlady, who appeared so shocked that I gave up the point, on the promise of some excellent and remarkably well-flavored trout from the stream that flowed through the village--a promise that was literally fulfilled.... We descended the Brenner on the 28th of June in a snow-storm, the wind whirling the light flakes in the air as it does with us in winter. It changed to rain, however, as we approached the beautiful and picturesque valley watered by the river Inn, on the banks of which stands the fine old town of Innsbruck, the capital of the Tyrol. Here we visited the Church of the Holy Cross, in which is the bronze tomb of Maxmilian I. and twenty or thirty bronze statues ranged on each side of the nave, representing fierce warrior-chiefs, and gowned prelates, and stately damsels of the middle ages. These are all curious for the costume; the warriors are cased in various kinds of ancient armor, and brandish various ancient weapons, and the robes of the females are flowing and by no means ungraceful. Almost every one of the statues has its hands and fingers in some constrained and awkward position; as if the artist knew as little what to do with them as some awkward and bashful people know what to do with their own. Such a crowd of figures in that ancient garb, occupying the floor in the midst of the living worshipers of the present day, has an effect which at first is startling. From Innsbruck we climbed and crossed another mountain-ridge, scarcely less wild and majestic in its scenery than those we had left behind. On descending, we observed that the crucifixes had disappeared from the roads, and the broad-brimmed and sugar-loaf hats from the heads of the peasantry; the men wore hats contracted in the middle of the crown like an hour-glass, and the women caps edged with a broad band of black fur, the frescoes on the outside of the houses became less frequent; in short it was apparent that we had entered a different region, even if the custom-house and police officers on the frontier had not signified to us that we were now in the kingdom of Bavaria. We passed through extensive forests of fir, here and there checkered with farms, and finally came to the broad elevated plain bathed by the Isar, in which Munich is situated. IN THE DOLOMITES[25] BY ARCHIBALD CAMPBELL KNOWLES The Dolomites are part of the Southern Tyrol. One portion is Italian, one portion is Austrian, and the rivalry of the two nations is keen. Under a warm summer sun, the quaint little villages seem half asleep, and the inhabitants appear to drift dreamily through life. Yet this is more apparent than real for, in many respects, the people here are busy in their own way. Crossing this region are many mountain ranges of limestone structure, which by water, weather and other causes have been worn away into the most fantastic fissures and clefts and the most picturesque peaks and pinnacles. A very great charm is their curious coloring, often of great beauty. The region of the Dolomites is a great contrast to the rest of the Alps. Its characteristics do not make the same appeal to all. This is largely not only a matter of individual taste and temperament but also of one's mental or spiritual constitution, for the picture with its setting depends as much upon what it suggests as upon its constituent parts. The Dolomites suggest Italy in the contour of the country, in the grace of the inhabitants and in the colors which make the scene one of rich magnificence. The great artist Titian was born here[26] and he probably learned much from his observation of his native place. Many of the mountain ranges are of the usual gray but such is the atmospheric condition that they seem to reflect the rosy rays of the setting sun or the purplish haze that often is found. The peaks are not great peaks in the sense that we speak of Mont Blanc, the Jungfrau, the Matterhorn or Monte Rosa. They impress one more as pictures with wonderful lights and strange grouping.... If the reader intends some day to visit the Dolomites he is advised to enter from the north. Salzburg and the Salzkammergut, so much frequented by the Emperor Francis Joseph and the Austrian nobility, make a good introduction. Then by way of Innsbruck, one of the gems of the Tyrol, Toblach is reached, where the driving tour may properly begin. Toblach is a lovely place, if one stops long enough to see it and enjoy it! It is not very far to Cortina, the center of this beautiful region. The way there is very lovely. And driving is in keeping with the spirit of the place. It almost seems profane to rush through in a motor, as some do, for not only is it impossible to appreciate the scenery, but also it is out of harmony with the peace and quiet which reign. For a while there is traversed a little valley quite embowered in green, but presently this abruptly leads into a wild gorge, with jagged peaks on every side. Soon Monte Cristallo appears. This is the most striking of all the Dolomite peaks. At a tiny village, called Schluderbach, the road forks, that to the right going directly to Cortina, the other to the left proceeding by way of Lake Misurina. Lake Misurina is a pretty stretch of water, pale green in color and at an altitude of about 5,800 feet. On its shores are two very attractive and well-kept hotels, with charming walks, from which one looks on a splendid panorama, picturesque in extreme. From Misurina, the road again ascends, becoming very narrow and very steep. The top is called "Passo Tre Croci," the Pass of the Three Crosses. The outlook is very lovely, with the three serrated peaks Monte Cristallo, Monte Piano and Monte Tofana, standing as guardian sentinels over the little valley of Ampezzo far below, where lies Cortina sleeping in the sun, while in the distance shine the snow fields of the Marmolata. Just as steeply as it climbed up one side, the road descends on the other side, to Cortina. This place is the capital of the valley and altogether lovely; beautiful in its woods and meadows, beautiful in its mountain views, beautiful in the town itself and beautiful in its people. Cortina has much to boast of--an ancient church and some old houses; an industrial school in which the villagers are taught the most delicate and artistic (and withal comparatively cheap) filigree mosaic work; and a community of people, handsome in face and figure and possessing a carriage and refinement superior to any seen elsewhere among the mountaineers or peasantry. In the neighborhood of Cortina are many excursions and also extended rock climbs, but those who go there in the summer will be more apt to linger lazily amid the cool shade of the trees than to brave the hot Italian sun on the peaks! After a few days' stay at Cortina, the drive is continued. There are many ways out. You can return by a new route to Toblach and the Upper Tyrol. Or you can go south to Belluno and thence to northern Italy. Or a third way and perhaps the finest tour of all is that over a series of magnificent mountain passes to Botzen. This last crosses the Ampezzo Valley and then begins the ascent of Monte Tofana, which here is beautifully wooded. Steepness seems characteristic of this region! It is hard to imagine a carriage climbing a road any steeper than that one on the slopes of Monte Tofana! If narrow and steep is the way and hard and toilsome the climb this Monte Tofana route most certainly repays one when it reaches the Falzarego Pass (6,945 feet high) which is certainly an earthly Paradise! One can not aptly describe a view like that! It is all a picture; as if every part was purposely what it is, here rocky, here green, here snowy, with summits, valleys, ravines and villages and even a partly ruined castle to form a whole such as an artist or poet would revel in. After a pause on the summit of the Pass, again comes a steep descent, as the drive is resumed, which continues to Andraz, where déjeuner is taken. One can not live on air or scenery and even the most indefatigable sightseer sometimes turns with longing to luncheon! Then one returns with added zest to the feast of eye and soul. And at Andraz, as one lingers awhile after luncheon on that high mountain terrace, a lovelier scene than that spread before the eye could scarcely be imagined. Indeed it is a "dream-scene," and as seen in the sleepy stillness of the early afternoon, when the shadows are already playing with the lights and gradually overcoming them, it seems like fancy, not reality. Again the carriage is taken and soon the road is climbing once more, this time giving fine views of the Sella group of peaks and going through a series of picturesque valleys. At Arabba (5,255 feet), a pretty little village, the final ascent to Pordoi begins. The scenery undergoes a change. It becomes more wild and barren and the characteristics of the high Alps appear. The hour begins to be late and it becomes cold, but the light still lingers as the carriage reaches the summit of the pass and stops at the new Hôtel Pordoi (7,020 feet high) facing the weird, fantastic shapes of the Rosengarten and the Langkofel, on the one side and on the other the snowy Marmolata and the summits about Cortina.... The following morning the start is made for Botzen. The way steadily descends for hours, past the pretty hamlets of Canazei, Campitello and Vigo di Fassa, surrounded by an imposing array of Dolomite peaks. After crossing the Karer Pass the scenery becomes much more soft and pastoral. Below the pass, most beautifully situated is a little green lake called the Karer-See.... At Botzen the drive through the Dolomites ends. At best it gives but a glimpse of this delightful region! That glimpse leaves a lasting impression, not of snowy summits and glistening glaciers, but of wonderful rocks and more wonderful coloring and of great peaks of fantastic form, set in a garden spot of green. And Botzen is a fitting terminus. It dates far back to the Middle Ages. It boasts of churches, houses and public buildings of artistic merit and architectural beauty and over all there lingers an atmosphere of rest and refinement, refreshing to see, where there might have been the noisy bustle and hopeless vulgarity of so many places similarly situated. There is plenty going on, nevertheless, for Botzen is quite a little commercial center in its own way, but with it there is this charm of dignified repose. One wanders through the town under the cool colonnades, strolls into some ancient cloisters, kneels for a moment in some finely carved church and then goes out again to the open, to see far above the little city that beautiful background of the Dolomite peaks, dominated by the wonderfully impressive and fantastic Rosengarten range, golden red in the western sun. With such a view experience may well lapse into memory, to linger on so long as the mind possesses the power of recalling the past. CORTINA[27] BY AMELIA B. EDWARDS Situate on the left bank of the Boita, which here runs nearly due north and south, with the Tre Croci pass opening away behind the town to the east, and the Tre Sassi Pass widening before it to the west, Cortina lies in a comparatively open space between four great mountains, and is therefore less liable to danger from bergfalls than any other village not only in the Val d'Ampezo but in the whole adjacent district. For the same reason, it is cooler in summer than either Caprile, Agordo, Primiero, or Predazzo; all of which, tho' more central as stopping places, and in many respects more convenient, are yet somewhat too closely hemmed in by surrounding heights. The climate of Cortina is temperate throughout the year. Ball gives the village an elevation of 4,048 feet above the level of the sea; and one of the parish priests--an intelligent old man who has devoted many years of his life to collecting the flora of the Ampezzo--assured me that he had never known the thermometer drop so low as fifteen degrees[28] of frost in even the coldest winters. The soil, for all this, has a bleak and barren look; the maize (here called "grano Turco") is cultivated, but does not flourish; and the vine is unknown. But then agriculture is not a specialty of the Ampezzo Thal, and the wealth of Cortina is derived essentially from its pasture-lands and forests. These last, in consequence of the increased and increasing value of timber, have been lavishly cut down of late years by the Commune--too probably at the expense of the future interests of Cortina. For the present, however, every inn, homestead, and public building bespeaks prosperity. The inhabitants are well-fed and well-drest. Their fairs and festivals are the most considerable in all the South Eastern Tyrol; their principal church is the largest this side of St. Ulrich; and their new Gothic Campanile, 250 feet high, might suitably adorn the piazza of such cities as Bergamo or Belluno. The village contains about 700 souls, but the population of the Commune numbers over 2,500. Of these, the greater part, old and young, rich and poor, men, women, and children, are engaged in the timber trade. Some cut the wood; some transport it. The wealthy convey it on trucks drawn by fine horses which, however, are cruelly overworked. The poor harness themselves six or eight in a team, men, women, and boys together, and so, under the burning summer sun, drag loads that look as if they might be too much for an elephant.... To ascend the Campanile and get the near view over the village, was obviously one of the first duties of a visitor; so, finding the door open and the old bellringer inside, we mounted laboriously to the top--nearly a hundred feet higher than the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Standing here upon the outer gallery above the level of the great bells, we had the village and valley at our feet. The panorama, tho' it included little which we had not seen already, was fine all around, and served to impress the mainland marks upon our memory. The Ampezzo Thal opened away to north and south, and the twin passes of the Tre Croci and Tre Sassi intersected it to east and west. When we had fixt in our minds the fact that Landro and Bruneck lay out to the north, and Perarolo to the south; that Auronzo was to be found somewhere on the other side of the Tre Croci; and that to arrive at Caprile it was necessary to go over the Tre Sassi, we had gained something in the way of definite topography. The Marmolata and Civetta, as we knew by our maps, were on the side of Caprile; and the Marmarole on the side of Auronzo. The Pelmo, left behind yesterday, was peeping even now above the ridge of the Rochetta; and a group of fantastic rocks, so like the towers and bastions of a ruined castle that we took them at first sight for the remains of some medieval stronghold, marked the summit of the Tre Sassi to the west. "But what mountain is that far away to the south?" we asked, pointing in the direction of Perarolo. "Which mountain, Signora?" "That one yonder, like a cathedral front with two towers." The old bellringer shaded his eyes with one trembling hand, and peered down the valley. "Eh," he said, "it is some mountain on the Italian side." "But what is it called?" "Eh," he repeated, with a puzzled look, "who knows? I don't know that I ever noticed it before." Now it was a very singular mountain--one of the most singular and the most striking that we saw throughout the tour. It was exactly like the front of Notre Dame, with one slender aiguille, like a flagstaff, shooting up from the top of one of its battlemented towers. It was conspicuous from most points on the left bank of the Boita; but the best view, as I soon after discovered, was from the rising ground behind Cortina, going up through the fields in the direction of the Begontina torrent. To this spot we returned again and again, fascinated as much, perhaps, by the mystery in which it was enveloped, as by the majestic outline of this unknown mountain, to which, for want of a better, we gave the name of Notre Dame. For the old bellringer was not alone in his ignorance. Ask whom we would, we invariably received the same vague reply--it was a mountain "on the Italian side." They knew no more; and some, like our friend of the Campanile, had evidently "not noticed it before." IX ALPINE RESORTS THE CALL OF THE MOUNTAINS[29] BY FREDERIC HARRISON Once more--perhaps for the last time--I listen to the unnumbered tinkling of the cow-bells on the slopes--"the sweet bells of the sauntering herd"--to the music of the cicadas in the sunshine, and the shouts of the neat herdlads, echoing back from Alp to Alp. I hear the bubbling of the mountain rill, I watch the emerald moss of the pastures gleaming in the light, and now and then the soft white mist creeping along the glen, as our poet says, "puts forth an arm and creeps from pine to pine." And see, the wild flowers, even in this waning season of the year, the delicate lilac of the dear autumn crocus, which seems to start up elf-like out of the lush grass, the coral beads of the rowan, and the beech-trees just begun to wear their autumn jewelry of old gold. As I stroll about these hills, more leisurely, more thoughtfully than I used to do of old in my hot mountaineering days, I have tried to think out what it is that makes the Alpine landscape so marvelous a tonic to the spirit--what is the special charm of it to those who have once felt all its inexhaustible magic. Other lands have rare beauties, wonders of their own, sights to live in the memory for ever. In France, in Italy, in Spain, in Greece and in Turkey, I hold in memory many a superb landscape. From boyhood upward I thirsted for all kinds of Nature's gifts, whether by sea, or by river, lake, mountain, or forest. For sixty years at least I have roved about the white cliffs, the moors, the riversides, lakes, and pastures of our own islands from Penzance to Cape Wrath, from Beachy Head to the Shetlands. I love them all. But they can not touch me, as do the Alps, with the sense at once of inexhaustible loveliness and of a sort of conscious sympathy with every fiber of man's heart and brain. Why then is this so? I find it in the immense range of the moods in which Nature is seen in the Alps, as least by those who have fully absorbed all the forms, sights, sounds, wonders, and adventures they offer. An hour's walk will show them all in profound contrast and yet in exquisite harmony. The Alps form a book of Nature as wide and as mysterious as Life. Earth has no scenes of placid fruitfulness more balmy than the banks of one of the larger lakes, crowded with vineyards, orchards, groves and pastures, down to the edge of its watery mirror, wherein, beside a semi-tropical vegetation, we see the image of some medieval castle, of some historic tower, and thence the eye strays up to sunless gorges, swept with avalanches, and steaming with feathery cascades; and higher yet one sees against the skyline ranges of terrific crags, girt with glaciers, and so often wreathed in storm clouds. All that Earth has of most sweet, softest, easiest, most suggestive of langor and love, of fertility and abundance--here is seen in one vision beside all that Nature has most hard, most cruel, most unkind to Man--where life is one long weary battle with a frost bitten soil, and every peasant's hut has been built up stone by stone, and log by log, with sweat and groans, and wrecked hopes. In a few hours one may pass from an enchanted garden, where every sense is satiated, and every flower and leaf and gleam of light is intoxication, up into a wilderness of difficult crags and yawning glaciers, which men can reach only by hard-earned skill, tough muscle and iron nerves.... The Alps are international, European, Humanitarian. Four written languages are spoken in their valleys, and ten times as many local dialects. The Alps are not especially Swiss--I used to think they were English--they belong equally to four nations of Europe; they are the sanatorium and the diversorium of the civilized world, the refuge, the asylum, the second home of men and women famous throughout the centuries for arts, literature, thought, religion. The poet, the philosopher, the dreamer, the patriot, the exile, the bereaved, the reformer, the prophet, the hero--have all found in the Alps a haven of rest, a new home where the wicked cease from troubling, where men need neither fear nor suffer. The happy and the thoughtless, the thinker and the sick--are alike at home here. The patriot exile inscribed on his house on Lake Leman--"Every land is fatherland to the brave man." What he might have written is--"This land is fatherland to all men." To young and old, to strong and weak, to wise and foolish alike, the Alps are a second fatherland. INTERLAKEN AND THE JUNGFRAU[30] B.T. ARCHIBALD CAMPBELL KNOWLES It is hard to find a prettier spot than Interlaken. Situated between two lovely lakes, surrounded by wooded heights, and lying but a few miles from the snowy Jungfrau, it is like a jewel richly set. From Lucerne over the Brunig, from Meiringen over the Grimsel come the travelers, passing on their way the Lake of Brienz, with the waterfall of the Giessbach, on its southern side. From Berne over Lake Thun, from the Rhône Valley over the Gemmi or through the Simmenthal come the tourists, seeing as they come the white peaks of the Oberland. And Interlaken welcomes them all, and rests them for their closer relations with the High Alps by trips to the region of the Lauterbrunnen, Grindelwald, and Mürren, and the great mountain plateaux looking down upon them. Interlaken is not a climbing center. Consequently mountaineering is little in evidence, conversation about ascents is seldom heard, and ice-axes, ropes, and nailed boots are seen more often in shop windows than in the streets. Interlaken is not like some other Swiss towns. Berne, Geneva, Zurich, and Lucerne are places possessing notable churches, museums, and monuments of the past, having a social life of their own and being distinguished in some special way, as centers of culture and education. Interlaken, however, has little life apart from that made by the throngs of visitors who gather here in the summer. There is little to see except a group of old monastic buildings, and in Unterseen and elsewhere some fine old carved chalets, but none of these receives much attention. The attraction, on what one may call the natural side, centers in the softly beautiful panorama of woods and meadows, green hills and snow peaks which opens to the eye, and on the social side in the busy little promenade and park of the Höheweg, bordered with hotels, shops, and gardens. Here is ever a changing picture in the height of the season, in fact, quite kaleidoscopic as railways and steamboats at each end of Interlaken send their passengers to mingle in the passing crowd. All "sorts and conditions of men" are here, and representatives of antagonistic nations meet in friendly intercourse. On the hotel terraces and in the little cafés and tea rooms, one hears a babel of voices, every nation of Europe seeming to speak in its own native tongue. Life goes easily. There is a gaiety in the little town that is infectious. It is a sort of busy idleness. "To trip or not to trip" is the question. If the affirmative, then a rush to the mountain trains and comfortable cabs. If the negative, then a turning to the shops, where pretty things worthy of Paris or London are seen side by side with Swiss carvings and Swiss embroidery and many little superficial souvenirs. As the contents of the shops are exhibited in the windows, so the character of the visitors is shown by the crowds, and the life of the place is seen in the constant ebb and flow of the people on the Höheweg. Interlaken is undoubtedly a tourist center, for few trips to Switzerland overlook or omit this delightful spot. Thousands come here, who never go any nearer the High Alps. They are quite content to sit on the benches of the Höheweg, listening to the music and enjoying the view. There is a casino, most artistically planned, with plashing fountains, shady paths, and wonderful flowerbeds. Here many persons pass the day, and, contrary to what one might expect, it is quiet and restful, lounging in that parklike garden. For, notwithstanding "the madding crowd," Interlaken is a little gem of a mountain town, with an undertone of repose and nobility, as if the spirit of the Alps asserted herself, reigning, as one might say, for all not ruling. And always smiling at the people, as it were, is the majestic Jungfrau, ever seeming close at hand, altho' eight miles away.... The pleasures of this little Swiss resort are exhaustless. The wooded hills of the Rugen give innumerable walks amid beautiful forests, with all their wealth of pine and larch and hardwood, their moss-clad rocks and waving ferns. In that pleasant shade hours may be passed close to nature. The lakes not only offer delightful water trips, but also charming excursions along the wooded shores, sometimes high above the lakes, giving varying views of great beauty. While, ever as with beckoning fingers, the great peaks, snow-capped or rock-summitted, call one across the verdant meadows into the higher valleys of Kienthal, Lauterbrunnen, Grindelwaid, and Kandersteg, to the terraced heights above or up amid the great wild passes. Interlaken is, above all, a garden of green. Perhaps the unusual amount of rain which falls to the lot of this valley accounts for its verdure. In any event, park, woods, meadow, garden, even the mountain sides are green, a vari-colored green, and interspersed with an abundance of flowers. Nowhere is the eye offended by anything inartistic or unpicturesque, but, on the contrary, the charm is so comprehensive that the visitor looks from place to place, from this bit to that bit, and ever sees new beauty. To complete all, to accentuate in the minds of some this impression of green, is the majestic Jungfrau. Other views may be grander and more magnificent, but no view of the Jungfrau can compare in loveliness to that from Interlaken. A great white glistening mass, far up above green meadows, green forests, and green mountains, rises this peak, a shining summit of white. Fitly named the Virgin, the Jungfrau gives her benediction to Interlaken, serenely smiling at the valley and at the town lying so quietly at her feet--the Jungfrau crowned with snow, Interlaken drest in green! In the golden glory of the sun, in the silver shimmer of the moon, the Jungfrau beckons, the Jungfrau calls! "Come," she seems to say, "come nearer! Come up to the heights! Come close to the running waters! Come." And that invitation falls on no unwilling ears, but in to the Grindelwald and to the Lauterbrunnen and up to Mürren go those who love the majestic Jungfrau! What a wonderful trip this is! It may shatter some ideals in being taken to such a height in a railway train, but even against one's convictions as to the proper way of seeing a mountain, when all has been said, the fact remains that this trip is wonderful beyond words. There is a strangeness in taking a train which leaves a garden of green in the early morning and in a few hours later, after valley and pass and tunnel, puts one out on snow fields over 11,000 feet above the sea, where are seen vast stretches of white, almost level with the summit of the Jungfrau close at hand, and below, stretching for miles, on the one side the great Aletsch Glacier, and on the other side the green valleys enclosed by the everlasting hills! The route is by way of Lauterbrunnen, Wengen, and the Scheidegg, and after skirting the Eiger Glacier going by tunnel into the very bowels of the mountain. At Eigerwand, Rotstock, and Eismeer are stations, great galleries blasted out of the rock, with corridors leading to openings from which one has marvelous views.[31] Eismeer looks directly upon the huge sea of snow and ice, with immense masses of dazzling white so close as to make one reel with awe and astonishment. In fact, this view is really oppressive in its wild magnificence, so near and so grand is it. The Jungfraujoch is different. One is out in the open, so to speak; one walks over that vast plateau of snow over 11,000 feet high in the glorious sunlight, above most of the nearer peaks and looking down at a beautiful panorama. On one side of this plateau is the Jungfrau, on the other the Mönch, either of which can be climbed from here in about three hours. Yet the eye lingers longer in the direction of the Aletsch Glacier than anywhere else, this frozen river running for miles and turning to the right at the little green basin of water full of pieces of floating ice, called the Marjelen Lake, or See, at the foot of the Eggishorn, which is unique and lovely. Long ago it was formed in this corner of the glacier, and its blue waters are really melted snow, over which float icebergs shining in the sun. In such a position the lake underlaps the glacier for quite a distance, forming a low vaulted cavern in the ice. Every now and then one of these little bergs overbalances itself and turns over, the upper side then being a deep blue, and the lower side, which was formerly above, being a pure white. Again turning toward the green valleys, one with the eye of an artist, who can perceive and differentiate varying shades of color, can not but admit that the Bernese Oberland is "par excellence" first. Even south of the Alps the verdure does not excel or even equal that to be seen here. There is something incomparably lovely about the Oberland valleys. It is indescribable, indefinable, for when one has exhausted the most extravagant terms of description, he feels that he has failed to picture the scene as he desired. Yet if one word should be chosen to convey the impression which the Oberland makes, the word would be "color." For whether one regards the snow summits as setting off the valleys, or the green meadows as setting off the peaks, it matters not, for the secret of their beauty lies in the richness and variety of the exquisite coloring wherein many wonderful shades of green predominate. THE ALTDORF OF WILLIAM TELL[32] BY W.D. M'CRACKAN Let it be said at once that, altho' the name of Altdorf is indissolubly linked with that of William Tell, the place arouses an interest which does not at all depend upon its associations with the famous archer. From the very first it gives one the impression of possessing a distinct personality, of ringing, as it were, to a note never heard before, and thus challenging attention to its peculiarities. As you approach Altdorf from Flüelen, on the Lake of Lucerne, by the long white road, the first houses you reach are large structures of the conventional village type, plain, but evidently the homes of well-to-do people, and some even adorned with family coats-of-arms. In fact, this street is dedicated to the aristocracy, and formerly went by the name of the Herrengasse, the "Lane of the Lords." Beyond these fashionable houses is an open square, upon which faces a cosy inn--named, of course, after William Tell; and off on one side the large parish church, built in cheap baroco style, but containing a few objects of interest.... There is a good deal of sight-seeing to be done in Altdorf, for so small a place. In the town hall are shown the tattered flags carried by the warriors of Uri in the early battles of the Confederation, the mace and sword of state which are borne by the beadles to the Landsgemeinde. In a somewhat inaccessible corner, a few houses off, the beginnings of a museum have been made. Here is another portrait of interest--that of the giant Püntener, a mercenary whose valor made him the terror of the enemy in the battle of Marignano, in 1515; so that when he was finally killed, they avenged themselves, according to a writing beneath the picture, by using his fat to smear their weapons, and by feeding their horses with oats from his carcass. Just outside the village stands the arsenal, whence, they say, old armor was taken and turned into shovels, when the St. Gothard Railroad was building, so poor and ignorant were the people. If you are of the sterner sex, you can also penetrate into the Capuchin Monastery, and enter the gardens, where the terraces that rise behind the buildings are almost Italian in appearance, festooned with vines and radiant with roses. Not that the fame of this institution rests on such trivial matters, however. The brothers boast of two things: theirs is the oldest branch of the order in Switzerland, dating from 1581, and they carry on in it the somewhat unappetizing industry of cultivating snails for the gourmands of foreign countries. Above the Capuchins is the famous Bannwald, mentioned by Schiller--a tract of forest on the mountain-slope, in which no one is allowed to fell trees, because it protects the village from avalanches and rolling stones. Nothing could be fairer than the outskirts of Altdorf on a May morning. The valley of the Reuss lies bathed from end to end in a flood of golden light, shining through an atmosphere of crystal purity. Daisies, cowslips, and buttercups, the flowers of rural well-being, show through the rising grass of the fields; along the hedges and crumbling walls of the lanes peep timid primroses and violets, and in wilder spots the Alpine gentian, intensely blue. High up, upon the mountains, glows the indescribable velvet of the slopes, while, higher still, ragged and vanishing patches of snow proclaim the rapid approach of summer. After all, the best part of Altdorf, to make an Irish bull, lies outside of the village. No adequate idea of this strange little community can be given without referring to the Almend, or village common. Indeed, as time goes on, one learns to regard this Almend as the complete expression and final summing up of all that is best in Altdorf, the reconciliation of all its inconsistencies. How fine that great pasture beside the River Reus, with its short, juicy, Alpine grass, in sight of the snow-capped Bristenstock, at one end of the valley, and of the waters of Lake Lucerne at the other! In May, the full-grown cattle have already departed for the higher summer pastures, leaving only the feeble young behind, who are to follow as soon as they have grown strong enough to bear the fatigues of the journey. At this time, therefore, the Almend becomes a sort of vision of youth--of calves, lambs, and foals, guarded by little boys, all gamboling in the exuberance of early life. LUCERNE[33] BY VICTOR TISSOT A height crowned with embattled ramparts that bristle with loop-holed turrets; church towers mingling their graceful spires and peaceful crosses with those warlike edifices; dazzling white villas, planted like tents under curtains of verdure; tall houses with old red skylights on the roofs--this is our first glimpse of the Catholic and warlike city of Lucerne. We seem to be approaching some town of old feudal times that has been left solitary and forgotten on the mountain side, outside of the current of modern life. But when we pass through the station we find ourselves suddenly transported to the side of the lake, where whole flotillas of large and small boats lie moored on the blue waters of a large harbor. And along the banks of this wonderful lake is a whole town of hotels, gay with many colored flags, their terraces and balconies rising tier above tier, like the galleries of a grand theater whose scenery is the mighty Alps.... In summer Lucerne is the Hyde Park of Switzerland. Its quays are thronged by people of every nation. There you meet pale women from the lands of snow, and dark women from the lands of the sun; tall, six-foot English women, and lively, alert, trim Parisian women, with the light and graceful carriage of a bird on the bough. At certain hours this promenade on the quays is like a charity fair or a rustic ball--bright colors and airy draperies everywhere. Nowhere can the least calm and repose be found but in the old town. There the gabled houses, with wooden galleries hanging over the waters of the Reuss, make a charming ancient picture, like a bit of Venice set down amid the verdant landscape of the valley. I also discovered on the heights beyond the ramparts a pretty and peaceful convent of Capuchins, the way to which winds among wild plants, starry with flowers. It is delicious to go right away, far from the town swarming and running over with Londoners, Germans, and Americans, and to find yourself among fragrant hedges, peopled by warblers whom it has not yet occurred to the hotel-keepers to teach to sing in English. This sweet path leads without fatigue to the convent of the good fathers. In a garden flooded with sunshine and balmy with the fragrance of mignonette and vervain, where broad sunflowers erect their black discs fringed with gold, two brothers with fan-shaped beards, their brass-mounted spectacles astride on their flat noses, and arrayed in green gardening aprons, are plying enormous watering-cans; while, in the green and cool half-twilight under the shadowy trees, big, rubicund brothers walk up and down, reading their red-edged breviaries in black leather bindings. Happy monks! Not a fraction of a pessimist among them! How well they understand life! A beautiful convent, beautiful nature, good wine and good cheer, neither disturbance nor care; neither wife nor children; and when they leave the world, heaven specially created for them, seraphim waiting for them with harps of gold, and angels with urns of rose-water to wash their feet! Lucerne began as a nest of monks, hidden in an orchard like a nest of sparrows. The first house of the town was a monastery, erected by the side of the lake. The nest grew, became a village, then a town, then a city. The monks of Murbach, to whom the monastery of St. Leger belonged, had got into debt; this sometimes does happen even to monks. They sold to King Rudolf all the property they possest at Lucerne and in Unterwalden; and thus the town passed into the hands of the Hapsburgs. When the first Cantons, after expelling the Austrian bailiffs, had declared their independence, Lucerne was still one of Austria's advanced posts. But its people were daily brought into contact with the shepherds of the Forest Cantons, who came into the town to supply themselves with provisions; and they were not long in beginning to ask themselves if there was any reason why they should not be, as well as their neighbors, absolutely free. The position of the partizans of Austria soon became so precarious that they found it safe to leave the town.... The opening of the St. Gothard Railway has given a new impulse to this cosmopolitan city, which has a great future before it. Already it has supplanted Interlaken in the estimation of the furbelowed, fashionable world--the women who come to Switzerland not to see but to be seen. Lucerne is now the chief summer station of the twenty-two Cantons. And yet it does not possess many objects of interest. There is the old bridge on the Reuss, with its ancient paintings; the Church of St. Leger, with its lateral altars and its Campo Santo, reminding us of Italian cemeteries; the museum at the Town Hall, with its fine collection of stained glass; the blood-stained standards from the Burgundian wars, and the flag in which noble old Gundolfingen, after charging his fellow-citizens never to elect their magistrates for more than a year, wrapt himself as in a shroud of glory to die in the fight; finally, there is the Lion of Lucerne; and that is all. The most wonderful thing of all is that you are allowed to see this lion for nothing; for close beside it you are charged a franc for permission to cast an indifferent glance on some uninteresting excavations, which date, it is said, from the glacial period. We do not care if they do.... The great quay of Lucerne is delightful; as good as the seashore at Dieppe or Trouville. Before you, limpid and blue, lies the lake, which from the character of its shores, at once stern and graceful, is the finest in Switzerland. In front rises the snow-clad peaks of Uri, to the left the Rigi, to the right the austere Pilatus, almost always wearing his high cap of clouds. This beautiful walk on the quay, long and shady like the avenue of a gentleman's park, is the daily resort, toward four o'clock, of all the foreigners who are crowded in the hotels or packed in the boarding-houses. Here are Russian and Polish counts with long mustaches, and pins set with false brilliants; Englishmen with fishes' or horses' heads; Englishwomen with the figures of angels or of giraffes; Parisian women, daintily attired, sprightly, and coquettish; American women, free in their bearing, and eccentric in their dress, and their men as stiff as the smoke-pipes of steamboats; German women, with languishing voices, drooping and pale like willow branches, fair-haired and blue-eyed, talking in the same breath of Goethe and the price of sausages, of the moon and their glass of beer, of stars and black radishes. And here and there are a few little Swiss girls, fresh and rosy as wood strawberries, smiling darlings like Dresden shepherdesses, dreaming of scenes of platonic love in a great garden adorned with the statue of William Tell or General Dufour. ZURICH[34] BY W.D. M'CRACKAN If you arrive in Zurich after dark, and pass along the river-front, you will think yourself for a moment in Venice. The street lamps glow responsively across the dark Limmat, or trail their light from the bridges. In the uncertain darkness, the bare house walls of the farther side put on the dignity of palaces. There are unsuspected architectural glories in the Wasserkirche and the Rathhaus, as they stand partly in the water of the river. And if, at such times, one of the long, narrow barges of the place passes up stream, the illusion is complete; for, as the boat cuts at intervals through the glare of gaslight it looks for all the world like a gondola.... Zurich need not rely upon any fancied resemblance of this sort for a distinct charm of its own. The situation of the city is essentially beautiful, reminding one, in a general way, of that of Geneva, Lucerne, or Thun--at the outlet of a lake, and at the point of issue of a swift river. Approaching from the lakeside, the twin towers of the Grossmünster loom upon the right, capped by ugly rounded tops, like miters; upon the left, the simple spires of the Fraumünster and St. Peter's. A conglomeration of roofs denotes the city houses. On the water-front, extensive promenades stretch, crescent shaped, from end to end, cleverly laid out, tho' as yet too new to quite fulfil their mission of beauty. Some large white buildings form the front line on the lake--notably the theater, and a few hotels and apartment houses. Finally, there where the River Limmat leaves the lake, a vista of bridges open into the heart of the city--a succession of arches and lines that invite inspection. Like most progressive cities of Europe, Zurich has outgrown its feudal accouterments within the last fifty years. It has razed its walls, converted its bastions into playgrounds, and, pushing out on every side, has incorporated many neighboring villages, until to-day it contains more than ninety thousand inhabitants.[35] The pride of modern Zurich is the Bahnhof-strasse, a long street which leads from the railroad station to the lake. It is planted with trees, and counts as the one and only boulevard of the city. Unfortunately, a good view of the distant snow mountains is very rare from the lake promenade, altho' they appear with distinctness upon the photographs sold in the shops. Early every Saturday the peasant women come trooping in, with their vegetables, fruits, and flowers, to line the Bahnhof-strasse with carts and baskets. The ladies and kitchen-maids of the city come to buy; but by noon the market is over. In a jiffy, the street is swept as clean as a kitchen floor, and the women have turned their backs on Zurich. But the real center of attraction in Zurich will be found by the traveler in that quarter where stands the Grossmünster, the church of which Zwingli was incumbent for twelve years. It may well be called the Wittenberg church of Switzerland. The present building dates from the eleventh and twelfth centuries; but tradition has it that the first minster was founded by Charlemagne. That ubiquitous emperor certainly manifested great interest in Zurich. He has been represented no less than three times in various parts of the building. About midway up one of the towers, his statue appears in a niche, where pigeons strut and prink their feathers, undisturbed. Charlemagne is sitting with a mighty two-edged sword upon his knees, and a gilded crown upon his head; but the figure is badly proportioned, and the statue is a good-natured, stumpy affair, that makes one smile rather than admire. The outside of the minster still shows traces of the image breakers of Zwingli's time, and yet the crumbling north portal remains beautiful, even in decay. As for the interior, it has an exceedingly bare and stript appearance; for, altho' there is good, solid stonework in the walls, the whole has been washed a foolish, Philistine white. The Romanesque of the architectural is said to be of particular interest to connoisseurs, and the queer archaic capitals must certainly attract the notice even of ordinary tourists.... It is also worth while to go to the Helmhaus, and examine the collection of lake-dwelling remains. In fact, there is a delightful little model of a lake-dwelling itself, and an appliance to show you how those primitive people could make holes in their stone implements, before they knew the use of metals. The ancient guild houses of Zurich are worth a special study. Take, for instance, that of the "Zimmerleute," or carpenter with its supporting arches and little peaked tower; or the so-called "Waag," with frescoed front; then the great wainscoated and paneled hall of the "schmieden" (smiths); and the rich Renaissance stonework of the "Maurer" (masons). These buildings, alas, with the decay of the system which produced them, have been obliged to put up big signs of Café Restaurant upon their historic façades, like so many vulgar, modern eating-houses. The Rathhaus, or Town Hall, too, is charming. It stands, like the Wasserkirche, with one side in the water and the other against the quay. The style is a sort of reposeful Italian Renaissance, that is florid only in the best artistic sense. Nor must you miss the so-called "Rüden," nearby, for its sloping roof and painted walls give it a very captivating look of alert picturesqueness, and it contains a large collection of Pestalozzi souvenirs. Zurich has more than one claim to the world's recognition; but no department of its active life, perhaps, merits such unstinted praise as its educational facilities. First and foremost, the University, with four faculties, modeled upon the German system, but retaining certain distinctive traits that are essentially Swiss--for instance, the broad and liberal treatment accorded to women students, who are admitted as freely as men, and receive the same instruction. A great number of Russian girls are always to be seen in Zurich, as at other Swiss universities, working unremittingly to acquire the degrees which they are denied at home. Not a few American women also have availed themselves of these facilities, especially for the study of medicine.... Zurich is, at the present time, undoubtedly the most important commercial city in Switzerland, having distanced both Basel and Geneva in this direction. The manufacturing of silk, woolen, and linen fabrics has flourished here since the end of the thirteenth century. In modern times, however, cotton and machinery have been added as staple articles of manufacture. Much of the actual weaving is still done in outlying parts of the Canton, in the very cottages of the peasants, so that the click of the loom is heard from open windows in every village and hamlet. But modern industrial processes are tending continually to drive the weavers from their homes into great centralized factories, and every year this inevitable change becomes more apparent. It is certainly remarkable that Zurich should succeed in turning out cheap and good machinery, when we remember that every ton of coal and iron has to be imported, since Switzerland possesses not a single mine, either of the one or the other. THE RIGI[36] BY W.D. M'CRACKAN If you really want to know how the Swiss Confederation came to be, you can not do better than take the train to the top of the Rigi. You might stumble through many a volume, and not learn so thoroughly the essential causes of this national birth. Of course, the eye rests first upon the phalanx of snow-crests to the south, then down upon the lake, lying outstretched like some wriggling monster, switching its tail, and finally off to the many places where early Swiss history was made. In point of fact, you are looking at quite a large slice of Switzerland. Victor Hugo seized the meaning of this view when he wrote: "It is a serious hour, and full of meditations, when one has Switzerland thus under the eyes." ... The physical features of a country have their counterparts in its political institutions. In Switzerland the great mountain ranges divide the territory into deep valleys, each of which naturally forms a political unit--the Commune. Here is a miniature world, concentrated into a small space, and representing the sum total of life to its inhabitants. Self-government becomes second nature under these conditions. A sort of patriarchal democracy is evolved: that is, certain men and certain families are apt to maintain themselves at the head of public affairs, but with the consent and cooperation of the whole population. There is hardly a spot associated with the rise of the Swiss Confederation whose position can not be determined from the Rigi. The two Tell's chapels; the Rütli; the villages of Schwiz, Altdorf, Brunnen, Beckenried, Stans, and Sarnen; the battlefields of Morgarten and Sempach; and on a clear day the ruined castle of Hapsburg itself, lie within a mighty circle at one's feet. It was preordained that the three lands of Uri, Schwiz, and Unterwalden should unite for protection of common interests against the encroachment of a common enemy--the ambitious house of Hapsburg. The lake formed at once a bond and a highway between them. On the first day of August, 1291, more than six hundred years ago, a group of unpretentious patriots, ignored by the great world, signed a document which formed these lands into a loose Confederation. By this act they laid the foundation upon which the Swiss state was afterward reared. In their naïve, but prophetic, faith, the contracting parties called this agreement a perpetual pact; and they set forth, in the Latin, legal phraseology of the day, that, seeing the malice of the times, they found it necessary to take an oath to defend one another against outsiders, and to keep order within their boundaries; at the same time carefully stating that the object of the league was to maintain lawfully established conditions. From small beginnings, the Confederation of Uri, Schwiz, and Unterwalden grew, by the addition of other communities, until it reached its present proportions, of twenty-two Cantons, in 1815. Lucerne was the first to join; then came Zurich, Glarus, Zug, Bern, etc. The early Swiss did not set up a sovereign republic, in our acceptation of the word, either in internal or external policy. The class distinctions of the feudal age continued to exist; and they by no means disputed the supreme rule of the head of the German Empire over them, but rather gloried in the protection which this direct dependence afforded them against a multitude of intermediate, preying nobles. CHAMOUNI--AN AVALANCHE[37] BY PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY From Servoz three leagues remain to Chamouni--Mont Blanc was before us--the Alps, with their innumerable glaciers on high all around, closing in the complicated windings of the single vale--forests inexpressibly beautiful, but majestic in their beauty--intermingled beech and pine, and oak, overshadowed our road, or receded, while lawns of such verdure as I have never seen before occupied these openings, and gradually became darker in their recesses. Mont Blanc was before us, but it was covered with cloud; its base, furrowed with dreadful gaps, was seen above. Pinnacles of snow intolerably bright, part of the chain connected with Mont Blanc, shone through the clouds at intervals on high. I never knew--I never imagined--what mountains were before. The immensity of these aerial summits excited, when they suddenly burst upon the sight, a sentiment of ecstatic wonder, not unallied to madness. And, remember, this was all one scene, it all prest home to our regard and our imagination. Tho' it embraced a vast extent of space, the snowy pyramids which shot into the bright blue sky seemed to overhang our path; the ravine, clothed with gigantic pines, and black with its depth below, so deep that the very roaring of the untameable Arve, which rolled through it, could not be heard above--all was as much our own, as if we had been the creators of such impressions in the minds of others as now occupied our own. Nature was the poet, whose harmony held our spirits more breathless than that of the divinest. As we entered the valley of the Chamouni (which, in fact, may be considered as a continuation of those which we have followed from Bonneville and Cluses), clouds hung upon the mountains at the distance perhaps of 6,000 feet from the earth, but so as effectually to conceal not only Mont Blanc, but the other "aiguilles," as they call them here, attached and subordinate to it. We were traveling along the valley, when suddenly we heard a sound as the burst of smothered thunder rolling above; yet there was something in the sound that told us it could not be thunder. Our guide hastily pointed out to us a part of the mountain opposite, from whence the sound came. It was an avalanche. We saw the smoke of its path among the rocks, and continued to hear at intervals the bursting of its fall. It fell on the bed of a torrent, which it displaced, and presently we saw its tawny-colored waters also spread themselves over the ravine, which was their couch. We did not, as we intended, visit the Glacier des Bossons to-day, altho it descends within a few minutes' walk of the road, wishing to survey it at least when unfatigued. We saw this glacier, which comes close to the fertile plain, as we passed. Its surface was broken into a thousand unaccountable figures; conical and pyramidical crystallizations, more than fifty feet in height, rise from its surface, and precipices of ice, of dazzling splendor, overhang the woods and meadows of the vale. This glacier winds upward from the valley, until it joins the masses of frost from which it was produced above, winding through its own ravine like a bright belt flung over the black region of pines. There is more in all these scenes than mere magnitude of proportion; there is a majesty of outline; there is an awful grace in the very colors which invest these wonderful shapes--a charm which is peculiar to them, quite distinct even from the reality of their unutterable greatness. ZERMATT[38] BY ARCHIBALD CAMPBELL KNOWLES Those who would reach the very heart of the Alps and look upon a scene of unparalleled grandeur must go into the Valais to Zermatt. [Illustration: PONTRESINA IN THE ENGADINE] [Illustration: ST. MORITZ IN THE ENGADINE] [Illustration: FRIBOURG] [Illustration: BERNE] [Illustration: VIVEY ON LAKE GENEVA] [Illustration: THE TURNHALLE IN ZURICH Courtesy Swiss Federal Railway] [Illustration: INTERLAKEN] [Illustration: LUCERNE] [Illustration: VIADUCTS On the new Lötschberg route to the Simplon tunnel] [Illustration: WOLFORT VIADUCT On the Pilatus Railroad, Switzerland] [Illustration: THE BALMAT-SAUSSURE MONUMENT IN CHAMONIX (Mont Blanc in the distance)] [Illustration: ROOFED WOODEN BRIDGE AT LUCERNE] [Illustration: THE CASTLE OF CHILLON] [Illustration: CLOUD EFFECT ABOVE INTERLAKEN Courtesy Swiss Federal Railway] [Illustration: DAVOS IN WINTER] The way up the valley is that which follows the River Visp. It is a delightful journey. The little stream is never still. It will scarcely keep confined to the banks or within the stone walls which in many places protect the shores. The river dances along as if seeking to be free. For the most part it is a torrent, sweeping swiftly past the solid masonry and descending the steep bed in a series of wild leaps or artificial waterfalls, with wonderful effects of sunlight seen in the showers of spray. Fed as it is by many mountain streams, the Visp is always full, and the more so, when in summer the melting ice adds to its volume. Then it is a sight long remembered, as roaring, rollicking, rushing along it is a brawling mass of waters, often working havoc with banks, road, village, and pastures. If one never saw a mountain, the sight of the Visp would more than repay, but, as it is, one's attention is taxed to the uttermost not to miss anything of this little rushing river and at the same time get the charming views of the Weisshorn, the Breithorn, and the other snow summits which appear over the mountain spurs surrounding the head of the valley. The first impression on reaching the Zermatt is one of disappointment. Maps and pictures generally lead the traveler to think that from the village he will see the great semicircle of snow peaks which surround the valley, but upon arrival he finds that he must go further up to see them, for all of them are hidden from view except the Matterhorn. This mountain, however, is seen in all its grandeur, fierce and frowning, and to an imaginative mind bending forward as if threatening and trying to shake off the little snow that appears here and there on its side. It dominates the whole scene and leaves an indelible impress on the mind, so that one can never picture Zermatt without the Matterhorn. Zermatt as a place is a curious combination; a line of hotels in juxtaposition with a village of chalets, unsophisticated peasants shoulder to shoulder with people of fashion! There are funny little shops, here showing only such simple things as are needed by the dwellers in the Valais, there exhibiting really beautiful articles in dress and jewelry to attract the summer visitors, while at convenient spots are the inevitable tea-rooms, where "Thé, Café, Limonade, Confiserie" minister to the coming crowds of an afternoon.... Guides galore wait in front of all the large hotels; ice-axes, ropes, nailed boots, rucksacks, and all the paraphernalia of the mountains are seen on every side, and a walk along the one main thoroughfare introduces one into the life of a climbing center, interesting to a degree and often very amusing from the miscellaneous collection of people there. Perhaps the first thing one cares to see at Zermatt is the village church, with the adjoining churchyard. The church, dedicated to Saint Maurice, a favorite saint in the Valais and Rhône district, is plain but interesting and in parts is quite old. Near it is a little mortuary chapel. In most parts of Switzerland, it is the custom, after the bodies of the dead have been buried a certain length of time, to remove the remains to the "charnel house," allowing the graves to be used again and thus not encroaching upon the space reserved and consecrated in the churchyard, but we do not think this custom obtains at Zermatt. In the churchyard is a monument to Michel Auguste Croz, the guide, and near by are the graves of the Reverend Charles Hudson and Mr. Hadow. These three, with Lord Francis Douglas were killed in Mr. Whymper's first ascent of the Matterhorn.[39] The body of Lord Francis Douglas has never been found. It is probably deep in some crevasse or under the snows which surround the base of the Matterhorn.... For the more extended climbs or for excursions in the direction of the Schwarzsee, the Staffel Alp or the Trift, Zermatt is the starting point. The place abounds in walks, most of them being the first part of the routes to the high mountains, so that those who are fond of tramping but not of climbing can reach high elevations with a little hard work, but no great difficulty. Some of these "midway" places may be visited on muleback, and with the railway now up to the Gorner-Grat there are few persons who may not see this wonderful region of snow peaks. The trip to the Schwarzsee is the first stage on the Matterhorn route. It leads through the village, past the Gorner Gorges (which one may visit by a slight détour) and then enters some very pretty woods, from which one issues on to the bare green meadows which clothe the upper part of the steep slope of the mountain. As one mounts this zigzag path, it sometimes seems as if it would never end, and for all the magnificent views which it affords, one is always glad that it is over, as it exactly fulfils the conditions of a "grind." From the Schwarzsee (8,495 feet, where there is an excellent hotel), there is a fine survey of the Matterhorn, and also a splendid panorama, on three sides, one view up the glaciers toward the Monte Rosa, another over the valley to the Dent Blanche and other great peaks, and still another to the far distant Bernese Oberland. Near the hotel is a little lake and a tiny chapel, where mass is sometimes said. The reflection in the still waters of the lake is very lovely. From the Schwarzsee, trips are made to the Hörnli (another stage on the way to the Matterhorn), to the Gandegg Hut, across moraine and glacier and to the Staffel Alp, over the green meadows. The Hörnli (9,490 feet high) is the ridge running out from the Matterhorn. It is reached by a stiff climb over rocks and a huge heap of fallen stones and debris. From it the view is similar to that from the Schwarzsee, but much finer, the Théodule Glacier being seen to great advantage. Above the Hörnli towers the Matterhorn, huge, fierce, frowning, threatening. Every few moments comes a heavy, muffled sound, as new showers of falling stones come down. This is one of the main dangers in climbing the peak itself, for from base to summit, the Matterhorn is really a decaying mountain, the stones rolling away through the action of the storms, the frosts, and the sun. PONTRÉSINA AND ST. MORITZ[40] BY VICTOR TISSOT The night was falling fine as dust, as a black sifted snow-shower, a snow made of shadow; and the melancholy of the landscape, the grand nocturnal solitude of these lofty, unknown regions, had a charm profound and disquieting. I do not know why I fancied myself no longer in Switzerland, but in some country near the pole, in Sweden or Norway. At the foot of these bare mountains I looked for wild fjords, lit up by the moon. Nothing can express the profound somberness of these landscapes at nightfall; the long desert road, gray from the reflections of the starry sky, unrolls in an interminable ribbon along the depth of the valley; the treeless mountains, hollowed out like ancient craters, lift their overhanging precipices; lakes sleeping in the midst of the pastures, behind curtains of pines and larches, glitter like drops of quicksilver; and on the horizon the immense glaciers crowd together and overflow like sheets of foam on a frozen sea. The road ascends. From the distance comes a dull noise, the roaring of a torrent. We cross a little cluster of trees, and on issuing from it the superb amphitheater of glaciers shows itself anew, overlooked by one white point glittering like an opal. On the hill a thousand little lights show me that I am at last at Pontrésina. I thought I should never have arrived there; nowhere does night deceive more than in the mountains; in proportion as you advance toward a point, it seems to retreat from you. Soon the black fantastic lines of the houses show through the darkness. I enter a narrow street, formed of great gloomy buildings, their fronts like a convent or prison. The hamlet is transformed into a little town of hotels, very comfortable, very elegant, very dear, but very stupid and very vulgar, with their laced porter in an admiral's hat, and their whiskered waiters, who have the air of Anglican ministers. Oh! how I detest them, and flee them, those hotels where the painter, or the tourist who arrives on foot, knapsack on his back and staff in hand, his trousers tucked into his leggings, his flask slung over his shoulder, and his hat awry, is received with less courtesy than a lackey. Besides those hotels, some of which are veritable palaces, and where the ladies are almost bound to change their dress three times a day, there is a hotel of the second and third class; and there is the old inn; the comfortable, hospitable, patriarchal inn, with its Gothic signboard.... On leaving the village I was again in the open mountain. In the distance the road penetrated into the valley, rising always. The moon had risen. She stood out sharply cut in a cloudless sky, and stars sparkling everywhere in profusion; not like nails of gold, but sown broadcast like a flying dust, a dust of carbuncles and diamonds. To the right, in the depths of the amphitheater of the mountains, an immense glacier looked like a frozen cascade; and above, a perfectly white peak rose draped in snow, like some legendary king in his mantle of silver. Bending under my knapsack, and dragging my feet, I arrive at last at the hotel, where I am received, in the kindest manner in the world, by the two mistresses of the establishment, two sisters of open, benevolent countenance and of sweet expression. And the poor little traveler who arrives, his bag on his back and without bustle, who has sent neither letter nor telegram to announce his arrival, is the object of the kindest and most delicate attentions; his clothes are brushed, he gets water for his refreshment, and is then conducted to a table bountifully spread, in a dining-room fragrant with good cookery and bouquets of flowers.... Beyond Campfer, its houses surrounding a third little lake, we come suddenly on a scene of extraordinary animation. All the cosmopolitan society of St. Moritz is there, sauntering, walking, running, in mountain parties, on afternoon excursions. The favorite one is the walk to the pretty lake of Campfer, with its shady margin, its resting places hidden among the branches, its châlet-restaurant, from the terrace of which one overlooks the whole valley; and it would be difficult to find near St. Moritz a more interesting spot. We meet at every step parties of English ladies, looking like plantations of umbrellas with their covers on and surmounted by immense straw hats; then there are German ladies, massive as citadels, but not impregnable, asking nothing better than to surrender to the young exquisites, with the figure of cuirassiers, who accompany them; further on, lively Italian ladies parade themselves in dresses of the carnival, the colors outrageously striking and dazzling to the eyes; with up-turned skirts they cross the Inn on great mossy stones, leaping with the grace of birds, and smiling, to show, into the bargain, the whiteness of their teeth. All this crowd passing in procession before us is composed of men and women of every age and condition; some with the grave face of a waxen saint, others beaming with the satisfied smile of rich people; there are also invalids, who go along hobbling and limping, or who are drawn, in little carriages. Soon handsome façades, pierced with hundreds of windows, show themselves in the grand and severe setting of mountains and glaciers. It is St. Moritz-les-Bains. Here every house is a hotel, and, as every hotel is a little palace, we do not alight from the diligence; we go a little farther and a little higher, to St. Moritz-le-Village, which has a much more beautiful situation. It is at the top of a little hill, whose sides slope down to a pretty lake, fresh and green as a lawn. The eye reaches beyond Sils, the whole length of the valley, with its mountains like embattled ramparts, its lakes like a great row of pearls, and its glaciers showing their piles of snowy white against the azure depths of the horizon. St. Moritz is the center of the valley of the Upper Engadine, which extends to the length of eighteen or nineteen leagues, and which scarcely possesses a thousand inhabitants. Almost all the men emigrate to work for strangers, like their brothers, the mountaineers of Savoy and Auvergne, and do not return till they have amassed a sufficient fortune to allow them to build a little white house, with gilded window frames, and to die quietly in the spot where they were born.... Historians tell us that the first inhabitants of the Upper Engadine were Etruscans and Latins chased from Italy by the Gauls and Carthaginians, and taking refuge in these hidden altitudes. After the fall of the Empire, the inhabitants of the Engadine fell under the dominion of the Franks and Lombards, then the Dukes of Swabia; but the blood never mingled--the type remained Italian; black hair, the quick eye, the mobile countenance, the expressive features, and the supple figure. GENEVA[41] BY FRANCIS H. GRIBBLE Straddling the Rhone, where it issues from the bluest lake in the world, looking out upon green meadows and wooded hills, backed by the dark ridge of the Salève, with the "great white mountain" visible in the distance, Geneva has the advantage of an incomparable site; and it is, from a town surveyor's point of view, well built. It has wide thoroughfares, quays, and bridges; gorgeous public monuments and well-kept public gardens; handsome theaters and museums; long rows of palatial hotels; flourishing suburbs; two railway-stations, and a casino. But all this is merely the façade--all of it quite modern; hardly any of it more than half a century old. The real historical Geneva--the little of it that remains--is hidden away in the background, where not every tourist troubles to look for it. It is disappearing fast. Italian stonemasons are constantly engaged in driving lines through it. They have rebuilt, for instance, the old Corraterie, which is now the Regent Street of Geneva, famous for its confectioners' and booksellers' shops; they have destroyed, and are still destroying, other ancient slums, setting up white buildings of uniform ugliness in place of the picturesque but insanitary dwellings of the past. It is, no doubt, a very necessary reform, tho' one may think that it is being executed in too utilitarian a spirit. The old Geneva was malodorous, and its death-rate was high. They had more than one Great Plague there, and their Great Fires have always left some of the worst of their slums untouched. These could not be allowed to stand in an age which studies the science and practises the art of hygiene. Yet the traveler who wants to know what the old Geneva was really like must spend a morning or two rambling among them before they are pulled down. The old Geneva, like Jerusalem, was set upon a hill, and it is toward the top of the hill that the few buildings of historical interest are to be found. There is the cathedral--a striking object from a distance, tho' the interior is hideously bare. There is the Town Hall, in which, for the convenience of notables carried in litters, the upper stories were reached by an inclined plane instead of a staircase. There is Calvin's old Academy, bearing more than a slight resemblance to certain of the smaller colleges at Oxford and Cambridge. There, too, are to be seen a few mural tablets, indicating the residences of past celebrities. In such a house Rousseau was born; in such another house or in an older house, now demolished, on the same site--Calvin died. And toward these central points the steep and narrow, mean streets--in many cases streets of stairs--converge. As one plunges into these streets one seems to pass back from the twentieth century to the fifteenth, and need not exercise one's imagination very severely in order to picture the town as it appeared in the old days before the Reformation. The present writer may claim permission to borrow his own description from the pages of "Lake Geneva and its Literary Landmarks:" "Narrow streets predominated, tho' there were also a certain number of open spaces--notably at the markets, and in front of the Cathedral, where there was a traffic in those relics and rosaries which Geneva was presently to repudiate with virtuous indignation. One can form an idea of the appearance of the narrow streets by imagining the oldest houses that one has seen in Switzerland all closely packed together--houses at the most three stories high, with gabled roofs, ground-floors a step or two below the level of the roadway, and huge arched doors studded with great iron nails, and looking strong enough to resist a battering-ram. Above the doors, in the case of the better houses, were the painted escutcheons of the residents, and crests were also often blazoned on the window-panes. The shops, too, and more especially the inns, flaunted gaudy signboards with ingenious devices. The Good Vinegar, the Hot Knife, the Crowned Ox, were the names of some of these; their tariff is said to have been fivepence a day for man and beast.".... In the first half of the sixteenth century occurred the two events which shaped the future of Geneva; Reformation theology was accepted; political independence was achieved. Geneva it should be explained, was the fief of the duchy of Savoy; or so, at all events, the Dukes of Savoy maintained, tho' the citizens were of the contrary opinion. Their view was that they owed allegiance only to their Bishops, who were the Viceroys of the Holy Roman Emperor; and even that allegiance was limited by the terms of a Charter granted in the Holy Roman Emperor's name by Bishop Adhémar de Fabri. All went fairly well until the Bishops began to play into the hands of the Dukes; but then there was friction, which rapidly became acute. A revolutionary party--the Eidgenossen, or Confederates--was formed. There was a Declaration of Independence and a civil war. So long as the Genevans stood alone, the Duke was too strong for them. He marched into the town in the style of a conqueror, and wreaked his vengeance on as many of his enemies as he could catch. He cut off the head of Philibert Berthelier, to whom there stands a memorial on the island in the Rhone; he caused Jean Pecolat to be hung up in an absurd posture in his banqueting-hall, in order that he might mock at his discomfort while he dined; he executed, with or without preliminary torture, several less conspicuous patriots. Happily, however, some of the patriots--notably Besançon Hugues--got safely away, and succeeded in concluding treaties of alliance between Geneva and the cantons of Berne and Fribourg. The men of Fribourg marched to Geneva, and the Duke retired. The citizens passed a resolution that he should never be allowed to enter the town again, seeing that he "never came there without playing the citizens some dirty trick or other;" and, the more effectually to prevent him from coming, they pulled down their suburbs and repaired their ramparts, one member of every household being required to lend a hand for the purpose. Presently, owing to religious dissensions, Fribourg withdrew from the alliance. Berne, however, adhered to it, and, in due course, responded to the appeal for help by setting an army of seven thousand men in motion. The route of the seven thousand lay through the canton of Vaud, then a portion of the Duke's dominions, governed from the Castle of Chillon. Meeting with no resistance save at Yverdon, they annexed the territory, placing governors of their own in its various strongholds. The Governor of Chillon fled, leaving his garrison to surrender; and in its deepest dungeon was found the famous prisoner of Chillon, François de Bonivard. From that time forward Geneva was a free republic, owing allegiance to no higher power. THE CASTLE OF CHILLON[42] BY HARRIET BEECHER STOWE Here I am, sitting at my window, overlooking Lake Leman. Castle Chillon, with its old conical towers, is silently pictured in the still waters. It has been a day of a thousand. We took a boat, with two oarsmen, and passed leisurely along the shores, under the cool, drooping branches of trees, to the castle, which is scarce a stone's throw from the hotel. We rowed along, close under the walls, to the ancient moat and drawbridge. There I picked a bunch of blue bells, "les clochettes," which were hanging their aerial pendants from every crevice--some blue, some white.... We rowed along, almost touching the castle rock, where the wall ascends perpendicularly, and the water is said to be a thousand feet deep. We passed the loopholes that illuminate the dungeon vaults, and an old arch, now walled up, where prisoners, after having been strangled, were thrown into the lake. Last evening we walked through the castle. An interesting Swiss woman, who has taught herself English for the benefit of her visitors, was our "cicerone." She seemed to have all the old Swiss vivacity of attachment for "liberté et patrie." She took us first into the dungeon, with the seven pillars, described by Byron. There was the pillar to which, for protecting the liberty of Geneva, Bonivard was chained. There the Duke of Savoy kept him for six years, confined by a chain four feet long. He could take only three steps, and the stone floor is deeply worn by the prints of those weary steps. Six years is so easily said; but to live them, alone, helpless, a man burning with all the fires of manhood, chained to that pillar of stone, and those three unvarying steps! Two thousand one hundred and ninety days rose and set the sun, while seed time and harvest, winter and summer, and the whole living world went on over his grave. For him no sun, no moon, no stars, no business, no friendship, no plans--nothing! The great millstone of life emptily grinding itself away! What a power of vitality was there in Bonivard, that he did not sink in lethargy, and forget himself to stone! But he did not; it is said that when the victorious Swiss army broke in to liberate him, they cried, "Bonivard, you are free!" "And Geneva?" "Geneva is free also!" You ought to have heard the enthusiasm with which our guide told this story! Near by are the relics of the cell of a companion of Bonivard, who made an ineffectual attempt to liberate him. On the wall are still seen sketches of saints and inscriptions by his hand. This man one day overcame his jailer, locked him in his cell, ran into the hall above, and threw himself from a window into the lake, struck a rock, and was killed instantly. One of the pillars in this vault is covered with names. I think it is Bonivard's pillar. There are the names of Byron, Hunt, Schiller, and many other celebrities. After we left the dungeons we went up into the judgment hall, where prisoners were tried, and then into the torture chamber. Here are the pulleys by which limbs are broken; the beam, all scorched with the irons by which feet were burned; the oven where the irons were heated; and there was the stone where they were sometimes laid to be strangled, after the torture. On that stone, our guide told us, two thousand Jews, men, women, and children, had been put to death. There was also, high up, a strong beam across, where criminals were hung; and a door, now walled up, by which they were thrown into the lake. I shivered. "'Twas cruel," she said; "'twas almost as cruel as your slavery in America."[43] Then she took us into a tower where was the "oubliette." Here the unfortunate prisoner was made to kneel before an image of the Virgin, while the treacherous floor, falling beneath him, precipitated him into a well forty feet deep, where he was left to die of broken limbs and starvation. Below this well was still another pit, filled with knives, into which, when they were disposed to a merciful hastening of the torture, they let him fall. The woman has been herself to the bottom of the first dungeon, and found there bones of victims. The second pit is now walled up.... To-night, after sunset, we rowed to Byron's "little isle," the only one in the lake. O, the unutterable beauty of these mountains--great, purple waves, as if they had been dashed up by a mighty tempest, crested with snow-like foam! this purple sky, and crescent moon, and the lake gleaming and shimmering, and twinkling stars, while far off up the sides of a snow-topped mountain a light shines like a star--some mountaineer's candle, I suppose. In the dark stillness we rode again over to Chillon, and paused under its walls. The frogs were croaking in the moat, and we lay rocking on the wave, and watching the dusky outlines of the towers and turrets. Then the spirit of the scene seemed to wrap me round like a cloak. Back to Geneva again. This lovely place will ever leave its image on my heart. Mountains embrace it. BY RAIL UP THE GORNER-GRAT[44] BY ARCHIBALD CAMPBELL KNOWLES To see the splendid array of snow peaks and glaciers which makes the sky line above Zermatt, one must leave the valley and walk or climb to a higher level. An ideal spot for this is the Hôtel Riffel Alp. Both the situation and the Hôtel outrival and surpass any similar places in the Alps. "Far from the madding crowd," on a little plateau bounded by pines and pastures stands the Hôtel, some two thousand feet above Zermatt and at an altitude of over 7,000 feet. The outlook is superb, the air splendid, the quiet most restful. Two little churches, the one for Roman Catholics, the other for members of the Church of England minister to the spiritual needs of the visitors and stamp religion upon a situation grand and sublime. Those who come here are lovers of the mountains who enjoy the open life. It is a place not so much for "les grands excursions" as for long walks, easy climbs and the beginnings of mountaineering. Many persons spend the entire day out, preferring to eat their déjeuner "informally," perched above some safe precipice, or on a glacier-bordered rock or in the shade of the cool woods, but there are always some who linger both morning and afternoon on the terrace with its far expanse of view, with the bright sunshine streaming down upon them. One great charm of the Riffel Alp is the proximity to the snow. An hour will bring one either to the Gorner Glacier or to the Findelen Glacier, while a somewhat longer time will lead to other stretches of snow and ice, where the climber may sit and survey the séracs and crevasses or walk about on the great frozen rivers. This is said to be beneficial to the nervous system as many physicians maintain that the glaciers contain a large amount of radium. Before essaying any of the longer or harder trips however, the traveler first of all generally goes to the Gorner-Grat, the rocky ridge that runs up from Zermatt to a point 10,290 feet high. Many people still walk up, but since the railroad was built, even those who feel it to be a matter of conscience to inveigh against any kind of progress which ministers to the pleasures of the masses, are found among those who prefer to ascend by electricity. The trip up is often made very amusing as among the crowds are always some, who knowing really nothing of the place, feel it incumbent upon themselves to point out all of the peaks, in a way quite discomposing to anybody familiar with the locality or versed in geography! Quite a luxurious little hôtel now surmounts the top of the Gorner-Grat. In it, about it and above it, on the walled terrace assembles a motley crowd every clear day in summer, clad in every variety of costume, conventional and unconventional.... An ordinary scene would be ruined by such a crowd, but not so the Gorner-Grat. The very majesty and magnificence of the view make one forget the vaporings of mere man, and the Glory of God, so overpoweringly revealed in those regions of perpetual snow, drives other impressions away. And if one wishes to be alone, it is easily possible by walking a little further along the ridge where some rock will shut out all sight of man and the wind will drive away the sound of voices. It is doubtful if there is any view comparable with that of the Gorner-Grat. There is what is called a "near view," and there is also what is known as a "distant view," for completely surrounded by snow peak and glacier, the eye passes from valley to summit, resting on that wonderful stretch of shining white which forms the skyline. To say that one can count dozens of glaciers, that he can see fifty summits, that Monte Rosa, the Lyskamm, the Twins, the Breithorn, the Matterhorn, the Dent Blanche, the Weisshorn, with many other mountains of the Valais and Oberland form a complete circle of snow peaks, may establish the geography of the place but it does not convey any but the faintest picture of the sublime grandeur of the scene.... An exciting experience for novices is to go with a guide from the Gorner-Grat to the Hohtäligrat and thence down to the Findelen Glacier. It looks dangerous but it is not really so, if the climber is careful, for altho there is a sheer descent on either side of the arête or ridge which leads from the one point to the other, the way is never narrow and only over easy rocks and snow. The Hohtäligrat is almost 11,000 feet in altitude and has a splendid survey of the sky line. One looks up at snow, one looks down at snow, one looks around at snow! From the beautiful summits of Monte Rosa, the eye passes in a complete circle, up and down, seeing in succession the white snow peaks, with their great glistening glaciers below, showing in strong contrast the occasional rock pyramids like the Matterhorn and the group around the Rothhorn. THROUGH THE ST. GOTHARD INTO ITALY[45] BY VICTOR TISSOT This is Geschenen, at the entrance of the great tunnel, the meeting place of the upper gorges of the Reuss, the valley of Urseren, of the Oberalp, and of the Furka. Geschenen has now the calm tranquility of old age. But during the nine years that it took to bore the great tunnel, what juvenile activity there was here, what feverish eagerness in this village, crowded, inundated, overflowed by workmen from Italy, from Tessin, from Germany and France! One would have thought that out of that dark hole, dug out in the mountain, they were bringing nuggets of gold. On all the roads nothing was to be seen but bands of workmen arriving, with miners' lamps hung to their old soldier's knapsacks. Nobody could tell how they were all to be lodged. One double bed was occupied in succession by twenty-four men in twenty-four hours. Some of the workmen set up their establishments in barns; in all directions movable canteens sprung up, built all awry and hardly holding together, and in mean sheds, doubtful, bad-looking places, the dishonest merchant hastened to sell his adulterated brandy.... The St. Gothard tunnel is about one and two-third miles longer than that of Mount Cenis, and more than three miles longer than that of Arlberg. While the train is passing with a dull rumbling sound under these gloomy vaults, let us explain how the great work of boring the Alps was accomplished. The mechanical work of perforation was begun simultaneously on the north and south sides of the mountain, working toward the same point, so as to meet toward the middle of the boring. The waters of the Reuss and the Tessin supplied the necessary motive power for working the screws attached to machinery for compressing the air. The borers applied to the rock the piston of a cylinder made to rotate with great rapidity by the pressure of air reduced to one-twentieth of its ordinary volume; then when they had made holes sufficiently deep, they withdrew the machines and charged the mines with dynamite. Immediately after the explosion, streams of wholesome air were liberated which dissipated the smoke; then the débris was cleared away, and the borers returned to their place. The same work was thus carried on day and night, for nine years. On the Geschenen side all went well; but on the other side, on the Italian slope, unforseen obstacles and difficulties had to be overcome. Instead of having to encounter the solid rock, they found themselves among a moving soil formed by the deposit of glaciers and broken by streams of water. Springs burst out, like the jet of a fountain, under the stroke of the pick, flooding and driving away the workmen. For twelve months they seemed to be in the midst of a lake. But nothing could damp the ardor of the contractor, Favre. His troubles were greater still when the undertaking had almost been suspended for want of money, when the workmen struck in 1875, and, when, two years later, the village of Arola was destroyed by fire. And how many times, again and again, the mason-work of the vaulted roof gave way and fell! Certain "bad places," as they were called, cost more than nine hundred pounds per yard. In the interior of the mountain the thermometer marked 86 degrees (Fahr.), but so long as the tunnel was still not completely bored, the workmen were sustained by a kind of fever, and made redoubled efforts. Discouragement and desertion did not appear among them till the goal was almost reached. The great tunnel passed, we find ourselves fairly in Italy. The mulberry trees, with silky white bark and delicate, transparent leaves; the chestnuts, with enormous trunks like cathedral columns; the vine, hanging to high trellises supported by granite pillars, its festoons as capricious as the feats of those who partake too freely of its fruits; the white tufty heads of the maize tossing in the breeze; all that strong and luxuriant vegetation through which waves of moist air are passing; those flowers of rare beauty, of a grace and brilliancy that belong only to privileged zones;--all this indicates a more robust and fertile soil, and a more fervid sky than those of the upper villages which we have just left. X ALPINE MOUNTAIN CLIMBING FIRST ATTEMPTS HALF A CENTURY AGO[46] BY EDWARD WHYMPER On the 23d of July, 1860, I started for my first tour of the Alps. At Zermatt I wandered in many directions, but the weather was bad and my work was much retarded. One day, after spending a long time in attempts to sketch near the Hörnli, and in futile endeavors to seize the forms of the peaks as they for a few seconds peered out from above the dense banks of woolly clouds, I determined not to return to Zermatt by the usual path, but to cross the Görner glacier to the Riffel hotel. After a rapid scramble over the polished rocks and snow-beds which skirt the base of the Theodule glacier, and wading through some of the streams which flow from it, at that time much swollen by the late rains, the first difficulty was arrived at, in the shape of a precipice about three hundred feet high. It seemed that there would be no difficulty in crossing the glacier if the cliff could be descended, but higher up and lower down the ice appeared, to my inexperienced eyes, to be impassable for a single person. The general contour of the cliff was nearly perpendicular, but it was a good deal broken up, and there was little difficulty in descending by zigzagging from one mass to another. At length there was a long slab, nearly smooth, fixt at an angle of about forty degrees between two wall-sided pieces of rock; nothing, except the glacier, could be seen below. It was a very awkward place, but being doubtful if return were possible, as I had been dropping from one ledge to another, I passed at length by lying across the slab, putting the shoulder stiffly against one side and the feet against the other, and gradually wriggling down, by first moving the legs and then the back. When the bottom of the slab was gained a friendly crack was seen, into which the point of the bâton could be stuck, and I dropt down to the next piece. It took a long time coming down that little bit of cliff, and for a few seconds it was satisfactory to see the ice close at hand. In another moment a second difficulty presented itself. The glacier swept round an angle of the cliff, and as the ice was not of the nature of treacle or thin putty, it kept away from the little bay on the edge of which I stood. We were not widely separated, but the edge of the ice was higher than the opposite edge of rock; and worse, the rock was covered with loose earth and stones which had fallen from above. All along the side of the cliff, as far as could be seen in both directions, the ice did not touch it, but there was this marginal crevasse seven feet wide and of unknown depth. All this was seen at a glance, and almost at once I concluded that I could not jump the crevass and began to try along the cliff lower down, but without success, for the ice rose higher and higher until at last farther progress was stopt by the cliffs becoming perfectly smooth. With an ax it would have been possible to cut up the side of the ice--without one, I saw there was no alternative but to return and face the jump. It was getting toward evening, and the solemn stillness of the High Alps was broken only by the sound of rushing water or of falling rocks. If the jump should be successful, well; if not, I fell into the horrible chasm, to be frozen in, or drowned in that gurgling, rushing water. Everything depended on that jump. Again I asked myself "Can it be done?" It must be. So, finding my stick was useless, I threw it and the sketch-book to the ice, and first retreating as far as possible, ran forward with all my might, took the leap, barely reached the other side, and fell awkwardly on my knees. At the same moment a shower of stones fell on the spot from which I had jumped. The glacier was crossed without further trouble, but the Riffel, which was then a very small building, was crammed with tourists, and could not take me in. As the way down was unknown to me, some of the people obligingly suggested getting a man at the chalets, otherwise the path would be certainly lost in the forest. On arriving at the chalets no man could be found, and the lights of Zermatt, shining through the trees, seemed to say, "Never mind a guide, but come along down; we'll show you the way"; so off I went through the forest, going straight toward them. The path was lost in a moment, and was never recovered. I was tript up by pine roots, I tumbled over rhododendron bushes, I fell over rocks. The night was pitch-dark, and after a time the lights of Zermatt became obscure or went out altogether. By a series of slides or falls, or evolutions more or less disagreeable, the descent through the forest was at length accomplished, but torrents of a formidable character had still to be passed before one could arrive at Zermatt. I felt my way about for hours, almost hopelessly, by an exhaustive process at last discovering a bridge, and about midnight, covered with dirt and scratches, reentered the inn which I had quitted in the morning.... I descended the valley, diverging from the path at Randa to mount the slopes of the Dom (the highest of the Mischabelhörner), in order to see the Weisshorn face to face. The latter mountain is the noblest in Switzerland, and from this direction it looks especially magnificent. On its north there is a large snowy plateau that feeds the glacier of which a portion is seen from Randa, and which on more than one occasion has destroyed that village. From the direction of the Dom--that is, immediately opposite--this Bies glacier seems to descend nearly vertically; it does not do so, altho it is very steep. Its size is much less than formerly and the lower portion, now divided into three tails, clings in a strange, weird-like manner to the cliffs, to which it seems scarcely possible that it can remain attached. Unwillingly I parted from the sight of this glorious mountain, and went down to Visp. Arriving once more in the Rhone valley, I proceeded to Viesch, and from thence ascended the Aeggischhorn, on which unpleasant eminence I lost my way in a fog, and my temper shortly afterward. Then, after crossing the Grimsel in a severe thunderstorm, I passed on to Brienz, Interlachen and Berne, and thence to Fribourg and Morat, Neuchâtel, Martigny and the St. Bernard. The massive walls of the convent were a welcome sight as I waded through the snow-beds near the summit of the pass, and pleasant also was the courteous salutation of the brother who bade me enter. Instead of descending to Aosta, I turned into the Val Pelline, in order to obtain views of the Dent d'Erin. The night had come on before Biona was gained, and I had to knock long and loud upon the door of the curé's house before it was opened. An old woman with querulous voice and with a large goître answered the summons, and demanded rather sharply what was wanted, but became pacific, almost good-natured, when a five-franc piece was held in her face and she heard that lodging and supper were required in exchange. My directions asserted that a passage existed from Prerayen, at the head of this valley, to Breuil, in the Val Tournanche, and the old woman, now convinced of my respectability, busied herself to find a guide. Presently she introduced a native picturesquely attired in high-peaked hat, braided jacket, scarlet waistcoat and indigo pantaloons, who agreed to take me to the village of Val Tournanche. We set off early on the next morning, and got to the summit of the pass without difficulty. It gave me my first experience of considerable slopes of hard, steep snow, and, like all beginners, I endeavored to prop myself up with my stick, and kept it outside, instead of holding it between myself and the slope, and leaning upon it, as should have been done. The man enlightened me, but he had, properly, a very small opinion of his employer, and it is probably on that account that, a few minutes after we had passed the summit, he said he would not go any farther and would return to Biona. All argument was useless; he stood still, and to everything that was said answered nothing but that he would go back. Being rather nervous about descending some long snow-slopes which still intervened between us and the head of the valley, I offered more pay, and he went on a little way. Presently there were some cliffs, down which we had to scramble. He called to me to stop, then shouted that he would go back, and beckoned to me to come up. On the contrary, I waited for him to come down, but instead of doing so, in a second or two he turned round, clambered deliberately up the cliff and vanished. I supposed it was only a ruse to extort offers of more money, and waited for half an hour, but he did not appear again. This was rather embarrassing, for he carried off my knapsack. The choice of action lay between chasing him and going on to Breuil, risking the loss of my knapsack. I chose the latter course, and got to Breuil the same evening. The landlord of the inn, suspicious of a person entirely innocent of luggage, was doubtful if he could admit me, and eventually thrust me into a kind of loft, which was already occupied by guides and by hay. In later years we became good friends, and he did not hesitate to give credit and even to advance considerable sums. My sketches from Breuil were made under difficulties; my materials had been carried off, nothing better than fine sugar-paper could be obtained, and the pencils seemed to contain more silica than plumbago. However, they were made, and the pass was again crossed, this time alone. By the following evening the old woman of Biona again produced the faithless guide. The knapsack was recovered after the lapse of several hours, and then I poured forth all the terms of abuse and reproach of which I was master. The man smiled when I called him a liar, and shrugged his shoulders when referred to as a thief, but drew his knife when spoken of as a pig. The following night was spent at Cormayeur, and the day after I crossed the Col Ferrex to Orsières, and on the next the Tête Noir to Chamounix. The Emperor Napoleon arrived the same day, and access to the Mer de Glace was refused to tourists; but, by scrambling along the Plan des Aiguilles, I managed to outwit the guards, and to arrive at the Montanvert as the imperial party was leaving, failing to get to the Jardin the same afternoon, but very nearly succeeding in breaking a leg by dislodging great rocks on the moraine of the glacier. From Chamounix I went to Geneva, and thence by the Mont Cenis to Turin and to the Vaudois valleys. A long and weary day had ended when Paesana was reached. The next morning I passed the little lakes which are the sources of the Po, on my way into France. The weather was stormy, and misinterpreting the dialect of some natives--who in reality pointed out the right way--I missed the track, and found myself under the cliffs of Monte Viso. A gap that was occasionally seen in the ridge connecting it with the mountains to the east tempted me up, and after a battle with a snow-slope of excessive steepness, I reached the summit. The scene was extraordinary, and, in my experience, unique. To the north there was not a particle of mist, and the violent wind coming from that direction blew one back staggering. But on the side of Italy the valleys were completely filled with dense masses of cloud to a certain level; and here--where they felt the influence of the wind--they were cut off as level as the top of a table, the ridges appearing above them. I raced down to Abries, and went on through the gorge of the Guil to Mont Dauphin. The next day found me at La Bessée, at the junction of the Val Louise with the valley of the Durance, in full view of Mont Pelvoux. The same night I slept at Briançon, intending to take the courier on the following day to Grenoble, but all places had been secured several days beforehand, so I set out at two P.M. on the next day for a seventy-mile walk. The weather was again bad, and on the summit of the Col de Lautaret I was forced to seek shelter in the wretched little hospice. It was filled with workmen who were employed on the road, and with noxious vapors which proceeded from them. The inclemency of the weather was preferable to the inhospitality of the interior. Outside, it was disagreeable, but grand--inside, it was disagreeable and mean. The walk was continued under a deluge of rain, and I felt the way down, so intense was the darkness, to the village of La Grave, where the people of the inn detained me forcibly. It was perhaps fortunate that they did so, for during that night blocks of rock fell at several places from the cliffs on to the road with such force that they made large holes in the macadam, which looked as if there had been explosions of gunpowder. I resumed the walk at half-past five next morning, and proceeded, under steady rain, through Bourg d'Oysans to Grenoble, arriving at the latter place soon after seven P.M., having accomplished the entire distance from Briançon in about eighteen hours of actual walking. This was the end of the Alpine portion of my tour of 1860, on which I was introduced to the great peaks, and acquired the passion for mountain-scrambling. FIRST TO THE TOP OF THE MATTERHORN[47] BY EDWARD WHYMPER We started from Zermatt on the 13th of July at half-past five, on a brilliant and perfectly cloudless morning. We were eight in number--Croz, old Peter and his two sons, Lord Francis Douglas, Hadow, Hudson and I. To ensure steady motion, one tourist and one native walked together. The youngest Taugwalder fell to my share, and the lad marched well, proud to be on the expedition and happy to show his powers. The wine-bags also fell to my lot to carry, and throughout the day, after each drink, I replenished them secretly with water, so that at the next halt they were found fuller than before! This was considered a good omen, and little short of miraculous. On the first day we did not intend to ascend to any great height, and we mounted, accordingly, very leisurely, picked up the things which were left in the chapel at the Schwarzsee at 8:20, and proceeded thence along the ridge connecting the Hörnli with the Matterhorn. At half-past eleven we arrived at the base of the actual peak, then quitted the ridge and clambered round some ledges on to the eastern face. We were now fairly upon the mountain, and were astonished to find that places which from the Riffel, or even from the Furggengletscher, looked entirely impracticable, were so easy that we could run about. Before twelve o'clock we had found a good position for the tent, at a height of eleven thousand feet. Croz and young Peter went on to see what was above, in order to save time on the following morning. They cut across the heads of the snow-slopes which descended toward the Furggengletscher, and disappeared round a corner, but shortly afterward we saw them high up on the face, moving quickly. We others made a solid platform for the tent in a well-protected spot, and then watched eagerly for the return of the men. The stones which they upset told that they were very high, and we supposed that the way must be easy. At length, just before 3 P.M., we saw them coming down, evidently much excited. "What are they saying, Peter?" "Gentlemen, they say it is no good." But when they came near we heard a different story: "Nothing but what was good--not a difficulty, not a single difficulty! We could have gone to the summit and returned to-day easily!" We passed the remaining hours of daylight--some basking in the sunshine, some sketching or collecting--and when the sun went down, giving, as it departed, a glorious promise for the morrow, we returned to the tent to arrange for the night. Hudson made tea, I coffee, and we then retired each one to his blanket-bag, the Taugwalders, Lord Francis Douglas and myself occupying the tent, the others remaining, by preference, outside. Long after dusk the cliffs above echoed with our laughter and with the songs of the guides, for we were happy that night in camp, and feared no evil. We assembled together outside the tent before dawn on the morning of the 14th, and started directly it was light enough to move. Young Peter came on with us as a guide, and his brother returned to Zermatt. We followed the route which had been taken on the previous day, and in a few minutes turned the rib which had intercepted the view of the eastern face from our tent platform. The whole of this great slope was now revealed, rising for three thousand feet like a huge natural staircase. Some parts were more and others were less easy, but we were not once brought to a halt by any serious impediment, for when an obstruction was met in front it could always be turned to the right or to the left. For the greater part of the way there was indeed no occasion for the rope, and sometimes Hudson led, sometimes myself. At 6:20 we had attained a height of twelve thousand eight hundred feet, and halted for half an hour; we then continued the ascent without a break until 9:55, when we stopt for fifty minutes at a height of fourteen thousand feet. Twice we struck the northeastern ridge, and followed it for some little distance--to no advantage, for it was usually more rotten and steep, and always more difficult, than the face. Still, we kept near to it, lest stones perchance might fall. We had now arrived at the foot of that part which, from the Riffelberg or from Zermatt, seems perpendicular or overhanging, and could no longer continue upon the eastern side. For a little distance we ascended by snow upon the arête--that is, the ridge--descending toward Zermatt, and then by common consent turned over to the right, or to the northern side. Before doing so we made a change in the order of ascent. Croz went first, I followed, Hudson came third; Hadow and old Peter were last. "Now," said Croz as he led off--"now for something altogether different." The work became difficult, and required caution. In some places there was little to hold, and it was desirable that those should be in front who were least likely to slip. The general slope of the mountain at this part was less than forty degrees, and snow had accumulated in, and had filled up, the interstices of the rock-face, leaving only occasional fragments projecting here and there. These were at times covered with a thin film of ice, produced from the melting and refreezing of the snow. It was the counterpart, on a small scale, of the upper seven hundred feet of the Pointe des Écrins; only there was this material difference--the face of the Écrins was about, or exceeded, an angle of fifty degrees, and the Matterhorn face was less than forty degrees. It was a place over which any fair mountaineers might pass in safety, and Mr. Hudson ascended this part, and, as far as I know, the entire mountain, without having the slightest assistance rendered to him upon any occasion. Sometimes, after I had taken a hand from Croz or received a pull, I turned to offer the same to Hudson, but he invariably declined, saying it was not necessary. Mr. Hadow, however, was not accustomed to this kind of work, and required continual assistance. It is only fair to say that the difficulty which he found at this part arose simply and entirely from want of experience. This solitary difficult part was of no great extent. We bore away over it at first nearly horizontally, for a distance of about four hundred feet, then ascended directly toward the summit for about sixty feet, and then doubled back to the ridge which descends toward Zermatt. A long stride round a rather awkward corner brought us to snow once more. The last doubt vanished! The Matterhorn was ours! Nothing but two hundred feet of easy snow remained to be surmounted!.... The summit of the Matterhorn was formed of a rudely level ridge, about three hundred and fifty feet long. The day was one of those superlatively calm and clear ones which usually precede bad weather. The atmosphere was perfectly still and free from clouds or vapors. Mountains fifty--nay, a hundred--miles off looked sharp and near. All their details--ridge and crag, snow and glacier--stood out with faultless definition. Pleasant thoughts of happy days in bygone years came up unbidden as we recognized the old, familiar forms. All were revealed--not one of the principal peaks of the Alps was hidden. I see them clearly now--the great inner circles of giants, backed by the ranges, chains and "massifs." First came the Dent Blanche, hoary and grand; the Gabelhorn and pointed Rothborn, and then the peerless Weisshorn; the towering Mischabelhörner flanked by the Allaleinhorn, Strahlhorn and Rimpfischhorn; then Monte Rosa--with its many Spitzen--the Lyskamm and the Breithorn. Behind were the Bernese Oberland, governed by the Finsteraarhorn, the Simplon and St. Gothard groups, the Disgrazia and the Orteler. Toward the south we looked down to Chivasso on the plain of Piedmont, and far beyond. The Viso--one hundred miles away--seemed close upon us; the Maritime Alps--one hundred and thirty miles distant--were free from haze. Then came into view my first love--the Pelvoux; the Écrins and the Meije; the clusters of the Graians; and lastly, in the west, gorgeous in the full sunlight, rose the monarch of all--Mont Blanc. Ten thousand feet beneath us were the green fields of Zermatt, dotted with chalets, from which blue smoke rose lazily. Eight thousand feet below, on the other side, were the pastures of Breuil. There were forests black and gloomy, and meadows bright and lively; bounding waterfalls and tranquil lakes; fertile lands and savage wastes: sunny plains and frigid plateaux. There were the most rugged forms and the most graceful outlines--bold, perpendicular cliffs and gentle, undulating slopes; rocky mountains and snowy mountains, somber and solemn or glittering and white, with walls, turrets, pinnacles, pyramids, domes, cones and spires! There was every combination that the world can give, and every contrast that the heart could desire. We remained on the summit for one hour-- One crowded hour of glorious life. THE LORD FRANCIS DOUGLAS TRAGEDY[48] BY EDWARD WHYMPER We began to prepare for the descent. Hudson and I again consulted as to the best and safest arrangement of the party. We agreed that it would be best for Croz to go first, and Hadow second; Hudson, who was almost equal to a guide in sureness of foot, wished to be third; Lord Francis Douglas was placed next, and old Peter, the strongest of the remainder, after him. I suggested to Hudson that we should attach a rope to the rocks on our arrival at the difficult bit, and hold it as we descended, as an additional protection. He approved the idea, but it was not definitely settled that it should be done. The party was being arranged in the above order while I was sketching the summit, and they had finished, and were waiting for me to be tied in line, when some one remembered that our names had not been left in a bottle. They requested me to write them down, and moved off while it was being done. A few minutes afterward I tied myself to young Peter, ran down after the others, and caught them just as they were commencing the descent of the difficult part. Great care was being taken. Only one man was moving at a time; when he was firmly planted, the next advanced, and so on. They had not, however, attached the additional rope to rocks, and nothing was said about it. The suggestion was not made for my own sake, and I am not sure that it even occurred to me again. For some little distance we followed the others, detached from them, and should have continued so had not Lord Francis Douglas asked me, about 3 P.M., to tie on to old Peter, as he feared, he said, that Taugwalder would not be able to hold his ground if a slip occurred. A few minutes later a sharp-eyed lad ran into the Monte Rosa hotel to Seiler,[49] saying that he had seen an avalanche fall from the summit of the Matterhorn on to the Matterhorngletscher. The boy was reproved for telling such idle stories; he was right, nevertheless, and this was what he saw. Michael Croz had laid aside his ax, and in order to give Mr. Hadow greater security was absolutely taking hold of his legs and putting his feet, one by one, into their proper positions. As far as I know, no one was actually descending. I can not speak with certainty, because the two leading men were partially hidden from my sight by an intervening mass of rock, but it is my belief, from the movements of their shoulders, that Croz, having done as I have said, was in the act of turning round to go down a step or two himself; at the moment Mr. Hadow slipt, fell against him and knocked him over. I heard one startled exclamation from Croz, then saw him and Mr. Hadow flying downward; in another moment Hudson was dragged from his steps, and Lord Francis Douglas immediately after him. All this was the work of a moment. Immediately we heard Croz's exclamation, old Peter and I planted ourselves as firmly as the rocks would permit; the rope was taut between us, and the jerk came on us both as one man. We held, but the rope broke midway between Taugwalder and Lord Francis Douglas. For a few seconds we saw our unfortunate companions sliding downward on their backs, and spreading out their hands, endeavoring to save themselves. They passed from our sight uninjured, disappeared one by one, and fell from precipice to precipice on to the Matterhorngletscher below, a distance of nearly four thousand feet in height. From the moment the rope broke it was impossible to help them. So perished our comrades! For the space of half an hour we remained on the spot without moving a single step. The two men, paralyzed by terror, cried like infants, and trembled in such a manner as to threaten us with the fate of the others. Old Peter rent the air with exclamations of "Chamounix!--oh, what will Chamounix say?" He meant, who would believe that Croz could fall? The young man did nothing but scream or sob, "We are lost! we are lost!" Fixt between the two, I could move neither up nor down. I begged young Peter to descend, but he dared not. Unless he did, we could not advance. Old Peter became alive to the danger, and swelled the cry, "We are lost! we are lost!" The father's fear was natural--he trembled for his son; the young man's fear was cowardly--he thought of self alone. At last old Peter summoned up courage, and changed his position to a rock to which he could fix the rope; the young man then descended, and we all stood together. Immediately we did so, I asked for the rope which had given way, and found, to my surprise--indeed, to my horror--that it was the weakest of the three ropes. It was not brought, and should not have been employed, for the purpose for which it was used. It was old rope, and, compared with the others, was feeble. It was intended as a reserve, in case we had to leave much rope behind attached to rocks. I saw at once that a serious question was involved, and made them give me the end. It had broken in mid-air, and it did not appear to have sustained previous injury. For more than two hours afterward I thought almost every moment that the next would be my last, for the Taugwalders, utterly unnerved, were not only incapable of giving assistance, but were in such a state that a slip might have been expected from them at any moment. After a time we were able to do that which should have been done at first, and fixt rope to firm rocks, in addition to being tied together. These ropes were cut from time to time, and were left behind. Even with their assurance the men were afraid to proceed, and several times old Peter turned with ashy face and faltering limbs, and said with terrible emphasis, "I can not!" About 6 P.M. we arrived at the snow upon, the ridge descending toward Zermatt, and all peril was over. We frequently looked, but in vain, for traces of our unfortunate companions; we bent over the ridge and cried to them, but no sound returned. Convinced at last that they were within neither sight nor hearing, we ceased from our useless efforts, and, too cast down for speech, silently gathered up our things, preparatory to continuing the descent. When lo! a mighty arch appeared, rising above the Lyskamm high into the sky. Pale, colorless and noiseless, but perfectly sharp and defined, except where it was lost in the clouds, this unearthly apparition seemed like a vision from another world, and almost appalled we watched with amazement the gradual development of two vast crosses, one on either side. If the Taugwalders had not been the first to perceive it, I should have doubted my senses. They thought it had some connection with the accident, and I, after a while, that it might bear some relations to ourselves. But our movements had no effect upon it. The spectral forms remained motionless. It was a fearful and wonderful sight, unique in my experience, and impressive beyond description, at such a moment.... Night fell, and for an hour the descent was continued in the darkness. At half-past nine a resting-place was found, and upon a wretched slab, barely large enough to hold three, we passed six miserable hours. At daybreak the descent was resumed, and from the Hornli ridge we ran down to the chalets of Buhl and on to Zermatt. Seiler met me at his door, and followed in silence to my room: "What is the matter?" "The Taugwalders and I have returned." He did not need more, and burst into tears, but lost no time in lamentations, and set to work to arouse the village. Ere long a score of men had started to ascend the Hohlicht heights, above Kalbermatt and Z'Mutt, which commanded the plateau of the Matterhorngletscher. They returned after six hours, and reported that they had seen the bodies lying motionless on the snow. This was on Saturday, and they proposed that we should leave on Sunday evening, so as to arrive upon the plateau at daybreak on Monday. We started at 2 A.M. on Sunday, the 16th, and followed the route that we had taken on the previous Thursday as far as the Hornli. From thence we went down to the right of the ridge, and mounted through the "séracs" of the Matterhorngletscher. By 8:30 we had got to the plateau at the top of the glacier, and within sight of the corner in which we knew my companions must be. As we saw one weather-beaten man after another raise the telescope, turn deadly pale and pass it on without a word to the next, we knew that all hope was gone. We approached. They had fallen below as they had fallen above--Croz a little in advance, Hadow near him, and Hudson behind, but of Lord Francis Douglas we could see nothing.[50] We left them where they fell, buried in snow at the base of the grandest cliff of the most majestic mountain of the Alps. AN ASCENT OF MONTE ROSA[51] BY JOHN TYNDALL On Monday, the 9th of August, we reached the Riffel, and, by good fortune on the evening of the same day, my guide's brother, the well-known Ulrich Lauener, also arrived at the hotel on his return from Monte Rosa. From him we obtained all the information possible respecting the ascent, and he kindly agreed to accompany us a little way the next morning, to put us on the right track. At three A.M. the door of my bedroom opened, and Christian Lauener announced to me that the weather was sufficiently good to justify an attempt. The stars were shining overhead; but Ulrich afterward drew our attention to some heavy clouds which clung to the mountains on the other side of the valley of the Visp; remarking that the weather might continue fair throughout the day, but that these clouds were ominous. At four o'clock we were on our way, by which time a gray stratus cloud had drawn itself across the neck of the Matterhorn, and soon afterward another of the same nature encircled his waist. We proceeded past the Riffelhorn to the ridge above the Görner Glacier, from which Monte Rosa was visible from top to bottom, and where an animated conversation in Swiss dialect commenced. Ulrich described the slopes, passes, and precipices, which were to guide us; and Christian demanded explanations, until he was finally able to declare to me that his knowledge was sufficient. We then bade Ulrich good-by, and went forward. All was clear about Monte Rosa, and the yellow morning light shone brightly upon its uppermost snows. Beside the Queen of the Alps was the huge mass of the Lyskamm, with a saddle stretching from the one to the other; next to the Lyskamm came two white, rounded mounds, smooth and pure, the Twins Castor and Pollux, and further to the right again the broad, brown flank of the Breithorn. Behind us Mont Cervin[52] gathered the clouds more thickly round him, until finally his grand obelisk was totally hidden. We went along the mountain side for a time, and then descended to the glacier. The surface was hard frozen, and the ice crunched loudly under our feet. There was a hollowness and volume in the sound which require explanation; and this, I think, is furnished by the remarks of Sir John Herschel on those hollow sounds at the Solfaterra, near Naples, from which travelers have inferred the existence of cavities within the mountain. At the place where these sounds are heard the earth is friable, and, when struck, the concussion is reinforced and lengthened by the partial echoes from the surfaces of the fragments. The conditions for a similar effect exist upon the glacier, for the ice is disintegrated to a certain depth, and from the innumerable places of rupture little reverberations are sent, which give a length and hollowness to the sound produced by the crushing of the fragments on the surface. We looked to the sky at intervals, and once a meteor slid across it, leaving a train of sparks behind. The blue firmament, from which the stars shone down so brightly when we rose, was more and more invaded by clouds, which advanced upon us from our rear, while before us the solemn heights of Monte Rosa were bathed in rich yellow sunlight. As the day advanced the radiance crept down toward the valleys; but still those stealthy clouds advanced like a besieging army, taking deliberate possession of the summits, one after another, while gray skirmishers moved through the air above us. The play of light and shadow upon Monte Rosa was at times beautiful, bars of gloom and zones of glory shifting and alternating from top to bottom of the mountain. At five o'clock a gray cloud alighted on the shoulder of the Lyskamm, which had hitherto been warmed by the lovely yellow light. Soon afterward we reached the foot of Monte Rosa, and passed from the glacier to a slope of rocks, whose rounded forms and furrowed surfaces showed that the ice of former ages had moved over them; the granite was now coated with lichens, and between the bosses where mold could rest were patches of tender moss. As we ascended a peal to the right announced the descent of an avalanche from the Twins; it came heralded by clouds of ice-dust, which resembled the sphered masses of condensed vapor which issue from a locomotive. A gentle snow-slope brought us to the base of a precipice of brown rocks, round which we wound; the snow was in excellent order, and the chasms were so firmly bridged by the frozen mass that no caution was necessary in crossing them. Surmounting a weathered cliff to our left, we paused upon the summit to look upon the scene around us. The snow gliding insensibly from the mountains, or discharged in avalanches from the precipices which it overhung, filled the higher valleys with pure white glaciers, which were rifted and broken here and there, exposing chasms and precipices from which gleamed the delicate blue of the half-formed ice. Sometimes, however, the "névés" spread over wide spaces without a rupture or wrinkle to break the smoothness of the superficial snow. The sky was now, for the most part, overcast, but through the residual blue spaces the sun at intervals poured light over the rounded bosses of the mountain. At half-past seven o'clock we reached another precipice of rock, to the left of which our route lay, and here Lauener proposed to have some refreshment; after which we went on again. The clouds spread more and more, leaving at length mere specks and patches of blue between them. Passing some high peaks, formed by the dislocation of the ice, we came to a place where the "névé" was rent by crevasses, on the walls of which the stratification, due to successive snowfalls, was thrown with great beauty and definition. Between two of these fissures our way now lay; the wall of one of them was hollowed out longitudinally midway down, thus forming a roof above and a ledge below, and from roof to ledge stretched a railing of cylindrical icicles, as if intended to bolt them together. A cloud now for the first time touched the summit of Monte Rosa, and sought to cling to it, but in a minute it dispersed in shattered fragments, as if dashed to pieces for its presumption. The mountain remained for a time clear and triumphant, but the triumph was shortlived; like suitors that will not be repelled, the dusky vapors came; repulse after repulse took place, and the sunlight gushed down upon the heights, but it was manifest that the clouds gained ground in the conflict. Until about a quarter-past nine o'clock our work was mere child's play, a pleasant morning stroll along the flanks of the mountain; but steeper slopes now rose above us, which called for more energy, and more care in the fixing of the feet. Looked at from below, some of these slopes appeared precipitous; but we were too well acquainted with the effect of fore-shortening to let this daunt us. At each step we dug our batons into the deep snow. When first driven in, the batons [53] "dipt" from us, but were brought, as we walked forward, to the vertical, and finally beyond it at the other side. The snow was thus forced aside, a rubbing of the staff against it, and of the snow-particles against each other, being the consequence. We had thus perpetual rupture and regelation; while the little sounds consequent upon rupture reinforced by the partial echoes from the surfaces of the granules, were blended together to a note resembling the lowing of cows. Hitherto I had paused at intervals to make notes, or to take an angle; but these operations now ceased, not from want of time, but from pure dislike; for when the eye has to act the part of a sentinel who feels that at any moment the enemy may be upon him; when the body must be balanced with precision, and legs and arms, besides performing actual labor, must be kept in readiness for possible contingencies; above all, when you feel that your safety depends upon yourself alone, and that, if your footing gives way, there is no strong arm behind ready to be thrown between you and destruction; under such circumstances the relish for writing ceases, and you are willing to hand over your impressions to the safekeeping of memory. Prom the vast boss which constitutes the lower portion of Monte Rosa cliffy edges run upward to the summit. Were the snow removed from these we should, I doubt not, see them as toothed or serrated crags, justifying the term "kamm," or "comb," applied to such edges by the Germans. Our way now lay along such a "kamm," the cliffs of which had, however, caught the snow, and been completely covered by it, forming an edge like the ridge of a house-roof, which sloped steeply upward. On the Lyskamm side of the edge there was no footing, and if a human body fell over here, it would probably pass through a vertical space of some thousands of feet, falling or rolling, before coming to rest. On the other side the snow-slope was less steep, but excessively perilous-looking, and intersected by precipices of ice. Dense clouds now enveloped us, and made our position far uglier than if it had been fairly illuminated. The valley below us was one vast cauldron, filled with precipitated vapor, which came seething at times up the sides of the mountain. Sometimes this fog would clear away, and the light would gleam from the dislocated glaciers. My guide continually admonished me to make my footing sure, and to fix at each step my staff firmly in the consolidated snow. At one place, for a short steep ascent, the slope became hard ice, and our position a very ticklish one. We hewed our steps as we moved upward, but were soon glad to deviate from the ice to a position scarcely less awkward. The wind had so acted upon the snow as to fold it over the edge of the kamm, thus causing it to form a kind of cornice, which overhung the precipice on the Lyskamm side of the mountain. This cornice now bore our weight; its snow had become somewhat firm, but it was yielding enough to permit the feet to sink in it a little way, and thus secure us at least against the danger of slipping. Here, also, at each step we drove our batons firmly into the snow, availing ourselves of whatever help they could render. Once, while thus securing my anchorage, the handle of my hatchet went right through the cornice on which we stood, and, on withdrawing it, I could see through the aperture into the cloud-crammed gulf below. We continued ascending until we reached a rock protruding from the snow, and here we halted for a few minutes. Lauener looked upward through the fog. "According to all description," he observed, "this ought to be the last kamm of the mountain; but in this obscurity we can see nothing." Snow began to fall, and we recommenced our journey, quitting the rocks and climbing again along the edge. Another hour brought us to a crest of cliffs, at which, to our comfort, the kamm appeared to cease, and other climbing qualities were demanded of us. On the Lyskamm side, as I have said, rescue would be out of the question, should the climber go over the edge. On the other side of the edge rescue seemed possible, tho' the slope, as stated already, was most dangerously steep. I now asked Lauener what he would have done, supposing my footing to have failed on the latter slope. He did not seem to like the question, but said that he should have considered well for a moment and then have sprung after me; but he exhorted me to drive all such thoughts away. I laughed at him, and this did more to set his mind at rest than any formal profession of courage could have done. We were now among rocks; we climbed cliffs and descended them, and advanced sometimes with our feet on narrow ledges, holding tightly on to other ledges by our fingers; sometimes, cautiously balanced, we moved along edges of rock with precipices on both sides. Once, in getting round a crag, Lauener shook a book from his pocket; it was arrested by a rock about sixty or eighty feet below us. He wished to regain it, but I offered to supply its place, if he thought the descent too dangerous. He said he would make the trial, and parted from me. I thought it useless to remain idle. A cleft was before me, through which I must pass; so pressing my knees and back against its opposite sides, I gradually worked myself to the top. I descended the other face of the rock, and then, through a second ragged fissure, to the summit of another pinnacle. The highest point of the mountain was now at hand, separated from me merely by a short saddle, carved by weathering out the crest of the mountain. I could hear Lauener clattering after me, through the rocks behind. I dropt down upon the saddle, crossed it, climbed the opposite cliff, and "die höchste Spitze" of Monte Rosa was won. Lauener joined me immediately, and we mutually congratulated each other on the success of the ascent. The residue of the bread and meat was produced, and a bottle of tea was also appealed to. Mixed with a little cognac, Lauener declared that he had never tasted anything like it. Snow fell thickly at intervals, and the obscurity was very great; occasionally this would lighten and permit the sun to shed a ghastly dilute light upon us through the gleaming vapor. I put my boiling-water apparatus in order, and fixt it in a corner behind a ledge; the shelter was, however, insufficient, so I placed my hat above the vessel. The boiling-point was 184.92 deg. Fahr., the ledge on which the instrument stood being five feet below the highest point of the mountain. The ascent from the Riffel Hotel occupied us about seven hours, nearly two of which were spent upon the kämm and crest. Neither of us felt in the least degree fatigued; I, indeed, felt so fresh, that had another Monte Rosa been planted on the first, I should have continued the climb without hesitation, and with strong hopes of reaching the top. I experienced no trace of mountain sickness, lassitude, shortness of breath, heart-beat, or headache; nevertheless the summit of Monte Rosa is 15,284 feet high, being less than 500 feet lower than Mont Blanc. It is, I think, perfectly certain, that the rarefaction of the air at this height is not sufficient of itself to produce the symptoms referred to; physical exertion must be superadded. MONT BLANC ASCENDED, HUXLEY GOING PART WAY[54] BY JOHN TYNDALL The way for a time was excessively rough,[55] our route being overspread with the fragments of peaks which had once reared themselves to our left, but which frost and lightning had shaken to pieces, and poured in granite avalanches down the mountain. We were sometimes among huge, angular boulders, and sometimes amid lighter shingle, which gave way at every step, thus forcing us to shift our footing incessantly. Escaping from these we crossed the succession of secondary glaciers which lie at the feet of the Aiguilles, and, having secured firewood, found ourselves, after some hours of hard work, at the Pierre l'Echelle. Here we were furnished with leggings of coarse woolen cloth to keep out the snow; they were tied under the knees and quite tightly again over the insteps, so that the legs were effectually protected. We had some refreshment, possest ourselves of the ladder, and entered upon the glacier. The ice was excessively fissured; we crossed crevasses and crept round slippery ridges, cutting steps in the ice wherever climbing was necessary. This rendered our progress very slow. Once, with the intention of lending a helping hand, I stept forward upon a block of granite which happened to be poised like a rocking stone upon the ice, tho' I did not know it; it treacherously turned under me; I fell, but my hands were in instant requisition, and I escaped with a bruise, from which, however, the blood oozed angrily. We found the ladder necessary in crossing some of the chasms, the iron spikes at its end being firmly driven into the ice at one side, while the other end rested on the opposite side of the fissure. The middle portion of the glacier was not difficult. Mounds of ice rose beside us right and left, which were sometimes split into high towers and gaunt-looking pyramids, while the space between was unbroken. Twenty minutes' walking brought us again to a fissured portion of the glacier, and here our porter left the ladder on the ice behind him. For some time I was not aware of this, but we were soon fronted by a chasm to pass which we were in consequence compelled to make a long and dangerous circuit amid crests of crumbling ice. This accomplished, we hoped that no repetition of the process would occur, but we speedily came to a second fissure, where it was necessary to step from a projecting end of ice to a mass of soft snow which overhung the opposite side. Simond could reach this snow with his long-handled ax; he beat it down to give it rigidity, but it was exceedingly tender, and as he worked at it he continued to express his fears that it would not bear us. I was the lightest of the party, and therefore tested the passage first; being partially lifted by Simond on the end of his ax, I crossed the fissure, obtained some anchorage at the other side, and helped the others over. We afterward ascended until another chasm, deeper and wider than any we had hitherto encountered, arrested us. We walked alongside of it in search of a snow-bridge, which we at length found, but the keystone of the arch had, unfortunately, given way, leaving projecting eaves of snow at both sides, between which we could look into the gulf, till the gloom of its deeper portions cut the vision short. Both sides of the crevasse were sounded, but no sure footing was obtained; the snow was beaten and carefully trodden down as near to the edge as possible, but it finally broke away from the foot and fell into the chasm. One of our porters was short-legged and a bad iceman; the other was a daring fellow, and he now threw the knapsack from his shoulders, came to the edge of the crevasse, looked into it, but drew back again. After a pause he repeated the act, testing the snow with his feet and staff. I looked at the man as he stood beside the chasm manifestly undecided as to whether he should take the step upon which his life would hang, and thought it advisable to put a stop to such perilous play. I accordingly interposed, the man withdrew from the crevasse, and he and Simond descended to fetch the ladder. While they were away Huxley sat down upon the ice, with an expression of fatigue stamped upon his countenance; the spirit and the muscles were evidently at war, and the resolute will mixed itself strangely with the sense of peril and feeling of exhaustion. He had been only two days with us, and, tho' his strength is great, he had had no opportunity of hardening himself by previous exercise upon the ice for the task which he had undertaken. The ladder now arrived, and we crossed the crevasse. I was intentionally the last of the party, Huxley being immediately in front of me. The determination of the man disguised his real condition from everybody but himself, but I saw that the exhausting journey over the boulders and débris had been too much for his London limbs. Converting my waterproof haversack into a cushion, I made him sit down upon it at intervals, and by thus breaking the steep ascent into short stages we reached the cabin of the Grands Mulets together. Here I spread a rug on the boards, and, placing my bag for a pillow, he lay down, and after an hour's profound sleep he rose refreshed and well; but still he thought it wise not to attempt the ascent farther. Our porters left us; a baton was stretched across the room over the stove, and our wet socks and leggings were thrown across it to dry; our boots were placed around the fire, and we set about preparing our evening meal. A pan was placed upon the fire, and filled with snow, which in due time melted and boiled; I ground some chocolate and placed it in the pan, and afterward ladled the beverage into the vessels we possest, which consisted of two earthen dishes and the metal cases of our brandy flasks. After supper Simond went out to inspect the glacier, and was observed by Huxley, as twilight fell, in a state of deep contemplation beside a crevasse. Gradually the stars appeared, but as yet no moon. Before lying down we went out to look at the firmament, and noticed, what I supposed has been observed to some extent by everybody, that the stars near the horizon twinkled busily, while those near the zenith shone with a steady light. One large star, in particular, excited our admiration; it flashed intensely, and changed color incessantly, sometimes blushing like a ruby, and again gleaming like an emerald. A determinate color would sometimes remain constant for a sensible time, but usually the flashes followed each other in very quick succession. Three planks were now placed across the room near the stove, and upon these, with their rugs folded round them, Huxley and Hirst stretched themselves, while I nestled on the boards at the most distant end of the room. We rose at eleven o'clock, renewed the fire and warmed ourselves, after which we lay down again. I, at length, observed a patch of pale light upon the wooden wall of the cabin, which had entered through a hole in the end of the edifice, and rising found that it was past one o'clock. The cloudless moon was shining over the wastes of snow, and the scene outside was at once wild, grand, and beautiful. Breakfast was soon prepared, tho' not without difficulty; we had no candles, they had been forgotten; but I fortunately possest a box of wax matches, of which Huxley took charge, patiently igniting them in succession, and thus giving us a tolerably continuous light. We had some tea, which had been made at the Montanvert,[56] and carried to the Grands Mulets in a bottle. My memory of that tea is not pleasant; it had been left a whole night in contact with its leaves, and smacked strongly of tannin. The snow-water, moreover, with which we diluted it was not pure, but left a black residuum at the bottom of the dishes in which the beverage was served. The few provisions deemed necessary being placed in Simond's knapsack, at twenty minutes past two o'clock we scrambled down the rocks, leaving Huxley behind us. The snow was hardened by the night's frost, and we were cheered by the hope of being able to accomplish the ascent with comparatively little labor. We were environed by an atmosphere of perfect purity; the larger stars hung like gems above us, and the moon, about half full, shone with wondrous radiance in the dark firmament. One star in particular, which lay eastward from the moon, suddenly made its appearance above one of the Aiguilles, and burned there with unspeakable splendor. We turned once toward the Mulets, and saw Huxley's form projected against the sky as he stood upon a pinnacle of rock; he gave us a last wave of the hand and descended, while we receded from him into the solitudes. The evening previous our guide had examined the glacier for some distance, his progress having been arrested by a crevasse. Beside this we soon halted: it was spanned at one place by a bridge of snow, which was of too light a structure to permit of Simond's testing it alone; we therefore paused while our guide uncoiled a rope and tied us all together. The moment was to me a peculiarly solemn one. Our little party seemed so lonely and so small amid the silence and the vastness of the surrounding scene. We were about to try our strength under unknown conditions, and as the various possibilities of the enterprise crowded on the imagination, a sense of responsibility for a moment opprest me. But as I looked aloft and saw the glory of the heavens, my heart lightened, and I remarked cheerily to Hirst that Nature seemed to smile upon our work. "Yes," he replied, in a calm and earnest voice, "and, God willing, we shall accomplish it." A pale light now overspread the eastern sky, which increased, as we ascended, to a daffodil tinge; this afterward heightened to orange, deepening at one extremity into red, and fading at the other into a pure, ethereal hue to which it would be difficult to assign a special name. Higher up the sky was violet, and this changed by insensible degrees into the darkling blue of the zenith, which had to thank the light of moon and stars alone for its existence. We wound steadily for a time through valleys of ice, climbed white and slippery slopes, crossed a number of crevasses, and after some time found ourselves beside a chasm of great depth and width, which extended right and left as far as we could see. We turned to the left, and marched along its edge in search of a "pont"; but matters became gradually worse; other crevasses joined on to the first one, and the further we proceeded the more riven and dislocated the ice became. At length we reached a place where further advance was impossible. Simond, in his difficulty complained of the want of light, and wished us to wait for the advancing day; I, on the contrary, thought that we had light enough and ought to make use of it. Here the thought occurred to me that Simond, having been only once before to the top of the mountain, might not be quite clear about the route; the glacier, however, changes within certain limits from year to year, so that a general knowledge was all that could be expected, and we trusted to our own muscles to make good any mistake in the way of guidance. We now turned and retraced our steps along the edges of chasms where the ice was disintegrated and insecure, and succeeded at length in finding a bridge which bore us across the crevasse. This error caused us the loss of an hour, and after walking for this time we could cast a stone from the point we had attained to the place whence we had been compelled to return. Our way now lay along the face of a steep incline of snow, which was cut by the fissure we had just passed, in a direction parallel to our route. On the heights to our right, loose ice-crags seemed to totter, and we passed two tracks over which the frozen blocks had rushed some short time previously. We were glad to get out of the range of these terrible projectiles, and still more so to escape the vicinity of that ugly crevasse. To be killed in the open air would be a luxury, compared with having the life squeezed out of one in the horrible gloom of these chasms. The blush of the coming day became more and more intense; still the sun himself did not appear, being hidden from us by the peaks of the Aiguille du Midi, which were drawn clear and sharp against the brightening sky. Right under this Aiguille were heaps of snow smoothly rounded and constituting a portion of the sources whence the Glacier du Géant is fed; these, as the day advanced, bloomed with a rosy light. We reached the Petit Plateau, which we found covered with the remains of ice avalanches; above us upon the crest of the mountain rose three mighty bastions, divided from each other by deep, vertical rents, with clean smooth walls, across which the lines of annual bedding were drawn like courses of masonry. From these, which incessantly renew themselves, and from the loose and broken ice-crags near them, the boulders amid which we now threaded our way had been discharged. When they fall their descent must be sublime. The snow had been gradually getting deeper, and the ascent more wearisome, but superadded to this at the Petit Plateau was the uncertainty of the footing between the blocks of ice. In many places the space was merely covered by a thin crust, which, when trod upon, instantly yielded and we sank with a shock sometimes to the hips. Our way next lay up a steep incline to the Grand Plateau, the depth and tenderness of the snow augmenting as we ascended. We had not yet seen the sun, but as we attained the brow which forms the entrance to the Grand Plateau, he hung his disk upon a spike of rock to our left, and, surrounded by a glory of interference spectra of the most gorgeous colors, blazed down upon us. On the Grand Plateau we halted and had our frugal refreshment. At some distance to our left was the crevasse into which Dr. Hamel's three guides were precipitated by an avalanche in 1820; they are still entombed in the ice, and some future explorer may, perhaps, see them disgorged lower down, fresh and undecayed. They can hardly reach the surface until they pass the snow-line of the glacier, for above this line the quantity of snow that annually falls being in excess of the quantity melted, the tendency would be to make the ice-covering above them thicker. But it is also possible that the waste of the ice underneath may have brought the bodies to the bed of the glacier, where their very bones may have been ground to mud by an agency which the hardest rocks can not withstand. As the sun poured his light upon the Plateau the little snow-facets sparkled brilliantly, sometimes with a pure white light, and at others with prismatic colors. Contrasted with the white spaces above and around us were the dark mountains on the opposite side of the valley of Chamouni, around which fantastic masses of cloud were beginning to build themselves. Mont Buet, with its cone of snow, looked small, and the Brevent altogether mean; the limestone bastions of the Fys, however, still presented a front of gloom and grandeur. We traversed the Grand Plateau, and at length reached the base of an extremely steep incline which stretched upward toward the Corridor. Here, as if produced by a fault, consequent upon the sinking of the ice in front, rose a vertical precipice, from the coping of which vast stalactites of ice depended. Previous to reaching this place I had noticed a haggard expression upon the countenance of our guide, which was now intensified by the prospect of the ascent before him. Hitherto he had always been in front, which was certainly the most fatiguing position. I felt that I must now take the lead, so I spoke cheerily to the man and placed him behind me. Marking a number of points upon the slope as resting places, I went swiftly from one to the other. The surface of the snow had been partially melted by the sun and then refrozen, thus forming a superficial crust, which bore the weight up to a certain point, and then suddenly gave way, permitting the leg to sink to above the knee. The shock consequent on this, and the subsequent effort necessary to extricate the leg, were extremely fatiguing. My motion was complained of as too quick, and my tracks as imperfect; I moderated the former, and to render my footholes broad and sure, I stamped upon the frozen crust, and twisted my legs in the soft mass underneath,--a terribly exhausting process. I thus led the way to the base of the Rochers Bouges, up to which the fault already referred to had prolonged itself as a crevasse, which was roofed at one place by a most dangerous-looking snow-bridge. Simond came to the front; I drew his attention to the state of the snow, and proposed climbing the Rochers Rouges; but, with a promptness unusual with him, he replied that this was impossible; the bridge was our only means of passing, and we must try it. We grasped our ropes, and dug our feet firmly into the snow to check the man's descent if the "pont" gave way, but to our astonishment it bore him, and bore us safely after him. The slope which we had now to ascend had the snow swept from its surface, and was therefore firm ice. It was most dangerously steep, and, its termination being the fretted coping of the precipice to which I have referred, if we slid downward we should shoot over this and be dashed to pieces upon the ice below.[57] Simond, who had come to the front to cross the crevasse, was now engaged in cutting steps, which he made deep and large, so that they might serve us on our return. But the listless strokes of his ax proclaimed his exhaustion; so I took the implement out of his hands, and changed places with him. Step after step was hewn, but the top of the Corridor appeared ever to recede from us. Hirst was behind, unoccupied, and could thus turn his thoughts to the peril of our position; he "felt" the angle on which we hung, and saw the edge of the precipice, to which less than a quarter of a minute's slide would carry us, and for the first time during the journey he grew giddy. A cigar which he lighted for the purpose tranquilized him. I hewed sixty steps upon this slope, and each step had cost a minute, by Hirst's watch. The Mur de la Côte was still before us, and on this the guide-books informed us two or three hundred steps were sometimes found necessary. If sixty steps cost an hour, what would be the cost of two hundred? The question was disheartening in the extreme, for the time at which we had calculated on reaching the summit was already passed, while the chief difficulties remained unconquered. Having hewn our way along the harder ice we reached snow. I again resorted to stamping to secure a footing, and while thus engaged became, for the first time, aware of the drain of force to which I was subjecting myself. The thought of being absolutely exhausted had never occurred to me, and from first to last I had taken no care to husband my strength. I always calculated that the "will" would serve me even should the muscles fail, but I now found that mechanical laws rule man in the long run; that no effort of will, no power of spirit, can draw beyond a certain limit upon muscular force. The soul, it is true, can stir the body to action, but its function is to excite and apply force, and not to create it. While stamping forward through the frozen crust I was compelled to pause at short intervals; then would set out again apparently fresh, to find, however, in a few minutes, that my strength was gone, and that I required to rest once more. In this way I gained the summit of the Corridor, when Hirst came to the front, and I felt some relief in stepping slowly after him, making use of the holes into which his feet had sunk. He thus led the way to the base of the Mur de la Côte, the thought of which had so long cast a gloom upon us; here we left our rope behind us, and while pausing I asked Simond whether he did not feel a desire to go to the summit. "Surely," was his reply, "but!--" Our guide's mind was so constituted that the "but" seemed essential to its peace. I stretched my hands toward him, and said: "Simond, we must do it." One thing alone I felt could defeat us: the usual time of the ascent had been more than doubled, the day was already far spent, and if the ascent would throw our subsequent descent into night it could not be contemplated. We now faced the Mur, which was by no means so bad as we had expected. Driving the iron claws of our boots into the scars made by the ax, and the spikes of our batons into the slope above our feet, we ascended steadily until the summit was attained, and the top of the mountain rose clearly above us. We congratulated ourselves upon this; but Simond, probably fearing that our joy might become too full, remarked: "But the summit is still far off!" It was, alas! too true. The snow became soft again, and our weary limbs sank in it as before. Our guide went on in front, audibly muttering his doubts as to our ability to reach the top, and at length he threw himself upon the snow, and exclaimed, "I give up!" Hirst now undertook the task of rekindling the guide's enthusiasm, after which Simond rose, exclaiming: "Oh, but this makes my knees ache!" and went forward. Two rocks break through the snow between the summit of the Mur and the top of the mountain; the first is called the Petits Mulets, and the highest the Derniers Rochers. At the former of these we paused to rest, and finished our scanty store of wine and provisions. We had not a bit of bread nor a drop of wine left; our brandy flasks were also nearly exhausted, and thus we had to contemplate the journey to the summit, and the subsequent descent to the Grands Mulets, with out the slightest prospect of physical refreshment. The almost total loss of two nights' sleep, with two days' toil superadded, made me long for a few minutes' doze, so I stretched myself upon a composite couch of snow and granite, and immediately fell asleep. My friend, however, soon aroused me. "You quite frighten me," he said; "I have listened for some minutes, and have not heard you breathe once." I had, in reality, been taking deep draughts of the mountain air, but so silently as not to be heard. I now filled our empty wine-bottle with snow and placed it in the sunshine, that we might have a little water on our return. We then rose; it was half-past two o'clock; we had been upward of twelve hours climbing, and I calculated that, whether we reached the summit or not, we could at all events work "toward" it for another hour. To the sense of fatigue previously experienced, a new phenomenon was now added--the beating of the heart. We were incessantly pulled up by this, which sometimes became so intense as to suggest danger. I counted the number of paces which we were able to accomplish without resting, and found that at the end of every twenty, sometimes at the end of fifteen, we were compelled to pause. At each pause my heart throbbed audibly, as I leaned upon my staff, and the subsidence of this action was always the signal for further advance. My breathing was quick, but light and unimpeded. I endeavored to ascertain whether the hip-joint, on account of the diminished atmospheric pressure, became loosened, so as to throw the weight of the leg upon the surrounding ligaments, but could not be certain about it. I also sought a little aid and encouragement from philosophy, endeavoring to remember what great things had been done by the accumulation of small quantities, and I urged upon myself that the present was a case in point, and that the summation of distances twenty paces each must finally place us at the top. Still the question of time left the matter long in doubt, and until we had passed the Derniers Rochers we worked on with the stern indifference of men who were doing their duty, and did not look to consequences. Here, however, a gleam of hope began to brighten our souls: the summit became visible nearer, Simond showed more alacrity; at length success became certain, and at half-past three P.M. my friend and I clasped hands upon the top. The summit of the mountain is an elongated ridge, which has been compared to the back of an ass. It was perfectly manifest that we were dominant over all other mountains; as far as the eye could range Mont Blanc had no competitor. The summits which had looked down upon us in the morning were now far beneath us. The Dôme du Goûté, which had held its threatening "séracs" above us so long, was now at our feet. The Aiguille du Midi, Mont Blanc du Tacul, and the Monts Maudits, the Talèfre, with its surrounding peaks, the Grand Jorasse, Mont Mallet, and the Aiguille du Géant, with our own familiar glaciers, were all below us. And as our eye ranged over the broad shoulders of the mountain, over ice hills and valleys, plateaux and far-stretching slopes of snow, the conception of its magnitude grew upon us, and imprest us more and more. The clouds were very grand--grander, indeed, than anything I had ever before seen. Some of them seemed to hold thunder in their breasts, they were so dense and dark; others, with their faces turned sunward, shone with the dazzling whiteness of the mountain snow; while others again built themselves into forms resembling gigantic elm trees, loaded with foliage. Toward the horizon the luxury of color added itself to the magnificent alternation of light and shade. Clear spaces of amber and ethereal green embraced the red and purple cumuli, and seemed to form the cradle in which they swung. Closer at hand squally mists, suddenly engendered, were driven hither and thither by local winds; while the clouds at a distance lay "like angels sleeping on the wing," with scarcely visibly motion. Mingling with the clouds, and sometimes rising above them, were the highest mountain heads, and as our eyes wandered from peak to peak, onward to the remote horizon, space itself seemed more vast from the manner in which the objects which it held were distributed.... The day was waning, and, urged by the warnings of our ever-prudent guide, we at length began the descent. Gravity was in our favor, but gravity could not entirely spare our wearied limbs, and where we sank in the snow we found our downward progress very trying. I suffered from thirst, but after we had divided the liquefied snow at the Petits Mulets among us we had nothing to drink. I crammed the clean snow into my mouth, but the process of melting was slow and tantalizing to a parched throat, while the chill was painful to the teeth. THE JUNGFRAU-JOCH[58] BY SIR LESLIE STEPHEN I was once more standing upon the Wengern Alp, and gazing longingly at the Jungfrau-Joch. Surely the Wengern Alp must be precisely the loveliest place in this world. To hurry past it, and listen to the roar of the avalanches, is a very unsatisfactory mode of enjoyment; it reminds one too much of letting off crackers in a cathedral. The mountains seem to be accomplices of the people who charge fifty centimes for an echo. But it does one's moral nature good to linger there at sunset or in the early morning, when tourists have ceased from traveling; and the jaded cockney may enjoy a kind of spiritual bath in the soothing calmness of scenery.... We, that is a little party of six Englishmen with six Oberland guides, who left the inn at 3 A.M. on July 20, 1862, were not, perhaps, in a specially poetical mood. Yet as the sun rose while we were climbing the huge buttress of the Mönch, the dullest of us--I refer, of course, to myself--felt something of the spirit of the scenery. The day was cloudless, and a vast inverted cone of dazzling rays suddenly struck upward into the sky through the gap between the Mönch and the Eiger, which, as some effect of perspective shifted its apparent position, looked like a glory streaming from the very summit of the Eiger. It was a good omen, if not in any more remote sense, yet as promising a fine day. After a short climb we descended upon the Gugg, glacier, most lamentably unpoetical of names, and mounted by it to the great plateau which lies below the cliffs immediately under the col. We reached this at about seven, and, after a short meal, carefully examined the route above us. Half way between us and the col lay a small and apparently level plateau of snow. Once upon it we felt confident that we could get to the top.... We plunged at once into the maze of crevasses, finding our passage much facilitated by the previous efforts of our guides. We were constantly walking over ground strewed with crumbling blocks of ice, the recent fall of which was proved by their sharp white fractures, and with a thing like an infirm toad stool twenty feet high, towering above our heads. Once we passed under a natural arch of ice, built in evident disregard of all principles of architectural stability. Hurrying judiciously at such critical points, and creeping slowly round those where the footing was difficult, we manage to thread the labyrinth safely, whilst Rubi appeared to think it rather pleasant than otherwise in such places to have his head fixt in a kind of pillory between two rungs of a ladder, with twelve feet of it sticking out behind and twelve feet before him. We reached the gigantic crevasse at 7.35. We passed along it to a point where its two lips nearly joined, and the side furthest from us was considerably higher than that upon which we stood. Fixing the foot of the ladder upon this ledge, we swung the top over, and found that it rested satisfactorily against the opposite bank. Almer crept up it, and made the top firmer by driving his ax into the snow underneath the highest step. The rest of us followed, carefully roped, and with the caution to rest our knees on the sides of the ladder, as several of the steps were extremely weak--a remark which was equally applicable to one, at least, of the sides. We crept up the rickety old machine, however, looking down between our legs into the blue depths of the crevasse, and at 8.15 the whole party found itself satisfactorily perched on the edge of the nearly level snow plateau, looking up at the long slopes of broken névé that led to the col.... When the man behind was also engaged in hauling himself up by the rope attached to your waist, when the two portions of the rope formed an acute angle, when your footing was confined to the insecure grip of one toe on a slippery bit of ice, and when a great hummock of hard sérac was pressing against the pit of your stomach and reducing you to a position of neutral equilibrium, the result was a feeling of qualified acquiescence in Michel or Almer's lively suggestion of "Vorwärts! vorwärts!" Somehow or other we did ascend. The excitement made the time seem short; and after what seemed to me to be half an hour, which was in fact nearly two hours, we had crept, crawled, climbed and wormed our way through various obstacles, till we found ourselves brought up by a huge overhanging wall of blue ice. This wall was no doubt the upper side of a crevasse, the lower part of which had been filled by snow-drift. Its face was honeycombed by the usual hemispherical chippings, which somehow always reminds me of the fretted walls of the Alhambra; and it was actually hollowed out so that its upper edge overhung our heads at a height of some twenty or thirty feet; the long fringe of icicles which adorned it had made a slippery pathway of ice at two or three feet distance from the foot of the wall by the freezing water which dripped from them; and along this we crept, in hopes that none of the icicles would come down bodily. The wall seemed to thin out and become much lower toward our left, and we moved cautiously toward its lowest point. The edge upon which we walked was itself very narrow, and ran down at a steep angle to the top of a lower icefall which repeated the form of the upper. It almost thinned out at the point where the upper wall was lowest. Upon this inclined ledge, however, we fixt the foot of our ladder. The difficulty of doing so conveniently was increased by a transverse crevasse which here intersected the other system. The foot, however, was fixt and rendered tolerably safe by driving in firmly several of our alpenstocks and axes under the lowest step. Almer, then, amidst great excitement, went forward to mount it. Should we still find an impassable system of crevasses above us, or were we close to the top? A gentle breeze which had been playing along the last ledge gave me hope that we were really not far off. As Almer reached the top about twelve o'clock, a loud yodel gave notice to all the party that our prospects were good. I soon followed, and saw, to my great delight, a stretch of smooth, white snow, without a single crevasse, rising in a gentle curve from our feet to the top of the col. The people who had been watching us from the Wengern Alp had been firing salutes all day, whenever the idea struck them, and whenever we surmounted a difficulty, such as the first great crevasse. We heard the faint sound of two or three guns as we reached the final plateau. We should, properly speaking, have been uproariously triumphant over our victory. To say the truth, our party of that summer was only too apt to break out into undignified explosions of animal spirits, bordering at times upon horseplay.... The top of the Jungfrau-Joch comes rather like a bathos in poetry. It rises so gently above the steep ice wall, and it is so difficult to determine the precise culminating point, that our enthusiasm oozed out gradually instead of producing a sudden explosion; and that instead of giving three cheers, singing "God Save the Queen," or observing any of the traditional ceremonial of a simpler generation of travelers, we calmly walked forward as tho' we had been crossing Westminster Bridge, and on catching sight of a small patch of rocks near the foot of the Mönch, rushed precipitately down to it and partook of our third breakfast. Which things, like most others, might easily be made into an allegory. The great dramatic moments of life are very apt to fall singularly flat. We manage to discount all their interest beforehand; and are amazed to find that the day to which we have looked forward so long--the day, it may be, of our marriage, or ordination, or election to be Lord Mayor--finds us curiously unconscious of any sudden transformation and as strongly inclined to prosaic eating and drinking as usual. At a later period we may become conscious of its true significance, and perhaps the satisfactory conquest of this new pass has given us more pleasure in later years than it did at the moment. However that may be, we got under way again after a meal and a chat, our friends Messrs. George and Moore descending the Aletsch glacier to the Aeggischhorn, whose summit was already in sight, and deceptively near in appearance. The remainder of the party soon turned off to the left, and ascended the snow slopes to the gap between the Mönch and Trugberg. As we passed these huge masses, rising in solitary grandeur from the center of one of the noblest snowy wastes of the Alps, Morgan reluctantly confest for the first time that he knew nothing exactly like it in Wales. XI OTHER ALPINE TOPICS THE GREAT ST. BERNARD HOSPICE[59] BY ARCHIBALD CAMPBELL KNOWLES The Pass of the Great St. Bernard was a well-known one long before the hospice was built. Before the Christian era, the Romans used it as a highway across the Alps, constantly improving the road as travel over it increased. Many lives were lost, however, as no material safeguards could obviate the danger from the elements, and no one will ever know the number of souls who met their end in the blinding snows and chilling blasts of those Alpine heights. To Bernard de Menthon is due the credit of the mountain hospice. He was the originator of the idea and the founder of the institution. He has since been canonized as a saint and he well deserved the honor, if it be a virtue to sacrifice oneself, as we believe, and to try and save the lives of one's fellows! It is no easy existence which St. Bernard chose for himself and followers. The very aspect of the pass is grand but gloomy. None of the softness of nature is seen. There is no verdure, no beauty of coloring, nothing but bleak, bare rock, great piles of stones, and occasional patches of fallen snow. It is thoroughly exposed, the winds always moaning mournfully around the buildings.... The trip begins at Martigny. First there is a level stretch, then a long, steady climb, after which begins the real road to the pass. The views are very lovely, and while quite different in some ways excel all passes except the famous Simplon. The scenery is very varied, the mountains are far enough off to give a good perspective, and the villages are most picturesque. The absence of snow peaks in any great number will be felt by some, but even a lover of such soon forgets the lack in the exceeding beauty and loveliness of the valleys. Toward the top of the pass there is quite a transformation. Both the road and the scenery change, the first becoming more and more steep and stony, the latter showing more and more of savage grandeur, as the green, smiling valleys are no longer seen, but in their place appear barren and rugged rocks and slopes, with the marks of the ravages wrought by storm, landslide and avalanche. The wind has fuller play and seems to moan in a mournful, dirge-like manner, accentuating the characteristics of bleakness and desolation which obtain at the top of the pass, all the more noticeable if the traveler arrives at dusk, just as the sun has disappeared behind the mountains. In this dreary place stands the hospice. The present buildings are not very old, the hospice only dating from the sixteenth century and the church from the seventeenth century, while the other structures, which have been built for the accommodation of strangers are comparatively new. Twelve monks of the Augustinian Order are regularly in residence here. They come when about twenty years of age; but so severe is the climate, so hard the life and so stern the rule that, after a service of about fifteen years, they generally have to seek a lower altitude, often ruined in health, with their powers completely sapped by the rigors and privations which they have endured. Altho the hospice and the adjoining hostelry for the travelers are cheerless in the extreme, there is always a warm welcome from the monks. No one, however poor, is refused bed and board for the night, and there is no "distinction of persons." The hospitality is extended to all, free of charge, this being the invariable rule of the institution, but it is expected, and rightly so, that those who can do so will deposit a liberal offering in the box provided for the purpose. The small receipts, however, show what a great abuse there is of this hospitality, for a large number of those who come in the summer could well afford to give and to give largely. We hear much of the courage and perseverance of Hannibal and Cæsar in leading their armies over the Alps! We see pictures of Napoleon and his soldiers as they toiled up the pass, dragging along their frozen guns, and perhaps falling into a fatal sleep about their dying camp fires at night! And we rightly admire such bravery, and thrill with admiration at the tale. Yet those armies which crossed the Alps failed to equal the heroic self-sacrifice of those soldiers of the cross, the Monks of the Grand St. Bernard, who remain for years at their post, unknown and unsung by the wide, wide world, simply to save and shelter the humble travelers who come to grief in their winter journey across the pass, in search of work. AVALANCHES[60] BY VICTOR TISSOT Beside this dazzling, magnificent snow, covering the chain of lofty peaks like an immaculate altar cloth, what a gloomy, dull look there is in the snow of the plains! One might think it was made of sugar or confectionery, that it was false like all the rest. To know what snow really is--to get quit of this feeling of artificial snow that we have when we see the stunted shrubs in our Parisian gardens wrapt, as it were, in silk paper like bits of Christmas trees--it must be seen here in these far-off, high valleys of the Engandine, that lie for eight months dead under their shroud of snow, and often, even in the height of summer, have to shiver anew under some wintry flakes. It is here that snow is truly beautiful! It shines in the sun with a dazzling whiteness; it sparkles with a thousand fires like diamond dust; it shows gleams like the plumage of a white dove, and it is as firm under the foot as a marble pavement. It is so fine-grained, so compact, that it clings like dust to every crevice and bend, to every projecting edge and point, and follows every outline of the mountain, the form of which it leaves as clearly defined as if it were a covering of thin gauze. It sports in the most charming decorations, carves alabaster facings and cornices on the cliffs, wreathes them in delicate lace, covers them with vast canopies of white satin spangled with stars and fringed with silver. And yet this dry, hard snow is extremely susceptible to the slightest shock, and may be set in motion by a very trifling disturbance of the air. The flight of a bird, the cracking of a whip, the tinkling of bells, even the conversation of persons going along sometimes suffices to shake and loosen it from the vertical face of the cliffs to which it is clinging; and it runs down like grains of sand, growing as it falls, by drawing down with it other beds of snow. It is like a torrent, a snowy waterfall, bursting out suddenly from the side of the mountain; it rushes down with a terrible noise, swollen with the snows that it carries down in its furious course; it breaks against the rocks, divides and joins again like an overflowing stream, and with a wild tempest blast resumes its desolating course, filling the echoes with the deafening thunder of battle. You think for a moment that a storm has begun, but looking at the sky you see it serenely blue, smiling, cloudless. The rush becomes more and more violent; it comes nearer, the ground trembles, the trees bend and break with a sharp crack; enormous stones and blocks of ice are carried away like gravel; and the mighty avalanche, with a crash like a train running off the rails over a precipice, drops to the foot of the mountain, destroying, crushing down everything before it, and covering the ground with a bed of snow from thirty to fifty feet deep. When a stream of water wears a passage for itself under this compact mass, it is sometimes hollowed out into an arched way, and the snow becomes so solid that carriages and horses can go through without danger, even in the middle of summer. But often the water does not find a course by which to flow away; and then, when the snow begins to melt, the water seeps into the fissures, loosens the mass that chokes up the valley, and carries it down, rending its banks as it goes, carrying away bridges, mills, and trees, and overthrowing houses. The avalanche has become an inundation. The mountaineers make a distinction between summer and winter avalanches. The former are solid avalanches, formed of old snow that has almost acquired the consistency of ice. The warm breath of spring softens it, loosens it from the rocks on which it hangs, and it slides down into the valleys. These are called "melting avalanches." They regularly follow certain tracks, and these are embanked, like the course of a river, with wood or bundles of branches. It is in order to protect the alpine roads from these avalanches that those long open galleries have been built on the face of the precipice. The most dreaded and most terrible avalanches, those of dry, powdery snow, occur only in winter, when sudden squalls and hurricanes of snow throw the whole atmosphere into chaos. They come down in sudden whirlwinds, with the violence of a waterspout, and in a few minutes whole villages are buried.... Here, in the Grisons, the whole village of Selva was buried under an avalanche. Nothing remained visible but the top of the church steeple, looking like a pole planted in the snow. Baron Munchausen might have tied his horse there without inventing any lie about it. The Val Verzasca was covered for several months by an avalanche of nearly 1,000 feet in length and 50 in depth. All communication through the valley was stopt; it was impossible to organize help; and the alarm-bell was incessantly sounding over the immense white desolation like a knell for the dead. In the narrow defile in which we now are, there are many remains of avalanches that neither the water of the torrent nor the heat of the sun has had power to melt. The bed of the river is strewn with displaced and broken rocks, and great stones bound together by the snow as if with cement; the surges dash against these rocky obstacles, foaming angrily, with the blind fury of a wild beast. And the moan of the powerless water flows on into the depth of the valley, and is lost far off in a hollow murmur. HUNTING THE CHAMOIS[61] BY VICTOR TISSOT Schmidt swept with his cap the snow which covered the stones on which we were to seat ourselves for breakfast, then unpacked the provisions; slices of veal and ham, hard-boiled eggs, wine of the Valtelline. His knapsack, covered with a napkin, served for our table. While we sat, we devoured the landscape, the twelve glaciers spreading around us their carpet of swansdown and ermine, sinking into crevasses of a magical transparency, and raising their blocks, shaped into needles, or into Gothic steeples with pierced arches. The architecture of the glacier is marvelous. Its decorations are the decorations of fairyland. Quite near us marks of animals in the snow attracted our attention. Schmidt said to us: "Chamois have been here this morning; the traces are quite fresh. They must have seen us and made off; the chamois are as distrustful, you see, as the marmots, and as wary. At this season they keep on the glaciers by preference. They live on so little! A few herbs, a few mosses, such as grow on isolated rocks like this. I assure you it is very amusing to see a herd of twenty or thirty chamois cross at a headlong pace a vast field of snow, or glacier, where they bound over the crevasses in play. "One would say they were reindeers in a Lapland scene. It is only at night that they come down into the valleys. In the moonlight they come out of the moraines, and go to pasture on the grassy slopes or in the forest adjoining the glaciers. During the day they go up again into the snow, for which they have an extraordinary love, and in which they skip and play, amusing themselves like a band of scholars in play hours. They tease one another, butt with their horns in fun, run off, return, pretend new attacks and new flights with charming agility and frolicsomeness. "While the young ones give themselves up to their sports, an old female, posted as sentinel at some yards distance, watches the valley and scents the air. At the slightest indication of danger, she utters a sharp cry; the games cease instantly, and the whole anxious troop assembles round the guardian, then the whole herd sets off at a gallop and disappears in the twinkling of an eye.... "Hunting on the névés and the glaciers is very dangerous. When the snow is fresh it is with difficulty one can advance. The hunters use wooden snowshoes, like those of the Esquimaux. "One of my comrades, in hunting on the Roseg, disappeared in the bottom of a crevasse. It was over thirty feet deep. Imagine two perfectly smooth sides; two walls of crystal. To reascend was impossible. It was certain death, either from cold or hunger; for it was known that when he went chamois-hunting he was often absent for several days. He could not therefore count on help being sent; he must resign himself to death. "One thing, however, astonished him; it was to find so little water in the bottom of the crevasse. Could there be then an opening at the bottom of the funnel into which he had fallen? He stooped, examined this grave in which he had been buried alive, discovered that the heat of the sun had caused the base of the glacier to melt. A canal drainage had been formed. Laying himself flat, he slid into this dark passage, and after a thousand efforts he arrived at the end of the glacier in the moraine, safe and sound." We had finished breakfast. We wanted something warm, a little coffee. Schmidt set up our spirit-lamp behind two great stones that protected it from the wind. And while we waited for the water to boil, he related to us the story of Colani, the legendary hunter of the upper Engandine. "Colani, in forty years, killed two thousand seven hundred chamois. This strange man had carved out for himself a little kingdom in the mountain. He claimed to reign there alone, to be absolute master. When a stranger penetrated into his residence, within the domain of 'his reserved hunting-ground,' as he called the regions of the Bernina, he treated him as a poacher, and chased him with a gun.... "Colani was feared and dreaded as a diabolical and supernatural being; and indeed he took no pains to undeceive the public, for the superstitious terrors inspired by his person served to keep away all the chamois-hunters from his chamois, which he cared for and managed as a great lord cares for the deer in his forests. Round the little house which he had built for himself on the Col de Bernina, and where he passed the summer and autumn, two hundred chamois, almost tame, might be seen wandering about and browsing. Every year he killed about fifty old males." THE CELEBRITIES OF GENEVA[62] BY FRANCIS H. GRIBBLE It has been remarked as curious that the Age of Revolution at Geneva was also the Golden Age--if not of Genevan literature, which has never really had any Golden Age, at least of Genevan science, which was of world-wide renown. The period is one in which notable names meet us at every turn. There were exiled Genevans, like de Lolme, holding their own in foreign political and intellectual circles; there were emigrant Genevan pastors holding aloft the lamps of culture and piety in many cities of England, France, Russia, Germany, and Denmark; there were Genevans, like François Lefort, holding the highest offices in the service of foreign rulers; and there were numbers of Genevans at Geneva of whom the cultivated grand tourist wrote in the tone of a disciple writing of his master. One can not glance at the history of the period without lighting upon names of note in almost all departments of endeavor. The period is that of de Saussure, Bourrit, the de Lucs, the two Hubers, great authorities respectively on bees and birds; Le Sage, who was one of Gibbon's rivals for the heart of Mademoiselle Suzanne Curchod; Senebier, the librarian who wrote the first literary history of Geneva; St. Ours and Arlaud, the painters; Charles Bonnet, the entomologist; Bérenger and Picot, the historians; Tronchin, the physician; Trembley and Jallabert, the mathematicians; Dentan, minister and Alpine explorer; Pictet, the editor of the "Bibliothèque Universelle," still the leading Swiss literary review; and Odier, who taught Geneva the virtue of vaccination. It is obviously impossible to dwell at length upon the careers of all these eminent men. As well might one attempt, in a survey on the same scale of English literature, to discuss in detail the careers of all the celebrities of the age of Anne. One can do little more than remark that the list is marvelously strong for a town of some 30,000 inhabitants, and that many of the names included in it are not only eminent, but interesting. Jean André de Luc, for example, has a double claim upon our attention as the inventor of the hygrometer and as the pioneer of the snow-peaks. He climbed the Buet as early as 1770, and wrote an account of his adventures on its summit and its slopes which has the true charm of Arcadian simplicity. He came to England, was appointed reader to Queen Charlotte, and lived in the enjoyment of that office, and in the gratifying knowledge that Her Majesty kept his presentation hygrometer in her private apartments, to the venerable age of ninety. Bourrit is another interesting character--being, in fact, the spiritual ancestor of the modern Alpine Clubman. By profession he was Precentor of the Cathedral; but his heart was in the mountains. In the summer he climbed them, and in the winter he wrote books about them. One of his books was translated into English; and the list of subscribers, published with the translation, shows that the public which Bourrit addrest included Edmund Burke, Sir Joseph Banks, Bartolozzi, Fanny Burney, Angelica Kauffman, David Garrick, Sir Joshua Reynolds, George Augustus Selwyn, Jonas Hanway and Dr. Johnson. His writings earned him the honorable title of Historian (or Historiographer) of the Alps. Men of science wrote him letters; princes engaged upon the grand tour called to see him; princesses sent him presents as tokens of their admiration and regard for the man who had taught them how the contemplation of mountain scenery might exalt the sentiments of the human mind. Tronchin, too, is interesting; he was the first physician who recognized the therapeutic use of fresh air and exercise, hygienic boots, and open windows. So is Charle Bonnet, who was not afraid to stand up for orthodoxy against Voltaire; so is Mallet, who traveled as far as Lapland; and so is that man of whom his contemporaries always spoke, with the reverence of hero-worshipers, as "the illustrious de Saussure."... The name of which the Genevans are proudest is probably that of Rousseau, who has sometimes been spoken of as "the austere citizen of Geneva." But "austere" is a strange epithet to apply to the philosopher who endowed the Foundling Hospital with five illegitimate children; and Geneva can not claim a great share in a citizen who ran away from the town of his boyhood to avoid being thrashed for stealing apples. It was, indeed, at Geneva that Jean Jacques received from his aunt the disciplinary chastisement of which he gives such an exciting account in his "Confessions"; and he once returned to the city and received the Holy Communion there in later life. But that is all. Jean Jacques was not educated at Geneva, but in Savoy--at Annecy, at Turin, and at Chambéry; his books were not printed at Geneva, tho' one of them was publicly burned there, but in Paris and Amsterdam; it is not to Genevan but to French literature that he belongs. We must visit Voltaire at Ferney, and Madame de Staël at Coppet. Let the patriarch come first. Voltaire was sixty years of age when he settled on the shores of the lake, where he was to remain for another four-and-twenty years; and he did not go there for his pleasure. He would have preferred to live in Paris, but was afraid of being locked up in the Bastille. As the great majority of the men of letters of the reign of Louis XV. were, at one time or another, locked up in the Bastille, his fears were probably well founded. Moreover, notes of warning had reached his ears. "I dare not ask you to dine," a relative said to him, "because you are in bad odor at Court." So he betook himself to Geneva, as so many Frenchmen, illustrious and otherwise, had done before, and acquired various properties--at Prangins, at Lausanne, at Saint-Jean (near Geneva), at Ferney, at Tournay, and elsewhere. He was welcomed cordially. Dr. Tronchin, the eminent physician, cooperated in the legal fictions necessary to enable him to become a landowner in the republic. Cramer, the publisher, made a proposal for the issue of a complete and authorized edition of his works. All the best people called. "It is very pleasant," he was able to write, "to live in a country where rulers borrow your carriage to come to dinner with you." Voltaire corresponded regularly with at least four reigning sovereigns, to say nothing of men of letters, Cardinals, and Marshals of France; and he kept open house for travelers of mark from every country in the world. Those of the travelers who wrote books never failed to devote a chapter to an account of a visit to Ferney; and from the mass of such descriptions we may select for quotation that written, in the stately style of the period, by Dr. John Moore, author of "Zeluco," then making the grand tour as tutor to the Duke of Hamilton. "The most piercing eyes I ever beheld," the doctor writes, "are those of Voltaire, now in his eightieth year. His whole countenance is expressive of genius, observation, and extreme sensibility. In the morning he has a look of anxiety and discontent; but this gradually wears off, and after dinner he seems cheerful; yet an air of irony never entirely forsakes his face, but may always be observed lurking in his features whether he frowns or smiles. Composition is his principal amusement. No author who writes for daily bread, no young poet ardent for distinction, is more assiduous with his pen, or more anxious for fresh fame, than the wealthy and applauded Seigneur of Ferney. He lives in a very hospitable manner, and takes care always to have a good cook. He generally has two or three visitors from Paris, who stay with him a month or six weeks at a time. When they go, their places are soon supplied, so that there is a constant rotation of society at Ferney. These, with Voltaire's own family and his visitors from Geneva, compose a company of twelve or fourteen people, who dine daily at his table, whether he appears or not. All who bring recommendations from his friends may depend upon being received, if he be not really indisposed. He often presents himself to the strangers who assemble every afternoon in his ante-chamber, altho they bring no particular recommendation." It might have been added that when an interesting stranger who carried no introduction was passing through the town, Voltaire sometimes sent for him; but this experiment was not always a success, and failed most ludicrously in the case of Claude Gay, the Philadelphian Quaker, author of some theological works now forgotten, but then of note. The meeting was only arranged with difficulty on the philosopher's undertaking to put a bridle on his tongue, and say nothing flippant about holy things. He tried to keep his promise, but the temptation was too strong for him. After a while he entangled his guest in a controversy concerning the proceedings of the patriarchs and the evidences of Christianity, and lost his temper on finding that his sarcasms failed to make their usual impression. The member of the Society of Friends, however, was not disconcerted. He rose from his place at the dinner-table, and replied: "Friend Voltaire! perhaps thou mayst come to understand these matters rightly; in the meantime, finding I can do thee no good, I leave thee, and so fare thee well." And so saying, he walked out and walked back to Geneva, while Voltaire retired in dudgeon to his room, and the company sat expecting something terrible to happen. A word, in conclusion, about Coppet! Necker[63] bought the property from his old banking partner, Thelusson, for 500,000 livres in French money, and retired to live there when the French Revolution drove him out of politics. His daughter, Madame de Staël, inherited it from him, and made it famous. Not that she loved Switzerland; it would be more true to say that she detested Switzerland. Swiss scenery meant nothing to her. When she was taken for an excursion to the glaciers, she asked what the crime was that she had to expiate by such a punishment; and she could look out on the blue waters of Lake Leman, and sigh for "the gutter of the Rue du Bac." Even to this day, the Swiss have hardly forgiven her for that, or for speaking of the Canton of Vaud as the country in which she had been "so intensely bored for such a number of years." What she wanted was to live in Paris, to be a leader--or, rather, to be "the" leader--of Parisian society, to sit in a salon, the admired of all admirers, and to pull the wires of politics to the advantage of her friends. For a while she succeeded in doing this. It was she who persuaded Barras to give Talleyrand his political start in life. But whereas Barras was willing to act on her advice, Napoleon was by no means equally amenable to her influence. Almost from the first he regarded her as a mischief-maker; and when a spy brought him an intercepted letter in which Madame de Staël exprest her hope that none of the old aristocracy of France would condescend to accept appointments in the household of "the bourgeois of Corsica," he became her personal enemy, and, refusing her permission to live either in the capital or near it, practically compelled her to take refuge in her country seat. Her pleasance in that way became her gilded cage. Perhaps she was not quite so unhappy there as she sometimes represented. If she could not go to Paris, many distinguished and brilliant Parisians came to Coppet, and met there many brilliant and distinguished Germans, Genevans, Italians, and Danes. The Parisian salon, reconstituted, flourished on Swiss soil. There visited there, at one time or another, Madame Récamier and Madame Krüdner; Benjamin Constant, who was so long Madame de Staël's lover; Bonstetten, the Voltairean philosopher; Frederika Brun, the Danish artist; Sismondi, the historian; Werner, the German poet; Karl Ritter, the German geographer; Baron de Voght; Monti, the Italian poet: Madame Vigée Le Brun; Cuvier; and Oelenschlaeger. From almost every one of them we have some pen-and-ink sketch of the life there. This, for instance, is the scene as it appeared to Madame Le Brun, who came to paint the hostess's portrait: "I paint her in antique costume. She is not beautiful, but the animation of her visage takes the place of beauty. To aid the expression I wished to give her, I entreated her to recite tragic verses while I painted. She declaimed passages from Corneille and Racine. I find many persons established at Coppet: the beautiful Madame Récamier, the Comte de Sabran, a young English woman, Benjamin Constant, etc. Its society is continually renewed. They come to visit the illustrious exile who is pursued by the rancor of the Emperor. Her two sons are now with her, under the instruction of the German scholar Schlegel; her daughter is very beautiful, and has a passionate love of study; she leaves her company free all the morning, but they unite in the evening. It is only after dinner that they can converse with her. She then walks in her salon, holding in her hand a little green branch; and her words have an ardor quite peculiar to her; it is impossible to interrupt her. At these times she produces on one the effect of an improvisation." And here is a still more graphic description, taken from a letter written to Madame Récamier by Baron de Voght: "It is to you that I owe my most amiable reception at Coppet. It is no doubt to the favorable expectations aroused by your friendship that I owe my intimate acquaintance with this remarkable woman. I might have met her without your assistance--some casual acquaintance would no doubt have introduced me--but I should never have penetrated to the intimacy of this sublime and beautiful soul, and should never have known how much better she is than her reputation. She is an angel sent from heaven to reveal the divine goodness upon earth. To make her irresistible, a pure ray of celestial light embellishes her spirit and makes her amiable from every point of view. "At once profound and light, whether she is discovering a mysterious secret of the soul or grasping the lightest shadow of a sentiment, her genius shines without dazzling, and when the orb of light has disappeared, it leaves a pleasant twilight to follow it.... No doubt a few faults, a few weaknesses, occasionally veil this celestial apparition; even the initiated must sometimes be troubled by these eclipses, which the Genevan astronomers in vain endeavor to predict. "My travels so far have been limited to journeys to Lausanne and Coppet, where I often stay three or four days. The life there suits me perfectly; the company is even more to my taste. I like Constant's wit, Schlegel's learning, Sabran's amiability, Sismondi's talent and character, the simple truthful disposition and just intellectual perceptions of Auguste,[64] the wit and sweetness of Albertine[65]--I was forgetting Bonstetten, an excellent fellow, full of knowledge of all sorts, ready in wit, adaptable in character--in every way inspiring one's respect and confidence. "Your sublime friend looks and gives life to everything. She imparts intelligence to those around her. In every corner of the house some one is engaged in composing a great work.... Corinne is writing her delightful letters about Germany, which will, no doubt, prove to be the best thing she has ever done. "The 'Shunamitish Widow,' an Oriental melodrama which she has just finished, will be played in October; it is charming. Coppet will be flooded with tears. Constant and Auguste are both composing tragedies; Sabran is writing a comic opera, and Sismondi a history; Schlegel is translating something; Bonstetten is busy with philosophy, and I am busy with my letter to Juliette." Then, a month later: "Since my last letter, Madame de Staël has read us several chapters of her work. Everywhere it bears the marks of her talent. I wish I could persuade her to cut out everything in it connected with politics, and all the metaphors which interfere with its clarity, simplicity, and accuracy. What she needs to demonstrate is not her republicanism, but her wisdom. Mlle. Jenner played in one of Werner's tragedies which was given, last Friday, before an audience of twenty. She, Werner, and Schlegel played perfectly.... "The arrival in Switzerland of M. Cuvier has been a happy distraction for Madame de Staël; they spent two days together at Geneva, and were well pleased with each other. On her return to Coppet she found Middleton there, and in receiving his confidences forgot her troubles. Yesterday she resumed her work. "The poet whose mystical and somber genius has caused us such profound emotions starts, in a few days' time, for Italy. "I accompanied Corinne to Massot's. To alleviate the tedium of the sitting, a Mlle. Romilly played pleasantly on the harp, and the studio was a veritable temple of the Muses.... "Bonstetten gave us two readings of a Memoir on the Northern Alps. It began very well, but afterward it bored us. Madame de Staël resumed her reading, and there was no longer any question of being bored. It is marvelous how much she must have read and thought over to be able to find the opportunity of saying so many good things. One may differ from her, but one can not help delighting in her talent.... "And now here we are at Geneva, trying to reproduce Coppet at the Hôtel des Balances. I am delightfully situated with a wide view over the Valley of Savoy, between the Alps and the Jura. "Yesterday evening the illusion of Coppet was complete. I had been with Madame de Staël to call on Madame Rilliet, who is so charming at her own fireside. On my return I played chess with Sismondi. Madame de Staël, Mlle. Randall, and Mlle. Jenner sat on the sofa chatting with Bonstetten and young Barante. We were as we had always been--as we were in the days that I shall never cease regretting." Other descriptions exist in great abundance, but these suffice to serve our purpose. They show us the Coppet salon as it was pleasant, brilliant, unconventional; something like Holland House, but more Bohemian; something like Harley Street, but more select; something like Gad's Hill--which it resembled in the fact that the members of the house-parties were expected to spend their mornings at their desks--but on a higher social plane; a center at once of high thinking and frivolous behavior; of hard work and desperate love-making, which sometimes paved the way to trouble. Footnotes: [Footnote 1: From "Hungary." Published by the Macmillan Co.] [Footnote 2: From "Hungary." Published by the Macmillan Co.] [Footnote 3: From "Sketches from the Subject and Neighbour Lands of Venice." Published by the Macmillan Co.] [Footnote 4: The modern Marseilles.] [Footnote 5: An ancient Italian town on the Adriatic, founded by Syracusans about 300 B.C. and still an important seaport.] [Footnote 6: The city in Provence where have survived a beautiful Roman arch and a stupendous Roman theater in which classical plays are still given each year by actors from the Theatre Français.] [Footnote 7: Diocletian.] [Footnote 8: A reference to the exquisite Maison Carrée of Nîmes.] [Footnote 9: That is, of Venice.] [Footnote 10: The famous general of the Emperor Justinian, reputed to have become blind and been neglected in his old age.] [Footnote 11: From "Sketches from the Subject and Neighbour Lands of Venice." Published by the Macmillan Co.] [Footnote 12: From "Through Savage Europe." Published by J.B. Lippincott Co.] [Footnote 13: From "Sketches from the Subject and Neighbour Lands of Venice." Published by the Macmillan Co.] [Footnote 14: That is, lands where the Greek Church prevails.] [Footnote 15: John Mason Neale, author of "An Introduction to the History of the Holy Eastern Church."] [Footnote 16: Montenegro.] [Footnote 17: From "A Girl in the Karpathians." After publishing this book. Miss Dowie became the wife of Henry Norman, the author and traveler.] [Footnote 18: One of Poland's greatest poets.] [Footnote 19: From "Views Afoot." Published by G.P. Putnam's Sons.] [Footnote 20: The population now (1914) is 24,000.] [Footnote 21: From "Six Months in Italy." Published by Houghton, Mifflin Co.] [Footnote 22: From "A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour," published in 1821.] [Footnote 23: From "Letters of a Traveller." The Tyrol and the Dolomites being mainly Austrian territory, are here included under "Other Austrian Scenes." Resorts in the Swiss Alps, including Chamouni (which, however, is in France), will be found further on in this volume.] [Footnote 24: An Italian poet (1749-1838), who, banished from Venice, settled in New York and became Professor of Italian at Columbia College.] [Footnote 25: From "Adventures in the Alps." Published by George W. Jacobs & Co.] [Footnote 26: In the village of Cadore--hence the name, Titian da Cadore.] [Footnote 27: From "Untrodden Peaks and Unfrequented Valleys: A Midsummer Ramble in the Dolomites." Published by E.P. Dutton & Co.] [Footnote 28: Reaumur.--Author's note.] [Footnote 29: From "My Alpine Jubilee." Published In 1908.] [Footnote 30: From "Adventures in the Alps." Published by George W. Jacobs Company, Philadelphia.] [Footnote 31: Since the above was written, the railway has been extended up the Jungfrau itself.] [Footnote 32: From "Teutonic Switzerland." By special arrangement with, and by permission of, the publishers, L.C. Page & Co. Copyright, 1894.] [Footnote 33: From "Unknown Switzerland." Published by James Pott & Co.] [Footnote 34: From "Teutonic Switzerland." By special arrangement with, and by permission of, the publishers, L.C. Page & Co. Copyright, 1894.] [Footnote 35: The population in 1902 had risen to 152,000.] [Footnote 36: From "Teutonic Switzerland." By special arrangement with, and by permission of, the publishers, L.C. Page & Co. Copyright, 1894.] [Footnote 37: From "The Letters of Percy Bysshe Shelley." Politically, Chamouni is in France, but the aim here has been to bring into one volume all the more popular Alpine resorts. Articles on the Tyrol and the Dolomites will also be found in this volume--under "Other Austrian Scenes."] [Footnote 38: From "Adventures in the Alps." Published by George W. Jacobs & Co.] [Footnote 39: For Mr. Whymper's own account of this famous ascent, see page 127 of this volume.] [Footnote 40: From "Unknown Switzerland." Published by James Pott & Co.] [Footnote 41: From "Geneva."] [Footnote 42: From "Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands."] [Footnote 43: Mrs. Stowe's "Uncle Tom's Cabin" had been published about a year when this remark was made to her.] [Footnote 44: From "Adventures in the Alps." Published by George W. Jacobs & Co.] [Footnote 45: From "Unknown Switzerland." Published by James Pott & Co.] [Footnote 46: From "Scrambles Amongst the Alps." Mr. Whymper's later achievements in the Alps are now integral parts of the written history of notable mountain climbing feats the world over.] [Footnote 47: From "Scrambles Amongst the Alps." Mr. Whymper's ascent of the Matterhorn was made in 1865. It was the first ascent ever made so far as known. Whymper died at Chamouni in 1911.] [Footnote 48: From "Scrambles Amongst the Alps." The loss of Douglas and three other men, as here described, occurred during the descent of the Matterhorn following the ascent described by Mr. Whymper in the preceding article.] [Footnote 49: That is, down in the village of Zermatt. Seiler was a well-known innkeeper of that time. Other Seilers still keep inns at Zermatt.] [Footnote 50: The body of Douglas has never been recovered. It is believed to lie buried deep in some crevasse in one of the great glaciers that emerge from the base of the Matterhorn.] [Footnote 51: From "The Glaciers of the Alps." Prof. Tyndall made this ascent in 1858. Monte Rosa stands quite near the Matterhorn. Each is reached from Zermatt by the Gorner-Grat.] [Footnote 52: Another name for the Matterhorn.] [Footnote 53: My staff was always the handle of an ax an inch or two longer than an ordinary walking-stick.--Author's note.] [Footnote 54: From "The Glaciers of the Alps."] [Footnote 55: That is, after having ascended the mountain to a point some distance beyond the Mer de Glace, to which the party had ascended from Chamouni, Huxley and Tyndall were both engaged in a study of the causes of the movement of glaciers, but Tyndall gave it most attention. One of Tyndall's feats in the Alps was to make the first recorded ascent of the Weisshorn. It is said that "traces of his influence remain in Switzerland to this day."] [Footnote 56: A hotel overlooking the Mer de Glace and a headquarters for mountaineers now as then.] [Footnote 57: Those acquainted with the mountain will at once recognize the grave error here committed. In fact, on starting from the Grands Mulets we had crossed the glacier too far, and throughout were much too close to the Dôme du Goûté.--Author's note.] [Footnote 58: From "The Playground of Europe." Published by Longmans, Green & Co.] [Footnote 59: From "Adventures in the Alps." Published by the George W. Jacob Co.] [Footnote 60: From "Unknown Switzerland." Published by James Pott & Co.] [Footnote 61: From "Unknown Switzerland." Published by James Pott & Co.] [Footnote 62: From "Geneva."] [Footnote 63: The French financier and minister of Louis XVI., father of Madame de Staël.] [Footnote 64: Madame de Staël's son, who afterward edited the works of Madame de Staël and Madame Necker.--Author's note.] [Footnote 65: Madame de Staël's daughter, afterward Duchesse de Broglie.] 
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13065	----	BEETHOVEN'S LETTERS. (1790-1826.) FROM THE COLLECTION OF DR. LUDWIG NOHL. ALSO HIS LETTERS TO THE ARCHDUKE RUDOLPH, CARDINAL-ARCHBISHOP OF OLMÜTZ, K.W., FROM THE COLLECTION OF DR. LUDWIG RITTER VON KÖCHEL. TRANSLATED BY LADY WALLACE. _WITH A PORTRAIT AND FAC-SIMILE._ IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL. I. BOSTON: OLIVER DITSON & CO., 277 WASHINGTON STREET. NEW YORK: C.H. DITSON & CO. TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. Since undertaking the translation of Dr. Ludwig Nohl's valuable edition of "Beethoven's Letters," an additional collection has been published by Dr. Ludwig Ritter von Köchel, consisting of many interesting letters addressed by Beethoven to his illustrious pupil, H.R.H. the Archduke Rudolph, Cardinal-Archbishop of Olmütz. These I have inserted in chronological order, and marked with the letter K., in order to distinguish them from the correspondence edited by Dr. Nohl. I have only omitted a few brief notes, consisting merely of apologies for non-attendance on the Archduke. The artistic value of these newly discovered treasures will no doubt be as highly appreciated in this country as in the great _maestro's_ Father-land. I must also express my gratitude to Dr. Th.G. v. Karajan, for permitting an engraving to be made expressly for this work, from an original Beethoven portrait in his possession, now for the first time given to the public. The grand and thoughtful countenance forms a fitting introduction to letters so truly depicting the brilliant, fitful genius of the sublime master, as well as the touching sadness and gloom pervading his life, which his devotion to Art alone brightened, through many bitter trials and harassing cares. The love of Beethoven's music is now become so universal in England, that I make no doubt his Letters will receive a hearty welcome from all those whose spirits have been elevated and soothed by the genius of this illustrious man. GRACE WALLACE. AINDERBY HALL, March 28, 1866. PREFACE BY DR. LUDWIG NOHL TO THE LETTERS OF LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN. In accompanying the present edition of the Letters of Ludwig van Beethoven with a few introductory remarks, I at once acknowledge that the compilation of these letters has cost me no slight sacrifices. I must also, however, mention that an unexpected Christmas donation, generously bestowed on me with a view to further my efforts to promote the science of music, enabled me to undertake one of the journeys necessary for my purpose, and also to complete the revision of the Letters and of the press, in the milder air and repose of a country residence, long since recommended to me for the restoration of my health, undermined by overwork. That, in spite of every effort, I have not succeeded in seeing the original of each letter, or even discovering the place where it exists, may well be excused, taking into consideration the slender capabilities of an individual, and the astonishing manner in which Beethoven's Letters are dispersed all over the world. At the same time, I must state that not only have the hitherto inaccessible treasures of Anton Schindler's "Beethoven's Nachlass" been placed at my disposal, but also other letters from private sources, owing to various happy chances, and the kindness and complaisance of collectors of autographs. I know better, however, than most people--being in a position to do so--that in the present work there can be no pretension to any thing approaching to a complete collection of Beethoven's Letters. The master, so fond of writing, though he often rather amusingly accuses himself of being a lazy correspondent, may very probably have sent forth at least double the amount of the letters here given, and there is no doubt whatever that a much larger number are still extant in the originals. The only thing that can be done at this moment, however, is to make the attempt to bring to light, at all events, the letters that could be discovered in Germany. The mass of those which I gradually accumulated, and now offer to the public (with the exception of some insignificant notes), appeared to me sufficiently numerous and important to interest the world, and also to form a substantial nucleus for any letters that may hereafter be discovered. On the other hand, as many of Beethoven's Letters slumber in foreign lands, especially in the unapproachable cabinets of curiosities belonging to various close-fisted English collectors, an entire edition of the correspondence could only be effected by a most disproportionate outlay of time and expense. When revising the text of the Letters, it seemed to me needless perpetually to impair the pleasure of the reader by retaining the mistakes in orthography; but enough of the style of writing of that day is adhered to, to prevent its peculiar charm being entirely destroyed. Distorted and incorrect as Beethoven's mode of expression sometimes is, I have not presumed to alter his grammar, or rather syntax, in the smallest degree: who would presume to do so with an individuality which, even amid startling clumsiness of style, displays those inherent intellectual powers that often did violence to language as well as to his fellow-men? Cyclopean masses of rock are here hurled with Cyclopean force; but hard and massive as they are, the man is not to be envied whose heart is not touched by these glowing fragments, flung apparently at random right and left, like meteors, by a mighty intellectual being, however perverse the treatment language may have received from him. The great peculiarity, however, in this strange mode of expression is, that even such incongruous language faithfully reflects the mind of the man whose nature was of prophetic depth and heroic force; and who that knows anything of the creative genius of a Beethoven can deny him these attributes? The antique dignity pervading the whole man, the ethical contemplation of life forming the basis of his nature, prevented even a momentary wish on my part to efface a single word of the oft-recurring expressions so painfully harsh, bordering on the unaesthetic, and even on the repulsive, provoked by his wrath against the meanness of men. In the last part of these genuine documents, we learn with a feeling of sadness, and with almost a tragic sensation, how low was the standard of moral worth, or rather how great was the positive unworthiness, of the intimate society surrounding the master, and with what difficulty he could maintain the purity of the nobler part of his being in such an atmosphere. The manner, indeed, in which he strives to do so, fluctuating between explosions of harshness and almost weak yieldingness, while striving to master the base thoughts and conduct of these men, though never entirely succeeding in doing so, is often more a diverting than an offensive spectacle. In my opinion, nevertheless, even this less pleasing aspect of the Letters ought not to be in the slightest degree softened (which it has hitherto been, owing to false views of propriety and morality), for it is no moral deformity here displayed. Indeed, even when the irritable master has recourse to expressions repugnant to our sense of conventionality, and which may well be called harsh and rough, still the wrath that seizes on our hero is a just and righteous wrath, and we disregard it, just as in Nature, whose grandeur constantly elevates us above the inevitable stains of an earthly soil. The coarseness and ill-breeding, which would claim toleration because this great man now and then showed such feelings, must beware of doing so, being certain to make shipwreck when coming in contact with the massive rock of true morality on which, with all his faults and deficiencies, Beethoven's being was surely grounded. Often, indeed, when absorbed in the unsophisticated and genuine utterances of this great man, it seems as if these peculiarities and strange asperities were the results of some mysterious law of Nature, so that we are inclined to adopt the paradox by which a wit once described the singular groundwork of our nature,--"The faults of man are the night in which he rests from his virtues." Indeed, I think that the lofty morality of such natures is not fully evident until we are obliged to confess with regret, that even the great ones of the earth must pay their tribute to humanity, and really do pay it (which is the distinction between them and base and petty characters), without being ever entirely hurled from their pedestal of dignity and virtue. The soul of that man cannot fail to be elevated, who can seize the real spirit of the scattered pages that a happy chance has preserved for us. If not fettered by petty feelings, he will quickly surmount the casual obstacles and stumbling-blocks which the first perusal of these Letters may seem to present, and quickly feel himself transported at a single stride into a stream, where a strange roaring and rushing is heard, but above which loftier tones resound with magic and exciting power. For a peculiar life breathes in these lines; an under-current runs through their apparently unconnected import, uniting them as with an electric chain, and with firmer links than any mere coherence of subjects could have effected. I experienced this myself, to the most remarkable degree, when I first made the attempt to arrange, in accordance with their period and substance, the hundreds of individual pages bearing neither date nor address, and I was soon convinced that a connecting text (such as Mozart's Letters have, and ought to have) would be here entirely superfluous, as even the best biographical commentary would be very dry work, interrupting the electric current of the whole, and thus destroying its peculiar effect. And now, what is this spirit which, for an intelligent mind, binds together these scattered fragments into a whole, and what is its actual power? I cannot tell; but I feel to this day just as I felt to the innermost depths of my heart in the days of my youth when I first heard a symphony of Beethoven's,--that a spirit breathes from it bearing us aloft with giant power out of the oppressive atmosphere of sense, stirring to its inmost recesses the heart of man, bringing him to the full consciousness of his loftier being, and of the undying within him. And even more distinctly than when a new world was thus disclosed to his youthful feelings is the _man_ fully conscious that not only was this a new world to him, but a new world of feeling in itself, revealing to the spirit phases of its own, which, till Beethoven appeared, had never before been fathomed. Call it by what name you will, when one of the great works of the sublime master is heard, whether indicative of proud self-consciousness, freedom, spring, love, storm, or battle, it grasps the soul with singular force, and enlarges the laboring breast. Whether a man understands music or not, every one who has a heart beating within his breast will feel with enchantment that here is concentrated the utmost promised to us by the most imaginative of our poets, in bright visions of happiness and freedom. Even the only great hero of action, who in those memorable days is worthy to stand beside the great master of harmony, having diffused among mankind new and priceless earthly treasures, sinks in the scale when we compare these with the celestial treasures of a purified and deeper feeling, and a more free, enlarged, and sublime view of the world, struggling gradually and distinctly upwards out of the mere frivolity of an art devoid of words to express itself, and impressing its stamp on the spirit of the age. They convey, too, the knowledge of this brightest victory of genuine German intellect to those for whom the sweet Muse of Music is as a book with seven seals, and reveal, likewise, a more profound sense of Beethoven's being to many who already, through the sweet tones they have imbibed, enjoy some dawning conviction of the master's grandeur, and who now more and more eagerly lend a listening ear to the intellectual clearly worded strains so skilfully interwoven, thus soon to arrive at the full and blissful comprehension of those grand outpourings of the spirit, and finally to add another bright delight to the enjoyment of those who already know and love Beethoven. All these may be regarded as the objects I had in view when I undertook to edit his Letters, which have also bestowed on myself the best recompense of my labors, in the humble conviction that by this means I may have vividly reawakened in the remembrance of many the mighty mission which our age is called on to perform for the development of our race, even in the realm of harmony,--more especially in our Father-land. LUDWIG NOHL. LA TOUR DE PERLZ--LAKE OF GENEVA, March, 1865. CONTENTS OF VOLUME I. FIRST PART. LIFE'S JOYS AND SORROWS 1783-1816. 1. To the Elector of Cologne, Frederick Maximilian. 2. To Dr. Schade, Augsburg 3. To the Elector Maximilian Francis 4. To Eleonore von Breuning, Bonn 5. To the Same 6. To Herr Schenk 7. To Dr. Wegeler, Vienna 8. To the Same 9. Lines written in the Album of L. von Breuning 10. To Baron Zmeskall von Domanowecz 11. Ukase to Zmeskall, Schuppanzigh, and Lichnowsky 12. To Pastor Amenda, Courland 13. To the Same 14. To Wegeler 15. To Countess Giulietta Guicciardi 16. To Matthisson 17. To Frau Frank, Vienna 18. To Wegeler 19. To Kapellmeister Hofmeister, Leipzig 20. To the Same 21. To the Same 22. To the Same 23. Dedication to Dr. Schmidt 24. To Ferdinand Ries 25. To Herr Hofmeister, Leipzig 26. To Carl and Johann Beethoven 27. Notice 28. To Ferdinand Ries 29. To Herr Hofmeister, Leipzig 30. Caution 31. To Ries 32. To the Same 33. To the Same 34. To the Same 35. To the Composer Leidesdorf, Vienna 36. To Ries 37. To the Same 38. To the Same 39. To Messrs. Artaria & Co. 40. To Princess Liechtenstein 41. To Herr Meyer 42. Testimonial for C. Czerny 43. To Herr Röckel 44. To Herr Collin, Court Secretary and Poet 45. To Herr Gleichenstein 46. To the Directors of the Court Theatre 47. To Count Franz von Oppersdorf 48. Notice of a Memorial to the Archduke Rudolph, Prince Kinsky, and Prince Lobkowitz 49. Memorial to the Same 50. To Zmeskall 51. To Ferdinand Ries 52. To Zmeskall 53. To the Same 54. To the Same 55. To the Same 56. To the Same 57. To the Same 58. To the Same 59. To Freiherr von Hammer-Purgstall 60. To the Same 61. To Baroness von Drossdick 62. To Mdlle. de Gerardi 63. To Zmeskall 64. To Wegeler 65. To Zmeskall 66. To Bettina Brentano 67. To the Same 68. To Zmeskall 69. To the Same 70. To the Archduke Rudolph 71. To a Dear Friend 72. To the Dramatic Poet Treitschke 73. To Zmeskall 74. To the Same 75. To the Same 76. To the Same 77. To the Same 78. To the Same 79. To the Same 80. To Kammerprocurator Varenna, Gratz 81. To Zmeskall 82. To the Same 83. To Varenna, Gratz 84. To Zmeskall 85. To Varenna 86. To Archduke Rudolph 87. To the Same 88. To Varenna, Gratz 89. To Joseph Freiherr von Schweiger 90. To Varenna, Gratz 91. Lines written in the Album of Mdme. Auguste Sebald 92. To Archduke Rudolph 93. To Bettina von Arnim 94. To Princess Kinsky 95. To Archduke Rudolph 96. To the Same 97. To the Same 98. To Princess Kinsky 99. To the Same 100. To Zmeskall 101. To Herr Joseph Varenna, Gratz 102. To the Same 103. To Zmeskall 104. To the Same 105. To the Same 106. To the Same 107. To the Same 108. To the Same 109. To the Same 110. To Archduke Rudolph 111. To the Same 112. To the Same 113. To Freiherr Josef von Schweiger 114. To Herr von Baumeister 115. To Zmeskall 116. Letter of Thanks 117. To the Archduke Rudolph 118. To the Same 119. To the Same 120. To Treitschke 121. To the Same 122. To the Same 123. To Count Lichnowsky. 124. To the Same 125. To the Archduke Rudolph 126. To the Same 127. Deposition 128. To Dr. Kauka, Prague. 129. Address and Appeal to London Artists 130. To Dr. Kauka 131. To Count Moritz Lichnowsky 132. To the Archduke Rudolph 133. To the Same 134. To the Same 135. To the Same 136. To the Same 137. To the Same 138. To the Same 139. To the Same 140. To Dr. Kauka 141. To the Same 142. To the Same 143. To the Members of the Landrecht 144. To Baron von Pasqualati 145. To Dr. Kauka 146. To the Archduke Rudolph SECOND PART. LIFE'S MISSION. 1815-1822. 147. Music written in Spohr's Album 148. To Dr. Kauka 149. To the Same 150. To the Same 151. To Mr. Salomon, London 152. To the Archduke Rudolph 153. To the Same 154. To the Same 155. To the Same 156. To the Same 157. To the Same 158. To Mr. Birchall, Music Publisher, London 159. To Zmeskall 160. To the Archduke Rudolph 161. To Messrs. Birchall, London 162. To Herr Ries 163. To Zmeskall 164. To Mdlle. Milder-Hauptmann 165. To Ries 166. To Mr. Birchall, London 167. To Czerny 168. To the Same 169. To Ries, London 170. To Giannatasio del Rio, Vienna 171. To the Same 172. To the Same 173. To the Same 174. To Ferdinand Ries, London 175. To the Same 176. Power of Attorney 177. To Ferdinand Ries 178. To Giannatasio del Rio 179. To the Same 180. To the Archduke Rudolph 181. To Mr. Birchall London 182. To the Same 183. To Giannatasio del Rio 184. To the Same 185. To Zmeskall 186. To Dr. Kauka 187. Query 188. To Giannatasio del Rio 189. To the Same 190. To Wegeler 191. To Mr. Birchall, London 192. To Zmeskall 193. To the Archduke Rudolph 194. To Freiherr von Schweiger 195. To Giannatasio del Rio 196. To the Same 197. To the Same 198. To the Same 199. To Herr Tschischka 200. To Mr. Birchall 201. To Zmeskall 202. To Frau von Streicher 203. To the Same 204. To the Same 205. To the Same 206. To the Same 207. To the Archduke Rudolph 208. To Giannatasio del Rio 209. To the Same 210. To the Same 211. To Hofrath von Mosel 212. To S.A. Steiner, Music Publisher, Vienna 213. To the Same 214. To the Same 215. To Zmeskall FIRST PART. LIFE'S JOYS AND SORROWS. 1783 TO 1815. BEETHOVEN'S LETTERS. PART I. 1. TO THE ELECTOR OF COLOGNE, FREDERICK MAXIMILIAN.[1] ILLUSTRIOUS PRINCE,-- Music from my fourth year has ever been my favorite pursuit. Thus early introduced to the sweet Muse, who attuned my soul to pure harmony, I loved her, and sometimes ventured to think that I was beloved by her in return. I have now attained my eleventh year, and my Muse often whispered to me in hours of inspiration,--Try to write down the harmonies in your soul. Only eleven years old! thought I; does the character of an author befit me? and what would more mature artists say? I felt some trepidation; but my Muse willed it--so I obeyed, and wrote. May I now, therefore, Illustrious Prince, presume to lay the first-fruits of my juvenile labors at the foot of your throne? and may I hope that you will condescend to cast an encouraging and kindly glance on them? You will; for Art and Science have ever found in you a judicious protector and a generous patron, and rising talent has always prospered under your fostering and fatherly care. Encouraged by this cheering conviction, I venture to approach you with these my youthful efforts. Accept them as the pure offering of childlike reverence, and graciously vouchsafe to regard with indulgence them and their youthful composer, LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN. [Footnote 1: The dedication affixed to this work, "Three Sonatas for the Piano, dedicated to my illustrious master, Maximilian Friedrich, Archbishop and Elector of Cologne, by Ludwig van Beethoven in his eleventh year," is probably not written by the boy himself, but is given here as an amusing contrast to his subsequent ideas with regard to the homage due to rank.] 2. TO DR. SCHADE,--AUGSBURG. Bonn, 1787. Autumn. MY MOST ESTEEMED FRIEND,-- I can easily imagine what you must think of me, and I cannot deny that you have too good grounds for an unfavorable opinion. I shall not, however, attempt to justify myself, until I have explained to you the reasons why my apologies should be accepted. I must tell you that from the time I left Augsburg[1] my cheerfulness, as well as my health, began to decline; the nearer I came to my native city, the more frequent were the letters from my father, urging me to travel with all possible speed, as my mother's health was in a most precarious condition. I therefore hurried forwards as fast as I could, although myself far from well. My longing once more to see my dying mother overcame every obstacle, and assisted me in surmounting the greatest difficulties. I found my mother indeed still alive, but in the most deplorable state; her disease was consumption, and about seven weeks ago, after much pain and suffering, she died [July 17]. She was indeed a kind, loving mother to me, and my best friend. Ah! who was happier than I, when I could still utter the sweet name of mother, and it was heard? But to whom can I now say it? Only to the silent form resembling her, evoked by the power of imagination. I have passed very few pleasant hours since my arrival here, having during the whole time been suffering from asthma, which may, I fear, eventually turn to consumption; to this is added melancholy,--almost as great an evil as my malady itself. Imagine yourself in my place, and then I shall hope to receive your forgiveness for my long silence. You showed me extreme kindness and friendship by lending me three Carolins in Augsburg, but I must entreat your indulgence for a time. My journey cost me a great deal, and I have not the smallest hopes of earning anything here. Fate is not propitious to me in Bonn. Pardon my intruding on you so long with my affairs, but all that I have said was necessary for my own justification. I do entreat you not to deprive me of your valuable friendship; nothing do I wish so much as in any degree to become worthy of your regard. I am, with all esteem, your obedient servant and friend, L. V. BEETHOVEN, _Cologne Court Organist._ [Footnote 1: On his return from Vienna, whither Max Franz had sent him for the further cultivation of his talents.] 3. TO THE ELECTOR MAXIMILIAN FRANCIS.[1] 1793. MOST ILLUSTRIOUS AND GRACIOUS PRINCE,-- Some years ago your Highness was pleased to grant a pension to my father, the Court tenor Van Beethoven, and further graciously to decree that 100 R. Thalers of his salary should be allotted to me, for the purpose of maintaining, clothing, and educating my two younger brothers, and also defraying the debts incurred by our father. It was my intention to present this decree to your Highness's treasurer, but my father earnestly implored me to desist from doing so, that he might not be thus publicly proclaimed incapable himself of supporting his family, adding that he would engage to pay me the 25 R.T. quarterly, which he punctually did. After his death, however (in December last), wishing to reap the benefit of your Highness's gracious boon, by presenting the decree, I was startled to find that my father had destroyed it. I therefore, with all dutiful respect, entreat your Highness to renew this decree, and to order the paymaster of your Highness's treasury to grant me the last quarter of this benevolent addition to my salary (due the beginning of February). I have the honor to remain, Your Highness's most obedient and faithful servant, LUD. V. BEETHOVEN, _Court Organist._ [Footnote 1: An electoral decree was issued in compliance with this request on May 3, 1793.] 4. TO ELEONORE VON BREUNING,--BONN. Vienna, Nov. 2, 1793. MY HIGHLY ESTEEMED ELEONORE, MY DEAREST FRIEND,-- A year of my stay in this capital has nearly elapsed before you receive a letter from me, and yet the most vivid remembrance of you is ever present with me. I have often conversed in thought with you and your dear family, though not always in the happy mood I could have wished, for that fatal misunderstanding still hovered before me, and my conduct at that time is now hateful in my sight. But so it was, and how much would I give to have the power wholly to obliterate from my life a mode of acting so degrading to myself, and so contrary to the usual tenor of my character! Many circumstances, indeed, contributed to estrange us, and I suspect that those tale-bearers who repeated alternately to you and to me our mutual expressions were the chief obstacles to any good understanding between us. Each believed that what was said proceeded from deliberate conviction, whereas it arose only from anger, fanned by others; so we were both mistaken. Your good and noble disposition, my dear friend, is sufficient security that you have long since forgiven me. We are told that the best proof of sincere contrition is to acknowledge our faults; and this is what I wish to do. Let us now draw a veil over the whole affair, learning one lesson from it,--that when friends are at variance, it is always better to employ no mediator, but to communicate directly with each other. With this you will receive a dedication from me [the variations on "Se vuol ballare"]. My sole wish is that the work were greater and more worthy of you. I was applied to here to publish this little work, and I take advantage of the opportunity, my beloved Eleonore, to give you a proof of my regard and friendship for yourself, and also a token of my enduring remembrance of your family. Pray then accept this trifle, and do not forget that it is offered by a devoted friend. Oh! if it only gives you pleasure, my wishes will be fulfilled. May it in some degree recall the time when I passed so many happy hours in your house! Perhaps it may serve to remind you of me till I return, though this is indeed a distant prospect. Oh! how we shall then rejoice together, my dear Eleonore! You will, I trust, find your friend a happier man, all former forbidding, careworn furrows smoothed away by time and better fortune. When you see B. Koch [subsequently Countess Belderbusch], pray say that it is unkind in her never once to have written to me. I wrote to her twice, and three times to Malchus (afterwards Westphalian Minister of Finance), but no answer. Tell her that if she does not choose to write herself, I beg that she will at least urge Malchus to do so. At the close of my letter I venture to make one more request--I am anxious to be so fortunate as again to possess an Angola waistcoat knitted by your own hand, my dear friend. Forgive my indiscreet request; it proceeds from my great love for all that comes from you; and I may privately admit that a little vanity is connected with it, namely, that I may say I possess something from the best and most admired young lady in Bonn. I still have the one you were so good as to give me in Bonn; but change of fashion has made it look so antiquated, that I can only treasure it in my wardrobe as your gift, and thus still very dear to me. You would make me very happy by soon writing me a kind letter. If mine cause you any pleasure, I promise you to do as you wish, and write as often as it lies in my power; indeed everything is acceptable to me that can serve to show you how truly I am your admiring and sincere friend, L. V. BEETHOVEN. P.S. The variations are rather difficult to play, especially the shake in the _Coda_; but do not be alarmed at this, being so contrived that you only require to play the shake, and leave out the other notes, which also occur in the violin part. I never would have written it in this way, had I not occasionally observed that there was a certain individual in Vienna who, when I extemporized the previous evening, not unfrequently wrote down next day many of the peculiarities of my music, adopting them as his own [for instance, the Abbé Gelinek]. Concluding, therefore, that some of these things would soon appear, I resolved to anticipate this. Another reason also was to puzzle some of the pianoforte teachers here, many of whom are my mortal foes; so I wished to revenge myself on them in this way, knowing that they would occasionally be asked to play the variations, when these gentlemen would not appear to much advantage. BEETHOVEN. 5. TO ELEONORE VON BREUNING,--BONN. The beautiful neckcloth, embroidered by your own hand, was the greatest possible surprise to me; yet, welcome as the gift was, it awakened within me feelings of sadness. Its effect was to recall former days, and to put me to shame by your noble conduct to me. I, indeed, little thought that you still considered me worthy of your remembrance. Oh! if you could have witnessed my emotions yesterday when this incident occurred, you would not think that I exaggerate in saying that such a token of your recollection brought tears to my eyes, and made me feel very sad. Little as I may deserve favor in your eyes, believe me, my dear _friend_, (let me still call you so,) I have suffered, and still suffer severely from the privation of your friendship. Never can I forget you and your dear mother. You were so kind to me that your loss neither can nor will be easily replaced. I know what I have forfeited, and what you were to me, but in order to fill up this blank I must recur to scenes equally painful for you to hear and for me to detail. As a slight requital of your kind _souvenir_, I take the liberty to send you some variations, and a Rondo with violin accompaniment. I have a great deal to do, or I would long since have transcribed the Sonata I promised you. It is as yet a mere sketch in manuscript, and to copy it would be a difficult task even for the clever and practised Paraquin [counter-bass in the Electoral orchestra]. You can have the Rondo copied, and return the score. What I now send is the only one of my works at all suitable for you; besides, as you are going to Kerpen [where an uncle of the family lived], I thought these trifles might cause you pleasure. Farewell, my friend; for it is impossible for me to give you any other name. However indifferent I may be to you, believe me, I shall ever continue to revere you and your mother as I have always done. If I can in any way contribute to the fulfilment of a wish of yours, do not fail to let me know, for I have no other means of testifying my gratitude for past friendship. I wish you an agreeable journey, and that your dear mother may return entirely restored to health! Think sometimes of your affectionate friend, BEETHOVEN. 6. TO HERR SCHENK. June, 1794. DEAR SCHENK,[1]-- I did not know that I was to set off to-day to Eisenstadt. I should like to have talked to you again. In the mean time rest assured of my gratitude for your obliging services. I shall endeavor, so far as it lies in my power, to requite them. I hope soon to see you, and once more to enjoy the pleasure of your society. Farewell, and do not entirely forget your BEETHOVEN. [Footnote 1: Schenk, afterwards celebrated as the composer of the "Dorf Barbier," was for some time Beethoven's teacher in composition. This note appears to have been written in June, 1794, and first printed in the "Freischütz," No. 183, about 1836, at the time of Schenk's death, when his connection with Beethoven was mentioned.] 7. TO DR. WEGELER,--VIENNA.[1] ... In what an odious light have you exhibited me to myself! Oh! I acknowledge it, I do not deserve your friendship. It was no intentional or deliberate malice that induced me to act towards you as I did, but inexcusable thoughtlessness alone. I say no more. I am coming to throw myself into your arms, and to entreat you to restore me my lost friend; and you will give him back to me, to your penitent, loving, and ever-grateful BEETHOVEN. [Footnote 1: Dr. Wegeler, in answer to my request that he would send me the entire letter, replied that "the passages omitted in the letter consisted chiefly in eulogiums of his father, and enthusiastic expressions of friendship, which did not seem to him to be of any value; but besides this, the same reasons that induced his father to give only a portion of the letter were imperative with him also." I do not wish to contest the point with the possessor of the letter; still I may remark that all the utterances and letters of a great man belong to the world at large, and that in a case like the present, the conscientious biographer, who strives faithfully to portray such a man, is alone entitled to decide what portion of these communications is fitted for publication, and what is not. Any considerations of a personal character seem to me very trivial.] 8. TO DR. WEGELER,--VIENNA. Vienna, May 1797. God speed you, my dear friend! I owe you a letter which you shall shortly have, and my newest music besides, _I am going on well; indeed, I may say every day better._ Greet those to whom it will give pleasure from me. Farewell, and do not forget your BEETHOVEN. 9. WRITTEN IN THE ALBUM OF LENZ VON BREUNING. Vienna, Oct. 1, 1797. Truth for the wise, Beauty for a feeling heart, And both for each other. MY DEAR, GOOD BREUNING,-- Never can I forget the time I passed with you, not only in Bonn, but here. Continue your friendship towards me, for you shall always find me the same true friend, L. V. BEETHOVEN. 10. TO BARON ZMESKALL VON DOMANOWECZ. 1800.[1] [Music: Alto, Tenor, Bass clefs, C Major, 4/4 time, Grave. ALTO. Ba-ron. TENORE. Ba-ron. BASSO. Ba-ron. Ba-ron. Ba-ron.] MY CHEAPEST (NOT DEAREST) BARON,-- Desire the guitar-player to come to me to-day. Amenda (instead of an _amende_ [fine], which he sometimes deserves for not observing his rests properly) must persuade this popular guitarist to visit me, and if possible to come at five o'clock this evening; if not then, at five or six o'clock to-morrow morning; but he must not waken me if I chance to be still asleep. _Adieu, mon ami à bon marché._ Perhaps we may meet at the "Swan"? [Footnote 1: As it appears from the following letters that Amenda was again at home in 1800, the date of this note is thus ascertained. It is undoubtedly addressed to Baron Zmeskall von Domanowecz, Royal Court Secretary, a good violoncello-player, and one of Beethoven's earliest friends in Vienna. The "guitarist" was probably the celebrated Giuliani, who lived in Vienna.] 11. The musical Count is from this day forth _cashiered_ with infamy. The first violin [Schuppanzigh] ruthlessly transported to _Siberia_. The Baron [see No. 10] for a whole month _strictly interdicted from asking questions_; no longer to be so hasty, and to devote himself exclusively to his _ipse miserum_.[1] B. [Footnote 1: Written in gigantic characters in pencil on a large sheet of paper. The "musical Count" is probably Count Moritz Lichnowsky, brother of Prince Carl Lichnowsky, in whose house were held those musical performances in which Beethoven's works were first produced. Even at that time he behaved in a very dictatorial manner to those gentlemen when his compositions were badly executed. Thence the name given him by Haydn of "The Great Mogul."] 12. TO PASTOR AMENDA,--COURLAND. Does Amenda think that I can ever forget him, because I do not write? in fact, never have written to him?--as if the memory of our friends could only thus be preserved! The _best man I ever knew_ has a thousand times recurred to my thoughts! Two persons alone once possessed my whole love, one of whom still lives, and you are now the third. How can my remembrance of you ever fade? You will shortly receive a long letter about my present circumstances and all that can interest you. Farewell, beloved, good, and noble friend! Ever continue your love and friendship towards me, just as I shall ever be your faithful BEETHOVEN. 13. TO PASTOR AMENDA. 1800. MY DEAR, MY GOOD AMENDA, MY WARM-HEARTED FRIEND,-- I received and read your last letter with deep emotion, and with mingled pain and pleasure. To what can I compare your fidelity and devotion to me? Ah! it is indeed delightful that you still continue to love me so well. I know how to prize you, and to distinguish you from all others; you are not like my Vienna friends. No! you are one of those whom the soil of my fatherland is wont to bring forth; how often I wish that you were with me, for your Beethoven is very unhappy. You must know that one of my most precious faculties, that of hearing, is become very defective; even while you were still with me I felt indications of this, though I said nothing; but it is now much worse. Whether I shall ever be cured remains yet to be seen; it is supposed to proceed from the state of my digestive organs, but I am almost entirely recovered in that respect. I hope indeed that my hearing may improve, but I scarcely think so, for attacks of this kind are the most incurable of all. How sad my life must now be!--forced to shun all that is most dear and precious to me, and to live with such miserable egotists as ----, &c. I can with truth say that of all my friends Lichnowsky [Prince Carl] is the most genuine. He last year settled 600 florins on me, which, together with the good sale of my works, enables me to live free from care as to my maintenance. All that I now write I can dispose of five times over, and be well paid into the bargain. I have been writing a good deal latterly, and as I hear that you have ordered some pianos from ----, I will send you some of my compositions in the packing-case of one of these instruments, by which means they will not cost you so much. To my great comfort, a person has returned here with whom I can enjoy the pleasures of society and disinterested friendship,--one of the friends of my youth [Stephan von Breuning]. I have often spoken to him of you, and told him that since I left my fatherland, you are one of those to whom my heart specially clings. Z. [Zmeskall?] does not seem quite to please him; he is, and always will be, too weak for true friendship, and I look on him and ---- as mere instruments on which I play as I please, but never can they bear noble testimony to my inner and outward energies, or feel true sympathy with me; I value them only in so far as their services deserve. Oh! how happy should I now be, had I my full sense of hearing; I would then hasten to you; whereas, as it is, I must withdraw from everything. My best years will thus pass away, without effecting what my talents and powers might have enabled me to perform. How melancholy is the resignation in which I must take refuge! I had determined to rise superior to all this, but how is it possible? If in the course of six months my malady be pronounced incurable then, Amenda! I shall appeal to you to leave all else and come to me, when I intend to travel (my affliction is less distressing when playing and composing, and most so in intercourse with others), and you must be my companion. I have a conviction that good fortune will not forsake me, for to what may I not at present aspire? Since you were here I have written everything except operas and church music. You will not, I know, refuse my petition; you will help your friend to bear his burden and his calamity. I have also very much perfected my pianoforte playing, and I hope that a journey of this kind may possibly contribute to your own success in life, and you would thenceforth always remain with me. I duly received all your letters, and though I did not reply to them, you were constantly present with me, and my heart beats as tenderly as ever for you. I beg you will keep the fact of my deafness a profound secret, and not confide it to any human being. Write to me frequently; your letters, however short, console and cheer me; so I shall soon hope to hear from you. Do not give your quartet to any one [in F, Op. 18, No. 1], as I have altered it very much, having only now succeeded in writing quartets properly; this you will at once perceive when you receive it. Now, farewell, my dear kind friend! If by any chance I can serve you here, I need not say that you have only to command me. Your faithful and truly attached L. V. BEETHOVEN. 14. TO WEGELER. Vienna, June 29, 1800. MY DEAR AND VALUED WEGELER,-- How much I thank you for your remembrance of me, little as I deserve it, or have sought to deserve it; and yet you are so kind that you allow nothing, not even my unpardonable neglect, to discourage you, always remaining the same true, good, and faithful friend. That I can ever forget you or yours, once so dear and precious to me, do not for a moment believe. There are times when I find myself longing to see you again, and wishing that I could go to stay with you. My father-land, that lovely region where I first saw the light, is still as distinct and beauteous in my eyes as when I quitted you; in short, I shall esteem the time when I once more see you, and again greet Father Rhine, as one of the happiest periods of my life. When this may be I cannot yet tell; but at all events I may say that you shall not see me again till I have become eminent, not only as an artist, but better and more perfect as a man; and if the condition of our father-land be then more prosperous, my art shall be entirely devoted to the benefit of the poor. Oh, blissful moment!--how happy do I esteem myself that I can expedite it and bring it to pass! You desire to know something of my position; well! it is by no means bad. However incredible it may appear, I must tell you that Lichnowsky has been, and still is, my warmest friend (slight dissensions occurred occasionally between us, and yet they only served to strengthen our friendship). He settled on me last year the sum of 600 florins, for which I am to draw on him till I can procure some suitable situation. My compositions are very profitable, and I may really say that I have almost more commissions than it is possible for me to execute. I can have six or seven publishers or more for every piece, if I choose; they no longer bargain with me--I demand, and they pay--so you see this is a very good thing. For instance, I have a friend in distress, and my purse does not admit of my assisting him at once; but I have only to sit down and write, and in a short time he is relieved. I am also become more economical than formerly. If I finally settle here, I don't doubt I shall be able to secure a particular day every year for a concert, of which I have already given several. That malicious demon, however, bad health, has been a stumbling-block in my path; my hearing during the last three years has become gradually worse. The chief cause of this infirmity proceeds from the state of my digestive organs, which, as you know, were formerly bad enough, but have latterly become much worse, and being constantly afflicted with diarrhoea, has brought on extreme weakness. Frank [Director of the General Hospital] strove to restore the tone of my digestion by tonics, and my hearing by oil of almonds; but alas! these did me no good whatever; my hearing became worse, and my digestion continued in its former plight. This went on till the autumn of last year, when I was often reduced to utter despair. Then some medical _asinus_ recommended me cold baths, but a more judicious doctor the tepid ones of the Danube, which did wonders for me; my digestion improved, but my hearing remained the same, or in fact rather got worse. I did indeed pass a miserable winter; I suffered from most dreadful spasms, and sank back into my former condition. Thus it went on till about a month ago, when I consulted Vering [an army surgeon], under the belief that my maladies required surgical advice; besides, I had every confidence in him. He succeeded in almost entirely checking the violent diarrhoea, and ordered me the tepid baths of the Danube, into which I pour some strengthening mixture. He gave me no medicine, except some digestive pills four days ago, and a lotion for my ears. I certainly do feel better and stronger, but my ears are buzzing and ringing perpetually, day and night. I can with truth say that my life is very wretched; for nearly two years past I have avoided all society, because I find it impossible to say to people, _I am deaf!_ In any other profession this might be more tolerable, but in mine such a condition is truly frightful. Besides, what would my enemies say to this?--and they are not few in number. To give you some idea of my extraordinary deafness, I must tell you that in the theatre I am obliged to lean close up against the orchestra in order to understand the actors, and when a little way off I hear none of the high notes of instruments or singers. It is most astonishing that in conversation some people never seem to observe this; being subject to fits of absence, they attribute it to that cause. I often can scarcely hear a person if speaking low; I can distinguish the tones, but not the words, and yet I feel it intolerable if any one shouts to me. Heaven alone knows how it is to end! Vering declares that I shall certainly improve, even if I be not entirely restored. How often have I cursed my existence! Plutarch led me to resignation. I shall strive if possible to set Fate at defiance, although there must be moments in my life when I cannot fail to be the most unhappy of God's creatures. I entreat you to say nothing of my affliction to any one, not even to Lorchen [see Nos. 4 and 5]. I confide the secret to you alone, and entreat you some day to correspond with Vering on the subject. If I continue in the same state, I shall come to you in the ensuing spring, when you must engage a house for me somewhere in the country, amid beautiful scenery, and I shall then become a rustic for a year, which may perhaps effect a change. Resignation!--what a miserable refuge! and yet it is my sole remaining one. You will forgive my thus appealing to your kindly sympathies at a time when your own position is sad enough. Stephan Breuning is here, and we are together almost every day; it does me so much good to revive old feelings! He has really become a capital good fellow, not devoid of talent, and his heart, like that of us all, pretty much in the right place. [See No. 13.] I have very charming rooms at present, adjoining the Bastei [the ramparts], and peculiarly valuable to me on account of my health [at Baron Pasqualati's]. I do really think I shall be able to arrange that Breuning shall come to me. You shall have your Antiochus [a picture], and plenty of my music besides--if, indeed, it will not cost you too much. Your love of art does honestly rejoice me. Only say how it is to be done, and I will send you all my works, which now amount to a considerable number, and are daily increasing. I beg you will let me have my grandfather's portrait as soon as possible by the post, in return for which I send you that of his grandson, your loving and attached Beethoven. It has been brought out here by Artaria, who, as well as many other publishers, has often urged this on me. I intend soon to write to Stoffeln [Christoph von Breuning], and plainly admonish him about his surly humor. I mean to sound in his ears our old friendship, and to insist on his promising me not to annoy you further in your sad circumstances. I will also write to the amiable Lorchen. Never have I forgotten one of you, my kind friends, though you did not hear from me; but you know well that writing never was my _forte_, even my best friends having received no letters from me for years. I live wholly in my music, and scarcely is one work finished when another is begun; indeed, I am now often at work on three or four things at the same time. Do write to me frequently, and I will strive to find time to write to you also. Give my remembrances to all, especially to the kind Frau Hofräthin [von Breuning], and say to her that I am still subject to an occasional _raptus_. As for K----, I am not at all surprised at the change in her: Fortune rolls like a ball, and does not always stop before the best and noblest. As to Ries [Court musician in Bonn], to whom pray cordially remember me, I must say one word. I will write to you more particularly about his son [Ferdinand], although I believe that he would be more likely to succeed in Paris than in Vienna, which is already overstocked, and where even those of the highest merit find it a hard matter to maintain themselves. By next autumn or winter, I shall be able to see what can be done for him, because then all the world returns to town. Farewell, my kind, faithful Wegeler! Rest assured of the love and friendship of your BEETHOVEN. 15. TO COUNTESS GIULIETTA GUICCIARDI.[1] Morning, July 6, 1800. MY ANGEL! MY ALL! MY SECOND SELF! Only a few words to-day, written with a pencil (your own). My residence cannot be settled till to-morrow. What a tiresome loss of time! Why this deep grief when necessity compels?--can our love exist without sacrifices, and by refraining from desiring all things? Can you alter the fact that you are not wholly mine, nor I wholly yours? Ah! contemplate the beauties of Nature, and reconcile your spirit to the inevitable. Love demands all, and has a right to do so, and thus it is _I feel towards you_ and _you towards me_; but you do not sufficiently remember that I must live both _for you_ and _for myself_. Were we wholly united, you would feel this sorrow as little as I should. My journey was terrible. I did not arrive here till four o'clock yesterday morning, as no horses were to be had. The drivers chose another route; but what a dreadful one it was! At the last stage I was warned not to travel through the night, and to beware of a certain wood, but this only incited me to go forward, and I was wrong. The carriage broke down, owing to the execrable roads, mere deep rough country lanes, and had it not been for the postilions I must have been left by the wayside. Esterhazy, travelling the usual road, had the same fate with eight horses, whereas I had only four. Still I felt a certain degree of pleasure, which I invariably do when I have happily surmounted any difficulty. But I must now pass from the outer to the inner man. We shall, I trust, soon meet again; to-day I cannot impart to you all the reflections I have made, during the last few days, on my life; were our hearts closely united forever, none of these would occur to me. My heart is overflowing with all I have to say to you. Ah! there are moments when I find that speech is actually nothing. Take courage! Continue to be ever my true and only love, my all! as I am yours. The gods must ordain what is further to be and shall be! Your faithful LUDWIG. Monday Evening, July 6. You grieve! dearest of all beings! I have just heard that the letters must be sent off very early. Mondays and Thursdays are the only days when the post goes to K. from here. You grieve! Ah! where I am, there you are ever with me; how earnestly shall I strive to pass my life with you, and what a life will it be!!! Whereas now!! without you!! and persecuted by the kindness of others, which I neither deserve nor try to deserve! The servility of man towards his fellow-man pains me, and when I regard myself as a component part of the universe, what am I, what is he who is called the greatest?--and yet herein are displayed the godlike feelings of humanity!--I weep in thinking that you will receive no intelligence from me till probably Saturday. However dearly you may love me, I love you more fondly still. Never conceal your feelings from me. Good-night! As a patient at these baths, I must now go to rest [a few words are here effaced by Beethoven himself]. Oh, heavens! so near, and yet so far! Is not our love a truly celestial mansion, but firm as the vault of heaven itself? July 7. GOOD-MORNING! Even before I rise, my thoughts throng to you, my immortal beloved!--sometimes full of joy, and yet again sad, waiting to see whether Fate will hear us. I must live either wholly with you, or not at all. Indeed I have resolved to wander far from you [see No. 13] till the moment arrives when I can fly into your arms, and feel that they are my home, and send forth my soul in unison with yours into the realm of spirits. Alas! it must be so! You will take courage, for you know my fidelity. Never can another possess my heart--never, never! Oh, heavens! Why must I fly from her I so fondly love? and yet my existence in W. was as miserable as here. Your love made me the most happy and yet the most unhappy of men. At my age, life requires a uniform equality; can this be found in our mutual relations? My angel! I have this moment heard that the post goes every day, so I must conclude, that you may get this letter the sooner. Be calm! for we can only attain our object of living together by the calm contemplation of our existence. Continue to love me. Yesterday, to-day, what longings for you, what tears for you! for you! for you! my life! my all! Farewell! Oh! love me forever, and never doubt the faithful heart of your lover, L. Ever thine. Ever mine. Ever each other's. [Footnote 1: These letters to his "immortal beloved," to whom the C sharp minor Sonata is dedicated, appear here for the first time in their integrity, in accordance with the originals written in pencil on fine notepaper, and given in Schindler's _Beethoven's Nachlass_. There has been much discussion about the date. It is certified, in the first place, in the church register which Alex. Thayer saw in Vienna, that Giulietta was married to Count Gallenberg in 1801; and in the next place, the 6th of July falls on a Monday in 1800. The other reasons which induce me decidedly to fix this latter year as the date of the letter, I mean to give at full length in the second volume of _Beethoven's Biography_. I may also state that Beethoven was at baths in Hungary at that time. Whether the K---- in the second letter means Komorn, I cannot tell.] 16. TO MATTHISSON. Vienna, August 4, 1800. MOST ESTEEMED FRIEND,-- You will receive with this one of my compositions published some years since, and yet, to my shame, you probably have never heard of it. I cannot attempt to excuse myself, or to explain why I dedicated a work to you which came direct from my heart, but never acquainted you with its existence, unless indeed in this way, that at first I did not know where you lived, and partly also from diffidence, which led me to think I might have been premature in dedicating a work to you before ascertaining that you approved of it. Indeed, even now I send you "Adelaide" with a feeling of timidity. You know yourself what changes the lapse of some years brings forth in an artist who continues to make progress; the greater the advances we make in art, the less are we satisfied with our works of an earlier date. My most ardent wish will be fulfilled if you are not dissatisfied with the manner in which I have set your heavenly "Adelaide" to music, and are incited by it soon to compose a similar poem; and if you do not consider my request too indiscreet, I would ask you to send it to me forthwith, that I may exert all my energies to approach your lovely poetry in merit. Pray regard the dedication as a token of the pleasure which your "Adelaide" conferred on me, as well as of the appreciation and intense delight your poetry always has inspired, and _always will inspire in me_. When playing "Adelaide," sometimes recall Your sincere admirer, BEETHOVEN. 17. TO FRAU FRANK,--VIENNA October, 1800. DEAR LADY,-- At the second announcement of our concert, you must remind your husband that the public should be made acquainted with the names of those whose talents are to contribute to this concert. Such is the custom here; and indeed, were it not so, what is there to attract a larger audience? which is after all our chief object. Punto [the celebrated horn-player, for whom Beethoven wrote Sonata 17] is not a little indignant about the omission, and I must say he has reason to be so; but even before seeing him it was my intention to have reminded you of this, for I can only explain the mistake by great haste or great forgetfulness. Be so good, then, dear lady, as to attend to my hint; otherwise you will certainly expose yourself to _many annoyances_. Being at last convinced in my own mind, and by others, that I shall not be quite superfluous in this concert, I know that not only I, but also Punto, Simoni [a tenorist], and Galvani will demand that the public should be apprised of our zeal for this charitable object; otherwise we must all conclude that we are not wanted. Yours, BEETHOVEN. 18. TO HERR VON WEGELER. Vienna, Nov. 16, 1800. MY DEAR WEGELER,-- I thank you for this fresh proof of your interest in me, especially as I so little deserve it. You wish to know how I am, and what remedies I use. Unwilling as I always feel to discuss this subject, still I feel less reluctant to do so with you than with any other person. For some months past Vering has ordered me to apply blisters on both arms, of a particular kind of bark, with which you are probably acquainted,--a disagreeable remedy, independent of the pain, as it deprives me of the free use of my arms for a couple of days at a time, till the blisters have drawn sufficiently. The ringing and buzzing in my ears have certainly rather decreased, particularly in the left ear, in which the malady first commenced, but my hearing is not at all improved; in fact I fear that it is become rather worse. My health is better, and after using the tepid baths for a time, I feel pretty well for eight or ten days. I seldom take tonics, but I have begun applications of herbs, according to your advice. Vering will not hear of plunge baths, but I am much dissatisfied with him; he is neither so attentive nor so indulgent as he ought to be to such a malady; if I did not go to him, which is no easy matter, I should never see him at all. What is your opinion of Schmidt [an army surgeon]? I am unwilling to make any change, but it seems to me that Vering is too much of a practitioner to acquire new ideas by reading. On this point Schmidt appears to be a very different man, and would probably be less negligent with regard to my case. I hear wonders of galvanism; what do you say to it? A physician told me that he knew a deaf and dumb child whose hearing was restored by it (in Berlin), and likewise a man who had been deaf for seven years, and recovered his hearing. I am told that your friend Schmidt is at this moment making experiments on the subject. I am now leading a somewhat more agreeable life, as of late I have been associating more with other people. You could scarcely believe what a sad and dreary life mine has been for the last two years; my defective hearing everywhere pursuing me like a spectre, making me fly from every one, and appear a misanthrope; and yet no one is in reality less so! This change has been wrought by a lovely fascinating girl [undoubtedly Giulietta], who loves me and whom I love. I have once more had some blissful moments during the last two years, and it is the first time I ever felt that marriage could make me happy. Unluckily, she is not in my rank of life, and indeed at this moment I can marry no one; I must first bestir myself actively in the world. Had it not been for my deafness, I would have travelled half round the globe ere now, and this I must still do. For me there is no pleasure so great as to promote and to pursue my art. Do not suppose that I could be happy with you. What indeed could make me happier? Your very solicitude would distress me; I should read your compassion every moment in your countenance, which would make me only still more unhappy. What were my thoughts amid the glorious scenery of my father-land? The hope alone of a happier future, which would have been mine but for this affliction! Oh! I could span the world were I only free from this! I feel that my youth is only now commencing. Have I not always been an infirm creature? For some time past my bodily strength has been increasing, and it is the same with my mental powers. I feel, though I cannot describe it, that I daily approach the object I have in view, in which alone can your Beethoven live. No rest for him!--I know of none but in sleep, and I do grudge being obliged to sacrifice more time to it than formerly.[1] Were I only half cured of my malady, then I would come to you, and, as a more perfect and mature man, renew our old friendship. You should then see me as happy as I am ever destined to be here below--not unhappy. No! that I could not endure; I will boldly meet my fate, never shall it succeed in crushing me. Oh! it is so glorious to live one's life a thousand times over! I feel that I am no longer made for a quiet existence. You will write to me as soon as possible? Pray try to prevail on Steffen [von Breuning] to seek an appointment from the Teutonic Order somewhere. Life here is too harassing for his health; besides, he is so isolated that I do not see how he is ever to get on. You know the kind of existence here. I do not take it upon myself to say that society would dispel his lassitude, but he cannot be persuaded to go anywhere. A short time since, I had some music in my house, but our friend Steffen stayed away. Do recommend him to be more calm and self-possessed, which I have in vain tried to effect; otherwise he can neither enjoy health nor happiness. Tell me in your next letter whether you care about my sending you a large selection of music; you can indeed dispose of what you do not want, and thus repay the expense of the carriage, and have my portrait into the bargain. Say all that is kind and amiable from me to Lorchen, and also to mamma and Christoph. You still have some regard for me? Always rely on the love as well as the friendship of your BEETHOVEN. [Footnote 1: "Too much sleep is hurtful" is marked by a thick score in the Odyssey (45, 393) by Beethoven's hand. See Schindler's _Beethoven's Nachlass_.] 19. TO KAPELLMEISTER HOFMEISTER,--LEIPZIG.[1] Vienna, Dec. 15, 1800. MY DEAR BROTHER IN ART,-- I have often intended to answer your proposals, but am frightfully lazy about all correspondence; so it is usually a good while before I can make up my mind to write dry letters instead of music. I have, however, at last forced myself to answer your application. _Pro primo_, I must tell you how much I regret that you, my much-loved brother in the science of music, did not give me some hint, so that I might have offered you my quartets, as well as many other things that I have now disposed of. But if you are as conscientious, my dear brother, as many other publishers, who grind to death us poor composers, you will know pretty well how to derive ample profit when the works appear. I now briefly state what you can have from me. 1st. A Septet, _per il violino, viola, violoncello, contra-basso, clarinetto, corno, fagotto;--tutti obbligati_ (I can write nothing that is not _obbligato_, having come into the world with an _obbligato_ accompaniment!) This Septet pleases very much. For more general use it might be arranged for one more _violino, viola_, and _violoncello_, instead of the three wind-instruments, _fagotto, clarinetto_, and _corno_.[2] 2d. A Grand Symphony with full orchestra [the 1st]. 3rd. A pianoforte Concerto [Op. 19], which I by no means assert to be one of my best, any more than the one Mollo is to publish here [Op. 15], (this is for the benefit of the Leipzig critics!) because _I reserve the best for myself_ till I set off on my travels; still the work will not disgrace you to publish. 4th. A Grand Solo Sonata [Op. 22]. These are all I can part with at this moment; a little later you can have a quintet for stringed instruments, and probably some quartets also, and other pieces that I have not at present beside me. In your answer you can yourself fix the prices; and as you are neither an _Italian_ nor a _Jew_, nor am I either, we shall no doubt quickly agree. Farewell, and rest assured, My dear brother in art, of the esteem of your BEETHOVEN. [Footnote 1: The letters to Hofmeister, formerly of Vienna, who conducted the correspondence with Beethoven in the name of the firm of "Hofmeister & Kühnel, Bureau de Musique," are given here as they first appeared in 1837 in the _Neue Zeitschrift für Musik_. On applying to the present representative of that firm, I was told that those who now possess these letters decline giving them out of their own hands, and that no copyist can be found able to decipher or transcribe them correctly.] [Footnote 2: This last phrase is not in the copy before me, but in Marx's _Biography_, who appears to have seen the original.] 20. TO KAPELLMEISTER HOFMEISTER. Vienna, Jan. 15 (or thereabouts), 1801. I read your letter, dear brother and friend, with much pleasure, and I thank you for your good opinion of me and of my works, and hope I may continue to deserve it. I also beg you to present all due thanks to Herr K. [Kühnel] for his politeness and friendship towards me. I, on my part, rejoice in your undertakings, and am glad that when works of art do turn out profitable, they fall to the share of true artists, rather than to that of mere tradesmen. Your intention to publish Sebastian Bach's works really gladdens my heart, which beats with devotion for the lofty and grand productions of this our father of the science of harmony, and I trust I shall soon see them appear. I hope when golden peace is proclaimed, and your subscription list opened, to procure you many subscribers here.[1] With regard to our own transactions, as you wish to know my proposals, they are as follows. I offer you at present the following works:--The Septet (which I already wrote to you about), 20 ducats; Symphony, 20 ducats; Concerto, 10 ducats; Grand Solo Sonata, _allegro, adagio, minuetto, rondo_, 20 ducats. This Sonata [Op. 22] is well up to the mark, my dear brother! Now for explanations. You may perhaps be surprised that I make no difference of price between the sonata, septet, and symphony. I do so because I find that a septet or a symphony has not so great a sale as a sonata, though a symphony ought unquestionably to be of the most value. (N.B. The septet consists of a short introductory _adagio_, an _allegro, adagio, minuetto, andante_, with variations, _minuetto_, and another short _adagio_ preceding a _presto_.) I only ask ten ducats for the concerto, for, as I already wrote to you, I do not consider it one of my best. I cannot think that, taken as a whole, you will consider these prices exorbitant; at least, I have endeavored to make them as moderate as possible for you. With regard to the banker's draft, as you give me my choice, I beg you will make it payable by Germüller or Schüller. The entire sum for the four works will amount to 70 ducats; I understand no currency but Vienna ducats, so how many dollars in gold they make in your money is no affair of mine, for really I am a very bad man of business and accountant. Now this _troublesome_ business is concluded;--I call it so, heartily wishing that it could be otherwise here below! There ought to be only one grand _dépôt_ of art in the world, to which the artist might repair with his works, and on presenting them receive what he required; but as it now is, one must be half a tradesman besides--and how is this to be endured? Good heavens! I may well call it _troublesome_! As for the Leipzig oxen,[2] let them talk!--they certainly will make no man immortal by their prating, and as little can they deprive of immortality those whom Apollo destines to attain it. Now may Heaven preserve you and your colleagues! I have been unwell for some time; so it is rather difficult for me at present to write even music, much more letters. I trust we shall have frequent opportunities to assure each other how truly you are my friend, and I yours. I hope for a speedy answer. Adieu! L. V. BEETHOVEN. [Footnote 1: I have at this moment in my hands this edition of Bach, bound in one thick volume, together with the first part of Nägeli's edition of the _Wohltemperirtes Clavier_, also three books of exercises (D, G, and C minor), the _Toccata in D Minor_, and _Twice Fifteen Inventions_.] [Footnote 2: It is thus that Schindler supplies the gap. It is probably an allusion to the _Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung_, founded about three years previously.] 21. TO HERR HOFMEISTER. Vienna, April 22, 1801. You have indeed too good cause to complain not a little of me. My excuse is that I have been ill, and in addition had so much to do, that I could scarcely even think of what I was to send you. Moreover, the only thing in me that resembles a genius is, that my papers are never in very good order, and yet no one but myself can succeed in arranging them. For instance, in the score of the concerto, the piano part, according to my usual custom, was not yet written down; so, owing to my hurry, you will receive it in my own very illegible writing. In order that the works may follow as nearly as possible in their proper order, I have marked the numbers to be placed on each, as follows:-- Solo Sonata, Op. 22. Symphony, Op. 21. Septet, Op. 20. Concerto, Op. 19. I will send you their various titles shortly. Put me down as a subscriber to Sebastian Bach's works [see Letter 20], and also Prince Lichnowsky. The arrangement of Mozart's Sonatas as quartets will do you much credit, and no doubt be profitable also. I wish I could contribute more to the promotion of such an undertaking, but I am an irregular man, and too apt, even with the best intentions, to forget everything; I have, however, mentioned the matter to various people, and I everywhere find them well disposed towards it. It would be a good thing if you would arrange the septet you are about to publish as a quintet, with a flute part, for instance; this would be an advantage to amateurs of the flute, who have already importuned me on the subject, and who would swarm round it like insects and banquet on it. Now to tell you something of myself. I have written a ballet ["Prometheus"], in which the ballet-master has not done his part so well as might be. The F---- von L---- has also bestowed on us a production which by no means corresponds with the ideas of his genius conveyed by the newspaper reports. F---- seems to have taken Herr M---- (Wenzel Müller?) as his ideal at the Kusperle, yet without even rising to his level. Such are the fine prospects before us poor people who strive to struggle upwards! My dear friend, pray lose no time in bringing the work before the notice of the public, and write to me soon, that I may know whether by my delay I have entirely forfeited your confidence for the future. Say all that is civil and kind to your partner, Kühnel. Everything shall henceforth be sent finished, and in quick succession. So now farewell, and continue your regards for Your friend and brother, BEETHOVEN. 22. TO HERR HOFMEISTER. Vienna, June, 1801. I am rather surprised at the communication you have desired your business agent here to make to me; I may well feel offended at your believing me capable of so mean a trick. It would have been a very different thing had I sold my works to rapacious shopkeepers, and then secretly made another good speculation; but, from _one artist to another_, it is rather a strong measure to suspect me of such a proceeding! The whole thing seems to be either a device to put me to the test, or a mere suspicion. In any event I may tell you that before you received the septet from me I had sent it to Mr. Salomon in London (to be played at his own concert, which I did solely from friendship), with the express injunction to beware of its getting into other hands, as it was my intention to have it engraved in Germany, and, if you choose, you can apply to him for the confirmation of this. But to give you a further proof of my integrity, "I herewith give you the faithful assurance that I have neither sold the septet, the symphony, the concerto, nor the sonata to any one but to Messrs. Hofmeister and Kühnel, and that they may consider them to be their own exclusive property. And to this I pledge my honor." You may make what use you please of this guarantee. Moreover, I believe Salomon to be as incapable of the baseness of engraving the septet as I am of selling it to him. I was so scrupulous in the matter, that when applied to by various publishers to sanction a pianoforte arrangement of the septet, I at once declined, though I do not even know whether you proposed making use of it in this way. Here follow the long-promised titles of the works. There will no doubt be a good deal to alter and to amend in them; but this I leave to you. I shall soon expect a letter from you, and, I hope, the works likewise, which I wish to see engraved, as others have appeared, and are about to appear, in connection with these numbers. I look on your statement as founded on mere rumors, which you have believed with too much facility, or based entirely on supposition, induced by having perchance heard that I had sent the work to Salomon; I cannot, therefore, but feel some coolness towards such a credulous friend, though I still subscribe myself Your friend, BEETHOVEN. 23. DEDICATION TO DR. SCHMIDT.[1] 1801. MONSIEUR,-- Je sens parfaitement bien, que la Celebrité de Votre nom ainsi que l'amitié dont Vous m'honorez, exigeroient de moi la dédicace d'un bien plus important ouvrage. La seule chose qui a pu me déterminer à Vous offrir celui-ci de préférence, c'est qu'il me paroît d'une exécution plus facile et par la même plus propre à contribuer à la Satisfaction dont Vous jouissez dans l'aimable Cercle de Votre Famille.--C'est surtout, lorsque les heureux talents d'une fille chérie se seront developpés davantage, que je me flatte de voir ce but atteint. Heureux si j'y ai réussi et si dans cette faible marque de ma haute estime et de ma gratitude Vous reconnoissez toute la vivacité et la cordialité de mes sentiments. LOUIS VAN BEETHOVEN. [Footnote 1: Grand Trio, Op. 38.] 24. TO HIS SCHOLAR, FERDINAND RIES.[1] 1801. DEAR RIES,-- I send you herewith the four parts corrected by me; please compare the others already written out with these. I also enclose a letter to Count Browne. I have told him that he must make an advance to you of fifty ducats, to enable you to get your outfit. This is absolutely necessary, so it cannot offend him; for after being equipped, you are to go with him to Baden on the Monday of the ensuing week. I must, however, reproach you for not having had recourse to me long ago. Am I not your true friend? Why did you conceal your necessities from me? No friend of mine shall ever be in need, so long as I have anything myself. I would already have sent you a small sum, did I not rely on Browne; if he fails us, then apply at once to your BEETHOVEN. [Footnote 1: Ries names 1801 as the date of this letter, and it was no doubt during that summer that Count Browne was in Baden. Ries's father had assisted the Beethoven family in every way in his power at the time of the mother's death.] 25. TO HERR HOFMEISTER,--LEIPZIG. Vienna, April 8, 1802. Do you mean to go post-haste to the devil, gentlemen, by proposing that I should write _such_ a _sonata_? During the revolutionary fever, a thing of the kind might have been appropriate, but now, when everything is falling again into the beaten track, and Bonaparte has concluded a _Concordat_ with the Pope--such a sonata as this? If it were a _missa pro Sancta Maria à tre voci_, or a _vesper_, &c., then I would at once take up my pen and write a _Credo in unum_, in gigantic semibreves. But, good heavens! such a sonata, in this fresh dawning Christian epoch. No, no!--it won't do, and I will have none of it. Now for my answer in quickest _tempo_. The lady can have a sonata from me, and I am willing to adopt the general outlines of her plan in an _aesthetical_ point of view, without adhering to the keys named. The price to be five ducats; for this sum she can keep the work a year for her own amusement, without either of us being entitled to publish it. After the lapse of a year, the sonata to revert to me--that is, I can and will then publish it, when, if she considers it any distinction, she may request me to dedicate it to her. I now, gentlemen, commend you to the grace of God. My Sonata [Op. 22] is well engraved, but you have been a fine time about it! I hope you will usher my Septet into the world a little quicker, as the P---- is waiting for it, and you know the Empress has it; and when there are in this imperial city people like ----, I cannot be answerable for the result; so lose no time! Herr ---- [Mollo?] has lately published my Quartets [Op. 18] full of faults and _errata_, both large and small, which swarm in them like fish in the sea; that is, they are innumerable. _Questo è un piacere per un autore_--this is what I call engraving [_stechen_, stinging] with a vengeance.[1] In truth, my skin is a mass of punctures and scratches from this fine edition of my Quartets! Now farewell, and think of me as I do of you. Till death, your faithful L. V. BEETHOVEN. [Footnote 1: In reference to the musical piracy at that time very prevalent in Austria.] 26.[1] TO MY BROTHERS CARL AND JOHANN BEETHOVEN. Heiligenstadt, Oct. 6, 1802. Oh! ye who think or declare me to be hostile, morose, and misanthropical, how unjust you are, and how little you know the secret cause of what appears thus to you! My heart and mind were ever from childhood prone to the most tender feelings of affection, and I was always disposed to accomplish something great. But you must remember that six years ago I was attacked by an incurable malady, aggravated by unskilful physicians, deluded from year to year, too, by the hope of relief, and at length forced to the conviction of a _lasting affliction_ (the cure of which may go on for years, and perhaps after all prove impracticable). Born with a passionate and excitable temperament, keenly susceptible to the pleasures of society, I was yet obliged early in life to isolate myself, and to pass my existence in solitude. If I at any time resolved to surmount all this, oh! how cruelly was I again repelled by the experience, sadder than ever, of my defective hearing!--and yet I found it impossible to say to others: Speak louder; shout! for I am deaf! Alas! how could I proclaim the deficiency of a sense which ought to have been more perfect with me than with other men,--a sense which I once possessed in the highest perfection, to an extent, indeed, that few of my profession ever enjoyed! Alas, I cannot do this! Forgive me therefore when you see me withdraw from you with whom I would so gladly mingle. My misfortune is doubly severe from causing me to be misunderstood. No longer can I enjoy recreation in social intercourse, refined conversation, or mutual outpourings of thought. Completely isolated, I only enter society when compelled to do so. I must live like an exile. In company I am assailed by the most painful apprehensions, from the dread of being exposed to the risk of my condition being observed. It was the same during the last six months I spent in the country. My intelligent physician recommended me to spare my hearing as much as possible, which was quite in accordance with my present disposition, though sometimes, tempted by my natural inclination for society, I allowed myself to be beguiled into it. But what humiliation when any one beside me heard a flute in the far distance, while I heard _nothing_, or when others heard _a shepherd singing_, and I still heard _nothing_! Such things brought me to the verge of desperation, and wellnigh caused me to put an end to my life. _Art! art_ alone, deterred me. Ah! how could I possibly quit the world before bringing forth all that I felt it was my vocation to produce?[2] And thus I spared this miserable life--so utterly miserable that any sudden change may reduce me at any moment from my best condition into the worst. It is decreed that I must now choose _Patience_ for my guide! This I have done. I hope the resolve will not fail me, steadfastly to persevere till it may please the inexorable Fates to cut the thread of my life. Perhaps I may get better, perhaps not. I am prepared for either. Constrained to become a philosopher in my twenty-eighth year![3] This is no slight trial, and more severe on an artist than on any one else. God looks into my heart, He searches it, and knows that love for man and feelings of benevolence have their abode there! Oh! ye who may one day read this, think that you have done me injustice, and let any one similarly afflicted be consoled, by finding one like himself, who, in defiance of all the obstacles of Nature, has done all in his power to be included in the ranks of estimable artists and men. My brothers Carl and Johann, as soon as I am no more, if Professor Schmidt [see Nos. 18 and 23] be still alive, beg him in my name to describe my malady, and to add these pages to the analysis of my disease, that at least, so far as possible, the world may be reconciled to me after my death. I also hereby declare you both heirs of my small fortune (if so it may be called). Share it fairly, agree together and assist each other. You know that anything you did to give me pain has been long forgiven. I thank you, my brother Carl in particular, for the attachment you have shown me of late. My wish is that you may enjoy a happier life, and one more free from care, than mine has been. Recommend _Virtue_ to your children; that alone, and not wealth, can ensure happiness. I speak from experience. It was _Virtue_ alone which sustained me in my misery; I have to thank her and Art for not having ended my life by suicide. Farewell! Love each other. I gratefully thank all my friends, especially Prince Lichnowsky and Professor Schmidt. I wish one of you to keep Prince L----'s instruments; but I trust this will give rise to no dissension between you. If you think it more beneficial, however, you have only to dispose of them. How much I shall rejoice if I can serve you even in the grave! So be it then! I joyfully hasten to meet Death. If he comes before I have had the opportunity of developing all my artistic powers, then, notwithstanding my cruel fate, he will come too early for me, and I should wish for him at a more distant period; but even then I shall be content, for his advent will release me from a state of endless suffering. Come when he may, I shall meet him with courage. Farewell! Do not quite forget me, even in death; I deserve this from you, because during my life I so often thought of you, and wished to make you happy. Amen! LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN. (_Written on the Outside._) Thus, then, I take leave of you, and with sadness too. The fond hope I brought with me here, of being to a certain degree cured, now utterly forsakes me. As autumn leaves fall and wither, so are my hopes blighted. Almost as I came, I depart. Even the lofty courage that so often animated me in the lovely days of summer is gone forever. O Providence! vouchsafe me one day of pure felicity! How long have I been estranged from the glad echo of true joy! When! O my God! when shall I again feel it in the temple of Nature and of man?--never? Ah! that would be too hard! (_Outside._) To be read and fulfilled after my death by my brothers Carl and Johann. [Footnote 1: This beautiful letter I regret not to have seen in the original, it being in the possession of the violin _virtuoso_ Ernst, in London. I have adhered to the version given in the Leipzig _Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung_, Oct. 1827.] [Footnote 2: A large portion of the _Eroica_ was written in the course of this summer, but not completed till August, 1804.] [Footnote 3: Beethoven did not at that time know in what year he was born. See the subsequent letter of May 2, 1810. He was then far advanced in his thirty-third year.] 27. NOTICE. November, 1802. I owe it to the public and to myself to state that the two quintets in C and E flat major--one of these (arranged from a symphony of mine) published by Herr Mollo in Vienna, and the other (taken from my Septet, Op. 20) by Herr Hofmeister in Leipzig--are not original quintets, but only versions of the aforesaid works given by the publishers. Arrangements in these days (so fruitful in--arrangements) an author will find it vain to contend against; but we may at least justly demand that the fact should be mentioned in the title-page, neither to injure the reputation of the author nor to deceive the public. This notice is given to prevent anything of the kind in future. I also beg to announce that shortly a new original quintet of my composition, in C major, Op. 29, will appear at Breitkopf & Härtel's in Leipzig. LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN. 28. TO FERDINAND RIES. Summer of 1803. You no doubt are aware that I am here. Go to Stein, and ask if he can send me an instrument, on hire. I am afraid of bringing mine here. Come to me this evening about seven o'clock. I lodge in Oberdöbling, on the left side of the street, No. 4, going down the hill towards Heiligenstadt. 29. TO HERR HOFMEISTER,--LEIPZIG. Vienna, Sept. 22, 1803. I hereby declare all the works you have ordered to be your property. The list of these shall be made out and sent to you with my signature, as the proof of their being your own. I also agree to accept the sum of fifty ducats for them. Are you satisfied? Perhaps, instead of the variations with violoncello and violin,[1] I may send you variations for the piano, arranged as a duet on a song of mine; but Goethe's poetry must also be engraved, as I wrote these variations in an album, and consider them better than the others. Are you satisfied? The arrangements are not by me, though I have revised and much improved various passages; but I do not wish you to say that I have arranged them, for it would be false, and I have neither time nor patience to do so. Are you satisfied? Now farewell! I sincerely wish that all may go well with you. I would gladly make you a present of all my works, if I could do so and still get on in the world; but--remember most people are provided for, and know what they have to live on, while, good heavens! where can an appointment be found at the Imperial Court for such a _parvum talentum com ego_? Your friend, L. V. BEETHOVEN. [Footnote 1: These are the six variations in D, on the air _Ich denke Dein_ written in 1800 in the album of the Countesses Josephine Deym and Thérèse of Brunswick.] 30. CAUTION. November, 1803. Herr Carl Zulehner, a piratical engraver in Mayence, has announced an edition of my collected works for the pianoforte and also stringed instruments. I consider it my duty publicly to inform all friends of music that I have no share whatever in this edition. I would never have in any way authorized any collection of my works (which, moreover, I consider premature) without previously consulting the publishers of single pieces, and ensuring that correctness in which editions of my individual works are so deficient. I must also observe that this illegal edition cannot be complete, as several new works of mine are shortly to appear in Paris, and these Herr Zulehner, being a French subject, dare not pirate. I intend to take another opportunity of enumerating the details of the collection of my works to be brought out under my own auspices and careful revision. LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN. 31. TO HERR RIES.[1] 1804. Be so good as to make out a list of the mistakes and send it at once to Simrock, and say that the work must appear as soon as possible. I will send him the Sonata [Op. 47] and the Concerto the day after to-morrow. BEETHOVEN. [Footnote 1: Ries relates that the three following notes refer to the pianoforte Sonata, Op. 31, No. 1, carefully engraved by Nägeli in Zurich, which Beethoven consequently sent forthwith to Simrock in Bonn, desiring him to bring out "_une édition très-correcte_" of the work. He also states that Beethoven was residing in Heiligenstadt at the time the work was first sent [see No. 26]. In Nottebohm's _Skizzenbuch von Beethoven_, he says (p. 43) that the first notice of the appearance of this sonata was on May 21st, 1803; but Simrock writes to me that the date of the document making over the sonata to him is 1804.] 32. TO HERR RIES. I must again ask you to undertake the disagreeable task of making a fair copy of the errors in the Zurich Sonata. I have got your list of _errata_ "_auf der Wieden_." 33. TO HERR RIES. DEAR RIES,-- The signs are wrongly marked, and many of the notes misplaced; so be careful! or your labor will be vain. _Ch' a detto l' amato bene?_ 34. TO HERR RIES. DEAR RIES,-- May I beg you to be so obliging as to copy this _andante_ [in the Kreuzer Sonata] for me, however indifferently? I must send it off to-morrow, and as Heaven alone knows what its fate may then be, I wish to get it transcribed. But I must have it back to-morrow about one o'clock. The cause of my troubling you is that one of my copyists is already very much occupied with various things of importance, and the other is ill. 35. TO THE COMPOSER LEIDESDORF,--VIENNA.[1] DORF DES LEIDES [VILLAGE OF SORROW--LEIDESDORF],-- Let the bearer of this, Herr Ries, have some easy duets, and, better still, let him have them for nothing. Conduct yourself in accordance with the reformed doctrines. Farewell! BEETHOVEN _Minimus._ [Footnote 1: Date unknown. Leidesdorf was also a music-seller.] 36. TO HERR RIES. Baden, July 14, 1804. DEAR RIES,-- If you can find me better lodgings, I shall be very glad. Tell my brothers not to engage these at once; I have a great desire to get one in a spacious, quiet square or on the Bastei. It it really inexcusable in my brother not to have provided wine, as it is so beneficial and necessary to me. I shall take care to be present at the rehearsal on Wednesday. I am not pleased to hear that it is to be at Schuppanzigh's. He may well be grateful to me if my impertinences make him thinner! Farewell, dear Ries! We have bad weather here, and I am not safe from visitors; so I must take flight in order to be alone. Your true friend, L. V. BEETHOVEN. 37. TO HERR RIES. Baden, July, 1804. DEAR RIES,-- As Breuning [see Nos. 13, 14, and 18] by his conduct has not scrupled to display my character to you and the house-steward as that of a mean, petty, base man, I beg you will convey my reply at once in person to Breuning. I answer only one point, the first in his letter, and I do so solely because it is the only mode of justifying myself in your eyes. Say also to him that I had no intention of reproaching him on account of the delay of the notice to quit, and even if Breuning were really to blame for this, our harmonious relations are so dear and precious in my sight, that, for the sake of a few hundreds more or less, I would never subject any friend of mine to vexation. You are aware, indeed, that I jestingly accused you as the cause of the notice arriving too late. I am quite sure that you must remember this. I had entirely forgotten the whole matter, but at dinner my brother began to say that he thought Breuning was to blame in the affair, which I at once denied, saying that you were in fault. I think this shows plainly enough that I attributed no blame to Breuning; but on this he sprang up like a madman, and insisted on sending for the house-steward. Such behavior, in the presence of all those with whom I usually associate, and to which I am wholly unaccustomed, caused me to lose all self-control; so I also started up, upset my chair, left the room, and did not return. This conduct induced Breuning to place me in a pretty light to you and the house-steward, and also to send me a letter which I only answered by silence. I have not another word to say to Breuning. His mode of thinking and of acting, with regard to me, proves that there never ought to have been such friendly intimacy between us, and assuredly it can never more be restored. I wished to make you acquainted with this, as your version of the occurrence degraded both my words and actions. I know that, had you been aware of the real state of the affair, you would not have said what you did, and with this I am satisfied. I now beg of you, dear Ries, to go to my brother, the apothecary, as soon as you receive this letter, and say to him that I mean to leave Baden in the course of a few days, and that he is to engage the lodging in Döbling as soon as you have given him this message. I had nearly left this to-day; I detest being here--I am sick of it. For Heaven's sake urge him to close the bargain at once, for I want to take possession immediately. Neither show nor speak to any one of what is written in the previous page of this letter. I wish to prove to him in every respect that I am not so meanly disposed as he is. Indeed I have written to him, although my resolve as to the dissolution of our friendship remains firm and unchangeable. Your friend, BEETHOVEN. 38. TO HERR RIES. Berlin, July 24, 1804. ... You were no doubt not a little surprised about the affair with Breuning; believe me, my dear friend, that the ebullition on my part was only an outbreak caused by many previous scenes of a disagreeable nature. I have the gift of being able to conceal and to repress my susceptibility on many occasions; but if attacked at a time when I chance to be peculiarly irritable, I burst forth more violently than any one. Breuning certainly possesses many admirable qualities, but he thinks himself quite faultless; whereas the very defects that he discovers in others are those which he possesses himself to the highest degree. From my childhood I have always despised his petty mind. My powers of discrimination enabled me to foresee the result with Breuning, for our modes of thinking, acting, and feeling are entirely opposite; and yet I believed that these difficulties might be overcome, but experience has disproved this. So now I want no more of his friendship! I have only found two friends in the world with whom I never had a misunderstanding; but what men these were! One is dead, the other still lives. Although for nearly six years past we have seen nothing of each other, yet I know that I still hold the first place in his heart, as he does in mine [see No. 12]. The true basis of friendship is to be found in sympathy of heart and soul. I only wish you could have read the letter I wrote to Breuning, and his to me. No! never can he be restored to his former place in my heart. The man who could attribute to his friend so base a mode of thinking, and could himself have recourse to so base a mode of acting towards him, is no longer worthy of my friendship. Do not forget the affair of my apartments. Farewell! Do not be too much addicted to tailoring,[1] remember me to the fairest of the fair, and send me half a dozen needles. I never could have believed that I could be so idle as I am here. If this be followed by a fit of industry, something worth while may be produced. _Vale!_ Your BEETHOVEN. [Footnote 1: Ries says, in Wegeler's _Biographical Notices_:--"Beethoven never visited me more frequently than when I lived in the house of a tailor, with three very handsome but thoroughly respectable daughters."] 39. TO MESSRS. ARTARIA & CO.[1] Vienna, June 1, 1805. I must inform you that the affair about the new quintet is settled between Count Fries and myself. The Count has just assured me that he intends to make you a present of it; it is too late to-day for a written agreement on the subject, but one shall be sent early in the ensuing week. This intelligence must suffice for the present, and I think I at all events deserve your thanks for it. Your obedient servant, LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN. [Footnote 1: The quintet is probably not that in C, Op. 29, dedicated to Count v. Fries, previously published in 1803 by Breitkopf & Härtel [see No. 27]. It is more likely that he alludes to a new quintet which the Count had no doubt ordered.] 40. TO MADAME LA PRINCESSE LIECHTENSTEIN, &C.[1] November, 1805. Pray pardon me, illustrious Princess, if the bearer of this should cause you an unpleasant surprise. Poor Ries, my scholar, is forced by this unhappy war to shoulder a musket, and must moreover leave this in a few days, being a foreigner. He has nothing, literally nothing, and is obliged to take a long journey. All chance of a concert on his behalf is thus entirely at an end, and he must have recourse to the benevolence of others. I recommend him to you. I know you will forgive the step I have taken. A noble-minded man would only have recourse to such measures in the most utter extremity. Confident of this, I send the poor youth to you, in the hope of somewhat improving his circumstances. He is forced to apply to all who know him. I am, with the deepest respect, yours, L. VAN BEETHOVEN. [Footnote 1: Communicated by Ries himself, who, to Beethoven's extreme indignation, did not deliver the note. See Wegeler's work, p. 134. The following remark is added:--"Date unknown; written a few days before the entrance of the French in 1805" (which took place Nov. 13). Ries, a native of Bonn, was now a French subject, and recalled under the laws of conscription. The Sonata, Op. 27, No. 1, is dedicated to Princess Liechtenstein.] 41. TO HERR MEYER.[1] 1805. DEAR MEYER,-- Pray try to persuade Herr v. Seyfried to direct my Opera, as I wish on this occasion to see and hear it myself _from a distance_; in this way my patience will at all events not be so severely tried as when I am close enough to hear my music so bungled. I really do believe that it is done on purpose to annoy me! I will say nothing of the wind-instruments; but all _pp._'s, _cresc._, _discresc._, and all _f._'s and _ff._'s may as well be struck out of my Opera, for no attention whatever is paid to them. I shall lose all pleasure in composing anything in future, if I am to hear it given thus. To-morrow or the day after I will come to fetch you to dinner. To-day I am again unwell. Your friend, BEETHOVEN. If the Opera is to be performed the day after to-morrow, there must be another private rehearsal to-morrow, or _each time it will be given worse and worse_. [Footnote 1: Meyer, the husband of Mozart's eldest sister-in-law, Josepha (Hofer's widow), sang the part of Pizarro at the first performance of _Fidelio_, Nov. 20, 1805, and also at a later period. Seyfried was at that time Kapellmeister at the Theatre "an der Wien."] 42. TESTIMONIAL FOR C. CZERNY. Vienna, Dec. 7, 1805. I, the undersigned, am glad to bear testimony to young Carl Czerny having made the most extraordinary progress on the pianoforte, far beyond what might be expected at the age of fourteen. I consider him deserving of all possible assistance, not only from what I have already referred to, but from his astonishing memory, and more especially from his parents having spent all their means in cultivating the talent of their promising son. LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN. 43. TO HERR RÖCKEL.[1] DEAR RÖCKEL,-- Be sure that you arrange matters properly with Mdlle. Milder, and say to her previously from me, that I hope she will not sing anywhere else. I intend to call on her to-morrow, to kiss the hem of her garment. Do not also forget Marconi, and forgive me for giving you so much trouble. Yours wholly, BEETHOVEN. [Footnote 1: Röckel, in 1806 tenor at the Theatre "an der Wien," sang the part of Florestan in the spring of that year, when _Fidelio_ was revived. Mdlle. Milder, afterwards Mdme. Hauptmann, played Leonore; Mdme. Marconi was also prima donna.] 44. TO HERR COLLIN,[1] COURT SECRETARY AND POET. MY ESTEEMED COLLIN,-- I hear that you are about to fulfil my greatest wish and your own purpose. Much as I desire to express my delight to you in person, I cannot find time to do so, having so much to occupy me. Pray do not then ascribe this to any want of proper attention towards you. I send you the "Armida"; as soon as you have entirely done with it, pray return it, as it does not belong to me. I am, with sincere esteem, Yours, BEETHOVEN. [Footnote 1: Collin, Court Secretary, was the author of _Coriolanus_, a tragedy for which Beethoven in 1807 wrote the celebrated Overture dedicated to that poet. According to Reichardt, Collin offered the libretto of _Bradamante_ to Beethoven in 1808, which Reichardt subsequently composed. This note evidently refers to a _libretto_.] 45. TO HERR GLEICHENSTEIN.[1] I should like very much, my good Gleichenstein, to speak to you this forenoon between one and two o'clock, or in the afternoon, and where you please. To-day I am too busy to call early enough to find you at home. Give me an answer, and don't forget to appoint the place for us to meet. Farewell, and continue your regard for your BEETHOVEN. [Footnote 1: Probably in reference to a conference with regard to a contract for the publication of his works, Op. 58, 59, 60, 61, and 62, that Beethoven had made on the 20th April, 1807, with Muzio Clementi, who had established a large music firm in London; it was also signed by Baron Gleichen. Beethoven's first intention was to dedicate Op. 58 to him, which is evident from a large page in Schindler's work, on which is written in bold characters, by the master's own hand, "_Quatrième Concerto pour le Piano, avec accompagnement, etc., dédié à son ami Gleichenstein_," &c. The name of the Archduke Rudolph had been previously written, and was eventually adopted, and Gleichenstein afterwards received the dedication of the Grand Sonata with violoncello, Op. 69.] 46. TO THE DIRECTORS OF THE COURT THEATRE.[1] Vienna, December, 1807. The undersigned has cause to flatter himself that during the period of his stay in Vienna he has gained some favor and approbation from the highest nobility, as well as from the public at large, his works having met with an honorable reception both in this and other countries. Nevertheless he has had difficulties of every kind to contend against, and has not hitherto been so fortunate as to acquire a position that would enable him _to live solely for art_, and to develop his talents to a still higher degree of perfection, which ought to be the aim of every artist, thus ensuring future independence instead of mere casual profits. The mere wish _to gain a livelihood_ has never been the leading clew that has hitherto guided the undersigned on his path. His great aim has been the _interest of art_ and the ennobling of taste, while his genius, soaring to a higher ideal and greater perfection, frequently compelled him to sacrifice his talents and profits to the Muse. Still works of this kind won for him a reputation in distant lands, securing him the most favorable reception in various places of distinction, and a position befitting his talents and acquirements. The undersigned does not, however, hesitate to say that this city is above all others the most precious and desirable in his eyes, owing to the number of years he has lived here, the favor and approval he has enjoyed from both high and low, and his wish fully to realize the expectations he has had the good fortune to excite, but most of all, he may truly say, from his _patriotism as a German_. Before, therefore, making up his mind to leave a place so dear to him, he begs to refer to a hint which the reigning Prince Lichnowsky was so kind as to give him, to the effect that the directors of the theatre were disposed to engage the undersigned on reasonable conditions in the service of their theatre, and to ensure his remaining in Vienna by securing to him a permanent position, more propitious to the further exercise of his talents. As this assurance is entirely in accordance with the wishes of the undersigned, he takes the liberty, with all due respect, to place before the directors his readiness to enter into such an engagement, and begs to state the following conditions for their gracious consideration. 1. The undersigned undertakes and pledges himself to compose each year at least _one grand opera_, to be selected by the directors and himself; in return for this he demands a _fixed salary_ of 2400 florins a year, and also a free benefit at the third performance of each such opera. 2. He also agrees to supply the directors annually with a little _operetta_ or a _divertissement_, with choruses or occasional music of the kind, as may be required, _gratis_; he feels confident that on the other hand the directors will not refuse, in return for these various labors, to grant him _a benefit concert_ at all events once a year in one of the theatres. Surely the above conditions cannot be thought exorbitant or unreasonable, when the expenditure of time and energy entailed by the production of an _opera_ is taken into account, as it entirely excludes the possibility of all other mental exertion; in other places, too, the author and his family have a share in the profits of every individual performance, so that even _one_ successful work at once ensures the future fortunes of the composer. It must also be considered how prejudicial the present rate of exchange is to artists here, and likewise the high price of the necessaries of life, while a residence in foreign countries is open to them. But in any event, whether the directors accede to or decline this present proposal, the undersigned ventures to request that he may be permitted to give a concert for his own benefit in one of the theatres. For if his conditions be accepted, the undersigned must devote all his time and talents to the composition of such an opera, and thus be prevented working in any other way for profit. In case of the non-acceptance of these proposals, as the concert he was authorized to give last year did not take place owing to various obstacles, he would entreat, as a parting token of the favor hitherto vouchsafed to him, that the promise of last year may now be fulfilled. In the former case, he would beg to suggest _Annunciation Day_ [March 25.] for his concert, and in the latter a day during the ensuing Christmas vacation. LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN, M.P. [_Manu propria._] [Footnote 1: This application was fruitless. See Reichardt's _Vertraute Briefe_. "These two (Lobkowitz and Esterhazy) are the heads of the great theatrical direction, which consists entirely of princes and counts, who conduct all the large theatres on their own account and at their own risk." The close of this letter shows that it was written in December.] 47. TO COUNT FRANZ VON OPPERSDORF.[1] Vienna, Nov. 1, 1808 [_sic!_]. MY DEAR COUNT,-- I fear you will look on me with displeasure when I tell you that necessity compelled me not only to dispose of the symphony I wrote for you, but to transfer another also to some one else. Be assured, however, that you shall soon receive the one I intend for you. I hope that both you and the Countess, to whom I beg my kind regards, have been well since we met. I am at this moment staying with Countess Erdödy in the apartments below those of Prince Lichnowsky. I mention this in case you do me the honor to call on me when you are in Vienna. My circumstances are improving, without having recourse to the intervention of people _who treat their friends insultingly_. I have also the offer of being made _Kapellmeister_ to the King of Westphalia, and it is possible that I may accept the proposal. Farewell, and sometimes think of your attached friend, BEETHOVEN. [Footnote 1: The fourth Symphony is dedicated to Count Oppersdorf.] 48.[1] I fear I am too late for to-day, but I have only now been able to get back your memorial from C----, because H---- wished to add various items here and there. I do beg of you to dwell chiefly on the great importance to me of adequate opportunities to exercise my art; by so doing you will write what is most in accordance with my head and my heart. The preamble must set forth what I am to have in Westphalia--600 ducats in gold, 150 ducats for travelling expenses; all I have to do in return for this sum being to direct the King's [Jerome's] concerts, which are short and few in number. I am not even bound to direct any opera I may write. So, thus freed from all care, I shall be able to devote myself entirely to the most important object of my art--to write great works. An orchestra is also to be placed at my disposition. N.B. As member of a theatrical association, the title need not be insisted on, as it can produce nothing but annoyance. With regard to the _Imperial service_, I think that point requires delicate handling, and not less so the solicitation for the title of _Imperial Kapellmeister_. It must, however, be made quite clear that I am to receive a sufficient salary from the Court to enable me to renounce the annuity which I at present receive from the gentlemen in question [the Archduke Rudolph, Prince Kinsky, and Prince Lobkowitz], which I think will be most suitably expressed by my stating that it is my hope, and has ever been my most ardent wish, to enter the Imperial service, when I shall be ready to give up as much of the above salary as the sum I am to receive from His Imperial Majesty amounts to. (N.B. We must have it to-morrow at twelve o'clock, as we go to Kinsky then. I hope to see you to-day.) [Footnote 1: This note, now first published, refers to the call Beethoven had received, mentioned in the previous No. The sketch of the memorial that follows is not, however, in Beethoven's writing, and perhaps not even composed by him [see also No. 46]. It is well known that the Archduke Rudolph, Prince Kinsky, and Prince Lobkowitz had secured to the _maestro_ a salary of 4000 gulden.] 49. The aim and endeavor of every true artist must be to acquire a position in which he can occupy himself exclusively with the accomplishment of great works, undisturbed by other avocations or by considerations of economy. A composer, therefore, can have no more ardent wish than to devote himself wholly to the creation of works of importance, to be produced before the public. He must also keep in view the prospect of old age, in order to make a sufficient provision for that period. The King of Westphalia has offered Beethoven a salary of 600 gold ducats for life, and 150 ducats for travelling expenses, in return for which his sole obligations are, occasionally to play before His Majesty, and to conduct his chamber concerts, which are both few and short. This proposal is of a most beneficial nature both to art and the artist. Beethoven, however, much prefers a residence in this capital, feeling so much gratitude for the many proofs of kindness he has received in it, and so much patriotism for his adopted father-land, that he will never cease to consider himself an Austrian artist, nor take up his abode elsewhere, if anything approaching to the same advantages are conferred on him here. As many persons of high, indeed of the very highest rank, have requested him to name the conditions on which he would be disposed to remain here, in compliance with their wish he states as follows:-- 1. Beethoven must receive from some influential nobleman security for a permanent salary for life: various persons of consideration might contribute to make up the amount of this salary, which, at the present increased price of all commodities, must not consist of less than 4000 florins _per annum_. Beethoven's wish is that the donors of this sum should be considered as cooperating in the production of his future great works, by thus enabling him to devote himself entirely to these labors, and by relieving him from all other occupations. 2. Beethoven must always retain the privilege of travelling in the interests of art, for in this way alone can he make himself known, and acquire some fortune. 3. His most ardent desire and eager wish is to be received into the Imperial service, when such an appointment would enable him partly or wholly to renounce the proposed salary. In the mean time the title of _Imperial Kapellmeister_ would be very gratifying to him; and if this wish could be realized, the value of his abode here would be much enhanced in his eyes. If his desire be fulfilled, and a salary granted by His Majesty to Beethoven, he will renounce so much of the said 4000 florins as the Imperial salary shall amount to; or if this appointment be 4000 florins, he will give up the whole of the former sum. 4. As Beethoven wishes from time to time to produce before the public at large his new great works, he desires an assurance from the present directors of the theatre on their part, and that of their successors, that they will authorize him to give a concert for his own benefit every year on Palm Sunday, in the Theatre "an der Wien." In return for which Beethoven agrees to arrange and direct an annual concert for the benefit of the poor, or, if this cannot be managed, at all events to furnish a new work of his own for such a concert. 50. TO ZMESKALL. December, 1808. MY EXCELLENT FRIEND,-- All would go well now if we had only a curtain, without it the _Aria_ ["Ah! Perfido"] _will be a failure_.[1] I only heard this to-day from S. [Seyfried], and it vexes me much: a curtain of any kind will do, even a bed-curtain, or merely a _kind of gauze screen_, which could be instantly removed. There must be something; for the Aria is in the _dramatic style_, and better adapted for the stage than for effect in a concert-room. _Without a curtain, or something of the sort, the Aria will be devoid of all meaning, and ruined! ruined! ruined!! Devil take it all!_ The Court will probably be present. Baron Schweitzer [Chamberlain of the Archduke Anton] requested me earnestly to make the application myself. Archduke Carl granted me an audience and promised to come. The Empress _neither promised nor refused_. A hanging curtain!!!! or the Aria and I will both be hanged to-morrow. Farewell! I embrace you as cordially on this new year as in the old one. _With or without a curtain!_ Your BEETHOVEN. [Footnote 1: Reichardt, in his _Vertraute Briefe_ relates among other things about the concert given by Beethoven in the Royal Theatre "an der Wien," Oct. 22, 1808, as follows:--"Poor Beethoven, who derived from this concert the first and only net profits which accrued to him during the whole year, met with great opposition and very slender support in arranging and carrying it out. First came the _Pastoral Symphony; or, Reminiscences of Rural Life_; then followed, as the sixth piece, a long Italian _scena_, sung by Demoiselle Killitzky, a lovely Bohemian with a lovely voice." The above note [to Zmeskall?] certainly refers to this concert.] 51. TO FERDINAND RIES.[1] 1809. MY DEAR FELLOW,-- Your friends have at any rate given you very bad advice; but I know all about them: they are the very same to whom you sent that fine news about me from Paris; the very same who inquired about my age--information that you contrived to supply so correctly!--the very same who have often before injured you in my opinion, but now permanently. Farewell! BEETHOVEN. [Footnote 1: Ries himself gives the date of this note as 1809, though he cannot recall what gave rise to it. It is probably connected with a fact mentioned by Wegeler, p. 95, that Reichardt, who was at that time in Vienna, had advised Beethoven's young pupil, Ries, to apply to the King of Westphalia for the appointment of Kapellmeister, which he had recently given up. This was reported to Beethoven, and roused his ire. Ries, too, had written from Paris that the taste in music there was very indifferent; that Beethoven's works were little known or played in that city. Beethoven was also very susceptible with regard to his age. At the request of some of Beethoven's friends, Ries, in 1806, obtained Beethoven's baptismal certificate, and sent it to Vienna. But the _maestro's_ wrath on this occasion passed away as quickly as usual.] 52. TO ZMESKALL.[1] March 7, 1809. It is just what I expected! As to the blows, that is rather far-fetched. The story is at least three months' old, and very different from what he now makes it out to be. The whole stupid affair was caused by a female huckster and a couple of low fellows. I lose very little. He no doubt was corrupted in the very house where I am now living. [Footnote 1: [See No. 10.] The notes to Zmeskall generally have the dates written by himself. This one bears the date March 7, 1809. In all points connected with domestic life, and especially in household matters and discords, Zmeskall was always a kind and consolatory friend. Beethoven at that time lived in the same house with Countess Erdödy. [See No. 74.]] 53. TO ZMESKALL. My most excellent, high, and well-born Herr v. Zmeskall, Court Secretary and Member of the Society of the Single Blessed,--If I come to see you to-day, ascribe it to the fact that a person wishes to speak to me at your house whom I could not refuse to see. I come without any _card_ from you, but I hope you will not on that account _discard_ me. Yours truly--most truly, L. V. BEETHOVEN. 54. TO ZMESKALL. It seems to me, dear Zmeskall, if war really does break out, when it comes to an end you will be the very man for an appointment in the Peace Legation. What a glorious office!!! I leave it entirely to you to do the best you can about my servant, only henceforth Countess Erdödy must not attempt to exercise the smallest influence over him. She says she made him a present of twenty-five florins, and gave him five florins a month, solely to induce him to stay with me. I cannot refuse to believe this trait of generosity, but I do not choose that it should be repeated. Farewell! I thank you for your friendship, and hope soon to see you. Yours ever, BEETHOVEN. 55. TO ZMESKALL.[1] April 16, 1809. If I cannot come to-day, dear Zmeskall which is very possible, ask Baroness von ---- [name illegible] to give you the pianoforte part of the Trios, and be so good as to send them and the other parts to me to-day. In haste, your BEETHOVEN. [Footnote 1: April 16, 1809. By the Terzetts he no doubt means the Trios, Op. 70, dedicated to Countess Erdödy.] 56. TO ZMESKALL. April 17, 1809. DEAR Z.,-- A suitable lodging has just been found out for me, but I need some one to help me in the affair. I cannot employ my brother, because he only recommends what costs least money. Let me know, therefore, if we can go together to look at the house. It is in the Klepperstall.[1] [Footnote 1: An der Mölker Bastei.] 57. TO ZMESKALL. April 25, 1809. I shall be glad, right glad, to play. I send you the violoncello part; if you find that you can manage it, play it yourself, or let old Kraft[1] do so. I will tell you about the lodging when we meet. Your friend, BEETHOVEN. [Footnote 1: Anton Kraft (and likewise his son, Nicolaus Kraft) was a most admirable violoncello-player, with whom Beethoven from the earliest days of his residence in Vienna had played a great deal at Prince Lichnowsky's. Kraft was at that time in Prince Lobkowitz's band.] 58. TO ZMESKALL.[1] May 14, 1809. MY DEAR LITTLE MUSICAL OLD COUNT!-- I think after all it would be advisable to let old Kraft play, as the trios are to be heard for the first time (in society), and you can play them afterwards; but I leave it all to your own option. If you meet with any difficulties, one of which may possibly be that Kraft and S. [Schuppanzigh] do not harmonize well together, then Herr v. Zmeskall must distinguish himself, not as a mere musical Count, but as an energetic musician. Your friend, BEETHOVEN. [Footnote 1: Kraft and Schuppanzigh were then each giving quartet _soirées_.] 59. TO FREIHERR V. HAMMER-PURGSTALL.[1] 1809. I feel almost ashamed of your complaisance and kindness in permitting me to see the MS. of your as yet unknown literary treasures. Pray receive my sincere thanks. I also beg to return both your operettas. Wholly engrossed by my professional avocations, it is impossible for me to give an opinion, especially with regard to the Indian Operetta; as soon as time permits, I will call on you for the purpose of discussing this subject, and also the Oratorio of "The Deluge." Pray always include me among the warm admirers of your great talents. I am, sir, with sincere esteem, your obedient BEETHOVEN. [Footnote 1: I see in Schindler's _Beethoven_, that he wished to have "an Indian Chorus of a religious character" from this renowned Orientalist, who, in sending his _Persian Operetta_, written "rather with an ideal than a musical object," and likewise an oratorio, _The Deluge_, remarks:--"Should you not find these works in all respects executed quite to your taste, still I feel convinced that through the genius of a Beethoven alone can music portray the rising of the great flood and the pacifying of the surging waters."] 60. TO FREIHERR V. HAMMER-PURGSTALL.[1] 1809. Forgive me, my dear H----, for not having brought you the letter for Paris. I have been, and still am, so much occupied, that day after day I am obliged to delay writing it, but you shall have it to-morrow, even if I am unable to come myself to see you, which I am most anxious to do. There is another matter that I would most earnestly press on you; perhaps you might succeed in doing something for a _poor unfortunate man_. I allude to Herr Stoll, son of the celebrated physician. With many persons the question is whether a man has been ruined by his own fault or by that of others, but this is not so with either you or me; it is sufficient that Stoll is unfortunate, and looks on a journey to Paris as his sole resource, having last year made many influential acquaintances, who, when he goes there, are to endeavor to procure him a professorship in Westphalia. Stoll has therefore applied to Herr v. Neumann, in the State Chancery Office, to send him with a government courier to Paris, but the latter refuses to take him for less than twenty-five louis d'or. Now I request you, my dear friend, to speak to Herr v. Neumann to arrange, if possible, that the courier should either take Stoll _gratis_, or for a small sum. I am persuaded that if there is nothing particular against it, you will be glad to interest yourself in poor Stoll. I return to the country to-day, but hope soon to be so fortunate as to enjoy an hour of your society. In the mean time I send you my best wishes, and beg you will believe in the sincere esteem of Your obedient LUDWIG v. BEETHOVEN. [Footnote 1: Reichardt states that Stoll was in Vienna in the spring of 1809, which fixes the date of this letter. Napoleon bestowed a pension on the young poet (who appears to have gone to Paris), mistaking him for his father, the celebrated physician.] 61. TO BARONESS VON DROSSDICK. MY ESTEEMED THÉRÈSE,-- You will receive with this what I promised. Had not many serious obstacles intervened, I would have sent you more, in order to show you that where my friends are concerned _I always perform more than I promise_. I hope, and do not doubt, that you are agreeably occupied and enjoying society, but not too much, I trust, to prevent your thinking of us. It would show too much confidence in you, or too high an estimation of my own merits, were I to attribute the sentiment to you, "That people are not together only when present, but that the absent and the dead also live with us." Who could ascribe such a thought to the volatile Thérèse, who takes the world so lightly? Among your various occupations, do not forget the piano, or rather, music in general, for which you have so fine a talent: why not then seriously cultivate it? You, who have so much feeling for the good and the beautiful, should strive to recognize the perfections of so charming an art, which in return always casts so bright a reflection on us. I live in entire quiet and solitude, and even though occasional flashes of light arouse me, still since you all left this I feel a hopeless void which even my art, usually so faithful to me, has not yet triumphed over. Your pianoforte is ordered, and you shall soon have it. What a difference you must have discovered between the treatment of the theme I extemporized on the other evening and the mode in which I have recently written it out for you? You must explain this yourself, only do not find the solution in the punch! How happy you are to get away so soon to the country! I cannot enjoy this luxury till the 8th. I look forward to it with the delight of a child. What happiness I shall feel in wandering among groves and woods, and among trees, and plants, and rocks! No man on earth can love the country as I do! Thickets, trees, and rocks supply the echo man longs for! You shall soon receive some more of my compositions, which will not cause you to complain so much of difficulties. Have you read Goethe's "Wilhelm Meister," and Schlegel's "Translations of Shakspeare"? People have so much leisure in the country, that perhaps you would like me to send you these works? It happens that I have an acquaintance in your neighborhood; so perhaps you may see me some morning early for half an hour, after which I must be off again. You will also observe that I intend to bore you for as short a time as possible.[1] Commend me to the regard of your father and mother, though I have as yet no right to claim it. Remember me also to your cousin M. [Mathilde]. Farewell, my esteemed Thérèse; I wish you all the good and charm that life can offer. Think of me kindly, and forget my follies. Rest assured that no one would more rejoice to hear of your happiness, even were you to feel no interest in your devoted servant and friend, BEETHOVEN. N.B. It would be very amiable in you to write me a few lines, to say if I can be of any use to you here. [Footnote 1: Herr v. Malfatti Rohrenbach, nephew of the renowned physician who was so prominent in Beethoven's last illness, lately related to me in Vienna as follows:--Beethoven went to pay a visit to young Frau Thérèse, Baroness Drossdick, at Mödling, but not finding her at home, he tore a sheet of music-paper out of a book, and wrote some music to a verse of Matthisson's, and on the other side, inscribed, in large letters, "To my dear Thérèse." The "Mathilde" mentioned farther on was, according to Bärmann, a Baroness Gleichenstein. [See No. 45.]] 62. À MDLLE. MDLLE. DE GERARDI.[1] DEAR MDLLE. G.,-- I cannot with truth deny that the verses you sent have considerably embarrassed me. It causes a strange sensation to see and hear yourself praised, and yet to be conscious of your own defects, as I am. I consider such occurrences as mere incitements to strive to draw nearer the unattainable goal set before us by Art and Nature, difficult as it may be. These verses are truly beautiful, with the exception of one fault that we often find in poets, which is, their being misled by Fancy to believe that they really do see and hear _what they wish to see and hear_, and yet even this is far below their ideal. You may well believe that I wish to become acquainted with the poet or poetess; pray receive also yourself my thanks for the kindly feeling you show towards your sincere friend, L. V. BEETHOVEN. [Footnote 1: Nothing has hitherto been ascertained respecting either the date of this note, or the lady to whom it is addressed.] 63. TO ZMESKALL.[1] January 23, 1810. What are you about? My gayety yesterday, though only assumed, has not only vexed but offended you. The _uninvited guests_ seemed so little to deserve your ill-humor, that I endeavored to use all my friendly influence to prevent your giving way to it, by my pretended flow of spirits. I am still suffering from indigestion. Say whether you can meet me at the "Swan" to-day. Your true friend, BEETHOVEN. [Footnote 1: The cause that gave rise to this note is not known.] 64. TO WEGELER. Vienna, May 2, 1810. MY DEAR OLD FRIEND,-- These lines may very possibly cause you some surprise, and yet, though you have no written proof of it, I always retain the most lively remembrance of you. Among my MSS. is one that has long been destined for you, and which you shall certainly receive this summer. For the last two years my secluded and quiet life has been at an end, and I have been forcibly drawn into the vortex of the world; though as yet I have attained no good result from this,--nay, perhaps rather the reverse,--but who has not been affected by the storms around us? Still I should not only be happy, but the happiest of men, if a demon had not taken up his settled abode in my ears. Had I not somewhere read that man must not voluntarily put an end to his life while he can still perform even one good deed, I should long since have been no more, and by my own hand too! Ah! how fair is life; but for me it is forever poisoned! You will not refuse me one friendly service, which is to procure me my baptismal certificate. As Steffen Breuning has an account with you, he can pay any expenses you may incur, and I will repay him here. If you think it worth while to make the inquiry in person, and choose to make a journey from Coblenz to Bonn, you have only to charge it all to me. I must, however, warn you that I had an _elder brother_ whose name was also Ludwig, with the second name of _Maria_, who died. In order to know my precise age, the date of my birth must be first ascertained, this circumstance having already led others into error, and caused me to be thought older than I really am. Unluckily, I lived for some time without myself knowing my age [see Nos. 26 and 51]. I had a book containing all family incidents, but it has been lost, Heaven knows how! So pardon my urgently requesting you to try to discover _Ludwig Maria's_ birth, as well as that of the present Ludwig. The sooner you can send me the certificate of baptism the more obliged shall I be.[1] I am told that you sing one of my songs in your Freemason Lodge, probably the one in E major, which I have not myself got; send it to me, and I promise to compensate you threefold and fourfold.[2] Think of me with kindness, little as I apparently deserve it. Embrace your dear wife and children, and all whom you love, in the name of your friend, BEETHOVEN. [Footnote 1: Wegeler says:--"I discovered the solution of the enigma (why the baptismal certificate was so eagerly sought) from a letter written to me three months afterwards by my brother-in-law, Stephan von Breuning, in which he said: 'Beethoven tells me at least once a week that he means to write to you; but I believe his _intended marriage is broken off_; he therefore feels no ardent inclination to thank you for having procured his baptismal certificate.'"] [Footnote 2: Beethoven was mistaken; Wegeler had only supplied other music to the words of Matthisson's _Opfer Lied_.] 65. TO ZMESKALL. July 9, 1810. DEAR Z.,-- You are about to travel, and so am I on account of my health. In the mean time all goes topsy-turvy with me. The _Herr_[1] wants to have me with him, and Art is not less urgent in her claims. I am partly in Schönbrunn and partly here; every day assailed by messages from strangers and new acquaintances, and even as regards art I am often driven nearly distracted by my undeserved fame. Fortune seeks me, and for that very reason I almost dread some new calamity. As for your "Iphigénie," the facts are these. I have not seen it for the last two years and a half, and have no doubt lent it to some one; but to whom?--that is the question. I have sent in all directions, and have not yet discovered it, but hope still to find it. If lost, you shall be indemnified. Farewell, my dear Z. I trust that when we meet again you will find that my art has made some progress in the interim. Ever remain my friend, as much as I am yours, BEETHOVEN. [Footnote 1: The "Herr" is his pupil, the Archduke Rudolph.] 66. TO BETTINA BRENTANO.[1] Vienna, August 11, 1810. MY DEAREST FRIEND,-- Never was there a lovelier spring than this year; I say so, and feel it too, because it was then I first knew you. You have yourself seen that in society I am like a fish on the sand, which writhes and writhes, but cannot get away till some benevolent Galatea casts it back into the mighty ocean. I was indeed fairly stranded, dearest friend, when surprised by you at a moment in which moroseness had entirely mastered me; but how quickly it vanished at your aspect! I was at once conscious that you came from another sphere than this absurd world, where, with the best inclinations, I cannot open my ears. I am a wretched creature, and yet I complain of others!! You will forgive this from the goodness of heart that beams in your eyes, and the good sense manifested by your ears; at least they understand how to flatter, by the mode in which they listen. My ears are, alas! a partition-wall, through which I can with difficulty hold any intercourse with my fellow-creatures. Otherwise, perhaps, I might have felt more assured with you; but I was only conscious of the full, intelligent glance from your eyes, which affected me so deeply that never can I forget it. My dear friend! dearest girl!--Art! who comprehends it? with whom can I discuss this mighty goddess? How precious to me were the few days when we talked together, or, I should rather say, corresponded! I have carefully preserved the little notes with your clever, charming, most charming answers; so I have to thank my defective hearing for the greater part of our fugitive intercourse being written down. Since you left this I have had some unhappy hours,--hours of the deepest gloom, when I could do nothing. I wandered for three hours in the Schönbrunn Allée after you left us, but no _angel_ met me there to take possession of me as you did. Pray forgive, my dear friend, this deviation from the original key, but I must have such intervals as a relief to my heart. You have no doubt written to Goethe about me? I would gladly bury my head in a sack, so that I might neither see nor hear what goes on in the world, because I shall meet you there no more; but I shall get a letter from you? Hope sustains me, as it does half the world; through life she has been my close companion, or what would have become of me? I send you "Kennst Du das Land," written with my own hand, as a remembrance of the hour when I first knew you; I send you also another that I composed since I bade you farewell, my dearest, fairest sweetheart! Herz, mein Herz, was soll das geben, Was bedränget dich so sehr; Welch ein neues fremdes Leben, Ich erkenne dich nicht mehr. Now answer me, my dearest friend, and say what is to become of me since my heart has turned such a rebel. Write to your most faithful friend, BEETHOVEN. [Footnote 1: The celebrated letters to Bettina are given here exactly as published in her book, _Ilius Pamphilius und die Ambrosia_ (Berlin, Arnim, 1857) in two volumes. I never myself had any doubts of their being genuine (with the exception of perhaps some words in the middle of the third letter), nor can any one now distrust them, especially after the publication of _Beethoven's Letters_. But for the sake of those for whom the weight of innate conviction is not sufficient proof, I may here mention that in December, 1864, Professor Moritz Carrière, in Munich, when conversing with me about _Beethoven's Letters_, expressly assured me that these three letters were genuine, and that he had seen them in Berlin at Bettina v. Arnim's in 1839, and read them most attentively and with the deepest interest. From their important contents, he urged their immediate publication; and when this shortly after ensued, no change whatever struck him as having been made in the original text; on the contrary, he still perfectly remembered that the much-disputed phraseology (and especially the incident with Goethe) was precisely the same as in the originals. This testimony seems to me the more weighty, as M. Carrière must not in such matters be looked on as a novice, but as a competent judge, who has carefully studied all that concerns our literary heroes, and who would not permit anything to be falsely imputed to Beethoven any more than to Goethe. Beethoven's biography is, however, the proper place to discuss more closely such things, especially his character and his conduct in this particular case. At present we only refer in general terms to the first chapter of _Beethoven's Jugend_, which gives all the facts connected with these letters to Bettina and the following ones--a characteristic likeness of Beethoven thus impressed itself on the mind of the biographer, and was reproduced in a few bold outlines in his _Biography_. These letters could not, however, possibly be given _in extenso_ in a general introduction to a comprehensive biography.] 67. TO BETTINA BRENTANO. Vienna, Feb. 10, 1811. DEAR AND BELOVED FRIEND,-- I have now received two letters from you, while those to Tonie show that you still remember me, and even too kindly. I carried your letter about with me the whole summer, and it often made me feel very happy; though I do not frequently write to you, and you never see me, still I write you letters by thousands in my thoughts. I can easily imagine what you feel at Berlin in witnessing all the noxious frivolity of the world's rabble,[1] even had you not written it to me yourself. Such prating about art, and yet no results!!! The best description of this is to be found in Schiller's poem "Die Flüsse," where the river Spree is supposed to speak. You are going to be married, my dear friend, or are already so, and I have had no chance of seeing you even once previously. May all the felicity that marriage ever bestowed on husband and wife attend you both! What can I say to you of myself? I can only exclaim with Johanna, "Compassionate my fate!" If I am spared for some years to come, I will thank the Omniscient, the Omnipotent, for the boon, as I do for all other weal and woe. If you mention me when you write to Goethe, strive to find words expressive of my deep reverence and admiration. I am about to write to him myself with regard to "Egmont," for which I have written some music solely from my love for his poetry, which always delights me. Who can be sufficiently grateful to a great poet,--the most precious jewel of a nation! Now no more, my dear sweet friend! I only came home this morning at four o'clock from an orgy, where I laughed heartily, but to-day I feel as if I could weep as sadly; turbulent pleasures always violently recoil on my spirits. As for Clemens [Brentano, her brother], pray thank him for his complaisance; with regard to the Cantata, the subject is not important enough for us here--it is very different in Berlin; and as for my affection, the sister engrosses so large a share, that little remains for the brother. Will he be content with this? Now farewell, my dear, dear friend; I imprint a sorrowful kiss on your forehead, thus impressing my thoughts on it as with a seal. Write soon, very soon, to your brother, BEETHOVEN. [Footnote 1: An expression which, as well as many others, he no doubt borrowed from Bettina, and introduced to please her.] 68. TO ZMESKALL. 1811. I am disposed to engage a man who has just offered me his services,--a music-copyist. His parents live in Vienna, which might be convenient in many respects, but I first wish to speak to you about the terms; and as you are disengaged to-morrow, which I, _alas_! am every day, I beg you will take coffee with me in the afternoon, when we can discuss the matter, and then proceed from _words to deeds_. We have also the honor to inform you that we intend shortly to confer on you some of the decorations of the Order of our Household,--the first class for yourself, the others for any one you choose, except a priest. We shall expect your answer early to-morrow. We now present you with some blotches of ink. Your BEETHOVEN. 69. TO ZMESKALL. 1811. MOST HIGH-BORN OF MEN!-- We beg you to confer some goose-quills on us; we will in return send you a whole bunch of the same sort, that you may not be obliged to pluck out your own. It is just possible that you may yet receive the Grand Cross of the Order of the Violoncello. We remain your gracious and most friendly of all friends, BEETHOVEN. 70. TO THE ARCHDUKE RUDOLPH.[1] The Spring of 1811. YOUR ROYAL HIGHNESS,-- As in spite of every effort I can find no copyist to write in my house, I send you my own manuscript; all you have to do is to desire Schlemmer to get you an efficient copyist, who must, however, write out the Trio in your palace, otherwise there would be no security against piracy. I am better, and hope to have the honor of waiting on you in the course of a few days, when we must strive to make up for lost time. I always feel anxious and uneasy when I do not attend your Royal Highness as often or as assiduously as I wish. It is certainly the truth when I say that the loss is mine, but I trust I shall not soon again be so unwell. Be graciously pleased to remember me; the time may yet come when I shall be able to show you doubly and trebly that I deserve this more than ever. I am your Royal Highness's devoted servant, LUDWIG V. BEETHOVEN. [Footnote 1: Schlemmer was for many years Beethoven's copyist.] 71. MY DEAR FRIEND,--[1] I have taken this trouble only that I might figure correctly, and thus be able sometimes to lead others. As for mistakes, I scarcely ever required to have them pointed out to me, having had from my childhood such a quick perception, that I exercised it unconscious that it ought to be so, or in fact could be otherwise. [Footnote 1: Written on a sheet of music-paper (oblong folio) numbered 22, and evidently torn out of a large book. On the other side (21) is written, in Beethoven's hand, instructions on the use of the fourth in retardations, with five musical examples. The leaf is no doubt torn from one of the books that Beethoven had compiled from various text-books, for the instruction of the Archduke Rudolph. I have therefore placed Beethoven's remark here.] 72. TO THE DRAMATIC POET TREITSCHKE. June 6, 1811. DEAR TREITSCHKE,-- Have you read the book, and may I venture to hope that you will be persuaded to undertake it? Be so good as to give me an answer, as I am prevented going to you myself. If you have already read it, then send it back to me, that I may also look over it again before you begin to work at it. Above all, if it be your good pleasure that I should soar to the skies on the wings of your poetry, I entreat you to effect this as soon as possible. Your obedient servant, L. V. BEETHOVEN. 73. TO ZMESKALL. Sept. 10, 1811. DEAR ZMESKALL,-- Let the rehearsal stand over for the present. I must see my doctor again to-day, of whose bungling I begin to tire. Thanks for your metronome; let us try whether we can measure Time into Eternity with it, for it is so _simple_ and _easily managed_ that there seems to be no impediment to this! In the mean time we will have a conference on the subject. The mathematical precision of clockwork is of course greater; yet formerly, in watching the little experiments you made in my presence, I thought there was something worthy of notice in your metronome, and I hope we shall soon succeed in _setting it thoroughly right_. Ere long I hope to see you. Your friend, BEETHOVEN. 74. TO ZMESKALL. Oct. 26, 1811. I shall be at the "Swan" to-day, and hope to meet you there _to a certainty_, but don't come too late. My foot is better; the author of so many poetical _feet_ promises the _head_ author a sound foot within a week's time. 75. TO ZMESKALL. Nov. 20, 1811. We are deucedly obliged to you. We beg you to be careful not to lose your well-earned fame. You are exhorted to pursue the same course, and we remain once more your deucedly attached LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN. 76. TO ZMESKALL. Jan. 19, 1812. I shall be at the "Swan" to-day, dear Z. I have, alas! _too much_ leisure, and you _none_! Your BEETHOVEN. 77. TO ZMESKALL.[1] 1812. CONFOUNDED LITTLE QUONDAM MUSICAL COUNT! What the deuce has become of you? Are you to be at the "Swan" to-day? No? ... Yes! See from this enclosure what I have done for Hungary. When a German undertakes a thing, even without pledging his word, he acts very differently from one of those Hungarian Counts, such as B. [Brunswick], who allowed me to travel by myself--from what paltry, miserable motive who can tell?--and kept me waiting, though he did not wait for me! My excellent little quondam musical Count, I am now, as ever, your attached BEETHÖVERL. Return the enclosure, for we wish to bring it, and something else, pretty forcibly under the notice of the Count. [Footnote 1: The date of this and the following note is decided by the allusion to his compositions written for Hungary (Pesth). See the subsequent letter to Varenna.] 78. TO ZMESKALL. You are summoned to appear to-day at the "Swan;" Brunswick also comes. If you do not appear, you are henceforth excluded from all that concerns us. Excuses _per excellentiam_ cannot be accepted. Obedience is enjoined, knowing that we are acting for your benefit, and that our motive is to guard you against temptations and faithlessness _per excellentiam--dixi_. BEETHOVEN. 79. TO ZMESKALL. DEAR ZMESKALL,-- The well-known watchmaker who lives close to the Freiung is to call on you. I want a first-rate repeater, for which he asks forty ducats. As you like that kind of thing, I beg you will exert yourself on my behalf, and select a really good watch for me. With the most enthusiastic admiration for a man like yourself, who is soon to give me an opportunity of displaying in his favor my particular knowledge of horn-playing, I am your LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN. 80. TO KAMMERPROCURATOR VARENNA,--GRATZ.[1] 1812. If the wish to benefit the poor were not so evident in your letter, I should have felt not a little offended by your accompanying your request to me by the offer of payment. From my childhood, whenever my art could be serviceable to poor suffering humanity, I have never allowed any other motive to influence me, and never required anything beyond the heartfelt gratification that it always caused me. With this you will receive an Oratorio--(A), the performance of which occupies half an evening, also an Overture and a Fantasia with Chorus--(B). If in your benevolent institution you possess a _dépôt_ for such things, I beg you will deposit these three works there, as a mark of my sympathy for the destitute; to be considered as their property, and to be given at any concerts intended for their sole benefit. In addition to these, you will receive an Introduction to the "Ruins of Athens," the score of which shall be written out for you as soon as possible. Likewise a Grand Overture to "Ungarn's erste Wohlthäter" [Hungary's First Benefactors]. Both form part of two works that I wrote for the Hungarians at the opening of their new theatre [in Pesth]. Pray give me, however, your written assurance that these works shall not be performed elsewhere, as they are not published, nor likely to be so for some time to come. You shall receive the latter Grand Overture as soon as it is returned to me from Hungary, which it will be in the course of a few days. The engraved Fantasia with Chorus could no doubt be executed by a lady, an amateur, mentioned to me here by Professor Schneller.[2] The words after the Chorus No. 4, in C major, were altered by the publishers, and are now quite contrary to the musical expression; those written in _pencil_, therefore, on the music must be sung. If you can make use of the Oratorio, I can send you _all the parts written out_, so that the outlay may be less for the poor. Write to me about this. Your obedient LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN. [Footnote 1: The correspondence with Varenna, consisting of fourteen letters and four notes, was purchased some years ago by a collector of autographs in Leipzig, and sold again by public auction, probably to different persons. It would be like pursuing leaves scattered by the wind to try to recover these letters. Those here given have for the most part appeared in newspapers; I cannot, therefore, be responsible for the text, farther than their publication goes, which, however, has evidently been conducted by a clever hand. The date of the first letter is to be gleaned from the second, and we also learn from them that _The Ruins of Athens_ and _King Stephen_ (or at all events the Overture) were already finished in January, 1812.] [Footnote 2: This _dilettante_ was Mdlle. Marie Koschak, subsequently the wife of Dr. Pachler, an advocate in Gratz, from whom two letters are given by Schindler of the dates of August 15th, 1825, and November 5th, 1826, in which she invites Beethoven to visit her in Gratz. Schindler considers as applicable to this lady the words of a note in Beethoven's writing of which he has given a fac-simile in his _Biography_, I. 95; the date 1817 or 1818. They are as follows:--"Love alone, yes! love alone can make your life happier. O God! grant that I may at last find her who can strengthen me in virtue, whom I can legitimately call my own. On July 27th, when she drove past me in Baden, she seemed to gaze at me." This lady also plays a friendly part in Franz Schubert's _Life_. See her _Biography_ by Dr. Kreissle.] 81. TO ZMESKALL. Feb. 2, 1812. By no means _extraordinary_, but _very ordinary_ mender of pens! whose talent has failed on this occasion (for those I send require to be fresh mended), when do you intend at last to cast off your fetters?--when? You never for a moment think of me; accursed to me is life amid this Austrian barbarism. I shall go now chiefly to the "Swan," as in other taverns I cannot defend myself against intrusion. Farewell! that is, _fare as well_ as I wish you to do without Your friend, BEETHOVEN. Most wonderful of men! We beg that your servant will engage a person to fit up my apartment; as he is acquainted with the lodgings, he can fix the proper price at once. Do this soon, you Carnival scamp!!!!!!! The enclosed note is at least a week old. 82. TO ZMESKALL. Feb. 8, 1812. Most extraordinary and first and foremost man of the pendulum in the world, and without a lever too!!! I am much indebted to you for having imparted to me some share of your motive power. I wish to express my gratitude in person, and therefore invite you this morning to come to the "Swan,"--a tavern, the name of which itself shows that it is a fitting place when such a subject is in question, Yours ever, BEETHOVEN. 83. TO VARENNA,--GRATZ. Vienna, Feb. 8, 1812. Herr Rettich has already got the parts of the Oratorio, and when you no longer require them I beg you will send them back to me. It is not probable that anything is wanting, but even in that case, as you have the score, you can easily remedy this. I only yesterday received the Overtures from Hungary, and shall have them copied and forwarded to you as soon as possible. I likewise send a March with a vocal Chorus, also from the "Ruins of Athens." Altogether you will now have sufficient to fill up the time. As these pieces are only in manuscript, I shall let you know at the time I send them what precautions I wish you to take with regard to the Overtures and the March with Chorus. As I do not publish any new work until a year after its composition, and, when I do so, am obliged invariably to give a written assurance to the publisher that no one is in possession of it, you can yourself perceive that I must carefully guard against any possible contingency or casualty as to these pieces. I must, however, assure you that I shall always be disposed to show the warmest zeal in aid of your charity, and I here pledge myself to send you every year works that exist solely in manuscript, or compositions written expressly for this charitable purpose. I beg you will also let me know what your future plans are with regard to your institution, that I may act accordingly. Farewell! I remain, with the highest consideration, Your obedient LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN. 84. TO ZMESKALL.[1] Feb. 19, 1812. DEAR Z.,-- I only yesterday received the written information that the Archduke pays his share in the new paper-money of the full value [_Einlösungsschein_]. I beg you will write out for me, as nearly as you can, the substance of what you said on Sunday, and which we thought it advisable to send to the other two. I am offered a certificate that the Archduke is to pay in _Einlösungsschein_, but I think this unnecessary, more especially as the people about Court, in spite of all their apparent friendship for me, declare that my demands are _not just_!!!! O Heaven! aid me in enduring this! I am no Hercules, to help Atlas in carrying the world, or to strive to do so in his place. It was only yesterday that I heard the particulars of the handsome manner in which Baron von Kraft had judged and spoken of me to Zisius! But never mind, dear Z.! My endurance of these shameful attacks cannot continue much longer; persecuted art will everywhere find an asylum--Daedalus, though imprisoned in a labyrinth, found wings to carry him aloft. Oh! I too shall find wings! Yours ever, BEETHOVEN. If you have time, send me this morning the draft of the memorial;--probably for nothing, and to receive nothing! so much time is already lost, and only to be kept in suspense by civil words! [Footnote 1: The Finance Patent appeared in Austria in 1811, by which the value of money was depreciated by a fifth. This also affected the salary that Beethoven drew from the Archduke Rudolph, Prince Kinsky, and Prince Lobkowitz. The first of these gentlemen paid his full share in _Einlösungsschein_. Lobkowitz, at the request of Beethoven, soon after did the same; with Kinsky's share alone difficulties arose subsequently, owing to his death.] 85. TO VARENNA. Lent, 1812. In spite of my anxiety to serve the cause of your charity, I have been quite unable to do so. I have no copyist of my own to write for me as formerly, and the limited time renders it impossible for me to do so myself; thus I am obliged to have recourse to strangers as copyists. One of these promised to write out the Overtures, &c., &c., for you; but Passion Week intervening, when there are so many concerts, prevented his being able to keep his word, in spite of every effort on my part. Even if the Overtures and the March with Chorus were transcribed, it would not be possible to send them by this post, and if we wait for the next, the music will arrive too late for Easter Sunday. Let me know if there are any means you could adopt to gain a little more time, or any chance opportunity of sending these works to you, and I will do all that lies in my power to aid the cause of your charity. I am, with esteem, yours obediently, LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN. 86. TO THE ARCHDUKE RUDOLPH.[1] 1812. YOUR IMPERIAL HIGHNESS,-- I was much vexed not to receive Y.I.H.'s message to come to you till very late yesterday evening--indeed nearly at eleven o'clock. Contrary to my usual custom, I did not go home at all during the afternoon, the fine weather having tempted me to spend the whole afternoon in walking, and the evening at the Banda, "auf der Wieden," and thus I was not aware of your wish till I returned home. In the mean time, whenever Y.I.H. desires it, I am ready at any hour or moment to place myself at your disposal. I therefore await your gracious commands. I am your Imperial Highness's most obedient LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN. [Footnote 1: The date 1812 is marked on the sheet by another hand, and the close of the second note proves that it was at the commencement of this year.] 87. TO THE ARCHDUKE RUDOLPH. 1812. YOUR IMPERIAL HIGHNESS,-- I was unable till to-day, when I leave my bed for the first time, to answer your gracious letter. It will be impossible for me to wait on you to-morrow, but perhaps the day after. I have suffered much during the last few days, and I may say two-fold from not being in a condition to devote a great part of my time to you, according to my heartfelt wish. I hope now, however, to have cleared off all scores for spring and summer (I mean as to health). I am your Imperial Highness's most obedient servant, LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN. 88. TO VARENNA,--GRATZ. Vienna, May 8, 1812. SIR,-- Being still far from well, and much occupied, I have been unable to reply to your letters. How in the world did such an unfounded idea ever occur to you as that I was displeased? It would certainly have been better had you returned the music as soon as it had been performed; for at that period I could have produced it here, whereas now, unluckily, it comes too late; but I only say _unluckily_ because it prevents my being able to spare the worthy ladies the expenses of copying. At any other time I would on no account have allowed them to pay for writing out the works, but it so happens that at this moment I am visited with every kind of _contretemps_, so I cannot avoid doing so. Possibly Herr O., although with the best intentions, has delayed informing you of this, which obliged me to apply to him for repayment of the expenses of copying; perhaps, too, in my haste, I did not express myself distinctly. You can now, esteemed sir, have the Overture and the Chorus again if you require them. I feel convinced that in any event you will prevent my confidence being abused; in the mean time you may keep the Overture on the conditions I have stated. If I find that I am able to pay for the copying, I will redeem it for my own use. The score of the Oratorio is a gift, and also the Overture to "Egmont." Keep the parts of the Oratorio beside you till you can have it performed. Select whatever you choose for the concert which I hear you now intend to give, and if you decide on the Chorus and the Overture, they shall be forwarded to you at once. For the future concert, for the benefit of the venerable Ursulines, I promise you an entirely new symphony at all events, and perhaps also a work of some importance for voices, and as I have now a favorable opportunity, the copying shall not cost you a farthing. My joy would be beyond all bounds if the concert were to be successful, and I could spare you all expense;--at all events, take my good-will for granted. Remember me to the admirable teachers of the children, and say to them that I shed tears of joy at the happy result of my poor good-will, and that so far as my humble capabilities can serve them, they shall always find in me the warmest sympathy. My cordial thanks for your invitation; I would fain become acquainted with the interesting scenery of Styria, and possibly I may one day enjoy that pleasure. Farewell! I heartily rejoice in having found in you a friend to the poor and needy, and am always yours to command. LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN, M.P. 89. TO JOSEPH FREIHERR VON SCHWEIGER, CHAMBERLAIN OF THE ARCHDUKE RUDOLPH.[1] 1812. The most insignificant of mortals has just been to wait on his gracious master, when he found everything closed; so he came here, where indeed all was _open_, but no one to be found except the trusty servant. I had a heavy packet of music with me, in order to ensure a good musical evening before we parted; but in vain. Malfatti[2] is resolved that I shall go to Töplitz, which is anything but agreeable to me. As, however, I must obey, I hope at least that my gracious master will not enjoy himself quite so much without me. _O vanitas!_ for it is nothing else. Before I set off for Töplitz I will either go to Baden to see you or write. Farewell! Pray present my homage to my gracious master, and continue your regard for Your friend, [K.] BEETHOVEN. [Footnote 1: The journey to Töplitz took place in the year 1812.] [Footnote 2: A very celebrated physician in Vienna at that time, consulted by Beethoven.] 90. TO VARENNA,--GRATZ. Töplitz, July 19, 1812. My thanks have been too long delayed for all the dainties which the worthy ladies sent for my enjoyment; being constantly ill in Vienna, I was at last forced to take refuge here. However, better late than never; so I beg you will say all sorts of kind things in my name to the admirable Ursuline ladies, though I did not deserve so much gratitude; indeed it is rather for me to thank Him who enables me to render my art occasionally useful to others. When you next wish to make use of my poor abilities for the benefit of the venerable ladies, you have only to write to me. A new symphony is now ready for you, and as the Archduke Rudolph has had it copied out, it will cost you nothing. Perhaps I may one of these days be able to send you something vocal. I only wish and hope that you will not ascribe my anxiety to serve these venerable ladies to a certain degree of vanity or desire for fame, as this would grieve me exceedingly. If these good ladies wish to do me any service in return, I beg they will include me with their pupils in their pious orisons. I remain, with esteem, Your friend, LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN. I shall remain here for some weeks; so if there is any occasion to write, address to me here. 91. WRITTEN IN THE ALBUM OF THE SINGER, MDME. AUGUSTE SEBALD. Töplitz, August 8, 1812. LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN, Who even if you would, Forget you never should. 92. TO H.R. HIGHNESS THE ARCHDUKE RUDOLPH. Franzensbrunn, Aug. 12, 1812. It was my bounden duty long ago to have recalled myself to Y.R.H.'s recollection, but partly my occupations and the state of my health, as well as my own insignificance, made me reluctant to do so. I missed Y.R.H. by one night only in Prague; for when proceeding to pay my respects to you in the morning, I found you had set off the very night before. In Töplitz I heard a military band four times a day,--the only musical report which I can give you. I was a great deal with Goethe.[1] My physician Staudenheim, however, ordered me off to Carlsbad,[2] and from thence here, and probably I shall have to go back to Töplitz from this. What flights! And yet it seems very doubtful whether any improvement in my condition has hitherto taken place. I receive the best accounts of Y.R.H.'s health, and also of the persistent devotion you exhibit towards the musical Muse. Y.R.H. has no doubt heard of a concert that I gave for the benefit of the sufferers by fire in the Stadt Baden,[3] assisted by Herr Polledro.[4] The receipts were nearly 1000 florins W.W., and if I had not been restricted in my arrangements we might easily have taken 2000 florins. It was literally a _poor concert for the poor_. I could only find at the publisher's here some of my earlier sonatas with violin accompaniments, and as Polledro had set his heart on these, I was obliged to content myself with playing an old Sonata.[5] The entire concert consisted of a trio, in which Polledro played, my Sonata with violin, then again something was played by Polledro, and, lastly, I extemporized. Meanwhile I do sincerely rejoice that by this means something has fallen to the share of the poor _Badeners_. Pray deign to accept my best wishes for your welfare, and my entreaty that you will sometimes think of me. [K.] [Footnote 1: Beethoven speaks very briefly of his meeting with Goethe. Goethe in his _Tag- und Jahrschriften_ of 1812 makes no allusion to Beethoven during his stay at Töplitz. It does not, therefore, appear that either of these master-minds found any particular pleasure in each other when they met personally. Beethoven, indeed, dedicated to "the immortal Goethe" (1812) his composition the _Meeresstille und glückliche Fahrt_, but only wrote once to him in 1823 to obtain a subscription from the Grand Duke of Weimar for his Grand Mass, and received no answer from Goethe. In the complete edition of Goethe's works Beethoven's name is only once mentioned by Goethe, when he refers to his funeral obsequies.] [Footnote 2: Dr. Staudenheim was, like Malfatti, one of the most celebrated physicians in Vienna. Beethoven, too, was well acquainted with Staudenheim, but in his regimen he neither followed the prescriptions of Staudenheim nor of Malfatti.] [Footnote 3: The Stadt Baden, near Vienna, had been visited on July 16th by a most destructive conflagration.] [Footnote 4: Giov. Batt. Polledro, Kapellmeister in Turin, born 1776, travelled through Germany as a violinist from 1809 to 1812. He gave a concert in Vienna in March, 1812.] [Footnote 5: The violin Sonata with pianoforte was probably Op. 47 (composed in 1803 and published in 1805, according to Thayer, No. 111), or one of his earlier compositions, Op. 30, or 24, or 23.] 93. TO BETTINA VON ARNIM. Töplitz, August 15, 1812. MY MOST DEAR KIND FRIEND,-- Kings and princes can indeed create professors and privy-councillors, and confer titles and decorations, but they cannot make great men,--spirits that soar above the base turmoil of this world. There their powers fail, and this it is that forces them to respect us.[1] When two persons like Goethe and myself meet, these grandees cannot fail to perceive what such as we consider great. Yesterday, on our way home, we met the whole Imperial family; we saw them coming some way off, when Goethe withdrew his arm from mine, in order to stand aside; and, say what I would, I could not prevail on him to make another step in advance. I pressed down my hat more firmly on my head, buttoned up my great-coat, and, crossing my arms behind me, I made my way through the thickest portion of the crowd. Princes and courtiers formed a lane for me; Archduke Rudolph took off his hat, and the Empress bowed to me first. These great ones of the earth _know me_. To my infinite amusement, I saw the procession defile past Goethe, who stood aside with his hat off, bowing profoundly. I afterwards took him sharply to task for this; I gave him no quarter, and upbraided him with all his sins, especially towards you, my dear friend, as we had just been speaking of you. Heavens! if I could have lived with you as _he_ did, believe me I should have produced far greater things. A musician is also a poet, he too can feel himself transported into a brighter world by a pair of fine eyes, where loftier spirits sport with him and impose heavy tasks on him. What thoughts rushed into my mind when I first saw you in the Observatory during a refreshing May shower, so fertilizing to me also![2] The most beautiful themes stole from your eyes into my heart, which shall yet enchant the world when Beethoven no longer _directs_. If God vouchsafes to grant me a few more years of life, I must then see you once more, my dear, most dear friend, for the voice within, to which I always listen, demands this. Spirits may love one another, and I shall ever woo yours. Your approval is dearer to me than all else in the world. I told Goethe my sentiments as to the influence praise has over men like us, and that we desire our equals to listen to us with their understanding. Emotion suits women only; (forgive me!) music ought to strike fire from the soul of a man. Ah! my dear girl, how long have our feelings been identical on all points!!! The sole real good is some bright kindly spirit to sympathize with us, whom we thoroughly comprehend, and from whom we need not hide our thoughts. _He who wishes to appear something, must in reality be something._ The world must acknowledge us, it is not always unjust; but for this I care not, having a higher purpose in view. I hope to get a letter from you in Vienna; write to me soon and fully, for a week hence I shall be there. The Court leaves this to-morrow, and to-day they have another performance. The Empress has studied her part thoroughly. The Emperor and the Duke wished me to play some of my own music, but I refused, for they are both infatuated with _Chinese porcelain_. A little indulgence is required, for reason seems to have lost its empire; but I do not choose to minister to such perverse folly--I will not be a party to such absurd doings to please those princes who are constantly guilty of eccentricities of this sort. Adieu! adieu! dear one; your letter lay all night next my heart, and cheered me. Musicians permit themselves great license. _Heavens! how I love you!_ Your most faithful friend and deaf brother, BEETHOVEN. [Footnote 1: Fräulein Giannatasio del Rio, in the journal she sent to the _Grenz Boten_ in 1857, states that Beethoven once declared, "It is very pleasant to associate with the great of the earth, but one must possess some quality which inspires them with respect."] [Footnote 2: According to Bettina (see _Goethe's Correspondence with a Child_, II. 193), their first acquaintance was made in Beethoven's apartments.] 94. TO PRINCESS KINSKY,--PRAGUE Vienna, Dec. 30, 1812. YOUR HIGHNESS,-- The dreadful event which deprived you of your husband, Prince von Kinsky, snatching him from his father-land and from all those who love him,[1] as well as from many whom he generously supported, filling every heart capable of appreciating goodness and greatness with the deepest sorrow, affected me also in the most profound and painful degree. The stern duty of self-interest compels me to lay before your Highness a humble petition, the reasonable purport of which may, I hope, plead my excuse for intruding on your Highness at a time when so many affairs of importance claim your attention. Permit me to state the matter to your Highness. Y.H. is no doubt aware that when I received a summons to Westphalia in the year 1809, his Highness Prince von Kinsky, your late husband, together with his I.H. Archduke Rudolph and H.H. the Prince von Lobkowitz, offered to settle on me for life an annual income of 4000 gulden, provided I declined the proposal in question, and determined to remain in Austria. Although this sum was by no means in proportion to that secured to me in Westphalia, still my predilection for Austria, as well as my sense of this most generous proposal, induced me to accept it without hesitation. The share contributed by H.H. Prince Kinsky consisted of 1800 florins, which I have received by quarterly instalments since 1809 from the Prince's privy purse. Though subsequent occurrences partially diminished this sum, I rested satisfied, till the appearance of the Finance Patent, reducing bank-notes into _Einlösung Schein_. I applied to H.I.H. the Archduke Rudolph to request that the portion of the annuity contributed by H.I.H. should in future be paid in _Einlösung Schein_. This was at once granted, and I received a written assurance to that effect from H.I.H. Prince von Lobkowitz agreed to the same with regard to his share,--700 florins [see No. 84]. H.H. Prince von Kinsky being at that time in Prague, I addressed my respectful petition to him last May, through Herr Varnhagen von Ense, an officer in the Vogelsang Regiment, that his Highness's contribution to my salary--1800 florins--should be paid like the rest in _Einlösung Schein_. Herr von Varnhagen wrote as follows, and the original of the letter is still extant:-- "I had yesterday the desired interview with Prince Kinsky. With the highest praise of Beethoven, he at once acceded to his demand, and is prepared to pay up the arrears, and also all future sums from the date of the _Einlösung Schein_, in that currency. The cashier here has received the necessary instructions, and Beethoven can draw for the whole sum on his way through Prague, or, if he prefers it, in Vienna, as soon as the Prince returns there. "Prague, June 9, 1812." When passing through Prague some weeks afterwards, I took the opportunity of waiting on the Prince, and received from him the fullest confirmation of this promise. H.H. likewise assured me that he entirely admitted the propriety of my demand, and considered it quite reasonable. As I could not remain in Prague till this affair was finally settled, H.H. was so kind as to make me a payment of sixty ducats on account, which, according to H.H.'s calculation, were good for 600 florins Vienna currency. The arrears were to be paid up on my return to Vienna, and an order given to the cashier to pay my salary in future in _Einlösung Schein_. Such was H.H.'s pleasure. My illness increasing in Töplitz, I was obliged to remain there longer than I originally intended. In the month of September I therefore addressed to H.H., who was then in Vienna, through one of my friends here, Herr Oliva, a written memorial, claiming his promise, when H.H. graciously repeated to this friend the assurance he had already given me, adding that in the course of a few days he would give the necessary instructions on the subject to his cashier. A short time afterwards he left Vienna. When I arrived there, I inquired from the Prince's secretary whether H.H. had given directions about my salary before leaving Vienna, when, to my surprise, I was told that H.H. had done nothing in the matter. My title to the liquidation of my claim is proved by the testimony of the Herren von Varnhagen and Oliva, to whom H.H. spoke on the subject, reiterating his consent. I feel convinced that the illustrious heirs and family of this prince will in the same spirit of benevolence and generosity strive to fulfil his intentions. I therefore confidently place in Y.H.'s hands my respectful petition, viz., "to pay up the arrears of my salary in _Einlösung Schein_, and to instruct your cashier to transmit me the amount in future, in the same currency." Relying on your sense of justice according me a favorable decision, I remain Y.H.'s Most obedient servant, LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN. [Footnote 1: Prince Josef Ferdinand Kinsky, born December, 1781, and killed by a fall from his horse, November 3, 1812.] 95. TO THE ARCHDUKE RUDOLPH. 1813.[1] I have been far from well since last Sunday, but have suffered more in mind than in body. I beg your forgiveness a thousand times for not having sooner sent my apologies; each day I had the strongest inclination to wait on you, but Heaven knows that in spite of the best will that I always entertain for the best of masters I was unable to do so, distressing as it is to me not to have it in my power to sacrifice all to him for whom I cherish the highest esteem, love, and veneration. Y.R.H. would perhaps act wisely in making a pause at present with the Lobkowitz concerts; even the most brilliant talent may lose its effect by too great familiarity. [K.] [Footnote 1: Prince Franz Josef Lobkowitz died December 25th, 1816. His musical meetings were certainly continued till 1813, or longer.] 96. TO THE ARCHDUKE RUDOLPH. 1813.[1] At early dawn to-morrow the copyist shall begin the last movement. As I am in the mean time writing several other works, I did not hurry myself much with this last movement merely for the sake of punctuality, especially as I must write this more deliberately, with a view to Rode's[2] playing; we like quick, full-toned passages in our _Finales_, which do not suit R., and this rather cramps me. At all events, all is sure to go well next Tuesday. I very much doubt whether I shall be able to present myself at Y.R.H.'s on that evening, in spite of my zeal in your service; but to make up for this, I mean to come to you to-morrow forenoon and to-morrow afternoon, that I may entirely fulfil the wishes of my illustrious pupil. [K.] [Footnote 1: 1813. January-February.] [Footnote 2: Pierre Rode, the violinist, arrived in Vienna in January, 1813, and gave a concert in the Redoutensaal on February 6th, but did not give universal satisfaction (_A.M.Z._, 1813, p. 114), and a second concert that he had projected does not appear to have taken place. He played in Gratz on February 20th and 27th. It seems that Rode was to play with Beethoven at the Archduke Rudolph's, for which occasion Beethoven prepared a composition for them both. Was this the Sonata for pianoforte and violin, Op. 36, which he afterwards dedicated to the Archduke? Thayer states that it was written by Beethoven in 1810, and sold to the music-publisher Steiner in Vienna in April, 1815. No other composition for the violin and pianoforte is so likely to be the one as this. It is, however, a mistake in the _Bibliothèque Universelle_, tome xxxvi. p. 210, to state that Beethoven during Rode's stay in Vienna composed the "délicieuse Romance" which was played with so much expression by De Baillot on the violin. There are only two Romances known for the violin by Beethoven, the one in G major, Op. 40, in the year 1803, and the second in F major, Op. 50, published in 1805. (Thayer, 102 and 104.)] 97. TO THE ARCHDUKE RUDOLPH. 1813. I had just gone out yesterday when your gracious letter reached me. As for my health, it is pretty much the same, particularly as moral causes affect it, which do not seem likely to be removed; particularly as I can have recourse to no one but myself for aid, and can find help in my own head alone; and more particularly still, because in these days neither words, nor honor, nor written pledges, seem binding on any one. As for my occupations, I have come to an end with some of them, and, even without your gracious invitation, I intended to appear at the usual hour to-day. With regard to Rode [see No. 96], I beg Y.R.H. to be so good as to let me have the part by the bearer of this, and I will send it to him at once, with a polite note from me. _He certainly will not take amiss my sending him the part. Oh! certainly not! Would to Heaven that I were obliged to ask his forgiveness on this account! for in that case things would really be in a better position._ Is it your pleasure that I should come to you this evening at five o'clock as usual, or does Y.R.H. desire another hour? I shall endeavor to arrange accordingly, and punctually to fulfil your wishes. [K.] 98. TO PRINCESS KINSKY. Vienna, Feb. 12, 1813. YOUR HIGHNESS!-- You were so gracious as to declare with regard to the salary settled on me by your deceased husband, that you saw the propriety of my receiving it in Vienna currency, but that the authority of the court of law which has assumed the guardianship of the estate must first be obtained. Under the conviction that the authorities who represent their princely wards could not fail to be influenced by the same motives that actuated the late Prince in his conduct towards me, I think I am justified in expecting the ratification of my claim from the aforesaid court, as I can prove, by the testimony of well-known, respectable, and upright men, the promise and intentions of H.H. in my behalf, which cannot fail to be binding on his heirs and children. If, therefore, the proofs submitted should even be found deficient in legal formality, I cannot doubt that this want will be supplied by the noble mode of thinking of this illustrious house, and by their own inclination to generous actions. Possibly another question may at present arise from the condition of the inheritance, which is no doubt heavily burdened, both owing to the melancholy and sudden death of the late Prince, and by the state of the times, which renders it equally just and indispensable to husband carefully all possible resources. On this account it is far from my wish to claim more than is absolutely necessary for my own livelihood, and grounded on the contract itself,--the legality of such a claim on the heirs of the late Prince not being in any way disputed. I beg, then, that Y.H. will be pleased to direct the arrears of my salary, due since the 1st September, 1811, calculated in Vienna currency, in accordance with the scale of the contract, making in W.W. 1088 florins 42 kreuzers, to be paid, and _in the interim_, the question whether this salary ought to be paid in Vienna currency can be deferred until the affairs are settled, when the subject is again brought before the trustees, and my claims admitted to be just by their consent and authority. The late Prince having given me sixty ducats merely on account of my salary, which was to be paid by agreement in Vienna currency, and as this agreement (as every intelligent man will inform Y.H.) must be accepted to its full extent, or at all events not cause me loss, it follows as a matter of course that Y.H. will not object to my considering the sixty ducats as only an instalment of the arrears due to me beyond the usual scale of payment, agreed to be paid in Vienna currency, so that the amount must not be deducted from the sum still due to me. I feel sure that Y.H.'s noble feelings will do justice to the equity of my proposal, and my wish to enter into every detail of this affair, so far as circumstances permit, and also my readiness to postpone my claims to suit your convenience. The same elevated sentiments which prompted you to fulfil the engagement entered into by the late Prince, will also make Y.H. apprehend the absolute necessity entailed on me by my position again to solicit immediate payment of the arrears of my salary, which are indispensable for my maintenance. Anxiously hoping for a favorable answer to my petition, I have the honor to remain, with profound respect, Y.R.H.'s obedient servant, LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN. 99. TO PRINCESS KINSKY. HIGHLY HONORED PRINCESS!-- As the Prince's counsel declared that my claim could not be heard till the choice of a guardian had been made, and as I now hear that Y.H. has been graciously pleased yourself to assume that office, but decline receiving any one, I present my humble petition in writing, requesting at the same time your early consideration; for you can easily understand that, relying on a thing as a certainty, it is painful to be so long deprived of it, especially as I am obliged entirely to support an unfortunate sickly brother and his whole family,[1] which (not computing my own wants) has entirely exhausted my resources, having expected to provide for myself by the payment of my salary. You may perceive the justice of my claims from the fact of my faithfully naming the receipt of the sixty ducats, advanced to me by the late Prince in Prague, the Prince's counsel himself declaring that I might have said nothing about this sum, the late Prince not having mentioned it either to him or to his cashier. Forgive my being obliged to intrude this affair on you, but necessity compels me to do so. Some days hence I shall take the liberty of making inquiries on the subject from the Prince's counsel, or from any one Y.H. may appoint. I remain, most esteemed and illustrious Princess, Your devoted servant, LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN. [Footnote 1: See a letter to Ries, Nov. 22d, 1815:--"He was consumptive for some years, and, in order to make his life easier, I can safely compute what I gave him at 10,000 florins W.W."] 100. TO ZMESKALL. DEAR Z.,-- Forward the accompanying letter to-day without fail to Brunswick, that it may arrive as soon and as safely as possible. Excuse the trouble I give you. I have been again applied to, to send some of my works to Gratz, in Styria, for a concert to be given in aid of the Ursuline convent and its schools: last year they had very large receipts by this means. Including this concert, and one I gave in Carlsbad for the benefit of the sufferers from fire at Baden, three concerts have been given by me, and through me, for benevolent purposes in one year; and yet if I ask a favor, people are as deaf as a post. Your BEETHOVEN. I. Letter to Sclowonowitsch (Maître des bureaux des postes) in Cassel. I can no longer do without the books of Tiedge and Frau von der Recke, as I am expected to give some opinion about them. 101. TO HERR JOSEPH VARENNA,--GRATZ. MY GOOD SIR,-- Rode was not quite correct in all that he said of me; my health is not particularly good, and from no fault of my own,--my present condition being the most unfortunate of my life. But neither this nor anything in the world shall prevent me from assisting, so far as it lies in my power, the innocent and distressed ladies of your convent by my poor works. I therefore place at your disposal two new symphonies, a bass aria with chorus, and several minor choruses; if you desire again to perform "Hungaria's Benefactors," which you gave last year, it is also at your service. Among the choruses you will find a "Dervise Chorus," a capital bait for a mixed public. In my opinion, your best plan would be to select a day when you could give the "Mount of Olives," which has been everywhere performed. This would occupy one half of the concert, and the other half might consist of a new symphony, the overtures, and various choruses, and likewise the above-named bass aria and chorus; thus the evening would not be devoid of variety. But you can settle all this more satisfactorily with the aid of your own musical authorities. I think I can guess what you mean about a gratuity for me from a _third person_. Were I in the same position as formerly, I would at once say, "Beethoven never accepts anything _where the benefit of humanity is concerned_;" but owing to my own too great benevolence I am reduced to a low ebb, the cause of which, however, does not put me to shame, being combined with other circumstances for which men devoid of honor and principle are alone to blame; so I do not hesitate to say that I would not refuse the contribution of the rich man to whom you allude.[1] But there is no question here of any _claim_. If, however, the affair with the _third person_ comes to nothing, pray rest assured that I shall be equally disposed to confer the same benefit as last year on my friends the respected Ursuline ladies, and shall at all times be ready to succor the poor and needy so long as I live. And now farewell! Write soon, and I will zealously strive to make all necessary arrangements. My best wishes for the convent. I am, with esteem, your friend, LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN. [Footnote 1: Reichardt, on the 1st March, 1809, writes in his _Vertraute Briefe_,--"Beethoven, by 'a rich third person,' as the following letter proves, meant Louis Bonaparte, who, after abdicating the Dutch throne, lived in Gratz."] 102. TO VARENNA. MY EXCELLENT V. [VARENNA],-- I received your letter with much pleasure, but with much displeasure the 100 florins allotted to me by our poor convent ladies; in the mean time I will apply part of this sum to pay the copyists--the surplus and the accounts for copying shall be sent to these good ladies. I never accept anything for such a purpose. I thought that perhaps the _third person_ to whom you alluded might be the Ex-King of Holland, in which case I should have had no scruples, under my present circumstances, in accepting a gratuity from him, who has no doubt taken enough from the Dutch in a less legitimate way; but as it is, I must decline (though in all friendship) any renewal of this subject. Let me know whether, were I to come myself to Gratz, I could give a concert, and what the receipts would probably be; for Vienna, alas! can no longer continue my place of abode. Perhaps it is now too late? but any information from you on the point will be very welcome. The works are being copied, and you shall have them as soon as possible. You may do just what you please with the Oratorio; where it will be of most use it will best fulfil my intentions. I am, with esteem, your obedient BEETHOVEN. P.S. Say all that is kind from me to the worthy Ursuline ladies. I rejoice in being able to serve them. 103. TO ZMESKALL. Confounded, invited guest! _Domanowetz!_--not musical Count, but gobbling Count! dinner Count! supper Count! &c., &c. The Quartet is to be tried over to-day at ten o'clock or half-past, at Lobkowitz's.[1] His Highness, whose wits are generally astray, is not yet arrived; so pray join us, if you can escape from your Chancery jailer. Herzog is to see you to-day. He intends to take the post of my man-servant; you may agree to give him thirty florins, with his wife _obbligata_. Firing, light, and morning livery found. I must have some one who knows how to cook, for if my food continues as bad as it now is, I shall always be ill. I dine at home to-day, because I get better wine. If you will only order what you like, I very much wish you to come to me. You shall have the wine _gratis_, and of far better quality than what you get at the scoundrelly "Swan." Your very insignificant BEETHOVEN. [Footnote 1: Reichardt, in his _Vertraute Briefe_, writes: "The beautiful quartets and evening concerts for the Archduke Rudolph still continue at Prince von Lobkowitz's, although the Prince himself is about to join his battalion in Bohemia." Reichardt, Vol. I. p. 182, calls Lobkowitz "an indefatigable, insatiable, genuine enthusiast for art."] 104. TO ZMESKALL. Feb. 25, 1813. I have been constantly indisposed, dear Zmeskall, since I last saw you; in the mean time the servant who lived with you before your present one has applied for my situation. I do not recollect him, but he told me he had been with you, and that you had nothing to say against him, except that he did not dress your hair as you wished. I gave him earnest-money, though only a florin. Supposing you have no other fault to find with the man (and if so I beg you will candidly mention it), I intend to engage him, for you know that it is no object with me to have my hair dressed; it would be more to the purpose if my finances could be dressed, or _re-dressed_. I hope to get an answer from you to day. If there is no one to open the door to your servant, let him leave the note in the entrance to the left, and should he find no one there either, he must give it to the porter's wife below stairs. May Heaven prosper you in your musical undertakings! Your BEETHOVEN, _Miserabilis._ 105. TO ZMESKALL. Feb. 28, 1813. Let us leave things as they are for to-day, dear Z., till we meet [and so on about the servant]. Farewell! Carefully guard the fortresses of the realm, which, as you know, are no longer virgins, and have already received many a shot. Your friend, BEETHOVEN. 106. TO ZMESKALL. MOST WORTHY COUNSELLOR, OWNER OF MINES AND LORD OF FASTNESSES IN BURGUNDY AND BUDA!-- Be so good as to let me know how matters stand, as this afternoon at latest I shall take advantage of your reply to my question, by giving my servant warning for this day fortnight. His wages, &c., &c. [The rest relates to his servant.] 107. TO ZMESKALL. April 19, 1813. MY DEAR ZMESKALL,-- I have been refused the University Hall. I heard this two days since; but being indisposed yesterday I could not go to see you, nor can I to-day either. We have no resource now but the Kärnthnerthor Theatre, or the one "an der Wien." I believe there will only be one concert. If both these fail, we must then have recourse to the Augarten, in which case we ought certainly to give two concerts. Reflect on this, my dear friend, and let me have your opinion. To-morrow the symphonies may perhaps be tried over at the Archduke's if I am able to go out, of which I will apprise you. Your friend, BEETHOVEN. 108. TO ZMESKALL. April 23, 1813. DEAR Z.,-- All will go right, the Archduke being resolved to take this Prince _Fizlypuzly_ roundly to task. Let me know if you are to dine at the tavern to-day, or where? Pray tell me if "Sentivany" is properly spelt, as I wish to write to him at the same time about the Chorus. We must also consult together what day to choose. By the by, be cautious not to mention the intercession of the Archduke, for Prince _Fizlypuzly_ is not to be with him till Sunday, and if that evil-minded creditor had any previous hint of the affair, he would still try to evade us. Yours ever, BEETHOVEN. 109. TO ZMESKALL. April 26, 1813. Lobkowitz will give me a day on the 15th of May, or after that period, which seems to me scarcely better than none at all; so I am almost disposed to give up all idea of a concert. But the Almighty will no doubt prevent my being utterly ruined. Yours, BEETHOVEN. 110. TO THE ARCHDUKE RUDOLPH. Baden, May 27, 1813. I have the honor to inform you of my arrival in Baden, which is indeed still very empty of human beings, but with all the greater luxuriance and full lustre does Nature shine in her enchanting loveliness. Where I fail, or ever have failed, be graciously indulgent towards me, for so many trying occurrences, succeeding each other so closely, have really almost bewildered me; still I am convinced that the resplendent beauties of Nature here, and the charming environs, will gradually restore my spirits, and a double share of tranquillity be my portion, as by my stay here I likewise fulfil the wishes of Y.R.H. Would that my desire soon to hear that Y.R.H. is fully restored were equally fulfilled! This is indeed my warmest wish, and how much I grieve that I cannot at this moment contribute to your recovery by means of _my_ art! This is reserved for the goddess Hygeia alone, and I, alas! am only a poor mortal, who commends himself to Y.R.H., and sincerely hopes soon to be permitted to wait on you. [K.] 111. TO THE ARCHDUKE RUDOLPH. Vienna, July 24, 1813. From day to day I have been expecting to return to Baden; in the mean time, the discords that detain me here may possibly be resolved by the end of the ensuing week. To me a residence in a town during the summer is misery, and when I also remember that I am thus prevented waiting on Y.R.H., it is still more vexatious and annoying. It is, in fact, the Lobkowitz and Kinsky affairs that keep me here. Instead of pondering over a number of bars, I am obliged constantly to reflect on the number of peregrinations I am forced to make; but for this, I could scarcely endure to the end. Y.R.H. has no doubt heard of Lobkowitz's misfortunes,[1] which are much to be regretted; but after all, to be rich is no such great happiness! It is said that Count Fries alone paid 1900 gold ducats to Duport, for which he had the security of the ancient Lobkowitz house. The details are beyond all belief. I hear that Count Rasumowsky[2] intends to go to Baden, and to take his Quartet with him, which is really very pretty, and I have no doubt that Y.R.H. will be much pleased with it. I know no more charming enjoyment in the country than quartet music. I beg Y.R.H. will accept my heartfelt wishes for your health, and also compassionate me for being obliged to pass my time here under such disagreeable circumstances. But I will strive to compensate twofold in Baden for what you have lost. [K.] [Footnote 1: Prince Lobkowitz's "misfortunes" probably refer to the great pecuniary difficulties which befell this music and pomp loving Prince several years before his death. Beethoven seems to have made various attempts to induce the Prince to continue the payment of his share of the salary agreed on, though these efforts were long fruitless. The subject, however, appears to have been again renewed in 1816, for on the 8th of March in this year Beethoven writes to Ries to say that his salary consists of 3400 florins E.S., and this sum he received till his death.] [Footnote 2: Those who played in Count Rasumowsky's Quartets, to whom Beethoven dedicated various compositions, were the _virtuosi_ Schuppanzigh (1st), Sina (2d violin), Linke (violoncello), Weiss (violin).] 112. TO THE ARCHDUKE RUDOLPH. 1813.[1] I beg to inquire whether, being in some degree restored, I am to wait on you this evening? I at the same time take the liberty to make a humble request. I was in hopes that by this time, at all events, my melancholy circumstances would have brightened, but all continues in its old state, so I must determine on giving two concerts.[2] I find that I am compelled to give up my former resolution never to give any except for benevolent purposes; as self-maintenance demands that I should do so. The hall of the University would be the most advantageous and distinguished for my present object, and my humble request consists in entreating Y.R.H. to be so gracious as to send a line to the present _Rector Magnificus_ of the University, through Baron Schweiger, which would certainly ensure my getting the hall. In the hope of a favorable answer, I remain, &c., &c. [K.] [Footnote 1: Late in the autumn of 1813.] [Footnote 2: The concerts here referred to were given in the University Hall on the 8th and 12th December, 1813, when the _Battle of Vittoria_ and the A major Symphony were performed for the first time. Beethoven himself conducted.] 113. TO FREIHERR JOSEF VON SCHWEIGER. Late in the Autumn of 1813. MY DEAR FRIEND,-- I have to-day applied (by letter) to my gracious master to interest himself in procuring the University Hall for two concerts which I think of giving, and in fact must give, for all remains as it was. Always considering you, both in good and evil fortune, my best friend, I suggested to the Duke that you should apply in his name for this favor to the present Rector of the University. Whatever may be the result, let me know H.R.H.'s decision as soon as possible, that I may make further efforts to extricate myself from a position so detrimental to me and to my art. I am coming this evening to the Archduke. Your friend, BEETHOVEN. [K.] 114. TO HERR VON BAUMEISTER.[1] DEAR SIR,-- I request you will send me the parts of the Symphony in A, and likewise my score. His I.H. can have the MS. again, but I require it at present for the music in the Augarten to-morrow. I have just received two tickets, which I send to you, and beg you will make use of them. I am, with esteem, yours, L. V. BEETHOVEN. [Footnote 1: Private Secretary to the Archduke Rudolph.] 115. TO ZMESKALL. Oct. 9, 1813. MY DEAR GOOD Z.,-- Don't be indignant with me for asking you to address the enclosed letter properly; the person for whom it is intended is constantly complaining that he gets no letters from me. Yesterday I took one myself to the post-office, when I was asked where the letter was meant to go. I see, therefore, that my writing seems to be as little understood as myself. Thence my request to you. Your BEETHOVEN. 116. LETTER OF THANKS. I esteem it my duty to express my gratitude for the great zeal shown by all those artists who so kindly coöperated on the 8th and 12th December [1813] in the concerts given for the benefit of the Austrian and Bavarian soldiers wounded at the battle of Hanau. It was a rare combination of eminent artists, where all were inspired by the wish to be of use to their father-land, and to contribute by the exercise of their talents to the fulfilment of the undertaking, while, regardless of all precedence, they gladly accepted subordinate places.[1] While an artist like Herr Schuppanzigh was at the head of the first violins, and by his fiery and expressive mode of conducting kindled the zeal of the whole orchestra, Herr Kapellmeister Salieri did not scruple to give the time to the drums and cannonades; Herr Spohr and Herr Mayseder, each worthy from his talents to fill the highest post, played in the second and third rank. Herr Siboni and Herr Giuliani also filled subordinate places. The conducting of the whole was only assigned to me from the music being my own composition; had it been that of any one else, I would willingly, like Herr Hummel, have taken my place at the big drum, as the only feeling that pervaded all our hearts was true love for our father-land, and the wish cheerfully to devote our powers to those who had sacrificed so much for us. Particular thanks are due to Herr Maelzel, inasmuch as he first suggested the idea of this concert, and the most troublesome part of the enterprise, the requisite arrangements, management, and regulations, devolved on him. I more especially thank him for giving me an opportunity by this concert of fulfilling a wish I have long cherished, to compose for such a benevolent object (exclusive of the works already made over to him) a comprehensive work more adapted to the present times, to be laid on the altar of my father-land.[2] As a notice is to be published of all those who assisted on this occasion, the public will be enabled to judge of the noble self-denial exercised by a mass of the greatest artists, working together with the same benevolent object in view. LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN. [Footnote 1: The A major Symphony and _Wellington's Victory at Vittoria_ were performed.] [Footnote 2: "Obsolete" is written in pencil by Beethoven.] 117. TO THE ARCHDUKE RUDOLPH.[1] 1814. I beg you will send me the score of the "Final Chorus"[2] for half a day, as the theatrical score is so badly written. [K.] [Footnote 1: The spring of 1814.] [Footnote 2: The _Schlusschor_, the score of which Beethoven requests the Archduke to send him, is in all probability the Finale _Germania! Germania!_ intended for Treitschke's Operetta _Die gute Nachricht_, which refers to the taking of Paris by the Allies, and was performed for the first time at Vienna in the Kärnthnerthor Theatre on the 11th April, 1814. The same _Final Chorus_ was substituted for another of Beethoven's (_Es ist vollbracht_) in Treitschke's Operetta _Die Ehrenpforten_, first given on the 15th July, 1815, in the Kärnthnerthor Theatre. Both these choruses are printed in score in Breitkopf & Härtel's edition of Beethoven's works.] 118. TO THE ARCHDUKE RUDOLPH. 1814. Having only so recently received the score of the "Final Chorus," I must ask you to excuse your getting it back so late. The best thing H.R.H. can do is to have it transcribed, for in its present form the score is of no use. I would have brought it myself, but I have been laid up with a cold since last Sunday, which is most severe, and obliges me to be very careful, being so much indisposed. I never feel greater satisfaction than when Y.R.H. derives any pleasure through me. I hope very soon to be able to wait on you myself, and in the mean time I pray that you will keep me in remembrance. [K.] 119. TO THE ARCHDUKE RUDOLPH. 1814. The song "Germania" belongs to the whole world who sympathize with the subject, and to you beyond all others, just as I myself am wholly yours. I wish you a good journey to Palermo. [K.] 120. TO TREITSCHKE. March, 1814. MY DEAR, WORTHY T.,-- I have read with the greatest satisfaction your amendments of the Opera ["Fidelio" which was about to be again performed]. It has decided me once more to rebuild the desolate ruins of an ancient fortress. Your friend, BEETHOVEN. 121. TO TREITSCHKE. The affair of the Opera is the most troublesome in the world, and there is scarcely one part of it which quite satisfies me now, and that I have not been obliged to _amend by something more satisfactory_. But what a difference between this, and giving one's self up to freely flowing thought and inspiration! 122. TO TREITSCHKE. 1814. I request, my dear T., that you will send me the score of the song [in "Fidelio," _Geld ist eine schöne Sache_], that the interpolated notes may be transcribed in all the instrumental parts; though I shall not take it at all amiss if you prefer that Girowetz or any other person, perhaps Weinmüller [who sang the part of Rocco], should do so. This I have nothing to say against, but I will not suffer my composition to be altered by any one whatever, be he who he may. I am, with high consideration, Your obedient BEETHOVEN. 123. TO COUNT MORITZ LICHNOWSKY.[1] MY DEAR COUNT,-- If you wish to attend our council [about the alterations in "Fidelio"], I beg to inform you that it assembles this afternoon at half-past three o'clock, in the Spielmann Haus, auf dem Graben, No. 188, 4th Etage, at Herr Weinmüller's. I shall be very glad if you have leisure to be present. [Footnote 1: The mention of Weinmüller decides the date of this note, as it was in the spring of 1814 that he, together with the singers Saal and Vogl, brought about the revival of _Fidelio_.] 124. TO COUNT MORITZ LICHNOWSKY.[1] My dear, victorious, and yet sometimes nonplussed (?) Count! I hope that you rested well, most precious and charming of all Counts! Oh! most beloved and unparalleled Count! most fascinating and prodigious Count! [Music: Treble clef, E-flat Major, 2/2 time. Graf Graf Graf Graf (in 3-part harmony) Graf (in 3-part counterpoint) Graf Graf Graf, liebster Graf, liebstes Schaf, bester Graf, bestes Schaf! Schaf! Schaf!] (_To be repeated at pleasure_.) At what hour shall we call on Walter to-day? My going or not depends entirely on you. Your BEETHOVEN. [Footnote 1: In Schindler's _Beethoven's Nachlass_ there is also an autograph Canon of Beethoven's in F major, 6/8, on Count Lichnowsky, on the words, _Bester Herr Graf, Sie sind ein Schaf_, written (according to Schindler) Feb. 20th, 1823, in the coffee-house "Die Goldne Birne," in the Landstrasse, where Beethoven usually went every evening, though he generally slipped in by the backdoor.] 125. TO THE ARCHDUKE RUDOLPH. 1814. I hope you forgive me for not having come to you. Your displeasure would be totally undeserved, and I will amply compensate for lost time in a few days. My Opera of "Fidelio"[1] is again to be performed, which gives me a great deal to do; moreover, though I look well, I am not so in reality. The arrangements for my second concert[2] are partly completed. I must write something new for Mdlle. Milder.[3] Meanwhile it is a consolation to me to hear that Y.R.H. is so much better. I hope I am not too sanguine in thinking that I shall soon be able to contribute towards this. I have taken the liberty to apprise my Lord Falstaff[4] that he is ere long to have the honor of appearing before Y.R.H. [K.] [Footnote 1: Letters 125 and 126 refer to the revival of the Opera of _Fidelio_, which had not been given since 1806, and was not again produced on the stage till the 23d May, 1814, in the Kärnthnerthor Theatre. Beethoven's benefit took place on the 8th July, two newly composed pieces being inserted.] [Footnote 2: Beethoven gave a concert on the 2d January, 1814, when _Wellington's Victory_ was performed, and on the 26th March another for the benefit of the Theatrical Fund, at which the _Overture to Egmont_ and _Wellingtons's Victory_ were given, directed by Beethoven himself.] [Footnote 3: Anna Milder, Royal Court opera singer, a pupil of Vogl's, who first sang the part of Leonore in _Fidelio_.] [Footnote 4: By "my Lord Falstaff" he means the corpulent violinist Schuppanzigh.] 126. TO THE ARCHDUKE RUDOLPH. Vienna, July 14, 1814. Whenever I inquire about you I hear nothing but good news. As for my own insignificant self, I have been hitherto hopelessly detained in Vienna, and unable to approach Y.R.H.; I am also thus deprived of the enjoyment of beautiful Nature, so dear to me. The directors of the theatre are so _conscientious_, that, contrary to their faithful promise, they have again given my Opera of "Fidelio," without thinking of giving me any share in the receipts. They would have exhibited the same commendable good faith a second time, had I not been on the watch like a French custom-house officer of other days. At last, after a great many troublesome discussions, it was settled that the Opera of "Fidelio" should be given on Monday the 18th of July, for my benefit. These _receipts_ at this season of the year may more properly be called _deceits_; but if a work is in any degree successful it often becomes a little feast for the author. To this feast the master invites his illustrious pupil, and hopes--yes! I hope that Y.R.H. will graciously consent to come, and thus add lustre to everything by your presence. It would be a great boon if Y.R.H. would endeavor to persuade the other members of the Imperial family to be present at the representation of my Opera, and I on my part will not fail to take the proper steps on the subject which duty commands. Vogl's illness[1] enabled me to satisfy my desire to give the part of Pizarro to Forti,[2] his voice being better suited to it; but owing to this there are daily rehearsals, which cannot fail to have a favorable effect on the performance, but which render it impossible for me to wait upon Y.R.H. before my benefit. Pray give this letter your favorable consideration, and think graciously of me. [K.] [Footnote 1: Joh. Mich. Vogl, born August 10th, 1768, was Court opera singer (tenor) in Vienna from 1794 to 1822; he died November 19th, 1840.] [Footnote 2: Forti, born June 8th, 1790, a member of the Royal Court Theatre (a barytone), pensioned off in 1834.] 127. DEPOSITION. 1814. I voluntarily presented Maelzel _gratis_ with a "Battle Symphony" for his panharmonica. After having kept it for some time, he brought me back the score, which he had already begun to engrave, saying that he wished it to be harmonized for a full orchestra. The idea of a battle had already occurred to me, which, however, could not be performed on his panharmonica. We agreed to select this and some more of my works [see No. 116] to be given at the concert for the benefit of disabled soldiers. At that very time I became involved in the most frightful pecuniary difficulties. Forsaken by every one in Vienna, and in daily expectation of remittances, &c., Maelzel offered me fifty gold ducats, which I accepted, saying that I would either repay them, or allow him to take the work to London, (provided I did not go there myself with him,) referring him to an English publisher for payment. I got back from him the score written for the panharmonica. The concerts then took place, and during that time Herr Maelzel's designs and character were first fully revealed. Without my consent, he stated on the bills of the concert that the work was _his property_. Indignant at this, I insisted on his destroying these bills. He then stated that I had given it to him as a friendly act, because he was going to London. To this I did not object, believing that I had reserved the right to state the conditions on which the work should be his own. I remember that when the bills were being printed, I violently opposed them, but the time was too short, as I was still writing the work. In all the fire of inspiration, and absorbed in my composition, I scarcely thought at all on the subject. Immediately after the first concert in the University Hall, I was told on all sides, and by people on whom I could rely, that Maelzel had everywhere given out he had paid me 400 gold ducats for the Symphony. I sent what follows to a newspaper, but the editor would not insert it, as Maelzel stands well with them all. As soon as the first concert was over, I repaid Maelzel his fifty ducats, declaring that having discovered his real character, nothing should ever induce me to travel with him; justly indignant that, without consulting me, he had stated in the bills that all the arrangements for the concert were most defective. His own despicable want of patriotism too is proved by the following expressions: "I care nothing at all about L.; if it is only said in London that people have paid ten gulden for admission here, that is all I care about; the wounded are nothing to me." Moreover, I told him that he might take the work to London on certain conditions, which I would inform him of. He then asserted that it was a _friendly gift_, and made use of this phrase in the newspapers after the second concert, without giving me the most remote hint on the subject. As Maelzel is a rude, churlish man, entirely devoid of education or cultivation, it is easy to conceive the tenor of his conduct to me during this time, which still further irritated me. Who could bear to be forced to bestow a _friendly gift_ on such a man? I was offered an opportunity to send the work to the Prince Regent, [afterwards George IV.] It was therefore quite impossible for me to _give away the work unconditionally_. He then called on a mutual friend to make proposals. He was told on what day to return for an answer, but he never appeared, set off on his travels, and performed the work in Munich. How did he obtain it? He could not possibly _steal_ it; but Herr Maelzel had several of the parts for some days in his house, and he caused the entire work to be harmonized by some obscure musical journeyman, and is now hawking it about the world. Herr Maelzel promised me ear-trumpets. I harmonized the "Battle Symphony" for his panharmonica from a wish to keep him to his word. The ear-trumpets came at last, but were not of the service to me that I expected. For this slight trouble Herr Maelzel, after my having arranged the "Battle Symphony" for a full orchestra, and composed a battle-piece in addition, declared that I ought to have made over these works to him as _his own exclusive property_. Even allowing that I am in some degree obliged to him for the ear-trumpets, this is entirely balanced by his having made at least 500 gulden in Munich by my mutilated or stolen battle-piece. He has therefore paid himself in full. He had actually the audacity to say here that he was in possession of the battle-piece; in fact he showed it, written out, to various persons. I did not believe this; and, in fact, with good reason, as the whole is not by me, but compiled by some one else. Indeed the credit he assumes for the work should alone be sufficient compensation. The secretary at the War Office made no allusion whatever to me, and yet every work performed at both concerts was of my composition. Herr Maelzel thinks fit to say that he has delayed his visit to London on account of the battle-piece, which is a mere subterfuge. He stayed to finish his patchwork, as the first attempt did not succeed. BEETHOVEN. 128. TO HERR J. KAUKA, DOCTOR OF LAWS IN PRAGUE, IN THE KINGDOM OF BOHEMIA. The Summer of 1814. A thousand thanks, my esteemed Kauka. At last I meet with a _legal representative_ and a _man_, who can both write and think without using unmeaning formulas. You can scarcely imagine how I long for the end of this affair, as it not only interferes with my domestic expenditure, but is injurious to me in various ways. You know yourself that a sensitive spirit ought not to be fettered by miserable anxieties, and much that might render my life happy is thus abstracted from it. Even my inclination and the duty I assigned myself, to serve suffering humanity by means of my art, I have been obliged to limit, and must continue to do so.[1] I write nothing about our monarchs and monarchies, for the newspapers give you every information on these subjects.[2] The intellectual realm is the most precious in my eyes, and far above all temporal and spiritual monarchies. Write to me, however, what you wish _for yourself_ from my poor musical capabilities, that I may, in so far as it lies in my power, supply something for your own musical sense and feeling. Do you not require all the papers connected with the Kinsky case? If so I will send them to you, as they contain most important testimony, which, indeed, I believe you read when with me. Think of me and do not forget that you represent a disinterested artist in opposition to a niggardly family. How gladly do men withhold from the poor artist in one respect _what they pay him in another_, and there is no longer a Zeus with whom an artist can invite himself to feast on ambrosia. Strive, my dear friend, to accelerate the tardy steps of justice. Whenever I feel myself elevated high, and in happy moments revel in my artistic sphere, circumstances drag me down again, and none more than these two lawsuits. You too have your disagreeable moments, though with the views and capabilities I know you to possess, especially in your profession, I could scarcely have believed this; still I must recall your attention to myself. I have drunk to the dregs a cup of bitter sorrow, and already earned martyrdom in art through my beloved artistic disciples and colleagues. I beg you will think of me every day, and imagine it to be an _entire world_, for it is really asking rather too much of you to think of so humble an _individual_ as myself. I am, with the highest esteem and friendship, Your obedient LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN. [Footnote 1: He supported a consumptive brother and his wife and child.] [Footnote 2: At the Vienna Congress Beethoven was received with much distinction by the potentates present.] 129. ADDRESS AND APPEAL TO LONDON ARTISTS BY L. VAN BEETHOVEN. Vienna, July 25, 1814. Herr Maelzel, now in London, on his way thither performed my "Battle Symphony" and "Wellington's Battle of Vittoria" in Munich, and no doubt he intends to produce them at London concerts, as he wished to do in Frankfort. This induces me to declare that I never in any way made over or transferred the said works to Herr Maelzel; that no one possesses a copy of them, and that the only one verified by me I sent to his Royal Highness the Prince Regent of England. The performance of these works, therefore, by Herr Maelzel is either an imposition on the public, as the above declaration proves that he does not possess them, or if he does, he has been guilty of a breach of faith towards me, inasmuch as he must have got them in a surreptitious manner. But even in the latter case the public will still be deluded, for the works that Herr Maelzel performs under the titles of "Wellington's Battle of Vittoria" and "Battle Symphony" are beyond all doubt spurious and mutilated, as he never had any portion of either of these works of mine, except some of the parts for a few days. This suspicion becomes a certainty from the testimony of various artists here, whose names I am authorized to give if necessary. These gentlemen state that Herr Maelzel, before he left Vienna, declared that he was in possession of these works, and showed various portions, which, however, as I have already proved, must be counterfeit. The question whether Herr Maelzel be capable of doing me such an injury is best solved by the following fact,--In the public papers he named himself as sole giver of the concert on behalf of our wounded soldiers, whereas my works alone were performed there, and yet he made no allusion whatsoever to me. I therefore appeal to the London musicians not to permit such a grievous wrong to be done to their fellow-artist by Herr Maelzel's performance of the "Battle of Vittoria" and the "Battle Symphony," and also to prevent the London public being so shamefully imposed upon. 130. TO DR. KAUKA. Vienna, August 22, 1814. You have shown a feeling for harmony, and you can resolve a great discord in my life, which causes me much discomfort, into more pleasing melody, if you will. I shortly expect to hear something of what you understand is likely to happen, as I eagerly anticipate the result of this most _unjust_ affair with the Kinskys. When the Princess was here, she seemed to be well disposed towards me; still I do not know how it will end. In the mean time I must restrict myself in everything, and await with entire confidence what is _rightfully my own_ and _legally devolves on me_; and though unforeseen occurrences caused changes in this matter, still two witnesses recently bore testimony to the wish of the deceased Prince that my appointed salary in _Banco Zettel_ should be paid in _Einlösung Schein_, making up the original sum, and the Prince himself gave me sixty gold ducats _on account_ of my claim. Should the affair turn out badly for me by the conduct of the Kinsky family, I will publish it in every newspaper, to their disgrace. If there had been an heir, and the facts had been told to him _in all their truth_, just as I narrated them, I am convinced that he would at once have adopted the words and deeds of his predecessor. Has Dr. Wolf [the previous advocate] shown you the papers, or shall I make you acquainted with them? As I am by no means sure that this letter will reach you safely, I defer sending you the pianoforte arrangement of my opera "Fidelio," which is ready to be dispatched. I hope, in accordance with your usual friendliness, soon to hear from you. I am also writing to Dr. Wolf (who certainly does not treat any one _wolfishly_), in order not to arouse his _passion_, so that he may have _compassion_ on me, and neither take my purse nor my life. I am, with esteem, your true friend, LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN. 131. TO COUNT MORITZ LICHNOWSKY. Baden, Sept. 21, 1841.[1] MOST ESTEEMED COUNT AND FRIEND,-- I unluckily only got your letter yesterday. A thousand thanks for your remembrance of me. Pray express my gratitude also to your charming Princess Christiane [wife of Prince Carl Lichnowsky]. I had a delightful walk yesterday with a friend in the Brühl, and in the course of our friendly chat you were particularly mentioned, and lo! and behold! on my return I found your kind letter. I see you are resolved to continue to load me with benefits. As I am unwilling you should suppose that a step I have already taken is prompted by your recent favors, or by any motive of the sort, I must tell you that a sonata of mine [Op. 90] is about to appear, _dedicated to you_. I wished to give you a surprise, as this dedication has been long designed for you, but your letter of yesterday induces me to name the fact. I required no new motive thus publicly to testify my sense of your friendship and kindness. But as for anything approaching to a gift in return, you would only distress me, by thus totally misinterpreting my intentions, and I should at once decidedly refuse such a thing. I beg to kiss the hand of the Princess for her kind message and all her goodness to me. _Never have I forgotten what I owe to you all_, though an unfortunate combination of circumstances prevented my testifying this as I could have wished. From what you tell me about Lord Castlereagh, I think the matter in the best possible train. If I were to give an opinion on the subject, I should say that Lord Castlereagh ought to hear the work given here before writing to Wellington. I shall soon be in Vienna, when we can consult together about a grand concert. Nothing is to be effected at Court; I made the application, but--but-- [Music: Treble clef, C major, 4/4 time, Adagio. al-lein al-lein al-lein] _Silentium!!!_ Farewell, my esteemed friend; pray continue to esteem me worthy of your friendship. Yours, BEETHOVEN. A thousand compliments to the illustrious Princess. [Footnote 1: The date reversed, as written by Beethoven, is here given.] 132. TO THE ARCHDUKE RUDOLPH. 1814. I perceive that Y.R.H. wishes to try the effect of my music even upon horses.[1] We shall see whether its influence will cause the riders to throw some clever summersets. Ha! ha! I can't help laughing at Y.R.H. thinking of me on such an occasion; for which I shall remain so long as I live, &c., &c., &c. The horse-music that Y.R.H. desires shall set off to you full gallop. [K.] [Footnote 1: A tournament was held on the 23d November, 1814, in the Royal Riding School. Beethoven was probably requested by the Archduke to compose some music for it, which, however, has not been traced.] 133. TO THE ARCHDUKE RUDOLPH. 1814. It is impossible for me to-day to wait on you, much as I wish it. I am dispatching the work on Wellington's victory[1] to London. Such matters have their appointed and fixed time, which cannot be delayed without final loss. To-morrow I hope to be able to call on Y.R.H. [K.] [Footnote 1: The Cantata _Der glorreiche Augenblick_, the poetry by Dr. Alois Weissenbach, set to music by Beethoven for chorus and orchestra (Op. 136), was first given in Vienna on the 29th November, 1814, and repeated on the 2d December.] 134. TO THE ARCHDUKE RUDOLPH. (In a different hand) Dec. 1814. I really feel that I can never deserve your goodness towards me. I beg to offer my most respectful thanks for Y.R.H.'s gracious intervention in my affairs at Prague. I will punctually attend to the score of the Cantata.[1] I trust Y.R.H. will forgive my not having yet been to see you. After the concert for the poor, comes one in the theatre, equally for the benefit of the _impresario in angustia_, for they have felt some just shame, and have let me off with one third and one half of the usual charges. I have now some fresh work on hand, and then there is a new opera to be begun,[2] the subject of which I am about to decide on. Moreover, I am again far from well, but a few days hence I will wait on Y.R.H. If I could be of any service to Y.R.H., the most eager and anxious wish of my life would be fulfilled. [K.] [Footnote 1: What concert Beethoven alludes to I cannot discover, but no mention of it being made in the very exact _Allgemeine Leipziger Musikalische Zeitung_, it appears not to have taken place.] [Footnote 2: The new opera, with the subject of which Beethoven was occupied, was no doubt Treitschke's _Romulus_.] 135. TO THE ARCHDUKE RUDOLPH. 1814. My warmest thanks for your present.[1] I only regret that you could not participate in the music. I have now the honor to send you the score of the Cantata [see No. 134]. Y.R.H. can keep it for some days, and afterwards I shall take care that it is copied for you as soon as possible. I feel still quite exhausted from fatigue and worry, pleasure and delight!--all combined! I shall have the honor of waiting on you in the course of a few days. I hope to hear favorable accounts of Y.R.H.'s health. How gladly would I sacrifice many nights, were it in my power to restore you entirely! [K.] [Footnote 1: The present he refers to was probably for the concert of November 29th, or December 2d, 1814.] 136. TO THE ARCHDUKE RUDOLPH. 1814.[1] I see with real pleasure that I may dismiss all fears for your well-being. As for myself, I hope (always feeling happy when able to give you any pleasure) that my health is also rapidly recruiting, when I intend forthwith to compensate both you and myself for the _pauses_ that have occurred. As for Prince Lobkowitz, his _pauses_ with me still continue, and I fear he will never again come in at the right place; and in Prague (good heavens! with regard to Prince Kinsky's affair) they scarcely as yet know what a figured bass is, for they sing in slow, long-drawn choral notes; some of these sustained through sixteen bars |======|. As all these discords seem likely to be very slowly resolved, it is best to bring forward only those which we can ourselves resolve, and to give up the rest to inevitable fate. Allow me once more to express my delight at the recovery of Y.R.H. [K.] [Footnote 1: 1814 or 1815. Prince Lobkowitz was still alive at that time (died December 21st, 1816).] 137. TO THE ARCHDUKE RUDOLPH. 1814. As you were so kind as to let me know through Count Troyer[1] that you would write a few lines on my affairs in Prague to the _Oberstburggraf_ Count Kolowrat, I take the liberty to enclose my letter to Count K.; I do not believe that it contains anything to which Y.R.H. will take exception. There is no chance of my being allowed payment in _Einlösung Schein_, for, in spite of all the proofs, the guardians cannot be persuaded to consent to this; still it is to be hoped that by the friendly steps we have meanwhile had recourse to, _extra-judicially_, a more favorable result may be obtained,--as, for instance, the rate of the scale to be higher. If, however, Y.R.H. will either write a few words yourself, or cause it to be done in your name, the affair will certainly be _much accelerated_, which induces me earnestly to entreat Y.R.H. to perform your gracious promise to me. This affair has now gone on for three years, and is still--undecided. [K.] [Footnote 1: Count Ferdinand Troyer was one of the Archduke's chamberlains.] 138. TO THE ARCHDUKE RUDOLPH. 1814. I have again for a fortnight past been afflicted with severe headaches, though constantly hoping to get better, but in vain. Now, however, that the weather is improved, my physician promises me a speedy cure. Though as each day I expected to be the last of my suffering, I did not write to you on the subject; besides, I thought that Y.R.H. probably did not require me, as it is so long since Y.R.H. sent for me. During the festivities in honor of the Princess of Baden,[1] and the injury to Y.R.H.'s finger, I began to work very assiduously, and as the fruit of this, among others, is a new pianoforte trio.[2] Myself very much occupied, I had no idea that I had incurred the displeasure of Y.R.H., though I now begin almost to think this to be the case. In the mean time I hope soon to be able to present myself before your tribunal. [K.] [Footnote 1: The festivities in honor of the Princess of Baden were probably during the Congress, 1814.] [Footnote 2: The new trio, if the one in B flat for the pianoforte, violin, and violoncello, Op. 97, was first performed on the 11th April, 1814, in the hall of the "Komischer Kaiser." Letter 139 also mentions this trio, composed in 1811 and published in July, 1816.] 139. TO THE ARCHDUKE RUDOLPH. 1814. I beg you will be so good as to let me have the Trio in B flat with all the parts, and also both parts of the violin Sonata in G,[1] as I must have them written out for myself with all speed, not being able to hunt out my own scores among so many others. I hope that this detestable weather has had no bad effect on Y.R.H.'s health; I must own that it rather deranges me. In three or four days at least I shall have the honor to restore both works to their proper place. Do the musical pauses still continue? [K.] [Footnote 1: The Sonata for pianoforte and violin in G major, Op. 96, was purchased by Haslinger, April 1st, 1815, and published the end of July, 1816. It was composed in 1814--perhaps in 1813. Thayer thinks in 1810.] 140. TO HERR KAUKA. Vienna, Jan. 11, 1815. MY GOOD, WORTHY K.,-- I received Baron Pasqualati's letter to-day, by which I perceive that you wish me to defer any fresh measures. In the mean time all the necessary papers are lodged with Pasqualati; so be so good as to inform him that he must delay taking any further steps. To-morrow a council is to be held here, and you and P. shall learn the result probably to-morrow evening. Meanwhile I wish you to look through the paper I sent to the Court through Pasqualati, and read the appendix carefully. You will then see that Wolf and others have not given you correct information. One thing is certain, that there are sufficient proofs _for any one who wishes to be convinced_. How could it ever occur to me _to think of written legal testimony_ with such a man as Kinsky, whose integrity and generosity were everywhere acknowledged? I remain, with the warmest affection and esteem, In haste, your friend, B. 141. TO HERR KAUKA. 1815. MY DEAR AND ESTEEMED K.,-- What can I think, or say, or feel? As for W. [Wolf], it seems to me that he not only showed _his weak points_, but gave himself no trouble to conceal them. It is impossible that he can have drawn up his statement in accordance with all the actual evidence he had. The order on the treasury about the rate of exchange was given by Kinsky previous to his consent to pay me my salary in _Einlösung Schein_, as the documents prove; indeed it is only necessary to examine the date to show this, so the first instruction is of importance. The _species facti_ prove that I was more than six months absent from Vienna. As I was not anxious to get the money, I allowed the affair to stand over; so the Prince thus forgot to recall his former order to the treasury, but that he neither forgot his promise to me, nor to Varnhagen [an officer] in my behalf, is evident by the testimony of Herr von Oliva, to whom shortly before his departure from hence--and indeed into another world--he repeated his promise, making an appointment to see him when he should return to Vienna, in order to arrange the matter with the treasury, which of course was prevented by his untimely death. The testimony of the officer Varnhagen is accompanied by a document (he being at present with the Russian army), in which he states that he is prepared to _take his oath_ on the affair. The evidence of Herr Oliva is also to the effect that he is willing to confirm his evidence by oath before the Court. As I have sent away the testimony of Col. Count Bentheim, I am not sure of its tenor, but I believe the Count also says that he is prepared at any time to make an affidavit on the matter in Court, and I am myself _ready to swear before the Court_ that Prince Kinsky said to me in Prague, "he thought it only fair to me that my salary should be paid in _Einlösung Schein_." These were his own words. He gave me himself sixty gold ducats in Prague, on account (good for about 600 florins), as, owing to my state of health, I could remain no longer, and set off for Töplitz. The Prince's word was _sacred_ in my eyes, never having heard anything of him to induce me either to bring two witnesses with me or to ask him for any written pledge. I see from all this that Dr. Wolf has miserably mismanaged the business, and has not made you sufficiently acquainted with the papers. Now as to the step I have just taken. The Archduke Rudolph asked me some time since whether the Kinsky affair was yet terminated, having probably heard something of it. I told him that it looked very bad, as I knew nothing, absolutely nothing, of the matter. He offered to write himself, but desired me to add a memorandum, and also to make him acquainted with all the papers connected with the Kinsky case. After having informed himself on the affair, he wrote to the _Oberstburggraf_, and enclosed my letter to him. The _Oberstburggraf_ answered both the Duke and myself immediately. In the letter to me he said "that I was to present a petition to the Provincial Court of Justice in Prague, along with all the proofs, whence it would be forwarded to him, and that he would do his utmost to further my cause." He also wrote in the most polite terms to the Archduke; indeed, he expressly said "that he was thoroughly cognizant of the late Prince Kinsky's intentions with regard to me and this affair, and that I might present a petition," &c. The Archduke instantly sent for me, and desired me to prepare the document and to show it to him; he also thought that I ought to solicit payment in _Einlösung Schein_, as there was ample proof, if not in strictly legal form, of the intentions of the Prince, and no one could doubt that if he had survived he would have adhered to his promise. If he [the Archduke] were this day the heir, _he would demand no other proofs than those already furnished_. I sent this paper to Baron Pasqualati, who is kindly to present it himself to the Court. Not till after the affair had gone so far did Dr. Adlersburg receive a letter from Dr. Wolf, in which he mentioned that he had made a claim for 1500 florins. As we have come so far as 1500 florins with the _Oberstburggraf_, we may possibly get on to 1800 florins. I do not esteem this any _favor_, for the late Prince was one of those who urged me most to refuse a salary of 600 gold ducats per annum, offered to me from Westphalia; and he said at the time "that he was resolved I should have no chance of eating hams in Westphalia." Another summons to Naples somewhat later I equally declined, and I am entitled to demand a fair compensation for the loss I incurred. If the salary were to be paid in bank-notes, what should I get? Not 400 florins in _Conventionsgeld_!!! in lieu of such a salary as 600 ducats! There are ample proofs for those who wish to act justly; and what does the _Einlösung Schein_ now amount to??!!! It is even at this moment no equivalent for what I refused. This affair was pompously announced in all the newspapers while I was nearly reduced to beggary. The intentions of the Prince are evident, and in my opinion the family are bound to act in accordance with them unless they wish to be disgraced. Besides, the revenues have rather increased than diminished by the death of the Prince; so there is no sufficient ground for curtailing my salary. I received your friendly letter yesterday, but am too weary at this moment to write all that I feel towards you. I can only commend my case to your sagacity. It appears that the _Oberstburggraf_ is the chief person; so what he wrote to the Archduke must be kept a profound secret, for it might not be advisable that any one should know of it but you and Pasqualati. You have sufficient cause on looking through the papers to show how improperly Dr. Wolf has conducted the affair, and that another course of action is necessary. I rely on your friendship to act as you think best for my interests. Rest assured of my warmest thanks, and pray excuse my writing more to-day, for a thing of this kind is very fatiguing,--more so than the greatest musical undertaking. My heart has found something for you to which yours will respond, and this you shall soon receive. Do not forget me, poor tormented creature that I am! and _act for me_ and _effect for me_ all that is possible. With high esteem, your true friend, BEETHOVEN. 142. TO HERR KAUKA. Vienna, Jan. 14, 1815. MY GOOD AND WORTHY K.,-- The long letter I enclose was written when we were disposed to claim the 1800 florins. Baron Pasqualati's last letter, however, again made me waver, and Dr. Adlersburg advised me to adhere to the steps already taken; but as Dr. Wolf writes that he has offered in your name to accept 1500 florins a year, I beg you will at least make every effort to get that sum. For this purpose I send you the long letter written before we received Baron P.'s dissuasive one, as you may discover in it many reasons for demanding _at least_ the 1500 florins. The Archduke, too, has written a second time to the _Oberstburggraf_, and we may conclude from his previous reply that he will certainly exert himself, and that we shall at all events succeed in getting the 1500 florins. Farewell! I cannot write another syllable; such things exhaust me. May your friendship accelerate this affair!--if it ends badly, then I must leave Vienna, because I could not possibly live on my income, for here things have come to such a pass that everything has risen to the highest price, and that price must be paid. The last two concerts I gave cost me 1508 florins, and had it not been for the Empress's munificent present I should scarcely have derived any profit whatever. Your faithful friend, BEETHOVEN. 143.[1] TO THE HONORABLE MEMBERS OF THE LANDRECHT. Vienna, 1815. GENTLEMEN,-- Quite ignorant of law proceedings, and believing that all claims on an inheritance could not fail to be liquidated, I sent to my lawyer in Prague [Dr. Kauka] the contract signed by the Archduke Rudolph, Prince Lobkowitz, and Prince von Kinsky, in which these illustrious personages agreed to settle on me an annual allowance of 4000 florins. My constant efforts to obtain a settlement of my claim, and also, as I am bound to admit, my reproaches to Dr. Kauka for not conducting the affair properly (his application to the guardians having proved fruitless), no doubt prompted him to have recourse to law. None but those who are fully aware of my esteem for the deceased Prince can tell how repugnant it is to my feelings to appear as a complainant against my benefactor. Under these circumstances I have recourse to a shorter path, in the conviction that the guardians of the Prince's estate will be disposed to mark their appreciation of art, and also their desire to fulfil the engagements of the late Prince. According to the terms of the contract in question, the Archduke Rudolph, Prince Lobkowitz, and Prince v. Kinsky granted me these 4000 florins until I should obtain a situation of equal value; and further, if by misfortune or old age I was prevented exercising my art, these distinguished contracting parties secured this pension to me for life, while I, in return, pledged myself not to leave Vienna. This promise was generous, and equally generous was its fulfilment, for no difficulty ever occurred, and I was in the peaceful enjoyment of my pension till the Imperial Finance Patent appeared. The consequent alteration in the currency made no difference in the payments of the Archduke Rudolph, for I received his share in _Einlösung Schein_, as I had previously done in bank-notes, without any reference to the new scale. The late illustrious Prince v. Kinsky also at once assured me that his share (1800 florins) should also be paid in _Einlösung Schein_. As however, he omitted giving the order to his cashier, difficulties arose on the subject. Although my circumstances are not brilliant, I would not have ventured to bring this claim before the notice of the guardians of the estate, if respectable, upright men had not received the same pledge from the late Prince's own lips, namely, that he would pay my past as well as my future claims in Vienna currency, which is proved by the papers B, C, D, appended to the pleas. Under these circumstances I leave the guardians to judge whether, after so implicitly relying on the promise of the deceased Prince, I have not cause to complain of my delicacy being wounded by the objection advanced by the curators to the witnesses, from their not having been present together at the time the promise was made, which is most distressing to my feelings. In order to extricate myself from this most disagreeable lawsuit, I take the liberty to give an assurance to the guardians that I am prepared, both as to the past and the future, to be satisfied with the 1800 florins, Vienna currency; and I flatter myself that these gentlemen will admit that I on my part make thus no small sacrifice, as it was solely from my esteem for those illustrious Princes that I selected Vienna for my settled abode, at a time when the most advantageous offers were made to me elsewhere. I therefore request the Court to submit this proposal to the guardians of the Kinsky estates for their opinion, and to be so good as to inform me of the result. L. V. BEETHOVEN. [Footnote 1: See No. 94. On the 18th January, 1815, the Court of Justice at Prague decreed that the trustees of Prince Kinsky's estate should pay to L. v. Beethoven the sum of 1200 florins W.W. from November 3d, 1812, instead of the original written agreement of 1800 florins. Dr. Constant, of Wurzbach, in his _Biographical Austrian Lexicon_, states that Beethoven dedicated his splendid song _An die Hoffnung_, Op. 94, to Princess Kinsky, wife of Prince Ferdinand Kinsky, who died in 1812.] 144. TO BARON VON PASQUALATI. January, 1815. MY ESTEEMED FRIEND,-- I beg you will kindly send me by the bearer the proper form for the Kinsky receipt (_but sealed_) for 600 florins half-yearly from the month of April. I intend to send the receipt forthwith to Dr. Kauka in Prague,[1] who on a former occasion procured the money for me so quickly. I will deduct your debt from this, but if it be possible to get the money here before the remittance arrives from Prague, I will bring it at once to you myself. I remain, with the most profound esteem, Your sincere friend, BEETHOVEN [Footnote 1: This man, now ninety-four years of age and quite blind, was at that time Beethoven's counsel in Prague. Pasqualati was that benefactor of Beethoven's who always kept rooms for him in his house on the Mölker Bastei, and whose kind aid never deserted him to the close of his life.] 145. TO HERR KAUKA. Vienna, Feb. 24, 1815. MY MUCH ESTEEMED K.,-- I have repeatedly thanked you through Baron Pasqualati for your friendly exertions on my behalf, and I now beg to express one thousand thanks myself. The intervention of the Archduke could not be very palatable to you, and perhaps has prejudiced you against me. You had already done all that was possible when the Archduke interfered. If this had been the case sooner, and we had not employed that one-sided, or many-sided, or weak-sided Dr. Wolf, then, according to the assurances of the _Oberstburggraf_ himself, the affair might have had a still more favorable result. I shall therefore ever and always be grateful to you for your services. The Court now deduct the sixty ducats I mentioned of my own accord, and to which the late Prince never alluded either to his treasurer or any one else. Where truth could injure me it has been accepted, so why reject it when it could have benefited me? How unfair! Baron Pasqualati requires information from you on various points. I am again very tired to-day, having been obliged to discuss many things with poor P.; such matters exhaust me more than the greatest efforts in composition. It is a new field, the soil of which I ought not to be required to till. This painful business has cost me many tears and much sorrow. The time draws near when Princess Kinsky must be written to. Now I must conclude. How rejoiced shall I be when I can write you the pure effusions of my heart once more; and this I mean to do as soon as I am extricated from all these troubles. Pray accept again my heartfelt thanks for all that you have done for me, and continue your regard for Your attached friend, BEETHOVEN. 146. TO THE ARCHDUKE RUDOLPH. 1815. I heard yesterday, and it was indeed confirmed by meeting Count Troyer, that Y.R.H. is now here. I therefore send the dedication of the Trio [in B flat] to Y.R.H., whose name is inscribed on it; but all my works on which I place any value, though the name does not appear, are equally designed for Y.R.H. I trust, however, that you will not think I have a motive in saying this,--men of high rank being apt to suspect self-interest in such expressions,--and I mean on this occasion to risk the imputation so far as _appearances_ go, by at once asking a favor of Y.R.H. My well-grounded reasons for so doing you will no doubt at once perceive, and graciously vouchsafe to grant my request. I have been very much indisposed in Baden since the beginning of last October; indeed, from the 5th of October I have been entirely confined to my bed, or to my room, till about a week ago. I had a very serious inflammatory cold, and am still able to go out very little, which has also been the cause of my not writing to Y.R.H. in Kremsir. May all the blessings that Heaven can shower upon earth attend you. [K.] SECOND PART. LIFE'S MISSION. 1815 TO 1822. PART II. 147. WRITTEN IN SPOHR'S ALBUM.[1] Vienna, March 3, 1815. [Music: Treble clef, F Major, 3/4 time. Kurz, kurz, kurz, kurz ist der Schmerz, der Schmerz, e-wig, e-wig ist die Freu-de, ist die Freu-de, ja die Freu-de, e-wig ist die Freu-de. Kurz, kurz, kurz, kurz ist der Schmerz, der Schmerz, der Schmerz, e-wig, e-wig ist die Freu-de, ist die Freu-de, e-wig ist die Freude, e-wig, e-wig ist die Freu-de. Kurz, kurz, kurz, kurz ist der Schmerz, der Schmerz, der Schmerz, e-wig, e-wig ist die Freude, e-wig ist die Freu-de.] Whenever, dear Spohr, you chance to find true art and true artists, may you kindly remember Your friend, LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN. [Footnote 1: From the fac-simile in Spohr's _Autobiography_, Vol. I.] 148. TO HERR KAUKA. Vienna, April 8, 1815. It seems scarcely admissible to be on the friendly terms on which I consider myself with you, and yet to be on such unfriendly ones that we should live close to each other and never meet!!!!![1] You write "_tout à vous_." Oh! you humbug! said I. No! no! it is really too bad. I should like to thank you 9000 times for all your efforts on my behalf, and to reproach you 20,000 that you came and went as you did. So all is a delusion! friendship, kingdom, empire; all is only a vapor which every breeze wafts into a different form!! Perhaps I may go to Töplitz, but it is not certain. I might take advantage of that opportunity to let the people of Prague hear something--what think you? if _indeed you still think of me at all_! As the affair with Lobkowitz is now also come to a close, we may write _Finis_, though it far from _fine is_ for me. Baron Pasqualati will no doubt soon call on you again; he also has taken much trouble on my account. Yes, indeed! it is easy to talk of _justice_, but to obtain it from others is _no easy matter_. In what way can I be of service to you in my own art? Say whether you prefer my celebrating the monologue of a fugitive king, or the perjury of a usurper--or the true friends, who, though near neighbors, never saw each other? In the hope of soon hearing from you--for being now so far asunder it is easier to hold intercourse than when nearer!--I remain, with highest esteem, Your ever-devoted friend, LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN. [Footnote 1: Kauka evidently had been recently in Vienna without visiting Beethoven.] 149. TO HERR KAUKA. 1815. MY DEAR AND WORTHY K.,-- I have just received from the Syndic Baier in R. the good news that you told him yourself about Prince F.K. As for the rest, you shall be perfectly satisfied. I take the liberty to ask you again to look after my interests with the Kinsky family, and I subjoin the necessary receipt for this purpose [see No. 144]. Perhaps some other way may be found, though it does not as yet occur to me, by means of which I need not importune you in future. On the 15th October [1815] I was attacked by an inflammatory cold, from the consequences of which I still suffer, and my art likewise; but it is to be hoped that I shall now gradually recover, and at all events be able once more to display the riches of my little realm of sweet sounds. Yet I am very poor in all else--owing to the times? to poverty of spirit? or what???? Farewell! Everything around disposes us to _profound silence_; but this shall not be the case as to the bond of friendship and soul that unites us. I loudly proclaim myself, now as ever, Your loving friend and admirer, BEETHOVEN. 150. TO HERR KAUKA. 1815. MY MOST WORTHY FRIEND,-- My second letter follows that of yesterday, May 2d. Pasqualati tells me to-day, after the lapse of a month and six days, that the house of Ballabene is too _high and mighty_ to assist me in this matter. I must therefore appeal to your _insignificance_ (as I myself do not hesitate to be so mean as to serve other people). My house-rent amounts to 550 florins, and must be paid out of the sum in question. As soon as the newly engraved pianoforte pieces appear, you shall receive copies, and also of the "Battle," &c., &c. Forgive me, forgive me, my generous friend; some other means must be found to forward this affair with due promptitude. In haste, your friend and admirer, BEETHOVEN. 151. TO MR. SALOMON,--LONDON.[1] Vienna, June 1, 1815. MY GOOD FELLOW-COUNTRYMAN,-- I always hoped to meet you one day in London, but many obstacles have intervened to prevent the fulfilment of this wish, and as there seems now no chance of such a thing, I hope you will not refuse a request of mine, which is that you will be so obliging as to apply to some London publisher, and offer him the following works of mine. Grand Trio for piano, violin, and violoncello [Op. 97], 80 ducats. Pianoforte Sonata, with violin accompaniment [Op. 96], 60 ducats. Grand Symphony in A (one of my very best); a short Symphony in F [the 8th]; Quartet for two violins, viola, and violoncello in F minor [Op. 95]; Grand Opera in score, 30 ducats. Cantata with Choruses and Solos ["The Glorious Moment"], 30 ducats. Score of the "Battle of Vittoria" and "Wellington's Victory," 80 ducats; also the pianoforte arrangement of the same, if not already published, which, I am told here, is the case. I have named the prices of some of these works, on a scale which I hold to be suitable for England, but I leave it to you to say what sum should be asked both for these and the others. I hear, indeed, that Cramer [John, whose pianoforte-playing was highly estimated by Beethoven] is also a publisher, but my scholar Ries lately wrote to me that Cramer not long since _publicly expressed his disapproval of my works_: I trust from no motive but that of _being of service to art_, and if so I have no right to object to his doing this. If, however, Cramer should wish to possess any of my _pernicious_ works, I shall be as well satisfied with him as with any other publisher; but I reserve the right to give these works to be published here, so that they may appear at the same moment in London and Vienna. Perhaps you may also be able to point out to me in what way I can recover from the Prince Regent [afterwards George IV.] the expenses of transcribing the "Battle Symphony" on Wellington's victory at Vittoria, to be dedicated to him, for I have long ago given up all hope of receiving anything from that quarter. I have not even been deemed worthy of an answer, whether I am to be authorized to dedicate the work to the Prince Regent; and when at last I propose to publish it here, I am informed that it has already appeared in London. What a fatality for an author!!! While the English and German papers are filled with accounts of the success of the work, as performed at Drury Lane, and that theatre drawing great receipts from it, the author has not one friendly line to show, not even payment for the cost of copying the work, and is thus deprived of all profit.[2] For if it be true that the pianoforte arrangement is soon to be published by a German publisher, copied from the London one, then I lose both my fame and my _honorarium_. The well-known generosity of your character leads me to hope that you will take some interest in the matter, and actively exert yourself on my behalf. The inferior paper-money of this country is now reduced to one fifth of its value, and I am paid according to this scale. After many struggles and considerable loss, I at length succeeded in obtaining the full value; but at this moment the old paper-money has again risen far beyond the fifth part, so that it is evident my salary becomes for the second time almost _nil_, and there is no hope of any compensation. My whole income is derived from my works. If I could rely on a good sale in England, it would doubtless be very beneficial to me. Pray be assured of my boundless gratitude. I hope soon, very soon, to hear from you. I am, with esteem, your sincere friend, LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN. [Footnote 1: J.P. Salomon was likewise a native of Bonn, and one of the most distinguished violin-players of his time. He had been Kapellmeister to Prince Heinrich of Prussia, and then went to London, where he was very active in the introduction of German music. It was through his agency that Beethoven's connection with Birchall, the music publisher, first commenced, to whom a number of his letters are addressed.] [Footnote 2: Undoubtedly the true reading of these last words, which in the copy before me are marked as "difficult to decipher."] 152. TO THE ARCHDUKE RUDOLPH. 1815. Pray forgive my asking Y.R.H. to send me the two Sonatas with violin _obbligato_[1] which I caused to be transcribed for Y.R.H. I require them only for a few days, when I will immediately return them. [K.] [Footnote 1: If by the two Sonatas for the pianoforte with violoncello _obbligato_, Op. 102 is meant, they were composed in July-August, 1815, and appeared on Jan. 13th, 1819. The date of the letter appears also to be 1815.] 153. TO THE ARCHDUKE RUDOLPH. 1815. I beg you will kindly send me the Sonata in E minor,[1] as I wish to correct it. On Monday I shall inquire for Y.R.H. in person. _Recent occurrences_[2] render it indispensable to complete many works of mine about to be engraved as quickly as possible; besides, my health is only partially restored. I earnestly entreat Y.R.H. to desire _some one_ to write me a few lines as to the state of your own health. I trust I shall hear a better--nay, the best report of it. [K.] [Footnote 1: The letters 152 and 153 speak sometimes expressly of the pianoforte Sonata in E minor, Op. 90, these being engraved or under revision, and sometimes only indicate them. This Sonata, dedicated to Count Lichnowsky, was composed on August 14th, 1814, and published in June, 1815.] [Footnote 2: What "recent occurrences" Beethoven alludes to, unless indeed his well-known misfortunes as to his salary and guardianship we cannot discover.] 154. TO THE ARCHDUKE RUDOLPH. 1815. You must almost think my illness a mere fiction, but that is assuredly not the case. I am obliged always to come home early in the evening. The first time that Y.R.H. was graciously pleased to send for me, I came home immediately afterwards, but feeling much better since then, I made an attempt the evening before last to stay out a little later. If Y.R.H. does not countermand me, I intend to have the honor of waiting on you this evening at five o'clock. I will bring the new Sonata with me, merely for to-day, for it is so soon to be engraved that it is not worth while to have it written out. [K.] 155. TO THE ARCHDUKE RUDOLPH. 1815. I intended to have given you this letter myself, but my personal attendance might possibly be an intrusion; so I take the liberty once more to urge on Y.R.H. the request it contains. I should also be glad if Y.R.H. would send me back my last MS. Sonata, for as I _must_ publish it, it would be labor lost to have it transcribed, and I shall soon have the pleasure of presenting it to you engraved. I will call again in a few days. I trust these joyous times may have a happy influence on your precious health. [K.] 156. TO THE ARCHDUKE RUDOLPH. Vienna, July 23, 1815. When you were recently in town, the enclosed Chorus[1] occurred to me. I hurried home to write it down, but was detained longer in doing so than I at first expected, and thus, to my great sorrow, I missed Y.R.H. The bad custom I have followed from childhood, instantly to write down my first thoughts, otherwise they not unfrequently go astray, has been an injury to me on this occasion. I therefore send Y.R.H. my impeachment and my justification, and trust I may find grace in your eyes. I hope soon to present myself before Y.R.H., and to inquire after a health so precious to us all. [K.] [Footnote 1: In 1815 the Chorus of _Die Meeresstille_ was composed by Beethoven. Was this the chorus which occurred to him? The style of the letter leaves his meaning quite obscure.] 157. TO THE ARCHDUKE RUDOLPH. 1815. It is neither presumption, nor the pretension of advocating any one's cause, still less from the wish of arrogating to myself the enjoyment of any especial favor with Y.R.H., that induces me to make a suggestion which is in itself very simple. Old Kraft[1] was with me yesterday; he wished to know if it were possible for him to be lodged in your palace, in return for which he would be at Y.R.H.'s service as often as you please it. He has lived for twenty years in the house of Prince Lobkowitz, and during a great part of that time he received no salary; he is now obliged to vacate his rooms without receiving any compensation whatever. The position of the poor deserving old man is hard, and I should have considered myself equally hard, had I not ventured to lay his case before you. Count Troyer will request an answer from Y.R.H. As the object in view is to brighten the lot of a fellow-creature, pray forgive your, &c., &c. [K.] [Footnote 1: Old Kraft was a clever violoncello-player who had an appointment in Prince Lobkowitz's band, but when the financial crisis occurred in the Prince's affairs he lost his situation, and was obliged to give up his lodging.] 158. WRITTEN IN ENGLISH TO MR. BIRCHALL, MUSIC PUBLISHER, LONDON. Mr. Beethoven send word to Mr. Birchall that it is severall days past that he has sent for London Wellington's Battel Sinphonie and that Mr. B[irchall] may send for it at Thomas Coutts. Mr. Beethoven wish Mr. B. would make ingrave the sayd Sinphonie so soon as possible and send him word in time the day it will be published that he may prevend in time the Publisher in Vienna. In regard the 3. Sonata which Mr. Birchall receive afterwerths there is not wanted such a g't hurry and Mr. B. will take the liberty to fixe the day when the are to be published. Mr. B[irchall] sayd that Mr. Salomon has a good many tings to say concerning the Synphonie in G [? A]. Mr. B[eethoven] wish for a answer so soon as possible concerning the days of the publication. 159. TO ZMESKALL. October 16, 1815. I only wish to let you know that I am _here_, and not _elsewhere_, and wish in return to hear if you are _elsewhere_ or _here_. I should be glad to speak to you for a few minutes when I know that you are at home and alone. _Farewell_--but not _too well_--sublime Commandant Pacha of various mouldering fortresses!!! In haste, your friend, BEETHOVEN. 160. TO THE ARCHDUKE RUDOLPH. Nov. 16, 1815. Since yesterday afternoon I have been lying in a state of exhaustion, owing to my great distress of mind caused by the sudden death of my unhappy brother. It was impossible for me to send an answer to Y.R.H. yesterday, and I trust you will graciously receive my present explanation. I expect, however, certainly to wait on Y.R.H. to-morrow. [K.] 161. TO THE MESSRS. BIRCHALL,--LONDON. Vienna, Nov. 22, 1815. You will herewith receive the pianoforte arrangement of the Symphony in A. "Wellington's Battle Symphony," and "Victory at Vittoria" were sent a month since, through Herr Neumann, to the care of Messrs. Coutts; so you have no doubt received them long ere this. In the course of a fortnight you shall have the Trio and Sonata, when you are requested to pay into the hands of Messrs. Coutts the sum of 130 gold ducats. I beg you will make no delay in bringing out these works, and likewise let me know on what day the "Wellington Symphony" is to appear, so that I may take my measures here accordingly. I am, with esteem, Your obedient LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN. 162. TO RIES. Vienna, Wednesday, Nov. 22, 1815. MY DEAR RIES,-- I hasten to apprise you that I have to-day forwarded by post the pianoforte arrangement of the Symphony in A, to the care of Messrs Coutts. As the Court is absent, few, indeed almost no couriers go from here; moreover, the post is the safest way. The Symphony ought to be brought out about March; the precise day I will fix myself. So much time has already been lost on this occasion that I could not give an earlier notice of the period of publication. The Trio in [??] and the violin Sonata may be allowed more time, and both will be in London a few weeks hence. I earnestly entreat you, dear Ries, to take charge of these matters, and also to see that I get the money; I require it, and it costs me a good deal before all is sent off. I have lost 600 florins of my yearly salary; at the time of the _bank-notes_ there was no loss, but then came the _Einlösungsscheine_ [reduced paper-money], which deprives me of these 600 florins, after entailing on me several years of annoyance, and now the total loss of my salary. We are at present arrived at a point when the _Einlösungsscheine_ are even lower than the _bank-notes_ ever were. I pay 1000 florins for house-rent: you may thus conceive all the misery caused by paper-money. My poor unhappy brother [Carl v. Beethoven, a cashier in Vienna] is just dead [Nov. 15th, 1815]; he had a bad wife. For some years past he has been suffering from consumption, and from my wish to make his life less irksome I may compute what I gave him at 10,000 florins (_Wiener Währung_). This indeed does not seem much to an Englishman, but it is a great deal for a poor German, or rather Austrian. The unhappy man was latterly much changed, and I must say I lament him from my heart, though I rejoice to think I left nothing undone that could contribute to his comfort. Tell Mr. Birchall that he is to repay the postage of my letters to you and Mr. Salomon, and also yours to me; he may deduct this from the sum he owes me; I am anxious that those who work for me should lose as little as possible by it. "Wellington's Victory at Vittoria"[1] must have arrived long ago through the Messrs. Coutts. Mr. Birchall need not send payment till he is in possession of all the works; only do not delay letting me know when the day is fixed for the publication of the pianoforte arrangement. For to-day, I only further earnestly recommend my affairs to your care; I shall be equally at your service at any time. Farewell, dear Ries. Your friend, BEETHOVEN. [Footnote 1: "This is also to be the title of the pianoforte arrangement." (Note by Beethoven.)] 163. TO ZMESKALL. Jan. 1816. MY GOOD ZMESKALL,-- I was shocked to discover to-day that I had omitted replying to a proposal from the "Society of Friends to Music in the Austrian States" to write an Oratorio for them. The death of my brother two months ago, which, owing to the guardianship of my nephew having devolved on me, has involved me in all sorts of annoyances and perplexities, has caused this delay in my answer. In the mean time, the poem of Herr van Seyfried is already begun, and I purpose shortly to set it to music. I need not tell you how very flattering I consider such a commission, for how could I think otherwise? and I shall endeavor to acquit myself as honorably as my poor talents will admit of. _With regard to our artistic resources_, when the time for the performance arrives I shall certainly take into consideration those usually at our disposal, without, however, strictly limiting myself to them. I hope I have made myself clearly understood on this point. As I am urged to say what gratuity I require in return, I beg to know whether the Society will consider 400 gold ducats a proper remuneration for such a work? I once more entreat the forgiveness of the Society for the delay in my answer, but I am in some degree relieved by knowing that, at all events, you, my dear friend, have already verbally apprised the Society of my readiness to write a work of the kind.[1] Ever, my worthy Z., your BEETHOVEN. [Footnote 1: In the _Fischof'sche Handschrift_ we are told:--"The allusion to 'our artistic resources' requires some explanation. Herr v. Zmeskall had at that time received instructions to give a hint to the great composer (who paid little regard to the difficulty of executing his works) that he must absolutely take into consideration the size of the orchestra, which at grand concerts amounted to 700 performers. The Society only stipulated for the exclusive right to the work for one year, and did not purchase the copyright; they undertook the gratuity for the poem also, so they were obliged to consult their pecuniary resources, and informed the composer that they were prepared to give him 200 gold ducats for the use of the work for a year, as they had proposed. Beethoven was quite satisfied, and made no objection whatever; he received an advance on this sum according to his own wish, the receipt of which he acknowledged in 1819. Beethoven rejected the first poem selected, and desired to have another. The Society left his choice quite free. Herr Bernhard undertook to supply a new one. Beethoven and he consulted together in choosing the subject, but Herr Bernhard, overburdened by other business, could only send the poem bit by bit. Beethoven, however, would not begin till the whole was in his hands."] 164. TO MDLLE. MILDER-HAUPTMANN.[1] Vienna, Jan. 6, 1816. MY HIGHLY VALUED MDLLE. MILDER, MY DEAR FRIEND,-- I have too long delayed writing to you. How gladly would I personally participate in the enthusiasm you excite at Berlin in "Fidelio!" A thousand thanks on my part for having so faithfully adhered to _my_ "Fidelio." If you will ask Baron de la Motte-Fouqué, in my name, to discover a good subject for an opera, and one suitable likewise to yourself, you will do a real service both to me and to the German stage; it is also my wish to write it expressly for the _Berlin Theatre_, as no new opera can ever succeed in being properly given here under this very penurious direction. Answer me soon, very soon--quickly, very quickly--as quickly as possible--as quick as lightning--and say whether such a thing is practicable. Herr Kapellmeister B. praised you up to the skies to me, and he is right; well may he esteem himself happy who has the privilege of enjoying your muse, your genius, and all your splendid endowments and talents;--it is thus I feel. Be this as it may, those around can only call themselves your fellow-creatures [Nebenmann], whereas I alone have a right to claim the honored name of captain [_Hauptmann_]. In my secret heart, your true friend and admirer, BEETHOVEN. My poor unfortunate brother is dead, which has been the cause of my long silence. As soon as you have replied to this letter, I will write myself to Baron de la Motte-Fouqué. No doubt your influence in Berlin will easily obtain for me a commission to write a grand opera (in which you shall be especially studied) on favorable terms; but do answer me soon, that I may arrange my other occupations accordingly. [Music: Tenor clef, C Major, 4/4 time. Ich küs-se Sie, drü-cke Sie an's Herz! Ich der Haupt-mann, der Haupt-mann.] Away with all other false _Hauptmänner_! [captains.] [Footnote 1: Mdlle. Milder married Hauptmann, a jeweller in Munich, in 1810, travelled in 1812, and was engaged at Berlin in 1816.] 165. TO RIES Vienna, Jan. 20, 1816. DEAR RIES,-- The Symphony is to be dedicated to the Empress of Russia. The pianoforte score of the Symphony in A must not, however, appear before June, for the publisher here cannot be ready sooner. Pray, dear Ries, inform Mr. Birchall of this at once. The Sonata with violin accompaniment, which will be sent from here by the next post, can likewise be published in London in May, but the Trio at a later date (it follows by the next post); I will myself name the time for its publication. And now, dear Ries, pray receive my heartfelt thanks for your kindness, and especially for the corrections of the proofs. May Heaven bless you more and more, and promote your progress, in which I take the most sincere interest. My kind regards to your wife. Now as ever, Your sincere friend, LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN. 166. TO MR. BIRCHALL,--LONDON. Vienne, le 3. Febr. den 1816 VOUS RECEUES CI JOINT-- Le grand Trio p. Pf. V. et Vllo. Sonata pour Pf. et Violin--qui form le reste de ce qu'il vous a plus à me comettre. Je vous prie de vouloir payer la some de 130 Ducats d'Holland come le poste lettre a Mr. Th. Cutts et Co. de votre ville e de me croire avec toute l'estime et consideration Votre tres humble Serviteur, LOUIS VAN BEETHOVEN. 167. TO CZERNY.[1] MY DEAR CZERNY,-- Pray give the enclosed to your parents for the dinners the boy had recently at your house; I positively will not accept these _gratis_. Moreover, I am very far from wishing that your lessons should remain without remuneration,--even those already given must be reckoned up and paid for; only I beg you to have a little patience for a time, as nothing can be _demanded_ from the widow, and I had and still have heavy expenses to defray;--but I _borrow_ from you for the moment only. The boy is to be with you to-day, and I shall come later. Your friend, BEETHOVEN. [Footnote 1: Carl Czerny, the celebrated pianist and composer, for whom Beethoven wrote a testimonial in 1805 (see No. 42). He gave lessons to Beethoven's nephew in 1815, and naturally protested against any payment, which gave rise to the expressions on the subject in many of his notes to Czerny, of which there appear to be a great number.] 168. TO CZERNY.[1] Vienna, Feb. 12, 1816. DEAR CZERNY,-- I cannot see you to-day, but I will call to-morrow being desirous to talk to you. I spoke out so bluntly yesterday that I much regretted it afterwards. But you must forgive this on the part of an author, who would have preferred hearing his work as he wrote it, however charmingly you played it. I will, however, _amply_ atone for this by the violoncello Sonata.[2] Rest assured that I cherish the greatest regard for you as an artist, and I shall always endeavor to prove this. Your true friend, BEETHOVEN. [Footnote 1: Czerny, in the _A.M. Zeitung_, 1845, relates:--"On one occasion (in 1812), at Schuppanzigh's concert, when playing Beethoven's quintet with wind-instruments, I took the liberty, in my youthful levity, to make many alterations,--such as introducing difficulties into the passages, making use of the upper octaves, &c., &c. Beethoven sternly and deservedly reproached me for this, in the presence of Schuppanzigh, Linke, and the other performers."] [Footnote 2: Opera 69, which Czerny (see _A.M. Zeitung_) was to perform with Linke the following week.] 169. TO RIES,--LONDON. Vienna, Feb. 28, 1816. ... For some time past I have been far from well; the loss of my brother affected both my spirits and my works. Salomon's death grieves me much, as he was an excellent man whom I have known from my childhood. You are his executor by will, while I am the guardian of my late poor brother's child. You can scarcely have had as much vexation from Salomon's death as I have had from that of my brother!--but I have the sweet consolation of having rescued a poor innocent child from the hands of an unworthy mother. Farewell, dear Ries; if I can in any way serve you, look on me as Your true friend, BEETHOVEN. 170. TO GIANNATASIO DEL RIO,--VIENNA. Feb. 1816. SIR,-- I have great pleasure in saying that at last I intend to-morrow to place under your care the dear pledge intrusted to me. But I must impress on you not to permit any influence on the mother's part to decide when and where she is to see her son. We can, however, discuss all this more minutely to-morrow.... You must keep a watchful eye on your servant, for mine was _bribed by her_ on one occasion. More as to this verbally, though it is a subject on which I would fain be silent; but the future welfare of the youth you are to train renders this unpleasant communication necessary. I remain, with esteem, Your faithful servant and friend, BEETHOVEN. 171. TO G. DEL RIO. 1816. Your estimable lady, Mdme. A.G. [Giannatasio] is politely requested to let the undersigned know as soon as possible (that I may not be obliged to keep it all in my head) how many pairs of stockings, trousers, shoes, and drawers are required, and how many yards of kerseymere to make a pair of black trousers for my tall nephew; and for the sake of the "Castalian Spring" I beg, without any further reminders on my part, that I may receive an answer to this. As for the Lady Abbess [a nickname for their only daughter], there shall be a conference held on Carl's affair to-night, viz., if things are to continue as they are. Your well (and ill) born BEETHOVEN. 172. TO G. DEL RIO. 1816. I heard yesterday evening, unluckily at too late an hour, that you had something to give me; had it not been for this, I would have called on you. I beg, however, that you will send it, as I have no doubt it is a letter for me from the "Queen of the Night."[1] Although you gave me permission to fetch Carl twice already, I must ask you to let him come to me when I send for him at eleven o'clock to-morrow, as I wish to take him with me to hear some interesting music. It is also my intention to make him play to me to-morrow, as it is now some time since I heard him. I hope you will urge him to study more closely than usual to-day, that he may in some degree make up for his holiday. I embrace you cordially, and remain, Yours truly, LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN. [Footnote 1: The "Queen of the Night" was the name given to Carl's mother by Beethoven. She was a person of great levity of conduct and bad reputation, and every effort was made by Beethoven to withdraw her son from her influence, on which account he at once removed him from her care, and placed him in this institution. She consequently appealed to the law against him,--the first step in a long course of legal proceedings of the most painful nature.] 173. TO G. DEL RIO.[1] 1816. I send you, dear sir, the cloak, and also a school-book of my Carl's, and request you will make out a list of his clothes and effects, that I may have it copied for myself, being obliged, as his guardian, to look carefully after his property. I intend to call for Carl to-morrow about half-past twelve o'clock, to take him to a little concert, and wish him to dine with me afterwards, and shall bring him back myself. With respect to his mother, I desire that _under the pretext_ of the boy being _so busy_, you will not let her see him; no man on earth can know or judge of this matter better than myself, and by any other line of conduct all my well-matured plans for the welfare of the child might be materially injured. I will myself discuss with you when the mother is henceforth to have access to Carl, for I am anxious on every account to prevent the occurrence of yesterday ever being repeated. I take all the responsibility on myself; indeed, so far as I am concerned, the Court conferred on me full powers, and the authority at once to counteract anything adverse to the welfare of the boy. If they could have looked on her in the light of an estimable mother, they assuredly would not have excluded her from the guardianship of her child. Whatever she may think fit to assert, nothing has been done in a clandestine manner against her. There was but one voice in the whole council on the subject. I hope to have no further trouble in this matter, for the burden is already heavy enough. From a conversation I had yesterday with Adlersburg [his lawyer], it would appear that a long time must yet elapse before the Court can decide what really belongs to the child. In addition to all these anxieties am I also to endure a persecution such as I have recently experienced, and from which I thought I _was entirely rescued by your Institution_? Farewell! I am, with esteem, your obedient L. V. BEETHOVEN. [Footnote 1: Beethoven's arbitrary authority had been previously sanctioned by a decree of the Court, and the mother deprived of all power over her son.] 174. TO FERDINAND RIES,--LONDON. Vienna, March 8, 1816. My answer has been too long delayed; but I was ill, and had a great press of business. Not a single farthing is yet come of the ten gold ducats, and I now almost begin to think that the English are only liberal when in foreign countries. It is the same with the Prince Regent, who has not even sent me the cost of copying my "Battle Symphony," nor one verbal or written expression of thanks. My whole income consists of 3400 florins in paper-money. I pay 1100 for house-rent, and 900 to my servant and his wife; so you may reckon for yourself what remains. Besides this, the entire maintenance of my young nephew devolves on me. At present he is at school, which costs 1100 florins, and is by no means a good one; so that I must arrange a proper household and have him with me. How much money must be made to live at all here! and yet there seems no end to it--because!--because!--because!--but you know well what I mean. Some commissions from the Philharmonic would be very acceptable to me, besides, the concert. Now let me say that my dear scholar Ries must set to work and dedicate something valuable to me, to which his master may respond, and repay him in his own coin. How can I send you my portrait? My kind regards to your wife. I, alas! have none. One alone I wished to possess, but never shall I call her mine![1] This, however, has not made me a woman-hater. Your true friend, BEETHOVEN. [Footnote 1: See the statement of Fräulein del Rio in the _Grenzboten_. We read:--"My father's idea was that marriage alone could remedy the sad condition of Beethoven's household matters; so he asked him whether he knew any one, &c., &c. Our long-existing presentiment was then realized." His love was unfortunate. Five years ago he had become acquainted with a person with whom he would have esteemed it the highest felicity of his life to have entered into closer ties; but it was vain to think of it, being almost an impossibility! a chimera! and yet his feelings remained the same as the very first day he had seen her! He added, "that never before had he found such harmony! but no declaration had ever been made, not being able to prevail on himself to do so." This conversation took place in Sept. 1816, at Helenenthal, in Baden, and the person to whom he alluded was undoubtedly Marie L. Pachler-Koschak in Gratz. (See No. 80.)] 175. TO F. RIES. Vienna, April 3, 1816. Neate[1] is no doubt in London by this time. He took several of my works with him, and promised to do the best he could for me. The Archduke Rudolph [Beethoven's pupil, see No. 70] also plays your works with me, my dear Ries; of these "Il Sogno" especially pleased us. Farewell! Remember me to your charming wife, and to any fair English ladies who care to receive my greetings. Your true friend, BEETHOVEN. [Footnote 1: Charles Neate, a London artist, as Schindler styles him in his _Biography_ (II. 254), was on several different occasions for some time resident in Vienna, and very intimate with Beethoven, whom he tried to persuade to come to London. He also was of great service in promoting the sale of his works. A number of Neate's letters, preserved in the Berlin State Library, testify his faithful and active devotion and attachment to the master.] 176. POWER OF ATTORNEY. Vienna, May 2, 1816. I authorize Herr v. Kauka, Doctor of Laws in the kingdom of Bohemia, relying on his friendship, to obtain for me the receipt of 600 florins W.W., payable at the treasury of Prince Kinsky, from the house of Ballabene in Prague, and after having drawn the money to transmit the same to me as soon as possible. Witness my hand and seal. LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN. 177. TO F. RIES. Vienna, June 11, 1816. MY DEAR RIES,-- I regret much to put you to the expense of postage on my account; gladly as I assist and serve every one, I am always unwilling myself to have recourse to others. I have as yet seen nothing of the ten ducats, whence I draw the inference that in England, just as with us, there are idle talkers who prove false to their word. I do not at all blame you in this matter. I have not heard a syllable from Neate; so I do wish you would ask him whether he has disposed of the F minor Concerto. I am almost ashamed to allude to the other works I intrusted to him, and equally so of myself, for having given them to him so confidingly, devoid of all conditions save those suggested by his own friendship and zeal for my interests. A translation has been sent to me of an article in the "Morning Chronicle" on the performance of the Symphony. Probably it will be the same as to this and all the other works Neate took with him as with the "Battle Symphony;" the only profit I shall derive will be reading a notice of their performance in the newspapers. 178. TO G. DEL RIO. 1816. MY WORTHY G.,-- I beg you will send Carl to me with the bearer of this letter; otherwise I shall not be able to see him all day, which would be contrary to his own interest, as my influence seems to be required; in the same view, I beg you will give him a few lines with a report of his conduct, so that I may enter at once on any point where improvement is necessary. I am going to the country to-day, and shall not return till rather late at night; being always unwilling to infringe your rules, I beg you will send some night-things with Carl, so that if we return too late to bring him to you to-day, I can keep him all night, and take him back to you myself early next morning. In haste, always yours, L. V. BEETHOVEN. 179. TO G. DEL RIO. 1816. I must apologize to you, my good friend, for Carl having come home at so late an hour. We were obliged to wait for a person who arrived so late that it detained us, but I will not soon repeat this breach of your rules. As to Carl's mother, I have now decided that your wish not to see her again in your house shall be acceded to. This course is far more safe and judicious for our dear Carl, experience having taught me that every visit from his mother leaves a root of bitterness in the boy's heart, which may injure, but never can benefit him. I shall strive to arrange occasional meetings at my house, which is likely to result in everything being entirely broken off with her. As we thoroughly agree on the subject of Carl's mother, we can mutually decide on the mode of his education. Your true friend, BEETHOVEN. 180. TO THE ARCHDUKE RUDOLPH. Vienna, July 11, 1816. Your kindness towards me induces me to hope that you will not attribute to any _selfish_ design on my part the somewhat audacious (though only as to the surprise) dedication annexed. The work[1] was written for Y.R.H., or rather, it owes its existence to you, and this the world (the musical world) ought to know. I shall soon have the honor of waiting on Y.R.H. in Baden. Notwithstanding all the efforts of my physician, who will not allow me to leave this, the weakness in my chest is no better, though my general health is improved. I hope to hear all that is cheering of your own health, about which I am always so much interested. [K.] [Footnote 1: Does Beethoven here allude to the dedication of the Sonata for pianoforte and violin in G major, Op. 96, which, though sold to a publisher in April, 1815, was designated as quite new in the _Allgemeine Zeitung_ on July, 29, 1816?] 181. WRITTEN IN ENGLISH TO MR. BIRCHALL. 1816. Received, March, 1816, of Mr. Robert Birchall, music-seller, 133 New Bond Street, London, the sum of one hundred and thirty gold Dutch ducats, value in English currency sixty-five pounds, for all my copyright and interest, present and future, vested or contingent, or otherwise within the United kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland in the four following compositions or pieces of music composed or arranged by me, viz.:-- 1st. A Grand Battle Sinfonia, descriptive of the battle and victory at Vittoria, adapted for the pianoforte and dedicated to his Royal Highness the Prince Regent--40 ducats. 2d. A Grand Symphony in the key of A, adapted to the pianoforte and dedicated to-- 3d. A Grand Trio for the pianoforte, violin, and violoncello in the key of B. 4th. A Sonata for the pianoforte, with an accompaniment for the violin in the key of G, dedicated to-- And, in consideration of such payment I hereby, for myself, my executors, and administrators, promise and engage to execute a proper anignment thereof to him, his executors and administrators or anignees, at his or their request and costs, as he or they shall direct. And I likewise promise and engage as above, that none of the above shall be published in any foreign country, before the time and day fixed and agreed on for such publication between R. Birchall and myself shall arrive. L. VAN BEETHOVEN. 182. WRITTEN IN FRENCH TO MR. BIRCHALL,--LONDON. Vienne 22. Juilliet, 1816. MONSIEUR,-- J'ai reçu la déclaration de proprieté de mes Oeuvres entierement cedé a Vous pour y adjoindre ma Signature. Je suis tout a fait disposer a seconder vos voeux si tôt, que cette affaire sera entierement en ordre, en egard de la petite somme de 10 # d'or la quelle me vient encore pour le fieux de la Copieture de poste de lettre etc. comme j'avois l'honneur de vous expliquier dans une note detaillé sur ses objectes. Je vous invite donc Monsieur de bien vouloir me remettre ces petits objects, pour me mettre dans l'état de pouvoir vous envoyer le Document susdit. Agrées Monsieur l'assurance de l'estime la plus parfait avec la quelle j'ai l'honneur de me dire LOUIS VAN BEETHOVEN. Copying . . . . 1. 10. 0. Postage to Amsterdam 1. 0. 0. ---- Trio . . . 2. 10. -- ----------- £5. 0. 0. 183. TO G. DEL RIO. July 28, 1816. MY GOOD FRIEND,-- Various circumstances compel me to take charge of Carl myself; with this view permit me to enclose you the amount due at the approaching quarter, at the expiry of which Carl is to leave you. Do not, I beg, ascribe this to anything derogatory either to yourself or to your respected institution, but to other pressing motives connected with Carl's welfare. It is only an experiment, and when it is actually carried out I shall beg you to fortify me by your advice, and also to permit Carl sometimes to visit your institution. I shall always feel the most sincere gratitude to you, and never can forget your solicitude, and the kind care of your excellent wife, which has fully equalled that of the best of mothers. I would send you at least four times the sum I now do, if my position admitted of it; but at all events I shall avail myself at a future and, I hope, a brighter day, of every opportunity to acknowledge and to do justice to the foundation _you_ have laid for the moral and physical good of my Carl. With regard to the "Queen of the Night," our system must continue the same; and as Carl is about to undergo an operation in your house which will cause him to feel indisposed, and consequently make him irritable and susceptible, you must be more careful than ever to prevent her having access to him; otherwise she might easily contrive to revive all those impressions in his mind which we are so anxious to avoid. What confidence can be placed in any promise to reform on her part, the impertinent scrawl I enclose will best prove [in reference, no doubt, to an enclosed note]. I send it merely to show you how fully I am justified in the precautions I have already adopted with regard to her. On this occasion, however, I did not answer like a Sarastro, but like a Sultan. I would gladly spare you the anxiety of the operation on Carl, but as it must take place in your house, I beg you will inform me of the outlay caused by the affair, and the expenses consequent on it, which I will thankfully repay. Now farewell! Say all that is kind from me to your dear children and your excellent wife, to whose continued care I commend my Carl. I leave Vienna to-morrow at five o'clock A.M., but shall frequently come in from Baden. Ever, with sincere esteem, your L. V. BEETHOVEN. 184. TO G. DEL RIO. Mdme. A.G. is requested to order several pairs of good linen drawers for Carl. I intrust Carl to her kindness, and entirely rely on her motherly care. 185. TO ZMESKALL. Baden, September 5, 1816. DEAR Z.,-- I don't know whether you received a note that I recently left on the threshold of your door, for the time was too short to enable me to see you. I must therefore repeat my request about another servant, as the conduct of my present one is such that I cannot possibly keep him.[1] He was engaged on the 25th of April, so on the 25th of September he will have been five months with me, and he received 50 florins on account. The money for his boots will be reckoned from the third month (in my service), and from that time at the rate of 40 florins per annum; his livery also from the third month. From the very first I resolved not to keep him, but delayed discharging him, as I wished to get back the value of my florins. In the mean time if I can procure another, I will let this one leave my service on the 15th of the month, and also give him 20 florins for boot money, and 5 florins a month for livery (both reckoned from the third month), making altogether 35 florins. I ought therefore still to receive 15 florins, but these I am willing to give up; in this way I shall at all events receive some equivalent for my 50 florins. If you can find a suitable person, I will give him 2 florins a day while I am in Baden, and if he knows how to cook he can use my firewood in the kitchen. (I have a kitchen, though I do not cook in it.) If not, I will add a few kreutzers to his wages. As soon as I am settled in Vienna, he shall have 40 florins a month, and board and livery as usual, reckoned from the third month in my service, like other servants. It would be a good thing if he understood a little tailoring. So now you have my proposals, and I beg for an answer by the 10th of this month at the latest, that I may discharge my present servant on the 2d, with the usual fortnight's warning; otherwise I shall be obliged to keep him for another month, and every moment I wish to get rid of him. As for the new one, you know pretty well what I require,--_good, steady conduct_, a _good character_, and _not to be of a bloodthirsty nature_, that I may feel my life to be safe, as, for the sake of various scamps in this world, I should like to live a little longer. By the 10th, therefore, I shall expect to hear from you on this affair. If you don't run restive, I will soon send you my treatise on the four violoncello strings, very profoundly handled; the first chapter devoted exclusively to entrails in general, the second to catgut in particular. I need scarcely give you any further warnings, as you seem to be quite on your guard against wounds inflicted before certain fortresses. The most _profound peace_ everywhere prevails!!! Farewell, my good _Zmeskällchen_! I am, as ever, _un povero musico_ and your friend, BEETHOVEN. N.B. I shall probably only require my new servant for some months, as, for the sake of my Carl, I must shortly engage a housekeeper. [Footnote 1: During a quarrel, the servant scratched Beethoven's face.] 186. TO HERR KAUKA. Baden, Sept. 6, 1816. MY WORTHY K.,-- I send you herewith the receipt, according to your request, and beg that you will kindly arrange that I should have the money by the 1st October, and without any deduction, which has hitherto been the case; I also particularly beg _you will not assign the money to Baron P._ (I will tell you why when we meet; for the present let this remain between ourselves.) Send it either direct to myself, or, if it must come through another person, do not let it be Baron P. It would be best for the future, as the house-rent is paid here for the great house belonging to Kinsky, that my money should be paid at the same time. This is only my own idea. The Terzet you heard of will soon be engraved, which is infinitely preferable to all written music; you shall therefore receive an engraved copy, and likewise some more of my unruly offspring. In the mean time I beg that you will see only what is truly good in them, and look with an indulgent eye on the human frailties of these poor innocents. Besides, I am full of cares, being in reality father to my late brother's child; indeed I might have ushered into the world a second part of the "Flauto Magico," having also been brought into contact with a "Queen of the Night." I embrace you from my heart, and hope soon in so far to succeed that you may owe some thanks to my Muse. My dear, worthy Kauka, I ever am your truly attached friend, BEETHOVEN. 187. QUERY? What would be the result were I to leave this, and indeed the kingdom of Austria altogether? Would the life-certificate, if signed by the authorities of a non-Austrian place, still be valid? _A tergo._ I beg you will let me know the postage all my letters have cost you. 188. TO G. DEL RIO. Sunday, September 22, 1816. Certain things can never be fully expressed. Of this nature are my feelings, and especially my gratitude, on hearing the details of the operation on Carl from you. You will excuse my attempting even remotely to shape these into words. I feel certain, however, that you will not decline the tribute I gladly pay you; but I say no more. You can easily imagine my anxiety to hear how my dear son is going on; do not omit to give me your exact address, that I may write to you direct. After you left this I wrote to Bernhard [Bernard], to make inquiries at your house, but have not yet got an answer; so possibly you may have thought me a kind of half-reckless barbarian, as no doubt Herr B. has neglected to call on you, as well as to write to me. I can have no uneasiness about Carl when your admirable wife is with him: that is quite out of the question. You can well understand how much it grieves me not to be able to take part in the sufferings of my Carl, and that I at least wish to hear frequently of his progress. As I have renounced such an unfeeling, unsympathizing friend as Herr B. [Bernard], I must have recourse to your friendship and complaisance on this point also, and shall hope soon to receive a few lines from you. I beg to send my best regards and a thousand thanks to your admirable wife. In haste, your BEETHOVEN. I wish you to express to Smetana [the surgeon] my esteem and high consideration. 189. TO G. DEL RIO. If you do not object, I beg you will allow Carl to come to me with the bearer of this. I forgot, in my haste, to say that all the love and goodness which Mdme. A.G. [Giannatasio] showed my Carl during his illness are inscribed in the list of my obligations, and I hope one day to show that they are ever present in my mind. Perhaps I may see you to-day with Carl. In haste, your sincere friend, L. V. BEETHOVEN. 190. TO WEGELER. I take the opportunity through J. Simrock to remind you of myself. I hope you received the engraving of me [by Letronne], and likewise the Bohemian glass. When I next make a pilgrimage through Bohemia you shall have something more of the same kind. Farewell! You are a husband and a father; so am I, but without a wife. My love to your dear ones--to _our_ dear ones. Your friend, L. V. BEETHOVEN. 191. WRITTEN IN ENGLISH TO MR. BIRCHALL, MUSIC SELLER, LONDON. Vienna, 1. Oct. 1816. MY DEAR SIR,-- I have duly received the £5 and thought previously you would non increase the number of Englishmen neglecting their word and honor, as I had the misfortune of meeting with two of this sort. In replic to the other topics of your favor, I have no objection to write variations according to your plan, and I hope you will not find £30 too much, the Accompaniment will be a Flute or Violin or a Violoncello; you'll either decide it when you send me the approbation of the price, or you'll leave it to me. I expect to receive the songs or poetry--the sooner the better, and you'll favor me also with the probable number of Works of Variations you are inclined to receive of me. The Sonata in G with the accompan't of a Violin to his Imperial Highnesse Archduke Rodolph of Austria--it is Op'a 96. The Trio in Bb is dedicated to the same and is Op. 97. The Piano arrangement of the Symphony in A is dedicated to the Empress of the Russians--meaning the Wife of the Emp'r Alexander--Op. 98. Concerning the expences of copying and packing it is not possible to fix him before hand, they are at any rate not considerable, and you'll please to consider that you have to deal with a man of honor, who will not charge one 6p. more than he is charged for himself. Messrs. Fries & Co. will account with Messrs. Coutts & Co.--The postage may be lessened as I have been told. I offer you of my Works the following new ones. A Grand Sonata for the Pianoforte alone £40. A Trio for the Piano with accomp't of Violin and Violoncello for £50. It is possible that somebody will offer you other works of mine to purchase, for ex. the score of the Grand Symphony in A.--With regard to the arrangement of this Symphony for the Piano I beg you not to forget that you are not to publish it until I have appointed the day of its publication here in Vienna. This cannot be otherwise without making myself guilty of a dishonorable act--but the Sonata with the Violin and the Trio in B fl. may be published without any delay. With all the _new works_, which you will have of me or which I offer you, it rests with you to name the day of their publication at your own choice: I entreat you to honor me as soon as possible with an answer having many ordres for compositions and that you may not be delayed. My address or direction is Monsieur Louis van Beethoven No. 1055 & 1056 Sailerstette 3d. Stock. Vienna. You may send your letter, if you please, direct to your most humble servant LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN. 192. TO ZMESKALL. Oct. 24, 1816. WELL BORN, AND YET EVIL BORN! (AS WE ALL ARE!) We are in Baden to-day, and intend to bring the celebrated naturalist Ribini a collection of dead leaves. To-morrow we purpose paying you not only a _visit_ but a _visitation_. Your devoted LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN. 193. TO THE ARCHDUKE RUDOLPH. November, 1816.[1] I have been again much worse, so that I can only venture to go out a little in the daytime; I am, however, getting better, and hope now to have the honor of waiting on Y.R.H. three times a week. Meanwhile, I have many and great cares in these terrible times (which surpass anything we have ever experienced), and which are further augmented by having become the father since last November of a poor orphan. All this tends to retard my entire restoration to health. I wish Y.R.H. all imaginable good and happiness, and beg you will graciously receive and not misinterpret Your, &c., &c. [K.] [Footnote 1: A year after Carl von Beethoven's death (Nov. 15, 1815).] 194. TO FREIHERR VON SCHWEIGER. BEST! MOST AMIABLE! FIRST AND FOREMOST TURNER MEISTER OF EUROPE! The bearer of this is a poor devil! (like many another!!!) You could assist him by asking your gracious master whether he is disposed to purchase one of his small but neat pianos. I also beg you will recommend him to any of the Chamberlains or Adjutants of the Archduke Carl, to see whether it is possible that H.R.H. would buy one of these instruments for his Duchess. We therefore request an introduction from the illustrious _Turner Meister_ for this poor devil[1] to the Chamberlains and Adjutants of the household. Likewise 1 poor devil, [K.] L. V. BEETHOVEN. [Footnote 1: A name cannot now be found for the "poor devil."] 195. TO G. DEL RIO. Nov. 16, 1816. MY DEAR FRIEND,-- My household seems about to make shipwreck, or something very like it. You know that I was duped into taking this house on false pretexts; besides, my health does not seem likely to improve in a hurry. To engage a tutor under such circumstances, whose character and whose very exterior even are unknown to me, and thus to intrust my Carl's education to hap-hazard, is quite out of the question, no matter how great the sacrifices which I shall be again called on to make. I beg you, therefore, to keep Carl for the ensuing quarter, commencing on the 9th. I will in so far comply with your proposal as to the cultivation of the science of music, that Carl may come to me two or three times a week, leaving you at six o'clock in the evening and staying with me till the following morning, when he can return to you by eight o'clock. It would be too fatiguing for Carl to come every day, and indeed too great an effort and tie for me likewise, as the lessons must be given at the same fixed hour. During this quarter we can discuss more minutely the most suitable plan for Carl, taking into consideration both his interests and my own. I must, alas! mention my own also in these times, which are daily getting worse. If your garden residence had agreed with my health, everything might have been easily adjusted. With regard to my debt to you for the present quarter, I beg you will be so obliging as to call on me, that I may discharge it; the bearer of this has the good fortune to be endowed by Providence with a vast amount of stupidity, which I by no means grudge him the benefit of, provided others do not suffer by it. As to the remaining expenses incurred for Carl, either during his illness or connected with it, I must, for a few days only, request your indulgence, having great calls on me at present from all quarters. I wish also to know what fee I ought to give Smetana for the successful operation he performed; were I rich, or not in the same sad position in which all are who have linked their fate to this country (always excepting _Austrian usurers_), I would make no inquiries on the subject; and I only wish you to give me a rough estimate of the proper fee. Farewell! I cordially embrace you, and shall always look on you as a friend of mine and of Carl's. I am, with esteem, your L. V. BEETHOVEN. 196. TO G. DEL RIO. Though I would gladly spare you all needless disagreeable trouble, I cannot, unluckily, do so on this occasion. Yesterday, in searching for some papers, I found this pile, which has been sent to me respecting Carl. I do not quite understand them, and you would oblige me much by employing some one to make out a regular statement of all your outlay for Carl, so that I may send for it to-morrow. I hope you did not misunderstand me when I yesterday alluded to _magnanimity_, which certainly was not meant for you, but solely for the "Queen of the Night," who is never weary of hoisting the sails of her vindictiveness against me; so on this account I require vouchers, more for the satisfaction of others than for her sake (as I never will submit to render her any account of my actions). No stamp is required, and the sum alone for each quarter need be specified, for I believe most of the accounts are forthcoming; so all you have to do is to append them to your _prospectus_ [the conclusion illegible]. L. V. BEETHOVEN. 197. TO G. DEL RIO. Nov. 14, 1816. MY GOOD FRIEND,-- I beg you will allow Carl to come to me to-morrow, as it is the anniversary of his father's death [Nov. 15th], and we wish to visit his grave together. I shall probably come to fetch him between twelve and one o'clock. I wish to know the effect of my treatment of Carl, after your recent complaints. In the mean time, it touched me exceedingly to find him so susceptible as to his honor. Before we left your house I gave him some hints on his want of industry, and while walking together in a graver mood than usual, he pressed my hand vehemently, but met with no response from me. At dinner he scarcely eat anything, and said that he felt very melancholy, the cause of which I could not extract from him. At last, in the course of our walk, he owned that _he was vexed because he had not been so industrious as usual_. I said what I ought on the subject, but in a kinder manner than before. This, however, proves a certain delicacy of feeling, and such _traits_ lead me to augur all that is good. If I cannot come to you to-morrow, I hope you will let me know by a few lines the result of my conference with Carl. I once more beg you to let me have the account due for the last quarter. I thought that you had misunderstood my letter, or even worse than that. I warmly commend my poor orphan to your good heart, and, with kind regards to all, I remain Your friend, L. V. BEETHOVEN. 198. TO G. DEL RIO. MY GOOD FRIEND,-- Pray forgive me for having allowed the enclosed sum to be ready for you during the last twelve days or more, and not having sent it. I have been very much occupied, and am only beginning to recover, though indeed the word _recovery_ has not yet been pronounced. In haste, with much esteem, ever yours, L. V. BEETHOVEN. 199. TO HERR TSCHISCHKA. SIR,-- It is certainly of some moment to me _not to appear in a false light_, which must account for the accompanying statement being so prolix. As to the future system of education, I can at all events congratulate myself on having done all that I could possibly effect at present _for the best_, and trust _that the future may be in accordance with it_. But if the welfare of my nephew demands a _change_, I shall be the first not only to propose such a step, but _to carry it out_. I am no self-interested guardian, but I wish to establish a new monument to my name through my nephew. I _have no need of my nephew_, but he has need of me. Idle talk and calumnies are beneath the dignity of a man with proper self-respect, and what can be said when these extend even to the subject of linen!!! This might cause me great annoyance, _but a just man ought to be able to bear injustice_ without in the _most remote degree_ deviating from the path of _right_. In this conviction I will stand fast, and nothing shall make me flinch. To deprive me of my nephew would indeed entail a heavy responsibility. As a matter of _policy_ as well as of morality, such a step would be productive of evil results to my nephew. _I urgently recommend his interests to you._ As for me, _my actions_ for _his_ benefit (not for my _own_) must speak for me. I remain, with esteem, Your obedient BEETHOVEN. Being very busy, and rather indisposed, I must claim your indulgence for the writing of the memorial. 200. WRITTEN IN ENGLISH TO MR. BIRCHALL,--LONDON. Vienna 14. December 1816--1055 Sailerstette. DEAR SIR,-- I give you my word of honor that I have signed and delivered the receipt to the home Fries and Co. some day last August, who as they say have transmitted it to Messrs. Coutts and Co. where you'll have the goodness to apply. Some error might have taken place that instead of Messrs. C. sending it to you they have been directed to keep it till fetched. Excuse this irregularity, but it is not my fault, nor had I ever the idea of withholding it from the circumstance of the £5 not being included. Should the receipt not come forth as Messrs. C., I am ready to sign any other, and you shall have it directly with return of post. If you find Variations--in my style--too dear at £30, I will abate for the sake of your friendship one third--and you have the offer of such Variations as fixed in our former lettres for £20 each Air. Please to publish the Symphony in A immediately--as well as the Sonata--and the Trio--they being ready here. The Grand Opera Fidelio is my work. The arrangement for the Pianoforte has been published here under my care, but the score of the Opera itself is not yet published. I have given a copy of the score to Mr. Neate under the seal of friendship and whom I shall direct to treat for my account in case an offer should present. I anxiously hope your health is improving, give me leave to subscrive myself Dear Sir Your very obedient Serv. LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN. 201. TO ZMESKALL. Dec. 16, 1816. With this, dear Zmeskall, you will receive my friendly dedication [a stringed quartet, Op. 95], which may, I hope, serve as a pleasant memorial of our long-enduring friendship here; pray accept it as a proof of my esteem, and not merely as the extreme end of a thread long since spun out (for you are one of my earliest friends in Vienna). Farewell! Beware of mouldering fortresses! for an attack on them will be more trying than on those in a better state of preservation! As ever, Your friend, BEETHOVEN. N.B. When you have a moment's leisure, let me know the probable cost of a livery, without linen, but including hat and boots. Strange changes have come to pass in my house. The man is off to the devil, I am thankful to say, whereas his wife seems the more resolved to take root here. 202. TO FRAU VON STREICHER--NÉE STEIN. Dec. 28, 1816. N---- ought to have given you the New Year's tickets yesterday, but it seems she did not do so. The day before I was occupied with Maelzel, whose business was pressing, as he leaves this so soon; otherwise you may be sure that I would have hurried up again to see you. Your dear kind daughter was with me yesterday, but I scarcely ever remember being so ill; my _precious servants_ were occupied from seven o'clock till ten at night in trying to heat the stove. The bitter cold, particularly in my room, caused me a chill, and the whole of yesterday I could scarcely move a limb. All day I was coughing, and had the most severe headache I ever had in my life; so by six o'clock in the evening I was obliged to go to bed, where I still am, though feeling somewhat better. Your brother dined with me yesterday, and has shown me great kindness. You are aware that on the same day, the 27th of December, I discharged B. [Baberl]. I cannot endure either of these vile creatures; I wonder if Nany will behave rather better from the departure of her colleague? I doubt it--but in that case I shall send her _packing_ without any ceremony. She is too uneducated for a housekeeper, indeed quite a _beast_; but the other, in spite of her pretty face, is even _lower than the beasts_. As the New Year draws near, I think five florins will be enough for Nany; I have not paid her the charge for _making her spencer_, on account of her _bad behavior to you_. The other certainly _deserves no New Year's gift_; besides, she has nine florins of mine on hand, and when she leaves I don't expect to receive more than four or five florins of that sum. I wish to have _your opinion about all this_. Pray accept my best wishes for your welfare, which are offered in all sincerity. I am your debtor in so many ways, that I really often feel quite ashamed. Farewell; I trust I may always retain your friendship. Now, as ever, your friend, L. V. BEETHOVEN. 203. TO FRAU VON STREICHER. I thank you for the interest you take in me. I am rather better, though to-day again I have been obliged to endure a great deal from Nany; but I shied half a dozen books at her head by way of a New Year's gift. We have stripped off the leaves (by sending off Baberl) and lopped off the branches, but we must extirpate the _roots_, till nothing is left but the actual soil. 204. TO FRAU VON STREICHER. Nany is not strictly _honest_, and an odiously stupid _animal_ into the bargain. Such people must be managed not by _love_ but by _fear_. I now see this clearly. Her account-book alone cannot show you everything clearly; you must often drop in unexpectedly at dinner-time, like an avenging angel, to see with your own eyes _what_ we actually have. I never dine at home now, _unless_ I have some friend as my guest, for I have no wish to pay as much for one person as would serve for four. I shall _now soon_ have my dear son Carl with me, so economy is more necessary than ever. I cannot prevail on myself to go to you; I know you will forgive this. I am very sensitive, and not used to such things, so the less ought I to expose myself to them. In addition to twelve kreutzers for bread, Nany has a roll of white bread every morning. Is this usual?--and it is the same with the cook. A daily roll for breakfast comes to eighteen florins a year. _Farewell_, and _work well_ for me. Mdlle. Nany is wonderfully changed for the better since I sent the half-dozen books at her head. Probably they chanced to come in collision with her _dull brain_ or her _bad heart_; at all events, she now plays the part of a penitent swindler!!! In haste, yours, BEETHOVEN. 205. TO FRAU VON STREICHER. Nany yesterday took me to task in the vulgar manner usual with people of her _low class_, about my complaining to you; so she evidently knew that I had written to you on the subject. All the devilry began again yesterday morning, but I made short work of it by throwing the heavy arm-chair beside my bed at B.'s head, which procured me peace for the rest of the day. They always take their revenge on me when I write to you, or when they discover any communication between us. I do thank Heaven that I everywhere find men who interest themselves in me; one of the _most distinguished Professors_ in this University has in the kindest manner undertaken _all that concerns Carl's education_. If you happen to meet any of the Giannatasios at Czerny's, you had better _know nothing of what is going on about Carl_, and say that it is _contrary_ to my _usual habit to disclose my plans, as when a project is told to others it is no longer exclusively your own_. They would like to interfere in the matter, and I do not choose that these _commonplace people should do so, both for_ my _own sake and Carl's_. Over their portico is inscribed, in golden letters, "Educational Institution," whereas "_Non_-Educational Institution" would be more appropriate. As for the servants, there is only _one voice_ about their immorality, to which _all_ the other annoyances here may be ascribed. Pray receive my benediction in place of that of the Klosterneuburgers.[1] In haste, your friend, BEETHOVEN. [Footnote 1: Frau von Streicher was at that time in Klosterneuburg.] 206. TO FRAU VON STREICHER. Judgment was executed to-day on the notorious criminal! She bore it nearly in the same spirit as Caesar did Brutus's dagger, except that in the former case truth formed the basis, while in hers only wicked malice. The kitchen-maid seems more handy than the former _ill-conducted beauty_; she no longer shows herself,--a sign that she does not expect a _good character_ from me, though I really had some thoughts of giving her one. The kitchen-maid at first made rather a wry face about carrying wood, &c. 207. TO THE ARCHDUKE RUDOLPH. Last day of December, 1816. I have been again obliged to keep my room ever since the Burgher concert,[1] and some time must no doubt elapse before I shall be able to dismiss all precautions as to my health. The year is about to close; and with this new year my warmest wishes are renewed for the welfare of Y.R.H.; but indeed these have neither beginning nor end with me, for every day I cherish the same aspirations for Y.R.H. If I may venture to add a wish for myself to the foregoing, it is, that I may daily thrive and prosper more in Y.R.H.'s good graces. The master will always strive not to be unworthy of the favor of his illustrious master and pupil. [K.] [Footnote 1: Beethoven directed his A major Symphony in the Burgher concert in the Royal Redoutensaal on the 25th December, 1816.] 208. TO G. DEL RIO. ... As to his mother, she urgently requested to see Carl in my house. You have sometimes seen me tempted to place more confidence in her, and my feelings would lead me to guard against harshness towards her, especially as it is not in her power to injure Carl. But you may well imagine that to one usually so independent of others, the annoyances to which I am exposed through Carl are often utterly insupportable, and above all with regard to his mother; I am only too glad to hear nothing of her, which is the cause of my avoiding her name. With respect to Carl, I beg you will enforce the strictest discipline on him, and if he refuses to obey your orders or to do his duty, I trust you will at once _punish_ him. Treat him as if he were your own child rather than a _mere pupil_, for I already told you that during his father's lifetime he only submitted to the discipline of blows, which was a bad system; still, such was the fact, and we must not forget it. If you do not see much of me, pray ascribe it solely to the little inclination I have for society, which is sometimes more developed and sometimes less; and this you might attribute to a change in my feelings, but it is not so. What is good alone lives in my memory, and not what is painful. Pray impute therefore solely to these hard times my not more practically showing my gratitude to you on account of Carl. God, however, directs all things; so my position may undergo a favorable change, when I shall hasten to show you how truly I am, with sincere esteem, your grateful friend, L. V. BEETHOVEN. I beg you will read this letter to Carl. 209. TO G. DEL RIO. Carl must be at H.B.'s to-day before four o'clock; I must request you therefore to ask his professor to dismiss him at half-past three o'clock; if this cannot be managed he must not go into school at all. In the latter case, I will come myself and fetch him; in the former, I will meet him in the passage of the University. To avoid all confusion, I beg for an explicit answer as to what you settle. As you have been loudly accused of showing great party feeling, I will take Carl myself. If you do not see me, attribute it to my distress of mind, for I am now only beginning to feel the full force of this terrible incident.[1] In haste, your BEETHOVEN. [Footnote 1: Probably the reversal of the first decree in the lawsuit with Carl's mother, who in order to procure a verdict more favorable to her claims, pointed out to the Austrian "Landrecht," where the lawsuit had been hitherto carried on, an error in their proceedings, the "Van," prefixed to Beethoven's name, having been considered by them a sign of nobility. Beethoven was cited to appear, and on the appointed day, pointing to his head and his heart, he said, "My nobility is here, and here." The proceedings were then transferred to the "magistrate," who was in universal bad odor from his mode of conducting his business.] 210. TO G. DEL RIO. The assertions of this wicked woman have made such a painful impression on me, that I cannot possibly answer every point to-day; to-morrow you shall have a detailed account of it all; but on no pretext whatever allow her to have access to Carl, and adhere to your rule that she is only to see him once a month. As she has been once this month already, she cannot come again till the next. In haste, your BEETHOVEN. 211. TO HOFRATH VON MOSEL. 1817. SIR,-- I sincerely rejoice that we take the same view as to the terms in use to denote the proper time in music which have descended to us from barbarous times. For example, what can be more irrational than the general term _allegro_, which only means _lively_; and how far we often are from comprehending the real time, so that the piece itself _contradicts the designation_. As for the four chief movements,--which are, indeed, far from possessing the truth or accuracy of the four cardinal points,--we readily agree _to dispense with them_, but it is quite another matter as to the words that indicate the character of the music; these we cannot consent to do away with, for while the time is, as it were, part and parcel of the piece, the _words denote the spirit in which it is conceived_. So far as I am myself concerned, I have long purposed giving up those inconsistent terms _allegro_, _andante_, _adagio_, and _presto_; and Maelzel's metronome furnishes us with the best opportunity of doing so. I here _pledge_ myself _no longer_ to make use of them in any of my new compositions. It is another question whether we can by this means attain the necessary universal use of the metronome. I scarcely think we shall! I make no doubt that we shall be loudly proclaimed as _despots_; but if the cause itself were to derive benefit from this, it would at least be better than to incur the reproach of Feudalism! In our country, where music has become a national requirement, and where the use of the metronome must be enjoined on every village schoolmaster, the best plan would be for Maelzel to endeavor to sell a certain number of metronomes by subscription, at the present higher prices, and as soon as the number covers his expenses, he can sell the metronomes demanded by the national requirements at so cheap a rate, that we may certainly anticipate their _universal use_ and _circulation_. Of course some persons must take the lead in giving an impetus to the undertaking. You may safely rely on my doing what is in my power, and I shall be glad to hear what post you mean to assign to me in the affair. I am, sir, with esteem, your obedient LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN. 212. TO S.A. STEINER, MUSIC PUBLISHER,--VIENNA. HIGHEST BORN! MOST ADMIRABLE! AND MARVELLOUS LIEUTENANT-GENERAL![1] We beg you to give us bank-notes for twenty-four gold ducats at yesterday's rate of exchange, and to send them to us this evening or to-morrow, in order that we may forthwith _remit_ and _transmit_ them. I should be glad and happy if your trustworthy Adjutant were to bring me these, as I have something particular to say to him. He must forget all his resentment, like a good Christian; we acknowledge his merits and do not contest his demerits. In short, and once for all, we wish to see him. This evening would suit us best. We have the honor to remain, most astounding Lieutenant-General! your devoted GENERALISSIMUS. [Footnote 1: Beethoven styled himself "Generalissimus," Herr A. Steiner "Lieutenant-General," and his partner, Tobias Haslinger, "Adjutant" and "Adjutant-General."] 213. TO LIEUTENANT-GENERAL VON STEINER.--PRIVATE. PUBLICANDUM,-- After due consideration, and by the advice of our Council, we have determined and decreed that henceforth on all our works published with German titles, the word _Pianoforte_ is to be replaced by that of _Hammer Clavier_, and our worthy Lieutenant-General, his Adjutant, and all whom it may concern, are charged with the execution of this order. Instead of Pianoforte--_Hammer Clavier_. Such is our will and pleasure. Given on the 23d of January, 1817, by the _Generalissimus_. _Manu propria._ 214. TO STEINER. The following dedication occurred to me of my new Sonata:-- "Sonata for the Pianoforte, or _Hammer Clavier_. Composed and dedicated to Frau Baronin Dorothea Ertmann--née Graumann, by Ludwig van Beethoven." If the title is already engraved, I have the two following proposals to make; viz., that I pay for one title--I mean that it should be at my expense, or reserved for another new sonata of mine, for which purpose the mines of the Lieutenant-General (or _pleno titulo_, Lieutenant-General and First Councillor of State) must be opened to usher it into the light of day; the title to be previously shown to a good linguist. _Hammer Clavier_ is certainly German, and so is the device. Honor to whom honor is due! How is it, then, that I have as yet received no reports of the carrying out of my orders, which, however, have no doubt been attended to? Ever and always your attached _Amicus ad Amicum de Amico._ [Music: Treble clef. O Ad-ju-tant!] N.B. I beg you will observe the most profound silence about the dedication, as I wish it to be a surprise! 215. TO ZMESKALL. Jan. 30, 1817. DEAR Z.,-- You seem to place me on a level with Schuppanzigh, &c., and have distorted the plain and simple meaning of my words. You are not my debtor, but I am yours, and now you make me so more than ever. I cannot express to you the pain your gift has caused me, and I must candidly say that I cannot give you one friendly glance _in return_. Although you confine yourself to the practice of music, still you have often recourse to the power of imagination, and it seems to me that this not unfrequently leads to uncalled-for caprice on your part; at least, so it appeared to me from your letter after my dedication. Loving as my sentiments are towards you, and much as I prize all your goodness, still I feel provoked!--much provoked!--terribly provoked! Your debtor afresh, Who will, however, contrive to have his revenge, L. VAN BEETHOVEN. 
12404	----	Proofreaders Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustrations. See 12404-h.htm or 12404-h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.net/1/2/4/0/12404/12404-h/12404-h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.net/1/2/4/0/12404/12404-h.zip) This text includes only Germany and those parts of Austria-Hungary noted in the table of contents. Part Two (Volume VI) is available as a separate text in Project Gutenberg's library. See http://www.gutenberg.net/etext/11179 SEEING EUROPE WITH FAMOUS AUTHORS, VOLUME V GERMANY, AUSTRIA-HUNGARY, AND SWITZERLAND, PART ONE Selected and Edited, with Introductions, etc., by FRANCIS W. HALSEY Editor of "Great Epochs in American History" Associate Editor of "The World's Famous Orations" and of "The Best of the World's Classics," etc. IN TEN VOLUMES ILLUSTRATED 1914 [Illustration: BERLIN: PANORAMA FROM THE TOWER OF THE TOWN HALL] INTRODUCTION TO VOLUMES V AND VI Germany, Austria-Hungary and Switzerland The tourist's direct route to Germany is by ships that go to the two great German ports--Bremen and Hamburg, whence fast steamer trains proceed to Berlin and other interior cities. One may also land at Antwerp or Rotterdam, and proceed thence by fast train into Germany. Either of these routes continued takes one to Austria. Ships by the Mediterranean route landing at Genoa or Trieste, provide another way for reaching either country. In order to reach Switzerland, the tourist has many well-worn routes available. As with England and France, so with Germany--our earliest information comes from a Roman writer, Julius Caesar; but in the case of Germany, this information has been greatly amplified by a later and noble treatise from the pen of Tacitus. Tacitus paints a splendid picture of the domestic virtues and personal valor of these tribes, holding them up as examples that might well be useful to his countrymen. Caesar found many Teutonic tribes, not only in the Rhine Valley, but well established in lands further west and already Gallic. By the third century, German tribes had formed themselves into federations--the Franks, Alemanni, Frisians and Saxons. The Rhine Valley, after long subjection to the Romans, had acquired houses, temples, fortresses and roads such as the Romans always built. Caesar had found many evidences of an advanced state of society. Antiquarians of our day, exploring German graves, discover signs of it in splendid weapons of war and domestic utensils buried with the dead. Monolithic sarcophagi have been found which give eloquent testimony of the absorption by them of Roman culture. Western Germany, in fact, had become, in the third century, a well-ordered and civilized land. Christianity was well established there. In general the country compared favorably with Roman England, but it was less advanced than Roman Gaul. Centers of that Romanized German civilization, that were destined ever afterward to remain important centers of German life, are Augsburg, Strasburg, Worms, Speyer, Bonn and Cologne. It was after the formation of the tribal federations that the great migratory movement from Germany set in. This gave to Gaul a powerful race in the Franks, from whom came Clovis and the other Merovingians; to Gaul also it gave Burgundians, and to England perhaps the strongest element in her future stock of men--the Saxons. Further east soon set in another world-famous migration, which threatened at times to dominate all Teutonic people--the Goths, Huns and Vandals of the Black and Caspian Sea regions. Thence they prest on to Italy and Spain, where the Goths founded and long maintained new and thriving states on the ruins of the old. Surviving these migrations, and serving to restore something like order to Central Europe, there now rose into power in France, under Clovis and Charlemagne, and spread their sway far across the Rhine, the great Merovingian and Carlovingian dynasties. Charlemagne's empire came to embrace in central Europe a region extending east of the Rhine as far as Hungary, and from north to south from the German ocean to the Alps. When Charlemagne, in 800, received from the Pope that imperial crown, which was to pass in continuous line to his successors for a thousand years, Germany and France were component parts of the same state, a condition never again to exist, except in part, and briefly, under Napoleon. The tangled and attenuated thread of German history from Charlemagne's time until now can not be unfolded here, but it makes one of the great chronicles in human history, with its Conrads and Henrys, its Maximilian, its Barbarossa, its Charles V., its Thirty Years' War, its great Frederick of Prussia, its struggle with Napoleon, its rise through Prussia under Bismarck, its war of 1870 with France, its new Empire, different alike in structure and in reality from the one called Holy and called Roman, and the wonderful commercial and industrial progress of our century. Out of Charlemagne's empire came the empire of Austria. Before his time, the history of the Austro-Hungarian lands is one of early tribal life, followed by conquest under the later Roman emperors, and then the migratory movements of its own people and of other people across its territory, between the days of Attila and the Merovingians. Its very name (Oesterreich) indicates its origin as a frontier territory, an outpost in the east for the great empire Charlemagne had built up. Not until the sixteenth century did Austria become a power of first rank in Europe. Hapsburgs had long ruled it, as they still do, and as they have done for more than six centuries, but the greatest of all their additions to power and dominion came through Mary of Burgundy, who, seeking refuge from Louis XI. of France, after her father's death, married Maximilian of Austria. Out of that marriage came, in two generations, possession by Austria of the Netherlands, through Mary's grandson, Charles V., Holy Roman emperor and king of Spain. For years afterward, the Hapsburgs remained the most illustrious house in Europe. The empire's later fortunes are a story of grim struggle with Protestants, Frederick the Great, the Ottoman Turks, Napoleon, the revolutionists of 1848, and Prussia. The story of Switzerland in its beginnings is not unlike that of other European lands north of Italy. The Romans civilized the country--built houses, fortresses and roads. Roman roads crossed the Alps, one of them going, as it still goes, over the Great St. Bernard. Then came the invaders--Burgundians, Alemanni, Ostrogoths and Huns. North Switzerland became the permanent home of Alemanni, or Germans, whose descendants still survive there, around Zürich. Burgundians settled in the western part which still remains French in speech, and a part of it French politically, including Chamouni and half of Mont Blanc. Ostrogoths founded homes in the southern parts, and descendants of theirs still remain there, speaking Italian, or a sort of surviving Latin called Romansch. After these immigrations most parts of the country were subdued by the Merovingian Franks, by whom Christianity was introduced and monasteries founded. With the break-up of Charlemagne's empire, a part of Switzerland was added to a German duchy, and another part to Burgundy. Its later history is a long and moving record of grim struggles by a brave and valiant people. In our day the Swiss have become industrially one of the world's successful races, and their country the one in which wealth is probably more equally distributed than anywhere else in Europe, if not in America. F.W.H. CONTENTS OF VOLUME V Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Switzerland--Part One I. THE RHINE VALLEY INTRODUCTION TO VOLS. V AND VI--By the Editor IN HISTORY AND ROMANCE--By Victor Hugo FROM BONN TO MAYENCE--By Bayard Taylor COLOGNE--By Victor Hugo ROUND ABOUT COBLENZ--By Lady Blanche Murphy BINGEN AND MAYENCE--By Victor Hugo FRANKFORT-ON-MAIN--By Bayard Taylor HEIDELBERG--By Bayard Taylor STRASBURG--By Harriet Beecher Stowe FREIBURG AND THE BLACK FOREST--By Bayard Taylor II. NUREMBERG AS A MEDIEVAL CITY--By Cecil Headlam ITS CHURCHES AND THE CITADEL--By Thomas Frognall Dibdin NUREMBERG TO-DAY--By Cecil Headlarn WALLS AND OTHER FORTIFICATIONS--By Cecil Headlam ALBERT DÜRER--By Cecil Headlam III. OTHER BAVARIAN CITIES MUNICH--By Bayard Taylor AUGSBURG--By Thomas Frognall Dibdin RATISBON--By Thomas Frognall Dibdin IV. BERLIN AND ELSEWHERE A LOOK AT THE GERMAN CAPITAL--By Theophile Gautier CHARLOTTENBURG--By Harriet Beecher Stowe LEIPZIG AND DRESDEN--By Bayard Taylor WEIMAR IN GOETHE'S DAY--By Madame De Staël ULM--By Thomas Frognall Dibdin AIX-LA-CHAPELLE AND CHARLEMAGNE'S TOMB--By Victor Hugo THE HANSEATIC LEAGUE--By James Howell HAMBURG--By Theophile Gautier SCHLESWIG--By Theophile Gautier LÜBECK--By Theophile Gautier HELIGOLAND--By William George Black V. VIENNA FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF THE CAPITAL--By Bayard Taylor ST. STEPHEN'S CATHEDRAL--By Thomas Frognall Dibdin THE BELVEDERE PALACE--By Thomas Frognall Dibdin SCHÖNBRUNN AND THE PRATER--By Thomas Frognall Dibdin VI. HUNGARY A GLANCE AT THE COUNTRY--By H. Tornai de Kövër BUDAPEST--By H. Tornai de Kövër (_Hungary continued in Vol. VI_) LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS VOLUME V A PANORAMA OF BERLIN FROM THE TOWN HALL COLOGNE CATHEDRAL COLOGNE CATHEDRAL BEFORE THE SPIRES WERE COMPLETED BINGEN-ON-THE RHINE NUREMBERG CASTLE STOLZENFELS CASTLE ON THE RHINE WIESBADEN STRASBURG CATHEDRAL STRASBURG FRAUENKIRCHE, MUNICH DOOR OF STRASBURG CATHEDRAL STRASBURG CLOCK GOETHE'S HOUSE, WEIMAR SCHILLER'S HOUSE, WEIMAR BERLIN: UNTER DEN LINDEN BERLIN: THE BRANDENBURG GATE BERLIN: THE ROYAL CASTLE AND EMPEROR WILLIAM BRIDGE BERLIN: THE WHITE HALL IN THE ROYAL CASTLE BERLIN: THE NATIONAL GALLERY AND FREDERICK'S BRIDGE BERLIN: THE GENDARMENMARKT THE COLUMN OF VICTORY, BERLIN THE MAUSOLEUM AT CHARLOTTENBURG THE NEW PALACE AT POTSDAM THE CASTLE OF SANS SOUCI, POTSDAM THE CATHEDRAL OF AIX-LA-CHAPELLE--TOMB OF CHARLEMAGNE SCHÖNBRUNN, VIENNA SALZBURG, AUSTRIA [Illustration: COLOGNE CATHEDRAL] [Illustration: COLOGNE CATHEDRAL (Before the spires were completed, as shown in a photograph taken in 1877)] [Illustration: BINGEN ON THE RHINE] [Illustration: NUREMBERG CASTLE] [Illustration: STOLZENFELS CASTLE ON THE RHINE] [Illustration: WIESBADEN] [Illustration: STRASSBURG CATHEDRAL] [Illustration: STRASSBURG AND THE CATHEDRAL] [Illustration: THE FRAUENKIRCHE, MUNICH] [Illustration: THE DOOR OF STRASSBURG CATHEDRAL] [Illustration: THE STRASSBURG CLOCK] [Illustration: GOETHE'S HOUSE IN WEIMAR] [Illustration: SCHILLER'S HOUSE IN WEIMAR] I THE RHINE VALLEY IN HISTORY AND ROMANCE[A] BY VICTOR HUGO Of all rivers, I prefer the Rhine. It is now a year, when passing the bridge of boats at Kehl, since I first saw it. I remember that I felt a certain respect, a sort of adoration, for this old, this classic stream. I never think of rivers--those great works of Nature, which are also great in History--without emotion. I remember the Rhone at Valserine; I saw it in 1825, in a pleasant excursion to Switzerland, which is one of the sweet, happy recollections of my early life. I remember with what noise, with what ferocious bellowing, the Rhone precipitated itself into the gulf while the frail bridge upon which I was standing was shaking beneath my feet. Ah well! since that time, the Rhone brings to my mind the idea of a tiger--the Rhine, that of a lion. The evening on which I saw the Rhine for the first time, I was imprest with the same idea. For several minutes I stood contemplating this proud and noble river--violent, but not furious; wild, but still majestic. It was swollen, and was magnificent in appearance, and was washing with its yellow mane, or, as Boileau says, its "slimy beard," the bridge of boats. Its two banks were lost in the twilight, and tho its roaring was loud, still there was tranquillity. The Rhine is unique: it combines the qualities of every river. Like the Rhone, it is rapid; broad like the Loire; encased, like the Meuse; serpentine, like the Seine; limpid and green, like the Somme; historical, like the Tiber; royal like the Danube; mysterious, like the Nile; spangled with gold, like an American river; and like a river of Asia, abounding with fantoms and fables. From historical records we find that the first people who took possession of the banks of the Rhine were the half-savage Celts, who were afterward named Gauls by the Romans. When Rome was in its glory, Caesar crossed the Rhine, and shortly afterward the whole of the river was under the jurisdiction of his empire. When the Twenty-second Legion returned from the siege of Jerusalem, Titus sent it to the banks of the Rhine, where it continued the work of Martius Agrippa. After Trajan and Hadrian came Julian, who erected a fortress upon the confluence of the Rhine and the Moselle; then Valentinian, who built a number of castles. Thus, in a few centuries, Roman colonies, like an immense chain, linked the whole of the Rhine. At length the time arrived when Rome was to assume another aspect. The incursions of the northern hordes were eventually too frequent and too powerful for Rome; so, about the sixth century, the banks of the Rhine were strewed with Roman ruins, as at present with feudal ones. Charlemagne cleared away the rubbish, built fortresses, and opposed the German hordes; but, notwithstanding all that he did, notwithstanding his desire to do more, Rome died, and the physiognomy of the Rhine was changed. The sixteenth century approached; in the fourteenth the Rhine witnessed the invention of artillery; and on its bank, at Strassburg, a printing-office was first established. In 1400 the famous cannon, fourteen feet in length, was cast at Cologne; and in 1472 Vindelin de Spire printed his Bible. A new world was making its appearance; and, strange to say, it was upon the banks of the Rhine that those two mysterious tools with which God unceasingly works out the civilization of man--the catapult and the book--war and thought--took a new form. The Rhine, in the destinies of Europe, has a sort of providential signification. It is the great moat which divides the north from the south. The Rhine for thirty ages, has seen the forms and reflected the shadows of almost all the warriors who tilled the old continent with that share which they call sword. Caesar crossed the Rhine in going from the south; Attila crossed it when descending from the north. It was here that Clovis gained the battle of Tolbiac; and that Charlemagne and Napoleon figured. Frederick Barbarossa, Rudolph of Hapsburg, and Frederick the First, were great, victorious, and formidable when here. For the thinker, who is conversant with history, two great eagles are perpetually hovering ever the Rhine--that of the Roman legions, and the eagle of the French regiments. The Rhine--that noble flood, which the Romans named "Superb," bore at one time upon its surface bridges of boats, over which the armies of Italy, Spain, and France poured into Germany, and which, at a later date, were made use of by the hordes of barbarians when rushing into the ancient Roman world; at another, on its surface it floated peaceably the fir-trees of Murg and of Saint Gall, the porphyry and the marble of Bâle, the salt of Karlshall, the leather of Stromberg, the quicksilver of Lansberg, the wine of Johannisberg, the slates of Coab, the cloth and earthenware of Wallendar, the silks and linens of Cologne. It majestically performs its double function of flood of war and flood of peace, having, without interruption, upon the ranges of hills which embank the most notable portion of its course, oak-trees on one side and vine-trees on the other--signifying strength and joy. [Footnote A: From "The Rhine." Translated by D.M. Aird.] FROM BONN TO MAYENCE[A] BY BAYARD TAYLOR I was glad when we were really in motion on the swift Rhine, and nearing the chain of mountains that rose up before us. We passed Godesberg on the right, while on our left was the group of the seven mountains which extend back from the Drachenfels to the Wolkenberg, or "Castle of the Clouds." Here we begin to enter the enchanted land. The Rhine sweeps around the foot of the Drachenfels, while, opposite, the precipitous rock of Rolandseck, crowned with the castle of the faithful knight, looks down upon the beautiful island of Nonnenwerth, the white walls of the convent still gleaming through the trees as they did when the warrior's weary eyes looked upon them for the last time. I shall never forget the enthusiasm with which I saw this scene in the bright, warm sunlight, the rough crags softened in the haze which filled the atmosphere, and the wild mountains springing up in the midst of vineyards and crowned with crumbling towers filled with the memories of a thousand years. After passing Andernach we saw in the distance the highlands of the middle Rhine--which rise above Coblentz, guarding the entrance to its scenery--and the mountains of the Moselle. They parted as we approached; from the foot shot up the spires of Coblentz, and the battlements of Ehrenbreitstein, crowning the mountain opposite, grew larger and broader. The air was slightly hazy, and the clouds seemed laboring among the distant mountains to raise a storm. As we came opposite the mouth of the Moselle and under the shadow of the mighty fortress, I gazed up with awe at its massive walls. Apart from its magnitude and almost impregnable situation on a perpendicular rock, it is filled with the recollections of history and hallowed by the voice of poetry. The scene went past like a panorama, the bridge of boats opened, the city glided behind us, and we entered the highlands again. Above Coblentz almost every mountain has a ruin and a legend. One feels everywhere the spirit of the past, and its stirring recollections come back upon the mind with irresistible force. I sat upon the deck the whole afternoon as mountains, towns and castles passed by on either side, watching them with a feeling of the most enthusiastic enjoyment. Every place was familiar to me in memory, and they seemed like friends I had long communed with in spirit and now met face to face. The English tourists with whom the deck was covered seemed interested too, but in a different manner. With Murray's Handbook open in their hands, they sat and read about the very towns and towers they were passing, scarcely lifting their eyes to the real scenes, except now and then to observe that it was "very nice." As we passed Boppart, I sought out the inn of the "Star," mentioned in "Hyperion;" there was a maiden sitting on the steps who might have been Paul Flemming's fair boat-woman. The clouds which had here gathered among the hills now came over the river, and the rain cleared the deck of its crowd of admiring tourists. As we were approaching Lorelei Berg, I did not go below, and so enjoyed some of the finest scenery on the Rhine alone. The mountains approach each other at this point, and the Lorelei rock rises up for four hundred and forty feet from the water. This is the haunt of the water nymph Lorelei, whose song charmed the ear of the boatman while his bark was dashed to pieces on the rocks below. It is also celebrated for its remarkable echo. As we passed between the rocks, a guard, who has a little house on the roadside, blew a flourish on his bugle, which was instantly answered by a blast from the rocky battlements of Lorelei. The sun came out of the clouds as we passed Oberwesel, with its tall round tower, and the light shining through the ruined arches of Schonberg castle made broad bars of light and shade in the still misty air. A rainbow sprang up out of the Rhine and lay brightly on the mountain-side, coloring vineyard and crag in the most singular beauty, while its second reflection faintly arched like a glory above the high summits in the bed of the river were the seven countesses of Schonberg turned into seven rocks for their cruelty and hard-heartedness toward the knights whom their beauty had made captive. In front, at a little distance, was the castle of Pfalz, in the middle of the river, and from the heights above Caub frowned the crumbling citadel of Gutenfels. Imagine all this, and tell me if it is not a picture whose memory should last a lifetime. We came at last to Bingen, the southern gate of the highlands. Here, on an island in the middle of the stream, is the old mouse-tower where Bishop Hatto of Mayence was eaten up by the rats for his wicked deeds. Passing Rüdesheim and Geisenheim--celebrated for their wines--at sunset, we watched the varied shore in the growing darkness, till like a line of stars across the water we saw before us the bridge of Mayence. [Footnote A: From "Views Afoot." Published by G.P. Putnam's Sons.] COLOGNE[A] BY VICTOR HUGO. The sun had set when we reached Cologne. I gave my luggage to a porter, with orders to carry it to a hotel at Duez, a little town on the opposite side of the Rhine; and directed my steps toward the cathedral. Rather than ask my way, I wandered up and down the narrow streets, which night had all but obscured. At last I entered a gateway leading to a court, and came out on an open square--dark and deserted. A magnificent spectacle now presented itself. Before me, in the fantastic light of a twilight sky, rose, in the midst of a group of low houses, an enormous black mass, studded with pinnacles and belfries. A little farther was another, not quite so broad as the first, but higher; a kind of square fortress, flanked at its angles with four long detached towers, having on its summit something resembling a huge feather. On approaching, I discovered that it was the cathedral of Cologne. What appeared like a large feather was a crane, to which sheets of lead were appended, and which, from its workable appearance, indicated to passers-by that this unfinished temple may one day be completed; and that the dream of Engelbert de Berg, which was realized under Conrad de Hochsteden, may, in an age or two, be the greatest cathedral in the world. This incomplete Iliad sees Homers in futurity. The church was shut. I surveyed the steeples, and was startled at their dimensions. What I had taken for towers are the projections of the buttresses. Tho only the first story is completed, the building is already nearly as high as the towers of Notre Dame at Paris. Should the spire, according to the plan, be placed upon this monstrous trunk, Strasburg would be, comparatively speaking, small by its side.[B] It has always struck me that nothing resembles ruin more than an unfinished edifice. Briars, saxifrages, and pellitories--indeed, all weeds that root themselves in the crevices and at the base of old buildings--have besieged these venerable walls. Man only constructs what Nature in time destroys. All was quiet; there was no one near to break the prevailing silence. I approached the façade, as near as the gate would permit me, and heard the countless shrubs gently rustling in the night breeze. A light which appeared at a neighboring window, cast its rays upon a group of exquisite statues--angels and saints, reading or preaching, with a large open book before them. Admirable prologue for a church, which is nothing else than the Word made marble, brass or stone! Swallows have fearlessly taken up their abode here, and their simple yet curious masonry contrasts strangely with the architecture of the building. This was my first visit to the cathedral of Cologne. The dome of Cologne, when seen by day, appeared to me to have lost a little of its sublimity; it no longer had what I call the twilight grandeur that the evening lends to huge objects; and I must say that the cathedral of Beauvais, which is scarcely known, is not inferior, either in size or in detail, to the cathedral of Cologne. The Hôtel-de-Ville, situated near the cathedral, is one of those singular edifices which have been built at different times, and which consist of all styles of architecture seen in ancient buildings. The mode in which these edifices have been built forms rather an interesting study. Nothing is regular--no fixt plan has been drawn out--all has been built as necessity required. Thus the Hôtel-de-Ville, which has, probably, some Roman cave near its foundation, was, in 1250, only a structure similar to those of our edifices built with pillars. For the convenience of the night-watchman, and in order to sound the alarum, a steeple was required, and in the fourteenth century a tower was built. Under Maximilian a taste for elegant structures was everywhere spread, and the bishops of Cologne, deeming it essential to dress their city-house in new raiment, engaged an Italian architect, a pupil, probably, of old Michael Angelo, and a French sculptor, who adjusted on the blackened façade of the thirteenth century a triumphant and magnificent porch. A few years expired, and they stood sadly in want of a promenade by the side of the Registry. A back court was built, and galleries erected, which were sumptuously enlivened by heraldry and bas-reliefs. These I had the pleasure of seeing; but, in a few years, no person will have the same gratification, for, without anything being done to prevent it, they are fast falling into ruins. At last, under Charles the Fifth, a large room for sales and for the assemblies of the citizens was required, and a tasteful building of stone and brick was added. I went up to the belfry; and under a gloomy sky, which harmonized with the edifice and with my thoughts, I saw at my feet the whole of this admirable town. From Thurmchen to Bayenthurme, the town, which extends upward of a league on the banks of the river, displays a whole host of windows and façades. In the midst of roofs, turrets and gables, the summits of twenty-four churches strike the eye, all of different styles, and each church, from its grandeur, worthy of the name of cathedral. If we examine the town in detail, all is stir, all is life. The bridge is crowded with passengers and carriages; the river is covered with sails. Here and there clumps of trees caress, as it were, the houses blackened by time; and the old stone hotels of the fifteenth century, with their long frieze of sculptured flowers, fruit and leaves, upon which the dove, when tired, rests itself, relieve the monotony of the slate roofs and brick fronts which surround them. Round this great town--mercantile from its industry, military from its position, marine from its river--is a vast plain that borders Germany, which the Rhine crosses at different places, and is crowned on the northeast by historic eminences--that wonderful nest of legends and traditions, called the "Seven Mountains." Thus Holland and its commerce, Germany and its poetry--like the two great aspects of the human mind, the positive and the ideal--shed their light upon the horizon of Cologne; a city of business and of meditation. After descending from the belfry, I stopt in the yard before a handsome porch of the Renaissance, the second story of which is formed of a series of small triumphal arches, with inscriptions. The first is dedicated to Caesar; the second to Augustus; the third to Agrippa, the founder of Cologne; the fourth to Constantine, the Christian emperor; the fifth to Justinian, the great legislator; and the sixth to Maximilian. Upon the façade, the poetic sculpture has chased three bas-reliefs, representing the three lion-combatants, Milo of Crotona, Pepin-le-Bref, and Daniel. At the two extremities he has placed Milo of Crotona, attacking the lions by strength of body; and Daniel subduing the lions by the power of mind. Between these is Pepin-le-Bref, conquering his ferocious antagonist with that mixture of moral and physical strength which distinguishes the soldier. Between pure strength and pure thought, is courage; between the athlete and the prophet--the hero. Pepin, sword in hand, has plunged his left arm, which is enveloped in his mantle, into the mouth of the lion; the animal stands, with extended claws, in that attitude which in heraldry represents the lion rampant. Pepin attacks it bravely and vanquishes. Daniel is standing motionless, his arms by his side, and his eyes lifted up to Heaven, the lions lovingly rolling at his feet. As for Milo of Crotona, he defends himself against the lion, which is in the act of devouring him. His blind presumption has put too much faith in muscle, in corporeal strength. These three bas-reliefs contain a world of meaning; the last produces a powerful effect. It is Nature avenging herself on the man whose only faith is in brute force.... In the evening, as the stars were shining, I took a walk upon the side of the river opposite to Cologne. Before me was the whole town, with its innumerable steeples figuring in detail upon the pale western sky. To my left rose, like the giant of Cologne, the high spire of St. Martin's, with its two towers; and, almost in front, the somber apsed cathedral, with its many sharp-pointed spires, resembling a monstrous hedgehog, the crane forming the tail, and near the base two lights, which appeared like two eyes sparkling with fire. Nothing disturbed the stillness of the night but the rustling of the waters at my feet, the heavy tramp of a horse's hoofs upon the bridge, and the sound of a blacksmith's hammer. A long stream of fire that issued from the forge caused the adjoining windows to sparkle; then, as if hastening to its opposite element, disappeared in the water. [Footnote A: From "The Rhine." Translated by D.M. Aird.] [Footnote B: One of the illustrations that accompany this volume shows the spires in their completed state.] ROUND ABOUT COBLENZ[A] BY LADY BLANCHE MURPHY Coblenz is the place which many years ago gave me my first associations with the Rhine. From a neighboring town we often drove to Coblenz, and the wide, calm flow of the river, the low, massive bridge of boats and the commonplace outskirts of a busy city contributed to make up a very different picture from that of the poetic "castled" Rhine of German song and English ballad. The old town has, however, many beauties, tho its military character looks out through most of them, and reminds us that the Mosel city (for it originally stood only on that river, and then crept up to the Rhine), tho a point of union in Nature, has been for ages, so far as mankind was concerned, a point of defense and watching. The great fortress, a German Gibraltar, hangs over the river and sets its teeth in the face of the opposite shore; all the foreign element in the town is due to the deposits made there by troubles in other countries, revolution and war sending their exiles, émigrés and prisoners. The history of the town is only a long military record, from the days of the archbishops of Trèves, to whom it was subject.... There is the old "German house" by the bank of the Mosel, a building little altered outwardly since the fourteenth century, now used as a food-magazine for the troops. The church of St. Castor commemorates a holy hermit who lived and preached to the heathen in the eighth century, and also covers the grave and monument of the founder of the "Mouse" at Wellmich, the warlike Kuno of Falkenstein, Archbishop of Trèves. The Exchange, once a court of justice, has changed less startlingly, and its proportions are much the same as of old; and besides these there are other buildings worth noticing, tho not so old, and rather distinguished by the men who lived and died there, or were born there, such as Metternich, than by architectural beauties. Such houses there are in every old city. They do not invite you to go in and admire them; every tourist you meet does not ask you how you liked them or whether you saw them. They are homes, and sealed to you as such, but they are the shell of the real life of the country; and they have somehow a charm and a fascination that no public building or show-place can have. Goethe, who turned his life-experiences into poetry, has told us something of one such house not far from Coblenz, in the village of Ehrenbreitstein, beneath the fortress, and which in familiar Coblenz parlance goes by the name of "The Valley"--the house of Sophie de Laroche. The village is also Clement Brentano's birthplace. The oldest of German cities, Trèves (or in German Trier), is not too far to visit on our way up the Mosel Valley, whose Celtic inhabitants of old gave the Roman legions so much trouble. But Rome ended by conquering, by means of her civilization as well as by her arms, and Augusta Trevirorum, tho claiming a far higher antiquity than Rome herself, and still bearing an inscription to that effect on the old council-house--now called the Red House and used as a hotel--became, as Ausonius condescendingly remarked, a second Rome, adorned with baths, gardens, temples, theaters and all that went to make up an imperial capital. As in Venice everything precious seems to have come from Constantinople, so in Trier most things worthy of note date from the days of the Romans; tho, to tell the truth, few of the actual buildings do, no matter how classic is their look. The style of the Empire outlived its sway, and doubtless symbolized to the inhabitants their traditions of a higher standard of civilization. The Porta Nigra, for instance--called Simeon's Gate at present--dates really from the days of the first Merovingian kings, but it looks like a piece of the Colosseum, with its rows of arches in massive red sandstone, the stones held together by iron clamps, and its low, immensely strong double gateway, reminding one of the triumphal arches in the Forum at Rome. The history of the transformation of this gateway is curious. First a fortified city gate, standing in a correspondingly fortified wall, it became a dilapidated granary and storehouse in the Middle Ages, when one of the archbishops gave leave to Simeon, a wandering hermit from Syracuse in Sicily, to take up his abode there; and another turned it into a church dedicated to this saint, tho of this change few traces remain. Finally, it has become a national museum of antiquities. The amphitheater is a genuine Roman work, wonderfully well preserved; and genuine enough were the Roman games it has witnessed, for, if we are to believe tradition, a thousand Frankish prisoners of war were here given in one day to the wild beasts by the Emperor Constantine. Christian emperors beautified the basilica that stood where the cathedral now is, and the latter itself has some basilica-like points about it, tho, being the work of fifteen centuries, it bears the stamp of successive styles upon its face.... The Mosel has but few tributary streams of importance; its own course is as winding, as wild and as romantic as that of the Rhine itself. The most interesting part of the very varied scenery of this river is not the castles, the antique towns, the dense woods or the teeming vineyards lining rocks where a chamois could hardly stand--all this it has in common with the Rhine--but the volcanic region of the Eifel, the lakes in ancient craters, the tossed masses of lava and tufa, the great wastes strewn with dark boulders, the rifts that are called valleys and are like the Iceland gorges, the poor, starved villages and the extraordinary rusticity, not to say coarseness, of the inhabitants. This grotesque, interesting country--unique, I believe, on the continent of Europe--lies in a small triangle between the Mosel, the Belgian frontier and the Schiefer hills of the Lower Rhine; it goes by the names of the High Eifel, with the High Acht, the Kellberg and the Nurburg; the upper (Vorder) Eifel, with Gerolstein, a ruined castle, and Daun, a pretty village; and the Snow-Eifel (Schnee Eifel), contracted by the speech of the country into Schneifel. The last is the most curious, the most dreary, the least visited. Walls of sharp rocks rise up over eight hundred feet high round some of its sunken lakes--one is called the Powder Lake--and the level above this abyss stretches out in moors and desolate downs, peopled with herds of lean sheep, and marked here and there by sepulchral, gibbet-looking signposts, shaped like a rough T and set in a heap of loose stones. It is a great contrast to turn aside from this landscape and look on the smiling villages and pretty wooded scenery of the valley of the Mosel proper; the long lines of handsome, healthy women washing their linen on the banks; the old ferryboats crossing by the help of antique chain-and-rope contrivances; the groves of old trees, with broken walls and rude shrines, reminding one of Southern Italy and her olives and ilexes; and the picturesque houses, in Kochem, in Daun, in Travbach, in Bernkastel, which, however untiring one may be as a sightseer, hardly warrant one as a writer to describe and re-describe their beauties. Klüsserath, however, we must mention, because its straggling figure has given rise to a local proverb--"As long as Klüsserath;" and Neumagen, because of the legend of Constantine, who is said to have seen the cross of victory in the heavens at this place, as well as at Sinzig on the Rhine, and, as the more famous legend tells us, at the Pons Milvium over the Tiber. The last glance we take at the beauties of this neighborhood is from the mouth of the torrent-river Eltz as it dashes into the Eifel, washing the rock on which stands the castle of Eltz. The building and the family are an exception in the history of these lands; both exist to this day, and are prosperous and undaunted, notwithstanding all the efforts of enemies, time and circumstances to the contrary. The strongly-turreted wall runs from the castle till it loses itself in the rock, and the building has a home-like inhabited, complete look; which, in virtue of the quaint irregularity and magnificent natural position of the castle, standing guard over the foaming Eltz, does not take from its romantic appearance, as preservation or restoration too often does. Not far from Coblenz, and past the island of Nonnenwerth, is the old tenth-century castle of Sayn, which stood until the Thirty Years' War, and below it, quiet, comfortable, large, but unpretending, lies the new house of the family of Sayn-Wittgenstein, built in the year 1848. As we push our way down the Rhine we soon come to the little peaceful town of Neuwied, a sanctuary for persecuted Flemings and others of the Low Countries, gathered here by the local sovereign, Count Frederick III. The little brook that gives its name to the village runs softly into the Rhine under a rustic bridge and amid murmuring rushes, while beyond it the valley gets narrower, rocks begin to rise over the Rhine banks, and we come to Andernach. Andernach is the Rocky Gate of the Rhine, and if its scenery were not enough, its history, dating from Roman times, would make it interesting. However, of its relics we can only mention, in passing, the parish church with its four towers, all of tufa, the dungeons under the council-house, significantly called the "Jew's bath," and the old sixteenth-century contrivances for loading Rhine boats with the millstones in which the town still drives a fair trade. At the mouth of the Brohl we meet the volcanic region again, and farther up the valley through which this stream winds come upon the retired little watering-place of Tönnistein, a favorite goal of the Dutch, with its steel waters; and Wassenach, with what we may well call its dust-baths, stretching for miles inland, up hills full of old craters, and leaving us only at the entrance of the beech-woods that have grown up in these cauldron-like valleys and fringe the blue Laachersee, the lake of legends and of fairies. One of these Schlegel has versified in the "Lay of the Sunken Castle," with the piteous tale of the spirits imprisoned; and Simrock tells us in rhyme of the merman who sits waiting for a mortal bride; while Wolfgang Müller sings of the "Castle under the Lake," where at night ghostly torches are lighted and ghostly revels are held, the story of which so fascinates the fisherman's boy who has heard of these doings from his grandmother that as he watches the enchanted waters one night his fancy plays him a cruel trick, and he plunges in to join the revellers and learn the truth. Local tradition says that Count Henry II. and his wife Adelaide, walking here by night, saw the whole lake lighted up from within in uncanny fashion, and founded a monastery in order to counteract the spell. This deserted but scarcely ruined building still exists, and contains the grave of the founder; the twelfth-century decoration, rich and detailed, is almost whole in the oldest part of the monastery. The far-famed German tale of Genovefa of Brabant is here localized, and Henry's son Siegfried assigned to the princess as a husband, while the neighboring grotto of Hochstein is shown as her place of refuge. On our way back to the Rocky Gate we pass through the singular little town of Niedermendig, an hour's distance from the lake--a place built wholly of dark gray lava, standing in a region where lava-ridges seam the earth like the bones of antediluvian monsters, but are made more profitable by being quarried into millstones. There is something here that brings part of Wales to the remembrance of the few who have seen those dreary slate-villages--dark, damp, but naked, for moss and weeds do not thrive on this dampness as they do on the decay of other stones--which dot the moorland of Wales. The fences are slate; the gateposts are slate; the stiles are of slate; the very "sticks" up which the climbing roses are trained are of slate; churches, schools, houses, stables are all of one dark iron-blue shade; floors and roofs are alike; hearth-stones and threshold-stones, and grave-stones all of the same material. It is curious and depressing. This volcanic region of the Rhine, however, has so many unexpected beauties strewn pell-mell in the midst of stony barrenness that it also bears some likeness to Naples and Ischia, where beauty of color, and even of vegetation, alternate surprisingly with tracts of parched and rocky wilderness pierced with holes whence gas and steam are always rising. [Footnote A: From "Down the Rhine."] BINGEN AND MAYENCE[A] BY VICTOR HUGO Bingen is an exceedingly pretty place, having at once the somber look of an ancient town, and the cheering aspect of a new one. From the days of Consul Drusus to those of the Emperor Charlemagne, from Charlemagne to Archbishop Willigis, from Willigis to the merchant Montemagno, and from Montemagno to the visionary Holzhausen, the town gradually increased in the number of its houses, as the dew gathers drop by drop in the cup of a lily. Excuse this comparison; for, tho flowery, it has truth to back it, and faithfully illustrates the mode in which a town near the conflux of two rivers is constructed. The irregularity of the houses--in fact everything, tends to make Bingen a kind of antithesis, both with respect to buildings and the scenery which surrounds them. The town, bounded on the left by Nahe, and by the Rhine on the right, develops itself in a triangular form near a Gothic church, which is backed by a Roman citadel. In this citadel, which bears the date of the first century, and has long been the haunt of bandits, there is a garden; and in the church, which is of the fifteenth century, is the tomb of Barthélemy de Holzhausen. In the direction of Mayence, the famed Paradise Plain opens upon the Ringau; and in that of Coblentz, the dark mountains of Leyen seem to frown on the surrounding scenery. Here Nature smiles like a lovely woman extended unadorned on the greensward; there, like a slumbering giant, she excites a feeling of awe. The more we examine this beautiful place, the more the antithesis is multiplied under our looks and thoughts. It assumes a thousand different forms; and as the Nahe flows through the arches of the stone bridge, upon the parapet of which the lion of Hesse turns its back to the eagle of Prussia, the green arm of the Rhine seizes suddenly the fair and indolent stream, and plunges it into the Bingerloch. To sit down toward the evening on the summit of the Klopp--to see the town at its base, with an immense horizon on all sides, the mountains overshadowing all--to see the slated roofs smoking, the shadows lengthening, and the scenery breathing to life the verses of Virgil--to respire at once the wind which rustles the leaves, the breeze of the flood, and the gale of the mountain--is an exquisite and inexpressible pleasure, full of secret enjoyment, which is veiled by the grandeur of the spectacle, by the intensity of contemplation. At the windows of huts, young women, their eyes fixt upon their work, are gaily singing; among the weeds that grow round the ruins birds whistle and pair; barks are crossing the river, and the sound of oars splashing in the water, and unfurling of sails, reaches our ears. The washerwomen of the Rhine spread their clothes on the bushes; and those of the Nahe, their legs and feet naked, beat their linen upon floating rafts, and laugh at some poor artist as he sketches Ehrenfels. The sun sets, night comes on, the slated roofs of the houses appear as one, the mountains congregate and take the aspect of an immense dark body; and the washerwomen, with bundles on their heads, return cheerfully to their cabins; the noise subsides, the voices are hushed; a faint light, resembling the reflections of the other world upon the countenance of a dying man, is for a short time observable on the Ehrenfels; then all is dark, except the tower of Hatto, which, tho scarcely seen in the day, makes its appearance at night, amid a light smoke and the reverberation of the forge.... Mayence and Frankfort, like Versailles and Paris, may, at the present time, be called one town. In the middle ages there was a distance of eight leagues between them, which was then considered a long journey; now, an hour and a quarter will suffice to transport you from one to the other. The buildings of Frankfort and Mayence, like those of Liège, have been devastated by modern good taste, and old and venerable edifices are rapidly disappearing, giving place to frightful groups of white houses. I expected to be able to see, at Mayence, Martinsburg, which, up to the seventeenth century, was the feudal residence of the ecclesiastical electors; but the French made a hospital of it, which was afterward razed to the ground to make room for the Porte Franc; the merchant's hotel, built in 1317 by the famed League, and which was splendidly decorated with the statues of seven electors, and surmounted by two colossal figures, bearing the crown of the empire, also shared the same fate. Mayence possesses that which marks its antiquity--a venerable cathedral, which was commenced in 978, and finished in 1009. Part of this superb structure was burned in 1190, and since that period has, from century to century, undergone some change. I explored its interior, and was struck with awe on beholding innumerable tombs, bearing dates as far back as the eighteenth century. Under the galleries of the cloister I observed an obscure monument, a bas-relief of the fourteenth century, and tried, in vain, to guess the enigma. On one side are two men in chains, wildness in their looks, and despair in their attitudes; on the other, an emperor, accompanied by a bishop, and surrounded by a number of people, triumphing. Is it Barbarossa? Is it Louis of Bavaria? Does it speak of the revolt of 1160, or of the war between Mayence and Frankfort in 1332? I could not tell, and therefore passed by. As I was leaving the galleries, I discovered in the shade a sculptured head, half protruding from the wall, surmounted by a crown of flower-work, similar to that worn by the kings of the eleventh century. I looked at it; it had a mild countenance; yet it possest something of severity in it--a face imprinted with that august beauty which the workings of a great mind give to the countenance of man. The hand of some peasant had chalked the name "Frauenlob" above it, and I instantly remembered the Tasso of Mayence, so calumniated during his life, so venerated after his death. When Henry Frauenlob died, which was in the year 1318, the females who had insulted him in life carried his coffin to the tomb, which procession is chiseled on the tombstone beneath. I again looked at that noble head. The sculptor had left the eyes open; and thus, in that church of sepulchers--in that cloister of the dead--the poet alone sees; he only is represented standing, and observing all. The market-place, which is by the side of the cathedral, has rather an amusing and pleasing aspect. In the middle is a pretty triangular fountain of the German Renaissance, which, besides having scepters, nymphs, angels, dolphins, and mermaids, serves as a pedestal to the Virgin Mary. This fountain was erected by Albert de Brandenburg, who reigned in 1540, in commemoration of the capture of Francis the First by Charles the Fifth. Mayence, white tho it be, retains its ancient aspect of a beautiful city. The river here is not less crowded with sails, the town not less incumbered with bales, nor more free from bustle, than formerly. People walk, squeak, push, sell, buy, sing, and cry; in fact in all the quarters of the town, in every house, life seems to predominate. At night the buzz and noise cease, and nothing is heard at Mayence but the murmurings of the Rhine, and the everlasting noise of seventeen water mills, which are fixt to the piles of the bridge of Charlemagne. [Footnote A: From "The Rhine." Translated by D.M. Aird.] FRANKFORT-AM-MAIN[A] BY BAYARD TAYLOR Frankfort is a genuine old German city. Founded by Charlemagne, afterward a rallying-point of the Crusaders, and for a long time the capital of the German Empire, it has no lack of interesting historical recollections, and, notwithstanding it is fast becoming modernized, one is everywhere reminded of the past. The cathedral, old as the days of Peter the Hermit, the grotesque street of the Jews, the many quaint, antiquated dwellings and the moldering watch-towers on the hills around, give it a more interesting character than any German city I have yet seen. The house we dwell in, on the Markt Platz, is more than two hundred years old; directly opposite is a great castellated building gloomy with the weight of six centuries, and a few steps to the left brings me to the square of the Römerberg, where the emperors were crowned, in a corner of which is a curiously ornamented house formerly the residence of Luther. There are legends innumerable connected with all these buildings, and even yet discoveries are frequently made in old houses of secret chambers and staircases. When you add to all this the German love of ghost-stories, and, indeed, their general belief in spirits, the lover of romance could not desire a more agreeable residence. Within the walls the greater part of Frankfort is built in the old German style, the houses six or seven stories high and every story projecting out over the other; so that those living in the upper part can nearly shake hands out of the windows. At the corners figures of men are often seen holding up the story above on their shoulders and making horrible faces at the weight. When I state that in all these narrow streets, which constitute the greater part of the city, there are no sidewalks, the windows of the lower stories have iron gratings extending a foot or so into the street, which is only wide enough for one cart to pass along, you can have some idea of the facility of walking through them, to say nothing of the piles of wood and market-women with baskets of vegetables which one is continuously stumbling over. Even in the wider streets I have always to look before and behind to keep out of the way of the cabs; the people here get so accustomed to it that they leave barely room for them to pass, and the carriages go dashing by at a nearness which sometimes makes me shudder. As I walked across the Main and looked down at the swift stream on its way from the distant Thuringian Forest to join the Rhine, I thought of the time when Schiller stood there in the days of his early struggles, an exile from his native land, and, looking over the bridge, said in the loneliness of his heart, "That water flows not so deep as my sufferings." From the hills on the Darmstadt road I had a view of the country around; the fields were white and bare, and the dark Taunus, with the broad patches of snow on his sides, looked grim and shadowy through the dim atmosphere. It was like the landscape of a dream--dark, strange and silent. I have seen the banker Rothschild several times driving about the city. This one--Anselmo, the most celebrated of the brothers--holds a mortgage on the city of Jerusalem. He rides about in style, with officers attending his carriage. He is a little baldheaded man with marked Jewish features, and is said not to deceive his looks. At any rate, his reputation is none of the best, either with Jews or Christians. A caricature was published some time ago in which he is represented as giving a beggar-woman by the wayside a kreutzer--the smallest German coin. She is made to exclaim, "God reward you a thousand fold!" He immediately replies, after reckoning up in his head, "How much have I then? Sixteen florins and forty kreutzers!"... The Eschernheim Tower, at the entrance of one of the city gates, is universally admired by strangers on account of its picturesque appearance, overgrown with ivy and terminated by the little pointed turrets which one sees so often in Germany on buildings three or four centuries old. There are five other watch-towers of similar form, which stand on different sides of the city at the distance of a mile or two, and generally upon an eminence overlooking the country. They were erected several centuries ago to discern from afar the approach of an enemy, and protect the caravans of merchants, which at that time traveled from city to city, from the attacks of robbers. The Eschernheim Tower is interesting from another circumstance which, whether true or not, is universally believed. When Frankfort was under the sway of a prince, a Swiss hunter, for some civil offense, was condemned to die. He begged his life from the prince, who granted it only on condition that he should fire the figure nine with his rifle through the vane of this tower. He agreed, and did it; and at the present time one can distinguish a rude nine on the vane, as if cut with bullets, while two or three marks at the side appear to be from shots that failed. [Footnote A: From "Views Afoot." Published by G.P. Putnam's Sons.] HEIDELBERG[A] BY BAYARD TAYLOR Here in Heidelberg at last, and a most glorious town it is. This is our first morning in our new rooms, and the sun streams warmly in the eastern windows as I write, while the old castle rises through the blue vapor on the side of the Kaiserstuhl. The Neckar rushes on below, and the Odenwald, before me, rejoices with its vineyards in the morning light.... There is so much to be seen around this beautiful place that I scarcely know where to begin a description of it. I have been wandering among the wild paths that lead up and down the mountain-side or away into the forests and lonely meadows in the lap of the Odenwald. My mind is filled with images of the romantic German scenery, whose real beauty is beginning to displace the imaginary picture which I had painted with the enthusiastic words of Howitt. I seem to stand now upon the Kaiserstuhl, which rises above Heidelberg, with that magnificent landscape around me from the Black Forest and Strassburg to Mainz, and from the Vosges in France to the hills of Spessart in Bavaria. What a glorious panorama! and not less rich in associations than in its natural beauty. Below me had moved the barbarian hordes of old, the triumphant followers of Arminius and the cohorts of Rome, and later full many a warlike host bearing the banners of the red cross to the Holy Land, many a knight returning with his vassals from the field to lay at the feet of his lady-love the scarf he had worn in a hundred battles and claim the reward of his constancy and devotion. But brighter spirits had also toiled below. That plain had witnessed the presence of Luther, and a host who strove with him. There had also trodden the master-spirits of German song--the giant twain with their scarcely less harmonious brethren. They, too, had gathered inspiration from those scenes--more fervent worship of Nature and a deeper love for their beautiful fatherland.... Then there is the Wolfsbrunnen, which one reaches by a beautiful walk up the bank of the Neckar to a quiet dell in the side of the mountain. Through this the roads lead up by rustic mills always in motion, and orchards laden with ripening fruit, to the commencement of the forest, where a quaint stone fountain stands, commemorating the abode of a sorceress of the olden time who was torn in pieces by a wolf. There is a handsome rustic inn here, where every Sunday afternoon a band plays in the portico, while hundreds of people are scattered around in the cool shadow of the trees or feeding the splendid trout in the basin formed by a little stream. They generally return to the city by another walk, leading along the mountain-side to the eastern terrace of the castle, where they have fine views of the great Rhine plain, terminated by the Alsatian hills stretching along the western horizon like the long crested swells on the ocean. We can even see these from the windows of our room on the bank of the Neckar, and I often look with interest on one sharp peak, for on its side stands the castle of Trifels, where Coeur de Lion was imprisoned by the Duke of Austria, and where Blondel, his faithful minstrel, sang the ballad which discovered the retreat of the noble captive. From the Carl Platz, an open square at the upper end of the city, two paths lead directly up to the castle. By the first walk we ascend a flight of steps to the western gate; passing through which, we enter a delightful garden, between the outer walls of the castle and the huge moat which surrounds it. Great linden, oak and beech trees shadow the walk, and in secluded nooks little mountain-streams spring from the side of the wall into stone basins. There is a tower over the moat on the south side, next the mountain, where the portcullis still hangs with its sharp teeth as it was last drawn up; on each side stand two grim knights guarding the entrance. In one of the wooded walks is an old tree brought from America in the year 1618. It is of the kind called "arbor vitae," and uncommonly tall and slender for one of this species; yet it does not seem to thrive well in a foreign soil. I noticed that persons had cut many slips off the lower branches, and I would have been tempted to do the same myself if there had been any I could reach. In the curve of the mountain is a handsome pavilion surrounded with beds of flowers and fountains; here all classes meet together in the afternoon to sit with their refreshments in the shade, while frequently a fine band of music gives them their invariable recreation. All this, with the scenery around them, leaves nothing unfinished to their present enjoyment. The Germans enjoy life under all circumstances, and in this way they make themselves much happier than we who have far greater means of being so. At the end of the terrace built for the Princess Elizabeth of England is one of the round towers which was split in twain by the French. Half has fallen entirely away, and the other semicircular shell, which joins the terrace and part of the castle-buildings, clings firmly together, altho part of its foundation is gone, so that its outer ends actually hang in the air. Some idea of the strength of the castle may be obtained when I state that the walls of this tower are twenty-two feet thick, and that a staircase has been made through them to the top, where one can sit under the lindens growing upon it or look down on the city below with the pleasant consciousness that the great mass upon which he stands is only prevented from crashing down with him by the solidity of its masonry. On one side, joining the garden, the statue of the Archduke Louis in his breastplate and flowing beard looks out from among the ivy. There is little to be seen about the castle except the walls themselves. The guide conducted us through passages, in which were heaped many of the enormous cannon-balls which it had received in sieges, to some chambers in the foundation. This was the oldest part of the castle, built in the thirteenth century. We also visited the chapel, which is in a tolerable state of preservation. A kind of narrow bridge crosses it, over which we walked, looking down on the empty pulpit and deserted shrines. We then went into the cellar to see the celebrated tun. In a large vault are kept several enormous hogsheads, one of which is three hundred years old, but they are nothing in comparison with the tun, which itself fills a whole vault. It is as high as a common two-story house; on the top is a platform upon which the people used to dance after it was filled, to which one ascends by two flights of steps. I forget exactly how many casks it holds, but I believe eight hundred. It has been empty for fifty years.... Opposite my window rises the Heiligenberg, on the other side of the Neckar. The lower part of it is rich with vineyards, and many cottages stand embosomed in shrubbery among them. Sometimes we see groups of maidens standing under the grape-arbors, and every morning the peasant-women go toiling up the steep paths with baskets on their heads, to labor among the vines. On the Neckar, below us, the fishermen glide about in their boats, sink their square nets fastened to a long pole, and haul them up with the glittering fish, of which the stream is full. I often lean out of the window late at night, when the mountains above are wrapt in dusky obscurity, and listen to the low, musical ripple of the river. It tells to my excited fancy a knightly legend of the old German time. Then comes the bell rung for closing the inns, breaking the spell with its deep clang, which vibrates far away on the night-air till it has roused all the echoes of the Odenwald. I then shut the window, turn into the narrow box which the Germans call a bed, and in a few minutes am wandering in America. Halfway up the Heidelberg runs a beautiful walk dividing the vineyards from the forest above. This is called "The Philosopher's Way," because it was the favorite ramble of the old professors of the university. It can be reached by a toilsome, winding path among the vines, called the Snake-way; and when one has ascended to it, he is well rewarded by the lovely view. In the evening, when the sun has got behind the mountain, it is delightful to sit on the stone steps and watch the golden light creeping up the side of the Kaiserstuhl, till at last twilight begins to darken in the valley and a mantle of mist gathers above the Neckar. We ascended the mountain a few days ago. There is a path which leads up through the forest, but we took the shortest way, directly up the side, tho it was at an angle of nearly fifty degrees. It was hard enough work scrambling through the thick broom and heather and over stumps and stones. In one of the stone-heaps I dislodged a large orange-colored salamander seven or eight inches long. They are sometimes found on these mountains, as well as a very large kind of lizard, called the "eidechse," which the Germans say is perfectly harmless, and if one whistles or plays a pipe will come and play around him. The view from the top reminded me of that from Catskill Mountain House, but is on a smaller scale. The mountains stretch off sideways, confining the view to but half the horizon, and in the middle of the picture the Hudson is well represented by the lengthened windings of the "abounding Rhine." Nestled at the base below us was the little village of Handschuhheim, one of the oldest in this part of Germany. The castle of its former lords has nearly all fallen down, but the massive solidity of the walls which yet stand proves its antiquity. A few years ago a part of the outer walls which was remarked to have a hollow sound was taken down, when there fell from a deep niche built therein, a skeleton clad in a suit of the old German armor. We followed a road through the woods to the peak on which stands the ruins of St. Michael's chapel, which was built in the tenth century and inhabited for a long time by a company of white monks. There is now but a single tower remaining, and all around is grown over with tall bushes and weeds. It had a wild and romantic look, and I sat on a rock and sketched at it till it grew dark, when we got down the mountain the best way we could.... We have just returned from a second visit to Frankfort, where the great annual fair filled the streets with noise and bustle. On our way back we stopt at the village of Zwingenberg, which lies at the foot of the Melibochus, for the purpose of visiting some of the scenery of the Odenwald. Passing the night at the inn there, we slept with one bed under and two above, and started early in the morning to climb up the side of the Melibochus. After a long walk through the forests, which were beginning to change their summer foliage for a brighter garment, we reached the summit and ascended the stone tower which stands upon it. This view gives one a better idea of the Odenwald than that from the Kaiserstuhl at Heidelberg. This is a great collection of rocks, in a wild pine wood, heaped together like pebbles on the seashore and worn and rounded as if by the action of water; so much do they resemble waves that one standing at the bottom and looking up can not resist the idea that they will flow down upon him. It must have been a mighty tide whose receding waves left these masses piled up together. The same formation continues at intervals to the foot of the mountains. It reminded me of a glacier of rocks instead of ice. A little higher up lies a massive block of granite called the Giant's Column. It is thirty-two feet long and three to four feet in diameter, and still bears the mark of the chisel. When or by whom it was made remains a mystery. Some have supposed it was intended to be erected for the worship of the sun by the wild Teutonic tribes who inhabited this forest; it is more probably the work of the Romans. A project was once started to erect a monument on the battlefield of Leipsic, but it was found too difficult to carry into execution. After dining at the little village of Reichelsdorf, in the valley below--where the merry landlord charged my friend two kreutzers less than myself because he was not so tall--we visited the castle of Schönberg, and joined the Bergstrasse again. We walked the rest of the way here. Long before we arrived the moon shone down on us over the mountains; and when we turned around the foot of the Heiligenberg, the mist descending in the valley of the Neckar rested like a light cloud on the church-spires. [Footnote A: From "Views Afoot." Published by G.P. Putnam's Sons.] STRASSBURG[A] BY HARRIET BEECHER STOWE I left the cars with my head full of the cathedral. The first thing I saw, on lifting my eyes, was a brown spire. We climbed the spire; we gained the roof. What a magnificent terrace! A world in itself; a panoramic view sweeping the horizon. Here I saw the names of Goethe and Herder. Here they have walked many a time, I suppose. But the inside--a forest-like firmament, glorious in holiness; windows many-hued as the Hebrew psalms; a gloom solemn and pathetic as man's mysterious existence; a richness gorgeous and manifold as his wonderful nature. In this Gothic architecture we see earnest northern races, whose nature was a composite of influences from pine forest, mountain, and storm, expressing in vast proportions and gigantic masonry those ideas of infinite duration and existence which Christianity opened before them. The ethereal eloquence of the Greeks could not express the rugged earnestness of souls wrestling with those fearful mysteries of fate, of suffering, of eternal existence, declared equally by nature and revelation. This architecture is Hebraistic in spirit, not Greek; it well accords with the deep ground-swell of the Hebrew prophets. "Lord, thou hast been our dwelling-place in all generations. Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God. A thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past. And as a watch in the night." The objection to Gothic architecture, as compared with Greek, is, that it is less finished and elegant. So it is. It symbolizes that state of mind too earnest for mere polish, too deeply excited for laws of exact proportions and architectural refinement. It is Alpine architecture--vast, wild, and sublime in its foundations, yet bursting into flowers at every interval. The human soul seems to me an imprisoned essence, striving after somewhat divine. There is a struggle in it, as of suffocated flame; finding vent now through poetry, now in painting, now in music, sculpture, or architecture; various are the crevices and fissures, but the flame is one. Moreover, as society grows from barbarism upward, it tends to inflorescence, at certain periods, as do plants and trees; and some races flower later than others. This architecture was the first flowering of the Gothic race; they had no Homers; the flame found vent not by imaged words and vitalized alphabet; they vitalized stone, and their poets were minster-builders; their epics, cathedrals. This is why one cathedral--like Strassburg, or Notre Dame--has a thousandfold the power of any number of Madeleines. The Madeleine is simply a building; these are poems. I never look at one of them without feeling that gravitation of soul toward its artist which poetry always excites. Often the artist is unknown; here we know him; Erwin von Steinbach, poet, prophet, priest, in architecture. We visited his house--a house old and quaint, and to me full of suggestions and emotions. Ah, if there be, as the apostle vividly suggests, houses not made with hands, strange splendors, of which these are but shadows, that vast religious spirit may have been finding scope for itself where all the forces of nature shall have been made tributary to the great conceptions of the soul. Save this cathedral, Strassburg has nothing except peaked-roofed houses, dotted with six or seven rows of gable windows. [Footnote A: From "Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands." Mrs. Stowe published this work in 1854, after returning from the tour she made soon after achieving great fame with "Uncle Tom's Cabin." During this visit she was received everywhere with distinction--and especially in England.] FREIBURG AND THE BLACK FOREST[A] BY BAYARD TAYLOR The airy basket-work tower of the Freiburg minster rises before me over the black roofs of the houses, and behind stand the gloomy pine-covered mountains of the Black Forest. Of our walk to Heidelberg over the oft-trodden Bergstrasse, I shall say nothing, nor how we climbed the Kaiserstuhl again, and danced around on the top of the tower for one hour amid cloud and mist, while there was sunshine below in the valley of the Neckar. I left Heidelberg yesterday morning in the "stehwagen" for Carlsruhe. The engine whistled, the train started, and, altho I kept my eyes steadily fixt on the spire of the Hauptkirche, three minutes hid it and all the rest of the city from sight. Carlsruhe, the capital of Baden--which we reached in an hour and a half--is unanimously pronounced by travelers to be a most dull and tiresome city. From a glance I had through one of the gates, I should think its reputation was not undeserved. Even its name in German signifies a place of repose. I stopt at Kork, on the branch-road leading to Strassburg, to meet a German-American about to return to my home in Pennsylvania, where he had lived for some time. I inquired according to the direction he had sent me to Frankfort, but he was not there; however, an old man, finding who I was, said Herr Otto had directed him to go with me to Hesselhurst, a village four or five miles off, where he would meet me. So we set off immediately over the plain, and reached the village at dusk.... My friend arrived at three o'clock the next morning, and, after two or three hours' talk about home and the friends whom he expected to see so much sooner than I, a young farmer drove me in his wagon to Offenburg, a small city at the foot of the Black Forest, where I took the cars for Freiburg. The scenery between the two places is grand. The broad mountains of the Black Forest rear their fronts on the east, and the blue lines of the French Vosges meet the clouds on the west. The night before, in walking over the plain, I saw distinctly the whole of the Strassburg minster, whose spire is the highest in Europe, being four hundred and ninety feet, or but twenty-five feet lower than the Pyramid of Cheops. I visited the minster of Freiburg yesterday morning. It is a grand, gloomy old pile, dating back from the eleventh century--one of the few Gothic churches in Germany that have ever been completed. The tower of beautiful fretwork rises to the height of three hundred and ninety-five feet, and the body of the church, including the choir, is of the same length. The interior is solemn and majestic. Windows stained in colors that burn let in a "dim religious light" which accords very well with the dark old pillars and antique shrines. In two of the chapels there are some fine altar-pieces by Holbein and one of his scholars, and a very large crucifix of silver and ebony, kept with great care, which is said to have been carried with the Crusaders to the Holy Land.... We went this afternoon to the Jägerhaus, on a mountain near, where we had a very fine view of the city and its great black minster, with the plain of the Briesgau, broken only by the Kaiserstuhl, a long mountain near the Rhine, whose golden stream glittered in the distance. On climbing the Schlossberg, an eminence near the city, we met the grand duchess Stephanie, a natural daughter of Napoleon, as I have heard. A chapel on the Schönberg, the mountain opposite, was pointed out as the spot where Louis XV.--if I mistake not--usually stood while his army besieged Freiburg. A German officer having sent a ball to this chapel which struck the wall just above the king's head, the latter sent word that if they did not cease firing he would point his cannons at the minster. The citizens thought it best to spare the monarch and save the cathedral. After two days delightfully spent, we shouldered our knapsacks and left Freiburg. The beautiful valley at the mouth of which the city lies runs like an avenue for seven miles directly into the mountains, and presents in its loveliness such a contrast to the horrid defile which follows that it almost deserves the name which has been given to a little inn at its head--the "Kingdom of Heaven." The mountains of the Black Forest enclose it on each side like walls, covered to the summit with luxuriant woods, and in some places with those forests of gloomy pine which give this region its name. After traversing its whole length, just before plunging into the mountain-depths the traveler rarely meets with a finer picture than that which, on looking back, he seems framed between the hills at the other end. Freiburg looks around the foot of one of the heights, with the spire of her cathedral peeping above the top, while the French Vosges grow dim in the far perspective. The road now enters a wild, narrow valley which grows smaller as we proceed. From Himmelreich, a large rude inn by the side of the green meadows, we enter the Höllenthal--that is, from the "Kingdom of Heaven" to the "Valley of Hell." The latter place better deserves its appellation than the former. The road winds between precipices of black rock, above which the thick foliage shuts out the brightness of day and gives a somber hue to the scene. A torrent foams down the chasm, and in one place two mighty pillars interpose to prevent all passage. The stream, however, has worn its way through, and the road is hewn in the rock by its side. This cleft is the only entrance to a valley three or four miles long which lies in the very heart of the mountains. It is inhabited by a few woodmen and their families, and, but for the road which passes through, would be as perfect a solitude as the Happy Valley of Rasselas. At the farther end a winding road called "The Ascent" leads up the steep mountain to an elevated region of country thinly settled and covered with herds of cattle. The cherries--which in the Rhine-plain below had long gone--were just ripe here. The people spoke a most barbarous dialect; they were social and friendly, for everybody greeted us, and sometimes, as we sat on a bank by the roadside, those who passed by would say "Rest thee!" or "Thrice rest!" Passing by the Titi Lake, a small body of water which was spread out among the hills like a sheet of ink, so deep was its Stygian hue, we commenced ascending a mountain. The highest peak of the Schwarzwald, the Feldberg, rose not far off, and on arriving at the top of this mountain we saw that a half hour's walk would bring us to its summit. This was too great a temptation for my love of climbing heights; so, with a look at the descending sun to calculate how much time we could spare, we set out. There was no path, but we prest directly up the steep side through bushes and long grass, and in a short time reached the top, breathless from such exertion in the thin atmosphere. The pine-woods shut out the view to the north and east, which is said to be magnificent, as the mountain is about five thousand feet high. The wild black peaks of the Black Forest were spread below us, and the sun sank through golden mist toward the Alsatian hills. Afar to the south, through cloud and storm, we could just trace the white outline of the Swiss Alps. The wind swept through the pines around, and bent the long yellow grass among which we sat, with a strange, mournful sound, well suiting the gloomy and mysterious region. It soon grew cold; the golden clouds settled down toward us, and we made haste to descend to the village of Lenzkirch before dark. Next morning we set out early, without waiting to see the trial of archery which was to take place among the mountain-youths. Their booths and targets, gay with banners, stood on a green meadow beside the town. We walked through the Black Forest the whole forenoon. It might be owing to the many wild stories whose scenes are laid among these hills, but with me there was a peculiar feeling of solemnity pervading the whole region. The great pine-woods are of the very darkest hue of green, and down their hoary, moss-floored aisles daylight seems never to have shone. The air was pure and clear and the sunshine bright, but it imparted no gayety to the scenery; except the little meadows of living emerald which lay occasionally in the lap of a dell, the landscape wore a solemn and serious air. In a storm it must be sublime. About noon, from the top of the last range of hills, we had a glorious view. The line of the distant Alps could be faintly traced high in the clouds, and all the heights between were plainly visible, from the Lake of Constance to the misty Jura, which flanked the Vosges on the west. From our lofty station we overlooked half Switzerland, and, had the air been a little clearer, we could have seen Mont Blanc and the mountains of Savoy. I could not help envying the feelings of the Swiss who, after long absence from their native land, first see the Alps from this road. If to the emotions with which I then looked on them were added the passionate love of home and country which a long absence creates, such excess of rapture would be almost too great to be borne. [Footnote A: From "Views Afoot." Published by G.P. Putnam's Sons.] II NUREMBERG AS A MEDIEVAL CITY[A] BY CECIL HEADLAM In spite of all changes, and in spite of the disfigurements of modern industry, Nuremberg is and will remain a medieval city, a city of history and legend, a city of the soul. She is like Venice in this, as in not a little of her history, that she exercises an indefinable fascination over our hearts no less than over our intellects. The subtle flavor of medieval towns may be likened to that of those rare old ports which are said to taste of the grave; a flavor indefinable, exquisite. Rothenburg has it; and it is with Rothenburg, that little gem of medievalism, that Nuremberg is likely to be compared in the mind of the modern wanderer in Franconia. But tho Rothenburg may surpass her greater neighbor in the perfect harmony and in the picturesqueness of her red-tiled houses and well-preserved fortifications, in interest at any rate she must yield to the heroine of this story. For, apart from the beauty which Nuremberg owes to the wonderful grouping of her red roofs and ancient castle, her coronet of antique towers, her Gothic churches and Renaissance buildings or brown riverside houses dipping into the mud-colored Pegnitz, she rejoices in treasures of art and architecture and in the possession of a splendid history such as Rothenburg can not boast. To those who know something of her story Nuremberg brings the subtle charm of association. While appealing to our memories by the grandeur of her historic past, and to our imaginations by the work and tradition of her mighty dead, she appeals also to our senses with the rare magic of her personal beauty, if one may so call it. In that triple appeal lies the fascination of Nuremberg.... The facts as to the origin of Nuremberg are lost in the dim shadows of tradition. When the little town sprang up amid the forests and swamps which still marked the course of the Pegnitz, we know as little as we know the origin of the name Nürnberg. It is true that the chronicles of later days are only too ready to furnish us with information; but the information is not always reliable. The chronicles, like our own peerage, are apt to contain too vivid efforts of imaginative fiction. The chroniclers, unharassed by facts or documents, with minds "not by geography prejudiced, or warped by history," can not unfortunately always be believed. It is, for instance, quite possible that Attila, King of the Huns, passed and plundered Nuremberg, as they tell us. But there is no proof, no record of that visitation. Again, the inevitable legend of a visit from Charlemagne occurs. He, you may be sure, was lost in the woods while hunting near Nuremberg, and passed all night alone, unhurt by the wild beasts. As a token of gratitude for God's manifest favor he caused a chapel to be built on the spot. The chapel stands to this day--a twelfth-century building--but no matter! for did not Otho I., as our chroniclers tell us, attend mass in St. Sebald's Church in 970, tho St. Sebald's Church can not have been built till a century later? The origin of the very name of Nuremberg is hidden in the clouds of obscurity. In the earliest documents we find it spelt with the usual variations of early manuscripts--Nourenberg, Nuorimperc, Niurenberg, Nuremberc, etc. The origin of the place, we repeat, is equally obscure. Many attempts have been made to find history in the light of the derivations of the name. But when philology turns historian it is apt to play strange tricks. Nur ein Berg (only a castle), or Nero's Castle, or Norix Tower--what matter which is the right derivation, so long as we can base a possible theory on it? The Norixberg theory will serve to illustrate the incredible quantity of misplaced ingenuity which both of old times and in the present has been wasted in trying to explain the inexplicable. Be that as it may, the history of our town begins in the year 1050. It is most probable that the silence regarding the place--it is not mentioned among the places visited by Conrad II. in this neighborhood--points to the fact that the castle did not exist in 1025, but was built between that year and 1050. That it existed then we know, for Henry III. dated a document from here in 1050, summoning a council of Bavarian nobles "to his estate Nourinberc." The oldest portion, called in the fifteenth century Altnürnberg, consisted of the Fünfeckiger Thurm--the Five-cornered tower--the rooms attached and the Otmarkapelle. The latter was burned down in 1420, rebuilt in 1428, and called the Walpurgiskapelle. These constituted the Burggräfliche Burg--the Burggraf's Castle. The rest of the castle was built on by Friedrich der Rotbart (Barbarossa), and called the Kaiserliche Burg. The old Five-cornered tower and the surrounding ground was the private property of the Burggraf, and he was appointed by the Emperor as imperial officer of the Kaiserliche Burg. Whether the Emperors claimed any rights of personal property over Nuremberg or merely treated it, at first, as imperial property, it is difficult to determine. The castle at any rate was probably built to secure whatever rights were claimed, and to serve generally as an imperial stronghold. Gradually around the castle grew up the straggling streets of Nuremberg. Settlers built beneath the shadow of the Burg. The very names of the streets suggest the vicinity of a camp or fortress. Söldnerstrasse, Schmiedstrasse, and so forth, betray the military origin of the present busy commercial town. From one cause or another a mixture of races, of Germanic and non-Germanic, of Slavonic and Frankish elements, seems to have occurred among the inhabitants of the growing village, producing a special blend which in dialect, in customs, and in dress was soon noticed by the neighbors as unique, and stamping the art and development of Nuremberg with that peculiar character which has never left it. Various causes combined to promote the growth of the place. The temporary removal of the Mart from Fürth to Nuremberg under Henry III. doubtless gave a great impetus to the development of the latter town. Henry IV., indeed, gave back the rights of Mart, customs and coinage to Fürth. But it seems probable that these rights were not taken away again from Nuremberg. The possession of a Mart was, of course, of great importance to a town in those days, promoting industries and arts and settled occupations. The Nurembergers were ready to suck out the fullest advantage from their privilege. That mixture of races, to which we have referred, resulted in remarkable business energy--energy which soon found scope in the conduct of the business which the natural position of Nuremberg on the south and north, the east and western trade routes, brought to her. It was not very long before she became the center of the vast trade between the Levant and Western Europe, and the chief emporium for the produce of Italy--the "Handelsmetropole" in fact of South Germany. Nothing in the Middle Ages was more conducive to the prosperity of a town than the reputation of having a holy man within its borders, or the possession of the miracle-working relics of a saint. Just as St. Elizabeth made Marburg so St. Sebaldus proved a very potent attraction to Nuremberg. As early as 1070 and 1080 we hear of pilgrimages to Nuremberg in honor of her patron saint. Another factor in the growth of the place was the frequent visits which the Emperors began to pay to it. Lying as it did on their way from Bamberg and Forcheim to Regensburg, the Kaisers readily availed themselves of the security offered by this impregnable fortress, and of the sport provided in the adjacent forest. For there was good hunting to be had in the forest which, seventy-two miles in extent, surrounded Nuremberg. And hunting, next to war, was then in most parts of Europe the most serious occupation of life. All the forest rights, we may mention, of wood-cutting, hunting, charcoal burning and bee-farming belonged originally to the Empire. But these were gradually acquired by the Nuremberg Council, chiefly by purchase in the fifteenth century. In the castle the visitor may notice a list of all the Emperors--some thirty odd, all told--who have stayed there--a list that should now include the reigning Emperor. We find that Henry IV. frequently honored Nuremberg with his presence. This is that Henry IV., whose scene at Canossa with the Pope--Kaiser of the Holy Roman Empire waiting three days in the snow to kiss the foot of excommunicative Gregory--has imprest itself on all memories. His last visit to Nuremberg was a sad one. His son rebelled against him, and the old king stopt at Nuremberg to collect his forces. In the war between father and son Nuremberg was loyal, and took the part of Henry IV. It was no nominal part, for in 1105 she had to stand a siege from the young Henry. For two months the town was held by the burghers and the castle by the Prefect Conrad. At the end of that time orders came from the old Kaiser that the town was to surrender. He had given up the struggle, and his undutiful son succeeded as Henry V. to the Holy Roman Empire, and Nuremberg with it. The mention of this siege gives us an indication of the growth of the town. The fact of the siege and the words of the chronicler, "The townsmen (oppidani) gave up the town under treaty," seem to point to the conclusion that Nuremberg was now no longer a mere fort (castrum), but that walls had sprung up round the busy mart and the shrine of St. Sebald, and that by this time Nuremberg had risen to the dignity of a "Stadt" or city state. Presently, indeed, we find her rejoicing in the title of "Civitas" (state). The place, it is clear, was already of considerable military importance or it would not have been worth while to invest it. The growing volume of trade is further illustrated by a charter of Henry V. (1112) giving to the citizens of Worms customs' immunity in various places subject to him, among which Frankfort, Goslar and Nuremberg are named as royal towns ("oppida regis"). [Footnote A: From "The Story of Nuremberg." Published by E.P. Dutton & Co.] ITS CHURCHES AND THE CITADEL[A] BY THOMAS FROGNALL DIBDIN It may be as well briefly to notice the two churches--St. Sebald and St. Lawrence. The former was within a stone's throw of our inn. Above the door of the western front is a remarkably fine crucifix of wood--placed, however, in too deep a recess--said to be by Veit Stoss. The head is of a very fine form, and the countenance has an expression of the most acute and intense feeling. A crown of thorns is twisted around the brow. But this figure, as well as the whole of the outside and inside of the church, stands in great need of being repaired. The towers are low, with insignificant turrets; the latter evidently a later erection--probably at the commencement of the sixteenth century. The eastern extremity, as well indeed as the aisles, is surrounded by buttresses; and the sharp-pointed, or lancet, windows, seem to bespeak the fourteenth, if not the thirteenth, century. The great "wonder" of the interior is the Shrine of the Saint (to whom the church is dedicated), of which the greater part is silver. At the time of my viewing it, it was in a disjointed state--parts of it having been taken to pieces, for repair; but from Geisler's exquisite little engraving, I should pronounce it to be second to few specimens of similar art in Europe. The figures do not exceed two feet in height, and the extreme elevation of the shrine may be about eight feet. Nor has Geisler's almost equally exquisite little engraved carving of the richly carved Gothic font in this church, less claim upon the admiration of the connoisseur. The mother church, or Cathedral of St. Lawrence, is much larger, and portions of it may be of the latter end of the thirteenth century. The principal entrance presents us with an elaborate doorway--perhaps of the fourteenth century--with the sculpture divided into several compartments, as at Rouen, Strassburg, and other earlier edifices. There is a poverty in the two towers, both from their size and the meagerness of the windows; but the slim spires at the summit are, doubtless, nearly of a coeval date with that which supports them. The bottom of the large circular or marigold window is injured in its effect by a Gothic balustrade of a later period. The interior of this church has certainly nothing very commanding or striking, on the score of architectural grandeur or beauty; but there are some painted glass windows--especially by Volkmar--which are deserving of particular attention. Nuremberg has one advantage over many populous towns; its public buildings are not choked up by narrow streets; and I hardly know an edifice of distinction, round which the spectator may not walk with perfect ease, and obtain a view of every portion which he is desirous of examining.... Of all edifices, more especially deserving of being visited at Nuremberg, the Citadel is doubtless the most curious and ancient, as well as the most remarkable. It rises to a considerable height, close upon the outer walls of the town, within about a stone's throw of the end of Albrecht Dürer Strasse--or the street where Albert Dürer lived--and whose house is not only yet in existence, but still the object of attraction and veneration with every visitor of taste, from whatever part of the world he may chance to come. The street running down is the street called (as before observed) after Albert Dürer's own name; and the well, seen about the middle of it, is a specimen of those wells--built of stone--which are very common in the streets of Nuremberg. The upper part of the house of Albert Dürer is supposed to have been his study. The interior is so altered from its original disposition as to present little or nothing satisfactory to the antiquary. It would be difficult to say how many coats of whitewash have been bestowed upon the rooms, since the time when they were tenanted by the great character in question. Passing through this street, therefore, you may turn to the right, and continue onward up a pretty smart ascent; when the entrance to the Citadel, by the side of a low wall--in front of an old tower--presents itself to your attention. It was before breakfast that my companion and self visited this interesting interior, over every part of which we were conducted by a most loquacious cicerone, who spoke the French language very fluently, and who was pleased to express his extreme gratification upon finding that his visitors were Englishmen. The tower and the adjoining chapel, may be each of the thirteenth century; but the tombstone of the founder of the monastery, upon the site of which the present Citadel was built, bears the date of 1296. This tombstone is very perfect; lying in a loose, unconnected manner, as you enter the chapel; the chapel itself having a crypt-like appearance. This latter is very small. From the suite of apartments in the older parts of the Citadel, there is a most extensive and uninterrupted view of the surrounding country, which is rather flat. At the distance of about nine miles, the town of Fürth (Furta) looks as if it were within an hour's walk; and I should think that the height of the chambers (from which we enjoyed this view) to the level ground of the adjacent meadows could be scarcely less than three hundred feet. In these chambers there is a little world of curiosity for the antiquary; and yet it was but too palpable that very many of its more precious treasures had been transported to Munich. In the time of Maximilian II., when Nuremberg may be supposed to have been in the very height of its glory, this Citadel must have been worth a pilgrimage of many score miles to have visited. The ornaments which remain are chiefly pictures; of which several are exceedingly precious.... In these curious old chambers, it was to be expected that I should see some Wohlegemuths--as usual, with backgrounds in a blaze of gold, and figures with tortuous limbs, pinched-in waists, and caricatured countenances. In a room, pretty plentifully encumbered with rubbish, I saw a charming Snyders; being a dead stag, suspended from a pole. There is here a portrait of Albert Dürer, by himself; but said to be a copy. If so, it is a very fine copy. The original is supposed to be at Munich. There was nothing else that my visit enabled me to see particularly deserving of being recorded; but, when I was told that it was in this Citadel that the ancient Emperors of Germany used oftentimes to reside, and make carousal, and when I saw, now, scarcely anything but dark passages, unfurnished galleries, naked halls, and untenanted chambers--I own that I could hardly refrain from uttering a sigh over the mutability of earthly fashions, and the transitoriness of worldly grandeur. With a rock for its base, and walls almost of adamant for its support--situated also upon an eminence which may be said to look frowningly down over a vast sweep of country--the Citadel of Nuremberg should seem to have bid defiance, in former times, to every assault of the most desperate and enterprising foe. It is now visited only by the casual traveler--who is frequently startled at the echo of his own footsteps. While I am on the subject of ancient art--of which so many curious specimens are to be seen in this Citadel--it may not be irrelevant to conduct the reader at once to what is called the Town Hall--a very large structure--of which portions are devoted to the exhibition of old pictures. Many of these paintings are in a very suspicious state, from the operations of time and accident; but the great boast of the collection is the "Triumphs of Maximilian I.," executed by Albert Dürer--which, however, has by no means escaped injury. I was accompanied in my visit to this interesting collection by Mr. Boerner, and had particular reason to be pleased by the friendliness of his attentions, and by the intelligence of his observations. A great number of these pictures (as I understood) belonged to a house in which he was a partner; and among them a portrait, by Pens, struck me as being singularly admirable and exquisite. The countenance, the dress, the attitude, the drawing and coloring, were as perfect as they well might be. But this collection has also suffered from the transportation of many of its treasures to Munich. The rooms, halls, and corridors of this Hôtel de Ville give you a good notion of municipal grandeur. In the neighborhood of Nuremberg--that is to say, scarcely more than an English mile from thence--are the grave and tombstone of Albert Dürer. The monument is simple and striking. In the churchyard there is a representation of the Crucifixion, cut in stone. It was on a fine, calm evening, just after sunset, that I first visited the tombstone of Albert Dürer; and I shall always remember the sensations, with which that visit was attended, as among the most pleasing and impressive of my life. The silence of the spot--its retirement from the city--the falling shadows of night, and the increasing solemnity of every monument of the dead--together with the mysterious, and even awful, effect produced by the colossal crucifix--but yet, perhaps, more than either, the recollection of the extraordinary talents of the artist, so quietly sleeping beneath my feet--all conspired to produce a train of reflections which may be readily conceived, but not so readily described. If ever a man deserved to be considered as the glory of his age and nation, Albert Dürer was surely that man. He was, in truth, the Shakespeare of his art--for the period. [Footnote A: From "A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour." Dibdin's tour was made in 1821.] NUREMBERG TO-DAY[A] BY CECIL HEADLAM Nuremberg is set upon a series of small slopes in the midst of an undulating, sandy plain, some 900 feet above the sea. Here and there on every side fringes and patches of the mighty forest which once covered it are still visible; but for the most part the plain is now freckled with picturesque villages, in which stand old turreted châteaux, with gabled fronts and latticed windows, or it is clothed with carefully cultivated crops or veiled from sight by the smoke which rises from the new-grown forest of factory chimneys. The railway sets us down outside the walls of the city. As we walk from the station toward the Frauen Thor, and stand beneath the crown of fortified walls three and a half miles in circumference, and gaze at the old gray towers and picturesque confusion of domes, pinnacles and spires, suddenly it seems as if our dream of a feudal city has been realized. There, before us, is one of the main entrances, still between massive gates and beneath archways flanked by stately towers. Still to reach it we must cross a moat fifty feet deep and a hundred feet wide. True, the swords of old days have been turned into pruning-hooks; the crenelles and embrasures which once bristled and blazed with cannon are now curtained with brambles and wall-flowers, and festooned with Virginia creepers; the galleries are no longer crowded with archers and cross-bowmen; the moat itself has blossomed into a garden, luxuriant with limes and acacias, elders, planes, chestnuts, poplars, walnut, willow and birch trees, or divided into carefully tilled little garden plots. True it is that outside the moat, beneath the smug grin of substantial modern houses, runs that mark of modernity, the electric tram. But let us for the moment forget these gratifying signs of modern prosperity and, turning to the left ere we enter the Frauen Thor, walk with our eyes on the towers which, with their steep-pitched roofs and myriad shapes and richly colored tiles, mark the intervals in the red-bricked, stone-cased galleries and mighty bastions, till we come to the first beginnings of Nuremberg--the Castle. There, on the highest eminence of the town, stands that venerable fortress, crowning the red slope of tiles. Roofs piled on roofs, their pinnacles, turrets, points and angles heaped one above the other in a splendid confusion, climb the hill which culminates in the varied group of buildings on the Castle rock. We have passed the Spittler, Mohren, Haller and Neu Gates on our way, and we have crossed by the Hallerthorbrücke the Pegnitz where it flows into the town. Before us rise the bold scarps and salient angles of the bastions built by the Italian architect, Antonio Fazuni, called the Maltese (1538-43). Crossing the moat by a wooden bridge which curls round to the right, we enter the town by the Thiergärtnerthor. The right-hand corner house opposite us now is Albert Dürer's house. We turn to the left and go along the Obere Schmiedgasse till we arrive at the top of a steep hill (Burgstrasse). Above, on the left, is the Castle. We may now either go through the Himmels Thor to the left, or keeping straight up under the old trees and passing the "Mount of Olives" on the left, approach the large deep-roofed building between two towers. This is the Kaiserstallung, as it is called, the Imperial stables, built originally for a granary. The towers are the Luginsland (Look in the land) on the east, and the Fünfeckiger Thurm, the Five-cornered tower, at the west end (on the left hand as we thus face it). The Luginsland was built by the townspeople in the hard winter of 1377. The mortar for building it, tradition says, had to be mixed with salt, so that it might be kept soft and be worked in spite of the severe cold. The chronicles state that one could see right into the Burggraf's Castle from this tower, and the town was therefore kept informed of any threatening movements on his part. To some extent that was very likely the object in view when the tower was built, but chiefly it must have been intended, as its name indicates, to afford a far look-out into the surrounding country. The granary or Kaiserstallung, as it was called later, was erected in 1494, and is referred to by Hans Behaim as lying between the Five-cornered and the Luginsland Towers. Inside the former there is a museum of curiosities (Hans Sachs' harp) and the famous collection of instruments of torture and the Maiden (Eiserne Jungfrau). The open space adjoining it commands a splendid view to the north. There, too, on the parapet-wall, may be seen the hoof-marks of the horse of the robber-king, Ekkelein von Gailingen. Here for a moment let us pause, consider our position, and endeavor to make out from the conflicting theories of the archeologists something of the original arrangement of the castles and of the significance of the buildings and towers that yet remain. Stretching to the east of the rock on which the Castle stands is a wide plain, now the scene of busy industrial enterprise, but in old days no doubt a mere district of swamp and forest. Westward the rock rises by three shelves to the summit. The entrance to the Castle, it is surmised, was originally on the east side, at the foot of the lower plateau and through a tower which no longer exists. Opposite this hypothetical gate-way stood the Five-cornered tower. The lower part dates, we have seen, from no earlier than the eleventh century. It is referred to as Alt-Nürnberg (old Nuremberg) in the Middle Ages. The title of "Five-cornered" is really somewhat a misnomer, for an examination of the interior of the lower portion of the tower reveals the fact that it is quadrangular. The pentagonal appearance of the exterior is due to the fragment of a smaller tower which once leaned against it, and probably formed the apex of a wing running out from the old castle of the Burggrafs. The Burggräfliche Burg stood below, according to Mummenhof, southwest and west of this point. It was burned down in 1420, and the ruined remains of it are supposed to be traceable in the eminence, now overgrown by turf and trees, through which a sort of ravine, closed in on either side by built-up walls, has just brought us from the town to the Vestner Thor. The Burggraf's Castle would appear to have been so situated as to protect the approach to the Imperial Castle (Kaiserburg). The exact extent of the former we can not now determine. Meisterlin refers to it as a little fort. We may, however, be certain that it reached from the Five-cornered tower to the Walpurgiskapelle. For this little chapel, east of the open space called the Freiung, is repeatedly spoken of as being on the property of the Burggrafs. Besides their castle proper, which was held at first as a fief of the Empire, and afterward came to be regarded as their hereditary, independent property, the Burggrafs were also entrusted with the keeping of a tower which commanded the entrance to the Castle rock on the country side, perhaps near the site of the present Vestner Thor. The guard door may have been attached to the tower, the lower portion of which remains to this day, and is called the Bailiff's Dwelling (Burgamtmannswohnung). The exact relationship of the Burggraf to the town on the one hand, and to the Empire on the other, is somewhat obscure. Originally, it would appear, he was merely an Imperial officer, administering Imperial estates, and looking after Imperial interests. In later days he came to possess great power, but this was due not to his position as castellan or castle governor as such, but to the vast private property his position had enabled him to amass and to keep. As the scope and ambitions of the Burggrafs increased, and as the smallness of their castle at Nuremberg, and the constant friction with the townspeople, who were able to annoy them in many ways, became more irksome, they gave up living at Nuremberg, and finally were content to sell their rights and possessions there to the town. Beside the guard door of the Burggrafs, which together with their castle passed by purchase into the hands of the town (1427), there were various other similar guard towers, such as the one which formerly occupied the present site of the Luginsland, or the Hasenburg at the so-called Himmels Thor, or a third which once stood near the Deep Well on the second plateau of the Castle rock. But we do not know how many of these there were, or where they stood, much less at what date they were built. All we do know is that they, as well as the Burggrafs' possessions, were purchased in succession by the town, into whose hands by degrees came the whole property of the Castle rock. Above the ruins of the "little fort" of the Burggrafs rises the first plateau of the Castle rock. It is surrounded by a wall, strengthened on the south side by a square tower against which leans the Walpurgiskapelle. The path to the Kaiserburg leads under the wall of the plateau, and is entirely commanded by it and by the quadrangular tower, the lower part of which alone remains and is known by the name of Burgamtmannswohnung. The path goes straight to this tower, and at the foot of it is the entrance to the first plateau. Then along the edge of this plateau the way winds southward, entirely commanded again by the wall of the second plateau, at the foot of which there probably used to be a trench. Over this a bridge led to the gate of the second plateau. The trench has been long since filled in, but the huge round tower which guarded the gate still remains and is the Vestner Thurm. The Vestner Thurm of Sinwel Thurm (sinwel = round), or, as it is called in a charter of the year 1313, the "Middle Tower," is the only round tower of the Burg. It was built in the days of early Gothic, with a sloping base, and of roughly flattened stones with a smooth edge. It was partly restored and altered in 1561, when it was made a few feet higher and its round roof was added. It is worth paying the small gratuity required for ascending to the top. The view obtained of the city below is magnificent. The Vestner Thurm, like the whole Imperial castle, passed at length into the care of the town, which kept its Tower watch here as early as the fourteenth century. The well which supplied the second plateau with water, the "Deep Well," as it is called, stands in the center, surrounded by a wall. It is 335 feet deep, hewn out of the solid rock, and is said to have been wrought by the hands of prisoners, and to have been the labor of thirty years. So much we can easily believe as we lean over and count the six seconds that elapse between the time when an object is dropt from the top to the time when it strikes the water beneath. Passages lead from the water's edge to the Rathaus, by which prisoners came formerly to draw water, and to St. John's Churchyard and other points outside the town. The system of underground passages here and in the Castle was an important part of the defenses, affording as it did a means of communication with the outer world and as a last extremity, in the case of a siege, a means of escape. Meanwhile, leaving the Deep Well and passing some insignificant modern dwellings, and leaving beneath us on the left the Himmelsthor, let us approach the summit of the rock and the buildings of the Kaiserburg itself. As we advance to the gateway with the intention of ringing the bell for the castellan, we notice on the left the Double Chapel, attaching to the Heathen Tower, the lower part of which is encrusted with what were once supposed to be Pagan images. The Tower protrudes beyond the face of the third plateau, and its prominence may indicate the width of a trench, now filled in, which was once dug outside the enclosing wall of the summit of the rock. The whole of the south side of this plateau is taken up by the "Palast" (the vast hall, two stories high, which, tho it has been repeatedly rebuilt, may in its original structure be traced back as far as the twelfth century), and the "Kemnate" or dwelling-rooms which seem to have been without any means of defense. This plateau, like the second, is supplied with a well. But the first object that strikes the eye on entering the court-yard is the ruined limetree, the branches of which once spread their broad and verdant shelter over the whole extent of the quadrangle. On leaving the Castle we find ourselves in the Burgstrasse, called in the old days Unter der Veste, which was probably the High Street of the old town. Off both sides of this street and of the Bergstrasse ran narrow crooked little alleys lined with wooden houses of which time and fire have left scarcely any trace. As you wander round the city tracing the line of the old walls, you are struck by the general air of splendor. Most of the houses are large and of a massive style of architecture, adorned with fanciful gables and bearing the impress of the period when every inhabitant was a merchant, and every merchant was lodged like a king. The houses of the merchant princes, richly carved both inside and out, tell of the wealth and splendor of Nuremberg in her proudest days. But you will also come upon a hundred crooked little streets and narrow alleys, which, tho entrancingly picturesque, tell of yet other days and other conditions. They tell of those early medieval days when the houses were almost all of wood and roofed with straw-thatching or wooden tiles; when the chimneys and bridges alike were built of wood. Only here and there a stone house roofed with brick could then be seen. The streets were narrow and crooked, and even in the fifteenth century mostly unpaved. In wet weather they were filled with unfathomable mud, and even tho in the lower part of the town trenches were dug to drain the streets, they remained mere swamps and morasses. In dry weather the dust was even a worse plague than the mud. Pig-styes stood in front of the houses; and the streets were covered with heaps of filth and manure and with rotting corpses of animals, over which the pigs wandered at will. Street police in fact was practically non-existent. Medievalism is undoubtedly better when survived. [Footnote A: From "The Story of Nuremberg." Published by E.P. Dutton & Co.] WALLS AND OTHER FORTIFICATIONS[A] BY CECIL HEADLAM A glance at the map will show us that Nuremberg, as we know it, is divided into two almost equal divisions. They are called after the names of the principal churches, the St. Lorenz, and the St. Sebald quarter. The original wall included, it will be seen, only a small portion of the northern or St. Sebald division. With the growth of the town an extension of the walls and an increase of fortification followed as a matter of course. It became necessary to carry the wall over the Pegnitz in order to protect the Lorenzkirche and the suburb which was springing up around it. The precise date of this extension of the fortifications can not be fixt. The chronicles attribute it to the twelfth century, in the reign of the first Hohenstaufen, Konrad III. No trace of a twelfth-century wall remains; but the chroniclers may, for all that, have been not very wide of the mark. The mud and wood which supplied the material of the wall may have given place to stone in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. However that may be, it will be remembered that the lower part of the White Tower, which is the oldest fragment of building we can certainly point to dates from the thirteenth century. All other portions of the second wall clearly indicate the fourteenth century, or later, as the time of their origin.... Beyond the White Tower the moat was long ago filled up, but the section of it opposite the Unschlittplatz remained open for a longer period than the rest, and was called the Klettengraben, because of the burdocks which took root there. Hereabouts, on a part of the moat, the Waizenbräuhaus was built in 1671, which is now the famous Freiherrlich von Tuchersche Brewery. Here, too, the Unschlitthaus was built at the end of the fifteenth century as a granary. It has since been turned into a school. We have now reached one of the most charming and picturesque bits of Nuremberg. Once more we have to cross the Pegnitz, whose banks are overhung by quaint old houses. Their projecting roofs and high gables, their varied chimneys and overhanging balconies from which trail rich masses of creepers, make an entrancing foreground to the towers and the arches of the Henkersteg. The wall was carried on arches over the southern arm of the Pegnitz to the point of the Saumarkt (or Trödelmarkt) island which here divides the river, and thence in like manner over the northern arm. The latter portion of it alone survives and comprises a large tower on the north bank called the Wasserthurm, which was intended to break the force of the stream; a bridge supported by two arches over the stream, which was the Henkersteg, the habitation of the hangman, and on the island itself a smaller tower, which formed the point of support for the original, southern pair of arches, which joined the Unschlitthaus, but were so badly damaged in 1595 by the high flood that they were demolished and replaced by a wooden, and later by an iron bridge. Somewhere in the second half of the fourteenth century, then, in the reign of Karl IV., they began to build the outer enceinte, which, altho destroyed at many places and broken through by modern gates and entrances, is still fairly well preserved, and secures to Nuremberg the reputation of presenting most faithfully of all the larger German towns the characteristics of a medieval town. The fortifications seem to have been thrown up somewhat carelessly at first, but dread of the Hussites soon inspired the citizens to make themselves as secure as possible. In times of war and rumors of war all the peasants within a radius of two miles of the town were called upon to help in the construction of barriers and ramparts. The whole circle of walls, towers, and ditches was practically finished by 1452, when with pardonable pride Tucher wrote, "In this year was completed the ditch round the town. It took twenty-six years to build, and it will cost an enemy a good deal of trouble to cross it." Part of the ditch had been made and perhaps revetted as early as 1407, but it was not till twenty years later that it began to be dug to the enormous breadth and depth which it boasts to-day. The size of it was always a source of pride to Nurembergers, and it was perhaps due to this reason that up till as recently as 1869 it was left perfectly intact. On the average it is about 100 feet broad. It was always intended to be a dry ditch, and, so far from there being any arrangements for flooding it, precautions were taken to carry the little Fischbach, which formerly entered the town near the modern Sternthor, across the ditch in a trough. The construction of the ditch was provided for by an order of the Council in 1427, to the effect that all householders, whether male or female, must work at the ditch one day in the year with their children of over twelve years of age, and with all their servants, male or female. Those who were not able to work had to pay a substitute. Subsequently this order was changed to the effect that every one who could or would not work must pay ten pfennige. There were no exemptions from this liturgy, whether in favor of councillor, official, or lady. The order remained ten years in force, tho the amount of the payment was gradually reduced.... At the time of the construction of these and the other lofty towers it was still thought that the raising of batteries as much as possible would increase their effect. In practise the plunging fire from platforms at the height of some eighty feet above the level of the parapets of the town wall can hardly have been capable of producing any great effect, more especially if the besieging force succeeded in establishing itself on the crest of the counterscarp of the ditches, since from that point the swell of the bastions masked the towers. But there was another use for these lofty towers. The fact is that the Nuremberg engineers, at the time that they were built, had not yet adopted a complete system of flank-works, and not having as yet applied with all its consequences the axiom that that which defends should itself be defended, they wanted to see and command their external defenses from within the body of the place, as, a century before, the baron could see from the top of his donjon whatever was going on round the walls of his castle, and send up his support to any point of attack. The great round towers of Nuremberg are more properly, in fact, detached keeps than portions of a combined system, rather observatories than effective defenses. The round towers, however, were not the sole defenses of the gates. Outside each one of them was a kind of fence of pointed beams after the manner of a chevaux-de-frise, while outside the ditch and close to the bridge stood a barrier, by the side of which was a guard-house. Tho it was not till 1598 that all the main gates were fitted with drawbridges, the wooden bridges that served before that could doubtless easily be destroyed in cases of emergency. Double-folding doors and portcullises protected the gateways themselves. Once past there, the enemy was far from being in the town, for the road led through extensive advanced works, presenting, as in the case of the Laufer Thor outwork, a regular "place d'armes." Further, the road was so engineered as not to lead in a straight line from the outer main gates to the inner ones, but rather so as to pursue a circuitous course. Thus the enemy in passing through from the one to the other were exposed as long as possible to the shots and projectiles of the defenders, who were stationed all round the walls and towers flanking the advanced tambour. This arrangement may be traced very clearly at the Frauen Thor to-day. The position of the round tower, it will be observed, was an excellent one for commanding the road from the outer to the inner gate. At intervals of every 120 or 150 feet the interior wall is broken by quadrilateral towers. Some eighty-three of these, including the gate towers, can still be traced. What the number was originally we do not know. It is the sort of subject on which chroniclers have no manner of conscience. The Hartmann Schedel Chronicle, for instance, gives Nuremberg 365 towers in all. The fact that there are 365 days in the year is of course sufficient proof of this assertion! The towers, which rise two or even three stories above the wall, communicated on both sides with the covered way. They are now used as dwelling-houses. On some of them there can still be seen, projecting near the roof, two little machicoulis turrets, which served as guard-rooms for observing the enemy, and also, by overhanging the base of the tower, enabled the garrison to hurl down on their assailants at the foot of the wall a hurricane of projectiles of every sort. Like the wall the towers are built almost entirely of sandstone, but on the side facing the town they are usually faced with brick. The shapes of the roofs vary from flat to pointed, but the towers themselves are simple and almost austere in form in comparison with those generally found in North Germany, where fantasy runs riot in red brick. The Nuremberg towers were obviously intended in the first place for use rather than for ornament. At the end of our long perambulations of the walls it will be a grateful relief to sit for a while at one of the "Restaurations" or restaurants on the walls. There, beneath the shade of acacias in the daytime, or in the evening by the white light of incandescent gas, you may sit and watch the groups of men, women, and children all drinking from their tall glasses of beer, and you may listen to the whirr and ting-tang of the electric cars, where the challenge of sentinels or the cry of the night-watchman was once the most frequent sound. Or, if you have grown tired of the Horn- and the Schloss-zwinger, cross the ditch on the west side of the town and make your way to the Rosenau, in the Fürtherstrasse. The Rosenau is a garden of trees and roses not lacking in chairs and tables, in bowers, benches, and a band. There, too, you will see the good burgher with his family drinking beer, eating sausages, and smoking contentedly. [Footnote A: From "The Story of Nuremberg." Published by E.P. Dutton & Co.] ALBERT DÜRER[A] BY CECIL HEADLAM Among the most treasured of Nuremberg's relics is the low-ceilinged, gabled house near the Thiergärtnerthor, in which Albert Dürer lived and died, in the street now called after his name. The works of art which he presented to the town, or with which he adorned its churches, have unfortunately, with but few exceptions, been sold to the stranger. It is in Vienna and Munich, in Dresden and Berlin, in Florence, in Prague, or the British Museum, that we find splendid collections of Dürer's works. Not at Nuremberg. But here at any rate we can see the house in which he toiled--no genius ever took more pains--and the surroundings which imprest his mind and influenced his inspiration. If, in the past, Nuremberg has been only too anxious to turn his works into cash, to-day she guards Albert Dürer's house with a care and reverence little short of religious. She has sold, in the days of her poverty and foolishness, the master's pictures and drawings, which are his own best monument; but she has set up a noble monument to his memory (by Rauch, 1840) in the Dürer Platz, and his house is opened to the public between the hours of 8 A.M. and 1 P.M., and 2 and 6 P.M. on week days. The Albert-Dürer-Haus Society has done admirable work in restoring and preserving the house in its original state with the aid of Professor Wanderer's architectural and antiquarian skill. Reproductions of Dürer's works are also kept here. The most superficial acquaintance with Dürer's drawings will have prepared us for the sight of his simple, unpretentious house and its contents. In his "Birth of the Virgin" he gives us a picture of the German home of his day, where there were few superfluous knick-knacks, but everything which served for daily use was well and strongly made and of good design. Ceilings, windows, doors and door-handles, chests, locks, candlesticks, banisters, waterpots, the very cooking utensils, all betray the fine taste and skilled labor, the personal interest of the man who made them. So in Dürer's house, as it is preserved to-day, we can still see and admire the careful simplicity of domestic furniture, which distinguishes that in the "Birth of the Virgin." The carved coffers, the solid tables, the spacious window-seats, the well-fitting cabinets let into the walls, the carefully wrought metal-work we see there are not luxurious; their merit is quite other than that. In workmanship as in design, how utterly do they put to shame the contents of the ordinary "luxuriously furnished apartments" of the present day! And what manner of man was he who lived in this house that nestles beneath the ancient castle? In the first place a singularly loveable man, a man of sweet and gentle spirit, whose life was one of high ideals and noble endeavor. In the second place an artist who, both for his achievements and for his influence on art, stands in the very front rank of artists, and of German artists is "facile princeps." At whatever point we may study Dürer and his works we are never conscious of disappointment. As painter, as author, as engraver, or simple citizen, the more we know of him the more we are morally and intellectually satisfied. Fortunately, through his letters and writings, his journals and autobiographical memoirs we know a good deal about his personal history and education. Dürer's grandfather came of a farmer race in the village of Eytas in Hungary. The grandfather turned goldsmith, and his eldest son, Albrecht Dürer the elder, came to Nuremberg in 1455 and settled in the Burgstrasse (No. 27). He became one of the leading goldsmiths of the town; married and had eighteen children, of whom only three, boys, grew up. Albrecht, or as we call him Albert Dürer, was the eldest of these. He was born May 21, 1471, in his father's house, and Anthoni Koberger, the printer and bookseller, the Stein of those days, stood godfather to him. The maintenance of so large a family involved the father, skilful artist as he was, in unremitting toil. His father, who was delighted with Albert's industry, took him from school as soon as he had learned to read and write and apprenticed him to a goldsmith. "But my taste drew me toward painting rather than toward goldsmithry. I explained this to my father, but he was not satisfied, for he regretted the time I had lost." Benvenuto Cellini has told us how his father, in like fashion, was eager that he should practise the "accurst art" of music. Dürer's father, however, soon gave in and in 1486 apprenticed the boy to Michael Wolgemut. That extraordinary beautiful, and, for a boy of that age, marvelously executed portrait of himself at the age of thirteen (now at Vienna) must have shown the father something of the power that lay undeveloped in his son. So "it was arranged that I should serve him for three years. During that time God gave me great industry so that I learned many things; but I had to suffer much at the hands of the other apprentices." When in 1490 his apprenticeship was completed Dürer set out on his Wanderjahre, to learn what he could of men and things, and, more especially, of his own trade. Martin Schongauer was dead, but under that master's brothers Dürer studied and helped to support himself by his art at Colmar and at Bâsle. Various wood-blocks executed by him at the latter place are preserved there. Whether he also visited Venice now or not is a moot point. Here or elsewhere, at any rate, he came under the influence of the Bellini, of Mantegna, and more particularly of Jacopo dei Barbari--the painter and engraver to whom he owed the incentive to study the proportions of the human body--a study which henceforth became the most absorbing interest of his life. "I was four years absent from Nuremberg," he records, "and then my father recalled me. After my return Hans Frey came to an understanding with my father. He gave me his daughter Agnes and with her 200 florins, and we were married." Dürer, who writes so lovingly of his parents, never mentions his wife with any affection; a fact which to some extent confirms her reputation as a Xantippe. She, too, in her way, it is suggested, practised the art of cross-hatching. Pirkheimer, writing after the artist's death, says that by her avariciousness and quarreling nature she brought him to the grave before his day. She was probably a woman of a practical and prosaic turn, to whom the dreamy, poetic, imaginative nature of the artist-student, her husband, was intolerably irritating. Yet as we look at his portraits of himself--and no man except Rembrandt has painted himself so often--it is difficult to understand how any one could have been angry with Albert Dürer. Never did the face of man bear a more sweet, benign, and trustful expression. In those portraits we see something of the beauty, of the strength, of the weakness of the man so beloved in his generation. His fondness for fine clothes and his legitimate pride in his personal beauty reveal themselves in the rich vestments he wears and the wealth of silken curls, so carefully waved, so wondrously painted, falling proudly over his free neck. [Footnote A: From "The Story of Nuremberg." Published by E.P. Dutton & Co.] III OTHER BAVARIAN CITIES MUNICH[A] BY BAYARD TAYLOR Art has done everything for Munich. It lies on a large flat plain sixteen hundred feet above the sea and continually exposed to the cold winds from the Alps. At the beginning of the present century it was but a third-rate city, and was rarely visited by foreigners; since that time its population and limits have been doubled and magnificent edifices in every style of architecture erected, rendering it scarcely secondary in this respect to any capital in Europe.[B] Every art that wealth or taste could devise seems to have been spent in its decoration. Broad, spacious streets and squares have been laid out, churches, halls and colleges erected, and schools of painting and sculpture established which draw artists from all parts of the world. All this was principally brought about by the taste of the present king, Ludwig I., who began twenty or thirty years ago, when he was crown-prince, to collect the best German artists around him and form plans for the execution of his grand design. He can boast of having done more for the arts than any other living monarch; and if he had accomplished it all without oppressing his people, he would deserve an immortality of fame.... We went one morning to see the collection of paintings formerly belonging to Eugène Beauharnais, who was brother-in-law to the present King of Bavaria, in the palace of his son, the Duke of Leuchtenberg. The first hall contains works principally by French artists, among which are two by Gérard--a beautiful portrait of Josephine, and the blind Belisarius carrying his dead companion. The boy's head lies on the old man's shoulder; but for the livid paleness of his limbs, he would seem to be only asleep, while a deep and settled sorrow marks the venerable features of the unfortunate emperor. In the middle of the room are six pieces of statuary, among which Canova's world-renowned group of the Graces at once attracts the eye. There is also a kneeling Magdalen, lovely in her wo, by the same sculptor, and a very touching work of Schadow representing a shepherd-boy tenderly binding his sash around a lamb which he has accidentaly wounded with his arrow. We have since seen in the St. Michael's Church the monument to Eugene Beauharnais from the chisel of Thorwaldsen. The noble, manly figure of the son of Josephine is represented in the Roman mantle, with his helmet and sword lying on the ground by him. On one side sits History writing on a tablet; on the other stand the two brother-angels Death and Immortality. They lean lovingly together, with arms around each other, but the sweet countenance of Death has a cast of sorrow as he stands with inverted torch and a wreath of poppies among his clustering locks. Immortality, crowned with never-fading flowers, looks upward with a smile of triumph, and holds in one hand his blazing torch. It is a beautiful idea, and Thorwaldsen has made the marble eloquent with feeling. The inside of the square formed by the arcades and the New Residence is filled with noble old trees which in summer make a leafy roof over the pleasant walks. In the middle stands a grotto ornamented with rough pebbles and shells, and only needing a fountain to make it a perfect hall of Neptune. Passing through the northern arcade, one comes into the magnificent park called the English Garden, which extends more than four miles along the bank of the Isar, several branches of whose milky current wander through it and form one or two pretty cascades. It is a beautiful alteration of forest and meadow, and has all the richness and garden-like luxuriance of English scenery. Winding walks lead along the Isar or through the wood of venerable oaks, and sometimes a lawn of half a mile in length, with a picturesque temple at its farther end, comes in sight through the trees. The New Residence is not only one of the wonders of Munich, but of the world. Altho commenced in 1826 and carried on constantly since that time by a number of architects, sculptors and painters, it is not yet finished; if art were not inexhaustible, it would be difficult to imagine what more could be added. The north side of the Max Joseph Platz is taken up by its front of four hundred and thirty feet, which was nine years in building, under the direction of the architect Klenze. The exterior is copied after the Palazzo Pitti, in Florence. The building is of light-brown sandstone, and combines an elegance, and even splendor, with the most chaste and classic style. The northern front, which faces the royal garden, is now nearly finished. It has the enormous length of eight hundred feet; in the middle is a portico of ten Ionic columns. Instead of supporting a triangular façade, each pillar stands separate and bears a marble statue from the chisel of Schwanthaler. The interior of the building does not disappoint the promise of the outside. It is open every afternoon, in the absence of the king, for the inspection of visitors. We went early to the waiting-hall, where several travelers were already assembled, and at four o'clock were admitted into the newer part of the palace, containing the throne-hall, ball-room, etc. On entering the first hall, designed for the lackeys and royal servants, we were all obliged to thrust our feet into cloth slippers to walk over the polished mosaic floor. The walls are of scagliola marble and the ceilings ornamented brilliantly in fresco. The second hall, also for servants, gives tokens of increasing splendors in the richer decorations of the walls and the more elaborate mosaic of the floor. We next entered the audience chamber, in which the court-marshal receives the guests. The ceiling is of arabesque sculpture profusely painted and gilded.... Finally we entered the Hall of the Throne. Here the encaustic decoration so plentifully employed in the other rooms is dropt, and an effect even more brilliant obtained by the united use of marble and gold. Picture a long hall with a floor of polished marble, on each side twelve columns of white marble with gilded capitals, between which stand colossal statues of gold. At the other end is the throne of gold and crimson, with gorgeous hangings of crimson velvet. The twelve statues in the hall are called the "Wittelsbach Ancestors" and represent renowned members of the house of Wittelsbach from which the present family of Bavaria is descended. They were cast in bronze by Stiglmaier after the models of Schwanthaler, and then completely covered with a coating of gold; so that they resemble solid golden statues. The value of the precious metal on each one is about three thousand dollars, as they are nine feet in height. We visited yesterday morning the Glyptothek, the finest collection of ancient sculpture except that in the British Museum I have yet seen, and perhaps elsewhere unsurpassed north of the Alps. The building, which was finished by Klenze in 1830, has an Ionic portico of white marble, with a group of allegorical figures representing Sculpture and the kindred arts. On each side of the portico there are three niches in the front, containing on one side Pericles, Phidias and Vulcan; on the other, Hadrian, Prometheus and Daedalus. The whole building forms a hollow square and is lighted entirely from the inner side. There are in all twelve halls, each containing the remains of a particular era in the art, and arranged according to time; so that, beginning with the clumsy productions of the ancient Egyptians, one passes through the different stages of Grecian art, afterward that of Rome, and finally ends with the works of our own times--the almost Grecian perfection of Thorwaldsen and Canova. These halls are worthy to hold such treasures, and what more could be said of them? The floors are of marble mosaic, the sides of green or purple scagliola and the vaulted ceilings covered with raised ornaments on a ground of gold. No two are alike in color and decoration, and yet there is a unity of taste and design in the whole which renders the variety delightful. From the Egyptian Hall we enter one containing the oldest remains of Grecian sculpture, before the artists won power to mold the marble to their conceptions. Then follow the celebrated Aegina marbles, from the temple of Jupiter Panhellenius, on the island of Aegina. They formerly stood in the two porticoes, the one group representing the fight for the body of Laomedon, the other the struggle for the dead Patroclus. The parts wanting have been admirably restored by Thorwaldsen. They form almost the only existing specimens of the Aeginetan school. Passing through the Apollo Hall, we enter the large Hall of Bacchus, in which the progress of the art is distinctly apparent. A satyr lying asleep on a goatskin which he has thrown over a rock is believed to be the work of Praxiteles. The relaxation of the figure and perfect repose of every limb is wonderful. The countenance has traits of individuality which led me to think it might have been a portrait, perhaps of some rude country swain. In the Hall of Niobe, which follows, is one of the most perfect works that ever grew into life under a sculptor's chisel. Mutilated as it is, without head and arms, I never saw a more expressive figure. Ilioneus, the son of Niobe, is represented as kneeling, apparently in the moment in which Apollo raises his arrow, and there is an imploring supplication in his attitude which is touching in the highest degree. His beautiful young limbs seem to shrink involuntarily from the deadly shaft; there is an expression of prayer, almost of agony, in the position of his body. It should be left untouched. No head could be added which would equal that one pictures to himself while gazing upon it. The Pinacothek is a magnificent building of yellow sandstone, five hundred and thirty feet long, containing thirteen hundred pictures selected with great care from the whole private collection of the king, which amounts to nine thousand. Above the cornice on the southern side stand twenty-five colossal statues of celebrated painters by Schwanthaler. As we approached, the tall bronze door was opened by a servant in the Bavarian livery, whose size harmonized so well with the giant proportions of the building that until I stood beside him and could mark the contrast I did not notice his enormous frame. I saw then that he must be near eight feet high and stout in proportion. He reminded me of the great "Baver of Trient," in Vienna. The Pinacothek contains the most complete collection of works by old German artists anywhere to be found. There are in the Hall of the Spanish Masters half a dozen of Murillo's inimitable beggar-groups. It was a relief, after looking upon the distressingly stiff figures of the old German school, to view these fresh, natural countenances. One little black-eyed boy has just cut a slice out of a melon, and turns with a full mouth to his companion, who is busy eating a bunch of grapes. The simple, contented expression on the faces of the beggars is admirable. I thought I detected in a beautiful child with dark curly locks the original of his celebrated infant St. John. I was much interested in two small juvenile works of Raphael and his own portrait. The latter was taken, most probably, after he became known as a painter. The calm, serious smile which we see on his portrait as a boy had vanished, and the thin features and sunken eye told of intense mental labor. [Footnote A: From "Views Afoot." Published by G.P. Putnam's Sons.] [Footnote B: This was written about 1848. The population of Munich is now (1914), 595,000. Munich is rated as third in importance among German cities.] AUGSBURG[A] BY THOMAS FROGNALL DIBDIN In ancient times--that is to say, upward of three centuries ago--the city of Augsburg was probably the most populous and consequential in the kingdom of Bavaria. It was the principal residence of the noblesse, and the great mart of commerce. Dukes, barons, nobles of every rank and degree, became domiciled here. A thousand blue and white flags streamed from the tops of castellated mansions, and fluttered along the then almost impregnable ramparts. It was also not less remarkable for the number and splendor of its religious establishments. Here was a cathedral, containing twenty-four chapels; and an abbey or monastery (of Saints Ulric and Afra) which had no rival in Bavaria for the size of its structure and the wealth of its possessions. This latter contained a Library, both of MSS. and printed books, of which the recent work of Braun has luckily preserved a record; and which, but for such record, would have been unknown to after ages. The treasures of this library are now entirely dispersed; and Munich, the capital of Bavaria, is the grand repository of them. Augsburg, in the first instance, was enriched by the dilapidations of numerous monasteries; especially upon the suppression of the order of the Jesuits. The paintings, books, and relics, of every description, of such monasteries as were in the immediate vicinity of this city, were taken away to adorn the town hall, churches, capitals and libraries. Of this collection (of which no inconsiderable portion, both for number and intrinsic value, came from the neighboring monastery of Eichstadt), there has of course been a pruning; and many flowers have been transplanted to Munich. The principal church, at the end of the Maximilian Street, is that which once formed the chief ornament of the famous Abbey of Sts. Ulric and Afra. I should think that there is no portion of the present building older than the fourteenth century; while it is evident that the upper part of the tower is of the middle of the sixteenth. It has a nearly globular or mosque-shaped termination--so common in the greater number of the Bavarian churches. It is frequented by congregations both of the Catholic and Protestant persuasion; and it was highly gratifying to see, as I saw, human beings assembled under the same roof, equally occupied in their different forms of adoration, in doing homage to their common Creator. Augsburg was once distinguished for great learning and piety, as well as for political consequence; and she boasts of a very splendid martyrological roll. At the present day, all is comparatively dull and quiet; but you can not fail to be struck with the magnificence of many of the houses, and the air of importance hence given to the streets; while the paintings upon the outer walls add much to the splendid effect of the whole. The population of Augsburg is supposed to amount to about thirty thousand. In the time of Maximilian and Charles V. it was, I make no doubt, twice as numerous.[B] [Footnote A: From "A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Taur," published in 1821.] [Footnote B: Augsburg has now (1914) a population of 102,000. Woolen and cotton goods and machinery are its manufactured products.] RATISBON[A] BY THOMAS FROGNALL DIBDIN It was dark when we entered Ratisbon, and, having been recommended to the Hotel of the Agneau Blanc, we drove thither, and alighted--close to the very banks of the Danube--and heard the roar of its rapid stream, turning several mills, close, as it were, to our very ears. The master of the hotel, whose name is Cramer, and who talked French very readily, received us with peculiar courtesy; and, on demanding the best situated room in the house, we were conducted on the second floor, to a chamber which had been occupied, only two or three days before, by the Emperor of Austria himself, on his way to Aix-la-Chapelle. The next morning was a morning of wonder to us. Our sitting-room, which was a very lantern, from the number of windows, gave us a view of the rushing stream of the Danube, of a portion of the bridge over it, of some beautifully undulating and vine-covered hills, in the distance, on the opposite side--and, lower down the stream, of the town walls and water-mills, of which latter we had heard the stunning sounds on our arrival. The whole had a singularly novel and pleasing appearance. The Town Hall was large and imposing; but the Cathedral, surrounded by booths--it being fair-time--was, of course, the great object of my attention. In short, I saw enough within an hour to convince me that I was visiting a large, curious, and well-peopled town; replete with antiquities, and including several of the time of the Romans, to whom it was necessarily a very important station. Ratisbon is said to contain a population of about 20,000 souls.[B] The cathedral can boast of little antiquity. It is almost a building of yesterday; yet it is large, richly ornamented on the outside, especially on the west, between the towers--and is considered one of the noblest structures of the kind in Bavaria. The interior wants that decisive effect which simplicity produces. It is too much broken into parts, and covered with monuments of a very heterogeneous description. Near it I traced the cloisters of an old convent or monastery of some kind, now demolished, which could not be less than five hundred years old. The streets of Ratisbon are generally picturesque, as well from their undulating forms, as from the antiquity of a great number of the houses. The modern parts of the town are handsome, and there is a pleasant intermixture of trees and grass plats in some of these more recent portions. There are some pleasing public walks, after the English fashion; and a public garden, where a colossal sphinx, erected by the late philosopher Gleichen, has a very imposing appearance. Here is also an obelisk erected to the memory of Gleichen himself, the founder of these gardens; and a monument to the memory of Kepler, the astronomer; which latter was luckily spared in the assault of this town by the French in 1809. But these are, comparatively, every-day objects. A much more interesting source of observation, to my mind, were the very few existing relics of the once celebrated monastery of St. Emmeram--and a great portion of the remains of another old monastery, called St. James--which latter may indeed be designated the College of the Jacobites; as the few members who inhabit it were the followers of the house and fortunes of the Pretender, James Stuart. The Monastery or Abbey of St. Emmeram was one of the most celebrated throughout Europe; and I suspect that its library, both of MSS. and printed books, was among the principal causes of its celebrity. Of all interesting objects of architectural antiquity in Ratisbon, none struck me so forcibly--and, indeed, none is in itself so curious and singular--as the Monastery of St. James. The front of that portion of it, connected with the church, should seem to be of an extremely remote antiquity. It is the ornaments, or style of architecture, which give it this character of antiquity. The ornaments, which are on each side of the doorway, or porch, are quite extraordinary. [Footnote A: From "A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour," published in 1821.] [Footnote B: Ratisbon has now (1914) a population of 53,000. Its manufactured products consist chiefly of pottery and lead pencils.] IV BERLIN AND ELSEWHERE A LOOK AT THE GERMAN CAPITAL[A] BY THEOPHILE GAUTIER The train spins along across great plains gilded by the setting sun; soon night comes, and with it, sleep. At stations remote from one another, German voices shout German names; I do not recognize them by the sound, and look for them in vain upon the map. Magnificent great station buildings are shown up by gaslight in the midst of surrounding darkness, then disappear. We pass Hanover and Minden; the train keeps on its way; and morning dawns. On either side stretched a peat-moss, upon which the mist was producing a singular mirage. We seemed to be upon a causeway traversing an immense lake whose waves crept up gently, dying in transparent folds along the edge of the embankment. Here and there a group of trees or a cottage, emerging like an island, completed the illusion, for such it was. A sheet of bluish mist, floating a little above the ground and curling up along its upper surface under the rays of the sun, caused this aqueous phantasmagoria, resembling the Fata Morgana of Sicily. In vain did my geographical knowledge protest, disconcerted, against this inland sea, which no map of Prussia indicates; my eyes would not give it up, and later in the day, when the sun, rising higher, had dried up this imaginary lake, they required the presence of a boat to make them admit that any body of water could be real. Suddenly upon the left were massed the trees of a great park; Tritons and Nereids appeared, dabbling in the basin of a fountain; there was a dome and a circle of columns rising above extensive buildings; and this was Potsdam.... A few moments later we were in Berlin, and a fiacre set me down at the hotel. One of the keenest pleasures of a traveler is that first drive through a hitherto unknown city, destroying or confirming his preconceived idea of it. All that is peculiar and characteristic seizes upon the yet virgin eye, whose perceptive power is never more clear. My idea of Berlin had been drawn in great measure from Hoffman's fantastic stories. In spite of myself, a Berlin, strange and grotesque, peopled with Aulic councillors, sandmen, Kreislers, archivist Lindursts, and student Anselms, had reared itself within my brain, amid a fog of tobacco-smoke; and there before me was a city regularly built, stately, with wide streets, extensive public grounds, and imposing edifices of a style half-English, half-German, and modern to the last degree. As we drove along I glanced down into those cellars, with steps so polished, so slippery, so well-soaped, that one might slide in as into the den of an ant-lion--to see if I might not discover Hoffman himself seated on a tun, his feet crossed upon the bowl of his gigantic pipe, and surrounded by a tangle of grotesque chimeras, as he is represented in the vignette of the French translation of his stories; and, to tell the truth, there was nothing of the kind in these subterranean shops whose proprietors were just opening their doors! The cats, of benignant aspect, rolled no phosphorescent eyeballs, like the cat Murr in the story, and they seemed quite incapable of writing their memoirs, or of deciphering a score of Richard Wagner's. These handsome stately houses, which are like palaces, with their columns and pediments and architraves, are built of brick for the most part, for stone seems rare in Berlin; but the brick is covered with cement or tinted stucco, to simulate hewn stone; deceitful seams indicate imaginary layers, and the illusion would be complete, were it not that in spots the winter frosts have detached the cement, revealing the red shades of the baked clay. The necessity of painting the whole façade, in order to mask the nature of the material, gives the effect of enormous architectural decorations seen in open air. The salient parts, moldings, cornices, entablatures, consoles, are of wood, bronze, or cast-iron, to which suitable forms have been given; when you do not look too closely the effect is satisfactory. Truth is the only thing lacking in all this splendor. The palatial buildings which border Regent's Park in London present also these porticoes, and these columns with brick cores and plaster-fluting, which, by aid of a coating of oil paint, are expected to pass for stone or marble. Why not build in brick frankly, since its water-coloring and capacity for ingeniously varied arrangement furnish so many resources? Even in Berlin I have seen charming houses of this kind which had the advantage of being truthful. A fictitious material always inspires a certain uneasiness. The hotel is very well located, and I propose to sketch the view seen from its steps. It will give a fair idea of the general character of the city. The foreground is a quay bordering the Spree. A few boats with slender masts are sleeping on the brown water. Vessels upon a canal or a river, in the heart of a city, have always a charming effect. Along the opposite quay stretches a line of houses; a few of them are ancient, and bear the stamp thereof; the king's palace makes the corner. A cupola upon an octagonal tower rises proudly above the other roofs, the square sides of the tower adding grace to the curve of the dome. A bridge spans the river, reminding me, with its white marble groups, of the Ponte San Angelo at Rome. These groups--eight in number, if my memory does not deceive me--are each composed of two figures; one allegorical, winged, representing the country, or glory; the other, a young man, guided through many trials to victory or immortality. These groups, in purely classic taste, are not wanting in merit, and show in some parts good study of the nude; their pedestals are ornamented with medallions, whereon the Prussian eagle, half-real, half-heraldic, makes a fine appearance. Considered as a decoration, the whole is, in my opinion, somewhat too rich for the simplicity of the bridge, which opens midway to allow the passage of vessels. Farther on, through the trees of a public garden of some kind, appears the old Museum, a great structure in the Greek style, with Doric columns relieved against a painted background. At the corners of the roof, bronze horses held by grooms are outlined upon the sky. Behind this building, and looking sideways, you perceive the triangular pediment of the new Museum. On crossing the bridge, the dark façade of the palace comes in view, with its balustraded terrace; the carvings around the main entrance are in that old, exaggerated German rococo which I have seen before and have admired in the palace in Dresden. This kind of barbaric taste has something charming about it, and entertains the eye, satiated with chefs d'oeuvre. It has invention, fancy, originality; and tho I may be censured for the opinion, I confess I prefer this exuberance to the coldness of the Greek style imitated with more erudition than success in our modern public buildings. At each side stand great bronze horses pawing the ground, and held by naked grooms. I visited the apartments of the palace; they are rich and elegant, but present nothing interesting to the artist save their ancient recessed ceilings filled with curious figures and arabesques. In the concert-hall there is a musicians' gallery in grotesque carving, silvered; its effect is really charming. Silver is not used enough in decorations; it is a relief from the classic gold, and forms admirable combinations with colors. The chapel, whose dome rises above the rest of the building, is well planned and well lighted, comfortable, reasonably decorated. Let us cross the square and take a look at the Museum, admiring, as we pass, an immense porphyry vase standing on cubes of the same material, in front of the steps which lead up to the portico. This portico is painted in fresco by various hands, under the direction of the celebrated Peter Cornelius. The paintings form a broad frieze, folding itself back at each end upon the side wall of the portico, and interrupted in the middle to give access to the Museum. The portion on the left contains a whole poem of mythologic cosmogony, treated with that philosophy and that erudition which the Germans carry into compositions of this kind; the right, purely anthropologie, represents the birth, development, and evolution of humanity. If I were to describe in detail these two immense frescoes, you would certainly be charmed with the ingenious invention, the profound knowledge, and the excellent judgment of the artist. The mysteries of the early creation are penetrated, and everything is faultlessly scientific. Also, if I should show you them in the form of those fine German engravings, the lines heightened by delicate shadows, the execution as accurate as that of Albrecht Dürer, the tone light and harmonious, you would admire the ordering of the composition, balanced with so much art, the groups skilfully united one to another, the ingenious episodes, the wise selection of the attributes, the significance of each separate thing; you might even find grandeur of style, an air of magisterial dignity, fine effects of drapery, proud attitudes, well-marked types, muscular audacities à la Michel Angelo, and a certain Germanic savagery of fine flavor. You would be struck with this free handling of great subjects, this vast conceptive power, this carrying out of an idea, which French painters so often lack; and you would think of Cornelius almost as highly as the Germans do. But in the presence of the work itself, the impression is completely different. I am well aware that fresco-painting, even in the hands of the Italian masters, skilful as they were in the technical details of their art, has not the charm of oil. The eye must become habituated to this rude, lustreless coloring, before we can discern its beauties. Many people who never say so--for nothing is more rare than the courage to avow a feeling or an opinion--find the frescoes of the Vatican and the Sistine frightful; but the great names of Michel Angelo and Raphael impose silence upon them; they murmur vague formulas of enthusiasm, and go off to rhapsodize--this time with sincerity--over some Magdalen of Guido, or some Madonna of Carlo Dolce. I make large allowance, therefore, for this unattractive aspect which belongs to fresco-painting; but in this case, the execution is by far too repulsive. The mind may be content, but the eye suffers. Painting, which is altogether a plastic art, can express its ideal only through forms and colors. To think is not enough; something must be done.... [Illustration: BERLIN: UNTER DEN LINDEN] [Illustration: BERLIN: THE BRANDENBURG GATE] [Illustration: BERLIN: THE ROYAL CASTLE AND EMPEROR WILLIAM BRIDGE] [Illustration: BERLIN: THE WHITE HALL IN THE ROYAL CASTLE] [Illustration: BERLIN: THE NATIONAL GALLERY AND FREDERICK'S BRIDGE] [Illustration: BERLIN: THE GENDARMENMARKT] [Illustration: THE COLUMN OF VICTORY IN BERLIN] [Illustration: THE MAUSOLEUM AT CHARLOTTENBURG] [Illustration: THE NEW PALACE AT POTSDAM] [Illustration: THE CASTLE OF SANS SOUCI, POTSDAM] [Illustration: THE CATHEDRAL OF AIX-LA-CHAPELLE, TOMB OF CHARLEMAGNE] [Illustration: THE ROYAL PALACE OF SCHÖNBRUNN, NEAR VIENNA (The man on the sidewalk at the left is the Emperor Francis Joseph)] [Illustration: SALZBURG, AUSTRIA] I shall not now give an inventory of the Museum in Berlin, which is rich in pictures and statues; to do this would require more space than is at my command. We find represented here, more or less favorably, all the great masters, the pride of royal galleries. But the most remarkable thing in this collection is the very numerous and very complete collection of the primitive painters of all countries and all schools, from the Byzantine down to those which immediately precede the Renaissance. The old German school, so little known in France, and on many accounts so curious, is to be studied to better advantage here than anywhere else. A rotunda contains tapestries after designs by Raphael, of which the original cartoons are now in Hampton Court. The staircase of the new Museum is decorated with those remarkable frescoes by Kaulbach, which the art of engraving and the Universal Exposition have made so well known in France. We all remember the cartoon entitled "The Dispersion of Races," and all Paris has admired, in Goupil's window that poetic "Defeat of the Huns," where the strife begun between the living warriors is carried on amidst the disembodied souls that hover above that battlefield strewn with the dead. "The Destruction of Jerusalem" is a fine composition, tho somewhat too theatrical. It resembles a "close of the fifth act" much more than beseems the serious character of fresco painting. In the panel which represents Hellenic civilization, Homer is the central figure; this composition pleased me least of all. Other paintings as yet unfinished present the climacteric epochs of humanity. The last of these will be almost contemporary, for when a German begins to paint, universal history comes under review; the great Italian painters did not need so much in achieving their master-pieces. But each civilization has its peculiar tendencies, and this encyclopedic painting is a characteristic of the present time. It would seem that, before flinging itself into its new career, the world has felt the necessity of making a synthesis of its past.... This staircase, which is of colossal size, is ornamented with casts from the finest antiques. Copies of the metopes of the Pantheon and friezes from the temple of Theseus are set into its walls, and upon one of the landings stands the Pandrosion, with all the strong and tranquil beauty of its Caryatides. The effect of the whole is very grand. At the present day there is no longer any visible difference between the people of one country and of another. The uniform domino of civilization is worn everywhere, and no difference in color, no special cut of the garment, notifies you that you are away from home. The men and women whom I met in the street escape description; the flâneurs of the Unter den Linden are exactly like the flâneurs of the Boulevard des Italiens. This avenue, bordered by splendid houses, is planted, as its name indicates, with lindens; trees "whose leaf is shaped like a heart," as Heinrich Heine remarks--a peculiarity which makes Unter den Linden dear to lovers, and eminently suited for sentimental interviews. At its entrance stands the equestrian statue of Frederick the Great. Like the Champs-Elysées in Paris, this avenue terminates at a triumphal arch, surmounted by a chariot with four bronze horses. Passing under the arch, we come out into a park in some degrees resembling the Bois de Boulogne. Along the edge of this park, which is shadowed by great trees having all the intensity of northern verdure, and freshened by a little winding stream, open flower-crowded gardens, in whose depths you can discern summer retreats, which are neither châlets, nor cottages, nor villas, but Pompeiian houses with their tetrastylic porticos and panels of antique red. The Greek taste is held in high esteem in Berlin. On the other hand, they seem to disdain the style of the Renaissance, so much in vogue in Paris; I saw no edifice of this kind in Berlin. Night came; and after paying a hasty visit to the zoological garden, where all the animals were asleep, except a dozen long-tailed paroquets and cockatoos, who were screaming from their perches, pluming themselves, and raising their crests, I returned to my hotel to strap my trunk and betake myself to the Hamburg railway station, as the train would leave at ten, a circumstance which prevented me from going, as I had intended, to the opera to hear Cherubini's "Deux Journées," and to see Louise Taglioni dance the Sevillana.... For the traveler there are but two ways: the instantaneous proof, or the prolonged study. Time failed me for the latter. Deign to accept this simple and rapid impression. [Footnote A: From "A Winter in Russia." By permission of, and by arrangement with, the publishers, Henry Holt & Co. Copyright, 1874. Since Gautier wrote, Berlin has greatly increased in population and in general importance. What is known as "Greater Berlin" now embraces about 3,250,000 souls. Many of the quaint two-story houses, which formerly were characteristic of the city, have given way to palatial houses and business blocks. Berlin is a thoroughly modern commercial city. It ranks among European cities immediately after London and Paris.] CHARLOTTENBURG[A] BY HARRIET BEECHER STOWE Then we drove to Charlottenburg to see the Mausoleum. I know not when I have been more deeply affected than there; and yet, not so much by the sweet, lifelike statue of the queen as by that of the king, her husband, executed by the same hand.[B] Such an expression of long-desired rest, after suffering the toil, is shed over the face--so sweet, so heavenly! There, where he has prayed year after year--hoping, yearning, longing--there, at last, he rests, life's long anguish over! My heart melted as I looked at these two, so long divided--he so long a mourner, she so long mourned--now calmly resting side by side in a sleep so tranquil. We went through the palace. We saw the present king's writing desk and table in his study, just as he left them. His writing establishment is about as plain as yours. Men who really mean to do anything do not use fancy tools. His bedroom, also, is in a style of severe simplicity. There were several engravings fastened against the wall; and in the anteroom a bust and medallion of the Empress Eugenie--a thing which I should not exactly have expected in a born king's palace; but beauty is sacred, and kings can not call it parvenu. Then we went into the queen's bed-room, finished in green, and then through the rooms of Queen Louisa. Those marks of her presence, which you saw during the old king's lifetime, are now removed; we saw no traces of her dresses, gloves, or books. In one room, draped in white muslin over pink, we were informed the Empress of Russia was born. In going out to Charlottenburg, we rode through the Thiergarten, the Tuileries of Berlin. In one of the most quiet and sequestered spots is the monument erected by the people of Berlin to their old king. The pedestal is Carrara marble, sculptured with beautiful scenes called garden pleasures--children in all manner of outdoor sports, and parents fondly looking on. It is graceful, and peculiarly appropriate to those grounds where parents and children are constantly congregating. The whole is surmounted by a statue of the king, in white marble--the finest representation of him I have ever seen. Thoughtful, yet benign, the old king seems like a good father keeping a grave and affectionate watch over the pleasures of his children in their garden frolics. There was something about these moss-grown gardens that seemed so rural and pastoral, that I at once preferred them to all I had seen in Europe. Choice flowers are planted in knots, here and there, in sheltered nooks, as if they had grown by accident: and an air of sweet, natural wildness is left amid the most careful cultivation. The people seemed to be enjoying themselves less demonstratively and with less vivacity than in France, but with a calm inwardness. Each nation has its own way of being happy, and the style of life in each bears a certain relation of appropriateness to character. The trim, dressy, animated air of the Tuileries suits admirably with the mobile, sprightly vivacity of society there. Both, in their way, are beautiful; but this seems less formal, and more according to nature. [Footnote A: From "Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands."] [Footnote B: King Frederick William III. and Queen Louise are here referred to. Since Mrs. Stowe's visit (1854) the Emperor William I. and the Empress Augusta have been buried in this mausoleum.] LEIPSIC AND DRESDEN[A] BY BAYARD TAYLOR I have now been nearly two days in wide-famed Leipsic, and the more I see of it, the better I like it. It is a pleasant, friendly town, old enough to be interesting and new enough to be comfortable. There is much active business-life, through which it is fast increasing in size and beauty. Its publishing establishments are the largest in the world, and its annual fairs attended by people from all parts of Europe. This is much for a city to accomplish situated alone in the middle of a great plain, with no natural charms of scenery or treasures of art to attract strangers. The energy and enterprise of its merchants have accomplished all this, and it now stands in importance among the first cities of Europe. On my first walk around the city, yesterday morning, I passed the Augustus Platz--a broad green lawn on which front the university and several other public buildings. A chain of beautiful promenades encircles the city on the site of its old fortifications. Following their course through walks shaded by large trees and bordered with flowering shrubs, I passed a small but chaste monument to Sebastian Bach, the composer, which was erected almost entirely at the private cost of Mendelssohn, and stands opposite the building in which Bach once directed the choirs. As I was standing beside it a glorious choral swelled by a hundred voices came through the open windows like a tribute to the genius of the great master. Having found my friend, we went together to the Sternwarte, or observatory, which gives a fine view of the country around the city, and in particular the battlefield. The castellan who is stationed there is well acquainted with the localities, and pointed out the position of the hostile armies. It was one of the most bloody and hard-fought battles which history records. The army of Napoleon stretched like a semicircle around the southern and eastern sides of the city, and the plain beyond was occupied by the allies, whose forces met together here. Schwarzenberg, with his Austrians, came from Dresden; Blücher, from Halle, with the Emperor Alexander. Their forces amounted to three hundred thousand, while those of Napoleon ranked at one hundred and ninety-two thousand men. It must have been a terrific scene. Four days raged the battle, and the meeting of half a million of men in deadly conflict was accompanied by the thunder of sixteen hundred cannon. The small rivers which flow through Leipsic were swollen with blood, and the vast plain was strewed with more than fifty thousand dead. It is difficult to conceive of such slaughter while looking at the quiet and tranquil landscape below. It seemed more like a legend of past ages, when ignorance and passion led men to murder and destroy, than an event which the last half century witnessed. For the sake of humanity it is to be hoped that the world will never see such another. There are some lovely walks around Leipsic. We went yesterday afternoon with a few friends to the Rosenthal, a beautiful meadow, bordered by forests of the German oak, very few of whose Druid trunks have been left standing. There are Swiss cottages embowered in the foliage where every afternoon the social citizens assemble to drink their coffee and enjoy a few hours' escape from the noisy and dusty streets. One can walk for miles along these lovely paths by the side of the velvet meadows or the banks of some shaded stream. We visited the little village of Golis, a short distance off, where, in the second story of a little white house, hangs the sign, "Schiller's Room." Some of the Leipsic "literati" have built a stone arch over the entrance, with the inscription above: "Here dwelt Schiller in 1795, and wrote his Hymn to Joy." Everywhere through Germany the remembrances of Schiller are sacred. In every city where he lived they show his dwelling. They know and reverence the mighty spirit who has been among them. The little room where he conceived that sublime poem is hallowed as if by the presence of unseen spirits. I was anxious to see the spot where Poniatowsky fell. We returned over the plain to the city, and passed in at the gate by which the Cossacks entered, pursuing the flying French. Crossing the lower part, we came to the little river Elster, in whose waves the gallant prince sank. The stone bridge by which we crossed was blown up by the French to cut off pursuit. Napoleon had given orders that it should not be blown up till the Poles had all passed over as the river, tho narrow, is quite deep and the banks are steep. Nevertheless, his officers did not wait, and the Poles, thus exposed to the fire of the enemy, were obliged to plunge into the stream to join the French army, which had begun retreat toward Frankfort. Poniatowsky, severely wounded, made his way through a garden near, and escaped on horseback into the water. He became entangled among the fugitives, and sank. By walking a little distance along the road toward Frankfort we could see the spot where his body was taken out of the river; it is now marked by a square stone covered with the names of his countrymen who have visited it. We returned through the narrow arched way by which Napoleon fled when the battle was lost. Another interesting place in Leipsic is Auerbach's Cellar, which, it is said, contains an old manuscript history of Faust from which Goethe derived the first idea of his poem. He used to frequent this cellar, and one of his scenes in "Faust" is laid in it. We looked down the arched passage; not wishing to purchase any wine, we could find no pretense for entering. The streets are full of book-stores, and one-half the business of the inhabitants appears to consist in printing, paper-making and binding. The publishers have a handsome exchange of their own, and during the fairs the amount of business transacted is enormous. At last in this "Florence of the Elbe," as the Saxons have christened it! Exclusive of its glorious galleries of art, which are scarcely surpassed by any in Europe, Dresden charms one by the natural beauty of its environs. It stands in a curve of the Elbe, in the midst of green meadows, gardens and fine old woods, with the hills of Saxony sweeping around like an amphitheater and the craggy peaks of the highlands looking at it from afar. The domes and spires at a distance give it a rich Italian look, which is heightened by the white villas embowered in trees gleaming on the hills around. In the streets there is no bustle of business--nothing of the din and confusion of traffic which mark most cities; it seems like a place for study and quiet enjoyment. The railroad brought us in three hours from Leipsic over the eighty miles of plain that intervene. We came from the station through the Neustadt, passing the Japanese palace and the equestrian statue of Augustus the Strong. The magnificent bridge over the Elbe was so much injured by the late inundation as to be impassable; we were obliged to go some distance up the river-bank and cross on a bridge of boats. Next morning my first search was for the picture-gallery. We set off at random, and after passing the church of Our Lady, with its lofty dome of solid stone, which withstood the heaviest bombs during the war with Frederick the Great, came to an open square one side of which was occupied by an old brown, red-roofed building which I at once recognized from pictures as the object of our search. I have just taken a last look at the gallery this morning, and left it with real regret; for during the two visits Raphael's heavenly picture of the Madonna and Child had so grown into my love and admiration that it was painful to think I should never see it again. There are many mere which clung so strongly to my imagination, gratifying in the highest degree the love for the beautiful, that I left them with sadness and the thought that I would now only have the memory. I can see the inspired eye and godlike brow of the Jesus-child as if I were still standing before the picture, and the sweet, holy countenance of the Madonna still looks upon me. Yet, tho this picture is a miracle of art, the first glance filled me with disappointment. It has somewhat faded during the three hundred years that have rolled away since the hand of Raphael worked on the canvas, and the glass with which it is covered for better preservation injures the effect. After I had gazed on it a while, every thought of this vanished. The figure of the Virgin seemed to soar in the air, and it was difficult to think the clouds were not in motion. An aërial lightness clothes her form, and it is perfectly natural for such a figure to stand among the clouds. Two divine cherubs look up from below, and in her arms sits the sacred Child. Those two faces beam from the picture like those of angels. The mild, prophetic eye and lofty brow of the young Jesus chain one like a spell. There is something more than mortal in its expression--something in the infant face which indicates a power mightier than the proudest manhood. There is no glory around the head, but the spirit which shines from those features marks its divinity. In the sweet face of the mother there speaks a sorrowful foreboding mixed with its tenderness, as if she knew the world into which the Savior was born and foresaw the path in which he was to tread. It is a picture which one can scarce look upon without tears. There are in the same room six pictures by Correggio which are said to be among his best works--one of them, his celebrated Magdalen. There is also Correggio's "Holy Night," or the Virgin with the shepherds in the manger, in which all the light comes from the body of the Child. The surprise of the shepherds is most beautifully exprest. In one of the halls there is a picture of Van der Werff in which the touching story of Hagar is told more feelingly than words could do it. The young Ishmael is represented full of grief at parting with Isaac, who, in childish unconsciousness of what has taken place, draws in sport the corner of his mother's mantle around him and smiles at the tears of his lost playmate. Nothing can come nearer real flesh and blood than the two portraits of Raphael Mengs, painted by himself when quite young. You almost think the artist has in sport crept behind the frame and wishes to make you believe he is a picture. It would be impossible to speak of half the gems of art contained in this unrivalled collection. There are twelve large halls, containing in all nearly two thousand pictures. The plain south of Dresden was the scene of the hard-fought battle between Napoleon and the allied armies in 1813. On the heights above the little village of Räcknitz, Moreau was shot on the second day of the battle. We took a footpath through the meadows, shaded by cherry trees in bloom, and reached the spot after an hour's walk. The monument is simple--a square block of granite surmounted by a helmet and sword, with the inscription, "The hero Moreau fell here by the side of Alexander, August 17, 1813," I gathered as a memorial a few leaves of the oak which shades it. By applying an hour before the appointed time, we obtained admission to the royal library. It contains three hundred thousand volumes--among them, the most complete collection of historical works in existence. Each hall is devoted to a history of a separate country, and one large room is filled with that of Saxony alone. There is a large number of rare and curious manuscripts, among which are old Greek works of the seventh and eighth centuries, a Koran which once belonged to the Sultan Bajazet, the handwriting of Luther and Melanchthon, a manuscript volume with pen-and-ink sketches by Albert Dürer, and the earliest works after the invention of printing. Among these latter was a book published by Faust and Schaeffer, at Mayence, in 1457. There were also Mexican manuscripts written on the aloe leaf, and many illuminated monkish volumes of the Middle Ages. We were fortunate in seeing the Grüne Gewölbe, or Green Gallery, a collection of jewels and costly articles unsurpassed in Europe. The first hall into which we were ushered contained works in bronze. They were all small, and chosen with regard to their artistical value. Some by John of Bologna were exceedingly fine, as was also a group in iron cut out of a single block, perhaps the only successful attempt in this branch. The next room contained statues, and vases covered with reliefs in ivory. The most remarkable work was the fall of Lucifer and his angels, containing ninety-two figures in all, carved out of a single piece of ivory sixteen inches high. It was the work of an Italian monk, and cost him many years of hard labor. There were two tables of mosaic-work that would not be out of place in the fabled halls of the Eastern genii, so much did they exceed my former ideas of human skill. The tops were of jasper, and each had a border of fruit and flowers in which every color was represented by some precious stone, all with the utmost delicacy and truth to nature. It is impossible to conceive the splendid effect it produced. Besides some fine pictures on gold by Raphael Mengs, there was a Madonna, the largest specimen of enamel-painting in existence. However costly the contents of these halls, they were only an introduction to those which followed. Each one exceeded the other in splendor and costliness. The walls were covered to the ceiling with rows of goblets, vases, etc., of polished jasper, agate, and lapis lazuli. Splendid mosaic tables stood around with caskets of the most exquisite silver and gold work upon them, and vessels of solid silver, some of them weighing six hundred pounds, were placed at the foot of the columns. We were shown two goblets, each prized at six thousand thalers, made of gold and precious stones; also the great pearl called the "Spanish Dwarf," nearly as large as a pullet's egg, globes and vases cut entirely out of the mountain-crystal, magnificent Nuremberg watches and clocks, and a great number of figures made ingeniously of rough pearls and diamonds. The officer showed me a hen's egg of silver. There was apparently nothing remarkable about it, but by unscrewing it came apart and disclosed the yolk of gold. This again opened, and a golden chicken was seen; by touching a spring a little diamond crown came from the inside, and, the crown being again taken apart, out dropt a valuable diamond ring. The seventh hall contains the coronation-robes of Augustus II. of Poland, and many costly specimens of carving in wood. A cherry-stone is shown in a glass case which has one hundred and twenty-five facets, all perfectly finished, carved upon it. The next room we entered sent back a glare of splendor that perfectly dazzled us; it was all gold, diamond, ruby, and sapphire. Every case sent out such a glow and glitter that it seemed like a cage of imprisoned lightnings. Wherever the eye turned it was met by a blaze of broken rainbows. They were there by hundreds, and every gem was a fortune--whole cases of swords with hilts and scabbards of solid gold studded with gems, the great two-handed coronation sword of the German emperors, daggers covered with brilliants and rubies, diamond buttons, chains, and orders, necklaces and bracelets of pearl and emerald, and the order of the Golden Fleece made in gems of every kind. We were also shown the largest known onyx, nearly seven inches long and four inches broad. One of the most remarkable works is the throne and court of Aurungzebe, the Indian king, by Dinglinger, a celebrated goldsmith of the last century. It contains one hundred and thirty-two figures, all of enameled gold and each one most perfectly and elaborately finished. It was purchased by Prince Augustus for fifty-eight thousand thalers,[B] which was not a high sum, considering that the making of it occupied Dinglinger and thirteen workmen for seven years. It is almost impossible to estimate the value of the treasures these halls contain. That of the gold and jewels alone must be many millions of dollars, and the amount of labor expended on these toys of royalty is incredible. As monuments of patient and untiring toil they are interesting, but it is sad to think how much labor and skill and energy have been wasted in producing things which are useless to the world and only of secondary importance as works of art. Perhaps, however, if men could be diverted by such playthings from more dangerous games, it would be all the better. [Footnote A: From "Views Afoot." Published by G.P. Putnam's Sons.] [Footnote B: A Prussian or Saxon thaler is about seventy cents. Author's note--The thaler went out of use in Germany in 1906.] WEIMAR IN GOETHE'S DAY[A] BY MADAME DE STAËL Of all the German principalities, there is none that makes us feel so much as Weimar the advantages of a small state, of which the sovereign is a man of strong understanding, and who is capable of endeavoring to please all orders of his subjects, without losing anything in their obedience. Such a state is as a private society, where all the members are connected together by intimate relations. The Duchess Louisa of Saxe Weimar is the true model of a woman destined by nature to the most illustrious rank; without pretension, as without weakness, she inspires in the same degree confidence and respect; and the heroism of the chivalrous ages has entered her soul without taking from it any thing of her sex's softness. The military talents of the duke are universally respected, and his lively and reflective conversation continually brings to our recollection that he was formed by the great Frederic. It is by his own and his mother's reputation that the most distinguished men of learning have been attracted to Weimar, and by them Germany, for the first time, has possest a literary metropolis; but, as this metropolis was at the same time only an inconsiderable town, its ascendency was merely that of superior illumination; for fashion, which imposes uniformity in all things, could not emanate from so narrow a circle. Herder was just dead when I arrived at Weimar; but Wieland, Goethe, and Schiller were still there. Their writings are the perfect resemblances of their character and conversation. This very rare concordance is a proof of sincerity; when the first object in writing is to produce an effect upon others, a man never displays himself to them, such as he is in reality; but when he writes to satisfy an internal inspiration which has obtained possession of the soul, he discovers by his works, even without intending it, the very slightest shades of his manner of thinking and acting. The residence in country towns has always appeared to me very irksome. The understanding of the men is narrowed, the heart of the women frozen there; people live so much in each other's presence that one is opprest by one's equals; it is no longer this distant opinion, the reverberation of which animates you from afar like the report of glory; it is a minute inspection of all the actions of your life, an observation of every detail, which prevents the general character from being comprehended; and the more you have of independence and elevation of mind, the less able you are to breathe amidst so many little impediments. This painful constraint did not exist at Weimar; it was rather a large palace than a little town; a select circle of society, which made its interest consist in the discussion of all the novelties of art and science: women, the amiable scholars of some superior men, were constantly speaking of the new literary works, as of the most important public events. They enjoyed the whole universe by reading and study; they freed themselves by the enlargement of the mind from the restraint of circumstances; they forgot the private anecdotes of each individual, in habitually reflecting together on those great questions which influence the destiny common to all alike. And in this society there were none of those provincial wonders, who so easily mistake contempt for grace, and affectation for elegance. [Footnote A: From "Germany."] ULM[A] BY THOMAS FROGNALL DIBDIN We were now within about twenty English miles of Ulm. Nothing particular occurred, either by way of anecdote or of scenery, till within almost the immediate approach or descent to that city--the last in the Suabian territories, and which is separated from Bavaria by the River Danube. I caught the first glance of that celebrated river (here of comparatively trifling width) with no ordinary emotions of delight. It recalled to my memory the battle of Blenheim, or of Hochstedt; for you know that it was across this very river, and scarcely a score of miles from Ulm, that the victorious Marlborough chased the flying French and Bavarians--at the battle just mentioned. At the same moment, almost, I could not fail to contrast this glorious issue with the miserable surrender of the town before me--then filled by a large and well-disciplined army, and commanded by that nonpareil of generals, J.G. Mack!--into the power of Bonaparte almost without pulling a trigger on either side--the place itself being considered, at the time, one of the strongest towns in Europe. These things, I say, rushed upon my memory, when, on the immediate descent into Ulm, I caught the first view of the tower of the minster which quickly put Marlborough, and Mack, and Bonaparte out of my recollection. I had never, since quitting the beach at Brighton, beheld such an English-like looking cathedral--as a whole; and particularly the tower. It is broad, bold, and lofty; but, like all edifices, seen from a neighboring and perhaps loftier height, it loses, at first view, very much of the loftiness of its character. However, I looked with admiration, and longed to approach it. This object was accomplished in twenty minutes. We entered Ulm about two o'clock: drove to an excellent inn (the White Stag--which I strongly recommend to all travelers), and ordered our dinner to be got ready by five; which, as the house was within a stone's cast of the cathedral, gave us every opportunity of visiting it beforehand. The day continued most beautiful: and we sallied forth in high spirits, to gaze at and to admire every object of antiquity which should present itself. The Cathedral of Ulm is doubtless among the most respectable of those on the Continent. It is large and wide, and of a massive and imposing style of architecture. The buttresses are bold, and very much after the English fashion. The tower is the chief exterior beauty. Before we mounted it, we begged the guide, who attended us, to conduct us all over the interior. This interior is very noble, and even superior, as a piece of architecture, to that of Strasburg. I should think it even longer and wider--for the truth is, that the tower of Strasburg Cathedral is as much too tall, as that of Ulm Cathedral is too short, for its nave and choir. Not very long ago, they had covered the interior by a whitewash; and thus the mellow tint of probably about five centuries--in a spot where there are few immediately surrounding houses--and in a town of which the manufactories and population are comparatively small--the latter about 14,000--thus, I say, the mellow tint of these five centuries (for I suppose the cathedral to have been finished about the year 1320) has been cruelly changed for the staring and chilling effects of whiting.[B] The choir is interesting in a high degree. At the extremity of it is an altar--indicative of the Lutheran form of worship being carried on within the church--upon which are oil paintings upon wood, emblazoned with gilt backgrounds--of the time of Hans Burgmair, and of others at the revival of the art of painting in Germany. These pictures turn upon hinges, so as to shut up, or be thrown open; and are in the highest state of preservation. Their subjects are entirely Scriptural; and perhaps old John Holbein, the father of the famous Hans Holbein, might have had a share in some of them. Perhaps they may come down to the time of Lucas Cranach. Wherever, or by whomsoever executed, this series of paintings, upon the high altar of the Cathedral of Ulm, can not be viewed without considerable satisfaction. They were the first choice specimens of early art which I had seen on this side of the Rhine; and I, of course, contemplated them with the hungry eye of an antiquary. After a careful survey of the interior, the whole of which had quite the air of English cleanliness and order, we prepared to mount the famous tower. Our valet, Rohfritsch, led the way; counting the steps as he mounted, and finding them to be about 378 in number. He was succeeded by the guide. Mr. Lewis and myself followed in a more leisurely manner; peeping through the interstices which presented themselves in the open fretwork of the ornaments, and finding, as we continued to ascend, that the inhabitants and dwelling houses of Ulm diminished gradually in size. At length we gained the summit, which is surrounded by a parapet wall of some three or four feet in height. We paused a minute, to recover our breath, and to look at the prospect which surrounded us. The town, at our feet, looked like the metropolis of Laputa. Yet the high ground, by which we had descended into the town--and upon which Bonaparte's army was formerly encamped--seemed to be more lofty than the spot whereon we stood. On the opposite side flowed the Danube; not broad, nor, as I learned, very deep; but rapid and in a serpentine direction. Upon the whole, the Cathedral of Ulm is a noble ecclesiastical edifice; uniting simplicity and purity with massiveness of composition. Few cathedrals are more uniform in the style of their architecture. It seems to be, to borrow technical language, all of a piece. Near it, forming the foreground of the Munich print, are a chapel and a house surrounded by trees. The Chapel is very small, and, as I learned, not used for religious purposes. The house (so Professor Veesenmeyer informed me) is supposed to have been the residence and offices of business of John Zeiner, the well-known printer, who commenced his typographical labors about the year 1740, and who uniformly printed at Ulm; while his brother Gunther as uniformly exercised his art in the city whence I am now addressing you. They were both natives of Reutlingen, a town of some note between Tübingen and Ulm. [Footnote A: From "A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour," published in 1821.] [Footnote B: Ulm has now (1914) a population of 56,000.] AIX-LA-CHAPELLE AND CHARLEMAGNE'S TOMB[A] BY VICTOR HUGO For an invalid, Aix-la-Chapelle is a mineral fountain--warm, cold, irony, and sulfurous; for the tourist, it is a place for redouts and concerts; for the pilgrim, the place of relics, where the gown of the Virgin Mary, the blood of Jesus, the cloth which enveloped the head of John the Baptist after his decapitation, are exhibited every seven years; for the antiquarian, it is a noble abbey of "filles à abbesse," connected with the male convent, which was built by Saint Gregory, son of Nicephore, Emperor of the East; for the hunter, it is the ancient valley of the wild boars; for the merchant, it is a "fabrique" of cloth, needles, and pins; and for him who is no merchant, manufacturer, hunter, antiquary, pilgrim, tourist, or invalid, it is the city of Charlemagne. Charlemagne was born at Aix-la-Chapelle, and died there. He was born in the old place, of which there now only remains the tower, and he was buried in the church that he founded in 796, two years after the death of his wife Fastrada. Leo the Third consecrated it in 804, and tradition says that two bishops of Tongres, who were buried at Maestricht, arose from their graves, in order to complete, at that ceremony, 365 bishops and archbishops--representing the days of the year. This historical and legendary church, from which the town has taken its name, has undergone, during the last thousand years, many transformations. No sooner had I entered Aix than I went to the chapel.... The effect of the great "portail" is not striking; the façade displays the different styles of architecture--Roman, Gothic, and modern--without order, and consequently, without grandeur; but if, on the contrary, we arrive at the chapel by Chevet, the result is otherwise. The high "abside" of the fourteenth century, in all its boldness and beauty, the rich workmanship of its balustrades, the variety of its "gargouilles," the somber hue of the stones, and the large transparent windows--strike the beholder with admiration. Here, nevertheless, the aspect of the church--imposing tho it is--will be found far from uniform. Between the "abside" and the "portail," in a kind of cavity, the dome of Otho III., built over the tomb of Charlemagne in the tenth century, is hid from view. After a few moments' contemplation, a singular awe comes over us when gazing at this extraordinary edifice--an edifice which, like the great work that Charlemagne began, remains unfinished; and which, like his empire that spoke all languages, is composed of architecture that represents all styles. To the reflective, there is a strange analogy between that wonderful man and this great building. After having passed the arched roof of the portico, and left behind me the antique bronze doors surmounted with lions' heads, a white rotundo of two stories, in which all the "fantasies" of architecture are displayed, attracted my attention. At casting my eyes upon the ground, I perceived a large block of black marble, with the following inscription in brass letters:-- "Carolo Magno." Nothing is more contemptible than to see, exposed to view, the bastard graces that surround this great Carlovingian name; angels resembling distorted Cupids, palm-branches like colored feathers, garlands of flowers, and knots of ribbons, are placed under the dome of Otho III., and upon the tomb of Charlemagne. The only thing here that evinces respect to the shade of that great man is an immense lamp, twelve feet in diameter, with forty-eight burners; which was presented, in the twelfth century, by Barbarossa. It is of brass, gilt with gold, has the form of a crown, and is suspended from the ceiling above the marble stone by an iron chain about seventy feet in length. It is evident that some other monument had been erected to Charlemagne. There is nothing to convince us that this marble, bordered with brass, is of antiquity. As to the letters, "Carolo Magno," they are not of a late date than 1730. Charlemagne is no longer under this stone. In 1166 Frederick Barbarossa--whose gift, magnificent tho it was, does by no means compensate for this sacrilege--caused the remains of that great emperor to be untombed. The Church claimed the imperial skeleton, and, separating the bones, made each a holy relic. In the adjoining sacristy, a vicar shows the people--for three francs seventy-five centimes--the fixt price--"the arm of Charlemagne"--that arm which held for a time the reins of the world. Venerable relic! which has the following inscription, written by some scribe of the twelfth century: "Arm of the Sainted Charles the Great." After that I saw the skull of Charlemagne, that cranium which may be said to have been the mold of Europe, and which a beadle had the effrontery to strike with his finger. All were kept in a wooden armory, with a few angels, similar to those I have just mentioned, on the top. Such is the tomb of the man whose memory has outlived ten ages, and who, by his greatness, has shed the rays of immortality around his name. "Sainted, Great," belong to him--two of the most august epithets which this earth could bestow upon a human being. There is one thing astonishing--that is, the largeness of the skull and arm. Charlemagne was, in fact, colossal with respect to size of body as well as extraordinary mental endowments. The son of Pepin-le-Bref was in body, as in mind, gigantic; of great corporeal strength, and of astounding intellect. An inspection of this armory has a strange effect upon the antiquary. Besides the skull and arm, it contains the heart of Charlemagne; the cross which the emperor had round his neck in his tomb; a handsome ostensorium, of the Renaissance, given by Charles the Fifth, and spoiled, in the last century, by tasteless ornaments; fourteen richly sculptured gold plates, which once ornamented the arm-chair of the emperor; an ostensorium, given by Philippe the Second; the cord which bound our Savior; the sponge that was used upon the cross; the girdle of the Holy Virgin, and that of the Redeemer. In the midst of innumerable ornaments, heaped up in the armory like mountains of gold and precious stones, are two shrines of singular beauty. One, the oldest, which is seldom opened, contains the remaining bones of Charlemagne, and the other, of the twelfth century, which Frederick Barbarossa gave to the church, holds the relics, which are exhibited every seven years. A single exhibition of this shrine, in 1696, attracted 42,000 pilgrims, and drew, in ten days 80,000 florins. This shrine has only one key, which is in two pieces; the one is in the possession of the chapter, the other in that of the magistrates of the town. Sometimes it is opened on extraordinary occasions, such as on the visit of a monarch.... The tomb, before it became the sarcophagus of Charlemagne, was, it is said, that of Augustus. After mounting a narrow staircase, my guide conducted me to a gallery which is called the Hochmünster. In this place is the arm-chair of Charlemagne. It is low, exceedingly wide, with a round back; is formed of four pieces of white marble, without ornaments or sculpture, and has for a seat an oak board, covered with a cushion of red velvet. There are six steps up to it, two of which are of granite, the others of marble. On this chair sat--a crown upon his head, a globe in one hand, a scepter in the other, a sword by his side, the imperial mantle over his shoulders, the cross of Christ round his neck, and his feet in the sarcophagus of Augustus--Carolus Magnus in his tomb, in which attitude he remained for three hundred and fifty-two years--from 852 to 1166, when Frederick Barbarossa, coveting the chair for his coronation, entered the tomb. Barbarossa was an illustrious prince and a valiant soldier; and it must, therefore, have been a moment singularly strange when this crowned man stood before the crowned corpse of Charlemagne--the one in all the majesty of empire, the other in all the majesty of death. The soldier overcame the shades of greatness; the living became the despoliator of inanimate worth. The chapel claimed the skeleton, and Barbarossa the marble chair, which afterward became the throne where thirty-six emperors were crowned. Ferdinand the First was the last; Charles the Fifth preceded him. In 1804, when Bonaparte became known as Napoleon, he visited Aix-la-Chapelle. Josephine, who accompanied him, had the caprice to sit down on this chair; but Napoleon, out of respect for Charlemagne, took off his hat, and remained for some time standing, and in silence. The following fact is somewhat remarkable, and struck me forcibly. In 814 Charlemagne died; a thousand years afterward, most probably about the same hour, Napoleon fell. In that fatal year, 1814, the allied sovereigns visited the tomb of the great "Carolus." Alexander of Russia, like Napoleon, took off his hat and uniform; Frederick William of Prussia kept on his "casquette de petite tenue;" Francis retained his surtout and round bonnet. The King of Prussia stood upon the marble steps, receiving information from the provost of the chapter respecting the coronation of the emperors of Germany; the two emperors remained silent. Napoleon, Josephine, Alexander, Frederick William, and Francis, are now no more. A few minutes afterward I was on my way to the Hôtel-de-Ville, the supposed birthplace of Charlemagne, which, like the chapel, is an edifice made of five or six others. In the middle of the court there is a fountain of great antiquity, with a bronze statue of Charlemagne. To the left and right are two others--both surmounted with eagles, their heads half turned toward the grave and tranquil emperor. The evening was approaching. I had passed the whole of the day among these grand and austere "souvenirs;" and, therefore, deemed it essential to take a walk in the open fields, to breathe the fresh air, and to watch the rays of the declining sun. I wandered along some dilapidated walls, entered a field, then some beautiful alleys, in one of which I seated myself. Aix-la-Chapelle lay extended before me, partly hid by the shades of evening, which were falling around. By degrees the fogs gained the roofs of the houses, and shrouded the town steeples; then nothing was seen but two huge masses--the Hôtel-de-Ville and the chapel. All the emotions, all the thoughts and visions which flitted across my mind during the day, now crowded upon me. The first of the two dark objects was to me only the birthplace of a child; the second was the resting-place of greatness. At intervals, in the midst of my reverie, I imagined that I saw the shade of this giant, whom we call Charlemagne, developing itself between this great cradle and still greater tomb. [Footnote A: From "The Rhine." Translated by D.M. Aird.] THE HANSEATIC LEAGUE[A] BY JAMES HOWELL The Hans, or Hanseatic League, is very ancient, some would derive the word from hand, because they of the society plight their faith by that action; others derive it from Hansa, which in the Gothic tongue is council; others would have it come from Hander see, which signifies near or upon the sea, and this passeth for the best etymology, because their towns are all seated so, or upon some navigable river near the sea. The extent of the old Hans was from the Nerve in Livonia to the Rhine, and contained sixty-two great mercantile towns, which were divided into four precincts. The chiefest of the first precinct was Lübeck, where the archives of their ancient records and their prime chancery is still, and this town is within that verge; Cullen is chief of the second precinct, Brunswick of the third, and Dantzic of the fourth. The kings of Poland and Sweden have sued to be their protector, but they refused them, because they were not princes of the empire. They put off also the King of Denmark with a compliment, nor would they admit the King of Spain when he was most potent in the Netherlands, tho afterward, when it was too late, they desired the help of the ragged staff; nor of the Duke of Anjou, notwithstanding that the world thought he should have married our queen, who interceded for him, and so it was probable that thereby they might recover their privileges in England. So I do not find that they ever had any protector but the great Master of Prussia; and their want of a protector did do them some prejudice in that famous difference they had with our Queen. The old Hans had extraordinary immunities given them by our Henry the Third, because they assisted him in his wars with so many ships, and as they pretend, the king was not only to pay them for the service of the said ships but for the vessels themselves if they miscarried. Now it happened that at their return to Germany, from serving Henry the Third, there was a great fleet of them cast away, for which, according to covenant, they demanded reparation. Our king in lieu of money, among other facts of grace, gave them a privilege to pay but one per cent., which continued until Queen Mary's reign, and she by advice of King Philip, her husband, as it was conceived, enhanced the one to twenty per cent. The Hans not only complained but clamored loudly for breach of their ancient privileges confirmed unto them, time out of mind, by thirteen successive kings of England, which they pretended to have purchased with their money. King Philip undertook to accommodate the business, but Queen Mary dying a little after, and he retiring, there could be nothing done. Complaint being made to Queen Elizabeth, she answered that as she would not innovate anything, so she would maintain them still in the same condition she found them. Hereupon their navigation and traffic ceased a while, wherefore the English tried what they could do themselves, and they thrived so well that they took the whole trade into their own hands, and so divided themselves (tho they be now but one), to staplers and merchant-adventurers, the one residing constant in one place, where they kept their magazine of wool, the other stirring and adventuring to divers places abroad with cloth and other manufacturies, which made the Hans endeavor to draw upon them all the malignancy they could from all nations. Moreover, the Hans towns being a body politic incorporated in the empire, complained thereof to the emperor, who sent over persons of great quality to mediate an accommodation, but they could effect nothing. Then the queen caused a proclamation to be published that the easterlings or merchants of the Hans should be entreated and used as all other strangers were, within her dominations, without any mark of difference in point of commerce. This nettled them more, thereupon they bent their forces more eagerly, and in a diet at Ratisbon they procured that the English merchants who had associated themselves into fraternities in Emden and other places should be declared monopolists; and so there was a committal edict published against them that they should be exterminated and banished out of all parts of the empire; and this was done by the activity of one Sudennan, a great civilian. There was there for the queen, Gilpin, as nimble a man as Suderman, and he had the Chancellor of Emden to second and countenance him, but they could not stop the said edict wherein the Society of English Merchant-Adventurers was pronounced to be a monopoly; yet Gilpin played his game so well, that he wrought underhand, that the said imperial ban should not be published till after the dissolution of the diet, and that in the interim the Emperor should send ambassadors to England to advise the queen of such a ban against her merchants. But this wrought so little impression upon the queen that the said ban grew rather ridiculous than formidable, for the town of Emden harbored our merchants notwithstanding and afterward Stade, but they not being able to protect them so well from the imperial ban, they settled in the town of Hamburg. After this the queen commanded another proclamation to be divulged that the easterlings or Hanseatic merchants should be allowed to trade in England upon the same conditions and payment of duties as her own subjects, provided that the English merchants might have interchangeable privilege to reside and trade peaceably in Stade or Hamburg or anywhere else within the precincts of Hans. This incensed them more, thereupon they resolved to cut off Stade and Hamburg from being members of the Hans or of the empire; but they suspended this decision till they saw what success the great Spanish fleet should have, which was then preparing in the year eighty-eight, for they had not long before had recourse to the King of Spain and made him their own, and he had done them some material good offices; wherefore to this day the Spanish Consul is taxed of improvidence and imprudence, that there was no use made of the Hans towns in that expedition. The queen finding that they of the Hans would not be contented with that equality she had offered betwixt them and her own subjects, put out a proclamation that they should carry neither corn, victuals, arms, timber, masts, cables, minerals, nor any other materials, or men to Spain or Portugal. And after, the queen growing more redoubtable and famous, by the overthrow of the fleet of eighty-eight, the easterlings fell to despair of doing any good. Add hereunto another disaster that befell them, the taking of sixty sails of their ships about the mouth of Tagus in Portugal by the Queen's ships that were laden with "ropas de contrabando," viz., goods prohibited by her former proclamation into the dominions of Spain. And as these ships were upon point of being discharged, she had intelligence of a great assembly at Lübeck, which had met of purpose to consult of means to be revenged of her thereupon she stayed and seized upon the said sixty ships, only two were freed to bring news what became of the rest. Hereupon the Pope sent an ambassador to her, who spoke in a high tone, but he was answered in a higher. Ever since our merchants have beaten a peaceful and free uninterrupted trade into this town and elsewhere within and without the Sound, with their manufactures of wool, and found the way also to the White Sea to Archangel and Moscow. Insomuch that the premises being well considered, it was a happy thing for England that that clashing fell out betwixt her and the Hans, for it may be said to have been the chief ground of that shipping and merchandising, which she is now come to, and wherewith she hath flourished ever since. But one thing is observable, that as that imperial or committal ban, pronounced in the Diet at Ratisbon against our merchants and manufactures of wool, incited them more to industry. So our proclamation upon Alderman Cockein's project of transporting no white cloths but dyed, and in their full manufacture, did cause both Dutch and Germans to turn necessity to a virtue, and made them far more ingenious to find ways, not only to dye but to make cloth, which hath much impaired our markets ever since. For there hath not been the third part of our cloth sold since, either here or in Holland. [Footnote A: From "Familiar Letters." "Montaigne and 'Howell's Letters'," says Thackeray, in one of the "Roundabout Papers," "are my bedside books." Howell wrote this letter in Hamburg in October, 1632.] HAMBURG[A] BY THÉOPHILE GAUTIER To describe a night journey by rail is a difficult matter; you go like an arrow whistling through a cloud; it is traveling in the abstract. You cross provinces, kingdoms even, unawares. From time to time during the night, I saw through the window the comet, rushing down upon the earth, with lowered head and hair streaming far behind; suddenly glares of gaslight dazzled my eyes, sanded with the goldust of sleep; or the pale bluish radiance of the moon gave an air of fairy-land to scenes doubtless poor enough by day. Conscientiously, this is all I can say from personal observation; and it would not be particularly amusing if I should transcribe from the railway guide the names of all the stations between Berlin and Hamburg. It is 7 a.m., and here we are in the good Hanse town of Hamburg; the city is not yet awake, or at most is rubbing its eyes and yawning. While they are preparing my breakfast, I sally forth at random, as my custom is, without guide or cicerone, in pursuit of the unknown. The hotel, at which I have been set down, is situated on the quay of the Alster, a basin as large as the Lac d'Enghien, which it still further resembles in being peopled with tame swans. On three sides, the Alster basin is bordered with hotels and handsome modern houses. An embankment planted with trees and commanded by a wind-mill in profile forms the fourth; beyond extends a great lagoon. From the most frequented of these quays, a café painted green and built on piles, makes out into the water, like that café of the Golden Horn where I have smoked so many chibouques; watching the sea-birds fly. At the sight of this quay, this basin, these houses, I experienced an inexplicable sensation: I seemed to know them already. Confused recollections of them arose in my memory; could I have been in Hamburg without being aware of it? Assuredly all these objects are not new to me, and yet I am seeing them for the first time. Have I preserved the impression made by some picture, some photograph? While I was seeking philosophic explanations for this memory of the unknown, the idea of Heinrich Heine suddenly presented itself, and all became clear. The great poet had often spoken to me of Hamburg, in those plastic words he so well knew how to use--words that were equivalent to realities. In his "Reisebilder," he describes the scene--café basin, swans, and townsfolk upon the quays--Heaven knows what portraits he makes of them! He returns to it again in his poem, "Germania," and there is so much life to the picture, such distinctness, such relief, that sight itself teaches you nothing more. I made the circuit of the basin, graciously accompanied by a snow-white swan, handsome enough to make one think it might be Jupiter in disguise, seeking some Hamburg Leda, and, the better to carry out the deception, snapping at the bread-crumbs offered him by the traveler. On the farther side of the basin, at the right, is a sort of garden or public promenade, having an artificial hillock, like that in the labyrinth in the "Jardin des Plantes." Having gone thus far, I turned and retraced my steps. Every city has its fashionable quarter--new, expensive, handsome--of which the citizens are proud, and through which the guide leads you with much complacency. The streets are broad and regular, and cut one another at right angles; there are sidewalks of granite, brick, or bitumen; there are lamp-posts in every direction. The houses are like palaces; their classically modern architecture, their irreproachable paint, their varnished doors and well-scoured brasses, fill with joy the city fathers and every lover of progress. The city is neat, orderly, salubrious, full of light and air, and resembles Paris or London. There is the Exchange! It is superb--as fine as the Bourse in Paris! I grant it; and, besides, you can smoke there, which is a point of superiority. Farther on you observe the Palace of Justice, the bank, etc., built in the style you know well, adored by Philistines of every land. Doubtless that house must have cost enormously; it contains all possible luxury and comfort. You feel that the mollusk of such a shell can be nothing less than a millionaire. Permit me, however, to love better the old house with its overhanging stories, its roof of irregular tiles, and all its little characteristic details, telling of former generations. To be interesting, a city must have the air of having lived, and, in a sense, of having received from man a soul. What makes these magnificent streets built yesterday so cold and so tiresome, is that they are not yet impregnated with human vitality. Leaving the new quarter, I penetrated by degrees into the chaos of the old streets, and soon I had before my eyes a characteristic, picturesque Hamburg; a genuine old city with a medieval stamp which would delight Bonington, Isabey or William Wyld. I walked slowly, stopping at every street-corner that I might lose no detail of the picture; and rarely has any promenade amused me so well. Houses, whose gables are denticulated or else curved in volutes, throw out successive overhanging stories, each composed of a row of windows, or, more properly, of one window divided into sections by carved uprights. Beneath each house are excavated cellars, subterranean recesses, which the steps leading to the front door bestride like a drawbridge. Wood, brick, stone and slate, mingled in a way to content the eye of a colorist, cover what little space the windows leave on the outside of the house. All this is surmounted by a roof of red or violet tiles, or tarred plank, interrupted by openings to give light to the attics, and having an abrupt pitch. These steep roofs look well against the background of a northern sky; the rains run off them in torrents, the snow slips from them; they suit the climate, and do not require to be swept in winter. Some houses have doors ornamented with rustic columns, scroll-work, recessed pediments, chubby-cheeked caryatides, little angels and loves, stout rosettes and enormous shells, all glued over with whitewash renewed doubtless every year. The tobacco sellers in Hamburg can not be counted. At every third step you behold a bare-chested negro cultivating the precious leaf or a Grand Seigneur, attired like the theatrical Turk, smoking a colossal pipe. Boxes of cigars, with their more or less fallacious vignettes and labels, figure, symmetrically disposed, in the ornamentation of the shop-fronts. There must be very little tobacco left at Havana, if we can have faith in these displays, so rich in famous brands. As I have said, it was early morning. Servant-maids, kneeling on the steps or standing on the window-sills, were going on with the Saturday scrubbing. Notwithstanding the keen air, they made a display of robust arms bare to the shoulder, tanned and sunburned, red with that astonishing vermilion that we see in some of Rubens' paintings, which is the joint result of the biting of the north wind and the action of water upon these blond skins; little girls belonging to the poorer classes, with braided hair, bare arms, and low-necked frocks, were going out to obtain articles of food; I shivered in my paletot, to see them so lightly clad. There is something strange about this; the women of northern countries cut their dresses out in the neck, they go about bare-headed and bare-armed, while the women of the South cover themselves with vests, haicks, pelisses, and warm garments of every description. Walking on, still at random, I came to the maritime part of the city, where canals take the place of streets. As yet it was low water, and vessels lay aground in the mud, showing their hulls, and careening over in a way to rejoice a water-color painter. Soon the tide came up, and everything began to be in motion. I would suggest Hamburg to artists following in the track of Canaletto, Guardi, or Joyant; they will find, at every step, themes as picturesque as and more new than those which they go to Venice in search of. This forest of salmon-colored masts, with their maze of cordage and their yellowish-brown sails drying in the sun, these tarred sterns with apple-green decks, these lateen-yards threatening the windows of the neighboring houses, these derricks standing under plank roofs shaped like pagodas, these tackles lifting heavy packages out of vessels and landing them in houses, these bridges opening to give passage to vessels, these clumps of trees, these gables overtopped here and there by spires and belfries; all this bathed in smoke, traversed by sunlight and here and there returning a glitter of polished metal, the far-off distance blue and misty, and the foreground full of vigorous color, produced effects of the most brilliant and piquant novelty. A church-tower, covered with plates of copper, springing from this curious medley of rigging and of houses, recalled to me by its odd green color the tower of Galata, at Constantinople.... As the hour advanced, the crowd became more numerous, and it was largely composed of women. In Hamburg they seem to enjoy great license. Very young girls come and go alone without anyone's noticing it, and--a remarkable thing!--children go to school by themselves, little basket on the arm, and slate in hand; in Paris, left to their own free will, they will run off to play marbles, tag, or hop-scotch. Dogs are muzzled in Hamburg all the week, but on Sundays they are left at liberty to bite whom they please. They are taxed, and appear to be esteemed; but the cats are sad and unappreciated. Recognizing in me a friend, they cast melancholy glances at me, saying in their feline language, to which long use has given me the key: "These Philistines, busy with their money-getting, despise us; and yet our eyes are as yellow as their louis d'or. Stupid men that they are, they believe us good for nothing but to catch rats; we, the wise, the meditative, the independent, who have slept upon the prophet's sleeve, and lulled his ear with the whir of our mysterious wheel! Pass your hand over our backs full of electric sparkles--we allow you this liberty, and say to Charles Baudelaire that he must write a fine sonnet, deploring our woes." As the Lübeck boat was not to leave until the morrow, I went to Wilkin's to get my supper. This famous establishment occupies a low-ceiled basement, which is divided into cabinets ornamented with more show than taste. Oysters, turtle-soup, a truffled filet, and a bottle of Veuve Cliquot iced, composed my simple bill of fare. The place was filled, after the Hamburg fashion, with edibles of all sorts; things early and things out of season, dainties not yet in existence or having long ceased to exist, for the common crowd. In the kitchen they showed us, in great tanks, huge sea-turtles which lifted their scaly heads above the water, resembling snakes caught between two platters. Their little horny eyes looked with uneasiness at the light which was held near them, and their flippers, like oars of some disabled galley, vaguely moved up and down, as seeking some impossible escape. I trust that the personnel of the exhibition changes occasionally. In the morning I went for my breakfast to an English restaurant, a sort of pavilion of glass, whence I had a magnificent panoramic view. The river spread out majestically through a forest of vessels with tall masts, of every build and tonnage. Steam-tugs were beating the water, towing sailing-vessels out to sea; others, moving about freely, made their way hither and thither, with that precision which makes a steam-boat seem like a conscious being, endowed by a will of its own, and served by sentient organs. From the elevation the Elbe is seen, spreading broadly like all great rivers as they near the sea. Its waters, sure of arriving at last, are in no haste; placid as a lake, they flow with an almost invisible motion. The low opposite shore was covered with verdure, and dotted with red houses half-effaced by the smoke from the chimneys. A golden bar of sunshine shot across the plain; it was grand, luminous, superb. [Footnote A: From "A Winter in Russia." By arrangement with, and by permission of, the publishers, Henry Holt & Co. Copyright, 1874. Hamburg is now the largest seaport on the continent of Europe. London and New York are the only ports in the world that are larger. Exclusive of its rural territory, it had in 1905 a population of 803,000.] SCHLESWIG[A] BY THÉOPHILE GAUTIER When you are in a foreign country, reduced to the condition of a deaf-mute, you can not but curse the memory of him who conceived the idea of building the tower of Babel, and by his pride brought about the confusion of tongues! An omnibus took possession of myself and my trunks, and, with the feeling that it must of necessity take me somewhere, I confidingly allowed myself to be stowed in and carried away. The intelligent omnibus set me down before the best hotel in the town, and there, as circumnavigators say in their journals, "I held a parley with the natives." Among them was a waiter who spoke French in a way that was transparent enough to give me an occasional glimpse of his meaning; and who--a much rarer thing!--even sometimes understood what I said to him. My name upon the hotel register was a ray of light. The hostess had been notified of my expected arrival, and I was to be sent for as soon as my appearance should be announced; but it was now late in the evening, and I thought it better to wait till the next day. There was served for supper a "chaud-froid" of partridge--without confiture--and I lay down upon the sofa, hopeless of being able to sleep between the two down-cushions which compose the German and the Danish bed.... I explored Schleswig, which is a city quite peculiar in its appearance. One wide street runs the length of the town, with which narrow cross streets are connected, like the smaller bones with the dorsal vertebræ of a fish. There are handsome modern houses, which, as usual, have not the slightest character. But the more modest dwellings have a local stamp; they are one-story buildings, very low--not over seven or eight feet in height--capped with a huge roof of fluted red tiles. Windows, broader than they are high, occupy the whole of the front; and behind these windows, spread luxuriantly in porcelain or faience or earthen flowerpots, plants of every description; geraniums, verbenas, fuchsias--and this absolutely without exception. The poorest house is as well adorned as the best. Sheltered by these perfumed window-blinds, the women sit at work, knitting or sewing, and, out of the corner of their eye, they watch, in the little movable mirror which reflects the streets, the rare passer-by, whose boots resound upon the pavement. The cultivation of flowers seem to be a passion in the north; countries where they grow naturally make but little account of them in comparison. The church in Schleswig had in store for me a surprise. Protestant churches in general, are not very interesting from an artistic point of view, unless the reformed faith may have installed itself in some Catholic sanctuary diverted from its primitive designation. You find, usually, only whitewashed naves, walls destitute of painting or bas-relief, and rows of oaken benches well-polished and shining. It is neat and comfortable, but it is not beautiful. The church at Schleswig contains, by a grand, unknown artist, an altar-piece in three parts, of carved wood, representing in a series of bas-reliefs, separated by fine architectural designs, the most important scenes in the drama of the Passion. Around the church stand sepulchral chapels of fine funereal fancy and excellent decorative effect. A vaulted hall contains the tombs of the ancient Dukes of Schleswig; massive slabs of stone, blazoned with armorial devices, covered with inscriptions which are not lacking in character. In the neighborhood of Schleswig are great saline ponds, communicating with the sea. I paced the high-road, remarking the play of light upon this grayish water, and the surface crisped by the wind; occasionally I extended my walk as far as the chateau metamorphosed into a barrack, and the public gardens, a miniature St. Cloud, with its cascade, its dolphins, and its other aquatic monsters all standing idle. A very good sinecure is that of a Triton in a Louis Quinze basin! I should ask nothing better myself. [Footnote A: From "A Winter in Russia." By arrangement with, and by permission of, the publishers, Henry Holt & Co. Copyright, 1874.] LÜBECK[A] BY THÉOPHILE GAUTIER In the evening the train carried me to Lübeck, across magnificent cultivated lands, filled with summer-houses, which lave their feet in the brown water, overhung by spreading willows. This German Venice has its canal, the Brenta, whose villas, tho not built by Sanmichele or Palladio, none the less make a fine show against the fresh green of their surroundings. On arriving at Lübeck, a special omnibus received me and my luggage, and I was soon set down at the hotel. The city seemed picturesque as I caught a glimpse of it through the darkness by the vague light of lanterns; and in the morning, as I opened my chamber-window, I perceived at once I had not been mistaken. The opposite house had a truly German aspect. It was extremely high and overtopped by an old-fashioned denticulated gable. At each one of the seven stories of the house, iron cross-bars spread themselves out into clusters of iron-work, supporting the building, and serving at once for use and ornament, in accordance with an excellent principle in architecture, at the present day too much neglected. It is not by concealing the framework, but by making it distinct, that we obtain more character. This house was not the only one of its kind, as I was able to convince myself on walking a few steps out of doors. The actual Lübeck is still to the eye the Lübeck of the Middle Ages, the old capital of the Hanseatic League.[B] All the drama of modern life is enacted in the old theater whose scenery remains the same, its drop-scene even not repainted. What a pleasure it is to be walking thus amid the outward life of the past, and to contemplate the same dwellings which long-vanished generations have inhabited! Without doubt, the living man has a right to model his shell in accordance with his own habits, his tastes, and his manners; but it can not be denied that a new city is far less attractive than an old one. When I was a child, I sometimes received for a New Year's present one of those Nuremberg boxes containing a whole miniature German city. In a hundred different ways I arranged the little houses of painted wood around the church, with its pointed belfry and its red walls, where the seam of the bricks was marked by fine white lines. I set out my two dozen frizzed and painted trees, and saw with delight the charmingly outlandish and wildly festal air which these apple-green, pink, lilac, fawn-colored houses with their window-panes, their retreating gables, and their steep roofs, brilliant with red varnish, assumed, spread out on the carpet. My idea was that houses like these had no existence in reality, but were made by some kind fairy for extremely good little boys. The marvelous exaggeration of childhood gave this little parti-colored city a respectable development, and I walked through its regular streets, tho with the same precautions as did Gulliver in Liliput. Lübeck gave back to me this long-forgotten feeling of my childish days. I seemed to walk in a city of the imagination, taken out of some monstrous toy-box. I believe, considering all the faultlessly correct architecture that I have been forced to see in my traveler's life, that I really deserved that pleasure by way of compensation. A cloister, or at least a gallery, a fragment of an ancient monastery, presented itself to view. This colonnade ran the whole length of the square, at the end of which stood the Marienkirche, a brick church of the fourteenth century. Continuing my walk, I found myself in a market-place, where awaited me one of those sights which repay the traveler for much fatigue: a public building of a new, unforeseen, original aspect, the old Stadthaus in which was formerly the Hanse hall, rose suddenly before me. It occupies two sides of the square. Imagine, in front of the Marienkirche, whose spires and roof of oxydized copper rise above it, a lofty brick façade, blackened by time, bristling with three bell-towers with pointed copper-covered roofs, having two great empty rose-windows, and emblazoned with escutcheons inscribed in the trefoils of its ogives, double-headed black eagles on a gold field, and shields, half gules, half argent, ranged alternately, and executed in the most elaborate fashion of heraldry. To this façade is joined a palazzino of the Renaissance, in stone and of an entirely different style, its tint of grayish-white marvelously relieved by the dark-red background of old brick-work. This building, with its three gables, its fluted Ionic columns, its caryatides, or rather its Atlases (for they are human figures), its semicircular window, its niches curved like a shell, its arcades ornamented with figures, its basement of diamond-shaped stones, produces what I may call an architectural discord that is most unexpected and charming. We meet very few edifices in the north of Europe of this style and epoch. In the façade, the old German style prevails: arches of brick, resting upon short granite columns, support a gallery with ogive-windows. A row of blazons, inclined from right to left, bring out their brilliant color against the blackish tint of the wall. It would be difficult to form an idea of the character and richness of this ornamentation. This gallery leads into the main building, a structure than which no scene-painter, seeking a medieval decoration for an opera, ever invented anything more picturesque and singular. Five turrets, coiffed with roofs like extinguishers, raise their pointed tops above the main line of the façade with its lofty ogive-windows--unhappily now most of them partially bricked up, in accordance, doubtless, with the exigencies of alterations made within. Eight great disks, having gold backgrounds, and representing radiating suns, double-headed eagles, and the shields, gules and argent, the armorial bearings of Lübeck, are spread out gorgeously upon this quaint architecture. Beneath, arches supported upon short, thick pillars yawn darkly, and from far within there comes the gleam of precious metals, the wares of some goldsmith's shop. Turning back toward the square again, I notice, rising above the houses, the green spires of another church, and over the heads of some market-women, who are chaffering over their fish and vegetables, the profile of a little building with brick pillars, which must have been a pillory in its day. This gives a last touch to the purely Gothic aspect of the square which is interrupted by no modern edifice. The ingenious idea occurred to me that this splendid Stadthaus must have another façade; and so in fact it had; passing under an archway, I found myself in a broad street, and my admiration began anew. Five bell-towers, built half into the wall and separated by tall ogive-windows now partly blocked up, repeated, with variations, the façade I have just described. Brick rosettes exhibited their curious designs, spreading with square stitches, so to speak, like patterns for worsted work. At the base of the somber edifice a pretty little lodge, of the Renaissance, built as an afterthought, gave entrance to an exterior staircase going up along the wall diagonally to a sort of mirador, or overhanging look-out, in exquisite taste. Graceful little statues of Faith and Justice, elegantly draped, decorated the portico. The staircase, resting on arches which widened as it rose higher, was ornamented with grotesque masks and caryatides. The mirador, placed above the arched doorway opening upon the market-place, was crowned with a recessed and voluted pediment, where a figure of Themis held in one hand balances, and in the other a sword, not forgetting to give her drapery, at the same time, a coquettish puff. An odd order formed of fluted pilasters fashioned like pedestals and supporting busts, separated the windows of this aërial cage. Consoles with fantastic masks completed the elegant ornamentation, over which Time had passed his thumb just enough to give to the carved stone that bloom which nothing can imitate.... The Marienkirche, which stands, as I have said, behind the Stadt-haus, is well worth a visit. Its two towers are 408 feet in height; a very elaborate belfry rises from the roof at the point of intersection of the transept. The towers of Lübeck have the peculiarity, every one of them, of being out of the perpendicular, leaning perceptibly to the right or left, but without disquieting the eye, like the tower of Asinelli at Bologna, or the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Seen two or three miles away, these towers, drunk and staggering, with their pointed caps that seem to nod at the horizon, present a droll and hilarious silhouette. On entering the church, the first curious object that meets the eye is a copy of the Todtentanz, or Dance of Death, of the cemetery at Bâsle. I do not need to describe it in detail. The Middle Ages were never tired of composing variations upon this dismal theme. The most conspicuous of them are brought together in this lugubrious painting, which covers all the walls of one chapel. From the Pope and the Emperor to the infant in his cradle, each human being in his turn enters upon the dance with the inevitable terror. But death is not depicted as a skeleton, white, polished, cleaned, articulated with copper wire like the skeleton of an anatomical cabinet: that would be too ornamental for the vulgar crowd. He appears as a dead body in a more or less advanced state of decomposition, with all the horrid secrets of the tomb carefully revealed.... The cathedral, which is called in German the Dom, is quite remarkable in its interior. In the middle of the nave, filling one whole arch, is a colossal Christ of Gothic style, nailed to a cross carved in open-work, and ornamented with arabesques. The foot of this cross rests upon a transverse beam, going from one pillar to another, on which are standing the holy women and other pious personages, in attitudes of grief and adoration; Adam and Eve, one on either side, are arranging their paradisaic costume as decently as may be; above the cross the keystone of the arch projects, adorned with flowers and leafage, and serves as a standing-place for an angel with long wings. This construction, hanging in mid-air, and evidently light in weight, notwithstanding its magnitude, is of wood, carved with much taste and skill. I can define it in no better way than to call it a carved portcullis, lowered halfway in front of the chancel. It is the first example of such an arrangement that I have ever seen.... The Holstenthor, a city gate close by the railway station, is a most curious and picturesque specimen of German medieval architecture. Imagine two enormous brick towers united by the main portion of the structure, through which opens an archway, like a basket-handle, and you have a rude sketch of the construction; but you would not easily conceive of the effect produced by the high summit of the edifice, the conical roofs of the towers, the whimsical windows in the walls and in the roofs, the dull red or violet tints of the defaced bricks. It is altogether a new gamut for painters of architecture or of ruins; and I shall send them to Lübeck by the next train. I recommend to their notice also, very near the Holstenthor, on the left bank of the Trave, five or six crimson houses, shouldering each other for mutual support, bulging out in front, pierced with six or seven stories of windows, with denticulated gables, the deep red reflection of them trailing in the water, like some high-colored apron which a servant-maid is washing. What a picture Van den Heyden would have made of this! Following the quay, along which runs a railway, where freight-trains were constantly passing, I enjoyed many amusing and varied scenes. On the other side of the Trave were to be seen, amid houses and clumps of trees, vessels in various stages of building. Here, a skeleton with ribs of wood, like the carcass of some stranded whale; there, a hull, clad with its planking near which smokes the calker's cauldron, emitting light yellowish clouds. Everywhere prevails a cheerful stir of busy life. Carpenters are planing and hammering, porters are rolling casks, sailors are scrubbing the decks of vessels, or getting the sails half way up to dry them in the sun. A barque just arriving comes alongside the quay, the other vessels making room for her to pass. The little steamboats are getting up steam or letting it off; and when you turn toward the city, through the rigging of the vessels, you see the church-towers, which incline gracefully, like the masts of clippers. [Footnote A: From "A Winter in Russia." By arrangement with, and by permission of, the publishers, Henry Holt & Co. Copyright, 1874.] [Footnote B: The decline of Lübeck dates from the first quarter of the sixteenth century and was chiefly due to the discovery of America and the consequent diversion of commerce to new directions. Other misfortunes came with the Thirty Years' War. As early as 1425, one of the constant sources of Lübeck's wealth had begun to fail her--the herring, which was found to be deserting Baltic waters. The discovery by the Portuguese of a route to India by the Cape of Good Hope was another cause of Lübeck's decline.] HELIGOLAND[A] BY WILLIAM GEORGE BLACK In Heligoland itself there are few trees, no running water, no romantic ruins, but an extraordinary width of sea-view, seen as from the deck of a gigantic ship; and yet the island is so small that one can look around it all, and take the sea-line in one great circle. Seen from a distance, as one must first see it, Heligoland is little more than a cloud on the horizon; but as the steamer approaches nearer, the island stands up, a red rock in the ocean, without companion or neighbor. A small ledge of white strand to the south is the only spot where boats can land, and on this ledge nestle many white-walled, red-roofed houses; while on the rim of the rock, nearly two hundred feet above, is a sister hamlet, with the church-tower and lighthouse for central ornaments. On the Unterland are the principal streets and shops, on the Oberland are many of the best hotels and government-house. As there is no harbor, passengers reach the shore in large boats, and get their first glimpse of the hardy, sun-browned natives in the boatmen who, with bright jackets and hats of every picturesque curve that straw is capable of, pull the boat quickly to the steps of the little pier. Crowds of visitors line the way, but one gets quickly through, and in a few minutes returns either to familiar quarters in the Oberland, or finds an equally clean and moderate home among the lodging-house keepers or seamen. The season is a very short one, only ten weeks out of fifty-two, but the prices are moderate and the comfort unchallengeable.... Heligoland is only one mile long from pier to Nordkap, and a quarter of a mile wide at its widest--in all it is three-quarters of a square mile in size. There are no horses or carts in Heligoland--only six cows, kept always in darkness, and a few sheep and goats tethered on the Oberland. The streets are very narrow, but very clean, and the constant repetition in houses and scarves and flags of the national colors gives Heligoland a gay aspect; for the national colors are anything but dull. Green land, red rocks, white strand--nothing could be better descriptive of the island than these colors. They are easily brought out in domestic architecture, for with a whitewashed cottage and a red-tiled roof the Heligolander has only to give his door and window-shutters a coat of bright green paint, and there are the colors of Heligoland. In case the unforgettable fact should escape the tourist, the government have worked the colors into the ingenious and pretty island postage-stamp, and many of our German friends wear bathing-pants of the same unobtrusive tints. Life is a very delightful thing in summer in this island. On your first visit you feel exhilarated by the novelty of everything as much as by the strong warm sea wind which meets you wherever you go. When you return, the novelty has worn away, but the sense of enjoyment has deepened. As you meet friendly faces and feel the grip of friendly hands, so you also exchange salutations with Nature, as if she, too, were an old Heligoland friend. You know the view from this point and from that; but, like the converse of a friend, it is always changing, for there is no monotony in the sea. The waves lap the shore gently, or roar tumultuously in the red caverns, and it is all familiar, but none the less welcome and soothing because of that familiarity. It is not a land of lotus-eating delights, but it is a land where there is little sound but what the sea makes, and where every face tells of strong sun and salt waves. No doubt, much of its charm lies in its contrast to the life of towns or country places. Whatever comes to Heligoland comes from over the sea; there is no railway within many a wide mile; the people are a peculiar people, with their own peculiar language, and an island patriotism which it would be hard to match.... From the little pier one passes up the narrow white street, no broader than a Cologne lane, but clean and bright as is no other street in Europe, past the cafés with low balconies, and the little shops--into some there are three or four steps to descend, into others there is an ascent of a diminutive ladder--till the small square or garden is reached in front of the Conversation House, a spacious building with a good ball-room and reading-room, where a kiosque, always in summer full of the fragrant Heligoland roses, detains the passer-by. Then another turn or two in the street, and the bottom of the Treppe is approached--the great staircase which winds upward to the Oberland, in whose crevices grow masses of foliage, and whose easy ascent need not be feared by any one, for the steps are broad and low. The older flight of steps was situated about a hundred paces northward from the present Treppe. It was cut out of the red crumbling rock, and at the summit passed through a guard-house. Undoubtedly the present Treppe should be similarly fortified. It was built by the government in 1834. During the smuggling days, it is said, an Englishman rode up to the Oberland, and the apparition so shocked an old woman, who had never seen a horse before, that she fell senseless to the ground. From the Falm or road skirting the edge of the precipice from the head of the stairs to Government House, one of the loveliest views in all the world lies before our eyes. Immediately beneath are the winding stairs, with their constant stream of broad-shouldered seamen, or coquettish girls, or brown boys, passing up and down, while at each resting-place some group is sitting on the green-red-white seats gossiping over the day's business. Trees and plants nestle in the stair corners, and almost conceal the roadway at the foot. Lifting one's eyes away from the little town, the white pier sprawls on the, sea, and countless boats at anchor spot with darkness the shining water. Farther away, the Düne lies like a bar of silver across the view, ribbed with emerald where the waves roll in over white sand; and all around it, as far as the eye can reach, white sails gleam in the light, until repose is found on the horizon where sea and sky meet in a vapory haze. At night the Falm is a favorite resort of the men whose houses are on the Oberland. With arms resting on the broad wall, they look down on the twinkling lights of the houses far beneath, listen to the laughter or song which float up from the small tables outside the café, or watch the specks of light on the dark gleam of the North Sea. It is a prospect of which one could hardly tire, if it was not that in summer one has in Heligoland a surfeit of sea loveliness.... Heligoland is conjecturally identified with the ocean island described by Tacitus as the place of the sacred rites of the Angli and other tribes of the mainland. It was almost certainly sacred to Forsete, the son of Balder the Sun-god--if he be identified, as Grimm and all Frisian writers identify him, with Fosite the Frisian god. Forsete, a personification to men of the great white god, who dwelt in a shining hall of gold and silver, was among all gods and men the wisest of judges. It is generally supposed that Heligoland was first named the Holy Island from its association with the worship of Forsete, and latterly in consequence of the conversion of the Frisian inhabitants. Hallier has, however, pointed out that the Heligolanders do not use this name for their home. They call the island "det Lunn"--the land; their language they call "Hollunner," and he suggests that the original name was Hallig-lunn. A hallig is a sand-island occasionally covered with water. When the Düne was connected with the rock there was a large stretch of sand covered by winter floods. Hallig-lunn would then mean the island that is more than a hallig; and from the similarity of the words to Heligoland a series of etymological errors may have arisen; but Hallier's derivation is, after all, only a guess. [Footnote A: From "Heligoland and the Islands of the North Sea." Heligoland, an island and fortress in the North Sea, lies thirty-six miles northwest of the mouth of the Elbe--Hamburg. It was ceded to Germany by Great Britain in 1890; and is attached to Schleswig Holstein. As a fortress, its importance has been greatly increased since the Germans recovered possession of the island.] V VIENNA FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF THE CAPITAL[A] BY BAYARD TAYLOR I have at last seen the thousand wonders of this great capital, this German Paris, this connecting-link between the civilization of Europe and the barbaric magnificence of the East. It looks familiar to be in a city again whose streets are thronged with people and resound with the din and bustle of business. It reminds me of the never-ending crowds of London or the life and tumult of our scarcely less active New York. The morning of our arrival we sallied out from our lodgings in the Leopoldstadt to explore the world before us. Entering the broad Praterstrasse, we passed down to the little arm of the Danube which separates this part of the new city from the old. A row of magnificent coffee-houses occupy the bank, and numbers of persons were taking their breakfasts in the shady porticos. The Ferdinand's Bridge, which crosses the stream, was filled with people; in the motley crowd we saw the dark-eyed Greek, and Turks in their turbans and flowing robes. Little brown Hungarian boys were going around selling bunches of lilies, and Italians with baskets of oranges stood by the sidewalk. The throng became greater as we penetrated into the old city. The streets were filled with carts and carriages, and, as there are no side-pavements, it required constant attention to keep out of their way. Splendid shops fitted up with great taste occupied the whole of the lower stories, and goods of all kinds hung beneath the canvas awnings in front of them. Almost every store or shop was dedicated to some particular person or place, which was represented on a large panel by the door. The number of these paintings added much to the splendor of the scene; I was gratified to find, among the images of kings and dukes, one dedicated "To the American," with an Indian chief in full costume. The Altstadt, or "old city," which contains about sixty thousand inhabitants, is completely separated from the suburbs, whose population, taking the whole extent within the outer barrier, numbers nearly half a million.[B] It is situated on a small arm of the Danube and encompassed by a series of public promenades, gardens and walks, varying from a quarter to half a mile in length, called the "Glacis." This formerly belonged to the fortifications of the city, but as the suburbs grew up so rapidly on all sides, it was changed appropriately to a public walk. The city is still surrounded with a massive wall and a deep wide moat, but, since it was taken by Napoleon in 1809, the moat has been changed into a garden with a beautiful carriage-road along the bottom around the whole city. It is a beautiful sight to stand on the summit of the wall and look over the broad Glacis, with its shady roads branching in every direction and filled with inexhaustible streams of people. The Vorstaedte, or new cities, stretch in a circle, around beyond this; all the finest buildings front on the Glacis, among which the splendid Vienna Theater and the church of San Carlo Borromeo are conspicuous. The mountains of the Vienna forest bound the view, with here and there a stately castle on their woody summits. There is no lack of places for pleasure or amusement. Besides the numberless walks of the Glacis there are the imperial gardens, with their cool shades and flowers and fountains; the Augarten, laid out and opened to the public by the Emperor Joseph; and the Prater, the largest and most beautiful of all. It lies on an island formed by the arms of the Danube, and is between two and three miles square. From the circle at the end of the Praterstrasse broad carriage-ways extend through its forests of oak and silver ash and over its verdant lawns to the principal stream, which bounds it on the north. These roads are lined with stately horse-chestnuts, whose branches unite and form a dense canopy, completely shutting out the sun. Every afternoon the beauty and nobility of Vienna whirl through the cool groves in their gay equipages, while the sidewalks are thronged with pedestrians, and the numberless tables and seats with which every house of refreshment is surrounded are filled with merry guests. Here on Sundays and holidays the people repair in thousands. The woods are full of tame deer, which run perfectly free over the whole Prater. I saw several in one of the lawns lying down in the grass, with a number of children playing around or sitting beside them. It is delightful to walk there in the cool of the evening, when the paths are crowded and everybody is enjoying the release from the dusty city. It is this free social life which renders Vienna so attractive to foreigners and draws yearly thousands of visitors from all parts of Europe.... We spent two or three hours delightfully one evening in listening to Strauss's band. We went about sunset to the Odeon, a new building in the Leopoldstadt. It has a refreshment-hall nearly five hundred feet long, with a handsome fresco ceiling and glass doors opening into a garden-walk of the same length. Both the hall and garden were filled with tables, where the people seated themselves as they came and conversed sociably over their coffee and wine. The orchestra was placed in a little ornamental temple in the garden, in front of which I stationed myself, for I was anxious to see the world's waltz-king whose magic tones can set the heels of half Christendom in motion. After the band had finished tuning their instruments, a middle-sized, handsome man stept forward with long strides, with a violin in one hand and bow in the other, and began waving the latter up and down, like a magician summoning his spirits. As if he had waved the sound out of his bow, the tones leaped forth from the instruments, and, guided by his eye and hand, fell into a merry measure. The accuracy with which every instrument performed its part was truly marvelous. He could not have struck the measure or the harmony more certainly from the keys of his own piano than from that large band. The sounds struggled forth so perfect and distinct that one almost expected to see them embodied, whirling in wild dance around him. Sometimes the air was so exquisitely light and bounding the feet could scarcely keep on the earth; then it sank into a mournful lament with a sobbing tremulousness, and died away in a long-breathed sigh. Strauss seemed to feel the music in every limb. He would wave his fiddle-bow a while, then commence playing with desperate energy, moving his whole body to the measure, till the sweat rolled from his brow. A book was lying on the stand before him, but he made no use of it. He often glanced around with a kind of half-triumphant smile at the restless crowd, whose feet could scarcely be restrained from bounding to the magic measure. It was the horn of Oberon realized. The composition of the music displayed great talent, but its charm consisted more in the exquisite combination of the different instruments, and the perfect, the wonderful, exactness with which each performed its part--a piece of art of the most elaborate and refined character. The company, which consisted of several hundred, appeared to be full of enjoyment. They sat under the trees in the calm, cool twilight with the stars twinkling above, and talked and laughed sociably together between the pauses of the music, or strolled up and down the lighted alleys. We walked up and down with them, and thought how much we should enjoy such a scene at home, where the faces around us would be those of friends and the language our mother-tongue. We went a long way through the suburbs one bright afternoon to a little cemetery about a mile from the city to find the grave of Beethoven. On ringing at the gate a girl admitted us into the grounds, in which are many monuments of noble families who have vaults there. I passed up the narrow walk, reading the inscriptions, till I came to the tomb of Franz Clement, a young composer who died two or three years ago. On turning again my eye fell instantly on the word "Beethoven" in golden letters on a tombstone of gray marble. A simple gilded lyre decorated the pedestal, above which was a serpent encircling a butterfly--the emblem of resurrection. Here, then, moldered the remains of that restless spirit who seemed to have strayed to earth from another clime, from such a height did he draw his glorious conceptions. The perfection he sought for here in vain he has now attained in a world where the soul is freed from the bars which bind it in this. There were no flowers planted around the tomb by those who revered his genius; only one wreath, withered and dead, lay among the grass, as if left long ago by some solitary pilgrim, and a few wild buttercups hung with their bright blossoms over the slab. It might have been wrong, but I could not resist the temptation to steal one or two while the old gravedigger was busy preparing a new tenement. I thought that other buds would open in a few days, but those I took would be treasured many a year as sacred relics. A few paces off is the grave of Schubert, the composer whose beautiful songs are heard all over Germany. We visited the imperial library a day or two ago. The hall is two hundred and forty-five feet long, with a magnificent dome in the center, under which stands the statue of Charles V., of Carrara marble, surrounded by twelve other monarchs of the house of Hapsburg. The walls are of variegated marble richly ornamented with gold, and the ceiling and dome are covered with brilliant fresco-paintings. The library numbers three hundred thousand volumes and sixteen thousand manuscripts, which are kept in walnut cases gilded and adorned with medallions. The rich and harmonious effect of the whole can not easily be imagined. It is exceedingly appropriate that a hall of such splendor should be used to hold a library. The pomp of a palace may seem hollow and vain, for it is but the dwelling of a man; but no building can be too magnificent for the hundreds of great and immortal spirits to dwell in who have visited earth during thirty centuries. Among other curiosities preserved in the collection, we were shown a brass plate containing one of the records of the Roman Senate made one hundred and eighty years before Christ, Greek manuscripts of the fifth and sixth centuries, and a volume of Psalms printed on parchment in the year 1457 by Faust and Schoeffer, the inventors of printing. There were also Mexican manuscripts presented by Cortez, the prayer-book of Hildegard, wife of Charlemagne, in letters of gold, the signature of San Carlo Borromeo, and a Greek Testament of the thirteenth century which had been used by Erasmus in making his, translation and contains notes in his own hand. The most interesting article was the "Jerusalem Delivered" of Tasso, in the poet's own hand, with his erasures and corrections. The chapel of St. Augustine contains one of the best works of Canova--the monument of the Grand Duchess Maria Christina of Sachsen-Teschen. It is a pyramid of gray marble, twenty-eight feet high, with an opening in the side representing the entrance to a sepulcher. A female figure personating Virtue bears in an urn to the grave the ashes of the departed, attended by two children with torches. The figure of Compassion follows, leading an aged beggar to the tomb of his benefactor, and a little child with its hands folded. On the lower step rests a mourning genius beside a sleeping lion, and a bas-relief on the pyramid above represents an angel carrying Christina's image, surrounded with the emblem of eternity, to heaven. A spirit of deep sorrow, which is touchingly portrayed in the countenance of the old man, pervades the whole group. While we looked at it the organ breathed out a slow, mournful strain which harmonized so fully with the expression of the figures that we seemed to be listening to the requiem of the one they mourned. The combined effect of music and sculpture thus united in their deep pathos was such that I could have sat down and wept. It was not from sadness at the death of a benevolent tho unknown individual, but the feeling of grief, of perfect, unmingled sorrow, so powerfully represented, came to the heart like an echo of its own emotion and carried it away with irresistible influence. Travelers have described the same feeling while listening to the "Miserere" in the Sistine Chapel at Rome. Canova could not have chiselled the monument without tears. One of the most interesting objects in Vienna is the imperial armory. We were admitted through tickets previously procured from the armory direction; as there was already one large company within, we were told to wait in the court till our turn came. Around the wall, on the inside, is suspended the enormous chain which the Turks stretched across the Danube at Buda in the year 1529 to obstruct the navigation. It has eight thousand links and is nearly a mile in length. The court is filled with cannon of all shapes and sizes, many of which were conquered from other nations. I saw a great many which were cast during the French Revolution, with the words "Liberté! Egalité!" upon them, and a number of others bearing the simple letter "N.".... The first wing contains banners used in the French Revolution, and liberty-trees with the red cap, the armor of Rudolph of Hapsburg, Maximilian, I., the emperor Charles V., and the hat, sword and order of Marshal Schwarzenberg. Some of the halls represent a fortification, with walls, ditches and embankments, made of muskets and swords. A long room in the second wing contains an encampment in which twelve or fifteen large tents are formed in like manner. There was also exhibited the armor of a dwarf king of Bohemia and Hungary who died a gray-headed old man in his twentieth year, the sword of Marlborough, the coat of Gustavus Adolphus, pierced in the breast and back with the bullet which killed him at Lützen, the armor of the old Bohemian princess Libussa, and that of the amazon Wlaska, with a steel vizor made to fit the features of her face. The last wing was the most remarkable. Here we saw the helm and breastplate of Attila, king of the Huns, which once glanced at the head of his myriads of wild hordes before the walls of Rome; the armor of Count Stahremberg, who commanded Vienna during the Turkish siege in 1529, and the holy banner of Mohammed, taken at that time from the grand vizier, together with the steel harness of John Sobieski of Poland, who rescued Vienna from the Turkish troops under Kara Mustapha; the hat, sword and breastplate of Godfrey of Bouillon, the crusader-king of Jerusalem, with the banners of the cross the crusaders had borne to Palestine and the standard they captured from the Turks on the walls of the Holy City. I felt all my boyish enthusiasm for the romantic age of the crusaders revive as I looked on the torn and moldering banners which once waved on the hills of Judea, or perhaps followed the sword of the Lion-Heart through the fight on the field of Ascalon. What tales could they not tell, those old standards cut and shivered by spear and lance! What brave hands have carried them through the storm of battle, what dying eyes have looked upward to the cross on the folds as the last prayer was breathed for the rescue of the holy sepulcher. [Footnote A: From "Views Afoot." Published by G.P. Putnam's Sons.] [Footnote B: The population of Vienna, according to the census of 1910, was 2,085,888.] ST. STEPHEN'S CATHEDRAL[A] BY THOMAS FROGNALL DIBDIN Of the chief objects of architecture which decorate street scenery in Vienna, there are none, to my old-fashioned eyes, more attractive and thoroughly beautiful and interesting--from a thousand associations of ideas than places of worship, and of course, among these, none stands so eminently conspicuous as the mother-church, or the cathedral, which in this place, is dedicated to St. Stephen. The spire has been long distinguished for its elegance and height. Probably these are the most appropriate, if not the only, epithets of commendation which can be applied to it. After Strasburg and Ulm, it appears a second-rate edifice. Not but what the spire may even vie with that of the former, and the nave may be yet larger than that of the latter; but, as a whole, it is much inferior to either--even allowing for the palpable falling off in the nave of Strasburg cathedral. The spire, or tower--for it partakes of both characters--is indeed worthy of general admiration. It is oddly situated, being almost detached--and on the south side of the building. Indeed the whole structure has a very strange, and I may add capricious, if not repulsive, appearance, as to its exterior. The western and eastern ends have nothing deserving of distinct notice or commendation. The former has a porch; which is called "the Giant's porch;" it should rather be designated as that of the Dwarf. It has no pretensions to size or striking character of any description. Some of the oldest parts of the cathedral appear to belong to the porch of the eastern end. As you walk round the church, you can not fail to be struck with the great variety of ancient--and to an Englishman, whimsical looking mural monuments, in basso and alto relievos. Some of these are doubtless both interesting and curious. But the spire is indeed an object deserving of particular admiration. It is next to that of Strasburg in height; being 432 feet of Vienna measurement. It may be said to begin to taper from the first stage or floor; and is distinguished for its open and sometimes intricate fretwork. About two-thirds of its height, just above the clock, and where the more slender part of the spire commences, there is a gallery or platform, to which the French quickly ascended, on their possession of Vienna, to reconnoiter the surrounding country. The very summit of the spire is bent, or inclined to the north; so much so, as to give the notion that the cap or crown will fall in a short time. As to the period of the erection of this spire, it is supposed to have been about the middle, or latter end, of the fifteenth century. It has certainly much in common with the highly ornamental Gothic style of building in our own country, about the reign of Henry VI. The colored glazed tiles of the roof of the church are very disagreeable and unharmonizing. These colors are chiefly green, red, and blue. Indeed the whole roof is exceedingly heavy and tasteless. I will now conduct you to the interior. On entering, from the southeast door, you observe, to the left, a small piece of white marble--which every one touches, with the finger or thumb charged with holy water, on entering or leaving the cathedral. Such have been the countless thousands of times that this piece of marble has been so touched, that, purely, from such friction, it has been worn nearly half an inch below the general surrounding surface. I have great doubts, however, if this mysterious piece of masonry be as old as the walls of the church (which may be of the fourteenth century), which they pretend to say it is. The first view of the interior of this cathedral, seen even at the most favorable moment--which is from about three till five o'clock--is far from prepossessing. Indeed, after what I had seen at Rouen, Paris, Strassburg, Ulm, and Munich, it was a palpable disappointment. In the first place, there seems to be no grand leading feature of simplicity; add to which, darkness reigns everywhere. You look up, and discern no roof--not so much from its extreme height, as from the absolute want of windows. Everything not only looks dreary, but is dingy and black--from the mere dirt and dust which seem to have covered the great pillars of the nave--and especially the figures and ornaments upon it--for the last four centuries. This is the more to be regretted, as the larger pillars are highly ornamented; having human figures, of the size of life, beneath sharply pointed canopies, running up the shafts. The extreme length of the cathedral is 342 feet of Vienna measurement. The extreme width, between the tower and its opposite extremity--or the transepts--is 222 feet. There are comparatively few chapels; only four--but many Bethstühle or Prie-Dieus. Of the former, the chapels of Savoy and St. Eloy are the chief; but the large sacristy is more extensive than either. On my first entrance, while attentively examining the choir, I noticed--what was really a very provoking, but probably not a very uncommon sight--a maid servant deliberately using a long broom in sweeping the pavement of the high altar, at the moment when several very respectable people, of both sexes, were kneeling upon the steps, occupied in prayer. But the devotion of the people is incessant--all the day long--and in all parts of the cathedral. Meanwhile, service is going on in all parts of the cathedral. They are singing here; they are praying there; and they are preaching in a third place. But during the whole time, I never heard one single note of the organ. I remember only the other Sunday morning--walking out beneath one of the brightest blue skies that ever shone upon man--and entering the cathedral about nine o'clock. A preacher was in the principal pulpit; while a tolerably numerous congregation was gathered around him. He preached, of course, in the German language, and used much action. As he became more and more animated, he necessarily became warmer, and pulled off a black cap--which, till then, he had kept upon his head; the zeal and piety of the congregation at the same time seeming to increase with the accelerated motions of the preacher. In other more retired parts, solitary devotees were seen--silent, and absorbed in prayer. Among these, I shall not easily forget the head and the physiognomical expression of one old man--who, having been supported by crutches, which lay by the side of him--appeared to have come for the last time to offer his orisons to heaven. The light shone full upon his bald head and elevated countenance; which latter indicated a genuineness of piety, and benevolence of disposition, not to be soured, even by the most bitter of worldly disappointments! It seemed as if the old man were taking leave of this life, in full confidence of the rewards which await the righteous beyond the grave. So much for the living. A word or two now for the dead. Of course this letter alludes to the monuments of the more distinguished characters once resident in and near the metropolis. Among these, doubtless the most elaborate is that of the Emperor Frederick III.--in the florid Gothic style, surmounted by a tablet, filled with coat-armor, or heraldic shields. Some of the mural monuments are very curious, and among them are several of the early part of the sixteenth century--which represent the chins and even mouths of females, entirely covered by drapery; such as is even now to be seen and such as we saw on descending from the Vosges. But among these monuments--both for absolute and relative antiquity--none will appear to the curious eye of an antiquary so precious as that of the head of the architect of the cathedral, whose name was Pilgram. [Footnote A: From "A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour," published in 1821.] THE BELVEDERE PALACE[A] BY THOMAS FROGNALL DIBDIN To the Belvedere Palace, therefore, let us go. I visited it with Mr. Lewis--taking our valet with us, immediately after breakfast--on one of the finest and clearest-skied September mornings that ever shone above the head of man. We had resolved to take the Ambras, or the little Belvedere, in our way; and to have a good, long, and uninterrupted view of the wonders of art--in a variety of departments. Both the little Belvedere and the large Belvedere rise gradually above the suburbs; and the latter may be about a mile and a half from the ramparts of the city. The Ambras contains a quantity of ancient horse- and foot-armor, brought thither from a chateau of that name, near Inssbruck, built by the Emperor Charles V. Such a collection of old armor--which had once equally graced and protected the bodies of their wearers, among whom the noblest names of which Germany can boast may be enrolled--was infinitely gratifying to me. The sides of the first room were quite embossed with suspended shields, cuirasses, and breast-plates. The floor was almost filled by champions on horseback--yet poising the spear, or holding it in the rest--yet almost shaking their angry plumes, and pricking the fiery sides of their coursers. Here rode Maximilian--and there halted Charles his son. Different suits of armor, belonging to the same character, are studiously shown you by the guide; some of these are the foot-, and some the horse-, armor; some were worn in fight--yet giving evidence of the mark of the bullet and battle-ax; others were the holiday suits of armor, with which the knights marched in procession, or tilted at the tournament. The workmanship of the full-dress suits, in which a great deal of highly wrought gold ornament appears, is sometimes really exquisite. The second, or long room, is more particularly appropriated to the foot- or infantry-armor. In this studied display of much that is interesting from antiquity, and splendid from absolute beauty and costliness, I was particularly gratified by the sight of the armor which the Emperor Maximilian wore as a foot-captain. The lower part, to defend the thighs, consists of a puckered or plated steel petticoat, sticking out at the bottom of the folds, considerably beyond the upper part. It is very simple, and of polished steel. A fine suit of armor--of black and gold--worn by an Archbishop of Salzburg in the middle of the fifteenth century, had particular claims upon my admiration. It was at once chaste and effective. The mace was by the side of it. This room is also ornamented by trophies taken from the Turks; such as bows, spears, battle-axes, and scimitars. In short, the whole is full of interest and splendor. I ought to have seen the arsenal--which I learn is of uncommon magnificence; and, altho not so curious on the score of antiquity, is yet not destitute of relics of the warriors of Germany. Among these, those which belong to my old bibliomaniacal friend Corvinus, King of Hungary, cut a conspicuous and very respectable figure. I fear it will be now impracticable to see the arsenal as it ought to be seen. It is now approaching mid-day, and we are walking toward the terrace in front of the Great Belvidere Palace, built by the immortal Eugene[B] in the year 1724, as a summer residence. Probably no spot could have been selected with better judgment for the residence of a Prince--who wished to enjoy, almost at the same moment, the charms of the country with the magnificence of a city view, unclouded by the dense fumes which forever envelop our metropolis. It is in truth a glorious situation. Walking along its wide and well-cultivated terraces, you obtain the finest view imaginable of the city of Vienna. Indeed it may be called a picturesque view. The spire of the cathedral darts directly upward, as it were, to the very heavens. The ground before you, and in the distance, is gently undulating; and the intermediate portion of the suburbs does not present any very offensive protrusions. More in the distance, the windings of the Danube are seen; with its various little islands, studded with hamlets and fishing-huts, lighted up by a sun of unusual radiance. Indeed the sky, above the whole of this rich and civilized scene, was at the time of our viewing it, almost of a dazzling hue; so deep and vivid a tint we had never before beheld. Behind the palace, in the distance, you observe a chain of mountains which extends into Hungary. As to the building itself, it is perfectly palatial in its size, form, ornaments, and general effect. Among the treasures, which it contains, it is now high time to enter and to look about us. My account is necessarily a mere sketch. Rubens, if any artist, seems here to "rule and reign without control!" Two large rooms are filled with his productions; besides several other pictures, by the same hand, which are placed in different apartments. Here it is that you see verified the truth of Sir Joshua's remark upon that wonderful artist: namely, that his genius seems to expand with the size of his canvas. His pencil absolutely riots here--in the most luxuriant manner--whether in the majesty of an altarpiece, in the gaiety of a festive scene, or in the sobriety of portrait-painting. His Ignatius Loyola and St. Francis Xavier--of the former class--each seventeen feet high, by nearly thirteen wide--are stupendous productions in more senses than one. The latter is, indeed, in my humble judgment, the most marvelous specimen of the powers of the painter which I have ever seen; and you must remember that both England and France are not without some of his celebrated productions, which I have frequently examined. In the old German School, the series is almost countless; and of the greatest possible degree of interest and curiosity. Here are to be seen Wohlgemuths, Albert Dürers, both the Holbeins, Lucas Cranachs, Ambergaus, and Burgmairs of all sizes and degrees of merit. Among these ancient specimens--which are placed in curious order, in the very upper suite of apartments, and of which the backgrounds of several, in one solid coat of gilt, lighten up the room like a golden sunset--you must not fail to pay particular attention to a singularly curious old subject--representing the Life, Miracles, and Passion of our Savior, in a series of one hundred and fifty-eight pictures--of which the largest is nearly three feet square, and every other about fifteen inches by ten. These subjects are painted upon eighty-six small pieces of wood; of which seventy-two are contained in six folding cabinets, each holding twelve subjects. In regard to Teniers, Gerard Dow, Mieris, Wouvermann, and Cuyp, you must look at home for more exquisite specimens. This collection contains, in the whole, not fewer than fifteen hundred paintings, of which the greater portion consists of pictures of very large dimensions. I could have lived here for a month; but could only move along with the hurried step, and yet more hurrying eye, of an ordinary visitor. [Footnote A: From "A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour," published in 1821.] [Footnote B: The celebrated Austrian general, who defeated the Turks in 1697, and shared with Marlborough in the victories of Blenheim and Malplaquet.] SCHÖNBRUNN AND THE PRATER[A] BY THOMAS FROGNALL DIBDIN About three English miles from the Great Belvedere--or rather about the same number of miles from Vienna, to the right, as you approach the capital--is the famous palace of Schönbrunn. This is a sort of summer-residence of the Emperor; and it is here that his daughter, the ex-Empress of France, and the young Bonaparte usually reside.[B] The latter never goes into Italy, when his mother, as Duchess of Parma, pays her annual visit to her principality. At this moment her son is at Baden, with the court. It was in the Schönbrunn palace that his father, on the conquest of Vienna, used to take up his abode, rarely venturing into the city. He was surely safe enough here; as every chamber and every court yard was filled by the élite of his guard--whether as officers or soldiers. It is a most magnificent pile of building; a truly imperial residence--but neither the furniture nor the objects of art, whether connected with sculpture or painting, are deserving of anything in the shape of a catalogue raisonné. I saw the chamber where young Bonaparte frequently passes the day; and brandishes his flag staff, and beats upon his drum. He is a soldier (as they tell me) every inch of him; and rides out, through the streets of Vienna, in a carriage of state drawn by four or six horses, receiving the homage of the passing multitude. To return to the Schönbrunn Palace. I have already told you that it is vast, and capable of accommodating the largest retinue of courtiers. It is of the gardens belonging to it, that I would now only wish to say a word. These gardens are really worthy of the residence to which they are attached. For what is called ornamental, formal, gardening--enriched by shrubs of rarity, and trees of magnificence--enlivened by fountains--adorned by sculpture--and diversified by vistas, lawns, and walks--interspersed with grottoes and artificial ruins--you can conceive nothing upon a grander scale than these: while a menagerie in one place (where I saw a large but miserably wasted elephant)--a flower-garden in another--a labyrinth in a third, and a solitude in a fourth place--each, in its turn, equally beguiles the hour and the walk. They are the most spacious gardens I ever witnessed. It was the other Sunday evening when I visited the Prater, and when--as the weather happened to be very fine--it was considered to be full, but the absence of the court, of the noblesse, necessarily gave a less joyous and splendid aspect to the carriages and their attendant liveries. In your way to this famous place of Sabbath evening promenade, you pass a celebrated coffee-house, in the suburbs, called the Leopoldstadt, which goes by the name of the Greek coffee-house--on account of its being almost entirely frequented by Greeks--so numerous at Vienna. Do not pass it, if you should ever come hither, without entering it--at least once. You would fancy yourself to be in Greece, so thoroughly characteristic are the countenances, dresses, and language of everyone within. But yonder commences the procession of horse and foot; of cabriolets, family coaches, German wagons, cars, phaetons and landaulets, all moving in a measured manner, within their prescribed ranks, toward the Prater. We must accompany them without loss of time. You now reach the Prater. It is an extensive flat, surrounded by branches of the Danube, and planted on each side with double rows of horse-chestnut trees. The drive, in one straight line, is probably a league in length. It is divided by two roads, in one of which the company move onward, and in the other they return. Consequently, if you happen to find a hillock only a few feet high, you may, from thence, obtain a pretty good view of the interminable procession of the carriages before mentioned: one current of them, as it were, moving forward, and another rolling backward. But, hark! the notes of a harp are heard to the left, in a meadow, where the foot passengers often digress from the more formal tree-lined promenade. A press of ladies and gentlemen is quickly seen. You mingle involuntarily with them; and, looking forward, you observe a small stage erected, upon which a harper sits and two singers stand. The company now lie down upon the grass, or break into standing groups, or sit upon chairs hired for the occasion--to listen to the notes so boldly and so feelingly executed. The clapping of hands, and exclamations of bravo succeed, and the sounds of applause, however warmly bestowed, quickly die away in the open air. The performers bow, receive a few kreutzers, retire, and are well satisfied. The sound of the trumpet is now heard behind you. Tilting feats are about to be performed; the coursers snort and are put in motion; their hides are bathed in sweat beneath their ponderous housings; and the blood, which flows freely from the pricks of their riders' spurs, shows you with what earnestness the whole affair is conducted. There, the ring is thrice carried off at the point of the lance. Feats of horsemanship follow in a covered building, to the right; and the juggler, conjurer, or magician, displays his dexterous feats, or exercises his potent spells, in a little amphitheater of trees, at a distance beyond. Here and there rise more stately edifices, as theaters, from the doors of which a throng of heated spectators is pouring out. In other directions, booths, stalls and tables are fixt; where the hungry eat, the thirsty drink, and the merry-hearted indulge in potent libations. The waiters are in a constant state of locomotion. Rhenish wine sparkles here; confectionery glitters there; and fruit looks bright and tempting in a third place. No guest turns round to eye the company; because he is intent upon the luxuries which invite his immediate attention, or he is in close conversation with an intimate friend, or a beloved female. They talk and laugh--and the present seems to be the happiest moment of their lives. All is gaiety and good humor. You return again to the foot-promenade, and look sharply about you, as you move onward, to catch the spark of beauty, or admire the costume of taste, or confess the power of expression. It is an Albanian female who walks yonder, wondering, and asking questions, at every thing she sees. The proud Jewess, supported by her husband and father, moves in another direction. She is covered with brocade and flaunting ribbons; but she is abstracted from everything around her, because her eyes are cast downward upon her stomacher, or sideways to obtain a glimpse of what may be called her spangled epaulettes. Her eye is large and dark; her nose is aquiline; her complexion is of an olive brown; her stature is majestic, her dress is gorgeous, her gait is measured--and her demeanor is grave and composed. "She must be very rich," you say--as she passes on. "She is prodigiously rich," replies the friend, to whom you put the question--for seven virgins, with nosegays of choicest flowers, held up her bridal train; and the like number of youths, with silver-hilted swords, and robes of ermine and satin, graced the same bridal ceremony. Her father thinks he can never do enough for her; and her husband, that he can never love her sufficiently. Whether she be happy or not, in consequence, we have no time to stop to inquire, for see yonder! Three "turbaned Turks" make their advances. How gaily, how magnificently they are attired! What finely proportioned limbs--what beautifully formed features! They have been carousing, peradventure, with some young Greeks--who have just saluted them, en passant--at the famous coffee-house before mentioned. Everything around you is novel and striking; while the verdure of the trees and lawns is yet fresh, and the sun does not seem yet disposed to sink below the horizon. The carriages still move on, and return, in measured procession. Those who are within, look earnestly from the windows, to catch a glance of their passing friends. The fair hand is waved here; the curiously-painted fan is shaken there; and the repeated nod is seen in almost every other passing landaulet. Not a heart seems sad; not a brow appears to be clouded with care. Such--or something like the foregoing--is the scene which usually passes on a Sunday evening--perhaps six months out of the twelve--upon the famous Prater at Vienna; while the tolling bell of St. Stephen's tower, about nine o'clock--and the groups of visitors hurrying back, to get home before the gates of the city are shut against them--usually conclude the scene just described. [Footnote A: From "A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour." published in 1821.] [Footnote B: Marie Louise, second wife of Napoleon, and their son, the King of Rome.] VI HUNGARY A GLANCE AT THE COUNTRY[A] BY H. TORNAI DE KÖVËR Hungary consists of Hungary proper, with Transylvania (which had independent rule at one time), Croatia and Slavonia (which have been added), and the town of Fiume on the shores of the Adriatic Sea. The lowlands are exceedingly beautiful in the northeast and west, where the great mountain, peaks rise into the clear blue sky or are hidden by big white clouds, but no beauty can be compared to the young green waving corn or the ripe ears when swaying gently in the breeze. One sees miles and miles of corn, with only a tree here and there to mark the distances, and one can not help comparing the landscape to a green sea, for the wind makes long silky waves, which make the field appear to rise and fall like the ocean. In the heat of midday the mirage, or, as the Hungarians call it, "Délibáb," appears and shows wonderful rivers, villages, cool green woods--all floating in the air. Sometimes one sees hundreds of white oxen and church towers, and, to make the picture still more confusing and wonderful, it is all seen upside down. This, the richest part of the country, is situated between the rivers Danube and Theiss, and runs right down to the borders of Servia. Two thirds of Hungary consist of mountainous districts, but one third has the richest soil in Europe. Great rivers run through the heart of the country, giving it the fertility which is its great source of wealth. The great lowlands, or "Alföld," as the Magyars call them, are surrounded by a chain of mountains whose heights are nearly equal to some Alpine districts. There are three principal mountain ranges--the Tátra, Mátra, and Fátra--and four principal rivers--the Danube, Theiss, Drave, and Save. Hungary is called the land of the three mountains and four rivers, and the emblem of these form the chief feature in the coat-of-arms of the country. The Carpathian range of mountains stretches from the northwest along the north and down the east, encircling the lowlands and sending forth rivers and streams to water the plains. These mountains are of a gigantic bulk and breadth; they are covered with fir and pine trees, and in the lower regions with oaks and many other kinds. The peaks of the high Tátra are about 9,000 feet high, and, of course, are bare of any vegetation, being snow-covered even in summer-time. On the well-sheltered sides of these mountains numerous baths are to be found, and they abound in mineral waters. Another curious feature are the deep lakes called "Tengerszem" (Eyes of the Sea). According to folklore they are connected with the sea, and wonderful beings live in them. However, it is so far true that they are really of astonishing depth. The summer up in the Northern Carpathians is very short, the nights always cold, and there is plenty of rain to water the rich vegetation of the forests. Often even in the summer there are snowstorms and a very low temperature. The Northeastern Carpathians include a range of lower hills running down to the so-called Hegyalja, where the wonderful vine which produces the wine of Tokay is grown. The southeastern range of the Carpathians divides the county of Máramaros from Erdély (Transylvania). The main part of this country is mountainous and rugged, but here also there is wonderful scenery. Everything is still very wild in these parts of the land, and tho mineral waters abound everywhere, the bathing-places are very primitive. The only seaport the country possesses is Fiume, which was given to Hungary by Maria Theresa, who wanted to give Hungary the chance of developing into a commercial nation. Besides the deep but small mountain lakes, there are several large ones; among these the most important is the Balaton, which, altho narrow, is about fifty miles long. Along its borders there are summer bathing-places, considered very healthy for children. Very good wine is produced here, as in most parts of Hungary which are hilly, but not situated too high up among the mountains. The lake of Balaton is renowned for a splendid kind of fresh-water fish, the Fogas. It is considered the best fish after trout--some even prefer it--and it grows to a good size. The chief river of Hungary is the Danube, and the whole of Hungary is included in its basin. It runs through the heart of the country, forming many islands; the greatest is called the Csallóköz, and has over a hundred villages on it. One of the prettiest and most cultivated of the islands is St. Margaret's Isle, near Budapest, which has latterly been joined to the mainland by a bridge. Some years ago only steamers conveyed the visitors to it; these still exist, but now carriages can drive on to the island too. It is a beautiful park, where the people of Budapest seek the shade of the splendid old trees. Hot sulfur springs are to be found on the island, and there is a bath for the use of visitors. The Danube leaves Hungary at Orsova, and passes through the so-called Iron Gates. The scenery is very beautiful and wild in that part, and there are many points where it is exceedingly picturesque, especially between Vienna and Budapest. It is navigable for steamships, and so is the next largest river, the Theiss. This river begins its course in the Southeastern Carpathians, right up among the snow-peaks, amid wild and beautiful scenery, and it eventually empties its waters into the Danube at Titel. The three largest rivers of Hungary feed the Danube, and by that means reach the Black Sea. Hungary lies under the so-called temperate zone, but there does not seem much temperance in the climate when we think of the terrible, almost Siberian winters that come often enough and the heat waves occasioning frequent droughts in the lowlands. The summer is short in the Carpathians; usually in the months of August and September the weather is the most settled. June and July are often rainy--sometimes snowstorms cause the barometer to fall tremendously. In the mountain districts there is a great difference between the temperature of the daytime and that of the night. All those who go to the Carpathians do well to take winter and Alpine clothing with them. The winter in the mountains is perhaps the most exhilarating, as plenty of winter sport goes on. The air is very cold, but the sun has great strength in sheltered corners, enabling even delicate people to spend the winter there. In the lowlands the summer is exceedingly hot, but frequent storms, which cool the air for some days, make the heat bearable. Now and then there have been summers when in some parts of Hungary rain has not fallen for many weeks--even months. The winter, too, even in the more temperate parts, is often severe and long, there being often from eight to ten weeks of skating, altho the last few years have been abnormally mild. In the valleys of the Carpathians potatoes, barley, oats, and cabbages are grown, while in the warmer south wheat, maize, tobacco, turnips, and the vine are cultivated. Down by the Adriatic Sea the climate is much warmer, but Hungary, as already mentioned, has only the town of Fiume of her own to boast of. The visitors who look for a temperate winter and want to get away from the raw cold must go to the Austrian town of Abbazia, which is reached in half an hour by steamboat, and is called the Austrian Riviera. Those who visit Hungary should come in spring--about May--and spend some weeks in the capital, the lowlands and hilly districts, and go north to the mountains and bathing-places in the summer months. Tokay produces some of the finest wine in the world, and the vintage time in that part of the country is most interesting and picturesque. [Footnote A: From "Hungary." Published by the Macmillan Co.] BUDAPEST[A] BY H. TORNAI DE KÖVËR Budapest is one of the most beautifully situated cities in Europe. Nobody can ever forget the wonderful sight of the two sister towns divided by the wide and swiftly flowing Danube, with the steamers and barges on her waters. Buda, the old stronghold, is on one side with the fantastic "Gellért" hill, which is a formidable-looking mass of rocks and caves; farther on is the lovely royal palace with its beautifully kept gardens clinging to the hillside; then the oldest part, called the stronghold, which has been rebuilt exactly in the style Matthias Corvinus built it, and which was demolished during the Turkish invasion. Here is the old church of Matthias too, but it is so much renovated that it lacks the appearance of age. Behind the smaller hills larger ones are to be seen covered with shady woods; these are the villa regions and summer excursion places for the people. Along the Danube are green and shady islands of which the most beautiful is St. Margaret's Isle, and on the other side of the waters is the city of "Pest," with the majestic Houses of Parliament, Palace of Justice, Academy of Science, and numerous other fine buildings. At the present time four bridges join the two cities together, and a huge tunnel leads through the first hill in Buda into another part of the town. One can not say which is the more beautiful sight: to look from Pest, which stands on level ground, up to the varying hilly landscape of Buda; or to look from the hillside of the latter place on to the fairy-land of Pest, with the broad silver Danube receding in the distance like a great winding snake, its scales all aglitter in the sunshine. It is beautiful by day, but still more so at night, for myriads of lights twinkle in the water, and the hillsides are dotted as if with flitting fairy-lamps. Even those who are used to the sight look at it in speechless rapture and wonder. What must it be like to foreigners! Besides her splendid natural situation, Budapest has another great treasure, and this is the great quantity of hot sulfur springs which exists on both sides of the Danube. The Romans made use of these at the time of their colonization, and we can find the ruins of the Roman baths in Aquincum half an hour from Budapest. During the Turkish rule many Turkish baths were erected in Buda. The Rudas bath exists to this day, and with its modernized system is one of the most popular. Császár bath, St. Lukács bath, both in Buda, have an old-established reputation for the splendid cures of rheumatism. A new bath is being built in Pest where the hot sulfur water oozes up in the middle of the park--the same is to be found in St. Margaret's Isle. Besides the sulfur baths there are the much-known bitter waters in Buda called "Hunyady" and "Franz Joseph," as well as salt baths. The city, with the exception of some parts in Buda, is quite modern, and has encircling boulevards and wide streets, one of the finest being the Andrássy Street. The electric car system is one of the most modern, while underground and overground electric railways lead to the most distant suburbs. The city has a gay and new look about it; all along the walks trees are planted, and cafés are to be seen with a screen of shrubs or flowers around them. In the evening the sound of music floats from the houses and cafés. There are plenty of theaters, in which only the Hungarian language is used, and a large and beautiful opera-house under government management. There are museums, institutions of art and learning, academies of painting and music, schools, and shops, and life and movement everywhere. At present [1911] the city numbers about 900,000 souls, but the more distant suburbs are not reckoned in this number. [Footnote A: From "Hungary." Published by the Macmillan Co.] 
34582	----	CHILD'S OWN BOOK _of Great Musicians_ MOZART [Illustration] _By_ THOMAS TAPPER THEODORE PRESSER CO. 1712 CHESTNUT STREET ·PHILADELPHIA· [Illustration] Directions for Binding Enclosed in this envelope it the cord and the needle with which to bind this book. Start in from the outside as shown on the diagram here. Pass the needle and thread through the center of the book, leaving an end extend outside, then through to the outside, about 2 inches from the center; then from the outside to inside 2 inches from the center at the other end of the book, bringing the thread finally again through the center, and tie the two ends in a knot, one each side of the cord on the outside. THEO. PRESSER CO., Pub's., Phila., Pa. MOZART The Story of A Little Boy and His Sister Who Gave Concerts This Book was made by ................................................................ Philadelphia _Theodore Presser Co._ 1712 Chestnut Str. COPYRIGHT, 1915, BY THEODORE PRESSER CO. Printed in U. S. A. [Illustration] ................................................................ Born ................................................................ Died ................................................................ MOZART The composer whom we call WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART was called Wolferl when he was a little boy. He had a sister, MARIA ANNA, who was called NANNERL. Nannerl was five years older than her brother. She had lessons from her father on a kind of piano called a harpsichord. Here is a picture of one. [Illustration: MOZART'S HARPSICHORD.] When Wolferl was three years old he used to listen to Nannerl's playing. He always watched and listened when Papa Mozart gave her a harpsichord lesson. Little as he was, he would often go to the harpsichord and try to pick out tunes with his chubby fingers. His father noticed that Wolferl could remember quite a little of the music that Nannerl was practising. And here is a picture of Wolferl trying to reach the keys so as to play the melody of his sister's lesson. [Illustration: THE INFANT MOZART AT THE PIANO.] When Wolferl was four years old he began to take lessons. While he practised no one ever spoke to him because he was so serious about it. If other children came to play with Nannerl he would make music for their games and marching; playing in strict time all the while. Here is Nannerl's picture when she grew up to be a young lady. [Illustration: MOZART'S SISTER.] Father Mozart loved both of his children deeply and often played with them. The violin was the instrument he liked best and little Mozart had daily lessons in his home. Here we see him playing while his sister sings. [Illustration: A MOZART FAMILY TRIO.] In this picture we see Papa Mozart, who was a very fine player on the violin. Wolferl and Nannerl are playing the piano. [Illustration: MOZART PLAYING WITH HIS FATHER AND SISTER.] When Wolferl was nearly six his father took him and Nannerl on a concert tour. Everybody wanted to hear them play and they gave many concerts. Wolferl spent all his boyhood with his music. He went to many places to play, even as far from Salzburg, in Austria (where he was born), as to Paris and London. Everywhere he went people were happy to see him and his sister and to hear them play. And they, too, were happy to play because they loved the music so much. When they reached Vienna they played for the Emperor and Empress. When Wolferl was presented to the Empress he jumped up into her lap and kissed her. Wolferl was always busy composing music. But he played games and had a good time just like any other boy. When he was busy with his music, however, he never let his thoughts go to anything else. But we must not go too fast, for we want to see how Wolferl is growing up. Here is his picture when he was five years old and beside it another when he was eight years old. Do you see his wig and sword? [Illustration: MOZART AT FIVE.] [Illustration: MOZART AT EIGHT.] Everybody in Paris wanted to hear Wolferl play when they knew that he had come, so they asked him to read at sight; to play the bass part to a melody and to accompany a song without seeing the music. People also took great delight in asking him to play on the harpsichord with a cloth stretched over the keyboard so that he could not see the keys. They all went to London to play for the King. The King wanted to see for himself how skilful little Mozart was, so he gave him pieces by Bach and Handel to play at sight. Mozart read them off at once. Here is a fine picture of the Mozart children when they played for the King and the Queen. [Illustration: MOZART AT THE COURT OF THE EMPEROR.] It must have been very fine for a little boy of seven to play for kings and queens. But Wolferl was not spoiled by it all. He was just a happy hearted boy all the time. He always made it a rule to put his mind on what he was doing and do it the very best he knew how. It is just as good a rule now as it was when he was alive. It is time now that we learned the birthday of Mozart. If we think of it every year on the 27th of January, it will be easy to remember it. In what year was he born? Here is another picture of Mozart in 1766. How old was he then? (Beethoven was born four years afterward.) [Illustration: MOZART IN 1766.] When anyone is always busy at one thing he soon gets a lot done. As Wolferl grew and kept on writing music all the time he made a great many pieces. Some were short like a song, others were long like an opera. He wrote for the piano, the violin and the voice. And he composed operas, symphonies and ever so many other kinds of music. Mozart liked to be alone when he was working upon his compositions. He used to go to a little house on the edge of Vienna and lock himself in. The people of the city of Salzburg, in Austria, took this house long after Mozart's death and moved it to a park where all may go to see it, just as we in America go to see the houses of William Penn, Lincoln and Washington. [Illustration: WHERE MOZART COMPOSED.] Can you remember, without turning back, the year in which Mozart was born? Some other great musicians were alive at that time. And during his lifetime some were born who became great men. In the year when Mozart was born both Handel and Haydn were living. And Haydn lived eighteen years after Mozart's death. You can remember it by these lines: |1732 The years of Haydn's life 1809| ------------------------------------------------------ |1756 The years of Mozart's life 1791| -------------------------------------- When Mozart was fourteen years old Beethoven was born. Mozart knew him and he knew Papa Haydn also, and they were very good friends. In our own country there lived in Mozart's lifetime Benjamin Franklin and three Presidents of the United States--George Washington, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. I wonder if Washington ever heard of Mozart? Perhaps we can best keep all these names together by looking at this page now and again. 1706 Benjamin Franklin was born. 1732 Washington and Haydn were born. 1736 Patrick Henry was born. 1743 Thomas Jefferson was born. 1750 Bach died. 1756 WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART was born. 1759 Handel died 1770 Beethoven was born. 1771 Walter Scott was born. 1790 Franklin died. 1791 Mozart died. 1809 Joseph Haydn died. Isn't it fine to think of Mozart writing so much music, so many operas, symphonies and sonatas; traveling so much, meeting so many people and never being spoiled by it all. While he wrote many very great pieces of music, here is something he composed when he was five years old. He made up the pieces at the piano and his father wrote them down note for note in a little copy book. [Illustration] FACTS ABOUT MOZART. Read these facts about Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and try to write his story out of them, using your own words. When your story is finished, ask your mother or your teacher to read it. When you have made it, copy it on pages 14, 15 and 16. 1. Full name: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. 2. Born Jan. 27, 1756; died Dec. 5, 1791. 3. The sister's name was Maria Anna. 4. Maria Anna was five years older than Wolfgang. 5. The pet names of the children were Wolferl and Nannerl. 6. Little Mozart loved to hear his sister play. 7. He started to study when he was four. 8. Mozart went on a concert tour with his sister when he was six years old. 9. When he was a child he visited many great cities, among them Paris, London and Vienna. 10. Handel and Haydn were living when Mozart was born. 11. Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson and Walter Scott were all alive during the time of Mozart. 12. Mozart was five years old when he wrote his first piece. SOME QUESTIONS. 1. In what country was Mozart born? 2. In what city was Mozart born? 3. Where did Mozart play before the Emperor and the Empress? 4. Did Mozart play games and have a good time like other boys? 5. Why did people ask Mozart to play upon the harpsichord with a cloth stretched over the keys? 6. Whose compositions did the King of England ask Mozart to play? 7. What great American patriot was born in the same year as Haydn? 8. Which lived the longer life, Haydn or Mozart? 9. Have you ever heard a piece by Mozart? 10. Was Mozart spoiled by meeting many people? THE STORY OF MOZART Written by..................................... On (date)...................................... Write a short story about Mozart and his sister and copy it on these pages. [Illustration: THE BOY MOZART PLAYING.] Transcriber's Notes Text in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_) On page 3, Mozart's sister's name was changed to "MARIA". 
46230	----	[Transcriber's Note: Bold text is surrounded by =equal signs= and italic text is surrounded by _underscores_.] Our Little Austrian Cousin THE Little Cousin Series (TRADE MARK) Each volume illustrated with six or more full page plates in tint. Cloth, 12mo, with decorative cover per volume, 60 cents LIST OF TITLES BY MARY HAZELTON WADE, MARY F. NIXON-ROULET, BLANCHE MCMANUS, CLARA V. WINLOW, FLORENCE E. MENDEL AND OTHERS =Our Little African Cousin= =Our Little Alaskan Cousin= =Our Little Arabian Cousin= =Our Little Argentine Cousin= =Our Little Armenian Cousin= =Our Little Australian Cousin= =Our Little Austrian Cousin= =Our Little Belgian Cousin= =Our Little Bohemian Cousin= =Our Little Brazilian Cousin= =Our Little Bulgarian Cousin= =Our Little Canadian Cousin= =Our Little Chinese Cousin= =Our Little Cuban Cousin= =Our Little Danish Cousin= =Our Little Dutch Cousin= =Our Little Egyptian Cousin= =Our Little English Cousin= =Our Little Eskimo Cousin= =Our Little French Cousin= =Our Little German Cousin= =Our Little Grecian Cousin= =Our Little Hawaiian Cousin= =Our Little Hindu Cousin= =Our Little Hungarian Cousin= =Our Little Indian Cousin= =Our Little Irish Cousin= =Our Little Italian Cousin= =Our Little Japanese Cousin= =Our Little Jewish Cousin= =Our Little Korean Cousin= =Our Little Malayan (Brown) Cousin= =Our Little Mexican Cousin= =Our Little Norwegian Cousin= =Our Little Panama Cousin= =Our Little Persian Cousin= =Our Little Philippine Cousin= =Our Little Polish Cousin= =Our Little Porto Rican Cousin= =Our Little Portuguese Cousin= =Our Little Russian Cousin= =Our Little Scotch Cousin= =Our Little Servian Cousin= =Our Little Siamese Cousin= =Our Little Spanish Cousin= =Our Little Swedish Cousin= =Our Little Swiss Cousin= =Our Little Turkish Cousin= L. C. PAGE & COMPANY 53 Beacon Street, Boston, Mass. [Illustration: "FERDINAND AND LEOPOLD ... WOULD HELP WITH THE CATTLE." (_See page 100._)] OUR LITTLE AUSTRIAN COUSIN By Florence E. Mendel Author of "Our Little Polish Cousin," etc. Illustrated by Diantha Horne Marlowe [Illustration: SPE LABOR LEVIS] Boston L. C. Page & Company _MDCCCCXIII_ _Copyright, 1913_, BY L. C. PAGE & COMPANY (INCORPORATED) _All rights reserved_ First Impression, June, 1913 THE COLONIAL PRESS C. H. SIMONDS & CO., BOSTON, U. S. A. PREFACE IN this volume I have endeavored to give my young readers a clearer and a more intimate knowledge than is usually possessed of the vast territory known as the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which is a collection of provinces united under one ruler, and which is, strange to say, the only country of importance in the world that has not a distinctive language of its own, since the various races--German, Slav, Magyar and others--each speak their own tongue. The northeastern provinces, Galicia and Bukowina, have not been considered in this book, owing to the fact that they are included in OUR LITTLE POLISH COUSIN; and, for a similar reason, Hungary and Bohemia have been omitted, as each is the subject of an earlier volume in THE LITTLE COUSIN SERIES. The book consequently is chiefly devoted to Austria proper and Tyrol, but the other provinces, including Dalmatia and Bosnia, are not neglected. The publication of =Our Little Austrian Cousin= is most timely, since the Balkan War, now drawing to a close, has occupied the attention of the world. The Balkan States lie just to the south of the Austrian Empire, and Austria has taken a leading part in defining the terms of peace which the Great Powers of Europe insist shall be granted by the Balkan allies to the defeated Turks. =Our Little Austrian Cousin= can well be read in connection with OUR LITTLE BULGARIAN COUSIN and OUR LITTLE SERVIAN COUSIN, describing two of the principal Balkan States, which volumes have just been added to THE LITTLE COUSIN SERIES. Among others, I am especially indebted to Fr. H. E. Palmer, for much information concerning country customs in Upper Austria. Contents CHAPTER PAGE I. A VISIT TO OLD VIENNA 1 II. DER STOCK IM EISEN 24 III. THE FARM IN UPPER AUSTRIA 41 IV. THE PEASANTS' DANCE 65 V. SOME TYROLESE LEGENDS 75 VI. MORE LEGENDS 86 VII. A NIGHT WITH THE SENNER 100 VIII. THROUGH THE TYROLESE MOUNTAINS 109 IX. THE HABICHT-BURG RAVENS 124 X. THROUGH DALMATIA AND THE BORDER-LANDS 135 XI. VIENNA 154 List of Illustrations PAGE "FERDINAND AND LEOPOLD ... WOULD HELP WITH THE CATTLE" (_See page 100_) _Frontispiece_ ST. STEPHAN'S CHURCH 12 EMPEROR FRANZ-JOSEPH 22 "'CHEER UP, MY LAD,' SAID THE STRANGER" 29 "IT TOWERED HIGH ABOVE HER HEAD" 72 STATUE OF ANDREAS HOFER, NEAR INNSBRUCK 83 "TRAMP THUS, IN VAGABOND FASHION, OVER THE MOUNTAINS!" 111 THE ROSENGARTEN 121 Our Little Austrian Cousin CHAPTER I A VISIT TO OLD VIENNA "HURRAH!" shouted Ferdinand, as he burst into the living-room, just as his mother was having afternoon coffee. "And what makes my son so joyful?" asked Frau Müller, as she looked up at the rosy cheeks of her young son. "Hurrah, mother! Don't you know? This is the end of school." "So it is," replied the mother. "But I had other things in my head." "And, do you know," the child continued, as he drew up to the table where the hot coffee emitted refreshing odors, "you haven't told me yet where we are to go." "No, Ferdinand, we've wanted to surprise you. But help yourself to the cakes," and the mother placed a heaping dish of fancy kuchen before the lad. Ferdinand did not require a second invitation; like all normal boys, he was always hungry; but I doubt very much if he knew what real American-boy-hunger was, because the Austrian eats more frequently than we, having at least five meals a day, three of which are composed of coffee and delicious cakes, so that one seldom has time to become ravenous. "But, mother," persisted the child, his mouth half filled with kuchen, "I _wish_ I knew. Tell me when we start; will you tell me that?" "Yes," answered his mother, smiling. "To-day is Wednesday; Saturday morning we shall leave." "Oh, I just can't wait! I _wish_ I knew." "Perhaps father will tell you when he comes," suggested the mother. "Do you think you could possibly wait that long?" "I don't believe I can," answered the lad, frankly; "but I suppose I shall have to." That evening, when Herr Müller returned from his shop, Ferdinand plied him with questions in an effort to win from him, if possible, the long-withheld secret. "Well, son, there's no use trying to keep you in the dark any longer. Where do you guess we are going?" "To see Cousin Leopold in Tyrol." "Well, that's a very good guess, and not all wrong, either; but guess again." "Oh, I can't. It must be splendid, if it's better than visiting Cousin Leopold." "Well, it _is_ better," continued Herr Müller; "for not only are we going to pass a few days with your Tyrolese relations, but we are going to a farm." The boy's face fell visibly. "To a farm!" he exclaimed. "Why, Uncle Hofer has a splendid farm in Tyrol; that won't be very new to me, then." "It won't!" ejaculated his father, a trifle amused. "You wait and see, my boy. This is not to be a tiny farm of a few acres, creeping up the mountain on one side and jumping off into a ravine on the other. We sha'n't have to tie _this_ farm to boulders to keep it from slipping away from us." And Herr Müller chuckled. "Then it isn't in the mountains?" "No, it isn't in the mountains; that is, not in any mountains that are like the Tyrolese mountains. But there will be acres and acres of this farm, and you will be miles away from any one. You will see corn growing, too; you've never seen that in Tyrol, my son." "No," answered the child. After a few moments' silence, he added: "Will there be any young folks, father?" "Don't let that trouble you, Ferdinand; where there's an Austrian farm there are many children." "Hurrah for the farm, then!" shouted Ferdinand, much to the astonishment and amusement of his parents, who were unused to such impulsive outbursts. But Ferdinand Müller was a typical boy, even though he had been reared in the heart of the city of Vienna, where the apartment houses stand shoulder to shoulder, and back to back, with no room for play-yards or gardens, even; the outside windows serving the latter duty, while the school building on week-days, and the public parks on holidays, serve the former. Austrian children are never allowed to play on the street; but, as if to make up to their children for the loss of play-space, the Austrian parents take them, upon every available occasion, to the splendid parks where are provided all sorts of amusements and refreshments at a modest sum. "Father," asked the lad, after a few moments' silence, during which he had sat thinking quietly, "when shall we start?" "Saturday morning, my son. I believe your mother has everything in readiness, _nicht war, meine liebe Frau_?" he asked, as he glanced over his paper at his wife. "Oh, mother, _do_ say you are ready," pleaded the child, who, for all his twelve years, and his finely developed body, was yet a boy, and impulsive. "Yes, I'm all ready," she replied. And, for the rest of the evening, silence descended upon the boy, his small brain being filled with visions of the coming pleasure. When Herr Müller returned to his home the following evening, he found a letter, postmarked "Linz," awaiting him. "Hello," he said, half aloud, "here's word from our friend Herr Runkel. Wonder if there's anything happened to upset our plans?" "Oh, father, please don't say it," pleaded the boy; "I shall be so disappointed." "Well, cheer up," replied his father, "there's better news than you thought for. We shall leave on Saturday morning as planned; but to-morrow Herr Runkel's sister from the convent will come to us. He asks us to take charge of her, as the Sisters find it very inconvenient this year to send an escort with her; and, as we are coming up in a day or two, perhaps we would not mind the extra trouble." "Oh, father, won't it be fine! How old is she?" "I believe about your age." Friday morning Frau Müller and Ferdinand jumped into a fiaker and drove to the railroad station to meet Teresa Runkel. She was a fine-looking child, with round, rosy cheeks; quite tall, with the fair complexion, sunny hair, and soft, Austrian blue eyes that makes the women of that land famed for their beauty. She was overjoyed at this unexpected pleasure of spending a day or two in the city of Vienna, which she had never seen, although she had passed through several times on her way to and from the convent. She enjoyed the brisk drive to the tall apartment house in the Schwanengasse, and she fairly bubbled with chatter. "After luncheon, my dear," observed Frau Müller, "we shall have Herr Müller take you about our city; for Vienna is vastly different from Linz." Herr Müller joined the party at luncheon at eleven o'clock, which was really the breakfast hour, because Austrian families take only coffee and cakes or rolls in the early morning, eating their hearty breakfast toward the middle of the day, after which they rest for an hour or two, before beginning their afternoon duties. At two o'clock the three were ready for the walk, for Frau Müller was not to accompany them. Joseph, the portier, an important personage in Viennese life, nodded "A-b-e-n-d" to them, as they passed out the front door of the building, over which he presided as a sort of turnkey. No one may pass in or out without encountering the wary eye of Joseph, who must answer to the police for the inmates of the building, as also for the visitors. And this is a curious custom, not only in Vienna, but other European cities, that immediately upon one's arrival at an hotel, or even a private home, the police are notified, unawares to the visitor, of his movements and his object in being in the city, which reduces chances of crime to a minimum; burglary being almost unknown, picking pockets on the open streets taking its place in most part. "Of course you know, children," said Herr Müller, as they passed along the broad Kärtnerstrasse, where are the finest shops of Vienna, "you've been taught in school the history of our city, so I need not tell you that." "Oh, but please do, father," said Ferdinand. "Teresa may not know it as well as I do,"--he hesitated, for he noticed the hurt look in the girl's eyes, and added--"although she may know a lot more about other things." "Well," began the father, "away back in the times before Christ, a body of rough men came from the northern part of France and the surrounding countries. They were called Celts. They were constantly roving; and so it chanced they came to this very spot where we now are, and founded a village which they called Vindobona. But about fourteen years after Christ, the Romans worked their way northward; they saw the village of the Celts and captured it. They built a great wall about it, placed a moat outside of these fortifications and settled down to retain their conquest. They built a forum, which was a public square where all the business of the city was transacted; and, on one side, they placed their camp or praetorium. To-day, we call the Roman forum the Hohermarkt, just here where we stand now," continued Herr Müller, "and here, where the Greek banker Sina has built this fine palace, stood the Roman praetorium; while here, you see the street is named for Marcus Aurelius, the Roman emperor who was born in Spain and died in this city so many hundreds of years ago." "I've heard that ever so many times, father," said Ferdinand, "but I never realized it before; somehow it seems as if I could almost see the Celts driven out and the great wall and moat of the Romans." Meanwhile they had walked on, down the Bauermarkt and reached the St. Stephanienplatz, with St. Stephan's Church in the middle. "There," said Herr Müller, pointing to the beautiful edifice, "is the oldest monument we have in Vienna, begun in 1144. Duke Heinrich Jasomirgott founded it." [Illustration: ST. STEPHAN'S CHURCH.] "Oh, he was our first duke," spoke up Teresa, who also wished to prove that she knew _her_ Austrian history as well as her friend. "Yes, Teresa," answered Herr Müller. "But it's a long jump from the Romans to Duke Heinrich. Several hundred years after the expulsion of the Celts from Vindobona, Charlemagne, the undaunted conqueror of the age, absorbed it into the German Empire; he distinguished it from the rest of the German Empire by giving it the name of the Eastmark or border of the empire (Oesterreich), hence Austria. He placed a lord or margrave over it; and when Conrad III of Germany became emperor, he appointed Heinrich Jasomirgott ruler over the Eastmark, giving him, at the same time, the adjoining territory of Bavaria. But he had no right to dispose of these Bavarian lands as he chose, just because he was angry with the Bavarians; and when his son, Frederick Redbeard (Barbarossa) came to the throne, he gave it back to the Bavarians. But Frederick Redbeard was a politic ruler; he did not wish to offend any of his subjects; in order to make up to Henry Jasomirgott for the loss of Bavaria, he raised him to the rank of duke, and thus Oesterreich or the Eastmark became a duchy. This was about 1100; then, being such an important personage, Duke Heinrich determined to make his home in Vienna. He built himself a strong castle, surrounded it with a high stone wall and a moat, as was the custom at that time, and included within it the confines of the city, so that he and his people might not be molested by neighboring princes. "Here," continued Herr Müller, as they passed to the end of the Platz, "is the Graben. To-day it is our most fashionable shopping district; but in the time of Duke Heinrich it was a moat filled with water; and here, where these rows of modern houses stand, were the ancient walls which protected the city." "Isn't it great!" cried Teresa, who, girl though she was, could appreciate the ancient struggles of her ancestors for liberty and defence. "Oh, father, there is Der Stock im Eisen!" said Ferdinand. "Tell Teresa about that, please; she doesn't know." "Der Stock im Eisen?" repeated Teresa. "What is it?" "That old tree with the iron hoop around it, at the corner of the Graben," replied her companion. "We will reserve that tale for the evening," answered Herr Müller; "it is getting toward coffee hour, and we want to visit many places yet." As he spoke, they walked slowly along the Graben, which means Moat in German, and, at the end of several minutes, they reached a large open square called Platz am Hof. "Here is what remains of the palace of the House of Babenberg, which Duke Heinrich built," said Herr Müller; "and here before it you see the Tiefe-graben, or deep moat, which amply protected the stronghold from attack. And there," he continued, moving as he spoke toward the building, "stands the Schottenhof." "The Schottenhof?" exclaimed Teresa, astonished. "Why is it called a Scottish palace in Austria?" "Because it was originally built and occupied by some monks from Scotland in the year 1158, whom Duke Heinrich had asked to come and instruct the citizens, not only in religion, but in the educational arts, there being no schools in those days; all the teaching was done by the Holy Fathers. But later on, the Scottish monks were dispossessed by a German order of monks; yet the Hof still bears the name of its founders. And even to-day the Church owns all this most valuable property, right in the very heart of our city, which was given to them so many years ago." "That's the first time I thought about the Hof being Scottish," admitted Ferdinand, between whom and Teresa there was much rivalry and jealousy as to the amount of knowledge possessed by each; but the lad was generous enough to admit his ignorance, because he did not wish to assume too superior airs before his guest. "Here runs the tiny lane, the Schotten-gasse, which separates the Schottenhof from the smaller Molkerhof just across the land; and here are the ancient bastions which protected them; to-day, you notice, these same names are retained; the bastions are no longer required, but history preserves their memory in preserving their names, the Schotten-bastei and the Molker-bastei, now streets of the city of Vienna instead of bastions. But we have had quite enough of history," continued Herr Müller, "I am quite certain our little convent friend is tired." "Oh, no indeed," spoke up Teresa. "At the convent we take long walks every day; and in the country at Linz, we do much walking, too; it does not tire me at all." "But walking about city streets is quite different from country lanes, my girl," observed Herr Müller. "Yes, but we do not have the interesting places to visit, nor the tales to hear, in the lanes," wisely answered the child. "Well, then, if you are quite certain you are not too tired, we will walk home. We will go by the way of the Ring, here behind the Schottenhof; and we will walk over the old walls, which were erected in later years as the original city of Duke Heinrich grew. Of course, we have no use for these fortifications in these days, so we have changed them into a magnificent boulevard." No one, not knowing the original use of the Ring, would ever have suspected the mission it had fulfilled; so broad and handsome was the avenue encircling what is called the Inner-Stadt (Inner City), planted with magnificent trees, and bubbling over with life, color and gayety. Teresa would like to have stopped at every fine building and park, but Herr Müller promised to ask her brother to allow her a few days with them in Vienna before returning to the convent in the fall, that she might see all there was not time now to show her. For the present must suffice a cursory glance at the Burghof or imperial residence, the royal theatre, the Hofgarten and the Volksgarten, gay with the scarlet skirts and gold cloth caps of hundreds of nurse-maids watching over their youthful cares. "Wouldn't it be splendid to be an emperor," remarked Teresa to her companion, "and live in such a fine palace?" "Oh, that isn't much of a palace," remarked Ferdinand, somewhat contemptuously, "that's just like a prison to me; you ought to see Schönbrunn, the summer home of the Emperor." "Oh, I've been to Schönbrunn," returned the girl with disdain in her voice. "The Sisters took us all there once; they showed us the room where the Duke of Reichstadt died, and where his father, Napoleon, lived when he took Vienna." "Well, I'll bet you haven't seen the celebration on Maundy Thursday, when the Emperor sends his twenty-four gorgeous gala coaches with their magnificent horses and mounted escorts in uniform to bring the four and twenty poor men and women to his palace, that he might humble himself to wash their feet?" "No, I haven't seen that," admitted Teresa. "Tell me about it. Have _you_ seen it?" "I've heard father tell about it a number of times," continued the lad. "The Emperor sends his wonderful holiday coaches with the escorts in gorgeous uniforms; they bring the poor men and women to the palace and set a splendid banquet before them; then they go to the royal chapel and hear Mass, at which the Emperor and the royal family, and the entire Court are present; after that, the poor folks are led to the banquet hall and here they are served from silver platters which the Emperor and his royal family present to them. After that, the Emperor kneels before them and wipes their feet with a wet cloth." "He does that himself?" asked Teresa, who had listened spellbound, that her beloved emperor should conduct such a ceremony. "Indeed he does! And, furthermore," added the boy, with ineffable pride, "he is the only monarch, so father tells me, who preserves the ancient custom. But that isn't all; the Emperor sends these astonished poor people home again in the gorgeous coaches; he gives them each a purse in which is about fifteen dollars; he sends a great basket filled with the remains of the banquet which they have left untouched, together with a bottle of wine and a fine bouquet of flowers;--and, what do you think, Teresa?" "I'm sure I couldn't guess," admitted the child. "He gives them the silver platters from which he served them." "What a splendid emperor!" cried Teresa. Then she added, "I've seen the Emperor." "Oh, that's nothing," most ungallantly replied the boy. "Franz-Joseph walks about our streets like Haroun-al-Raschid used to in the Arabian Nights. _Any_ one can see the Emperor; he allows even the poorest to come and see him in his palace every week; and he talks to them just as if he was a plain, ordinary man and not an emperor at all." [Illustration: EMPEROR FRANZ-JOSEPH.] "Well, I've had him speak to me," answered Teresa. "At the convent he praised my work." There was a dead silence. Herr Müller walked along, not a muscle in his face betraying the fact that he had overheard this juvenile conversation, for fear of interrupting a most entertaining dialogue. "Has he ever spoken _directly_ to you?" demanded the girl, seeing that Ferdinand did not reply. "No." Again a dead silence. "The Emperor needs our love and sympathy," said Herr Müller, after waiting in vain for the children to renew their talk; "his beloved empress Elizabeth has been taken from him by an assassin's hand; his favorite brother Maximilian went to his doom in the City of Mexico, the victim of the ambition of a Napoleon; even his heir, the crown-prince is dead; and when our beloved king shall be no more, the very name of Habsburg will have passed away." "He is a very kind man," replied Teresa. "He comes often to the convent; and he makes us feel that he is not an emperor but one of us." Herr Müller touched his hat in respect. "Long live our beloved emperor, our most sympathetic friend," he said. By this time they had gained the entrance of their home; Joseph opened the public door to admit them to the corridor, and they ascended to the third floor to the apartment of Herr Müller. CHAPTER II DER STOCK IM EISEN THAT evening, after a hearty dinner, the children called for the story of Der Stock im Eisen. And so Herr Müller began: "Many hundreds of years ago, in the old square known as the Horsemarket, lived Vienna's most skilful master-locksmith, Herr Erhanrd Marbacher. Next door to him, stood a baker-shop owned by the Widow Mux. The widow and Herr Marbacher were good neighbors, and were fond of chatting together outside the doors of their homes, as the evening came on; Herr Marbacher smoking his long, quaintly-painted pipe, and the Widow Mux relating the sprightly anecdotes of the day. "But, one evening, Herr Marbacher found the widow in great distress; as she usually wore a merry smile upon her jolly face this change in temperament greatly affected the spirits of the locksmith, and he demanded the cause of her unhappiness. With tears in her eyes, the widow confided to her neighbor the dreadful fact that her younger son, Martin, a worthless, idle fellow, had refused to do any work about the shop, and had even used harsh words. "'Sometimes it happens,' suggested the master-locksmith, 'that a lad does not take to his forced employment; it may be that Martin is not cut out for a baker; let me have a hand with him; perhaps he will make a first-rate locksmith.' "'A locksmith!' exclaimed the widow in astonishment. 'How can he become a locksmith, with its attendant hard work, when he will not even run errands for the baker-shop! No, Herr Marbacher, you are very kind to suggest it, and try to help me out of my trouble, but Martin would never consent to become a locksmith's apprentice. He is downright lazy.' "'Well, you might let me have a trial with him,' said the locksmith; 'I am loved by all my workmen, yet they fear me, too; they do good work under my direction, and I am proud of my apprentices. Martin, I am certain, would also obey me.' "'Well, have your way, good neighbor,' replied the widow, 'I can only hope for the best.' "Evidently Herr Marbacher knew human nature better than the widow, for Martin was delighted with the prospect of becoming an apprentice-locksmith, with the hope of earning the degree of master-locksmith, like Herr Marbacher, and he worked hard and long to please his master. His mother was overjoyed at the change in the lad, and Herr Marbacher himself was very well pleased. "Now, it chanced that some little time after Martin's apprenticeship, Herr Marbacher handed him a tin pail and directed him to a certain spot on the edge of the forest, without the city walls, where he should gather clay with which to mould a certain form, for which he had had an order. As the commission was a particular one, and somewhat out of the ordinary, it required a peculiar sort of clay which was only to be found in this particular spot. "With light heart, and whistling a merry tune, Martin, swinging his tin pail, set out upon his errand. The day was perfect; Spring was just beginning; the trees were clothed in their fresh greenness, light clouds flitted across a marvelously blue sky, the birds twittered noisily in the treetops and Martin caught the Spring fever; he fairly bounded over the green fields, and reached the forest in a wonderfully short time. "Having filled his pail, he started homewards. But, instead of keeping to the path by which he had come, he crossed through the meadows, his heart as light as ever. Suddenly he espied through the trees figures of men or boys; then voices came to his ears; he stopped and listened. Boy-like, he was unable to resist the temptation--the lure of the Spring--so he changed his course and made toward the bowlers, his old-time cronies, who were engaged in their old-time sport. Slower moved his feet,--his conscience prompted him in vain--he forgot the admonition of his master not to loiter on the way, for fear the city gates would be shut at the ringing of the curfew; he forgot all about the time of day, and that it was now well on toward evening. The fever of the Spring had gotten into his veins; Martin paused, set down his bucket of clay, and, picking up a bowl, joined in the sport of his comrades. [Illustration: "'CHEER UP, MY LAD,' SAID THE STRANGER."] "Suddenly the curfew bell reached his ears; he recalled his errand, the warning of his master, and his heart stopped still in fright. He dropped the bowl in his hands, grasped his bucket of clay, and ran with beating heart toward the city gate, but he was too late; the gate was closed and the gate-keeper either would not or could not hear his call. "Fear now seized Martin, in very truth. The woods about the city were infested with robbers and dangerous men; there was no way in which to protect himself; yet he had nothing about him which any one would care to have, and that thought gave him some comfort. As he was planning how he might get within the walls, a tall man dressed in scarlet feathered cap and a long black velvet cloak upon his shoulders, stood before him. "'Cheer up, my lad,' said the stranger. 'What is the use of crying?' "'But I am locked out for the night,' replied Martin. "'That is nothing to fret about,' answered the tall man. 'Here is some gold. Take it, it will open the gate for you.' "'Oh, thank you,' said Martin, overjoyed. Then he hesitated. 'But I shall never be able to repay you,' he added. 'I have never seen so much gold.' "'Oh, do not fret yourself about repaying me,' answered the stranger. 'I have plenty of gold, and do not need the little I have given you. Still, if you are really anxious to repay me, you might give me your soul when you have finished with it.' "'My soul?' cried the boy aghast. 'I can't give it to you. One cannot sell his soul?' "'Oh, yes,' replied the malicious stranger, smiling grimly, 'many people do sell their souls; but you need not give it me until you are dead.' "'Much good would it do you then,' replied Martin; 'I cannot see what you would want with it after I am dead?' "'That is the bargain,' retorted the tall man. And he made as if to move away and leave Martin to his fate. "'Oh, very well,' said Martin, fearing to throw away this chance for deliverance. 'I will take your gold, and you may have my soul when I have finished with it; the bargain is made.' "'And I shall be lenient with you,' continued the stranger. 'I will give you a chance to redeem your soul.' "'You will?' exclaimed Martin in delight. 'And how?' "'Only this, if you forget to attend divine service even once, during all the rest of your days, then shall I claim my bargain. Now, am I not fair?' "Martin was very glad to be released, even with this proviso, and laughed as he moved away, for Martin had been brought up religiously by a pious mother, and he knew he should not forget his Sabbath duty. "As the stranger had said, the gold gained entrance for Martin Mux through the closed city gate, and he straightway made his way to his room and to bed before his master should discover his absence. * * * * * "Some days later, as the apprentices were hard at work in the shop under the scrutinizing eye of Herr Marbacher, a tall man in a black velvet cloak and a red plumed cap, stood in the doorway. Martin recognized his erstwhile friend and feared he knew not what. But the stranger had come to order an iron hoop with padlock so intricate that it could not be unlocked. "Herr Marbacher hesitated; the order was certainly unusual, and even he, the master-locksmith of Vienna, was uncertain whether he could accomplish such a commission. But, seeing Marbacher's hesitation, the stranger cast his glance about the shop full of young apprentices, and fixing his regard upon Martin, he said, in a loud voice: "'Among all these workmen, is there not one who can make the lock?' "Whether impelled by fear, or feeling that having assisted him once, the devil would assist him yet a second time, Martin spoke out, "'I will do it.' "All eyes turned toward the young apprentice. "'You?' cried Marbacher, and he laughed very loud and very long, so excellent did he consider the joke. 'You? You are my very youngest apprentice.' "'Let him try,' suggested the stranger warily, fearing the master would deny Martin the privilege. 'Who knows what he may be able to accomplish?' "And so it was agreed. "Martin worked all that day until the evening shadows compelled him to quit his work. He racked his brain; he thought and thought; yet no lock could he imagine which could not be unlocked. He carried his paper and pencil to his room with him, thinking that in the stillness of the night he might think of some design. But, although he worked conscientiously, no ideas came to him, and he fell asleep. With visions of locks and bolts and bars in his head, it was no wonder that Martin dreamed of robbers' castles and dungeons and locks and bolts. He dreamed about a mighty robber in a fortress-castle; he was a prisoner there, he, Martin; but what his crime he did not know. He rushed toward the door to make his escape; it was locked; he tried to undo it, but in vain; then he looked about him, and the room seemed filled with padlocks, some small, some large, some handsomely wrought, some very simple; but among them he found one that looked like a huge spider. It interested him so much that he took out his pencil and mechanically reproduced it; then he felt himself sinking, sinking, down, down. With a start he awoke, he had tossed himself out of bed and lay sprawling upon the floor of his room. Rather piqued, Martin picked himself up and jumped into bed. But there upon his pillow lay a drawing. He examined it by the feeble rays of the candle, which was still burning; it was the design of the spider lock he had seen in the robber's castle in his dream. "Impatient for the morning, Martin was at his bench early working upon the design of the lock; and when the end of the sixth day arrived, the time appointed by the stranger for the delivery of the work, Martin had the lock completed. Evidently it proved entirely satisfactory to the stranger, for he paid Marbacher the money agreed upon, and left the shop. "At the corner of the square he stopped before the larch-tree, bound the iron hoop about the tree, locked it, put the key in his pocket and disappeared. * * * * * "Time passed. Martin, for some inexplicable reason, had left Vienna and gone to the city of Nuremburg where he continued in his profession. But, one day, he heard that the Burgomaster of Vienna had offered the title of master-locksmith to the one who would make a key which would unlock the iron hoop about the larch-tree. It was a small task for Martin to make a duplicate of the key he had once made, and with it in his pocket he travelled to Vienna and presented it to the Burgomaster. "It was a great holiday when the hoop was to be unbound. Dressed in robes of state, glistening all over with gold thread and medals, the Burgomaster and the City Fathers gathered in the Horsemarket, where stood the Stock im Eisen; the lock was unfastened and Martin was created a master-locksmith, much to the joy of his mother and to the overwhelming pride of his former master, Herr Marbacher. "But, although Martin Mux had now acquired fortune and fame, he was far from being happy. His bargain with the devil haunted him; day and night it was with him, for he feared Sunday morning might come and he would forget to attend Mass. And then he would be irretrievably lost. What would he not give to be able to recall his bargain. He enjoyed no peace of mind; at his bench he thought ever of the dreaded day when he must pay; he could no longer work; he must not think; he joined his old-time idle companions; hour after hour was spent in gambling; night after night he frittered his wealth away; the more he lost the more desperate he became; poor Martin Mux was paying dearly for his game of bowls and his disobedience to his master. "One Saturday evening Martin joined his comrades quite early, but luck had deserted him; he lost and lost. One by one the other habitués of the place had gone until there was no one left but Martin and his few friends at the table with him. He paid no heed to time; all he thought of was to regain some of his lost money. Suddenly, as had happened some years before, out on the bowling green, Martin heard the deep tones of a bell. But this was not the curfew; it was the church bell calling to Mass. "Martin looked up from his cards and saw the sun shining brightly through the curtained windows. His heart stood still with fright, for his bargain flashed through his mind; he threw down the cards and fled into the street, like a mad man. "On and on he ran. He brushed past a tall man, but heeding him not, Martin rushed on. "'Hurry, my friend,' called out the stranger, whom he had jostled. 'Hurry, the church bell has rung; the bargain is paid.' "A malicious laugh rang in Martin's ear. He turned and saw the evil-eyed stranger, him of the black velvet cloak and red-plumed cap. "Mad with fear, Martin bounded up the church steps. He entered the house of worship; but the stranger had said truly it was too late; the bargain was due for the service was ending. Martin Mux turned to leave the church, but at the threshold he fell dead; the stranger had claimed his soul. "Since that time it has been the custom for every locksmith apprentice, whether he comes into Vienna to seek his fortunes, or whether he goes out from Vienna to other parts, to drive a nail into the stump of the larch-tree and offer up a prayer for the peace of Martin Mux's soul. That is why the old tree is so studded with nails." "What a dreadful bargain for Martin to make!" said Teresa fearfully. "How could he have given his soul away?" "He chose the easier way out of a small difficulty, and he paid dearly for it," replied Herr Müller. "It is not always the easiest way which is the wisest, after all." CHAPTER III THE FARM IN UPPER AUSTRIA THE following morning the Müller family and Teresa Runkel boarded the boat in the Canal which should take them up current to Linz. It was most exciting for Ferdinand, who had never been on the Danube before, but to Teresa it was quite usual, for she always made the journey to and from her home by way of the river. There was a great deal of excitement upon the quay--the fish boats had come in with their supply for the day, and fishermen were shouting themselves hoarse in their endeavors to over-shout their competitors. The children seated themselves in the bow of the boat that they might miss nothing of the scenery which is so delightful near Vienna, with its green banks, its thick forests and its distant mountains. "Do you know what that grim castle is, over there on the left?" asked Herr Müller. "Oh, yes," replied Teresa quickly. "That is the Castle of Griefenstein." "Then you know its history?" asked Herr Müller. "Yes, indeed," answered the child. "Sometimes the Sister who takes me home tells me, and sometimes father; but doesn't Ferdinand know it?" "No," answered the boy. "I haven't been on the river before." As if it required some explanation for his seeming ignorance. "Then tell it to him, please," said Teresa, "for it is a splendid tale." "Long ages ago, this castle belonged to a lord who was, like all noblemen of that time, very fond of adventure. Whenever the least opportunity offered to follow his king, he would take up his sword and his shield and his coat-of-mail, and hie him off to the wars. "Now, the lord of the castle had a young and beautiful wife whose wonderful golden locks were a never-ending delight to him. Having a great deal of time upon her hands, and neighbors being few and far between, the lady of the castle passed her time in arranging her magnificent hair in all sorts of fashions, some very simple, while others were most intricate and effective. "It chanced that one day, after an absence of several months, the lord of the castle returned. Hastening to his wife's boudoir, he found her before her mirror dressing her hair in most bewitching fashion. "After greeting her, he remarked about her elaborate head-dress, and laughingly the young wife asked her husband how he liked it. "'It is much too handsome,' he replied, 'for a young woman whose husband is away to the wars. It is not well for a woman to be so handsome.' "And without further word, he seized the sword which hung at his side, removed it from its scabbard, and with one stroke cut off the beautiful golden locks of his young wife. But no sooner had he done so than he was angry with himself, for his display of temper. He rushed from the room to cool his anger, when, whom did he run into, in the corridor, but the castle chaplain. The poor young lord was so ashamed of himself for his ungovernable temper, that, with even less reason than before, he seized the frightened and astonished chaplain by the two shoulders, dragged him down the castle steps and threw him into the dungeon. "'Now,' said he, after bolting the door securely, 'pray, my good man, that the day may be hastened when the balustrade of my castle steps may become so worn by the hands of visitors that it may hold the hair of my wife, which I have cut off in my folly.' "There is nothing so unreasonable as a man in anger; I presume had the cook of the castle chanced to come in the way of milord's anger, he, too, would have been thrown into the dungeon, and all would have starved, just to appease the temper of the impossible lord. Fortunately, the cook, or the hostler or any of the knights or attendants of the castle did not appear, and thus was averted a great calamity. "When the lord had had time to calm down a bit, he realized how unjust had been his actions. It was impossible to restore his wife's hair, but at least he might release the chaplain. A castle without a priest is indeed a sorry place; in his haste to descend the steps to the dungeon the lord caught his foot; perhaps his own sword, which had been the means of his folly, tripped him; in any event, he fell down the entire flight and was picked up quite dead." "It served him quite right," interrupted Ferdinand. "Oh, but that wasn't the end of the lord, by any means," continued Herr Müller, smiling. "He is doomed to wander about his castle until the balustrade has been worn so deep that it will hold two heads of hair like those he cut from his wife. The penitent lord has roamed about the castle for many a year crying out to all who pass, 'Grief den Stein! Grief den Stein!' (Grasp the stone). Long ago he realized how foolish had been his actions, but although he has heartily repented, yet may he never know the rest of his grave until the balustrade has been worn hollow." "And does he yet wander there?" asked Ferdinand. "So they say; but one cannot see him except at night. There are many who claim to have heard him calling out, 'Grief den Stein,' but although I have been up and down the river many times, sometimes in the daytime and sometimes at night, I, myself, have never heard the ghostly voice." "I've always felt sorrier for the poor lady without her beautiful golden hair," observed Teresa, after a moment's silence, "and I always felt glad to think the lord had to be punished for his wickedness; but, somehow, hearing you tell the story, Herr Müller, I wish his punishment might not last much longer. For he was truly sorry, wasn't he?" Herr Müller looked quizzically at his wife, and they both turned their heads from the earnest faces of the children. "Do you find the old legends of the Danube interesting, Teresa?" asked Herr Müller, as the boat sped along, and the children maintained silence. "Oh, I love all sorts of tales," the child replied. "Father tells us some occasionally, but I am home so little of the time now I do not hear as many as I used to. In the summer-days we are always so busy at the farm we do not have the time for story-telling as we do in the winter-days." "Austria is full of tales about lords and ladies, ghosts and towers, but the Danube legends are not as well known as those of the Rhine. Have you ever heard that story concerning the Knight of Rauheneck near Baaden?" "No, Herr Müller," replied Teresa. "Well, it isn't much of a tale when you compare it with the Habsburg legends and the Griefenstein, and Stock im Eisen, but then it is worth telling." "Begin," commanded the young son, in playful mood. "Well, near Baaden there stands a formidable fortress called Rauheneck where lived a knight in former years. As he was about to go to war, and might return after many years and perhaps never, he decided to hide the treasures of the castle and place a spell upon them so that none might touch them but those for whom they were intended. So, in secrecy, he mounted to the summit of the great tower of the castle and on the battlement he planted a cherry stone, saying, as he did so: "'From this stone shall spring forth a tree; a mighty cherry-tree; from the trunk of the tree shall be fashioned a cradle; and in that cradle shall be rocked a young baby, who, in later years, shall become a priest. To this priest shall my treasure belong. But even he may not be able to find the treasure until another cherry-tree shall have grown upon the tower, from a stone dropped by a bird of passage. When all these conditions have been complied with, then shall the priest find the treasure at the foot of my tree, and not until then.' "Then the careful knight, fearing for the safety of his treasure, even after such precautions, called upon a ghost to come and watch over the castle tower, that peradventure, daring robbers who might presume to thrust aside the spells which bound the treasure, would fear to cope with a ghost." "And did the priest ever come?" queried Teresa. "Not yet, child; the cherry-tree at the top of the tower is but yet a sapling; there are long years yet to wait." "But we don't believe in ghosts, father," interrupted Ferdinand. "Why could not some one go and dig at the root of the tree and see if the treasure were really there?" "One could if he chose, no doubt," answered Herr Müller, "but no one has." "Would you, Ferdinand?" asked Teresa. "Oh, I might, if I were a grown man and had a lot of soldiers with me." "Do you know another legend, Herr Müller?" asked Teresa, shortly. "Well, there is the legend of Endersdorf in Moravia. "A shepherd once lived in the neighborhood, and although he had always been exceedingly poor, often almost to the verge of starvation, yet, one morning, his neighbors found that he had suddenly become exceedingly rich. Every one made conjectures concerning the source of his wealth, but none of them became the confidante of the shepherd, so that none were ever the wiser. The erstwhile poor shepherd left his humble cot and built himself a magnificent estate and palace upon the spot; he surrounded himself with retainers and sportsmen and gave himself up quite naturally to a life of ease and indolence. Most of his time was spent in following the hounds; but with all his newly-acquired wealth, and notwithstanding the memory of days when a few pence meant a fortune to him, the shepherd lost all sense of pity, and none about the country-side were quite so penurious and selfish as he. To such poor wayfarers as accosted him, in mercy's name, to befriend them, he turned a deaf ear, until his name was the synonym for all that was miserable and hard-hearted. "Now, it happened, that one day a poor beggar came to the gate of the rich shepherd, asking for alms. The shepherd was about to leave the gate in company with a noisy crowd of hunters and followers, on his way to the chase. Taking no pity on the poor man's condition, he suddenly conceived the idea of making the beggar his prey. "'Here is sport for us, good men,' he cried. 'Let us drive the beggar before us with our whips, and see him scamper lively.' "Whereupon, following the action of their host, the entire company raised their whips, set spurs to their horses, and drove the trembling, frightened, outraged man from before them. "'Now has your hour come,' cried out the old man, as he turned and defied his assailants. 'May all the curses of Heaven fall upon your heads, ye hard-hearted lot of roysterers!' "At the word, the sky, which had before been cloudless, grew suddenly black; the lightning flashed; the thunder rolled; the very ground under their feet, shook, cracked and opened, swallowing the shepherd, his followers, their horses, dogs, and every vestige of the estate vanished. In its place arose a lake whose dark waters tossed and moaned in strange fashion. "On stormy days, even to this present day, when the waters of the lake are lashing themselves in fury, the shepherd of the hard heart can be seen passing across the waves, his whip raised to strike some unseen object, a black hunting dog behind him. How long his punishment may last, no one knows, but he can always be seen just as he was when the earthquake swallowed him up." "Isn't it strange," observed Teresa, "but every one of the tales end in the punishment of the wicked knight." "Of course," remarked Ferdinand. "They wouldn't be tales at all if the wrong-doer was allowed to go free. Would they, father?" "Indeed not; but now it's time for breakfast. Would you like to eat on deck? It is so perfect a day, it is a pity to go indoors." This suggestion appealed wonderfully to the children, and Herr Müller left them to order the meal served upon the deck. As night fell, the boat docked at Linz. Herr Runkel was waiting on the quay with a heavy wagon and a team of horses to drive them to the farm. It was a beautiful drive in the bright moonlight, and the lights of Linz twinkled below them, while the Danube sparkled in the distance, just like a fairy world. It was very late when they reached the farm-house; Frau Runkel greeted them cordially, and immediately after helping them off with their wraps, poured out steaming hot coffee to warm them up, the night air having been a trifle chilly. Ferdinand went directly to his room after coffee was served. It was on the opposite side of the house, on the ground floor; the farm-house was but one story high, with a lofty attic above. In one corner of the large bedroom stood a canopied bed of dark wood, elaborately painted in bright colors, on head and foot board, with designs of flowers and birds. There were two small, stiff-backed wooden chairs, a night-table, upon which stood a brass candlestick, and an enormous wardrobe or chest for his clothes. All the furnishings of the room, even to the rug by the bed, were the handiwork of the occupants of the farm-house, for no true Austrian peasant would condescend to purchase these household necessities from a shop. Between two voluminous feather beds Ferdinand slept soundly, nor did he stir until he heard voices in the garden. Hastily dressing, he made his way into the living-room, where breakfast had already been partaken of by the others. "I'm so sorry to be late," he apologized, shamefacedly. "Why didn't you call me, mother?" he asked, as he turned to the one who must naturally share the responsibility of her children's shortcomings. "We thought to let you have your rest," answered Frau Müller. "Your day will be very full. You evidently enjoyed your downy bed." "Oh, it was great; let _us_ get one, mother." "I used to sleep under one when I was a girl," replied Frau Müller, "but no one in the city uses them any more; the woolly blankets have quite superceded them." "You may take yours home with you, if you like," said Frau Runkel, "we have geese enough to make more." "Now," said Herr Runkel, "if you are all ready, we'll go over and pay our respects to father and mother." "Then your parents do not live with you?" asked Herr Müller, a little astonished. "No, that is not the custom among us. You see, when I got married, father made over the farm and all its appurtenances to me, being the eldest son; then he built himself another home, just over in the field, there," and Herr Runkel pointed to a tiny, cosy cottage some few hundred paces away. "What a splendid thing to be the eldest son," remarked Herr Müller. "Perhaps it is," replied his host, "but it entails a great responsibility, as well. You see, after the ceremony of deeding the farm away to me, _I_ am called upon to settle an allowance upon my parents during their lifetime." "That's but right," assented Herr Müller, "seeing that they have given you everything they possess, and which they have acquired with such toil and privation." "Yes, but father received the farm from his father, in just the same manner; although he has enlarged it, so that it is bigger and better. But, in addition to father and mother," continued the farmer, "I have all my brothers and sisters to look after. There is Teresa at the convent in Vienna; there is Frederick at the Gymnasium in Linz; and there is Max an apprentice in Zara; these must all be cared for; and, I can tell you, Müller, it's a responsible position, that of being the eldest son." "But you weren't called upon, Franz," replied his friend, "to provide so bountifully for each." "No, but what would you have?" he replied. "I have tried to be a dutiful son; and," he added, his eyes twinkling as he glanced at his wife, "I've been sort of lenient towards father and the children, because father let me off so lightly when he boxed my ears for the last time." "Boxed your ears?" exclaimed Herr Müller, in astonishment. "What _had_ you done to deserve such disgrace?" "Well, that was part of the ceremony. When the farm was made over to me, it's the custom, before signing the deed, for the owner to make the rounds of his estate with his family; when he comes to each of the four corner-posts, he boxes the ears of the new owner. Now, father might have boxed mine roundly, had he chosen, for I was somewhat of a rollicker in my youth," and the genial farmer chuckled softly, "but father was sparing of my feelings. Don't you believe he deserved a recompense?" "He certainly did," answered his friend, and they all laughed heartily over the matter. Meanwhile they had gained the entrance to the dower-house, as the home of the aged couple was called. As Herr Müller had not seen the parents of his friend since childhood there were many years of acquaintanceship to bridge over; and Ferdinand, fascinated, listened to the conversation, for this old couple were most interesting persons to talk with. After returning from church the family gathered on the wide verandah under the eaves, the women with their knitting, which is not considered improper even on Sundays among Austrian women. This verandah in the peasant home in Upper Austria is a most important part of the house. It is protected from the elements by the enormous overhanging eaves above, running the entire side of the house; heavy timbers support it, green with growing vines which climb from the porch boxes filled with gayly blossoming flowers. It is a tiny garden brought to one's sitting-room; the birds twitter in the sunlight, as they fly in and out of their nests under the eaves; and here the neighbors gossip and drink coffee and munch delicious cakes. In fact, it is the sole sitting-room of the family during warm days, for no peasant woman would think of shutting herself in a room to do her work. One can always work to better advantage in the sunlight and open air. The children rambled about the farm and outbuildings. The farm-house was very long and deep and low, with a long, slanting roof. The front door was of heavy timbers upon which was a design of St. Martin outlined in nails, the work of the farmer, while small crosses at either side of the door were considered sufficient protection from the evil spirits who might wish to attack the family within. The interior of the farm-house was very simple; a large vestibule called the Laube or bower served as a means of communication between the different parts of the house; the sleeping-rooms were ranged on one side, while the dining and living-room occupied the other, with the kitchen just beyond. The Gesindestube, or living-room, was very plain, with its bare floors and darkened walls; a tile stove in one corner, benches about the walls and chests, some plain, some elaborately decorated and carved, occupied whatever space was left. Here were kept the household linens and the wardrobes for the family, as no Austrian peasant home is built with closets as we have in America. That evening, Herr Runkel said to Ferdinand: "To-morrow, my boy, we work. Would you like to help?" "Oh, it would be jolly," replied the lad. After a moment's hesitation, he added: "What kind of work? Hoeing potatoes or weeding the garden?" These two tasks were the only ones the lad was familiar with upon his uncle's farm in Tyrol. The farmer laughed. "No, we won't do that," he said. "We'll leave that to the servants; but we'll make shoes." "Make shoes!" exclaimed the child, incredulously. "Really make them yourself? I've never made shoes," he added, doubting whether he might be allowed now to assist. "Why not?" answered Herr Runkel. "You know we are very old-fashioned here; and, as we have so far to go to the shops, why we don't go; we let the workmen come to us. This is an off-time of the season; so we have the tailors and the shoemakers and all sorts of folk come and help us with such things as we can't do ourselves, for, you know, we make everything we use on the farm, and everything we wear." "Oh, how fine," said Ferdinand. "Yes, and we have jolly times, too," continued the farmer, "for when work is over we play. Isn't that right?" Ferdinand went to bed that night with visions of tailors and shoemakers and harnessmakers and whatnot, in his head, until he fell asleep. CHAPTER IV THE PEASANTS' DANCE FERDINAND needed no call to arouse him in the morning. He was awake and up long before any of his family, but he did not catch Herr Runkel nor his buxom wife, napping. "Come along, Ferdinand, and help me get the leather ready for the men," said the farmer, and he led the way across the garden to a great timber building, two stories in height. He opened the door, and they entered a very large room, with a decided smoky smell about it. "What is this?" asked Ferdinand. "This is our Feld-kasten (field-box) where we keep all our supplies. Here are the seeds for planting when the time comes; here are the hams and bacons and dried meat for use during the winter; here is the lard for the year;" and Herr Runkel took off the lids of the great casks and showed the white lard to the child, astonished beyond expression, at this collection of supplies. "And what's in the loft?" asked the boy, seeing the substantial ladder leading thereto. "Oh, that's for the women-folks," he replied. "We keep all sorts of things there. Let's go up." And they ascended. The loft was a room full of shelves; in most delightful order were ranged bundles of white cotton cloth, bundles of flax for spinning, bundles of woolen goods for making up into apparel, some dyed and some in the natural wool; there were rows and rows of yarn for embroidering the garments of the peasants, and upon the floor in one corner was a great heap of leather, with all sorts of machinery, and harness, and Ferdinand never _could_ learn what there was not here, so overwhelmed was he. "Here we are," said Herr Runkel, as he tugged at the pile of leather. "We must get this out, for the shoemakers start after breakfast. Give us a lift, child," and he half dragged, half lifted the leather to the trap-door and let it slide down the ladder. For days afterwards Ferdinand was in a fever of excitement. First he would help cut out the leather for the heavy farm shoes, working the best he could with his inexperience; the main thing being to keep busy, and he certainly accomplished it. Then he helped the tailors, for every one who could be spared about the farm joined in the tasks of the journeymen, that they might finish their work and move on to another farm, before the busy season should begin for the farmers. It is customary in addition to the low wages of about twelve cents a day for servants to receive their clothing, as part payment, so that upon a large farm, of the extent of Herr Runkel's, there were many to be provided for. Frau Müller assisted Frau Runkel in the kitchen, where Teresa, too, was kept busy; even Ferdinand not disdaining to make himself useful in that department. At length the journeymen were finished, and Herr Müller spoke about leaving in a few days for Tyrol. "We shall have a merrymaking, then, before you go," said his host. "But I presume parties are not a novelty to you; are they, Ferdinand? City folks, especially Viennese, are very gay." "Oh, we never have parties in Vienna," replied the lad. "That is, private parties; they cost too much. But we have our masked balls and ice festivals. Of course I can't go to those; they are only for grown folks." Herr Müller took up the thread of conversation at this point. "Vienna, with all its glitter, is but a poor city, after all," he said. "Living is very costly; the rich and the aristocracy have impoverished themselves by their extravagant ways of living. They dwell in fine homes, wear gorgeous uniforms and gowns, but cannot pay for these extravagances. They have shooting-lodges in the mountains, country villas for the summer, besides their town homes, but they have the fear constantly over their heads that these will be taken from them, to redeem the mortgages upon them." "I am more than ever thankful," replied the farmer, "that I have my farm and my family, and owe no man." "You are certainly right," answered his friend. "It is to such men as you that Austria must look in the future." "But about the party, Herr Runkel," interrupted Ferdinand, who feared that his host might forget his suggestion. "Oh, yes. Well, we'll have that Saturday night; so run along and help the women-folks get ready for it, for you never saw such feasts as we do have at our parties, child." Ferdinand, being just a boy, rushed off to the kitchen to provide for the "spread" that was to come, and he and Teresa chattered like two magpies over the splendid prospect. Although Ferdinand Müller did not quite believe that Saturday afternoon would ever come, it eventually did come; and a perfect day, too. Teresa was dressed in her most shining silver buckles and her whitest of homespun stockings, while Frau Runkel outshone every one in the room with her gayly embroidered apron over her dark skirt, and her overwhelming display of hand-made silver ornaments in her ears, upon her arms, about her neck, and on her fingers. And her head-dress was a marvel to behold, glistening with gold thread and shining with tiny beads of various colors. The table was set in the Gesindestube; there were roast ducks, and geese and chickens, roast meats and stewed meats, and Wienerschnitzel (veal cutlet), without which no Austrian home is complete. There were sausage and cheese and black bread and noodles; there were cakes with white frosting and pink frosting, and some were decorated with tiny colored seeds like caraway-seeds. Never had Ferdinand beheld such a sight before; but truly the Austrian peasant knows how to enjoy life. The reception over, the host and hostess led the way to the dining-table, the men placing themselves on the bench on one side while the women sat opposite them on the other. With bowed heads, the host said the grace; then began the gayety. There was no constraint; each helped himself and his neighbor bountifully. Meanwhile, the two young children, at the foot of the board, were not neglected, but kept up a lively conversation of their own, utterly oblivious of their elders. "Wait until the dessert comes," said Teresa. "Did you ever see one of these nettle-cakes?" [Illustration: "IT TOWERED HIGH ABOVE HER HEAD."] "Nettle-cakes?" repeated the lad. "What is that?" "Oh, you will see," replied the young lady, looking wise. "But be careful, I warn you, not to prick your fingers. Perhaps, though," she added, "mother may not allow us to join in, for this is a special feast-day, in honor of you and your parents." Ferdinand was not kept long in suspense. The viands having been disposed of to the satisfaction of every one, the maid brought in the "pièce de resistance." It towered high above her head, and had she not been brought up in the open air of the country she certainly never would have had the strength to manage such a burden. Upon a huge wooden dish was piled high fresh fruits from the orchard, cakes with delicious frosting, nuts and bright flowers. It was a medley of color, set off by great streamers of gay ribbons and bows; quite like a bridal cake, but vastly more interesting. Tongues wagged fast, you may be sure; all wished to get a chance at the gorgeous centrepiece, nevertheless, they all waited for their host's approval, and, waiting his opportunity, when many were not on the alert, he raised his hand, and then such a scramble you never saw in all your days. The men rose out of their seats and grabbed for one particular sweetmeat, which might appeal to the palate of his fair partner; but for all their precautions, knowing the hidden secrets of the dessert, many emerged from the battle with scratched hands or bleeding fingers, for these delicious cakes and luscious fruits covered prickly nettles, a trap for the unskilful. But what mattered these trifles to the happy-hearted peasant folk. They chatted and laughed and dived for fruit and decked the hair of their favorites with gay flowers, or cracked nuts with their knife handles and fed them to their lady loves. With the coffee, the feast ended. Carrying the benches to the sides of the room, where they ordinarily reposed, the table was cleared as if by magic. Now the dance was on. Zithers and violins appeared, and the darkened rafters of the Gesindestube rang with the clatter of many feet. By ten o'clock all was quiet at the farm-house; the guests had complimented their host and hostess upon the success of the evening, and the elaborateness of the table; they bade farewell to the Müller family, and saying good night to all, made their way over the fields, singing with hearty voices, their tuneful folk-songs; and thus Ferdinand heard the last of them ere he fell asleep. CHAPTER V SOME TYROLESE LEGENDS THE following morning Herr and Frau Müller and Ferdinand bade their kind host and hostess good-by and they set out for Linz, where they would take the train to Innsbruck, the capital of Upper Tyrol. Ferdinand was very loth to leave the farm, he had had such a splendid time there, and felt that he had not seen half of the farm-life; but Herr Runkel promised that he should come again the following summer and spend the entire vacation with them, to which his parents consented, so the child was content. However, he was to visit his cousin Leopold, and that was always a treat, for Tyrol is so charming and so different from other spots in Austria, it would be a difficult child, indeed, to please, who would not be content with a trip to Tyrol. Herr Hofer and his son Leopold met them at the station in Innsbruck, with a heavy wagon and two strong horses; the Hofers lived in Volders in the Unter-Innthal or valley of the Lower Inn River, some distance in the mountains; all the country to the north of the Inn being designated as the Upper and that to the south, as the Lower valley. "Have you had your luncheon?" asked Herr Hofer, as soon as the greetings were over. "Oh, yes, we lunched on board the train," replied Herr Müller. "Then, let's get off," said Herr Hofer, "for we have a long drive before us." He pulled his horses' reins and the beasts started off at a good pace. Leaving the station, they turned down the Margareth-platz with its fountain of dragons and griffins, where young women were filling their pitchers, for Innsbruck is very primitive in many of its customs. Down the broad and splendid Maria-Theresa Strasse the carriage turned, and stopped before a most gorgeous palace, whose roof shone in the bright sunshine like molten metal. "Oh, uncle, who can live in such a beautiful house?" asked Ferdinand. "That is the Goldne Dachl, or the House with the Golden Roof," replied his uncle. "It was built ever so many years ago by our beloved Count Frederick of Tyrol. You've heard of him?" he queried. "Oh, yes," replied the lad. "But I don't know about this house of his." "Well, Count Frederick was a most generous man; he would lend to all his friends who were not always very prompt in repaying him, and sometimes forget they owed him anything at all. At length, his enemies began to call him the Count of the Empty Pockets. This was very unjust, for poor Friedl (that's what we call him, who love him, you know) had had a very hard time of it, indeed. His own brother had driven him from his throne and usurped it himself, and made it a crime for any one to even shelter poor Friedl, who wandered about from place to place like the veriest vagabond. But, at length, he discovered that he had many friends who longed to show their devotion to him; he made a stand for his rights and secured his throne. But still, the nickname did not leave him. So, just to prove to his people that he was unjustly called the Count of the Empty Pockets, he ordered this wonderful roof of gold to be put on his palace. They say it cost him $70,000, which certainly was a great sum for a man with empty pockets." Turning the horses' heads in the opposite direction, Herr Hofer conducted them through the Triumphal Arch and gained the country road. "I thought to show the boys the Abbey of Wilten," explained Herr Hofer, as they trotted along, "and perhaps stop at Schloss Amras, as we may not have an opportunity soon again." "Oh, uncle," cried Ferdinand, "I love to see old ruins and castles. We have a lot of fine ones about Vienna, but they are all alike." "Well, these will be quite different, I can assure you," replied his uncle. The two boys occupied the rear seat with Frau Müller, while the fathers sat upon the front. And verily the little tongues wagged as only boys' tongues can do. In the midst of their spirited conversation, the carriage stopped before a splendid old church. "Oh, father," exclaimed Ferdinand, "what queer looking men!" Herr Müller looked about, but saw no one. "Where?" he asked. "Why, there, by the sides of the church door." Both men laughed. "They _are_ queer looking, aren't they?" said Uncle Hofer. "But you would think it a lot queerer did you know how they came to be here." "Oh, tell us," the boy exclaimed. "Well, once upon a time, way back in the Middle Ages, there were two giants who lived in different parts of the earth. Each of them was twelve feet or more tall; one was called Haymo and the other Tirsus. Now, in those times, giants did not remain quietly in their strongholds; they set out on adventures; so it chanced that, in the course of their travels, these two mighty giants encountered each other, right on this spot where this abbey stands. But of course, there was no abbey here then; the ancient Roman town of Veldidena was hereabouts. "Now, when the two giants met, they stopped, looked one at the other and measured his strength. Well, it naturally fell about that they decided to prove their strength; in the struggle, sad to tell, Haymo killed Tirsus. Poor giant Haymo. Big as he was, he wept, for he had not meant to harm his giant comrade. At length, to ease his mind, he determined to build an abbey on the spot, as that seemed to be the solace for all evils, in those days. And then Haymo would become a monk, and for eighteen whole years he would weep and weep as penance for the deed. "But poor Haymo had more than he bargained for. He did not know that the Devil had claimed this same spot; no sooner did Haymo bring the stones for the foundation of his church than the Devil came and pulled them down. But Haymo persisted, for he really must keep his vow; and evidently he conquered the Devil himself, for the abbey stands, as you see, and these are the two statues of the giants guarding the portal of the church, so that the Devil may not come, I suppose." [Illustration: STATUE OF ANDREAS HOFER, NEAR INNSBRUCK.] "Poor Haymo," said Ferdinand. "What a hardship to weep for eighteen years, _nicht wahr_, Leopold?" "_Yawohl_," came the stolid reply, while the two men chuckled softly. It is a peculiarity of Tyrol that, not until one attains middle age at least, does he begin to appreciate humor the least bit. Children are always too serious to admit of "fun" in their prosaic lives, so that, were it not for the elderly people, humor might eventually die out altogether in Tyrol, so serious a nation are they. "Shall we go inside, father?" asked Leopold. "We have not time; night will overtake us, and we must go on to Schloss Amras yet. There really is little to see, however." And while the lads strained their necks and eyes to catch a glimpse of the beautiful paintings upon the outside walls of the abbey, the wonderful gilding and stucco, the horses disappeared around a bend in the road, and it was lost to sight. Now they commenced to climb, for the road is always up and up in Tyrol. Below them lay the wonderful view of Innsbruck, with the Inn running gayly along; there, too, was the fair abbey with its two giants carved in stone, watching ever at the portal. "Have you boys any idea where we are?" asked Herr Hofer. Both shook their heads negatively. "All this country hereabouts is alive with interest attaching to Andreas Hofer, our patriot," replied he. "Here, at this very Gasthaus (inn) was where he made his last effort against the enemy. We shall learn more of it as we go along," he continued, "but there is not much use to stop here now. We go a few steps further to the Schloss." Truly it was a delightful old place, this castle of Amras, one of the few feudal castles left. There was an old courtyard paved with great stones, there were battlements and towers and relics of Roman invasions. The guide led them through the castle, room after room, filled with most interesting articles of every description pertaining to ancient times and wars, all of which intensely absorbed the boys' attention. "Oh, what an immense bowl!" cried Ferdinand. "And of glass. What is it for?" "That is the welcome bowl," replied the attendant. "We call it, nowadays, the loving cup. In every castle there were many like this; there was a gold one for ladies, a silver one for princes and a glass one for knights, which latter was the largest of all. When guests came to the castle, the welcome bowl was brought out, filled to the brim and handed to the guest, who was supposed to drink it off at a draught, if he was at all of a hazardous or knightly disposition. To his undoing, it sometimes happened he did not survive the ordeal; but that mattered not at all to him; he had displayed his bravery and that was worth life itself. After the bowl was drained, a great book was brought out, in which the guest was requested to write his name, no doubt as a test as to his real station, for no one but the highest and noblest were able to write or read in those times, and it often chanced even they were unable to do so." "Why, that is what they do in hotels!" said Ferdinand. "Yes," replied the guide, "and probably that is where the custom originated, for the manager of a hotel but preserves the ancient custom of registering the names of his guests." All too soon the visit came to an end; the party made its way to the near-by inn to spend the night. CHAPTER VI MORE LEGENDS THE inn-keeper, Herr Schmidt, was a big, raw-boned man with a red face and a jolly air. He was a genuine Wirthe or inn-keeper of the old-time; and after supper, as they all sat in the great sitz-saal together, he told them wonderful tales of the country round about, which so abounded in legends and folk-lore. As the position of Wirthe descends from father to son, for generations back, as long as there remains any sons to occupy that honored position, naturally, too, the legends are passed from one to the other, so that no one is quite so well able to recite these as our hearty friend Herr Schmidt. "If it were not so late," remarked Herr Hofer, while the men sat and smoked their long, curious pipes, "I should continue on to Volders, for it looks as if to-morrow might be stormy." "Oh, you need have no fear as to that," replied the host. "I noticed Frau Hütte did not have her night-cap on." Ferdinand looked at his little cousin with his face so puckered up with glee and merriment, that Leopold laughed outright. "Do tell Ferdinand about Frau Hütte, father!" said the child. "No, I think Herr Wirthe better able to do that. Bitte," and he saluted the inn-keeper in deference. "And have you never heard of Frau Hütte, my boy?" asked the host. "No, sir," replied the boy. "You know I live in Vienna." "Well, everybody knows her," replied the inn-keeper; "but then, you are a little young yet, so I will tell you." "Very long ago, in the time of giants and fairies,-- But then you don't believe in fairies, do you?" and the fellow's eyes sparkled keenly. "Oh, yes, I do," exclaimed the boy hastily, for fear if he denied the existence of such beings, he should miss a good story. "Well, then, there was a queen over the giants who was called Frau Hütte." "Oh," interrupted the lad, "then she isn't a real person?" "Oh, yes, she was; but that was long ago," continued the story teller. "Well, Frau Hütte had a young son who was very much like any other little child; he wanted whatever he wanted, and he wanted it badly. One day, this giant child took a notion he should like to have a hobby horse. Without saying a word to any one, he ran off to the edge of the forest and chopped himself a fine large tree. But evidently the child did not know much about felling trees, for this one fell over and knocked him into the mud. With loud cries, he ran home to his mother. Instead of punishing him, she bade the nurse wipe off the mud with a piece of white bread. No one but the very richest could afford the luxury of white bread, black bread being considered quite good enough for ordinary consumption, so no wonder the mountain began to shake and the lightning to flash, just as soon as the maid started to obey her mistress' command. "Frau Hütte was so frightened at this unexpected storm that she picked up her son in her arms and made for the mountain peak some distance from her palace. No sooner had she left the palace than it disappeared from view, even to the garden, and nothing was ever seen of it again. But even in her retreat the wasteful queen was not secure. When she had seated herself upon the rock, she became a stone image, holding her child in her arms. And there she sits to this day. When the clouds hover about her head then we know there will be a storm, but when Frau Hütte does not wear her night-cap," and the Wirthe's eyes sparkled, "then we are certain of clear weather." "Ever since then, the Tyrolese have made Frau Hütte the theme of a proverb 'Spart eure Brosamen fur die Armen, damit es euch nicht ergehe wie der Frau Hütte,' which really means 'Spare your crumbs for the poor, so that you do not fare like Frau Hütte,' a lesson to the extravagant." There were endless more stories, all of which delighted the boys immensely, but we could not begin to relate them all, for Tyrol is so overladen with the spirit of the past, and with the charm of legend, that the very air itself breathes of fairies and giants, and days of yore, so that in invading its territory one feels he is no longer in this work-a-day world, but in some enchanted spot. Early the next morning, up with the sun, all were ready for the drive home. As Herr Wirthe had predicted, the day was fair; as they drove away from the Inn, they caught a glimpse of Frau Hütte in the distance beyond Innsbruck, and, sure enough, there she sat on her mountain peak, with her great son safely sheltered in her arms. "Shall we go to the salt mines, father?" asked Leopold, as they made their way along the mountain road. "No, we cannot take the time; mother will be waiting for us and the women folks are impatient to visit, I know." "They have wonderful salt mines at Salzburg," said Ferdinand. "Perhaps we may go there some time to visit them." "Perhaps," replied his father. "But, while we are on the subject, did it ever occur to you that Salzburg means the 'town or castle of salt?'--for, in the old times, all towns were within castle-walls, to protect them from depredations of the enemy." "Isn't it curious?" meditated Ferdinand. The Inn River crossed, they continued to climb. Herr Hofer stopped to rest the horses; he glanced about him at the panorama below, and chuckled mirthfully. "What's the matter, uncle?" asked Ferdinand. "Oh, nothing much; but every time I see the towns of Hall and Thaur, just over there," and he pointed with the handle of his whip, "I think of the Bauernkrieg." "But there isn't anything very funny about a war, is there, uncle?" asked the serious little fellow. "Well," rambled on his uncle, "there was about _this_ one. You see, in early times, when Tyrol was not quite so peaceful as it is to-day, these two cities were most jealous of each other, and were always at feud. A watchman stood on the tower, day and night, to prevent any surprise from his neighbor. One night, in midsummer,--and a very hot night it was, too,--the people of Hall were roused from their slumbers, if they had been able to sleep at all in such heat, by the voice of the watchman calling them to arms. "'What is the trouble, watchman?' cried one and all, as they appeared at their windows. "'Oh,' exclaimed the frightened fellow, 'hasten, friends, hasten! The whole town of Thaur is at our gates; and not only are they advancing toward us, but each man boldly carries a lantern.' "Such audacity was never heard of before. In utmost consternation the people gathered in the village square and held a consultation. It was finally arranged that Herr Zott, the steward of the salt mine, and therefore a most important personage in the village, should meet the enemy with a flag of truce and demand the reason for this unexpected attack. The inhabitants of Hall, in fear and trembling, awaited Herr Zott's return. "The truce-bearer left the city gates and proceeded into the plain, which separated their village from the enemy's. On and on he went; but not one soul did he meet. The great army of men, each carrying a lantern, had disappeared as if by magic. Finally he reached the walls of Thaur, where all was as quiet as it should be at that time of the night. "He turned his horse's head homeward. The night was very still, and over the plain flashed the lights of thousands of fireflies, reveling in the warm summer breeze. It was not until he had reached the very gates of his own town that Herr Zott realized what had caused all the excitement. The watchman had mistaken the fireflies for lanterns; and naturally, as some one must carry the lanterns, who more probable than their enemy, the people of Thaur? "The townsfolks betook themselves to their beds again, laughing heartily over the mistake; and even to this day we laugh over the incident which has become a by-word in Tyrol; Bauernkrieg, or the peasant's war." "But I don't see how peasant's war can mean anything now," said Ferdinand. "Well, when one becomes excited over nothing," returned his uncle, "they exclaim 'Bauernkrieg.' Some day you will hear it, and then you will recollect the origin of it." Not long after this tale, the carriage stopped in front of a most charming home on the mountainside. The first story was stuccoed, while across the entire front and two sides of the second and third stories ran a wide wooden balcony. Boxes of red and white geraniums decked the top of the fancy balustrade, while vines trailed themselves far over, giving the house a most "homey" appearance. The lower story receded far behind the overhanging second story, which formed a convenient space for sheltering the cattle. There is little available space in Tyrol for outbuildings, the mountains rising so precipitously that there is but little level. But, as stone floors separate the house from the stable, odors do not penetrate as much as one would imagine. At the front of the house stood a woman of middle age, her hair carefully drawn back under an immense head-dress, so tall it seemed as if she would be unable to enter the doorway. She wore a black skirt, so very full it had the appearance of being a hoop-skirt; but this effect was produced by her ten extremely full petticoats. The reputation of a Tyrolese woman depends, in a great degree, to the number of petticoats she wears; sometimes young girls, who value modesty highly, wear as many as fifteen or more. Over the black skirt, which showed to advantage the white stockings and low shoes with their shining buckles of silver, was a most elaborately embroidered black apron, the work of many hours of tedious labor for the housewife. About her waist was twined a bright yellow sash which brightened up the dark bodice, with its short sleeves tied fantastically with bright yellow ribbons. The woman nodded to the travelers; Herr Hofer pulled up his horses and descended from the carriage. "Well, _meine liebe frau_, here we are," said he, as he greeted his wife. Such hugging as followed! Ferdinand was clasped time and again against the ample bosom of Frau Hofer, and even Herr Müller came in for a goodly share, while as for the greeting that Frau Müller received, no words may convey its warmth. The party made its way up the narrow stairway with carved balustrade, which led from the ground floor to the second story, upon the outside of the house. This is the most convenient manner of building staircases in Tyrol, because it does not track mud and dirt through the corridors, and saves much interior space. The guest-room was certainly restful looking. Its dark polished floor of pine had been newly polished until it fairly radiated; the big bed of wood, painted a vivid color of green, also had received scrupulous polishing; two small home-made rugs, one at the bedside, the other at the washstand, had been scrubbed and beaten until it seemed as if there would be nothing left of them. At the side of the canopied bed stood a tiny foot-stool: the Tyrolese beds being extremely high make the use of a stool necessary. No doubt the object of this is to avoid draughts, as none of the floors are carpeted, many being of cement. Immaculate white curtains hung at the casement windows, those dear little windows, unlike anything we have in America, which open into the room and give such a cosy character to the home. A basin of Holy Water was hung in its accustomed place, and the image of the Virgin hung over the table; for, you must know, the Tyrolese are devout Roman Catholics, as, in fact, are nearly all the natives of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. CHAPTER VII A NIGHT WITH THE SENNER MERRY days followed; there were excursions almost every day. Ferdinand and Leopold would spend part of the time picking flowers on the mountain-sides, or would help with the cattle and in the garden, so that their elders might be able to devote more time to recreation with their guests. One morning the two men and boys set out with rücksacks on their shoulders, and long alpenstocks in their hands, to climb the mountain and visit an "alp" in the pasture lands, for in the summertime the cows of the neighboring villagers are driven to pasture in charge of a few attendants, sometimes men, called senner, sometimes women, called sennerin, where they remain during the entire season. "Have you never seen the senner_ei_, Ferdinand?" asked his cousin. "Oh, yes. Don't you remember the last time I was here," replied Ferdinand, "we saw them drive the cattle away?" "But I said the senner_ei_ (dairy)," repeated the child. "No, but I should love to see the cheeses made; the alps look so picturesque." "Well, they aren't quite so nice when you reach them," admitted his cousin; "however, we are not going specially to see the dairy but the dance which the sennern have on Saturday night. Oh, it's great." "Do they have one every Saturday night?" "Very near, as long as the season lasts; it's wonderful, Ferdinand. I've seen some of the fellows do the most astonishing tricks." Of course, such conversation stimulated the city lad's desire to a great pitch; and it was with the keenest joy he tramped over the rocky mountains, which was difficult for him. But he said nothing; he kept before his mind the delights of the dance he should witness, and plodded on. At length they reached the first "alp," or chalet, as the huts which serve for sleeping-room and dairy for the sennern are called. These chalets are built at different heights up the mountain; when the cattle have eaten all the green grass available at one level they are driven to the next higher pasture and so on until, towards the beginning of November, they return to the village for the winter. Picturesque as the "alp" may look from the distance, it is scarce one of grandeur upon closer view. It consists of a low wooden hut, usually of one room, and a sort of adjoining alcove. In the main room is a bunk built against the wall; nothing but straw serves for the mattress; there are no coverlets except the blanket the senner always carries with him, and in which he wraps himself. In another part of this uninviting room is a hollowed space where the fire is built, over which hangs a great crane and an iron pot for use in making the cheeses so famous throughout Tyrol. The alcove serves as a store-room for the cheeses, and for the dairy, while off to one end is sometimes a room for such cattle as are ill or young cattle who must be protected from the chill night air of the mountain. As evening advanced from all directions came merry voices, ringing the clear notes of yodels from over the mountainsides. Each sennerin knows the peculiar yodel of her swain; and you may be sure her heart beats light when she hears, miles and miles away, the beautiful, clear notes of his call. This is the only method the mountaineers have of communicating with each other. The peculiar notes carry across ravines and hillsides as distinctly as if one were close at hand. "Oh, father," said Ferdinand, as he touched him upon the elbow, "what queer-looking men these are! I have not seen such costumes about here. Do they belong to Tyrol?" "Yes, but these men are from the south, from Meran. When a man is married he must distinguish himself by placing a green cord about his hat, so that he may not allow folks to think him single; we other Austrians wear the wedding-ring, the same as the women; but in the different provinces, customs vary." Ferdinand watched the different costumes of the men, as they poured in from all directions. There were some in brown jackets trimmed with red, and wide brown suspenders; all Tyrolese men wear these wide suspenders, sometimes of one color, sometimes of another, but usually green, of which color they are passionately fond, no doubt because their country is so wonderfully green. Most of the men wore knee trousers of leather, while some were of homespun, but that was an extravagance. The stockings, usually grey and home-knitted, reached from the ankle to just below the knee leaving the latter bare. Without exception, all wore the Tyrolese cap of rough green cloth, at the back of which was the black-cock's tail, while one or two isolated fellows were fortunate enough to deck their hats with the Gamsbart or Beard of the Chamois, as it is called; but this is not the correct name for it, as it is not the beard of the chamois but the long tuft which grows upon his back in the winter. On the green of the mountainside, in a spot selected for its advantage of being as near level as possible, the dance took place. The senner and sennerin went through manoeuvers that did them credit; they swung each other in giddy fashion until one almost believed they would spin themselves down the mountainside, and thus dance to their deaths; but after whirling at great speed for many minutes, they would suddenly pull up with a jerk and seem none the worse for the whirling. It was no unusual sight for Ferdinand to see the Tyrolese dances; but here on the pasture lands, on their native heath, he saw them perform many which were most unfamiliar to him. He always smiled when he saw the women place their arms about their partners' necks and waltz in that fashion; and then, when the couples separated, the women to dance round and round, holding out their full skirts to their greatest width, while the men indulged in all sorts of fantastic gymnastics, was truly bewildering. At length the evening drew to a close; the company dispersed as quickly as it had assembled, and all was quiet upon the mountainside. One might have imagined himself back to the days of Old Rip Van Winkle, so mysterious did the entire proceeding seem. In the morning, the party descended the mountain. The air was very clear, although the day was cloudy, the sun steadfastly refusing to appear; but this made walking agreeable for which all were thankful. "Did you ever hear so many bells in your life?" observed the city cousin. "Oh, those are the cow-bells," replied Leopold. "Each herd has its own peculiar tone, so that the cattle won't get mixed up, where there are so many together. And then the senner can tell right away to which owner they belong." "But there is such a constant tinkling, and so many different tones, I don't see how one can ever tell which is his own," replied the lad. "That is because you are not used to it," answered his uncle. "After you have been on the mountain awhile, you, too, would be able to distinguish your own bell as well as the senner in charge." And to the tinkling of the bells, the party descended until they were well out of reach of the bewitching sounds. CHAPTER VIII THROUGH THE TYROLESE MOUNTAINS WHEN the pedestrians reached home in the early afternoon, a letter was awaiting Herr Müller. It was from Herr Runkel, stating he was obliged to make a visit to Dalmatia to see his younger brother Max on business, and if Herr Müller would care to make the trip with him, he would meet him at Villach in Carinthia the following Tuesday. Of course, there was new excitement now for the boys; the one wished to go with his father, while the other was urgent in his demands that the cousin remain with him. Finally it was arranged that both boys should accompany Herr Müller, while Frau Müller should remain with her relatives and join her husband and son at Gratz in Styria, on their return. [Illustration: "TRAMP THUS, IN VAGABOND FASHION, OVER THE MOUNTAINS!"] Leopold had never made a journey from home before, except the one time he had been to Innsbruck, quite recently, to meet his Müller relations; so you may be certain there was one little heart which beat faster than normal. "We shall leave to-morrow, then," decided Herr Müller, "if you think you can be ready in that time," he added, addressing the Tyrolese youngster. "Because we shall want to visit some of the mountain towns; and if you boys want to see anything of Tyrol we had better walk than take the train." "Oh, I could be ready to-night," ventured the child, delighted beyond measure. But his uncle assured him the morning would be ample time, and the two lads skipped away to talk over the plans. As the sun was just beginning to peep above the mountaintop, the party of three set off, with many admonitions from Frau Hofer to her child, and many also from Frau Müller that Ferdinand should not allow his cousin to be too adventuresome. But to this Leopold smiled. "I am used to the mountains, auntie," he said. "Ferdinand will tire long before I do, you'll see." How glorious it was to tramp thus, in vagabond fashion, over the mountains! They stopped wherever night overtook them, passed through Brixen, the wine center of much importance in Tyrol, and on through narrow defiles through which there seemed no exit. A bracing walk of six miles from Brixen brought them to Klausen, or The Pass, so completely hidden among mountains there was but room for one long, narrow street. "Well, I had no idea Klausen was quite so narrow," Herr Müller remarked. "I can well believe the tale of the barber, now." "What barber, uncle?" asked Leopold. "The barber of Klausen. You've never heard it? Well, there once lived a barber in this town who was old and full of rheumatism; he had a client whom he must shave every morning; but the poor barber found it very difficult to descend three flights of steps from his dwelling and ascend three more on the opposite side of the street, in order to shave his customer. He could not afford to lose this fee, yet it was exceedingly painful for him to attempt the climb. "One morning he opened his window and called to his neighbor. Upon hearing the barber's voice, the man in the opposite house opened his window and asked what was wanted. "'Allow me,' said the ingenious barber. 'I am unable to descend the stairs this morning; my rheumatism is getting the better of me. But, in order that you may not lose your shave, if you will lean a little way out of your window, I shall be able to accomplish the duty quite as well as though you were sitting in your chair in your room.' "For a moment the man hesitated; but, as the village was small, and there was but one barber, it was either a question of going unshaved, or of following the fellow's advice. Accordingly, he consented; he stretched his neck far out of the window, the barber placed the towel beneath his chin, and, with all the dexterity in his power, he proceeded to shave his client; and thenceforth the barber performed this operation in a similar manner, quite to the satisfaction of them both." They passed on through the village of Waidbruck, the very center of romanticism; for here, right at the mouth of the Grodener-thal, rises the fascinating Castle of Trostburg, the home of the Counts of Wolkenstein; and here was born Count Oswald, the last of all the long line of Minnesingers or troubadours, who found employment and enjoyment in wandering from castle to castle, their harps or zithers under their arms, singing love-songs or reciting war-stories that stirred the young blood to action. They climbed to the magnificent Castle of Hauerstein, so hidden among the mountain-peaks and dense woods that one might imagine it to be the palace of the Sleeping Beauty; and then they diverged a few miles up the ravine in order to visit Santa Claus' shops, for such might be called the village of St. Ulrich with its countless numbers of toy shops. In every cottage men, women and young children busy themselves from morning until night, from one year's end to the other, in making toys; carved animals for Noah's Arks, dolls and wagons, to supply the world's demand of the children. Here, too, the very language is different from any other spoken roundabout; for the inhabitants, primitive in language as in everything else, still cling to the tongue of the Romans, which is to-day known as the Ladin or Romansch tongue. They passed the night at Botzen, and, as the sun sunk behind the lofty mountains just beyond, a gorgeous glow overspread their entire summit. "Isn't it beautiful!" remarked the two lads almost at the same moment. "And it looks just like a rose-garden, too," added Leopold. "It is a rose-garden, child," answered Herr Müller. "It is called the Rosengarten or Gardl (Little Garden)." "But is it possible, father," asked Ferdinand, "that roses will bloom on such lofty heights?" "Well, this is the legend about it. Once upon a time, there lived an ugly dwarf who was king over all the underground sprites and elves in the mountains of Tyrol. He was in the habit of going forth from his palace, wrapped in a magic cloak which rendered him invisible. Now, it chanced that during one of these expeditions, Laurin went into the country of Styria, which lies right over there to the east. We shall pass that way on our return to Vienna. He saw a most beautiful maiden who was playing in a meadow with her attendants. Suddenly she disappeared from before the very eyes of her companions; they shouted, but no answer came back to them; in great dismay they fled back to the castle to report the news to the princess' brother Dietlieb. "Dietlieb had heard of Laurin and his propensity for carrying off fair maidens; Dietlieb was a brave knight and had traveled far, so, as soon as he heard the news, he suspicioned at once that Laurin had done the deed. Immediately he set out for the city of Bern, where the king held his court, to demand that the dwarf be punished for his insolence. But the king was powerless against Laurin's magic; however, he warned Dietlieb not to attempt to approach too near the dwarf's domains, for it was guarded by four magnificent pillars of shining gold, and a fence of silken thread stretched between. "'Remember,' said the king, 'should you happen to break so much as one strand of Laurin's fence, he will demand the forfeit of a foot and a hand.' "In hot rage Dietlieb left the king's palace; what mattered to him Laurin's magic powers, if only he could recover his dear sister, the Princess Kunhild? "With a few faithful companions he set out over the mountains until he reached the Rose-garden before the dwarf's underground abode, the very sight of which so enraged the worthy knight that he tore away the silken threads and destroyed the four gorgeous pillars. "Within his subterranean palace, Laurin heard the destruction without; he mounted his war-horse, and putting on his magic belt, which endowed him with supernatural strength, he appeared at the door of the cave covered with sparkling jewels from head to foot. "'Who has dared to enter my domains?' he shouted. 'And to destroy my garden? Let him who has done the deed stand forth that I may exact the punishment!' "'Be not so hasty, Sir Laurin,' replied one of the knights, 'we will gladly repay you three, four-fold, if you wish, what you demand. The season is early and your roses will bloom again.' "'I care not for your gold,' replied the indignant king; 'I have gold and to spare. I demand satisfaction, and satisfaction I shall have.' "So saying, he spurred on his horse. There was a hotly contested battle; in the end, he was overpowered by Dietlieb, who had torn from him his magic belt, and thus robbed him of his strength. "'Come,' said Laurin, 'let us not harbor ill feelings against one another. Come into my palace, Sir Knights, and drink to the health of the fair Kunhild.' "He led them through the door of the cave, down several long corridors at the end of each of which was a stout door, one of bronze, another of steel and a third of gold, and entered the banquet hall, where the table was gorgeously decorated with gold and silver and most rare flowers. "As the dinner drew to a close--at which Kunhild had presided, dazzling with jewels--the knights fell into a sound doze; when they awoke each was locked securely in a separate cell with no means of communicating one with the other. But, when all was still, Kunhild entered her brother's dungeon and released him by the aid of her magic arts, which she had learned while captive. "'Take this ring,' she said, 'gather up your weapons and flee for your life.' "'But will you go with me?' he said. [Illustration: THE ROSENGARTEN.] "'I will come later,' she replied. 'But make your escape now before Laurin discovers us.' "Dietlieb did not require a second bidding. The magic of Laurin had penetrated through the stone walls of the cell, however, and he followed the knight to the outer earth and there they fought a terrible battle. When Laurin found himself yielding to the superior strength of the knight, he blew a shrill blast upon his golden horn, and five enormous giants appeared. Meanwhile Kunhild had not been idle; she had released the companions of her brother, who now rushed to the scene of the fray, and in spite of his magic arts, and his reinforcement of the five giants, Laurin was made prisoner and carried off into Styria. The garden was left uncared for, and little by little it died; but on just such evenings as this, one can see the gorgeous roses, which will bloom only as the sun descends." "Do you think, father," said Ferdinand, "that there is really an underground palace in those mountains?" "Well, that's what they say; many have tried to find the entrance, but the key has been lost; some day, one may be fortunate enough to find it, and then great riches will be his. It is my private opinion that within those mountains lie metals unknown to exist, and when one has opened the door to them, he will discover great riches in them." "I should like to gather just _one_ rose, uncle," said Leopold. "I think mother would like to have one, for she has never seen the Rosengarten." "You cannot do that, my boy, because they are not real roses; the rocks of the mountain are composed of magnesia and chalk, which take on these beautiful colors when the rays of the setting sun fall upon them; and it is only the sharp, jagged points of those rocks which simulate roses, that you see." Another night would see them out of Tyrol, much to the regret of Ferdinand, for he had never imagined such an interesting land to exist. "How did Tyrol come to belong to our country, father?" asked Ferdinand. "Well, in the olden times," answered Herr Müller, "Tyrol was governed by counts who ruled like kings; but in 1363 a princess was the ruler; she was a woman with a very hasty temper and was nicknamed Pocket-mouthed Meg. Some say she received this nickname because her mouth was so extraordinarily large; but others tell a tale of her Bavarian cousin, who lived in the adjoining territory, who struck her on the mouth during a quarrel. It certainly was not a very gentlemanly thing for the Bavarian cousin to do, but children were not brought up so carefully as they are to-day, and you must not think too harshly of this little Bavarian, which sounds quite like barbarian. But Queen Margaret could never forgive nor forget that blow; in after years, when her own son was dead, and her kingdom must be left to some one, she preferred to give it to her Habsburg cousins, who were Austrians, so that ever since, with the exception of a few years in which several nations struggled for possession of it, it has belonged to the Austrian Empire. "You know Emperor Maximilian I, who was one of our greatest rulers, loved Tyrol best of all his provinces," continued Herr Müller. "I don't blame him," replied Ferdinand, "I think he was quite right." CHAPTER IX THE HABICHT-BURG RAVENS FROM Botzen, the train took them through the Puster-thal, which is on the north boundary of Italy, and on to Villach in Carinthia, where they were to meet Herr Runkel. There were great demonstrations when he saw the two young lads. "Have you never been to Dalmatia?" he asked them. Both shook their heads negatively. "What a splendid thing, then, that business called me to Zara," he replied, "for Dalmatia is one of the provinces of our empire which is different from any of the others. You see, in the first place, it is on the Adriatic Sea, and could one have vision that would carry that far, he might glance over into the opposite country of Italy. But, as if to make up for that lack of supernatural power, Italy has brought her customs and manners into Dalmatia, so we shall really be seeing two countries at one time." Through Carinthia the party made its way, over the Kara-Wanken Mountains into Istria and spent the night at Trieste. As neither of the boys had seen the sea before, it was a never-ending source of wonder and delight to them to wander about the wharves, to see the ships of many nations lying in the harbor, flying their flags of many colors, and to see the curious sights of a sea-town. There was nothing to remind them of Austria with its German customs, even the name of the city (Tergeste) being Roman, which was conquered by that nation, and colonized about B. C. 41. There are no longer strassen (streets), but vias, and piazzas (squares) take the place of platze. As in most Italian cities, there were narrow, winding streets, some of which were nothing more than mere flights of steps lined on each side, in place of a balustrade, with houses. In the morning it had been arranged to make a hasty trip to Miramar, the charming residence of the Archduke Maximilian, the favorite brother of the emperor. "Here it is," said Herr Müller, "that the ominous ravens warned the archduke of the fatality which should overtake him in accepting the throne of Mexico at the instance of Napoleon III of France. And the raven's warning came true, for the unfortunate young prince never returned." "Tell us about the ravens, father," said Ferdinand, as they stood upon the terrace before the villa, overlooking the wonderful Adriatic. "Well, you know the house of Habsburg occupies the Austrian throne to-day," began Herr Müller. "_Yawohl_," replied the two simultaneously. "Well, many hundreds of years ago, the founder of the Habsburg dynasty, Count Rudolph, was born in a very ancient and formidable castle in the northern part of Switzerland, somewhere near Zurich. The castle was known throughout the country by the peculiar name of the Hawk's Castle or Habicht-burg, from a story concerning one of the first counts who lived there. "This was Count Gontran, of Altenbourg. He was a brave and gallant knight and loved to spend his time among the mountains hunting, when he was not away to the war. As he was so fearless in this sport, pursuing his enemy to the remotest spots of their lairs, he gained the sobriquet of the 'Hawk Count' or Der Habicht Graf. "One day he had climbed to the top of a most peculiarly shaped rock, which much resembled a fortress. In his eagerness to reach the summit he had lost sight of his companions; but in his joy at the marvelous panorama spread beneath him, he quite forgot all about them, and gave himself up only to the spell of the wildness surrounding him. "Suddenly the air grew thick with moving objects; the sun was hidden from sight, and then the count realized that numberless vultures, whose habitation he had invaded, had gathered about the rock in swarms, waiting for their time to come when they might claim him their victim. But Der Habicht Graf was no craven; he made no attempt to fight; well he knew they would not attack him until he had passed that stage when he would be able to defend himself. "All at once, while he thus stood defying his antagonists, a shrill cawing was heard on all sides; in a few moments the air was filled with innumerable ravens who seemed to have appeared from out the very heavens, so silently and unexpectedly had they come. There was a sharp battle between the two swarms, the smaller birds being able to drive off the larger on account of their greater numbers. And then, when all vestige of both feathered tribes had disappeared, Count Gontran was able to find his way down the almost inaccessible rock, where he joined his companions at its base, who had given him up for lost, as their shouts had failed to reach him, and no answering call came back to them. "From that day Der Habicht Graf chose the raven for his pennon; he became their protector, feeding them in winter, until, as time went on, they became verily a pest. "Der Habicht Graf died, and others came into possession of Der Habicht-burg. There was little sentiment in these descendants concerning the ravens, and when Count Rudolph succeeded to the estate in 1240, he had them all driven away or killed. Ever since that time, the birds have taken a peculiar delight in foretelling disaster to the house of Habsburg (as Habicht-burg has been corrupted into). And right here, in this garden," continued Herr Müller, "was where the ravens came and flew about the heads of the Archduke Maximilian and his young wife Carlota before they left on that fatal journey." "What happened then, father?" "Surely you must know. The Mexicans refused to accept a foreign ruler; he was sentenced to be shot, and although Carlota made the trip to France three times to beg Napoleon III to save her husband, the emperor was deaf to all her appeals." "That was because Napoleon was not born a king, father," remarked Ferdinand. "Had he been _truly_ royal, he would have saved Maximilian." Herr Müller made no further comment, but shook his head slowly in an affirmative nod. From Trieste the boat was taken to Pola, one of the oldest cities in the country, quite at the extreme tip of Istria. Although the Romans built a city here in 178 B. C., yet many of the ancient landmarks remain, among which, outside the ancient city walls, stands the splendid Amphitheatre where gladiators fought and wild beasts contended with human beings for supremacy. As Herr Runkel was obliged to make Zara on a specified day, they were not permitted to linger in the Istrian peninsula, with its almost continuous olive-groves and vineyards, famous throughout the world; but boarding a small steamer they slowly made their way to the sea-coast town of Zara in Dalmatia, stretching like a lizard along the Adriatic. No longer was there sign of modernism or progress; every object, every peasant spoke of the past, of long-flown glory, and of poverty. One could almost imagine himself back in those days, six hundred or more years before Christ, when the Argonauts inhabited the spot, and who, in turn, ceded to the Celts and they to the inevitable Romans. Then Charlemagne coveted Dalmatia; later the influential Venetians wrested it from the Germans; and in 1798 it was finally ceded to Austria, to whom it has ever since belonged, except for a short period when it belonged to France. The peasants were gorgeous in their gay costumes; there were men in light-colored trousers, very tight fitting, laced with fancy cords of gold or silver thread, and most elaborately embroidered about the pockets in front; there were short jackets of bright cloth designed in intricate fashion in tinseled thread, with tassels about the edges; there were women with blue skirts, very short, over which was an apron so heavily embroidered that it seemed more like an Oriental rug than a bit of cloth, while the bodice was one mass of embroidery. Every conceivable spot was embroidered; about the neck, the shoulders, down the front and at the wrists. There was color, color, color; fringes and tassels and gold thread, as if these poor gewgaws could make up to the peasant for all the poverty he suffered and the monotony of his life. But how charming they did look in their apparel; if their lives were not the sunniest, they surely tried to embody the very sunlight into their clothing, and that helps a lot, for they were never so happy as when decked in their gayest, wearing the hand-made filigree silver ornaments about their necks, in their ears and upon their fingers, even about their waists, which no persuasion nor hunger can prevail upon them to part with. Herr Runkel's younger brother Max was an apprentice in Zara; his term was about to expire and some arrangement must be made for the future. It was this which had brought Herr Runkel to Zara. While he was busy with his brother's affairs, the rest of the party wandered about the ancient city; they visited the market-place, alive and riotous with brilliant coloring; they inspected the wharves, and commented upon St. Mark's Lion, which reposed over the entrance-gate from the harbor, in the city wall, a relic of Venetian invasion, as if that stone lion was yet watching for the return of his people. They even crossed over to the islands, which lie like so many bits of broken mainland, to watch the fishing which is so remunerative, the sardine fishery being one of the greatest sources of revenue of the country. His business terminated satisfactorily, Herr Runkel suggested they might return by way of the provinces of Bosnia, Croatia and Styria, because these held such wonders in sightseeing for the children. CHAPTER X THROUGH DALMATIA AND THE BORDER-LANDS EARLY the following morning they made their start, packs on backs, over the low, waste lands of Dalmatia. The sun was burning hot; nothing but extensive plains of desert met the eye; far in the distance were low mountains, which glistened in the scorching sun with a startling whiteness, most dazzling to the eyes. There was a sameness about the landscape which wearied the boys. "I certainly should not like to live here," remarked Leopold; "it is not so nice as Tyrol; there is too much barrenness, and too much dazzling whiteness." "Nevertheless," replied his uncle, "this is a fine country; the wine and olive oil are famous the world over, to say nothing of the fruit and flowers. If you did but stop to think about it, most of the fruit and flowers we have in Vienna out of season come from this region." "But how can anything grow in a desert?" "We shall soon see," replied his uncle. "Dalmatia looks baked, but it is extremely productive." After some time, the soil began to grow more and more irregular. Great stones lay upon the surface, and immense fissures opened up at irregular distances. "Now, my boy, can you call this a desert?" asked Herr Müller. "Here are the gardens of Dalmatia." "The gardens?" exclaimed both children. "Yes." "But I see nothing but great ravines," said Leopold. "They are not ravines, child, but great cracks opened up in the swampy soil which has burst asunder from the terrific heat of the sun. But that is what saves the country from starvation; on the bottom of these fissures are deposits of fertile soil washed into them by the rains, and here the peasant plants his crops. Here you see one too narrow to plant anything in, but over there," and he pointed to the immediate right, "is one which stretches a mile or more." "How interesting!" exclaimed Ferdinand. "But what a queer place to plant crops." At the farm-house, a low, uninviting hut with thatch roof, they stopped to fill their flasks. The farmer led them to the rear of the house where was a huge tank of stagnant water. "But we cannot drink that," said Herr Runkel, astonished. "It is all there is," remarked the peasant. "In Dalmatia we drink rain water. It is all we have. There are no streams in Dalmatia except in the mountains, and often those are underground." "Underground?" cried Ferdinand. "How do you get the water then?" "Oh, the water runs along in the limestone until it meets with some obstruction, or when it deems it time to appear upon the surface, then it will flow on in a fine stream for some distance, when perhaps it will disappear again for awhile." "I never heard of such a thing," said Leopold, to whom water was so very plentiful in Tyrol. "It is a wise precaution of Nature," answered the peasant. "In these hot lands, were it not for this provision, the streams would soon dry up." "But why don't you convey this water from the mountains to your home?" asked Herr Müller. "That costs too much; we have no money to spend on luxuries; we have the rain and we gather the water as it falls." Walking on, having thanked the peasant for his courtesy, they came in sight of a convent. "Now we shall have some fresh water, I am bound," said Herr Müller. "Convents are always well supplied with refreshments of all kinds." A friar in brown costume opened the door to them and ushered them into a cool courtyard, paved with brick, in which were small openings at regular intervals. At the well in the centre of the court the flasks were filled with delicious, clear, cool water. "It surprises me," said Herr Runkel, "that you have such delicious water here, while just below, a mile or two, the peasant told us there was no water available for miles around, except rain water." "He is quite right, too," returned the affable friar. "If it were not for the rain we should all perish; but the peasant does not take the pains to collect the rain in just the same manner as we do." He then explained to them the method of obtaining the drinking water. The earth under the brick pavement was dug out to the depth of several feet; the sides and bottom were lined with some hard substance, sometimes clay, sometimes cement, to form a foundation to the cistern. In the middle of the pit was built a well of brick; fine, clean sand was then put in to the level of the court; the brick pavement was then laid, through the openings of which the rain passed into the bed of sand, and, as it seeped through the brick well eventually the sand filtered the water from all impurities and imparted to it a taste, without which it would have been "flat." A brief rest, and some slight refreshment, upon which the friar insisted, and the travelers plodded on; they passed peasants pushing crude wooden ploughs such as have been in use since long-forgotten ages, but which seem specially adapted to the rocky, stubborn soil of Dalmatia. And being so close to the border of Bosnia they encountered Bosnian peasants, fine tall men much like Turks in their costumes, for Turkey lies just next door on the south. The Bosnian Mohammedan women veil their faces like the Turkish women, and wear white garments with an apron of many colors, not outdoing, however, the men with their gold embroidered vests, their scarlet jackets and the fez upon their heads. A curious contrariety of nature is, that although the Bosnians and Herzegovians dislike the Turk, nevertheless they cling to the Turkish costume with pertinacity. So deep was their hatred of the Turk that these two provinces combined and placed themselves under the Austrian rule. As night approached, the travelers made their way towards a very large, low house surrounded with outbuildings, and all enclosed by a strong palisade of timbers built for defense. "We shall pass the night at the Community House," said Herr Runkel. "A Community House?" repeated Leopold. "Yes. You see, in the olden times, the borders of this country, and the neighboring ones, Servia, Bosnia, Croatia and Roumania, were constantly being overrun by the Turks, who have always been the dread of nations, their cruelty being proverbial. The inhabitants of these border-countries were forced to protect themselves, as in unity was their strength. Consequently, they built a Community or General House in which the villagers might live together for mutual protection, and mutual benefit as well." "But they don't have wars to fear any more, do they?" asked Ferdinand. "No. Nevertheless custom of long-standing cannot be lightly laid aside. Our empress Maria-Theresa, seeing the advantage these communities afforded as a means of defense, had a long line of them built, seven thousand miles long, from the Carpathian Mountains on the east of Transylvania to the sea-coast in Croatia to protect the border from the Turks, but now these fortifications have been abandoned. However, isolated Communities remain, being a part of the customs of Servia, and you will find them vastly different from anything you have yet seen." It was quite late in the afternoon; the sun had not yet sunk, because the days were at their longest; however, it was certainly dinner-time, if not past, and the party were hungry. Knocking at the door of the largest and most important-looking building, which was of timber, and one story only, it was opened by a young man in Servian costume who ushered them into the room. It was an enormous room, to say the least; in the centre extended a wooden table set for the evening meal, and about which were already seated the inhabitants of the Community. The eldest man, who had the honor to be, at the time, the Stareshina or Hausvater, arose from his seat and greeted the strangers. "And may we have the honor of receiving you as our guests?" he asked, simply. Herr Runkel thanked him, and explained that they were on a tour of the provinces with the lads, and should be most grateful for a night's shelter. Room was made for them at the table, and right heartily were they received by the Zadruga, or Community family. The two boys were lost in admiration of all they saw; and although they were plied with cheeses and meats and bread, and even fruits of all kinds, yet their hunger seemed to have left them in their wonderment. At one end of the great room was a brick stove or sort of fireplace, the largest either of the lads had ever seen. To carry off the smoke from the blazing logs, was built a huge canopy, round and very large at the bottom, tapering to a small circumference at the top, and allowing the smoke to escape through the open roof at that point. Over the fire, but high enough to prevent them being burned, were cross-beams from which hung huge pieces of beef, bacons, hams and all sorts of meat smoking for future use, while the cooking was done in huge pots of iron suspended by chains from the beams. The women were dressed in white linen bodices with long, flowing sleeves; their skirts were a combination of two wide aprons, one at the front and one at the back, over which was another smaller apron elaborately embroidered in brilliant colors. About their waists were scarlet sashes, with a second somewhat higher up of the same brilliant hue; red leather high boots, filigree silver ornaments or beads about their necks, and on their heads a filmy veil with fancy border fastened to the hair with a silver pin, and hanging far down over their shoulders like a mist. In this most picturesque costume they certainly resembled our scarlet flamingo or bird-of-paradise more than anything else one could think of. The men, too, were splendid in their gay costumes; loose trousers like the Turks, with top-boots of black leather; scarlet vests embellished with silver thread and silver buttons, and white coats, very long, reaching almost to the boots. The meal finished, the Stareshina (the presiding elder of the Zadruga) and his wife, the Domatchina (which means homekeeper), arose and thus gave the signal for the others to arise. Those women whose allotted work it was to attend to the clearing of the table, betook themselves to the task. The Domatchina arranges all the work to be done by each during the week, and turn about is taken, so that there may be no cause for dissatisfaction, while the Stareshina attends to the matters of the farm. Thus harmony always prevails; prosperity reigns wherever these Communities are established, and happiness is paramount. Although there seemed no apparent necessity for a fire, fresh logs were added. The men brought out their pipes, drew up the benches toward the hearth and began conversation. Some brought their musical instruments; the women sat with their spinning or sewing, while the little girls even, were occupied with elaborate embroideries for their trousseaux later in life, which are always begun in childhood. There was great unity and happiness in the circle. Amid laughter, song and anecdotes the evening passed; as the hour advanced the Stareshina conducted evening prayers. Goodnight was said by all, and each family betook himself to his own vayat (hut) outside the main building or Koutcha, which alone was reserved for the use of the Stareshina and the unmarried members of his family. As soon as one of his family should marry, he would have a separate vayat built for him about the Koutcha. The travelers were conducted to the guest-house, reserved solely for that purpose, and long into the night the children lay and talked over the strange customs they had seen, and plied their elders with endless questions as to the meaning of it all. "Let them be children, Fred," said Herr Runkel. "We brought them on this trip to learn," and he explained to them those things they wished so much to know. That the Slavs never allow their hearth-fire to die out, no matter how hot the season, for as surely as they do, all sorts of evils would befall them; that is one of the unswerving superstitions of the nation. The fire of their hearth is as a sacred flame to them, which must be tended and cared for with unremitting zeal, which harks back to the days of paganism when the fire was looked upon as the most sacred thing in their religion, and was kept ever burning in their temples and public places; finally it became the custom for each family to have his own hearth or fire, but the superstition that should it die out it would bring all sorts of maledictions upon the household, has remained. No doubt the difficulty of obtaining the fire by means of friction (matches of course, being unknown) accounted for the careful preservation of the flame. However it be, the Slavs still retain the ancient custom. He explained to them how the House father and the House mother of this great family are elected by vote, serving a given number of years; sometimes one, sometimes more, as custom establishes; but usually the eldest man in the Community holds that post of honor, while his wife is the House mother. He told the lads how the farm is worked by each member of the Zadruga under the supervision and instruction of the Stareshina, each receiving his share, according to his labor, at the end of the season, the finances being in charge of the House father. He told them how many of the young men, longing for higher education at the universities or in the arts, such as painting, etc., were sent by the Zadruga to the city which afforded the best advantages for them, the expenses being borne by the Community funds, should there not be sufficient to the young men's credit to pay for it, entirely; this extra sum being repaid when the students should be in position to do so. The children were fascinated with the Community, where every one seemed so happy and well cared for; and they begged to be allowed to remain many days, but Herr Müller reminded them that Frau Müller would be awaiting them at Gratz. "But we shall come again, _nicht wahr, mein Vater_?" asked Ferdinand. "Yes, we shall come again, and soon maybe," he replied. "And I, too?" queried Leopold. "_Naturlich._" * * * * * Off in the morning, the party journeyed through the southeastern portion of Carniola, so rich in mountains and minerals. There were unusual sights to be seen here, too; huge caverns were fashioned in the rocks, and grottoes of curious formations. They saw the peasant women making lace, a product for which the province is particularly famed. At Marburg, Herr Runkel and Leopold Hofer bade farewell to their companions, and boarded the train for Innsbruck where Herr Hofer would meet his young son; while Herr Müller and Ferdinand continued on up into Styria to the city of Gratz, where Frau Müller awaited them. Styria, or Steiermark, is a splendid province of the Austria-Hungarian empire, famous even in the time of the Romans, for its production of ore, and holding to-day an important place in the commercial world for its minerals. Gratz, the capital, is a charming city with an excellent university, and lies on the River Mur. It has been said of it that it is "La Ville des Grâces sur la rivière de l'Amour" (the favored city on the river of Love) being a play upon words, amour (love) being interpreted Mur. Of course there was an excursion to the Castle-hill, where formerly stood the ancient castle; and Herr Müller pointed out to the children the spot where Charles II ordered twenty thousand books of the Protestant faith to be burned in public. A few days' visit and they were once more on their way for Vienna, and home. Ferdinand's tongue had never ceased to chatter, there were so many interesting details to report to the mother; and when Vienna was reached it did seem as if the child never could settle down to life in the City, after his splendid rambles about the open country, wandering where he willed. "Father," he remarked, after some days at home, "we did not go to Moravia. We visited all the provinces except that." "Yes, it is true," replied his father, "but, you know, we lingered longer than we intended, and Teresa is due to arrive shortly. We shall have to reserve Moravia for another vacation-time. I think you will not find the customs there very different, however, from those of Bohemia.[1] But I should like to have you see Olmutz, the ancient capital of Moravia, where our emperor Franz-Joseph was proclaimed king." FOOTNOTES: [1] Our Little Bohemian Cousin. CHAPTER XI VIENNA WITH the arrival of Teresa Runkel busy days followed; visits to the Prater, which Emperor Joseph II had dedicated to the public for a playground and recreation park; to the Capuchin Church, where lie the remains of the imperial families from the time of Matthias I in 1619, and where the ill-starred Duke of Reichstadt (L'Aiglon), the only son of Napoleon of France, lies buried among his kinsfolks, as well as his imperial mother, Marie Louise. And, best of all, there was the excursion to the Castle of Laxenburg just outside Vienna, one of the imperial chateaux, standing in the midst of a miniature island, which is reached by a tiny ferry boat, quite as though it were some ancient feudal castle with its moat, minus the drawbridge and portcullis. Here they were frightened nearly out of their senses while inspecting the dungeons, at hearing an automaton chained to the wall shake its cumbersome fetters as if he were some prisoner living out his days in the hopelessness of the dungeon. But Herr Müller quieted the alarms of the young girl by explaining the pleasantry of the custodian, who gives his visitors thrills, which is what they really come for, as he says. "I wish you could be here for the ice-carnival, Teresa," said Ferdinand, after one busy day's sight-seeing. "It's wonderful, with the lake all lit up by electric lights and lanterns, and tiny booths dotted here and there, and skaters in their furs and gay gowns. Can't you manage to come at Christmas time?" "I should love to," she replied. "I'll write and ask brother Franz if I may." "And maybe mother will let us go to one of the masked balls," the lad said, half hesitatingly, for he knew this would, indeed, be a privilege. "Scarcely yet, Ferdinand; children do not attend balls; but there are countless other festivities for children, which would delight Teresa much more than a masked ball at which she could but look on. It is far better to be a participant, isn't it, my dear?" "Oh, much," answered the child, politely. Nevertheless, she did wish she might see the ball. A few days later Ferdinand and his mother drove the Austrian girl to the railroad station, where she was met by the Sister who would conduct her and others to the Convent. At the conductor's call "Einsteigen!" the doors of the train were fastened, and Ferdinand waved farewell to his little friend, through whose childish head flashed visions of a merry Yule-tide to come, passed in the home of her friends, with dances and parties, and skating and endless merriment. THE END THE LITTLE COLONEL BOOKS (Trade Mark) _By ANNIE FELLOWS JOHNSTON_ _Each 1 vol., large 12mo, cloth, illustrated, per vol._ $1.50 =THE LITTLE COLONEL STORIES= (Trade Mark) Being three "Little Colonel" stories in the Cosy Corner Series, "The Little Colonel," "Two Little Knights of Kentucky," and "The Giant Scissors," in a single volume. =THE LITTLE COLONEL'S HOUSE PARTY= (Trade Mark) =THE LITTLE COLONEL'S HOLIDAYS= (Trade Mark) =THE LITTLE COLONEL'S HERO= (Trade Mark) =THE LITTLE COLONEL AT BOARDING-SCHOOL= (Trade Mark) =THE LITTLE COLONEL IN ARIZONA= (Trade Mark) =THE LITTLE COLONEL'S CHRISTMAS VACATION= (Trade Mark) =THE LITTLE COLONEL, MAID OF HONOR= (Trade Mark) =THE LITTLE COLONEL'S KNIGHT COMES RIDING= (Trade Mark) =MARY WARE: THE LITTLE COLONEL'S CHUM= (Trade Mark) =MARY WARE IN TEXAS= =MARY WARE'S PROMISED LAND= _These 12 volumes, boxed as a set_, $18.00. =THE LITTLE COLONEL= (Trade Mark) =TWO LITTLE KNIGHTS OF KENTUCKY= =THE GIANT SCISSORS= =BIG BROTHER= Special Holiday Editions Each one volume, cloth decorative, small quarto, $1.25 New plates, handsomely illustrated with eight full-page drawings in color, and many marginal sketches. =IN THE DESERT OF WAITING:= THE LEGEND OF CAMELBACK MOUNTAIN. =THE THREE WEAVERS:= A FAIRY TALE FOR FATHERS AND MOTHERS AS WELL AS FOR THEIR DAUGHTERS. =KEEPING TRYST= =THE LEGEND OF THE BLEEDING HEART= =THE RESCUE OF PRINCESS WINSOME:= A FAIRY PLAY FOR OLD AND YOUNG. =THE JESTER'S SWORD= Each one volume, tall 16mo, cloth decorative $0.50 Paper boards .35 There has been a constant demand for publication in separate form of these six stories which were originally included in six of the "Little Colonel" books. =JOEL: A BOY OF GALILEE:= BY ANNIE FELLOWS JOHNSTON. 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Sun._ =FAMOUS INDIAN CHIEFS= In this book Mr. Johnston gives interesting sketches of the Indian braves who have figured with prominence in the history of our own land. =FAMOUS PRIVATEERSMEN AND ADVENTURERS OF THE SEA= In this volume Mr. Johnston tells interesting stories about the famous sailors of fortune. =FAMOUS SCOUTS= "It is the kind of a book that will have a great fascination for boys and young men and while it entertains them it will also present valuable information in regard to those who have left their impress upon the history of the country."--_The New London Day._ =FAMOUS FRONTIERSMEN AND HEROES OF THE BORDER= This book is devoted to a description of the adventurous lives and stirring experiences of many pioneer heroes who were prominently identified with the opening of the great west. -------- =RALPH SOMERBY AT PANAMA= By FORBES LINDSAY. 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One vol., library 12mo, illustrated $1.50 In the new book, the author tells how Nancy becomes in fact "the doctor's assistant," and continues to shed happiness around her. =NANCY, THE DOCTOR'S LITTLE PARTNER= By MARION AMES TAGGART. One vol., library 12mo, illustrated $1.50 In Nancy Porter, Miss Taggart has created one of the most lovable child characters in recent years. In the new story she is the same bright and cheerful little maid. =NANCY PORTER'S OPPORTUNITY= By MARION AMES TAGGART. One vol., library 12mo, illustrated $1.50 Already as the "doctor's partner" Nancy Porter has won the affection of her readers, and in the same lovable manner she continues in the new book to press the key-notes of optimism and good-will. =BORN TO THE BLUE= By FLORENCE KIMBALL RUSSEL. 12mo, cloth decorative, illustrated $1.25 The atmosphere of army life on the plains breathes on every page of this delightful tale. The boy is the son of a captain of U. S. cavalry stationed at a frontier post in the days when our regulars earned the gratitude of a nation. * * * * * Transcriber's Note: Obvious punctuation errors repaired. 
3788	----	HAYDN By J. Cuthbert Hadden TABLE OF CONTENTS: DEDICATION PREFACE TEXT OF "HAYDN," FROM THE MASTER MUSICIANS SERIES Chapter I: Birth--Ancestry--Early Years Chapter II: Vienna--1750-1760 Chapter III: Eisenstadt--1761-1766 Chapter IV: Esterhaz--1766-1790 Chapter V: First London Visit--1791-1792 Chapter VI: Second London Visit--1794-1795 Chapter VII: "The Creation" and "The Seasons" Chapter VIII: Last Years Chapter IX: Haydn, the Man Chapter X: Haydn, the Composer Appendix A: Haydn's Last Will and Testament Appendix B: Catalogue of Works Appendix C: Bibliography Appendix D: Haydn's Brothers Appendix E: A Selection of Haydn's Letters INFORMATION ABOUT THIS E-TEXT EDITION DEDICATION To The Rev. Robert Blair, D.D. In Grateful Acknowledgment of Many Kindnesses and Much Pleasant Intercourse PREFACE The authority for Haydn's life is the biography begun by the late Dr Pohl, and completed after his death by E.V. Mandyczewski. To this work, as yet untranslated, every subsequent writer is necessarily indebted, and the present volume, which I may fairly claim to be the fullest life of Haydn that has so far appeared in English, is largely based upon Pohl. I am also under obligations to Miss Pauline D. Townsend, the author of the monograph in the "Great Musicians" series. For the rest, I trust I have acquainted myself with all the more important references made to Haydn in contemporary records and in the writings of those who knew him. Finally, I have endeavoured to tell the story of his career simply and directly, to give a clear picture of the man, and to discuss the composer without trenching on the ground of the formalist. J.C.H. EDINBURGH, September 1902. HAYDN CHAPTER I. BIRTH--ANCESTRY--EARLY YEARS Introductory--Rohrau--A Poor Home--Genealogy--Haydn's Parents--His Birth--His Precocity--Informal Music-making--His First Teacher--Hainburg--"A Regular Little Urchin"--Attacks the Drum--A Piece of Good Luck--A Musical Examination--Goes to Vienna--Choir School of St Stephen's--A House of Suffering--Lessons at the Cathedral--A Sixteen-Part Mass--Juvenile Escapades--"Sang like a Crow"--Dismissed from the Choir. Haydn's position, alike in music and in musical biography, is almost unique. With the doubtful exception of Sebastian Bach, no composer of the first rank ever enjoyed a more tranquil career. Bach was not once outside his native Germany; Haydn left Austria only to make those visits to England which had so important an influence on the later manifestations of his genius: His was a long, sane, sound, and on the whole, fortunate existence. For many years he was poor and obscure, but if he had his time of trial, he never experienced a time of failure. With practical wisdom he conquered the Fates and became eminent. A hard, struggling youth merged into an easy middle-age, and late years found him in comfortable circumstances, with a solid reputation as an artist, and a solid retiring-allowance from a princely patron, whose house he had served for the better part of his working career. Like Goethe and Wordsworth, he lived out all his life. He was no Marcellus, shown for one brief moment and "withdrawn before his springtime had brought forth the fruits of summer." His great contemporary, Mozart, cut off while yet his light was crescent, is known to posterity only by the products of his early manhood. Haydn's sun set at the end of a long day, crowning his career with a golden splendour whose effulgence still brightens the ever-widening realm of music. Voltaire once said of Dante that his reputation was becoming greater and greater because no one ever read him. Haydn's reputation is not of that kind. It is true that he may not appeal to what has been called the "fevered modern soul," but there is an old-world charm about him which is specially grateful in our bustling, nerve-destroying, bilious age. He is still known as "Papa Haydn," and the name, to use Carlyle's phrase, is "significant of much." In the history of the art his position is of the first importance. He was the father of instrumental music. He laid the foundations of the modern symphony and sonata, and established the basis of the modern orchestra. Without him, artistically speaking, Beethoven would have been impossible. He seems to us now a figure of a very remote past, so great have been the changes in the world of music since he lived. But his name will always be read in the golden book of classical music; and whatever the evolutionary processes of the art may bring, the time can hardly come when he will be forgotten, his works unheard. Rohrau Franz Joseph Haydn was born at the little market-town of Rohrau, near Prugg, on the confines of Austria and Hungary, some two-and-a-half hours' railway journey from Vienna. The Leitha, which flows along the frontier of Lower Austria and Hungary on its way to the Danube, runs near, and the district [Figure: Haydn's birth-house at Rohrau] is flat and marshy. The house in which the composer was born had been built by his father. Situated at the end of the market-place, it was in frequent danger from inundation; and although it stood in Haydn's time with nothing worse befalling it than a flooding now and again, it has twice since been swept away, first in 1813, fours years after Haydn's death, and again in 1833. It was carefully rebuilt on each occasion, and still stands for the curious to see--a low-roofed cottage, very much as it was when the composer of "The Creation" first began to be "that various thing called man." A fire unhappily did some damage to the building in 1899. But excepting that the picturesque thatched roof has given place to a covering of less inflammable material, the "Zum Haydn" presents its extensive frontage to the road, just as it did of yore. Our illustration shows it exactly as it is to-day. [See an interesting account of a visit to the cottage after the fire, in The Musical Times for July 1899.] Schindler relates that when Beethoven, shortly before his death, was shown a print of the cottage, sent to him by Diabelli, he remarked: "Strange that so great a man should have been born in so poor a home!" Beethoven's relations with Haydn, as we shall see later on, were at one time somewhat strained; but the years had softened his asperity, and this indirect tribute to his brother composer may readily be accepted as a set-off to some things that the biographer of the greater genius would willingly forget. A Poor Home It was indeed a poor home into which Haydn had been born; but tenderness, piety, thrift and orderliness were there, and probably the happiest part of his career was that which he spent in the tiny, dim-lighted rooms within sound of Leitha's waters. In later life, when his name had been inscribed on the roll of fame, he looked back to the cottage at Rohrau, "sweet through strange years," with a kind of mingled pride and pathetic regret. Flattered by the great and acclaimed by the devotees of his art, he never felt ashamed of his lowly origin. On the contrary, he boasted of it. He was proud, as he said, of having "made something out of nothing." He does not seem to have been often at Rohrau after he was launched into the world, a stripling not yet in his teens. But he retained a fond memory of his birthplace. When in 1795 he was invited to inspect a monument erected to his honour in the grounds of Castle Rohrau, he knelt down on the threshold of the old home by the market-place and kissed the ground his feet had trod in the far-away days of youth. When he came to make his will, his thoughts went back to Rohrau, and one of his bequests provided for two of its poorest orphans. Genealogy Modern theories of heredity and the origin of genius find but scanty illustration in the case of Haydn. Unlike the ancestors of Bach and Beethoven and Mozart, his family, so far as the pedigrees show, had as little of genius, musical or other, in their composition, as the families of Shakespeare and Cervantes. In the male line they were hard-working, honest tradesmen, totally undistinguished even in their sober walk in life. They came originally from Hainburg, where Haydn's great-grandfather, Kaspar, had been among the few to escape massacre when the town was stormed by the Turks in July 1683. The composer's father, Matthias Haydn, was, like most of his brothers, a wheelwright, combining with his trade the office of parish sexton. He belonged to the better peasant class, and, though ignorant as we should now regard him, was yet not without a tincture of artistic taste. He had been to Frankfort during his "travelling years," and had there picked up some little information of a miscellaneous kind. "He was a great lover of music by nature," says his famous son, "and played the harp without knowing a note of music." He had a fine tenor voice, and when the day's toil was over he would gather his household around him and set them singing to his well-meant accompaniment. Haydn's Mother It is rather a pretty picture that the imagination here conjures up, but it does not help us very much in trying to account for the musical genius of the composer. Even the popular idea that genius is derived from the mother does not hold in Haydn's case. If Frau Haydn had a genius for anything it was merely for moral excellence and religion and the good management of her household. Like Leigh Hunt's mother, however, she was "fond of music, and a gentle singer in her way"; and more than one intimate of Haydn in his old age declared that he still knew by heart all the simple airs which she had been wont to lilt about the house. The maiden name of this estimable woman was Marie Koller. She was a daughter of the Marktrichter (market judge), and had been a cook in the family of Count Harrach, one of the local magnates. Eight years younger than her husband, she was just twenty-one at her marriage, and bore him twelve children. Haydn's regard for her was deep and sincere; and it was one of the tricks of destiny that she was not spared to witness more of his rising fame, being cut off in 1754, when she was only forty-six. Matthias Haydn promptly married again, and had a second family of five children, all of whom died in infancy. The stepmother survived her husband--who died, as the result of an accident, in 1763--and then she too entered a second time into the wedded state. Haydn can never have been very intimate with her, and he appears to have lost sight of her entirely in her later years. But he bequeathed a small sum to her in his will, "to be transferred to her children should she be no longer alive." Birth Joseph Haydn, to give the composer the name which he now usually bears, was the second of the twelve children born to the Rohrau wheelwright. The exact date of his birth is uncertain, but it was either the 31st of March or the 1st of April 1732. Haydn himself gave the latter as the correct date, alleging that his brother Michael had fixed upon the previous day to save him from being called an April fool! Probably we shall not be far off the mark if we assume with Pohl that Haydn was born in the night between the 31st of March and the 1st of April. His Precocity Very few details have come down to us in regard to his earlier years; and such details as we have refer almost wholly to his musical precocity. It was not such a precocity as that of Mozart, who was playing minuets at the age of four, and writing concertos when he was five; but just on that account it is all the more credible. One's sympathies are with the frank Philistine who pooh-poohs the tales told of baby composers, and hints that they must have been a trial to their friends. Precocious they no doubt were; but precocity often evaporates before it can become genius, leaving a sediment of disappointed hopes and vain ambitions. In literature, as Mr Andrew Lang has well observed, genius may show itself chiefly in acquisition, as in Sir Walter Scott, who, as a boy, was packing all sorts of lore into a singularly capacious mind, while doing next to nothing that was noticeable. In music it is different. Various learning is not so important as a keenly sensitive organism. The principal thing is emotion, duly ordered by the intellect, not intellect touched by emotion. Haydn's precocity at any rate was of this sort. It proclaimed itself in a quick impressionableness to sound, a delicately-strung ear, and an acute perception of rhythm. Informal Music-Making We have seen how the father had his musical evenings with his harp and the voices of wife and children. These informal rehearsals were young Haydn's delight. We hear more particularly of his attempts at music-making by sawing away upon a piece of stick at his father's side, pretending to play the violin like the village schoolmaster under whom he was now learning his rudiments. The parent was hugely pleased at these manifestations of musical talent in his son. He had none of the absurd, old-world ideas of Surgeon Handel as to the degrading character of the divine art, but encouraged the youngster in every possible way. Already he dreamt--what father of a clever boy has not done the same?--that Joseph would in some way or other make the family name famous; and although it is said that like his wife, he had notions of the boy becoming a priest, he took the view that his progress towards holy orders would be helped rather than hindered by the judicious cultivation of his undoubted taste for music. His First Teacher While these thoughts were passing through his head, the chance visit of a relation practically decided young Haydn's future. His grandmother, being left a widow, had married a journeyman wheelwright, Matthias Seefranz, and one of their children married a schoolmaster, Johann Matthias Frankh. Frankh combined with the post of pedagogue that of choir-regent at Hainburg, the ancestral home of the Haydns, some four leagues from Rohrau. He came occasionally to Rohrau to see his relatives, and one day he surprised Haydn keeping strict time to the family music on his improvised fiddle. Some discussion following about the boy's unmistakable talent, the schoolmaster generously offered to take him to Hainburg that he might learn "the first elements of music and other juvenile acquirements." The father was pleased; the mother, hesitating at first, gave her reluctant approval, and Haydn left the family home never to return, except on a flying visit. This was in 1738, when he was six years of age. Hainburg The town of Hainburg lies close to the Danube, and looks very picturesque with its old walls and towers. According to the Nibelungen Lied, King Attila once spent a night in the place, and a stone figure of that "scourge of God" forms a feature of the Hainburg Wiener Thor, a rock rising abruptly from the river, crowned with the ruined Castle of Rottenstein. The town cannot be very different from what it was in Haydn's time, except perhaps that there is now a tobacco manufactory, which gives employment to some 2000 hands. It is affecting to think of the little fellow of six dragged away from his home and his mother's watchful care to be planted down here among strange surroundings and a strange people. That he was not very happy we might have assumed in any case. But there were, unfortunately, some things to render him more unhappy than he need have been. Frankh's intentions were no doubt excellent; but neither in temper nor in character was he a fit guardian and instructor of youth. He got into trouble with the authorities more than once for neglect of his duties, and had to answer a charge of gambling with loaded dice. As a teacher he was of that stern disciplinarian kind which believes in lashing instruction into the pupil with the "tingling rod." Haydn says he owed him more cuffs than gingerbread. "A Regular Little Urchin" What he owed to the schoolmaster's wife may be inferred from the fact that she compelled him to wear a wig "for the sake of cleanliness." All his life through Haydn was most particular about his personal appearance, and when quite an old man it pained him greatly to recall the way in which he was neglected by Frau Frankh. "I could not help perceiving," he remarked to Dies, "much to my distress, that I was gradually getting very dirty, and though I thought a good deal of my little person, was not always able to avoid spots of dirt on my clothes, of which I was dreadfully ashamed. In fact, I was a regular little urchin." Perhaps we should not be wrong in surmising that the old man was here reading into his childhood the habits and sentiments of his later years. Young boys of his class are not usually deeply concerned about grease spots or disheveled hair. Attacks the Drum At all events, if deplorably neglected in these personal matters, he was really making progress with his art. Under Frankh's tuition he attained to some proficiency on the violin and the harpsichord, and his voice was so improved that, as an early biographer puts it, he was able to "sing at the parish desk in a style which spread his reputation through the canton." Haydn himself, going back upon these days in a letter of 1779, says: "Our Almighty Father (to whom above all I owe the most profound gratitude) had endowed me with so much facility in music that even in my sixth year I was bold enough to sing some masses in the choir." He was bold enough to attempt something vastly more ponderous. A drummer being wanted for a local procession, Haydn undertook to play the part. Unluckily, he was so small of stature that the instrument had to be carried before him on the back of a colleague! That the colleague happened to be a hunchback only made the incident more ludicrous. But Haydn had rather a partiality for the drum--a satisfying instrument, as Mr George Meredith says, because of its rotundity--and, as we shall learn when we come to his visits to London, he could handle the instrument well enough to astonish the members of Salomon's orchestra. According to Pohl, the particular instrument upon which he performed on the occasion of the Hainburg procession is still preserved in the choir of the church there. Hard as these early years must have been, Haydn recognized in after-life that good had mingled with the ill. His master's harshness had taught him patience and self-reliance. "I shall be grateful to Frankh as long as I live," he said to Griesinger, "for keeping me so hard at work." He always referred to Frankh as "my first instructor," and, like Handel with Zachau, he acknowledged his indebtedness in a practical way by bequeathing to Frankh's daughter, then married, 100 florins and a portrait of her father--a bequest which she missed by dying four years before the composer himself. A Piece of Good Fortune Haydn had been two years with Frankh when an important piece of good fortune befell him. At the time of which we are writing the Court Capellmeister at Vienna was George Reutter, an inexhaustible composer of church music, whose works, now completely forgotten, once had a great vogue in all the choirs of the Imperial States. Even in 1823 Beethoven, who was to write a mass for the Emperor Francis, was recommended to adopt the style of this frilled and periwigged pedant! Reutter's father had been for many years Capellmeister at St Stephen's Cathedral, Vienna, and on his death, in 1738, the son succeeded to the post. He had not been long established in the office when he started on a tour of search for choristers. Arriving at Hainburg, he heard from the local pastor of Haydn's "weak but pleasing voice," and immediately had the young singer before him. A Musical Examination The story of the examination is rather amusing. Reutter gave the little fellow a canon to sing at first sight. The boy went though the thing triumphantly, and the delighted Reutter cried "Bravo!" as he flung a handful of cherries into Haydn's cap. But there was one point on which Reutter was not quite satisfied. "How is it, my little man," he said, "that you cannot shake?" "How can you expect me to shake," replied the enfant terrible, "when Herr Frankh himself cannot shake?" The great man was immensely tickled by the ready retort, and, drawing the child towards him, he taught him how to make the vibrations in his throat required to produce the ornament. The boy picked up the trick at once. It was the final decision of his fate. Reutter saw that here was a recruit worth having, and he lost no time in getting the parents' sanction to carry him off to Vienna. In the father's case this was easily managed, but the mother only yielded when it was pointed out that her son's singing in the cathedral choir did not necessarily mean the frustration of her hopes of seeing him made a priest. Goes to Vienna Thus, some time in the year 1740, Reutter marched away from Hainburg with the little Joseph, and Hainburg knew the little Joseph no more. Vienna was now to be his home for ten long years of dreary pupilage and genteel starvation. In those days, and for long after, St Stephen's Cathedral was described as "the first church in the empire," and it is still, with its magnificent spire, the most important edifice in Vienna. Erected in 1258 and 1276 on the site of a church dating from 1144, it was not finally completed until 1446. It is in the form of a Latin cross, and is 355 feet long. The roof is covered with coloured tiles, and the rich groined vaulting is borne by eighteen massive pillars, adorned with more than a hundred statuettes. Since 1852 the building has been thoroughly restored, but in all essentials it remains as it was when Haydn sang in it as a choir-boy. The Choir School of St Stephen's Many interesting details have been printed regarding the Choir School of St Stephen's and its routine in Haydn's time. They have been well summarized by one of his biographers. [See Miss Townsend's Haydn, p. 9.] The Cantorei was of very ancient foundation. Mention is made of it as early as 1441, and its constitution may be gathered from directions given regarding it about the period 1558-1571. It was newly constituted in 1663, and many alterations were made then and afterwards, but in Haydn's day it was still practically what it had been for nearly a century before. The school consisted of a cantor (made Capellmeister in 1663), a sub-cantor, two ushers and six scholars. They all resided together, and had meals in common; and although ample allowance had originally been made for the board, lodging and clothing of the scholars, the increased cost of living resulted in the boys of Haydn's time being poorly fed and scantily clad. They were instructed in "religion and Latin, together with the ordinary subjects of school education, and in music, the violin, clavier, and singing." The younger scholars were taken in hand by those more advanced. The routine would seem to us now to be somewhat severe. There were two full choral services daily in the cathedral. Special Te Deums were constantly sung, and the boys had to take part in the numerous solemn processions of religious brotherhoods through the city, as well as in the services for royal birthdays and other such occasions. During Holy Week the labours of the choir were continuous. Children's processions were very frequent, and Haydn's delight in after years at the performance of the charity children in St Paul's may have been partly owing to the reminiscences of early days which it awakened. A House of Suffering But these details are aside from our main theme. The chapel-house of St Stephen's was now the home of our little Joseph. It ought to have been a happy home of instruction, but it was, alas! a house of suffering. Reutter did not devote even ordinary care to his pupil, and from casual lessons in musical theory he drifted into complete neglect. Haydn afterwards declared that he had never had more than two lessons in composition from Reutter, who was, moreover, harsh and cruel and unfeeling, laughing at his pupil's groping attempts, and chastising him on the slightest pretext. It has been hinted that the Capellmeister was jealous of his young charge--that he was "afraid of finding a rival in the pupil." But this is highly improbable. Haydn had not as yet shown any unusual gifts likely to excite the envy of his superior. There is more probability in the other suggestion that Reutter was piqued at not having been allowed by Haydn's father to perpetuate the boy's fine voice by the ancient method of emasculation. The point, in any case, is not of very much importance. It is sufficient to observe that Reutter's name survives mainly in virtue of the fact that he tempted Haydn to Vienna with the promise of special instruction, and gave him practically nothing of that, but a great deal of ill-usage. Lessons at St Stephen's Haydn was supposed to have lessons from two undistinguished professors named Gegenbauer and Finsterbusch. But it all amounted to very little. There was the regular drilling for the church services, to be sure: solfeggi and psalms, psalms and solfeggi--always apt to degenerate, under a pedant, into the dreariest of mechanical routine. How many a sweet-voiced chorister, even in our own days, reaches manhood with a love for music? It needs music in his soul. Haydn's soul withstood the numbing influence of pedantry. He realized that it lay with himself to develop and nurture the powers within his breast of which he was conscious. "The talent was in me," he remarked, "and by dint of hard work I managed to get on." Shortly before his death, when he happened to be in Vienna for some church festival, he had an opportunity of speaking to the choir-boys of that time. "I was once a singing boy," he said. "Reutter brought me from Hainburg to Vienna. I was industrious when my companions were at play. I used to take my little clavier under my arm, and go off to practice undisturbed. When I sang a solo, the baker near St Stephen's yonder always gave me a cake as a present. Be good and industrious, and serve God continually." A Sixteen-Part Mass! It is pathetic to think of the boy assiduously scratching innumerable notes on scraps of music paper, striving with yet imperfect knowledge to express himself, and hoping that by some miracle of inspiration something like music might come out of it. "I thought it must be all right if the paper was nice and full," he said. He even went the length of trying to write a mass in sixteen parts--an effort which Reutter rewarded with a shrug and a sneer, and the sarcastic suggestion that for the present two parts might be deemed sufficient, and that he had better perfect his copying of music before trying to compose it. But Haydn was not to be snubbed and snuffed out in this way. He appealed to his father for money to buy some theory books. There was not too much money at Rohrau, we may be sure, for the family was always increasing, and petty economies were necessary. But the wheelwright managed to send the boy six florins, and that sum was immediately expended on Fux's Gradus ad Parnassum and Mattheson's Volkommener Capellmeister--heavy, dry treatises both, which have long since gone to the musical antiquary's top shelf among the dust and the cobwebs. These "dull and verbose dampers to enthusiasm" Haydn made his constant companions, in default of a living instructor, and, like Longfellow's "great men," toiled upwards in the night, while less industrious mortals snored. Juvenile Escapades Meanwhile his native exuberance and cheerfulness of soul were irrepressible. Several stories are told of the schoolboy escapades he enjoyed with his fellow choristers. One will suffice here. He used to boast that he had sung with success at Court as well as in St Stephen's. This meant that he had made one of the choir when visits were paid to the Palace of Schonbrunn, where the Empress Maria and her Court resided. On the occasion of one of these visits the palace was in the hands of the builders, and the scaffolding presented the usual temptation to the youngsters. "The empress," to quote Pohl, "had caught them climbing it many a time, but her threats and prohibitions had no effect. One day when Haydn was balancing himself aloft, far above his schoolfellows, the empress saw him from the windows, and requested her Hofcompositor to take care that 'that fair-headed blockhead,' the ringleader of them all, got 'einen recenten Schilling' (slang for 'a good hiding')." The command was only too willingly obeyed by the obsequious Reutter, who by this time had been ennobled, and rejoiced in the addition of "von" to his name. Many years afterwards, when the empress was on a visit to Prince Esterhazy, the "fair-headed blockhead" took the cruel delight of thanking her for this rather questionable mark of Imperial favour! "Sang like a Crow" As a matter of fact, the empress, however she may have thought of Haydn the man, showed herself anything but considerate to Haydn the choir-boy. The future composer's younger brother, Michael, had now arrived in Vienna, and had been admitted to the St Stephen's choir. His voice is said to have been "stronger and of better quality" than Joseph's, which had almost reached the "breaking" stage; and the empress, complaining to Reutter that Joseph "sang like a crow," the complacent choirmaster put Michael in his place. The empress was so pleased with the change that she personally complimented Michael, and made him a present of 24 ducats. Dismissed from St Stephen's One thing leads to another. Reutter, it is obvious, did not like Haydn, and any opportunity of playing toady to the empress was too good to be lost. Unfortunately Haydn himself provided the opportunity. Having become possessed of a new pair of scissors, he was itching to try their quality. The pig-tail of the chorister sitting before him offered an irresistible attraction; one snip and lo! the plaited hair lay at his feet. Discipline must be maintained; and Reutter sentenced the culprit to be caned on the hand. This was too great an indignity for poor Joseph, by this time a youth of seventeen--old enough, one would have thought, to have forsworn such boyish mischief. He declared that he would rather leave the cathedral service than submit. "You shall certainly leave," retorted the Capellmeister, "but you must be caned first." And so, having received his caning, Haydn was sent adrift on the streets of Vienna, a broken-voiced chorister, without a coin in his pocket, and with only poverty staring him in the face. This was in November 1749. CHAPTER II. VIENNA--1750-1760 Vienna--The Forlorn Ex-Chorister--A Good Samaritan--Haydn Enskied--Street Serenades--Joins a Pilgrim Party--An Unconditional Loan--"Attic" Studies--An Early Composition--Metastasio--A Noble Pupil--Porpora--Menial Duties--Emanuel Bach--Haydn his Disciple--Violin Studies--Attempts at "Programme" Music--First Opera--An Aristocratic Appointment--Taken for an Impostor--A Count's Capellmeister--Falls in Love--Marries--His Wife. Vienna The Vienna into which Haydn was thus cast, a friendless and forlorn youth of seventeen, was not materially different from the Vienna of to-day. While the composer was still living, one who had made his acquaintance wrote of the city: "Represent to yourself an assemblage of palaces and very neat houses, inhabited by the most opulent families of one of the greatest monarchies in Europe--by the only noblemen to whom that title may still be with justice applied. The women here are attractive; a brilliant complexion adorns an elegant form; the natural but sometimes languishing and tiresome air of the ladies of the north of Germany is mingled with a little coquetry and address, the effect of the presence of a numerous Court...In a word, pleasure has taken possession of every heart." This was written when Haydn was old and famous; it might have been written when his name was yet unknown. Vienna was essentially a city of pleasure--a city inhabited by "a proud and wealthy nobility, a prosperous middle class, and a silent, if not contented, lower class." In 1768, Leopold Mozart, the father of the composer, declared that the Viennese public had no love of anything serious or sensible; "they cannot even understand it, and their theatres furnish abundant proof that nothing but utter trash, such as dances, burlesques, harlequinades, ghost tricks, and devils' antics will go down with them." There is, no doubt, a touch of exaggeration in all this, but it is sufficiently near the truth to let us understand the kind of attention which the disgraced chorister of St Stephen's was likely to receive from the musical world of Vienna. It was Vienna, we may recall, which dumped Mozart into a pauper's grave, and omitted even to mark the spot. The Forlorn Ex-Chorister Young Haydn, then, was wandering, weary and perplexed, through its streets, with threadbare clothes on his back and nothing in his purse. There was absolutely no one to whom he could think of turning. He might, indeed, have taken the road to Rohrau and been sure of a warm welcome from his humble parents there. But there were good reasons why he should not make himself a burden on them; and, moreover, he probably feared that at home he would run some risk of being tempted to abandon his cherished profession. Frau Haydn had not yet given up the hope of seeing her boy made a priest, and though we have no definite information that Haydn himself felt a decided aversion to taking orders, it is evident that he was disinclined to hazard the danger of domestic pressure. He had now finally made up his mind that he would be a composer; but he saw clearly enough that, for the present, he must work, and work, too, not for fame, but for bread. A Good Samaritan Musing on these things while still parading the streets, tired and hungry, he met one Spangler, a tenor singer of his acquaintance, who earned a pittance at the Church of St Michael. Spangler was a poor man--but it is ever the poor who are most helpful to each other--and, taking pity on the dejected outcast, he invited Haydn to share his garret rooms along with his wife and child. It is regrettable that nothing more is known of this good Samaritan--one of those obscure benefactors who go through the world doing little acts of kindness, never perhaps even suspecting how far-reaching will be the results. He must have died before Haydn, otherwise his name would certainly have appeared in his will. Haydn Enskied Haydn remained with Spangler in that "ghastly garret" all through the winter of 1749-1750. He has been commiserated on the garret--needlessly, to be sure. Garrets are famous, in literary annals at any rate; and is it not Leigh Hunt who reminds us that the top story is healthier than the basement? The poor poet in Pope, who lay high in Drury Lane, "lull'd by soft zephyrs through the broken pane," found profit, doubtless, in his "neighbourhood with the stars." However that may be, there, in Spangler's attic, was Haydn enskied, eager for work--work of any kind, so long as it had fellowship with music and brought him the bare means of subsistence. "Scanning his whole horizon In quest of what he could clap eyes on," he sought any and every means of making money. He tried to get teaching, with what success has not been recorded. He sang in choirs, played at balls and weddings and baptisms, made "arrangements" for anybody who would employ him, and in short drudged very much as Wagner did at the outset of his tempestuous career. Street Serenades He even took part in street serenades by playing the violin. This last was not a very dignified occupation; but it is important to remember that serenading in Vienna was not the lover's business of Italy and Spain, where the singer is accompanied by guitar or mandoline. It was a much more serious entertainment. It dated from the seventeenth century, if we are to trust Praetorius, and consisted of solos and concerted vocal music in various forms, accompanied sometimes by full orchestra and sometimes by wind instruments alone. Great composers occasionally honoured their patrons and friends with the serenade; and composers who hoped to be great found it advantageous as a means of gaining a hearing for their works. It proved of some real service to Haydn later on, but in the meantime it does not appear to have swelled his lean purse. With all his industry he fell into the direst straits now and again, and was more than once driven into wild projects by sheer stress of hunger. Joins a Pilgrim Party One curious story is told of a journey to Mariazell, in Styria. This picturesquely-situated village has been for many years the most frequented shrine in Austria. To-day it is said to be visited by something like 100,000 pilgrims every year. The object of adoration is the miraculous image of the Madonna and Child, twenty inches high, carved in lime-wood, which was presented to the Mother Church of Mariazell in 1157 by a Benedictine priest. Haydn was a devout Catholic, and not improbably knew all about Mariazell and its Madonna. At any rate, he joined a company of pilgrims, and on arrival presented himself to the local choirmaster for admission, showing the official some of his compositions, and telling of his eight years' training at St Stephen's. The choirmaster was not impressed. "I have had enough of lazy rascals from Vienna," said he. "Be off!" But Haydn, after coming so far, was not to be dismissed so unceremoniously. He smuggled himself into the choir, pleaded with the solo singer of the day to be allowed to act as his deputy, and, when this was refused, snatched the music from the singer's hand, and took up the solo at the right moment with such success that "all the choir held their breath to listen." At the close of the service the choirmaster sent for him, and, apologizing for his previous rude behaviour, invited him to his house for the day. The invitation extended to a week, and Haydn returned to Vienna with money enough--the result of a subscription among the choir--to serve his immediate needs. An Unconditional Loan But it would have been strange if, in a musical city like Vienna, a youth of Haydn's gifts had been allowed to starve. Slowly but surely he made his way, and people who could help began to hear of him. The most notable of his benefactors at this time was a worthy tradesman named Buchholz, who made him an unconditional loan of 150 florins. An echo of this unexpected favour is heard long years after in the composer's will, where we read: "To Fraulein Anna Buchholz, 100 florins, inasmuch as in my youth her grandfather lent me 150 florins when I greatly needed them, which, however, I repaid fifty years ago." "Attic" Studies One hundred and fifty florins was no great sum assuredly, but at this time it was a small fortune to Haydn. He was able to do a good many things with it. First of all, he took a lodging for himself--another attic! Spangler had been very kind, but he could not give the young musician the privacy needed for study. It chanced that there was a room vacant, "nigh to the gods and the clouds," in the old Michaelerhaus in the Kohlmarkt, and Haydn rented it. It was not a very comfortable room--just big enough to allow the poor composer to turn about. It was dimly lighted. It "contained no stove, and the roof was in such bad repair that the rain and the snow made unceremonious entry and drenched the young artist in his bed. In winter the water in his jug froze so hard during the night that he had to go and draw direct from the well." For neighbours he had successively a journeyman printer, a footman and a cook. These were not likely to respect his desire for quiet, but the mere fact of his having a room all to himself made him oblivious of external annoyances. As he expressed it, he was "too happy to envy the lot of kings." He had his old, worm-eaten spinet, and his health and his good spirits; and although he was still poor and unknown, he was "making himself all the time," like Sir Walter Scott in Liddesdale. An Early Composition Needless to say, he was composing a great deal. Much of his manuscript was, of course, torn up or consigned to the flames, but one piece of work survived. This was his first Mass in F (No. 11 in Novello's edition), erroneously dated by some writers 1742. It shows signs of immaturity and inexperience, but when Haydn in his old age came upon the long-forgotten score he was so far from being displeased with it that he rearranged the music, inserting additional wind parts. One biographer sees in this procedure "a striking testimony to the genius of the lad of eighteen." We need not read it in that way. It rather shows a natural human tenderness for his first work, a weakness, some might call it, but even so, more pardonable than the weakness--well illustrated by some later instances--of hunting out early productions and publishing them without a touch of revision. Metastasio It was presumably by mere chance that in that same rickety Michaelerhaus there lived at this date not only the future composer of "The Creation," but the Scribe of the eighteenth century, the poet and opera librettist, Metastasio. Born in 1698, the son of humble parents, this distinguished writer had, like Haydn, suffered from "the eternal want of pence." A precocious boy, he had improvised verses and recited them on the street, and fame came to him only after long and weary years of waiting. In 1729 he was appointed Court poet to the theatre at Vienna, for which he wrote several of his best pieces, and when he made Haydn's acquaintance his reputation was high throughout the whole of Europe. Naturally, he did not live so near the clouds as Haydn--his rooms were on the third story--but he heard somehow of the friendless, penniless youth in the attic, and immediately resolved to do what he could to further his interests. This, as events proved, was by no means inconsiderable. A Noble Pupil Metastasio had been entrusted with the education of Marianne von Martinez, the daughter of a Spanish gentleman who was Master of the Ceremonies to the Apostolic Nuncio. The young lady required a musicmaster, and the poet engaged Haydn to teach her the harpsichord, in return for which service he was to receive free board. Fraulein Martinez became something of a musical celebrity. When she was only seventeen she had a mass performed at St Michael's Church, Vienna. She was a favourite of the Empress Maria Theresa, and is extolled by Burney--who speaks of her "marvelous accuracy" in the writing of English--as a singer and a player, almost as highly as Gluck's niece. Her name finds a place in the biographies of Mozart, who, at her musical receptions, used to take part with her in duets of her own composition. Several of her manuscripts are still in the possession of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde. Something of her musical distinction ought certainly to be attributed to Haydn, who gave her daily lessons for three years, during which time he was comfortably housed with the family. Porpora It was through Metastasio, too, that he was introduced to Niccolo Porpora, the famous singing-master who taught the great Farinelli, and whose name is sufficiently familiar from its connection with an undertaking set on foot by Handel's enemies in London. Porpora seems at this time to have ruled Vienna as a sort of musical director and privileged censor, to have been, in fact, what Rossini was for many years in Paris. He was giving lessons to the mistress of Correr, the Venetian ambassador--a "rare musical enthusiast"--and he employed Haydn to act as accompanist during the lessons. Menial Duties We get a curious insight into the social conditions of the musicians of this time in the bearing of Haydn towards Porpora and his pupil. That Haydn should become the instructor of Fraulein Martinez in no way compromised his dignity; nor can any reasonable objection be raised against his filling the post of, accompanist to the ambassador's mistress. But what shall be said of his being transported to the ambassador's summer quarters at Mannersdorf, and doing duty there for six ducats a month and his board--at the servants' table? The reverend author of Music and Morals answers by reminding us that in those days musicians were not the confidential advisers of kings like Wagner, rich banker's sons like Meyerbeer, private gentlemen like Mendelssohn, and members of the Imperial Parliament like Verdi. They were "poor devils" like Haydn. Porpora was a great man, no doubt, in his own metier. But it is surely odd to hear of Haydn acting the part of very humble servant to the singing-master; blackening his boots and trimming his wig, and brushing his coat, and running his errands, and playing his accompaniments! Let us, however, remember Haydn's position and circumstances. He was a poor man. He had never received any regular tuition such as Handel received from Zachau, Mozart from his father, and Mendelssohn from Zelter. He had to pick up his instruction as he went along; and if he felt constrained to play the lackey to Porpora, it was only with the object of receiving in return something which would help to fit him for his profession. As he naively said, "I improved greatly in singing, composition, and Italian." [The relations of Haydn and Porpora are sketched in George Sand's "Consuelo."] Emanuel Bach In the meantime he was carrying on his private studies with the greatest assiduity. His Fux and his Mattheson had served their turn, and he had now supplemented them by the first six Clavier Sonatas of Philipp Emanuel Bach, the third son of the great composer. The choice may seem curious when we remember that Haydn had at his hand all the music of Handel and Bach, and the masters of the old contrapuntal school. But it was wisely made. The simple, well-balanced form of Emanuel Bach's works "acted as well as a master's guidance upon him, and led him to the first steps in that style of writing which was afterwards one of his greatest glories." The point is admirably put by Sir Hubert Parry. He says, in effect, that what Haydn had to build upon, and what was most congenial to him, through his origin and circumstances, was the popular songs and dances of his native land, which, in the matter of structure, belong to the same order of art as symphonies and sonatas; and how this kind of music could be made on a grander scale was what he wanted to discover. The music of Handel and Bach leaned too much towards the style of the choral music and organ music of the church to serve him as a model. For their art was essentially contrapuntal--the combination of several parts each of equal importance with the rest, each in a sense pursuing its own course. In modern music the essential principle is harmonic: the chords formed by the combination of parts are derived and developed in reference to roots and keys. In national dances few harmonies are used, but they are arranged on the same principles as the harmonies of a sonata or a symphony; and "what had to be found out in order to make grand instrumental works was how to arrange more harmonies with the same effect of unity as is obtained on a small scale in dances and national songs." Haydn, whose music contains many reminiscences of popular folk-song, had in him the instinct for this kind of art; and the study of Philipp Emanuel's works taught him how to direct his energies in the way that was most agreeable to him. A Disciple of Emanuel Bach Although much has been written about Emanuel Bach, it is probable that the full extent of his genius remains yet to be recognized. He was the greatest clavier player, teacher and accompanist of his day; a master of form, and the pioneer of a style which was a complete departure from that of his father. Haydn's enthusiasm for him can easily be explained. "I did not leave the clavier till I had mastered all his six sonatas," he says, "and those who know me well must be aware that I owe very much to Emanuel Bach, whose works I understand and have thoroughly studied. Emanuel Bach himself once complimented me on this fact." When Haydn began to make a name Bach hailed him with delight as a disciple, and took occasion to send him word that, "he alone had thoroughly comprehended his works and made a proper use of them." This is a sufficient answer to the absurd statement which has been made, and is still sometimes repeated, that Bach was jealous of the young composer and abused him to his friends. A writer in the European Magazine for October 1784, says that Bach was "amongst the number of professors who wrote against our rising author." He mentions others as doing the same thing, and then continues: "The only notice Haydn took of their scurrility and abuse was to publish lessons written in imitation of the several styles of his enemies, in which their peculiarities were so closely copied and their extraneous passages (particularly those of Bach of Hamburg) so inimitably burlesqued, that they all felt the poignancy of his musical wit, confessed its truth, and were silent." Further on we read that the sonatas of Ops. 13 and 14 were "expressly composed in order to ridicule Bach of Hamburg." All this is manifestly a pure invention. Many of the peculiarities of Emanuel Bach's style are certainly to be found in Haydn's works--notes wide apart, pause bars, surprise modulations, etc., etc.--but if every young composer who adopts the tricks of his model is to be charged with caricature, few can hope to escape. The truth is, of course, that every man's style, whether in music or in writing, is a "mingled yarn" of many strands, and it serves no good purpose to unravel it, even if we could. Violin Studies Haydn's chief instrument was the clavier, but in addition to that he diligently practiced the violin. It was at this date that he took lessons on the latter instrument from "a celebrated virtuoso." The name is not mentioned, but the general opinion is that Dittersdorf was the instructor. This eminent musician obtained a situation as violinist in the Court Orchestra at Vienna in 1760; and, curiously enough, after many years of professional activity, succeeded Haydn's brother, Michael, as Capellmeister to the Bishop of Groswardein in Hungary. He wrote an incredible amount of music, and his opera, "Doctor and Apotheker," by which he eclipsed Mozart at one time, has survived up to the present. Whether or not he gave Haydn lessons on the violin, it is certain that the pair became intimate friends, and had many happy days and some practical jokes together. One story connected with their names sounds apocryphal, but there is no harm in quoting it. Haydn and Dittersdorf were strolling down a back street when they heard a fiddler scraping away in a little beer cellar. Haydn, entering, inquired, "Whose minuet is that you are playing?" "Haydn's," answered the fiddler. "It's a--bad minuet," replied Haydn, whereupon the enraged player turned upon him and would have broken his head with the fiddle had not Dittersdorf dragged him away. Attempts at Programme Music It seems to have been about this time--the date, in fact, was 1751--that Haydn, still pursuing his serenading practices, directed a performance of a quintet of his own composition under the windows of Felix Kurz, a well-known Viennese comedian and theatrical manager. According to an old writer, Kurz amused the public by his puns, and drew crowds to his theatre by his originality and by good opera-buffas. He had, moreover, a handsome wife, and "this was an additional reason for our nocturnal adventurers to go and perform their serenades under the harlequin's windows." The comedian was naturally flattered by Haydn's attention. He heard the music, and, liking it, called the composer into the house to show his skill on the clavier. Kurz appears to have been an admirer of what we would call "programme" music. At all events he demanded that Haydn should give him a musical representation of a storm at sea. Unfortunately, Haydn had never set eyes on the "mighty monster," and was hard put to it to describe what he knew nothing about. He made several attempts to satisfy Kurz, but without success. At last, out of all patience, he extended his hands to the two ends of the harpsichord, and, bringing them rapidly together, exclaimed, as he rose from the instrument, "The devil take the tempest." "That's it! That's it!" cried the harlequin, springing upon his neck and almost suffocating him. Haydn used to say that when he crossed the Straits of Dover in bad weather, many years afterwards, he often smiled to himself as he thought of the juvenile trick which so delighted the Viennese comedian. His First Opera But the comedian wanted more from Haydn than a tempest on the keyboard. He had written the libretto of an opera, "Der Neue Krumme Teufel," and desired that Haydn should set it to music. The chance was too good to be thrown away, and Haydn proceeded to execute the commission with alacrity, not a little stimulated, doubtless, by the promise of 24 ducats for the work. There is a playfulness and buoyancy about much of Haydn's music which seems to suggest that he might have succeeded admirably in comic opera, and it is really to be regretted that while the words of "Der Neue Krumme Teufel" have been preserved, the music has been lost. It would have been interesting to see what the young composer had made of a subject which--from Le Sage's "Le Diable Boiteux" onwards--has engaged the attention of so many playwrights and musicians. The opera was produced at the Stadt Theatre in the spring of 1752, and was frequently repeated not only in Vienna, but in Berlin, Prague, Saxony and the Breisgau. An Aristocratic Appointment An event of this kind must have done something for Haydn's reputation, which was now rapidly extending. Porpora seems also to have been of no small service to him in the way of introducing him to aristocratic acquaintances. At any rate, in 1755, a wealthy musical amateur, the Baron von Furnberg, who frequently gave concerts at his country house at Weinzierl, near Vienna, invited him to take the direction of these performances and compose for their programmes. It was for this nobleman that he wrote his first string quartet, the one in B flat beginning-- [figure: a musical score excerpt] This composition was rapidly followed by seventeen other works of the same class, all written between 1755 and 1756. Taken for an Impostor Haydn's connection with Furnberg and the success of his compositions for that nobleman at once gave him a distinction among the musicians and dilettanti of Vienna. He now felt justified in increasing his fees, and charged from 2 to 5 florins for a month's lessons. Remembering the legend of his unboylike fastidiousness, and the undoubted nattiness of his later years, it is curious to come upon an incident of directly opposite tendency. A certain Countess von Thun, whose name is associated with Beethoven, Mozart and Gluck, met with one of his clavier sonatas in manuscript, and expressed a desire to see him. When Haydn presented himself, the countess was so struck by his shabby appearance and uncouth manners that it occurred to her he must be an impostor! But Haydn soon removed her doubts by the pathetic and realistic account which he gave of his lowly origin and his struggles with poverty, and the countess ended by becoming his pupil and one of his warmest friends. A Count's Capellmeister Haydn is said to have held for a time the post of organist to the Count Haugwitz; but his first authenticated fixed engagement dates from 1759, when, through the influence of Baron Furnberg, he was appointed Capellmeister to the Bohemian Count Morzin. This nobleman, whose country house was at Lukavec, near Pilsen, was a great lover of music, and maintained a small, well-chosen orchestra of some sixteen or eighteen performers. It was for him that Haydn wrote his first Symphony in D-- [Figure: a musical score excerpt] Falls in Love We now approach an interesting event in Haydn's career. In the course of some banter at the house of Rogers, Campbell the poet once remarked that marriage in nine cases out of ten looks like madness. Haydn's case was not the tenth. His salary from Count Morzin was only 20 pounds with board and lodging; he was not making anything substantial by his compositions; and his teaching could not have brought him a large return. Yet, with the proverbial rashness of his class, he must needs take a wife, and that, too, in spite, of the fact that Count Morzin never kept a married man in his service! "To my mind," said Mozart, "a bachelor lives only half a life." It is true enough; but Mozart had little reason to bless the "better half," while Haydn had less. The lady with whom he originally proposed to brave the future was one of his own pupils--the younger of the two daughters of Barber Keller, to whom he had been introduced when he was a chorister at St Stephen's. According to Dies, Haydn had lodged with the Kellers at one time. The statement is doubtful, but in any case his good stars were not in the ascendant when it was ordained that he should marry into this family. Marries It was, as we have said, with the younger of the two daughters that he fell in love. Unfortunately, for some unexplained reason, she took the veil, and said good-bye to a wicked world. Like the hero in "Locksley Hall," Haydn may have asked himself, "What is that which I should do?" But Keller soon solved the problem for him. "Barbers are not the most diffident people of the world," as one of the race remarks in "Gil Blas," and Keller was assuredly not diffident. "Never mind," he said to Haydn, "you shall have the other." Haydn very likely did not want the other, but, recognizing with Dr Holmes's fashionable lady that "getting married is like jumping overboard anyway you look at it," he resolved to risk it and take Anna Maria Keller for better or worse. His Wife The marriage was solemnized at St Stephen's on November 26, 1760, when the bridegroom was twenty-nine and the bride thirty-two. There does not seem to have been much affection on either side to start with; but Haydn declared that he had really begun to "like" his wife, and would have come to entertain a stronger feeling for her if she had behaved in a reasonable way. It was, however, not in Anna Maria's nature to behave in a reasonable way. The diverting Marville says that the majority of women married to men of genius are so vain of the abilities of their husbands that they are frequently insufferable. Frau Haydn was not a woman of that kind. As Haydn himself sadly remarked, it did not matter to her whether he were a cobbler or an artist. She used his manuscript scores for curling papers and underlays for the pastry, and wrote to him when he was in England for money to buy a "widow's home." He was even driven to pitifully undignified expedients to protect his hard-earned cash from her extravagant hands. There are not many details of Anna Maria's behaviour, for Haydn was discreetly reticent about his domestic affairs; and only two references can be found in all his published correspondence to the woman who had rendered his life miserable. But these anecdotes tell us enough. For a long time he tried making the best of it; but making the best of it is a poor affair when it comes to a man and woman living together, and the day arrived when the composer realized that to live entirely apart was the only way of ending a union that had proved anything but a foretaste of heaven. Frau Haydn looked to spend her last years in a "widow's home" provided for her by the generosity of her husband, but she predeceased him by nine years, dying at Baden, near Vienna, on the 20th of March 1800. With this simple statement of facts we may finally dismiss a matter that is best left to silence--to where "beyond these voices there is peace." Whether Count Morzin would have retained the services of Haydn in spite of his marriage is uncertain. The question was not put to the test, for the count fell into financial embarrassments and had to discharge his musical establishment. A short time before this, Prince Paul Anton Esterhazy had heard some of Haydn's compositions when on a visit to Morzin, and, being favourably impressed thereby, he resolved to engage Haydn should an opportunity ever present itself. The opportunity had come, and Haydn entered the service of a family who were practically his life-long patrons, and with whom his name must always be intimately associated. CHAPTER III. EISENSTADT--1761-1766 The Esterhazy Family--Haydn's Agreement--An "Upper Servant"?--Dependence in the Order of Nature--Material and Artistic Advantages of the Esterhazy Appointment--Some Disadvantages--Capellmeister Werner--A Posthumous Tribute--Esterhazy "The Magnificent"--Compositions for Baryton--A Reproval--Operettas and other Occasional Works--First Symphonies. The Esterhazy Family As Haydn served the Esterhazys uninterruptedly for the long period of thirty years, a word or two about this distinguished family will not be out of place. At the present time the Esterhazy estates include twenty-nine lordships, with twenty-one castles, sixty market towns, and 414 villages in Hungary, besides lordships in Lower Austria and a county in Bavaria. This alone will give some idea of the power and importance of the house to which Haydn was attached. The family was divided into three main branches, but it is with the Frakno or Forchtenstein line that we are more immediately concerned. Count Paul Esterhazy of Frakno (1635-1713) served in the Austrian army with such distinction as to gain a field-marshal's baton at the age of thirty. He was the first prince of the name, having been ennobled in 1687 for his successes against the Turks and his support of the House of Hapsburg. He was a musical amateur and a performer of some ability, and it was to him that the family owed the existence of the Esterhazy private chapel, with its solo singers, its chorus, and its orchestra. Indeed, it was this prince who, in 1683, built the splendid Palace of Eisenstadt, at the foot of the Leitha mountains, in Hungary, where Haydn was to spend so many and such momentous years. When Prince Paul died in 1713, he was succeeded by his son, Joseph Anton, who acquired "enormous wealth," and raised the Esterhazy family to "the height of its glory." This nobleman's son, Paul Anton, was the reigning prince when Haydn was called to Eisenstadt in 1761. He was a man of fifty, and had already a brilliant career behind him. Twice in the course of the Seven Years' War he had "equipped and maintained during a whole campaign a complete regiment of hussars for the service of his royal mistress," and, like his distinguished ancestor, he had been elevated to the dignity of field-marshal. He was passionately devoted to the fine arts, more particularly to music, and played the violin with eminent skill. Under his reign the musical establishment at Eisenstadt enjoyed a prosperity unknown at any other period of its history. Haydn's Agreement As there will be something to say about the terms and nature of Haydn's engagement with Prince Paul Anton, it may be well to quote the text of the agreement which he was required to sign. It was in these terms: FORM OF AGREEMENT AND INSTRUCTIONS FOR THE VICE-CAPELLMEISTER "This day (according to the date hereto appended) Joseph Heyden [sic] native of Rohrau, in Austria, is accepted and appointed Vice-Capellmeister in the service of his Serene Highness, Paul Anton, Prince of the Holy Roman Empire, of Esterhazy and Galantha, etc., etc., with the conditions here following: "1st. Seeing that the Capellmeister at Eisenstadt, by name Gregorius Werner, having devoted many years of true and faithful service to the princely house, is now, on account of his great age and infirmities, unfit to perform the duties incumbent on him, therefore the said Gregorious Werner, in consideration of his long services, shall retain the post of Capellmeister, and the said Joseph Heyden as Vice-Capellmeister shall, as far as regards the music of the choir, be subordinate to the Capellmeister and receive his instructions. But in everything else relating to musical performances, and in all that concerns the orchestra, the Vice-Capellmeister shall have the sole direction. "2nd. The said Joseph Heyden shall be considered and treated as a member of the household. Therefore his Serene Highness is graciously pleased to place confidence in his conducting himself as becomes an honourable official of a princely house. He must be temperate, not showing himself overbearing towards his musicians, but mild and lenient, straightforward and composed. It is especially to be observed that when the orchestra shall be summoned to perform before company, the Vice-Capellmeister and all the musicians shall appear in uniform, and the said Joseph Heyden shall take care that he and all members of his orchestra do follow the instructions given, and appear in white stockings, white linen, powdered, and either with a pig-tail or a tie-wig. "3rd. Seeing that the other musicians are referred for directions to the said Vice-Capellmeister, therefore he should take the more care to conduct himself in an exemplary manner, abstaining from undue familiarity, and from vulgarity in eating, drinking and conversation, not dispensing with the respect due to him, but acting uprightly and influencing his subordinates to preserve such harmony as is becoming in them, remembering how displeasing the consequences of any discord or dispute would be to his Serene Highness. "4th. The said Vice-Capellmeister shall be under an obligation to compose such music as his Serene Highness may command, and neither to communicate such compositions to any other person, nor to allow them to be copied, but to retain them for the absolute use of his Highness, and not to compose anything for any other person without the knowledge and permission of his Highness. "5th. The said Joseph Heyden shall appear in the ante-chamber daily, before and after mid-day, and inquire whether his Highness is pleased to order a performance of the orchestra. After receipt of his orders be shall communicate them to the other musicians and shall take care to be punctual at the appointed time, and to ensure punctuality in his subordinates, making a note of those who arrive late or absent themselves altogether. "6th. Should any quarrel or cause of complaint arise, the Vice-Capellmeister shall endeavour to arrange it, in order that his Serene Highness may not be incommoded with trifling disputes; but should any more serious difficulty occur, which the said Joseph Heyden is unable to set right, his Serene Highness must then be respectfully called upon to decide the matter. "7th. The said Vice-Capellmeister shall take careful charge of all music and musical instruments, and shall be responsible for any injury that may occur to them from carelessness or neglect. "8th. The said Joseph Heyden shall be obliged to instruct the female vocalists, in order that they may not forget in the country what they had been taught with much trouble and expense in Vienna, and, as the said Vice-Capellmeister is proficient on various instruments, he shall take care to practice himself on all that he is acquainted with. "9th. A copy of this agreement and instructions shall be given to the said Vice-Capellmeister and to his subordinates, in order that he may be able to hold them to their obligations therein laid down. "10th. It is considered unnecessary to detail the services required of the said Joseph Heyden more particularly, since his Serene Highness is pleased to hope that he will of his own free will strictly observe not only these regulations, but all others that may from time to time be made by his Highness, and that he will place the orchestra on such a footing, and in such good order, that he may bring honour upon himself, and deserve the further favour of the Prince, his master, who thus confides in his zeal and discretion. "11th. A salary of four hundred florins to be received quarterly is hereby bestowed upon the said Vice-Capellmeister by his Serene Highness. "12th. In addition, the said Joseph Heyden shall have board at the officers' table, or half a gulden a day in lieu thereof. "13th. Finally, this agreement shall hold good for at least three years from May 1st, 1761, with the further condition that if at the conclusion of this term the said Joseph Heyden shall desire to leave the service, he shall notify his intention to his Highness half-a-year beforehand. "14th. His Serene Highness undertakes to keep Joseph Heyden in his service during this time, and should he be satisfied with him, he may look forward to being appointed Capellmeister. This, however, must not be understood to deprive his Serene Highness of the freedom to dismiss the said Joseph Heyden at the expiration of the term, should he see fit to do so. "Duplicate copies of this document shall be executed and exchanged. "Given at Vienna this 1st day of May 1761, "Ad mandatum Celsissimi Principis. "JOHANN STIFFTELL, Secretary." An "Upper Servant"? The situation indicated by this lengthy document has afforded matter for a good deal of comment, and not a little foolish writing. With some it is the old case of Porpora and the blacking of the boots. Thus Miss Townsend remarks: "Our indignation is roused at finding a great artist placed in the position of an upper servant, and required to perform duties almost menial in their nature." That is essentially a modern view. These things have to be judged in relation to the ideas of the age. It was only a few years before this that Johnson had contemptuously thrown away a pair of boots which some pitying soul had placed at the door of his rooms at Pembroke. The British mind likes to think of the sturdy independence of the man who struck the death-blow at patronage in literature. But Johnson himself had the meanest opinion of fiddlers. Dependence in the Order of Nature There was no talk in Haydn's native country of the dignity of art, at any rate so far as musicians were concerned. When Mozart first arrived in Vienna in 1781, he had to live with the archbishop's household, and dine at the servants' table. Nay, he was known as "the villain, the low fellow." And is it altogether certain even now, in free Britain, that the parish organist is very clearly distinguished in the squire's mind from the peripatetic organ-grinder? Public opinion does not seem to have commiserated Haydn on his position of dependence; and, as for Haydn himself, he was no doubt only too glad to have an assured income and a comfortable home. We may be certain that he did not find the yoke unbearably galling. He was of humble birth; of a family which must always have looked up to their "betters" as unspeakably and immeasurably above them. Dependence was in the order of nature, and a man of Haydn's good sense was the last in the world to starve and fret because his freedom to practice his art and develop his powers was complicated with a sort of feudal service. Some strong souls may find an empty purse the truest source of inspiration, as Mr Russell Lowell declares it to be; but it is very much to be doubted whether a careful investigation would show that a great man's best work was done with the wolf at the door. Material Advantages Haydn had no self-pity: why should we pity him? He had free quarters at the palace, with liberty to enjoy the company of his wife when she chose to favour him--an event of rare occurrence. His salary was raised from time to time. The old prince, his first employer, paid him 400 florins; his successor increased the amount first to 600 and then to 782 florins (78 pounds); and finally he had 1400 florins, which last sum was continued to him as a pension when he left the Esterhazy service. Although money had a much higher purchasing value in those days, the figures here quoted do not seem princely when we consider the extent and nature of Haydn's duties, but to a man of Haydn's simple tastes they would appear ample enough. At least, they would save him from lying on straw and drinking bad whisky, which Wagner regarded as among the things that are inimical to the creative genius. Artistic Advantages These were the material advantages of the Eisenstadt appointment. The artistic advantages were even more important, especially to a young and inexperienced artist who, so far, had not enjoyed many opportunities of practically testing his own work. Haydn had a very good band always at his disposal, the members of which were devoted to him. If he wrote part of a symphony over-night he could try it in the morning, prune, revise, accept, reject. Many a young composer of to-day would rejoice at such an opportunity, as indeed Haydn himself rejoiced at it. "I not only had the encouragement of constant approval," he says, speaking of this period of his career, "but as conductor of an orchestra I could make experiments, observe what produced an effect and what weakened it, and was thus in a position to improve, alter, make additions and omissions, and be as bold as I pleased." Some Disadvantages No doubt there were some disadvantages in counterpoise. After the gay life of Vienna, Eisenstadt must have been dull enough, and there is plenty of evidence to show that the young artist occasionally fell into the dumps. In one letter he complains that he "never can obtain leave, even for four-and-twenty hours, to go to Vienna." In another he writes: "I am doomed to stay at home. What I lose by so doing you can well imagine. It is indeed sad always to be a slave, but Providence wills it so. I am a poor creature, plagued perpetually by hard work, and with few hours for recreation." Haydn clearly recognized the necessities of the artist. A quiet life is all very well, but no man ever yet greatly touched the hearts of men if he kept himself too strictly segregated from his kind. Music, like every other art, would perish in a hot-house. Reckon up to-day the composers who are really a force in the emotional life of the people, and ask which of them was reared in the serene, cold air of the academies. A composer to be great must live with his fellows, and open his soul to human affluences. "I was cut off from the world," says Haydn. "There was no one to confuse or torment me, and I was forced to become original." But his originality was that of an active mind working upon material already stored, and the store had to be replenished in occasional excursions, all too few, from the palace. The Eisenstadt appointment, then, provided for Haydn's material wants, and gave him opportunities for the peaceful pursuit of his studies, for experiment and self-criticism. He was treated with great consideration by the Esterhazys, and, menial or not, he lived on their bounty and in the friendliest relations with them. Capellmeister Werner From his agreement with Prince Esterhazy it will have been gathered that, though virtually entrusted with the direction of the Eisenstadt musical establishment, Haydn was really under the control of an old official. Such arrangements seldom work well. The retention of Joseph Werner was presumably due to the thoughtful kindness of his noble patron, but it was bound to lead to awkward situations. Werner had served the Esterhazys for thirty-two years, and could not be expected to placidly accept his supersession by a young and as yet almost unknown musician. True, he was not a very distinguished man himself. He had composed a large amount of music, chiefly sacred, including thirty-nine masses and twelve "Oratorios for Good Friday," besides some grotesque pieces intended as burlesques of the musical life of Vienna. Not one of his works has any real musical value; but, as is usually the case with the talent which stops short of genius, he thought a great deal of himself, and was inclined to look down upon Haydn as an interloper, unskilled in that rigid counterpoint which was the "heaven's law" of the old-time composer. Indeed, he described his associate as "a mere fop" and "a scribbler of songs." A Posthumous Tribute It is but fair to Haydn to say that, if he did not suffer his nominal superior gladly, he at least treated him with respect and a certain deference. He did more. Werner died in 1766, having thus seen only five years of the new order of things, but Haydn's regard for his memory was such that, so late as 1804, he published six of his fugues arranged as string quartets, "out of sincere esteem for this celebrated master." A kindness of heart and a total absence of professional jealousy characterized Haydn throughout his whole career, and never more than in this action. Esterhazy "the Magnificent" The composer had been rather less than a twelvemonth in his service when Prince Paul Anton died on the 18th of March 1762. He was succeeded by his brother Nicolaus, a sort of glorified "Grand Duke" of Chandos, who rejoiced in the soubriquet of "The Magnificent." He loved ostentation and glitter above all things, wearing at times a uniform bedecked with diamonds. But he loved music as well. More, he was a performer himself, and played the baryton, a stringed instrument not unlike the viola-da-gamba, in general use up to the end of the eighteenth century. Haydn naturally desired to please his prince, and being perpetually pestered to provide new works for the noble baryton player, he thought it would flatter him if he himself learnt to handle the baryton. This proved an unfortunate misreading of "The Magnificent's" character, for when Haydn at length made his debut with the instrument, the prince lost no time in letting him understand that he disapproved of such rivalry. An amusing story is told of Kraft, the Eisenstadt 'cellist, at this time, who occasionally played the second baryton. Kraft presented the prince with a composition into which he had introduced a solo for himself as second baryton. The prince asked to see the part, and proceeded to try it over. Coming to a difficult passage, he exclaimed indignantly: "For the future, write solos only for my part; it is no credit to you to play better than I; it is your duty." Compositions for Baryton Haydn, so far as we can make out, never essayed the baryton again, but he wrote a surprising amount of music for it, considering its complicated mechanism and the weakness of its tone. In the catalogue of his works there are no fewer than 175 compositions for the instrument--namely, six duets for two barytons, twelve sonatas for baryton and violoncello, twelve divertimenti for two barytons and bass, and 125 divertimenti for baryton, viola and violoncello; seventeen so-called "cassations"; and three concertos for baryton, with accompaniment of two violins and bass. There is no need to say anything about these compositions, inasmuch as they have gone to oblivion with the instrument which called them into being. At the best they can never have been of much artistic importance. A Reproval A new epoch began at Eisenstadt with the rule of Prince Nicolaus. He was a man of unbounded energy himself, and he expected everybody in his service to be energetic too. There is nothing to suggest that Haydn neglected any of his routine duties, which certainly gave him abundant opportunity to "break the legs of time," but once, at least--in 1765--his employer taxed him with lack of diligence in composition, as well as for failing to maintain the necessary discipline among the musicians under his charge. It is likely enough that Haydn was not a rigid disciplinarian; but it must have been a mere whim on the part of Prince Nicolaus to reprove him on the score of laziness in composing. In any case, it seems to have been only a solitary reproof. There is no evidence of its having been repeated, and we may assume that even now it was not regarded as a very serious matter, from the fact that three weeks after the prince was requesting his steward to pay Haydn 12 ducats for three new pieces, with which he was "very much pleased." Operettas Life at Eisenstadt moved on in "calm peace and quiet," but now and again it was stirred into special activity, when Haydn had to put forth his efforts in various new directions. Such an occasion came very early in his service of Prince Nicolaus, when that pompous person made triumphant entry into Eisenstadt. The festivities were on a regal scale and continued for a whole month. A company of foreign players had been engaged to perform on a stage erected in the large conservatory, and Haydn was required to provide them with operettas. He wrote several works of the kind, one of which, "La Marchesa Nepola," survives in the autograph score. Later on, for the marriage of Count Anton, the eldest son of Prince Nicolaus, in 1763, he provided a setting of the story which Handel had already used for his "Acis and Galatea." This work, which was performed by the Eisenstadt Capelle, with the orchestra clad in a new uniform of crimson and gold, bore the name of "Acide e Galatea." Portions of the score still exist--a section of the overture, four arias, and a finale quartet. The overture is described as being "in his own style, fresh and cheerful, foreshadowing his symphonies. The songs are in the Italian manner, very inferior in originality and expression to Handel's music; the quartet is crude in form and uninteresting in substance." [See Miss Townsend's Haydn, p. 44.] It would seem rather ungracious, as it would certainly be redundant to discuss these "occasional" works in detail. For one thing, the material necessary to enable us to form a correct estimate of Haydn's powers as a dramatic composer is wanting. The original autograph of "Armida," first performed in 1783, is, indeed, preserved. "Orfeo ed Euridice," written for the King's Theatre in the Haymarket in 1791, but never staged, was printed at Leipzig in 1806, and a fair idea of the general style of the work may be obtained from the beautiful air, "Il pensier sta negli oggetti," included in a collection entitled "Gemme d'Antichita." But beyond these and the fragments previously mentioned, there is little left to represent Haydn as a composer of opera, the scores of most of the works written expressly for Prince Esterhazy having been destroyed when the prince's private theatre was burned down in 1779. What Haydn would have done for opera if he had devoted his serious attention to it at any of the larger theatres it is, of course, impossible to say. Judging from what has survived of his work in this department, he was notable for refinement rather than for dramatic power. We must, however, remember the conditions under which he worked. He confessed himself that his operas were fitted only for the small stage at Esterhaz and "could never produce the proper effect elsewhere." If he had written with a large stage in view, it may reasonably be assumed that he would have written somewhat differently. Occasional Works In 1764 Prince Nicolaus made a journey to Frankfort for the coronation of the Archduke Joseph as King of the Romans. After the festivities connected with that imposing function were over he extended his journey to Paris, where he created some sensation by his extravagant displays of wealth and circumstance. During the Prince's absence Haydn busied himself on a couple of compositions intended to celebrate his home-coming. One was a Te Deum, the other a cantata. The latter work is the more worthy of remark, not because of its music, but because of the fulsomely obsequious manner in which it celebrates the graces and virtues of Nicolaus the Magnificent. The cantata is made up of choruses and duets, a recitative and two arias. Parts of it were afterwards employed in church services. The Te Deum is in C major, and is for four voices with orchestra. It is interesting as an early work, especially if we compare it with the greater Te Deum in the same key composed in the year 1800. First Symphonies At this point a summary may perhaps be made of the compositions written by Haydn during these five years a Eisenstadt. The list, as given by Pohl, comprises, in addition to the works already named, about thirty symphonies six string trios, a few divertimenti in five parts, a piece for four violins and two 'celli, entitled "Echo," twelve minuets for orchestra, concertos, trios, sonatas and variations for clavier, and, in vocal music, a "Salve Regina" for soprano and alto, two violins and organ. It would serve no useful purpose to deal with these works in detail. The symphonies are, of course, the most important feature in the list, but of these we shall speak generally when treating of Haydn as the father of instrumental music. The first Symphony in C Major, usually called "Le Midi," is of special interest. [Figure: a musical score excerpt] The autograph score, dated 1761, and preserved at Eisenstadt, is superscribed, "In Nomine Domini," and closes with Haydn's customary "Laus Deo" after the final signature The work is in the usual four movements. The symphonies of this date included also those known in England as "Le Matin" and "Le Soir," the one beginning-- [Figure: a musical score excerpt] and the other-- [figure: a musical score excerpt] Of the string quartets and other instrumental compositions of the period nothing need be said. In all these the composer was simply feeling his way towards a more perfect expression, and as few of them are now performed, their interest for us is almost entirely antiquarian. CHAPTER IV. ESTERHAZ--1766-1790 Haydn's Fame extending--Haydn and Mozart compared--Esterhaz--Its Puppet Theatre--A Busy Life--Opera at Esterhaz--First Oratorio--Opponents and Intriguers--"L'Isola Disabitata"--A Love Episode--Correspondence with Artaria and Forster--Royal Dedicatees--The "Seven Words"--The "Toy" and "Farewell" Symphonies. To crowd the details of a professional career covering close upon a quarter of a century into a single chapter would, in the case of most of the great composers, be an altogether impossible task. In Haydn's case the difficulty is to find the material for even so slight a record. His life went on smoothly, almost sleepily, as we should now think, in the service of his prince, without personal incident and with next to no disturbance from the outside world. If he had not been a genius of the first rank the outside world would, in all probability, never have heard of his existence. Haydn's Fame extending As it was, his fame was now manifestly spreading. Thus the Wiener Diarum for 1766 includes him among the most distinguished musicians of Vienna, and describes him as "the darling of our nation." His amiable disposition, says the panegyrist, "speaks through every one of his works. His music has beauty, purity, and a delicate and noble simplicity which commends it to every hearer. His cassations, quartets and trios may be compared to a pure, clear stream of water, the surface now rippled by a gentle breeze from the south, and anon breaking into agitated billows, but without ever leaving its proper channel and appointed course. His symphonies are full of force and delicate sympathy. In his cantatas he shows himself at once captivating and caressing, and in his minuets he is delightful and full of humour. In short, Haydn is in music what Gellert is in poetry." This comparison with Gellert, who died three years later, was at that date, as Dr Pohl remarks, the most flattering that could well be made. The simplicity and naturalness of Gellert's style were the very antithesis of the pedantries and frigid formalities of the older school; and just as he pioneered the way for the resuscitation of German poetry under Goethe and Schiller, so Haydn may be said to have prepared the path for Beethoven and the modern school. Haydn and Mozart compared Very likely it was this comparison of the magazine writer that suggested Dittersdorf's remark to Joseph II in 1786, when the emperor requested him to draw an analogy between Haydn's and Mozart's chamber music. Dittersdorf shrewdly replied by asking the emperor in his turn to draw a parallel between Gellert and Klopstock; whereupon Joseph made answer by saying that both were great poets, but that Klopstock's works required attentive study, while Gellert's beauties were open to the first glance. The analogy, Dittersdorf tells us, "pleased the emperor very much." Its point is, however, not very clear--that is to say, it is not very clear whether the emperor meant to compare Klopstock with Haydn and Gellert with Mozart or vice versa, and whether, again, he regarded it as more of a merit that the poet and the composer should require study or be "open to the first glance." Joseph was certainly friendly towards Mozart, but by all accounts he had no great love for Haydn, to whose "tricks and nonsense" he made frequent sneering reference. The first noteworthy event of 1766 was the death of Werner, which took place on March 5. It made no real difference to Haydn, who, as we have seen, had been from the first, in effect, if not in name, chief of the musical establishment; but it at least freed him from sundry petty annoyances, and left him absolutely master of the musical situation. Shortly after Werner's death, the entire musical establishment at Eisenstadt was removed to the prince's new palace of Esterhaz, with which Haydn was now to be connected for practically the whole of his remaining professional career. Esterhaz A great deal has been written about Esterhaz, but it is not necessary that we should occupy much space with a description of the castle and its surroundings. The palace probably owed its inception to the prince's visit to Paris in 1764. At any rate, it is in the French Renaissance style, and there is some significance in the fact that a French traveller who saw it about 1782 described it as having no place but Versailles to compare with it for magnificence. The situation--about three and a half miles from Eisenstadt--was anything but suitable for an erection of the kind, being in an unhealthy marsh and "quite out of the world." But Prince Nicolaus had set his heart upon the scheme, as Scott set his heart upon Abbotsford; and just as "Clarty Hole" came in time to be "parked about and gated grandly," so Esterhaz, after something like 11,000,000 gulden had been spent upon it, emerged a veritable Versailles, with groves and grottoes, hermitages and temples, summer-houses and hot-houses, and deer parks and flower gardens. There were two theatres in the grounds: one for operas and dramatic performances generally; the other "brilliantly ornamented and furnished with large artistic marionettes, excellent scenery and appliances." A Puppet Theatre It is upon the entertainments connected with the latter house that the French traveller just mentioned chiefly dwells. "The prince," he says, "has a puppet theatre which is certainly unique in character. Here the grandest operas are produced. One knows not whether to be amazed or to laugh at seeing 'Alceste,' 'Alcides,' etc., put on the stage with all due solemnity, and played by puppets. His orchestra is one of the best I ever heard, and the great Haydn is his court and theatre composer. He employs a poet for his singular theatre, whose humour and skill in suiting the grandest subjects for the stage, and in parodying the gravest effects, are often exceedingly happy. He often engages a troupe of wandering players for a month at a time, and he himself and his retinue form the entire audience. They are allowed to come on the stage uncombed, drunk, their parts not half learned, and half-dressed. The prince is not for the serious and tragic, and he enjoys it when the players, like Sancho Panza, give loose reins to their humour." Prince Nicolaus became so much attached to this superb creation of his own, that he seldom cared to leave it. A small portion of the Capelle remained at Eisenstadt to carry on the church service there, but the prince seldom went to Eisenstadt, and more seldom still to Vienna. Most of the Hungarian grandees liked nothing better than to display their wealth in the Imperial city during the winter season; but to Haydn's employer there was literally "no place like home." When he did go to Vienna, he would often cut short his visits in the most abrupt manner, to the great confusion of his musicians and other dependants. These eccentricities must have given some annoyance to Haydn, who, notwithstanding his love of quiet and seclusion, often longed for the change and variety of city life. It is said that he was specially anxious to make a tour in Italy about this time, but that ambition had, of necessity, to be abandoned. A Busy Life There was certainly plenty for him to do at Esterhaz--more than he had ever been required to do at Eisenstadt. Royalties, nobles and aristocrats were constantly at the palace; and music was one of the chief diversions provided for them. The prince was very proud of his musical establishment, and desired to have it considered the best of its kind in Europe. The orchestra of the opera was formed of members of the Capelle; "the singers were Italian for the most part, engaged for one, two, or more years, and the books of the words were printed. Numerous strolling companies were engaged for shorter terms; travelling virtuosi often played with the members of the band. Special days and hours were fixed for chamber music, and for orchestral works; and in the interval the singers, musicians and actors met at the cafe, and formed, so to speak, one family." Something more than creative genius was obviously required to direct the music of an establishment of this kind. A talent for organization, an eye for detail, tact in the management of players and singers--these qualities were all indispensable for the performance of duties such as Haydn had undertaken. That he possessed them we may fairly assume from more than one circumstance. In the first place, his employer was satisfied with him. He raised his salary, listened attentively to all his suggestions, and did everything that he could to retain his services. In the second place, his band and singers were sincerely attached to him. They saw that he had their interests, personal and professional, at heart, and they "loved him like a father." The prince paid them well, and several of them were sufficiently capable to receive appointments afterwards in the Imperial Chapel. Pohl gives a list of the names about this time, but, with one or two exceptions, they are quite unfamiliar. J. B. Krumpholtz, the harpist, was engaged from 1773 to 1776, and Andreas Lidl, who played in London soon after leaving the band, was in the service of the prince from 1769 to 1774. The sum paid to Haydn at this date was not large as we should now consider it, but it was sufficient to free him from financial worry had it not been for the extravagance and bad management of his wife. The prince gave him about 78 pounds, in addition to which he had certain allowances in kind, and, as we have already said, free quarters for himself and his wife when she thought fit to stay with him. Probably, too, he was now making something substantial by his compositions. Griesinger declares that he had saved about 200 pounds before 1790, the year when he started for London. If that be true, he must have been very economical. His wife, we must remember, was making constant calls upon him for money, and in addition he had to meet the pressing demands of various poor relations. His correspondence certainly does not tend to show that he was saving, and we know that when he set out for London he had not only to draw upon the generosity of his prince for the costs of the journey, but had to sell his house to provide for his wife until his return. Opera at Esterhaz It is time, however, to speak of some of Haydn's compositions during this period. At Esterhaz he "wrote nearly all his operas, most of his arias and songs, the music for the marionette theatre--of which he was particularly fond--and the greater part of his orchestral and chamber works." The dramatic works bulk rather largely during the earlier part of the period. In 1769, for example, when the whole musical establishment of Esterhaz visited Vienna, a performance of his opera, "Lo Speciale," was given at the house of Freiherr von Sommerau, and was repeated in the form of a concert. Other works of the kind were performed at intervals, particularly on festival occasions, but as most of them have perished, and all of them are essentially pieces d'occasion, it is unnecessary even to recall their names. In 1771 Haydn wrote a "Stabat Mater" and a "Salve Regina," and in 1773 followed the Symphony in C which bears the name of the Empress Maria Theresa, having been written for the empress's visit to Esterhaz in September of that year. In the course of the visit Haydn was naturally introduced to Her Majesty, when, as we have stated, he took occasion to remind her of the "good hiding" she had ordered him to have at Schonbrunn during the old chorister days at St Stephen's. "Well, you see, my dear Haydn," was the reply, "the hiding has borne good fruit." First Oratorio In 1775 came his first oratorio, "Il Ritorno di Tobia." This is an exceedingly interesting work. It was first performed under Haydn's direction by the Tonkunstler Societat, with solo singers from Esterbaz, at Vienna, on April 2, 1775. In 1784 Haydn added two choruses, one a "Storm Chorus," which is sometimes confused with the "Storm Chorus" (in the same key, but in triple time) composed during his sojourn in London. It is from "Il Ritorno di Tobia" that the so-called motet, "Insanae et Vanae Curae," is adapted, and the "Storm Chorus" immediately follows a fine soprano air in F minor and major, sung by Anna in the original work, a portion of which forms the beautiful second subject (in F) of the "Insanae." The original words of this chorus--"Svanisce in un momento"--are to the effect that the soul threatens to yield to the fury of its enemies, yet trust in God keeps one steadfast. The music admirably reflects these contrasting sentiments, first in the tumultuous D minor section, and then in the tranquillity of the F major portion which follows, no less than in the trustful quietude of the D major conclusion. Latin words were adapted to three of the original choruses, but nothing seems to be known as to the origin of the "Insanae" adaptation. A full score of the motet, published by Breitkopf & Hartel in 1809, was reviewed in the Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung of August 15, 1810, as if it were an entirely original work. The source of the Latin words also remains a mystery. They were presumably put together to fit Haydn's music, but by whom we have no means of ascertaining. It is interesting to know that Haydn brought the score of his "Il Ritorno di Tobia" with him to England on the occasion of his first visit in 1791, probably with a view to its performance here. Messrs Novello's private library contains an oblong volume in the handwriting of Vincent Novello, in which he has copied some numbers from "Tobia," including the air of Anna already mentioned, but not the "Insanae" chorus. The inside cover of the book bears the following note in Novello's hand, written, not later than 1820, under the contents of the volume: "The whole of the above are unpublished manuscripts, and were copied from an extremely rare volume, containing the full orchestral score of the entire oratorio, kindly lent to me for the purpose by my friend, Mr Shield, who had obtained it from Haydn himself during the visit of the latter to England in the year 1791.--VINCENT NOVELLO, 240 Oxford St." [See an interesting account of "Il Ritorno di Tobia" in The Musical Times for September 1901, p. 600.] Some of our musical societies in search of novelties might do worse than revive this almost completely forgotten oratorio. The airs are exceedingly melodious, and the choruses bold and tuneful, with well-developed fugue subjects. The "Insanae" already referred to is frequently performed. Opponents In 1776 Haydn composed "La Vera Costanza" for the Court Theatre of Vienna, but owing to certain intrigues it was declined by the management and produced at Esterhaz instead. The opera was subsequently staged at Vienna in 1790, and six of its airs and a duet were published by Artaria. This incident makes it sufficiently plain that Haydn had his opponents among the musicians and critics of Vienna as well as elsewhere. Burney says a friend in Hamburg wrote him in 1772 that "the genius, fine ideas and fancy of Haydn, Ditters and Filitz were praised, but their mixture of serious and comic was disliked, particularly as there is more of the latter than the former in their works; and as for rules, they knew but little of them." If we substitute "humorous" for "comic," this may be allowed to fully represent the views of the critics and amateurs of Vienna in regard to Haydn's music. And, unfortunately, the incident just mentioned was not a solitary one. In 1778 Haydn applied for membership to the Tonkunstler Societat, for whom he had in reality written his "Il Ritorno di Tobia." One would have expected such a body to receive him with open arms, but instead of that they exacted a sum of 300 florins on the ground of his non-residence in Vienna! Not only so, but they would fain have brought him under a promise to compose for them whenever they chose to ask him. This latter condition Haydn felt to be impossible in view of his engagement at Esterhaz, and he withdrew his admission fee. That the society were not ashamed of themselves is obvious from a further episode. Some years after this they desired Haydn to rearrange his "Tobia" for a special performance, and when he demanded payment for his trouble they promptly decided to produce Hasse's "Elena" instead. Everything comes to the man who waits. After his second visit to London the Tonkunstler Societat welcomed Haydn at a special meeting, and with one voice appointed him "Assessor Senior" for life. In return for this distinction he presented the society with "The Creation" and "The Seasons," to which gifts, according to Pohl, its prosperity is mainly owing. "L'Isola Disabitata" If Haydn was thus less highly appreciated at home than he deserved to be, there were others who knew his sterling worth. In 1779 he composed one of his best operas, "L'Isola Disabitata," the libretto of which was by his old benefactor Metastasio, and this work procured his nomination as a member of the Philharmonic Society of Modena. The following extract of a letter written to Artaria in May 1781 is interesting in this connection. He says: "M. le Gros, director of the 'Concerts Spirituels' [in Paris], wrote me a great many fine things about my Stabat Mater, which had been given there four times with great applause; so this gentleman asked permission to have it engraved. They made me an offer to engrave all my future works on very advantageous terms, and are much surprised that my compositions for the voice are so singularly pleasing. I, however, am not in the least surprised, for, as yet, they have heard nothing. If they could only hear my operetta, 'L'Isola Disabitata,' and my last Shrove-tide opera, 'La Fedelta Premiata,' I do assure you that no such work has hitherto been heard in Paris, nor, perhaps, in Vienna either. My great misfortune is living in the country." It will be seen from this what he thought of "L'Isola," which was not heard in Vienna until its performance at a concert given at the Court Theatre by Willmann the 'cellist in 1785. Haydn sent the score to the King of Spain, who showed his sense of the honour by the gift of a gold snuff-box, set in brilliants. Other marks of royal attention were bestowed upon him about this time. Thus, in 1784, Prince Henry of Prussia sent him a gold medal and his portrait in return for the dedication of six new quartets, while in 1787 King Frederick William II gave him the famous gold ring which he afterwards always wore when composing. A Love Episode But we have passed somewhat out of our chronological order. The absence of love at home, as we all know, often encourages love abroad. Haydn liked to have an occasional flirtation, as ardent as might be within the bounds of decorum. Sometimes, indeed, according to our insular ideas of such things, he exceeded the bounds of decorum, as in the case of which we are now compelled to speak. Among the musicians who had been engaged for the Esterhazy service in 1779 were a couple named Polzelli--the husband a violinist, the wife a second-rate vocalist. Luigia Polzelli was a lively Italian girl of nineteen. She does not seem to have been happy with Polzelli, and Haydn's pity was roused for her, much as Shelley's pity was roused for "my unfortunate friend," Harriet Westbrook. The pity, as often happens in such cases, ultimately ripened into a violent passion. We are not concerned to adopt an apologetic tone towards Haydn. But Signora Polzelli was clearly an unscrupulous woman. She first got her admirer into her power, and then used her position to dun him for money. She had two sons, and the popular belief of the time that Haydn was the father of the younger is perpetuated in several of the biographies. Haydn had certainly a great regard for the boy, made him a pupil of his own, and left him a small sum in his first will, which, however, he revoked in the second. Signora Polzelli's conduct was probably natural enough in the circumstances, but it must have been rather embarrassing to Haydn. After the death of her husband, she wheedled him into signing a paper promising to marry her in the event of his becoming a widower. This promise he subsequently repudiated, but he cared for her well enough to leave her an annuity in his will, notwithstanding that she had married again. She survived him for twenty-three years, and her two daughters were still living at Pesth in 1878. Returning to 1779, an untoward event of that year was the destruction by fire of the theatre at Esterhaz. The re-building of the house was set about at once, the prince having meanwhile gone to Paris, and the re-opening took place on October 15, 1780, when Haydn's "La Fedelta Premiata," already mentioned, was staged. Correspondence It was about this time that he began to correspond with Artaria, the Vienna music-publisher, with whom he had business dealings for many years. A large number of his letters is given in an English translation by Lady Wallace. [See Letters of Distinguished Musicians. Translated from the German by Lady Wallace. London, 1867]. They treat principally of business matters, but are not unimportant as fixing the chronological dates of some of his works. They exhibit in a striking way the simple, honest, unassuming nature of the composer; and if they also show him "rather eager after gain, and even particular to a groschen," we must not forget the ever-pressing necessity for economy under which he laboured, and his almost lavish benevolence to straitened relatives and friends. In one letter requesting an advance he writes: "I am unwilling to be in debt to tradesmen, and, thank God! I am free from this burden; but as great people keep me so long waiting for payments, I have got rather into difficulty. This letter, however, will be your security...I will pay off the interest with my notes." There is no real ground for charging Haydn with avarice, as some writers have done. "Even philosophers," as he remarked himself, "occasionally stand in need of money"; and, as Beethoven said to George Thomson, when haggling about prices, there is no reason why the "true artist" should not be "honourably paid." A London Publisher It was about this time too that Haydn opened a correspondence with William Forster of London, who had added to his business of violin-maker that of a music-seller and publisher. Forster entered into an agreement with him for the English copyright of his compositions, and between 1781 and 1787 he published eighty-two symphonies, twenty-four quartets, twenty-four solos, duets and trios, and the "Seven Last Words," of which we have yet to speak. Nothing of the Forster correspondence seems to have survived. Royal Dedicatees Among the events of 1781-1782 should be noted the entertainments given in connection with two visits which the Emperor Joseph II received from the Grand Duke Paul and his wife. The Grand Duchess was musical, and had just been present at the famous combat between Clementi and Mozart, a suggestion of the Emperor. She had some of Haydn's quartets played at her house and liked them so well that she gave him a diamond snuff-box and took lessons from him. It was to her that he afterwards--in 1802--dedicated his part-songs for three and four voices, while the Grand Duke was honoured by the dedication of the six so-called "Russian" quartets. It had been arranged that the Duke and Duchess should accompany the Emperor to Eisenstadt, but the arrangement fell through, and an opera which Haydn had written for the occasion was only produced at Esterhaz in the autumn of 1782. This was his "Orlando Paladino," better known in its German form as "Ritter Roland." Another work of this year (1782) was the "Mariazell" Mass in C major (Novello, No. 15), which derives its name from the shrine of the Virgin in Styria, the scene of an incident already related. The mass was written to the order of a certain Herr Liebe de Kreutzner, and the composer is said to have taken special pains with it, perhaps because it reminded him of his early struggling days as a chorister in Vienna. It was the eighth mass Haydn had written, one being the long and difficult "Cecilia" Mass in C major, now heard only in a curtailed form. No other work of the kind was composed until 1796, between which year and 1802 the best of his masses were produced. To the year 1783 belongs the opera "Armida," performed in 1784 and again in 1797 at Schickaneder's Theatre in Vienna. Haydn writes to Artaria in March 1784 to say that "Armida" had been given at Esterhaz with "universal applause," adding that "it is thought the best work I have yet written." The autograph score was sent to London to make up, in a manner, for the non-performance of his "Orfeo" there in 1791. The "Seven Words" But the most interesting work of this period was the "Seven Words of our Saviour on the Cross," written in 1785. The circumstances attending its composition are best told in Haydn's own words. In Breitkopf & Hartel's edition of 1801, he writes: About fifteen years ago I was requested by a Canon of Cadiz to compose instrumental music on the Seven Words of Jesus on the Cross. It was the custom of the Cathedral of Cadiz to produce an oratorio every year during Lent, the effect of the performance being not a little enhanced by the following circumstances. The walls, windows and pillars of the Church were hung with black cloth, and only one large lamp, hanging from the centre of the roof, broke the solemn obscurity. At mid-day the doors were closed and the ceremony began. After a short service the bishop ascended the pulpit, pronounced one of the Seven Words (or sentences) and delivered a discourse thereon. This ended, he left the pulpit and knelt prostrate before the altar. The pause was filled by the music. The bishop then in like manner pronounced the second word, then the third, and so on, the orchestra falling in at the conclusion of each discourse. My composition was to be subject to these conditions, and it was no easy matter to compose seven adagios to last ten minutes each, and follow one after the other without fatiguing the listeners; indeed I found it quite impossible to confine myself within the appointed limits. This commission may be taken as a further evidence of the growing extent of Haydn's fame. He appears to have been already well known in Spain. Boccherini carried on a friendly correspondence with him from Madrid, and he was actually made the hero of a poem called "The Art of Music," published there in 1779. The "Seven Words" created a profound impression when performed under the circumstances just detailed, but the work was not allowed to remain in its original form, though it was printed in that form by Artaria and by Forster. Haydn divided it into two parts, and added choruses and solos, in which form it was given for the first time at Eisenstadt in October, 1797, and published in 1801. The "Seven Words" was a special favourite of the composer himself, who indeed is declared by some to have preferred it to all his other compositions. The "Toy" Symphony The remaining years of the period covered by this chapter being almost totally devoid of incident, we may pause to notice briefly two of the better-known symphonies of the time--the "Toy" Symphony and the more famous "Farewell." The former is a mere jeu d'esprit, in which, with an orchestral basis of two violins and a bass, the solo instruments are all of a burlesque character. Mozart attempted something of a kindred nature in his "Musical joke," where instruments come in at wrong places, execute inappropriate phrases, and play abominably out of tune. This kind of thing does not require serious notice, especially in the case of Haydn, to whom humour in music was a very different matter from the handling of rattles and penny trumpets and toy drums. The "Farewell" Symphony The "Farewell" Symphony has often been described, though the circumstances of its origin are generally mis-stated. It has been asserted, for example, that Haydn intended it as an appeal to the prince against the dismissal of the Capelle. But this, as Pohl has conclusively shown, is incorrect. The real design of the "Farewell" was to persuade the prince to shorten his stay at Esterhaz, and so enable the musicians to rejoin their wives and families. Fortunately, the prince was quick-witted enough to see the point of the joke. As one after another ceased playing and left the orchestra, until only two violinists remained, he quietly observed, "If all go, we may as well go too." Thus Haydn's object was attained--for the time being! The "Farewell" is perfectly complete as a work of art, but its fitness for ordinary occasions is often minimized by the persistent way in which its original purpose is pointed out to the listener. Free from Esterhaz Haydn's active career at Esterhaz may be said to have closed with the death, on September 28, 1790, of Prince Nicolaus. The event was of great importance to his future. Had the prince lived, Haydn would doubtless have continued in his service, for he "absolutely adored him." But Prince Anton, who now succeeded, dismissed the whole Capelle, retaining only the few members necessary for the carrying on of the church service, and Haydn's occupation was practically gone. The new prince nominally held the right to his services, but there was no reason for his remaining longer at the castle, and he accordingly took up his residence in Vienna. Thus free to employ his time as he considered best, Haydn embraced the opportunity to carry out a long-meditated project, and paid the first of his two visits to London. With these we enter upon a new epoch in the composer's life, and one of great interest to the student and lover of music. CHAPTER V. FIRST LONDON VISIT--1791-1792 English Music about 1791--Salomon--Mozart and Haydn--Terms for London--Bonn and Beethoven--Haydn Sea-Sick--Arrives in London--An Enthusiastic Welcome--Ideas of the Metropolis--At Court--Unreasoning Rivalries--Temporarily eclipsed--Band and Baton--A Rehearsal Incident--Hanover Square Rooms--Hoops and Swords--The "Surprise" Symphony--Gallic Excitement--New Compositions--Benefit and Other Concerts--Haydn on Handel--Oxford Doctor of Music--The "Oxford" Symphony--Relaxations--Royalty again--Pleyel--Close of Season--Herschel--Haydn at St Paul's--London Acquaintances--Another Romance--Mistress Schroeter--Love-Letters--Haydn's Note-Book. English Music about 1791 Haydn came to England in 1791. It may occur to the reader to ask what England was doing in music at that time, and who were the foremost representatives of the art. The first question may be partially answered from the literature of the period. Thus Jackson, in his Present State of Music in London, published the year after Haydn's arrival, remarks that "instrumental music has been of late carried to such perfection in London by the consummate skill of the performers that any attempt to beat the time would be justly considered as entirely needless." Burney, again, in his last volume, published in 1789, says that the great improvement in taste during the previous twenty years was "as different as civilized people from savages"; while Stafford Smith, writing in 1779, tells that music was then "thought to be in greater perfection than among even the Italians themselves." There is a characteristic John Bull complacency about these statements which is hardly borne out by a study of the lives of the leading contemporary musicians. Even Mr Henry Davey, the applauding historian of English music, has to admit the evanescent character of the larger works which came from the composers of that "bankrupt century." Not one of these composers--not even Arne--is a real personality to us like Handel, or Bach, or Haydn, or Mozart. The great merit of English music was melody, which seems to have been a common gift, but "the only strong feeling was patriotic enthusiasm, and the compositions that survive are almost all short ballads expressing this sentiment or connected with it by their nautical subjects." When Haydn arrived, there was, in short, no native composer of real genius, and our "tardy, apish nation" was ready to welcome with special cordiality an artist whose gifts were of a higher order. Salomon We have spoken of Haydn's visit as a long-meditated project. In 1787 Cramer, the violinist, had offered to engage him on his own terms for the Professional Concerts; and Gallini, the director of the King's Theatre in Drury Lane, pressed him to write an opera for that house. Nothing came of these proposals, mainly because Haydn was too much attached to his prince to think of leaving him, even temporarily. But the time arrived and the man with it. The man was Johann Peter Salomon, a violinist, who, having fallen out with the directors of the professional concerts, had started concerts on his own account. Salomon was a native of Bonn, and had been a member of the Electoral Orchestra there. He had travelled about the Continent a good deal, and no one was better fitted to organize and direct a series of concerts on a large scale. In 1790 he had gone abroad in search of singers, and, hearing of the death of Prince Esterhazy, he set off at once for Vienna, resolved to secure Haydn at any cost. "My name is Salomon," he bluntly announced to the composer, as he was shown into his room one morning. "I have come from London to fetch you; we will settle terms to-morrow." The question of terms was, we may be sure, important enough for Haydn. But it was not the only question. The "heavy years" were beginning to weigh upon him. He was bordering on threescore, and a long journey in those days was not to be lightly undertaken. Moreover, he was still, nominally at least, the servant of Prince Anton, whose consent would have to be obtained; and, besides all this, he was engaged on various commissions, notably some for the King of Naples, which were probably a burden on his conscience. His friends, again, do not appear to have been very enthusiastic about the projected visit. There were Dittersdorf and Albrechtsberger, and Dr Leopold von Genzinger, the prince's physician, and Frau von Genzinger, whose tea and coffee he so much appreciated, and who sent him such excellent cream. Above all, there was Mozart--"a man very dear to me," as Haydn himself said. Mozart and Haydn He had always greatly revered Mozart. Three years before this he wrote: "I only wish I could impress upon every friend of mine, and on great men in particular, the same deep musical sympathy and profound appreciation which I myself feel for Mozart's inimitable music; then nations would vie with each other to possess such a jewel within their frontiers. It enrages me to think that the unparalleled Mozart is not yet engaged at any Imperial Court! Forgive my excitement; I love the man so dearly." The regard was reciprocal. "Oh, Papa," exclaimed Mozart, when he heard of Haydn's intention to travel, "you have had no education for the wide, wide world, and you speak too few languages." It was feelingly said, and Haydn knew it. "My language," he replied, with a smile, "is understood all over the world." Mozart was really concerned at the thought of parting with his brother composer, to whom he stood almost in the relation of a son. When it came to the actual farewell, the tears sprang to his eyes, and he said affectingly: "This is good-bye; we shall never meet again." The words proved prophetic. A year later, Mozart was thrown with a number of paupers into a grave which is now as unknown as the grave of Moliere. Haydn deeply lamented his loss; and when his thoughts came to be turned homewards towards the close of his English visit his saddest reflection was that there would be no Mozart to meet him. His wretched wife had tried to poison his mind against his friend by writing that Mozart had been disparaging his genius. "I cannot believe it," he cried; "if it is true, I will forgive him." It was not true, and Haydn never believed it. As late as 1807 he burst into tears when Mozart's name was mentioned, and then, recovering himself, remarked: "Forgive me! I must ever weep at the name of my Mozart." Terms for London But to return. Salomon at length carried the day, and everything was arranged for the London visit. Haydn was to have 300 pounds for six symphonies and 200 pounds for the copyright of them; 200 pounds for twenty new compositions to be produced by himself at the same number of concerts; and 200 pounds from a benefit concert. The composer paid his travelling expenses himself, being assisted in that matter by an advance of 450 florins from the prince, which he refunded within the year. In order to provide for his wife during his absence he sold his house at Eisenstadt, the gift of Prince Nicolaus, which had been twice rebuilt after being destroyed by fire. Salomon sent advance notices of the engagement to London, and on the 30th of December the public were informed through the Morning Chronicle that, immediately on his arrival with his distinguished guest, "Mr Salomon would have the honour of submitting to all lovers of music his programme for a series of subscription concerts, the success of which would depend upon their support and approbation." Before leaving for London Haydn had a tiff with the King of Naples, Ferdinand IV, who was then in Vienna. The composer had taken him some of the works which he had been commissioned to write, and His Majesty, thanking him for the favour, remarked that "We will rehearse them the day after to-morrow." "The day after to-morrow," replied Haydn, "I shall be on my way to England." "What!" exclaimed the King, "and you promised to come to Naples!" With which observation he turned on his heel and indignantly left the room. Before Haydn had time to recover from his astonishment Ferdinand was back with a letter of introduction to Prince Castelcicala, the Neapolitan Ambassador in London; and to show further that the misunderstanding was merely a passing affair he sent the composer later in the day a valuable tabatiere as a token of esteem and regard. Bonn and Beethoven The journey to London was begun by Haydn and Salomon on the 15th of December 1790, and the travellers arrived at Bonn on Christmas Day. It is supposed, with good reason, that Haydn here met Beethoven, then a youth of twenty, for the first time. Beethoven was a member of the Electoral Chapel, and we know that Haydn, after having one of his masses performed and being complimented by the Elector, the musical brother of Joseph II, entertained the chief musicians at dinner at his lodgings. An amusing description of the regale may be read in Thayer's biography of Beethoven. From Bonn the journey was resumed by way of Brussels to Calais, which was reached in a violent storm and an incessant downpour of rain. "I am very well, thank God!" writes the composer to Frau Genzinger, "although somewhat thinner, owing to fatigue, irregular sleep, and eating and drinking so many different things." Haydn Sea-Sick Next morning, after attending early mass, he embarked at 7:30, and landed at Dover at five o'clock in the afternoon. It was his first acquaintance with the sea, and, as the weather was rather rough, he makes no little of it in letters written from London. "I remained on deck during the whole passage," he says, "in order to gaze my full at that huge monster--the ocean. So long as there was a calm I had no fears, but when at length a violent wind began to blow, rising every minute, and I saw the boisterous high waves running on, I was seized with a little alarm and a little indisposition likewise." Thus delicately does he allude to a painful episode. Arrives in London Haydn reached London in the opening days of 1791. He passed his first night at the house of Bland, the music-publisher, at 45 High Holborn, which now, rebuilt, forms part of the First Avenue Hotel. Bland, it should have been mentioned before, had been sent over to Vienna by Salomon to coax Haydn into an engagement in 1787. When he was admitted on that occasion to Haydn's room, he found the composer in the act of shaving, complaining the while of the bluntness of his razor. "I would give my best quartet for a good razor," he exclaimed testily. The hint was enough for Bland, who immediately hurried off to his lodgings and fetched a more serviceable tool. Haydn was as good as his word: he presented Bland with his latest quartet, and the work is still familiarly known as the "Rasirmesser" (razor) Quartet. The incident was, no doubt, recalled when Haydn renewed his acquaintance with the music-publisher. But Haydn did not remain the guest of Bland. Next day he went to live with Salomon, at 18 Great Pulteney Street, Golden Square, which--also rebuilt--is now the warehouse of Messrs Chatto & Windus, the publishers. [See Musical Haunts in London, by F.G. Edwards, London, 1895] He described it in one of his letters as "a neat, comfortable lodging," and extolled the cooking of his Italian landlord, "who gives us four excellent dishes." But his frugal mind was staggered at the charges. "Everything is terribly dear here," he wrote. "We each pay 1 florin 30 kreuzers [about 2s. 8d.] a day, exclusive of wine and beer." This was bad enough. An Enthusiastic Welcome But London made up for it all by the flattering way in which it received the visitor. People of the highest rank called on him; ambassadors left cards; the leading musical societies vied with each other in their zeal to do him honour. Even the poetasters began to twang their lyres in his praise. Thus Burney, who had been for some time in correspondence with him, saluted him with an effusion, of which it will suffice to quote the following lines: Welcome, great master! to our favoured isle, Already partial to thy name and style; Long may thy fountain of invention run In streams as rapid as it first begun; While skill for each fantastic whim provides, And certain science ev'ry current guides! Oh, may thy days, from human suff'rings, free, Be blest with glory and felicity, With full fruition, to a distant hour, Of all thy magic and creative pow'r! Blest in thyself, with rectitude of mind, And blessing, with thy talents, all mankind! Like "the man Sterne" after the publication of Tristram Shandy, he was soon deep in social engagements for weeks ahead. "I could dine out every day," he informs his friends in Germany. Shortly after his arrival he was conducted by the Academy of Ancient Music into a "very handsome room" adjoining the Freemasons' Hall, and placed at a table where covers were laid for 200. "It was proposed that I should take a seat near the top, but as it so happened that I had dined out that very day, and ate more than usual, I declined the honour, excusing myself under the pretext of not being very well; but in spite of this, I could not get off drinking the health, in Burgundy, of the harmonious gentlemen present. All responded to it, but at last allowed me to go home." This sort of thing strangely contrasted with the quiet, drowsy life of Esterhaz; and although Haydn evidently felt flattered by so much attention, he often expressed a wish that he might escape in order to have more peace for work. Ideas of London His ideas about London were mixed and hesitating. He was chiefly impressed by the size of the city, a fact which the Londoner of to-day can only fully appreciate when he remembers that in Haydn's time Regent Street had not been built and Lisson Grove was a country lane. Mendelssohn described the metropolis as "that smoky nest which is fated to be now and ever my favourite residence." But Haydn's regard was less for the place itself than for the people and the music. The fogs brought him an uncommonly severe attack of rheumatism, which he naively describes as "English," and obliged him to wrap up in flannel from head to foot. The street noises proved a great distraction--almost as much as they proved to Wagner in 1839, when the composer of "Lohengrin" had to contend with an organ-grinder at each end of the street! He exclaimed in particular against "the cries of the common people selling their wares." It was very distracting, no doubt, for, as a cynic has said, one cannot compose operas or write books or paint pictures in the midst of a row. Haydn desired above all things quiet for his work, and so by-and-by, as a solace for the evils which afflicted his ear, he removed himself from Great Pulteney Street to Lisson Grove--"in the country amid lovely scenery, where I live as if I were in a monastery." Haydn at Court For the present the dining and the entertaining went on. The 12th of January found him at the "Crown and Anchor" in the Strand, where the Anacreonatic Society expressed their respect and admiration in the usual fashion. The 18th of the same month was the Queen's birthday, and Haydn was invited to a Court ball in the evening. This was quite an exceptional distinction, for he had not yet been "presented" at Court. Probably he owed it to the Prince of Wales, afterwards George IV. The Prince was a musical amateur, like his father and his grandfather, whose enthusiasm for Handel it is hardly necessary to recall. He played the 'cello--"not badly for a Prince," to parody Boccherini's answer to his royal master--and liked to take his part in glees and catches. Haydn was charmed by his affability. "He is the handsomest man on God's earth," wrote the composer. "He has an extraordinary love for music, and a great deal of feeling, but very little money." These courtesies to Haydn may perhaps be allowed to balance the apparent incivility shown to Beethoven and Weber, who sent compositions to the same royal amateur that were never so much as acknowledged. But even the attentions of princes may become irksome and unprofitable. Haydn soon found that his health and his work were suffering from the flood of social engagements which London poured upon him. The dinner hour at this time was six o'clock. He complained that the hour was too late, and made a resolve to dine at home at four. He wanted his mornings for composition, and if visitors must see him they would have to wait till afternoon. Obviously he was beginning to tire of "the trivial round." Unreasoning Rivalries The Salomon concerts should have begun in January, but London, as it happened, was suffering from one of those unreasoning rivalries which made a part of Handel's career so miserable, and helped to immortalize the names of Gluck and Piccini. It is hardly worth reviving the details of such ephemeral contests now. In the present case the factionists were to some extent swayed by financial interests; to a still greater extent by professional jealousies. The trouble seems to have arisen originally in connection with Gallini's preparations for the opening of a new Opera House in the Haymarket. Salomon had engaged Cappelletti and David as his principal vocalists; but these, it appeared, were under contract not to sing in public before the opening of the Opera House. One faction did not want to have the Opera House opened at all. They were interested in the old Pantheon, and contended that a second Italian Opera House was altogether unnecessary. Temporarily eclipsed Salomon's first concert, already postponed to February 25, had been fixed for the 11th of March, on which date David, by special permission, was to appear "whether the Opera house was open or not." The delay was extremely awkward for both Haydn and Salomon, particularly for Haydn. He had been brought to London with beat of drum, and here he was compelled to hide his light while the directors of the professional concerts shot ahead of him and gained the ear of the public before he could assert his superiority. By this time also the element of professional jealousy had come into free play. Depreciatory paragraphs appeared in the public prints "sneering at the composer as 'a nine days' wonder,' whom closer acquaintance would prove to be inferior to either Cramer or Clementi; and alluding to the 'proverbial avarice' of the Germans as tempting so many artists, who met with scanty recognition from their own countrymen to herald their arrival in England with such a flourish of trumpets as should charm the money out of the pockets of easily-gulled John Bull." These pleasantries were continued on rather different lines, when at length Haydn was in a position to justify the claims made for him. Band and Baton Haydn, meanwhile, had been rehearsing the symphony for his opening concert. Two points are perhaps worth noting here: First, the size and strength of the Salomon Orchestra; and second, the fact that Haydn did not, as every conductor does now, direct his forces, baton in hand. The orchestra numbered between thirty-five and forty performers--a very small company compared with our Handel Festival and Richter Orchestras, but in Haydn's time regarded as quite sufficiently strong. There were sixteen violins, four tenors, three 'celli, four double basses, flutes, oboes, bassoons, trumpets and drums. Salomon played the first violin and led the orchestra, and Haydn sat at the harpsichord, keeping the band together by an occasional chord or two, as the practice then was. Great composers have not always been great conductors, but Haydn had a winning way with his band, and generally succeeded in getting what he wanted. A Rehersal Incident An interesting anecdote is told by Dies of his first experience with the Salomon Orchestra. The symphony began with three single notes, which the orchestra played much too loudly; Haydn called for less tone a second and a third time, and still was dissatisfied. He was growing impatient. At this point he overheard a German player whisper to a neighbour in his own language: "If the first three notes don't please him, how shall we get through all the rest?" Thereupon, calling for the loan of a violin, he illustrated his meaning to such purpose that the band answered to his requirements in the first attempt. Haydn was naturally at a great disadvantage with an English orchestra by reason of his ignorance of the language. It may be true, as he said, that the language of music "is understood all over the world," but one cannot talk to an orchestra in crotchets and semi-breves. The Hanover Square Rooms At length the date of the first concert arrived, and a brilliant audience rewarded the enterprise, completely filling the Hanover Square Rooms, at that time the principal concert hall in London. It had been opened in 1775 by J. C. Bach, the eleventh son of the great Sebastian, when the advertisements announced that "the ladies' tickets are red and the gentlemen's black." It was there that, two years after the date of which we are writing, "Master Hummel, from Vienna," gave his first benefit; Liszt appeared in 1840, when the now familiar term "recital" was first used; Rubinstein made his English debut in 1842; and in the same year Mendelssohn conducted his Scotch Symphony for the first time in England. In 1844 the "wonderful little Joachim," then a youth of thirteen in a short jacket, made the first of his many subsequent visits to London, and played in the old "Rooms." Hoops and Swords So much for the associations of the concert hall in which Haydn directed some of his finest symphonies. And what about the audiences of Haydn's time? It was the day of the Sedan chair, when women waddled in hoops, like that of the lady mentioned in the Spectator, who appeared "as if she stood in a large drum." Even the royal princesses were, in Pope's phrase, "armed in ribs of steel" so wide that the Court attendants had to assist their ungainly figures through the doorways. Swords were still being worn as a regulation part of full dress, and special weapons were always provided at a grand concert for the use of the instrumental solo performers, who, when about to appear on the platform, were girt for the occasion by an attendant, known as the "sword-bearer." [See Musical Haunts in London, F. G. Edwards, quoting Dr W. H. Cummings.] Haydn's first concert, we have said, was an immense success. Burney records that his appearance in the orchestra "seemed to have an electrical effect on all present, and he never remembered a performance where greater enthusiasm was displayed." A wave of musical excitement appears to have been passing through London, for on this very evening both Covent Garden and Drury Lane Theatres were packed with audiences drawn together by the oratorio performances there. Haydn was vastly pleased at having the slow movement of his symphony encored--an unusual occurrence in those days--and he spoke of it afterwards as worthy of mention in his biography. Fresh from the dinner-table, the audience generally fell asleep during the slow movements! When the novelty of the Salomon concerts had worn off, many of the listeners lapsed into their usual somnolence. Most men in Haydn's position would have resented such inattention by an outburst of temper. Haydn took it good-humouredly, and resolved to have his little joke. The "Surprise" Symphony He wrote the well-known "Surprise" Symphony. The slow movement of this work opens and proceeds in the most subdued manner, and at the moment when the audience may be imagined to have comfortably settled for their nap a sudden explosive fortissimo chord is introduced. "There all the women will scream," said Haydn, with twinkling eyes. A contemporary critic read quite a different "programme" into it. "The 'Surprise,'" he wrote, "might not be inaptly likened to the situation of a beautiful shepherdess who, lulled to slumber by the murmur of a distant waterfall, starts alarmed by the unexpected firing of a fowling-piece." One can fancy the composer's amusement at this highly-imaginative interpretation of his harmless bit of waggery. Gallic Excitement The same success which attended Haydn's first concert marked the rest of the series. The Prince of Wales's presence at the second concert no doubt gave a certain "lead" to the musical public. We read in one of the Gallic newspapers: "It is truly wonderful what sublime and august thoughts this master weaves into his works. Passages often occur which it is impossible to listen to without becoming excited--we are carried away by admiration, and are forced to applaud with hand and mouth. The Frenchmen here cannot restrain their transports in soft adagios; they will clap their hands in loud applause and thus mar the effect." In the midst of all this enthusiasm the factionists were keeping up their controversy about the opening of Gallini's Theatre. Gallini had already engaged the services of Haydn, together with an orchestra led by Salomon, but nothing could be done without the Lord Chamberlain's license for the performance of operas. To prevent the issue of that license was the avowed object of the Pantheon management and their friends. The fight was rendered all the more lively when the Court divided itself between the opposing interests. "The rival theatre," wrote Horace Walpole, "is said to be magnificent and lofty, but it is doubtful whether it will be suffered to come to light; in short the contest will grow political; 'Dieu et mon Droit' (the King) supporting the Pantheon, and 'Ich dien' (the Prince of Wales) countenancing the Haymarket. It is unlucky that the amplest receptacle is to hold the minority." Cantatas, Catches and Choruses That was how it turned out. The Lord Chamberlain finally refused his license for operatic performances, and Gallini had to be content with a license for "entertainments of music and dancing." He opened his house on the 20th of March, and continued during the season to give mixed entertainments twice a week. Various works of Haydn's were performed at these entertainments, including a cantata composed for David, an Italian catch for seven voices, and the chorus known as "The Storm," a setting of Peter Pindar's "Hark, the wild uproar of the waves." An opera, "Orfeo ed Euridice," to which we have already referred, was almost completed, but its production had necessarily to be abandoned, a circumstance which must have occasioned him considerable regret in view of the store he set upon his dramatic work. Benefit and Other Concerts On the 16th of May he had a benefit concert, when the receipts exceeded by 150 pounds the 200 pounds which had been guaranteed. A second benefit was given on May 30, when "La Passione Instrumentale" (the "Seven Words" written for Cadiz) was performed. This work was given again on June 10, at the benefit concert of the "little" Clement, a boy violinist who grew into the famous artist for whom Beethoven wrote his Violin Concerto. On this occasion Haydn conducted for Clement, and it is interesting to observe that Clement took the first violin at the last concert Haydn ever attended, in March 1808. Haydn on Handel In the note-book he kept while in London, one of the entries reads: "Anno 1791, the last great concert, with 885 persons, was held in Westminster, Anno 1792, it was transferred to St Margaret's Chapel, with 200 performers. This evoked criticism." Haydn here refers to the Handel Commemoration Festival, the sixth and last of the century. He attended that of 1791, and was much impressed with the grandeur of the performances. A place had been reserved for him near the King's box, and when the "Hallelujah Chorus" was sung, and the whole audience rose to their feet, he wept like a child. "Handel is the master of us all," he sobbed. No one knew the value of Handel's choral work better than Haydn. After listening at the Concert of Antient Music to the chorus, "The Nations tremble," from "Joshua," he told Shield that "he had long been acquainted with music, but never knew half its powers before he heard it, as he was perfectly certain that only one inspired author ever did, or ever would, pen so sublime a composition." [See the Appendix to Shield's Introduction to Harmony.] Oxford Doctor of Music Haydn was no Handel, either as man or artist. Handel declined the Doctor of Music degree with the characteristic remark: "What the devil I throw my money away for that the blockhead wish?" Haydn did not decline it, though probably enough he rated the distinction no higher than Handel did. In the month of July he went down to the Oxford Commemoration, and was then invested with the degree. Handel's latest biographer, Mr W. S. Rockstro, says that the Oxford fees would have cost Handel 100 pounds. Haydn's note of the expense is not so alarming: "I had to pay one and a half guineas for the bell peals at Oxforth [sic] when I received the doctor's degree, and half a guinea for the robe." He seems to have found the ceremonies a little trying, and not unlikely he imagined himself cutting rather a ridiculous figure in his gorgeous robe of cherry and cream-coloured silk. At the concert following the investiture he seized the gown, and, raising it in the air, exclaimed in English, "I thank you." "I had to walk about for three days in this guise," he afterwards wrote, "and only wish my Vienna friends could have seen me." Haydn's "exercise" for the degree was the following "Canon cancrizans, a tre," set to the words, "Thy voice, O harmony, is divine." [figure: a musical score excerpt] This was subsequently used for the first of the Ten Commandments, the whole of which he set to canons during his stay in London. Three grand concerts formed a feature of the Oxford Commemoration. The "Oxford" Symphony At the second of these a symphony in G, written in 1787 or 1788, and since known as the "Oxford," was performed, with the composer at the organ. He had taken a new symphony with him for the occasion, but owing to lack of time for rehearsals, the earlier work was substituted. Of this latter, the Morning Chronicle wrote that "a more wonderful composition never was heard. The applause given to Haydn was enthusiastic; but the merit of the work, in the opinion of all the musicians present, exceeded all praise." Holiday Relaxations The London season having now come to an end, Haydn proceeded to recruit his energies by paying visits to distinguished people at their country quarters, taking part in river excursions, picnics, and the like. Prince Esterhazy had sent him a pressing summons to return for a great fete which was being organized in honour of the Emperor, but having entered into new engagements with Salomon and others, he found it impossible to comply. A less indulgent employer would have requited him with instant dismissal, but all that the prince said when they afterwards met was, "Ah, Haydn! you might have saved me 40,000 florins." His longest visit at this time was spent with Mr Brassey, a Lombard Street banker, and ancestor of the present peer. "The banker," he says, "once cursed because he enjoyed too much happiness in this world." He gave lessons to Miss Brassey, and "enjoyed the repose of country life in the midst of a family circle all cordially devoted to him." In November he was the guest at two Guildhall banquets--that of the outgoing Lord Mayor on the 5th and that of his successor on the 9th. Of these entertainments he has left a curious account, and as the memorandum is in English it may, perhaps, be reproduced here. It runs as follows in Lady Wallace's translation of the letters: I was invited to the Lord Mayor's banquet on November 5. At the first table, No. 1, the new Lord Mayor and his wife dined, the Lord Chancellor, the two sheriffs, the Duke of Lids [Leeds], the minister Pitt, and others of the highest rank in the Cabinet. I was seated at No. 2 with Mr Sylvester, the most celebrated advocate and first King's counsel in London. In this hall, called the Geld Hall [Guildhall], were six tables, besides others in the adjoining room. About twelve hundred persons altogether dined, and everything was in the greatest splendour. The dishes were very nice and well dressed. Wines of every kind in abundance. We sat down to dinner at six o'clock and rose from table at eight. The guests accompanied the Lord Mayor both before and after dinner in their order of precedence. There were various ceremonies, sword bearing, and a kind of golden crown, all attended by a band of wind instruments. After dinner, the whole of the aristocratic guests of No. 1 withdrew into a private room prepared for them, to have tea and coffee, while the rest of the company were conducted into another room. At nine o'clock No. 1 repaired to a small saloon, when the ball began. There was a raised platform in this room, reserved for the highest nobility, where the Lord Mayor and his wife were seated on a throne. Dancing then commenced in due order of precedence, but only one couple at a time, just as on January 6, the King's birthday. There were raised benches on both sides of this room with four steps, where the fair sex chiefly prevailed. Nothing but minuets were danced in this saloon, but I could only remain for a quarter of an hour, first, because the heat of so many people assembled in such a narrow space was so oppressive, and, secondly, on account of the bad music for dancing, the whole orchestra consisting of two violins and a violoncello; the minuets were more in the Polish style than in our own, or that of the Italians. I proceeded into another room, which really was more like a subterranean cave than anything else; they were dancing English dances, and the music here was a degree better, as a drum was played by one of the violinists! [This might be effected by the violin player having the drumstick tied to his right foot, which was sometimes done.] I went on to the large hall, where we had dined, and there the orchestra was more numerous, and the music more tolerable. They were also dancing English dances, but only opposite the raised platform where the four first sets had dined with the Lord Mayor. The other tables were all filled afresh with gentlemen, who as usual drank freely the whole night. The strangest thing of all was that one part of the company went on dancing without hearing a single note of the music, for first at one table, and then at another, songs were shouted, or toasts given, amidst the most crazy uproar and clinking of glasses and hurrahs. This hall and all the other rooms were lighted with lamps, of which the effluvia was most disagreeable, especially in the small ballroom. It was remarkable that the Lord Mayor had no need of a carving-knife, as a man in the centre of the table carved everything for him. One man stood before the Lord Mayor and another behind him, shouting out vociferously all the toasts in their order according to etiquette, and after each toast came a flourish of kettledrums and trumpets. No health was more applauded than that of Mr Pitt. There seemed to be no order. The dinner cost 6,000 pounds, one-half of which is paid by the Lord Mayor, and the other half by the two sheriffs. Royalty Again In this same month--November--he visited the Marionettes at the Fantoccini Theatre in Saville Row, prompted, no doubt, by old associations with Esterhaz. On the 24th he went to Oatlands to visit the Duke of York, who had just married the Princess of Prussia. "I remained two days," he says, "and enjoyed many marks of graciousness and honour... On the third day the Duke had me taken twelve miles towards town with his own horses. The Prince of Wales asked for my portrait. For two days we made music for four hours each evening, i.e., from ten o'clock till two hours after midnight. Then we had supper, and at three o'clock went to bed." After this he proceeded to Cambridge to see the university, thence to Sir. Patrick Blake's at Langham. Of the Cambridge visit he writes: "Each university has behind it a very roomy and beautiful garden, besides stone bridges, in order to afford passage over the stream which winds past. The King's Chapel is famous for its carving. It is all of stone, but so delicate that nothing more beautiful could have been made of wood. It has already stood for 400 years, and everybody judges its age at about ten years, because of the firmness and peculiar whiteness of the stone. The students bear themselves like those at Oxford, but it is said they have better instructors. There are in all 800 students." From Langham he went to the house of a Mr Shaw, to find in his hostess the "most beautiful woman I ever saw." Haydn, it may be remarked in passing, was always meeting the "most beautiful woman." At one time she was a Mrs Hodges, another of his London admirers. When quite an old man he still preserved a ribbon which Mrs Shaw had worn during his visit, and on which his name was embroidered in gold. Pleyel in Opposition But other matters now engaged his attention. The directors of the Professional Concerts, desiring to take advantage of his popularity, endeavoured to make him cancel his engagements with Salomon and Gallini. In this they failed. "I will not," said Haydn, "break my word to Gallini and Salomon, nor shall any desire for dirty gain induce me to do them an injury. They have run so great a risk and gone to so much expense on my account that it is only fair they should be the gainers by it." Thus defeated in their object, the Professionals decided to bring over Haydn's own pupil, Ignaz Pleyel, to beat the German on his own ground. It was not easy to upset Haydn's equanimity in an affair of this kind; his gentle nature, coupled with past experiences, enabled him to take it all very calmly. "From my youth upwards," he wrote, "I have been exposed to envy, so it does not surprise me when any attempt is made wholly to crush my poor talents, but the Almighty above is my support.... There is no doubt that I find many who are envious of me in London also, and I know them almost all. Most of them are Italians. But they can do me no harm, for my credit with this nation has been established far too many years." As a rule, he was forbearing enough with his rivals. At first he wrote of Pleyel: "He behaves himself with great modesty." Later on he remarked that "Pleyel's presumption is everywhere criticized." Nevertheless, "I go to all his concerts, for I love him." It is very pleasant to read all this. But how far Haydn's feelings towards Pleyel were influenced by patriotic considerations it is impossible to say. The defeated Professionals had a certain advantage by being first in the field in 1792. But Haydn was only a few days behind them with his opening concert, and the success of the entire series was in no way affected by the ridiculous rivalry. Symphonies, divertimenti for concerted instruments, string quartets, a clavier trio, airs, a cantata, and other works were all produced at these concerts, and with almost invariable applause. Nor were Haydn's services entirely confined to the Salomon concerts. He conducted for various artists, including Barthelemon, the violinist; Haesler, the pianist; and Madam Mara, of whom he tells that she was hissed at Oxford for not rising during the "Hallelujah" Chorus. Close of the Season The last concert was given on June 6 "by desire," when Haydn's compositions were received with "an extasy of admiration." Thus Salomon's season ended, as the Morning Chronicle put it, with the greatest eclat. Haydn's subsequent movements need not detain us long. He made excursions to Windsor Castle and to Ascot "to see the races," of which he has given an account in his note-book. Herschel and Haydn From Ascot he went to Slough, where he was introduced to Herschel. In this case there was something like real community of tastes, for the astronomer was musical, having once played the oboe, and later on acted as organist, first at Halifax Parish Church, and then at the Octagon Chapel Bath. The big telescope with which he discovered the planet Uranus in 1781 was an object of great interest to Haydn, who was evidently amazed at the idea of a man sitting out of doors "in the most intense cold for five or six hours at a time." Visits were also paid to Vauxhall Gardens, where "the music is fairly good" and "coffee and milk cost nothing." "The place and its diversions," adds Haydn, "have no equal in the world." At St Paul's But the most interesting event of this time to Haydn was the meeting of the Charity Children in St Paul's Cathedral, when something like 4000 juveniles took part. "I was more touched," he says in his diary, "by this innocent and reverent music than by any I ever heard in my life!" And then he notes the following chant by John Jones: [Jones was organist of St Paul's Cathedral at this time. His chant, which was really in the key of D, has since been supplanted. Haydn made an error in bar 12.] [Figure: a musical score excerpt] Curiously enough Berlioz was impressed exactly in the same way when he heard the Charity Children in 1851. He was in London as a juror at the Great Exhibition; and along with his friend, the late G. A. Osborne, he donned a surplice and sang bass in the select choir. He was so moved by the children's singing that he hid his face behind his music and wept. "It was," he says, "the realization of one part of my dreams, and a proof that the powerful effect of musical masses is still absolutely unknown." [See Berlioz's Life and Letters, English edition, Vol. I., p. 281.] London Acquaintances Haydn made many interesting acquaintances during this London visit. Besides those already mentioned, there was Bartolozzi, the famous engraver, to whose wife he dedicated three clavier trios and a sonata in E flat (Op. 78), which, so far unprinted in Germany, is given by Sterndale Bennett in his Classical Practice. There was also John Hunter, described by Haydn as "the greatest and most celebrated chyrurgus in London," who vainly tried to persuade him to have a polypus removed from his nose. It was Mrs Hunter who wrote the words for most of his English canzonets, including the charming "My mother bids me bind my hair." And then there was Mrs Billington, the famous singer, whom Michael Kelly describes as "an angel of beauty and the Saint Cecilia of song." There is no more familiar anecdote than that which connects Haydn with Sir Joshua Reynolds's portrait of this notorious character. Carpani is responsible for the tale. He says that Haydn one day found Mrs Billington sitting to Reynolds, who was painting her as St Cecilia listening to the angels. "It is like," said Haydn, "but there is a strange mistake." "What is that?" asked Reynolds. "You have painted her listening to the angels. You ought to have represented the angels listening to her." It is a very pretty story, but it cannot possibly be true. Reynolds's portrait of Mrs Billington was painted in 1789, two years before Haydn's arrival, and was actually shown in the Academy Exhibition of 1790, the last to which Sir Joshua contributed. [The portrait, a whole length, was sold in 1798 for 325 pounds, 10s., and again at Christie's, in 1845, for 505 guineas--to an American, as usual.] Of course Haydn may have made the witty remark here attributed to him, but it cannot have been at the time of the painting of the portrait. That he was an enthusiastic admirer of Mrs Billington there can be no doubt. Another Romance There was another intimacy of more import, about which it is necessary to speak at some length. When Dies published his biography of Haydn in 1810 he referred to a batch of love-letters written to the composer during this visit to London. The existence of the letters was known to Pohl, who devotes a part of his Haydn in London to them, and prints certain extracts; but the letters themselves do not appear to have been printed either in the original English or in a German translation until Mr Henry E. Krehbiel, the well-known American musical critic, gave them to the world through the columns of the New York Tribune. Mr Krehbiel was enabled to do this by coming into possession of a transcript of Haydn's London note-book, with which we will deal presently. Haydn, as he informs us, had copied all the letters out in full, "a proceeding which tells its own story touching his feelings towards the missives and their fair author." He preserved them most carefully among the souvenirs of his visit, and when Dies asked him about them, he replied: "They are letters from an English widow in London who loved me. Though sixty years old, she was still lovely and amiable, and I should in all likelihood have married her if I had been single." Who was the lady thus celebrated? In Haydn's note-book the following entry occurs: "Mistress Schroeter, No. 6 James Street, Buckingham Gate." The inquiry is here answered: Mistress Schroeter was the lady. Mistress Schroeter Haydn, it will be seen, describes her as a widow of sixty. According to Goldsmith, women and music should never be dated; but in the present case, there is a not unnatural curiosity to discover the lady's age. Mr Krehbiel gives good grounds for doubting Haydn's statement that Mistress Schroeter was sixty when he met her. She had been married to Johann Samuel Schroeter, an excellent German musician, who settled in London in 1772. Schroeter died in 1788, three years before the date of Haydn's visit, when he was just thirty-eight. Now Dr Burney, who must have known the family, says that Schroeter "married a young lady of considerable fortune, who was his scholar, and was in easy circumstances." If, therefore, Mrs Schroeter was sixty years old when Haydn made her acquaintance, she must have been nineteen years her husband's senior, and could not very well be described as a "young" lady at the time of her marriage. It is, however, unnecessary to dwell upon the matter of age. The interesting point is that Haydn fell under the spell of the charming widow. There is no account of their first meeting; but it was probably of a purely professional nature. Towards the end of June 1791 the lady writes: "Mrs Schroeter presents her compliments to Mr Haydn, and informs him she is just returned to town, and will be very happy to see him whenever it is convenient to him to give her a lesson." A woman of sixty should hardly have been requiring lessons, especially after having been the wife of a professor who succeeded the "English Bach" as music-master to the Queen. But lessons sometimes cover a good deal of love-making, and that was clearly the case with Haydn and Mrs Schroeter. Love Letters There is indeed some reason to doubt if the lessons were continued. At any rate, by February 1792, the affair had ripened so far as to allow the lady to address the composer as "my dear," and disclose her tender solicitude for his health. On the 7th of the following month she writes that she was "extremely sorry" to part with him so suddenly the previous night. "Our conversation was particularly interesting, and I had a thousand affectionate things to say to you. My heart was and is full of tenderness for you, but no language can express half the love and affection I feel for you. You are dearer to me every day of my life." This was pretty warm, considering that Haydn was still in the bonds of wedlock. We cannot tell how far he reciprocated the feeling, his letters, if he wrote any, not having been preserved; but it may be safely inferred that a lady who was to be "happy to see you both in the morning and the evening" did not do all the love-making. On the 4th of April the composer gets a present of soap, and is the "ever dear Haydn" of the "invariable and truly affectionate" Mistress Schroeter. He had been working too hard about this particular date (he notes that he was "bled in London" on the 17th of March), and on the 12th the "loveress," to use Marjorie Fleming's term, is "truly anxious" about her "dear love," for whom her regard is "stronger every day." An extract from the letter of April 19 may be quoted as it stands: I was extremely sorry to hear this morning that you were indisposed. I am told you were five hours at your studies yesterday. Indeed, my dear love, I am afraid it will hurt you. Why should you, who have already produced so many wonderful and charming compositions, still fatigue yourself with such close application? I almost tremble for your health. Let me prevail on you, my much-loved Haydn, not to keep to your studies so long at one time. My dear love, if you could know how very precious your welfare is to me, I flatter myself you would endeavour to preserve it for my sake as well as your own. Come Early The next letter shows that Haydn had been deriving some profit from Mistress Schroeter's affections by setting her to work as an amanuensis. She has been copying out a march, and is sorry that she has not done it better. "If my Haydn would employ me oftener to write music, I hope I should improve; and I know I should delight in the occupation." Invitations to dine at St James's Street are repeatedly being sent, for Mistress Schroeter wishes "to have as much of your company as possible." When others are expected, Haydn is to come early, so that they may have some time together "before the rest of our friends come." Does the adored Schroeter go to one of her "dearest love's" concerts, she thanks him a thousand times for the entertainment. "Where your sweet compositions and your excellent performance combine," she writes, "it cannot fail of being the most charming concert; but, apart from that, the pleasure of seeing you must ever give me infinite satisfaction." As the time drew near for Haydn's departure, "every moment of your company is more and more precious to me." She begs to assure him with "heart-felt affection" that she will ever consider the acquaintance with him as one of the chief blessings of her life. Nay, she entertains for her "dearest Haydn" "the fondest and tenderest affection the human heart is capable of." And so on. An Innocent Amourette One feels almost brutally rude in breaking in upon the privacy of this little romance. No doubt the flirtation was inexcusable enough on certain grounds. But taking the whole circumstances into account--above all, the loveless, childless home of the composer--the biographer is disposed to see in the episode merely that human yearning after affection and sympathy which had been denied to Haydn where he had most right to expect them. He admitted that he was apt to be fascinated by pretty and amiable women, and the woman to whom he had given his name was neither pretty nor amiable. An ancient philosopher has said that a man should never marry a plain woman, since his affections would always be in danger of straying when he met a beauty. This incident in Haydn's career would seem to support the philosopher's contention. For the rest, it was probably harmless enough, for there is nothing to show that the severer codes of morality were infringed. The biographers of Haydn have not succeeded in discovering how the Schroeter amourette ended. The letters printed by Mr Krehbiel are all confined to the year 1792, and mention is nowhere made of any of later date. When Haydn returned to London in 1794, he occupied rooms at No. 1 Bury Street, St James', and Pohl suggests that he may have owed the more pleasant quarters to his old admirer, who would naturally be anxious to have him as near her as possible. A short walk of ten minutes through St James' Park and the Mall would bring him to Buckingham Palace, and from that to Mrs Schroeter's was only a stone-throw. Whether the old affectionate relations were resumed it is impossible to say. If there were any letters of the second London visit, it is curious that Haydn should not have preserved them with the rest. There is no ground for supposing that any disagreement came between the pair: the facts point rather the other way. When Haydn finally said farewell to London, he left the scores of his six last symphonies "in the hands of a lady." Pohl thinks the lady was Mrs Schroeter, and doubtless he is right. At any rate Haydn's esteem for her, to use no stronger term, is sufficiently emphasized by his having inscribed to her the three trios numbered 1, 2 and 6 in the Breitkopf & Hartel list. Haydn's Note-Book Reference has already been made to the diary or note-book kept by Haydn during his visit. The original manuscript of this curious document came into the hands of his friend, Joseph Weigl, whose father had been 'cellist to Prince Esterhazy. A similar diary was kept during the second visit, but this was lost; and indeed the first note-book narrowly escaped destruction at the hands of a careless domestic. Haydn's autograph was at one time in the possession of Dr Pohl. A copy of it made by A. W. Thayer, the biographer of Beethoven, in 1862, became, as previously stated, the property of Mr Krehbiel, who has printed the entries, with running comment, in his "Music and Manners in the Classical Period" (London, 1898). Mr Krehbiel rightly describes some of the entries as mere "vague mnemonic hints," and adds that one entry which descants in epigrammatic fashion on the comparative morals of the women of France, Holland and England is unfit for publication. Looking over the diary, it is instructive to observe how little reference is made to music. One or two of the entries are plainly memoranda of purchases to be made for friends. There is one note about the National Debt of England, another about the trial of Warren Hastings. London, we learn, has 4000 carts for cleaning the streets, and consumes annually 800,000 cartloads of coals. That scandalous book, the Memoirs of Mrs Billington, which had just been published, forms the subject of a long entry. "It is said that her [Mrs Billington's] character is very faulty, but nevertheless she is a great genius, and all the women hate her because she is so beautiful." Prince of Wale's Punch A note is made of the constituents of the Prince of Wales's punch--"One bottle champagne, one bottle Burgundy, one bottle rum, ten lemons, two oranges, pound and a half of sugar." A process for preserving milk "for a long time" is also described. We read that on the 5th of November (1791) "there was a fog so thick that one might have spread it on bread. In order to write I had to light a candle as early as eleven o'clock." Here is a curious item--"In the month of June 1792 a chicken, 7s.; an Indian [a kind of bittern found in North America] 9s.; a dozen larks, 1 coron [? crown]. N.B.--If plucked, a duck, 5s." Haydn liked a good story, and when he heard one made a note of it. The diary contains two such stories. One is headed "Anectod," and runs: "At a grand concert, as the director was about to begin the first number, the kettledrummer called loudly to him, asking him to wait a moment, because his two drums were not in tune. The leader could not and would not wait any longer, and told the drummer to transpose for the present." The second story is equally good. "An Archbishop of London, having asked Parliament to silence a preacher of the Moravian religion who preached in public, the Vice-President answered that could easily be done: only make him a Bishop, and he would keep silent all his life." On the whole the note-book cannot be described as of strong biographical interest, but a reading of its contents as translated by Mr Krehbiel will certainly help towards an appreciation of the personal character of the composer. CHAPTER VI. SECOND LONDON VISIT--1794-1795 Beethoven--Takes Lessons from Haydn--The Relations of the Two Composers--The Haydn Museum--Haydn starts for London--His Servant Elssler--The Salomon Concerts--A "Smart" Drummer--New Acquaintances--Haydn at Bath--Opera Concerts--Kingly Courtesies--A Valuable Parrot--Rohrau Reminiscences--Esterhaz once more--The "Austrian Hymn"--Haydn's Love for It--A Charge of Plagiarism. Haydn left London some time towards the end of June 1792. He had intended to visit Berlin, in response to an invitation from King Frederick William II., but he altered his route in order to meet Prince Anton Esterhazy, who was at Frankfort for the coronation of the Emperor Francis II. Beethoven A more interesting meeting took place at Bonn. Beethoven, then a young man of twenty-two, was still living with his people in the Wenzegasse, but already arrangements had been made by the Elector for his paying a somewhat lengthened visit to Vienna in order to prosecute his studies there. Since the death of Mozart, Haydn had become the most brilliant star in the musical firmament, and it was only natural that the rising genius should look to him for practical help and encouragement. It so happened that the Elector's Band, of which Beethoven was a member, gave a dinner to Haydn at Godesberg. The occasion was opportune. Beethoven submitted a cantata to the guest of the evening which Haydn "greatly praised, warmly encouraging the composer to proceed with his studies." The name of the cantata has not been ascertained, though Thayer conjectures it to have been on the death of the Emperor Leopold II. Whatever it was, the fact of Haydn's approval would make it an easy matter to discuss the subject of lessons, whether now or later. Beethoven did not start for Vienna until November, and it appears that immediately before that date some formal communication had been made with Haydn in reference to his studies. On the 29th of October Count Waldstein wrote: "DEAR BEETHOVEN,--You are travelling to Vienna in fulfillment of your long-cherished wish. The genius of Mozart is still weeping and bewailing the death of her favourite. With the inexhaustible Haydn she found a refuge, but no occupation, and is now waiting to leave him and join herself to someone else. Labour assiduously, and receive Mozart's spirit from the hands of Haydn." This was not exactly complimentary to Haydn, but Beethoven doubtless had the good sense not to repeat the count's words. When the young artist arrived in Vienna, he found Haydn living at the Hamberger Haus, No. 992 (since demolished), and thither he went for his lessons. From Beethoven's own notes of expenses we find that his first payment was made to Haydn on December 12. The sum entered is 8 groschen (about 9 1/2 d.), which shows at least that Haydn was not extravagant in his charges. Master and Pupil Beethoven's studies were in strict counterpoint, and the text-book was that same "Gradus ad Parnassum" of Fux which Haydn had himself contended with in the old days at St Stephen's. How many exercises Beethoven wrote cannot be said, but 245 have been preserved, of which, according to Nottebohm, Haydn corrected only forty-two. Much ink has been wasted in discussing the relations of these distinguished composers. There is no denying that Haydn neglected his young pupil, but one may find another excuse for the neglect besides that of his increasing age and his engrossing occupations. Beethoven was already a musical revolutionist: Haydn was content to walk in the old ways. The two men belonged almost to different centuries, and the disposition which the younger artist had for "splendid experiments" must have seemed to the mature musician little better than madness and licentious irregularity. "He will never do anything in decent style," was Albrechtsberger's dictum after giving Beethoven a series of lessons. Haydn's opinion of Beethoven's future was not so dogmatically expressed; but he must have been sorely puzzled by a pupil who looked upon even consecutive fifths as an open question, and thought it a good thing to "learn occasionally what is according to rule that one may hereafter come to what is contrary to rule." It is said that Haydn persisted in regarding Beethoven, not as a composer at all but as a pianoforte player; and certainly Beethoven regarded Haydn as being behind the age. That he was unjust to Haydn cannot be gainsaid. He even went so far as to suspect Haydn of willfully trying to retard him in his studies, a proceeding of which Haydn was altogether incapable. For many years he continued to discharge splenetic remarks about his music, and he was always annoyed at being called his pupil. "I never learned anything from Haydn," he would say; "he never would correct my mistakes." When, the day after the production of his ballet music to Prometheus, he met Haydn in the street, the old man observed to him: "I heard your music last night; I liked it very well." To which Beethoven, alluding to Haydn's oratorio, replied: "Oh! dear master, it is far from being a CREATION." The doubtful sincerity of this remark may be inferred from an anecdote quoted by Moscheles. Haydn had been told that Beethoven was speaking depreciatingly of "The Creation." "That is wrong of him," he said. "What has HE written, then? His Septet? Certainly that is beautiful; nay, splendid." Beethoven on Haydn It is hardly necessary to say who comes out best in these passages at arms. Yet we must not be too hard on Beethoven. That he recognized Haydn's genius as a composer no careful reader of his biography can fail to see. As Pohl takes pains to point out, he spoke highly of Haydn whenever opportunity offered, often chose one of his themes when improvising in public, scored one of his quartets for his own use, and lovingly preserved the autograph of one of the English symphonies. That he came in the end to realize his true greatness is amply proved by the story already related which represents him as exclaiming on his death-bed upon the fact of Haydn having been born in a common peasant's cottage. In the meantime, although Beethoven was dissatisfied with his progress under Haydn, there was no open breach between the two. It is true that the young musician sought another teacher--one Schenck, a well-known Viennese composer--but this was done without Haydn's knowledge, out of consideration, we may assume, for his feelings. That master and pupil were still on the best of terms may be gathered from their having been at Eisenstadt together during the summer of 1793. In the January of the following year Haydn set out on his second visit to England, and Beethoven transferred himself to Albrechtsberger. The Haydn Museum Haydn's life in Vienna during the eighteen months which intervened between the two London visits was almost totally devoid of incident. His wife, it will be remembered, had written to him in England, asking for money to buy a certain house which she fancied for a "widow's home." Haydn was astute enough not to send the money, but on his return to Vienna, finding the house in every way to his liking, he bought it himself. Frau Haydn died seven years later, "and now," said the composer, speaking in 1806, "I am living in it as a widower." The house is situated in the suburb of Vienna known as Gumpendorf. It is No. 19 of the Haydngasse and bears a marble memorial tablet, affixed to it in 1840. The pious care of the composer's admirers has preserved it almost exactly as it was in Haydn's day, and has turned it into a kind of museum containing portraits and mementoes of the master, the original manuscript of "The Creation," and other interesting relics. Starts for London Haydn started on his journey to England on January 19, 1794, Salomon having brought him, under a promise to return with six new symphonies which he was to conduct in person. This time he travelled down the Rhine, and he had not been many days on the way when news reached him of the death of Prince Anton Esterhazy, who had very reluctantly given him leave of absence. On the occasion of the first London visit Salomon had been his travelling companion; now, feeling doubtless the encumbrance of increasing years, Haydn took his servant and copyist, Johann Elssler, along with him. Honest Elssler It may be noted in passing that he entertained a very warm regard for Elssler, whose father had been music copyist to Prince Esterhazy. He was born at Eisenstadt in 1769, and, according to Pohl, lived the whole of his life with Haydn, first as copyist, and then as general servant and factotum. It was Elssler who tended the composer in his last years, a service recompensed by the handsome bequest of 6000 florins, which he lived to enjoy until 1843. No man, it has been said, is a hero to his valet, but "Haydn was to Elssler a constant subject of veneration, which he carried so far that when he thought himself unobserved he would stop with the censer before his master's portrait as if it were the altar." This "true and honest servant" copied a large amount of Haydn's music, partly in score, partly in separate parts, much of which is now treasured as the autograph of Haydn, though the handwritings of the two are essentially different. It is a pity that none of the earlier writers on Haydn thought of applying to Elssler for particulars of the private life of the composer. He could have given information on many obscure points, and could have amplified the details of this second London visit, about which we know much less than we know about the former visit. The Salomon Concerts Salomon's first concert had been arranged for the 3rd of February, but Haydn did not arrive until the 4th, and the series accordingly began upon the 10th. Twelve concerts were given in all, and with the most brilliant success. The six new symphonies commissioned by Salomon were performed, and the previous set were also repeated, along with some new quartets. Of the many contemporary notices of the period, perhaps the most interesting is that which appears in the Journal of Luxury and Fashion, published at Weimar in July 1794. It is in the form of a London letter, written on March 25, under the heading of "On the Present State and Fashion of Music in England." After speaking of Salomon's efforts on behalf of classical music and of the praise due to him for his performance of the quartets of "our old favourite, Haydn," the writer continues: "But what would you now say to his new symphonies composed expressly for these concerts, and directed by himself at the piano? It is truly wonderful what sublime and august thoughts this master weaves into his works. Passages often occur which render it impossible to listen to them without becoming excited. We are altogether carried away by admiration, and forced to applaud with hand and mouth. This is especially the case with Frenchmen, of whom we have so many here that all public places are filled with them. You know that they have great sensibility, and cannot restrain their transports, so that in the midst of the finest passages in soft adagios they clap their hands in loud applause and thus mar the effect. In every symphony of Haydn the adagio or andante is sure to be repeated each time, after the most vehement encores. The worthy Haydn, whose personal acquaintance I highly value, conducts himself on these occasions in the most modest manner. He is indeed a good-hearted, candid, honest man, esteemed and beloved by all." Several notable incidents occurred at the Salomon Concerts. It has been remarked, as "an event of some interest in musical history," that Haydn and Wilhelm Cramer appeared together at one concert, Cramer as leader of the orchestra, Haydn conducting from the pianoforte. But Cramer was not a genius of the first rank--his compositions are of the slightest importance--and there was nothing singular about his appearing along with Haydn. He had been leader at the Handel Festivals at Westminster Abbey in 1784 and 1787, and was just the man to be engaged for an enterprise like that of Salomon's. A "Smart" Drummer An anecdote told of Haydn in connection with one of the rehearsals is better worth noting. The drummer was found to be absent. "Can anyone here play the drum?" inquired Haydn, looking round from his seat at the piano. "I can," promptly replied young George (afterwards Sir George) Smart, who was sitting among the violinists. Smart, who lived to become the doyen of the musical profession in England, had never handled a drumstick before, and naturally failed to satisfy the conductor. Haydn took the drumstick from him and "showed to the astonished orchestra a new and unexpected attitude in their leader." Then, turning to Smart, he remarked: "That is how we use the drumsticks in Germany." "Oh, very well," replied the unabashed youth, "if you like it better in that way we can also do it so in London." New Acquaintances Haydn made several new acquaintances during this visit, the most notable being, perhaps, Dragonetti, the famous double-bass player, who had accompanied Banti, the eminent prima donna, to London in 1794. Banti had been discovered as a chanteuse in a Paris cafe, and afterwards attracted much notice by her fine voice both in Paris and London. "She is the first singer in Italy, and drinks a bottle of wine every day," said one who knew her. In her journeys through Germany, Austria and Italy she won many triumphs. Haydn composed for her an air, "Non Partir," in E, which she sang at his benefit. As for "Old Drag," the familiar designation of the distinguished bassist, his eccentricities must have provided Haydn with no little amusement. He always took his dog Carlo with him into the orchestra, and Henry Phillips tells us that, having a strange weakness for dolls, he often carried one of them to the festivals as his wife! On his way to Italy in 1798 Dragonetti visited Haydn in Vienna, and was much delighted with the score of "The Creation," just completed. Several eminent violinists were in London at the time of Haydn's visit. The most distinguished of them was perhaps Felice de Giardini, who, at the age of fourscore, produced an oratorio at Ranelagh Gardens, and even played a concerto. He had a perfectly volcanic temper, and hated Haydn as the devil is said to hate holy water. "I don't wish to see the German dog," he remarked in the composer's hearing, when urged to pay him a visit. Haydn, as a rule, was kindly disposed to all brother artists, but to be called a dog was too much, He went to hear Giardini, and then got even with him by noting in his diary that he "played like a pig." The accounts preserved of Haydn's second visit to England are, as already remarked, far less full than those of the first visit. Unconnected memoranda appear in his diary, some of which are given by Griesinger and Dies; but they are of comparatively little interest. During the summer of 1794 he moved about the country a good deal. Thus, about the 26th of August, he paid a visit to Waverley Abbey, whose "Annales Waverliensis" suggested to Scott the name of his first romance. The ruined condition of the venerable pile--it dates from 1128--set Haydn moralizing on the "Protestant heresy" which led the "rascal mob" to tear down "what had once been a stronghold of his own religion." Haydn at Bath In the following month he spent three days in Bath with Dr Burney, and Rauzzini, the famous tenor, who had retired to the fashionable watering-place after a successful career of thirteen years as a singer and teacher in London. Rauzzini is little more than a name now, but for Haydn's sake it is worth recalling his memory. Born at Rome in 1747, his striking beauty of face and figure had drawn him into certain entanglements which made it expedient for him to leave his native land. He was as fond of animals as Dragonetti was of dolls, and had erected a memorial tablet in his garden to his "best friend," otherwise his dog. "Turk was a faithful dog and not a man," ran the inscription, which reminds one of Schopenhauer's cynical observation that if it were not for the honest faces of dogs, we should forget the very existence of sincerity. When Haydn read the inscription he immediately proceeded to make use of the words for a four-part canon. It was presumably at this time that he became acquainted with Dr Henry Harington, the musician and author, who had removed to Bath in 1771, where he had founded the Harmonic Society. Haydn dedicated one of his songs to him in return for certain music and verses, which explains the following otherwise cryptic note of Clementi's, published for the first time recently by Mr J. S. Shedlock: "The first Dr [Harington] having bestowed much praise on the second Dr [Haydn], the said second Dr, out of doctorial gratitude, returns the 1st Dr thanks for all favours recd., and praises in his turn the said 1st Dr most handsomely." The title of Haydn's song was "Dr Harington's Compliments." Opera Concerts The composer returned to London at the beginning of October for the winter season's concerts. These began, as before, in February, and were continued once a week up to the month of May. This time they took the form of opera concerts, and were given at the "National School of Music" in the new concert-room of the King's Theatre. No fresh symphonies were contributed by Haydn for this series, though some of the old ones always found a place in the programmes. Two extra concerts were given on May 21 and June 1, at both of which Haydn appeared; but the composer's last benefit concert was held on May 4. On this occasion the programme was entirely confined to his own compositions, with the exception of concertos by Viotti, the violinist, and Ferlendis, the oboist. Banti sang the aria already mentioned as having been written expressly for her, but, according to the composer, "sang very scanty." The main thing, however, was that the concert proved a financial success, the net receipts amounting to 400 pounds. "It is only in England," said Haydn, "that one can make 4000 gulden in one evening." Haydn did indeed remarkably well in London. As Pohl says, "he returned from it with increased powers, unlimited fame, and a competence for life. By concerts, lessons, and symphonies, not counting his other compositions, he had again made 1200 pounds, enough to relieve him from all anxiety as to the future. He often said afterwards that it was not till he had been to England that he became famous in Germany; by which he meant that although his reputation was high at home, the English were the first to give him public homage and liberal remuneration." Kingly Courtesies It is superfluous to say that Haydn was as much of a "lion" in London society during his second visit as he had been on the previous occasion. The attention bestowed on him in royal circles made that certain, for "society" are sheep, and royalty is their bell-wether. The Prince of Wales had rather a fancy for him, and commanded his attendance at Carlton House no fewer than twenty-six times. At one concert at York House the programme was entirely devoted to his music. George III and Queen Caroline were present, and Haydn was presented to the King by the Prince. "You have written a great deal, Dr Haydn," said the King. "Yes, sire," was the reply; "more than is good for me." "Certainly not," rejoined His Majesty. He was then presented to the Queen, and asked to sing some German songs. "My voice," he said, pointing to the tip of his little finger, "is now no bigger than that"; but he sat down to the pianoforte and sang his song, "Ich bin der Verliebteste." He was repeatedly invited by the Queen to Buckingham Palace, and she tried to persuade him to settle in England. "You shall have a house at Windsor during the summer months," she said, and then, looking towards the King, added, "We can sometimes make music tete-a-tete." "Oh! I am not jealous of Haydn," interposed the King; "he is a good, honourable German." "To preserve that reputation," replied Haydn, "is my greatest pride." Most of Haydn's appearances were made at the concerts regularly organized for the entertainment of royalty at Carlton House and Buckingham Palace, and Haydn looked to be paid for his services. Whether the King and the Prince expected him to give these services in return for the supposed honour they had conferred upon him does not appear. At all events, Haydn sent in a bill for 100 guineas sometime after his return to Vienna, and the amount was promptly paid by Parliament. A Valuable Parrot Among the other attentions bestowed upon him while in London, mention should be made of the present of a talking parrot. Haydn took the bird with him, and it was sold for 140 pounds after his death. Another gift followed him to Vienna. A Leicester manufacturer named Gardiner--he wrote a book on The Music of Nature, and other works--sent him half a dozen pairs of cotton stockings, into which were woven the notes of the Austrian Hymn, "My mother bids me bind my hair," the Andante from the "Surprise" Symphony, and other thematic material. These musical stockings, as a wit has observed, must have come as a REAL surprise to Haydn. It was this same Leicester manufacturer, we may remark parenthetically, who annotated the translation of Bombet's Life of Haydn, made by his fellow-townsman, Robert Brewin, in 1817. Haydn's return from London was hastened by the receipt of a communication from Esterhaz. Prince Anton had been succeeded by his son Nicolaus, who was as fond of music as the rest of his family, and desired to keep his musical establishment up to the old standard. During the summer of 1794 he had written to Haydn, asking if the composer would care to retain his appointment as director. Haydn was only too glad to assent; and now that his London engagements were fulfilled, he saw no reason for remaining longer in England. Accordingly he started for home on the 15th of August 1795, travelling by way of Hamburg, Berlin and Dresden, and arriving at Vienna in the early days of September. Rohrau Reminiscences Soon after his return he was surprised to receive an invitation to visit his native Rohrau. When he arrived there he found that a monument, with a marble bust of himself, had been erected to his honour in a park near his birthplace. This interesting memorial consists of a square pillar surmounting three stone steps, with an inscription on each side. The visit was productive of mingled feelings to Haydn. He took his friends to see the old thatch-roofed cottage, and, pointing to the familiar stove, still in its place, modestly remarked that there his career as a musician began--a reminiscence of the now far-away time when he sat by his father's side and sawed away on his improvised fiddle. Esterhaz once more There is little to say about Haydn's labours as Capellmeister of the Esterhazy household at this time. Apparently he was only at Eisenstadt for the summer and autumn. Down to 1802, however, he always had a mass ready for Princess Esterhazy's name-day in September. These compositions are Nos. 2, 1, 3, 16, 4 and 6 of the Novello edition. No. 2, Pohl tells us, was composed in 1796, and called the "Paukenmesse," from the fact of the drums being used in the Agnus. No. 3 was written in 1797. It is known in England as the Imperial Mass, but in Germany as "Die Nelsonmesse," on account of its having been performed during Nelson's visit to Eisenstadt in 1800. On that occasion Nelson asked Haydn for his pen, and gave him his own gold watch in exchange. The Austrian Hymn It was shortly after his return to Vienna--in January 1797, to be precise--that he composed his favourite air, "God preserve the Emperor," better known as the Austrian Hymn. The story of this celebrated composition is worth telling with some minuteness. Its inception was due to Count von Saurau, Imperial High Chancellor and Minister of the Interior. Writing in 1820, the count said: I often regretted that we had not, like the English, a national air calculated to display to all the world the loyal devotion of our people to the kind and upright ruler of our Fatherland, and to awaken within the hearts of all good Austrians that noble national pride so indispensable to the energetic fulfillment of all the beneficial measures of the sovereign. This seemed to me more urgent at a period when the French Revolution was raging most furiously, and when the Jacobins cherished the idle hope of finding among the worthy Viennese partisans and participators in their criminal designs. [The scandalous Jacobin persecutions and executions in Austria and Hungary took place in 1796]. I caused that meritorious poet Haschka to write the words, and applied to our immortal countryman Haydn to set them to music, for I considered him alone capable of writing anything approaching in merit to the English "God save the King." Such was the origin of our national hymn. It would not have been difficult to match "God save the King," the mediocrity of which, especially as regards the words, has been the butt of countless satirists. Beethoven wrote in his diary that he "must show the English what a blessing they have" in that "national disgrace." If Haydn regarded it as a "blessing," he certainly did not take it as a model. He produced an air which, looking at it from a purely artistic point of view, is the best thing of the national anthem kind that has ever been written. The Emperor was enchanted with it when sung on his birthday, February 12, 1797, at the National Theatre in Vienna, and through Count Saurau sent the composer a gold box adorned with a facsimile of the royal features. "Such a surprise and such a mark of favour, especially as regards the portrait of my beloved monarch," wrote Haydn, "I never before received in acknowledgment of my poor talents." Haydn's Love for It We have several indications of Haydn's predilection for this fine air, which has long been popular as a hymn tune in all the churches. He wrote a set of variations for it as the Andante of his "Kaiser Quartet." Griesinger tells us, too, that as often as the warm weather and his strength permitted, during the last few years of his life, he used to be led into his back room that he might play it on the piano. It is further related by Dies that, during the bombardment of Vienna in May 1809, Haydn seated himself at his instrument every forenoon to give forth the sound of the favourite song. Indeed, on May 26, only five days before his death, he played it over three times in succession, and "with a degree of expression that astonished himself." As one writer puts it, the air "seemed to have acquired a certain sacredness in his eyes in an age when kings were beheaded and their crowns tossed to the rabble." Haydn's first sketch of the melody was found among his papers after his death. We reproduce it here, with an improvement shown in small notes. There are, it will be observed, some slight differences between the draft and the published version of the air: [figure: a musical score excerpt from the draft] [figure: a musical score excerpt from the published version] The collecting of what Tennyson called "the chips of the workshop" is not as a rule an edifying business, but the evolution of a great national air must always be interesting. Plagiarism or Coincidence? It might perhaps be added that Dr Kuhac, the highest authority on Croatian folk-song, asserted in an article contributed to the Croatian Review (1893) that the Austrian National Hymn was based on a Croatian popular air. In reviewing Kuhac's collection of Croatian melodies, a work in four volumes, containing 1600 examples, Dr Reimann signifies his agreement with Kuhac, and adds that Haydn employed Croatian themes not only in "God preserve the Emperor," but in many passages of his other works. These statements must not be taken too seriously. Handel purloined wholesale from brother composers and said nothing about it. The artistic morality of Haydn's age was different, and, knowing his character as we do, we may be perfectly sure that if he had of set purpose introduced into any of his compositions music which was not his own he would, in some way or other, have acknowledged the debt. This hunting for plagiarisms which are not plagiarisms at all but mere coincidences--coincidences which are and must be inevitable--is fast becoming a nuisance, and it is the duty of every serious writer to discredit the practice. The composer of "The Creation" had no need to borrow his melodies from any source. CHAPTER VII. "THE CREATION" AND "THE SEASONS" Haydn's Crowning Achievement--"The Creation" suggested--The "Unintelligible Jargon" of the Libretto--The Stimulating Effect of London--Haydn's Self-Criticism--First Performance of "The Creation"--London Performances--French Enthusiasm--The Oratorio criticized--"The Seasons." Haydn's Crowning Achievement Haydn rounded his life with "The Creation" and "The Seasons." They were the summit of his achievement, as little to be expected from him, considering his years, as "Falstaff" was to be expected from the octogenarian Verdi. Some geniuses flower late. It was only now, by his London symphonies and his "Creation," that Haydn's genius blossomed so luxuriantly as to place him with almost amazing suddenness among the very first of composers. There is hardly anything more certain than this, that if he had not come to London he would not have stood where he stands to-day. The best of his symphonies were written for London; and it was London, in effect, that set him to work in what was for him practically a new direction, leading to the production of an oratorio which at once took its place by the side of Handel's master-pieces, and rose to a popularity second only to that of "The Messiah" itself. "The Creation" suggested The connection thus established between the names of Handel and Haydn is interesting, for there can be little question that Haydn was led to think of writing a large choral work chiefly as the result of frequently hearing Handel's oratorios during his visits to the metropolis. The credit of suggesting "The Creation" to Haydn is indeed assigned to Salomon, but it is more than probable that the matter had already been occupying his thoughts. It has been explicitly stated [See note by C.H. Purday in Leisure Hour for 1880, p. 528.] that, being greatly impressed with the effect produced by "The Messiah," Haydn intimated to his friend Barthelemon his desire to compose a work of the same kind. He asked Barthelemon what subject he would advise for such a purpose, and Barthelemon, pointing to a copy of the Bible, replied: "There! take that, and begin at the beginning." This story is told on apparently good authority. But it hardly fits in with the statements of biographers. According to the biographers, Salomon handed the composer a libretto originally selected for Handel from Genesis and Paradise Lost by Mr Lidley or Liddell. That this was the libretto used by Haydn is certain, and we may therefore accept it as a fact that Haydn's most notable achievement in choral music was due in great measure to the man who had brought him to London, and had drawn from him the finest of his instrumental works. "The Creation" Libretto Before proceeding further we may deal finally with the libretto of "The Creation." The "unintelligible jargon" which disfigures Haydn's immortal work has often formed the subject of comment; and assuredly nothing that can be said of it can well be too severe. "The Creation" libretto stands to the present day as an example of all that is jejune and incongruous in words for music. The theme has in itself so many elements of inspiration that it is a matter for wonder how, for more than a century, English-speaking audiences have listened to the arrant nonsense with which Haydn's music is associated. As has been well observed, "the suburban love-making of our first parents, and the lengthy references to the habits of the worm and the leviathan are almost more than modern flesh and blood can endure." Many years ago a leading musical critic wrote that there ought to be enough value, monetarily speaking, in "The Creation" to make it worth while preparing a fresh libretto; for, said he, "the present one seems only fit for the nursery, to use in connection with Noah's ark." At the Norwich Festival performance of the oratorio in 1872, the words were, in fact, altered, but in all the published editions of the work the text remains as it was. It is usual to credit the composer's friend, Baron van Swieten, with the "unintelligible jargon." The baron certainly had a considerable hand in the adaptation of the text. But in reality it owes its very uncouth verbiage largely to the circumstance that it was first translated from English into German, and then re-translated back into English; the words, with the exception of the first chorus, being adapted to the music. Considering the ways of translators, the best libretto in the world could not but have suffered under such transformations, and it is doing a real injustice to the memory of Baron Swieten, the good friend of more than one composer, to hold him up needlessly to ridicule. [In one of George Thomson's letters to Mrs Hunter we read: "It it is not the first time that your muse and Haydn's have met, as we see from the beautiful canzonets. Would he had been directed by you about the words to 'The Creation'! It is lamentable to see such divine music joined with such miserable broken English. He (Haydn) wrote me lately that in three years, by the performance of 'The Creation' and 'The Seasons' at Vienna, 40,000 florins had been raised for the poor families of musicians."] The Stimulus of London Haydn set to work on "The Creation" with all the ardour of a first love. Naumann suggests that his high spirits were due to the "enthusiastic plaudits of the English people," and that the birth of both "The Creation" and "The Seasons" was "unquestionably owing to the new man he felt within himself after his visit to England." There was now, in short, burning within his breast, "a spirit of conscious strength which he knew not he possessed, or knowing, was unaware of its true worth." This is somewhat exaggerated. Handel wrote "The Messiah" in twenty-four days; it took Haydn the best part of eighteen months to complete "The Creation," from which we may infer that "the sad laws of time" had not stopped their operation simply because he had been to London. No doubt, as we have already more than hinted, he was roused and stimulated by the new scenes and the unfamiliar modes of life which he saw and experienced in England. His temporary release from the fetters of official life had also an exhilarating influence. So much we learn indeed from himself. Thus, writing from London to Frau von Genzinger, he says: "Oh, my dear, good lady, how sweet is some degree of liberty! I had a kind prince, but was obliged at times to be dependent on base souls. I often sighed for freedom, and now I have it in some measure. I am quite sensible of this benefit, though my mind is burdened with more work. The consciousness of being no longer a bond-servant sweetens all my toils." If this liberty, this contact with new people and new forms of existence, had come to Haydn twenty years earlier, it might have altered the whole current of his career. But it did not help him much in the actual composition of "The Creation," which he found rather a tax, alike on his inspiration and his physical powers. Writing to Breitkopf & Hartel on June 12, 1799, he says: "The world daily pays me many compliments, even on the fire of my last works; but no one could believe the strain and effort it costs me to produce these, inasmuch as many a day my feeble memory and the unstrung state of my nerves so completely crush me to the earth, that I fall into the most melancholy condition, so much so that for days afterwards I am incapable of finding one single idea, till at length my heart is revived by Providence, when I seat myself at the piano and begin once more to hammer away at it. Then all goes well again, God be praised!" Self-Criticism In the same letter he remarks that, "as for myself, now an old man, I hope the critics may not handle my 'Creation' with too great severity, and be too hard on it. They may perhaps find the musical orthography faulty in various passages, and perhaps other things also which I have for so many years been accustomed to consider as minor points; but the genuine connoisseur will see the real cause as readily as I do, and will willingly cast aside such stumbling blocks." It is impossible to miss the significance of all this. [At this point in the original book, a facsimile of a letter regarding "The Creation" takes up the entire next page.] Certainly it ought to be taken into account in any critical estimate of "The Creation"; for when a man admits his own shortcomings it is ungracious, to say the least, for an outsider to insist upon them. It is obvious at any rate that Haydn undertook the composition of the oratorio in no light-hearted spirit. "Never was I so pious," he says, "as when composing 'The Creation.' I felt myself so penetrated with religious feeling that before I sat down to the pianoforte I prayed to God with earnestness that He would enable me to praise Him worthily." In the lives of the great composers there is only one parallel to this frame of mind--the religious fervour in which Handel composed "The Messiah." First Performance of the Oratorio The first performance of "The Creation" was of a purely private nature. It took place at the Schwartzenburg Palace, Vienna, on the 29th of April 1798, the performers being a body of dilettanti, with Haydn presiding over the orchestra. Van Swieten had been exerting himself to raise a guarantee fund for the composer, and the entire proceeds of the performance, amounting to 350 pounds, were paid over to him. Haydn was unable to describe his sensations during the progress of the work. "One moment," he says, "I was as cold as ice, the next I seemed on fire; more than once I thought I should have a fit." A year later, on the 19th of March 1799, to give the exact date, the oratorio was first heard publicly at the National Theatre in Vienna, when it produced the greatest effect. The play-bill announcing the performance (see next page) had a very ornamental border, and was, of course, in German. [At this point in the original book, a facsimile of the first play-bill for "The Creation" takes up the entire next page.] Next year the score was published by Breitkopf & Hartel, and no fewer than 510 copies, nearly half the number subscribed for, came to England. The title-page was printed both in German and English, the latter reading as follows: "The Creation: an Oratorio composed by Joseph Haydn, Doctor of Musik, and member of the Royal Society of Musik, in Sweden, in actuel (sic) service of His Highness the Prince of Esterhazy, Vienna, 1800." Clementi had just set up a musical establishment in London, and on August 22, 1800, we find Haydn writing to his publishers to complain that he was in some danger of losing 2000 gulden by Clementi's non-receipt of a consignment of copies. London Performances Salomon, strangely enough, had threatened Haydn with penalties for pirating his text, but he thought better of the matter, and now wrote to the composer for a copy of the score, so that he might produce the oratorio in London. He was, however, forestalled by Ashley, who was at that time giving performances of oratorio at Covent Garden Theatre, and who brought forward the new work on the 28th of March (1800). An amusing anecdote is told in this connection. The score arrived by a King's messenger from Vienna on Saturday, March 22, at nine o'clock in the evening. It was handed to Thomas Goodwin, the copyist of the theatre, who immediately had the parts copied out for 120 performers. The performance was on the Friday evening following, and when Mr Harris, the proprietor of the theatre, complimented all parties concerned on their expedition, Goodwin, with ready wit, replied: "Sir, we have humbly emulated a great example; it is not the first time that the Creation has been completed in six days." Salomon followed on the 21st of April with a performance at the King's Theatre, Mara and Dussek taking the principal parts. Mara remarked that it was the first time she had accompanied an orchestra! French Enthusiasm Strange to say--for oratorio has never been much at home in France--"The Creation" was received with immense enthusiasm in Paris when it was first performed there in the summer of this same year. Indeed, the applause was so great that the artists, in a fit of transport, and to show their personal regard for the composer, resolved to present him with a large gold medal. The medal was designed by the famous engraver, Gateaux. It was adorned on one side with a likeness of Haydn, and on the other side with an ancient lyre, over which a flame flickered in the midst of a circle of stars. The inscription ran: "Homage a Haydn par les Musiciens qui ont execute l'oratorio de la Creation du Monde au Theatre des Arts l'au ix de la Republique Francais ou MDCCC." The medal was accompanied by a eulogistic address, to which the recipient duly replied in a rather flowery epistle. "I have often," he wrote, "doubted whether my name would survive me, but your goodness inspires me with confidence, and the token of esteem with which you have honoured me perhaps justifies my hope that I shall not wholly die. Yes, gentlemen, you have crowned my gray hairs, and strewn flowers on the brink of my grave." Seven years after this Haydn received another medal from Paris--from the Societe Academique des Enfants d'Apollon, who had elected him an honorary member. A second performance of "The Creation" took place in the French capital on December 24, 1800, when Napoleon I. escaped the infernal machine in the Rue Nicaise. It was, however, in England, the home of oratorio, that the work naturally took firmest root. It was performed at the Worcester Festival of 1800, at the Hereford Festival of the following year, and at Gloucester in 1802. Within a few years it had taken its place by the side of Handel's best works of the kind, and its popularity remained untouched until Mendelssohn's "Elijah" was heard at Birmingham in 1847. Even now, although it has lost something of its old-time vogue, it is still to be found in the repertory of our leading choral societies. It is said that when a friend urged Haydn to hurry the completion of the oratorio, he replied: "I spend much time over it because I intend it to last a long time." How delighted he would have been could he have foreseen that it would still be sung and listened to with pleasure in the early years of the twentieth century. "The Creation" criticized No one thinks of dealing critically with the music of "The Messiah"; and it seems almost as thankless a task to take the music of "The Creation" to pieces. Schiller called it a "meaningless hotch-potch"; and even Beethoven, though he was not quite innocent of the same thing himself, had his sardonic laugh over its imitations of beasts and birds. Critics of the oratorio seldom fail to point out these "natural history effects"--to remark on "the sinuous motion of the worm," "the graceful gamboling of the leviathan," the orchestral imitations of the bellowing of the "heavy beasts," and such like. It is probably indefensible on purely artistic grounds. But Handel did it in "Israel in Egypt" and elsewhere. And is there not a crowing cock in Bach's "St Matthew Passion"? Haydn only followed the example of his predecessors. Of course, the dispassionate critic cannot help observing that there is in "The Creation" a good deal of music which is finicking and something which is trumpery. But there is also much that is first-rate. The instrumental representation of chaos, for example, is excellent, and nothing in all the range of oratorio produces a finer effect than the soft voices at the words, "And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters." Even the fortissimo C major chord on the word "light," coming abruptly after the piano and mezzoforte minor chords, is as dazzling to-day as it was when first sung. It has been said that the work is singularly deficient in sustained choruses. That is true, if we are comparing it with the choruses of Handel's oratorios. But Haydn's style is entirely different from that of Handel. His choruses are designed on a much less imposing scale. They are more reflective or descriptive, much less dramatic. It was not in his way "to strike like a thunderbolt," as Mozart said of Handel. The descriptive effects which he desired to introduce into his orchestration made it necessary that he should throw the vocal element into a simpler mould. Allowance must be made for these differences. Haydn could never have written "The Messiah," but, on the other hand, Handel could never have written "The Creation." The chief beauty of Haydn's work lies in its airs for the solo voices. While never giving consummate expression to real and deep emotion, much less sustained thought, they are never wanting in sincerity, and the melody and the style are as pure and good as those of the best Italian writing for the stage. With all our advance it is impossible to resist the freshness of "With verdure clad," and the tender charm of such settings as that of "Softly purling, glides on, thro' silent vales, the limpid brook." On the whole, however, it is difficult to sum up a work like "The Creation," unless, as has been cynically remarked, one is prepared to call it great and never go to hear it. It is not sublime, but neither is it dull. In another fifty years, perhaps, the critic will be able to say that its main interest is largely historic and literary. [See J. F. Runciman's Old Scores and New Readings, where an admirably just and concise appreciation of Haydn and "The Creation" may be read.] A New Work After such an unexpected success as that of "The Creation," it was only in the nature of things that Haydn's friends should persuade him to undertake the composition of a second work of the kind. Van Swieten was insistent, and the outcome of his importunity was "The Seasons." This work is generally classed as an oratorio, but it ought more properly to be called a cantata, being essentially secular as regards its text, though the form and style are practically the same as those of "The Creation." The libretto was again due to Swieten, who, of course, adapted the text from James Thomson's well-known poem. "The Seasons" It would certainly have been a pity to lose such a fresh, melodious little work as "The Seasons"; but it is only too apparent that while there was no appreciable failure of Haydn's creative force, his physical strength was not equal to the strain involved by a composition of such length. In 1806, when Dies found him rather weaker than usual, he dolorously remarked: "You see it is all over with me. Eight years ago it was different, but 'The Seasons' brought on this weakness. I ought never to have undertaken that work. It gave me the finishing stroke." He appears to have started on the work with great reluctance and with considerable distrust of his own powers, but once fairly committed to the undertaking he entered into it with something of his old animation, disputing so manfully with his librettist over certain points in the text that a serious rupture between the two was at one time imminent. The subject was probably not very congenial to Haydn, who, as the years advanced, was more and more inclined towards devotional themes. That at least seems to be the inference to be drawn from the remark which he made to the Emperor Francis on being asked which of his two oratorios he himself preferred. "'The Creation,'" answered Haydn. "In 'The Creation' angels speak and their talk is of God; in 'The Seasons' no one higher speaks than Farmer Simon." "The Seasons" criticized But whether he liked the theme or not, in the end he produced a work as fresh and genial and melodious as if it had been the work of his prime. If anyone sees in it an evidence of weakness, he is seeing only what he had expected to see. As Mr Rockstro remarks, not a trace of the "failing power" of which the grand old man complained is to be found in any part of it. It is a model of descriptive, contemplative work, and must please by its thoughtful beauty and illustrative power. True to Nature in its minutest details, it yet never insults her by trivial attempts at outward imitation where artistic suggestion of the hidden truth was, possible. The "delicious softness" of the opening chorus, and the perfection of rustic happiness portrayed in the song which describes the joy of the "impatient husbandman" are alone sufficient to prove that, whatever he may have thought about it himself, Haydn's genius was not appreciably waning. The first performance of "The Seasons" took place at the Schwartzenburg Palace on the 24th of April 1801. It was repeated twice within a week; and on the 29th of May the composer conducted a grand public performance at the Redoutensaal. The work proved almost as successful as "The Creation." Haydn was enraptured with it, but he was never really himself again. As he said, it gave him the finishing stroke. CHAPTER VIII. LAST YEARS Failing Strength--Last Works--A Scottish Admirer--Song Accompaniments--Correspondence with George Thomson--Mrs Jordan--A Hitch--A "Previous" Letter of Condolence--Eventide--Last Public Appearance--The End--Funeral Honours--Desecration of Remains. Failing Strength Little is left to be told of the years which followed the production of "The Seasons." Haydn never really recovered from the strain which that last great effort of his genius had entailed. From his letters and the reminiscences of his friends we can read only too plainly the story of his growing infirmity. Even in 1799 he spoke of the diminution of his mental powers, and exclaimed: "Oh, God! how much yet remains to be done in this splendid art, even by a man like myself!" In 1802 he wrote of himself as "a gradually decaying veteran," enjoying only the feeble health which is "the inseparable companion of a gray-haired man of seventy." In December 1803 he made his last public exertion by conducting the "Seven Words" for the hospital fund at the Redoutensaal, and shortly afterwards wrote sadly of his "very great weakness." In 1804 he was asked to direct a performance of "The Creation," but declined on the score of failing strength. Gradually he withdrew himself almost entirely from the outside world, his general languor broken only by the visits of friends and by moods of passing cheerfulness. Cherubini, the Abbe Vogler, Pleyel, the Weber family, Hummel, Reichardt, and many others came to see him. Visits from members of the Esterhazy family gave him much pleasure. Mozart's widow also brought her son Wolfgang, to beg his blessing on the occasion of his first public concert in April 1805, for which he had composed a cantata in honour of Haydn's seventy-third birthday. But the homage of friends and admirers could not strengthen the weak hands or confirm the feeble knees. In 1806 Dies notes that his once-gleaming eye has become dull and heavy and his complexion sallow, while he suffers from "headache, deafness, forgetfulness and other pains." His old gaiety has completely gone, and even his friends have become a bore to him. "My remaining days," he said to Dies, "must all be spent in this lonely fashion.... I have many visitors, but it confuses me so much to talk to them that at last I scarcely know what I am saying and only long to be left in peace." The condition of a man of naturally genial and optimistic temperament can easily be imagined from all this--perhaps even more from the fact of his having a card printed to hand to inquirers who called, bearing the words: Hin ist alle meine Kraft; Alt and schwach bin ich. [Fled for ever is my strength; Old and weak am I.] Last Works But while Haydn was thus suffering from the natural disabilities of his years, he was not wholly divorced from his art. It is true that nothing of any real importance came from his pen after "The Seasons," but a good deal of work of various kinds was done, some of which it is impossible for the biographer to ignore. One rather novel undertaking carries us back to the end of 1799, about which time he was first asked by George Thomson, the friend of Burns, to write accompaniments for certain Scottish songs to be published in Thomson's well-known national collections. The correspondence which followed is interesting in many ways, and as it is not noticed in any other biography of Haydn, we propose to deal with it here. [The letters passed through the present writer's hands some five years ago, when he was preparing his Life of George Thomson(1898). They are now in the British Museum with the other Thomson correspondence.] A Scottish Admirer George Thomson engaged at one time or other the services of Beethoven, Pleyel, Weber, Hummel, Bishop and Kozeluch. But Haydn was his first love. A genius of the kind, he writes in 1811 "never before existed and probably never will be surpassed." He is "the inimitable Haydn," the "delectable," the "father of us all," and so on. On the other hand, Haydn was proud of what he did for Thomson. "I boast of this work," he said, "and by it I flatter myself my name will live in Scotland many years after my death." Nay, if we may trust an authority cited by Thomson, so highly did he think of "the symphonies and accompaniments which he composed for my melodies as to have the original score of each framed and hung all over the walls of his bedroom." Little wonder that Thomson "loved the dear old man" and regretted that his worldly circumstances did not allow him to erect a statue to the composer at his own expense! We have called this writing of symphonies and accompaniments for George Thomson a novel undertaking. It was, however, only novel in the sense of being rather out of Haydn's special "line." He had already been employed on work of the kind for the collection of William Napier, to which he contributed the accompaniments of 150 songs. Later on, too (in 1802-1803), he harmonized and wrote accompaniments for sixty-five airs, for which he received 500 florins from Whyte of Edinburgh. The extent of his labours for George Thomson we shall now proceed to show. Song Accompaniments Thomson addressed his first letter to Haydn in October 1799. There is no copy of it, but there is a copy of a letter to Mr Straton, a friend of Thomson's, who was at this time Secretary to the Legation at Vienna. Straton was to deliver the letter to Haydn, and negotiate with him on Thomson's behalf. He was authorized to "say whatever you conceive is likely to produce compliance," and if necessary to "offer a few more ducats for each air." The only stipulation was that Haydn "must not speak of what he gets." Thomson does not expect that he will do the accompaniments better than Kozeluch--"that is scarcely possible"(!); but in the symphonies he will be "great and original." Thomson, as we now learn from Straton, had offered 2 ducats for each air (say 20s.); Haydn "seemed desirous of having rather more than 2 ducats, but did not precisely insist upon the point." Apparently he did not insist, for the next intimation of the correspondence is to the effect that thirty-two airs which he had just finished had been forwarded to Thomson on June 19, 1800. They would have been done sooner, says Straton, but "poor Haydn laboured under so severe an illness during the course of this spring that we were not altogether devoid of alarm in regard to his recovery." Thomson, thus encouraged, sent sixteen more airs; and Straton writes (April 30, 1801) that Haydn at first refused to touch them because the price paid was too low. But in the course of conversation Straton learnt that Haydn was writing to Thomson to ask him to procure a dozen India handkerchiefs, and it struck him that "your making him a present of them might mollify the veteran into compliance respecting the sixteen airs." Straton therefore took upon himself to promise in Thomson's name that the handkerchiefs would be forthcoming, and "this had the desired effect to such a degree that Haydn immediately put the sixteen airs in his pocket, and is to compose the accompaniments as soon as possible on the same terms as the former." Mrs Jordan The handkerchiefs duly arrived--"nice and large"--and Haydn made his acknowledgments in appropriate terms. At the same time (in January 1802) he wrote: "I send you with this the favourite air 'The Blue Bells of Scotland,' and I should like that this little air should be engraved all alone and dedicated in my name as a little complimentary gift to the renowned Mrs Jordan, whom, without having the honour of knowing, I esteem extremely for her great virtue and reputation." Mrs Jordan has been credited with the air of "The Blue Bells of Scotland." She certainly popularized the song, whether it was her own or not. In the note just quoted Haydn must have used the term "virtue" in the Italian sense. A Hitch After this a little hitch occurred in the Thomson correspondence. Haydn, being asked by Whyte, the publisher of a rival collection, to do something for his work, at once agreed. Thomson, not unnaturally, perhaps, felt hurt. He made his complaint through Mr Straton's successor at the Embassy, Mr Charles Stuart; and in August 1803 Stuart writes to say that he had broached the matter to Haydn "in as delicate terms as possible for fear he might take offence." Haydn frankly admitted that he had done the accompaniments for Whyte, but said the airs were different from those he had done for Thomson. After "a long conversation, he informed me," says Mr Stuart, "that being now seventy-four years of age and extremely infirm, he found himself wholly incapable of further application to study; that he must therefore beg leave to decline all offers, whether on your part or from any other person whatsoever. He even declared that notwithstanding the repeated requests of Prince Esterhazy, he felt himself utterly incapable of finishing several pieces of music he had undertaken, and being possessed of a competency he desired nothing so much as to pass the short time he has yet to live in repose and quiet." From this letter we learn that Thomson had unluckily sent a present of a handkerchief for Frau Haydn, who had now been dead for three years! A "Previous" Letter of Condolence In spite of the little misunderstanding just referred to Haydn was brought round once more, and on the 20th of December 1803 Thomson sends twenty-four airs, "which will most certainly be the last." Haydn's work delights him so much that he "really cannot bear the idea of seeking an inferior composer to finish a work already so nearly finished by you." He would pay 4 ducats for each air rather than have the mortification of a refusal. After this there is little of interest to note in the correspondence, unless it be a very "previous" letter of condolence which Thomson sent to Vienna. A false rumour had reached him that Haydn was dead. The following extract from a note which Haydn dictated to be sent to the friend who received Thomson's letter will explain the matter: Kindly say to Mr Thomson that Haydn is very sensible of the distress that the news of his alleged death has caused him, and that this sign of affection has added, if that were possible, to the esteem and friendship he will always entertain for Mr Thomson. You will notice that he has put his name and the date on the sheet of music to give better proof that he is still on this nether world. He begs you at the same time to be kind enough to have Mr Thomson's letter of condolence copied and to send him the copy. Haydn's experience in this way was perhaps unique. Burney says he was reported dead in 1778; and the false rumour which reached Thomson in 1805 led Cherubini to compose a sacred cantata for three voices and orchestra, which was duly performed in Paris when his death actually occurred. Haydn furnished in all some 250 airs with symphonies and accompaniments for Thomson. In the packet of letters from the composer, docketed by Thomson himself, the latter has placed a slip of paper indicating the various payments he had made. According to this statement Haydn had 291 pounds, 18s. for his work from first to last--not by any means an insignificant sum to make out of a side branch of his art. Eventide This interesting correspondence takes us up to the year 1806, by which time Haydn's work was entirely over. His eventide, alas! was darkened by the clouds of war. The wave of the French Revolution had cast its bloody spray upon the surrounding nations, and 1805 saw the composer's beloved Vienna occupied by the French. Haydn was no politician, but love of country lay deep down in his heart, and he watched the course of events, from his little cottage, with the saddest forebodings. The Last Public Appearance Once only was he drawn from his seclusion. This was on the 27th of March 1808, when he appeared in public for the last time at a performance of "The Creation" at the University. The scene on this remarkable occasion has been described by many pens. Naumann, writing of it, says that "such an apotheosis of the master was witnessed as has but few parallels," and this is no exaggeration. The performance, which was under the direction of Salieri, had been arranged in honour of his approaching seventy-sixth birthday. All the great artists of Vienna were present, among them Beethoven and Hummel. Prince Esterhazy had sent his carriage to bring the veteran to the hall, and, as he was being conveyed in an arm-chair to a place among the princes and nobles, the whole audience rose to their feet in testimony of their regard. It was a cold night, and ladies sitting near swathed him in their costly wraps and lace shawls. The concert began, and the audience was hushed to silence. When that magnificent passage was reached, "And there was light," they burst into loud applause, and Haydn, overcome with excitement, exclaimed, "Not I, but a Power from above created that." The performance went on, but it proved too much for the old man, and friends arranged to take him home at the end of the first part. As he was being carried out, some of the highest of the land crowded round to take what was felt to be a last farewell; and Beethoven, forgetting incidents of early days, bent down and fervently kissed his hand and forehead. Having reached the door, Haydn asked his bearers to pause and turn him towards the orchestra. Then, lifting his hand, as if in the act of blessing, he was borne out into the night. Next year Vienna was bombarded by the French, and a cannon-ball fell not far from Haydn's house. He was naturally much alarmed; but there is no ground for the statement, sometimes made, that his death was hastened by the fright. On the contrary, he called out to his servants, who were assisting him to dress: "Children, don't be frightened; no harm can happen to you while Haydn is here." The End But his days were numbered. "This miserable war has cast me down to the very ground," he would say, with tears in his eyes. And yet it was a French officer who last visited him on his death-bed, the city being then actually occupied by the enemy. The officer's name is not given, but he sang "In native worth" with such expression that Haydn was quite overcome, and embraced him warmly at parting. On May 26 he seems to have felt that his end was fast approaching. He gathered his household around him, and, being carried to the piano, at his own special request, played the Emperor's Hymn three times over, with an emotion that fairly overpowered himself and all who heard him. Five days later, on the 31st of May 1809, he breathed his last. Funeral services were held in all the churches, and on June 15 Mozart's Requiem was given in his honour at the Scots Church, when several generals and administrators of the French army were present. Many poems were also written in his praise. Haydn was buried as a private individual in the Hundsthurm Churchyard, which was just outside the lines, and close to the suburb of Gumpendorf, where he had lived. The grave remained entirely undistinguished till 1814--another instance of Vienna's neglect--when Haydn's pupil, Chevalier Neukomm, erected a stone bearing the following inscription, which contains a five-part canon for solution: HAYDN NATUS MDCCXXXIII. OBIIT MDCCCIX. CAN. AENIGM. QUINQUE. VOC. [figure: a musical score excerpt to the syllables non om - nis mo - ri - ar] D. D. D. Discp. Eius Neukom Vindob. Redux. Mdcccxiv. Desecration of Haydn's Remains In 1820 the remains were exhumed by order of Prince Esterhazy, and re-interred with fresh funeral honours in the Pilgrimage Church of Maria-Einsiedel, near Eisenstadt, on November 7. A simple stone, with a Latin inscription, is inserted in the wall over the vault. When the coffin was opened, the startling discovery was made that the skull had been stolen. The desecration took place two days after the funeral. It appears that one Johann Peter, intendant of the royal and imperial prisons of Vienna, conceived the grim idea of forming a collection of skulls, made, as he avowed in his will, to corroborate the theory of Dr Gall, the founder of phrenology. This functionary bribed the sexton, and--in concert with Prince Esterhazy's secretary Rosenbaum, and with two Government officials named Jungermann and Ullmann--he opened Haydn's grave and removed the skull. Peter afterwards gave the most minute details of the sacrilege. He declared that he examined the head and found the bump of music fully developed, and traces in the nose of the polypus from which Haydn suffered. The skull was placed in a lined box, and when Peter got into difficulties and his collection was dispersed, the relic passed into the possession of Rosenbaum. That worthy's conscience seems to have troubled him in the matter, for he conceived the idea of erecting a monument to the skull in his back garden! When the desecration was discovered in 1820 there was an outcry, followed by police search. Prince Esterhazy would stand no nonsense. The skull must be returned, no questions would be asked, and Peter was offered a reward if he found it. The notion then occurred to Rosenbaum of palming off another skull for Haydn's. This he actually succeeded in doing, the head of some unfortunate individual being handed to the police. Peter claimed the reward, which was very justly refused him. When Rosenbaum was dying he confessed to the deception, and gave the skull back to Peter. Peter formed the resolution of bequeathing it, by will, to the Conservatorium at Vienna; but he altered his mind before he died, and by codicil left the skull to Dr Haller, from whose keeping it ultimately found its way to the anatomical museum at Vienna. We believe it is still in the museum. Its proper place is, of course, in Haydn's grave, and a stigma will rest on Vienna until it is placed there. [The great masters have been peculiarly unfortunate in the matter of their "remains." When Beethoven's grave was opened in 1863, Professor Wagner was actually allowed to cut off the ears and aural cavities of the corpse in order to investigate the cause of the dead man's deafness. The alleged skeleton of Sebastian Bach was taken to an anatomical museum a few years ago, "cleaned up," and clothed with a semblance of flesh to show how Bach looked in life! Donizetti's skull was stolen before the funeral, and was afterwards sold to a pork butcher, who used it as a money-bowl. Gluck was re-buried in 1890 beside Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert, after having lain in the little suburban churchyard of Matzleinsdorf since 1787.] A copy of Haydn's will has been printed as one of the appendices to the present volume, with notes and all necessary information about the interesting document. Two years before his death he had arranged that his books, music, manuscripts and medals should become the property of the Esterhazy family. Among the relics were twenty-four canons which had hung, framed and glazed, in his bedroom. "I am not rich enough," he said, "to buy good pictures, so I have provided myself with hangings of a kind that few possess." These little compositions were the subject of an oft-quoted anecdote. His wife, in one of her peevish moods, was complaining that if he should die suddenly, there was not sufficient money in the house to bury him. "In case such a calamity should occur," he replied, "take these canons to the music-publisher. I will answer for it, that they will bring enough to pay for a decent funeral." CHAPTER IX. HAYDN: THE MAN Face and Features--Portraits--Social Habits--Partial to Pretty Women--His Letters--His Humour--His Generosity--Unspoiled by Success--His Piety--His Industry--Habits of Composition--Impatient of Pedantry. Face and Features Something of Haydn's person and character will have already been gathered from the foregoing pages. He considered himself an ugly man, and, in Addison's words, thought that the best expedient was "to be pleasant upon himself." His face was deeply pitted with small-pox, and the nose, large and aquiline, was disfigured by the polypus which he had inherited from his mother. In complexion he was so dark as to have earned in some quarters the familiar nickname of "The Moor." His underlip was thick and hanging, his jaw massive. "The mouth and chin are Philistine," wrote Lavater under his silhouette, noting, at the same time, "something out of the common in the eyes and the nose." The eyes were dark gray. They are described as "beaming with benevolence," and he used to say himself: "Anyone can see by the look of me that I am a good-natured sort of fellow." In stature he was rather under the middle height, with legs disproportionately short, a defect rendered more noticeable by the style of his dress, which he refused to change with the changes of fashion. Dies writes: "His features were regular, his expression animated, yet, at the same time, temperate, gentle and attractive. His face wore a stern look when in repose, but in conversation it was smiling and cheerful. I never heard him laugh out loud. His build was substantial, but deficient in muscle." Another of his acquaintances says that "notwithstanding a cast of physiognomy rather morose, and a short way of expressing himself, which seemed to indicate an ill-tempered man, the character of Haydn was gay, open and humorous." From these testimonies we get the impression of a rather unusual combination of the attractive and the repulsive, the intellectual and the vulgar. What Lavater described as the "lofty and good" brow was partly concealed by a wig, with side curls, and a pig-tail, which he wore to the last. His dress as a private individual has not been described in detail, but the Esterhazy uniform, though frequently changing in colour and style, showed him in knee-breeches, white stockings, lace ruffles and white neckcloth. This uniform he never wore except when on actual duty. Portraits After his death there were many portraits in chalks, engraved, and modeled in wax. Notwithstanding his admission of the lack of personal graces, he had a sort of feminine objection to an artist making him look old. We read that, in 1800, he was "seriously angry" with a painter who had represented him as he then appeared. "If I was Haydn at forty," said he, "why should you transmit to posterity a Haydn of seventy-eight?" Several writers mention a portrait by Sir Joshua Reynolds, and even give details of the sittings, but he never sat to Reynolds, whose eyesight had begun to fail before Haydn's arrival in England. During his first visit to London Hoppner painted his portrait at the special request of the Prince of Wales. This portrait was engraved by Facius in 1807, and is now at Hampton Court. Engravings were also published in London by Schiavonetti and Bartolozzi from portraits by Guttenbrunn and Ott, and by Hardy from his own oil-painting. A silhouette, which hung for long at the head of his bed, was engraved for the first time for Grove's Dictionary of Music. This was said by Elssler, his old servant, to have been a striking likeness. Of the many busts, the best is that by his friend Grassi, the sculptor. [figure: Haydn's silhouette by Lavater] Social Habits Very little has been recorded of his social habits. Anything like excess in wine is not once mentioned; but it is easy to see from his correspondence that he enjoyed a good dinner, and was not insensible to creature comforts. Writing to Artaria from Esterhaz in 1788, he says: "By-the-bye, I am very much obliged to you for the capital cheese you sent me, and also the sausages, for which I am your debtor, but shall not fail when an opportunity offers to return the obligation." In a subsequent letter to Frau von Genzinger he comically laments the change from Vienna to Esterhaz: "I lost twenty pounds in weight in three days, for the effect of my fare at Vienna disappeared on the journey. 'Alas! alas!' thought I, when driven to eat at the restaurateurs, 'instead of capital beef, a slice of a cow fifty years old; instead of a ragout with little balls of force-meat, an old sheep with yellow carrots; instead of a Bohemian pheasant, a tough grill; instead of pastry, dry apple fritters and hazelnuts, etc.! Alas! alas! would that I now had many a morsel I despised in Vienna! Here in Esterhaz no one asks me, Would you like some chocolate, with milk or without? Will you take some coffee, with or without cream? What can I offer you, my good Haydn? Will you have vanille ice or pineapple?' If I had only a piece of good Parmesan cheese, particularly in Lent, to enable me to swallow more easily the black dumplings and puffs! I gave our porter this very day a commission to send me a couple of pounds." Even amid the social pleasures and excitements of London, where he was invited out six times a week and had "four excellent dishes" at every dinner, he longs to be back in his native land so that he may have "some good German soup." Partial to Pretty Women We read that in Austria he "never associated with any but the musicians, his colleagues," a statement which cannot be strictly true. In London he was, as we have seen, something of a "lion," but it is doubtful if he enjoyed the conventional diversions of the beau monde. Yet he liked the company of ladies, especially when they were personally attractive. That he was never at a loss for a compliment may perhaps be taken as explaining his frequent conquests, for, as he frankly said himself, the pretty women "were at any rate not tempted by my beauty." Of children he was passionately fond, a fact which lends additional melancholy to his own unhappy and childless home life. His Letters He was not highly educated, and he does not seem to have taken much interest in anything outside his own profession. This much may be gathered from his correspondence, upon which it is not necessary to comment at length. Mr Russell Lowell remarks that a letter which is not mainly about the writer loses its prime flavour. Haydn's letters are seldom "mainly about the writer." They help us very little in seeking to get at what Newman called "the inside of things," though some, notably those given at the end of this volume, embody valuable suggestions. He habitually spoke in the broad dialect of his native place. He knew Italian well and French a little, and he had enough Latin to enable him to set the Church services. Of English he was almost entirely ignorant until he came to London in 1791, when we hear of him walking the country lanes with an English grammar in hand. There is an amusing story of a dinner at Madame Mara's, at which he was present during his first visit. Crossdill, the violoncellist, proposed to celebrate him with "three times three." The suggestion was at once adopted, all the guests, with the exception of Haydn himself, standing up and cheering lustily. Haydn heard his name repeated, but not understanding what was going on, stared at the company in blank bewilderment. When the matter was explained to him he appeared quite overcome with diffidence, putting his hands before his face and not recovering his equanimity for some minutes. [See Records of My Life, by John Taylor: London, 1832.] His Humour Of hobbies or recreations he appears to have had none, though, to relieve the dull monotony of life at Eisenstadt or Esterhaz, he occasionally indulged in hunting and fishing and mountain rambles. A leading trait in his character was his humour and love of fun. As he remarked to Dies: "A mischievous fit comes over me sometimes that is perfectly beyond control." The incident of the removal of the fellow chorister's pig-tail will at once recur to the memory. The "Surprise" Symphony is another illustration, to say nothing of the "Toy" Symphony and "Jacob's Dream." His Generosity Of his generosity and his kindness to fellow artists there are many proofs. In 1800 he speaks of himself as having "willingly endeavoured all my life to assist everyone," and the words were no empty boast. No man was, in fact, more ready to perform a good deed. He had many needy relations always looking to him for aid, and their claims were seldom refused. A brother artist in distress was sure of help, and talented young men found in him a valuable friend, equally ready to give his advice or his gold, as the case might require. That he was sometimes imposed upon goes without saying. He has been charged with avarice, but the charge is wholly unfounded. He was simply careful in money matters, and that, to a large extent, because of the demands that were constantly being made upon him. In commercial concerns he was certainly sharp and shrewd, and attempts to take advantage of him always roused his indignation. "By heavens!" he writes to Artaria, "you have wronged me to the extent of fifty ducats.... This step must cause the cessation of all transactions between us." The same firm, having neglected to answer some business proposition, were pulled up in this fashion: "I have been much provoked by the delay, inasmuch as I could have got forty ducats from another publisher for these five pieces, and you make too many difficulties about a matter by which, in such short compositions, you have at least a thirty fold profit. The sixth piece has long had its companion, so pray make an end of the affair and send me either my music or my money." The Haydn of these fierce little notes is not the gentle recluse we are apt to imagine him. They show, on the contrary, that he was not wanting in spirit when occasion demanded. He was himself upright and honest in all his dealings. And he never forgot a kindness, as more than one entry in his will abundantly testifies. He was absolutely without malice, and there are several instances of his repaying a slight with a generous deed or a thoughtful action. His practical tribute to the memory of Werner, who called him a fop and a "scribbler of songs," has been cited. His forbearance with Pleyel, who had allowed himself to be pitted against him by the London faction, should also be recalled; and it is perhaps worth mentioning further that he put himself to some trouble to get a passport for Pleyel during the long wars of the French Revolution. He carried his kindliness and gentleness even into "the troubled region of artistic life," and made friends where other men would have made foes. Unspoiled by Success His modesty has often been insisted upon. Success did not spoil him. In a letter of 1799 he asks that a certain statement in his favour should not be mentioned, lest he "be accused of conceit and arrogance, from which my Heavenly Father has preserved me all my life long." Here he spoke the simple truth. At the same time, while entirely free from presumption and vanity, he was perfectly alive to his own merits, and liked to have them acknowledged. When visitors came to see him nothing gave him greater pleasure than to open his cabinets and show the medals, that had been struck in his honour, along with the other gifts he had received from admirers. Like a true man of genius, as Pohl says, he enjoyed distinction and fame, but carefully avoided ambition. High Ideals Of his calling and opportunities as an artist he had a very high idea. Acknowledging a compliment paid to him in 1802 by the members of the Musical Union in Bergen, he wrote of the happiness it gave him to think of so many families susceptible of true feeling deriving pleasure and enjoyment from his compositions. "Often when contending with the obstacles of every sort opposed to my work, often when my powers both of body and mind failed, and I felt it a hard matter to persevere in the course I had entered on, a secret feeling within me whispered, 'There are but few contented and happy men here below; everywhere grief and care prevail, perhaps your labours may one day be the source from which the weary and worn or the man burdened with affairs may derive a few moments' rest and refreshment.' What a powerful motive to press onwards! And this is why I now look back with heartfelt, cheerful satisfaction on the work to which I have devoted such a long succession of years with such persevering efforts and exertions." With this high ideal was combined a constant effort to perfect himself in his art. To Kalkbrenner he once made the touching remark: "I have only just learned in my old age how to use the wind instruments, and now that I do understand them I must leave the world." To Griezinger, again, he said that he had by no means exhausted his genius: that "ideas were often floating in his mind, by which he could have carried the art far beyond anything it had yet attained, had his physical powers been equal to the task." His Piety Closely, indeed inseparably, connected with this exalted idea of his art was his simple and sincere piety. He was a devout Christian, and looked upon his genius as a gift from God, to be freely used in His service. His faith was never assailed with doubts; he lived and died in the communion of the Catholic Church, and was "never in danger of becoming either a bigot or a free-thinker." When Carpani, anticipating latter-day criticism, hinted to him that his Church compositions were impregnated with a light gaiety, he replied: "I cannot help it; I give forth what is in me. When I think of the Divine Being, my heart is, so full of joy that the notes fly off as from a spindle, and as I have a cheerful heart He will pardon me if I serve Him cheerfully." His reverent practice during the composition of "The Creation" has been mentioned. "Never was I so pious," he said. There are many proofs of the same feeling in his correspondence and other writings. Thus he concludes an autobiographical sketch with the words: "I offer up to Almighty God all eulogiums, for to Him alone do I owe them. My sole wish is neither to offend against my neighbour nor my gracious prince, but above all not against our merciful God." Again, in one of his later letters, he says "May God only vouchsafe to grant me the health that I have hitherto enjoyed, and may I preserve it by good conduct, out of gratitude to the Almighty." The note appended to the first draft of his will is also significant. Nor in this connection should we forget the words with which he inscribed the scores of his more important compositions. For the conclusion he generally adopted Handel's "Soli Deo Gloria" or "Laus Deo," with the occasional addition of "et B.V. Mae. et Oms. Sis. (Beatae Virgini Mariae et Omnibus Sanctis)." Even his opera scores were so inscribed, one indeed having the emphatic close: "Laus omnipotenti Deo et Beatissimae Virgini Mariae." The superscription was uniformly "In nomine Domini." It is recorded somewhere that when, in composing, he felt his inspiration flagging, or was baulked by some difficulty, he rose from the instrument and began to run over his rosary. In short, not to labour the point, he had himself followed the advice which, as an old man, he gave to the choirboys of Vienna: "Be good and industrious and serve God continually." His Industry The world has seen many an instance of genius without industry, as of industry without genius. In Haydn the two were happily wedded. He was always an early riser, and long after his student days were over he worked steadily from sixteen to eighteen hours a day. He lived strictly by a self-imposed routine, and was so little addicted to what Scott called "bed-gown and slipper tricks," that he never sat down to work or received a visitor until he was fully dressed. He had none of Wagner's luxurious tastes or Balzac's affectations in regard to a special attire for work, but when engaged on his more important compositions he always wore the ring given him by the King of Prussia. In Haydn's case there are no incredible tales of dashing off scores in the twinkling of an eye. That he produced so much must be attributed to his habit of devoting all his leisure to composition. He was not a rapid worker if we compare him with Handel and Mozart. He never put down anything till he was "quite sure it was the right thing"--a habit of mind indicated by his neat and uniform handwriting ["His notes had such little heads and slender tails that he used, very properly, to call them his, flies' legs."--Bombet, p. 97.]--and he assures us: "I never was a quick writer, and always composed with care and deliberation. That alone," he added, "is the way to compose works that will last, and a real connoisseur can see at a glance whether a score has been written in undue haste or not." He is quoted as saying that "genius is always prolific." However the saying may be interpreted, there does not seem to have been about him anything of what has been called the irregular dishabille of composers, "the natural result of the habit of genius of watching for an inspiration, and encouraging it to take possession of the whole being when it comes." Habits of Composition His practice was to sketch out his ideas roughly in the morning, and elaborate them in the afternoon, taking pains to preserve unity in idea and form. "That is where so many young composers fail," he said in reference to the latter point. "They string together a number of fragments; they break off almost as soon as they have begun, and so at the end the listener carries off no definite impression." The importance of melody he specially emphasized. "It is the air which is the charm of music," he remarked, "and it is that which is most difficult to produce. The invention of a fine melody is the work of genius." In another place he says: "In vocal composition, the art of producing beautiful melody may now almost be considered as lost; and when a composer is so fortunate as to throw forth a passage that is really melodious, he is sure, if he be not sensible of its excellence, to overwhelm and destroy it by the fullness and superfluity of his instrumental parts." [Compare Mozart's words as addressed to Michael Kelly: "Melody is the essence of music. I should liken one who invents melodies to a noble racehorse, and a mere contrapuntist to a hired post-hack."] He is stated to have always composed with the aid of the pianoforte or harpsichord; and indeed we find him writing to Artaria in 1788 to say that he has been obliged to buy a new instrument "that I might compose your clavier sonatas particularly well." This habit of working out ideas with the assistance of the piano has been condemned by most theorists as being likely to lead to fragmentariness. With Haydn at any rate the result was entirely satisfactory, for, as Sir Hubert Parry points out, the neatness and compactness of his works is perfect. It is very likely, as Sir Hubert says, that most modern composers have used the pianoforte a good deal--not so much to help them to find out their ideas, as to test the details and intensify their musical sensibility by the excitant sounds, the actual sensual impression of which is, of course, an essential element in all music. The composer can always hear such things in his mind, but obviously the music in such an abstract form can never have quite as much effect upon him as when the sounds really strike upon his ear. [See Studies of Great Composers, by C. Hubert H. Parry, p. 109.] No Pedant Like all the really great composers, Haydn was no pedant in the matter of theoretical formulae, though he admitted that the rigid rules of harmony should rarely be violated, and "never without the compensation of some inspired effect." When he was asked according to what rule he had introduced a certain progression, he replied "The rules are all my very obedient humble servants." With the quint-hunters and other faddists who would place their shackles on the wrists of genius, he had as little patience as Beethoven, who, when told that all the authorities forbade the consecutive fifths in his C Minor Quartet, thundered out: "Well, I allow them." Somebody once questioned him about an apparently unwarranted passage in the introduction to Mozart's Quartet in C Major. "If Mozart has written it, be sure he had good reasons for doing so," was the conclusive reply. That fine old smoke-dried pedant, Albrechtsberger, declared against consecutive fourths in strict composition, and said so to Haydn. "What is the good of such rules?" demanded Haydn. "Art is free and must not be fettered by mechanical regulations. The cultivated ear must decide, and I believe myself as capable as anyone of making laws in this respect. Such trifling is absurd; I wish instead that someone would try to compose a really new minuet." To Dies he remarked further: "Supposing an idea struck me as good and thoroughly satisfactory both to the ear and the heart, I would far rather pass over some slight grammatical error than sacrifice what seemed to me beautiful to any mere pedantic trifling." These were sensible views. Practice must always precede theory. When we find a great composer infringing some rule of the old text-books, there is, to say the least, a strong presumption, not that the composer is wrong, but that the rule needs modifying. The great composer goes first and invents new effects: it is the business of the theorist not to cavil at every novelty, but to follow modestly behind and make his rules conform to the practice of the master. [Compare Professor Prout's Treatise on Harmony.] Thus much about Haydn the man. Let us now turn to Haydn the composer and his position in the history of music. CHAPTER X. HAYDN: THE COMPOSER The Father of Instrumental Music--The Quartets--The Symphonies--The Salomon Set--The Sonatas--Church Music--Songs--Operas--Orchestration--General Style--Conclusion. The Father of Instrumental Music Haydn has been called "the father of instrumental music," and although rigid critics may dispute his full right to that title, on broad grounds he must be allowed to have sufficiently earned it. He was practically the creator of more than one of our modern forms, and there was hardly a department of instrumental music in which he did not make his influence felt. This was emphatically the case with the sonata, the symphony and the string quartet. The latter he brought to its first perfection. Before his time this particular form of chamber music was long neglected, and for a very simple reason. Composers looked upon it as being too slight in texture for the display of their genius. That, as has often been demonstrated, was because they had not mastered the art of "writing a four-part harmony with occasional transitions into the pure polyphonic style--a method of writing which is indispensable to quartet composition--and also because they did not yet understand the scope and value of each individual instrument." The Quartet It would be too much to say that even Haydn fully realized the capacities of each of his four instruments. Indeed, his quartet writing is often bald and uninteresting. But at least he did write in four-part harmony, and it is certainly to him that we owe the installation of the quartet as a distinct species of chamber music. "It is not often," says Otto Jahn, the biographer of Mozart, "that a composer hits so exactly upon the form suited to his conceptions; the quartet was Haydn's natural mode of expressing his feelings." This is placing the Haydn quartet in a very high position among the products of its creator. But its artistic value and importance cannot well be over-estimated. Even Mozart, who set a noble seal upon the form, admitted that it was from Haydn he had first learned the true way to compose quartets; and there have been enthusiasts who regarded the Haydn quartet with even more veneration than the Haydn symphony. No fewer than seventy-seven quartets are ascribed to him. Needless to say, they differ considerably as regards their style and treatment, for the first was written so early as 1755, while the last belongs to his later years. But they are all characterized by the same combination of manly earnestness, rich invention and mirthful spirit. The form is concise and symmetrical, the part-writing is clear and well-balanced, and a "sunny sweetness" is the prevailing mood. As a discerning critic has remarked, there is nothing in the shape of instrumental music much pleasanter and easier to listen to than one of Haydn's quartets. The best of them hold their places in the concert-rooms of to-day, and they seem likely to live as long as there are people to appreciate clear and logical composition which attempts nothing beyond "organized simplicity." [See W. J. Henderson's How Music Developed, p. 191: London, 1899]. In this department, as Goethe said, he may be superseded, but he can never be surpassed. The Symphony For the symphony Haydn did no less than for the quartet. The symphony, in his young days, was not precisely the kind of work which now bears the name. It was generally written for a small band, and consisted of four parts for strings and four for wind instruments. It was meant to serve no higher purpose, as a rule, than to be played in the houses of nobles; and on that account it was neither elaborated as to length nor complicated as to development. So long as it was agreeable and likely to please the aristocratic ear, the end of the composer was thought to be attained. Haydn, as we know, began his symphonic work under Count Morzin. The circumstances were not such as to encourage him to "rise to any pitch of real greatness or depth of meaning"; and although he was able to build on a somewhat grander scale when he went to Eisenstadt, it was still a little comfortable coterie that he understood himself to be writing for rather than for the musical world at large. Nevertheless, he aimed at constant improvement, and although he had no definite object in view, he "raised the standard of symphony--writing far beyond any point which had been attained before." "His predecessors," to quote Sir Hubert Parry, "had always written rather carelessly and hastily for the band, and hardly ever tried to get refined and original effects from the use of their instruments, but he naturally applied his mind more earnestly to the matter in hand, and found out new ways of contrasting and combining the tones of different members of his orchestra, and getting a fuller and richer effect out of the mass of them when they were all playing. In the actual style of the music, too, he made great advances, and in his hands symphonies became by degrees more vigorous, and, at the same time, more really musical." But the narrow limits of the Esterhazy audience and the numbing routine of the performances were against his rising to the top heights of his genius. The Salomon Set It was only when he came to write for the English public that he showed what he could really do with the matter of the symphony. In comparison with the twelve symphonies which he wrote for Salomon, the other, and especially the earlier works are of practically no account. They are interesting, of course, as marking stages in the growth of the symphony and in the development of the composer's genius. But regarded in themselves, as absolute and individual entities, they are not for a moment to be placed by the side of the later compositions. These, so far as his instrumental music is concerned, are the crowning glory of his life work. They are the ripe fruits of his long experience working upon the example of Mozart, and mark to the full all those qualities of natural geniality, humour, vigour and simple-heartedness, which are the leading characteristics of his style. [figure: a musical score excerpt] The Sonata Haydn's sonatas show the same advance in form as his symphonies and quartets. The older specimens of the sonata, as seen in the works of Biber, Kuhnau, Mattheson and others, contain little more than the germs of the modern sonata. Haydn, building on Emanuel Bach, fixed the present form, improving so largely upon the earlier, that we could pass from his sonatas directly to those of Beethoven without the intervention of Mozart's as a connecting link. Beethoven's sonatas were certainly more influenced by Haydn's than by Mozart's. Haydn's masterpieces in this kind, like those of Mozart and Beethoven, astonish by their order, regularity, fluency, harmony and roundness; and by their splendid development into full and complete growth out of the sometimes apparently unimportant germs. [See Ernst Pauer's Musical Forms.] Naturally his sonatas are not all masterpieces. Of the thirty-five, some are old-fashioned and some are quite second-rate. But, like the symphonies, they are all of historical value as showing the development not only of the form but of the composer's powers. One of the number is peculiar in having four movements; another is equally peculiar--to Haydn at least--in having only two movements. Probably in the case of the latter the curtailment was due to practical rather than to artistic reasons. Like Beethoven, with the two-movement sonata in C minor, Haydn may not have had time for a third! In several of the sonatas the part-writing strikes one as being somewhat poor and meagre; in others there is, to the modern ear, a surfeiting indulgence in those turns, arpeggios and other ornaments which were inseparable from the nature of the harpsichord, with its thin tones and want of sustaining power. If Haydn had lived to write for the richer and more sustained sounds of the modern pianoforte, his genius would no doubt have responded to the increased demands made upon it, though we may doubt whether it was multiplex enough or intellectual enough to satisfy the deeper needs of our time. As it is, the changes which have been made in sonata form since his day are merely changes of detail. To him is due the fixity of the form. [See "The Pianoforte Sonata," by J. S. Shedlock: London, 1895. Mr Shedlock, by selecting for analysis some of the most characteristic sonatas, shows Haydn in his three stages of apprenticeship, mastery and maturity.] Church Music Of his masses and Church music generally it is difficult to speak critically without seeming unfair. We have seen how he explained what must be called the almost secular style of these works. But while it is true that Haydn's masses have kept their place in the Catholic churches of Germany and elsewhere, it is impossible, to Englishmen, at any rate, not to feel a certain incongruity, a lack of that dignity and solemnity, that religious "sense," which makes our own Church music so impressive. We must not blame him for this. He escaped the influences which made Bach and Handel great in religious music--the influences of Protestantism, not to say Puritanism. The Church to which he belonged was no longer guided in its music by the principles of Palestrina. On the contrary; it was tainted by secular and operatic influences; and although Haydn felt himself to be thoroughly in earnest it was rather the ornamental and decorate side of religion that he expressed in his lively music. He might, perhaps, have written in a more serious, lofty strain had he been brought under the noble traditions which glorified the sacred choral works of the earlier masters just named. In any case, his Church music has nothing of the historical value of his instrumental music. It is marked by many sterling and admirable qualities, but the progress of the art would not have been materially affected if it had never come into existence. Songs As a song-writer Haydn was only moderately successful, perhaps because, having himself but a slight acquaintance with literature, he left the selection of the words to others, with, in many cases, unfortunate results. The form does not seem to have been a favourite with him, for his first songs were not produced until so late as 1780. Some of the later compositions have, however, survived; and one or two of the canzonets, such as "My mother bids me bind my hair" and "She never told her love," are admirable. The three-part and the four-part songs, as well as the canons, of which he thought very highly himself, are also excellent, and still charm after the lapse of so many years. Operas On the subject of his operas little need be added to what has already been said. Strictly speaking, he never had a chance of showing what he could do with opera on a grand scale. He had to write for a small stage and a small audience, and in so far he was probably successful. Pohl thinks that if his project of visiting Italy had been fulfilled and his faculties been stimulated in this direction by fresh scenes and a larger horizon, we might have gained "some fine operas." It is doubtful; Haydn lacked the true dramatic instinct. His placid, easy-going, contented nature could never have allowed him to rise to great heights of dramatic force. He was not built on a heroic mould; the meaning of tragedy was unknown to him. Orchestration Regarding his orchestration a small treatise might be written. The terms which best describe it are, perhaps, refinement and brilliancy. Much of his success in this department must, of course, be attributed to his long and intimate association with the Esterhazy band. In 1766, six years after his appointment, this band numbered seventeen instruments--six violins and viola, one violoncello, one double bass, one flute, two oboes, two bassoons and four horns. It was subsequently enlarged to twenty-two and twenty-four, including trumpets and kettledrums on special occasions. From 1776 to 1778 there were also clarinets. This gradual extension of resources may be taken as roughly symbolizing Haydn's own advances in the matter of orchestral development. When he wrote his first symphony in 1759 he employed first and second violins, violas, basses, two oboes and two horns; in his last symphony, written in 1795, he had at his command "the whole symphonic orchestra as it had stood when Beethoven took up the work of orchestral development." Between these two points Mozart had lived and died, leaving Haydn his actual debtor so far as regards the increased importance of the orchestra. It has been said that he learnt from Mozart the use of the clarinet, and this is probably true, notwithstanding the fact that he had employed a couple of clarinets in his first mass, written in 1751 or 1752. Both composers used clarinets rarely, but Haydn certainly did not reveal the real capacity of the instrument or establish its position in the orchestra as Mozart did. From his first works onwards, he proceeded along the true symphonic path, and an orchestra of two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, two horns, two trumpets, drums, and the usual strings fairly represents the result of his contributions to its development up to the first successful experiments of Mozart. The names of Mozart and Haydn ought in reality to be coupled together as the progenitors of the modern orchestral colouring. But the superiority must be allowed to attach to Haydn, inasmuch as his colouring is the more expansive and decided. Some of his works, even of the later period, show great reticence in scoring, but, on the other hand, as in "The Creation," he knew when to draw upon the full resources of the orchestra. It has been pointed out as worthy of remark that he was not sufficiently trustful of his instrumental army to leave it without the weak support of the harpsichord, at which instrument he frequently sat during the performance of his symphonies, and played with the orchestra, with extremely bad effect. [Compare The Orchestra and Orchestral Music, by W. J. Henderson: London, 1901.] In this, however, he merely followed the custom of his day. General Style Of Haydn's general style as a composer it is hardly necessary to speak. To say that a composition is "Haydnish" is to express in one word what is well understood by all intelligent amateurs. Haydn's music is like his character--clear, straightforward, fresh and winning, without the slightest trace of affectation or morbidity. Its perfect transparency, its firmness of design, its fluency of instrumental language, the beauty and inexhaustible invention of its melody, its studied moderation, its child-like cheerfulness--these are some of the qualities which mark the style of this most genial of all the great composers. That he was not deep, that he does not speak a message of the inner life to the latter-day individual, who, in the Ossianic phrase, likes to indulge in "the luxury of grief," must, of course, be admitted. The definite embodiment of feeling which we find in Beethoven is not to be found in him. It was not in his nature. "My music," says Schubert, "is the production of my genius and my misery." Haydn, like Mendelssohn, was never more than temporarily miserable. But in music the gospel of despair seldom wants its preachers. To-day it is Tschaikowsky; to-morrow it will be another. Haydn meant to make the world happy, not to tear it with agony. "I know," he said, "that God has bestowed a talent upon me, and I thank Him for it. I think I have done my duty, and been of use in my generation by my works. Let others do the same." APPENDIX A: HAYDN'S LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT The following draft of Haydn's will is copied from Lady Wallace's Letters of Distinguished Musicians (London, 1867), where it was published in full for the first time. The much-corrected original is in the Court Library at Vienna. Dies says: "Six weeks before his death, in April 1809, he read over his will to his servants in the presence of witnesses, and asked them whether they were satisfied with his provisions or not. The good people were quite taken by surprise at the kindness of their master's heart, seeing themselves thus provided for in time to come, and they thanked him with tears in their eyes." The extracts given by Dies vary in some particulars from the following, because Haydn's final testamentary dispositions were made at a later date. But, as Lady Wallace says, it is not the legal but the moral aspect of the affair that interests us. Here we see epitomized all the goodness and beauty of Haydn's character. The document runs as follows: FLORINS. 1. For holy masses,........................................12 2. To the Norman School,....................................5 3. To the Poorhouse,........................................5 4. To the executor of my will.............................200 And also the small portrait of Grassi. 5. To the pastor,..........................................10 6. Expenses of my funeral, first-class,...................200 7. To my dear brother Michael, in Salzburg,..............4000 8. To my brother Johann, in Eisenstadt,..................4000 9. To my sister in Rohrau (erased, and written underneath): "God have mercy on her soul! To the three children of my sister,".........................2000 10. To the workwoman in Esterhazy, Anna Maria Moser, nee Frohlichin,........................................500 11. To the workwoman in Rohrau, Elisabeth, nee Bohme,......500 12. To the two workwomen there (erased, and replaced by: "To the shoemaker, Anna Loder, in Vienna"),........200 Should she presume to make any written claims, I declare them to be null and void, having already paid for her and her profligate husband, Joseph Lungmayer, more than 6000 gulden. 13. To the shoemaker in Garhaus, Theresa Hammer,............500 14. To her son, the blacksmith, Matthias Frohlich,..........500 15.&16. To the eldest child of my deceased sister, Anna Wimmer, and her husband, at Meolo, in Hungary,.....500 17. To her married daughter at Kaposwar,....................100 18. To the other three children (erased),...................300 19. To the married Dusse, nee Scheeger,.....................300 20. To her imbecile brother, Joseph (erased),...............100 21. To her brother, Karl Scheeger, silversmith, and his wife,...................................................900 22. To the son of Frau von Koller,..........................300 23. To his son (erased),....................................100 24. To the sister of my late wife (erased). 25. To my servant, Johann Elssler,.........................2500 Also one year's wages, likewise a coat, waistcoat and a pair of trousers. (According to Griesinger, Haydn bequeathed a capital of 6000 florins to this faithful servant and copyist.) 26. To Rosalia Weber, formerly in my service,...............300 (She has a written certificate of this from me.) 27. To my present maid-servant, Anna Kremnitzer,...........1000 And a year's wages in addition. Also, her bed and bedding and two pairs of linen sheets; also, four chairs, a table, a chest of drawers, the watch, the clock and the picture of the Blessed Virgin in her room, a flat-iron, kitchen utensils and crockery, one water-pail, and other trifles. 28. To my housekeeper, Theresia Meyer,......................500 And one year's wages,.................................20 29. To my old gardener, Michel,..............................24 30. To the Prince's Choir for my obsequies, to share alike (erased),......................................100 31. To the priest (erased),..................................12 32. To the pastor in Eisenstadt for a solemn mass,............5 33. To his clerk,.............................................2 34. To the beneficiary,.......................................2 35. To Pastor von Nollendorf,.................................2 36. To Pastor von St Georg,...................................2 37. To the sexton (erased from 33),...........................1 38. To the organ-bellows' blower,.............................1 39. To the singer, Babett,...................................50 40. To my cousin, the saddler's wife, in Eisenstadt,.........50 To her daughter,........................................300 41. To Mesdemoiselles Anna and Josepha Dillin,..............100 42. To the blind daughter of Herr Graus, leader of the choir in Eisenstadt (erased),.......................100 43. To the four sisters Sommerfeld, daughters of the wigmaker in Presburg,...............................200 44. To Nannerl, daughter of Herr Weissgerb, my neighbour (erased),......................................50 45. To Herr Art, merchant in the Kleine Steingasse,..........50 46. To the pastor in Rohrau,.................................12 47. To the schoolmaster in Rohrau,............................6 48. To the school children,...................................3 49. To Herr Wamerl, formerly with Count v. Harrach,..........50 50. To his present cashier,..................................50 51. To Count v. Harrach for the purpose of defraying the bequests Nos. 51 and 52, I bequeath an obligation of 6000 florins at 5 per cent., the interest to be disposed of as follows: To the widow Aloysia Polzelli, formerly singer at Prince Nikolaus Esterhazy's, payable in ready money six weeks after my death,................100 And each year, from the date of my death, for her life, the interest of the above capital,............150 After her death her son, Anton Polzelli, to receive 150 florins for one year, having always been a good son to his mother and a grateful pupil to me. N.B.--I hereby revoke the obligation in Italian, signed by me, which may be produced by Mdme. Polzelli, otherwise so many of my poor relations with greater claims would receive too little. Finally, Mdme. Polzelli must be satisfied with the annuity of 150 florins. After her death the half of the above capital, viz., 3000 florins, to be divided into two shares--one-half (1500) to devolve on the Rohrau family, for the purpose of keeping in good order the monument erected to me by Count von Harrach, and also that of my deceased father at the door of the sacristy. The other half to be held in trust by the Count, and the annual interest of the sum, namely, 45 florins, to be divided between any two orphans in Rohrau. 52. To my niece, Anna Lungmayer, payable six weeks after my death,..........................................100 Likewise a yearly annuity to her husband and herself,....150 All these legacies and obligations, and also the proceeds of the sale of my house and legal costs, to be paid within one year of my death; all the other expenses to be deducted from the sum of ready money in the hands of the executors, who must account to the heir for the same. On their demise this annuity to go to their children until they come of age, and after that period the capital to be equally divided among them. Of the remaining 950 florins, 500 to become the property of my beloved Count v. Harrach, as the depositary of my last will and testament, and 300 I bequeath to the agent for his trouble. The residue of 150 florins to go to my stepmother, and, if she be no longer living, to her children. N.B.--Should Mdme. Lungmayer or her husband produce any document signed by me for a larger sum, I wish it to be understood, as in the case of Mdme. Polzelli, that it is to be considered null and void, as both Mdme. Lungmayer and her husband, owing to my great kindness, lavished more than 6000 florins of mine during my life, which my own brother and the citizens in Oedenberg and Eisenstadt can testify. (From No. 51 is repeatedly and thickly scored out.) 53. To the widow Theresia Eder and her two daughters, lacemakers,...............................................150 54. To my pupil, Anton Polzelli,..............................100 55. To poor blind Adam in Eisenstadt,..........................24 56. To my gracious Prince, my gold Parisian medal and the letter that accompanied it, with a humble request to grant them a place in the museum at Forchtentein. 57. To Mdlle. C. Czeck, waiting-woman to Princess Graschalkowitz (erased),.................................1000 58. To Fraulein Anna Bucholz,.................................100 Inasmuch as in my youth her grandfather lent me 150 florins when I greatly needed them, which, however, I repaid fifty years ago. 59. To the daughter of the bookkeeper, Kandler, my piano, by the organ-builder Schanz. 60. The small Parisian medal to Count v. Harrach, and also the bust a l'antique of Herr Grassi. 61. To the widow Wallnerin in Schottenhof,....................100 62. To the Father Prior Leo in Eisenstadt, of the "Brothers of Mercy,".......................................50 63. To the Hospital for the Poor in Eisenstadt (erased),.......75 For the ratification of this my last will and testament, I have written it entirely in my own hand, and earnestly beg the authorities to consider it, even if not strictly or properly legal, in the light at least of a codicil, and to do all in their power to make it valid and binding. JOSEPH HAYDN. May 5, 1801. Should God call me away suddenly, this my last will and testament, though not written on stamped paper, to be considered valid in law, and the stamps to be repaid tenfold to my sovereign. In the name of the Holy Trinity. The uncertainty of the period when it may please my Creator, in His infinite wisdom, to call me from time into eternity has caused me, being in sound health, to make my last will with regard to my little remaining property. I commend my soul to my all-merciful Creator; my body I wish to be interred, according to the Roman Catholic forms, in consecrated ground. A first-class funeral. For my soul I bequeath No. 1. Joseph Haydn Vienna, Dec. 6, 1801 APPENDIX B: CATALOGUE OF WORKS There are unusual difficulties in the way of compiling a thoroughly satisfactory catalogue of Haydn's instrumental works. From the want of any generally-accepted consecutive numbering, and the fact that several are in the same key, this is particularly the case with the symphonies. Different editions have different numberings, and the confusion is increased by a further re-numbering of the piano symphonic scores arranged for two and four hands. In Breitkopf & Hartel's catalogue many works are included among the symphonies which are also found among the smaller compositions, and others are catalogued twice. Even the composer himself, in compiling his thematic catalogue, made mistakes. In the present list we have been content for the most part to state the numbers of the various instrumental works, without attempting to notify each individual composition. Indeed, to do otherwise would have called for an extensive use of music type. Nor have we thought it necessary to include the supposititious and doubtful works, for which Pohl's list may be consulted. INSTRUMENTAL 125 symphonies, including overtures to operas and plays. Of these 94 are published in parts, 40 in score; 29 remain in MS. About 40 have been arranged for pianoforte 2 hands, 60 for 4 hands, 10 for 8 hands. Pohl gives a thematic list of the 12 symphonies composed for Salomon, numbered in the order of their occurrence in the catalogue of the London Philharmonic Society. These include: TITLE OF WORK KEY DATE "The Surprise" G major 1791 "The Clock," referring D minor 1794 to the Andante "The Military" G major 1794 Other symphonies known by their titles are: TITLE OF WORK KEY DATE "Le Matin" D major "Le Midi" C major "Le Soir" G major 1761 "The Farewell" A major 1772 "Maria Theresa" C major 1773 "The Schoolmaster" E flat 1774 "Feuer Symphonie" (probably overture to "Die Feuersbrunst") A major 1774 "La Chasse" D major 1780 "Toy" Symphony C major 1780 "La Reine de France" B major for Paris, 1786 "The Oxford" G major 1788 "The Seven Words from the Cross." Originally for orchestra. Arranged first for 2 violins, viola and bass; afterwards for soli, chorus and orchestra. 66 various compositions for wind and strings, separately and combined, including divertimenti, concerted pieces, etc. 7 notturnos or serenades for the lyre. 7 marches. 6 scherzandos. 1 sestet. Several quintets. 1 "Echo" for 4 violins and 2 'cellos. "Feld-partien" for wind instruments and arrangements from baryton pieces. 12 collections of minuets and allemands. 31 concertos: 9 violin, 6 'cello, 1 double bass, 5 lyre, 3 baryton, 2 flute, 3 horn, 1 for 2 horns, 1 clarino (1796). 175 baryton pieces. Arrangements were published of several of these in 3 parts, with violin (or flute), viola or 'cello as principal. 1 duet for 2 lutes. 2 trios for lute, violin and 'cello. 1 sonata for harp, with flute and bass. Several pieces for a musical clock. A solo for harmonica. 6 duets for violin solo, with viola accompaniments. The numerous printed duets for 2 violins are only arrangements from his other works. 30 trios: 20 for 2 violins and bass, 1 for violin solo, viola concertante and bass, 2 for flute, violin and bass, 3 for 3 flutes, 1 for corno di caccia, violin and 'cello. 77 quartets. The first 18 were published in 3 series; the next is in MS.; then 1 printed separately; 54 in 9 series of 6 Nos. each; 2 more and the last. CLAVIER MUSIC 20 concertos and divertimenti: 1 concerto is with principal violin, 2 only (G and D) have been printed; the last alone survives. 38 trios: 35 with violin and 'cello, 3 with flute and 'cello Only 31 are printed. 53 sonatas and divertimenti. Only 35 are printed: the one in C, containing the adagio in F included in all the collections of smaller pieces, only in London. 4 sonatas for clavier and violin. 8 are published, but 4 of these are arrangements. 9 smaller pieces, including 5 Nos. of variations, a capriccio, a fantasia, 2 adagios and "differentes petites pieces." 1 duet (variations). VOCAL Church Music 14 masses. 1 Stabat Mater. 2 Te Deums. 13 offertories. 10 of these are taken from other compositions with Latin text added. 4 motets. 1 Tantum Ergo. 4 Salve Reginas. 1 Regina Coeli. 2 Aves Reginas; Responsoria de Venerabili. 1 Cantilena pro Aventu (German words). 6 sacred arias. 2 duets. ORATORIOS AND CANTATAS "The Creation." "The Seasons." "Il Ritorno di Tobia." "The Seven Words." "Invocation of Neptune." "Applausus Musicus." For the festival of a prelate, 1768. Cantata for the birthday of Prince Nicolaus, 1763. Cantata "Die Erwahlung eines Kapellmeisters." OPERAS Italian Operas: "La Canterina," 1769; "L'Incontro Improviso," 1776; "Lo Speciale," 1768; "Le Pescatrice," 1780; "Il Mondo della Luna," 1877; "L'Isola Disabitata," 1779; "Armida," 1782; "L'Infedelta Delusa," 1773; "La Fedelta Premiata," 1780; "La Vera Constanza," 1786; "Acide e Galatea," 1762; "Orlando Paladino," 1782; "Orfeo," London, 1794. German Opera or Singspiel, "Der Neue Krumme Teufel." 5 marionette operas. Music for "Alfred," a tragedy, and various other plays. MISCELLANEOUS SONGS: 12 German lieder, 1782; 12 ditto, 1784; 12 single songs; 6 original canzonets, London, 1796; 6 ditto; "The Spirit Song," Shakespeare (F minor); "O Tuneful Voice" (E flat), composed for an English lady of position; 3 English songs in MS.; 2 duets; 3 three-part and 10 four-part songs; 3 choruses, MS.; 1 ditto from "Alfred"; The Austrian National Anthem, for single voice and in 4 parts; 42 canons in 2 and more parts; 2 ditto; "The Ten Commandments" set to canons; the same with different words under the title "Die zehn Gesetze der Kunst"; symphonies and accompaniments for national songs in the collections of Whyte, Napier and George Thomson. 22 airs mostly inserted in operas. "Ariana a Naxos," cantata for single voice and pianoforte, 1790. "Deutschlands Klage auf den Tod Friedrichs der Grossen," cantata for single voice, with baryton accompaniment, 1787. APPENDIX C: BIBLIOGRAPHY The Haydn literature is almost entirely Continental. With the exceptions of Pohl's article in Grove's "Dictionary of Music" and Miss Townsend's "Haydn," nothing of real importance has appeared in English. The following list does not profess to be complete. It seems futile in a book of this kind to refer amateurs and students to foreign works, many of which are out of print and others generally inaccessible. For the benefit of English readers the English works have been placed first and apart from the Continental. It has not been thought necessary to follow Pohl in giving a separate list of German and other Continental critiques. His plan of citing works in the order of their publication has, however, been adopted as being perhaps preferable to an alphabetical order of writers. TITLE OF WORK AUTHOR PLACE AND DATE "History of Music," Vol. IV. Burney London, 1789 "Reminiscences," Vol. I, p. 190 Michael Kelly London, 1826 "Musical Memoirs" Parke London, 1830, 2 vols. "Letters of Distinguished Musicians."... London, 1867 Translated from the German by Lady Wallace. Haydn's Letters, pp. 71-204, with portrait "Musical Composers and their Works" Sarah Tytler London, 1875 --Haydn, pp. 57-75 "Music and Morals"--Haydn, Haweis London, 1876 pp. 241-263 Leisure Hour, p. 572. Article, ... London, 1877 "Anecdotes of Haydn" "The Great Composers Sketched Joseph Bennett London, Musical by Themselves"--No. 1, Haydn. Times, Sept. 1877 An estimate of Haydn drawn mainly from his letters Article on Haydn in Grove's Pohl London, 1879 "Dictionary of Music" "Studies of Great Composers"--Haydn, Parry London, 1887 pp. 91-118, with portrait "History of Music," English edition, Naumann London (Cassell), Vol. IV., pp. 852-882. 1888 Portraits and facsimiles "Musical Reminiscences"--Music and William Spark London, 1892 Sunshine, pp. 141-149, with quotations from Haydn's music to show "the happy state of his mind whilst composing" "Musical Haunts in London"--Haydn in F. G. Edwards London, 1895 London, pp. 32-36 "The Pianoforte Sonata"--Haydn, J. S. Shedlock London, 1895 pp. 111-120 "Music and Manners from Pergolese Krehbiel London, 1898 to Beethoven"--Haydn in London: (1) His Note-book; (2) His English Love, pp. 57-95 "George Thomson, the Friend of Burns" Cuthbert Hadden London, 1898 --Correspondence with Haydn, pp. 303-308 "Old Scores and New Readings"--Haydn J. F. Runciman London, 1899 and his "Creation," pp. 85-92 "The Birthplace of Haydn: Dr Frank Merrick London, Musical a Visit to Rohrau" Times, July 1899 "Joseph Haydn" Miss Pauline London, N.D. in Great Musicians series D. Townsend Article on Haydn in "Dictionary Riemann London, of Music." English ed. translated Augener & Co. by J. S. Shedlock Autobiographical Sketch by himself. ... 1776 This was made use of by (1) De Luca in "Das gelehrte Oesterreich," 1778; (2) in Forkel's "Musikalischer Almanach fur Deutschland," 1783; and (3) in the European Magazine for October 1784. The latter includes a portrait "Lexicon." Additional particulars Gerber 1790 are given in 2nd edition, 1812 Musik Correspondenz der teutschen Gerber 1792 Filarm. Gesellschaft, Nos. 17 and 18 Article in Journal des Luxus und Bertuch Weimar, 1805 der Moden "Brevi notizie istorchie della vita Mayer Bergamo, 1809 e delle opere di Guis. Haydn." Obituary in the Vaterland. Blatter ... Vienna, 1809 fur den ost Kaiserstaat "Der Nagedachtenis van J. Haydn" Kinker Amsterdam, 1810 "Biographische Notizen uber Griezinger Leipzig, 1810 Joseph Haydn" "Biographische Nachrichten von Dies Vienna, 1810 Joseph Haydn" "Joseph Haydn" Arnold Erfurt, 1810; 2nd ed., 1825 "Notice sur J. Haydn" Framery Paris, 1810 "Notice historique sur la vie et les Le Breton Paris, 1810 ouvrages de Haydn" in the Moniteur. This was reprinted in the "Bibliographie Musicale," Paris, 1822. It was also translated into Portuguese, with additions by Silva-Lisboa. Rio Janeiro, 1820 "Essai Historique sur la vie ... Strassburg, 1812 de J. Haydn" "Le Haydine," etc. Carpani Milan, 1812; This work was essentially reproduced, 2nd edition, without acknowledgment, in "Lettres enlarged, ecrites de Vienne en Autriche," etc., Padua, 1823 by L. A. C. Bombet, Paris, 1814; republished as "Vie de Haydn, Mozart et Metastase," par Stendhal, Paris, 1817. Bombet and Stendhal are both pseudonyms of Henri Beyle. An English translation of the 1814 work was published in London by John Murray, in 1817, under the title of "The Life of Haydn in a Series of Letters," etc. "Biogr. Notizen" Grosser Hirschberg, 1826 "Allg. Encyclopadie der Ersch und Gruber Leipzig, 1828 Wissenschaften und Kunste," 2nd section, 3rd part, with a biographical sketch by Frohlich "Allg. Wiener Musikzeitung" ... 1843 "J. Haydn in London, 1791 and 1792" Karajan Vienna, 1861 "Joseph Haydn und sein Bruder Michael" Wurzbach Vienna, 1861 "Joseph Haydn" Ludwig Nordhausen, 1867 "Mozart and Haydn in London" Pohl Vienna, 1867 "Joseph Haydn." Pohl ... This, the first comprehensive biography of Haydn, was published --the first half of Vol. I. in 1875, the second half in 1882. After the death of Pohl in 1887 it was completed (1890) by E. V. Mandyczewski Notice in "Biographie Universelle" Fetis ... APPENDIX D: HAYDN'S BROTHERS Of the large family born to the Rohrau wheelwright, two, besides the great composer, devoted themselves to music. The first, JOHANN EVANGELIST HAYDN, made some little reputation as a vocalist, and was engaged in that capacity in the Esterhazy Chapel. His health had, however, been delicate from the first, and his professional career was far from prosperous. JOHANN MICHAEL HAYDN was much more distinguished. Born in 1737, he became, as we have seen, a chorister and solo-vocalist at St Stephen's, Vienna. He was a good violinist, and played the organ so well that he was soon able to act as deputy-organist at the cathedral. In 1757 he was appointed Capellmeister to the Bishop of Grosswardein, and in 1762 became conductor, and subsequently leader and organist to Archbishop Sigismund of Salzburg. There he naturally came in contact with Mozart, in whose biography his name is often mentioned. Mozart on one occasion wrote two compositions for him which the archbishop received as Michael Haydn's. The Concertmeister was incapacitated by illness at the time, and Mozart came to his rescue to save his salary, which the archbishop had characteristically threatened to stop. Mozart also scored several of his sacred works for practice. Michael Haydn remained at Salzburg till his death in 1806. He had the very modest salary of 24 pounds, with board and lodging, which was afterwards doubled; but although he was more than once offered preferment elsewhere, he declined to leave his beloved Salzburg. He was happily married--in 1768--to a daughter of Lipp, the cathedral organist; and with his church work, his pupils--among whom were Reicha and Weber--and his compositions, he sought nothing more. When the French entered Salzburg and pillaged the city in 1801 he was among the victims, losing some property and a month's salary, but his brother and friends repaired the loss with interest. This misfortune led the Empress Maria Theresa to commission him to compose a mass, for which she rewarded him munificently. Another of his masses was written for Prince Esterhazy, who twice offered him the vice-Capellmeistership of the chapel at Eisenstadt. Joseph thought Michael too straightforward for this post. "Ours is a court life," he said, "but a very different one from yours at Salzburg. It is uncommonly hard to do what you want." If any appointment could have drawn him away from Salzburg it was this; and it is said that he refused it only because he hoped that the chapel at Salzburg would be reorganized and his salary raised. Michael Haydn is buried in a side chapel of St Peter's Church, Salzburg. A monument was erected in 1821, and over it is an urn containing his skull. He is described by Pohl as "upright, good-tempered and modest; a little rough in manners, and in later life given to drink." His correspondence shows him to have been a warm-hearted friend; and he had the same devout practice of initialing his manuscripts as his brother. The latter thought highly of him as a composer, declaring that his Church compositions were superior to his own in earnestness, severity of style and sustained power. When he asked leave to copy the canons which hung in Joseph's bedroom at Vienna, Joseph replied: "Get away with your copies; you can compose much better for yourself." Michael's statement has often been quoted: "Give me good librettos and the same patronage as my brother, and I should not be behind him." This could scarcely have been the case, since, as Pohl points out, Michael Haydn failed in the very qualities which ensured his brother's success. As it was, he wrote a very large number of works, most of which remained in manuscript. A Mass in D is his best-known composition, though mention should be made of the popular common-metre tune "Salzburg," adapted from a mass composed for the use of country choirs. Michael Haydn was nominated the great composer's sole heir, but his death frustrated the generous intention. APPENDIX E: A SELECTION OF HAYDN LETTERS The greater number of Haydn's extant letters deal almost exclusively with business matters, and are therefore of comparatively little interest to the reader of his life. The following selection may be taken as representing the composer in his more personal and social relations. It is drawn from the correspondence with Frau von Genzinger, which was discovered by Theodor Georg von Karajan, in Vienna, and published first in the Jahrbuch fur Vaterlandische Geschichte, and afterwards in his J. Haydn in London, 1791 and 1792 (1861). The translation here used, by the courtesy of Messrs Longman, is that of Lady Wallace. The name of Frau von Genzinger has been mentioned more than once in the biography. Her husband was the Esterhazy physician. In that capacity he paid frequent visits to Eisenstadt and Esterhaz (which Haydn spells Estoras) and so became intimate with the Capellmeister. He was fond of music, and during the long winter evenings in Vienna was in the habit of assembling the best artists in his house at Schottenhof, where on Sundays Mozart, Haydn, Dittersdorf, Albrechtsberger, and others were often to be found. His wife, Marianne--nee von Kayser--was a good singer, and was sought after by all the musical circles in Vienna. She was naturally attracted to Haydn, and although she was nearly forty years of age when the correspondence opened in 1789, "a personal connection was gradually developed in the course of their musical intercourse that eventually touched their hearts and gave rise to a bright bond of friendship between the lady and the old, though still youthful, maestro." Some brief extracts from the letters now to be given have of necessity been worked into the biography. The correspondence originated in the following note from Frau von Genzinger: January 1789. DEAR M. HAYDN, With your kind permission I take the liberty to send a pianoforte arrangement of the beautiful adagio in your admirable composition. I arranged it from the score quite alone, and without the least help from my master. I beg that, if you should discover any errors, you will be so good as to correct them. I do hope that you are in perfect health, and nothing do I wish more than to see you soon again in Vienna, in order to prove further my high esteem. Your obedient servant, MARIA ANNA V. GENZINGER. To this Haydn replies as follows: ESTORAS, Janr. 14, 1789. DEAR MADAM, In all my previous correspondence, nothing was ever so agreeable to me as the surprise of seeing your charming writing, and reading so many kind expressions; but still more did I admire what you sent me--the admirable arrangement of the adagio, which, from its correctness, might be engraved at once by any publisher. I should like to know whether you arranged the adagio from the score, or whether you gave yourself the amazing trouble of first putting it into score from the separate parts, and then arranging it for the piano, for, if the latter, such an attention would be too flattering to me, and I feel that I really do not deserve it. Best and kindest Frau v. Genzinger! I only await a hint from you as to how, and in what way, I can serve you; in the meantime, I return the adagio, and hope that my talents, poor though they be, may ensure me some commands from you. I am yours, etc., HAYDN. The next letter is from the lady: VIENNA, Oct. 29, 1789. DEAR HERR V. HAYDN, I hope you duly received my letter of September 15, and also the first movement of the symphony (the andante of which I sent you some months ago), and now follows the last movement, which I have arranged for the piano as well as it was in my power to do; I only wish that it may please you, and earnestly beg that, if there are any mistakes in it, you will correct them at your leisure, a service which I shall always accept from you, my valued Herr Haydn, with the utmost gratitude. Be so good as to let me know whether you received my letter of September 15, and the piece of music, and if it is in accordance with your taste, which would delight me very much, for I am very uneasy and concerned lest you should not have got it safely, or not approve of it. I hope that you are well, which will always be a source of pleasure to me to hear, and commending myself to your further friendship and remembrance. I remain, your devoted friend and servant, MARIA ANNA V. GENZINGER. nee v. Kayser. My husband sends you his regards. To Frau v. Genzinger. Nov. 9, 1789. DEAR MADAM, I beg your forgiveness a million times for having so long delayed returning your laborious and admirable work: the last time my apartments were cleared out, which occurred just after receiving your first movement, it was mislaid by my copyist among the mass of my other music, and only a few days ago I had the good fortune to find it in an old opera score. Dearest and kindest Frau v. Genzinger! do not be displeased with a man who values you so highly; I should be inconsolable if by the delay I were to lose any of your favour, of which I am so proud. These two pieces are arranged quite as correctly as the first. I cannot but admire the trouble and the patience you lavish on my poor talents; and allow me to assure you in return that, in my frequent evil moods, nothing cheers me so much as the flattering conviction that I am kindly remembered by you; for which favour I kiss your hands a thousand times, and am, with sincere esteem, your obedient servant, JOSEPH HAYDN. P.S.--I shall soon claim permission to wait on you. The next letter is again from Frau v. Genzinger: VIENNA, Nov. 12, 1789. MY VALUED HERR V. HAYDN, I really cannot tell you all the pleasure I felt in reading your highly-prized letter of the 9th. How well am I rewarded for my trouble by seeing your satisfaction! Nothing do I wish more ardently than to have more time (now so absorbed by household affairs), for in that case I would certainly devote many hours to music, my most agreeable and favourite of all occupations. You must not, my dear Herr v. Haydn, take it amiss that I plague you with another letter, but I could not but take advantage of so good an opportunity to inform you of the safe arrival of your letter. I look forward with the utmost pleasure to the happy day when I am to see you in Vienna. Pray continue to give me a place in your friendship and remembrance. Your sincere and devoted friend and servant. To Frau v. Genzinger. ESTORAS, Nov. 18, 1789. DEAR LADY, The letter which I received through Herr Siebert gave me another proof of your excellent heart, as instead of a rebuke for my late remissness, you express yourself in so friendly a manner towards me, that so much indulgence, kindness and great courtesy cause me the utmost surprise, and I kiss your hands in return a thousand times. If my poor talents enable me to respond in any degree to so much that is flattering, I venture, dear madam, to offer you a little musical potpourri. I do not, indeed, find in it much that is fragrant; perhaps the publisher may rectify the fault in future editions. If the arrangement of the symphony in it be yours, oh! then I shall be twice as much pleased with the publisher; if not, I venture to ask you to arrange a symphony, and to transcribe it with your own hand, and to send it to me here, when I will at once forward it to my publisher at Leipzig to be engraved. I am happy to have found an opportunity that leads me to hope for a few more charming lines from you. I am, etc., JOSEPH HAYDN. Shortly after the date of this letter Hadyn was again in Vienna, when the musical evenings at Schottenhof were renewed. The Herr v. Haring referred to in the following note is doubtless the musical banker, well known as a violinist in the Vienna of the time. To Frau v. Genzinger. Jan. 23, 1790. DEAR, KIND FRAU V. GENZINGER, I beg to inform you that all arrangements are now completed for the little quartet party that we agreed to have next Friday. Herr v. Haring esteemed himself very fortunate in being able to be of use to me on this occasion, and the more so when I told him of all the attention I had received from you, and your other merits. What I care about is a little approval. Pray don't forget to invite the Pater Professor. Meanwhile, I kiss your hands, and am, with profound respect, yours, etc., HAYDN. A call to return to Esterhaz put an end to these delights of personal intercourse, as will be gathered from the following letter: To Frau v. Genzinger. Feb. 3, 1790. NOBLEST AND KINDEST LADY, However flattering the last invitation you gave me yesterday to spend this evening with you, I feel with deep regret that I am even unable to express to you personally my sincere thanks for all your past kindness. Bitterly as I deplore this, with equal truth do I fervently wish you, not only on this evening, but ever and always, the most agreeable social "reunions"--mine are all over--and to-morrow I return to dreary solitude! May God only grant me health; but I fear the contrary, being far from well to-day. May the Almighty preserve you, dear lady, and your worthy husband, and all your beautiful children. Once more I kiss your hands, and am unchangeably while life lasts, yours, etc., HAYDN. The next letter was written six days later, evidently in the most doleful mood: To Frau v. Genzinger. ESTORAS, Feb. 9, 1790. MUCH ESTEEMED AND KINDEST FRAU V. GENZINGER,-- Well! here I sit in my wilderness; forsaken, like some poor orphan, almost without human society; melancholy, dwelling on the memory of past glorious days. Yes; past, alas! And who can tell when these happy hours may return? those charming meetings? where the whole circle have but one heart and one soul--all those delightful musical evenings, which can only be remembered, and not described. Where are all those inspired moments? All gone--and gone for long. You must not be surprised, dear lady, that I have delayed writing to express my gratitude. I found everything at home in confusion; for three days I did not know whether I was capell master, or capell servant; nothing could console me; my apartments were all in confusion; my pianoforte, that I formerly loved so dearly, was perverse and disobedient, and rather irritated than soothed me. I slept very little, and even my dreams persecuted me, for, while asleep, I was under the pleasant delusion that I was listening to the opera of "Le Nozze di Figaro," when the blustering north wind woke me, and almost blew my nightcap off my head. [The portion of the letter deleted is that given at page 161, beginning, "I lost twenty pounds in weight."] ...Forgive me, dear lady, for taking up your time in this very first letter by so wretched a scrawl, and such stupid nonsense; you must forgive a man spoilt by the Viennese. Now, however, I begin to accustom myself by degrees to country life, and yesterday I studied for the first time, and somewhat in the Haydn style too. No doubt, you have been more industrious than myself. The pleasing adagio from the quartet has probably now received its true expression from your fair fingers. I trust that my good Fraulein Peperl [Joseph A., one of the Genzinger children.] may be frequently reminded of her master, by often singing over the cantata, and that she will pay particular attention to distinct articulation and correct vocalization, for it would be a sin if so fine a voice were to remain imprisoned in the breast. I beg, therefore, for a frequent smile, or else I shall be much vexed. I advise M. Francois [Franz, author of the Genzinger children.] too to cultivate his musical talents. Even if he sings in his dressing-gown, it will do well enough, and I will often write something new to encourage him. I again kiss your hands in gratitude for all the kindness you have shown me. I am, etc., HAYDN. To Frau v. Genzinger. ESTORAS, March 14, 1790. MOST VALUED, ESTEEMED AND KINDEST FRAU V. GENZINGER, I ask forgiveness a million times for having so long delayed answering your two charming letters, which has not been caused by negligence (a sin from which may Heaven preserve me so long as I live), but from the press of business which has devolved on me for my gracious Prince, in his present melancholy condition. The death of his wife overwhelmed the Prince with such grief that we were obliged to use every means in our power to rouse him from his profound sorrow. I therefore arranged for the three first days a selection of chamber music, but no singing. The poor Prince, however, the first evening, on hearing my favourite Adagio in D, was affected by such deep melancholy that it was difficult to disperse it by other pieces. On the fourth day we had an opera, the fifth a comedy, and then our theatre daily as usual... You must now permit me to kiss your hands gratefully for the rusks you sent me, which, however, I did not receive till last Tuesday; but they came exactly at the right moment, having just finished the last of the others. That my favourite "Ariadne" has been successful at Schottenhof is delightful news to me, but I recommend Fraulein Peperl to articulate the words clearly, especially in the words "Che tanto amai." I also take the liberty of wishing you all possible good on your approaching nameday, begging you to continue your favour towards me, and to consider me on every occasion as your own, though unworthy, master. I must also mention that the teacher of languages can come here any day, and his journey will be paid. He can travel either by the diligence or by some other conveyance, which can always be heard of in the Madschaker Hof. As I feel sure, dear lady, that you take an interest in all that concerns me (far greater than I deserve), I must inform you that last week I received a present of a handsome gold snuff-box, the weight of thirty-four ducats, from Prince Oetting v. Wallerstein, accompanied by an invitation to pay him a visit this year, the Prince defraying my expenses, His Highness being desirous to make my personal acquaintance (a pleasing fillip to my depressed spirits). Whether I shall make up my mind to the journey is another question. I beg you will excuse this hasty scrawl. I am always, etc., HAYDN. P.S.--I have just lost my faithful coachman; he died on the 25th of last month. To Frau v. Genzinger. ESTORAS, May 13, 1790. BEST AND KINDEST FRAU V. GENZINGER, I was quite surprised, on receiving your esteemed letter, to find that you had not yet got my last letter, in which I mentioned that our landlord had accepted the services of a French teacher, who came by chance to Estoras, and I also made my excuses both to you and your tutor on that account. My highly esteemed benefactress, this is not the first time that some of my letters and of others also have been lost, inasmuch as our letter bag, on its way to Oedenburg (in order to have letters put into it), is always opened by the steward there, which has frequently been the cause of mistake and other disagreeable occurrences. For greater security, however, and to defeat such disgraceful curiosity, I will henceforth enclose all my letters in a separate envelope to the porter, Herr Pointer. This trick annoys me the more because you might justly reproach me with procrastination, from which may Heaven defend me! At all events, the prying person, whether male or female, cannot, either in this last letter or in any of the others, have discovered anything in the least inconsistent with propriety. And now, my esteemed patroness, when am I to have the inexpressible happiness of seeing you in Estoras? As business does not admit of my going to Vienna, I console myself by the hope of kissing your hands here this summer. In which pleasing hope, I am, with high consideration, etc., yours, HAYDN. To Frau v. Genzinger. ESTORAS, May 30, 1790. KINDEST AND BEST FRAU V. GENZINGER, I was at Oedenburg when I received your last welcome letter, having gone there on purpose to enquire about the lost letter. The steward there vowed by all that was holy that he had seen no letter at that time in my writing, so that it must have been lost in Estoras! Be this as it may, such curiosity can do me no harm, far less yourself, as the whole contents of the letter were an account of my opera "La Vera Costanza," performed in the new theatre in the Landstrasse, and about the French teacher who was to have come at that time to Estoras. You need, therefore, be under no uneasiness, dear lady, either as regards the past or the future, for my friendship and esteem for you (tender as they are) can never become reprehensible, having always before my eyes respect for your elevated virtues, which not only I, but all who know you, must reverence. Do not let this deter you from consoling me sometimes by your agreeable letters, as they are so highly necessary to cheer me in this wilderness, and to soothe my deeply wounded heart. Oh! that I could be with you, dear lady, even for one quarter of an hour, to pour forth all my sorrows, and to receive comfort from you. I am obliged to submit to many vexations from our official managers here, which, however, I shall at present pass over in silence. The sole consolation left me is that I am, thank God, well, and eagerly disposed to work. I only regret that, with this inclination, you have waited so long for the promised symphony. On this occasion it really proceeds from absolute necessity, arising from my circumstances, and the raised prices of everything. I trust, therefore, that you will not be displeased with your Haydn, who, often as his Prince absents himself from Estoras, never can obtain leave, even for four-and-twenty hours, to go to Vienna. It is scarcely credible, and yet the refusal is always couched in such polite terms, and in such a manner, as to render it utterly impossible for me to urge my request for leave of absence. Well, as God pleases! This time also will pass away, and the day, return when I shall again have the inexpressible pleasure of being seated beside you at the pianoforte, hearing Mozart's masterpieces, and kissing your hands from gratitude for so much pleasure. With this hope, I am, etc., J. HAYDN. To Frau v. Genzinger. ESTORAS, June 6, 1790. DEAR AND ESTEEMED LADY, I heartily regret that you were so long in receiving my last letter. But the previous week no messenger was despatched from Estoras, so it was not my fault that the letter reached you so late. Between ourselves! I must inform you that Mademoiselle Nanette has commissioned me to compose a new sonata for you, to be given into your hands alone. I esteem myself fortunate in having received such a command. You will receive the sonata in a fortnight at latest. Mademoiselle Nanette promised me payment for the work, but you can easily imagine that on no account would I accept it. For me the best reward will always be to hear that I have in some degree met with your approval. I am, etc., HAYDN. To Frau v. Genzinger. ESTORAS, June 20, 1790. DEAR, KIND FRIEND, I take the liberty of sending you a new pianoforte sonata with violin or flute, not as anything at all remarkable, but as a trifling resource in case of any great ennui. I only beg that you will have it copied out as soon as possible, and then return it to me. The day before yesterday I presented to Mademoiselle Nanette the sonata commanded by her. I had hoped she would express a wish to hear me play it, but I have not yet received any order to that effect; I, therefore, do not know whether you will receive it by this post or not. The sonata is in E flat, newly written, and always intended for you. It is strange enough that the final movement of this sonata contains the very same minuet and trio that you asked me for in your last letter. This identical work was destined for you last year, and I have only written a new adagio since then, which I strongly recommend to your attention. It has a deep signification which I will analyze for you when opportunity offers. It is rather difficult, but full of feeling. What a pity that you have not one of Schanz's pianos, for then you could produce twice the effect! N.B.--Mademoiselle Nanette must know nothing of the sonata being already half written before I received her commands, for this might suggest notions with regard to me that I might find most prejudicial, and I must be very careful not to lose her favour. In the meanwhile I consider myself fortunate to be the means of giving her pleasure, particularly as the sacrifice is made for your sake, my charming Frau v. Genzinger. Oh! how I do wish that I could only play over these sonatas once or twice to you; how gladly would I then reconcile myself to remain for a time in my wilderness! I have much to say and to confess to you, from which no one but yourself can absolve me; but what cannot be effected now will, I devoutly hope, come to pass next winter, and half of the time is already gone. Meanwhile I take refuge in patience, and am content with the inestimable privilege of subscribing myself your sincere and obedient friend and servant J. HAYDN. To Frau v. Genzinger. ESTORAS, June 27, 1790. HIGHLY ESTEEMED LADY, You have no doubt by this time received the new pianoforte sonata, and, if not, you will probably do so along with this letter. Three days ago I played the sonata to Mademoiselle Nanette in the presence of my gracious Prince. At first I doubted very much, owing to its difficulty, whether I should receive any applause, but was soon convinced of the reverse by a gold snuff-box being presented to me by Mademoiselle Nanette's own hand. My sole wish now is, that you may be satisfied with it, so that I may find greater credit with my patroness. For the same reason, I beg that either you or your husband will let her know "that my delight was such that I could not conceal her generosity," especially being convinced that you take an interest in all benefits conferred on me. It is a pity that you have not a Schanz pianoforte, which is much more favourable to expression; my idea is that you should make over your own still very tolerable piano to Fraulein Peperl, and get a new one for yourself. Your beautiful hands, and their brilliant execution, deserve this, and more. I know that I ought to have composed the sonata in accordance with the capabilities of your piano, but, being so unaccustomed to this, I found it impossible, and now I am doomed to stay at home. What I lose by so doing you can well imagine: It is indeed sad always to be a slave--but Providence wills it so. I am a poor creature, plagued perpetually by hard work, and with few hours for recreation. Friends? What do I say? One true friend; there are no longer any true friends, but one female friend. Oh yes! no doubt I still have one, but she is far away. Ah well! I take refuge in my thoughts. May God bless her, and may she never forget me! Meanwhile I kiss your hands a thousand times, and ever am, etc., HAYDN. Pray forgive my bad writing. I am suffering from inflamed eyes to-day. To Frau v. Genzinger. ESTORAS, July 4, 1790. MOST ESTEEMED AND VALUED LADY, I this moment receive your letter, and at the same time the post departs. I sincerely rejoice to hear that my Prince intends to present you with a new piano, more especially as I am in some measure the cause of this, having been constantly imploring Mademoiselle Nanette to persuade your husband to purchase one for you. The choice now depends entirely on yourself, and the chief point is that you should select one in accordance with your touch and your taste. Certainly my friend, Herr Walter, is very celebrated, and every year I receive the greatest civility from him; but, entre nous, and to speak candidly, sometimes there is not more than one out of ten of his instruments which may be called really good, and they are exceedingly high priced besides. I know Herr Nickl's piano; it is first-rate, but too heavy for your touch; nor can every passage be rendered with proper delicacy on it. I should, therefore, like you to try one of Herr Schanz's pianos, for they have a remarkably light and agreeable touch. A good pianoforte is absolutely necessary for you, and my sonata will also gain vastly by it. Meanwhile I thank you much, dear lady, for your caution with regard to Mademoiselle Nanette. It is a pity that the little gold box she gave me, and had used herself, is tarnished, but perhaps I may get it polished up in Vienna. I have as yet received no orders to purchase a pianoforte. I fear that one may be sent to your house, which may be handsome outside, but the touch within heavy. If your husband will rely on my opinion, that Herr Schanz is the best maker for this class of instruments, I would then settle everything at once. In great haste, yours, etc., HAYDN. To Frau v. Genzinger. Estoras, August 15. I ought to have written to you last week in answer to your letter, but as this day has been long enshrined in my heart, I have been striving earnestly all the time to think how and what I was to wish for you; so thus eight days passed, and now, when my wishes ought to be expressed, my small amount of intellect comes to a standstill, and (quite abashed) I find nothing to say; why? wherefore? because I have not been able to fulfill those musical hopes for this particular day that you have justly the right to expect. Oh, my most charming and kind benefactress! if you could only know, or see into my troubled heart on this subject, you would certainly feel pity and indulgence for me. The unlucky promised symphony has haunted my imagination ever since it was bespoken, and it is only, alas! the pressure of urgent occurrences that has prevented its being hitherto ushered into the world! The hope, however, of your lenity towards me for the delay, and the approaching time of the fulfillment of my promise, embolden me to express my wish, which, among the hundreds offered to you to-day and yesterday, may perhaps appear to you only an insignificant interloper; I say perhaps, for it would be too bold in me to think that you could form no better wish for yourself than mine. You see, therefore, most kind and charming lady, that I can wish nothing for you on your nameday, because my wishes are too feeble, and therefore unproductive. As for me, I venture to wish for myself your kind indulgence, and the continuance of your friendship, and the goodness that I so highly prize. This is my warmest wish! But if any wish of mine may be permitted, then mine shall become identical with your own, for thus I shall feel assured that none other remains, except the wish once more to be allowed to subscribe myself your very sincere friend and servant, HAYDN. No further letters appear to have been addressed to the lady until Haydn started on his first visit to London in December 1790. One or two extracts from these London letters have been used in Chapter V., but as the repetitions will be very slight, we allow the letters to stand as they are. To Frau v. Genzinger. CALAIS, Decr. 31, 1790. HIGHLY HONOURED LADY, A violent storm and an incessant pour of rain prevented our arriving at Calais till this evening (where I am now writing to you), and to-morrow at seven in the morning we cross the sea to London. I promised to write from Brussels, but we could only stay there an hour. I am very well, thank God! although somewhat thinner, owing to fatigue, irregular sleep, and eating and drinking so many different things. A few days hence I will describe the rest of my journey, but I must beg you to excuse me for to-day. I hope to heaven that you and your husband and children are all well. I am, with high esteem, etc., yours, HAYDN. To Frau v. Genzinger. LONDON, Jan. 8, 1791. I thought that you had received my last letter from Calais. I ought, indeed, according to my promise, to have sent you some tidings of myself when I arrived in London, but I preferred waiting a few days that I might detail various incidents to you. I must now tell you that on New Year's Day, after attending early mass, I took ship at half-past seven o'clock a.m., and at five o'clock in the afternoon arrived safe and well at Dover, for which Heaven be praised! During the first four hours there was scarcely any wind, and the vessel made so little way that in that time we only went one English mile, there being twenty-four between Calais and Dover. The ship's captain, in the worst possible humour, said that if the wind did not change we should be at sea all night. Fortunately, however, towards half-past eleven o'clock such a favourable breeze began to blow that by four o'clock we had come twenty-two miles. As the ebb of the tide prevented our large vessel making the pier, two small boats were rowed out to meet us, into which we and our luggage were transferred, and at last we landed safely, though exposed to a sharp gale. The large vessel stood out to sea five hours longer, till the tide carried it into the harbour. Some of the passengers, being afraid to trust themselves in the small boats, stayed on board, but I followed the example of the greater number. I remained on deck during the whole passage, in order to gaze my fill at that huge monster, the Ocean. So long as there was a calm I had no fears, but when at length a violent wind began to blow, rising every minute, and I saw the boisterous high waves running on, I was seized with a little alarm, and a little indisposition likewise. But I overcame it all, and arrived safely in harbour, without being actually ill. Most of the passengers were ill, and looked like ghosts. I did not feel the fatigue of the journey till I arrived in London, but it took two days before I could recover from it. But now I am quite fresh and well, and occupied in looking at this mighty and vast town of London, its various beauties and marvels causing me the most profound astonishment. I immediately paid the necessary visits, such as to the Neapolitan Minister and to our own. Both called on me in return two days afterwards, and a few days ago I dined with the former--nota bene, at six o'clock in the evening, which is the fashion here. My arrival caused a great sensation through the whole city, and I went the round of all the newspapers for three successive days. Everyone seems anxious to know me. I have already dined out six times, and could be invited every day if I chose; but I must in the first place consider my health, and in the next my work. Except the nobility, I admit no visitors till two o'clock in the afternoon, and at four o'clock I dine at home with Salomon. I have a neat, comfortable lodging, but very dear. My landlord is an Italian, and likewise a cook, who gives us four excellent dishes; we each pay one florin thirty kreuzers a day, exclusive of wine and beer, but everything is terribly dear here. I was yesterday invited to a grand amateur concert, but as I arrived rather late, when I gave my ticket, they would not let me in, but took me to an ante-room, where I was obliged to remain till the piece which was then being given was over. Then they opened the door, and I was conducted, leaning on the arm of the director, up the centre of the room to the front of the orchestra amid universal clapping of hands, stared at by everyone, and greeted by a number of English compliments. I was assured that such honours had not been conferred on anyone for fifty years. After the concert I was taken into a very handsome room adjoining, where tables were laid for all the amateurs, to the number of two hundred. It was proposed that I should take a seat near the top, but as it so happened that I had dined out that very day, and ate more than usual, I declined the honour, excusing myself under the pretext of not being very well; but in spite of this, I could not get off drinking the health, in Burgundy, of the harmonious gentlemen present; all responded to it, but at last allowed me to go home. All this, my dear lady, was very flattering to me; still I wish I could fly for a time to Vienna, to have more peace to work, for the noise in the streets, and the cries of the common people selling their wares, is intolerable. I am still working at symphonies, as the libretto of the opera is not yet decided on, but in order to be more quiet, I intend to engage an apartment some little way out of town. I would gladly write more at length, but I fear losing this opportunity. With kindest regards to your husband, Fraulein Pepi, and all the rest, I am, with sincere esteem, etc., HAYDN. P.S.--I have a request to make. I think I must have left my symphony in E flat, that you returned to me, in my room at home, or mislaid it on the journey. I missed it yesterday, and being in pressing need of it, I beg you urgently to procure it for me, through my kind friend, Herr v. Kees. Pray have it copied out in your own house, and send it by post as soon as possible. If Herr v. Kees hesitates about this, which I don't think likely, pray send him this letter. My address is, M. Haydn, 18 Great Pulteney Street, London. To Frau v. Genzinger. LONDON, Sept. 17, 1791. MY HIGHLY ESTEEMED FRIEND, I have received no reply to my two letters of July 3, entrusted to the care of a composer, Herr Diettenhofer, by whom I likewise sent the pianoforte arrangement of an andante in one of my new symphonies. Nor have I any answer either about the symphony in E flat, that I wished to get. I can now no longer delay inquiring after your own health, as well as that of your husband, and all your dear family. Is that odious proverb, "Out of sight, out of mind," to prove true everywhere? Oh no! urgent affairs or the loss of my letter and the symphony are, no doubt, the cause of your silence. I feel assured of Herr von Kees's willingness to send the symphony, as he said he would do so in his letter; so it seems we shall both have to deplore a loss, and must trust to Providence. I flatter myself I shall receive a short answer to this. Now, my dear, good, kind lady, what is your piano about? Is a thought of Haydn sometimes recalled by your fair hand? Does my sweet Fraulein Pepi ever sing poor "Ariadne"? Oh yes! I seem to hear it even here, especially during the last two months, when I have been residing in the country, amid lovely scenery, with a banker, whose heart and family resemble the Genzingers, and where I live as in a monastery. God be praised! I am in good health, with the exception of my usual rheumatic state. I work hard, and in the early mornings, when I walk in the wood alone with my English grammar, I think of my Creator, of my family, and of all the friends I have left--and of these you are the most valued of all. I had hoped, indeed, sooner to have enjoyed the felicity of seeing you again; but my circumstances, in short, fate so wills it that I must remain eight or ten months longer in London. Oh, my dear, good lady, how sweet is some degree of liberty! I had a kind Prince, but was obliged at times to be dependent on base souls. I often sighed for release, and now I have it in some measure. I am quite sensible of this benefit, though my mind is burdened with more work. The consciousness of being no longer a bond-servant sweetens all my toils. But, dear as liberty is to me, I do hope on my return again to enter the service of Prince Esterhazy, solely for the sake of my poor family. I doubt much whether I shall find this desire realized, for in his letter my Prince complains of my long absence, and exacts my speedy return in the most absolute terms; which, however, I cannot comply with, owing to a new contract I have entered into here. I, alas! expect my dismissal; but I hope even in that case that God will be gracious to me, and enable me in some degree to remedy the loss by my own industry. Meanwhile I console myself by the hope of soon hearing from you. You shall receive my promised new symphony two months hence; but in order to inspire me with good ideas, I beg you will write to me, and a long letter too. Yours, etc. HAYDN. To Frau v. Genzinger. LONDON, Oct. 13, 1791. I take the liberty of earnestly entreating you to advance 150 florins for a short time to my wife, provided you do not imagine that since my journey I have become a bad manager. No, my kind, good friend, God blesses my efforts. Three circumstances are alone to blame. In the first place, since I have been here, I have repaid my Prince the 450 florins he advanced for my journey; secondly, I can demand no interest from my bank obligations, having placed them under your care, and not being able to remember either the names or the numbers, so I cannot write a receipt; thirdly, I cannot yet apply for the 5883 florins (1000 of which I recently placed in my Prince's hands, and the rest with the Count v. Fries), especially because it is English money. You will, therefore, see that I am no spendthrift. This leads me to hope that you will not refuse my present request, to lend my wife 150 florins. This letter must be your security, and would be valid in any court. I will repay the interest of the money with a thousand thanks on my return. I am, etc., HAYDN. ...I believe you received my letter the very same day that I was reading your cruel reproach that Haydn was capable of forgetting his friend and benefactress. Oh! how often do I long to be beside you at the piano, even for a quarter of an hour, and then to have some good German soup. But we cannot have everything in this world. May God only vouchsafe to grant me the health that I have hitherto enjoyed, and may I preserve it by good conduct and out of gratitude to the Almighty! That you are well is to me the most delightful of all news. May Providence long watch over you! I hope to see you in the course of six months, when I shall, indeed, have much to tell you. Good-night! it is time to go to bed; it is half-past eleven o'clock. One thing more. To insure the safety of the money, Herr Hamberger, a good friend of mine, a man of tall stature, our landlord, will bring you this letter himself, and you can with impunity entrust him with the money; but I beg you will take a receipt both from him and from my wife. Among other things, Herr v. Kees writes to me that he should like to know my position in London, as there are so many different reports about me in Vienna. From my youth upwards I have been exposed to envy, so it does not surprise me when any attempt is made wholly to crush my poor talents; but the Almighty above is my support. My wife wrote to me that Mozart depreciates me very much, but this I will never believe. If true, I forgive him. There is no doubt that I find many who are envious of me in London also, and I know them almost all. Most of them are Italians. But they can do me no harm, for my credit with this nation has been firmly established far too many years. Rest assured that, if I had not met with a kind reception, I would long since have gone back to Vienna. I am beloved and esteemed by everyone, except, indeed, professors [of music]. As for my remuneration, Mozart can apply to Count Fries for information, in whose hands I placed 500 pounds, and 1000 guilders in those of my Prince, making together nearly 6000 florins. I daily thank my Creator for this boon, and I have good hope that I may bring home a couple of thousands besides, notwithstanding, my great outlay and the cost of the journey. I will now no longer intrude on your time. How badly this is written! What is Pater ---- doing? My compliments to him. Yours, etc. HAYDN. To Frau v. Genzinger. LONDON, Nov. 17, 1791. I write in the greatest haste, to request that you will send the accompanying packet, addressed to you, to Herr v. Kees, as it contains the two new symphonies I promised. I waited for a good opportunity, but could hear of none; I have therefore been obliged to send them after all by post. I beg you will ask Herr v. Kees to have a rehearsal of both these symphonies, as they are very delicate, particularly the last movement in D, which I recommend to be given as pianissimo as possible, and the tempo very quick. I will write to you again in a few days. Nota bene, I was obliged to enclose both the symphonies to you, not knowing the address of Herr v. Kees. I am, etc. HAYDN. P.S.--I only returned here to-day from the country. I have been staying with a mylord for the last fortnight, a hundred miles from London. To Frau v. Genzinger. LONDON, Dec. 20, 1791. I am much surprised that you did not get my letter at the same time as the two symphonies, having put them myself into the post here, and given every direction about them. My mistake was not having enclosed the letter in the packet. This is what often happens, dear lady, with those who have too much head work. I trust, however, that the letter reached you soon afterwards, but in case it did not, I must here explain that both symphonies were intended for Herr v. Kees, but with the stipulation that, after being copied by his order, the scores were to be given up to you, so that you may prepare a pianoforte arrangement of them, if you are so disposed. The particular symphony intended for you will be finished by the end of February at latest. I regret much having been obliged to forward the heavy packet to you, from not knowing Herr v. Kees's address; but he will, of course, repay you the cost of postage, and also, I hope, hand you over seven ducats. May I, therefore, ask you to employ a portion of that sum in copying on small paper my often-applied-for symphony in E minor, and forward it to me by post as soon as possible, for it may perhaps be six months before a courier is despatched from Vienna, and I am in urgent need of the symphony. Further, I must plague you once more by asking you to buy at Artaria's my last pianoforte sonata in A flat, that is, with 4 B flat minor, with violin and violoncello, and also another piece, the fantasia in C, without accompaniment, for these pieces are not yet published in London; but be so good as not to mention this to Herr Artaria, or he might anticipate the sale in England. I beg you will deduct the price from the seven ducats. To return to the aforesaid symphonies, I must tell you that I sent you a pianoforte arrangement of the andante in C minor by Herr Diettenhofer. It is reported here, however, that he either died on the journey, or met with some serious accident. You had better look over both pieces at your leisure. The principal part of the letter I entrusted to Herr Diettenhofer was the description of a Doctor's degree being conferred on me at Oxford, and all the honours I then received. I must take this opportunity of mentioning that three weeks ago the Prince of Wales invited me to his brother's country seat. The Prince presented me to the Duchess (a daughter of the King of Prussia), who received me very graciously, and said many flattering things. She is the most charming lady in the world, possesses much intelligence, plays the piano, and sings very pleasingly. I stayed two days there, because on the first day a slight indisposition prevented her having any music; on the second day, however, she remained beside me from ten o'clock at night, when the music began, till two hours after midnight. No compositions played but Haydn's. I directed the symphonies at the piano. The sweet little lady sat close beside me at my left hand, and hummed all the pieces from memory, having heard them so repeatedly in Berlin. The Prince of Wales sat on my right hand, and accompanied me very tolerably on the violoncello. They made me sing too. The Prince of Wales is having me painted just now, and the portrait is to be hung up in his private sitting-room. The Prince of Wales is the handsomest man on God's earth; he has an extraordinary love of music, and a great deal of feeling, but very little money. Nota bene, this is entre nous. His kindness gratifies me far more than any self-interest; on the third day, as I could not get any post-horses, the Duke of York sent me two stages with his own. Now, dear lady, I should like to reproach you a little for believing that I prefer London to Vienna, and find my residence here more agreeable than in my fatherland. I am far from hating London, but I could not reconcile myself to spend my life there; no, not even to amass millions; my reasons I will tell you when we meet. I think of my home, and embracing once more all my old friends, with the delight of a child; only I deeply lament that the great Mozart will not be of the number, if it be true, which I trust it is not, that he is dead. Posterity will not see such talent as his for the next hundred years! I am happy to hear that you and yours are all so well. I, too, have hitherto been in excellent health, till eight days since, when I was attacked by English rheumatism, and so severely that sometimes I could not help crying out aloud; but I hope soon to get quit of it, as I have adopted the usual custom here, and have wrapped myself up from head to foot in flannel. Pray excuse my bad writing. In the hope of soon being gratified by a letter, and with all esteem for yourself, and best regards to your husband, my dear Fraulein Pepi, and the others. I am, etc., HAYDN. P.S.--Pray give my respects to Herr v. Kreybich [chamber music director to Joseph II]. To Frau v. Genzinger. LONDON, Jan. 17, 1792. DEAREST AND KINDEST LADY, I must ask your forgiveness a thousand times; and I own and bemoan that I have been too dilatory in the performance of my promise, but if you could only see how I am importuned to attend private concerts, causing me great loss of time, and the mass of work with which I am burdened, you would indeed, dear lady, feel the utmost compassion for me. Never in my life did I write so much in one year as during the last, which has indeed utterly exhausted me, and it will do me good to be able to take a little rest when I return home. At present I am working for Salomon's concerts, and feel bound to take all possible trouble, for our rivals of the Professional Society have sent for my pupil Pleyel from Strassburg, to direct their concerts. So a bloody harmonious war will now commence between master and scholar. All the newspapers have begun to discuss the subject, but I think an alliance will soon ensue, my reputation here being so firmly established. Pleyel, on his arrival, displayed so much modesty towards me that he gained my goodwill afresh. We are very often together, which is much to his credit, and he knows how to appreciate his "father"; we will share our laurels fairly, and each go home satisfied. Professional Concerts met with a great misfortune on the 14th of this month, by the Pantheon being entirely burned down, a theatre only built last year. It was the work of an incendiary, and the damage is estimated at more than 100,000 pounds sterling; so there is not a single Italian theatre in London at this moment. Now, my dear angelic lady, I have a little fault to find with you. How often have I reiterated my request to have my symphony in E minor, of which I sent you the theme, copied out on small paper, and sent to me by post? Long have I sighed for it, and if I do not get it by the end of next month I shall lose twenty guineas. Herr v. Kees writes that the copy may possibly arrive in London three months hence, or three years, for there is no chance of a courier being sent off at present. I also told Herr v. Kees in the same letter to take charge of this, and if he could not do so, I ventured to transfer the commission to you, flattering myself that my urgent request would certainly be fulfilled by your kindness. I also desired Herr v. Kees to repay you the cost of the postage you paid for his packet. Kindest and most charming Frau v. Genzinger, I once more beg you to see to this matter, for it is really a work of mercy, and when we meet I will explain my reasons, respectfully kiss your fair hands, and repay my debt with gratitude. The celebration you mention in honour of my poor abilities touched me deeply, but still not so profoundly as if you had considered it more perfect. Perhaps I may supply this imperfection by another symphony which I will shortly send you; I say perhaps, because I (or rather my brain) am in truth weary. Providence alone can repair the deficiency in my powers, and to Him I daily pray for aid, for without His support I should indeed be a poor creature! And now, my kind and dear friend, I venture to hope for your indulgence. Oh yes! your portrait is at this moment before me, and I hear it say, "Well, for this time, you odious Haydn, I will forgive you, but--but!" No, no, I mean henceforth strictly to fulfill my duties. I must conclude for to-day by saying that now, as ever, I am, with the highest esteem, yours, etc., HAYDN. To Frau v. Genzinger. LONDON, Feb. 2, 1792. I have to-day received your kind letter, and also the fantasia, and sonata a tre. I was, however, rather vexed, on opening the packet, not to find the long-looked-for symphony in E minor, which I had fully hoped for, and expected. Dear lady, I entreat you to send it at once, written on small post paper, and I will gladly pay all expenses, for Heaven alone can tell when the symphonies from Brussels may arrive here. I cannot dispense with this one, without incurring great loss. Pray forgive my plaguing you so often on the subject, but I shall indeed be truly grateful if you will send it. Being overwhelmed with work at present, I cannot as yet write to Herr v. Kees. Pray, then, apply to him yourself for the said symphony. With my kind respects, I am, yours, etc., HAYDN. You shall have a good portion of the sewing needles. To Frau v. Genzinger. LONDON, March 2, 1792. Yesterday morning I received your valued letter, and also the long-looked-for symphony. I humbly kiss your hands for sending it so safely and quickly. I had indeed received it six days previously from Brussels, through Herr v. Kees; but the score was more useful, as a good deal must be altered in it to suit the English taste. I only regret that I must trouble you so frequently with my commissions, especially as at present I cannot adequately testify my gratitude. I do positively assure and declare to you that this causes me great embarrassment, and indeed often makes me feel very sad; the more so that, owing to various urgent causes, I am unable to send you as yet the new symphony dedicated to you. First, because I wish to alter and embellish the last movement, which is too feeble when compared with the first. I felt this conviction myself quite as much as the public, when it was performed for the first time last Friday; notwithstanding which, it made the most profound impression on the audience. The second reason is that I really dread the risk of its falling into other hands. I was not a little startled when I read the unpleasant intelligence about the sonata. By Heavens! I would rather have lost twenty-five ducats than have suffered such a theft, and the only one who can have done this is my own copyist; but I fervently hope to supply the loss through Madame Tost, for I do not wish to incur any reproaches from her. You must therefore, dear lady, be indulgent towards me, until I can towards the end of July myself have the pleasure of placing in your hands the sonata, as well as the symphony. Nota bene, the symphony is to be given by myself, but the sonata by Madame Tost. It is equally impossible for me to send Herr v. Kees the promised symphonies at present, for here too there is a great want of faithful copyists. If I had time, I would write them out myself, but no day, not a single one, am I free from work, and I shall thank the good Lord when I can leave London; the sooner the better. My labours are augmented by the arrival of my pupil Pleyel, who has been summoned here by the Professional Society to direct their concerts. He brought with him a number of new compositions, which were, however, written long ago! He accordingly promised to give a new piece every evening. On seeing this, I could easily perceive that there was a dead set against me, so I also announced publicly that I would likewise give twelve different new pieces; so in order to keep my promise, and to support poor Salomon, I must be the victim, and work perpetually. I do feel it, however, very much. My eyes suffer most, and my nights are very sleepless, but with God's help I will overcome it all. The Professors wished to put a spoke in my wheel because I did not join their concerts, but the public is just. Last year I received great applause, but this year still more. Pleyel's presumption is everywhere criticized, and yet I love him, and have gone to his concert each time, and been the first to applaud him. I sincerely rejoice that you and yours are well. My kind regards to all. The time draws near to put my trunks in travelling order. Oh! how delighted shall I be to see you again, and to show personally all the esteem that I felt for you in absence, and that I ever shall feel for you. Yours, etc., HAYDN. P.S.--Please apologize to Herr v. Kees for want of time preventing my sending him the new symphonies. I hope to have the honour of directing them myself in your house, at our next Christmas music. To Frau v. Genzinger. LONDON, April 24, 1792. I yesterday evening received with much pleasure your last letter of 5 April, with the extract from the newspaper, extolling my poor talents to the Viennese. I must confess that I have gained considerable credit with the English in vocal music, by this little chorus, [The "Storm Chorus," see p. 91.] my first attempt with English words. It is only to be regretted that, during my stay here, I have not been able to write more pieces of a similar nature, but we could not find any boys to sing at our concerts, they having been already engaged for a year past to sing at other concerts, of which there are a vast number. In spite of the great opposition of my musical enemies, who are so bitter against me, more especially leaving nothing undone with my pupil Pleyel this winter to humble me, still, thank God! I may say that I have kept the upper hand. I must, however, admit that I am quite wearied and worn out with so much work, and look forward with eager longing to the repose which will soon take pity on me. I thank you, dear lady, for your kind solicitude about me. Just as you thought, I do not require to go to Paris at present, from a variety of reasons, which I will tell you when we meet. I am in daily expectation of an order from my Prince, to whom I wrote lately, to tell me where I am to go. It is possible that he may summon me to Frankfort; if not, I intend (entre nous) to go by Holland to the King of Prussia at Berlin, thence to Leipzig, Dresden, Prague, and last of all to Vienna, where I hope to embrace all my friends. Ever, with high esteem, etc., HAYDN. INFORMATION ABOUT THIS E-TEXT EDITION The preceding is the text of "Haydn," a biography of the composer Franz Joseph Haydn, from the Master Musicians series. The book itself was authored by J. Cuthbert Hadden, while the Master Musicians series itself was edited by Frederick J. Crowest. "Haydn" was published in 1902 by J.M. Dent & Co. (LONDON), represented at the time in New York by E.P. Dutton & Co. Each page was cut out of the original book with an X-acto knife and fed into an Automatic Document Feeder Scanner to make this e-text, so the original book was, well, ruined in order to save it. Some adaptations from the original text were made while formatting it for an e-text. Italics in the original book were ignored in making this e-text, unless they referred to proper nouns, in which case they are put in quotes in the e-text. Italics are problematic because they are not easily rendered in ASCII text. Words enclosed in brackets [ ] are original footnotes inserted into the text. This electronic text was prepared by John Mamoun with help from numerous other proofreaders, including those associated with Charles Franks' Distributed Proofreaders website. Thanks to R. Zimmermann, S. Morrison, B. Wyman, V. Walker, N. Harris, T. Mills, C. Franks, F. Clowes, T. Mills, E. Beach, D. McKee, D. Levy, D. Bindner, R. Rowe, K. Rieff, J. Cardillo, K. Peterson, H. Dank and several others for proof-reading. Version 11 of this text prepared by Andrew Sly. Numerous changes and corrections made by comparison with the original book. 
13272	----	BEETHOVEN'S LETTERS. (1790-1826.) FROM THE COLLECTION OF DR. LUDWIG NOHL. ALSO HIS LETTERS TO THE ARCHDUKE RUDOLPH, CARDINAL-ARCHBISHOP OF OLMÜTZ, K.W., FROM THE COLLECTION OF DR. LUDWIG RITTER VON KÖCHEL. TRANSLATED BY LADY WALLACE. _WITH A PORTRAIT AND FAC-SIMILE._ IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL. II. BOSTON: OLIVER DITSON & CO., 277 WASHINGTON STREET. NEW YORK: C.H. DITSON & CO. CONTENTS OF VOLUME II. SECOND PART. LIFE'S MISSION. 1815-1822. (_Continued._) 216. To Steiner & Co. 217. To the Same 218. To Tobias Haslinger 219. To the Same 220. To Baroness Dorothea von Ertmann 221. To Zmeskall 222. To Steiner & Co. 223. To G. del Rio 224. To the Same 225. To the Same 226. To the Same 227. To the Same 228. To Czerny 229. To the Same 230. To the Same 231. To Zmeskall 232. To G. del Rio 233. To Frau von Streicher 234. To the Same 235. To the Same 236. To F. Ries, London 237. To Zmeskall 238. To the Same 239. To Frau von Streicher 240. To G. del. Rio 241. To Zmeskall 242. To the Same 243. To the Same 244. To the Same 245. To Frau von Streicher 246. To the Same 247. To the Same 248. To the Same 249. To the Archduke Rudolph 250. To G. del Rio 251. To the Same 252. To the Archduke Rudolph 253. To G. del Rio 254. To the Same 255. To Czerny 256. To F. Ries, London 257. To the Rechnungsrath Vincenz Hauschka 258. To the Archduke Rudolph 259. To the Same 260. To Ferdinand Ries 261. To the Same 262. To the Same 263. To the Philharmonic Society in Laibach 264. To Ferdinand Ries, London 265. To the Archduke Rudolph 266. To the Same 267. To the Same 268. To the Same 269. To the Same 270. To the Same 271. To the Same 272. To the Same 273. To the Same 274. To the Same 275. To the Same 276. To Herr Blöchlinger 277. Canon on Herr Schlesinger 278. To Artaria, Vienna 279. A Sketch by Beethoven 280. To Artaria 281. Petition to the Magistracy 282. To F. Ries, London 283. To the Archduke Rudolph 284. Memorandum 285. To the Archduke Rudolph 286. To the Same 287. To the Royal and Imperial High Court of Appeal 288. To the Archduke Rudolph 289. Testimonial in favor of Herr von Kandeler 290. To Theodore Amadeus Hoffmann 291. To Haslinger 292. To the Same 293. To the Archduke Rudolph 294. To the Same 295. To Artaria & Co. 296. To Bolderini 297. To the Archduke Rudolph 298. To Artaria & Co. 299. To Haslinger 300. To the Archduke Rudolph 301. To the Same 302. To Steiner & Co. 303. To a Friend 304. To the Archduke Rudolph 305. To F. Ries, London 306. To Herren Peters & Co., Leipzig 307. To the Same 308. To the Same 309. To Artaria 310. To Herr Peters, Leipzig 311. To the Archduke Rudolph 312. To Herr Peters, Leipzig 313. To F. Ries, London 314. To Ignaz Ritter von Seyfried THIRD PART. LIFE'S TROUBLES AND CLOSE 1823-1827. 315. To Zelter 316. To F. Ries, London 317. To Schindler 318. To the Same 319. To Herr Kind 320. To Cherubini 321. To Schindler 322. To Herr Peters, Leipzig 323. To Zelter 324. To the Archduke Rudolph 325. To Schindler 326. To F. Ries, London 327. To Herr Lissner, Petersburg 328. To Schindler 329. To the Same 330. To the Same 331. To the Same 332. To the Same 333. To the Same 334. To the Same 335. To the Same 336. To the Archduke Rudolph 337. To Schindler 338. To Pilat, editor of the "Austrian Observer" 339. To Schindler 340. To the Same 341. To the Same 342. To the Same 343. To the Same 344. To the Same 345. To the Archduke Rudolph 346. To F. Ries 347. To Herr von Könneritz 348. To Herr von Könneritz 349. To Schindler 350. To his Nephew 351. To the Archduke Rudolph 352. To the Same 353. To the Same 354. To F. Ries, London 355. To the Same 356. To the Archduke Rudolph 357. To the Same 358. To Schindler 359. To the Same 360. To the Same 361. To Herr Grillparzer 362. To Herr Probst, Leipzig 363. To Schindler 364. To Herr von Rzehatschek 365. To Prince Trautmannsdorf 366. To Count Moritz Lichnowsky 367. To Herr Schuppanzigh 368. To Schindler 369. To Herr von Sartorius 370. To Schindler 371. To the Same 372. To the Same 373. To the Same 374. To the Same 375. To Steiner & Co 376. To Haslinger 377. To Steiner & Co 378. To Haslinger 379. To the Same 380. To the Same 381. To M. Diabelli 382. To Herr Probst, Leipzig 383. To Haslinger 384. To Herr Schott, Mayence 385. To the Archduke Rudolph 386. To his Nephew 387. To Herr Peters 388. To Hans Georg Nägeli, Zurich 389. To his Nephew 390. To Herr Nägeli 391. To Herr Schott, Mayence 392. To Hauschka 393. To Herr Nägeli, Zurich 394. To the Archduke Rudolph 395. To Herr Schott, Mayence 396. To Carl Holz 397. To the Same 398. To Herr Schott, Mayence 399. To Friends 400. To Schindler 401. To Linke 402. To * * * 403. To F. Ries 404. To Herr Jenger, Vienna 405. To Schott 406. To Ludwig Rellstab 407. To * * * 408. To his brother Johann 409. To Herr von Schlemmer 410. To his Nephew 411. To the Same 412. To Dr. Braunhofer 413. To his Nephew 414. To the Same 415. To the Same 416. To the Same 417. To his Nephew 418. To the Same 419. To the Same 420. To the Same 421. To the Same 422. To the Same 423. To the Same 424. To the Same 425. To the Same 426. To the Same 427. To the Same 428. To the Same 429. To the Same 430. To the Same 431. To the Same 432. To the Same 433. To the Same 434. To his brother Johann, Gneixendorf 435. To his Nephew 436. To the Same 437. To the Same 438. To his Copyist 439. To his Nephew 440. To the Same 441. To Zmeskall 442. To Herr Friedrich Kuhlau 443. To his Nephew 444. To the Same 445. To Herr von Schlesinger 446. To his Nephew 447. To the Same 448. To the Same 449. To the Same 450. To the Abbé Maximilian Stadler 451. To Gottfried Weber 452. To Herr Probst, Leipzig 453. To Stephan von Breuning 454. To the Same 455. To the Same 456. Testimonial for C. Holz 457. To C. Holz 458. To the King of Prussia 459. To Wegeler 460. To Tobias Haslinger 461. To the Same 462. To Carl Holz 463. To Dr. Bach 464. To Wegeler 465. To Sir George Smart, London 466. To Herr Moscheles 467. To Schindler 468. To Baron von Pasqualati 469. To the Same 470. To Sir George Smart, London 471. To Baron von Pasqualati 472. To the Same 473. To Herr Moscheles 474. To Schindler 475. To Herr Moscheles 476. Codicil BEETHOVEN'S LETTERS. 216. TO STEINER & CO. The Adjutant's innocence is admitted, and there is an end of it! We beg you to be so good as to send us two copies in score of the Symphony in A. We likewise wish to know when we may expect a copy of the Sonata for Baroness von Ertmann, as she leaves this, most probably, the day after to-morrow. No. 3--I mean the enclosed note--is from a musical friend in Silesia, not a rich man, for whom I have frequently had my scores written out. He wishes to have these works of Mozart in his library; as my servant, however, has the good fortune, by the grace of God, to be one of the greatest blockheads in the world (which is saying a good deal), I cannot make use of him for this purpose. Be so kind therefore as to send to Herr ---- (for the _Generalissimus_ can have no dealings with a petty tradesman), and desire him to _write down the price of each work_ and send it to me with my two scores in A, and also an answer to my injunction about Ertmann, as early to-day as you can (_presto, prestissimo_!)--_nota bene_, the _finale_ to be _a march in double-quick time_. I recommend the best execution of these orders, so that no further obstacle may intervene to my recovery. L. VAN BEETHOVEN, The best _generalissimus_ for the good, But the devil himself for the bad! 217. TO STEINER. The Lieutenant-General is requested to send his _Diabolum_, that I may tell him myself my opinion of the "Battle," which is _printed in the vilest manner_. There is much to be altered. THE G----S. 218. TO TOBIAS HASLINGER. MY GOOD ADJUTANT,-- Best of all little fellows! Do see again about that house, and get it for me. I am very anxious also to procure _the treatise on education_. It is of some importance to me to be able to compare my own opinions on this subject with those of others, and thus still further improve them. As for our juvenile Adjutant, I think I shall soon have hit on the right system for his education. Your CONTRA FA, _Manu propria._ 219. TO THE HIGH-BORN HERR HASLINGER, HONORARY MEMBER OF THE HÖFEN GRABENS AND PATER NOSTER GÄSSCHEN. BEST OF ALL PRINTERS AND ENGRAVERS,-- Be kinder than kind, and throw off a hundred impressions of the accompanying small plate.[1] I will repay you threefold and fourfold. Farewell! Your BEETHOVEN. [Footnote 1: This is possibly the humorous visiting-card that Beethoven sometimes sent to his friends, with the inscription _Wir bleiben die Alten_ ("We are the same as ever"), and on reversing the card, a couple of asses stared them in the face! Frau Eyloff told me of a similar card that her brother Schindler once got from Beethoven on a New Year's day.] 220. TO BARONESS DOROTHEA VON ERTMANN.[1] Feb. 23, 1817. MY DEAR AND VALUED DOROTHEA CECILIA,-- You have no doubt often misjudged me, from my apparently forbidding manner; much of this arose from circumstances, especially in earlier days, when my nature was less understood than at present. You know the manifestations of those self-elected apostles who promote their interests by means very different from those of the true Gospel. I did not wish to be included in that number. Receive now what has been long intended for you,[2] and may it serve as a proof of my admiration of your artistic talent, and likewise of yourself! My not having heard you recently at Cz---- [Czerny's] was owing to indisposition, which at last appears to be giving way to returning health. I hope soon to hear how you get on at St. Polten [where her husband's regiment was at that time quartered], and whether you still think of your admirer and friend, L. VAN BEETHOVEN. My kindest regards to your excellent husband. [Footnote 1: It was admitted that she played Beethoven's compositions with the most admirable taste and feeling. Mendelssohn thought so in 1830 at Milan, and mentions it in his _Letters from Italy and Switzerland_.] [Footnote 2: Undoubtedly the Sonata dedicated to her, Op. 101.] 221. TO ZMESKALL. DEAR Z.,-- I introduce to your notice the bearer of this, young Bocklet, who is a very clever violin-player. If you can be of any service to him through your acquaintances, do your best for him, especially as he is warmly recommended to me from Prague.[1] As ever, your true friend, BEETHOVEN. [Footnote 1: Carl Maria Bocklet, a well-known and distinguished pianist in Vienna. He told me himself that he came for the first time to Vienna in 1817, where he stayed six weeks. On April 8th he gave a violin concert in the _Kleine Redoutensaale_. He brought a letter of introduction to Beethoven, from his friend Dr. Berger in Prague.] 222. TO STEINER & CO. The Lieutenant-General is desired to afford all aid and help to the young artist Bocklet from Prague. He is the bearer of this note, and a virtuoso on the violin. We hope that our command will be obeyed, especially as we subscribe ourselves, with the most vehement regard, your GENERALISSIMUS. 223. TO G. DEL RIO. I only yesterday read your letter attentively at home. I am prepared to give up Carl to you at any moment, although I think it best not to do so till after the examination on Monday; but I will send him sooner if you wish it. At all events it would be advisable afterwards to remove him from here, and to send him to Mölk, or some place where he will neither see nor hear anything more of his abominable mother. When he is in the midst of strangers, he will meet with less support, and find that he can only gain the love and esteem of others by his own merits. In haste, your BEETHOVEN. 224. TO G. DEL RIO. I request you, my dear friend, to inquire whether in any of the houses in your vicinity there are lodgings to be had at Michaelmas, consisting of a few rooms. You must not fail to do this for me to-day or to-morrow. Your friend, L. VAN BEETHOVEN. P.S.--N.B. Though I would gladly profit by your kind offer of living in your garden-house, various circumstances render this impossible. My kind regards to all your family. 225. TO G. DEL RIO. HOUSE OF GIANNATASIO!-- The treatise on the piano is a general one,--that is, it is a kind of compendium. Besides, I am pleased with the Swiss [probably Weber, a young musician who had been recommended to him], but the "Guaden" is no longer the fashion. In haste, the devoted servant and friend of the Giannatasio family, BEETHOVEN. 226. TO G. DEL RIO. You herewith receive through Carl, my dear friend, the ensuing quarter due to you. I beg you will attend more to the cultivation of his feelings and kindness of heart, as the latter in particular is the lever of all that is good; and no matter how a man's kindly feeling may be ridiculed or depreciated, still our greatest authors, such as Goethe and others, consider it an admirable quality; indeed, many maintain that without it no man can ever be very distinguished, nor can any depth of character exist. My time is too limited to say more, but we can discuss verbally how in my opinion Carl ought to be treated on this point. Your friend and servant, L. VAN BEETHOVEN. Alser Vorstadt--Beim Apfel, 2ter Étage, No. 12, Leiberz, Dressmaker. 227. TO G. DEL RIO. This is at any rate the first time that it has been necessary to remind me of an agreeable duty; very pressing business connected with my art, as well as other causes, made me totally forget the account, but this shall not occur again. As for my servant bringing home Carl in the evening, the arrangement is already made. In the mean time I thank you for having been so obliging as to send your servant for him yesterday, as I knew nothing about it, so that Carl probably must otherwise have remained at Czerny's. Carl's boots are too small, and he has repeatedly complained of this; indeed, they are so bad that he can scarcely walk, and it will take some time before they can be altered to fit him. This kind of thing ruins the feet, so I beg you will not allow him to wear them again till they are made larger. With regard to his pianoforte studies, I beg you will keep him strictly to them; otherwise his music-master would be of no use. Yesterday Carl could not play the whole day, I have repeatedly wished to hear him play over his lessons, but have been obliged to come away without doing so. "_La musica merita d'esser studiata._" Besides, the couple of hours now appointed for his music lessons are quite insufficient. I must therefore the more earnestly urge on you their being strictly adhered to. It is by no means unusual that this point should be attended to in an institute; an intimate friend of mine has also a boy at school, who is to become a professor of music, where every facility for study is afforded him; indeed, I was rather struck by finding the boy quite alone in a distant room practising, neither disturbing others, nor being himself disturbed. I beg you will allow me to send for Carl to-morrow about half-past ten o'clock, as I wish to see what progress he has made, and to take him with me to some musicians. I am, with all possible esteem, your friend, L. VAN BEETHOVEN. 228. TO CZERNY. DEAR CZERNY,-- I beg you will treat Carl with as much patience as possible; for though he does not as yet get on quite as you and I could wish, still I fear he will soon do even less, because (though I do not want him to know it) he is over-fatigued by the injudicious distribution of his lesson hours. Unluckily it is not easy to alter this; so pray, however strict you may be, show him every indulgence, which will, I am sure, have also a better effect on Carl under such unfavorable circumstances. With respect to his playing with you, when he has finally acquired the proper mode of fingering, and plays in right time, and gives the notes with tolerable correctness, you must only then first direct his attention to the mode of execution; and when he is sufficiently advanced, do not stop his playing on account of little mistakes, but only point them out at the end of the piece. Although I have myself given very little instruction, I have always followed this system, which quickly forms a _musician_; and this is, after all, one of the first objects of art, and less fatiguing both to master and scholar. In certain passages, like the following,-- [Music: Treble clef, sixteenth notes.] I wish all the fingers to be used; and also in similar ones, such as these,-- [Music: Treble clef, sixteenth notes.] &c. [Music: Treble clef, sixteenth notes.] &c. so that they may go very smoothly; such passages can indeed be made to sound very _perlés_, or like a pearl, played by fewer fingers, but sometimes we wish for a different kind of jewel.[1] More as to this some other time. I hope that you will receive these suggestions in the same kindly spirit in which they are offered and intended. In any event I am, and ever must remain, your debtor. May my candor serve as a pledge of my wish to discharge this debt at some future day! Your true friend, BEETHOVEN. [Footnote 1: Carl Czerny relates in the Vienna _A.M. Zeitung_ of 1845, No. 113, as follows:--"Beethoven came to me usually every day himself with the boy, and used to say to me, 'You must not think that you please me by making Carl play my works; I am not so childish as to wish anything of the kind. Give him whatever you think best.' I named Clementi. 'Yes, yes,' said he, 'Clementi is very good indeed;' and, added he, laughing, 'Give Carl occasionally what is _according to rule_, that he may hereafter come to what is _contrary to rule_.' After a hit of this sort, which he introduced into almost every speech, he used to burst into a loud peal of laughter. Having in the earlier part of his career been often reproached by the critics with his _irregularities_, he was in the habit of alluding to this with gay humor."] 229. TO CZERNY. DEAR CZERNY,-- I beg you will say nothing _on that particular subject_ at Giannatasio's, who dined with us on the day you were so good as to call on me; he requested this himself. I _will tell you the reason_ when we meet. I hope to be able to prove my gratitude for your patience with my nephew, that I may not always remain your debtor. In haste, Your friend, BEETHOVEN. 230. TO CZERNY. DEAR CZERNY,-- Can you in any way assist the man I now send to you (a pianoforte maker and tuner from Baden) in selling his instruments? Though small in size, their manufacture is solid. In haste, Your friend, BEETHOVEN. 231. TO ZMESKALL. Wednesday, July 3, 1817. DEAR ZMESKALL,-- I have changed my mind. It might hurt the feelings of Carl's mother to see her child in the house of a stranger, which would be more harsh than I like; so I shall allow her to come to my house to-morrow; a certain tutor at Puthon, of the name of Bihler, will also be present. I should be _extremely_ glad if you could be with me about six o'clock, but not later. Indeed, I earnestly beg you to come, as I am desirous to show the Court that you are present, for there is no doubt that a _Court Secretary_ will be held in higher estimation by them than a man _without an official character, whatever his moral character may be!_ Now, jesting apart, independent of my real affection for you, your coming will be of great service to me. I shall therefore expect you without fail. I beg you will not take my _badinage_ amiss. I am, with sincere esteem, Your friend, BEETHOVEN 232. TO G. DEL RIO. Your friend has no doubt told you of my intention to send for Carl early to-morrow. I wish to place his mother in a more creditable position with the neighborhood; so I have agreed to pay her the compliment of taking her son to see her in the company of a third person. This is to be done once a month. As to all that is past, I beg you will never allude to it again, either in speaking or writing, but forget it all--as I do. 233. TO FRAU VON STREICHER. I have been occupied in arranging my papers; an immense amount of patience is required for such an affair as putting them in order, but having once summoned it to our aid we must persevere, or the matter would never be completed. My papers, both musical and unmusical, are nearly arranged at last; it was like one of the seven labors of Hercules![1] [Footnote 1: Ries (in Wegeler's _Notizen_) relates: "Beethoven placed very little value on the MSS. of his pieces written out by himself; when once engraved they were usually scattered about the anteroom, or on the floor in the middle of his apartment, together with other music. I often arranged his music for him, but the moment Beethoven began to search for any piece, it was all strewed about again."] 234. TO FRAU VON STREICHER. You see what servants are! [He had gone out and taken the key with him.] Such is housekeeping! So long as I am ill, I would fain be on a different footing with those around me; for dearly as I usually love solitude, it is painful to me now, finding it scarcely possible, while taking baths and medicine, to employ myself as usual,--to which is added the grievous prospect that I may perhaps never get better. I place no confidence in my present physician, who at length pronounces my malady to be _disease of the lungs_. I will consider about engaging a housekeeper. If I could only have the faintest hope, in this corrupt Austrian State, of finding an honest person, the arrangement would be easily made; but--but!! [He wishes to hire a piano and pay for it in advance; the tone to be as loud as possible, to suit his defective hearing.] Perhaps you do not know, though I have not always had one of your pianos, that since 1809 I have invariably preferred yours. It is peculiarly hard on me to be a burden on any one, being accustomed rather to serve others than to be served by them. 235. TO FRAU VON STREICHER. I can only say that I am better; I thought much of death during the past night, but such thoughts are familiar to me by day also. 236. TO F. RIES,--LONDON. Vienna, July 9, 1817. MY DEAR FRIEND,-- The proposals in your esteemed letter of the 9th of June are very flattering, and my reply will show you how much I value them. Were it not for my unhappy infirmities, which entail both attendance and expense, particularly on a journey to a foreign country, I would _unconditionally_ accept the offer of the Philharmonic Society. But place yourself in my position, and consider how many more obstacles I have to contend with than any other artist, and then judge whether my demands (which I now annex) are unreasonable. I beg you will convey my conditions to the Directors of the above Society, namely:-- 1. I shall be in London early in January. 2. The two grand new symphonies shall be ready by that time; to become the exclusive property of the Society. 3. The Society to give me in return 300 guineas, and 100 for my travelling expenses, which will, however, amount to much more, as I am obliged to bring a companion. 4. As I am now beginning to work at these grand symphonies for the Society, I shall expect that (on receiving my consent) they will remit me here the sum of 150 guineas, so that I may provide a carriage, and make my other preparations at once for the journey. 5. The conditions as to my non-appearance in any other public orchestra, my not directing, and the preference always to be given to the Society on the offer of equal terms by them, are accepted by me; indeed, they would at all events have been dictated by my own sense of honor. 6. I shall expect the aid of the Society in arranging one, or more, benefit concerts in my behalf, as the case may be. The very friendly feeling of some of the Directors in your valuable body, and the kind reception of my works by all the artists, is a sufficient guaranty on this point, and will be a still further inducement to me to endeavor not to disappoint their expectations. 7. I request that I may receive the assent to and confirmation of these terms, signed by three Directors in the name of the Society. You may easily imagine how much I rejoice at the thoughts of becoming acquainted with the worthy Sir George Smart [Music Director], and seeing you and Mr. Neate again; would that I could fly to you myself instead of this letter! Your sincere well wisher and friend, LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN. [P.S. ON A SEPARATE SHEET OF PAPER.] DEAR RIES,-- I cordially embrace you! I have purposely employed another hand in my answer to the Society, that you might read it more easily, and present it to them. I place the most implicit reliance on your kindly feelings toward me. I hope that the Philharmonic Society may accept my proposals, and they may rest assured that I shall employ all my energies to fulfil in the most satisfactory manner the flattering commission of so eminent a society of artists. What is the strength of your orchestra? How many violins, &c.? Have you _one or two sets of wind instruments_? Is the concert room large and sonorous? 237. TO ZMESKALL. NUSSDORF, July 23, 1817. MY DEAR GOOD ZMESKALL,-- I shall soon see you again in town. What is the proper price for fronting a pair of boots? I have to pay my servant for this, who is always running about. I am really in despair at being condemned by my defective hearing to pass the greater part of my life with this most odious class of people, and to be in some degree dependent on them. To-morrow, early, my servant will call on you, and bring me back a _sealed answer_. 238. TO ZMESKALL. August 12, 1817. MY DEAR GOOD Z.,-- I heard of your indisposition with great regret. As for myself, I am often in despair, and almost tempted to put an end to my life, for all these remedies seem to have no end. May God have compassion on me, for I look upon myself to be as good as lost! I have a great deal to say to you. That this servant is a _thief_, I cannot doubt--he must be sent away; my health requires living _at home_ and greater comfort. I shall be glad to have your opinion on this point. If my condition is not altered, instead of being in London I shall probably be in my grave. I thank God that the thread of my life will soon be spun out. In haste, your BEETHOVEN. N.B. I wish you to buy me a quarter of a yard of green wax-cloth, green on both sides. It seems incredible that I have not been able to get anything of the kind from these _green_ people here. It is far.... [illegible]. [X. brought the Trio in C minor (Op. 1, No. 3) to show to Beethoven, having arranged it as a quintet for stringed instruments (published by Artaria as Op. 104). Beethoven evidently discovered a good many faults in the work; still, the undertaking had sufficient attractions to induce him to correct it himself, and to make many changes in it. A very different score was thus of course produced from that of X., on the cover of whose work the genial master, in a fit of good humor, inscribed with his own hand the following title:-- A Terzet arranged as a Quintet, by _Mr. Well-meaning_, translated from the semblance into the reality of five parts, and exalted from the depths of wretchedness to a certain degree of excellence, by _Mr. Goodwill_. Vienna, Aug. 14, 1817. N.B. The original three-part score of the Quintet has been sacrificed as a solemn burnt-offering to the subterranean gods.][1] [Footnote 1: This Quintet appeared as Op. 104 at Artaria's in Vienna.] 239. TO FRAU VON STREICHER. When we next meet, you will be surprised to hear what I have in the mean time learned. My poor Carl was only misled for the moment; but there are men who are brutes, and of this number is the priest here, who deserves to be well cudgelled. 240. TO G. DEL RIO. August 19, 1817. I unluckily received your letter yesterday too late, for she had already been here; otherwise I would have shown her to the door, as she richly deserved. I sincerely thank Fraulein N. for the trouble she took in writing down the gossip of this woman. Though an enemy to all tattling and gossip, still this is of importance to us; so I shall write to her, and also give her letter to me to Herr A.S. [Advocate Schönauer?] I may possibly have let fall some words in her presence in reference to the recent occurrence, and the irregularity on your part, but I cannot in the slightest degree recall ever having written to her about you. It was only an attempt on her side to exasperate you against me; and thus to influence you and obtain more from you, in the same way that she formerly reported to me all sorts of things that you had said about me; but I took no heed of her talk. On this recent occasion I wished to try whether she might not be improved by a more patient and conciliatory mode of conduct: I imparted my intention to Herr A.S., but it has utterly failed; and on Sunday I made up my mind to adhere to the former necessary severity, as even during the glimpse she had of Carl, she contrived to inoculate him with some of her venom. In short, we must be guided by the zodiac, and only allow her to see Carl twelve times a year, and then barricade her so effectually that she cannot smuggle in even a pin, whether he is with you or me, or with a third person. I really thought that by entirely complying with her wishes, it might have been an incitement to her to improve, and to acknowledge my complete unselfishness. Perhaps I may see you to-morrow. Frau S. can order the shoes and stockings and all that Carl requires, and I will remit her the money at once. I beg that you will always order and buy anything Carl ought to have, without any reference to me, merely informing me of the amount, which I will forthwith discharge, without waiting for the end of the quarter. I will take care that Carl has a new coat for the next examination. One thing more. The mother affects to receive her information from a person in your house. If you cannot arrange with Czerny to bring Carl home, he must not go at all; "_trau, schau, wem!_" [trust not till you try.] The only impression that his mother ought to make on Carl is what I have already told him,--namely, to respect her as _his mother_, but _not to follow her example in any respect_; he must be strongly warned against this. Yours truly, L. V. BEETHOVEN. 241. TO ZMESKALL. Sept. 11, 1817. DEAR Z.,-- The answer from London arrived yesterday [see No. 236], but in English. Do you know any one who could translate it verbally for us? In haste, Your BEETHOVEN. 242. TO ZMESKALL. Oct. 20, 1817. DEAR Z.,-- The devil himself cannot persuade your _Famulus_ to take away the wine. Pray forgive my behavior yesterday; I intended to have asked your pardon this very afternoon. _In my present condition_ I require _indulgence_ from every one, for I am a poor unfortunate creature! In haste, as ever, yours. 243. TO ZMESKALL. DEAR Z.,-- I give up the journey; at least I will not pledge myself on this point. The matter must be more maturely considered. In the mean time the work is already sent off to the Prince Regent. _If they want me they can have me_, and I am still at _liberty_ to say _yes_! or _no_! Liberty!!!! what more can any one desire!!! 244. TO ZMESKALL. DEAR Z.,-- Don't be angry about my note. Are you not aware of my present condition, which is like that of Hercules with Queen Omphale??? I asked you to buy me a looking-glass like yours, which I now return, but if you do not require it, I wish you would send yours back to me to-day, for mine is broken. Farewell, and do not write in such high-flown terms about me, for never have I felt so strongly as now the strength and the weakness of human nature. Continue your regard for me. 245. TO FRAU VON STREICHER. The Autumn of 1817. I have had an interview with your husband, whose sympathy did me both good and harm, for Streicher almost upset my resignation. God alone knows the result! but as I have always assisted my fellow-men when I had the power to do so, I also rely on his mercy to me. Educate your daughter carefully, that she may make a good wife. To-day happens to be Sunday; so I will quote you something out of the Bible,--"Love one another." I conclude with best regards to your best of daughters, and with the wish that all your wounds may be healed. When you visit the ancient ruins [Frau Streicher was in Baden], do not forget that Beethoven has often lingered there; when you stray through the silent pine forests, do not forget that Beethoven often wrote poetry there, or, as it is termed, _composed_. 246. TO FRAU VON STREICHER. How deeply am I indebted to you, my excellent friend, and I have become such a poor creature that I have no means of repaying you. I am very grateful to Streicher for all the trouble he has taken on my behalf [about a house in the Gärtner Strasse], and beg he will continue his inquiries. God will, I hope, one day enable me to return benefit for benefit, but this being at present impossible, grieves me most of all.... Now Heaven be praised! [he thus winds up a long letter about a bad servant,] I have contrived to collect all these particulars for you with no little toil and trouble, and God grant that I may never, never more be obliged to speak, or write, or think again on such a subject, for mud and mire are not more pernicious to artistic soil, than such devilry to any man!!! 247. TO FRAU VON STREICHER. As to Frau von Stein [stone], I beg she will not allow Herr von Steiner to turn into stone, that he may still be of service to me; nor must Frau von Stein become too stony towards Herr von Steiner, &c. My good Frau von Streicher, do not play any trick [Streiche] to your worthy little husband, but rather be to all others Frau von Stein [stone]!!!! Where are the coverlets for the beds? [Music: Treble clef. Where? where?] 248. TO FRAU VON STREICHER. ... It is now very evident from all this that if _you_ do not kindly superintend things for me, I, with my _infirmities_, must meet with the _same fate_ as usual at the hands of these people. Their _ingratitude_ towards you is what chiefly degrades both of them in my eyes. But I don't understand your allusion about gossip? on one occasion alone can I remember having forgotten myself for the moment, but _with very different people_. This is all I can say on the subject. For my part I neither encourage nor listen to the gossip of the lower orders. I have often given you hints on the subject, without telling you a word of what I had heard. Away! away! away! with such things! 249. TO THE ARCHDUKE RUDOLPH. Nussdorf, Sept. 1, 1817. I hope to be able to join you in Baden; but my invalid condition still continues, and though in some respects improved, my malady is far from being entirely cured. I have had, and still have, recourse to remedies of every kind and shape; I must now give up the long-cherished hope of ever being wholly restored. I hear that Y.R.H. looks wonderfully well, and though many false inferences may be drawn from this as to good health, still every one tells me that Y.R.H. is much better, and in this I feel sincerely interested. I also trust that when Y.R.H. again comes to town, I may assist you in those works dedicated to the Muses. My confidence is placed on Providence, who will vouchsafe to hear my prayer, and one day set me free from all my troubles, for I have served Him faithfully from my childhood, and done good whenever it has been in my power; so my trust is in Him alone, and I feel that the Almighty will not allow me to be utterly crushed by all my manifold trials. I wish Y.R.H. all possible good and prosperity, and shall wait on you the moment you return to town. [K.] 250. TO G. DEL RIO Vienna, Nov. 12, 1817. My altered circumstances render it possible that I may not be able to leave Carl under your care beyond the end of this quarter; so, as in duty bound, I give you this _warning_ a quarter in advance. Though it is painful to admit it, my straitened circumstances leave me no choice in the matter; had it been otherwise, how gladly would I have presented you with an additional quarter's payment when I removed Carl, as a slight tribute of my gratitude. I do hope you will believe that such are my _genuine and sincere_ wishes on the subject. If on the other hand I leave Carl with you for the ensuing quarter, commencing in February, I will apprise you of it early in January, 1818. I trust you will grant me this _favor_, and that I shall not solicit it in vain. If I ever enjoy better health, so that I can _earn more money_, I shall not fail to evince my gratitude, knowing well how much more you have done for Carl than I had any right to expect; and I can with truth say that to be obliged to confess my inability to requite your services at this moment, distresses me much. I am, with sincere esteem, your friend, L. V. BEETHOVEN. 251. TO G. DEL RIO. MY DEAR FRIEND,-- I have been hitherto unable to answer your friendly letter, having been much occupied and still far from well. As to your proposal, it merits both gratitude and consideration. I must say that the same idea formerly occurred to me about Carl; at this moment, however, I am in the most unsettled state. This was why I made the stipulation to which I begged you to agree, namely, to let you know in the last month of the present quarter whether Carl was to continue with you. In this way our plans would neither be hurried nor demolished. I am, besides, well aware that it can be no advantage to you to have Carl either on his present terms, or according to your last proposal, and on that very account I wished to point out to you in my letter how gladly, besides the usual remuneration, I would have testified my gratitude in some additional manner. When I spoke of my _inability_, I knew that his education would cost me even more elsewhere than with you; but what I intended to convey was that every father has a particular object in the education of his child, and it is thus with me and Carl. No doubt we shall soon discover what is best for him; whether to have a tutor here, or to go on as formerly. I do not wish to tie myself down for the moment, but to remain free to act as his interests may dictate. Carl daily costs me great sacrifices, but I only allude to them on his own account. I know too well the influence his mother contrives to acquire over him, for she seems resolved to show herself well worthy of the name of "Queen of the Night." Besides, she everywhere spreads a report that I do nothing whatever for Carl, whereas she pays everything!! As we have touched on this point, I must thank you for your most considerate letter, which in any event will be of great use to me. Pray ask Herr L.S. to be so kind as to make my excuses to his brother for not having yet called on him. Partly owing to business and also to indisposition, it has been nearly impossible for me to do so. When I think of this oft-discussed affair, I should prefer going to see him on any other subject. She has not applied to me; so it is not my business to promote a meeting between her and her son. With regard to the other matter, I am told that in _this_ case we must have recourse to compulsion, which will cost me more money, for which I have chiefly to thank Herr Adlersburg [his advocate]. As Carl's education, however, must be carried on so far as possible independent of his mother, for the future as well as the present we must act as I have arranged. I am, with esteem, your attached friend, L. V. BEETHOVEN. 252. TO THE ARCHDUKE RUDOLPH. Last day of December, 1817. The old year has nearly passed away, and a new one draws near. May it bring Y.R.H. no sorrow, but rather may it bestow on you every imaginable felicity! These are my wishes, all concentrated in the one I have just expressed. If it be allowable to speak of myself, I may say that my health is very variable and uncertain. I am unhappily obliged to live at a great distance from Y.R.H., which shall not, however, prevent my having the extreme gratification of waiting on you at the first opportunity. I commend myself to your gracious consideration, though I may not appear to deserve it. May Heaven, for the benefit of so many whom you befriend, enrich each day of your life with an especial blessing! I am always, &c., &c. [K.] 253. TO G. DEL RIO. Jan. 6, 1818. To prevent any mistake I take the liberty to inform you that it is finally settled my nephew Carl should leave your excellent institution the end of this month. My hands are also tied with regard to your other proposal, as if I accepted it, my further projects for Carl's benefit would be entirely frustrated; but I sincerely thank you for your kind intentions. Circumstances may cause me to remove Carl even before the end of the month, and as I may not be here myself, I will appoint some one to fetch him. I mention this to you now, that it may not appear strange when the time comes; and let me add, that my nephew and I shall feel grateful to you through life. I observe that Carl already feels thus, which is to me a proof that although thoughtless, his disposition is not evil; far less has he a bad heart. I am the more disposed to augur well of him from his having been for two years under your admirable guidance. I am, with esteem, your friend, L. V. BEETHOVEN. 254. TO G. DEL RIO. Vienna, Jan. 24, 1818. I do not come to you myself, as it would be a kind of leave-taking, and this I have all my life avoided. Pray accept my heartfelt thanks for the zeal, rectitude, and integrity with which you have conducted the education of my nephew. As soon as I am at all settled, we mean to pay you a visit; but on account of the mother, I am anxious that the fact of my nephew being with me should not be too much known. I send you my very best wishes, and I beg especially to thank Frau A.Z. for her truly maternal care of Carl. I am, with sincere esteem, yours, L. V. BEETHOVEN. 255. TO CZERNY. MY DEAR GOOD KIND CZERNY,--[1] I have this moment heard that you are in a position I really never suspected; you might certainly place confidence in me, and point out how matters could be made better for you (without any pretensions to patronage on my part). As soon as I have a moment to myself, I must speak to you. Rest assured that I highly value you, and am prepared to prove this at any moment by deeds. Yours, with sincere esteem, L. VAN BEETHOVEN. [Footnote 1: Zellner, in his _Blätter für Musik_, relates what follows on Czerny's own authority:--In 1818 Czerny was requested by Beethoven in a letter (which he presented some years ago to Cocks, the London music publisher) to play at one of his last concerts in the large _Redoutensaal_, his E flat major Concerto, Op. 73. Czerny answered, in accordance with the truth, that having gained his livelihood entirely for many years past by giving lessons on the piano, for more than twelve hours daily, he had so completely laid aside his pianoforte playing, that he could not venture to attempt playing the concerto properly within the course of a few days (which Beethoven desired). On which he received, in the above letter, a touching proof of Beethoven's sympathy. He also learned subsequently that Beethoven had exerted himself to procure him a permanent situation.] 256. TO F. RIES,--LONDON. Vienna, March 5, 1818. MY DEAR RIES,-- In spite of my wishes it was impossible for me to go to London this year [see No. 236]. I beg you will apprise the Philharmonic Society that my feeble health prevented my coming; I trust, however, I shall be entirely restored this spring, so that in the autumn I may avail myself of their offers and fulfil all their conditions. Pray request Neate, in my name, to make no public use of the various works of mine that he has in his hands, at least not until I come. Whatever he may have to say for himself, I have cause to complain of him. Potter[1] called on me several times; he seems to be a worthy man, and to have a talent for composition. My wish and hope for you is that your circumstances may daily improve. I cannot, alas! say that such is the case with my own.... I cannot bear to see others want, I must give; you may therefore believe what a loser I am by this affair. I do beg that you will write to me soon. If possible I shall try to get away from this earlier, in the hope of escaping utter ruin, in which case I shall arrive in London by the winter at latest. I know that you will assist an unfortunate friend. If it had only been in my power, and had I not been chained to this place, as I always have been, by circumstances, I certainly would have done far more for you. Farewell; remember me to Neate, Smart, and Cramer. Although I hear that the latter is a _counter subject_ both to you and to myself, still I rather understand how to manage people of that kind; so notwithstanding all this we shall yet succeed in producing an agreeable harmony in London. I embrace you from my heart. Your friend, L. VAN BEETHOVEN. Many handsome compliments to your charming, (and as I hear) handsome wife. [Footnote 1: Schindler, in his _Biography_ (Vol. II. 254), states that Cipriani Potter came to Vienna in 1817.] 257. TO THE RECHNUNGSRATH, VINCENZ HAUSCHKA.[1] 1818. First and foremost member of our society, and grand cross of the violon--cello! You wish for an _heroic_ subject, whereas I have none but a _spiritual_ one! I am contented; still, I think an infusion of the spiritual would be quite appropriate in such a mass. I have no objections to H. v. Bernard, but you must pay him; I do not speak of myself. As you call yourselves "Friends of Music," it is only natural that you should expect a great deal to be done on the score of friendship. Now farewell, my good Hauschka! As for myself, I wander about here with music paper, among the hills and dales and valleys, and scribble a great deal to get my daily bread; for I have brought things to such a pass in this mighty and ignominious _land of the Goths and Vandals_, that in order to gain time for a great composition, I must always previously _scrawl away_ a good deal for the sake of money, to enable me to complete an important work. However, my health is much improved, and if the matter is urgent, I can do as you wish now. In haste, your friend, BEETHOVEN. [Footnote 1: Hauschka was at that time on the committee, and agent for the "Friends to Music" who commissioned Beethoven to write an Oratorio in 1815. Schindler is of opinion that the repeated performance of the Abbé Stadler's heroic Oratorio, _Die Befreiung von Jerusalem_, was the cause of the Society in 1818 bespeaking, through Hauschka, "An oratorio of the heroic order."] 258. TO THE ARCHDUKE RUDOLPH. 1819. I have the honor to send the masterly variations[1] of Y.R.H. by the copyist Schlemmer, and to-morrow I shall come in person to wait upon Y.R.H., and much rejoice at being able to serve as a companion to my illustrious pupil on the path of fame. [K.] [Footnote 1: The letters 258 and 259, allude to the pianoforte variations composed by the Archduke Rudolph and dedicated to his instructor.] 259. TO THE ARCHDUKE RUDOLPH. Jan. 1, 1819. All that can be comprehended in one wish, or individually named,--health, happiness, and prosperity,--all are included in the prayer I offer up for Y.R.H. on this day. May the wish that I also form for myself be graciously accepted by Y.R.H., namely, that I may continue to enjoy the favor of Y.R.H. A dreadful occurrence[1] has lately taken place in my family, which for a long time stunned my senses, and to this must be ascribed my not having waited on Y.R.H., nor taken any notice of the masterly variations of my much-honored and illustrious pupil, and favorite of the Muses. The gratitude I feel for the surprise and the honor you have done me, I dare not venture to express either verbally or in writing, for I am _too far beneath you_, even if I _could_ or wished ever so ardently _to return like for like_. May Heaven accept and listen with peculiar favor to my prayers for Y.R.H.'s health. In the course of a few days I trust I shall myself hear the masterpiece Y.R.H. has sent to me, and nothing will rejoice me more than to assist Y.R.H. as early as possible, in taking the place already prepared for you on Parnassus. [K.] [Footnote 1: The "dreadful occurrence" which took place in the end of 1818 in Beethoven's family cannot be discovered.] 260. TO RIES. Vienna, April [March?] 30, 1819. DEAR RIES,-- I am only now able to answer your letter of December 18th. Your sympathy does me good. It is impossible for me to go to London at present, being involved here in various ways; but God will, I trust, aid me, and enable me to visit London next winter, when I shall bring the new symphonies with me. I every day expect the text for a new _oratorio_, which I am to write for our Musical Society here, and no doubt it will be of use to us in London also. Do what you can on my behalf, for I greatly need it. I should have been glad to receive any commission from the Philharmonic, but Neate's report of the all but failure of the three overtures vexed me much. Each in its own style not only pleased here, but those in E flat major and C major made a profound impression, so that the fate of those works at the Philharmonic is quite incomprehensible to me. You have no doubt received the arrangement of the Quintet [Op. 104, see No. 238] and the Sonata [Op. 106]. See that both, especially the Quintet, be engraved without loss of time. There is no such hurry about the Sonata, though I should like it to appear within two or three months. Never having received the previous letter to which you allude, I had no scruple in disposing of both works here; but for Germany only. It will be at any rate three months before the Sonata appears here, but you must make haste with the Quintet. As soon as you forward me a check for the money, I will send an authority to the publisher, securing him the exclusive right to these works for England, Scotland, Ireland, France, &c., &c. You shall receive by the next post the _Tempi_ of the Sonata marked in accordance with Maelzel's metronome. Prince Paul Esterhazy's courier, De Smidt, took the Quintet and the Sonata with him. You shall also have my portrait by the next opportunity, as I understand that you really wish for it. Farewell! Continue your regard for me, Your friend, BEETHOVEN. All sorts of pretty compliments to your pretty wife!!! From me!!!! 261. TO RIES. Vienna, April 16, 1819. DEAR RIES,-- Here are the _Tempi_ of the Sonata. 1st Allegro, Allegro (alone), erase the _assai_. Maelzel's metronome [half-note] = 138. 2d movement, Scherzoso. Maelzel's metronome [half-note] = 80. 3d movement, Maelzel's metronome [eighth-note] = 92. Observe that a previous bar is to be inserted here, namely:-- [Music: New bar. Piano Staves (treble & bass), D major, 6/8 time.] 4th movement, Introduzione--largo. Maelzel's metronome [sixteenth-note] = 76. 5th and last movement, 3/4 time. Maelzel's metronome [half-note] = 144. [Music: Treble clef, B-flat major.] Pray forgive the confused way in which this is written. It would not surprise you if you knew my situation; you would rather marvel that I accomplish so much in spite of it. The Quintet can no longer be delayed, and must shortly appear; but not the Sonata, until I get an answer from you and the check, which I long to see. The name of the courier is De Smidt, by whom you will receive both the Quintet and Sonata. I beg you will give me an immediate answer. I will write more fully next time. In haste, your BEETHOVEN. 262. TO RIES. April 19, 1819. MY DEAR FRIEND,-- I ask your forgiveness a thousand times for the trouble I cause you. I cannot understand how it is that there are so many mistakes in the copying of the Sonata. This incorrectness no doubt proceeds from my no longer being able to keep a copyist of my own; circumstances have brought this about. May God send me more prosperity, till ---- is in a better position! This will not be for a whole year to come. It is really dreadful the turn affairs have taken, and the reduction of my salary, while no man can tell what the issue is to be till the aforesaid year has elapsed. If the Sonata be not suitable for London, I could send another, or you might omit the _Largo_, and begin at once with the _Fugue_ in the last movement, or the first movement, _Adagio_, and the third the _Scherzo_, the _Largo_, and the _Allegro risoluto_. I leave it to you to settle as you think best. This Sonata was written at a time of great pressure. It is hard to write for the sake of daily bread; and yet I have actually come to this! We can correspond again about my visit to London. To be rescued from this wretched and miserable condition is my only hope of deliverance, for as it is I can neither enjoy health, nor accomplish what I could do under more favorable auspices. 263. TO THE PHILHARMONIC SOCIETY IN LAIBACH.[1] Vienna, May 4, 1819. I fully appreciate the high compliment paid to me by the respected members of the Philharmonic Society, in acknowledgment of my poor musical deserts, by electing me honorary member of their Society, and sending me the diploma through Herr von Tuscher; and as a proof of my sense of this honor, I intend in due course to forward to the Society an unpublished work of mine.[2] Moreover, at any time when I can be of use to the Society, I shall be prepared to forward their wishes. I remain, the humble servant and honorary member of the Philharmonic Society, LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN. [Footnote 1: In Dr. Fr. Keesbacher's pamphlet, "_The Philharmonic Society in Laibach, from 1702 to 1862_," he says:--"The Philharmonic Society, always anxious to add to its lustre by attracting honorary members, resolved to appoint the great master of harmony as one of these. This idea had previously occurred to them in 1808. At that time they asked Dr. Anton Schmidt whether he thought that the election of Beethoven, and also Hummel's son, would contribute to the advancement of the Society. On that occasion the Society appear to have had recourse to Haydn for the composition of a Canon; whether they applied to him for a new one or an already existing one is not known. Schmidt replied, 'I, for my part, with such an object in view, would prefer giving my vote for the latter, (Hummel's son, who is second Kapellmeister, Haydn being the first, to the reigning Prince Niklas Esterhazy.) _Beethoven is as full of caprice as he is devoid of complaisance._ I have not seen Father Haydn for a long time, his residence being so distant. He is now in failing health and scarcely ever writes; I will, however, shortly call on him and make the attempt to get a Canon from him.' This discouraging picture of Beethoven, who had indeed too often a repulsive manner, might well deprive the Society of all courage to think any more of him as one of their honorary members. On the 15th of March, 1819, however, the Society prepared the diploma for Beethoven, the usually stereotyped form being exceptionally varied in his honor, and running thus:--'The Philharmonic Society here, whose aim it is to promote refinement of feeling and cultivation of taste in the science of music, and who strive by their incessant efforts to impart to the Society both inwardly and outwardly, by the judicious selection of new members, greater value, solidity, and distinction, are universally animated with the desire to see their list adorned by the name of Beethoven. The organ of this society, the undersigned directors, fulfil the general wish in thus performing _their most agreeable duty_, and giving you, sir, the strongest proof of their profound admiration, by appointing you one of their honorary members.--Laibach, March 15, 1819.'" A fac-simile of Beethoven's handwriting is hung up in a frame under glass in the hall of the Society and affixed to Dr. Keesbacher's pamphlet.] [Footnote 2: We are told, "One work alone of Beethoven's in the collection of the Society bears visible marks of coming from his own hand, and that is the _Pastoral Symphony_." The above-mentioned copy is a MS. score (though not in his writing); on the cover is written by himself in red pencil, now almost illegible, "Sinfonie Pastorale;" and underneath are inscribed the following words in ink by another hand: "Beethoven's writing in red pencil." This score contains various corrections in pencil. Two of these appear to be by Beethoven, but unluckily the pencil marks are so much effaced that it is difficult to decide as to the writing. In the scene "By the Rivulet," where the 12/8 time begins (in B flat major), these words are written, "Violoncelli tutti con Basso." The B especially recalls his mode of writing. Moreover the _tempo_ at the beginning of "The Shepherd's Song," (in F, 6/8 time,) _allegretto_, is qualified by the same hand in pencil thus, _Quasi allegro_. No direct proof exists of this being sent by him.] 264. TO F. RIES,--LONDON. Vienna, May 25, 1819. ... I was at the time burdened with cares beyond all I had ever in my life known,[1] caused solely by my too lavish benefits to others. Do compose industriously! My dear pupil the Archduke Rudolph and I frequently play your works, and he says that my quondam pupil does honor to his master. Now farewell! as I hear that your wife is so handsome, I venture to embrace her in imagination only, though I hope to have that pleasure in person next winter. Do not forget the Quintet, and the Sonata, and the money, I mean the _Honoraire, avec ou sans honneur_. I hope soon to hear good news from you, not in _allegro_ time, but _veloce prestissimo_. This letter will be given to you by an intelligent Englishman; they are generally very able fellows, with whom I should like to pass some time in their own country. _Prestissimo--Responsio De suo amico e Maestro,_ BEETHOVEN. [Footnote 1: In Schindler's _Beethoven's Nachlass_ there is a large calendar of the years 1819 used by Beethoven, in which he has marked, "Arrived at Mödling May 12!!!--_miser sum pauper_." Carl too was again ill at that time. Beethoven took him to Blöchlinger's Institution, June 22.] 265. TO THE ARCHDUKE RUDOLPH. 1819. I learned with deep sorrow of your being again unwell; I trust it will only be a passing indisposition. No doubt our very variable spring is the cause of this. I intended to have brought the variations [see No. 259] yesterday; they may well boldly face the light of day, and no doubt Y.R.H. will receive an application for your consent on this point. I very much regret being only able to express a _pia desideria_ for Y.R.H's. health. I earnestly hope the skill of your Aesculapius may at length gain the victory and procure permanent health for Y.R.H. [K.] 266. TO THE ARCHDUKE RUDOLPH. Mödling, July 15, 1819. I have been very ill since my last visit to Y.R.H. in town; I hope however to be much better by next week, in which case I will instantly join Y.R.H. at Baden. Meanwhile I went several times to town to consult my physician. My continued distress about my nephew, whose moral character has been almost totally ruined, has been the main cause of my illness. At the beginning of this week I was obliged to resume my guardianship, the other guardian having resigned, and much has taken place for which he has asked my forgiveness. The solicitor has also given up his office, because, having interested himself in the good cause, he has been loudly accused of partiality. Thus these endless perplexities go on, and no help, no consolation! The whole fabric that I had reared now blown away as if by the wind! A pupil of Pestalozzi, at present an inmate of the Institute where I have placed my nephew, seems to think that it will be a difficult matter for him and for my poor Carl to attain any desirable goal. But he is also of opinion that the most advisable step is the removal of my nephew to a foreign country! I hope that the health of Y.R.H., always so interesting to me, leaves nothing to be desired, and I look forward with pleasure to soon being with Y.R.H., that I may be enabled to prove my anxiety to serve you. [K.] 267. TO THE ARCHDUKE RUDOLPH. 1819. May I beg the favor of Y.R.H. to inform H.R.H. Archduke Ludwig of the following circumstances. Y.R.H. no doubt remembers my mentioning the necessary removal of my nephew from here, on account of his mother. My intention was to present a petition to H.R.H. Archduke Ludwig on the subject; no difficulties however have hitherto arisen on the subject, as all the authorities concerned are in my favor. Among the chief of these are the College of Privy Councillors, the Court of Guardians, and the guardian himself, who all entirely agree with me in thinking that nothing can be more conducive to the welfare of my nephew than being kept at the greatest possible distance from his mother; moreover, all is admirably arranged for the education of my nephew in Landshut, as the estimable and renowned Professor Sailer is to superintend everything connected with the studies of the youth, and I have also some relations there, so no doubt the most desirable results may be thus attained for my nephew. Having, as I already said, as yet encountered no obstacles, I had no wish whatever to trouble H.R.H. the Archduke Ludwig, but I now understand that the mother of my nephew intends to demand an audience from H.R.H. in order to _oppose_ my scheme. She will not scruple to utter all sorts of _calumnies against me_, but I trust these can be easily refuted by my well known and acknowledged moral character, and I can fearlessly appeal to Y.R.H. for a testimony on this point for the satisfaction of H.R.H. Archduke Ludwig. As for the conduct of the mother of my nephew, it is easily to be inferred from the fact of her having been declared by the Court wholly incapable of undertaking the guardianship of her son. All that she _plotted_ in order to ruin her poor child can only be credited from her own depravity, and thence arises the _unanimous agreement_ about this affair, and the boy being entirely withdrawn from her influence. Such is the natural and unnatural state of the case. I therefore beg Y.R.H. to intercede with H.R.H. Archduke Ludwig, and to warn him against listening to the slanders of the mother, who would plunge her child into an abyss whence he could never be rescued. That sense of justice which guides every party in our just Austrian land, does not entirely exclude her either; at the same time, this _very same sense of justice_ must render all her remonstrances unavailing. A religious view of the Fourth Commandment is what chiefly decides the Court to send away the son as far as possible. The difficulty those must have who conduct the boy's education in not offending against this commandment, and the necessity that the son should never be tempted to fail in this duty or to repudiate it, ought certainly to be taken into consideration. Every effort has been made by forbearance and generosity to amend this unnatural mother, but all has been in vain. If necessary I will supply H.R.H. Archduke Ludwig with a statement on the subject, and, favored by the advocacy of my gracious master Y.R.H. the Archduke Rudolph, I shall certainly obtain justice. [K.] 268. TO THE ARCHDUKE RUDOLPH. 1819. I regret to say that, owing to a judicial meeting about the affairs of my nephew (being unable to alter the hour fixed), I must give up the pleasure of waiting on Y.R.H. this evening, but shall not fail to do so to-morrow at half-past four o'clock. As for the affair itself, I know that I shall be treated with indulgence. May Heaven at length bring it to a close! for my mind suffers keenly from such a painful turmoil. [K.] 269. TO THE ARCHDUKE RUDOLPH. Mödling, July 29, 1819. I heard with deep regret of Y.R.H.'s recent indisposition, and having received no further reliable information on the subject, I am extremely uneasy. I went to Vienna to search in Y.R.H.'s library for what was most suitable to me. The chief object must be to _hit off our idea at once_, and _in accordance with a high class of art_, unless the object in view should require different and more _practical_ treatment. On this point the ancient composers offer the best examples, as most of these possess real artistic value (though among them the _German Handel_ and Sebastian Bach can alone lay claim to _genius_); but _freedom_ and _progress_ are our true aim in the world of art, just as in the great creation at large; and if we moderns are not so far advanced as our _forefathers_ in _solidity_, still the refinement of our ideas has contributed in many ways to their enlargement. My illustrious musical pupil, himself a competitor for the laurels of fame, must not incur the reproach of _onesidedness, et iterum venturus judicare vivos et mortuos_. I send you three poems, from which Y.R.H. might select one to set to music. The Austrians have now learned that the _spirit of Apollo_ wakes afresh in the Imperial House; I receive from all sides requests for something of yours. The editor of the "Mode Zeitung" is to write to Y.R.H. on the subject. I only hope that I shall not be accused of being _bribed_--to be _at court and yet no courtier_! After that, what is not credible??!!! _I met with some opposition from His Excellency the Obersthofmeister[1] in selecting the music._ It is not worth while to trouble Y.R.H. on the subject in writing; but this I will say, that such conduct might have the effect of repelling many talented, good, and noble-minded men, who had not enjoyed the good fortune to learn from personal intercourse with Y.R.H. all the admirable qualities of your mind and heart. I wish Y.R.H. a speedy, speedy recovery, and, _for my own peace of mind_, that I may hear some good tidings of Y.R.H. [K.] [Footnote 1: Probably the Obersthofmeister, Count Laurencin, by no means approved of the manner in which Beethoven searched for music, which accounts for this outbreak on the part of the irritable _maestro_.] 270. TO THE ARCHDUKE RUDOLPH. 1819. I have unhappily only myself to blame! I went out yesterday for the first time, feeling pretty well, but I forgot, or rather paid no attention to the fact, that, being an invalid only just recovering, I ought to have gone home early; I have consequently brought on another attack. I think, however, that by staying at home to-day, all will be right by to-morrow, when I hope to be able to wait on my esteemed and illustrious pupil without fail. I beg Y.R.H. not to forget about Handel's works, as they certainly offer to your mature musical genius the highest nourishment, and their study will always be productive of admiration of this great man. [K.] 271. TO THE ARCHDUKE RUDOLPH. Mödling, Aug. 31, 1819. I yesterday received the intelligence _of a fresh recognition and homage[1] offered to the admirable qualities of your head and heart_. I beg that Y.R.H. will graciously accept my congratulations. They spring from the heart, and do not require to be suggested! I hope things will soon go better with me also. So much annoyance has had a most prejudicial effect on my health, and I am thus far from well; so for some time past I have been obliged to undergo a course of medicine which has only permitted me to devote myself for a few hours in the day to the most cherished boon of Heaven, my art and the Muses. I hope, however, to be able to finish the Mass[2] so that it can be performed on the 19th--if that day is still fixed. I should really be in despair[3] were I prevented by bad health from being ready by that time. I trust, however, that my sincere wishes for the accomplishment of this task may be fulfilled. As to that _chef-d'oeuvre_, the variations of Y.R.H., I think they should be published under the following title:-- Theme or Subject composed by L. van Beethoven, forty times varied, and dedicated to his Instructor, by the Illustrious Author. The inquiries about this work are numerous, and yet, after all, this excellent composition may be ushered into the world in mutilated copies, for Y.R.H. yourself cannot possibly resist giving it first to one person and then to another; so, in Heaven's name, together with the great homage Y.R.H. now publicly receives, let the homage to Apollo (or the Christian Cecilia) also be made public. Perhaps Y.R.H. may accuse me of _vanity_; but I do assure you that precious as this dedication is to my heart, and truly proud of it as I am, this is certainly not my chief object. Three publishers have offered to take the work,--Artaria, Steiner, and a third whose name does not at this moment occur to me. So of the two I have named, which is to have the variations? I await the commands of Y.R.H. on this point. They are to be engraved at the cost of either of those publishers, according to their own offer. The question now is whether Y.R.H. _is satisfied with the title_. My idea is that Y.R.H. should entirely close your eyes to the fact of the publication; when it does appear, Y.R.H. may deem it a misfortune, _but the world will consider it the reverse_. May Providence protect Y.R.H., and shower down the richest blessings of His grace on Y.R.H.'s sacred head, and preserve for me your gracious regard! [On the cover] My indisposition must be my excuse with Y.R.H. for this confused letter. [K.] [Footnote 1: The Emperor Francis had sent the new Archbishop of Olmütz, Archduke Rudolph, the Grand Cross of the Order of St. Stephen.] [Footnote 2: The Mass for the solemnities of the Archduke Rudolph's enthronization in Olmütz (March 20, 1820) was not completed by Beethoven till 1822.] [Footnote 3: Beethoven had, however, no cause for despair on the subject. The kind-hearted Archduke showed the utmost indulgence to him on this occasion as well as on many others, and even at a later period accepted the dedication of this long delayed composition.] 272.[1] TO THE ARCHDUKE RUDOLPH. 1819. I perceive that Baron Schweiger has not informed Y.R.H. of the attack I had yesterday. I was suddenly seized with such sharp fever that I entirely lost consciousness; a bruised foot may have contributed to bring this on. It is therefore impossible for me to leave the house to-day. I hope, however, to be quite recovered by to-morrow, and I request Y.R.H. to appoint the orchestra to come to-morrow afternoon at a quarter to three o'clock, that the musicians may appear a little earlier, and leave sufficient time to try over the two Overtures. If Y.R.H. wishes to hear these, I shall require four horns; the Symphonies, however, require only two. For the proper performance of the Symphonies we must have at least four violins, four second, four first, two double basses, two violoncellos. I beg you will be so good as to let me know what you decide on. No pleasure can ever be greater to me than hearing my works performed before my illustrious pupil. May God speedily restore your health, which often causes me anxiety! [K.] [Footnote 1: The letters 272, 273, 274, relate to arrangements for musical meetings at which Beethoven caused his new works to be played for the Archduke.] 273. TO THE ARCHDUKE RUDOLPH. 1819. I beg you will be so kind as to let Herr von Wranitzky[1] know your commands about the music, and whether to bespeak two or four horns. I have already spoken with him, and suggested his only selecting musicians who can accomplish a performance, rather than a mere rehearsal. [K.] [Footnote 1: Anton Wranitzky (born 1760, died 1819), director of Prince Lobkowitz's opera and band. His brother Paul (born 1756, died 1808) was from 1785 to 1808 Kapellmeister at the Royal Opera in Vienna.] 274. TO THE ARCHDUKE RUDOLPH. 1819. It is impossible to double the parts by eleven o'clock to-morrow, most of the copyists having so much to write this week. I think therefore you will perhaps appoint next Saturday for our _resurrection day_, and by that time I expect to be entirely recovered, and better able to conduct, which would have been rather an arduous task for me to-morrow, in spite of my good-will. On Friday I do hope to be able to go out and inquire for Y.R.H. [K.] 275. TO THE ARCHDUKE RUDOLPH. 1819. (_A Fragment._) The day when a High Mass of mine is performed in honor of the solemnities for Y.R.H. will be the most delightful of my life, and God will enlighten me so that my poor abilities may contribute to the splendors of that solemn occasion. I send you the Sonata with heartfelt gratitude; I think the violoncello part is wanting,--at least I could not lay my hand on it at the moment. As the work is beautifully engraved, I have taken the liberty to add a published copy, and also a violin quintet. In addition to the two pieces written in my hand on Y.R.H.'s name-day, there are two more; the last a grand _Fugato_, so that it forms one great sonata,[1] which is now shortly to appear, and has been long _in my heart_ dedicated to Y.R.H. _The recent occurrence connected with Y.R.H.[2] is not in the slightest degree the cause of this._ I beg you will forgive my bad writing. I implore the Lord to bestow His richest blessings on Y.R.H., whose love of humanity is so comprehensive,--one of the choicest of all qualities; and in this respect Y.R.H. will always, either in a _worldly_ or _spiritual_ point of view, be one of our brightest examples. [K.] [Footnote 1: The Grand Sonata with two movements, and two additional ones, of which the last is a grand fugued one, can scarcely be any other than the pianoforte Sonata (Op. 106) composed in 1818, dedicated to the Archduke Rudolph, and published in September, 1819.] [Footnote 2: The "recent occurrence" to which Beethoven alludes is no doubt his being appointed Archbishop.] 276. TO HERR BLÖCHLINGER. Mödling, Sept. 14, 1819. 85 florins enclosed. DEAR SIR,-- I have the honor to send you payment for the ensuing month, which begins on the 22d Sept., and I add 10 florins in order to provide for any unforeseen expenses, which you will please account for to me on the 12th October. The following persons alone are to have free access to my nephew: Herr von Bernard, Herr von Oliva, Herr von Piuss. If any persons, exclusive of those I have named, wish to see my nephew, I will give them a letter to you, when you will be so obliging as to admit them; for the distance to your house is considerable, and those who go there can only do so to oblige me, as, for example, the bandage-maker, &c., &c. My nephew must never leave your house without a written permission from me. From this you will at once plainly perceive your line of conduct towards Carl's mother. I must impress on you the necessity of these rules (proceeding from the magistrates and myself) being strictly enforced. You, dear sir, are too little experienced in these circumstances, however obvious your other merits are to me, to act on your own judgment in the matter, as you have hitherto done. Credulity can in the present instance only lead to embarrassment, the result of which might prove injurious to you rather than beneficial, and this I wish to avoid for the sake of your own credit. I hear that my nephew requires, or at all events wishes to have, a variety of things from me; he has only to apply to myself. Be so good as to forward all his letters through Herr Steiner & Co., Pater Noster Gässel, auf'm Graben. Your obedient BEETHOVEN, _Sole guardian of my nephew Carl Van Beethoven._ N.B. Any outlay will be at once repaid. 277. Vienna, Sept. 21, 1819. In honor of the visit of Herr Schlesinger of Berlin. [Music: Four staves (SATB), B-flat major, 4/4 time, repeating. Glaube und hoffe Glaube und hoffe und hoffe Glaube und hoffe, Glaube und hoffe Glaube und hoffe, ] L. V. BEETHOVEN. 278. TO HERR ARTARIA,--VIENNA. Oct. 1, 1819. MOST EXCELLENT AND MOST VIRTUOUS OF VIRTUOSI, AND NO HUMBUG! While informing you of all sorts of things from which we hope you will draw the best conclusions, we request you to send us six (say 6) copies of the Sonata in B flat major, and also six copies of the variations on the Scotch songs, as the author's right. We beg you to forward them to Steiner, in Pater Noster Gässel, whence they will be sent to us with some other things. In the hope that you are conducting yourself with all due propriety and decorum, we are your, &c., B----. 279. A SKETCH WRITTEN BY BEETHOVEN,-- Corrected by Artaria's Bookkeeper, Wuister. 1819. Having heard from Herr B. that Y.R. Highness [the Archduke Rudolph] has written a most masterly work, we wish to be the first to have the great honor of publishing Y.R. Highness's composition, that the world may become acquainted with the admirable talents of so illustrious a Prince. We trust Y. Royal Highness will comply with our respectful solicitation. FALSTAFF--[1] _Ragged Rascal!_ [Footnote 1: The name Beethoven gave to Artaria's partner, Bolderini.] 280. TO ARTARIA. Mödling, Oct. 12, 1819. Pray forgive me, dear A. (?), for plaguing you as follows:-- We are coming to town the day after to-morrow, and expect to arrive at four o'clock. The two days' festival compels us to return the same day, as Carl must prepare with his master here for the second examination, these very holidays enabling the tutor to devote more time to him; but I must soon return to town on account of the certificate of Carl's birth, which costs more time and money than I like. I at all times dislike travelling by the _diligence_, and this one has moreover one peculiarity, that you may wish to go on what day you please, but it always turns out to be a Friday on which it sets off; and though a good Christian, still one Friday in the year is sufficient for me. I beg you will request the leader of the choir (the devil alone knows what the office is!) to be so good as to give us Carl's _certificate of birth_ on the afternoon of the same day if possible. He might do so at seven o'clock in the morning, at the time we arrive; but he ought to be punctual, for Carl is to appear at the examination at half-past seven o'clock. So it must be _either to-morrow at_ seven, or _at all events in the afternoon_. We shall call on you to-morrow before seven o'clock to inquire about this, with the proviso of a visit later in the day. In haste, and asking your pardon, Your L. VAN BEETHOVEN. 281. PETITION TO THE MAGISTRACY.[1] Oct. 30, 1819. GENTLEMEN,-- My brother, Carl van Beethoven, died on November 5, 1815, leaving a boy twelve years old,--his son Carl. In his will, by clause 5, he bequeathed to me the guardianship of the boy, and in the codicil B he expressed a wish that his widow, Johanna, should have a share in this duty, adding that, for the sake of his child, he recommended her to submit to my guidance. This explicit declaration of the father, added to my legal claim, I being the nearest relative (clause 198), entitles me clearly to the guardianship of my nephew, Carl van Beethoven; and the Court of Justice, by their Decree E, committed to me, under existing circumstances, the guardianship, to the exclusion moreover of Beethoven's widow. A journey on business having compelled me to be for some time absent, I did not object to an official guardian supplying my place for the time, which was effected by the nomination of the Town Sequestrator, Herr Nussböck. Being now, however, finally settled here, and the welfare of the boy very precious to me, both love and duty demand that I should resume my rights; especially as this talented lad is coming to an age when greater care and expense must be bestowed on his education, on which his whole future prospects depend. This duty ought not to be confided to any woman, far less to his mother, who possesses neither the will nor the power to adopt those measures indispensable to a manly and suitable education. I am the more anxious to reclaim my guardianship of Carl, as I understand that, in consequence of want of means to defray the expenses of the school where I placed him, he is to be removed, and his mother wishes him to live with her, in order herself to spend his trifling provision, and thus save the one half of her pension, which, according to the decree, she is bound to apply to his use. I have hitherto taken a paternal charge of my nephew, and I intend to do the same in future at my own expense, being resolved that the hopes of his deceased father, and the expectations I have formed for this clever boy, shall be fulfilled by his becoming an able man and a good citizen. With this view I accordingly request that the highly respected magistrates whom I now address will be pleased to annul the Town Sequestrator Nussböck's interim office, and forthwith transfer to me the sole guardianship of my nephew Carl van Beethoven.[2] LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN. [Footnote 1: Evidently drawn up by his advocate, Dr. Bach, from Beethoven's notes.] [Footnote 2: The magisterial decree of Nov. 4, 1819, was adverse to Beethoven.] 282. TO F. RIES,--LONDON. Vienna, Nov. 10, 1819. DEAR RIES,-- I write to let you know that the Sonata is already out, though only a fortnight ago, and it is nearly six months since I sent you both the Quintet and the Sonata. In the course of a few days I will send them both to you engraved, and from them you can correct the two works. Having received no letter from you on the subject, I thought the thing was at an end. I have indeed made shipwreck already with Neate this year! I only wish you could contrive to get me the fifty ducats which I have yet to receive, as I calculated on them, and really am in great want of money. I shall say no more to-day, but must inform you that I have nearly completed a _new Grand Mass_. Write to me whether you could do anything with this in London; but soon, very soon, and send the money soon also for both works. I will write more fully next time. In haste, Your true and faithful friend, BEETHOVEN. 283. TO THE ARCHDUKE RUDOLPH. Dec. 14, 1819. Immediately on last leaving Y.R.H. I was taken ill, of which I apprised Y.R.H., but owing to a change in my household, neither the letter in question nor another to Y.R.H. was ever sent. In it I begged Y.R.H.'s indulgence, having some works on hand that I was obliged to dispatch with all speed, owing to which I was, alas! compelled to lay aside the Mass also.[1] I hope Y.R.H. will ascribe the delay solely to the pressure of circumstances. This is not the time to enter fully into the subject, but I must do so as soon as the right moment arrives, that Y.R.H. may not form too severe or undeserved a judgment of me. My heart is always with Y.R.H., and I trust at length circumstances may in so far change, that I may be able to contribute more than I have hitherto done, to perfecting your great talent. I think, however, Y.R.H. is already aware of my good-will in this respect, and is fully convinced that insurmountable obstacles alone can ever detain me from the most excellent of all princes, so revered by me, and so entwined with every feeling of my heart. I did not till yesterday hear of the mistake about the two letters, and I now intend to bring them myself, for I have no one in my service on whom I can depend. I will present myself at your house this afternoon at half-past four o'clock. My warmest thanks for Y.R.H.'s kind letter to me. When Y.R.H. thus vouchsafes to declare your esteem for me, it only heightens and increases my impulse to all that is good. [Footnote 1: Another allusion to the Grand Mass in D, which seemed likely never to be completed.] 284. MEMORANDUM. 1822. The Mass[1] will soon be all in Y.R.H.'s hands; it ought to have been, and would have been so long ago, but--but--but--when Y.R.H. becomes acquainted with my circumstances, you will be surprised that I have even now been able to finish it. [K.] [Footnote 1: The circumstances which prevented the completion of this work were undoubtedly his perpetual state of strife with his nephew and his sister-in-law.] 285. TO THE ARCHDUKE RUDOLPH. I heard with heartfelt sorrow of Y.R.H.'s indisposition, but hope soon to hear of your recovery. Why am I also ill? for I might possibly discover the best mode of restoring Y.R.H. I will call again to inquire after Y.R.H., and hope to hear good news. [K.] 286. TO THE ARCHDUKE RUDOLPH. I have been rather an invalid all this time, though I try to think myself tolerably well. I deeply regret to hear of Y.R.H.'s attack, especially as I knew nothing of it, or I certainly should have hastened to inquire whether it was in my power in any way to alleviate your sufferings. To-morrow, in compliance with Y.R.H.'s wish, I shall certainly enjoy the pleasure of seeing my own most dear and illustrious master. [K.] 287. TO THE ROYAL AND IMPERIAL HIGH COURT OF APPEAL. Jan. 7, 1820. GENTLEMEN,-- On the plea of the Decree A, I sought to have transferred to myself the guardianship of my nephew, Carl v. Beethoven, but was referred by the magistracy to the previous decision. On my consequent remonstrance the same result ensued. I find myself the more aggrieved by this, inasmuch as not only are my own rights set at naught, but even the welfare of my nephew is thus utterly disregarded. I am therefore compelled to have recourse to the highest Court of Appeal to lay before them my well-founded claim, and rightfully to demand that the guardianship of my nephew should be restored to me. My reasons are the following:-- 1st. I am entitled to the guardianship of my nephew, not only by his father's will, but by law, and this the Court of Justice confirmed to the exclusion of the mother. When business called me away from Vienna, I conceded that Herr Nussböck should act for me _ad interim_. Having now, however, taken up my residence here, the welfare of my nephew demands that I should again undertake the office of his guardian. 2d. My nephew has arrived at an age when he requires to be trained to a higher degree of cultivation. Neither his mother nor his present guardian are calculated to guide the boy in the pursuit of his studies. The former, in the first place, because she is a woman; and as to her conduct, it has been legally proved that, to say the least of it, she has no creditable testimonials to bring forward,[1] on which account she was expressly prohibited from acting by the Court of Justice. How the Honorable Magistracy could nevertheless again appoint her is quite incomprehensible. The latter is unfit; because, on the one hand, his office as sequestrator and administrator of houses and lands, occupies his time too much to enable him properly to undertake the duties of guardian to the boy; and, on the other, because his previous occupation as a paper manufacturer, does not inspire me with any confidence that he possesses the intelligence or judgment indispensable to conduct a scientific education. 3d. The welfare of my nephew is dearer to my heart than it can be to any one else. I am myself childless, and have no relations except this boy, who is full of talent, and I have good grounds to hope the best for him, if properly trained. Now I am compelled to hear that he has been delayed a whole year by remaining in his previous class, from want of means to defray the expense, and that his mother intends to remove him from his present school, and wishes him to live with her. What a misfortune to the boy, were he to become a victim to the mismanagement of his mother, who would fain squander on herself that portion of her pension which she is obliged to devote to the education of her son! I have therefore declared in due form to the Honorable Magistracy that I am myself willing to undertake the expenses of his present school, and also to provide the various masters required. Being rather deaf, which is an impediment to conversation, I have requested the aid of a colleague, and suggested for this purpose Herr Peters, Councillor of Prince Lobkowitz, in order that a person may forthwith be appointed to superintend the education and progress of my nephew, that his moral character may one day command esteem, and whose acquirements may be a sure guaranty to all those who feel an interest in the youth's welfare, that he will undoubtedly receive the education and culture necessary to develop his abilities. My efforts and wishes have no other aim than to give the boy the best possible education,--his abilities justifying the brightest hopes,--and to fulfil the trust placed in my brotherly love by his father. The shoot is still flexible; but if longer neglected it will become crooked, and outgrow the gardener's training hand, and upright bearing, intellect, and character, be destroyed forever. I know no duty more sacred than the education and training of a child. The chief duties of a guardian consist in knowing how to appreciate what is good, and in adopting a right course; then alone has proper attention been devoted to the welfare of his ward, whereas in opposing what is good he neglects his duty. Indeed, keeping in view what is most for the benefit of the boy, I do not object to the mother in so far sharing in the duties of a guardian that she may visit her son, and see him, and be apprised of all the measures adopted for his education; but to intrust her with the sole guardianship of the boy without a strict guardian by her side, would cause the irrevocable ruin of her son. On these cogent grounds I reiterate my well-founded solicitation, and feel the more confident of a favorable answer, as the welfare of my nephew alone guides my steps in this affair.[2] LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN. [Footnote 1: Schindler states that during these law proceedings the widow of Beethoven's brother had another child.] [Footnote 2: The Court excluded Carl's mother from all share in his education, and from all direct influence over her son, and again restored to Beethoven the full authority of a guardian.] 288. TO HIS HIGHNESS THE ARCHDUKE RUDOLPH. [Music: Treble clef, C major. Seiner Kaiserlichen Hoheit! Dem Erzherzog Rudolph! Dem geistlichen Fürsten! Alles Gute! alles Schöne! alles Gute! alles Schöne! alles alles Gute, alles alles Schöne! alles Gute! alles Schöne! alles Gute, alles Schöne! alles alles Gute, alles Schöne! alles Gute, alles Schöne! alles Gute, alles Schöne!] From your obedient servant, L. V. BEETHOVEN. Jan. 12, 1820. 289. TESTIMONIAL IN FAVOR OF HERR V. KANDELER. It is certainly the duty of every musical composer to become acquainted with all the earlier as well as more modern poets, in order to select what is most suitable to his purpose for songs. Such, however, not being invariably the case, this present collection of Herr v. Kandeler's cannot fail to be useful and commendable to many who wish to write songs, and also tend to induce more able poets to contribute something in the same direction. LUDWIG V. BEETHOVEN.--M.P. I entirely agree with Herr v. Beethoven. JOS. WEIGEL. 290. TO THEODORE AMADEUS HOFFMANN.[1] Vienna, March 23, 1820. I seize the opportunity through Herr N. of approaching a man so gifted as yourself. You have also written of my humble self, and Herr N.N. showed me some lines of yours about me in his album; I have, therefore, every reason to believe that you feel some interest in me. Permit me to say that, on the part of so talented a man as yourself, this is truly gratifying to me. I wish you all possible good and happiness, and remain, Sir, with esteem, your obedient BEETHOVEN. [Footnote 1: It is well known that Hoffmann, in the years 1809 to 1812, wrote the first really important articles on Beethoven's works for the _Leipzig A.M. Zeitung_ on his instrumental music, his trios, and masses, &c., &c.] 291. TO HERR HASLINGER,--ADJUTANTERL. I request the Adjutant to lend me the score of the Overture in E flat, which I will return as soon as the performance is over. I also beg he will be so good as to send me Kirnberger's work to supply the place of mine, as I am at this moment giving lessons in counterpoint, and have been unable to find my own manuscript amid my confused mass of papers. Yours, MI CONTRA FA. 292. TO TOBIAS,--ADJUTANT. MOST WORTHY ADJUTANT,-- I have made a bet of ten florins, W.W., against the truth of your having been obliged to pay a compensation of 2000 florins to Artaria for the new edition of Mozart's works, which have been again and again engraved and sold everywhere. I really wish to know the truth on this subject, for I cannot possibly believe what is said. If it be the fact that you have been so unhandsomely treated, then _Ah, dolce contento_ must pay the ten florins. Send me a true report. Farewell; be a good Christian. Your BEETHOVEN. 293. TO THE ARCHDUKE RUDOLPH. Vienna, April 3, 1820. YOUR ROYAL HIGHNESS,-- So far as I can recollect, when I was about to wait on you, I was told that Y.R.H. was indisposed; I called on Sunday evening to inquire, having been assured that Y.R.H. did not intend to set off on Monday. In accordance with my usual custom, not to remain long in an anteroom, I hurried away after receiving this information, though I observed that the gentleman in waiting wished to say something to me. Unhappily I did not hear till Monday afternoon that Y.R.H. had really gone to Olmütz. I must confess that this caused me a very painful feeling, but my consciousness of never having neglected my duty in any respect, induced me to suppose that the same may have been the case on this occasion, as it often is in human life,--for I can easily conceive that Y.R.H., immersed in ceremonies and novel impressions, had very little time to spare in Olmütz for other things. I should otherwise certainly have anticipated Y.R.H. in writing. May I ask you graciously to inform me what length of stay you intend to make in Olmütz? It was reported that Y.R.H. intended to return here towards the end of May; but a few days ago I heard that you were to remain a year and a half in Olmütz; owing to this I may perhaps have adopted wrong measures, not with regard to Y.R.H., but myself. As soon as I receive information from you on the subject, I will enter into further explanations. May I also beg that in the mean time Y.R.H. will not listen to certain reports about me? I have heard a great deal of what may be termed gossip here, which people seem to think may be acceptable to Y.R.H. As Y.R.H. is pleased to say that I am one of those whom you esteem, I can confidently declare that Y.R.H. is the person whom I value most in the universe. Although no courtier, I believe that Y.R.H. knows me too thoroughly to believe that mere selfish interest has ever attached or attracted me towards Y.R.H., but, on the contrary, true and heartfelt affection alone. I can with truth say that a second Blondel has long since set forth on his pilgrimage, and if no Richard can be found in this world for me, God shall be my Sovereign! It seems to me that my idea of giving a quartet is the best; even though some works have been already performed on a grand scale at Olmütz, still something might thus be introduced into Moravia to attract the attention of the musical world, and for the benefit of Art. If, according to the above reports, Y.R.H. should return here in May, I advise Y.R.H. to reserve your _spiritual children_ for me [see No. 279] till then, because it would be better that I should hear them performed by yourself. But if your stay in Olmütz is really to be of such long duration, I will receive them now with the greatest pleasure, and strive to accompany Y.R.H. to the summit of Parnassus. May God preserve Y.R.H. in health for the good of humanity, and also for that of all your warm admirers. I beg you will be graciously pleased soon to write to me. Y.R.H. cannot fail to be convinced of my readiness at all times to fulfil your wishes. I am Y.R.H.'s humble and faithful servant, LUDWIG V. BEETHOVEN 294. TO THE ARCHDUKE RUDOLPH. Mödling, Aug. 3, 1820. I have this moment received the letter in which Y.R.H. informs me yourself of your journey hither, and I sincerely thank Y.R.H. for such a mark of attention. I intended to have hastened to town to-morrow to wait on Y.R.H., but no carriage is to be had; I expect however to get one before next Saturday, when I shall lose no time, and set off at an early hour to inquire for Y.R.H. With regard to the sacrifice Y.R.H. intends to offer up to the Muses, I will make a proposal verbally on the subject. I heartily rejoice in knowing that Y.R.H. is once more so near me. May I in all respects be enabled to assist in fulfilling your wishes! May Heaven bless Y.R.H., and mature all your plans! [K.] 295. TO HERR ARTARIA, FALSTAFF, & CO. Vienna, Oct. 26, 1820. I politely request that you will hand over to Herr Oliva the sum of 300 florins, which has no doubt already been received by you in full. Having been entirely occupied by removing to my new lodgings, I could not do myself the honor of expressing my thanks to you and Sir John Falstaff in person. Your obedient servant, LUDWIG V. BEETHOVEN. 296. TO BOLDERINI. MY VERY WORTHY FALSTAFF!-- I request, with all due civility, that you will send me a copy of each of the two works for pianoforte and flute, with variations. As for the receipt, you shall have it to-morrow; and I also beg you will forward it forthwith. Give my compliments to Herr Artaria, and thank him from me for his kind offer of an advance, but as I have received from abroad the money due to me, I do not require to avail myself of his aid. Farewell, Knight Falstaff; do not be too dissipated, read the Gospel, and be converted! We remain, your well-affected BEETHOVEN. To Sir John Falstaff, Knight. To the care of Herr Artaria & Co. 297. TO THE ARCHDUKE RUDOLPH. Mödling, Sept. 1820. Since last Tuesday evening I have been far from well, but hoped by Friday, certainly, to have had the happiness of waiting on Y.R.H. This proved a delusion, and it is only to-day that I am able to say confidently that I expect to present myself before Y.R.H. next Monday or Tuesday at an early hour. I ascribe my illness to having taken an open _calèche_, in order not to miss my appointment with Y.R.H. The day was very wet and positively _cold_ here towards the evening. Nature seems almost to have been offended by the liberty I took, and by my audacity, and to have punished me in consequence. May Heaven bestow on Y.R.H. all that is good and holy, as well as every charm and blessing, and on _me_ your favor, _but only in so far as justice sanctions_! [K.] 298. TO HERR ARTARIA & CO. Vienna, Dec. 17, 1820. I thank you warmly for the advance of 150 florins, for which I have made out the receipt in the name of his Imperial Highness the Cardinal, and I beg, as I am in danger of losing one of my bank shares, that you will advance me another 150 florins, which I pledge myself to repay within three months at latest from this date. As a proof of my gratitude, I engage in this letter to make over to you, as your exclusive property, one of my compositions, consisting of two or more movements, without claiming payment for it hereafter. Your ever-complaisant BEETHOVEN. [L.S.] 299. TO TOBIAS V. HASLINGER. Baden, Sept. 10, 1821. MY VERY DEAR FRIEND,-- On my way to Vienna yesterday, sleep overtook me in my carriage, which was by no means strange, for having been obliged to rise so early every morning, I never had a good night's sleep. While thus slumbering I dreamt that I had gone on a far journey, to no less a place than to Syria, on to Judea, and back, and then all the way to Arabia, when at length I actually arrived at Jerusalem. The Holy City gave rise to thoughts of the Holy Books. No wonder then if the man Tobias occurred to me, which also naturally led me to think of our own little Tobias and our great Tobias. Now during my dream-journey, the following Canon came into my head:-- [Music: Bass clef, F major, 2/4 time. _Lively in the upper octave._ O Tobias! O Tobias! Dominus Ha--slinger o! o! o Tobias!] But scarcely did I wake when away flew the Canon, and I could not recall any part of it. On returning here however, next day, in the same carriage, (that of a poor Austrian musician,) I resumed my dream-journey, being, however, on this occasion wide awake, when lo and behold! in accordance with the laws of the association of ideas the same Canon again flashed across me; so being now awake I held it as fast as Menelaus did Proteus, only permitting it to be changed into three parts. [Music: Treble, Tenor, and Bass clef staves, F major, 2/4 time. O Tobias! O Tobias! Dominus Ha--slinger o!] Farewell! I intend to send next something composed on Steiner's name, to show that his is no heart of stone [Stein]. Adieu, my good friend; it is my most heartfelt wish that you may prosper as a publisher; may all credit be given to you, and yet may you never require credit. Sing daily the Epistles of St. Paul, and daily visit Father Werner, who can show you in his little book how to go straight to heaven. See, how anxious I am about the welfare of your soul! I remain always, with infinite pleasure, henceforth and forever, Your faithful debtor, BEETHOVEN. 300. TO THE ARCHDUKE RUDOLPH. Unterdöbling, July 18, 1821. I yesterday heard of Y.R.H.'s arrival here; joyful tidings for me, but saddened by knowing that it must be some time before I can have the good fortune to wait on Y.R.H.; having been long very ill, at last _jaundice_ declared itself, which I consider a most loathsome malady. I trust, however, I shall be so far recovered as to see Y.R.H. before you leave this. Last winter, too, I had some very severe rheumatic attacks. Much of this proceeds from the melancholy state of my family affairs; I have hitherto hoped, by every possible exertion on my part, at last to remedy these. That Providence, who searches my inmost heart, and knows that as a man I have striven sacredly to fulfil all the duties imposed on me by humanity, God, and Nature, will no doubt one day extricate me from all these troubles. The Mass [in D] will be delivered to Y.R.H. here. I hope Y.R.H. will excuse my entering into the various causes of the delay. The details could not be otherwise than painful to Y.R.H. I would often gladly have written to Y.R.H. from here, but you told me to wait till I first heard from you. What, then, was I to do? Y.R.H. might have been displeased had I not attended to your injunction, and I know that there are people who are glad to calumniate me to Y.R.H., which pains me exceedingly. I therefore often think that my sole recourse is to keep quiet till Y.R.H. expresses a wish either to see or to hear of me. I was told that Y.R.H. had been indisposed, but I hope it was nothing serious. May Heaven shower down its most precious blessings on Y.R.H.! I trust it may not be very long before I shall be so fortunate as to assure Y.R.H. how entirely I am, &c., &c. [K.] 301. TO THE ARCHDUKE RUDOLPH. Unterdöbling, July 18, 1821. I have written a long and minute letter to Y.R.H., which my copyist Schlemmer will deliver. I wrote it on hearing the day before yesterday of the arrival of Y.R.H. How much I grieve that the attack of jaundice with which I am affected prevents my at once hastening to Y.R.H. to express in person my joy at your arrival. May the Lord of all things, for the sake of so many others, take Y.R.H. under His protection! [K.] 302. TO THE MOST CELEBRATED MUSIC FIRM IN EUROPE, MESSRS. STEINER & CO., PATERNOSTER-(MISERERE) GÄSSEL. I request Geh'-bauer[1] to send me two tickets, as some of my friends wish to attend your hole-and-corner music. You probably have some of these worthless admission tickets; so let me have one or two. The part I send belongs to the Chorus, of which Bauer has the other portions. Your _amicus_ BEETHOVEN. [Footnote 1: Gebauer established the "Concerts Spirituels" in 1819, and died in 1822.] 303. ADDRESS UNKNOWN. Baden, Sept. 27, 1821. I hope, sir, that you will forgive the liberty I take in thus intruding on you. The bearer of this, H. v. ----, has been commissioned by me to exchange or sell a bank-note. Being ignorant of everything connected with these matters, I beg you will be so good as to communicate your views and advice to the bearer. The two illnesses I had last winter and summer rather deranged all my calculations. I have been here since the 7th of September, and must remain till the end of October. All this costs a great deal of money, and prevents my earning it as usual. I indeed expect shortly to receive money from abroad, but as bank-notes stand so high at present, I consider this the easiest resource, and intend subsequently to purchase a new bank-note in its place. Immediate--in haste. Your friend, BEETHOVEN. [This unsealed letter was enclosed in an envelope on which was written:] You will at once see what kind of commercial genius I am. After writing the enclosed, I for the first time consulted a friend about the note, who pointed out to me that all I had to do was to cut off a _coupon_, and the affair was completed. I rejoice, therefore, not to be obliged to plague you further on the subject. Yours, BEETHOVEN. 304. TO THE ARCHDUKE RUDOLPH. Feb. 27, 1822. I went to-day early to the Palace, not, indeed, with the intention of meeting Y.R.H., (not being yet dressed), but only to beg Zips to mention that I had called, and was sincerely rejoiced at your arrival here; but I could no longer discover Y.R.H.'s apartments, and wherever I knocked in the hope of finding Y.R.H., my dress seemed to be so closely scrutinized that I hurried away, and write to-day to recommend myself to Y.R.H. To-morrow I intend to pay my respects to Y.R.H., when I hope also to hear whether the usual _musical and intellectual meetings_ are to continue, and when they are to take place. My not having written all this time to Y.R.H. has indeed a very bad appearance, but I delayed from day to day, hoping always to send the Mass, the mistakes in which were really quite dreadful; so much so that I was obliged to revise _every part_, and thus the delay occurred. Other pressing occupations and various circumstances tended to impede me, which is often the case when a man least expects it. That Y.R.H., however, was ever present with me is shown by the following copies of some novelties,[1] which have been lying finished by me for some time for Y.R.H., but I resolved not to forward them till I could at the same time send the Mass. The latter now only requires binding, when it shall be respectfully delivered to Y.R.H. by myself. Sincerely rejoiced at the hope of soon personally waiting on Y.R.H., I remain, with devoted homage, yours till death. [K.] [Footnote 1: The _novelties_ which Beethoven sends to the Archduke are:-- Six _bagatelles_ for the pianoforte, Op. 126 (composed in 1821). Sonata for pianoforte in E major " 109 ( " " ?1821). " " " A flat major " 110 ( " " 1821).] 305. TO F. RIES,--LONDON. Vienna, April 6, 1822. MY DEAREST AND BEST RIES,-- Having been again in bad health during the last ten months, I have hitherto been unable to answer your letter. I duly received the 26l. sterling, and thank you sincerely; I have not, however, yet got the sonata you dedicated to me. My greatest work is a _Grand Mass_ that I have recently written. As time presses, I can only say what is most urgent. What would the Philharmonic give me for a symphony? I still cherish the hope of going to London next spring, if my health admits of it! You will find in me one who can thoroughly appreciate my dear pupil, now become a great master, and who can tell what benefit art might derive from our conjunction! I am, as ever, wholly devoted to my Muse, who constitutes the sole happiness of my life, and I toil and act for others as I best can. You have two children; I only one (my brother's son); but you are married, so both yours will not cost you so much as my one costs me. Now farewell! kiss your handsome wife for me until I can perform this solemn act in person. Your attached BEETHOVEN. Pray send me your dedication, that I may strive to return the compliment, which I mean to do as soon as I receive your work. 306. TO HERREN PETERS & CO., MUSIC PUBLISHERS,--LEIPZIG. Vienna, June 5, 1822. GENTLEMEN,-- You did me the honor to address a letter to me at a time when I was much occupied, and I have also been extremely unwell for the last five months. I now only reply to the principal points. Although I met Steiner by chance a few days ago, and asked him jestingly what he had brought me from Leipzig, he did not make _the smallest_ allusion to _your commission or to yourself_. He urged me, however, in the very strongest manner, to _pledge myself to give him the exclusive right of publishing all my works, both present and future_,--and indeed to _sign a contract to that effect_,--which I declined. This _trait_ sufficiently proves to you why I often give the preference to other publishers both home and foreign. I love uprightness and integrity, and am of opinion that no one should drive a hard bargain with artists, for, alas! however brilliant the exterior of Fame may appear, an artist does not enjoy the privilege of being the daily guest of Jupiter on Olympus; unhappily commonplace humanity only too often unpleasantly drags him down from these pure ethereal heights. The _greatest_ work I have hitherto written is a _Grand Mass_ with Choruses, and four _obbligati_ voice parts, and full orchestra. Several persons have applied to me for this work, and I have been offered 100 Louis d'or, hard cash, for it; but I demand at least 1000 florins C.M. [20 florins to the mark], for which sum I will also furnish a pianoforte arrangement. Variations on a waltz [Diabelli's] for the piano (they are numerous), 30 ducats in gold,--N.B. Vienna ducats. With regard to songs, I have several rather important descriptive ones: as, for example, a comic Aria, with full orchestra, on Goethe's text, "Mit Mädeln sich vertragen;" and another Aria, in the same style, 16 ducats each (furnishing also a pianoforte arrangement if required); also several descriptive songs, with pianoforte accompaniment, 12 ducats each; among these is a little Italian Cantata, with Recitative; there is also a Song with recitative among the German ones. A Song with pianoforte accompaniment, 8 ducats. An Elegy, four voices, with the accompaniment of _two violins, viola, and violoncello_, 24 ducats. A Dervise Chorus, with full orchestra, 20 ducats. Also the following instrumental music: a Grand March for full orchestra, with pianoforte accompaniment, 12 ducats, written for the tragedy of "Tarpeia." Romance for the violin (a solo with full orchestra), 15 ducats. Grand Terzet for two oboes, and one English horn (which might be arranged for other instruments), 30 ducats. Four military Marches with Turkish music; when applied for, I will name the sum. _Bagatelles_, or minor pianoforte solos, the price to be fixed when required. The above works are all completed. Solo pianoforte Sonata, 40 ducats (which could soon be delivered); Quartet for _two violins, tenor, and violoncello_, 50 ducats (this will also soon be ready). I am by no means so anxious about these, however, as about _a full and complete edition of my works_, being desirous to edit them during my lifetime. I have indeed received many proposals on this subject, but accompanied by stipulations to which I could scarcely agree, and which I neither could nor would fulfil. I am willing to undertake, in the course of two years, or possibly a year, or a year and a half, with proper assistance, to edit and superintend a complete edition of my works, and to furnish a new composition in each style; namely, a new work in the style of variations, one in the sonata style, and so on in every separate class of work that I have ever composed, and for the whole combined I ask 10,000 florins C.M. I am no man of business, and only wish I were; as it is, I am guided by the offers made to me by different competitors for my works, and such a competition is rather strong just now. I request you to say nothing on the subject, because, as you may perceive from the proceedings of these gentlemen, I am exposed to a great deal of annoyance. When once my works appear published by you, I shall no longer be plagued. I shall be very glad if a connection be established between us, having heard you so well spoken of. You will then also find that I infinitely prefer dealing with _one_ person of your description than with a variety of people of the ordinary stamp. Pray, let me have an immediate answer, as I am now on the verge of deciding on the publication of various works. If you consider it worth while, be so good as to send me a duplicate of the list with which you furnished Herr Steiner. In the expectation of a speedy reply, I remain, with esteem, Your obedient LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN. 307. TO HERREN PETERS & CO. Vienna, July 26, 1822. I write merely to say that I agree to give you the Mass and pianoforte arrangement of it for 1000 florins C.M. You shall receive the above, written out in score, by the end of July, perhaps a few days sooner or later. As I am always very much occupied, and have been indisposed for the last five months, and works to be sent to a distance requiring the most careful supervision, I must proceed rather more slowly than usual. At all events, Steiner shall get nothing further from me, as he has just played me a most Jewish trick; so he is not one of those who might have had the Mass. The competition for my works is at present very great, for which I thank the Almighty, as I have hitherto been such a loser. I am the foster-father of my brother's destitute child, a boy who shows so much aptitude for scientific pursuits that not only does his study of these, and his maintenance, cost a great deal of money, but I must also strive to make some future provision for him; being neither Indians nor Iroquois, who, as we know, leave everything to Providence, whereas we consider a pauper's existence to be a very sad one. I assure you on my honor, which, next to God, is what I prize most, that I authorized no one to accept commissions for me. My fixed principle has always been never to make any offer to publishers; not from pride, but simply from a wish to ascertain how far the empire of my small talents extended. I must conclude for to-day, and wishing you every success, I am, with esteem, Your obedient BEETHOVEN. 308.[1] TO HERR PETERS. Vienna, August 3, 1822. I already wrote to you that my health was still far from being quite restored. I am obliged to have recourse to baths and mineral waters as well as to medicine; all this makes me rather unpunctual, especially as I must go on writing; corrections, too, run away with a great deal of time. As to the songs and marches and other trifles, my choice is still undecided, but by the 15th of this month everything shall be ready to be sent off. I await your orders on the subject, and in the mean time shall make no use of your bill of exchange. As soon as I know that the money for the Mass and the other works has arrived here, all shall be ready for delivery by the 15th; and after that date I must set off to some mineral waters near this, when it will be most desirable for me to avoid all business for a time. More as to other matters when less occupied. Pray, do not suspect me of any ignoble motives. It pains me when I am obliged to bargain. In haste. With esteem, yours, BEETHOVEN. [Footnote 1: Schindler states that the advance of 360 florins C.M. was made to Beethoven in August, 1822. The receipt is dated Nov. 30, 1825.] 309. TO HERR ARTARIA. August 22, 1822. Being overwhelmed with work, I can only briefly say that I will always do what I can to repay your obliging kindness to me. With regard to the Mass, I have been offered 1000 florins (C.M.) for it. My circumstances do not permit me to accept a less sum from you; all that I can do is to give you the preference. Rest assured that I do not ask you one farthing more than others have offered me, which I can prove to you by written documents. You can consider about this, but I must request you to send me an answer on the subject to-morrow, it being a post-day, and my decision expected elsewhere. With regard to the 150 florins for which I am your debtor, I intend to make you a proposal, as I stand in great need of the 1000 florins. I beg you will observe strict secrecy as to the Mass. Now, as ever, Your grateful friend, BEETHOVEN. 310. TO HERR PETERS,--LEIPZIG Vienna, November 22, 1822. I now reply to your letter of the 9th November, in which I expected to find just reproaches for my apparent negligence, you having sent me the money and as yet received nothing in return. Unfair as this may appear, I know you would be mollified towards me in a few minutes were we to meet. Everything is now ready for you, except selecting the songs, but at all events you shall receive one more than our agreement. I can send you more _bagatelles_ than I promised, as I have got ten others beside; if you write to me immediately, I will send you these, or as many as you wish for, along with the rest. My health, indeed, is not entirely reestablished by the baths, yet on the whole I think I have improved. I had another annoyance here, owing to a person having engaged an unsuitable lodging for me, which is hard on me, as I cannot yet accustom myself to it, and my occupations are thus sadly deranged. The case with regard to the Mass stands thus: I finished one long ago, and another is in progress. There is always a certain degree of gossip about people of our class, which has, no doubt, misled you. I don't yet know which you are to get. Besieged on all sides, I am almost forced to testify the reverse of the _dictum_ that "the spirit cannot be weighed." I send you my best wishes, and trust that time will foster a beneficial and honorable connection between us. BEETHOVEN. 311. TO THE ARCHDUKE RUDOLPH. I was extremely unwell both yesterday and the day before; unfortunately there was no one whom I could send to apprise Y.R.H. of the fact. As I felt better towards evening, I went into the town to make Schlemmer correct the Sonata.[1] He was not at home, so I requested him to come here to-day. I send the Sonata by him, and will come in to-day before four o'clock to wait on Y.R.H. [K.] [Footnote 1: The C minor pianoforte Sonata, Op. 111?] 312. TO HERR PETERS. Vienna, December 20, 1822. I take advantage of a moment's leisure to-day to answer your letter. Not one of all the works that are your property is unfinished, but time is too precious to particularize all the details that prevent the copying and sending off the music to you. I recollect in a former letter having offered you some more _bagatelles_, but I by no means press you to take them. If you wish only to have the four, so be it; but in that case I must make a different selection. Herr ---- has not as yet got anything from me. Herr ---- begged me to make him a present of the songs for the "Journal de la Mode," which, in fact, I did not write for money; indeed, I find it quite impossible to act in every case according to so much _per cent_. It is painful for me to calculate in this manner oftener than is absolutely necessary. My position is far from being so brilliant as you think, &c., &c. It is not possible to listen to all these proposals at once, being far too numerous, but many cannot be refused. A commission is not always quite in accordance with the inclinations of an author. If my salary were not so far reduced as to be no salary at all,[1] I would write nothing but symphonies for a full orchestra, and church music, or at most quartets. Of my minor works, you can still have Variations for two oboes and one English horn, on the theme from "Don Giovanni," "_La ci darem la mano_," and a Gratulation Minuet for a full orchestra. I should be glad, likewise, to have your opinion about the full edition of my works. In the most desperate haste, your obedient BEETHOVEN. [Footnote 1: It was reduced from 4000 gulden to 800.] 313. TO F. RIES,--LONDON Vienna, December 20, 1822. MY DEAR RIES,-- I have been so overburdened with work that I am only now able to reply to your letter of November 15. I accept with pleasure the proposal to write a new symphony for the Philharmonic Society. Although the prices given by the English cannot be compared with those paid by other nations, still I would gladly write even gratis for those whom I consider the first artists in Europe--were I not still, as ever, the poor Beethoven. If I were only in London, what would I not write for the Philharmonic! For Beethoven, thank God! can write--if he can do nothing in the world besides! If Providence only vouchsafes to restore my health, which is at least improving, I shall then be able to respond to the many proposals from all parts of Europe, and even North America, and may thus perhaps be some day in clover. 314. TO IGNAZ RITTER VON SEYFRIED. 1822. MY DEAR AND WORTHY BROTHER IN APOLLO,-- I heartily thank you for the trouble you have taken in aiding my _charitable work_.[1] I rejoice that its success is universally admitted, and hope you will never fail to let me know when it is in my power to serve you by my poor talents. The worthy municipal corporation is, no doubt, thoroughly convinced of my good-will; in order to give fresh proofs of it, we ought to have a friendly interview as to the mode in which I can best serve the corporation. When such a master as yourself takes an interest in us, our pinions ought never to droop. I am, with the warmest esteem, Your friend, BEETHOVEN. [Footnote 1: Seyfried, at a concert for the benefit of the Burgher Hospital, performed Beethoven's grand fugue _Fest Ouverture_ (in C major, in Op. 124), 1822, in celebration of the opening of the new Josephstadt Theatre. The written parts were returned to him with the grateful thanks of the committee.] THIRD PART LIFE'S TROUBLES AND CLOSE. 1823 TO 1827. 315. TO ZELTER.[1] Vienna, Feb. 8, 1823. MY BRAVE COLLEAGUE IN ART,-- I write, having a favor to ask of you, for we are now so distant from each other that we can no longer converse together, and, indeed, unhappily, we can seldom write either. I have written a grand mass, which might also be given as an oratorio (for the benefit of the poor, a good established custom here). I do not wish to publish it in the usual way, but to dispose of it to some of the leading courts alone. I ask fifty ducats for it. No copies are to be sold except those subscribed for, so that the mass will be, as it were, in manuscript; but there must be a fair number of subscribers, if any profit is to accrue to the author. I have made an application to the Prussian embassy here, to know if the King of Prussia would vouchsafe to take a copy, and I have also written to Prince Radziwill, to ask him to interest himself in the affair. I beg you likewise to do what you can for me. It is a work that might likewise be useful to the Academy of Singing, for there is scarcely any portion of it that could not be almost entirely executed by voices. The more these are increased and multiplied in combination with instruments, the more effective would be the result. It ought to be appropriate also as an oratorio, for such societies as those for the benefit of the poor require marks of this kind. Having been an invalid for some years past, and consequently my position anything but brilliant, I have had recourse to this scheme. I have written much; but as to profits, they are nearly _nil_! The more do I look upwards; but both for his own sake, and that of others, man is obliged to turn his eyes earthwards; for this, too, is part of the destiny of humanity. I embrace you, my dear fellow-artist, and am, with sincere esteem, Your friend, BEETHOVEN. [Footnote 1: Zelter was in Vienna in 1819.] 316. TO F. RIES,--LONDON. ... Manage this as soon as you can for your poor friend. I also expect my travelling route from you. Things have become quite too bad here, and I am fleeced worse than ever. If I do not go at all, lo! and behold a _crimen laesae_!... As it seems that you wish soon to have a dedication from me, I gladly comply with your request, much more so than with that of any great man; though, _entre nous_, the devil alone can tell how soon one may fall into their hands! The dedication to you will be written on the new symphony; and I hope I shall at length receive yours to me. B. is to open the letter he took charge of for the King [George IV.], in which he will see what I have written to His Majesty on the subject of the "Battle of Vittoria." The tenor of the enclosed is the same; but not a word as to the mass.[1] Our amiable friend B. must try to get me at least a battle-axe or a turtle for it! The engraved copy of the score of "The Battle" must also be presented to the King. This letter will cost you a good deal [seventeen shillings]; but I beg you will deduct it from your remittance to me. How much I regret being so troublesome! May God prosper you! Say all that is amiable to your wife till I come myself. Beware! you think me old; but I am a young veteran! Yours, as ever, B. [Footnote 1: On February 24, 1823, Beethoven wrote to the King of England that, so far back as 1813, he had sent him "Wellington's Victory," but never had received any communication on the subject; he, therefore, now sent an engraved copy of the work, which had been intended for him since 1815. He closed the letter by saying: "Convinced of the discrimination and kindness which your Majesty has always evinced in protecting and encouraging art and artists, the undersigned ventures to hope that your Majesty will graciously take the matter into consideration, and vouchsafe to comply with his respectful solicitation."] 317. TO SCHINDLER. MY VERY BEST OPTIMUS OPTIME,-- Pray try to hunt out a philanthropist who will advance me some money on a bank-share, that I may not put the generosity of my friends too much to the test, nor myself be placed in difficulty by the delay of this money, for which I have to thank the fine plans and arrangements of my precious brother. You must not let it appear that this money is really wanted. 318. TO SCHINDLER. DEAR SCHINDLER,-- Don't forget the bank-share. It is greatly needed; it would be very annoying to be brought into court; indeed, I would not be so for the whole world. My brother's conduct is quite worthy of him. The tailor is appointed to come to-day, still I hope to be able to get rid of him for the present by a few polite phrases. 319. TO HERR KIND. DEAR KIND,-- I intend to call on you at latest on Wednesday afternoon at four o'clock, when I will settle everything. Your obedient BEETHOVEN. 320. TO CHERUBINI.[1] March 15, 1823. HIGHLY ESTEEMED SIR,-- I joyfully take advantage of this opportunity to address you. I have done so frequently in spirit, as I prize your theatrical works beyond others. The artistic world has only to lament that, in Germany at least, no new dramatic piece of yours has appeared. Highly as all your works are valued by true connoisseurs, still it is a great loss to art not to possess any fresh production of your great genius for the theatre. True art is imperishable, and the true artist feels heartfelt pleasure in grand works of genius, and that is what enchants me when I hear a new composition of yours; in fact, I take greater interest in it than in my own; in short, I love and honor you. Were it not that my continued bad health prevents my going to see you in Paris, with what exceeding delight would I discuss questions of art with you! Do not think that this is merely intended to serve as an introduction to the favor I am about to ask of you. I hope and feel convinced that you do not for a moment suspect me of such base sentiments. I recently completed a grand solemn mass, and have resolved to offer it to the various European courts, as it is not my intention to publish it at present. I have therefore solicited the King of France, through the French embassy here, to subscribe to this work, and I feel certain that his Majesty would, at your recommendation, agree to do so. _Ma situation critique demande que je ne fixe pas seulement, comme ordinnaire, mes voeux au ciel; au contraire, il faut les fixer aussi_ ["_aussi_" in Beethoven's hand] _en bas pour les nécessités de la vie._ Whatever may be the fate of my request to you, I shall forever continue to love and esteem you, _et vous resterez toujours celui de mes contemporains que je l'estime le plus. Si vous me voulez faire un extrême plaisir, c'était si vous m'écrivez quelques lignes, ce que me soulagera bien. L'art unit tout le monde_, how much more, then, true artists, _et peut-être vous me dignez aussi_ to include me in that number. _Avec le plus haut estime_, _Votre ami et serviteur_, BEETHOVEN. [Footnote 1: Cherubini declared that he never received this letter.] 321. TO SCHINDLER.[1] DEAR SCHINDLER,-- I am not sure whether the other copy was corrected or not, so I send you this one instead. As to N. in S----, I beg you not to say a word; Bl. is already very uneasy on the subject. In haste, your friend, BEETHOVEN. [Footnote 1: We cannot understand what induced Beethoven, who lived in the same house with Schindler, to write to him; but he often did so to persons with whom he could easily have spoken, partly in order to get rid of the matter while it was in his thoughts, and also because he was a great deal from home; that is, going backwards and forwards from one lodging to another, having often several at the same time.] 322. TO HERR PETERS,--LEIPZIG. Vienna, March 20, 1823. The other three marches are only to be sent off to-day, as I missed the post last week. Irregular as I have been on this occasion in our transactions, you would not think me so culpable if you were here, and aware of my position, a description of which would be too tedious both for you and me. I have now an observation to make with regard to what I have sent off to you. Several sets of wind instruments may combine in the performance of the Grand March, and if this cannot be done, and a regimental band is not strong enough for its present arrangement, any bandmaster can easily adapt it by omitting some of the parts. You can, no doubt, find some one in Leipzig to show you how this can be managed with a smaller number, although I should regret if it were not to appear engraved exactly as it is written. You must forgive the numerous corrections in the works I send; my old copyist no longer sees distinctly, and the younger one has yet to be trained, but at all events there are no errors left. It is impossible for me to comply at once with your request for a stringed and a pianoforte quartet, but if you will write to me fixing the time you wish to have both works, I will do what I can to complete them. I must, however, apprise you that I cannot accept less than 50 ducats for a stringed quartet, and 70 for a pianoforte one, without incurring loss; indeed, I have repeatedly been offered more than 50 ducats for a violin quartet. I am, however, always unwilling to ask more than necessary, so I adhere to the sum of 50 ducats, which is, in fact, nowadays the usual price. The other commission is indeed an uncommon one, and I, of course, accept it, only I must beg you to let me know soon when it is required; otherwise, willing as I am to give you the preference, I might find it almost impossible to do so. You know I wrote to you formerly that quartets were precisely what had risen most in value, which makes me feel positively ashamed when I have to ask a price for a _really great work_. Still, such is my position that it obliges me to secure every possible advantage. It is very different, however, with the work itself; when I never, thank God, think of _profit_, but solely of _how I write it_. It so happens that two others besides yourself wish to have a mass of mine, and I am quite disposed to write at least three. The first has long been finished, the second not yet so, and the third not even begun. But in reference to yourself, I must have a certainty, that I may in any event be secure. More of this next time I write; do not remit the money, at any rate till you hear from me that the work is ready to be sent off. I must now conclude. I hope your distress is, by this time, in some degree alleviated. Your friend, BEETHOVEN. 323. TO ZELTER. Vienna, March 25, 1823. SIR,-- I avail myself of the present opportunity to send you my best wishes. The bearer of this asked me to recommend her to you; her name is Cornega; she has a fine _mezzo soprano_, and is a very artistic singer, and has, moreover, been favorably received in several operas. I have also specially considered your proposals about your Academy for Singing. If the Mass is ever published, I will send you a copy free of all charge. There is no doubt that it might be almost entirely executed _à la capella_; in which case, however, the work would have to be arranged accordingly; perhaps you have patience to do this. Besides, there is already a movement in the work quite _à la capella_, and that style may be specially termed the true church style. Thanks for your wish to be of service to me, but never would I accept anything whatever from so highly esteemed an artist as yourself. I honor you, and only wish I could have an opportunity to prove this by my actions. I am, with high consideration, Your friend and servant, BEETHOVEN. 324. TO HIS IMPERIAL HIGHNESS THE ARCHDUKE RUDOLPH. The Spring of 1823. YOUR IMPERIAL HIGHNESS,-- It must still be some days before I can wait on you again, as I am in the greatest hurry to send off the works that I named to your R.H. yesterday, for if they are not punctually dispatched, I might lose all profit. Your R.H. can easily understand how much time is occupied in getting copies made, and looking through every part; indeed, it would not be easy to find a more troublesome task. Your R.H. will, I am sure, gladly dispense with my detailing all the toil caused by this kind of thing, but I am compelled to allude to it candidly, though only in so far as is absolutely necessary to prevent your R.H. being misled with regard to me, knowing, alas! only too well what efforts are made to _prejudice your R.H. against_ me. But time will prove that I have been in all respects most faithful and attached to your R.H., and if my position were only as great as my zeal to serve your R.H., no happier man than myself would exist. I am your R.H.'s faithful and obedient servant, BEETHOVEN. 325. TO SCHINDLER. _Imprimis._--Papageno, not a word of what I said about Prussia. No reliance is to be placed on it; Martin Luther's table-talk alone can be compared to it. I earnestly beg my brother also not to remove the padlock from his lips, and not to allow anything to transpire beyond the Selchwurst-Gasse.[1] _Finis._--Inquire of that arch-churl Diabelli when the French copy of the Sonata in C minor [Op. 111] is to be published. I stipulated to have five copies for myself, one of which is to be on fine paper, for the Cardinal [the Archduke Rudolph]. If he attempts any of his usual impertinence on this subject, I will sing him in person a bass aria in his warehouse which shall cause it and all the street (Graben) to ring![2] [Footnote 1: Schindler relates: "The royal decision (to subscribe for a copy of the mass) was brought to Beethoven by the Chancellor of the Embassy, Hofrath Wernhard. Whether Prince Hatzfeld [the Ambassador] made the following offer from his own impulse, or in consequence of a commission from Berlin, is not known. At all events, the Hofrath put this question in the name of the prince to the great composer, 'Whether he would be disposed to prefer a royal order to the fifty ducats' [the sum demanded for the mass]. Beethoven replied at once, 'The fifty ducats.' Scarcely had the Chancellor left the room when Beethoven, in considerable excitement, indulged in all kinds of sarcastic remarks on the manner in which many of his contemporaries hunted after orders and decorations, these being in his estimation generally gained at the cost of the sanctity of art."] [Footnote 2: Schindler relates that Diabelli had refused to let Beethoven again have the MS. of the Sonata, which he had repeatedly sent for when in the hands of the engraver, in order to correct and improve it. Diabelli therefore coolly submitted to all this abuse of the enraged composer, and wrote to him that he would note down the threatened bass aria, and publish it, but would give him the usual gratuity for it, and that Beethoven had better come to see him. On this Beethoven said no more. This Sonata is dedicated to the Archduke Rudolph, and is also published by Schlesinger.] 326. TO F. RIES,--LONDON. Vienna, April 25, 1823. DEAR RIES,-- The Cardinal's stay here of a month robbed me of a great deal of time, being obliged to give him daily lessons of two or three hours each; and after such lessons I was scarcely able next day to think, far less to write. My continued melancholy situation compels me, however, to write immediately what will bring me in sufficient money for present use. What a sad revelation is this! I am, besides, far from well, owing to my many troubles,--weak eyes among others. But do not be uneasy, you shall shortly receive the Symphony; really and truly, my distressing condition is alone to blame for the delay. In the course of a few weeks you shall have thirty-three new variations on a theme [Valse, Op. 120] dedicated to your wife. Bauer [First Secretary to the Austrian Embassy] has the score of the "Battle of Vittoria," which was dedicated to the then Prince Regent, and for which I have still to receive the costs of copying. I do beg you, my dear friend, to remit me as soon as possible anything you can get for it. With regard to your tender conjugal discussion, you will always find an opponent in me,--that is, not so much an opponent of yours as a partisan of your wife's. I remain, as ever, your friend, BEETHOVEN. 327. TO HERR LISSNER,--PETERSBURG. Vienna, May 7, 1823. SIR,-- Herr v. Schuppanzigh assured me, when he was here, that you were anxious to acquire some of my productions for your house. Perhaps the following works might suit your purpose, namely: six _bagatelles_ for pianoforte, 20 gold ducats; thirty-five variations on a favorite theme for pianoforte, forming one entire work, 30 gold ducats; two grand airs with chorus, the poetry by Goethe and Matthisson, which can be sung either with instrumental or pianoforte accompaniment, 12 gold ducats. I request an answer as soon as possible, for others also wish to have my works. I am, sir, your obedient LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN. 328.[1] TO SCHINDLER. Hetzendorf, 1823. SAMOTHRACIAN VAGABOND!--[2] You must hunt out from Schlemmer [the copyist] what is still wanting in the "Kyrie;" show him the postscript, and so, _satis_, no more of such a wretch! Farewell! arrange everything; I am to bind up my eyes at night, and to spare them as much as possible; otherwise, says Smetana, I shall write little more music in the time to come. [Footnote 1: "We arrived at Hetzendorf on May 17" is written by Carl in Beethoven's note-book of 1823; and on this note is written, in the "scamp's" hand, Hetzendorf, 1823.] [Footnote 2: "By the word 'Samothracian,' Beethoven alludes to the Samothracian Mysteries, partly grounded on music. Their mutual participation in the Beethoven Mysteries is intended to be thus indicated. Among the initiated were also Brunswick, Lichnowsky, and Zmeskall." [From a note of Schindler's on the subject.]] 329. TO SCHINDLER. Hetzendorf, 1823 (?). Pray, forward the packet to-day, and inquire this afternoon, if possible, about the housekeeper in the Glockengasse, No. 318, 3d Étage. She is a widow, understands cookery, and is willing to serve merely for board and lodging, to which, of course, I cannot consent, or only under certain conditions. My present one is too shameful. I cannot invite you here, but be assured of my gratitude. 330. TO SCHINDLER.[1] Hetzendorf, 1823. I enclose the letter to Herr v. Obreskow [Chargé d'Affaires of the Russian Legation]; as soon as I receive the money, I will immediately send you 50 florins for your trouble. Not a word more than what is absolutely necessary! I have advertised your house. You can mention, merely as a casual remark at the right moment, that France also remitted the money to you. Never forget that such persons represent Majesty itself. [Footnote 1: Louis VIII. sent a gold medal for his subscription copy of the Mass on February 20, 1824.] 331. TO SCHINDLER. I beg you will kindly write out the enclosed invitation neatly for me on the paper I send you, for Carl has too much to do. I wish to dispatch it early on Wednesday. I want to know where Grillparzer lives; perhaps I may pay him a visit myself.[1] You must have a little patience about the 50 florins; as yet it is impossible for me to send them, for which you are as much to blame as I am. [Footnote 1: It is well known that in the winter of 1822-23 Beethoven was engaged in the composition of an opera for the Royal Theatre; for which purpose Grillparzer had given him his _Melusina_.] 332. TO SCHINDLER. I send K.'s [Kanne's] book [libretto]. Except the first act, which is rather insipid, it is written in such a masterly style that it does not by any means require a first-rate composer. I will not say that on this very account it would be the more suitable for me; still, if I can get rid of previous engagements, who knows what may or will happen! Please acknowledge the receipt of this. 333. TO SCHINDLER. I wish to know about Esterhazy, and also about the post. A letter-carrier from the Mauer [a place near Hetzendorf] was here; I only hope the message has been properly delivered. Nothing as yet from Dresden [see No. 330]. I mean to ask you to dine with me a few days hence, for I still suffer from my weak eyes; to-day, however, for the first time, they seem to improve, but I scarcely dare make any use of them as yet. Your friend, BEETHOVEN. P.S. As for the Tokay,[1] it is better adapted for _summer_ than for _autumn_, and also for some fiddler who could _respond_ to its noble fire, and yet _stand firm as a rock_. [Footnote 1: A musical friend had sent the _maestro_ six bottles of genuine Tokay, expressing his wish that it might tend to restore his strength. Schindler, he says, wrote to Beethoven at Hetzendorf, to tell him of this, and received the above answer, and the order through "Frau Schnaps" to do as he pleased with the wine. He sent one bottle of it to Hetzendorf, but Beethoven at that time had inflamed eyes.] 334. TO SCHINDLER. I cannot at present accept these tempting invitations [from Sonntag and Unger]; so far as my weak eyes permit, I am very busy, and when it is fine, I go out. I will myself thank these two fair ladies for their amiability. No tidings from Dresden. I shall wait till the end of this month, and then apply to a lawyer in Dresden. I will write about Schoberlechner to-morrow. 335. TO SCHINDLER. June 18, 1823. You ought to have perfectly well known that I would have nothing to do with the affair in question. With regard to my being "liberal," I think I have shown you that I am so on principle; indeed, I suspect you must have observed that I even have gone _beyond_ these principles. _Sapienti sat._[1] [Footnote 1: Franz Schoberlechner, pianist in Vienna, wrote to Beethoven on June 25, 1823, to ask him for letters of introduction to Leipzig, Dresden, Berlin, and Russia, etc. The _maestro_, however, wrote across the letter, "An active fellow requires no other recommendation than from one respectable family to another," and gave it back to Schindler, who showed it to Schoberlechner, and no doubt at his desire urged Beethoven to comply with his request. Beethoven, however, did not know Schoberlechner, and had no very high opinion of him, as he played chiefly _bravura_ pieces, and, besides, on the bills of his concerts, he pompously paraded all his titles, decorations, and as member of various societies, which gave ample subject for many a sarcastic remark on the part of Beethoven.] 336. TO THE ARCHDUKE RUDOLPH. Vienna, June 1, 1823. I have been always ailing since Y.R.H. left this, and latterly afflicted by severe inflammation of the eyes, which has now in so far subsided that for the last eight days I have been able once more to use my sight, though very sparingly. Y.R.H. will perceive from the enclosed receipt of June 27, the dispatch of some music. As Y.R.H. seemed to take pleasure in the C minor Sonata,[1] I thought I did not take too much on myself by surprising Y.R.H. with the dedication. The Variations[2] have been written out for at least five or six weeks past, but the state of my eyes did not permit me to revise them thoroughly myself. My hope of being entirely restored proved vain. At last I made Schlemmer look them over, so, though they may not look very neat, still they are correct. The C minor Sonata was engraved in Paris in a very faulty manner, and being engraved here from that copy, I tried to make it as correct as possible. I intend shortly to send you a beautifully engraved copy of the Variations. With regard to the Mass[3] that Y.R.H. wished should be more generally known, my continued bad health for some years past, causing me to incur heavy debts, and compelling me to give up my intention of going to England, induced me to ponder on some mode of improving my condition. This Mass seemed well adapted to my purpose. I was advised to offer it to different courts. Painful as this was to me, I felt that I should have cause for self-reproach if I neglected doing so. I therefore applied to various courts to subscribe to the Mass, fixing the price at fifty ducats; the general opinion being that this was not too much, and if there were a good many subscribers, the scheme would not be unprofitable. Hitherto the subscription is indeed flattering to me, as their Majesties of France and Prussia have each taken a copy. I also received a letter from my friend Prince Nicolaus Gallizin a few days ago, from Petersburg, in which this most amiable Prince mentions that H.M. the Emperor of Russia had become a subscriber, and that I should soon hear further on the subject from the Imperial Russian Embassy. Notwithstanding all this (and though there are some other subscribers), I have not yet realized as much as the sum a publisher offered me for it; the only advantage being that the work remains _mine_. The costs of copying are also great, and further increased by three new pieces being added, which, as soon as they are completed, I will send to Y.R.H. Perhaps you would not think it too much trouble to apply to H.R.H. the Grand Duke of Tuscany to take a copy of this Mass. The application was indeed made some time ago to the Grand Duke of Tuscany through the agent here, V. Odelga, who faithfully assured me that the proposal would be graciously accepted. I place no great faith, however, in this, as some months have elapsed, and no notice has been again taken of the application. As the affair is now set agoing, it is but natural that I should do all I can to attain my desired object. The undertaking was from the first disagreeable to me, and still more so to mention it to Y.R.H., or to allude to it at all, but "_necessity has no law_." I only feel grateful to Him who dwells above the stars that I now begin once more to be able to use my eyes. I am at present writing a new symphony for England,[4] bespoken by the Philharmonic Society, and hope it will be quite finished fourteen days hence. I cannot strain my eyes as yet long at a time; I beg therefore Y.R.H.'s indulgence with regard to your Variations,[5] which appear to me very charming, but still require closer revision on my part. Y.R.H. has only to persevere, especially to accustom yourself to write down your ideas at once at the piano, quickly and briefly. For this purpose a small table ought to be placed close beside the piano. By this means not only is the imagination strengthened; but you learn instantly to hold fast the most fugitive ideas. It is equally necessary to be able to write without any piano; and sometimes a simple choral melody, to be carried out in simple or varied phrases, in counterpoint, or in a free manner, will certainly entail no headache on Y.R.H., but rather, in finding yourself thus right amid the centre of art, cause you very great pleasure. The faculty of representing precisely what we wish and feel comes by degrees; an essential _desideratum_ for a noble-minded man. My eyes warn me to conclude. With every kind and good wish for Y.R.H., I remain, &c., &c. [K.] POSTSCRIPT. If Y.R.H. should confer the happiness of a letter on me, I beg you will address to me at Vienna, for I shall receive all my letters here safely forwarded by the post from there. If agreeable to Y.R.H., I would beg you to recommend the Mass to Prince Anton in Dresden,[6] so that the King of Saxony may subscribe to it, which he will, no doubt, do if Y.R.H. shows any interest in the matter. As soon as I know that you have actually done me this favor, I will forthwith apply to the General-Director there[7] of the Royal Theatre and of Music, whose office it is to arrange these things, and send him a request to procure a subscription from the King of Saxony, which I am reluctant to do without a recommendation from Y.R.H. My opera, "Fidelio," was performed with much applause in Dresden at the festivities there in honor of the visit of the King of Bavaria, when their Majesties were all present. I received this intelligence from the above-named director-general, who asked me for the score through Weber, and afterwards sent me really a very handsome present in return. I hope Y.R.H. will excuse my intruding such a request on you, but Y.R.H. knows that I am not usually importunate. Should, however, the slightest obstacle arise to render my request disagreeable to you, I shall not be the less convinced of your generosity and kindness. Neither avarice, nor the love of speculation, which I have always avoided, prompted this scheme; but necessity compels me to use every effort to rescue my self from my present condition. Candor is best, for it will prevent my being too hardly judged. Owing to constant ill health, which has prevented my writing as usual, I have incurred a debt of 200 to 300 florins C.M.,[8] which can only be discharged by vigorous exertions on my part. If my subscription succeeds better than it has hitherto done, it will be an effectual help, and if my health improves, of which there is every hope, I shall be able once more to resume my compositions with fresh energy. In the mean time I trust Y.R.H. will not be offended by my candor. Had it not been the fear of being accused of not sufficiently _bestirring_ myself, I would have persevered in my usual silence. As to the recommendation, I am at all events convinced that Y.R.H. is always glad to effect good results for others when _possible_, and that you are not likely to make any exception in my case. [Footnote 1: This Sonata, Op. 111, dedicated to the Archduke Rudolph, was composed in 1822, and published by Schlesinger in the beginning of 1823.] [Footnote 2: These _Variations_ are, no doubt, the 33 C major Variations for pianoforte, Op. 120, on a waltz of Diabelli's, dedicated to Madame Brentano, composed in 1823, and published in the June of the same year.] [Footnote 3: The Grand Mass in D.] [Footnote 4: The symphony which Beethoven declared he had completed in fourteen days was the 9th in D minor, composed in 1822 or 1823, first performed on the 7th May, and published in 1826.] [Footnote 5: The Archduke's Variations alluded to by Beethoven are not published or now known.] [Footnote 6: In a letter from the Archduke Rudolph of July 31, 1823, he says, "My brother-in-law, Prince Anton, has written to me that the King of Saxony is expecting your beautiful Mass."] [Footnote 7: The director-general of the musical Court band and opera in Dresden (1823) was Von Könneritz.] [Footnote 8: This debt of 200 to 300 florins had only been incurred by Beethoven in order not to sell out his shares in the Austrian Loan; he was in no need.] 337. TO SCHINDLER. Hetzendorf, July 1, 1823. I am myself writing to Wocher [cabinet courier to Prince Esterhazy? No. 333], and for more speed I send by Carl, who chances to be driving in, the application to Prince E. Be so good as to inquire the result; I doubt its being favorable, not expecting much kindly feeling on his part towards me, judging from former days.[1] I believe that female influence alone ensures success with him in such matters; at all events, I now know, by your obliging inquiries, how I can safely write to this Scholz. The bad weather, and more especially the bad atmosphere, prevented my paying her [Countess Schafgotsch] a visit about this affair.[2] Your _amicus_, BEETHOVEN. P.S. Nothing yet from Dresden! Schlemmer [the copyist] has just been here asking again for money. I have now advanced him 70 Gulden. Speculations are for commercial men, and not for poor devils like myself. Hitherto the sole fruit of this unlucky speculation [a subscription for his Mass] are only more debts. You have, no doubt, seen that the "Gloria" is completed. If my eyes were only strong again, so that I could resume my writing, I should do well enough. [Written on the cover:] Are the Variations [Op. 120] sent off yet to London? N.B.--So far as I can remember, it was not mentioned in the application to Prince Esterhazy that the Mass was to be delivered in manuscript only. What mischief may ensue from this! I suspect that such was the intention of Herr Artaria in proposing to present the Mass _gratis_ to the Prince, as it would give Artaria an opportunity for the third time to steal one of my works. Wocher's attention must be called to this. Of course, there is nothing obligatory on Papageno in the matter. [Footnote 1: Beethoven wrote the Mass in C for him in the year 1807, which was by no means satisfactory to the prince when performed at Eisenstadt in the year following, and conducted by Beethoven himself.] [Footnote 2: Scholz, music director at Warmbrunn in Silesia, had written a German text for the Mass in C. Beethoven also wished to have from him a German translation from the Latin words adapted to the music of the Grand Mass. Schindler says, that the words "prevented my visiting her" refer to Countess Schafgotsch, whom Beethoven wished to see on account of Scholz, who unhappily died in the ensuing year. His text, however, is given in the _Cecilia_, 23-54.] 338. TO PILAT, EDITOR OF THE "AUSTRIAN OBSERVER." SIR,-- I shall feel highly honored if you will be so good as to mention in your esteemed journal my nomination as an honorary member of the Royal Swedish Musical Academy. Although neither vain nor ambitious, still I consider it advisable not wholly to pass over such an occurrence, as in practical life we must live and work for others, who may often eventually benefit by it. Forgive my intrusion, and let me know if I can in any way serve you in return, which it would give me much pleasure to do. I am, sir, with high consideration, Your obedient BEETHOVEN. 339. TO SCHINDLER. Hetzendorf, July, 1823. MOST WORTHY RAGAMUFFIN OF EPIRUS AND BRUNDUSIUM!-- Give this letter to the editor of the "Observer," but write the address on it first; ask him at the same time whether his daughter makes great progress on the piano, and if I can be of any use to her by sending her a copy of one of my compositions. I wrote that I was an "_honorary_ member;" I don't know, however, whether this is correct; perhaps I ought to have said, "a corresponding member;" neither knowing nor caring much about such things. You had also better say something on the subject to _Bernardum non sanctum_ (editor of the "Vienna Zeitschrift"). Make inquiries, too, from Bernard about that knave Ruprecht; tell him of this queer business, and find out from him how he can punish the villain. Ask both these philosophical newspaper scribes whether this may be considered an honorable or dishonorable nomination. 340. TO SCHINDLER. Master flash in the pan, and wide of the mark! full of reasons, yet devoid of reason!--Everything was ready yesterday for Gläser (the copyist). As for you, I shall expect you in Hetzendorf to dinner at half-past two o'clock. If you come later, dinner shall be kept for you. 341. TO SCHINDLER. Hetzendorf, July 2, 1823. WORTHY HERR V. SCHINDLER,-- The incessant insolence of my landlord from the hour I entered his house up to the present moment compels me to apply for aid to the police; so I beg you will do so for me at once. As to the double winter windows, the housekeeper was desired to see about them, and especially to state if they were not necessary after such a violent storm, in case of the rain having penetrated into the room; but her report was that the rain had not come in, and, moreover, that it could not possibly do so. In accordance with her statement, I locked the door to prevent this rude man entering my room during my absence (which he had threatened). Say also further what his conduct to you was, and that he put up a placard of the lodgings being to let, without giving me notice, which, besides, he has no right to do till St. James's Day. He is equally unfair in refusing to give up the receipt from St. George's Day till St. James's, as the enclosure shows; I am charged, too, for lighting, of which I know nothing. This detestable lodging,[1] without any open stove, and the principal flue truly abominable, has cost me (for extra outlay, exclusive of the rent) 259 florins, in order merely to keep me alive while I was there during the winter. It was a deliberate fraud, as I never was allowed to see the rooms on the first floor, but only those on the second, that I might not become aware of their many disagreeable drawbacks. I cannot understand how a flue _so destructive to health can be tolerated by the Government_. You remember the appearance of the walls of your room owing to smoke, and the large sum it cost even to lessen in any degree this discomfort, although to do away with it wholly was impossible. My chief anxiety at present is that he may be ordered to take down his placard, and to give me a receipt for the house-rent I have paid; but nothing will induce me to pay for the abominable lighting, without which it cost me enough actually to preserve my life in such a lodging. My eyes do not yet suffer me to encounter the town atmosphere, or I would myself apply in person to the police. Your attached BEETHOVEN. [Footnote 1: The Pfarrgasse, in the Laimgrube, where Schindler lived with him.] 342. TO SCHINDLER. I must have an attested copy of all the writings; I send you 45 kreutzers. How could you possibly accept such a proposal from our churlish landlord when accompanied by a threat? Where was your good sense? Where it always is. To-morrow early I shall send for the Variations, copy and originals. It is not certain whether the Pr. comes or not; so be so good as to stay at home till eight o'clock. You can come to dinner either to-day or to-morrow; but you must settle which you mean to do, as it is not easy _for me_ to provide provisions. Not later than half-past two o'clock. The housekeeper will tell you about a lodging in the Landstrasse. It is high time, truly! As soon as you hear of anything to be had on the Bastei or the Landstrasse, you must at once give me notice. We must find out what room the landlord uses on account of the well.--_Vale!_ 343. TO SCHINDLER.[1] Hetzendorf, 1823. SAMOTHRACIAN VAGABOND!-- You were dispatched yesterday to the South Pole, whereas we went off to the North Pole, a slight difference now equalized by Captain Parry. There were, however, no mashed potatoes there. Bach [his lawyer], to whom I beg my best regards, is requested to say what the lodging in Baden is to cost; we must also try to arrange that Carl should come to me once every fortnight there (but cheaply; good heavens! poverty and economy!). I intrust this matter to you, as you have your friends and admirers among the drivers and liverymen. If you get this in time, you had better go to Bach to-day, so that I may receive his answer to-morrow forenoon. It is almost too late now. You might also take that rascal of a copyist by surprise; I don't expect much good from him. He has now had the Variations for eight days. Your ["friend" stroked out] _amicus_, BEETHOVEN. [Footnote 1: He no doubt alludes to Captain Parry, the celebrated traveller, who wrote an article in the _A.M. Zeitung_ on the music of the Esquimaux.] 344. TO SCHINDLER.[1] June, 1823. SAMOTHRACIAN!-- Don't trouble yourself to come here till you receive a _Hati Scherif_. I must say you do not deserve the _golden_ cord. My fast-sailing frigate, the worthy and well-born Frau Schnaps, will call every three or four days to inquire after your health. Farewell! Bring _no one whatever_ with you: farewell! [Footnote 1: Schindler says in his _Biography_: "These _Variations_ [Op. 120] were completed in June, 1823, and delivered to the publisher, Diabelli, without the usual amount of time bestowed on giving them the finishing touches; and now he set to work at once at the ninth Symphony, some jottings of which were already written down. Forthwith all the gay humor that had made him more sociable, and in every respect more accessible, at once disappeared. All visits were declined," &c.] 345. TO THE ARCHDUKE RUDOLPH. Hetzendorf, July 15, 1823. I trust that you are in the best possible health. As for my eyes, they are improving, though slowly, and in six or seven days at most I hope to have the good fortune to wait on Y.R.H. If I were not obliged to use spectacles, I should get better sooner. It is a most distressing occurrence, and has thrown me back in everything. What soothes my feelings, however, is Y.R.H. being fully aware that I am always to be of service to you. I have another favor to ask of Y.R.H., which I hope you will graciously accede. Will Y.R.H. be so kind as to grant me a testimonial to the following effect: "That I wrote the Grand Mass expressly for Y.R.H.; that it has been for some time in your possession; and that you have been pleased to permit me to circulate it." This ought to have been the case, and being no untruth, I hope I may claim this favor. Such a testimonial will be of great service to me; for how could I have believed that my slight talents would have exposed me to so much envy, persecution, and calumny. It has always been my intention to ask Y.R.H.'s permission to circulate the Mass, but the pressure of circumstances, and above all my inexperience in worldly matters, as well as my feeble health, has caused this confusion. If the Mass is engraved hereafter, I hope to dedicate it to Y.R.H. when published,[1] and not till then will the limited list of royal subscribers appear. I shall ever consider Y.R.H. as my most illustrious patron, and make this known to the world whenever it is in my power. In conclusion, I entreat you again not to refuse my request about the testimonial. It will only cost Y.R.H. a few lines, and ensure the best results for me. I will bring the Variations[2] of Y.R.H. with me. They require little alteration, and cannot fail to become a very pretty pleasing work for all lovers of music. I must indeed appear a most importunate suitor. I beg you will kindly send me the testimonial as soon as possible, for I require it. [K.] [Footnote 1: The Grand Mass (_Op._ 123) was published in 1827.] [Footnote 2: The _Variations_ composed by the Archduke Rudolph, mentioned in the letters 345 and 351, are not the same as the published ones, and are unknown.] 346. TO F. RIES. Hetzendorf, July 16, 1823. MY DEAR RIES,-- I received your letter with much pleasure the day before yesterday. The Variations have, no doubt, arrived by this time. I could not write the dedication to your wife, not knowing her name; so I beg you will write it yourself on the part of your wife's friend and your own; let it be a surprise to her, for the fair sex like that.--_Entre nous_, surprise is always the greatest charm of the beautiful! As for the _Allegri di Bravura_, I must make allowance for yours. To tell you the truth, I am no great friend to that kind of thing, as it is apt to entail too much mere mechanism; at least, such is the case with those I know. I have not yet looked at yours, but I shall ask ---- about them. I recommend you to be cautious in your intercourse with him. Could I not be of use to you in many ways here? These printers, or rather _misprinters_, as they ought to be called to deserve their names, pirate your works, and give you nothing in return; this, surely, might be differently managed. I mean to send you some choruses shortly, even if obliged to compose some new ones, for this is my favorite style. Thanks for the proceeds of the _bagatelles_, with which I am quite satisfied. Give nothing to the King of England. Pray accept anything you can get for the Variations. I shall be perfectly contented. I only must stipulate to take no other reward for the dedication to your wife than the kiss which I am to receive in London. You name _guineas_, whereas I only get _pounds sterling_, and I hear there is a difference between these. Do not be angry with _un pauvre musicien autrichien_, who is still at a very low ebb. I am now writing a new violin quartet. Might not this be offered to the musical or unmusical London Jews?--_en vrai Juif_. I am, with cordial regard, Your old friend, BEETHOVEN. 347. TO HERR GEHEIMRATH VON KÖNNERITZ,--DRESDEN,[1] DIRECTOR OF THE ROYAL ORCHESTRA AND THEATRE IN SAXONY. Hetzendorf, July 17, 1823. SIR,-- I have too long deferred sending you a signed receipt and thanks, but I feel sure you will pardon the delay from my great pressure of business, owing to my health having improved, and God knows how long this may continue. The description given by my dear friend Maria Weber[2] of your generous and noble disposition encourages me to apply to you on another subject, namely, about a Grand Mass which I am now issuing in manuscript. Though I have met with a previous refusal on this matter [337], still, as my esteemed Cardinal, H.R. Highness the Archduke Rudolph, has written to H.R.H. Prince Anton, requesting him to recommend the Mass to his Majesty the King of Saxony, I think this fresh application might at all events be made, as I should consider it a great honor to number among my distinguished subscribers (such as the King of Prussia, the Emperor of Russia, the King of France, &c.) so great a connoisseur in music as the King of Saxony. I leave it to you, sir, to decide from this statement how and when you can best effect my purpose. I am unable to send you to-day the application for a subscription to my Mass to H.M. the King of Saxony, but I will do so by the next post. In any event I feel assured that you will not think I am one of those who compose for the sake of paltry gain; but how often do events occur which constrain a man to act contrary to his inclinations and his principles? My Cardinal is a benevolent Prince, but means are wanting! I hope to receive your forgiveness for my apparent importunity. If my poor abilities can in any way be employed in your service, what extreme pleasure it would give me. I am, sir, with esteem, Your expectant BEETHOVEN. [Footnote 1: The director-general of the Dresden theatre at that time was Von Könneritz, who sent Beethoven forty ducats (requesting a receipt) for his opera of _Fidelio_, performed with great applause April 29, 1823, and conducted by C.M. von Weber. Madame Schröder-Devrient made her _début_ in the character of Leonore.] [Footnote 2: In Weber's _Biography_ it is stated (Vol. II. p. 465) that Beethoven and Weber exchanged several letters about the performance of _Fidelio_, and in fact Weber did receive letters from Beethoven on February 16, April 10, and June 9. Unhappily, no part of this correspondence has yet been discovered, except a fragment of the sketch of a letter written by Weber of January 28, 1823, which sufficiently proves that Beethoven was right in calling him his _friend_. It is as follows:--"This mighty work, teeming with German grandeur and depth of feeling, having been given under my direction at Prague, had enabled me to acquire the most enthusiastic and instructive knowledge of its inner essence, by means of which I hope to produce it before the public here with full effect, provided as I am with all possible accessories for the purpose. Each performance will be a festival to me, permitting me to pay that homage to your mighty spirit which dwells in the inmost recesses of my heart, where love and admiration strive for the mastery." On October 5 of this year, Weber visited Beethoven in Baden, with Haslinger and Benedict.] 348. TO HERR V. KÖNNERITZ,--DRESDEN. Vienna, July 25, 1823. SIR,-- Forgive my importunity in sending to your care the enclosed letter from me to his R.H. Prince Anton of Saxony; it contains an application to his Majesty the King of Saxony to subscribe to a mass of mine. I recently mentioned to you that the Cardinal Archduke Rudolph had written to his M. the King of Saxony about this Mass; I entreat you to use all your influence in this matter, and I leave it entirely to your own judgment and knowledge of local matters to act as you think best. Although I do not doubt that the recommendation of my Cardinal will have considerable weight, still the decision of his Majesty cannot fail to be much influenced by the advice of the Administrator of objects connected with the fine arts. Hitherto, in spite of apparent brilliant success, I have scarcely realized as much as a publisher would have given me for the work, the expenses of copying being so very great. It was the idea of my friends to circulate this Mass, for, thank God! I am a mere novice in all speculations. In the mean time, there is not a single _employé_ of our Government who has not been, like myself, a loser. Had it not been for my continued bad health for many years past, a foreign country would at least have enabled me to live free from all cares except those for art. Judge me kindly, and not harshly; I live only for my art, and my sole wish is to fulfil my duties as a man; but this, alas! cannot always be accomplished without the influence of the _subterranean powers_. While commending my cause to you, I also venture to hope that your love of art, and above all your philanthropy, will induce you to be so good as to write me a few lines, informing me of the result as soon as you are acquainted with it. I am, sir, with high consideration, Your obedient BEETHOVEN. 349. TO SCHINDLER. August, 1823. YOU SAMOTHRACIAN VILLAIN!-- Make haste and come, for the weather is just right. Better early than late--_presto, prestissimo_! We are to drive from here.[1] [Footnote 1: Beethoven had apartments in a summer residence of Baron Pronay's on his beautiful property at Hetzendorf. Suddenly, however, the _maestro_, deeply immersed in the _Ninth Symphony_, was no longer satisfied with this abode, because "the Baron would persist in making him profound bows every time that he met him." So, with the help of Schindler and Frau Schnaps, he removed to Baden in August, 1823.] 350. TO HIS NEPHEW. Baden, August 16, 1823. MY DEAR BOY,-- I did not wish to say anything to you till I found my health improving here, which, however, is scarcely even yet the case. I came here with a cold and catarrh, which were very trying to me, my constitution being naturally rheumatic, which will, I fear, soon cut the thread of my life, or, still worse, gradually wear it away. The miserable state of my digestive organs, too, can only be restored by medicines and diet, and for this I have to thank my _faithful_ servants! You will learn how constantly I am in the open air when I tell you that to-day for the first time I properly (or improperly, though it was involuntary) resumed my suit to my Muse. I _must_ work, but do not wish it to be known. Nothing can be more tempting (to me at least) than the enjoyment of beautiful Nature at these baths, but _nous sommes trop pauvres, et il faut écrire ou de n'avoir pas de quoi_. Get on, and make every preparation for your examination, and be unassuming, so that you may prove yourself higher and better than people expect. Send your linen here at once; your gray trousers must still be wearable, at all events at home; for, my dear son, you are indeed very _dear_ to me! My address is, "At the coppersmith's," &c. Write instantly to say that you have got this letter. I will send a few lines to that contemptible creature, Schindler, though I am most unwilling to have anything to do with such a wretch. If we could write as quickly as we think and feel, I could say a great deal not a little remarkable; but for to-day I can only add that I wish a certain Carl may prove worthy of all my love and unwearied care, and learn fully to appreciate it. Though not certainly exacting, as you know, still there are many ways in which we can show those who are better and nobler than ourselves that we acknowledge their superiority. I embrace you from my heart. Your faithful and true FATHER. 351. TO THE ARCHDUKE RUDOLPH. August, 1823. I am really very ill, and not suffering from my eyes alone. I intend to drag myself to-morrow to Baden, to look out for a lodging, and to go there altogether in the course of a few days. The air in town has a very bad effect on my whole organization, and has really injured my health, having gone twice to town to consult my physicians. It will be easier for me to repair to Y.R.H. in Baden. I am quite inconsolable, both on account of Y.R.H. and myself, that my usefulness is thus limited. I have marked some things in the Variations, but I can explain these better verbally. [K.] 352. TO THE ARCHDUKE RUDOLPH. Baden, August 22, 1823. Your gracious letter led me to believe that Y.R.H. intended to return to Baden, where I arrived on the 13th, very ill; but I am now better. I had recently another inflammatory cold, having just recovered from one. My digestion, too, was miserable, and my eyes very bad; in short, my whole system seemed impaired. I was obliged to make the effort to come here, without even being able to see Y.R.H. Thank God, my eyes are so much better that I can again venture to make tolerable use of them by daylight. My other maladies, too, are improving, and I cannot expect more in so short a period. How I wish that Y.R.H. were only here, when in a few days we could entirely make up for lost time. Perhaps I may still be so fortunate as to see Y.R.H. here, and be able to show my zeal to serve Y.R.H. How deeply does this cause me to lament my unhappy state of health. Much as I wish for its entire restoration, still I greatly fear that this will never be the case, and on this account I hope for Y.R.H.'s indulgence. As I can now at length prove how gladly I place myself at Y.R.H.'s disposal, my most anxious desire is that you would be pleased to make use of me. [K.] 353. TO THE ARCHDUKE RUDOLPH. 1823. I have just been enjoying a short walk and composing a Canon, "Grossen Dank, ÷ ÷ ÷," when, on returning home, with the intention of writing it out for Y.R.H., I find a petitioner who is under the delusion that his request will be better received if made through me. What can I do? A good action cannot be too soon performed, and even a whim must be sometimes humored. The bearer of this is Kapellmeister Drechsler, of the Josephstadt and Baden Theatre; he wishes to obtain the situation of second Court organist. He has a good knowledge of thorough bass, and is also a good organist, besides being favorably known as a composer,--all qualities that recommend him for this situation. He _rightly_ thinks that the best recommendation to secure him the appointment is that of Y.R.H., who, being yourself so great a connoisseur and performer, know better than any one how to appreciate true merit; and assuredly H.I. Majesty would prefer such testimony to every other. I therefore add my entreaties, though with some hesitation, to those of Herr D., relying on the indulgence and kindness of Y.R.H., and in the hope that the illustrious patron and protector of all that is good will do what lies in his power to be of use on this occasion. My Canon shall be sent to-morrow,[1] together with the confession of my sins, intentional and unintentional, for which I beg your gracious absolution. My eyes, alas! prevent me from saying to-day as I could wish my hopes and desires that all good may attend you. P.S. I ought also to mention that Herr Drechsler is the unsalaried professor of thorough bass at St. Anna's, and has been so for the last ten years. [K.] [Footnote 1: The Canon, _Grossen Dank, ÷ ÷ ÷_, is not to be found in either Breitkopf & Härtel's or Thayer's catalogue, nor anywhere else.] 354. TO F. RIES. Baden, September 5, 1823. MY DEAR FRIEND,-- You advise me to engage some one to look after my affairs; now I did so as to the Variations; that is, my brother and Schindler took charge of them, but how? The Variations were not to have appeared here till after being published in London; but everything went wrong. The dedication to Brentano [Antonie v. Brentano, _née_ Edlen von Birkenstock] was to be confined to Germany, I being under great obligations to her, and having nothing else to spare at the moment; indeed, Diabelli, the publisher, alone got it from me. But everything went through Schindler's hands. No man on earth was ever more contemptible,--an arch villain; but I soon sent him packing! I will dedicate some other work to your wife in the place of this one. You, no doubt, received my last letter [No. 346]. I think thirty ducats would be enough for one of the _Allegri di Bravura_, but I should like to publish them here at the same time, which might easily be arranged. Why should I give up so much profit to these rogues here? It will not be published here till I am told that it has arrived in London; moreover, you may yourself fix the price, as you best know London customs. The copyist to-day at last finished the score of the Symphony; so Kirchhoffer and I are only waiting for a favorable opportunity to send it off. I am still here, being very ill when I arrived, and my health still continues in a most precarious condition, and, good heavens! instead of amusing myself like others at these baths, my necessities compel me to write every day. I am also obliged to drink the mineral waters besides bathing. The copy will shortly be sent off; I am only waiting till I hear of an opportunity from Kirchhoffer, for it is too bulky to forward by post. My last letter must have given you an insight into everything. I will send you some choruses; let me have any commissions for oratorios as soon as you can, that I may fix the time at once. I am sorry about the Variations on account of ----, as I wrote them more for London than here. This is not my fault. Answer me very soon, both as to particulars and time. Kind regards to your family. 355. TO F. RIES,--LONDON. Baden, September 5, 1823. MY DEAR KIND RIES,-- I have still no tidings of the Symphony, but you may depend on its soon being in London. Were I not so poor as to be obliged to live by my pen, I would accept nothing from the Philharmonic Society; but as it is, I must wait till the money for the Symphony is made payable here; though as a proof of my interest and confidence in that Society, I have already sent off the new Overture, and I leave it to them to settle the payment as they please. My brother, who keeps his carriage, wished also to profit by me; so without asking my permission, he offered this Overture to Boosey, a London publisher. Pray, tell him that my brother was mistaken with regard to the Overture. I see now that he bought it from me in order to practise usury with it. _O Frater!!_ I have never yet received the Symphony you dedicated to me. If I did not regard this dedication as a kind of challenge to which I am bound to respond, I would ere this have dedicated some work to you. I always, however, wished first to see yours, and how joyfully would I then testify my gratitude to you in one way or another. I am, indeed deeply your debtor for your kind services and many proofs of attachment. Should my health improve by my intended course of baths, I hope to kiss your wife in London in 1824. Yours, ever, BEETHOVEN. 356. TO THE ARCHDUKE RUDOLPH. 1823. I have just heard that Y.R.H. is expected here to-morrow. If I am still unable to follow the impulse of my heart, I hope you will ascribe it to the state of my eyes. I am better, but for some days to come I dare not breathe the town air, so prejudicial to my eyes. I only wish that the next time Y.R.H. returns from Baden, you would be so good as to let me know, and also name the hour at which I am to present myself, and once more have the good fortune to see my gracious master. But as it is probable Y.R.H. will not long remain here, it is the more incumbent on us to take advantage of the short time at our disposal to carry out our artistic discussions and practice. I will myself bring "Grossen Dank, ÷ ÷ ÷," as it must be sent to Baden. Herr Drechsler thanked me to-day for the _liberty_ I had taken in recommending him to Y.R.H., who received him so graciously that I beg to express my warmest gratitude for your kindness. I trust that Y.R.H. will continue firm, for it is said that Abbé Stadler is endeavoring to procure the situation in question for some one else. It would also be very beneficial to Drechsler if Y.R.H. would vouchsafe to speak to Count Dietrichstein[1] on the subject. I once more request the favor of being told the date of your return from Baden, when I will instantly hasten into town to wait on the best master I have in this world. Y.R.H.'s health seems to be good; Heaven be praised that it is so, for the sake of so many who wish it, and among this number I may certainly be included. [K.] [Footnote 1: Count Moritz Dietrichstein was in 1823 Court director of the royal band.] 357. TO THE ARCHDUKE RUDOLPH. I was very much affected on receiving your gracious letter yesterday. To flourish under the shade of a stately verdant fruit-tree is refreshing to any one capable of elevated thought and feeling, and thus it is with me under the aegis of Y.R.H. My physician assured me yesterday that my malady was disappearing, but I am still obliged to swallow a whole bottle of some mixture every day, which weakens me exceedingly, and compels me, as Y.R.H. will see from the enclosed instructions of the physician, to take a great deal of exercise. I have every hope, however, that soon, even if not entirely recovered, I shall be able to be a great deal with Y.R.H. during your stay here. This hope will tend to recruit my health sooner than usual. May Heaven bestow its blessings on me through Y.R.H., and may the Lord ever guard and watch over you! Nothing can be more sublime than to draw nearer to the Godhead than other men, and to diffuse here on earth these godlike rays among mortals. Deeply impressed by the gracious consideration of Y.R.H. towards me, I hope very soon to be able to wait on you. [K.] 358. TO SCHINDLER. Baden, September, 1823. SIGNORE PAPAGENO,-- That your scandalous reports may no longer distress the poor Dresdener, I must tell you that the money reached me to-day, accompanied by every possible mark of respect to myself. Though I should have been happy to offer you a _substantial_ acknowledgment for the [illegible, effaced by Schindler] you have shown me, I cannot yet accomplish to the full extent what I have so much at heart. I hope to be more fortunate some weeks hence. [See No. 329.] _Per il Signore Nobile, Papageno Schindler._ 359. TO SCHINDLER. 1823. The occurrence that took place yesterday, which you will see in the police reports, is only too likely to attract the notice of the established police to this affair. The testimony of a person whose name is not given entirely coincides with yours. In such a case private individuals cannot act; the authorities alone are empowered to do so.[1] Yours, BEETHOVEN. [Footnote 1: Schindler says, "Brother Johann, the apothecary, was ill in the summer of 1823, and during that time his disreputable wife visited her lover, an officer, in the barracks, and was often seen walking with him in the most frequented places, besides receiving him in her own house. Her husband, though confined to bed, could see her adorning herself to go in search of amusement with her admirer. Beethoven, who was informed of this scandal from various quarters, appealed vigorously to his brother, in the hope of persuading him to separate from his ill-conducted wife, but failed in his attempt, owing to the indolence of this ill-regulated man." It was Schindler, too, who prevented Beethoven making any further application to the police. The following note probably refers to this. In his note-book of November, 1823, is a Canon written by Beethoven on his brother Johann and his family, on these words, "Fettlümerl Bankert haben triumphirt," no doubt an allusion to the disgraceful incident we have mentioned. Brother Johann's wife had a very lovely daughter before she married him.] 360. TO SCHINDLER. WISEACRE! I kiss the hem of your garment! 361. TO HERR GRILLPARZER, COURT COMPOSER. ESTEEMED SIR,-- The directors wish to know your terms with regard to "Melusina." [See No. 331.] In so far she has asserted herself, which is certainly better than being obliged to importune others on such matters. My household has been in great disorder for some time past, otherwise I should have called on you, and requested you to visit me in return.[1] Pray, write your conditions at once, either to the directors or to myself, in which case I will undertake to deliver them. I have been so busy that I could not call on you, nor can I do so now, but hope to see you before long. My number is 323. In the afternoons you will find me in the coffee-house opposite the "Goldene Birne." If you do come, I beg that you may be _alone_. That obtrusive appendage, Schindler, has long been most obnoxious to me, as you must have perceived when at Hetzendorf,[2] _otium est vitium_. I embrace and esteem you from my heart. Yours, BEETHOVEN. [Footnote 1: In the note-book of 1823 is written, in Beethoven's hand: 8th or 9th November, bad humor. Another bad day. Another bad day. And underneath, in Schindler's hand: Devil take such a life!] [Footnote 2: The _Elegante Zeitung_ of 1858, No. 73, relates the following anecdote about this visit:--"During the composition of the Opera many conferences took place between the two artistic colleagues, when the new work was zealously discussed on both sides. On one occasion the poet drove out to visit the composer in the country. Beethoven's writing-desk was placed somewhat like a sentry-box opposite a cupboard for provisions, the contents of which compelled the housekeeper to be perpetually coming and going, attracting thereby many an admonitory look askance in the midst of his conversation from the deaf _maestro_. At last the clock struck the dinner-hour. Beethoven went down to his cellar, and soon after returned carrying four bottles of wine, two of which he placed beside the poet, while the other two were allotted to the composer himself and a third guest. After dinner Beethoven slipped out of the room, and held a short parley with the coachman hired for the occasion, who was still waiting at the door. When the time arrived for returning to town, Beethoven proposed driving part of the way with his guests, and did not get out of the carriage till close to the Burgthor. Scarcely was he gone when the companions he had just quitted found some papers lying on the seat he had vacated, which proved to be six _gulden_, the amount of the carriage-hire. They instantly stopped the carriage, and shouted to their friend (who was making off as quick as he could) that he had forgotten some money; but Beethoven did not stand still till he was at a safe distance, when he waved his hat, rejoicing with the glee of a child at the success of his trick. There was no possibility of refusing his _naïf_ generosity, and they had sufficient delicacy of feeling not to poison his enjoyment by any untimely remonstrances."] 362. TO PROBST, MUSIC PUBLISHER,--LEIPZIG. Vienna, March 10, 1824. ... These are all I can at present give you for publication. I must, alas! now speak of myself, and say that this, the greatest work I have ever written, is well worth 1000 florins C.M. It is a new grand symphony, with a finale and voice parts introduced, solo and choruses, the words being those of Schiller's immortal "Ode to Joy," in the style of my pianoforte Choral Fantasia, only of much greater breadth. The price is 600 florins C.M. One condition is, indeed, attached to this Symphony, that it is not to appear till next year, July, 1825; but to compensate for this long delay, I will give you a pianoforte arrangement of the work gratis, and in more important engagements you shall always find me ready to oblige you. 363. TO SCHINDLER. 1824. Frau S. [Schnaps] will provide what is required, so come to dinner to-day at two o'clock. I have good news to tell you,[1] but this is quite _entre nous_, for the _braineater_ [his brother Johann] must know nothing about it. [Footnote 1: This no doubt refers to a letter from Prince Gallizin, March 11, 1824:--"I beg you will be so good as to let me know when I may expect the Quartet, which I await with the utmost impatience. If you require money, I request you will draw on Messrs. Stieglitz & Co., in St. Petersburg, for the sum you wish to have, and it will be paid to your order."] 364. TO HERR V. RZEHATSCHEK. 1824. MY WORTHY HERR V. RZEHATSCHEK,-- Schuppanzigh assures me that you intend to be so kind as to lend me the instruments required for my concert;[1] thus encouraged, I venture to ask you to do so, and hope not to meet with a refusal when thus earnestly soliciting you to comply with my request. Your obedient servant, BEETHOVEN. [Footnote 1: It seems highly probable that this concert is the celebrated one in the spring of 1824, when the Ninth Symphony and a portion of the Grand Mass were performed.] 365. TO THE HIGH CHAMBERLAIN PRINCE TRAUTMANNSDORF.[1] I am deeply indebted to your Highness for your invariable politeness, which I prize probably the more from Y.H. being by no means devoid of sympathy for my art. I hope one day to have the opportunity of proving my esteem for your H. [Footnote 1: Enclosed in a note to Schindler, who was to apply for the great _Redoutensaal_ for the concert on April 8, 1824.] 366. TO COUNT MORITZ LICHNOWSKY.[1] Insincerity I despise; visit me no more; my concert is not to take place. BEETHOVEN. [Footnote 1: The originals of these three well-known notes were found by Schindler on the piano, where Beethoven usually left things of the kind, which he intended his amanuensis to take charge of. Lichnowsky, Schuppanzigh, and Schindler had all met at Beethoven's, as if by chance, in order to discuss with him some difficulties which stood in the way of the concert. The suspicious _maestro_ saw only collusion and treachery in this, and wrote these notes, which Schindler did not allow to be sent.] 367. TO HERR SCHUPPANZIGH. Come no more to see me. I give no concert. BEETHOVEN. 368. TO HERR SCHINDLER. Do not come to me till I summon you. No concert. BEETHOVEN. 369. TO HERR V. SARTORIUS, ROYAL CENSOR. SIR,-- As I hear that obstacles are likely to arise on the part of the royal censorship to a portion of sacred music being given at an evening concert in the Theatre "an der Wien," I must inform you that I have been particularly requested to give these pieces, that the copies for this purpose have already caused serious expense, and the intervening time is too short to produce other new works. Besides, only three sacred compositions are to be given, and these under the title of hymns. I do earnestly entreat you, sir, to interest yourself in this matter, as there are always so many difficulties to contend with on similar occasions. Should this permission not be granted, I do assure you that it will be impossible to give a concert at all, and the whole outlay expended on the copying be thrown away. I hope you have not quite forgotten me. I am, sir, with high consideration, yours, BEETHOVEN. 370. TO SCHINDLER. 1824. If you have any information to give me, pray write it down; but seal the note, for which purpose you will find wax and a seal on my table. Let me know where Duport[1] lives, when he is usually to be met with, and whether I could see him alone, or if it is probable that people will be there, and who? I feel far from well. _Portez-vous bien._ I am still hesitating whether to speak to Duport or to write to him, which I cannot do without bitterness. Do not wait dinner for me; I hope you will enjoy it. I do not intend to come, being ill from our bad fare of yesterday. A flask of wine is ready for you. [Footnote 1: Schindler says that on April 24, 1824, he applied to Duport, at that time administrator of the Kärnthnerthor Theatre, in Beethoven's name, to sanction his giving a grand concert there, allowing him to have the use of the house for the sum of 400 florins C.M. Further, that the conducting of the concert should be intrusted to Umlauf and Schuppanzigh, and the solos to Mesdames Unger and Sonntag, and to the bass singer Preisinger.] 371.[1] TO SCHINDLER. I beg you will come to see me to-morrow, as I have a tale to tell you as sour as vinegar. Duport said yesterday that he had written to me, though I have not yet got his letter, but he expressed his satisfaction, which is best of all. The chief feat however is not yet performed, that which is to be acted in front of the _Proscenium_! [In Beethoven's writing:] Yours, _from C# below to high F_, BEETHOVEN. [Footnote 1: Written by his nephew.] 372. TO SCHINDLER. After six weeks of discussion, here, there, and everywhere, I am fairly boiled, stewed, and roasted. What will be the result of this much-talked-of concert if the prices are not raised? What shall I get in return for all my outlay, as the copying alone costs so much? 373. TO SCHINDLER. At twelve o'clock to-day "in die Birne" [an inn on the Landstrasse]--thirsty and hungry--then to the coffee-house, back again here, and straight to Penzing, or I shall lose the lodging. 374. TO SCHINDLER. When you write to me, write exactly as I do to you, without any formal address or signature--_vita brevis, ars longa_. No necessity for details; only the needful! 375. TO HERR STEINER & CO. Baden, May 27, 1824. P.N.G. [PATERNOSTERGÄSSEL],-- Have the goodness to give me a proof of your great complaisance, by using your hand-rostrum (ruler) (not _Rostrum Victoriatum_) to rule 202 lines of music for me, somewhat in the style I now send, and also on equally fine paper, which you must include in your account. Send it, if possible, to-morrow evening by Carl, for I require it. Perhaps plenary indulgence may then be granted. 376. POUR M. DE HASLINGER, GÉNÉRAL MUSICIEN ET GÉNÉRAL-LIEUTENANT. MY DEAR FRIEND,-- You would really do me great injustice were you to suppose that negligence prevented my sending you the tickets; I assure you that it was my intention to do so, but I forgot it like many other things. I hope that some other opportunity may occur to enable me to prove my sentiments with regard to you. I am, I assure you, entirely innocent of all that Duport has done, in the same way that it was _he_ who thought fit to represent the Terzet [Op. 116] as new, _not I_. You know too well my love of truth; but it is better to be silent now on the subject, as it is not every one who is aware of the true state of the case, and I, though innocent, might incur blame. I do not at all care for the other proposals Duport makes, as by this concert I have lost both time and money. In haste, your friend, BEETHOVEN. 377. TO STEINER & CO. MY KIND FRIEND,-- Be so good as to read the enclosed, and kindly forward it at once to the authorities. Your servant and _amicus_, BEETHOVEN. 378. TO HERR TOBIAS PETER PHILIP HASLINGER. The horn part and the score are shortly to follow. We are immensely indebted to you. Observe the laws. Sing often my Canon in silence,--_per resurrectionem_, &c. Farewell! Your friend, BEETHOVEN. 379. TO HASLINGER. Have the goodness to send me my shoes and my sword. You can have the loan of the "Eglantine" for six days, for which, however, you must give an acknowledgment. Farewell! Yours, BEETHOVEN. 380. TO HASLINGER. Baden, June 12. MY GOOD FRIEND,-- Something worth having has been put in your way; so make the most of it. You will no doubt come off with a handsome fee, and all expenses paid. As for the March with Chorus [in the "Ruins of Athens," Op. 114], you have yet to send me the sheets for final revision, also the Overture in E flat ["To King Stephen," Op. 117]; the Terzet [Op. 116]; the Elegy [Op. 118]; the Cantata ["_Meeresstille und glückliche Fahrt_," Op. 112]; and the Opera. Out with them all! or I shall be on very little ceremony, your right having already expired. My liberality alone confers on you a larger sum than you do on me. I want the score of the Cantata for a few days, as I wish to write a kind of recitative for it; mine is so torn that I cannot put it together, so I must have it written out from the parts. Has the Leipzig musical paper yet retracted its lies about the medal I got from the late King of France? I no longer receive the paper, which is a shabby proceeding. If the editor does not rectify the statement, I shall cause him and his consumptive chief to be _harpooned_ in the northern waters among the whales. Even this barbarous Baden is becoming enlightened, and now instead of _gutten Brunn_, people write _guten Brun_. But tell me what are they about in Paternoster Street? I am, with all esteem for yourself, but with none for the barbarian Paternoster-Gässel, Your devoted, _incomparativo_, B----N. Paternoster-Gässel _primus_ will no doubt, like Mephistopheles, emit fiery flames from his jaws. 381. TO M. DIABELLI. SIR,-- Pray forgive my asking you to send me the score of my Mass,[1] being in urgent need of it; but I repeat that no public use is to be made of it until I can let you know _how_ and _when_. It will be at first performed under my direction, with the addition of several new pieces composed expressly for it, which I will with pleasure send to you afterwards. There are certain conventionalities which must be observed, especially as I am so dependent on foreign connections, for Austria does not furnish me with the means of existence, and gives me nothing but vexation. I will soon appoint a day for you to visit Carl. I remain, sir, with the highest esteem, yours, BEETHOVEN. [Footnote 1: This letter seems to be addressed to Diabelli, who in the summer of 1824 begged the loan of the Mass in D for a few days, but neglected to return it.] 382. TO PROBST,--LEIPZIG. Vienna, July 3, 1824 SIR,-- Overwhelmed with work and concerts, it is only now in my power to inform you that the works you wished to have are finished and transcribed, and can be delivered at any time to Herr Glöggl [music publisher in Vienna]. I therefore request you will transmit the 100 Viennese ducats to Herr Glöggl, and let me know when you have done so. I must conclude for to-day, and defer the pleasure of writing further till another opportunity. I am, with esteem, yours obediently, BEETHOVEN.[1] [Footnote 1: Probst answered the letter as follows:-- "August 18, 1824. "The many gossiping reports about the differences between you and a publisher here in a similar transaction are the cause, I frankly own, of my wishing first to see your manuscript. The piracy in engraving, so universal in Austria, often prevents the German publisher paying the price for a work which it merits; and even at this moment in Vienna, with regard to your compositions [Schindler mentions three songs with pianoforte accompaniment, six _bagatelles_, and a grand overture], I can see that the birds of prey are on the watch to rob me of them under the shelter of the law." On one of these letters Beethoven writes in pencil, "Do not listen to gossip; I have no time at this moment to enter on the subject, but I have all the proofs in my own hands; more of this hereafter."] 383. TO T. HASLINGER.[1] MY VERY WORTHY FRIEND,-- Have the goodness to send me the Rochlitz article on the Beethoven works, and we will return it to you forthwith by the flying, driving, riding, or migrating post. Yours, BEETHOVEN. [Footnote 1: The _Rochlitz'sche article_ is probably the report in the _A.M. Zeitung_ of the works performed at the grand concert of May 7.] 384. TO HERR SCHOTT,--MAYENCE. 1824. The Overture[1] that you got from my brother was recently performed here, and I received many eulogiums on the occasion. What is all this compared to the grandest of all masters of harmony above! above! above! Rightfully the _Most High_! While here below all is a mere mockery--_Dwarfs_--and the _Most High_!! You shall receive the Quartet with the other works. You are open and candid, qualities which I never before found in publishers, and this pleases me. I say so in writing, but who knows whether it may not soon be in person? I wish you would transmit the sum due for the Quartet to P., as at this moment I require a great deal of money, for I derive everything from foreign sources, and sometimes a delay occurs--caused by myself. [Footnote 1: The Overture to which he alludes is no doubt Op. 124, in C major, _Zur Weihe des Hauses_, published by Schott. It was performed in the great concert of May 23 of this year (1824), which in the estimation of a Beethoven, already absorbed in new great works, might well be termed "recently performed." Schott himself says the letter is written between July 3 and September 17, 1824.] 385. TO THE ARCHDUKE RUDOLPH. Baden, August 23, 1824. YOUR ROYAL HIGHNESS,-- I live--how?--the life of a snail. The unfavorable weather constantly throws me back, and at these baths it is impossible to command one's natural strength. A few days ago, Nägeli, a musical author and poet of considerable repute, wrote to me from Zurich; he is about to publish 200 poems, and among these some are suitable for musical composition. He urged me much to apply to Y.R.H. to request that you would be graciously pleased to subscribe to this collection. The price is very moderate, 20 groschen, or 1 florin 80 kreutzers. Were Y.R.H. to subscribe for six copies, it would immediately be noised abroad, although I am well aware that my illustrious master does not care for anything of the kind; it will suffice for the present if Y.R.H. will condescend to inform me of your will on the subject. The money can be paid when the copies arrive, probably a couple of months hence. I have conveyed Herr Nägeli's request, and now I must ask another favor, on his account, from myself. Everything cannot be measured by line and plummet; but Wieland says: "A little book may be well worth a few _groschen_." Will Y.R.H. therefore honor these poems by permitting your august name to be prefixed to them, as a token of your sympathy for the benefit of this man? the work is not likely to be quite devoid of value. Being convinced of Y.R.H.'s interest in all that is noble and beautiful, I hope I shall not fail in my intercession for Nägeli, and I beg that Y.R.H. will give me a written permission to inform Nägeli that you will be one of his subscribers. I remain, with all dutiful fidelity and devotion, your R. Highness's obedient servant, BEETHOVEN. 386. TO HIS NEPHEW. Baden, August 29, 1824. MY DEAR YOUNG SCAMP,-- How active our _mahogany Holz_ [wood] is! My plans are decided. We will give the present quartet to Artaria, and the last to Peters. You see I have learned something; I now perceive why I first _explored the path_; it was for your sake, that you might find it smooth. My digestion is terribly out of order, and no physician! I wish to have some ready-made pens, so send some in a letter. Don't write to Peters on Saturday; we had better wait a little, to show him our indifference on the subject. Since yesterday I have only taken some soup, and a couple of eggs, and drank nothing but water; my tongue is discolored; and without medicine and tonics, whatever my farcical doctor may say, my digestion will never improve. The third quartet [in C sharp minor, Op. 131] also contains six movements, and will certainly be finished in ten or twelve days at most. Continue to love me, my dear boy; if I ever cause you pain, it is not from a wish to grieve you, but for your eventual benefit. I now conclude. I embrace you cordially. All I wish is that you should be loving, industrious, and upright. Write to me, my dear son. I regret all the trouble I give you, but it will not go on long. Holz seems inclined to become our friend. I expect a letter soon from [illegible]. Your faithful FATHER. 387. ROUGH DRAFT OF A LETTER TO PETERS. 1824. I wrote to you that a quartet ["and a grand one too" is effaced] is ready for you; as soon, therefore, as you let me know that you will accept it for the 360 florins C.M., or 80 ducats, I will at once forward it to you. My works are now paid at a higher rate than ever; besides, you have only yourself to blame in this affair. Your own letters show what you formerly desired to have, and the works I sent you were _what they ought to have been_ (the numerous pirated editions prove the truth of this); but the Quartet will convince you that, so far from wishing to take my revenge, I now give you what could not possibly be better, were it intended even for my best friend. I beg that you will make no delay, so that I may receive your answer by the next post; otherwise I must forthwith return you the 360 florins C.M. I shall, at all events, be rather in a scrape, for there is a person who wishes to have not only this but another newly finished work of mine, though he does not care to take only one. It is solely because you have waited so long (though you are yourself to blame for this) that I separate the Quartet from the following one, now also completed. (Do you think that the latter ought to be also offered here? but, of course, cunningly and warily: _comme marchand coquin!_) You need have no misgivings that I am sending you something merely to fulfil my promise; no, I assure you on my honor as an artist that you may place me on a level with the lowest of men, if you do not find that it is one of my very best works. 388. TO HANS GEORG NÄGELI,--ZURICH. Baden, September 9, 1824. MY MUCH-VALUED FRIEND,-- The Cardinal Archduke is in Vienna, and owing to my health, I am here. I only yesterday received from him a gracious written consent to subscribe to your poems, on account of the services you have rendered to the progress of music. He takes six copies of your work. I will shortly send you the proper address. An anonymous friend is also on the list of subscribers. I mean myself, for as you do me the honor to become my panegyrist, I will on no account allow my name to appear. How gladly would I have subscribed for more copies, but my means are too straitened to do so. The father of an adopted son, (the child of my deceased brother,) I must for his sake think and act for the _future_ as well as for the _present_. I recollect that you previously wrote to me about a subscription; but at that time I was in very bad health, and continued an invalid for more than three years, but now I am better. Send also the complete collection of your lectures direct to the Archduke Rudolph, and, if possible, dedicate them to him; you are certain at all events to receive a present, not a very large one probably, but still better than nothing; put some complimentary expressions in the preface, for he understands music, and it is his chief delight and occupation. I do really regret, knowing his talents, that I cannot devote myself to him as much as formerly. I have made various applications to procure you subscribers, and shall let you know as soon as I receive the answers. I wish you would also send me your lectures, and likewise Sebastian Bach's five-part Mass, when I will at once remit you the money for both. Pray, do not imagine that I am at all guided by self-interest; I am free from all petty vanity; in godlike Art alone dwells the impulse which gives me strength to sacrifice the best part of my life to the celestial Muse. From childhood my greatest pleasure and felicity consisted in working for others; you may therefore conclude how sincere is my delight in being in any degree of use to you, and in showing you how highly I appreciate all your merits. As one of the votaries of Apollo, I embrace you. Yours cordially, BEETHOVEN. Write to me soon about the Archduke, that I may introduce the subject to his notice; you need take no steps towards seeking permission for the dedication. It will and ought to be a surprise to him. 389. TO HIS NEPHEW. Baden, evening, September 14, 1824. MY DEAR SON,--, Whether it rains heavily to-morrow or not, stifling dust or pouring rain would be equally prejudicial to me. It does grieve me to know that you are so long with this demon; but, pray, strive to keep out of her way. You must give her a letter, written in my name, to the manager of the hospital, in which you must state that she did not come on the 1st, partly because she was unwell, and also from various people having come here to meet me, _Basta cosi_! I send you 40 florins for the singing-master [corépétiteur]. Get a written receipt from him: how many mistakes are thus avoided! and this should be done by every one who pays money for another. Did not Holz bring Rampel's receipt [the copyist] unasked, and do not others act in the same way? Take the white waistcoat for yourself, and have the other made for me. You can bring the metronome with you; nothing can be done with it. Bring also your linen sheets and two coverlets, and some lead-pencils and patterns; be sure you get the former at the Brandstatt. And now farewell, my dear son; come to my arms as early as you can,--perhaps to-morrow. [The paper is here torn away.] As ever, your faithful FATHER. P.S. All that could be done was to send you by the old woman's _char à banc_, which, however, including everything, costs 8 florins 36 kreutzers. Do not forget anything, and be careful of your health. 390. TO HERR NÄGELI. Vienna, September 16, 1824. MY ESTEEMED FRIEND,-- I gladly comply with your wish that I should arrange the vocal parts of my last Grand Mass for the organ, or piano, for the use of the different choral societies. This I am willing to do, chiefly because these choral associations, by their private and still more by their church festivals, make an unusually profound impression on the multitude, and my chief object in the composition of this Grand Mass was to awaken, and deeply to impress, religious feelings both on singers and hearers. As, however, a copy of this kind and its repeated revision must cause a considerable outlay, I cannot, I fear, ask less than 50 ducats for it, and leave it to you to make inquiries on the subject, so that I may devote my time exclusively to it. I am, with high consideration, Your obedient BEETHOVEN. 391. TO SCHOTT,--MAYENCE. Baden, near Vienna, September 17, 1824. The Quartet [Op. 127, in E flat major] you shall also certainly receive by the middle of October. Overburdened by work, and suffering from bad health, I really have some claim on the indulgence of others. I am here entirely owing to my health, or rather to the want of it, although I already feel better. Apollo and the Muses do not yet intend me to become the prey of the bony Scytheman, as I have yet much to do for you, and much to bequeath which my spirit dictates, and calls on me to complete, before I depart hence for the Elysian fields; for I feel as if I had written scarcely more than a few notes of music. I wish your efforts all possible success in the service of art; it is that and science alone which point the way, and lead us to hope for a higher life. I will write again soon. In haste, your obedient BEETHOVEN. 392. TO HAUSCHKA. Baden, September 23, 1824. MY DEAR AND VALUED FRIEND,-- As soon as I arrive in town, I will write Bernard's Oratorio [see No. 257], and I beg you will also transmit him payment for it. We can discuss when we meet in town what we further require and think necessary, and in the mean-time, I appoint you High and Puissant Intendant of all singing and humming societies, Imperial Violoncello-General, Inspector of the Imperial _Chasse_, as well as Deacon of my gracious master, without house or home, and without a prebendary (like myself). I wish you all these, most faithful servant of my illustrious master, as well as everything else in the world, from which you may select what you like best.[1] That there may be no mistake, I hereby declare that it is our intention to set to music the Bernard Oratorio, the "Sieg des Kreuzes" and speedily to complete the same. Witness this our sign and seal, LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN. 1st P.S. Take care that the venison is not devoured by rats or mice--you understand? Strive for better choice and variety. Yours, as a Christian and in Apollo, B. 2d P.S. As for the little flag on the white tower, we hope soon to see it waving again! [Footnote 1: An allusion to Hauschka's subserviency to all persons in high Court offices.] 393. TO HERR NÄGELI,--ZURICH. Vienna, November 17, 1824. MY MUCH-VALUED FRIEND,-- Deeply absorbed in work, and not sufficiently protected against this late season of the year, I have again been ill; so believe me it was impossible for me to write to you sooner. With regard to your subscription, I have only succeeded in getting one subscriber for two copies, Herr v. Bihler, tutor in the family of His Imperial Highness the Archduke Carl; he tried to get the Archduke also, but failed. I have exerted myself with every one, but, unluckily, people are here actually deluged with things of the same kind. This is all that I can write to you in my hurry. I urged the matter, too, on Haslinger, but in vain; we are really poor here in Austria, and the continued pressure of the war leaves but little for art and science. I will see that the subscriptions are paid, but let me know distinctly where the money is to be sent to. I embrace you in spirit. Always rely on the high esteem of your true friend, BEETHOVEN. 394. TO THE ARCHDUKE RUDOLPH. November 18, 1824. YOUR ROYAL HIGHNESS,-- On my return from Baden, illness prevented my waiting on Y.R.H. according to my wish, being prohibited going out; thus yesterday was the first time I dared to venture again into the open air. When your gracious letter arrived, I was confined to bed, and under the influence of sudorifics, my illness having been caused by a chill; so it was impossible for me to rise. I feel sure that Y.R.H is well aware that I never would neglect the respect so properly your due. I shall have the pleasure of waiting on you to-morrow forenoon. Moreover, there will be no lack of opportunity here to awaken the interest Y.R.H. takes in music, which cannot fail to prove so beneficial to art,--ever my refuge, thank God! I remain Y.R.H.'s obedient servant, BEETHOVEN. 395. TO SCHOTT,--MAYENCE. Vienna, November 18, 1824. I regret being obliged to tell you that some little time must yet elapse before I can send off the works. There was not in reality much to revise in the copies; but as I did not pass the summer here, I am obliged to make up for this now, by giving two lessons a day to H.R.H. the Archduke Rudolph. This exhausts me so much that it almost entirely unfits me for all else. Moreover, I cannot live on my income, and my pen is my sole resource; but _no consideration is shown either for my health or my precious time_. I do hope that this may not long continue, when I will at once complete the slight revision required. Some days ago I received a proposal which concerns you also; its purport being that a foreign music publisher was disposed, &c., &c., to form a connection with you, in order to guard against piracy. I at once declined the offer, having had sufficiently painful experience on these matters. (Perhaps this was only a pretext to spy into my affairs!) 396. TO CARL HOLZ. I send you my greetings, and also wish to tell you that I am not going out to-day. I should be glad to see you, perhaps this evening after your office hours. In haste, your friend, BEETHOVEN. I am by no means well. 397. TO CARL HOLZ. MY WORTHY HOLZ--BE NO LONGER HOLZ [WOOD]! The well-beloved government wishes to see me to-day at ten o'clock. I beg you will go in my place; but first call on me, which you can arrange entirely according to your own convenience. I have already written a letter to the _powers that be_, which you can take with you. I much regret being forced to be again so troublesome to you, but my going is out of the question, and the affair must be brought to a close, Yours, BEETHOVEN. 398. TO SCHOTT,--MAYENCE. Vienna, December 17 [Beethoven's birthday], 1824. I write to say that a week must yet elapse before the works can be dispatched to you. The Archduke only left this yesterday, and much precious time was I obliged to spend with him. I am beloved and highly esteemed by him, _but_--I cannot live on that, and the call from every quarter to remember "that he who has a lamp ought to pour oil into it" finds no response here. As the score ought to be correctly engraved, I must look it over repeatedly myself, for I have no clever copyist at present. Pray, do not think ill of me! _Never_ was I guilty of anything base! 399. March, 1825. MY GOOD FRIENDS,-- Each is herewith appointed to his own post, and formally taken into our service, pledging his honor to do his best to distinguish himself, and each to vie with the other in zeal. Every individual cooperating in this performance must subscribe his name to this paper.[1] Schuppanzigh, (_Manu propria._) Weiss. Linke, (M.P.) Confounded violoncello of the great masters. Holz, (M.P.) The _last_, but only as to his signature. [Footnote 1: In reference to the rehearsals of the first production of the E flat major Quartet, Op. 127, in March, 1825.] 400. TO SCHINDLER. The Spring of 1825. I have waited till half-past one o'clock, but as the _caput confusum_ has not come, I know nothing of what is likely to happen. Carl must be off to the University in the Prater; so I am obliged to go, that Carl, who must leave this early, may have his dinner first. I am to be found in the "Wilde Mann" [an inn in the Prater]. To Herr Schindler, _Moravian numskull_.[1] [Footnote 1: Schindler was a Moravian.] 401. TO LINKE, VIOLONCELLIST.[1] DEAR LINKE,-- Having heard Herr v. Bocklet very highly spoken of, I think it would be advisable to ask him kindly to play in the trio at your concert. I do not know him myself, or I would have applied to him on your behalf. Always rely on me when it is in my power to serve you. Yours truly, BEETHOVEN. [Footnote 1: Bocklet, a pianist in Vienna, tells me that he rehearsed the Trio with Holz and Linke in 1825 or 1826 at Beethoven's.] 402.[1] TO * * * SIR,-- Through the stupidity of my housekeeper your mother was recently sent away from my house, without my having been informed of her visit. I highly disapprove of such incivility, especially as the lady was not even shown into my apartments. The _rudeness_ and _coarseness_ of the persons whom I am so unfortunate as to have in my service are well known to every one; I therefore request your forgiveness. Your obedient servant, L. V. BEETHOVEN. [Footnote 1: In the New Vienna _Musik Zeitung_ the occasion of this note is thus related:--"In 1825, a well-known artist and _dilettante_ in the composition of music published a book of waltzes, each of these being composed by the most popular and celebrated musicians of the day; as no one declined giving a musical contribution to the editor, the profits being intended to enable him to go to Carlsbad for the benefit of the waters there. The work met with unusual support and sympathy. It then occurred to the editor to apply for a contribution to the great Ludwig van Beethoven, with whom he had been acquainted in former days through his father and grandfather. The great musician at once, in the most gracious and amiable manner, promised to comply with the request, and sent him not only a waltz, but (the only one who did so) also a trio, desiring the editor to send in the course of a month for these works, which would by that time be completed. As the editor was in the mean time taken ill, he was not able to call for the work himself, and was thus obliged to give up this interesting visit. He therefore requested his mother to apply for the waltz, &c., and to express his thanks; but the housekeeper, to whom she gave her name, refused to admit her, saying she could not do so, 'for her master was in such a crazy mood.' As at this very moment Beethoven chanced to put his head in at the door, she hurried the lady into a dark room, saying, 'Hide yourself, as it is quite impossible that anyone can speak to him to-day,' getting out of the way herself as fast as she could. A couple of days afterwards Beethoven sent the waltz, &c., to the house of the musical editor in question, with the above letter."] 403. TO F. RIES. Vienna, April 9, 1825. MY DEAR GOOD RIES,-- I write only what is most pressing! So far as I can remember in the score of the Symphony [the 9th] that I sent you, in the first hautboy, 242d bar, there stands [Music: F E D] instead of [Music: F E E]. I have carefully revised all the instrumental parts, but those of the brass instruments only partially, though I believe they are tolerably correct. I would already have sent you my score [for performance at the Aix musical festival], but I have still a concert in prospect, if indeed my health admits of it, and this MS. is the only score I possess. I must now soon go to the country, as this is the only season when I profit by it. You will shortly receive the second copy of the "Opferlied;" mark it at once as corrected by myself, that it may not be used along with the one you already possess. It is a fine specimen of the wretched copyists I have had since Schlemmer's death. It is scarcely possible to rely on a single note. As you have now got all the parts of the _finale_ of the Symphony copied out, I have likewise sent you the score of the choral parts. You can easily score these before the chorus commences, and when the vocal parts begin, it could be contrived, with a little management, to affix the instrumental parts just above the scored vocal parts. It was impossible for me to write all these out at once, and if we had hurried such a copyist, you would have got nothing but mistakes. I send you an Overture in C, 6/8 time, not yet published; you shall have the engraved parts by the next post. A _Kyrie_ and _Gloria_, two of the principal movements (of the solemn Mass in D major), and an Italian vocal duet, are also on their way to you. You will likewise receive a grand march with chorus, well adapted for a musical performance on a great scale, but I think you will find what I have already sent quite sufficient. Farewell! You are now in the regions of the Rhine [Ries at that time lived at Godesberg, near Bonn], which will ever be so dear to me! I wish you and your wife every good that life can bestow! My kindest and best regards to your father, from your friend, BEETHOVEN. 404. TO HERR JENGER,--VIENNA.[1] 1824. MY ESTEEMED FRIEND,-- It will give me much pleasure to send you some day soon the score of Matthisson's "Opferlied." The whole of it, published and unpublished, is quite at your service. Would that my circumstances permitted me to place at once at your disposal the greater works I have written, before they have been heard. I am, alas! fettered on this point; but it is possible that such an opportunity may hereafter occur, when I shall not fail to take advantage of it. The enclosed letter is for Hofrath v. Kiesewetter. I beg you will be so good as to deliver it, especially as it concerns yourself quite as much as the Herr Hofrath. I am, with high esteem, your devoted friend, BEETHOVEN. [Footnote 1: This note is addressed to Jenger in Vienna, a chancery official and a musical amateur, connoisseur, factotum, and distinguished pianist. The date is not known. The _Opferlied_ he refers to, is undoubtedly the 2d arrangement, Op. 121-b, which according to the Leipzig _A.M. Zeitung_ was performed as Beethoven's "most recent poetical and musical work," at the concert in the Royal Redoutensaal, April 4, 1824.] 405. TO SCHOTT. I have much pleasure in herewith contributing to the "Cecilia"[1] and its readers some Canons written by me, as a supplement to a humorous and romantic biography of Herr Tobias Haslinger residing here, which is shortly to appear in three parts. In the _first_ part, Tobias appears as the assistant of the celebrated and solid Kapellmeister Fux, holding the ladder for his _Gradus ad Parnassum_. Being, however, mischievously inclined, he contrives, by shaking and moving the ladder, to cause many who had already climbed up a long way, suddenly to fall down, and break their necks. He now takes leave of this earthly clod and comes to light again in the _second_ part in the time of Albrechtsberger. The already existing Fux, _nota cambiata_, is now dealt with in conjunction with Albrechtsberger. The alternating subjects of the Canon are most fully illustrated. The art of creating musical skeletons is carried to the utmost limit, &c. Tobias begins once more to spin his web as a caterpillar, and comes forth again in the _third_ part, making his third appearance in the world. His half-fledged wings bear him quickly to the Paternostergässel, of which he becomes the Kapellmeister. Having emerged from the school of the _nota cambiata_, he retains only the _cambiata_ and becomes a member of several learned societies, &c. But here are the Canons. On a certain person of the name of Schwencke.[2] [Music: treble clef, key of F major, 3/4 time. Schwen-ke dich, Schwen-ke dich oh-ne Schwän-ke, oh-ne Schwän-ke, oh-ne Schwän-ke, oh-ne Schwän-ke ÷ ÷ ÷ ÷ ÷ Schwen-ke dich, schwen-ke dich, schwen-ke dich ÷ ÷ ÷ ÷ ÷ ÷ ÷ ÷ ÷ ÷] On a certain person of the name of Hoffmann. [Music: treble clef, key of C, 3/4 time. Hoff-mann! Hoff-mann! Sei ja kein Hof-mann! ja kein Hof-mann! nein, nein ÷ nein ÷ ÷ ÷ ich hei-ße Hoff-mann und bin kein Hof-mann] LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN. [Footnote 1: A periodical published for the musical world, and edited by a society of _savants_, art-critics, and artists; Mayence, B. Schott & Sons. The publishers applied to Beethoven, in the name of the editors, for a contribution to the _Cecilia_.] [Footnote 2: It appears that Kapellmeister Schwencke in Hamburg, in many complimentary and flowery phrases, had requested Beethoven to send him his autograph. Perhaps Beethoven, to whom the sound of certain names appeared comical, alludes here to this Hamburg Kapellmeister Schwencke.] 406. TO LUDWIG RELLSTAB. May 3, 1825. As I was just starting for the country yesterday, I was obliged to make some preparations myself; so unluckily your visit to me was in vain. Forgive me in consideration of my very delicate health. As perhaps I may not see you again, I wish you every possible prosperity. Think of me when writing your poems. Your friend, BEETHOVEN. Convey my affectionate regards and esteem to Zelter,--that faithful prop of true art. Though convalescent, I still feel very weak. Kindly accept the following token of remembrance from Your friend, BEETHOVEN. [Music: treble clef, C-major. Das Schö-ne mit dem Guten.] 407. TO * * * Vienna. SIR,-- Being on the point of going into the country, and only very recently recovered from an attack of internal inflammation, I can merely write you a few words. In the passage in the "Opferlied," 2d strophe, where it runs thus:-- [Music: C-clef on bottom line, A major, marked "Solostimme". E-rde.] I wish it to be written thus:-- [Music: E-rde. (with different notes)] 408. TO HIS BROTHER JOHANN. Baden, May 6, 1825. The bell and bell-pulls, &c., &c., are on no account whatever to be left in my former lodging. No proposal was ever made to these people to take any of my things. Indisposition prevented my sending for it, and the locksmith had not come during my stay to take down the bell; otherwise it might have been at once removed and sent to me in town, as they have no right whatever to retain it. Be this as it may, I am quite determined not to leave the bell there, for I require one here, and therefore intend to use the one in question for my purpose, as a similar one would cost me twice as much as in Vienna, bell-pulls being the most expensive things locksmiths have. If necessary, apply at once to the police. The window in my room is precisely in the same state as when I took possession, but I am willing to pay for it, and also for the one in the kitchen,--2 florins 12 kreutzers for the two. The key I will not pay for, as I found none; on the contrary, the door was fastened or nailed up when I came, and remained in the same condition till I left; there never was a key, so of course neither I myself, nor those who preceded me, could make use of one. Perhaps it is intended to make a collection, in which case I am willing to put my hand in my pocket. LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN. 409. TO HERR VON SCHLEMMER.[1] SIR,-- It strikes me as very remarkable that Carl cannot be persuaded to go into good society, where he might amuse himself in a creditable manner. This almost leads me to suspect that he possibly finds recreations, both in the evening and at night, in less respectable company. I entreat you to be on your guard as to this, and on no pretext whatever to allow him to leave the house at night, unless you receive a written request from me to that effect, by Carl. He once paid a visit, with my sanction, to Herr Hofrath Breuning. I strongly recommend this matter to your attention; it is far from being indifferent, either to you or to me; so I would once more urge you to practise the greatest vigilance. I am, sir, Your obedient BEETHOVEN. [Footnote 1: In 1825, his nephew lived with Schlemmer in the Alleengasse, close to the Karlskirche.] 410. TO HIS NEPHEW. Frau Schlemmer is to receive, or has already received, her money by our housekeeper. Some letters must be written to-morrow. Let me know what time would suit you best? Your UNCLE. I left my pocket-handkerchief with you. 411.[1] MY DEAR SON,-- I have this moment got your letter. I still feel very weak and solitary, and only read the horrid letter I enclose! I send you 25 florins to buy the books at once, and you can spend the surplus when you require to do so. Pray bring me back Reisser's note.[2] On Saturday, the 14th of May, I will send a carriage into town to fetch you here; the charge is as yet very reasonable. The old woman is to inquire what hour will suit you best; you can set off at any time before six in the evening, so that you need neglect nothing. Perhaps I may come myself, and then your shirts might be purchased; in which case it would be as well if you were to be at liberty by four o'clock; but if I do not come, which is very possible, drive straight here at five or six o'clock in the evening. You will not thus feel so much fatigued, and you can leave this again on Monday, if nothing is neglected by the delay. You can take the money with you for the Correpetitor. Are you aware that this affair of the Correpetitor, including board and lodging, amounts to 2000 florins a year? I can write no more to-day, I can scarcely guide my pen. Show this letter to Reisser. Your affectionate FATHER. [Footnote 1: I have arranged the following notes to his nephew in their probable succession as to time. Schindler has given some of these in his _Biography_, but quite at random, and disjointed, without any reliable chronological order.] [Footnote 2: Reisser was Vice-Director of the Polytechnic Institution, where the nephew had been placed for some time. Reisser had also undertaken the office of his co-guardian. Beethoven sometimes writes _Reissig_.] 412. TO DR. BRAUNHOFER. Baden, May 13, 1825. MY ESTEEMED FRIEND,-- _Doctor._ "How does our patient get on?" _Patient._ "Still in a bad way, feeling weak and irritable, and I think that at last we must have recourse to stronger medicines, and yet not too violent; surely I might now drink white wine with water, for that deleterious beer is quite detestable. My catarrhal condition is indicated by the following symptoms. I spit a good deal of blood, though probably only from the windpipe. I have constant bleeding from the nose, which has been often the case this winter. There can be no doubt that my digestion is terribly weakened, and in fact my whole system, and, so far as I know my own constitution, my strength will never be recruited by its natural powers." _Doctor._ "I will prescribe for you, and soon, very soon, shall your health be restored." _Patient._ "How glad I should be to sit down at my writing-table, with some cheerful companions. Reflect on this proposal." _Finis._ P.S. I will call on you as soon as I come to town, only tell Carl at what hour I am likely to see you. It would be a good plan to give Carl directions what I am to do. (I took the medicine only once, and have lost it.) I am, with esteem and gratitude, Your friend, BEETHOVEN. [Music: Treble clef, C major, 2/2 time. Doctor sperrt das Thor dem Todt: Rote hilft auch aus der Roth. Doctor sperrt das Thor dem Todt: Rote hilft auch aus der Roth.] Written on May 11th, 1825, in Baden, Helenenthal, second floor, Anton's-Brücke, near Siechenfeld. 413. TO HIS NEPHEW. Baden, May 17. MY DEAR SON,-- The weather here is abominable, and the cold greater even than yesterday; so much so that I have scarcely the use of my fingers to write; this is the case, however, only in the mountains, and more especially in Baden. I forgot the chocolate to-day, and am sorry to be obliged to trouble you about it, but all will go better soon. I enclose you 2 florins, to which you must add 15 kreutzers; send it if possible with the post in the afternoon; otherwise I shall have none the day after to-morrow; the people of the house will assist you in this. May God bless you! I begin to write again very tolerably; still, in this most dreary, cold stormy weather, it is almost impossible to have any clear conceptions. Now as ever, Your good and loving FATHER. 414. TO HIS NEPHEW. Noon, 1 o'clock. MY DEAR SON,-- I merely wish to let you know that the old woman is not yet returned,--why, I cannot tell. Inquire immediately at Höbel's in the Kothgasse, whether the Höbel who belongs to this place set off from Vienna to Baden? It is really so distressing to me to depend on such people, that if life did not possess higher charms, it would be utterly insupportable in my eyes. You no doubt got my yesterday's letter, and the 2 florins for the chocolate. I shall be obliged to drink coffee to-morrow; perhaps after all it is better for me than chocolate, as the prescriptions of this B. [Braunhofer] have been repeatedly wrong. Indeed he seems to me very ignorant, and a blockhead into the bargain; he must have known about the asparagus. Having dined at the inn to-day, I have a threatening of diarrhoea. I have no more white wine, so I must get it from the inn, and such wine too! for which, however, I pay 3 florins! Two days ago the old woman wrote to me that she wished to end her days in an alms-house; perhaps she will not return to me; so be it in God's name! she will always be a wicked old woman. She ought to make arrangements with the person whom she knows of. She wrote to me in a very different strain from that in which she spoke to you on Sunday, and said "that the people refused to give up the bell-pull." Who knows whether she may not have some interest in the matter? She went into town yesterday at six o'clock, and I begged her to make haste back here this forenoon; if she still comes, I must go to town the day after to-morrow. Leave a written message to say when I am to see you.... Write me a few lines immediately. How much I regret troubling you, but you must see that I cannot do otherwise.... Your attached FATHER. How distressing to be in such a state here! To Herr Carl van Beethoven, Vienna, Alleengasse 72, Karlskirche, 1ter Étage, at Herr Schlemmer's. 415. TO HIS NEPHEW. MY DEAR SON,-- I sent for the cabinet-maker to-day with the old--witch--to Asinanius'[1] house. Don't forget the paintings, and the things sent in last summer; at all events look for them. I may perhaps come on Saturday; if not, you must come to me on Sunday. May God watch over you, my dear son. Your attached FATHER. I cannot write much. Send me a few words.[2] [Footnote 1: It was thus Beethoven named his _pseudo_-brother.] [Footnote 2: Underneath is written in pencil by another hand, "I shall be at the usual place at three o'clock, _s'il vous plait_." The whole appears to be afterwards stroked out.] 416. TO HIS NEPHEW. Do send the chocolate at last by the old woman. If Ramler is not already engaged, he may perhaps drive her over. I become daily thinner, and feel far from well; and no physician, no sympathizing friends! If you can possibly come on Sunday, pray do so; but I have no wish to deprive you of any pleasure, were I only sure that you would spend your Sunday properly away from me. I must strive to wean myself from everything; if I were only secure that my great sacrifices would bring forth worthy fruits! Your attached FATHER. 417. TO HIS NEPHEW. Wednesday, May 17. MY DEAR SON,-- The old woman is just come, so you need be under no uneasiness; study assiduously and rise early, as various things may occur to you in the morning, which you could do for me. It cannot be otherwise than becoming in a youth, now in his nineteenth year, to combine his duties towards his benefactor and foster-father with those of his education and progress. I fulfilled my obligations towards my own parents. In haste, Your attached FATHER. The old bell-pull is here. The date of my letter is wrong; it is not May the 17th, but the 18th. 418. TO HIS NEPHEW. May 19. Ask the house agent about a lodging in the Landstrasse, Ungargasse, No. 345, adjoining the Bräuhaus,--four rooms and a kitchen, commanding a view of the adjacent gardens. I hear there are various others too in the Hauptstrasse. Give a gulden to the house agent in the Ungargasse, to promise me the refusal of the lodgings till Saturday, when, if the weather is not too bad, I mean to come on to fetch you. We must decide to-morrow whether it is to be hired from Michaelmas or now. If I do come on Saturday, take care that I find you at home. Your attached FATHER. 419. TO HIS NEPHEW. Say everything that is kind and amiable from me to my esteemed fellow-guardian, Dr. v. Reissig; I feel still too feeble to write to him myself. I hope he will not object to your coming to me here every Saturday evening. You are well aware that I _never abused_ such a permission when you were at Blöchlinger's [see No. 276]. Besides, I feel sure of your intercession _in support of my request_. Your attached father, BEETHOVEN. 420. TO HIS NEPHEW. Baden, May 23. I have been assured, though as yet it is only a matter of conjecture, that a clandestine intercourse has been renewed between your mother and yourself. Am I doomed again to experience such detestable ingratitude? No! if the tie is to be severed, so be it! By such ingratitude you will incur the hatred of all impartial persons. The expressions my brother made use of yesterday before Dr. Reissig (as he says); and your own with respect to Schönauer (who is naturally adverse to me, the judgment of the Court being the _exact reverse of what he desired_), were such, that I will not mix myself up with such shameful doings! No! never more! If you find the _Pactum_ oppressive, then, in God's name, I resign you to His holy keeping! I have done my part, and on this score I do not dread appearing before the Highest of all Judges. Do not be afraid to come to me to-morrow; as yet I only _suspect_; God grant that those suspicions _may not prove true_, for to you it would be an incalculable misfortune, with whatever levity my rascally brother, and perhaps your mother also, may treat the matter to the old woman. I shall expect you without fail. 421. TO HIS NEPHEW. Baden, May 31, 1825. MY DEAR SON,-- I intend to come to town on Saturday, and to return here either on Sunday evening, or early on Monday. I beg you will therefore ask Dr. Bach [advocate] at what hour I can see him, and also fetch the key from brother Bäcker's [a brother-in-law of Johann Beethoven's], to see whether in the room inhabited by my unbrotherly brother, the arrangements are such that I can stay a night there; and if there is clean linen, &c., &c. As Thursday is a holiday, and it is unlikely that you will come here (indeed I do not desire that you should), you may easily execute these two commissions for me. You can let me know the result when I arrive on Saturday. I don't send you money, for if you want any, you can borrow a gulden at home. Moderation is necessary for young people, and you do not appear to pay sufficient attention to this, as you had _money without my knowledge, nor do I yet know whence it came_. Fine doings! It is not advisable that you should go to the theatre at _present_, on account of the distraction it causes. The 5 florins procured by Dr. Reissig, I will pay off by instalments, punctually every month. So enough of this! Misled as you have been, it would be no bad thing were you at length to cultivate _simplicity and truth_, for my heart has been so deeply wounded by your deceitful conduct, that it is difficult to forget it. Even were I disposed to submit like an ox to so hard a yoke without murmuring, if you pursue the same course towards others, you will never succeed in gaining the love of any one. As God is my witness, I can think of nothing but you, and my contemptible brother, and the detestable family that I am afflicted with. May God vouchsafe to listen to my prayer, for _never_ again can I trust you! Your Father, alas! Yet fortunately not your Father. 422. TO HIS NEPHEW. Baden, June 9, 1825. I wish you at least to come here on Sundays. In vain do I ask for an answer. God help you and me! As ever, Your attached FATHER. I have written to Herr v. Reissig to desire you to come here on Sundays. The _calèche_ leaves his house at six o'clock, from the _Kugel, auf der Wieden_. You have only to work and study a little in advance, to lose nothing. I regret being obliged to cause you this annoyance; you are to return the same afternoon at five o'clock, with the _calèche_. Your place is already paid for; you can shave here in the morning, and a shirt and neckcloth will be ready for you, so that you may arrive at the right time. Farewell. If I reproach you it is not without good cause, and it would be hard to have sacrificed so much, merely to bestow a _commonplace man_ on the world. I hope to see you without fail. If the intrigues are already matured, say so frankly (and naturally), and you will find one who will always be true to the good cause. The lodging A. was again advertised in the paper on Tuesday; could you not have arranged about this? You might at all events have done so through some one else, or by writing, if you were at all indisposed. I should much prefer not moving, if I were not compelled to do so. You know my mode of living here, and it is far worse in this cold stormy weather. My continued solitude only still further enfeebles me, and really my weakness often amounts to a swoon. Oh! do not further grieve me, for the scythe of Death will grant me no long delay! If I could find a good lodging in the Alleengasse, I would at once engage it. 423. Tuesday Morning. MY DEAR SON,-- The two patterns, one placed at the top and the other below, each 21 florins, seem to me the best; the landlord can advise you. For the trousers 88--4-1/2. I enclose 62 florins W.W. 30 kreutzers. Give me an exact account of how you spend this money, for it was hard to earn; still it is not worth while, for the sake of a florin a yard, not to select the best material; so choose, or get some one to choose for you, the best of the two at 21 florins. Order the highest quality for your trousers also; remember you ought never to wear your best clothes at home; no matter who comes, you need never be well dressed in the house.[1] The moment you come home change your good clothes, and be at your ease in those set aside for the purpose. Farewell. Your attached FATHER. P.S. The creature went off yesterday and has not returned; we shall see how this turns out. The old beast was determined to be off, being like a restless wild animal devoid of purpose or reason. May Heaven have pity on me! The new cooking began yesterday. [Footnote 1: See Weber's narrative in his _Biography_, Vol. II. 510. "The square Cyclopean figure was attired in a shabby coat with torn sleeves."] 424. TO HIS NEPHEW. Baden, June 15. MY DEAR SON,-- I hope you received the 62 florins 30 kreutzers. If you wish to order trousers of the same cloth, do so. You probably chose that at 25 florins, and on such occasions the best quality should not be rejected for the sake of a couple of florins. You may also order two pairs of trousers of the gray cloth. You must let me know the amount of the tailor's bill, &c., &c., which shall be paid by me. "Let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth." Such is the sentiment of noble-minded men. You have, alas! only yourself to blame for my being forced to draw your attention to this. Do not forget to call on Riess (??). May Aurora not only awaken you but speed your industry. Now for my every-day household matters. The maid came indeed, but is not to remain; in the mean time I have spoken pretty plainly to the old woman, _so far_ as it is possible to speak to such people. But let us say no more of all this bedevilment. My brother _Asinanio_ has written to me. What I find most trying of all is being alone at dinner, and it is really surprising that I can write to you even tolerably from here. Possibly I may come to town on Saturday, and if so you will perhaps drive out here with me at six o'clock in the evening? Now farewell, my darling! deserve this name. Retain what money you require; anything you want shall be purchased for you when I come in. I embrace you, and hope you will be my good, studious, noble son. Now as ever, your attached FATHER. I should like to know that you received the money safely. Did the Correpetitor come? 425. TO HIS NEPHEW. MY DEAR SON,-- I send you herewith the 90 florins. Get a written receipt from the landlady to prevent all mistakes afterwards; this is the invariable custom with those still under the control of guardians. My wafers are done; cannot you manage to send me a box in some way or other? Acknowledge the receipt of the money at once. God bless you! Do all you possibly can to rid me of that old demon. Do not involve yourself in any clandestine doings with my brother; above all do nothing clandestine towards me; towards your attached father. Goodnight. Farewell! farewell! The old witch and Satan and I?! 426. TO HIS NEPHEW. I rejoice, my dear son, that you take pleasure in this new sphere, and such being the case you must zealously strive to acquire what is necessary for it. I did not recognize your writing; I indeed look only to the _sense_ and _meaning_, but you must now attain some outward elegance also. If it is too hard a task for you to come here, give it up; but if you can by any possibility do so, I shall rejoice in my desert home to have a feeling heart near me. If you do come, the housekeeper will settle that you leave Vienna at five o'clock, which leaves you ample time for your studies. I embrace you cordially. Your attached FATHER. P.S. Don't forget to bring the "Morgenblatt" and Ries's letter.[1] [Footnote 1: A letter from Ries of this date, in the _Fischhof'sche Handschrift_, is of sufficient interest to be given here at full length:-- Godesberg, June 9, 1825. Dearest Beethoven,--I returned a few days ago from Aix-la-Chapelle, and feel the greatest pleasure in telling you that your new Symphony [the 9th] was executed with the most extraordinary precision, and received with the greatest applause. It was a hard nut to crack, and the last day I rehearsed the _finale_ alone for three hours; but I in particular, and all the others, were fully rewarded by the performance. It is a work beside which no other can stand, and had you written nothing but this you would have gained immortality. Whither will you lead us? As it will interest you to hear something of the performance, I will now briefly describe it. The orchestra and choruses consisted of 422 persons, and many very distinguished people among them. The first day commenced with a new Symphony of mine, and afterwards Handel's _Alexander's Feast_. The second day began with your new Symphony, followed by the _Davide Penitente_ of Mozart, the overture to the _Flaute Magico_, and the _Mount of Olives_. The applause of the public was almost terrific. I had been in Aix-la-Chapelle from the 3d of May on purpose to conduct the rehearsals, and as a mark of the satisfaction and enthusiasm of the public, I was called forward at the close of the performance, when an ode and a laurel crown were presented to me by a lady (a very pretty one too), and at the same moment another poem and a shower of flowers followed from the upper boxes. All was pleasure and contentment, and every one says that this is the finest of the seven Whitsuntide festivals held here. I cannot sufficiently lament that your other music arrived too late to make use of it. It was indeed utterly impossible to do so. I herewith send you, my dear friend, a check for 40 Louis d'or on Heppenmayer & Co. in Vienna, according to our agreement, and beg you will acknowledge the receipt, that I may settle everything relating to Aix-la-Chapelle. I am glad that you have not accepted any engagement in England. If you choose to reside there, you must previously take measures to ensure your finding your account in it. From the Theatre alone Rossini got £2500. If the English wish to do anything at all remarkable for you, they must combine, so that it may be well worth your while to go there. You are sure to receive enough of applause, and marks of homage, but you have had plenty of these during your whole life. May all happiness attend you. Dear Beethoven, yours ever, FERDINAND RIES.] 427. TO HIS NEPHEW. Baden, June 28, 1825. MY DEAR SON,-- As in this heat you may perhaps wish to bathe, I send you two more florins. You must be careful to take a written receipt from those to whom you pay money; for that errors do occur is proved by the blue cloth, and the three florins for the looking-glass. You are a thorough Viennese, and although I do not expect you to become a W.W. (depreciated Vienna currency), still it is no disgrace at your age to give an exact account of all that you receive, as no one is considered to be of age till five and twenty, and even if you had property of your own, you would be obliged to account for it to your guardian at your present years. Let us not refer to the past; it would be easy to do so, but only cause me pain; at last it would come to this, "You are indeed a first-rate guardian," &c. If you had any depth of feeling you would have acted very differently in most things. Now as to my domestic rabble; yesterday the kitchenmaid was off again and got a fresh place; the cause is difficult to discover from my old witch, who is now once more all smiles, and no longer persists in declaring that she has incurred any _loss_ from the weekly bills; what do you think of that? [The last page of this letter is an illegible fragment.] 428. TO HIS NEPHEW. Baden. MY DEAR GOOD CARL,-- I have just got your letter this evening, and could not help laughing at it. It was not right in the people at Mayence to have acted thus, but since the thing has occurred, it does not signify. Our epoch requires strong minds to scourge those frivolous, contemptible, malicious beings, repulsive as it is to my feelings to cause pain to any man. Besides, I intended a mere jest, and it was far from my intention to let such a thing be printed.[1] You must ascertain instantly from a magistrate the proper mode of converting the Bank obligations into Rothschild's Austrian Loan, that you may get the authority from a magistrate (not from the _Court_ of those _pseudo_-guardians!) Be good and honest; you have here an instance how people rejoice when such men are properly estimated. Be my own dear precious son, and imitate my virtues, but not my faults; still, though man is frail, do not at least have worse defects than those of Your sincere and fondly attached FATHER. Write to me about the conversation on Sunday--it is of the _Court, courtly_, so you must be on your guard. Holz did not come to-day; whether he is trustworthy I cannot say. [Footnote 1: There is no doubt that he alludes to the severe castigation of Haslinger in No. 405 and the _canonization_ of the two others. See also No. 440, which shows that there was something amiss with Haslinger.] 429. TO HIS NEPHEW. To-day is Friday, to-morrow Saturday. Here comes _Satanas_. To-day her raging fury and madness have somewhat subsided, but if she applies to you, refer her to me the day after to-morrow. During the whole week I was forced to submit and to suffer like a saint. Avaunt! such dregs of the people! What a reproach to our civilization to stand in need of a class like this, and to have those whom we despise so constantly near us. Go with her to-morrow as formerly to the Carolin Thor about the Seltzer water; if the small bottles are as genuine as the larger ones, order some of them, but I think the larger size are more likely to be the _safest_; _ce dépend de votre esprit, votre distinction_, &c. Now farewell, my dear son; take care to get me the genuine, and _not_ the artificial Seltzer water, and go yourself to see about it, or I might get Heaven knows what! Farewell again, my good fellow; we are well affected towards you, and shall expect you the day after to-morrow at eight o'clock. Breakfast shall be ready for you, if that early meal does not become as usual a late meal. _Ah! au diable avec ces grands coquins de neveux, allez-vous en, soyez mon fils, mon fils bien aimé. Adieu; je vous baise, votre père sincère comme toujours._ 430. TO HIS NEPHEW. The old goose is the bearer of this. She has given you the quills, and you have again told an untruth. Alas! farewell. I await your report about the book. She is going to-day to Katel, so she will have very little time for her stupid blundering. May the Lord one day deliver me from her! _Libera me Domine de illis_, &c. 431.[1] DEAR SON, DEAR BOY,-- Do not omit the point about "the happiness." I know from my experience of the late Lichnowsky, that those so-called great personages do not like to see an artist, who is at all events their equal, prosperous. _Voilà le même cas, votre Altesse_, sometimes in the context V.A. The address "à son Altesse Monseigneur le Prince," &c., &c. We cannot tell whether he may have that weakness or not. A blank sheet ought to follow with my signature. You might add that he must not regard the newspaper trash, the writers of which, if I chose, would loudly trumpet forth my merits. The Quartet did indeed fail the first time that it was played by Schuppanzigh; for on account of his corpulence he requires more time than formerly to decipher a piece at a glance, and many other circumstances concurred in preventing its success, which were indeed predicted by me; for although Schuppanzigh and two others receive pensions from royal personages [Rasumowsky], their quartet-playing is not what it was when all four were in the habit of constantly playing together. On the other hand, it has been six times performed in the most admirable manner by other artists, and received with the greatest applause; it was played twice over in one evening, and then again after supper. A violinist of the name of Böhm means also to give it at his benefit, and I must now let many others have it. Mention the Grand Quartet in your letter to Peters at Leipzig; lose no time about this, and desire him to send me an early reply. Mischances of this kind cannot well be avoided, and we must appear rather coy. Seal the enclosed letter to my brother and send it to the post. Desire the tailor in the Kärntnerstrasse to get lining for trousers for me, and to make them long and without straps, one pair to be of kerseymere and the other of cloth. The great-coat can be fetched from Wolf's. The shoemaker's shop is in the "Stadt" in the Spiegelgasse, in front when coming from the Graben. His name is Magnus Senn, at the Stadthaus, No. 1093. Call on Hönigstein [a banker] and be _candid_, that we may really know _how this wretch has acted_; it would be wise to ascertain this before the letter to Galitzin is sent off. It is probable that something else may be found for you this winter, but we can talk over the matter. Before coming here on Saturday call on Zinbrachen in the Naglergasse about the knives, which you can send at once; the old woman made a fine mess of it! When driving home yesterday I met Clement, Holz, Linke, and Rtschaschek [Rzehatschek] in Neudorf; they had all been to call on me while I was in town. They wish to have the Quartet again. Holz drove straight back here from Neudorf and supped with me in the evening, when I gave him the Quartet to take back with him. The attachment of genuine artists is not to be despised, and cannot be otherwise than gratifying. Let me hear from you as soon as you have spoken with Hönigstein; write the dedication of the Overture in C [Op. 124] to Galitzin. If the H.'s undertake to forward it, give it to them, but look sharp about it. God be with you, my dear son; I shall expect a letter from you without fail. May God bless you and me. The end must soon come of your attached father. Good-by, you scamp! N.B. Do not forget in your letter to Galitzin to mention that the Overture is already announced and about to appear, engraved and dedicated to him. [Footnote 1: He refers to Prince Boris Gallizin and the Quartets he had ordered. The production of the first of them in E flat major had been a failure. See No. 399.] 432. TO HIS NEPHEW. MY DEAR SON,-- Send this letter at once to my _pseudo_-brother, and add something yourself. It is impossible to permit this to continue any longer; no soup to-day, no beef, no eggs, and at last _broiled meat_ from the inn! When Holz was with me lately, there was really almost nothing to eat at supper; and such is the woman's bold and insolent behavior, that I have told her to-day I will not suffer her to remain beyond the end of the month. No more to-day. All that is necessary about the magistrate is for me to write a note authorizing you to draw the money, but it would be as well were you to take the opportunity of asking what you are to do about converting the bank shares into a share in Rothschild's Loan. I shall say nothing further, except that I always look on you as my dear son, and one who deserves to be so. _Little_ as I require what nourishes the body, as you know, still the present state of things is really too bad, besides being every moment in danger of being poisoned. Farewell! Be careful, my dear son, of your health in this heat; I trust you will continue well. Shun all that may enervate or diminish your youthful energies. Farewell! A pleasant talk together would be far better than all this writing. Ever your loving and attached father, who fondly presses you to his heart. 433. TO HIS NEPHEW. MY DEAR SON,-- The enclosed will show you all. Write this letter to Schlesinger. To ---- Schlesinger, Berlin, Emporium of Art and Science. You can couch some things in better terms. I think we may calculate on 80 ducats. If indispensable, delay the letter to Galitzin, but be sure to dispatch the one to Schlesinger on Saturday. I suppose you received the packet? I beg you will bring me some shaving-soap, and at least one pair of razors; the man who grinds them gets 2 florins. You will know if anything is to be paid. Now pray practise economy, for you certainly receive too much money. All in vain--a Viennese will always be a Viennese! I rejoiced when I could assist my poor parents; what a contrast are you in your conduct towards me! Thriftless boy, farewell! Your attached FATHER. Bring the newspaper with you. You have a great deal to do this time. You no doubt will write before Sunday. Do not flatter that wretch ----. He is a miserable, weak-minded fellow. I embrace you. My health is _no better_. 434. TO HIS BROTHER JOHANN,--GNEIXENDORF. Baden, July 13, 1825. MY WORTHY BROTHER,-- As you have taken such good care of the book, I beg you will take equal care that it be returned to the proprietor here. Another pretty business! As to your wish that I should come to see you, I long ago fully explained myself on that point; so I request that you will never again allude to the subject, for you will find me as immovable as ever. Pray spare me all details, as I am unwilling to repeat what is disagreeable. You are happy, and it is my desire that you should be so; continue thus, for every one is best _in his own sphere_. I only once made use of your lodgings, but the baking-oven nearly made me ill, so I did not go again; as I have now a lodging of my own, it is not probable that I shall even _once_ make use of the room you offer me. When you write, be sure to _seal_ your letters, and address them to the care of Carl, in Vienna, as such letters cost a great deal here. I once more urge you to restore the book belonging to the machinist, _an dem Graben_, for such occurrences are really almost incredible, and place me in no small embarrassment. So the book! the book! to be sent to Carl in Vienna with all possible haste and speed. Farewell, most worthy brother! Yours, LUDWIG. 435. TO HIS NEPHEW. Baden, July 15. MY DEAR SON,-- In your letter to Schlesinger don't forget to ask whether Prince Radziwill is in Berlin. As to the 80 ducats, you can also write that they may be paid in _Conventionsgulden_, at only 4 florins 30 kreutzers to the ducat; but I leave this entirely to yourself, though gold ducats would not be too much from one who has the right of publishing in England and also in France. You must be quite decided too with respect to the four months' bill. A. Mayseder receives 50 ducats for a set of violin variations! Do not fail to call attention to the fact that my bad health and other circumstances constrain me to look more closely after my interests than formerly. Bargaining is odious to me, but it must be so! What are my feelings when I find myself thus alone among these men! Be sure to forward my letter to my brother, that the book may be restored--what a trick! I should have liked, too, to do all I could to benefit my hearing, and here I should have had time to do so. How melancholy to have such a brother! Alas! alas! Farewell! I embrace you from my heart. Your attached FATHER. P.S. Do not be dilatory, and rise early. If you would rather not, pray do not come on Sunday; but at all events write, though not at present, for if you can come we can discuss all matters together. 436. TO HIS NEPHEW. Baden, July 18, Monday. MY DEAR SON,-- You will see from the enclosure all that you wish to know; only observe _moderation_. Fortune crowns my efforts, but do not lay the foundation of misery by mistaken notions; be truthful and exact in the account of your expenses, and give up the theatre for the present. Follow the advice of your guide and father; be counselled by him whose exertions and aspirations have always been directed to your moral welfare, though without neglecting your temporal benefit. This Herr Thal will call on you, and he will also be at Herr Hönigstein's; you can give him the Overture if you think fit. He is to stay three weeks. You may invite him to dine here. Sunday would be best, as a certain scamp comes on that day at an early hour, in a carriage that I will send for him. Pray show some amiability of manner towards this man; art and science form a link between the noblest spirits, and your future vocation[1] by no means exempts you from this. You might take a _fiacre_ and drive to the copyist's if you can spare time. With respect to the transcription of the Quartet, you may tell him that I write very differently now, much more legibly than during my illness; this Quartet must be written out twice, and I can send it at once. I have had the offer of a copyist here, but I don't know what he can do. I should be careful not to be too confidential at first with the _Holz Christi_, or the splinter of the _Holz Christi_. Write to me forthwith. Perhaps the old goose may go to Vienna the day after to-morrow. Farewell! Attend to my advice. Your attached FATHER, Who cordially embraces you. You may possibly go to D---- with this Herr Thal; do not, however, show too much anxiety about the money. [Footnote 1: The nephew had now resolved on a commercial career, and on this account entered the Polytechnic Institution.] 437. TO HIS NEPHEW. MY DEAR SON,-- So let it be! Bring G----'s letter with you, for I have scarcely read it myself. My _Signor Fratello_ came the day before yesterday with his brother-in-law [see No. 435]--what a contemptible fellow! The old witch, who went almost crazy again yesterday, will bring you the answer about the book from his brother-in-law. If it does not convey a positive certainty on the subject, send this letter at once to the base creature! When Cato exclaimed, with regard to Caesar, "This man and myself!" what can be done in such a case? I don't send the letter, for it will be time enough a couple of days hence. It is too late to-day. I impress my love, as with a seal, on your affectionate attachment to me. If you are likely to miss your work by coming here, then stay where you are. As ever, your loving and anxious FATHER. Three times over: ________________ |: Come soon! :| 438. TO THE COPYIST.[1] Read _violino 2do_--the passage in the first _Allegretto_ in the 1st violin--thus:-- [Music: Treble clef, sixteenth notes.] &c. So write it in this way; in the first _Allegretto_, mark the signs of expression in all the four parts: [Music: Treble and Bass clefs.] The notes are all right; so do not misunderstand me. Now, my good friend, as to your mode of writing--_obbligatissimo_; but the signs [Music: piano crescendo decrescendo] &c., are shamefully neglected, and often, very often, in the wrong place, which is no doubt owing to haste. For Heaven's sake impress on Kempel [a copyist] to copy everything just as it stands; look carefully over my present corrections, and you will find all that you have to say to him. When [Music: staccato mark] is put over a note, [Music: staccatissimo mark] is not to take its place, and _vice versa_. It is not the same thing to write [Music: three staccatissimo quarter notes] and [Music: three staccato quarter notes]. The [Music: crescendo] are often purposely placed after the notes. For instance:--[Music: three notes, decrescendo on second note]. The ties to be just as they are now placed. It is not synonymous to write [Music: three notes, slurred] or thus [Music: three notes, slur over first two notes]. Such is our will and pleasure! I have passed no less than the whole forenoon to-day, and yesterday afternoon, in correcting these two pieces, and I am actually quite hoarse from stamping and swearing. In haste, yours, BEETHOVEN. Pray excuse me for to-day, as it is just four o'clock. [The close of this letter has not been deciphered by its possessor, who has traced over the hieroglyphics with a pencil; it reads somewhat to this effect, "to go to Carl at four o'clock. We were much amused," &c.] [Footnote 1: This letter is evidently written about the same time that the copying of the A minor Quartet (Op. 132) took place, of which the letter treats, and is probably "the enclosure" named in the following note. The corrections, or we ought rather to say revisions, of Beethoven, are all fully and accurately reproduced, at all events in Breitkopf & Härtel's edition.] 439. TO HIS NEPHEW. Tuesday, August 2. MY DEAR SON,-- Send the enclosed to-morrow morning (Wednesday) to the post; as it refers to corrections, _haste is absolutely necessary_. We must have done with this evil old creature! I have scarcely enough to eat, and am forced also to endure the sauciness and insolence of this most malicious old witch--and with such wages too! I think I must ask my _pseudo_-brother to come, and would be glad to engage again the woman from Winter's, in the Kothgasse, who at least knew how to cook. Write me a few lines to-morrow, and direct here. I send you another florin. Do not neglect your bathing; continue well, and guard against _illness_. Spend your money _on good objects alone_. Be my dear son! What a frightful discord would it be, were you to prove _false_ to me, as many persons maintain that you already are! May God bless you! Your attached FATHER. N.B. Send off the letter to-morrow (Wednesday). I have heard nothing as yet of the knives, and my made pens also begin to fail. 440. TO HIS NEPHEW. Baden, August MY DEAR SON,-- I am in mortal anxiety about the Quartet--namely, the third, fourth, fifth, and sixth parts, that Holz took away, while the first bars of the third movement have been left here; the number of these sheets is 13. _I hear nothing of Holz._ I wrote to him yesterday, and he is not usually remiss in writing. What a sad business it will be if he has lost it! He drinks hard, _entre nous_. Tranquillize me on this point as quickly as possible. You can find out Linke's lodgings from Haslinger; he was here to-day and very friendly, and brought some of the sheets and other things, and begged hard for the new quartets. Never interfere in this kind of business; it can only lead to what is unpleasant. For Heaven's sake pacify me about the Quartet--a serious loss. The sketch is only written on small fragments of paper, and I could not manage to write out the whole exactly from these. Your attached FATHER. I must remind you that next Sunday and Monday are holidays, so that you may arrange accordingly. On this occasion you could perhaps, when I come in, return with me here on Saturday evening, which would give you the whole of Sunday morning to yourself. 441. TO ZMESKALL. 1825. MY GOOD FRIEND,-- I had scarcely got home when I bethought me of the stuff I may have written yesterday. Give the enclosed to Kuhlau; you know all the rest. Write to me as soon as possible, or come here, next Thursday being a holiday, but write beforehand. Ask if the cook understands anything about game, that she may take the command of my game preserves for me. As to Carl, it would be better for him to tell me about it at the _Atrapper_ at _Rosen_. All this _prestissimo_! As for my friendship, think of me always as _Cantum firmum_. Farewell! Ever your friend, BEETHOVEN. 442. TO HERR FRIEDRICH KUHLAU. Baden, September 3, 1825. [Music: Alto clef, B-flat major, 4/4 time. Kuhl nicht lau, nicht lau, Kuhl nicht lau, Kuh-lau nicht lau. Kuhl nicht lau, Kuhl nicht lau, nicht lau. Kuhl nicht lau, Kuhl nicht lau, Kuhl nicht lau.] I must admit that the champagne went a little to my head yesterday, and I learned once more from experience, that such things rather prostrate than promote my energies; for, though able to respond fluently at the moment, still I can no longer recall what I wrote yesterday. Sometimes bear in mind your attached BEETHOVEN. 443. TO HIS NEPHEW. September 6, 1825. MY DEAR SON,-- I see perfectly well how troublesome it would be for you all to come here; we must therefore make an appointment to meet every Friday at Schlesinger's, when I will come to town; for, in case any thing goes amiss, I must be present. This is the best plan, and settles the affair. He was here yesterday, and said that he would pay for the Quintet as soon as you sent it to him. It will be enough if they play the new one only, but you can judge what is best. If they prefer Thursday, I can be present then. Only see that they come to an arrangement as quickly as possible, so that the money may be transmitted to Peters in Leipzig, to whom, however, you must on no account allude. Schlesinger scarcely expects to be still in Vienna on Sunday; haste is therefore necessary. The ducats must be in gold; mention, as a precedent, that others do this. Be sure to write to me by the old woman to-day. All I want is a rehearsal, to see whether corrections are required. Make no delays, and take care that the old woman sets off in good time. The best plan would be to fix where I am to come to in town every Friday for rehearsals. If Schlesinger has brought you the Quartet (the first), pray stand on no ceremony, for it is clear he means to pay. Your letter has this moment come. So Holz is not to be here till Thursday, and who can tell whether even this is certain? Your letter changes everything, as Friday is now decided on. Holz can inform me whether we meet here or in Vienna. Our main point now is with Schlesinger, for we must delay no longer. If he is only waiting for the rehearsal, he certainly shall not have it. He said yesterday that he would not publish the quartets here; I told him it was a matter of entire indifference to me. May God bless you and keep you! Your attached FATHER. 444. TO HIS NEPHEW. September. MY DEAR SON,-- Do not forget to give Tobias [Haslinger] the receipt together with the money. The gentleman ought to have come a little sooner; but as the affair stands, you must do as he advises. I do not wish now that you should come to me on the 19th of September. It is better to finish your studies. God has never yet forsaken me, and no doubt some one will be found to close my eyes. The whole thing seems to me to have been some artful collusion, in which my brother (_pseudo_) has played a part. I also know that you have no pleasure now in coming to me--which is only natural, for my atmosphere is too pure for you. Last Sunday you again borrowed 1 florin 15 kreutzers from the housekeeper, from a mean old kitchen wench,--this was already forbidden,--and it is the same in all things. I could have gone on wearing the out-of-doors coat for two years--to be sure I have the shabby custom of putting on an old coat at home--but Herr Carl! What a disgrace it would be! and why should he do so? Herr Ludwig van Beethoven's money-bags are expressly for this purpose. You had better not come next Sunday, for true harmony and concord can never exist with conduct such as yours. Why such hypocrisy? Avoid it, and you will then become a better man, and not require to be deceitful nor untruthful, which will eventually benefit your moral character. Such is the impression you have made on my mind--for what avail even the most gentle reproofs? They merely serve to embitter you. But do not be uneasy; I shall continue to _care for you_ as much as ever. _What feelings_ were aroused in me when I again found a florin and 15 kreutzers charged in the bill! Do not send any more such flimsy notes, for the housekeeper can see through them in the light. I have just received this letter from Leipzig, but I don't mean to send the Quartet yet; we can talk of this on Sunday. Three years ago I only asked 40 ducats for a quartet; we must therefore refer to the exact words you have written. Farewell! He who, though he did not give you life, has certainly provided for it, and above all striven to perfect your mental culture, and been more than a father to you, earnestly implores you to pursue steadily the only true path to all that is good and right. Farewell! Bring back the letter with you on Sunday. Your attached and kind FATHER. 445. TO HERR VON SCHLESINGER. Vienna, September 26, 1825. [Music: Tenor clef, F major, 4/4 time. Si non per Por-tus, per mu-ros, per mu-ros, per mu-ros.] My worthy friend, I wish you the loveliest bride! And I take this opportunity of asking you to present my compliments to Herr Marx, in Berlin, and beg him not to be too hard on me, and sometimes to allow me to slip out at the backdoor. Yours, BEETHOVEN. 446. TO HIS NEPHEW. Baden, October 4. MY DEAR SON,-- Like the sage Odysseus, I know the best course to take; if you come on Saturday, you need not fear the cold, for a portion of the old window-shutters is still here, with which we can protect ourselves. I hope also to get rid of my cold and catarrh here; at the same time this place is a great risk in my rheumatic condition, for wind, or rather hurricanes, still prevail here. As to Biedermann, you must inquire whether Schlesinger gave him a commission; for if this be not the case, we ought to write at once to Peters. You could scarcely write to me to-day, but I hope to hear from you to-morrow, and to see you positively on Saturday. I wish you never may have cause to feel ashamed of your want of love for me; if I alone suffer, what matters it? I wish and hope that all the pretexts you made here to go into Vienna may prove true. Rest assured that you may at all times expect every possible kindness from me, but can I hope for the same from you? When you see me irritable, ascribe it solely to my great anxiety on your account, for you are exposed to many dangers. I hope at all events to get a letter from you to-morrow; do not cause me uneasiness, but think of my sufferings. I ought not, properly, to have any such apprehensions, but what sorrow have I not already experienced?! As ever, your attached FATHER. Remember that I am all alone here, and subject to sudden illness. [On the outside:] _N'oubliez pas de demander des quittances, et donnez-moi aussi vite que possible des nouvelles._ 447. TO HIS NEPHEW. MY DEAR SON,-- Say no more! only come to my arms; not one harsh word shall you hear! For God's sake do not bring misery on your own head. You shall be received as lovingly as ever. We can discuss in a friendly manner what is to be done and settled as to the future. I pledge my word of honor you shall meet with no reproaches from me, which, indeed, could no longer avail. You need expect only the most affectionate care and assistance from me. Only come! Come to the faithful heart of-- Your father, BEETHOVEN. _Volti sub._ Set off the moment you receive this letter. _Si vous ne viendrez pas, vous me tuerez sûrement. Lisez la lettre et restez à la maison chez vous. Venez embrasser votre père, vous vraiment adonné. Soyez assuré que tout cela restera entre nous._ For God's sake come home to-day, for we cannot tell what risks you run,--hasten,--hasten to me! 448. TO HIS NEPHEW. October 5. DEAR AND MUCH-BELOVED SON,-- I have just received your letter. I was a prey to anguish, and resolved to hurry into Vienna myself this very day. God be praised! this is not necessary; follow my advice, and love and peace of mind, as well as worldly happiness, will attend us, and you can then combine an inward and spiritual existence with your outer life. But it is well that the _former_ should be esteemed superior to the _latter_. _Il fait trop froid._ So I am to see you on Saturday? Write to say whether you come early or in the evening, that I may hasten to meet you. I embrace and kiss you a thousand times over, _not my lost, but my new-born son_. I wrote to Schlemmer; do not take it amiss, but my heart is still too full [a piece is here torn away]. Live! and my care of the son _I have found again_ will show only love on the part of your father. [On the cover:] _Ayez la bonté de m'envoyer_ a lucifer-match bottle and matches from Rospini, _ou en portez avec vous, puisque de celle de Kärnthnerthor on ne veut pas faire usage_. 449. TO HIS NEPHEW. _Immediate._ Baden, October 14. I write in the greatest haste to say, that even if it rains, I shall certainly come in to-morrow forenoon; be sure, therefore, that I find you at home. I rejoice at the thoughts of seeing you again, and if you detect any heavy clouds lowering, do not attribute them to deliberate anger, for they will be wholly chased away by your promise to strive more earnestly after the true and pure happiness, based on active exertion. Something hovered before me in my last letter, which though perhaps _not quite justly_ yet called forth a dark mood; this, after all that has passed, was indeed very possible; still who would not rejoice when the transgressor returns to the right path?--and this I hope I shall live to see. I was especially pained by your coming so late on Sunday, and hurrying away again so early. I mean to come in to-morrow with the joiner and to send off these old hags; they are too bad for anything. Until the other housekeeper arrives, I can make use of the joiner. More of this when we meet, and I know you will think I am right. Expect me then to-morrow without fail, whether it rains or not. Your loving FATHER, Who fondly embraces you. 450. TO THE ABBÉ MAXIMILIAN STADLER. February 6, 1826. REVEREND AND HONORED SIR,-- You have really done well in rendering justice to the _manes_ of Mozart by your inimitable pamphlet, which so searchingly enters into the matter [the Requiem], and you have earned the gratitude of the lay and the profane, as well as of all who are musical, or have any pretensions to be so. To bring a thing of this kind forward as H.W.[1] has done, a man must either be a great personage, or a nonentity. Be it remembered also that it is said this same person has written a book on composition, and yet has ascribed to Mozart such passages as the following:-- [Music: Bass clef] and has added such things as,-- [Music: Treble clef, B-flat major. A-gnus de-i pec-ca-ta mun-di.] [Music: Treble clef, B-flat major. Qui tol-lis pec-ca-ta, qui tol-lis pec-ca-ta,] as samples of his own composition! H.W.'s astonishing knowledge of harmony and melody recall the old composers of the Empire,--Sterkel, [illegible,] Kalkbrenner (the father), André, &c. _Requiescant in pace!_ I especially thank you, my dear friend, for the pleasure you have conferred on me by your pamphlet. I have always accounted myself one of Mozart's greatest admirers, and shall continue to be so to my last breath. I beg, venerable sir, for your blessing, and I am, with sincere esteem and veneration, yours, BEETHOVEN. [Footnote 1: Gottfried Weber, the well-known theorist, who was one of those engaged in the dispute as to the genuineness of Mozart's Requiem.] 451. TO GOTTFRIED WEBER. April 3, 1826. Holz tells me that it is your intention to publish a larger size of the engraving representing Handel's monument, in St. Peter's Church in London. This affords me extreme pleasure, independent of the fact that I was the person who suggested this. Accept my thanks beforehand. I am your obedient BEETHOVEN. 452. TO HERR PROBST, MUSIC PUBLISHER,--LEIPZIG. Vienna, June 3, 1826. SIR,-- I always consider myself in some degree bound to make you the offer of my compositions when it is possible to do so. I am at this moment more at liberty than usual. I was obliged to give my minor works to those who took the greater ones also, as without the former they refused to accept the latter. So far as I remember, however, you wished to have nothing to do with the greater works. In this view, I offer you an entirely new Quartet for two violins, viola and violoncello; you must not, however, be surprised at my demanding the sum of 80 gold ducats for it. I assure you, upon my honor, that the same sum has been remitted to me for several quartets. I must request you, in any event, to write to me on this point as soon as possible. Should you accept my offer, I beg you will send the money to some bank here, where I can receive it on delivery of the work. If the reverse be the case, I shall equally expect an immediate reply, as other publishers have already made me offers. I have also the following trifles ready, with which I can supply you. A Serenade-congratulatory-Minuet, and an _Entr'acte_, both for a full orchestra,--the two for 20 gold ducats. In the hope of a speedy answer, I am, sir, your obedient BEETHOVEN. 453. TO STEPHAN V. BREUNING.[1] MY DEAR AND MUCH-LOVED STEPHAN,-- May our temporary estrangement be forever effaced by the portrait I now send. I know that I have rent your heart. The emotion which you cannot fail now to see in mine has sufficiently punished me for it. There was no malice towards you in my heart, for then I should be no longer worthy of your friendship. It was _passion_ both on _your_ part and on _mine_; but mistrust was rife within me, for people had come between us, unworthy both of _you_ and of _me_. My portrait[2] was long ago intended for you; you knew that it was destined for some one--and to whom could I give it with such warmth of heart as to you, my faithful, good, and noble Stephan? Forgive me for having grieved you; but I did not myself suffer less when I no longer saw you near me. I then first keenly felt how dear you were, and ever will be to my heart. Surely you will once more fly to my arms as you formerly did. [Footnote 1: Schindler places this letter in the summer of 1826, when his nephew attempted self-destruction in Baden, which reduced Beethoven to the most miserable state of mind, and brought afresh to his recollection those dear friends of his youth, whom he seemed almost to have forgotten in the society of Holz and his colleagues. Schindler states that the more immediate cause of this estrangement was Breuning having tried to dissuade him from adopting his nephew. Dr. v. Breuning in Vienna is of opinion that the reunion of the two old friends had already occurred in 1825, or even perhaps at an earlier period. I am not at present capable of finally deciding on this discrepancy, but I believe the latter assertion to be correct.] [Footnote 2: Schindler says, "It was Stieler's lithograph, which the _maestro_ had previously sent to Dr. Wegeler." See No. 459.] 454. TO STEPHAN VON BREUNING. MY BELOVED FRIEND,-- You are harassed by work, and so am I--besides, I am still far from well. I would have invited you to dinner ere this, but I have been obliged to entertain people whose most highly prized author is _the cook_, and not finding his interesting productions at home, they hunt after them in the kitchens and cellars of others [Holz for instance]. Such society would not be very eligible for you, but all this will soon be altered. In the mean time do not buy Czerny's "School for the Pianoforte;"[1] for in a day or two I expect to get some information about another. Along with the "Journal des Modes" that I promised to your wife, I also send something for your children. I can always regularly transmit you the journal--you have only to express your wish on any point, for me to comply with it at once. I am, with love and esteem, your friend, BEETHOVEN. I hope we shall soon meet. [Footnote 1: Czerny, _The Vienna Pianoforte Teacher; or, theoretical and practical mode of learning how to play the piano skilfully and beautifully in a short time by a new and easy method_. Vienna: Haslinger. See No. 455.] 455. TO STEPHAN V. BREUNING MY DEAR GOOD FRIEND,-- I can at length realize my boast, and send you Clement's long-promised "Pianoforte School" for Gerhard [Breuning's eldest son]. If he makes the use of it that I advise, the results cannot fail to be good. I shall see you very shortly now, and cordially embrace you. Your BEETHOVEN. 456.[1] TESTIMONIAL FOR C. HOLZ. Vienna, August 30, 1826. I am happy to give my friend Carl Holz the testimonial he wishes, namely, that I consider him well fitted to write my Biography hereafter, if indeed I may presume to think that this will be desired. I place the most implicit confidence in his faithfully transmitting to posterity what I have imparted to him for this purpose. LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN. [Footnote 1: Carl Holz ceded his rights to Dr. Gassner, who however died in 1851 without having completed any biography of Beethoven. In the _maestro's_ bequest, which Gassner's widow was so kind as to show me, there was nothing new (at least to me) except two letters included in this collection and a couple of anecdotes. Schindler also states that Beethoven subsequently repented of the authority he had given Holz and declared he did so too hastily.] 457. TO CARL HOLZ. Both the gentlemen were here, but they have been admonished on every side to observe the most strict secrecy with regard to the Order. Haslinger declares that in this respect you are a son of the deceased Papageno. _Prenez garde!_ I told Carl to-day it was definitively settled that he could not quit the hospital except with you or me. I dine at home to-morrow, so I shall be very glad if you can come. As you have no official work to-morrow you might arrive later, but it is very necessary that you should come. _Portez-vous bien, Monsieur terrible amoureux._[1] Your _indeclinable_ friend, BEETHOVEN. [Footnote 1: This letter contains all kinds of dashes and flourishes, which prove that the _maestro_ was in his happiest mood when he wrote it. His nephew was at that time in the hospital, probably owing to his attempt at suicide.] 458. TO THE KING OF PRUSSIA. YOUR MAJESTY,-- One of the greatest pieces of good fortune of my life is your Majesty having graciously permitted me respectfully to dedicate my present work [the 9th Symphony] to you. Your Majesty is not only the father of your subjects, but also a patron of art and science; and how much more precious is your gracious permission to me, from being myself so fortunate as to be numbered among your subjects, being a citizen of Bonn. I beg your Majesty will vouchsafe to accept this work as a slender token of the profound admiration with which I regard your virtues. I am, your Majesty's obedient humble servant, LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN. 459. TO WEGELER. Vienna, October 7, 1826. MY OLD AND BELOVED FRIEND,-- I really cannot express the pleasure your letter and that of your Lorchen caused me. An answer speedy as an arrow's flight ought indeed to have responded, but I am always rather indolent about writing, because I think that the better class of men know me sufficiently without this. I often compose the answer in my head, but when I wish to write it down I generally throw aside the pen, from not being able to write as I feel. I recall all the kindness you have ever shown me; for example, your causing my room to be whitewashed, which was an agreeable surprise to me. It was just the same with all the Breuning family. Our separation was in the usual course of things; each striving to pursue and to attain his object; while at the same time the everlasting and immutable principles of good still held us closely united. I cannot unfortunately write so much to you to-day as I could wish, being confined to bed,[1] so I limit my reply to some points in your letter. You write that in some book I am declared to be the natural son of the late King of Prussia; this was mentioned to me long ago, but I have made it a rule never either to write anything about myself, or to answer anything written by others about me. I therefore gladly devolve on you the duty of making known to the world the respectability of my parents, and especially that of my mother. You write to me about your son. There is no possible doubt that when he comes here he will find a friend and a father in me, and whenever it may be in my power to serve or to assist him, I will gladly do so. I still have the _silhouette_ of your Lorchen, by which you will see how dear to me to this hour are all those who were kind and loving to me in the days of my youth. As to my diploma, I may briefly state that I am an Honorary Member of the Royal Academy of Science in Sweden [see No. 338] and in Amsterdam, and that I have been presented with the Honorary Citizenship of Vienna. A Dr. Spiecker lately took with him to Berlin my last Grand Symphony with Choruses; it is dedicated to the King, and I wrote the dedication with my own hand. I had previously applied at the Embassy for permission to dedicate the work to the King, which has now been accorded.[2] By desire of Dr. Spiecker I gave him the manuscript I had myself corrected, and with my own amendments, to present to the King, as it is to be deposited in the Royal Library. I received a hint at the time about the second class of the Order of the Red Eagle; I do not know what the result may be, for I have never sought such distinctions, though in these days for many reasons they would not be unwelcome to me. Besides, my maxim has always been,--_Nulla dies sine linea_; and if I allow my Muse to slumber, it is only that she may awake with fresh vigor. I hope yet to usher some great works into the world, and then to close my earthly career like an old child somewhere among good people.[3] You will soon receive some music through the Brothers Schott, in Mayence. The portrait which I now send you is indeed an artistic masterpiece, but not the last that has been taken of me. I must tell you further, what I know you will rejoice to hear, with regard to marks of distinction. The late King of France sent me a medal with the inscription, _Donné par le Roi à M. Beethoven_, accompanied by a very polite letter from _le premier gentilhomme du Roi, le Duc de Châtres_. My beloved friend, excuse my writing more to-day, for the remembrance of the past has deeply affected me, and not without many tears have I written this letter. The oftener you write the more pleasure will you confer on me. There can be no question on either side as to our friendship, so farewell. I beg you will embrace your dear children and your Lorchen in my name, and think of me when you do so. May God be with you all. As ever, your attached friend, with sincere esteem, BEETHOVEN. [Footnote 1: On which account this letter is dictated, and only signed by Beethoven, who was at that time at his brother's house in the country--Gneixendorf, near Krems, on the Danube.] [Footnote 2: In consequence of his application to the King of Prussia to subscribe to his Mass, of which he had sent the MS., Beethoven received the following intimation:-- _To the Composer Ludwig van Beethoven._ Berlin, Nov. 25, 1826. "It gave me great pleasure to receive your new work, knowing the acknowledged value of your compositions. I thank you for having sent it to me, and present you with a ring of brilliants, as a token of my sincere appreciation. "FRIEDRICH WILHELM." Schindler adds that the stones in the ring were false, and casts a suspicion of fraud on the Chancery Director of that day, W----.] [Footnote 3: It was during those weeks that he wrote the second _Finale_ to the B. flat major Quartet, Op. 130, little anticipating that this was to be his "Swan song."] 460. TO TOBIAS HASLINGER.[1] [Music: Bass clef. C major. Bester--] No time is left to-day for further words and vocalization. I beg you will at once deliver the enclosed letter. Pray forgive my causing you this trouble; but, as you are the owner of an artistic post-office, it is scarcely possible not to take advantage of this. You will perceive that I am now at Gneixendorf. The name sounds like the breaking of an axletree. The air is healthy. The _memento mori_ must be applied to all else. Most marvellous and best of all Tobiases, we salute you in the name of the arts and poets! I remain yours, BEETHOVEN. [Footnote 1: The music alone and the words "I remain" at the close, are in Beethoven's writing. The rest is probably written by his nephew, with whom he had been obliged to take refuge in the house of his odious brother near Krems, because the police had intimated to the young delinquent that he must leave Vienna. See No. 435 on the subject of Beethoven's repugnance to live in his brother's family circle, whose ignoble wife treated the gray-haired and suffering _maestro_ as badly as possible.] 461. TO TOBIAS HASLINGER. GNEIXENDORF, October 13, 1826. BEST OF ALL TOBIASES,-- [Here follow eight bars of music.] We are writing to you from the castle of our _Signor Fratello_. I must again intrude on you by the polite request to post the two enclosed letters without delay. I will repay you for the time I kept the "School for the Pianoforte" and all the other expenses as soon as I return to Vienna. I am staying here longer, owing to the weather being so fine, and also not having gone to the country at all during the summer. A quartet[1] for Schlesinger is already finished; only I don't know which is the safest way to send it to you, that you may give it to Tendler and Manstein and receive the money in return. Schlesinger will probably not make the remittance in _gold_, but if you can contrive that I should get it, you would very much oblige me, as all my publishers pay me in gold. Besides, my worthy _Tobiasserl_, we stand in need of money, and it is by no means the same thing whether we have money or not. If you get a sight of Holz make sure of him, and nail him at once. The passion of love has so violently assailed him that he has almost taken fire, and some one jestingly wrote that Holz was a son of the deceased Papageno. Most astounding, most admirable, and most _unique_ of all Tobiases, farewell! If not inconvenient, pray write me a few lines here. Is Dr. Spiecker still in Vienna? I am, with highest consideration and fidelity, Yours, BEETHOVEN. [Footnote 1: Probably the one in F, Op. 135.] 462. TO CARL HOLZ. Dec. 1826. YOUR OFFICIAL MAJESTY,-- I wrote to you on my arrival here a few days ago, but the letter was mislaid; I then became so unwell that I thought it best to stay in bed. I shall therefore be very glad if you will pay me a visit. You will find it less inconvenient, because every one has left Döbling to go to town. I only add, in conclusion,[1] [Music: Bass clef, C major, 3/4 time. Wir ir-ren al-le Samt, Nur je-der ir-ret an-derst.] As ever, your friend, BEETHOVEN. [Footnote 1: Here Beethoven's own writing begins. The slight indisposition that he mentions, in the course of a few days became a serious illness, the result of which was dropsy, and from this the _maestro_ was doomed never to recover. Indeed from that time he never again left his bed.] 463. TO DR. BACH.[1] Vienna, Wednesday, Jan. 3, 1827. MY RESPECTED FRIEND,-- I hereby declare, at my decease, my beloved nephew, Carl van Beethoven, sole heir of all my property, and of seven bank shares in particular, as well as any ready money I may be possessed of. If the law prescribes any modifications in this matter, pray endeavor to regulate these as much as possible to his advantage. I appoint you his curator, and beg that, together with Hofrath Breuning, his guardian, you will supply the place of a father to him. God bless you! A thousand thanks for all the love and friendship you have shown towards me. LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN. [Footnote 1: The signature alone is in Beethoven's writing.] 464. TO WEGELER. Vienna, February 17, 1827. MY OLD AND WORTHY FRIEND,-- I received your second letter safely through Breuning. I am still too feeble to answer it, but you may be assured that its contents were most welcome and agreeable to me.[1] My convalescence, if indeed I may call it such, makes very slow progress, and there is reason to suspect that a fourth operation will be necessary, although the medical men have not as yet decided on this. I arm myself with patience, and reflect that all evil leads to some good. I am quite surprised to find from your last letter that you had not received mine. From this one you will see that I wrote to you on the 10th of December last. It is the same with the portrait, as you will perceive from the date, when you get it. "Frau Steffen spake the word:" Michael Steffen insisted on sending them by some private hand; so they have been lying here until this very day, and really it was a hard matter to get them back even now. You will receive the portrait by the post, through the Messrs. Schott, who have also sent you the music. How much is there that I would fain say to you to-day; but I am too weak,[2] so I can only embrace you and your Lorchen in spirit. With true friendship and attachment to you and yours, Your old and faithful friend, BEETHOVEN. [Footnote 1: Wegeler had reminded him of Blumenauer, who, after being operated on for dropsy, lived for many years in perfect health. He at the same time suggested to him the plan of going with him in the ensuing summer to one of the Bohemian baths, proposing to travel by a circuitous route to the Upper Rhine, and from thence to Coblenz.] [Footnote 2: Beethoven's last letter to Wegeler. The signature alone is his.] 465. TO SIR GEORGE SMART,--LONDON. Feb. 22, 1827. I remember that some years ago the Philharmonic Society proposed to give a concert for my benefit. This prompts me to request you, dear sir, to say to the Philharmonic Society that if they be now disposed to renew their offer it would be most welcome to me. Unhappily, since the beginning of December I have been confined to bed by dropsy,--a most wearing malady, the result of which cannot yet be ascertained. As you are already well aware, I live entirely by the produce of my brains, and for a long time to come all idea of writing is out of the question. My salary is in itself so small, that I can scarcely contrive to defray my half-year's rent out of it. I therefore entreat you kindly to use all your influence for the furtherance of this project,--your generous sentiments towards me convincing me that you will not be offended by my application. I intend also to write to Herr Moscheles on this subject, being persuaded that he will gladly unite with you in promoting my object. I am so weak that I can no longer write, so I only dictate this. I hope, dear sir, that you will soon cheer me by an answer, to say whether I may look forward to the fulfilment of my request. In the mean time, pray receive the assurance of the high esteem with which I always remain, &c., &c. 466. TO HERR MOSCHELES. Vienna, Feb. 22, 1827. DEAR MOSCHELES,-- I feel sure that you will not take amiss my troubling you as well as Sir G. Smart (to whom I enclose a letter) with a request. The matter is briefly this. Some years since, the London Philharmonic Society made me the handsome offer to give a concert in my behalf. At that time I was not, God be praised! so situated as to render it necessary for me to take advantage of this generous proposal. Things are, however, very different with me now, as for fully three months past I have been entirely prostrated by that tedious malady, dropsy. Schindler encloses a letter with further details. You have long known my circumstances, and are aware how, and by what, I live: a length of time must elapse before I can attempt to write again, so that, unhappily, I might be reduced to actual want. You have not only an extensive acquaintance in London, but also the greatest influence with the Philharmonic; may I beg you, therefore, to exercise it, so far as you can, in prevailing on the Society to resume their former intention, and to carry it soon into effect. The letter I enclose to Sir Smart is to the same effect, as well as one I already sent to Herr Stumpff.[1] I beg you will yourself give the enclosed letter to Sir Smart, and unite with him and all my friends in London in furthering my object. Your sincere friend, BEETHOVEN. [Footnote 1: Stumpff, a Thuringian maker of harps, came to Vienna in 1824, recommended to our _maestro_ by Andreas Streicher in a letter of Sept. 24, in these words:--"The bearer of this is Herr Stumpff, an excellent German, who has lived for thirty-four years in London. The sole reason of his going to Baden is to see you, my revered Beethoven, the man of whom Germany is so proud. Pray receive him in a kind and friendly manner, as beseems the saint to whose shrine the pious pilgrim has made so long a journey." In 1826 he presented Beethoven with the English edition of Handel's works in 40 folio volumes, which the _maestro_ constantly studied during his last illness. Gerhard v. Breuning, when a youth of fourteen, either held up the separate volumes for him, or propped them against the wall.] 467. TO SCHINDLER. The end of February, 1827. When we meet we can discuss the mischance that has befallen you. I can send you some person without the smallest inconvenience. Do accept my offer; it is, at least, something. Have you had no letters from Moscheles or Cramer? There will be a fresh occasion for writing on Wednesday, and once more urging my project. If you are still indisposed at that time, one of my people can take the letter, and get a receipt from the post-office. _Vale et fave._ I need not assure you of my sympathy with your misfortune. Pray allow me to supply board for you in the mean time. I offer this from my heart. May Heaven preserve you! Your sincere friend, BEETHOVEN. 468. TO BARON VON PASQUALATI.[1] March 6, 1827. MY MUCH-ESTEEMED OLD FRIEND,-- My warmest thanks for the kind present you have sent me for the benefit of my health; as soon as I have found what wine is most suitable for me I will let you know, but not abuse your kindness. I like the _compote_ much, and shall again apply to you for some. Even this costs me an effort. _Sapienti pauca._ Your grateful friend, BEETHOVEN. [Footnote 1: Traced in feeble and trembling characters. Some other hand has written on it, "March 6, 1827."] 469. TO BARON VON PASQUALATI. MY ESTEEMED FRIEND,-- I beg you will send me some more of the cherry _compote_, but without lemons, and quite simple. I should also like a light pudding, almost liquid, my worthy cook not being very experienced in invalid diet. I am allowed to drink _champagne_, and I wish you would send me for to-day a champagne glass with it. Now, as to wine, Malfatti wished me to drink moselle, but declared that no genuine moselle could be got here; so he gave me several bottles of _Krumbholzkirchner_,[1] deeming this best for my health, as no really good moselle is to be had. Pray forgive my troubling you, and ascribe it chiefly to my helpless condition. I am, with much esteem, your friend, BEETHOVEN. [Footnote 1: Gumpoldskirchner--a celebrated and generous Austrian wine.] 470. TO SIR GEORGE SMART,--LONDON. March 6, 1827. DEAR SIR,-- I make no doubt that you have already received through Herr Moscheles my letter of February 22, but as I found your address by chance among my papers, I do not hesitate to write direct to yourself, to urge my request once more on you in the strongest terms. I do not, alas! even up to the present hour, see any prospect of the termination of my terrible malady; on the contrary, my sufferings, and consequently my cares, have only increased. I underwent a fourth operation on the 27th of February, and possibly fate may compel me to submit to this a fifth time, and perhaps oftener. If this goes on, my illness will certainly continue one half the summer, and in that case, what is to become of me? How am I to subsist until I can succeed in arousing my decayed powers, and once more earn my living by my pen? But I do not wish to plague you by fresh complaints; so I only refer you to my letter of the 22d February, and entreat you to use all your influence with the Philharmonic Society to carry now into execution their former proposal of a concert for my benefit. 471. TO BARON VON PASQUALATI. MY WORTHY FRIEND,-- I am still confined to my room; be so good, therefore, as to tell me, or rather, I should say, write to me, the name of the person who values this house, and where he is to be found. If you have any Muterhall [?] medicine I beg you will think of your poor Austrian musician and citizen of the guild. BEETHOVEN. 472.[1] TO BARON VON PASQUALATI. March 14, 1827. MY ESTEEMED FRIEND,-- Many thanks for the dish you sent me yesterday, which will suffice for to-day also. I am allowed to have game; and the doctor said that fieldfares were very wholesome for me. I only tell you this for information, as I do not want them to-day. Forgive this stupid note, but I am exhausted from a sleepless night. I embrace you, and am, with much esteem, your attached friend. [Footnote 1: In a tremulous hand,--"March 14, 1827."] 473. TO HERR MOSCHELES. Vienna, March 14, 1827. MY DEAR MOSCHELES,-- I recently heard, through Herr Lewisey,[1] that in a letter to him of the 10th February, you had made inquiries as to the state of my health, about which such various rumors have been circulated. Although I cannot possibly doubt that you have by this time received my letter of February 22d, which explains all you wish to know, still I cannot resist thanking you for your sympathy with my sad condition, and again imploring you to attend to the request contained in my first letter. I feel already certain that, in conjunction with Sir Smart and other friends, you are sure to succeed in obtaining a favorable result for me from the Philharmonic Society. I wrote again to Sir Smart also on the subject. I was operated on for the fourth time on the 27th of February, and now symptoms evidently exist which show that I must expect a fifth operation. What is to be done? What is to become of me if this lasts much longer? Mine has indeed been a hard doom; but I resign myself to the decrees of fate, and only constantly pray to God that His holy will may ordain that while thus condemned to suffer death in life, I may be shielded from want. The Almighty will give me strength to endure my lot, however severe and terrible, with resignation to His will. So once more, dear Moscheles, I commend my cause to you, and shall anxiously await your answer, with highest esteem. Hummel is here, and has several times come to see me. Your friend, BEETHOVEN. [Footnote 1: Schindler mentions, on Beethoven's authority, that this gentleman translated Beethoven's letters to Smart into English, which his nephew had previously done.] 474.[1] TO SCHINDLER.-- March 17, 1827. WONDERFUL! WONDERFUL! WONDERFUL!-- Both the learned gentlemen are defeated, and I shall be saved solely by Malfatti's skill! You must come to me for a few minutes without fail this forenoon. Yours, BEETHOVEN. [Footnote 1: Schindler dates this note March 17, 1827, and says that these are the last lines Beethoven ever wrote. They certainly were the last that he wrote to Schindler. On the back of the note, in another writing (probably Schindler's), the receipt is given in pencil for the bath with hay steeped in it, ordered by Malfatti, which the poor invalid thought had saved his life. The "learned gentlemen" are Dr. Wawruch and the surgeon Seibert, who had made the punctures.] 475. TO MOSCHELES. Vienna, March 18, 1827. No words can express my feelings on reading your letter of the 1st of March. The noble liberality of the Philharmonic Society, which almost anticipated my request, has touched me to my inmost soul.[1] I beg you, therefore, dear Moscheles, to be my organ in conveying to the Society my heartfelt thanks for their generous sympathy and aid. [Say[2] to these worthy men, that if God restores me to health, I shall endeavor to prove the reality of my gratitude by my actions. I therefore leave it to the Society to choose what I am to write for them--a symphony (the 10th) lies fully sketched in my desk, and likewise a new overture and some other things. With regard to the concert the Philharmonic had resolved to give in my behalf, I would entreat them not to abandon their intention. In short, I will strive to fulfil every wish of the Society, and never shall I have begun any work with so much zeal as on this occasion. May Heaven only soon grant me the restoration of my health, and then I will show the noble-hearted English how highly I value their sympathy with my sad fate.] I was compelled at once to draw for the whole sum of 1000 gulden, being on the eve of borrowing money. Your generous conduct can never be forgotten by me, and I hope shortly to convey my thanks to Sir Smart in particular, and to Herr Stumpff. I beg you will deliver the metronomed 9th Symphony to the Society. I enclose the proper markings. Your friend, with high esteem, BEETHOVEN. [Footnote 1: A hundred pounds had been sent at once.] [Footnote 2: In the original the words placed within brackets are dictated by Beethoven himself, and were indeed the last he ever dictated--but they are crossed out.] 476. CODICIL.[1] Vienna, March 23, 1827. I appoint my nephew Carl my sole heir. The capital of my bequest, however, to devolve on his natural or testamentary heirs. LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN.[2] [Footnote 1: See No. 463. Schindler relates:--"This testament contained no restrictions or precautionary measures with regard to his heir-at-law, who, after the legal forms connected with the inheritance were terminated, was entitled to take immediate possession of the whole. The guardian and curator, however, knowing the unexampled levity of the heir, had a valid pretext for raising objections to these testamentary depositions. They therefore suggested to the _maestro_, to alter his intentions in so far as to place his property in trust; his nephew to draw the revenue, and at his death the capital to pass to his direct heirs. Beethoven, however, considered such restraints as too severe on the nephew whom he still so dearly loved in his heart [since December of the previous year the young man had been a cadet in a royal regiment at Iglau, in Moravia], so he remonstrated against this advice; indeed he reproached Hofrath Breuning as the person who had suggested such harsh measures. A note, still extant, written by Breuning to Beethoven, shows the state of matters, in which he still maintains, though in moderate language, the absolute necessity of the above precautions. This mode of argument seemed to make an impression on the _maestro_, who at last promised to yield his own wishes. By his desire, Breuning laid the codicil of three lines before him, and Beethoven at once proceeded to copy it, which was no easy matter for him. When it was finished he exclaimed, 'There! now I write no more!' He was not a little surprised to see on the paper the words 'heirs of his body' changed into 'natural heirs.' Breuning represented to him the disputes to which this destination might give rise. Beethoven replied that the one term was as good as the other, and that it should remain just as it was. _This was his last contradiction._"] [Footnote 2: Next day, at noon, he lost consciousness, and a frightful death-struggle began, which continued till the evening of March 26, 1827, when, during a violent spring storm of thunder and lightning, the sublime _maestro_ paid his last tribute to that humanity for which he had made so many sacrifices in this world, to enter into life everlasting, which, from his life and actions, few could look forward to more hopefully.] INDEX. Academies, concerts given by Beethoven, so called. The grand concerts of the year 1824. Address and appeal to London artists, from Beethoven. Adlersburg, Dr. von, Court advocate and barrister at Vienna, "a most inconsiderate character," for some time Beethoven's lawyer. Aesthetical observations on particular subjects. Albrechtsberger, the popular theorist and composer, Kapellmeister at St. Stephen's in Vienna, for some time, about the year 1795, Beethoven's instructor in musical composition. Amenda of Courland, afterwards rector in Talsen. "A.M.Z." _See_ Leipzig "Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung." André, composer and music publisher in Offenbach on the Maine. Archduke Carl. Arnim, Frau von. _See_ Brentano, Bettina. Artaria, print and music publisher in Vienna. Attorney, power of. Augarten, the well-known park near Vienna, in which morning concerts were frequently given. Augsburg. Austria, Beethoven's sentiments respecting that country, his second father-land. Bach, Dr. Johann Baptist, Court advocate and barrister, from the year 1816 Beethoven's lawyer at Vienna. Bach, Johann Sebastian. Baden, near Vienna, a favorite watering-place, to which Beethoven often resorted. Bauer, chief secretary to the Austrian Embassy in London. Baumeister, private secretary to the Archduke Rudolph. Beethoven's brother Carl, born at Bonn in 1774, instructed in music by Beethoven; afterwards came to Vienna, where he occupied the appointment of cashier in the Government Revenue (died Nov. 15, 1815). His brother Johann, born in 1776, an apothecary, first in Linz, afterwards in Vienna, and at a later period proprietor of Gneixendorf, an estate near Krems, on the Danube; named by Beethoven, "Braineater," "Pseudo-brother," "Asinanios," &c. His brother Ludwig Maria. His father, Johann, son of Ludwig van Beethoven, Kapellmeister to the Elector of Cologne, Court tenor singer at the Electoral Chapel at Bonn, a man possessing no considerable mental endowments, but an excellent musician, and Beethoven's first instructor in music. Unhappily, he was so addicted to habits of intemperance, that he greatly impoverished his family, the care of which, owing to the father's recklessness, devolved entirely upon his son Ludwig (died Dec. 1792). His grandfather, Ludwig van Beethoven, Kapellmeister to the Elector of Cologne (died 1774). His mother, Maria Magdalena Kewerich, the wife, first of Leym of Ehrenbreitstein, cook to the Elector of Treves, and afterwards of Johann van Beethoven, in Bonn, Court tenor singer to the Elector of Cologne. She gave birth to her illustrious son Ludwig on Dec. 17, 1770, and died July 17, 1787. His nephew, Carl, son of his brother Carl, Beethoven's ward from the year 1815. Entered the Blöchlinger Institute, at Vienna, June 22, 1819. Letters to him from Beethoven. His sister-in-law, Johanna, wife of his brother Carl and mother of his nephew, named by Beethoven "The Queen of the Night." Beethoven's _Works. In General._ I. _For pianoforte only._ Sonatas of the year 1783. Op. 22. Op. 31. Op. 90. Op. 106. Op. 109. Op. 111. _Variations_. _Bagatelles_. "Allegri di Bravoura." II. _For pianoforte with obbligato instruments._ For pianoforte and violin:--Sonatas. Sonatas with violoncello. Twelve Variations in F on the Theme from "Figaro," "Se vuol ballare." Rondo. Variations with violoncello and violin. for hautboys and horn. Trios. Concertos. Fantasia with chorus. III. _Quartets._ IV. _Instrumental pieces._ Septet. Quintets. Violin Romance. V. _Orchestral music._ Symphonies. The Ninth. Minuet and Interlude. Music for the ballet of "Prometheus." "Egmont." "King Stephen." "The Ruins of Athens." "Wellington's Victory at Vittoria." March to "Tarpeia." Gratulation Minuet. Marches. Overtures. VI. _Vocal music._ "Adelaide." "Ah! Perfido." "Heart, my Heart," and "Knowest Thou the Land?" "To Hope." Aria for bass voice with chorus. Terzet on Count Lichnowsky. Canon for Spohr. "The Glorious Moment." On Mdlle. Milder-Hauptmann. Scotch songs. Canon for Schlesinger; for the Archduke Rudolph; on Tobias Haslinger. Various songs; two grand songs with chorus from Goethe and Matthisson. Choruses. "Empitremate." Elegy. "Meeresstille und glückliche Fahrt." Opferlied. Canons; for Rellstab; for Braunhofer; for Kuhlau; for Schlesinger. Terzet. VII. _Operas._ Grillparzer's "Melusina." "Fidelio" in Dresden. VIII. _Church music and Oratorios._ "Missa solennis." Benedict, Julius, in London, a composer, the pupil of C.M. von Weber. Berlin. Bernard, Carl, an author, editor of the "Wiener Zeitschrift." Bihler, J.N., a special admirer of Beethoven, one of the subscribers to, and the bearer of, the address presented to Beethoven in the year 1824, in which the master was requested again to present himself and his works to the Viennese public. Birchall, music publisher in London. "Birne, zur goldnen," an eating-house in the Landstrasse, Vienna. Blöchlinger, proprietor of an educational institution at Vienna. Bocklet, Carl Maria, of Prague, pianist in Vienna. Böhm, Joseph, a distinguished concerto violinist, professor at the Vienna Conservatory, and the teacher of Joachim. Bolderini. Bonn, residence of the Elector of Cologne, and Beethoven's birthplace, which he left in the year 1792, never again to visit. Braunhofer, Dr., for some time Beethoven's surgeon at Vienna. Breitkopf & Härtel, the well-known book and music publishers in Leipzig. Brentano, Bettina, became Frau von Arnim in 1811. Brentano, Clemens, the poet. Brentano, F.A., merchant at Frankfort, an admirer of Beethoven's music. _See also_ Tonie. Breuning, Christoph von. Breuning, Dr. Gerhard von, Court physician at Vienna, son of Stephan von Breuning. Breuning, Eleonore von, daughter of Councillor von Breuning, in Bonn, the friend and pupil of Beethoven; in 1802 became the wife of Dr. Wegeler, afterwards consulting physician at Coblenz. Breuning, Frau von, widow of Councillor von Breuning, into whose house Beethoven was received as one of the family, and where he received his first musical impressions. Breuning, Lenz (Lorenz), youngest son of the "Frau Hofrath." Breuning, Stephan von, of Bonn; came to Vienna in the spring of 1800, where he became councillor, and died in 1827. Browne, Count, of Vienna, an admirer of Beethoven's music. Brühl, the, a village and favorite pleasure resort near Vienna. Brunswick, Count Franz von, of Pesth, one of Beethoven's greatest admirers and friends in Vienna. Bonaparte, Ludwig, King of Holland. "Cäcilia, a Journal for the Musical World," &c. Carl, Archduke. _See_ Archduke Carl. Carlsbad. Cassel. Castlereagh, the well-known English minister. Cherubini. Visited Vienna in 1805. Clement, Franz, born 1784, died 1842, orchestral director at the "Theater an der Wien." Clementi. Collin, the famous Austrian poet. Cornega, a singer in Vienna commended to Beethoven by Schindler. Court Theatre, Beethoven's letter to the directors of the. Cramer, John, the celebrated London pianist, also a music publisher. Czerny, Carl, in Vienna, the well known writer of pianoforte studies. Czerny, Joseph, in Vienna. Deafness of Beethoven. De la Motte-Fouqué, the poet of "Undine," which he had arranged as an Opera libretto for T.A. Hoffmann. Del Rio, Giannatasio, proprietor of an academy at Vienna, under whose care Beethoven placed his nephew Carl from the year 1816 to 1818. Diabelli, Anton, composer and music publisher in Vienna. Döbling, Ober- and Unter-Döbling, near Vienna, Beethoven's occasional summer residence. Dresden. Drossdick, Baroness Thérèse, to whom Beethoven was greatly attached. Duport, director of the Kärnthnerthor Theatre in the year 1823. Eisenstadt, in Hungary, the residence of Prince Esterhazy, where Beethoven remained on a visit in the years 1794 and 1808. English language, Beethoven's correspondence in the. Erdödy Countess, in Vienna, one of Beethoven's best friends. Ertmann, Baroness Dorothea (_née_ Graumann), a friend of Beethoven, and one of the most accomplished pianists in Vienna; she especially excelled in the performance of Beethoven's compositions. Esterhazy, Prince Paul, son of the protector of Haydn, and himself, at a later period, an ardent admirer of that master. France. Frank, Dr. Frank, Frau, in Vienna. "Frau Schnaps," Beethoven's housekeeper during the latter years of his life; called also "The Fast-sailing Frigate" and "The Old Goose." French language, Beethoven's correspondence in the. Fries, Count, in Vienna, an admirer of Beethoven's works. Fux, the well-known old theorist and composer, in Vienna, author of the "Gradus ad Parnassum." Gallizin, Prince Nikolaus Boris, at St. Petersburg, a zealous friend of art, from whom Beethoven received an order for his last quartet. Gebauer, Franz Xaver, founder of the "Concerts Spirituels" at Vienna. Gerardi, Mdlle. Girowetz, Court musical director at the "Burgtheater." Giuliani, a celebrated guitar player at Vienna. Gläser, Beethoven's copyist from the year 1823. Gleichenstein, Baron, of Rothweil, near Freiburg in Breisgau, a friend of Beethoven at Vienna. He left Vienna about the year 1815, and only revisited that city once afterwards, in 1824. Gneixendorf, the estate of Beethoven's brother Johann, near Krems, on the Danube, which Beethoven visited, accompanied by his nephew, in the autumn of 1826. Goethe. Gratz, in Styria. Grillparzer. Guicciardi, Countess Giulietta, Beethoven's "immortal beloved." Hammer-Purgstall, the distinguished Orientalist in Vienna. Handel. Haslinger, Tobias, music publisher at Vienna. Hauschka, Vincenz, Government auditor, a friend of Beethoven. Heiligenstadt, near Vienna, a favorite summer residence of Beethoven, where, among other works, the "Pastoral Symphony" was written by him. Hetzendorf, a favorite suburban residence near Vienna. Hoffmann, Th. Amadeus. Hofmeister, Kapellmeister and music publisher, first in Vienna, and afterwards in company with Kühnel in Leipzig (now Peters's Bureau de Musique). _See also_ Peters. Holz, Carl, Government official at Vienna, an accomplished violinist, born in 1798; became a member of the Schuppanzigh Quartets in 1824, and afterwards director of the Concerts Spirituels in that capital; a Viennese of somewhat dissolute habits, by whom even the grave master himself was at times unfavorably influenced. Homer, especially the Odyssey, a favorite study of Beethoven. Hönigstein, a banker in Vienna. Hummel, Johann Nepomuk, the celebrated composer and pianist, a pupil of Mozart, and for some time Beethoven's rival in love matters, having married the sister of the singer Röckel, to whom Beethoven also was much attached (_see also_ Schindler's "Biography," i. 189). Hungary, Beethoven there. Imperial Court at Vienna. Imperial High Court of Appeal, letter from Beethoven to the. Jenger, Chancery officer in the Imperial War Office at Vienna, a passionate lover of music. Kalkbrenner. Kandeler, testimonial from Beethoven in favor of. Kanne, F.A., at Vienna, highly appreciated in his day as a poet, composer, and critic, an intimate friend of Beethoven, and occasionally his guest (_see also_ Schindler's "Biography," i. 228). Kauka, Dr., Beethoven's advocate in Prague. Kiesewetter, Councillor von, in Vienna, the popular writer on the science of music, one of the subscribers to the great address presented to Beethoven in February, 1824. Kinsky, Prince Ferdinand, of Bohemia, one of Beethoven's most devoted patrons in Vienna. Kinsky, Princess. Kirnberger, of Berlin, the well-known theorist. Koch, Barbara, of Bonn, daughter of the landlord of the "Zehrgaden," the friend of Eleonore von Breuning, an amiable and intelligent lady, at whose house the leading persons of the town were accustomed to assemble; she afterwards became governess to the children of Count Belderbusch, whom she married in 1802. Könneritz, Von, principal director of the Court band and Opera in Dresden. Kraft, Anton, a celebrated violoncello-player in Vienna. Kuhlau, Friedrich, the distinguished flute-player, a great admirer of Beethoven's music. Kühnel, in Leipzig. _See_ Hofmeister. Laibach, the Philharmonic Society of. Landrecht, Beethoven's address to the honorable members of the. Leidesdorf, M.J., composer and music publisher in Vienna, a subscriber to the great address presented to Beethoven in 1824. Leipzig "Allgemeine Zeitung," established in 1798; its remarks at first unfavorable towards Beethoven. Lichnowsky, Count Moritz, brother of Prince Carl Lichnowsky, and, like him, the friend and patron of Beethoven. Schindler, in his "Biography," i. 241, n., relates as follows:--"The acute perception of the Count led him, on a nearer acquaintance with the work, to surmise that it had been written with some special intentions. On being questioned on this matter, the author replied that he had intended to set the Count's love-story to music, and that if he needed titles for it, he might write over the first piece, 'Fight between Head and Heart,' and over the second, 'Conversation with the Loved One.' After the death of his first wife, the Count had fallen deeply in love with a distinguished opera singer, but his friends protested against such an alliance. After a contest of many years' duration, however, he at last succeeded, in 1816, in removing all hindrances to their union." Lichnowsky, Prince Carl, a friend and pupil of Mozart, and afterwards a most zealous patron of Beethoven in Vienna (died April 15, 1814). Liechtenstein, Princess, in Vienna, Beethoven's patroness. Linke, born 1783, a distinguished violoncello player, member of the Rasumowsky Quartets. Lobkowitz, Prince, one of Beethoven's most zealous patrons in Vienna. London, England, and the English. Luther. Maelzel, mechanician to the Imperial Court of Vienna, the well-known inventor of the metronome. Malchus, a youthful friend of Beethoven in Bonn, in later years Minister of Finance of the kingdom of Westphalia, and afterwards of that of Wirtemberg (died at Stuttgart in 1840). Malfatti, Dr., a celebrated surgeon in Vienna; Beethoven under his treatment in 1814. Marconi, contralto singer in Vienna. Marx, A.B., music director and professor at the University of Berlin; edited, when in his twentieth year, the "Berliner Musikzeitung," a journal whose publication, unfortunately, lasted but a few years only. Next to T.A. Hofmann, he was the first who fully and thoroughly appreciated Beethoven's music in all its depth and grandeur, and who manfully and intelligently defended the lofty genius of the master against the base attacks to which it was at times exposed; he has remained until the present day the most efficient representative of the progress of musical art. Matthisson, the poet. Maximilian Franz, youngest brother of the Emperor Joseph II., Elector of Cologne from the year 1785, and one of the noblest and most zealous patrons of the young Beethoven, on whom, in 1785, he conferred the appointment of Court organist, and in 1787, with a view to the further cultivation of his talents, sent him to Vienna, assisting him in every way until the year 1794, at which period his country fell entirely under the dominion of France (died in 1801). Maximilian, Friedrich, Elector of Cologne until the year 1784; the first noble patron of Beethoven, whom he placed under the instruction of the Court organist Von der Eeden, and afterwards, on the death of that musician, under Neefe; as an acknowledgment for which kindness, and in proof of the success which had attended his studies, the young composer, then only eleven years of age, dedicated his first sonatas to his benefactor. Mayseder, the celebrated violinist (died at Vienna in 1863). Meyer, Friedrich Sebastian, a singer (born 1773, died 1835), the husband of Mozart's eldest sister-in-law, who frequently, even in Beethoven's presence, made some boastful remark in praise of his deceased relative; such as "My brother-in-law would not have written that!" Metronome, an instrument for measuring tune in music, invented about the year 1815 by Maelzel, of Vienna, and often employed and spoken of by Beethoven. Milder-Hauptmann, Mdlle., the celebrated singer, first in Vienna and afterwards in Berlin. Mödling, a village near Vienna, and Beethoven's favorite summer residence. Mollo, music publisher in Vienna, afterwards the firm of Steiner & Co., and at a later period that of Haslinger. Mölk, the celebrated abbey on the Danube. Mölker Bastei, the, at Vienna, on several occasions Beethoven's residence in the house of Baron von Pasqualati (_see also_ Schindler's "Biography," i. 187). Moscheles. Mosel, Hofrath Ignaz von, in Vienna, a well-known music writer, and the founder of the Conservatory of Music in that capital. Mozart. Munich. Mythological subjects, reference made to, by Beethoven, who, as it is well known, possessed a considerable acquaintance with ancient history. Nägeli, Hans Georg, the distinguished founder of men's vocal unions in Switzerland, also a popular composer of vocal music, a music publisher, and, at a later period, educational inspector in Zurich. Napoleon, when General Bonaparte, so greatly admired by Beethoven, that on the occasion of that General's appearance, the master was incited to compose the "Eroica," which he dedicated to him ("Napoleon Buonaparte--Luigi van Beethoven"). On hearing, however, of the coronation of his hero as Emperor, he angrily cast aside the intended presentation copy of his work, and refused to send it to him. Neate, Charles, a London artist, and a great admirer of Beethoven, with whom he became acquainted in Vienna in the year 1816. Nussböck, town sequestrator at Vienna, for some time the guardian of Beethoven's nephew. Nussdorf, a favorite summer residence on the Danube, near Vienna. Oliva, a philologist and friend of Beethoven. According to Schindler ("Biography," i. 228), he repaired to St. Petersburg in 1817, in which city he settled as professor of German literature; Schindler is, however, mistaken in the date which he has given. Oppersdorf, Count Franz von, Beethoven's friend and patron. Pachler-Koschak, Marie, of Gratz, to whom Beethoven was warmly attached. Papageno. Paris. Parry, Captain, wrote on the music of the Esquimaux. Pasqualati, Baron von, merchant in Vienna, an ardent admirer of Beethoven, and his constant benefactor. In 1813 Beethoven again occupied apartments appropriated to his use by the Baron at his residence on the Mölker Bastei, and remained there until 1816. Penzing, a village near Vienna, a favorite summer residence. Peters, C.F., "Bureau de Musique" in Leipzig (_see also_ Hofmeister). Peters, councillor of Prince Lobkowitz at Vienna, a friend of Beethoven. Philharmonic Society in London. In Laibach. Pianoforte, Beethoven's remarks concerning the. Pilat, editor of the "Austrian Observer." Plutarch. Portraits of Beethoven. Potter, Cipriani, pianist in London. Prague. Prince Regent, the, afterwards George IV. of England. Probst, music publisher in Leipzig. Prussia. Punto (_alias_ Stich) a celebrated horn player, to whom Beethoven was mainly indebted for his knowledge of that instrument (died 1804). "Queen of the Night." _See_ Beethoven's sister-in-law. Radziwill, Prince, at Berlin, a devoted patron of music and the composer of music to "Faust." Rampel, Beethoven's copyist about the year 1824. Rasumowsky, Count, afterwards Prince, Russian ambassador at Vienna, an ardent lover of music. Recke, Elise von der, the well-known poetess. Reisser, vice-director of the Polytechnic Institution at Vienna, co-guardian of Beethoven's nephew in the year 1825. Religious and moral sentiments on particular subjects. Rellstab, Ludwig, a writer and poet, for many years editor of the "Vossische Zeitung," in Berlin. Ries, Ferdinand, son of the preceding, a pupil of Beethoven and a distinguished composer. Quitted Vienna in 1805, and, with the exception of a short residence there, on his return from Russia in the autumn of 1808, never again returned to that capital (Schindler, i. 227). Ries, Franz, Court musician to the Elector of Cologne, a helpful friend to Beethoven (born 1755). Rochlitz, Friedrich, the well-known writer on the science of music, and for nearly twenty-five years editor of the Leipzig "Allgemeine Musikzeitung," a man who, notwithstanding his entire lack of historical acumen and his limited acquaintance with the technicalities of music, did very much towards liberating the art from its mechanical condition, and promoting its intellectual appreciation by the public. He was in Vienna in the year 1822, where he became personally acquainted with Beethoven, but never fully appreciated the genius of the master,--a circumstance which Beethoven himself most deeply felt, even after the retirement of Rochlitz from the editorship of that journal, and which formed the subject of many ironical remarks on the part of Beethoven respecting these representatives of the so-called Old-German national composers. Röckel, singer of the part of Florestan in Vienna in 1806, still living at Bath, in England. Rode, the celebrated violinist; came to Vienna in the winter of 1812-13, where he became acquainted with Beethoven. Rudolph, Archduke, youngest brother of the Emperor Franz, born 1788, died 1831, a passionate lover of music, and himself a composer; he became Beethoven's pupil in 1808, and in 1819 Cardinal-Archbishop of Olmütz. Russia. Rzehatschek, in Vienna. Salieri, Kapellmeister at Vienna, a contemporary and rival of Haydn and Mozart, for some time Beethoven's instructor in the dramatic style. Salomon, J.P., of Bonn, the celebrated violinist, until the year 1782 director of the concerts of Prince Heinrich of Prussia; he afterwards came to London, where he became chiefly instrumental in the introduction of German music into that capital; as is well known, it was owing to him also that J. Haydn was induced to visit England. Sarastro. Sartorius, royal censor at Vienna (_see also_ Schindler's "Biography," ii. 69). Saxony. _See also_ Dresden. Schade, Dr., advocate at Augsburg, a helpful friend of the young Beethoven. Schenk, the well-known composer of the "Village Barber," for some time Beethoven's instructor in Vienna (died 1836). Schiller. Schindler, Anton, of Moravia, Beethoven's sincere friend and biographer (born 1790, died 1864); he became acquainted with Beethoven towards the end of March, 1814. Schlemmer, for many years Beethoven's copyist until 1823. Schlemmer, a gentleman living in the Alleengasse, auf der Wieden, in whose house Beethoven placed his nephew Carl (not to be confounded with the copyist of the same name). Schlesinger, Moritz, music publisher in Berlin and Paris. Schmidt, Dr., army surgeon in Vienna. Schoberlechner, Franz, pianist. Scholz, music director in Warmbrunn. Schönauer, Dr., Court advocate and barrister at Vienna, appointed by Beethoven's brother Carl testamentary trustee to his nephew--an intriguing lawsuit-pettifogger. Schott, music publisher in Mayence. Schröder, Wilhelmine, the great singer. Schuppanzigh, Ignaz, born 1776, died 1830, the celebrated violinist, whose extraordinary corpulence was a frequent subject of Beethoven's witticisms; he was, however, the first who fully appreciated Beethoven's music for stringed instruments, which he performed in a masterly manner. Resided in Russia from 1816 to 1823. Schweiger, Joseph Freiherr von, chamberlain to the Archduke Rudolph. Schweizer, Ed. Friedrich von, chamberlain to the Archduke Anton, an admirer of Beethoven's music and subscriber to the address of February 1824. Sebald, Auguste, the singer. Seibert, Dr., surgeon in Vienna, Beethoven's operator. Seyfried, Ignaz Ritter von, the well-known composer, publisher of the spurious edition of "Studies by Ludwig van Beethoven," Kapellmeister in Vienna. Shakespeare, deeply read and greatly admired by Beethoven. Siboni, a distinguished tenorist in Vienna. Sight, Beethoven's weakness of. Simrock, Court musician (horn player) to the Elector of Cologne, and music publisher in Bonn, a friend of Beethoven's early days. His son, the present proprietor of the business in Bonn, at Vienna in the summer of 1816. Sketch by Beethoven. Smart, Sir George, music publisher in London, a great admirer of Beethoven's music. Smetana, Dr., surgeon at Vienna; gained considerable popularity by his treatment of deafness. "Society of Friends to Music in the Austrian States" at Vienna. Sonntag, Henriette, the celebrated singer. Spiecker. Dr., of Berlin. Spohr. Stadler, Abbé Maximilian (born 1748, died 1833), a composer, and the friend of Mozart; an opponent of the Beethoven school of music (_see_ Schindler's "Biography," i. 80; ii. 109). Standenheim, a celebrated physician in Vienna. Stein, pianoforte manufacturer at Vienna, brother of Frau Nanette Streicher. Steiner, S.A., music publisher in Vienna, succeeded by T. Haslinger. Sterkel, Franz Xaver, a pleasing pianist and composer, whom Beethoven visited at Aschaffenburg in 1791, and greatly astonished by his pianoforte playing. Stoll, a young poet at Vienna. Streicher, Andreas, the well-known friend of Schiller's early days. He married, when in his nineteenth year, Nanette Stein, only daughter of the celebrated pianoforte manufacturer at Augsburg, whom he took with him to Vienna, where he first became teacher of the pianoforte, and afterwards, by the assistance of his wife, who had made herself acquainted with her father's art, founder of the celebrated Streicher pianoforte manufactory. Schindler, in his "Biography," i. 187, speaks of the interest taken by Frau Streicher in Beethoven's domestic matters. Stumpff, harp manufacturer in London, an admirer of Beethoven's works. Swedish Academy of Music. Theatres: Josephstadt; Kärnthnerthor; "An der Wien." Tiedge, the poet of "Urania," and also of the song "An die Hoffnung," so much admired by Beethoven, and several times set to music by him. Tonie, Antonie, of Birkenstock, daughter of a family in Vienna from which Beethoven received great kindness from the first period of his residence in that capital, and in which, in the year 1810, Bettina lived, who afterwards became the wife of B.A. Brentano, a merchant in Frankfort, to whom Beethoven was greatly indebted. Töplitz, in Bohemia. Trautmannsdorf, Prince, High Chamberlain. Travels and travelling projects of Beethoven. _See also_ London. Treitschke, stage poet at Vienna. Unger, the celebrated singer. University, the, of Vienna. Ursulines, convent of the, at Gratz, in Styria, music supplied by Beethoven in aid of. Varenna, Kammerprocurator at Gratz. Varnhagen von Ense. Vering, Dr., army surgeon at Vienna. Vienna, Beethoven's settled residence from the year 1792, of which, however, he never spoke favorably. Wawruch, Dr., clinical professor, Beethoven's last surgeon. Weber, Carl Maria von. Weber, Gottfried, theorist and composer. Wegeler, Dr., of Bonn, an early friend of Beethoven. Weigl, Joseph, composer of the "Swiss Family," Kapellmeister at Vienna. Weinmüller, singer at the Kärnthnerthor Theatre. Weiss, tenor player at Vienna. Westphalia, Beethoven offered the appointment of Kapellmeister to the King of, in 1808. Wieden, a suburb of Vienna, on several occasions Beethoven's residence. Wieland. Wills, Beethoven's. Wolf, Dr., advocate in Prague. Zelter, the song composer and friend of Goethe, director of the Academy of Vocal Music at Berlin. Zmeskall von Domanowecz, Court secretary at Vienna, one of Beethoven's earliest friends in the Imperial city, a good violoncello player and also a composer. Zulehner, music publisher at Mayence. Zurich. THE END 
20997	----	THE NÜRNBERG STOVE EIGHTH EDITION [Illustration: FOR WHAT HE SAW WAS NOTHING LESS THAN ALL THE BRIC-À-BRAC IN MOTION _Page 64_] THE NÜRNBERG STOVE BY LOUISA DE LA RAMÉ (OUIDA) _ILLUSTRATED IN COLOR BY_ MARIA L. KIRK [Illustration] PHILADELPHIA AND LONDON J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY COPYRIGHT, 1909, BY J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY COPYRIGHT, 1916, BY J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY PRINTED BY J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY AT THE WASHINGTON SQUARE PRESS PHILADELPHIA. U. S. A. ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE FOR WHAT HE SAW WAS NOTHING LESS THAN ALL THE BRIC-À-BRAC IN MOTION _Frontispiece_ HE WENT ON THROUGH THE STREETS, PAST THE STONE MAN-AT-ARMS OF THE GUARD-HOUSE 9 "IT IS A SIN, IT IS A THEFT, IT IS AN INFAMY," HE SAID 34 AUGUST OPENED THE WINDOW, CRAMMED THE SNOW INTO HIS MOUTH AGAIN AND AGAIN 55 THE NÜRNBERG STOVE I August lived in a little town called Hall. Hall is a favorite name for several towns in Austria and in Germany; but this one especial little Hall, in the Upper Innthal, is one of the most charming Old-World places that I know, and August for his part did not know any other. It has the green meadows and the great mountains all about it, and the gray-green glacier-fed water rushes by it. It has paved streets and enchanting little shops that have all latticed panes and iron gratings to them; it has a very grand old Gothic church, that has the noblest blendings of light and shadow, and marble tombs of dead knights, and a look of infinite strength and repose as a church should have. Then there is the Muntze Tower, black and white, rising out of greenery and looking down on a long wooden bridge and the broad rapid river; and there is an old schloss which has been made into a guard-house, with battlements and frescos and heraldic devices in gold and colors, and a man-at-arms carved in stone standing life-size in his niche and bearing his date 1530. A little farther on, but close at hand, is a cloister with beautiful marble columns and tombs, and a colossal wood-carved Calvary, and beside that a small and very rich chapel: indeed, so full is the little town of the undisturbed past, that to walk in it is like opening a missal of the Middle Ages, all emblazoned and illuminated with saints and warriors, and it is so clean, and so still, and so noble, by reason of its monuments and its historic color, that I marvel much no one has ever cared to sing its praises. The old pious heroic life of an age at once more restful and more brave than ours still leaves its spirit there, and then there is the girdle of the mountains all around, and that alone means strength, peace, majesty. In this little town a few years ago August Strehla lived with his people in the stone-paved irregular square where the grand church stands. He was a small boy of nine years at that time,--a chubby-faced little man with rosy cheeks, big hazel eyes, and clusters of curls the brown of ripe nuts. His mother was dead, his father was poor, and there were many mouths at home to feed. In this country the winters are long and very cold, the whole land lies wrapped in snow for many months, and this night that he was trotting home, with a jug of beer in his numb red hands, was terribly cold and dreary. The good burghers of Hall had shut their double shutters, and the few lamps there were flickered dully behind their quaint, old-fashioned iron casings. The mountains indeed were beautiful, all snow-white under the stars that are so big in frost. Hardly any one was astir; a few good souls wending home from vespers, a tired post-boy who blew a shrill blast from his tasselled horn as he pulled up his sledge before a hostelry, and little August hugging his jug of beer to his ragged sheepskin coat, were all who were abroad, for the snow fell heavily and the good folks of Hall go early to their beds. He could not run, or he would have spilled the beer; he was half frozen and a little frightened, but he kept up his courage by saying over and over again to himself, "I shall soon be at home with dear Hirschvogel." [Illustration: HE WENT ON THROUGH THE STREETS, PAST THE STONE MAN-AT-ARMS OF THE GUARD-HOUSE] He went on through the streets, past the stone man-at-arms of the guard-house, and so into the place where the great church was, and where near it stood his father, Karl Strehla's house, with a sculptured Bethlehem over the door-way, and the Pilgrimage of the Three Kings painted on its wall. He had been sent on a long errand outside the gates in the afternoon, over the frozen fields and the broad white snow, and had been belated, and had thought he had heard the wolves behind him at every step, and had reached the town in a great state of terror, thankful with all his little panting heart to see the oil-lamp burning under the first house-shrine. But he had not forgotten to call for the beer, and he carried it carefully now, though his hands were so numb that he was afraid they would let the jug down every moment. The snow outlined with white every gable and cornice of the beautiful old wooden houses; the moonlight shone on the gilded signs, the lambs, the grapes, the eagles, and all the quaint devices that hung before the doors; covered lamps burned before the Nativities and Crucifixions painted on the walls or let into the wood-work; here and there, where a shutter had not been closed, a ruddy fire-light lit up a homely interior, with the noisy band of children clustering round the house-mother and a big brown loaf, or some gossips spinning and listening to the cobbler's or the barber's story of a neighbor, while the oil-wicks glimmered, and the hearth-logs blazed, and the chestnuts sputtered in their iron roasting-pot. Little August saw all these things, as he saw everything with his two big bright eyes that had such curious lights and shadows in them; but he went heedfully on his way for the sake of the beer which a single slip of the foot would make him spill. At his knock and call the solid oak door, four centuries old if one, flew open, and the boy darted in with his beer, and shouted, with all the force of mirthful lungs, "Oh, dear Hirschvogel, but for the thought of you I should have died!" It was a large barren room into which he rushed with so much pleasure, and the bricks were bare and uneven. It had a walnut-wood press, handsome and very old, a broad deal table, and several wooden stools for all its furniture; but at the top of the chamber, sending out warmth and color together as the lamp shed its rays upon it, was a tower of porcelain, burnished with all the hues of a king's peacock and a queen's jewels, and surmounted with armed figures, and shields, and flowers of heraldry, and a great golden crown upon the highest summit of all. II It was a stove of 1532, and on it were the letters H. R. H., for it was in every portion the handwork of the great potter of Nürnberg, Augustin Hirschvogel, who put his mark thus, as all the world knows. The stove no doubt had stood in palaces and been made for princes, had warmed the crimson stockings of cardinals and the gold-broidered shoes of archduchesses, had glowed in presence-chambers and lent its carbon to help kindle sharp brains in anxious councils of state; no one knew what it had seen or done or been fashioned for; but it was a right royal thing. Yet perhaps it had never been more useful than it was now in this poor desolate room, sending down heat and comfort into the troop of children tumbled together on a wolf-skin at its feet, who received frozen August among them with loud shouts of joy. "Oh, dear Hirschvogel, I am so cold, so cold!" said August, kissing its gilded lion's claws. "Is father not in, Dorothea?" "No, dear. He is late." Dorothea was a girl of seventeen, dark-haired and serious, and with a sweet sad face, for she had had many cares laid on her shoulders, even whilst still a mere baby. She was the eldest of the Strehla family, and there were ten of them in all. Next to her there came Jan and Karl and Otho, big lads, gaining a little for their own living; and then came August, who went up in the summer to the high Alps with the farmers' cattle, but in winter could do nothing to fill his own little platter and pot; and then all the little ones, who could only open their mouths to be fed like young birds,--Albrecht and Hilda, and Waldo and Christof, and last of all little three-year-old Ermengilda, with eyes like forget-me-nots, whose birth had cost them the life of their mother. They were of that mixed race, half Austrian, half Italian, so common in the Tyrol; some of the children were white and golden as lilies, others were brown and brilliant as fresh-fallen chestnuts. The father was a good man, but weak and weary with so many to find for and so little to do it with. He worked at the salt-furnaces, and by that gained a few florins; people said he would have worked better and kept his family more easily if he had not loved his pipe and a draught of ale too well; but this had only been said of him after his wife's death, when trouble and perplexity had begun to dull a brain never too vigorous, and to enfeeble further a character already too yielding. As it was, the wolf often bayed at the door of the Strehla household, without a wolf from the mountains coming down. Dorothea was one of those maidens who almost work miracles, so far can their industry and care and intelligence make a home sweet and wholesome and a single loaf seem to swell into twenty. The children were always clean and happy, and the table was seldom without its big pot of soup once a day. Still, very poor they were, and Dorothea's heart ached with shame, for she knew that their father's debts were many for flour and meat and clothing. Of fuel to feed the big stove they had always enough without cost, for their mother's father was alive, and sold wood and fir cones and coke, and never grudged them to his grandchildren, though he grumbled at Strehla's improvidence and hapless, dreamy ways. "Father says we are never to wait for him: we will have supper, now you have come home, dear," said Dorothea, who, however she might fret her soul in secret as she knitted their hose and mended their shirts, never let her anxieties cast a gloom on the children; only to August she did speak a little sometimes, because he was so thoughtful and so tender of her always, and knew as well as she did that there were troubles about money,--though, these troubles were vague to them both, and the debtors were patient and kindly, being neighbors all in the old twisting streets between the guard-house and the river. Supper was a huge bowl of soup, with big slices of brown bread swimming in it and some onions bobbing up and down: the bowl was soon emptied by ten wooden spoons, and then the three eldest boys slipped off to bed, being tired with their rough bodily labor in the snow all day, and Dorothea drew her spinning-wheel by the stove and set it whirring, and the little ones got August down upon the old worn wolf-skin and clamored to him for a picture or a story. For August was the artist of the family. He had a piece of planed deal that his father had given him, and some sticks of charcoal, and he would draw a hundred things he had seen in the day, sweeping each out with his elbow when the children had seen enough of it and sketching another in its stead,--faces and dogs' heads, and men in sledges, and old women in their furs, and pine-trees, and cocks and hens, and all sorts of animals, and now and then--very reverently--a Madonna and Child. It was all very rough, for there was no one to teach him anything. But it was all life-like, and kept the whole troop of children shrieking with laughter, or watching breathless, with wide open, wondering, awed eyes. They were all so happy: what did they care for the snow outside? Their little bodies were warm, and their hearts merry; even Dorothea, troubled about the bread for the morrow, laughed as she spun; and August, with all his soul in his work, and little rosy Ermengilda's cheek on his shoulder, glowing after his frozen afternoon, cried out loud, smiling, as he looked up at the stove that was shedding its heat down on them all,-- "Oh, dear Hirschvogel! you are almost as great and good as the sun! No; you are greater and better, I think, because he goes away nobody knows where all these long, dark, cold hours, and does not care how people die for want of him; but you--you are always ready: just a little bit of wood to feed you, and you will make a summer for us all the winter through!" The grand old stove seemed to smile through all its iridescent surface at the praises of the child. No doubt the stove, though it had known three centuries and more, had known but very little gratitude. It was one of those magnificent stoves in enamelled faïence which so excited the jealousy of the other potters of Nürnberg that in a body they demanded of the magistracy that Augustin Hirschvogel should be forbidden to make any more of them,--the magistracy, happily, proving of a broader mind, and having no sympathy with the wish of the artisans to cripple their greater fellow. It was of great height and breadth, with all the majolica lustre which Hirschvogel learned to give to his enamels when he was making love to the young Venetian girl whom he afterwards married. There was the statue of a king at each corner, modelled with as much force and splendor as his friend Albrecht Dürer could have given unto them on copperplate or canvas. The body of the stove itself was divided into panels, which had the Ages of Man painted on them in polychrome; the borders of the panels had roses and holly and laurel and other foliage, and German mottoes in black letter of odd Old-World moralizing, such as the old Teutons, and the Dutch after them, love to have on their chimney-places and their drinking-cups, their dishes and flagons. The whole was burnished with gilding in many parts, and was radiant everywhere with that brilliant coloring of which the Hirschvogel family, painters on glass and great in chemistry as they were, were all masters. The stove was a very grand thing, as I say: possibly Hirschvogel had made it for some mighty lord of the Tyrol at that time when he was an imperial guest at Innspruck and fashioned so many things for the Schloss Amras and beautiful Philippine Welser, the burgher's daughter, who gained an archduke's heart by her beauty and the right to wear his honors by her wit. Nothing was known of the stove at this latter day in Hall. The grandfather Strehla, who had been a master-mason, had dug it up out of some ruins where he was building, and, finding it without a flaw, had taken it home, and only thought it worth finding because it was such a good one to burn. That was now sixty years past, and ever since then the stove had stood in the big desolate empty room, warming three generations of the Strehla family, and having seen nothing prettier perhaps in all its many years than the children tumbled now in a cluster like gathered flowers at its feet. For the Strehla children, born to nothing else, were all born with beauty: white or brown, they were equally lovely to look upon, and when they went into the church to mass, with their curling locks and their clasped hands, they stood under the grim statues like cherubs flown down off some fresco. III "Tell us a story, August," they cried, in chorus, when they had seen charcoal pictures till they were tired; and August did as he did every night pretty nearly,--looked up at the stove and told them what he imagined of the many adventures and joys and sorrows of the human being who figured on the panels from his cradle to his grave. To the children the stove was a household god. In summer they laid a mat of fresh moss all round it, and dressed it up with green boughs and the numberless beautiful wild flowers of the Tyrol country. In winter all their joys centred in it, and scampering home from school over the ice and snow they were happy, knowing that they would soon be cracking nuts or roasting chestnuts in the broad ardent glow of its noble tower, which rose eight feet high above them with all its spires and pinnacles and crowns. Once a travelling peddler had told them that the letters on it meant Augustin Hirschvogel, and that Hirschvogel had been a great German potter and painter, like his father before him, in the art-sanctified city of Nürnberg, and had made many such stoves, that were all miracles of beauty and of workmanship, putting all his heart and his soul and his faith into his labors, as the men of those earlier ages did, and thinking but little of gold or praise. An old trader, too, who sold curiosities not far from the church had told August a little more about the brave family of Hirschvogel, whose houses can be seen in Nürnberg to this day; of old Veit, the first of them, who painted the Gothic windows of St. Sebald with the marriage of the Margravine; of his sons and of his grandsons, potters, painters, engravers all, and chief of them great Augustin, the Luca della Robbia of the North. And August's imagination, always quick, had made a living personage out of these few records, and saw Hirschvogel as though he were in the flesh walking up and down the Maximilian-Strass in his visit to Innspruck, and maturing beautiful things in his brain as he stood on the bridge and gazed on the emerald-green flood of the Inn. So the stove had got to be called Hirschvogel in the family, as if it were a living creature, and little August was very proud because he had been named after that famous old dead German who had had the genius to make so glorious a thing. All the children loved the stove, but with August the love of it was a passion; and in his secret heart he used to say to himself, "When I am a man, I will make just such things too, and then I will set Hirschvogel in a beautiful room in a house that I will build myself in Innspruck just outside the gates, where the chestnuts are, by the river: that is what I will do when I am a man." For August, a salt-baker's son and a little cow-keeper when he was anything, was a dreamer of dreams, and when he was upon the high Alps with his cattle, with the stillness and the sky around him, was quite certain that he would live for greater things than driving the herds up when the spring-tide came among the blue sea of gentians, or toiling down in the town with wood and with timber as his father and grandfather did every day of their lives. He was a strong and healthy little fellow, fed on the free mountain-air, and he was very happy, and loved his family devotedly, and was as active as a squirrel and as playful as a hare; but he kept his thoughts to himself, and some of them went a very long way for a little boy who was only one among many, and to whom nobody had ever paid any attention except to teach him his letters and tell him to fear God. August in winter was only a little, hungry school-boy, trotting to be catechised by the priest, or to bring the loaves from the bake-house, or to carry his father's boots to the cobbler; and in summer he was only one of hundreds of cow-boys, who drove the poor, half-blind, blinking, stumbling cattle, ringing their throat-bells, out into the sweet intoxication of the sudden sunlight, and lived up with them in the heights among the Alpine roses, with only the clouds and the snow-summits near. But he was always thinking, thinking, thinking, for all that; and under his little sheepskin winter coat and his rough hempen summer shirt his heart had and much courage in it as Hofer's ever had,--great Hofer, who is a household word in all the Innthal, and whom August always reverently remembered when he went to the city of Innspruck and ran out by the foaming water-mill and under the wooded height of Berg Isel. August lay now in the warmth of the stove and told the children stories, his own little brown face growing red with excitement as his imagination glowed to fever-heat. That human being on the panels, who was drawn there as a baby in a cradle, as a boy playing among flowers, as a lover sighing under a casement, as a soldier in the midst of strife, as a father with children round him, as a weary, old, blind man on crutches, and, lastly, as a ransomed soul raised up by angels, had always had the most intense interest for August, and he had made, not one history for him, but a thousand; he seldom told them the same tale twice. He had never seen a story-book in his life; his primer and his mass-book were all the volumes he had. But nature had given him Fancy, and she is a good fairy that makes up for the want of very many things! only, alas! her wings are so very soon broken, poor thing, and then she is of no use at all. "It is time for you all to go to bed, children," said Dorothea, looking up from her spinning. "Father is very late to-night; you must not sit up for him." "Oh, five minutes more, dear Dorothea!" they pleaded; and little rosy and golden Ermengilda climbed up into her lap. "Hirschvogel is so warm, the beds are never so warm as he. Cannot you tell us another tale, August?" "No," cried August, whose face had lost its light, now that his story had come to an end, and who sat serious, with his hands clasped on his knees, gazing on to the luminous arabesques of the stove. "It is only a week to Christmas," he said, suddenly. "Grandmother's big cakes!" chuckled little Christof, who was five years old, and thought Christmas meant a big cake and nothing else. "What will Santa Claus find for 'Gilda if she be good?" murmured Dorothea over the child's sunny head; for, however hard poverty might pinch, it could never pinch so tightly that Dorothea would not find some wooden toy and some rosy apples to put in her little sister's socks. "Father Max has promised me a big goose, because I saved the calf's life in June," said August; it was the twentieth time he had told them so that month, he was so proud of it. "And Aunt Maïla will be sure to send us wine and honey and a barrel of flour; she always does," said Albrecht. Their aunt Maïla had a chalet and a little farm over on the green slopes towards Dorp Ampas. "I shall go up into the woods and get Hirschvogel's crown," said August; they always crowned Hirschvogel for Christmas with pine boughs and ivy and mountain-berries. The heat soon withered the crown; but it was part of the religion of the day to them, as much so as it was to cross themselves in church and raise their voices in the "O Salutaris Hostia." And they fell chatting of all they would do on the Christ-night, and one little voice piped loud against another's, and they were as happy as though their stockings would be full of golden purses and jewelled toys, and the big goose in the soup-pot seemed to them such a meal as kings would envy. IV In the midst of their chatter and laughter a blast of frozen air and a spray of driven snow struck like ice through the room, and reached them even in the warmth of the old wolf-skins and the great stove. It was the door which had opened and let in the cold; it was their father who had come home. The younger children ran joyous to meet him. Dorothea pushed the one wooden arm-chair of the room to the stove, and August flew to set the jug of beer on a little round table, and fill a long clay pipe; for their father was good to them all, and seldom raised his voice in anger, and they had been trained by the mother they had loved to dutifulness and obedience and a watchful affection. To-night Karl Strehla responded very wearily to the young ones' welcome, and came to the wooden chair with a tired step and sat down heavily, not noticing either pipe or beer. "Are you not well, dear father?" his daughter asked him. "I am well enough," he answered, dully, and sat there with his head bent, letting the lighted pipe grow cold. He was a fair, tall man, gray before his time, and bowed with labor. "Take the children to bed," he said, suddenly, at last, and Dorothea obeyed. August stayed behind, curled before the stove; at nine years old, and when one earns money in the summer from the farmers, one is not altogether a child any more, at least in one's own estimation. August did not heed his father's silence: he was used to it. Karl Strehla was a man of few words, and, being of weakly health, was usually too tired at the end of the day to do more than drink his beer and sleep. August lay on the wolf-skin, dreamy and comfortable, looking up through his drooping eyelids at the golden coronets on the crest of the great stove, and wondering for the millionth time whom it had been made for, and what grand places and scenes it had known. Dorothea came down from putting the little ones in their beds; the cuckoo-clock in the corner struck eight; she looked to her father and the untouched pipe, then sat down to her spinning, saying nothing. She thought he had been drinking in some tavern; it had been often so with him of late. There was a long silence; the cuckoo called the quarter twice; August dropped asleep, his curls falling over his face; Dorothea's wheel hummed like a cat. Suddenly Karl Strehla struck his hand on the table, sending the pipe on the ground. "I have sold Hirschvogel," he said; and his voice was husky and ashamed in his throat. The spinning-wheel stopped. August sprang erect out of his sleep. "Sold Hirschvogel!" If their father had dashed the holy crucifix on the floor at their feet and spat on it, they could not have shuddered under the horror of a greater blasphemy. "I have sold Hirschvogel!" said Karl Strehla, in the same husky, dogged voice. "I have sold it to a travelling trader in such things for two hundred florins. What would you?--I owe double that. He saw it this morning when you were all out. He will pack it and take it to Munich to-morrow." Dorothea gave a low shrill cry: "Oh, father!--the children--in mid-winter!" She turned white as the snow without; her words died away in her throat. August stood, half blind with sleep, staring with dazed eyes as his cattle stared at the sun when they came out from their winter's prison. "It is not true! It is not true!" he muttered. "You are jesting, father?" Strehla broke into a dreary laugh. "It is true. Would you like to know what is true too?--that the bread you eat, and the meat you put in this pot, and the roof you have over your heads, are none of them paid for, have been none of them paid for for months and months: if it had not been for your grandfather I should have been in prison all summer and autumn, and he is out of patience and will do no more now. There is no work to be had; the masters go to younger men: they say I work ill; it may be so. Who can keep his head above water with ten hungry children dragging him down? When your mother lived, it was different. Boy, you stare at me as if I were a mad dog! You have made a god of yon china thing. Well--it goes: goes to-morrow. Two hundred florins, that is something. It will keep me out of prison for a little, and with the spring things may turn----" August stood like a creature paralyzed. His eyes were wide open, fastened on his father's with terror and incredulous horror; his face had grown as white as his sister's; his chest heaved with tearless sobs. "It is not true! It is not true!" he echoed, stupidly. It seemed to him that the very skies must fall, and the earth perish, if they could take away Hirschvogel. They might as soon talk of tearing down God's sun out of the heavens. "You will find it true," said his father, doggedly, and angered because he was in his own soul bitterly ashamed to have bartered away the heirloom and treasure of his race and the comfort and health-giver of his young children. "You will find it true. The dealer has paid me half the money to-night, and will pay me the other half to-morrow when he packs it up and takes it away to Munich. No doubt it is worth a great deal more,--at least I suppose so, as he gives that,--but beggars cannot be choosers. The little black stove in the kitchen will warm you all just as well. Who would keep a gilded, painted thing in a poor house like this, when one can make two hundred florins by it? Dorothea, you never sobbed more when your mother died. What is it, when all is said?--a bit of hardware much too grand-looking for such a room as this. If all the Strehlas had not been born fools it would have been sold a century ago, when it was dug up out of the ground. 'It is a stove for a museum,' the trader said when he saw it. To a museum let it go." August gave a shrill shriek like a hare's when it is caught for its death, and threw himself on his knees at his father's feet. "Oh, father, father!" he cried, convulsively, his hands closing on Strehla's knees, and his uplifted face blanched and distorted with terror. "Oh, father, dear father, you cannot mean what you say? Send _it_ away--our life, our sun, our joy, our comfort? We shall all die in the dark and cold. Sell _me_ rather. Sell me to any trade or any pain you like; I will not mind. But Hirschvogel!--it is like selling the very cross off the altar! You must be in jest. You could not do such a thing--you could not!--you who have always been gentle and good, and who have sat in the warmth here year after year with our mother. It is not a piece of hardware, as you say; it is a living thing, for a great man's thoughts and fancies have put life into it, and it loves us though we are only poor little children, and we love it with all our hearts and souls, and up in heaven I am sure the dead Hirschvogel knows! Oh, listen; I will go and try and get work to-morrow! I will ask them to let me cut ice or make the paths through the snow. There must be something I could do, and I will beg the people we owe money to to wait; they are all neighbors, they will be patient. But sell Hirschvogel!--oh, never! never! never! Give the florins back to the vile man. Tell him it would be like selling the shroud out of mother's coffin, or the golden curls off Ermengilda's head! Oh, father, dear father! do hear me, for pity's sake!" Strehla was moved by the boy's anguish. He loved his children, though he was often weary of them, and their pain was pain to him. But besides emotion, and stronger than emotion, was the anger that August roused in him: he hated and despised himself for the barter of the heirloom of his race, and every word of the child stung him with a stinging sense of shame. And he spoke in his wrath rather than in his sorrow. "You are a little fool," he said, harshly, as they had never heard him speak. "You rave like a play-actor. Get up and go to bed. The stove is sold. There is no more to be said. Children like you have nothing to do with such matters. The stove is sold, and goes to Munich to-morrow. What is it to you? Be thankful I can get bread for you. Get on your legs, I say, and go to bed." Strehla took up the jug of ale as he paused, and drained it slowly as a man who had no cares. August sprang to his feet and threw his hair back off his face; the blood rushed into his cheeks, making them scarlet; his great soft eyes flamed alight with furious passion. "You _dare_ not!" he cried, aloud, "you dare not sell it, I say! It is not yours alone; it is ours----" Strehla flung the emptied jug on the bricks with a force that shivered it to atoms, and, rising to his feet, struck his son a blow that felled him to the floor. It was the first time in all his life that he had ever raised his hand against any one of his children. Then he took the oil-lamp that stood at his elbow and stumbled off to his own chamber with a cloud before his eyes. "What has happened?" said August, a little while later, as he opened his eyes and saw Dorothea weeping above him on the wolf-skin before the stove. He had been struck backward, and his head had fallen on the hard bricks where the wolf-skin did not reach. He sat up a moment, with his face bent upon his hands. "I remember now," he said, very low, under his breath. Dorothea showered kisses on him, while her tears fell like rain. "But, oh, dear, how could you speak so to father?" she murmured. "It was very wrong." "No, I was right," said August, and his little mouth, that hitherto had only curled in laughter, curved downward with a fixed and bitter seriousness. "How dare he? How dare he?" he muttered, with his head sunk in his hands. "It is not his alone. It belongs to us all. It is as much yours and mine as it is his." Dorothea could only sob in answer. She was too frightened to speak. The authority of their parents in the house had never in her remembrance been questioned. "Are you hurt by the fall, dear August?" she murmured, at length, for he looked to her so pale and strange. "Yes--no. I do not know. What does it matter?" He sat up upon the wolf-skin with passionate pain upon his face; all his soul was in rebellion, and he was only a child and was powerless. "It is a sin; it is a theft; it is an infamy," he said, slowly, his eyes fastened on the gilded feet of Hirschvogel. "Oh, August, do not say such things of father!" sobbed his sister. "Whatever he does, _we_ ought to think it right." [Illustration: "IT IS A SIN, IT IS A THEFT, IT IS AN INFAMY," HE SAID] August laughed aloud. "Is it right that he should spend his money in drink?--that he should let orders lie unexecuted?--that he should do his work so ill that no one cares to employ him?--that he should live on grandfather's charity, and then dare sell a thing that is ours every whit as much as it is his? To sell Hirschvogel! Oh, dear God! I would sooner sell my soul!" "August!" cried Dorothea, with piteous entreaty. He terrified her, she could not recognize her little, gay, gentle brother in those fierce and blasphemous words. August laughed aloud again; then all at once his laughter broke down into bitterest weeping. He threw himself forward on the stove, covering it with kisses, and sobbing as though his heart would burst from his bosom. What could he do? Nothing, nothing, nothing! "August, dear August," whispered Dorothea, piteously, and trembling all over,--for she was a very gentle girl, and fierce feeling terrified her,--"August, do not lie there. Come to bed: it is quite late. In the morning you will be calmer. It is horrible indeed, and we shall die of cold, at least the little ones; but if it be father's will----" "Let me alone," said August, through his teeth, striving to still the storm of sobs that shook him from head to foot. "Let me alone. In the morning!--how can you speak of the morning?" "Come to bed, dear," sighed his sister. "Oh, August, do not lie and look like that! you frighten me. Do come to bed." "I shall stay here." "Here! all night!" "They might take it in the night. Besides, to leave it _now_!" "But it is cold! the fire is out." "It will never be warm any more, nor shall we." All his childhood had gone out of him, all his gleeful, careless, sunny temper had gone with it; he spoke sullenly and wearily, choking down the great sobs in his chest. To him it was as if the end of the world had come. His sister lingered by him while striving to persuade him to go to his place in the little crowded bedchamber with Albrecht and Waldo and Christof. But it was in vain. "I shall stay here," was all he answered her. And he stayed,--all the night long. V The lamps went out; the rats came and ran across the floor; as the hours crept on through midnight and past, the cold intensified and the air of the room grew like ice. August did not move; he lay with his face downward on the golden and rainbow-hued pedestal of the household treasure, which henceforth was to be cold for evermore, an exiled thing in a foreign city in a far-off land. Whilst yet it was dark his three elder brothers came down the stairs and let themselves out, each bearing his lantern and going to his work in stone-yard and timber-yard and at the salt-works. They did not notice him; they did not know what had happened. A little later his sister came down with a light in her hand to make ready the house ere morning should break. She stole up to him and laid her hand on his shoulder timidly. "Dear August, you must be frozen. August, do look up! do speak!" August raised his eyes with a wild, feverish, sullen look in them that she had never seen there. His face was ashen white: his lips were like fire. He had not slept all night; but his passionate sobs had given way to delirious waking dreams and numb senseless trances, which had alternated one on another all through the freezing, lonely, horrible hours. "It will never be warm again," he muttered, "never again!" Dorothea clasped him with trembling hands. "August! do you not know me?" she cried, in an agony. "I am Dorothea. Wake up, dear--wake up! It is morning, only so dark!" August shuddered all over. "The morning!" he echoed. He slowly rose up on to his feet. "I will go to grandfather," he said, very low. "He is always good: perhaps he could save it." Loud blows with the heavy iron knocker of the house-door drowned his words. A strange voice called aloud through the keyhole,-- "Let me in! Quick!--there is no time to lose! More snow like this, and the roads will all be blocked. Let me in! Do you hear? I am come to take the great stove." August sprang erect, his fists doubled, his eyes blazing. "You shall never touch it!" he screamed; "you shall never touch it!" "Who shall prevent us?" laughed a big man, who was a Bavarian, amused at the fierce little figure fronting him. "I!" said August. "You shall never have it! you shall kill me first!" "Strehla," said the big man, as August's father entered the room, "you have got a little mad dog here: muzzle him." One way and another they did muzzle him. He fought like a little demon, and hit out right and left, and one of his blows gave the Bavarian a black eye. But he was soon mastered by four grown men, and his father flung him with no light hand out from the door of the back entrance, and the buyers of the stately and beautiful stove set to work to pack it heedfully and carry it away. When Dorothea stole out to look for August, he was nowhere in sight. She went back to little 'Gilda, who was ailing, and sobbed over the child, whilst the others stood looking on, dimly understanding that with Hirschvogel was going all the warmth of their bodies, all the light of their hearth. Even their father now was sorry and ashamed; but two hundred florins seemed a big sum to him, and, after all, he thought the children could warm themselves quite as well at the black iron stove in the kitchen. Besides, whether he regretted it now or not, the work of the Nürnberg potter was sold irrevocably, and he had to stand still and see the men from Munich wrap it in manifold wrappings and bear it out into the snowy air to where an ox-cart stood in waiting for it. In another moment Hirschvogel was gone,--gone forever and aye. August had stood still for a time, leaning, sick and faint from the violence that had been used to him, against the back wall of the house. The wall looked on a court where a well was, and the backs of other houses, and beyond them the spire of the Muntze Tower and the peaks of the mountains. Into the court an old neighbor hobbled for water, and, seeing the boy, said to him,-- "Child, is it true your father is selling the big painted stove?" August nodded his head, then burst into a passion of tears. "Well, for sure he is a fool," said the neighbor. "Heaven forgive me for calling him so before his own child! but the stove was worth a mint of money. I do remember in my young days, in old Anton's time (that was your great-grandfather, my lad), a stranger from Vienna saw it, and said that it was worth its weight in gold." August's sobs went on their broken, impetuous course. "I loved it! I loved it!" he moaned. "I do not care what its value was. I loved it! _I loved it!_" "You little simpleton!" said the old man, kindly. "But you are wiser than your father, when all's said. If sell it he must, he should have taken it to good Herr Steiner over at Sprüz, who would have given him honest value. But no doubt they took him over his beer,--ay, ay! but if I were you I would do better than cry. I would go after it." August raised his head, the tears raining down his cheeks. "Go after it when you are bigger," said the neighbor, with a good-natured wish to cheer him up a little. "The world is a small thing after all: I was a travelling clockmaker once upon a time, and I know that your stove will be safe enough whoever gets it; anything that can be sold for a round sum is always wrapped up in cotton wool by everybody. Ay, ay, don't cry so much; you will see your stove again some day." Then the old man hobbled away to draw his brazen pail full of water at the well. August remained leaning against the wall; his head was buzzing and his heart fluttering with the new idea which had presented itself to his mind. "Go after it," had said the old man. He thought, "Why not go with it?" He loved it better than any one, even better than Dorothea; and he shrank from the thought of meeting his father again, his father who had sold Hirschvogel. He was by this time in that state of exaltation in which the impossible looks quite natural and commonplace. His tears were still wet on his pale cheeks, but they had ceased to fall. He ran out of the court-yard by a little gate, and across to the huge Gothic porch of the church. From there he could watch unseen his father's house-door, at which were always hanging some blue-and-gray pitchers, such as are common and so picturesque in Austria, for a part of the house was let to a man who dealt in pottery. He hid himself in the grand portico, which he had so often passed through to go to mass or compline within, and presently his heart gave a great leap, for he saw the straw-enwrapped stove brought out and laid with infinite care on the bullock-dray. Two of the Bavarian men mounted beside it, and the sleigh-wagon slowly crept over the snow of the place,--snow crisp and hard as stone. The noble old minster looked its grandest and most solemn, with its dark-gray stone and its vast archways, and its porch that was itself as big as many a church, and its strange gargoyles and lamp-irons black against the snow on its roof and on the pavement; but for once August had no eyes for it: he only watched for his old friend. Then he, a little unnoticeable figure enough, like a score of other boys in Hall, crept, unseen by any of his brothers or sisters, out of the porch and over the shelving uneven square, and followed in the wake of the dray. Its course lay towards the station of the railway, which is close to the salt-works, whose smoke at times sullies this part of clean little Hall, though it does not do very much damage. From Hall the iron road runs northward through glorious country to Salzburg, Vienna, Prague, Buda, and southward over the Brenner into Italy. Was Hirschvogel going north or south? This at least he would soon know. VI August had often hung about the little station, watching the trains come and go and dive into the heart of the hills and vanish. No one said anything to him for idling about; people are kind-hearted and easy of temper in this pleasant land, and children and dogs are both happy there. He heard the Bavarians arguing and vociferating a great deal, and learned that they meant to go too and wanted to go with the great stove itself. But this they could not do, for neither could the stove go by a passenger-train nor they themselves go in a goods-train. So at length they insured their precious burden for a large sum, and consented to send it by a luggage-train which was to pass through Hall in half an hour. The swift trains seldom deign to notice the existence of Hall at all. August heard, and a desperate resolve made itself up in his little mind. Where Hirschvogel went would he go. He gave one terrible thought to Dorothea--poor, gentle Dorothea!--sitting in the cold at home, then set to work to execute his project. How he managed it he never knew very clearly himself, but certain it is that when the goods-train from the north, that had come all the way from Linz on the Danube, moved out of Hall, August was hidden behind the stove in the great covered truck, and wedged, unseen and undreamt of by any human creature, amidst the cases of wood-carving, of clocks and clock-work, of Vienna toys, of Turkish carpets, of Russian skins, of Hungarian wines, which shared the same abode as did his swathed and bound Hirschvogel. No doubt he was very naughty, but it never occurred to him that he was so: his whole mind and soul were absorbed in the one entrancing idea, to follow his beloved friend and fire-king. It was very dark in the closed truck, which had only a little window above the door; and it was crowded, and had a strong smell in it from the Russian hides and the hams that were in it. But August was not frightened; he was close to Hirschvogel, and presently he meant to be closer still; for he meant to do nothing less than get inside Hirschvogel itself. Being a shrewd little boy, and having had by great luck two silver groschen in his breeches-pocket, which he had earned the day before by chopping wood, he had bought some bread and sausage at the station of a woman there who knew him, and who thought he was going out to his uncle Joachim's chalet above Jenbach. This he had with him, and this he ate in the darkness and the lumbering, pounding, thundering noise which made him giddy, as never had he been in a train of any kind before. Still he ate, having had no breakfast, and being a child, and half a German, and not knowing at all how or when he ever would eat again. When he had eaten, not as much as he wanted, but as much as he thought was prudent (for who could say when he would be able to buy anything more?), he set to work like a little mouse to make a hole in the withes of straw and hay which enveloped the stove. If it had been put in a packing-case he would have been defeated at the onset. As it was, he gnawed, and nibbled, and pulled, and pushed, just as a mouse would have done, making his hole where he guessed that the opening of the stove was,--the opening through which he had so often thrust the big oak logs to feed it. No one disturbed him; the heavy train went lumbering on and on, and he saw nothing at all of the beautiful mountains, and shining waters, and great forests through which he was being carried. He was hard at work getting through the straw and hay and twisted ropes; and get through them at last he did, and found the door of the stove, which he knew so well, and which was quite large enough for a child of his age to slip through, and it was this which he had counted upon doing. Slip through he did, as he had often done at home for fun, and curled himself up there to see if he could anyhow remain during many hours. He found that he could; air came in through the brass fret-work of the stove; and with admirable caution in such a little fellow he leaned out, drew the hay and straw together, and rearranged the ropes, so that no one could ever have dreamed a little mouse had been at them. Then he curled himself up again, this time more like a dormouse than anything else; and, being safe inside his dear Hirschvogel and intensely cold, he went fast asleep as if he were in his own bed at home with Albrecht and Christof on either side of him. The train lumbered on, stopping often and long, as the habit of goods-trains is, sweeping the snow away with its cow-switcher, and rumbling through the deep heart of the mountains, with its lamps aglow like the eyes of a dog in a night of frost. The train rolled on in its heavy, slow fashion, and the child slept soundly for a long while. When he did awake, it was quite dark outside in the land; he could not see, and of course he was in absolute darkness; and for a while he was sorely frightened, and trembled terribly, and sobbed in a quiet heart-broken fashion, thinking of them all at home. Poor Dorothea! how anxious she would be! How she would run over the town and walk up to grandfather's at Dorf Ampas, and perhaps even send over to Jenbach, thinking he had taken refuge with Uncle Joachim! His conscience smote him for the sorrow he must be even then causing to his gentle sister; but it never occurred to him to try and go back. If he once were to lose sight of Hirschvogel how could he ever hope to find it again? how could he ever know whither it had gone,--north, south, east, or west? The old neighbor had said that the world was small; but August knew at least that it must have a great many places in it: that he had seen himself on the maps on his schoolhouse walls. Almost any other little boy would, I think, have been frightened out of his wits at the position in which he found himself; but August was brave, and he had a firm belief that God and Hirschvogel would take care of him. The master-potter of Nürnberg was always present to his mind, a kindly, benign, and gracious spirit, dwelling manifestly in that porcelain tower whereof he had been the maker. A droll fancy, you say? But every child with a soul in him has quite as quaint fancies as this one was of August's. So he got over his terror and his sobbing both, though he was so utterly in the dark. He did not feel cramped at all, because the stove was so large, and air he had in plenty, as it came through the fret-work running round the top. He was hungry again, and again nibbled with prudence at his loaf and his sausage. He could not at all tell the hour. Every time the train stopped and he heard the banging, stamping, shouting, and jangling of chains that went on, his heart seemed to jump up into his mouth. If they should find him out! Sometimes porters came and took away this case and the other, a sack here, a bale there, now a big bag, now a dead chamois. Every time the men trampled near him, and swore at each other, and banged this and that to and fro, he was so frightened that his very breath seemed to stop. When they came to lift the stove out, would they find him? and if they did find him, would they kill him? That was what he kept thinking of all the way, all through the dark hours, which seemed without end. The goods-trains are usually very slow, and are many days doing what a quick train does in a few hours. This one was quicker than most, because it was bearing goods to the King of Bavaria; still, it took all the short winter's day and the long winter's night and half another day to go over ground that the mail-trains cover in a forenoon. It passed great armored Kuffstein standing across the beautiful and solemn gorge, denying the right of way to all the foes of Austria. It passed twelve hours later, after lying by in out-of-the-way stations, pretty Rosenheim, that marks the border of Bavaria. And here the Nürnberg stove, with August inside it, was lifted out heedfully and set under a covered way. When it was lifted out, the boy had hard work to keep in his screams; he was tossed to and fro as the men lifted the huge thing, and the earthenware walls of his beloved fire-king were not cushions of down. However, though they swore and grumbled at the weight of it, they never suspected that a living child was inside it, and they carried it out on to the platform and set it down under the roof of the goods-shed. There it passed the rest of the night and all the next morning, and August was all the while within it. VII The winds of early winter sweep bitterly over Rosenheim, and all the vast Bavarian plain was one white sheet of snow. If there had not been whole armies of men at work always clearing the iron rails of the snow, no trains could ever have run at all. Happily for August, the thick wrappings in which the stove was enveloped and the stoutness of its own make screened him from the cold, of which, else, he must have died,--frozen. He had still some of his loaf, and a little--a very little--of his sausage. What he did begin to suffer from was thirst; and this frightened him almost more than anything else, for Dorothea had read aloud to them one night a story of the tortures some wrecked men had endured because they could not find any water but the salt sea. It was many hours since he had last taken a drink from the wooden spout of their old pump, which brought them the sparkling, ice-cold water of the hills. But, fortunately for him, the stove, having been marked and registered as "fragile and valuable," was not treated quite like a mere bale of goods, and the Rosenheim station-master, who knew its consignees, resolved to send it on by a passenger-train that would leave there at daybreak. And when this train went out, in it, among piles of luggage belonging to other travellers, to Vienna, Prague, Buda-Pesth, Salzburg, was August, still undiscovered, still doubled up like a mole in the winter under the grass. Those words, "fragile and valuable," had made the men lift Hirschvogel gently and with care. He had begun to get used to his prison, and a little used to the incessant pounding and jumbling and rattling and shaking with which modern travel is always accompanied, though modern invention does deem itself so mightily clever. All in the dark he was, and he was terribly thirsty; but he kept feeling the earthenware sides of the Nürnberg giant and saying, softly, "Take care of me; oh, take care of me, dear Hirschvogel!" He did not say, "Take me back;" for, now that he was fairly out in the world, he wished to see a little of it. He began to think that they must have been all over the world in all this time that the rolling and roaring and hissing and jangling had been about his ears; shut up in the dark, he began to remember all the tales that had been told in Yule round the fire at his grandfather's good house at Dorf, of gnomes and elves and subterranean terrors, and the Erl King riding on the black horse of night, and--and--and he began to sob and to tremble again, and this time did scream outright. But the steam was screaming itself so loudly that no one, had there been any one nigh, would have heard him; and in another minute or so the train stopped with a jar and a jerk, and he in his cage could hear men crying aloud, "München! München!" Then he knew enough of geography to know that he was in the heart of Bavaria. He had had an uncle killed in the Bayerischenwald by the Bavarian forest guards, when in the excitement of hunting a black bear he had overpassed the limits of the Tyrol frontier. That fate of his kinsman, a gallant young chamois-hunter who had taught him to handle a trigger and load a muzzle, made the very name of Bavaria a terror to August. "It is Bavaria! It is Bavaria!" he sobbed to the stove; but the stove said nothing to him; it had no fire in it. A stove can no more speak without fire than a man can see without light. Give it fire, and it will sing to you, tell tales to you, offer you in return all the sympathy you ask. "It is Bavaria!" sobbed August; for it is always a name of dread augury to the Tyroleans, by reason of those bitter struggles and midnight shots and untimely deaths which come from those meetings of jäger and hunter in the Bayerischenwald. But the train stopped; Munich was reached, and August, hot and cold by turns, and shaking like a little aspen-leaf, felt himself once more carried out on the shoulders of men, rolled along on a truck, and finally set down, where he knew not, only he knew he was thirsty,--so thirsty! If only he could have reached his hand out and scooped up a little snow! He thought he had been moved on this truck many miles, but in truth the stove had been only taken from the railway-station to a shop in the Marienplatz. Fortunately, the stove was always set upright on its four gilded feet, an injunction to that effect having been affixed to its written label, and on its gilded feet it stood now in the small dark curiosity-shop of one Hans Rhilfer. "I shall not unpack it till Anton comes," he heard a man's voice say; and then he heard a key grate in a lock, and by the unbroken stillness that ensued he concluded he was alone, and ventured to peep through the straw and hay. What he saw was a small square room filled with pots and pans, pictures, carvings, old blue jugs, old steel armor, shields, daggers, Chinese idols, Vienna china, Turkish rugs, and all the art lumber and fabricated rubbish of a _bric-à-brac_ dealer's. It seemed a wonderful place to him; but, oh! was there one drop of water in it all? That was his single thought; for his tongue was parching, and his throat felt on fire, and his chest began to be dry and choked as with dust. There was not a drop of water, but there was a lattice window grated, and beyond the window was a wide stone ledge covered with snow. August cast one look at the locked door, darted out of his hiding-place, ran and opened the window, crammed the snow into his mouth again and again, and then flew back into the stove, drew the hay and straw over the place he entered by, tied the cords, and shut the brass door down on himself. He had brought some big icicles in with him, and by them his thirst was finally, if only temporarily, quenched. Then he sat still in the bottom of the stove, listening intently, wide awake, and once more recovering his natural boldness. [Illustration: AUGUST OPENED THE WINDOW, CRAMMED THE SNOW INTO HIS MOUTH AGAIN AND AGAIN] The thought of Dorothea kept nipping his heart and his conscience with a hard squeeze now and then; but he thought to himself, "If I can take her back Hirschvogel, then how pleased she will be, and how little 'Gilda will clap her hands!" He was not at all selfish in his love for Hirschvogel: he wanted it for them all at home quite as much as for himself. There was at the bottom of his mind a kind of ache of shame that his father--his own father--should have stripped their hearth and sold their honor thus. A robin had been perched upon a stone griffin sculptured on a house-eave near. August had felt for the crumbs of his loaf in his pocket, and had thrown them to the little bird sitting so easily on the frozen snow. In the darkness where he was he now heard a little song, made faint by the stove-wall and the window-glass that was between him and it, but still distinct and exquisitely sweet. It was the robin, singing after feeding on the crumbs. August, as he heard, burst into tears. He thought of Dorothea, who every morning threw out some grain or some bread on the snow before the church. "What use is it going _there_," she said, "if we forget the sweetest creatures God has made?" Poor Dorothea! Poor, good, tender, much-burdened little soul! He thought of her till his tears ran like rain. Yet it never once occurred to him to dream of going home. Hirschvogel was here. VIII Presently the key turned in the lock of the door, he heard heavy footsteps and the voice of the man who had said to his father, "You have a little mad dog; muzzle him!" The voice said, "Ay, ay, you have called me a fool many times. Now you shall see what I have gotten for two hundred dirty florins. _Potztausend!_ never did _you_ do such a stroke of work." Then the other voice grumbled and swore, and the steps of the two men approached more closely, and the heart of the child went pit-a-pat, pit-a-pat, as a mouse's does when it is on the top of a cheese and hears a housemaid's broom sweeping near. They began to strip the stove of its wrappings: that he could tell by the noise they made with the hay and the straw. Soon they had stripped it wholly: that, too, he knew by the oaths and exclamations of wonder and surprise and rapture which broke from the man who had not seen it before. "A right royal thing! A wonderful and never-to-be-rivalled thing! Grander than the great stove of Hohen-Salzburg! Sublime! magnificent! matchless!" So the epithets ran on in thick guttural voices, diffusing a smell of lager-beer so strong as they spoke that it reached August crouching in his stronghold. If they should open the door of the stove! That was his frantic fear. If they should open it, it would be all over with him. They would drag him out; most likely they would kill him, he thought, as his mother's young brother had been killed in the Wald. The perspiration rolled off his forehead in his agony; but he had control enough over himself to keep quiet, and after standing by the Nürnberg master's work for nigh an hour, praising, marvelling, expatiating in the lengthy German tongue, the men moved to a little distance and began talking of sums of money and divided profits, of which discourse he could make out no meaning. All he could make out was that the name of the king--the king--the king came over very often in their arguments. He fancied at times they quarrelled, for they swore lustily and their voices rose hoarse and high; but after a while they seemed to pacify each other and agree to something, and were in great glee, and so in these merry spirits came and slapped the luminous sides of stately Hirschvogel, and shouted to it,-- "Old Mumchance, you have brought us rare good luck! To think you were smoking in a silly fool of a salt-baker's kitchen all these years!" Then inside the stove August jumped up, with flaming cheeks and clinching hands, and was almost on the point of shouting out to them that they were the thieves and should say no evil of his father, when he remembered, just in time, that to breathe a word or make a sound was to bring ruin on himself and sever him forever from Hirschvogel. So he kept still, and the men barred the shutters of the little lattice and went out by the door, double-locking it after them. He had made out from their talk that they were going to show Hirschvogel to some great person: therefore he kept quite still and dared not move. Muffled sounds came to him through the shutters from the streets below,--the rolling of wheels, the clanging of church-bells, and bursts of that military music which is so seldom silent in the streets of Munich. An hour perhaps passed by; sounds of steps on the stairs kept him in perpetual apprehension. In the intensity of his anxiety, he forgot that he was hungry and many miles away from cheerful, Old World little Hall, lying by the clear gray river-water, with the ramparts of the mountains all around. Presently the door opened again sharply. He could hear the two dealers' voices murmuring unctuous words, in which, "honor," "gratitude," and many fine long noble titles played the chief parts. The voice of another person, more clear and refined than theirs, answered them curtly, and then, close by the Nürnberg stove and the boy's ear, ejaculated a single "_Wunderschön!_" August almost lost his terror for himself in his thrill of pride at his beloved Hirschvogel being thus admired in the great city. He thought the master-potter must be glad too. "_Wunderschön!_" ejaculated the stranger a second time, and then examined the stove in all its parts, read all its mottoes, gazed long on all its devices. "It must have been made for the Emperor Maximilian," he said at last; and the poor little boy, meanwhile, within, was "hugged up into nothing," as you children say, dreading that every moment he would open the stove. And open it truly he did, and examined the brass-work of the door; but inside it was so dark that crouching August passed unnoticed, screwed up into a ball like a hedgehog as he was. The gentleman shut to the door at length, without having seen anything strange inside it; and then he talked long and low with the tradesmen, and, as his accent was different from that which August was used to, the child could distinguish little that he said, except the name of the king and the word "gulden" again and again. After awhile he went away, one of the dealers accompanying him, one of them lingering behind to bar up the shutters. Then this one also withdrew again, double-locking the door. The poor little hedgehog uncurled itself and dared to breathe aloud. What time was it? Late in the day, he thought, for to accompany the stranger they had lighted a lamp; he had heard the scratch of the match, and through the brass fret-work had seen the lines of light. He would have to pass the night here, that was certain. He and Hirschvogel were locked in, but at least they were together. If only he could have had something to eat! He thought with a pang of how at this hour at home they ate the sweet soup, sometimes with apples in it from Aunt Maïla's farm orchard, and sang together, and listened to Dorothea's reading of little tales, and basked in the glow and delight that had beamed on them from the great Nürnberg fire-king. "Oh, poor, poor little 'Gilda! What is she doing without the dear Hirschvogel?" he thought. Poor little 'Gilda! she had only now the black iron stove of the ugly little kitchen. Oh, how cruel of father! August could not bear to hear the dealers blame or laugh at his father, but he did feel that it had been so, so cruel to sell Hirschvogel. The mere memory of all those long winter evenings, when they had all closed round it, and roasted chestnuts or crab-apples in it, and listened to the howling of the wind and the deep sound of the church-bells, and tried very much to make each other believe that the wolves still came down from the mountains into the streets of Hall, and were that very minute growling at the house-door,--all this memory coming on him with the sound of the city bells, and the knowledge that night drew near upon him so completely, being added to his hunger and his fear, so overcame him that he burst out crying for the fiftieth time since he had been inside the stove, and felt that he would starve to death, and wondered dreamily if Hirschvogel would care. Yes, he was sure Hirschvogel would care. Had he not decked it all summer long with Alpine roses and edelweiss and heaths and made it sweet with thyme and honeysuckle and great garden-lilies? Had he ever forgotten when Santa Claus came to make it its crown of holly and ivy and wreathe it all around? "Oh, shelter me; save me; take care of me!" he prayed to the old fire-king, and forgot, poor little man, that he had come on this wild-goose chase northward to save and take care of Hirschvogel! After a time he dropped asleep, as children can do when they weep, and little robust hill-born boys most surely do, be they where they may. It was not very cold in this lumber-room; it was tightly shut up, and very full of things, and at the back of it were the hot pipes of an adjacent house, where a great deal of fuel was burnt. Moreover, August's clothes were warm ones, and his blood was young. So he was not cold, though Munich is terribly cold in the nights of December; and he slept on and on,--which was a comfort to him, for he forgot his woes, and his perils, and his hunger, for a time. IX Midnight was once more chiming from all the brazen tongues of the city when he awoke, and, all being still around him, ventured to put his head out of the brass door of the stove to see why such a strange bright light was round him. It was a very strange and brilliant light indeed; and yet, what is perhaps still stranger, it did not frighten or amaze him, nor did what he saw alarm him either, and yet I think it would have done you or me. For what he saw was nothing less than all the _bric-à-brac_ in motion. A big jug, an Apostel-Krug, of Kruessen, was solemnly dancing a minuet with a plump Faenza jar; a tall Dutch clock was going through a gavotte with a spindle-legged ancient chair; a very droll porcelain figure of Littenhausen was bowing to a very stiff soldier in _terre cuite_ of Ulm; an old violin of Cremona was playing itself, and a queer little shrill plaintive music that thought itself merry came from a painted spinet covered with faded roses; some gilt Spanish leather had got up on the wall and laughed; a Dresden mirror was tripping about, crowned with flowers, and a Japanese bonze was riding along on a griffin; a slim Venetian rapier had come to blows with a stout Ferrara sabre, all about a little pale-faced chit of a damsel in white Nymphenburg china; and a portly Franconian pitcher in _grès gris_ was calling aloud, "Oh, these Italians! always at feud!" But nobody listened to him at all. A great number of little Dresden cups and saucers were all skipping and waltzing; the teapots, with their broad round faces, were spinning their own lids like teetotums; the high-backed gilded chairs were having a game of cards together; and a little Saxe poodle, with a blue ribbon at its throat, was running from one to another, whilst a yellow cat of Cornelis Lachtleven's rode about on a Delft horse in blue pottery of 1489. Meanwhile the brilliant light shed on the scene came from three silver candelabra, though they had no candles set up in them; and, what is the greatest miracle of all, August looked on at these mad freaks and felt no sensation of wonder! He only, as he heard the violin and the spinet playing, felt an irresistible desire to dance too. No doubt his face said what he wished; for a lovely little lady, all in pink and gold and white, with powdered hair, and high-heeled shoes, and all made of the very finest and fairest Meissen china, tripped up to him, and smiled, and gave him her hand, and led him out to a minuet. And he danced it perfectly,--poor little August in his thick, clumsy shoes, and his thick, clumsy sheepskin jacket, and his rough homespun linen, and his broad Tyrolean hat! He must have danced it perfectly, this dance of kings and queens in days when crowns were duly honored, for the lovely lady always smiled benignly and never scolded him at all, and danced so divinely herself to the stately measures the spinet was playing that August could not take his eyes off her till, their minuet ended, she sat down on her own white-and-gold bracket. "I am the Princess of Saxe-Royale," she said to him, with a benignant smile; "and you have got through that minuet very fairly." Then he ventured to say to her,-- "Madame my princess, could you tell me kindly why some of the figures and furniture dance and speak, and some lie up in a corner like lumber? It does make me curious. Is it rude to ask?" For it greatly puzzled him why, when some of the _bric-à-brac_ was all full of life and motion, some was quite still and had not a single thrill in it. "My dear child," said the powdered lady, "is it possible that you do not know the reason? Why, those silent, dull things are _imitation_!" This she said with so much decision that she evidently considered it a condensed but complete answer. "Imitation?" repeated August, timidly, not understanding. "Of course! Lies, falsehoods, fabrications!" said the princess in pink shoes, very vivaciously. "They only _pretend_ to be what we _are_! They never wake up: how can they? No imitation ever had any soul in it yet." "Oh!" said August, humbly, not even sure that he understood entirely yet. He looked at Hirschvogel: surely it had a royal soul within it: would it not wake up and speak? Oh dear! how he longed to hear the voice of his fire-king! And he began to forget that he stood by a lady who sat upon a pedestal of gold-and-white china, with the year 1746 cut on it, and the Meissen mark. "What will you be when you are a man?" said the little lady, sharply, for her black eyes were quick though her red lips were smiling. "Will you work for the _Königliche Porcellan-Manufactur_, like my great dead Kandler?" "I have never thought," said August, stammering; "at least--that is--I do wish--I do hope to be a painter, as was Master Augustin Hirschvogel at Nürnberg." "Bravo!" said all the real _bric-à-brac_ in one breath, and the two Italian rapiers left off fighting to cry, "_Benone!_" For there is not a bit of true _bric-à-brac_ in all Europe that does not know the names of the mighty masters. August felt quite pleased to have won so much applause, and grew as red as the lady's shoes with bashful contentment. "I knew all the Hirschvögel, from old Veit downwards," said a fat _grès de Flandre_ beer-jug: "I myself was made at Nürnberg." And he bowed to the great stove very politely, taking off his own silver hat--I mean lid--with a courtly sweep that he could scarcely have learned from burgomasters. The stove, however, was silent, and a sickening suspicion (for what is such heart-break as a suspicion of what we love?) came through the mind of August: _Was Hirschvogel only imitation_? "No, no, no, no!" he said to himself, stoutly: though Hirschvogel never stirred, never spoke, yet would he keep all faith in it! After all their happy years together, after all the nights of warmth and joy he owed it, should he doubt his own friend and hero, whose gilt lion's feet he had kissed in his babyhood? "No, no, no, no!" he said, again, with so much emphasis that the Lady of Meissen looked sharply again at him. "No," she said, with pretty disdain; "no, believe me, they may 'pretend' forever. They can never look like us! They imitate even our marks, but never can they look like the real thing, never can they _chassent de race_." "How should they?" said a bronze statuette of Vischer's. "They daub themselves green with verdigris, or sit out in the rain to get rusted; but green and rust are not _patina_; only the ages can give that!" "And _my_ imitations are all in primary colors, staring colors, hot as the colors of a hostelry's sign-board!" said the Lady of Meissen, with a shiver. "Well, there is a _grès de Flandre_ over there, who pretends to be a Hans Kraut, as I am," said the jug with the silver hat, pointing with his handle to a jug that lay prone on its side in a corner. "He has copied me as exactly as it is given to moderns to copy us. Almost he might be mistaken for me. But yet what a difference there is! How crude are his blues! how evidently done over the glaze are his black letters! He has tried to give himself my very twist; but what a lamentable exaggeration of that playful deviation in my lines which in his becomes actual deformity!" "And look at that," said the gilt Cordovan leather, with a contemptuous glance at a broad piece of gilded leather spread out on a table. "They will sell him cheek by jowl with me, and give him my name; but look! _I_ am overlaid with pure gold beaten thin as a film and laid on me in absolute honesty by worthy Diego de las Gorgias, worker in leather of lovely Cordova in the blessed reign of Ferdinand the Most Christian. _His_ gilding is one part gold to eleven other parts of brass and rubbish, and it has been laid on him with a brush--_a brush!_--pah! of course he will be as black as a crock in a few years' time, whilst I am as bright as when I first was made, and, unless I am burnt as my Cordova burnt its heretics, I shall shine on forever." "They carve pear-wood because it is so soft, and dye it brown, and call it _me_!" said an old oak cabinet, with a chuckle. "That is not so painful; it does not vulgarize you so much as the cups they paint to-day and christen after _me_!" said a Carl Theodor cup subdued in hue, yet gorgeous as a jewel. "Nothing can be so annoying as to see common gimcracks aping _me_!" interposed the princess in the pink shoes. "They even steal my motto, though it is Scripture," said a _Trauerkrug_ of Regensburg in black-and-white. "And my own dots they put on plain English china creatures!" sighed the little white maid of Nymphenburg. "And they sell hundreds and thousands of common china plates, calling them after me, and baking my saints and my legends in a muffle of to-day; it is blasphemy!" said a stout plate of Gubbio, which in its year of birth had seen the face of Maestro Giorgio. "That is what is so terrible in these _bric-à-brac_ places," said the princess of Meissen. "It brings one in contact with such low, imitative creatures; one really is safe nowhere nowadays unless under glass at the Louvre or South Kensington." "And they get even there," sighed the _grès de Flandre_. "A terrible thing happened to a dear friend of mine, a _terre cuite_ of Blasius (you know the _terres cuites_ of Blasius date from 1560). Well, he was put under glass in a museum that shall be nameless, and he found himself set next to his own imitation born and baked yesterday at Frankfort, and what think you the miserable creature said to him, with a grin? 'Old Pipe-clay,'--that is what he called my friend,--'the fellow that bought _me_ got just as much commission on me as the fellow that bought _you_, and that was all that _he_ thought about. You know it is only the public money that goes!' And the horrid creature grinned again till he actually cracked himself. There is a Providence above all things, even museums." "Providence might have interfered before, and saved the public money," said the little Meissen lady with the pink shoes. "After all, does it matter?" said a Dutch jar of Haarlem. "All the shamming in the world will not _make_ them us!" "One does not like to be vulgarized," said the Lady of Meissen, angrily. "My maker, the Krabbetje,[A] did not trouble his head about that," said the Haarlem jar, proudly. "The Krabbetje made me for the kitchen, the bright, clean, snow-white Dutch kitchen, wellnigh three centuries ago, and now I am thought worthy the palace; yet I wish I were at home; yes, I wish I could see the good Dutch vrouw, and the shining canals, and the great green meadows dotted with the kine." [Footnote A: Jan Asselyn, called Krabbetje, the Little Crab, born 1610, master-potter of Delft and Haarlem.] "Ah! if we could all go back to our makers!" sighed the Gubbio plate, thinking of Giorgio Andreoli and the glad and gracious days of the Renaissance: and somehow the words touched the frolicsome souls of the dancing jars, the spinning teapots, the chairs that were playing cards; and the violin stopped its merry music with a sob, and the spinet sighed,--thinking of dead hands. Even the little Saxe poodle howled for a master forever lost; and only the swords went on quarrelling, and made such a clattering noise that the Japanese bonze rode at them on his monster and knocked them both right over, and they lay straight and still, looking foolish, and the little Nymphenburg maid, though she was crying, smiled and almost laughed. Then from where the great stove stood there came a solemn voice. All eyes turned upon Hirschvogel, and the heart of its little human comrade gave a great jump of joy. "My friends," said that clear voice from the turret of Nürnberg faïence, "I have listened to all you have said. There is too much talking among the Mortalities whom one of themselves has called the Windbags. Let not us be like them. I hear among men so much vain speech, so much precious breath and precious time wasted in empty boasts, foolish anger, useless reiteration, blatant argument, ignoble mouthings, that I have learned to deem speech a curse, laid on man to weaken and envenom all his undertakings. For over two hundred years I have never spoken myself: you, I hear, are not so reticent. I only speak now because one of you said a beautiful thing that touched me. If we all might but go back to our makers! Ah, yes! if we might! We were made in days when even men were true creatures, and so we, the work of their hands, were true too. We, the begotten of ancient days, derive all the value in us from the fact that our makers wrought at us with zeal, with piety, with integrity, with faith,--not to win fortunes or to glut a market, but to do nobly an honest thing and create for the honor of the Arts and God. I see amidst you a little human thing who loves me, and in his own ignorant childish way loves Art. Now, I want him forever to remember this night and these words; to remember that we are what we are, and precious in the eyes of the world, because centuries ago those who were of single mind and of pure hand so created us, scorning sham and haste and counterfeit. Well do I recollect my master, Augustin Hirschvogel. He led a wise and blameless life, and wrought in loyalty and love, and made his time beautiful thereby, like one of his own rich, many-colored church casements, that told holy tales as the sun streamed through them. Ah, yes, my friends, to go back to our masters!--that would be the best that could befall us. But they are gone, and even the perishable labors of their lives outlive them. For many, many years I, once honored of emperors, dwelt in a humble house and warmed in successive winters three generations of little, cold, hungry children. When I warmed them they forgot that they were hungry; they laughed and told tales, and slept at last about my feet. Then I knew that humble as had become my lot it was one that my master would have wished for me, and I was content. Sometimes a tired woman would creep up to me, and smile because she was near me, and point out my golden crown or my ruddy fruit to a baby in her arms. That was better than to stand in a great hall of a great city, cold and empty, even though wise men came to gaze and throngs of fools gaped, passing with flattering words. Where I go now I know not; but since I go from that humble house where they loved me, I shall be sad and alone. They pass so soon,--those fleeting mortal lives! Only we endure,--we, the things that the human brain creates. We can but bless them a little as they glide by: if we have done that, we have done what our masters wished. So in us our masters, being dead, yet may speak and live." Then the voice sank away in silence, and a strange golden light that had shone on the great stove faded away; so also the light died down in the silver candelabra. A soft, pathetic melody stole gently through the room. It came from the old, old spinet that was covered with the faded roses. Then that sad, sighing music of a bygone day died too; the clocks of the city struck six of the morning; day was rising over the Bayerischenwald. August awoke with a great start, and found himself lying on the bare bricks of the floor of the chamber, and all the _bric-à-brac_ was lying quite still all around. The pretty Lady of Meissen was motionless on her porcelain bracket, and the little Saxe poodle was quiet at her side. He rose slowly to his feet. He was very cold, but he was not sensible of it or of the hunger that was gnawing his little empty entrails. He was absorbed in the wondrous sight, in the wondrous sounds, that he had seen and heard. X All was dark around him. Was it still midnight or had morning come? Morning, surely; for against the barred shutters he heard the tiny song of the robin. Tramp, tramp, too, came a heavy step up the stair. He had but a moment in which to scramble back into the interior of the great stove, when the door opened and the two dealers entered, bringing burning candles with them to see their way. August was scarcely conscious of danger more than he was of cold or hunger. A marvellous sense of courage, of security, of happiness, was about him, like strong and gentle arms enfolding him and lifting him upwards--upwards--upwards! Hirschvogel would defend him. The dealers undid the shutters, scaring the red-breast away, and then tramped about in their heavy boots and chattered in contented voices, and began to wrap up the stove once more in all its straw and hay and cordage. It never once occurred to them to glance inside. Why should they look inside a stove that they had bought and were about to sell again for all its glorious beauty of exterior? The child still did not feel afraid. A great exaltation had come to him: he was like one lifted up by his angels. Presently the two traders called up their porters, and the stove, heedfully swathed and wrapped and tended as though it were some sick prince going on a journey, was borne on the shoulders of six stout Bavarians down the stairs and out of the door into the Marienplatz. Even behind all those wrappings August felt the icy bite of the intense cold of the outer air at dawn of a winter's day in Munich. The men moved the stove with exceeding gentleness and care, so that he had often been far more roughly shaken in his big brothers' arms than he was in his journey now; and though both hunger and thirst made themselves felt, being foes that will take no denial, he was still in that state of nervous exaltation which deadens all physical suffering and is at once a cordial and an opiate. He had heard Hirschvogel speak; that was enough. The stout carriers tramped through the city, six of them, with the Nürnberg fire-castle on their brawny shoulders, and went right across Munich to the railway-station, and August in the dark recognized all the ugly, jangling, pounding, roaring, hissing railway-noises, and thought, despite his courage and excitement, "Will it be a _very_ long journey?" For his stomach had at times an odd sinking sensation, and his head sadly often felt light and swimming. If it was a very, very long journey he felt half afraid that he would be dead or something bad before the end, and Hirschvogel would be so lonely: that was what he thought most about; not much about himself, and not much about Dorothea and the house at home. He was "high strung to high emprise," and could not look behind him. Whether for a long or a short journey, whether for weal or woe, the stove with August still within it was once more hoisted up into a great van; but this time it was not all alone, and the two dealers as well as the six porters were all with it. He in his darkness knew that; for he heard their voices. The train glided away over the Bavarian plain southward; and he heard the men say something of Berg and the Wurm-See, but their German was strange to him, and he could not make out what these names meant. The train rolled on, with all its fume and fuss, and roar of steam, and stench of oil and burning coal. It had to go quietly and slowly on account of the snow which was falling, and which had fallen all night. "He might have waited till he came to the city," grumbled one man to another. "What weather to stay on at Berg!" But who he was that stayed on at Berg, August could not make out at all. Though the men grumbled about the state of the roads and the season, they were hilarious and well content, for they laughed often, and, when they swore, did so good-humoredly, and promised their porters fine presents at New-Year; and August, like a shrewd little boy as he was, who even in the secluded Innthal had learned that money is the chief mover of men's mirth, thought to himself, with a terrible pang,-- "They have sold Hirschvogel for some great sum. They have sold him already!" Then his heart grew faint and sick within him, for he knew very well that he must soon die, shut up without food and water thus; and what new owner of the great fire-palace would ever permit him to dwell in it? "Never mind; I _will_ die," thought he; "and Hirschvogel will know it." Perhaps you think him a very foolish little fellow; but I do not. It is always good to be loyal and ready to endure to the end. It is but an hour and a quarter that the train usually takes to pass from Munich to the Wurm-See or Lake of Starnberg; but this morning the journey was much slower, because the way was encumbered by snow. When it did reach Possenhofen and stop, and the Nürnberg stove was lifted out once more, August could see through the fret-work of the brass door, as the stove stood upright facing the lake, that this Wurm-See was a calm and noble piece of water, of great width, with low wooded banks and distant mountains, a peaceful, serene place, full of rest. It was now near ten o'clock. The sun had come forth; there was a clear gray sky hereabouts; the snow was not falling, though it lay white and smooth everywhere, down to the edge of the water, which before long would itself be ice. Before he had time to get more than a glimpse of the green gliding surface, the stove was again lifted up and placed on a large boat that was in waiting,--one of those very long and huge boats which the women in these parts use as laundries, and the men as timber-rafts. The stove, with much labor and much expenditure of time and care, was hoisted into this, and August would have grown sick and giddy with the heaving and falling if his big brothers had not long used him to such tossing about, so that he was as much at ease head, as feet, downward. The stove once in it safely with its guardians, the big boat moved across the lake to Leoni. How a little hamlet on a Bavarian lake got that Tuscan-sounding name I cannot tell; but Leoni it is. The big boat was a long time crossing: the lake here is about three miles broad, and these heavy barges are unwieldy and heavy to move, even though they are towed and tugged at from the shore. "If we should be too late!" the two dealers muttered to each other, in agitation and alarm. "He said eleven o'clock." "Who was he?" thought August; "the buyer, of course, of Hirschvogel." The slow passage across the Wurm-See was accomplished at length: the lake was placid; there was a sweet calm in the air and on the water; there was a great deal of snow in the sky, though the sun was shining and gave a solemn hush to the atmosphere. Boats and one little steamer were going up and down; in the clear frosty light the distant mountains of Zillerthal and the Algau Alps were visible; market-people, cloaked and furred, went by on the water or on the banks; the deep woods of the shores were black and gray and brown. Poor August could see nothing of a scene that would have delighted him; as the stove was now set, he could only see the old worm-eaten wood of the huge barge. Presently they touched the pier at Leoni. "Now, men, for a stout mile and half! You shall drink your reward at Christmas-time," said one of the dealers to his porters, who, stout, strong men as they were, showed a disposition to grumble at their task. Encouraged by large promises, they shouldered sullenly the Nürnberg stove, grumbling again at its preposterous weight, but little dreaming that they carried within it a small, panting, trembling boy; for August began to tremble now that he was about to see the future owner of Hirschvogel. "If he look a good, kind man," he thought, "I will beg him to let me stay with it." XI The porters began their toilsome journey, and moved off from the village pier. He could see nothing, for the brass door was over his head, and all that gleamed through it was the clear gray sky. He had been tilted on to his back, and if he had not been a little mountaineer, used to hanging head-downwards over crevasses, and, moreover, seasoned to rough treatment by the hunters and guides of the hills and the salt-workers in the town, he would have been made ill and sick by the bruising and shaking and many changes of position to which he had been subjected. The way the men took was a mile and a half in length, but the road was heavy with snow, and the burden they bore was heavier still. The dealers cheered them on, swore at them and praised them in one breath; besought them and reiterated their splendid promises, for a clock was striking eleven, and they had been ordered to reach their destination at that hour, and, though the air was so cold, the heat-drops rolled off their foreheads as they walked, they were so frightened at being late. But the porters would not budge a foot quicker than they chose, and as they were not poor four-footed carriers their employers dared not thrash them, though most willingly would they have done so. The road seemed terribly long to the anxious tradesmen, to the plodding porters, to the poor little man inside the stove, as he kept sinking and rising, sinking and rising, with each of their steps. Where they were going he had no idea, only after a very long time he lost the sense of the fresh icy wind blowing on his face through the brass-work above, and felt by their movements beneath him that they were mounting steps or stairs. Then he heard a great many different voices, but he could not understand what was being said. He felt that his bearers paused some time, then moved on and on again. Their feet went so softly he thought they must be moving on carpet, and as he felt a warm air come to him he concluded that he was in some heated chambers, for he was a clever little fellow, and could put two and two together, though he was so hungry and so thirsty and his empty stomach felt so strangely. They must have gone, he thought, through some very great number of rooms, for they walked so long on and on, on and on. At last the stove was set down again, and, happily for him, set so that his feet were downward. What he fancied was that he was in some museum, like that which he had seen in the city of Innspruck. The voices he heard were very hushed, and the steps seemed to go away, far away, leaving him alone with Hirschvogel. He dared not look out, but he peeped through the brass work, and all he could see was a big carved lion's head in ivory, with a gold crown atop. It belonged to a velvet fauteuil, but he could not see the chair, only the ivory lion. There was a delicious fragrance in the air,--a fragrance as of flowers. "Only how can it be flowers?" thought August. "It is December!" From afar off, as it seemed, there came a dreamy, exquisite music, as sweet as the spinet's had been, but so much fuller, so much richer, seeming as though a chorus of angels were singing all together. August ceased to think of the museum: he thought of heaven. "Are we gone to the Master?" he thought, remembering the words of Hirschvogel. All was so still around him; there was no sound anywhere except the sound of the far-off choral music. He did not know it, but he was in the royal castle of Berg, and the music he heard was the music of Wagner, who was playing in a distant room some of the motives of "Parsival." Presently he heard a fresh step near him, and he heard a low voice say, close behind him, "So!" An exclamation no doubt, he thought, of admiration and wonder at the beauty of Hirschvogel. Then the same voice said, after a long pause, during which no doubt, as August thought, this new-comer was examining all the details of the wondrous fire-tower, "It was well bought; it is exceedingly beautiful! It is most undoubtedly the work of Augustin Hirschvogel." Then the hand of the speaker turned the round handle of the brass door, and the fainting soul of the poor little prisoner within grew sick with fear. The handle turned, the door was slowly drawn open, some one bent down and looked in, and the same voice that he had heard in praise of its beauty called aloud, in surprise, "What is this in it? A live child!" Then August, terrified beyond all self-control, and dominated by one master-passion, sprang out of the body of the stove and fell at the feet of the speaker. "Oh, let me stay! Pray, meinherr, let me stay!" he sobbed. "I have come all the way with Hirschvogel!" Some gentlemen's hands seized him, not gently by any means, and their lips angrily muttered in his ear, "Little knave, peace! be quiet! hold your tongue! It is the king!" They were about to drag him out of the august atmosphere as if he had been some venomous, dangerous beast come there to slay, but the voice he had heard speak of the stove said, in kind accents, "Poor little child! he is very young. Let him go: let him speak to me." The word of a king is law to his courtiers: so, sorely against their wish, the angry and astonished chamberlains let August slide out of their grasp, and he stood there in his little rough sheepskin coat and his thick, mud-covered boots, with his curling hair all in a tangle, in the midst of the most beautiful chamber he had ever dreamed of, and in the presence of a young man with a beautiful dark face, and eyes full of dreams and fire; and the young man said to him,-- "My child, how came you here, hidden in this stove? Be not afraid: tell me the truth. I am the king." August in an instinct of homage cast his great battered black hat with the tarnished gold tassels down on the floor of the room, and folded his little brown hands in supplication. He was too intensely in earnest to be in any way abashed; he was too lifted out of himself by his love for Hirschvogel to be conscious of any awe before any earthly majesty. He was only so glad--so glad it was the king. Kings were always kind; so the Tyrolese think, who love their lords. "Oh, dear king!" he said, with trembling entreaty in his faint little voice, "Hirschvogel was ours, and we have loved it all our lives; and father sold it. And when I saw that it did really go from us, then I said to myself I would go with it; and I have come all the way inside it. And last night it spoke and said beautiful things. And I do pray you to let me live with it, and I will go out every morning and cut wood for it and you, if only you will let me stay beside it. No one ever has fed it with fuel but me since I grew big enough, and it loves me;--it does indeed; it said so last night; and it said that it had been happier with us than if it were in any palace----" And then his breath failed him, and, as he lifted his little, eager, pale face to the young king's, great tears were falling down his cheeks. Now, the king likes all poetic and uncommon things, and there was that in the child's face which pleased and touched him. He motioned to his gentlemen to leave the little boy alone. "What is your name?" he asked him. "I am August Strehla. My father is Karl Strehla. We live in Hall, in the Innthal; and Hirschvogel has been ours so long,--so long!" His lips quivered with a broken sob. "And have you truly travelled inside this stove all the way from Tyrol?" "Yes," said August; "no one thought to look inside till you did." The king laughed; then another view of the matter occurred to him. "Who bought the stove of your father?" he inquired. "Traders of Munich," said August, who did not know that he ought not to have spoken to the king as to a simple citizen, and whose little brain was whirling and spinning dizzily round its one central idea. "What sum did they pay your father, do you know?" asked the sovereign. "Two hundred florins," said August, with a great sigh of shame. "It was so much money, and he is so poor, and there are so many of us." The king turned to his gentlemen-in-waiting. "Did these dealers of Munich come with the stove?" He was answered in the affirmative. He desired them to be sought for and brought before him. As one of his chamberlains hastened on the errand, the monarch looked at August with compassion. "You are very pale, little fellow: when did you eat last?" "I had some bread and sausage with me; yesterday afternoon I finished it." "You would like to eat now?" "If I might have a little water I would be glad; my throat is very dry." The king had water and wine brought for him, and cake also; but August, though he drank eagerly, could not swallow anything. His mind was in too great a tumult. "May I stay with Hirschvogel?--may I stay?" he said, with feverish agitation. "Wait a little," said the king, and asked, abruptly; "What do you wish to be when you are a man?" "A painter. I wish to be what Hirschvogel was,--I mean the master that made _my_ Hirschvogel." "I understand," said the king. Then the two dealers were brought into their sovereign's presence. They were so terribly alarmed, not being either so innocent or so ignorant as August was, that they were trembling as though they were being led to the slaughter, and they were so utterly astonished too at a child having come all the way from Tyrol in the stove, as a gentleman of the court had just told them this child had done, that they could not tell what to say or where to look, and presented a very foolish aspect indeed. "Did you buy this Nürnberg stove of this little boy's father for two hundred florins?" the king asked them; and his voice was no longer soft and kind as it had been when addressing the child, but very stern. "Yes, your majesty," murmured the trembling traders. "And how much did the gentleman who purchased it for me give to you?" "Two thousand ducats, your majesty," muttered the dealers, frightened out of their wits, and telling the truth in their fright. The gentleman was not present: he was a trusted counsellor in art matters of the king's, and often made purchases for him. The king smiled a little, and said nothing. The gentleman had made out the price to him as eleven thousand ducats. "You will give at once to this boy's father the two thousand gold ducats that you received, less the two hundred Austrian florins that you paid him," said the king to his humiliated and abject subjects. "You are great rogues. Be thankful you are not more greatly punished." He dismissed them by a sign to his courtiers, and to one of these gave the mission of making the dealers of the Marienplatz disgorge their ill-gotten gains. August heard, and felt dazzled yet miserable. Two thousand gold Bavarian ducats for his father! Why, his father would never need to go any more to the salt-baking! And yet, whether for ducats or for florins, Hirschvogel was sold just the same, and would the king let him stay with it?--would he? "Oh, do! oh, please do!" he murmured, joining his little brown weather-stained hands, and kneeling down before the young monarch, who himself stood absorbed in painful thought, for the deception so basely practised for the greedy sake of gain on him by a trusted counsellor was bitter to him. He looked down on the child, and as he did so smiled once more. "Rise up, my little man," he said, in a kind voice; "kneel only to your God. Will I let you stay with your Hirschvogel? Yes, I will; you shall stay at my court, and you shall be taught to be a painter,--in oils or on porcelain as you will, and you must grow up worthily, and win all the laurels at our Schools of Art, and if when you are twenty-one years old you have done well and bravely, then I will give you your Nürnberg stove, or, if I am no more living, then those who reign after me shall do so. And now go away with this gentleman, and be not afraid, and you shall light a fire every morning in Hirschvogel, but you will not need to go out and cut the wood." Then he smiled and stretched out his hand; the courtiers tried to make August understand that he ought to bow and touch it with his lips, but August could not understand that anyhow; he was too happy. He threw his two arms about the king's knees, and kissed his feet passionately; then he lost all sense of where he was, and fainted away from hunger, and tire, and emotion, and wondrous joy. As the darkness of his swoon closed in on him, he heard in his fancy the voice from Hirschvogel saying,-- "Let us be worthy our maker!" * * * * * He is only a scholar yet, but he is a happy scholar, and promises to be a great man. Sometimes he goes back for a few days to Hall, where the gold ducats have made his father prosperous. In the old house-room there is a large white porcelain stove of Munich, the king's gift to Dorothea and 'Gilda. And August never goes home without going into the great church and saying his thanks to God, who blessed his strange winter's journey in the Nürnberg stove. As for his dream in the dealers' room that night, he will never admit that he did dream it; he still declares that he saw it all, and heard the voice of Hirschvogel. And who shall say that he did not? for what is the gift of the poet and the artist except to see the sights which others cannot see and to hear the sounds that others cannot hear? THE CHILDREN'S CLASSICS Each beautifully illustrated in color and tastefully bound BY WASHINGTON IRVING THE LEGEND OF SLEEPY HOLLOW RIP VAN WINKLE SELECTED TALES OF WASHINGTON IRVING'S ALHAMBRA BY JOHN RUSKIN THE KING OF THE GOLDEN RIVER BY ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON A CHILD'S GARDEN OF VERSES SELECTED HANS ANDERSEN'S FAIRY TALES BY MISS MULOCK THE LITTLE LAME PRINCE THE ADVENTURES OF A BROWNIE BY EMMA GELLIBRAND J. COLE BY JOHANNA SPYRI MONI THE GOAT BOY BY OUIDA MOUFFLOU AND OTHER STORIES THE NÜRNBERG STOVE A DOG OF FLANDERS SELECTED WONDERLAND STORIES ALL TIME TALES BY JONATHAN SWIFT GULLIVER'S TRAVELS (LILLIPUT LAND) BY GEORGE MACDONALD THE PRINCESS AND THE GOBLIN THE PRINCESS AND CURDIE AT THE BACK OF THE NORTH WIND 
45824	----	SOCIAL COMPTABILISM By ERNEST SOLVAY THE CHEQUE AND CLEARING SERVICE in the Austrian Postal Savings Bank PROPOSED LAW laid before the Chamber of Representatives of Belgium By Prof. HECTOR DENIS 1896 (Extract from the _Annals of the Institute of Social Sciences_) BRUSSELS AT THE INSTITUTE 11, RUE RAVENSTEIN, 11 1897 Bruxelles.--Imp. écon., N. VANDERSYPEN, rue de Trèves, 38. SOCIAL COMPTABILISM ITS PRINCIPLE AND GROUND OF EXISTENCE THEORY OF THE MEASURE OF TRANSACTIONAL VALUE By ERNEST SOLVAY Would it be possible, in a society constituted as ours is, to replace the agency of money by another agency which would have its advantages without its inconveniences, and which could be considered as theoretically perfect,--in other words would it be possible to replace the agency of money by a system which would be the final expression of possible improvement in this matter and the definitive point to which social economics ought necessarily to tend? This is the subject which we propose to consider. The paper _Social comptabilism and proportionalism_[A] which was the starting point of the Institute of Social Sciences of Brussels, was necessarily done in a premature fashion, the subject being regarded from too general a point of view, so as to be harmful to a true explanation of «comptabilism» properly so called. It laid itself open to criticism and lays itself open still; it does not satisfy all those who wish to go deeply into the question. On these accounts we deem it our duty, after what the Institute has already published with reference to it, to return again to the subject, limiting ourselves to purely monetary and account-keeping grounds, and an exclusively theoretical explanation of the conception which, connected as it is with the inductive researches of our fellow workers we have submitted to their consideration. In the first place let us examine into the use of money in society, and to whom it is of use; we will next consider if it is indispensable. Money presents itself to us as being an indispensable instrument for effecting transactions which are not mere acts of barter, and it presents itself also as having rendered possible,--and this is of capital importance as the sequel will show,--the registering, the writing down or account-keeping of the transactions, if one may so say, which barter did not permit. Money is exclusively of use to those who enter into commercial transactions. Thus a man who could sufficiently provide for himself in everything without any such transactions, would not have to make any use of money; a landed proprietor may have a considerable fortune and have only a small monetary need, whilst a merchant whose fortune may be much less will find himself in a very different situation: for the greater part of his fortune consisting of merchandise, continually renewed, and consequently engaged in circulation, his monetary need will be considerable. It may therefore be said that the need of money is proportional to the need for commercial transactions. Beyond what we have just pointed out, has money fulfilled, or does it fulfil any other purpose? We shall see. If, from the beginning, we could have had a system allowing us to exactly register transactions, would money have been indispensably necessary? In a word, is money in point of fact the particular element in such transactions which caused the writing of them down, or, in reality does not its use hide an agency entirely independent of money? Let us examine this. But we cannot do so without offering as a necessary preliminary a few words in explanation of the term «transactions», which we have already used and which will continue to be employed in this paper to the exclusion of the word «exchanges». In our opinion exchange properly speaking,--true exchange and free from the alloy of any foreign element whatsoever, has never been anything but barter; and as soon as the system of barter was left and that of money entered upon, the exchange system was rather abandoned for another system quite different, than that one form of exchange was simply substituted for another form of exchange. And if we have continued afterwards to make use of the word «exchange» it is due more to the force of habit than in order to define the actual condition of things. What in reality fundamentally characterises barter, is that it is an exchange, carried out on the spot, of goods immediately usable by the two parties, each of them giving one usable thing in order to enter into possession of another; whilst that which fundamentally characterises the operation of selling and buying, by means of money, is that it constitutes an exchange of goods carried out on the spot, of which one form only can be immediately used by one of the parties, the other party obtaining not a real thing but an instrument by which he will be able to procure it. So that the party who has received the money, the seller, has only thus obtained a _power_ to make subsequently an inverse operation, that is a purchase where and when it pleases him. The operation of selling and buying is then nothing less than the _exchange of a thing for a power_. But can we still make use of the word «exchange» to define such an operation? We do not think so, and it is for this reason that we substitute for it that of «transaction.» The word «exchange» has continued to be employed after having quitted the system of barter to enter upon the system of buying and selling, by means of money, just as the expression «money» has continued to be used to describe bank-notes, which are only paper having the power of money, as money is an instrument having the power of «things.» Thus we have here an example of the general rule, that the evolution of ideas and of facts, is always more rapid than that of the words which represent them. Our opinion with regard to «exchange» will be found all the more justified since it will be seen later on that the power conferred by money upon the seller does not exclusively belong to the monetary system, but that it can be obtained, and that theoretically it always could be obtained, in quite another way, without exchanging anything, without having anything to do with money, by simple entry, registering or writing down of figures on paper which is not exchanged, but which remains in one's own hands. Let us now come back to the question. We proceed to show that the relative value of things is independent of the unity of value chosen, and that the transactions can be registered, written down, abstraction made of the real, actual value of the material support which has served to fix this unity. In a general way and within possibly narrow limits, very different and variable according as the case may be, given the existence in actual society of fortunes and desires of all degrees of importance, one can, in principle, admit that theoretically, the value _v_ of a thing or of a certain quantity of goods, is proportional to the average _d_ of the desire to possess it, which the men demanding it have, either on account of its use, or from any other reason, multiplied by the number _h_ of these men and divided by the number _o_ offered of this thing; these three factors _d_, _h_ and _o_ not being probably in other respects determinable with precision. We shall then have for the formula of value: _v_ = _u_ × _dh/o_ _u_ being a coefficient of proportionality depending on the unity of value adopted. It will be seen that the term _dh/o_ represents in reality the account of the conditions of the supply and of the demand at the moment and at the place where the value is determined[B]. In substituting E, we have a new term expressive of the value: _v_ = _u_ × E. The relatively fixed value of the precious metals has made it possible for the unity of value to be determined on and easily represented by means of a certain quantity of metal, and the actual monetary system is the result, the value of all things having been henceforth expressed by means of the monetary unity identifying itself with the unity of value determined on. But it may in consequence be remarked in looking closely into this, and it is important to do so, that this result has been reached not because the thing: «metal money», has made its appearance, but because thanks to it, a common denominator of the value of things in general has been employed which did not exist before. Now, as we shall see, this common denominator does not of necessity remain invariably tied to the thing, money, or more generally to any sort of material support which has served to define it at a given moment. Once fixed it may be considered independently of this support; becoming thus a permanent quantity in time and space, taking in consequence the character of a common measure of the transactional value of things and being employed as a unity of measure of that value[C]. In reality this hypothesis could only be made when there was no such thing as money, and a system of barter exclusively prevailing, those engaged in making transactions might have said to themselves. «Let us choose a common denominator of the value of things that we may write down our transactions, and not be any longer obliged to carry on the exchange of usable things when we do not want them, let us take for example the value of a kilogram of wheat here at ... to day, the ... as common denominator and let us calculate directly the value of all other things by this unity. »Evidently every other thing would be worth as many times this unity as we see men would give kilograms of wheat to possess it, and thus the numerical value of things would be easily established. »Let us agree further in future always to express the value of things by this initial value of the kilogram of wheat, _a value which has only existed during the preceding operation, and which strictly can only have existed for an indefinitely short time, but which can be considered as absolutely permanent_, and apart from any necessity of occupying ourselves with the variation of value undergone in time and space by the kilogram of wheat itself.» It will result that if _v'_ is the value of a thing at any period and at any place of which the originally fixed value was _v_, the relations will be: _v_ = _u_ × E _v'_ = _u_ × E whence: _v'/v_ = E'/E and _v'_ = _v_ × E'/E that is the value _v_ of a thing at any time and place is equal to its initial value simply multiplied by the proportion of the terms which represent the conditions of the supply and demand at the two periods under consideration. Let us note, that, as it should do the formula _v'/v_ = E'/E shows that the unity is eliminated when the point in question is the estimate of relative values. It is needless to say that we do not insist on the practical possibility of the determination of the coefficients E and E', which intervene in the preceding formula. We have in effect said that the factors _d_, _h_ and _o_, do not appear to us determinable; we limit ourselves simply to showing here, the theoretical possibility of the system. What is important to remark is that in proceeding, as we have just pointed out, in all estimates of value and in consequence in the registration of all transactions, the variation in the value of the material support, corn, metal, etc. of the unity adopted does not intervene in any way. It will be further seen and we would insist on this point, that the common denominator of the value of things takes in this system, by the fact of its invariability, the character of a common measure; that it can in consequence be taken as unity, and considered in an abstract way. In fact this unity served once in a certain place and at a given moment to fix the initial value of things. From that moment it separates itself from the material thing which served to define it, which has momentarily represented it, and which has served as a support in our mind to effect the operations necessary to the relative fixing of the value of things. These operations made, it is of little consequence if the value itself of the kilogram of wheat varies, as is the case with the value of every thing else. Its initial value was for ever fixed, it can be taken as absolutely permanent and immutable,--the fundamental condition which a unity of measure ought to satisfy. In like manner original values of all kinds are equally constant quantities and anyone from among them might be taken as unity. In due course the actual values of things alter; varying continually, and it is the same with the kilogram of wheat or with any support whatever that has served to define the unity. The new values will always express themselves numerically by means of the fixed unity, although that has ceased to have a material representation. In practice the new numerical values will be obtained very easily; from the theoretical point of view they are fixed by means of the formula already given: _v'_ = _v_ × E'/E a formula which by the way, shows that if it happened that for anything at any moment and at any place, the elements _d_, _h_ and _o_ took values such that the term (_d'_ × _h'_)/_o'_ should return to a value equivalent to its initial value (_d_ × _h_)/_o_, the value of this same thing would again become identical with its initial value. This formula shows that the value of things is only relatively to be taken for it varies ceaselessly, shifting to as great a degree as supply and demand itself, just as human desire often does,--it is only mathematically fixed in time and space, we would again repeat for an infinitely short period. This being so it is evident that it becomes possible to put down in writing all transactions by means of the unity determined on. And if this writing down of transactions can be made under a legal form, that is, can be carried out under conditions which have the effect of conferring on the seller a _legal right_, corresponding to what the thing is worth to him who acquires it, and here we enter into the conception of «social accountancy», it becomes useless, superfluous and even harmful to make a material use of the thing representing the unity of the value adopted. It is thus that from the beginning, from the very time barter is abandoned and it is no longer necessary to give a kilogram of wheat to obtain possession of a thing, that at that very moment a writing down would confer on the holder of a thing a right representing a value equivalent to it and permitting him to effect under the same conditions new transactions. If things can thus take place, it will be seen how absurd it becomes to persist in the custom of representing materially a unity which should be detached from the support which has served to define it at a given moment, and which no longer appears as anything but an abstraction permitting in a homogenous manner the arithmetical representation by figures, of the value of things, relatively and individually. This abstract unity ought to be detached from every material tie. On the other hand, it becomes evident that money does not in the least constitute the indispensable element for effecting transactions. And if at the distant period to which the introduction of money goes back it had been possible to tell beforehand that transactions could be written down in a simple but legal manner, after having fixed as above indicated the numerical value of things by the use of a unity essentially invariable, an enormous error in principle would have been committed if to the unities admitted as estimates of value had been given, as is actually the case now, a representation of them in gold and silver,--the franc, the mark, the pound sterling. The usage of money has taken from the unity of value that character of invariability which it ought necessarily to possess. This unity being associated in point of fact with a real article of merchandise, society has been exposed either to want, or to have too much of the matter thus become the indispensable element of transactions, to suffer in fact monetary contractions and dilations, the results of the traffic which necessarily takes place, results which, for a nation producing the precious metals, like the United States does, may possibly end in disaster. A confusion must necessarily be brought about between the conventional fixed value attached to pieces of gold and silver money and the actual variable value of the very matter of those pieces. The conventional value of a piece of silver corresponds to the value we have called its initial value, and we have seen it was possible to preserve to that initial value the character of absolute permanency. But how can its invariability be assured if a material support is given to it open to incessant fluctuations of value resulting from all the speculations to which what ever can be bought and sold is submitted? The very fact of the association of the unity of value with an actual marketable article takes away all stability from the base of our estimates of the value of things. If the price of any commodity,--for example, some article of food or manufacture,--rises in comparison with what it was 50 years or a century ago, it is often asked whether the augmentation is real or only apparent and due to the diminution in the value of the metal which supports the unity: it results clearly from what has been advanced that the variation in the value of metal goes for nothing if, _it be well understood that the quantity of money in use is supposed to remain exactly proportioned to the needs of the transactions_. But when monetary contractions take place, the implement necessary in transactions is wanting, the value of things in general falls, for those who are engaged in making transactions offer their goods at a reduced price to get the monetary implement without which they cannot effect their operations. It would evidently be the same if this implement instead of being in gold or silver, was in wood or paper; and still the same if it was represented only by comptabilist unities. Directly it is conceded that man must make transactions then, if an implement is indispensable to that end, be that implement paper or comptabilist unities, he will make sacrifices to procure it and will for this object part with some of his wealth, and therefore the value of things will in a general way fall. While if this implement is in excess, that is if there is monetary dilation, as excess of the implement is of no service to the great bulk of those who transact business, who only want what is necessary to effect their transactions and nothing more, it will be found that the value of things cannot be affected by this as it is in the preceding case. We would say that if this implement is in paper, or represented by accountancy unities, its excess would do no harm, nor have any effect on the value of things, when in the contrary case as we have just seen, this value would fall. But if it is in gold or silver and instead of being stored up in the iron safes of the banks it circulates amongst those who transact business, these last will seek to get rid of it, not because as in the preceding case it is a mere implement of transaction, but as a valuable metal, and in consequence of withdrawal of this kind the value of things will be raised. When we say that the value of things in general would rise in a case of monetary dilatation occurring in the way we have put it, and that it would fall in the case of monetary contraction pure and simple, it is because we are allowing that the supposed want or excess of money would make itself generally felt amongst those engaged in transacting business. If it only affected a special class of such persons, if gold or silver were only wanting or only circulated amongst them, it is needless to say that the rise or fall in prices would only affect the commodities in which their special property exactly consisted. We believe it right to attempt to give as logically deduced from the preceding formulas this note of precision in a rather complex question, which, as we think, has not always been rightly looked at, and that, in consequence of the fact that in money, a marketable article of variable value, is associated with a unity which ought to be invariable. In our epoch of exact science and profound insight into phenomena and things, it is no longer possible to err on the very basis of a question of an interest so general and so vital as this relating to the monetary system. The suppression of such a defective instrument as money and its substitution by a mere simple writing down of transactions, but legally guaranteed,--a system which we have entitled «Social Comptabilism» demands the study of every economist who wishes progress independently of any dogma, doctrine or party. The time is at hand in which by the force of circumstances it must be carried into effect in highly civilized countries. Germany, almost entirely educated to-day, should have no reason to oppose its adoption, if she saw clearly the advantages which social comptabilism presents and the difficulties and inconveniences which would disappear on its use. It would be a great error to imagine that any kind of economic revolution is necessary to establish it. In Belgium M. De Greef[D], in his «_Essais sur la monnaie, le crédit et les banques_», has shown how simple, logical and profitable it would be to approach it by rapid strides resting on the fundamental principle of «social comptabilism»,--the guarantee of property. M. H. Denis[E] in his work on the «_Organisation et le Fonctionnement du service des chèques et des virements à la Caisse d'Epargne postale de l'Empire d'Autriche_», shows how such comptabilism has been already approached in what chiefly relates to deferred payments, in a great country, which although it does not generally lead the way in progress, seems to have correctly apprehended what relates to the machinery money masks and wrongly represents. We shall only add one more observation in justification of the way we look at the matter, it is that in our country there is in principle at the present time in the financial organisms patronised and guaranteed by the State, all that is needed to realize «social comptabilism». Does not the National Bank of Belgium, as well as the Bank of France, among our neighbours to the west, issue bank notes,--and from our point of view, these notes represent unities of comptabilist value--to all those who offer them sufficient guarantees. In exchange for a deposit of securities, or for well known signatures, paper is obtained, notes equivalent to metal money:--this is already on the road to social comptabilism. In place of that, let these banks issue notes, counters--only possible to be used once--or rather bankbooks containing leaves or fractions of leaves, or squares having a meaning equivalent to that of notes or counters, or able in some way easily to realize that meaning, and which would be simply obliterated in case of transactions accomplished and the working of comptabilism is fully seen although only at the threshold of the system. Let the State then enlarge to the utmost degree possible the power of these banks to issue such notes or cheque books; let these be authorised to accept mortgages, deposits and all guarantees from third parties or others, whether directly or more indirectly by the intervention of other public organisms appointed to the work, or even analogous private organisms, of a solvency secured beyond all doubt; let this issue be made for any amounts, however small; let these establishments be even authorised to issue notes similar in form, but blank, or account-books to people without means and only usable on the understanding that all that results in connection with them is at the risk and peril of those transacting business, and we have arrived at comptabilism complete and definitive, even to the point of suppressing the copper coinage. It is evident that in this way society as it is at present organised, can demonetize the precious metals and establish social comptabilism without in principle having to make any revolution whatever in its present position, it has only largely to increase a portion of its machinery, already existing and in full swing. To sum up, it is a question of a simple change in the machinery of transactions and all society is interested in the realization of such a progress purely mechanical and functional, which moreover has no connection with any doctrine, opinion or party, and is no new invention whatever. In conclusion, and at the risk of repeating ourselves, in order to explain our idea under all its forms, and to render it accessible to every mind, we think we cannot do better than to recapitulate it in formulating some articles which set forth in principle the basis on which legal arrangements could be made on the hypothesis that the legislative power should determine suddenly to decree the application of «social comptabilism» such as we have defined it in basing it on the guarantee of property, on the employ of account books, with debit and credit entries, and on the use of a stamp or punch to inscribe or obliterate figures. The articles recapitulate the essential principles of the reform from a point of view wholly general, the only one in this notice we have proposed to examine, leaving for the present absolutely out of consideration details of application which have to be studied and which might vary infinitely. It is needless to say that we by no means believe that a reform like this can be realized at once, we rather think that it will come by stages, as is always the case in every fundamental change relating to any established order of things. The intermediary phases would probably be the adoption of the system of comptabilism already in operation in Austria, principally for defered payments, as it is explained in the work of M. H. Denis, already cited (it would be only necessary to add to this system the guarantee of the State, based itself entirely on the guarantee of individual property, in order to enter into the plan of «social comptabilism»), and on the other hand, a large extension of the issue by the State of paper money for that which concerns current payments as proposed by M. De Greef (it would suffice to add the system of stamping as equivalent to signature, the limitation of the use of paper to a single operation, and its regular return to the Accountant's Office, for to make such reforms equally a part of the plan of «social comptabilism»). Articles setting forth the principles of an organic project. 1.--From ... the monetary system shall be replaced by the comptabilist system. 2.--The National Bank shall become a comptabilistic establishment, commissioned to deliver to individuals, to societies, etc., account books, divided into leaves and squares having a certain significance for the credit, and leaves and squares having a certain significance for the debit, in which the signification of the transactional operations effected, and which at present involve the use of money, shall be stamped[F] respectively to the credit and debit of the account-books of each of the operators in account unities equivalent to the actual franc. 3.--The accountant-general will deliver either blank account-books, or account-books having a certain sum inscribed to the credit of the account-book. 4.--The transactional operations inscribed in a blank account-book will be effected at the risk and peril of the operators. Every-one will be able to obtain such an account-book. 5.--Contrariwise, the transactional operations inscribed in a credit account-book will be made under the guarantee of the National Bank, but only in so far as they concur with the sum inscribed to the credit of that account-book. 6.--Every-one can obtain credit account-books, for a certain sum, either in mortgaging some corresponding property in favour of the Bank, or in offering to it the guarantee of a third party, who should have agreed to a similar mortgage, or ... 7.--An account-book out of use or obliterated, or of which the sum appearing to its credit is exhausted, will be returned to the accountant-general; should such returner of an account-book have a balance, then the accountant-general will open an account in the official books, and enter this balance to that account. 8.--Every individual whose account-book balance is to his credit will be able to obtain credit account-book for a maximum sum equivalent to this balance, if he offers a corresponding mortgage either as before stated, on an existing property, or on property he may acquire by means of the sum thus inscribed to the credit of his account-book. * * * * * What has preceded shows how simple, unobtrusive, passive is the part played by the accountant-general. The books containing the figures signifying what transactions have been effected either to the credit or debit side, with the figures attached identifying those who have made the transactions, are remitted to him. He adds up the credit and debit account and, if there is a balance, enters it to the account of the possessor of the account-book. That is all. If he comes across mistakes or errors, he rectifies them, notably if he discovers that the statements of the account-books do not agree with the corresponding statements of the account-books of those whose transactions appear there. The accountant-general acts as a piece of machinery would act. He is a recorder of figures, _a registrar of balances_. If there are no balances to enter he does not even make a registration, and is then only a _legal witness_ of transactional operations. No more is asked of him in order to arrive at the suppression, pure and simple of the monetary system. But from the day in which the comptabilist system becomes legal to the exclusion of the monetary system, from the moment in which each individual has his personal account introduced into the registers of the accountant-general, his _transactional life_ is henceforth, and for ever, represented on the one side by the mortgages and guarantees that he furnishes in order to obtain comptabilist unities, on the other hand by the balances of his account books that the accountant enters successively and indefinitely to his account. If the whole fortune of each person were treated in such a manner, and it is this we foresee must be the legal situation in the definitely social state (having for sole tax the succession duty, etc., etc.), it is plain that the true function of the accountant-general would be that of recorder of the state, of the shifting social position of each person, the determiner of the diagram of his active, relatively effective life. Each individual would thus have the stereotype of his effective social life cast; each social being would have his effective life formulated, if one may so speak, _by relation_, always by relations, nothing but by relations--to that of all the rest, but in figures, and yet again, in nothing but figures. And herein is seen clearly the fundamental error or profound confusion of those who believe there can be any other thing in the social problem which occupies us than what has just been stated; of those who imagine that capital or fortune must be able at _every moment_, and not eventually, in the sole end of utilising the metal for itself, to be represented by its equivalent in gold or silver; of those who persuade themselves that the words capital and fortune represent anything else than _relative_ social power of action or enjoyment which it is sufficient to record, to make public, purely, simply and legally, as we propose, in order that it may be absolutely guaranteed to each person. ERNEST SOLVAY. FOOTNOTES: [A] _Annals of the Institute._ N^o 1. June, 1894. [B] If it is not admitted that the term _dh/o_ exactly represents the account of the conditions of the supply and the demand, it could be represented in a more general way by a function F (_dho_) of the elements _d_, _h_, _o_, which are the only ones which ever can, according to our view, intervene in the fixing, for even admitting that things could be regulated to the last point, socialized if you will, these two elements of supply and demand would at least remain always existing and dominant. [C] It is by design that we employ the expression _transactional value_ in order to differentiate it from a value such as would result from a theory of the measure of value based on work stored up in transactional merchandise, a theory with which we have not here to occupy ourselves. [D] _Annales de l'Institut_, 1896. N^{os} 1 and 4. [E] _Annales de l'Institut_, 1896. N^o 5. [F] We think we ought here to recall (see: _Comptabilism et Proportionnalisme social_) that every-one who makes transactions carries about with him not only his account book, but also a marker or stamp bearing representative figures or signs, identifying his personality and by aid of which he inscribes or obliterates the figures significant of the transactions in the account book of his correspondent. It is needless to add, that instead of marking,--an operation we have always put forward the better to show that all account-keeping can be done by simple inscription or the registration of figures and without any «exchange» whatsoever, not even of bits of paper--a system could be adopted, for example, consisting of having on the credit and debit sides of the account-books, leaves of stamps more or less analogous to postage stamps, credit-stamps which the buyer would detach from his account-book, and which would be fastened into that of the seller, then the seller would detach from his account-book corresponding debit stamps to be fastened to the debit side of that of the buyer. These stamps would carry naturally besides their signification the same figures or representative signs of the personality of the maker of the transaction as the marker they would be destined to replace. The comptabilistic system making use of such stamps rather than of marks would be applied to defered payments as well as to current payments, it could be thus used in every case. The principle of the account-book consists naturally in the book forming a real account with debit and credit--like all accounts in ordinary book keeping,--in which is inscribed in a way which would be regarded as valid, having legal force the sums corresponding to the transactions effected either by being written out at full length, with the signature, or by marking in figures, and indicating at the same time the personality of the party making the transaction, or by means of stamps as we have just seen, or finally by some other way. Directly we leave the principle above mentioned to look at some intermediary form of its application, a host of combinations offer themselves. The use of stamps for example would permit doing away with the debit side in the account books. The buyer in this case detaches, from his account-book, which becomes now only a credit account book, the stamps corresponding to the extent of the transaction, and he sticks them in the account book of the seller, which is also only a credit one: the credit of the seller increases, that of the buyer diminishes, that is all. If the buyer does not stick his stamps in the account-book of the seller, these stamps can circulate, they would be analogous to bank notes which have been endorsed by writing upon them the name of the first party holding them. SOCIAL COMPTABILISM (COMPLEMENTARY NOTE) By ERNEST SOLVAY In the last number of these Annals[G], I explained in a manner which I consider definitive, the theoretical conception of comptabilism. To this point of view it seems to me necessary to add a few words in order to throw light on certain points which the first article did not sufficiently bring out. We have seen what is the use of money and to whom it is of use, we have considered if it was indispensable. Gold and silver are not a «real commodity» except when they take the form of useful objects, utensils, works of art, etc., the possession of which produces enjoyment. Turned into coin, they lose this character, they become an instrument, an instrument recognised so far as indispensable for obtaining a real commodity, be this commodity material or moral, by an operation which I have designated under the general term of «transaction». Money is not then a commodity in the true sense of the word; on the contrary it is generally obtained by the surrender of a commodity. It is solely in order to accomplish the «operation» of transaction that money is needed, because this is the method, the means, the instrument which custom has consecrated; and if another practicable method, means or instrument were found in order to accomplish this operation money would no longer be indispensable. Now, this is what comptabilism does. It is essential to note here that the comptabilistic unities, francs, marks, pounds, etc., would be derived from securities, and not, as with money by the surrender of commodities, that in consequence these unities would no longer have a value by themselves, but simply by the things which they represented. But apart from that, they could be with held or parted with, they could be borrowed or lent, with or without interest, directly from man to man, or by the medium of banking houses, exactly as in the case of money. And in fact, if the force of habit required, nothing would prevent their being called money of account or comptabilistic money, since apart from what has just been said as to the way of obtaining them and their nature, nothing would be altered in the current methods, everything would remain as to day both in the organisation of business and of society. And all that might have been said, written or thought until now in an opposite sense to the fore going considerations should be held as contrary to the reality of the facts resulting from comptabilism. The conception of the comptabilistic system is one quite other than that of the monetary system. There is not the smallest trace of this second conception in the first; it becomes necessary to leave entirely the one to understand the other. In a word the two conceptions mutually exclude each other; the one is based upon _exchange_, the other upon _accounts_, and the two systems derived rest thus on two essentially different principles. The examination of the theoretical side of the comptabilistic system could not be undertaken through the ideas, nor from the point of view derived from the monetary system. It is necessary first of all to accustom oneself to think and speak of business, finances, etc., abstraction being made of every idea of money and to persuade oneself that transactions--and by transactions I understand every operation, whatever it may be, which gives rise at present to the use of money or its equivalent--when finally analysed, only modify the ratio of fortunes. If these ratios could be continuously recognised and fixed, could be officially registered, money would lose its use. Indeed, money put in circulation by whatsoever an operation is only a means of granting to the one who receives it, the power to acquire subsequently its equivalent, the other who has given the money having diminished by this much this power as far as he is concerned. Now the comptabilistic system in officially registering this power, acquired on the one hand and diminished on the other, permits the afore mentioned ratios being fixed, and realises entirely the part played by money. Therefore it can entirely be substituted for the monetary system. And let it be said, in its favour, that the power registered in this system cannot itself be lessened by the fact of the fluctuations in price of the metal, as actually now takes place. Moreover, the necessity which exists at this present moment of surrendering commodities to procure the monetary instrument indispensable in transactions, would disappear. It is evident that it might have been possible _theoretically_ to pass directly from the regime of barter to the application of the comptabilistic system, and if one admits that the conception of this system could have been produced at this far distant epoch, and have been thus used from the commencement,--which in the presence of the laws of evolution of the human mind, could only be a pure hypothesis--it must be immediately granted that the monetary idea could not then have occurred to anyone--and even admitting, which is impossible, that it had occurred all the same to someone, no one would have dreamt of making use of it, so much in the presence of comptabilism would the monetary system have seemed barbarous by its illogical and inconvenient character. Such are the theoretical considerations which it seems necessary to insist upon. But if there is a difficulty in comprehending the question from its theoretical side, this difficulty disappears if approached from the practical side. This is what will be seen on examining the system which M. Hector Denis has gone to study in Austria and which he proposes to realise in Belgium. All the post-offices in the Austrian Empire are in connection with the Savings Bank, the central establishment of which is in Vienna and which has become during the last few years a thoroughly comptabilistic establishment, in this sense, that,--independent of its primitive aim, it keeps the accounts of over thirty thousand who are affiliated and who annually through this medium do business of which the figures are above a thousand millions of florins. The Savings Bank exacts from those persons who wish to transact business through its medium, a fixed monetary deposit of 100 florins, without relation therefore to the importance of the transactions which they can effect; it opens for them an account and delivers them, upon request, cheque books which serve to effect the payments which they desire to make. All this is done by the intervention of any post-office of the Empire. Each time that a cheque is paid by an affiliated person, the Central Office at Vienna is advised by post and returns immediately, also by post, an extract of their account to the two persons concerned. Each affiliated person's account is thus kept to date, and this as much for the Central Bank as for the person affiliated. Here then are thirty thousand persons who could at a stretch do entirely without money--if their mutual relations were sufficient to permit them to do so for all the necessaries of life, and this result is obtained merely by the fact that an official establishment is willing to undertake to keep the banking account. But it is seen that these thirty thousand persons are but a select few in the mass of the population, since the Savings Bank admits them to carry on transactions merely upon the deposit of 100 florins, thus almost always at the risk and peril of the transactors, as has always been the case so far in regard to cheques. And it is evident that if it were desired to make the system general, it would be necessary to adopt the principle of comptabilism which would mean that the transactions were guaranteed by the property of the persons affiliated. Here then, as I said, has the Savings Bank of Vienna become up to a certain point a comptabilistic establishment. I may add that the dangers that might threaten this institution, as far as it actually works, spring from its being not entirely comptabilistic, in so far as it still retains the metallic basis. The deposits received are not left unproductive, they are placed in funds, public or otherwise. Let a political crisis occur which should cause a rush of withdrawals of these deposits from the Bank and it would be exposed to the greatest dangers. Solely because the institution is based upon current ideas and not upon the comptabilistic system. In effect, in this latter system, the individual who is affiliated does not make a deposit of monetary unities having a value in themselves, he gives as a pledge a commodity, and according to the value of this commodity he is permitted to make use of more or less unities. Here then is the ground on which the institution ought to be based. Under these conditions deposits are not necessary. The affiliated person will give a pledge in exchange for his cheque book. The registers of the Central Savings Bank will declare that he is permitted to carry on transactions with _x_ unities, and his cheques will be accepted, as long as he does not go beyond this figure. In place of a deposit having a value of its own, there is the simply writing down, the entry of a right, and the dangers of the present system would be avoided. The entry and the writing down constitute the ideal realization of the comptabilistic system. They lead one to understand that the transactional unities have only a fictitious value, that they serve solely to measure the transactional value of things, that their system is thus dependant on the existence of these things. Ideally speaking, all the transactions, that is to say the changes in the fortunes of individuals, may be written down, may be entered, for example in bank books. But concerning the practical side, although the entry remains the ideal conception, it may be that the necessities of human relations require other methods of a more convenient nature. This is a side of the question upon which we hope soon to set forth some solutions, but which can be discussed without the theoretical side of comptabilism being introduced. ERNEST SOLVAY. FOOTNOTES: [G] _Annales de l'Institut des Sciences sociales_, of Brussels. THE ORGANISATION AND WORKING OF THE CHEQUE AND CLEARING SERVICE (CHECKS UND CLEARING VERKEHR) IN THE AUSTRIAN POSTAL SAVINGS BANK By HECTOR DENIS The accumulation and safe keeping of funds, their investment with the triple guarantee of security, productiveness and easy and prompt realization are regarded as the fundamental functions of Savings Banks, and it is in these directions that their development has especially been accomplished. The comparative studies on these institutions, such as the works of Rostrand and the fine account of Messrs Hamande and Burny testify to the increasing ingenuity of the means of drawing out and gathering up savings, and of the great expansion Savings Banks well conducted can give to divers forms of credit, and will finally be obliged to give them. But such is the flexibility of this institution that in carrying the spirit of reform into the means of assuring to the depositor the most prompt and convenient disposal of his savings, there ought, in order to apply it to his payments, to be accomplished in the Savings Bank, an evolution equally fecund in a new direction. A savings bank like that of Vienna having at its command the powerful lever of the postal service, combining in a few years with singular ability, the centralization of the accounts of its depositors with the post office functions,--at once receptive and distributive, centripetal and centrifugal, cannot fail to appear one of the most ingenious, stable and perfect organs of modern circulation. There is no need to discover in this functional evolution the realisation of any new principle--undeniable bonds of filiation attach it manifestly to the Bank of Amsterdam, whose system of clearing accounts Adam Smith has so admirably described, and in a still more distant past to the Bank of Venice, which, more perhaps than the Bank of St-George, served as a type to the Bank of Amsterdam; only like the most advanced modern institutions of credit and settling up, it has, over the primitive institutions, the advantage of perfections of means, of rapidity, and of an ever-growing importance in its operations, and of an ever increasing economy of money;--it has as its own peculiar features conditions of special expansion, valuable means of control and specially a capacity of adaptation to a system of credit institutions which can make it one of the instruments of the transformation of the monetary system. The Austrian Imperial Government in carrying out the reforms which are the subject of this paper does not directly pursue the solution of the monetary problem, but is primarily occupied with the financial interest of the Savings Bank. As its able secretary, M. Tobisch, has explained, the law of May 28^{th} 1882, of which the text is given further on, in organising the Postal Savings Bank, caused no doubt a considerable number of deposits to be made, but their average importance was so feeble and they involved such general expenses, that the cost almost completely absorbed the results of the investments. In order to distribute these general expenses over a greater mass of monies and to realise a larger clear profit, that is to cause more considerable deposits to be made by especially interesting tradesmen and working-men to have recourse to the medium of the Savings Bank, a notice of the Minister of Commerce of Oct. 29 1883, authorised the depositors of over 100 florins to draw cheques on the Central Office at Vienna. Originally the depositor remained the holder of his account-book, but from Dec. 1 1886, the deposit of all such books at the Central Office in Vienna became obligatory for those who wished to take advantage of the cheque service. The institution of this service had a considerable influence on the progress of the amount of deposits; before the reform in 1883 the total deposits amounted to 8,176,889 florins, a year after in 1884, they reached 56,586,461 florins, of which 46,223,539 was connected with the cheque service. The natural corollary of the centralisation at Vienna of the accounts of all those who adhered to the cheque-service was the organisation of the service of clearing accounts, for the more the number of its adherents increased, the more frequently it happened that one depositor drew a cheque in favour of another depositor. The cheque, up till then payable in specie, became a clearing cheque realisable by a simple transfer in writing. This complimentary service which is destined to become the principal one, was instituted Sept. 1 1884. The Austrian institution is only at present an element in the vast modern system of credit and the balancing of accounts and no one is ignorant that the system entirely rests on metallic money, as Stanley Jevons, Francis A. Walker and Macleod have elsewhere clearly shown. Macleod makes the striking comparison of modern circulation to the movement of a peg top which spins round on a very fine metallic point. The Postal Savings Bank, as it is organised and works, has not yet any kind of purpose of freeing circulation from its metallic basis, but like all other credit institutions, it contributes to this end by economising more and more the use of money; with extraordinary powers of expansion, it enables an ever increasing number of respectable persons, associations or bodies, to effect all their payments without the least risk, almost without loss of time and without having to keep any metallic money in their possession. And if one tries to conceive the future ideal evolution of an instrument so flexible as the Savings Bank, one may expect as I shall attempt to show in subsequent papers, that in combining its circulatory function with its function of investment it will be led into concurrence with the radical transformation sought by M. Solvay in the definitive elimination of the metallic instrument. The sources from which the materials of this account have been drawn, are the laws, regulations and instructions of which the translation is appended, the statistics of the cheque and clearing service in the last official report (Zwölfter Rechenschaftsbericht des postsparcassen Amtes) the remarkable studies of M. Tobisch, secretary of the Savings Bank, and finally direct observation. Guided by one of the most enlightened officials of the Savings Bank, Inspector L. Kotschy, I have been able to penetrate into the inner life of this admirable institution. The Vienna Central Postal Bank occupies the old palace of the University; there, distributed in its antique halls, a population of 1,300 employés, among them 150 ladies, working after a skilfully organised plan, pursue silently now for thirteen years, with inflexible method, an experiment of very great interest for science and for the economic life of societies. Bound by invisible threads to more than four thousand secondary organs:--the post offices, which plunge directly into the torrent of the exchanges,--the Central Office records each day with extraordinary precision the minutest changes that the ever increasing number of its adherents accomplish in the social movement of wealth. All the operations of which it thus fixes the traces arrange themselves into two great classes which recur as the two essential aspects of the rhythmic movement of a central organ of circulation; one joins in the formation of the property of every adherent of the system, in the constitution of his credit at the Central Bank; the other leads to different modes of disposing of his property and to the formation of his debit. The services of cheques and account-clearing[H] of the Austrian Savings Bank enable on the one hand every person to make, under conditions fixed by law, in any Post Office in the Austrian Empire, payments on account, or to the profit of all those who participate in the service; on the other and they enable every adherent to assign by means of a payment cheque, a part of his property to anyone, physically and morally, or by means of a clearance cheque to cause the transfer to be made to the account of another participator in the service. The Austrian terminology bristles with difficulties, the name of _cheque verkehr_ is here given to the first of these services, _circulation of payment cheques_ resulting in the end in the use of metallic money, and to the second service, the name of _clearing verkehr_, circulation of _clearing cheques_, which resolves itself, as far as the Savings Bank is concerned, into the transference from one account to another, in the substitution of one creditor for another. The cheque service may exclusively be adhered to, or the cheque and _clearing_ service. For affiliation to the cheque service it is necessary to request the Office of the Postal Savings Bank in Vienna to open an account, to send a cheque book and a book of _certificates of receipts and deposits_, of which we are now about to speak. The cheque book costs 1 florin 50 kreutzers, the certificates of deposit 1 kreutzer a piece. The Post Office can refuse the request without having to give any reason. If an account is opened to the grantee, he receives cheque books and certificates, but he is bound within a month to effect a deposit of 100 florins as security. Neither the law nor the regulations fix any maximum of deposit. The minimum of 100 florins will remain in the hands of the administration, without the person entitled to it being able to dispose of it as long as he has an account open in the Post Office. The adhesion to the _clearing_ circulation is at once requested by the Post Office, of adherents to the cheque service. The number of adherents to the cheque service is not identical with that of adherents to the service of _clearing_. For the thirteen years that these services have been instituted the first has always taken precedence of the second, but the divergence which exists between the two numbers is being reduced and the number of adherents to the _clearing_ service tends to blend and will finally blend with the adherents to the cheque service. The geographical distribution of those who have accounts in the two services is of much interest. In 1895, out of 28,363 adherents to the cheque service there were 27,820 in Austria, 353 in Hungary, and 190 abroad,--163 in the German Empire, 5 in England, 1 in France, 3 in Holland, 5 in Italy, 3 in Switzerland, 2 in Belgium--an interesting fact. The twelfth report: _Zwölfter Rechenschaftsbericht des postsparcassen Amtes_, insists on the important number of Hungarian commercial firms, affiliated to the Austrian Bank, all of whom have an account open in the Post Office Savings Bank instituted in 1887 at Budapest; it announces the approaching inauguration of a direct and regular service of account-keeping between the two Banks, a service to which the traders in both countries attach great importance. It will mark a new phase in the evolution of the institution; and form as it were the preface to its internationalisation. It is curious to note that out of 543 residing in Hungary and abroad who have cheque accounts, there are 434 who are affiliated to the _Clearing_ at Vienna, that is 79.9%, a proportion very much larger than is seen in all those in the various Austrian provinces. The number of those having accounts has successively been: In the In the cheque service clearing service In 1883 167 » 1884 2,520 1,283 » 1885 6,877 4,733 » 1886 10,553 7,274 » 1887 12,981 8,758 » 1888 14,296 9,836 » 1889 16,046 11,025 » 1890 17,808 12,200 » 1891 19,391 13,331 » 1892 21,365 14,955 » 1893 23,471 16,197 » 1894 25,834 18,250 » 1895 28,363 20,750 From the above it is seen that the proportion per cent of the number of adherents to the service of clearing rises gradually in the later years;--after having from 1890 to 1893 been nearly uniformly from 69 to 70%, it rises in 1895 to 73.2%. The classification of the adherents from the point of view of conditions and profession reveals the elasticity peculiar to such an institution. Advocates, notaries, doctors, even professors appear in great numbers. Manufacturers and traders united represent nevertheless more than half the total number of members; 339 bankers and money-changers, 362 associations for savings and loans, 220 private savings banks, 1,490 associations or corporations,--public establishments of which 185 were communes and administrative bodies,--271 benevolent associations, funds, establishments and foundations, 175 agricultural and forestal associations and 175 religious associations, 266 assurance societies, and 204 journals or periodicals serving as media for the Savings Bank. The administration of the State forests and domains have recourse to the Savings Bank in order to bank the produce of the forestal sales, and the administration of taxes is now experimenting as to its intervention for the getting in of duties. This institution thus presents a marvellous flexibility, invading by degrees the whole domain of exchange and enveloping one by one all the organs of the collective life. Let us first explain the modes of operating payments to the profit of every member affiliated to the cheque and clearing service. In the first of these modes, the instrument employed is the _certificate or attestation of receipt and of deposit_ (_empfang erlag scheine_). (Fig. 1.) Books containing blank certificates are issued by the Central Office at the low price of a kreutzer the piece, to every person adhering to the cheque and clearing services; these are books of 10, 20, 50 and 100 pieces, and to meet the needs of various holders they are drawn up either in German or in some other of the tongues spoken in the Empire. All these certificates bear the number of the account to the operations of which they are destined and carry the name and the address of the account holder. Each of the certificates presents three parts which are separated one from the other in the course of the operation: the first, the counterfoil, remains attached to the book and in the hands of the holder of the account; of the two others, one, the attestation of the payment, has to be returned by the Post Office receiver to the person who makes the payment; the third the certificate of the deposit has to be transmitted to the Central Office at Vienna, which returns it to the holder of the account. To make a payment it is necessary to fill in the certificate of receipt and the certificate of deposit, and to present them at a Post Office with the sum to be paid into the holder's account. The receiver of the Post Office will bank the sum, and will sign the receipt, imprinting on it the stamp of the office, and will remit it to the person making the payment; he will then detach the certificate of the deposit and will send it to the Central office at Vienna with the daily account of his operations. The central administration will immediately credit the person in whose favour the payment is made, in the account that it has opened for him, and it will then transmit to him the deposit certificate with an extract of his account. Such is the series of operations which result from _empfang erlag schein_. Suppose for example that the holder of an account is a merchant who has furnished supplies to a customer in the provinces to the amount of a hundred florins, net. He fills up a leaf of the account book, bearing a certain number, on which he indicates the amount payable, and which payment is to be placed to his account; he sends this leaf to his customer, keeping the counterfoil with the customer's name written on it: the customer forwards the leaf to the Post Office where he lives with the sum due: the postal receiver separates from the leaf the certificate of receipt (_empfang schein_), which he signs and returns to the customer, he sends the certificate of deposit to the Central Office at Vienna, where the sum is carried to the account of the merchant. After which the deposit certificate bearing the name of the person making the payment is forwarded to the merchant with an extract from his current account, enabling him thus to exercise strict control. [Illustration: FIGURE I. [1]Coupon den ____ 189__ [2]Empfang-Schein pr. ____ fl. __ kr. gesendet an: D. S. Nr. 37 c (15.) ex 94. * * * * * Nummer [3]Empfang-Schein über eine Einlage von ____ fl. ____ kr., d. i. fl. _______________ auf das Check Conto Nr. 800.000 des k. k. Postsparcassen-Amtes. [4]Conto-Inhaber: JOSEF FISCHER, JÄGERNDORF * * * * * [5]Unterschrift des Postbeamten * * * * * [6]Erlag-Schein Nummer über eine Einlage von ____ fl. ____ kr. geleistet durch. ____ ____ auf das Check-Conto Nr. 800.000 des k. k. Postsparcassen-Amtes. [7]Postempel: [8]Dieser Erlag-Schein ist durch den Postbeamten abzutrennen und mit der Tagesrechnung an das k. k. Postsparcassen-Amt einzusenden. D. S. Nr. 37 c (15.) ex 94. * * * * * }Von der Partei auszufüllen. * * * * * [1] Voucher. [2] Acknowledgement of receipt of ... fl.... kr. sent to ... [3] Acknowledgement of a payment of ... fl.... kr. l. e fl.... to the cheque-account N^o ... of the Post Office Savings Bank. [4] Holder of the current-account. [5] Signature of the post office official. [6] Acknowledgement of a deposit ... fl.... kr. made by ... to the cheque account N^o ... of the Post Office Savings Bank. [7] Post Office stamp. [8] This acknowledgement of deposit is to be detached and to be sent with the daily account to the Post Office Savings Bank.] [Illustration: Space for notifications sent to the holder of the current account (affix a postage stamps of 2 kr.). * * * * * By means of this acknowledgement of receipt, a payment to the cheque account designated on the other side may be made in every post office (receiving office). The acknowledgement of receipt and the acknowledgement of deposit, properly filled up are to be presented with the sum in question to the post office official. This official certifies the receipt of the sum on the acknowledgement of receipt and returns it to the payer, whilst he detaches the acknowledgement of deposit and sends it to the Post Office Savings Bank. The Savings Bank informs the holder of the account both by extract from the current-account and by the acknowledgement of deposit, that the sum has been received. Acknowledgements of receipt or deposit on which are found erasures, obliterations or alterations of any kind, either in the printed text or the written sum are not accepted by the post offices. Similarly acknowledgements of receipt or of deposit which are very dirty or much torn are refused.] Deposits can be made by the intermediary of rural postmen to the extent of 500 florins. In this case the receipt and deposit certificates must be remitted to them with the sum; a provisional receipt is given which is replaced at the next round by the official receipt of the district post-office. It will be interesting to show the importance to which this mode of arranging deposits has now attained. There is at the Central Office at Vienna a printing office which permanently employs 16 workmen, exclusively engaged in printing cheques and certificates of receipts and deposits. Six million of the latter kind of certificates are now annually printed and the number of them printed since the setting up of this system in 1883 amounts to 107 millions. An office for the verification and control of the printed matter is connected with this workshop. As to the amount of payments made through these certificates to the accounts of holders the 12^{th} Report enables us to give the statistics. At the opening of the year 1883 the sums paid into the funds of the account holders, by means of the _Empfang erlag schein_ amounted to 322,284 florins. They rose successively: In 1884 to 43,748,349 florins. » 1885 » 217,109,144 » » 1886 » 361,466,434 » » 1887 » 442,138,414 » » 1888 » 446,874,084 » » 1889 » 517,734,775 » » 1890 » 592,089,250 » » 1891 » 663,221,494 » » 1892 » 731,325,411 » » 1893 » 811,318,663 » » 1894 » 889,793,808 » » 1895 » 969,479,217 » The annual growth has been during the later years about 70 to 80 millions of florins. It moves at a regular pace. I have shown by the example above how by aid of the _empfang erlag scheine_, the trader can by means of his responsible agent, the Savings Bank, receive at once the amounts of his invoices, without the money passing through his own hands. Numerous other applications of the system are before us: commercial travellers can deposit to the account of their employers, the sums they have collected in their rounds; they can even add at the back of the certificate such helpful notes as they think necessary; the commercial firm which employs them being regularly and immediately informed of payments by account extracts and the certificates of deposit being successively forwarded to the firm by the Central Office at Vienna. Associations of every kind having accounts at the Savings Bank can by the same means gather subscriptions from the members: it is enough to send their members _certificates of receipt and deposit_; each one makes his payment at the neighbouring post office; the associations receiving, as the merchants, extracts of their accounts. Assurance societies can in like manner, effect the payment of their insurers' premiums without any formality beyond that of sending to these insurers the _empfang erlag scheine_. And in like manner subscriptions to journals and all kinds of periodical payments can be received. _Secondly._ Post Office orders issued to the benefit of any person affiliated to the cheque-service can, at his request be placed to the credit of his account. He gives to this end, on forms required by the regulations, an authorisation at his district post office. On its side the Central Office of the Savings Bank puts itself in relation with the post office. Ingenious combinations which are indicated in the instructions reproduced in the appendix to this paper, cause the order to be transmitted to the Money Order Office of the Viennese Post Office, which in paying the amount to the Central Office of the Savings Bank will at the game time inform of this transmission, the person in whose favour the order is made out. The Post Office Orders only take a very secondary position in the accounts of the _cheque_ and _clearing_ service. In 1884 their amount rose to 851,514 florins » 1885 to 6,399,576 » » 1886 » 14,197,234 » » 1887 » 17,702,424 » » 1888 » 17,853,284 » » 1889 » 18,967,659 » » 1890 » 22,349,594 » » 1891 » 25,614,771 » » 1892 » 26,271,893 » » 1893 » 27,230,128 » » 1894 » 28,252,117 » » 1895 » 29,241,933 » It is stated that the progressive movement is at once slower and more regular since 1891, than it was previously. _Thirdly._ The Postal Savings Bank receives in like manner for the benefit of holders of cheque-books, dividend warrants due from the Austrian public funds. It records the amount of them to the credit of the holder's account and receives a fee of 1 kreutzer a piece. It is the least important of the agencies which feed the credit of the adherents of the system. In 1884 the amount received was 3,310 florins » 1885 44,056 » » 1886 114,684 » » 1887 134,588 » » 1888 147,833 » » 1889 131,944 » » 1890 148,104 » » 1891 167,199 » » 1892 165,139 » » 1893 176,524 » » 1894 223,757 » » 1895 254,497 » _Fourthly._ The amount of claims to debts and bills rendered payable at the post office can in like manner be placed to the credit of the adherent to the cheque and clearing service in favour of whom these bills have been drawn. The importance of this agency is more considerable, but its progressive development is said to move at an irregular rate. Introduced in 1886, it was absolutely insignificant during the first two years. 1886 17,916 florins 1887 23,370 » 1888 1,013,478 » 1889 1,072,812 » 1890 1,511,822 » 1891 2,303,012 » 1892 2,740,125 » 1893 2,623,893 » 1894 3,001,165 » 1895 4,301,265 » _Fifthly._ When the bearer of a cheque book is at the same time an adherent to the _clearing_ circulation, the amount of the cheques issued in his favour is carried to the credit of his account by the Postal Savings Bank, unless on these cheques is expressly noted: _Outside the clearing circulation_. The amount of this service, after that of the _empfang erlag scheine_, is the most important element in the formation of the accounts' credit. It has nearly quintupled in the last ten years, moving forward, since 1886, at a steady rate, a proof, as the whole of the facts otherwise witness, of the progressive penetration of the system into the national economy. At the opening of the institution of _clearing verkehr_, in the second fortnight in 1884, the amount of the sums carried to the _clearing_ account was: 1884 1,620,102 florins 1885 40,271,880 » 1886 102,185,786 » 1887 150,479,085 » 1888 177,846,958 » 1889 216,683,156 » 1890 264,262,296 » 1891 310,141,924 » 1892 360,498,168 » 1893 414,342,892 » 1894 445,378,270 » 1895 482,031,950 » The last and assuredly the most ingenious of the application of the system is being made at this very time in the payment of taxes. The _certificate of the payment of taxes (steuer Einzahlungs-schein)_ is nothing but a special form of _empfang erlag schein_; the Savings Bank proceeds experimentally by the trial of this mode of collecting the taxes in the province of Lower Austria. The document, which costs 5 kreutzers, is divided into three parts: the _Empfang schein_, the _Erlag schein_, the _Treasury acknowledgement: Amtliche bestätigung_ (confirmation and official attestation). (Fig. II.) The tax payer pays at the Post Office the amount of his tax which must be paid to the account of the central administration of taxes at Vienna; the document bears the account number of this Receipt Office of Taxation. The attestation of this payment of the tax-payer is signed by the postal employé and bears the stamp of his post office. The remainder of the document is detached from the tax receipt and presents at first the _erlag schein_; it is the authentication of the deposit paid to the cashier of the administration of finances and which is sent by an employé of the Central Post Office at Vienna. It bears the name, the profession, the address of the tax-payer, the amount of the payment made by him, and shows what is the nature of the taxes received and the number of the account at the ministry of finances. The other part of the document is the attestation by the ministry of finances itself of the payment made to its account; this _amtliche bestätigung_ will be detached and sent to the tax-payer: he will thus possess in the end a double authentication. It may be easily imagined how a tax-payer who is an adherent of the clearing service can pay his tax by a simple transfer of accounts, the ministry of finances having itself an account open at the Savings Bank. If the various modes which concur to the formation of the property of the account holders in the Central Office at Vienna are considered as a whole the total amount of deposits has successively been: In 1883 322,284 florins » 1884 46,223,529 » » 1885 263,853,687 » » 1886 478,190,612 » » 1887 610,477,881 » » 1888 643,735,637 » » 1889 754,590,345 » » 1890 880,361,067 » » 1891 1,001,448,400 » » 1892 1,121,000,736 » » 1893 1,255,692,098 » » 1894 1,366,649,116 » » 1895 1,485,308,862 » In fixing the proportional relations per cent of all the statistical data here brought together we see that the factors which concur to form the credit of the double service of cheques and of clearing, the payments made by way of _empfang erlag schein_ represent in 1895, 65%, and the transfers by writing about 35%, while the total amount of the banking of post office orders, of interest in the public funds and of bills does not come to more than 3% of the whole. [Illustration: FIGURE II. Preis[1] 5 kr. Steuer-Einzahlungs-Schein, Preis 5 kr. _N^o 1_ [2]Empfang-Schein über eine Einlage von .. fl. .. kr., d. i. fl. ____________________ ____________________ auf das Postsparcassen-Check-Conto Nr. 809,990 des Städtischen Central-Steueramtes in Wien (I. Rathhaus). * * * * * Post-Stempel: [3]Unterschrift des Postbeamten; D.S. Nr. 120 (1.) ex 96. * * * * * Post-Stempel _N^o 1_ [4]Erlag-Schein über eine Einlage von ____ fl. __ kr. geleistet durch: (Vor-und Zuname des Steuerträgers) (dessen Gewerbe oder Beschästigung) (dessen Wohn-oder Betriebsort) Bez Gasse (Platz); Haus-Nr. auf das Postsparcassen-Check-Conto Nr. 809,900 des Städtischen Central-Steueramtes in Wien. [5]Als Grundateuer: Bezirk (Sleuergeineinde) ___ Besitzbogen-Nr. ___ [6]Als Hammeclammenutuer: Bezirk (Sleuergeineinde) ___ Conscript.-Nr. D. S. Nr. 120 (1.) ex 96. * * * * * [7]Amtliche Bestätigung Der im Checkverkehr des k. k. Postsparcassen-Amtes am. ______ ___ 189--entrichtete Betrag Pr. ______ fl. ___ kr. wurde verrechnet; * * * * * ----------+-----------------+---------------- |[8]Steuer sammt |[9]Vereugssinsen | Umlagen | +---------+-------+----------+----- | fl. |kr. | fl. |kr. +---------+-------+----------+----- | | | | * * * * * [10](Baum für Mittheilungen an die Partei.) * * * * * [1] Acknowledgement of payment of taxes, price: 5 kr. [2] Acknowledgement of receipt of a sum of ... fl.... kr. for the cheque account N^o ... of the Central Office of Taxes of the city of Vienna. [3] Signature of the post office official. [4] Acknowledgement of deposit of a sum of ... fl.... kr. made by ... (surname and Christian name of the tax-payer, his profession, domicile, district, street (place), N^o ...) for the cheque account N^o ... of the Central Office of Taxes of the city of Vienna. [5] As land-tax. [6] As house-tax. [7] Official attestation. The sum paid by the cheque service of the Post Office Savings Bank, on the ... th of ... 189 ..., has been placed to account. [8] Tax. [9] Interest charged for delay in payment of tax. [10] Space for notifications to the person interested.] [Illustration: POST CARD Amount fl. kr. House-tax Professional-tax Income-tax Costs arising from delay, execution, etc. (Space for other advices to the Office of taxes) This certificate of deposit is to be detached by the post-office official, and to be sent with the adhering official attestation together with the daily account to the Post Office Savings Bank. 2 kreutzers * * * * * Instructions for the persons interested By means of this acknowledgement of payment, the direct taxes indicated on the acknowledgement of deposit and their additions can be paid in each post office, but only to the Central Office of Taxes of the city of Vienna (1. Town-hall). The tax-payer should indicate exactly and legibly, the sum paid, in figures and in letters, his name, profession and residence; he should also write down the tax in the columns designated for it indicating the kind. This condition not being fulfilled, the payment is not accepted by the post office. The tax-payers having a cheque-account in the Post Office Savings Bank can pay the taxes designated in this acknowledgement by a cheque sent to the Post Office Savings Bank at Vienna at the same time as this acknowledgement form, duly filled in. In this case the tax is only considered as paid on the day on which the cheque is entered in the books of the Post Office Savings Bank. Acknowledgements of payment on which alterations or erasures occur are not accepted.] The second class of operations of the cheque and clearing service of the Austrian Postal Savings Bank embraces the different modes of disposing of the property of the depositors who share in the service. The cheque is in a general way the instrument to which they recur under its two fundamental forms of cheques of payment and cheques of clearing, according as the amount is to be paid in cash or to be transferred to the account of another participant in the clearing service. The cheque books remitted to holders serve the double purpose; it has not been found necessary to print distinct documents, nor even to give to these two classes of cheques different colours. Cheque books containing fifty pieces are remitted to participants by the Central Office at the charge of 1 florin 50 kreutzers; this sum means 50 kreutzers, expense of paper and printing and 1 florin stamp duty. They are printed on the premises of the Central Office as are the attestations of receipts and deposits. About 2,500,000 of them are now annually reproduced and more than 23,000,000 of cheques have been issued since the official presses were first set up at Vienna. They are prepared either in German, or in any other language spoken in the Empire. Before sending them to the holders of an account the Office prints on each of these vouchers the number of the account for which they are to be used, as well as the name and address of the holder. (Fig. III.) Expressed in ordinary terms, the cheque states, that the Savings Bank will pay, on the voucher being forwarded, the sum of which the amount in florins has been written out in full. It bears the signature of the person drawing it. To avoid frauds in the statement of the sums to be paid, the Savings Bank has adopted moreover an arrangement so ingenious and sure that up to the present time no fraud has been noted. The cheque bears to the right four series of figures going from 1 to 9. The first set corresponds to thousands, the second to hundreds, the third to tens, the fourth to units; the four series united together can express the sum of 9,999 florins, beyond which no cheque can be drawn, so that if this part of the document is left intact, the amount of the cheque will be 9,999 florins, provided always that the written statement agrees with the series of figures. If a lower figure is stated, then the number of the thousands, hundreds, tens exceeding the amount desired must be cut off with a pair of scissors. Suppose for example the cheque is to be for 782 florins; the column of the thousands is to be cut off, figures 8 and 9 in the columns of the hundreds, the last figure in that of the tens and the last seven in the column of units. It is evident that by this ingenious method of control, it will never be possible to raise the amount of the cheque; it will be of no use to alter the written statement of the amount in order to augment it, for it will never be possible to make a corresponding alteration in the arrangement of the figures to the right; by this process of cutting off, the cheque can only be reduced in value but never augmented. And if the agreement between the written figures and the combination of the figures resulting from this way of cutting them out is not perfectly exact, the Central Office at Vienna rejects the voucher as possibly fraudulent, at any rate erroneous. _Firstly._ (_Cassa-checks._) The cheque (of payment) can be payable to bearer at the Postal Savings Bank at Vienna. In this case it is delivered to the person who ought to receive the amount without the drawer having to transmit it to him. This party can either bank it himself immediately at the Post Office Bank at Vienna, or put it in circulation: this circulation is authorised for fourteen days, but the voucher cannot carry any endorsement. The cheque will be paid by the Office up to the time that the credit account of the drawer is sufficient to meet it. If the cheque has been delivered to a person affiliated to the postal-service of cheques and clearing, he can have the amount put to his credit instead of receiving it in cash. _Secondly._ (_Zahlungsanweisungen des postsparcassen-Amtes._) The customer of the Postal Savings Bank has the right to cause the amount of the cheque to be paid into the hands of a particular person in any one of the Post Offices; in this case he writes on the back of the cheque the address of the person for whom he intends it. [Illustration: FIGURE III. Coupon 0 _Datum_ .......... .... _fl._ .... _kr._ _an_ ............. ...................... ...................... ...................... ...................... 0 [1]_Conto-Inhaber_: JOSEF FISCHER _in_ JÄGERNDORF [2]_Conto Nr._ 800.000 * * * * * ........................ _den_ ...................... _189.._ [3]_Das_ =K.k. Postparacassen-Amt in Wien= _zahle gegen diesen_ =Check= _den Betrag von_: _Fl._ [4]_öst. W._ [5]Unterschrift des Ausstellers: _Gulden_ _kr._ _öst. W._ * * * * * [6]Tausender 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 [7]Hunderter 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 [8]Zehner 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 [9]Einer 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 * * * * * [1] Holder of the current account. [2] Number of the current account. [3] The Post Office Savings Bank at Vienna is requested to pay as against this cheque the sum of.... [4] Austrian Standard. [5] Signature of the drawer. [6] Thousands. [7] Hundreds. [8] Tens. [9] Units.] This cheque will be sent by him to the Central Office at Vienna. There are special envelopes for the transmission of these advices which are sold by the Office to the possessors of cheque books. The Central Office will immediately transmit to the person designated an assignment of payment and the cheque will be paid to him on his returning this assignment, signed by him as a receipt. He will detach from it, in order to preserve it, a portion on which is noted the amount of the sum he has received, who the holder of the account is, the said portion bearing also the stamp of the Postal Office at Vienna. A notice to the post office where it is payable will have been sent at the same time, giving authority to pay the cheque. (Fig. IV.) Everyday 4,000 to 5,000 of these authorisations to pay cheques are issued. Ladies write out these authorisations by means of type-writing machines: their fingers work the machine with astounding rapidity. According to the data given me each of them prints every day 400 to 500 assignments of payment to the persons designated and authorisations to the post-offices to pay; and the hours of work averaging seven, they write about one a minute. _Thirdly. (Postanweisungen.)_ The cheque can be drawn in favour of a person living in Hungary or a foreign country. It is enough that on the back is noted:--«for the issue of a post office order in favour of N ...», and that it is signed. The Central Office at Vienna will send immediately a post office order of corresponding import. The telegraphic order can even be used. Statistics distinguish these three categories of cheques and enable us to follow their movement. Payments effected By cheques By cheques to particular persons By foreign payable to bearer paid at the Post Post Office (Cassa checks)[I] Offices[J] Orders[K] 1884 13,639,555 25,791,497 83,834 1885 78,375,622 132,053,520 777,914 1886 141,052,319 220,198,781 1,420,668 1887 178,365,871 278,559,689 1,583,098 1888 180,295,982 280,241,673 1,705,948 1889 223,060,247 303,720,753 2,008,593 1890 271,660,264 335,293,896 2,469,268 1891 318,239,728 361,727,429 2,611,044 1892 347,410,842 398,456,797 2,558,398 1893 386,027,972 437,492,243 2,590,614 1894 433,377,459 472,345,574 3,028,639 1895 463,540,198 524,212,798 3,781,586 It will be seen that in the last ten years the movement of the cheques payable to bearer has been more rapid than that of cheques paid at the post offices; the amount of the former has more than tripled. _Fourthly._ The possessors of cheque books can cause purchases to be made by the Post Office in the public funds up to the amount of their account. The order ought to be explained by the transmission of a cheque of a value corresponding to that of the stocks to be bought. The rights acquired by the Post Office will either be sent on to the purchaser of the stocks, or at his request kept by the Office and under its guarantee. The Office banks the dividend warrants on their payments and places them to the credit of its client unless he requires them to be sent to him or the money remitted. [Illustration: FIGURE IV. [1]K. k. Postsparcassen-Amt in Wien [2]Aviso über eine Zahlungsanweisung _N^o_ ddto per [3]zahlbar an [4]bei dem aus der Aussenseite bezeichneten Postamte. [5]Ausgezahlt: [6]Ohne Büchel auszuzahlen. D.S. Nr. 8 II (21.) ex 96 ------------------------------------------ Coupon | | | für Rechnung | | von der Partei | abzutrennen. [7]K. k. Postsparcassen-Amt in Wien. [8]Zahlungs-Anweisung. _N^o_ [9](2 Monate giltig.) [10]Das k. k. Postamt [11]zahlt gegen diese Anweisung an: [12]den Betrag von ====================================================================== | [13]Ausgezahlt: | [14]Den obigen Betrag empfangen | | zu haben bestätigt: | | | | | | [15]Datum. | | | | | | ---------------------------------------------------------------------- D. S. Nr. 6 II (21.) ex 96. * * * * * [1] Post Office Savings Bank. [2] Advice with reference to an order for repayment. [3] Payable to.... [4] In the Post Office designated on the back. [5] Paid. [6] To be paid without Savings Book. [7] Post Office Savings Bank. [8] Order for repayment. [9] Valid during two months. [10] The Post Office. [11] Pay on this order to.... [12] The sum of.... [13] Paid. [14] In acknowledgement of the receipt of the above sum. [15] Date.] The importance of these payments is not considerable as is seen by the following figures: 1884 99,942 florins. 1885 374,697 " 1886 445,338 " 1887 844,978 " 1888 887,037 " 1889 955,019 " 1890 1,274,607 " 1891 1,091,839 " 1892 1,149,872 " 1893 1,685,791 " 1894 1,697,270 " 1895 1,865,919 " _Fifthly._ The Postal Savings Bank pays in the same way on account of the adherents of the cheque and clearing service, bills, signed bonds, accounts admitted and approved. Bills of exchange are settled at the Postal Office at Vienna. In order to realize their payment, the holder of an account draws a cheque for the amount of the bill and writes on the back: _for payment of the bill herein refered to_. He indicates the date of its falling due and puts his signature below these remarks. This cheque is sent to the Postal Office at Vienna before the bill falls due. It can be addressed also to the possessor of the bill, who will present it at the date it is due to the Postal pay Office with at the same time his claim. If the possessor of the bill is himself affiliated to the cheque service he can have the bill put to the credit of his account. The degree of importance of this branch is indicated by the following figures: 1885 406,451 florins 1886 1,522,404 " 1887 1,877,602 " 1888 3,053,419 " 1889 2,823,845 " 1890 3,436,795 " 1891 4,564,179 " 1892 6,183,954 " 1893 7,343,438 " 1894 7,917,723 " 1895 8,818,997 " From this it will be seen that during the last five years the movement has so accelerated that the amount has in the interval nearly doubled. _Sixthly._ Here the system presents to us its highest degree of interest: the possessors of account books, adherents of the clearing service, can discharge their debts one to the other by the transfer of accounts. It is sufficient to write at the back of the cheque: to be carried to the credit of account N^o ..., with the name of the holder of the account and his address. In this case the amount of the cheque is placed to the debit of the person who issued it and to the credit of the person in whose favour it is drawn. The two holders of accounts at the Savings Bank are immediately informed of this transfer by the sending of the extract of their accounts. The cheques which have this destination are properly speaking clearing cheques not intended to be paid in species; but it may happen that a cheque destined for a member, adherent to the clearing service has in an exceptional case to be paid in money; the person who has issued it will in that case have to make a note at the back of the document: _Outside the clearing circulation_. The statistics show the growing importance of _clearing cheques_. 1884 1,620,102 florins 1885 40,271,880 " 1886 102,185,786 " 1887 150,479,085 " 1888 177,846,958 " 1889 216,683,156 " 1890 264,262,296 " 1891 310,141,924 " 1892 360,498,168 " 1893 414,342,892 " 1894 445,378,270 " 1895 482,031,950 " It will be seen that in the last ten years, the amount has nearly quintupled. The pace of the movement is here more rapid than in cheques payable in cash. The proportional relations of all the modes of disposing of the credit of the adherents of the cheques and _clearing_ service show that in 1895 on a total of liquidations or payments of 1,484,251,488 florins, 32% were occasioned by transfers of accounts, 32% by cheques to bearer (_cassa-checks_), 35% by cheques to appointed persons, and the remainder by the other modes indicated. The progress of the figures taken all round is as follows: 1883 213,239 florins 1884 41,234,429 " 1885 252,260,083 " 1886 466,807,297 " 1887 611,693,909 " 1888 643,718,457 " 1889 750,898,892 " 1890 877,975,829 " 1891 998,376,144 " 1892 1,116,258,031 " 1893 1,249,482,460 " 1894 1,363,744,935 " 1895 1,484,251,448 " All this formidable account keeping is done strictly day by day. Three hundred employés are working at it constantly. Special employés who have acquired an extraordinary ability, verify the signatures on each occasion. The type signatures are classed alphabetically. Current-accounts are drawn up on loose sheets and not in books: this is considered a real progress for books are soon in tatters. On each occasion an extract of the account is sent to the party interested: every transfer entails the sending extracts to both parties interested. Envelopes with their names and addresses printed are classified in pigeon holes so as to be easily found. I join to this explanation some extracts from typical accounts. One shows a banking made by a post office, the other a transfer made between adherents to the _clearing_ system. (Fig. V.) The centralisation of all this vast account-keeping at the Central Office of the Savings Bank at Vienna is the basis of the system, the pledge of the regularity of the service and of the certainty of the control. Notwithstanding the inevitable complexity of operations and accounts, this complexity does not entail any really prejudicial delays[L]. The increasing figure of the operations is a proof of the growing favour of the public and is a testimony to the usefulness of the institution beyond all argument. The coefficient of error has been very slight and fraud has not been as yet able to succeed in causing trouble in the working of this admirable machinery of circulation. The Central Office is put every day in relation with 4,000 post offices, which transmit to it packets containing the _empfang erlag schein_, the claims and all the documents which have been brought them. The unfastening of this immense correspondence is simplified by machinery. All these documents are enclosed in large envelopes of uniform dimensions so that they can be opened by packets, in cutting off their edges by means of large knives working mechanically. (Fig. VI.) The Postal Office of Vienna prepares annually the list of all the possessors of cheque books who are adherents to the clearing service; this list is printed and can be obtained by subscribers with the supplements published at irregular intervals for one florin a year. [Illustration: FIGURE V. [1]Nummer des Checkbüchels: [2]_K. K. Postsparcassen-Amt._ =805503= [3]Conto-Auszug [4]=N^o 75 vom 14/9 1896.= +----+-------+---------+---+---+---+---+---+---+----+---+----+----+ |[5]_Nr. des Erlagscheines oder Checks_ | |[6]_Einlagestelle bezw. Zahlstelle_ | | |[7]_Name des Einzahlers bezw. Empfängers_ | | | |[8]_Einlagen und Gutschriften_ | | | | |[9]_Rückzahlungen_ | | | | | |[10]_Lastschriften im_ | | | | | |_Clearingverkehr_ | | | | | | |[11]_Guthaben_ | | | | | | | |[12]_C. C.[A]_ | | | | | | | |_Folio_ | | | | | | | | |[13]_Fact.[A]_ | | | | | | | | |_Datum_ +----+-------+---------+---+---+---+---+---+---+----+---+----+----+ | | | |fl.|kr.|fl.|kr.|fl.|kr.|fl. |kr.| | | +----+-------+---------+---+---+---+---+---+---+----+---+----+----+ | | |[14] | | | | | | | 524| 27| | | | | |Uebertrag| | | | | | | | | | | | | |vom 13/9.| | | | | | | | | | | +----+-------+---------+---+---+---+---+---+---+----+---+----+----+ | 75 |Wein | | 20| 25| | | | | | | | | +----+-------+---------+---+---+---+---+---+---+----+---+----+----+ | 41 |Inglan | | | | | | 76| 08| 468| 44| | | +----+-------+---------+---+---+---+---+---+---+----+---+----+----+ | | | | | | | | | | | | | | +----+-------+---------+---+---+---+---+---+---+----+---+----+----+ | | | | | | | | | | | | | | +----+-------+---------+---+---+---+---+---+---+----+---+----+----+ | | | | | | | | | | | | | | +----+-------+---------+---+---+---+---+---+---+----+---+----+----+ | | |[15] | | | | | | | | | | | | | |Fürtrag | | | | | | | | | | | +----+-------+---------+---+---+---+---+---+---+----+---+----+----+ [A] _Colonne zur eventuellen Benützung der Conto-Inhaber._ D. S. Nr. 4 b (21.) ex 96. * * * * * [1] Number of the cheque book. [2] Post Office Savings Bank. [3] Extract of current account. [4] Number 75 of the 14th of September 1896. [5] Number of the acknowledgement of payments or cheques. [6] Receiving office (pay-office). [7] Name of payer or of receiver of money. [8] Deposits and entries to the credit of current account. [9] Repayments. [10] Debit entries in the clearing service. [11] Balance in hand. [12] Page. [13] Date. [14] Brought over from 13. 9. 96. [15] To be carried over.] [Illustration: [1]Nummer des Checkbüchels: [2]_K.K. Postsparcassen-Amt._ =805043= [3]Conto-Auszug [4]=N^o 151 vom 13/9 1896.= +----+-------+---------+---+---+---+---+---+---+----+---+----+----+ |[5]_Nr. des Erlagscheines oder Checks_ | |[6]_Einlagestelle bezw. Zahlstelle_ | | |[7]_Name des Einzahlers bezw. Empfängers_ | | | |[8]_Einlagen und Gutschriften_ | | | | |[9]_Rückzahlungen_ | | | | | |[10]_Lastschriften im_ | | | | | |_Clearingverkehr_ | | | | | | |[11]_Guthaben_ | | | | | | | |[12]_C. C.[A]_ | | | | | | | |_Folio_ | | | | | | | | |[13]_Fact.[A]_ | | | | | | | | |_Datum_ +----+-------+---------+---+---+---+---+---+---+----+---+----+----+ | | | |fl.|kr.|fl.|kr.|fl.|kr.| fl.|kr.| | | +----+-------+---------+---+---+---+---+---+---+----+---+----+----+ | | |[14] | | | | | | |2941| 95| | | | | |Uebertrag| | | | | | | | | | | | | |vom 12/9.| | | | | | | | | | | +----+-------+---------+---+---+---+---+---+---+----+---+----+----+ | |Taxe | | | | | | | 98| | | | | | |de | | | | | | | | | | | | | |manipu-| | | | | | | | | | | | | |lation | | | | | | | | | | | | +----+-------+---------+---+---+---+---+---+---+----+---+----+----+ | |Provi- | | | | | | | 05| | | | | | |sion | | | | | | | | | | | | +----+-------+---------+---+---+---+---+---+---+----+---+----+----+ | | | | | | | | | |3023| 24| | | +----+-------+---------+---+---+---+---+---+---+----+---+----+----+ | 69 |Lies- | | 82| 32| | | | | | | | | | |ing | | | | | | | | | | | | +----+-------+---------+---+---+---+---+---+---+----+---+----+----+ | | | | | | | | | | | | | | +----+-------+---------+---+---+---+---+---+---+----+---+----+----+ | | | | | | | | | | | | | | +----+-------+---------+---+---+---+---+---+---+----+---+----+----+ | | | | | | | | | | | | | | +----+-------+---------+---+---+---+---+---+---+----+---+----+----+ | | |[15] | | | | | | | | | | | | | |Fürtrag | | | | | | | | | | | +----+-------+---------+---+---+---+---+---+---+----+---+----+----+ [A] _Colonne zur eventuellen Benützung der Conto-Inhaber._ D. S. Nr. 4 b (21.) ex 96. * * * * * [1] Number of the cheque book. [2] Post Office Savings Bank. [3] Extract of current account. [4] N^o 151 of the 13th September 1896. [5] Number of the acknowledgements of payments or cheques. [6] Receiving Office (pay office). [7] Name of payer or of receiver of money. [8] Deposits and entries to the credit of current account. [9] Repayments. [10] Debit entries in the clearing service. [11] Balance in hand. [12] Page. [13] Date. [14] Brought over from 12. 9. 96. [15] To be carried over.] [Illustration: FIGURE VI. [1]Tagesrechnung der Einlagen im Checkverkehr. [2](Einlagen auf Empfangscheine.) +------------------------------------+ | [3]Raum zum Aufkleben der Vignette.| +------------------------------------+ +------------+---------+-----------+---------------+---------------+ | [4]1 Von | 2 |[6]3 Betrag| [7]4 | 5 | | Seiten der |[5]Nummer|der Einlage| Nr. des | [8]Name des | |Sammelstelle| des +-----+-----+Empfangscheines| Einzahlers | | leer zu | Contos | fl. | kr. | | [aus dem | | lassen | | | | | Erlagscheine] | +------------+---------+-----+-----+---------------+---------------+ | | | | | | | +------------+---------+-----+-----+---------------+---------------+ | | | | | | | +------------+---------+-----+-----+---------------+---------------+ | | | | | | | +------------+---------+-----+-----+---------------+--+------------+ | |[9] | | | Anzahl | | [11] | | |Gesammt- | | | der | |Unterschrift| | |betrag | | | Einlagen[10] | | des | | |der | | | | |Postbeamten:| | |Einlagen | | | | | | + +---------+-----+-----+---------------+--+------------+ | D. S. Nr. 2 n (9.) ex 96.| +------------+---------+-----+-----+---------------+--+------------+ [1] Daily account of deposits in the cheque service. [2] Payments upon acknowledgement of receipt. [3] Space for affixing the vignette. [4] To be left blank by the receiving office. [5] Number of current account. [6] Amount of the payment. [7] Number of the acknowledgement of receipt. [8] Name of the payer according to the acknowledgement of deposit. [9] Total sum of the payments. [10] Number of the payments. [11] Signature of the post office official.] [Illustration: Tagesrechnung der Rückzahlungen im Checkverkehr[1] * * * * * Belehrung für den Postbeamten.[2] 1. Alle Einlagen auf Empfangscheine sind in diese Tagesrechnung einzutragen, ebenso alle Rückzahlungen, welche ohne Vorweisung eines Einlagebüchels auf Grund der vereinigten Drucksorte Nr. 6-8 zu leisten sind. 2. Die Eintragung hat genau dem Vordrucke entsprechend zu geschehen. 3. Anzahl und Gesammtbetrag der Einlagen und Rückzahlungen sind nach Abschluss der Tagesrechnung in die correspondirenden Rubriken des Tagessummariums zu übertragen. Die Anzahl der zu dieser Tagesrechnung gehörigen Erlagscheine und Zahlungsanweisungen ist am Schlusse der Rechnung auszusetzen und in der Beilagenliste anzumerken. 4. Die Tagesrechnung wird nur dann an das k. k. Postsparcassen-Amt eingesendet, wenn eine Einlage oder Rückzahlung in derselben zu verzeichnen ist. =Nur am letzten eines jeden Monates ist stets eine Tagesrechnung einzusenden, ohne Rücksicht, ob eine Eintragung stattgefunden hat oder nicht.= * * * * * +-------------+------------+-----------------+----------------------+ | 1 | 2 | 3[5] | 4 | |Nummer des[3]| Betrag[4] | Ausstellungstag |[6]Name des Adressaten| | Contos |-------+----| der |der Zahlungsanweisung | | | fl. | kr.|Zahlungsanweisung| | +-------------+-------+----+-----------------+----------------------+ | | | | | | +-------------+-------+----+-----------------+----------------------+ | | | | | | +-------------+-------+----+-----------------+----------------------+ | | | | | | +-------------+-------+----+-----------------+----------------------+ | [7] | | | [8]Anzahl | | | |Gesammtbetrag| | | der | | | | der | | | Rückzahlungen | | | |Rückzahlungen| | | | | | +-------------+-------+----+-----------------+----------------------+ [1] Daily account of repayments in the cheque service. [2] Instruction for the post office official: 1. In this daily account must be entered all the deposits made upon acknowledgement of receipt as well as all the repayments made without presentation of deposit-book on the ground of the united document N^o 6-8; 2. The entry must be absolutely conformable to the printed text; 3. The number and the total sum of the deposits and the repayments are to be entered after the closing of the daily account in the corresponding columns of the summary of the day. The number of the pay-cheques and the orders for repayment which belong to this daily account is to be set forth at the end of the account and to be noted on the supplementary list; 4. The daily account is only to be sent to the Post Office Savings Bank when there is a deposit or a repayment to be entered. _Only at the end of each month this daily account must be sent whether there be an entry or not._ [3] Number of the current account. [4] Amount. [5] Date of issue of the order for repayment. [6] Name of the person to whom the order for repayment is to be sent. [7] Total sum of the repayments. [8] Number of the repayments.] This list is the expression as it were, of a conscious agreement of wills on a more and more extended scale in a common work of reciprocity. The all round figure which sums up for the service during 1895, the total amount of operations relating to the credit and debit of holders of accounts in the Postal Savings Bank of Vienna is 2,970,170,049 florins. It will be interesting to learn what have been the expenses which have arisen from such a vast amount of business. The account of the financial administration of the service of cheques and _clearing_ makes the administrative expenses 899,356 florins, that is three-hundredths of a florin, for every 100 florins of business[M]. The average business done for each possessor of a cheque book is 100,000 florins, and the average charges of the service per person have been about 30 florins. Going back ten years it is seen that when in 1886 the amount reached 944,997,612 florins, the total expense was 620,247 florins, or six-hundredths of a florin for every 100 florins of business done. The operations averaged about 90,000 florins to each holder of a cheque book and the charges 44 florins each person. The law, in accordance with which the general expenses are relatively reduced by the increase in the figure of business done, receives here a fresh verification. Such is the summary explanation of the organisation and working of the cheque and clearing system instituted thirteen years ago at the Postal Savings Bank of Vienna. It is based on the centralisation at Vienna of the accounts of depositors holding cheque books and on the almost absolute perfectness of the regularity and precision with which all those interested are every time fully informed of their position of the Central Bank, and, in consequence, of the extent of the credit they have at their command. This institution implies the free adhesion under conditions fixed by law of all the depositors at the Savings Bank and the right of each to withdraw as he thinks proper. The institution therefore works on the ground of stipulated contract, but its elasticity is seen in the perpetually widening extension of its operations and its making way in every class of society and in every one of the professions. Its realization under the international form, for we give this character to an agreement between the Savings Banks of Austria and Hungary, is only a question of time, and the new experiment will prepare the way for a new enlargement of the system. The basis of the institution is monetary, it differs in this respect in no way from all the other modern institutions of credit and of balancing one account against the other; but the saving of money is ever on the increase. Within the monetary circulation is developed a circulation which if it remains still subordinate to the monetary circulation is not inevitably enchained to it. Our collective effort tends to break for ever this bond of subordination. The papers which will follow will be a contribution to that work. FOOTNOTES: [H] The account-books of _Empfang erlagscheine_ are used as instruments in this first class of operations. [I] Rückzahlungen auf grund von checks, zahlbar an den überbringer bei des Cassa des Postsparcassen Amtes. [J] Rückzahlungen an dritte personen durch zahlungsanweisungen des Postsparcassen Amtes. [K] Auszahlung von beträgen an dritte personen nittelst postanweisungen. [L] To accomplish operations in the remotest part of Dalmatia, five or six days is the maximum required. [M] A kreutzer is charged for posting a sum to the credit of an adherent, but no charge is made on the debit side. APPENDIX I Law of the 28^{th} of May 1882 _with reference to the introduction of Postal Savings Banks in the kingdoms and lands represented in the Imperial Council. (R. G. Bl.[N] N^o 56.) with the alterations made by the law of the 19^{th} of November 1897. (R. G. Bl. N^o 133.)_ With the consent of the two Houses of the Imperial Council I will to order as follow: ARTICLE 1. Under State administration and guarantee there will be founded at Vienna a State Savings Bank, under the control of the Minister of Commerce and belonging to the jurisdiction of the Postal Administration, with the title «Post Office Savings Bank». The sphere of activity, the organisation and the civil service of the Post Office Savings Bank will be fixed by means of ordinances. Post Offices in the kingdom and lands represented in the Imperial Council will be appointed by the Minister of Commerce to serve as receiving offices of the Post Office Savings Bank. To the Post Office Savings Bank will belong the management and execution of the business assigned to it by this law; in which business it will represent before the public the administration of the State. To give advice as well as to make proposals in the business relating to the Postal Savings Banks, a special Council will be constituted. Regulations as to the composition of this special Council as well as the determination of its special sphere of action will follow by way of ordinance. ARTICLE 2. The Post Office Savings Bank will receive savings deposits paid into the Post Offices, and by the agency of the Post Offices will pay back the deposits when reclaimed. ARTICLE 3. All deposits in excess of the current needs of the Post Office Savings Bank are to be profitably invested. Such profitable investments of the savings-deposits will be made by the purchase of the Austrian Consolidated Bonds bearing interest. ARTICLE 4. From the profit of the invested deposits is to be defrayed the interests on the deposits, as well as the whole expenses, administrative or otherwise. As long as the profit of the funded capital of the deposits is not sufficient to pay the interest of the savings-deposits and to cover the expenses of the administration, the deficit as well as the costs of the establishment of the institution will be advanced by the State as a charge on the Postal Budget. These advances are to be restored without interest, to the Postal Budget, out of the surplus appearing at the close of the administrative year. The surplus remaining over after the entire liquidation of the above named advances is to be employed in the formation of a reserve fund. ARTICLE 5[O]. The receiving office (Post Office) in which a first deposit is made, gives to the party who makes the deposit, a deposit book, in which each amount paid in, each amount paid back and the interest added to the capital is to be entered. Each subsequent payment can be made in any receiving office (Post Office), the amount being entered in the deposit book. That person is to be considered the depositor on whose behalf the deposit is made. The deposit-book is to be delivered gratuitously and is stamp free. The Post Office Savings Bank will open an account for each depositor. ARTICLE 6[P]. The deposit-book is issued in the name of the depositor and is to contain the notes necessary in forming a judgement of his identity, as well as the signature of the party who makes the first deposit. A depositor who cannot write will have to bring with him a trustworthy man, who will have to attest the identity of the depositor and to sign the deposit-book in his stead. An assignment of a deposit-book to another person, is only to be accepted by the Post Office Savings Bank when the act of assignment has taken place at a Post Office entrusted with Post Office Savings Bank business. This being done, the assignee is to be regarded as the proprietor of the deposit-book. (Art. 21, § 3.) Minors are entitled to pay in sums as savings and to receive repayments back provided their legal representatives have entered no written objection at the Post Office Savings Bank. In case of the loss of the deposit-book, a duplicate is, after carrying out the proceedings prescribed by article 14, to be issued. Whoever causes two or more deposit-books to be issued loses the interests on the capital entered in the second and in any subsequent books. If the whole amount of the deposits in the two or more deposit-books, that a depositor has caused to be issued, is over the sum of a 1,000 florins, the depositor loses that part of the capital which exceeds 1,000 florins. The Minister of Commerce is empowered on well considered reasons to be indulgent with reference to the loss of capital, which, in conformity with the regulations occurs to surplus deposits. Post Office servants are forbidden, except to their superiors, to give any information whatever to anyone, as to the names of depositors, or the amount of their deposits. ARTICLE 7[Q]. Each single payment must amount to at least 50 kreutzers or a multiple of 50 kreutzers. The balance in favour of a depositor can at no time amount to more than 1,000 florins including deposits paid in and interest added to the capital. Deposits of 50 kreutzers can be made in postage stamps, or in special postal savings stamps as soon as such stamps are issued by the Minister of Commerce. These stamps are to be fastened on forms supplied gratuitously. ARTICLE 8[R]. The rate of interest for savings deposits, which is never to exceed 3 per cent per annum, after having been placed before the special Council (art. 1) will be fixed by the Minister of Commerce in concert with the Ministers of the Interior and of Finances, by way of ordinances, and every alteration is to be published in the Imperial Law Pamphlets (_Reichs-Gesetz-Blatte_) in the official part of the «Vienna Gazette» (_Wiener Zeitung_) and in the various official gazettes. The new rate of interest will begin to come into operation on the 1^{st} and 16^{th} of the month which follows its publication and will also apply to deposits made previously. ARTICLE 9. Savings deposits bear interest commencing from the 1^{st} or the 16^{th} day of the month following the date of their payment, and the interest ends on the 15^{th} or last day of the month preceding the arrival of the notice of the expiration of the agreement with the Post Office Savings Bank at Vienna. Sums under a florin are not to bear interest. The 31^{st} of December, each year, the interests accruing are to be added to the capital and from that time forward they also bear interest. In the calculation of interest each month is to be regarded as 30 days. The officially prepared table of interest is to be publicly posted up in the receiving offices (post offices). ARTICLE 10. Any amount exceeding 1,000 florins to the credit of a savings deposit is not to bear interest. ARTICLE 11. The Post Office Savings Bank is obliged as soon as the deposits and capitalized interest of a depositor surpasses the figure of 1,000 florins, by a registered letter, to require the depositor to lessen his capital. If during the month following the depositor has not lessened the balance to his credit, then at the expiration of the period, bonds of the state debt bearing interest in notes will in the course of the day be officially bought to the nominal amount of 200 florins, and the depositor is to be informed of the fact. From the time of the sending out of the notice until the reduction is effected in the balance to the credit of a depositor no interest will accrue. In case the depositor on whose account the bonds were bought, does not withdraw the documents, the Post Office Savings Bank will receive the interest falling in on the bonds under its care and will enter these interests in the books of the institutions as a new deposit in favour of the depositor. For the State funds belonging to a depositor lying at the Post Office Savings Bank a book is to be issued. ARTICLE 12. At the request of a depositor and that the balance in his favour is sufficient, it can be employed in the purchase of Austrian State Funds. ARTICLE 13[S]. The payment back of the balance in favour of a depositor or any part of it to him or to his legal heir or authorised agent, will take place upon a notice which can be made by the party giving it, at the receiving office (Post Office) which he names in the notice. The payment back is to made through the receiving office (Post Office) named in the notice, on production of the deposit-book, on the basis of an assignment by the Post Office Savings Bank, except the payment is according to Article 14 barred by legal proceedings having been instituted, or according to Articles 6 and 17, by a protest having been made. When such notice has been given with reference to sums up to 10 florins, the assignment will be sent by the Post Office Savings Bank by return of post and the payment back will be made by the receiving office (Post Office) immediately after its arrival. The repayment of sums between 10 and 100 florins will be made in a fortnight at the latest, that of sums between 100 and 500 florins in a month at the latest, that of sums above 500 florins, at the latest within two months after the arrival of the notice. The Administration is however authorised, with power of countermand and under necessary precautions to permit sums up to 20 florins of which notice has been given to be immediately paid at one of the authorised receiving offices without waiting for the arrival of the foregoing assignment from the Post Office Savings Bank. ARTICLE 14. If a deposit-book proves to be lost the following proceedings occur: The owner has, in order to obtain a duplicate to give immediate notice of the loss, either directly to the Post Office Savings Bank, or to the nearest receiving office (Post Office) with as exact an account as possible of its characteristic marks. The Post Office Savings Bank immediately orders a note of the characteristic marks to be entered in its books with the result that meanwhile no payment is made to anyone on the lost deposit-book. At the same time the Post Office Savings Bank causes a public placard to be put up at the Post Office where the lost book was issued, and also in that to which perhaps it might be forwarded, by which all persons are informed that at the expiration of a month from the date of its publication, if no claim to the lost book is made in the interval, it will be cancelled and declared null and void, and a new one issued. If within the month no claim is made, the Post Office Savings Bank will on payment of a fee of 10 kreutzers Austrian currency, issue a duplicate and declare the deposit-book proved lost, to be null and void. If a claim is made during the course of a month, the Post Office Savings Bank must refer the parties to the ordinary tribunals, and no duplicate is to be issued nor any proceedings permitted with reference to the lost book until the validity of the outstanding claim has been decided by a legal judgement. ARTICLE 15. The statement of paragraph 1480 of the General Civil Code, by which claims to arrears of interests are lost after three years, has no application to interests of depositors in the Post Office Savings Bank. In relation to the lapse of Post Office Savings Bank deposits the ordinary legal decisions will be relied upon. Lapsed deposits fall into the postal treasury. Such a lapsing of deposits will be stopped by every new payment, every notice for payment back, every entry of interest in the deposit book. ARTICLE 16. State bonds bought officially, or at the request of depositors, and kept at the Post Office Savings Bank fall into the postal treasury, if, during a lapse of 40 years, no one has laid claim either to the deposit or to the interest, and the depositor has not forwarded to the Post Office Savings Bank any order whatever with reference to them. ARTICLE 17. Neither savings deposited at the Post Office Savings Bank, nor the Post Office Savings Bank deposit-books can be sequestered, and in like manner they cannot be used as security. Nor can a deposit-book be seized or taken in distraint. These restrictions have no application to the books mentioned in Articles 11 and 12, as issued for the state bonds bought for a depositor. If a depositor declares himself insolvent, the Official Receiver is empowered to give notice to the Post Office Savings Bank to pay him the balance in favour of the depositor, and thereon to give a receipt. A protest against the payment back of a savings deposit can only be considered in case a lawsuit has been entered into with reference to the right of property in a deposit-book, or on the hypothesis which Article 6 meets. ARTICLE 18. The reserve fund which is primarily intended to cover every possible loss which may occur to the Post Office Savings Bank is to be formed by the laying aside of the surpluses which remain at the close of the administrative years from the produce of the savings-money deposited, after deduction for interest paid, administrative and other expenses, and after restitution of the advances made from the postal budget. The reserve fund is to be gradually stored up until it reaches 5 per cent of the total amount of the deposits, but it must never go beyond the point of two million Austrian florins. ARTICLE 19. The reserve fund capital is to be placed at interest and whatever it brings in is to be added to the reserve fund so long as this last has not reached the maximum fixed. When the reserve fund has reached the above mentioned point, all the business profits will be entered to the credit of the Postal Revenue. ARTICLE 20. The Post Office Savings Bank is to render a formal account of the administration of the savings-money paid in at the receiving offices (Post offices), and the duty of the control lies with the supreme audit-office. At the end of each solar year the Minister of Commerce will communicate to both Houses of the Imperial Council, a detailed business statement with reference to the administration, working and position of the Post Office Savings Bank and will publish the same in the official part of the «Vienna Gazette». The Post Office Savings Bank will periodically make known the actual position of the institution in the «Vienna Gazette». ARTICLE 21. The correspondence of the Post Office Savings Bank and its organs with the depositors is post free. The revenue of the Post Office Savings Bank is exempt from duty. In the business of the Post Office Savings Bank all legal documents passing between the Bank, the authorities or the organs of the Bank and the depositors, their legal heirs or authorised agents, are free from stamp duty and taxes. In like manner the interest of savings-deposits is exempt from the Income-tax and from any tax which may replace it in time to come. ARTICLE 22. The exact time when the Post Office Savings Bank in Vienna, as well as the receiving offices will commence their work will be fixed by the Minister of Commerce. ARTICLE 23. The carrying out of this law is entrusted to the Minister of Commerce. II Law of November 19^{th} 1897 _containing alterations in the Law of May 28^{th} 1882 (R. G. Bl. N^o 56) and decisions with regard to the Orders' (Cheque and Clearing) Service of the Post Office Savings Bank (R. G. Bl. N^o 133)._ With the consent of the two Houses of the Imperial Council I ordain as follows: § 1. The arrangements of the Law of May 28^{th} 1882, contained in the Articles 5, 6, 7, 8 and 13 (_R. G. Bl._ N^o 56) will no longer be in force. In their stead will come the following arrangements, indicated in the articles bearing the same numbers. (_The articles altered: 5, 6, 7, 8 and 13, are with their new text given in Appendix I, containing the Law of May 28^{th} 1882._) § 2. To the existing Orders' (Cheque and Clearing) Service of the Post Office Savings Bank the modifications in the Law of May 28^{th} 1882 (_R. G. Bl._ N^o 56) as well as the alterations refered to in § 1 of the present Law, have no application. An exception, however, occurs with reference to articles 1, 20 and 21 of the above mentioned Law which are to be applied to the aforesaid service conformably to their sense. In addition to which the Government is authorized to regulate this service by way of ordinances. Apart from such regulations the service is to proceed according to the following determinations. § 3. The administration and keeping of the accounts of the Orders' (Cheque and Clearing) Service at the Post Office Savings Bank are to be carried on separately from those of the Savings' service. Participation in the Cheque service with or without inclusion in the Clearing service is to be granted by the Post Office Savings Bank on paying in a guarantee deposit. The Post Office Savings Bank will open an account for each participant. § 4. The guarantee deposit remains in the Post Office Savings Bank as long as the holder of the account continues a participant in the Cheque service and contingently also in the Clearing service. In case a holder of an account on the one side, or the Post Office Savings Bank on the other, wishes to give notice to withdraw, which either can do at any time, the guarantee-deposit will, within a fortnight at latest after receiving the notice, be repaid. To the Post Office Savings belongs also the right by giving notice of the repayment of the guarantee-deposit to cause the immediate withdrawal of a participant and it has also the right to decline, without giving any reason a request to participate in the Cheque and Clearing service. § 5. The amount of the guarantee-deposit, which is on every occasion to be paid in specie, will be always fixed by way of ordinance. This fixing can be arranged in such a way, that in the event of the whole transactions exceeding an agreed maximum sum the guarantee deposit is to be increased. § 6. The rate of interest for deposits in the Orders' (Cheque and Clearing) service cannot rise higher than two per cent per annum. The Government is empowered within this maximum point to fix the rate of interest for deposits. The Government can also ordain that the abovementioned deposits, especially the guarantee deposits shall either bear no interest at all or only partially do so. § 7. Of the money paid into the Orders' (Cheque and Clearing) Service of the Post Office Savings Bank there will always be kept in hand a portion in specie adequate to meet probable needs. The surplus remaining is to be placed out at interest in such a way as always to assure the complete fulfilment of the engagements entered into. The placing out can be made: 1. By acquiring partially mortgaged bills of exchange (salt mine, treasury bonds). 2. By opening at a banking establishment a running account at short dates of payment (a deposit running account). 3. By advances on security of bonds of the United National Debt and of the National Debt of the kingdoms and lands represented in the Imperial Council, also those Austrian bills upon which loans are permitted by the statutes of the Austro-Hungarian Bank, finally upon stock and other securities in the Austro-Hungarian Bank. (Advances with the exception of accounts booked.) 4. By discounting coupons of the funds pointed out in N^o 3, also in prize-tickets in the Austrian State Lottery, also of other funds indicated in N^o 3, repayable by draft, last on discharge certificates of Customs duties. 5. By discounting Bills of Exchange to be cashed at a Bank, a Savings Bank, or else at a Deposit or Credit Company, registered according to the Law of April 9^{th} 1873 (Z. 70 R. G. Bl.). 6. By purchase of bonds of the National Debt, deeds of mortgage or bonds having priority rights, in so far as such stocks are, in conformity with N^o 3, capable of being taken in deposit. The duration of the loans described in N^o 3, as well as the paper to be discounted, described in N^o 4, and the bills of Exchange within the kingdoms and lands represented in the Imperial Council as described in N^o 5, is limited to three months. In selecting what to take in deposit, or what to buy, in fixing the extent of the sum to be lent out, as well as the choice of the institutions with which it is to enter into business relations, the Post Office Savings Bank is to seek direction from the Ministry of Finance. § 8. The Orders (Cheques) issued in the Orders' (Cheque and Clearing) Service are subject to no other tax than that fixed by the Law of February 29^{th} 1864, § 7 (R. G. Bl. N^o 20) of 2 kreutzers a piece. The declarations which, in conformity with the regulations of the Orders Service are added to the order (cheque) by the Drawer, especially such as the declaration by which a third person is designated as Receiver of the sums assigned, or by which commissions are given for the issuing of post-office orders or the retiring of bills, etc.; also the authorisations for the Post Office Savings Bank and the receipt-vouchers, reciprocally given by the Post Office Savings Bank Office and participants, are free from stamp duty and taxation. In like manner the extracts forwarded to parties from their accounts are free from stamp duty and taxation. In respect of sums received in current account by the Post Office Savings Bank, the payment of the percentage tax fixed by the Law of February 29^{th} 1864, § 7, paragraph 2 (R. G. Bl. N^o 20) does not operate. § 9. For the use of the Orders' (Cheque and Clearing) Service the Post Office is to impose special fees. In addition to the already existing fees and repayment of the cost price of printed matter supplied to parties interested, the Government is empowered to impose to the amount stated below the following fees: 1. A record-fee of 2 kreutzers for each official act with reference to the account (Deposit, Assignment, Entry to credit or debit). 2. A commission up to the maximum of 1/4 the thousand on the paying out side of the account (Entering to the debit). These fees are to be taken by the Post Office Savings Bank deducting them from the account. § 10. For the Orders' (Cheque and Clearing) Service, a special Reserve fund is to be formed, which is primarily intended to cover possible losses which may result from the service. This Reserve fund is to be formed from what remains of the surpluses at the close of the administrative year after deduction resulting from the possible deficit in the Savings Service. This allotment of the surpluses is to continue as long as the Reserve fund designated has not reached the point of 5 per cent of what remains of the deposit capital in the Orders' (Cheque and Clearing) Service, at the close of the year, after deduction of the payments back. The money of the Reserve fund formed for the Orders' (Cheque and Clearing) Service is to be placed out at interest under the restrictions of § 7 as to the nature of such arrangements, and the produce accruing from time to time, is to be added to the Reserve until it has reached the abovementioned point. The Reserve fund having reached this point, the whole of the profits on the business done in the Orders' (Cheque and Clearing) Service will accrue as receipts to the Postal Revenue. To what remains the determinations of Article 4 of the Law of May 28^{th} 1882 (R. G. Bl. N^o 56) understood in conformity with their sense will apply. § 11. The determinations of §§ 2 to 10 of the present Law apply from the time it comes into operation, also to deposits paid in before that time to the Orders' (Cheque and Clearing) Service of the Post Office Savings Bank. § 12. With the execution of this Law which comes into operation from the date of its publication, together with the partially altered Law of May 28^{th} 1882 (R. G. Bl. N^o 56) My Minister of Commerce and My Minister of Finance are charged. III Ordinance of the Ministry of Commerce _in agreement with the Ministry of the Interior and with the Finance Ministry, November 22^{nd} 1887, by which on the basis of the Law of November 19^{th} 1887 (R. G. Bl. N^o 133) Regulations with reference to the Orders' (Cheque and Clearing) Service in the Post Office Savings Bank are issued._ In carrying out the Law of November 19^{th} 1887 (R. G. Bl. N^o 133) by which alterations were made in the Law of May 28^{th} 1882 (R. G. Bl. N^o 56), and determinations with regard to the Orders' (Cheque and Clearing) Service in the Post Office Savings Bank, the Ministry of Commerce in agreement with the Ministry of the Interior and the Finance Ministry ordains as follows: A.--_Savings Service._ § 1. The highest point of the rate of interest, according to the determination of the Special Council of the Post Office Savings Bank, is to be fixed at _three_ per cent per annum. § 2. Whoever pays the first deposit in favour of another--of the Depositor and signs the deposit-book in this name, is to be called the Payer. The Depositor is at any time entitled without the intervention of the Payer to appear at a Receiving Office and to have his own signature accepted. As long as the Depositor has not exercised this right, the Post Office Savings Bank will consider the Payer as authorised in the name of the Depositor to dispose of the balance in his favour, unless the Post Office Savings Bank has been made aware that it is against the depositor's will. § 3. Until further notice Repayments may be made of sums up to 20 florins, immediately upon notice of recall, by duly authorised Receiving Offices, without previous assignment from the Post Office Savings Bank. § 4. Business regulations which have been made by the Post Office Savings Bank not in present agreement with the arrangements of articles 5, 6, 7, 8 and 13 of the Law of November 19^{th} 1887 (R. G. Bl. N^o 133) in relation with §§ 2 and 3 of the present Ordinance are out of force. B.--_Orders' (Cheque and Clearing) Service._ § 5. In carrying out § 2 of the Law of November 19^{th} 1887 (R. G. Bl. N^o 133), the Orders' (Cheque and Clearing) Service of the Post Office Savings Bank is to be regulated by the rules existing with reference to them in the Post Office Savings Bank applied in such a manner as the alterations of the aforesaid Law as well as the following determinations render necessary. § 6. The Post Office Savings Bank will keep separate the accounts and administration of the Orders' (Cheque and Clearing) Service from those of the Savings Service. Participation in the Orders' (Cheque and Clearing) Service is also to be allowed to persons who are not depositors in the Savings Service. It will be granted on payment of a Guarantee-deposit, and of course if the participant wishes he can enter the Clearing as well as the Cheque Service. In order to obtain permission to be a participant in the Orders' Service the person wishing to enter has to ask for an account to be opened and to pay in the Guarantee-deposit. This request is to be made on one of the forms issued by the Post Office Savings Bank, which are to be delivered gratuitously at all post-offices and to be forwarded to Vienna post paid under an enclosure containing the sum for the desired Cheque and Receipt books. To the Post Office Savings Bank belongs the right to refuse a request for admission as participant in the Orders' (Cheque and Clearing) Service without giving reasons (§ 4 of the Law). The Guarantee-deposit is to be paid within a month at any Receiving Office after the grant of the said request by using a Receipt (Pay) certificate. The Post Office Savings Bank opens an account for each participant. Deposit-books are no longer to be used in the Orders' (Cheque and Clearing) Service. § 7. The amount of the Guarantee-deposit will until further notice be fixed at 100 florins. The Guarantee-deposit will remain at the Post Office Savings Bank as long as the holder of an account continues a participant in the Orders' (Cheque and Clearing) Service. During participation in the Orders' (Cheque and Clearing) Service, the Guarantee-deposit cannot be disposed of and in case the participant should withdraw from the Service it can only be paid back upon 15 days notice (§ 4 of the Law). § 8. The deposits in the Orders' (Cheque and Clearing) Service, including the Guarantee-deposit, will until further notice bear interest at 2 per cent per annum. The interest begins from the 1^{st} or from the 16^{th} of the month following the booking of the deposit, and terminates at the expiration of the 15^{th} or from the last day of the month which precedes the writing off from the account of the sum assigned for payment. Sums under one florin will not bear interest. On the 31^{st} of December in every year the interest accruing will be added to the capital and will in like manner bear interest. In reckoning the interest every month will be regarded as thirty days. § 9. The Post Office Savings Bank has always the right to give notice to a participant to withdraw his Guarantee-deposit, with the result that from the day the participant receives the notice he can no longer dispose of the balance to his credit by way of cheques (§ 4 of the Law). § 10. For making use of the Orders' (Cheque and Clearing) Service, besides the fees at present existing--under which are included the fee of 2 kreutzers the cheque, already fixed by § 8 of the Law of November 19^{th} 1887, and according to rule the equivalent of the cost price of the various printed documents furnished to participants in the service,--the under mentioned fees will be taken: 1. A record-fee of 2 kreutzers for each official act with reference to the account (Deposit, Assignment, Entering to Credit or Debit); 2. A commission on each entry to the debit up to the sum of 3,000 florins at the rate of 1/4 the thousand, and 1/8 the thousand for sums exceeding that amount. These fees will be taken by writing them off the account. From the commission, however, are free: _a_) The Debit Entries in the Clearing Service; _b_) Sums sent by means of Post Office Orders through the Post Office Savings Bank; _c_) Sums written off in the Cheque Service on account of a purchase of State-bonds made for a participant, finally; _d_) Every entry of fees, commissions, etc. in favour of the Post Office Savings Bank. § 11. The Post Office Savings Bank will keep for three years the accounts, documents and writings in the Orders' (Cheque and Clearing) Service relating to business concluded; it can only therefore give consideration to claims with reference to payments in, assignments, payments back, interest and fees, etc., when they come within this period. To claims which refer to a Post Office missive (Paying in Order, Post Office Order, Registered Letter and the like) the Post Office regulations as to the time in which such claims can be made will apply. § 12. The foregoing regulations §§ 5 to 11 apply from the time this ordinance comes into operation, and will also apply from the same time to all deposits already made in the Orders' (Cheque and Clearing) Service, (§ 11 of the Law). § 13. The Officials of the Post Office Savings Bank and of the Receiving Offices are bound by duty to keep the business and official secrets, and not to give to any third person, except their superiors, any kind of information whatever with reference to the name of a depositor, to the sums paid in or paid back, or to the amount of the balance in hand. FINAL REGULATIONS § 14. The Receiving Offices of the Post Office Savings Bank will receive at the End of each calendar year an indemnity for business done in the Post Office Savings Bank Service. This indemnity amounts to: _a_) Two kreutzers at the close of each year for every deposit-book issued at the Receiving Office in question during the year and then existing. _b_) One and a quarter kreutzer for every payment during the year effected at the Receiving Office in question, into the Savings Service and into the Orders' (Cheque and Clearing) Service. § 15. This Ordinance will come into force at the same time as the Law of November 19^{th} 1887 (R. G. Bl. N^o 133). IV Instruction concerning the Savings Service of the Post Office Savings Bank. 1.--_Receiving Offices._ All post offices in the kingdoms and lands represented in the Imperial Council are appointed to be Receiving Offices of the Post Office Savings Bank, and have daily during the prescribed hours to carry out the Post Office Savings Bank Service. They receive deposits, effect payments back, give information about all branches of the Post Office Savings Bank Service, and in connection with this Institution, aid the depositors in every way. 2.--_Depositors and Payers._ Any one can become a Depositor in the Post Office Savings Bank and obtain a deposit-book, or cause another person to obtain one, upon making, in conformity with the regulations, a payment at a Receiving Office, of a given sum within the prescribed limits. Societies, Unions, Cooperative Associations and persons having a legal position are competent depositors in the Post Office Savings Bank. The person in whose name the book has been issued is to be regarded as the Depositor. No Depositor is permitted to obtain, or cause to be obtained on his behalf, more than one deposit-book issued in his name; on the other hand every one is free, beyond their own deposit-books, to obtain for other, wholly distinct persons, deposit-books and to pay in deposits on their behalf. Whoever in favour of another,--the depositor,--pays in the first payment and signs the deposit-book in his name is called the Payer. Any one can be a Depositor who can read and write. Minors no more than persons having a legal position are debarred from being depositors. The Post Office Savings Bank regards the Payer as empowered in the name of the Depositor to dispose of the balance to his credit as long as the latter has not informed the Post Office Savings Bank that it is against his will. This can be done by the Depositor signing his own name in the deposit-book at a post office. The admission of the signature can take place: _a_) In the presence of and with the consent of the Payer; _b_) Without the intervention of the Payer. In the first case the Payer confirms the authenticity of the signature, in the second case the Depositor has to establish his own personal identity. 3.--_The Deposits._ The smallest deposit is 50 kreutzers, larger deposits must be a multiple of that sum. In order to render possible the saving of smaller sums than 50 kreutzers, Post Office Savings Cards have been issued. Post Office Savings Cards are cards imprinted with a postage stamp of 5 kreutzers, and having the necessary room to fasten on further stamps; these cards are sold at all Post Offices, and by all postage stamp vendors on payment of the value of the imprinted stamp. Such a Post Office Savings Card with stamps fastened on to the value of 50 kreutzers will be accepted at the Receiving Offices of the Post Office Savings Bank as a deposit. One and the same depositor can only be permitted to bring for deposit three Post Office Savings Cards during one week, either singly or at the same time. The balance of a depositor in paid up deposits and capitalised interests is not permitted to amount at any time to more than 1,000 florins. The Depositor must with the first deposit inscribe his signature in the place appointed on the third page of the deposit-book and must further give an account of his calling or occupation, the place, day, month, year of his birth, as well as the place where he lives and his address. He must moreover sign with his own hand the so-called «_Gegenschein_» (Counter-certificate) to be found in the deposit book. And he himself choose a given private «Watchword» (_Losungswort_) and inscribe it in the appointed place in the counter-certificate. The result of this will be that payments back in the customary way can only follow on giving this watchword. A person who cannot write is obliged to bring with him a witness who authenticates the depositors mark by his own signature. To those known personally to the Post Office official, or, who identify themselves by means of a certificate of domicile, a passport or a work-or service book, the Post Office official can himself become the witness. In the case of Societies, Unions, Cooperative Associations and persons having a legal position either the bringer of the first deposit can give his signature and be then regarded as the Payer, or no signature will be received. In the latter case nothing can be done with reference to the deposits until the Payer by means of an official document, N^o 14, signifies to the Post Office Savings Bank who will be authorised to give notices of withdrawals and to collect payments. Subsequent payments can be effected on each book at any office without further notice and without its being necessary for the person to come personally. Every deposit must be at once entered in the deposit-book by the Post Office official and this entry is to be certified by the imprint of the Receiving Offices stamp of the day and the signature of the Post Office official. The Depositor (Payer) is bound before leaving the office to examine the entries sufficiently so as to see that they are correct. Deposits are also received from Rural Agents to the limit of 300 florins for each deposit-book and for each commission bought. Deposits up to 5 florins pay no fee. For deposits of more than 5 florins a receiving-fee of 5 kreutzers is charged. The Post Office Savings Bank receives from Depositors, Coupons of Austrian Bond falling due and enters the proceeds in the deposit-book and to the depositors account. To this end the coupons together with the deposit-book are either to be given in at the Bank of the Office, or forwarded post-paid to the Post Office Savings Bank at Vienna. Each single coupon given in or forwarded must have legibly written on the back, the number of the deposit-book and the depositor's name, if not, a list of the sorts and numbers of the coupons as well as the number of the deposit-book will have to be given. For receiving the coupons the Post Office Savings Bank charges a commission of 1 kreutzer the coupon, which will be deducted from what it produces. The sending-back of the deposit-book will be post free. It is moreover allowable when a depositor has to receive at a post office not dependent on the Treasury a sum by order,--whether it be an ordinary post office order, or a repayment--or transfer post-office order, or finally by a pay-order in the cheque service of the Post Office Savings Bank, not to pay the same in cash, but have it immediately entered in the deposit-book. 4.--_Acknowledgments of Receipts._ Beyond the entry which the Post Office Service makes in the deposit-book, the depositors receive, and so, relatively, payers, upon each deposit an acknowledgment of receipt from the Post Office Savings Bank at Vienna, forwarded every time to their address or to _poste restante_ as they desire. Should this acknowledgment of receipt not have reached a depositor within 14 days, or should it contain some errors with reference to the sum or name or in some other way be erroneous, the depositor has to find in his deposit-book, «Complaint», and to separate the paper, fill it in conformity with the case, and to forward it in an envelope, N^o 42^o, which he will receive gratis at any post office. Other blank forms of complaint are gratuitously supplied at every post-office. For entries of interest and coupon the Post Office Savings Bank does not give receipts. 5.--_Replacement of Lost, Spoiled or Filled in Deposit-books._ Should a deposit-book be lost, the loser must notify the fact to the Post Office Savings Bank at Vienna, on a printed form, supplied gratuitously at every Receiving Office, stating the peculiar marks of the lost book as exactly as he can possibly remember them, also the particular circumstances under which the loss took place, as well as his full address, enclosing at the same time 10 kreutzers in postage stamps and the notice of withdrawal book, requesting that a duplicate of the deposit-book lost may be given him. Should the notice-book be also mislaid, this is to be notified on the printed form and the sum of five kreutzers added for a new notice-book. The Post Office Savings Bank notes down the loss and until further notice makes no payment on the lost deposit-book. Meanwhile arrangements will be made for its annulment and if during the space of a month no claim is raised, a duplicate book will be issued and forwarded. If no room can be found in a deposit-book for further entries, or it has become torn or so dirty as to become useless, the depositor has to send it with the printed form, N^o 11, properly filled up to Post Office Savings Bank at Vienna for exchange. Books filled up will be exchanged gratuitously, for a spoilt book, however, the sum of 10 kreutzers is to be added to the request. In case the notice book is also spoilt, the sum of 5 kreutzers is to be added for issuing a new one. 6.--_Interest._ Deposits begin to yield interest at three per cent per annum from one florin upwards. Interest begins from the 1^{st} or from the 16^{th} day of the month which follows on the deposit and ends with the 15^{th} or with the last day of the month which precedes the arrival of the notice of withdrawal from the Post Office Savings Bank. On December 31^{st} of each year the interest accruing will be added to the capital and from that time it will, in like manner bear interest. To each depositor, the Post Office Savings Bank sends at the close of the year an interest-order, valid for two months with an announcement of the amount of interest which has accrued to him for the year ending December 31^{st}. The depositor must cause the amount of this interest to be entered in his deposit-book within the prescribed two months, on presentation of the interest order at some Receiving Office. If a depositor has not within the time allowed caused the entry of the capitalised interest to be effected as per order received, he does not lose the interest, only he has to forward his book to the Post Office Savings Bank for the purpose of having it entered there. The determination of § 1480 of the general Civil Code according to which claims on arrears of interest lapse after three years, do not apply to the interest on deposits in the Post Office Savings Bank. With reference to the lapsing of Post Office Savings Bank deposits the general legal decisions are valid. This lapsing will be arrested by any fresh deposit, by any fresh notice or by any fresh entry of interest in the deposit-book. 7.--_Notice of Withdrawal._ A depositor or the legal successors or authorised agents of a depositor are entitled at any time to require through the prescribed notice the payment back of any part of the deposit or the whole deposit. Sums less than a florin can, however, only be recalled if the deposit-book proves that the total amount deposited does not exceed the amount recalled. Notice of withdrawal is given on a special document, that is on a leaf out of the notice-book which the depositor receives gratuitously at the same time as the deposit-book. These leaves are to be detached according to the order determined by the numbers printed on them, to be duly filled up and forwarded undercover (document N^o 42^b) to the Post Office Savings Bank. For the Notice of Withdrawal the following rules are to regarded: 1. The Notices must always bear the signature which according to instructions was received in the deposit-book, or communicated to the Post Office Savings Bank on document N^o 14. 2. The address to which the order should be sent must, where _poste restante_ is stated, in every case give the receiver's full name. Addresses in figures cannot be used, because they are not allowed on registered letters, and the orders for payment are always sent for the greater security of the depositor by registered letter. 3. The watchword chosen by the depositor must be added to the Notice. If the Depositor has forgotten his watchword he can at any Receiving Office desire the issuing of a request to make it known to him anew. To obtain this favour he must present his deposit-book to the Post Office officials and prove himself the Depositor (Payer). In case he is not personally known to the officials, he must bring some witness who is known to them, or a document capable of giving this proof (passport, certificate of being naturalised, Work-or Service-book). 4. If the Depositor cannot write he must add his mark to the notice-form and this mark must be attested by a witness. Should the witness be the same one who attested the Depositor's signature on the Counter-cheque and in the Deposit-book, the Notice with the mark of the Depositor and the signature of such a witness can be sent without further delay to the Post Office Savings Bank. But should the signature of this person be no longer adducible, the Depositor has himself to go to a Receiving Office and establish his own identity. In the case of depositors who cannot write but have a watchword, its declaration and the attestation of the mark by any witness is enough. The right is reserved to give Notice to withdraw the balance to the Depositor's credit and to give a receipt for the same to the Official Assignee, should the depositor fail,--to the Guardian appointed by the authorities, should the depositor become incapable of managing his affairs,--to the executor of the estate with relation to the person to whom the right of inheritance to the deposit-book belongs should the depositor die. The persons designated, are required to address their memorials direct to the Post Office Savings Bank, sustained by the documents necessary to form a judgement of the case together with the deposit-and notice-books. The deposits of a deceased Depositor are to be withdrawn in full by notice from the person who has the right of inheritance. If a Notice-book has been used up, or in any way has become useless, or a depositor has lost his notice-book, he can on form N^o 5^d which will be supplied at all post offices gratuitously, request the Post Office Savings Bank to forward him a new Notice-book. In the case of Notice-book lost or spoilt the sum of five kreutzers must be added in postage-stamps; in that of an ordinary used up Notice-book, a new one will be substituted gratuitously. 8.--_Repayment._ Consequent on the Notice of withdrawal the Post Office Savings Bank sends to the Depositor, to the address he has named Payment-order valid for two months. The order is sent as a rule by return of post, but in any case soon enough for the repayment to take place within the limit named by the Law of May 22^{nd} 1882:--upon notice of sums between 10 and 100 florins within 15 days, upon notice of sums between 100 and 500 florins at the latest within a month, and finally, upon notice of sums over 500 florins, at the latest within two months of the arrival of the notice at the Post Office Savings Bank. On delivery of this order, _the Depositor, in the presence of the Post Office Official, putting his signature in receipt to the Payment Order_, and on producing the deposit-book, in which the sum paid back will be entered by the Post Office official and deducted from the sum total of the balance, the repayment to the depositor will follow at the pay-counter. The Depositor can authorise any person he pleases to receive payment of a sum thus withdrawn by notice. If he possesses a watchword he needs only to duly fill in the form, N^o 15 (authorisation) and to give or send it by the person authorised with the deposit-book and the payment-order. On this person presenting the authorisation and signing the payment-order, and at the same time presenting the deposit book, the sum will be paid. But the Depositor can in like manner also request in the Notice that the payment-order be sent to the person he has authorised to receive it and whose address he has given. Then the Depositor sends the deposit-book together with the authorisation to the person he thus authorises to receive the payment. But for payment of the sum the person thus authorised must, if not personally known to the post office officials, produce a document for his identification or establish his identity by bringing with him a witness. For authorisation without the watchword, the legalisation of the signature of the withdrawer, either in a law court or by a notary is requisite. 9.--_Repayments without delay._ But also without having to send a previous notice to the Post Office Savings Bank, a Depositor (Payer) can at once at any post office obtain repayments of sums from 1 to 20 florins. Repayments can be made without delay on producing the notice drawn out according to the regulations together with the last acknowledgment of receipt or abstract of the credit account with at the same time an entry of the sum in the deposit-book. Repayments made without delay are not allowed on authorisations, also the whole balance of the depositor's account cannot thus be withdrawn, but a sum of at least 50 kreutzers must remain in the book. This sum as well as the interest can then in the usual way be withdrawn by notice. After each repayment made without delay, the depositor receives a statement from the Post Office Savings Bank with reference to his remaining balance (Statement of Credit-account), on the ground of which he can again obtain a repayment without delay. Repayments without delay cannot be made with reference to annulled deposit-books, or, with reference to deposit-books concerning which a protest, recognised by the Post Office Savings Bank has been made. The Post Office Savings Bank sends out no acknowledgements of receipt upon entering and carrying to the depositor's credit, interest and coupons,--the last receipt or statement of balance of account is therefore valid for a repayment made without delay; but the sum to be repaid must not include the credited interests or coupons. After repayments in the usual manner or after such payments as the Post Office Savings Bank at Vienna itself makes as well as after other debit entries in the deposit-book, as for example purchases in the stocks, no statement with reference to the remaining balance is given, the acknowledgement of the receipt of the last deposit remains therefore in like manner valid until the next repayment made without delay. In the same way a statement with reference to the remaining balance retains its validity without regard to these repayments or debit entries, until in its place comes another acknowledgment of receipt in consequence of a new deposit, or a new statement with reference to the balance of the account in consequence of a new payment made without delay. It is evident of itself that a higher sum than the balance remaining at the depositor's disposal after deduction of the last repayment and entered in the book cannot at any time be paid. Should it happen that owing to the Post Office Service the acknowledgment of the receipt of the last deposit has not come into the depositor's hands, the previous receipt-acknowledgment, or statement of balance will be considered valid; the last deposit, not yet confirmed cannot however be included in the payment requested. If after a payment made without delay there remains less than 1 fl. 50 kr. to the credit of the depositor, the Post Office Savings Bank will issue no statement of the balance of the account, since in such a case there can be no further payment made without delay until there has been a new deposit paid in followed by an acknowledgment of receipt. At the bank of the Post Office Savings Bank at Vienna repayments can be made without delay every day from 8 o'clock in the morning until 6 o'clock in the evening (on Sundays and holidays from 9 until 12 at noon) without regard to the amount of the sums required. To this end it is necessary to present at the Cashier's sliding window the Notice-paper filled in and signed by the person empowered to do this together with the deposit-book; bringing the last receipt acknowledgment or statement of balance is not requisite. For sums above 20 florins, the depositor, in case he has no watchword must prove his own identity. 10.--_Business in the Public Funds._ When the Savings account of a depositor's exceeds 1,000 florins, the Post Office Savings Bank is obliged to request the depositor by a registered letter to lessen the amount of his saved up capital. If within a month after the request the depositor has not lessened the amount of his capital, there will at the expiration of the time, be bought on his account in the course of the day, bonds of the only stock issued in notes, to the amount of the sum required to reduce the account to 1,000 florins, in any case for the nominal sum at least of 200 florins. The price of this purchase will be entered to the debit of the depositor's account as repayment; the bonds bought will remain under the care of the Post Office Savings Bank and a Stocks-book will be forwarded to the depositor. * * * * * A Depositor (Payer) who has in the Post Office Savings Bank an adequate sum at his disposal can at any time request the Office to make purchases for him in the Public Funds. The request for the purchase is to be drawn up on Form N^o 22, and must, if the purchased stock is to remain at the Post Office Savings Bank contain a watchword. If the depositor already has a watchword in connection with his deposit book that watchword is to be inserted. If a depositor cannot write he must make his mark and have it attested by a witness. If this witness is the same person who attested the depositor's mark on the counter-cheque and in the deposit book, then the request with the mark of the depositor and the signature of the witness can be sent without further delay to the Post Office Savings Bank. But if the signature of this witness cannot any longer be obtained, the depositor has to go to a Receiving Office and himself prove his own identity. For the first purchase together with the request it is simply necessary to enclose the deposit-book; for each subsequent purchase the deposit-book and if it relates to deposited bonds the stock account-book also must be sent. The purchase is made as far as practicable according to the state of the market as noted in the official price-list of the Vienna Exchange on the day in which the request refered to reached the Post Office Savings Bank, a commission being charged of 2 per thousand, which however cannot amount to less than 20 kreutzers. The stock bought will, according to desire of the depositor either be sent at his own risk and cost to the address he names in his request or be taken care of without cost by the Office under guarantee for kind and number of documents, class of coupons and winning numbers in the lotteries, and the Post Office Savings Bank will prepare and send to the depositor with reference to them a «stock account-book» (Document N^o 32). Stock which the depositor has not bought through the Post Office Savings Bank can be deposited by means of a stock account-book. The process is thus: the Post Office Savings Bank buys the stock sent and enters it to the credit of the sender, upon which the resale to him is gone through and the stock entered in the usual way in the stocks account-book. In such cases the purchase and sale in respect of stock of the same kind takes place at the same market price, so that there is no loss to the depositor, merely costing for the purchase on account the fixed commission of 2 per thousand. Depositors have, with a view to the taking over of such stock to send it at their own cost to the Post Office Savings Bank, joining with it a request in which the stock to be taken over is described, the deposit-book being sent (either lottery or stock account-book). * * * * * The Post Office Savings Bank undertakes to present at the Treasury of the Public Debt, the bonds bought on account of depositors in order that they may be stamped with the names of the holders. This can be done at the request of the purchaser immediately after purchase of the bonds refered to in which case the stamp duty will be accounted for at the same time as the costs of purchase, or, the stamping of the bonds can be requested which according to the stock account-book are already in the Post Office Savings Bank. In the last case the duty which including the cost of the form used amounts to 40 kreutzers a stamp is to be forwarded in postage stamps enclosed with form N^o 22. In every case the request must contain the exact name of the holder and further information as to where he wishes to take the interest, otherwise it will be understood that it is to be received at the Public Debt Treasury. After the stamping has occurred, which, according to rule must take place within 3 or 4 weeks, the Post Office Savings Banks forwards the stamped bonds to the address given before the business was entered on. If an account of the interest due has to be prepared it is forwarded to the holder by the Treasury of the Public Debt. * * * * * The coupons of the Bonds deposited as per stock account-book will, when they fall due, be detached and cashed, and upon the day of their falling due entered both in the stock account-books of the holders without their having in each particular case to give notice. With reference to these sums coupon-orders will be issued to the depositor on the ground of which they can receive payment of them at any Receiving Office, on the amount being entered in their deposit-book before the expiration of the two months during which the orders are valid. After this the entry can only take place by sending the deposit-book to the Post Office Savings Bank at Vienna. It remains free to the holder of the stock-account book to cause the Post Office Savings Bank to forward the coupons in its case, falling due in their entirety or in part, either _in natura_ or in money to himself or to a third party. This order should be sent to the Post Office Savings Bank in sufficient time for it to arrive before the coupons fall due. When the coupons are detached and sent _in natura_, no commission is charged, only the persons to whom they to be addressed must pay the postage as when coupon interests are forwarded. For banking coupons or lottery prizes, a commission will be charged as for stock in case of the Post Office Savings Bank at 1 per thousand, excepting, however, when the produce of the coupons is itself entered to the account of the depositor. * * * * * The owner of a stock-account book can at any time request that his stock in the public funds be sent to him or that it be sold. The request is to be duly addressed to the Post Office Savings Bank on form N^o 22^c in connection with N^o 24. The request forwarded to the Post Office Savings Bank must contain the watchword and personal signature of the person making the request and be accompanied by the stock-account book and also by the deposit-book when it is a question of entering the money resulting from the sale to the credit of the depositor's account. The sale takes place in agreement with the final state of the market officially noted on the day the request arrived at the Post Office Savings Bank upon a commission of 2 per 100, at the lowest, 20 kreutzers. If a stock-account book is lost, the loser is to inform the Post Office Savings Bank in writing, sending at the same time his watchword, and, enclosing 20 kreutzers in postage stamps to request a duplicate. If after eight days subsequent to the notice the stock-account book is not found the Post Office Savings Bank will issue a duplicate and send it to the depositor, or if an official act is sought with reference to the book, the Post Office Savings Bank will enter into communication with the actual possessor of the book and it will depend upon the result whether the Post Office Savings Bank can grant the request of the loser, or whether it decides to relegate the parties to the magistrate in whose jurisdiction the matter lies. 11.--_Freedom from Cost of Postage and Commissions._ The correspondence of depositors with Post Office Savings Bank as well as with the Receiving Offices and with the Post Office management is always post-free, even in the case of a registered letter. This favour however has no application to the sending of certificates of stock or with reference to money transactions which result from the purchase and collection of the interest on the stock, nor does it apply to notices forwarded of their declared value, with the sole exception of the deposit-book being sent by letter with the declared value for the purchase of stock in the funds. The correspondence of the Post Office Savings Bank and its organs with the depositors is with reference to orders to addresses designated free from the tax of 1 kreutzer the letter, a tax appointed with reference to the post offices not dependent on the Treasury and to rural post offices, and in connection with the collection of registered letters also to those dependent on the Treasury. The memorials addressed to the Post Office Savings Bank, to the Post Office authorities and their organs by depositors their legal successors, or authorised representatives, as well as the acts of conveyance mentioned in article 6 of the law of May 28^{th} 1882 are stamp and duty free. The interests of the savings deposits are in like manner exempt from the Income Tax and from any future tax coming in its place. The deposit-book as well as the forms necessary in giving instructions in business transactions with the Post Office Saving Bank will be supplied to depositors gratuitously. 12.--_Official Secrets._ The officials of the Post Office Savings Bank are bound by duty to keep the business and official secrets and it is strictly forbidden to them, beyond their superiors, to impart to any persons whatever, knowledge of any kind relating either to the names of depositors or the the amount of the sums deposited or withdrawn, or to the amount of balances. Those who contravene this rule will undergo disciplinary treatment, and, according to the circumstances, will be dismissed from the service. Every depositor may therefore rely on the strictest secrecy with relation to his business transactions with the Post Office Savings Bank, not only with reference to the usual Post Office Savings Service, but also with regard to the business in the Public Funds. POST OFFICE SAVINGS BANK. _The Director_, WACEK. FOOTNOTES: [N] _Reichs-Gesetz-Blatt._ Collection of the Imperial Laws. [O] _According to the altered form of the law of November 19^{th} 1887._ The earlier form of Article 5 ran thus: Each depositor will receive from the receiving office (Post office) where he pays in his first deposit, a deposit book in which each amount paid in, each amount paid back, and the interest added to the capital is to be entered. Each subsequent payment can be made at any receiving office (Post office), the amount being entered in the deposit book. That person is to be considered the depositor on whose behalf the deposit is made. The deposit book is to be delivered gratuitously and stamp-free. The Post Office Savings Bank will open an account for each depositor. [P] _According to the altered form of the law of November 19^{th} 1887._ The earlier form of Article 6 ran thus: The deposit-book is issued in the name of the person for whom the savings have been deposited, and is to contain the notes necessary to the identification of the same, as well as the signature of the depositor. A depositor who cannot write will have to bring with him a trustworthy man who will have to attest the identity of the depositor and to sign the deposit-book in his stead. An assignment of a deposit-book to another person is only to be accepted by the Post Office Savings Bank when the act of assignment has taken place at a post office entrusted with Post Office Savings Bank business. This being done, the assignee is to be regarded as the proprietor of the deposit-book. (Art. 21, paragraph 3.) Minors are entitled to pay in sums as savings and to receive repayments back, provided their legal representative has entered no written objection at the Post Office Savings Bank. In the case of the loss of the deposit-book, a duplicate is, after carrying out the proceedings prescribed by Article 14, to be issued. For one and the same person, but one Post Office Savings Bank deposit-book is to be issued. Whoever causes two or more deposit-books to be issued loses the interests on the capital entered in the second and in any subsequent books. If the whole amount of the deposits in the two or more deposit-books that a depositor has caused to be issued is over the sum of a 1,000 florins, or if a depositor has deposited in one year more than 300 florins, in the two or more deposit-books issued to him, he will lose in the first case that part of the capital which exceeds 1,000 florins, and in the second, that part of the capital which exceeds 300 florins. The Minister of Commerce is empowered for well considered reasons to be indulgent with reference to the loss of capital, which, in conformity with the regulations, would occur to the surplus deposits. Post Office servants are forbidden, except to their superiors, to give any information whatever to anyone, as to the names of depositors and the amounts of their deposits. [Q] _According to the altered form of the law of November 19^{th} 1887._ The earlier form of Article 7 ran thus: Each payment must amount to at least 50 kreutzers or a multiple of 50 kreutzers. The sum total of payments in the course of a year cannot exceed the amount of 300 florins, after deducting the amount resulting from payments back during that year. The balance in favour of a depositor including deposits paid in and interest added to the capital cannot, deducting the amount of repayments amount to more than 1,000 florins. Deposits of 50 kreutzers can be made in postage stamps, or in special postal savings stamps as soon as such stamps are issued by the Minister of Commerce. These stamps are to be fastened on forms supplied gratuitously. [R] _According to the altered form of the law of November 19^{th} 1887._ The earlier form of Article 8 ran thus: The rate of interest for savings deposits is to be fixed at 3 per cent per annum. The rate of interest can only be altered by legislation. [S] _According to the altered form of the law of November 19^{th} 1887._ The earlier form of Article 13 ran thus: The repayment of the balance in favour of a depositor, or any part of it, to him or to his legal heir or authorised agent, will take place upon a notice which can be made by the party giving it, at the receiving office (post office) which he names in the notice. The repayment is to be made through the receiving office (Post Office) named in the notice on the production of the deposit-book on the basis of an assignment by the Post Office Savings Bank, except the payment is, according to Article 14, barred by proceedings having been instituted, or according to Articles 6 and 17 by a protest having been made. When such notice has been received with reference to sums up to 10 florins, the assignment will be sent by return of post by the Post Office Savings Bank and the payment back will be made by the receiving office (Post Office) immediately after its arrival. The repayment of sums between 10 and 100 florins will be made in a fortnight at the latest, that of sums between 100 and 500 florins in a month at the latest, that of sums above 500 florins at the latest within two months after the arrival of the notice. PROPOSED LAW DEALING WITH THE ORGANISATION OF A Service of Cheques and Clearing of Accounts in the General Savings Bank laid before the Chamber of Representatives of Belgium at the sitting of Nov. 20^{th} 1896 EXPLANATIONS[T] GENTLEMEN, The proposed law laid before the Chamber of Representatives, proposes to attach to our General Savings Bank, a service of which the great importance, the remarkable stability and singular capacity for development, has been proved by a trial conducted with vigilant carefulness during thirteen years in Austria and five in Hungary. In fact the chief part of the unfolding of a project of this kind consists in the setting forth of the results of foreign experience. * * * * * (This part of the explanation relating to Austrian experience is a summary of the preceding article, to which we refer our readers.) * * * * * Returning now to Belgium we cannot fail to recognise first of all that the institution of the General Savings Bank by the Act of March 16^{th} 1865, is one of the important events of our economic evolution. History will justly connect the name of Frère-Orban with a work so perfectly balanced and bearing the imprint of a real constructive genius. The solution given to the fundamental problem of the relations of the Savings Bank with the State, and of which the essential characteristics were:--making the Central Bank a distinct legal entity, whilst at the same time surrounding it with the guarantee of the State;--taking measures so that this State guarantee should not be to onerous,--and the constitution of a reserve fund,--the conception of the complex and diversified system of investing the capital in the best way to suit both the exigencies of its productivity and its disposal;--fixing the rates of interest and the periodic distribution of a portion of the reserve;--the accession of all classes of society to the Savings Bank and the admission of unlimited deposits;--the correctives brought to bear on these principles by the fixing of differential rates of interest according to the largeness of the deposits;--all these elements wisely co-ordinated, give to the work of the legislator of 1865, at once an original physiognomy and a true grandeur. No one of the fundamental ideas of this edifice is attacked by the bill laid before the Chamber. But this work is perfectible and it contains in its constitution even the principles of its perfectibility. In studying the functions of the Savings Bank, the conviction is soon arrived at that the authors of the Act of 1865, conceived them in the most general and simple form possible, leaving it to time to complete their work. Thus it is that the investments are above all things regarded and portioned out with the view of the possible eventual withdrawal of deposits. The great peril which the makers of the law had before them, was that of not being able to satisfy a sudden and simultaneous demand for the repayment of the deposits. As to the various forms which these investments could take, they were thoroughly recognized and pointed out by the law-makers, but there were some which were only mentioned in their explanatory statement, but which must take a more and more important position. This has occurred with regard to agricultural investments, which have awaited a complementary organic legislation. This again is the case with the investments in land, the importance of which in the economy of the Savings Bank, Frère-Orban had seen already in 1850, better than anyone, but which so far has lacked appropriate embodiment by which to give a real satisfaction to the needs of rural property. The Acts of April 15^{th} 1884 and June 21^{st} 1894, with regard to agricultural credit, of August 9^{th} 1889, with regard to working-class Dwellings, the bill of November 19^{th} 1896, with regarded to landed credit only develop the thought contained in the institution of 1865. The much-regretted Mahillon has profoundly said: «It is indispensable in order to produce its whole useful effect, that the Savings Bank should be completed by distinct bodies which regulate its working. It is by this organic development that the fruitful character of the genius of our legislators will show itself.» Our bill tends less to give a larger expansion to these original functions of the Savings Bank than to set free a new function which will carry we think according to the words of Mahillon, its useful effect to a still higher degree. The Act of 1865 makes no preparation for this putting into motion the property of the depositors, but then neither its text, nor the spirit even of the institution excludes it. It has been seen at work in the examples of Austria and Hungary; such important innovations however require in themselves real legal sanction. Thus it is that the two large classes of operations which the new service proposes to combine, imply the possibility for third parties to effect at all post offices payments in favour of depositors whose deposit-books will be kept centralized at the General Savings Bank. To-day the deposits, like the withdrawals, although they can be effected at all the post offices, can only be so effected on presentation of the Savings Account-book, whether this is done by the holders themselves or by third parties in their names. The Annual Report of the Savings Bank on these operations gives the statistics of deposits effected by teachers on behalf of their pupils, by parents on behalf of their children, by masters on behalf of their workmen. Teachers, parents, workers, retain the account-books. According to the proposed law depositors will be able to dispose of the free balance of their account by payment-cheques or clearing-cheques. At present the holders of the account books cannot have recourse to the cheque, nor transfer any sum from their account to that of another on a simple demand addressed to the Savings Bank. Every transfer resolves itself into an act of cession which must be signified to the Bank by a judicial act or notified by a letter bearing the legalised signature of the ceder. The carrying out of these extra judicial formalities is evidently incompatible with what is required in a perfect organ of circulation. The end in view is in fact to place at the disposition of the greatest number of depositors a permanent intermediary which will enable them to economise time to the utmost, to reduce risk and expense and to save money. The postal administration by the extraordinary development of its invaluable public service in collecting bills and taking receipts, the importance of which has tripled in the last fifteen years, and by the aid which it has given to the Savings Bank in virtue of the Act of May 30^{th} 1879, in the collection of deposits and in payment of withdrawals, has realized one part of the operations which the projected institution includes. But it is necessary to attain a still higher degree of organisation taking the Savings Bank itself as the foundation on which to rest. The point aimed at is how to place at the disposal of its depositors a regular and continuous service of account-keeping both individual and collective in character, and to co-ordinate in a permanent manner all the operations which it embraces; the point aimed at is how to assure to every depositor the power of causing regular collections to be made by the mediation of the Savings Bank and the post offices, the amount being carried to his or her account; the point aimed at, is how to effect these payments by the same intermediaries without running the slightest risk, without the least of these operations escaping an inflexible account-keeping, constantly kept before the depositor's eyes, and without there being any need for the depositors themselves directly and personally to handle the funds. The centralization of the accounts of all the adherents makes it possible for the Savings Bank to obtain clear and definite results and to eliminate by means of the clearing of accounts the intermediary of money in an ever increasing number of transactions, for this service is by its natural evolution, by the rapid increase of the number of the adherents destined to preponderate. Assuredly, the instruments of credit and of liquidation, of clearing and balancing, which more and more reduce the use of money, have in Belgium taken an already great importance at the National Bank, in the private banks, and in the Unions de Credit:--the credit given and received having, in a quarter of a century attained two thousand millions of francs at the National Bank alone;--the extent of the movement being shown by the large figures of the current accounts upon which it operates, and during the last three years the National Bank has sought to connect by a sort of clearing the other credit institutions. But who can hide the fact that we have yet much progress to make, or how far we are behind certain nations such as England. We may judge of it by the collected statistics given very lately by M. Des Essarts in the Annals of the Statistical Society of Paris. The point to aim at is to make the more perfect means of liquidation penetrate more thoroughly into new soil and of bringing them into closer connection with the social organism. This is precisely the project now laid before the Chamber, by which it is proposed for this end to have recourse to an institution like the Savings Bank, the deposits in which rise to more than 450 millions of francs and are distributed in more than 1 million 100,000 bankbooks, and which has seen these deposits increase, in five years, more than 100 millions; and to bring this institution to help to accelerate the general evolution of the community in the fruitful direction of the gradual economising of the monetary instrument and its final elimination. In looking into the official statistics we become convinced that the one most fixed idea of Frère-Orban is there definitely brought into operation; that of the common participation of all classes of society in the Savings Bank. Out of 100,000 savings-books, if 50% be set on one side as children's books, it will be seen that the surplus may be divided into nearly equal proportions between the class of manual workers on the one hand, and on the other that of the shopkeepers, the heads of industrial or agricultural enterprises, officials military men, proprietors, stock holders and professional persons. If to this division according to the number of account-books be added, the classification of the account-books according to their total sum, the conviction is soon arrived at that it is to the members of the working-classes that the cheques and the clearing of cheques will directly render the least service. In effect, if one ought to attribute to the working-class all the account-books of 1 to 1,000 francs, their total importance would represent hardly a quarter of the sum total of the account-books of the Savings Bank. This point will be rendered more clear by the publication of the book of Messrs Hamande and Burny. However, if putting the consideration of individuals on one side we consider the different forms of working class associations, the conviction is arrived at that, in the service of cheques and clearing they will have a valuable intermediary: the mutual aid societies, the cooperative societies, the professional unions themselves will find in this organ of circulation, the same help as the multitudinous associations of every kind connected with the Savings Bank of Vienna, the popular banks and the rural Savings Banks, specially carried on with a view to small industrial agricultural and commercial enterprises, and in a higher degree the unions de credit, will connect themselves by organic threads to the service of the Savings Bank; they will find in it a means of bringing their efforts to a common point. It may be added that, to the leading idea of the monetary benefit, is, in our idea united that, of assuring to the workers in this great movement of association one of the indispensable organs to a general and truly democratic financial service and a powerful instrument of economic education, for it will accustom the working-class societies which connect themselves with it to the invaluable discipline of a strict and permanent bookkeeping. The articles of the proposed law only reproduce the general conditions of this new institution as they result from experience. The cheques and clearing service ought to have a distinct existence, its accounts being kept separate from those of the savings service, understanding the term savings in the sense which the law of 1865 has given to it. The Austrian law of November 19^{th} 1887, the complement of the law of May 28^{th} 1882, has laid this down. This condition is bound up with the liberty and spontaneity which ought to characterise the association; nothing can oblige the depositors in the Savings Bank to give their adhesion to this service, to run the risks, small though they be, of these operations, to submit to the working out of its special conditions. Its utility ought to be freely appreciated and the Savings Bank will on the other hand have to fix the regulations which the adherents must satisfy. Thus those affiliated to the service will not be necessarily confounded with the whole mass of the depositors in the Savings Bank. In carrying out this law it will be necessary to fix a minimum deposit enabling anyone to become a participant in the institution and to have an account; and until the withdrawal of the depositor he will not be able to dispose of this sum; this is the fundamental guarantee the Austrian law imposes and it is a legitimate one: the risks are in other respects insignificant; however it is wise to render this guarantee complete by the formation of a reserve fund; all those who adhere to the service will participate in it; the mode of its formation, and the amount will be fixed by subsequent ordinances. Thus the stability of the institution will be completely assured. Free to adhere to the service, the depositor ought to be free to withdraw from it, only the regulations will have if this occurs, to determine the consequences of withdrawal, from the point of view of responsibility. The working of the system absolutely requires the complete centralisation of the accounts of the adherents. The account-books ought to be preserved as well as the accounts kept at the central office of the Savings Bank. What enlargement will be required in number of persons employed must be left to the future. This centralisation is the absolute condition of the regularity of the entries, the certainty of the control and of the preservation against error and fraud; without it the transferring of the entries and of the clearing could not be carried out; by it alone the exact state of the balance of every adherent can be known at any moment; by it alone exact information can be had at each operation of the situation and consequently of the extent of the capital which can be disposed of. The secret of the way in which the surplus is employed will moreover be kept from the knowledge of outsiders. Experience has proved that the central service of bookkeeping can, without any disturbance, be placed every day in relation with all the post-offices, and the accounts be kept to date notwithstanding the apparent inextricable complexity of all this correspondence and of all these various operations. The instruments intended to facilitate the two classes of operations in which the Savings Bank and the Postal administration will intervene in the interest of the adherents:--the collection on behalf of the latter, the payments in or the payments in discharge are the object of special bye-laws. In this direction still, and in this direction especially we shall be able to learn from experience. Perfected instruments, as the _Empfang Erlag Schein_, the certificate of payment in and of deposit, the cheque-books of payment and of clearing with the ingenious measures taken to baffle every fraud have been well tried in Austria and Hungary and there would be no longer any peril in adopting them. A metallic reserve sufficient to satisfy all immediate wants ought to be secured. Experience has proved that this condition is to be realized without difficulty. The establishment of a service of cheques and clearing may lead to a more considerable flow of capital to the Savings Bank. This has been the result in Vienna and has been in fact the very thing the Viennese legislation wished to bring about. But, on the one hand the investments continue without ceasing to increase: for example, the extent of the advances connected with agriculture and land which will be solicited of the Savings Bank or in which it will participate cannot be measured; on the other hand it is possible to exercise regulative and limiting action on the deposits in making a difference in the rates of interest given to depositors; it is possible to go the length of suppressing all interest; to this end special arrangements with reference to deposits belonging to the cheque and clearing service will be made in carrying out the law. Such is the economy of a proposition in itself modest and simple, which we have no hesitation to submit to the Chamber. If we make an effort to conceive what in the future will be the evolution of an apparatus so marvellously flexible as the Savings Bank, we may fairly expect from a combination of the service of cheques and clearing with that of investments, of the association of special organs,--such as Mahillon speaks of,--with the central organism of the Bank, a powerful co-operation in the legitimate effort to eliminate metallic money from our circulating system. But without inquiring, now, what may occur in a future perhaps alas still remote, in only occupying ourselves with the production of present good, it has seemed to us in the general interest to solicit the Chamber to establish a service of which decisive experiences have fixed the essential conditions and shown the efficacy, and of which the link is as manifest with our democratic evolution as with the higher forms of credit and circulation. FOOTNOTES: [T] Sitting of December 2^{nd} 1896. Parliamentary Documents N^o 29. PROPOSED LAW _Additions to the laws of March 16^{th} 1865 instituting a General, Savings Bank, and of March 30^{th} 1879, codifying the postal legislation._ ARTICLE 1.--The Savings Bank is authorised to organise, with the assistance of the postal administration, a service of cheques and of clearing in current accounts in the interest of those depositors who shall satisfy certain conditions in virtue of the present law. ART. 2.--This service shall have a distinct and separate administration to that of the Savings Service; the bookkeeping operations to which it gives rise shall be centralised at the Savings Bank in Brussels. ART. 3.--All participation in this service by the opening of a current account shall be voluntary; withdrawal shall always be possible. ART. 4.--Royal decrees shall determine: 1. The general conditions of admission and particularly the minimum of deposit which shall be required of every adherent and which shall remain non-withdrawable so long as his participation in the service shall continue; the carrying out of his withdrawal; 2. The conditions and the forms under which the Savings Bank shall receive deposits of third parties and payments on account of adherents, either directly or by the intermediary of the postal administration; 3. The rules according to which the adherents shall be able to dispose of the free balance of their account, by means of cheques and clearings; the conditions and the forms of the cheques given out; the arrangements made to prevent errors and frauds; the intervention of the postal administration in the payments or repayments effected on account of the adherents; 4. The rules which will permit the accounts to be kept from day to day and to enable the account holders to know the condition of affairs in a regular manner; 5. The formation of a reserve sufficient to assure the regularity of the operations; 6. The rate of interest which shall be given to the funds placed in the cheque and clearing service; 7. The constitution of a reserve destined to cover the eventual losses of this service; 8. The fees for collection which shall be charged to the adherents. H. DENIS. E. VANDERVELDE. F. FLÉCHET. L. BERTRAND. T. NIEZETTE. Transcriber's Notes: Simple spelling, grammar, and typographical errors were corrected. Punctuation normalized. Anachronistic and non-standard spellings retained as printed. Italics markup is enclosed in _underscores_. Bold markup is enclosed in =equals=. Superscripts are indicated with a single caret (^) followed by the superscripted text. If the superscript continues for more than one character, then the text is surrounded by curly braces { and } as well. Added missing "FIGURE V." reference to top of page 57. 
35070	----	CHILD'S OWN BOOK _of Great Musicians_ SCHUBERT [Illustration] _By_ THOMAS TAPPER THEODORE PRESSER CO. 1712 CHESTNUT STREET PHILADELPHIA HOW TO USE THIS BOOK This book is one of a series known as the CHILD'S OWN BOOK OF GREAT MUSICIANS, written by Thomas Tapper, author of "Pictures from the Lives of the Great Composers for Children," "Music Talks with Children," "First Studies in Music Biography," and others. The sheet of illustrations included herewith is to be cut apart by the child, and each illustration is to be inserted in its proper place throughout the book, pasted in the space containing the same number as will be found under each picture on the sheet. It is not necessary to cover the entire back of a picture with paste. Put it only on the corners and place neatly within the lines you will find printed around each space. Use photographic paste, if possible. After this play-work is completed there will be found at the back of the book blank pages upon which the child is to write his own story of the great musician, based upon the facts and questions found on the previous pages. The book is then to be sewed by the child through the center with the cord found in the enclosed envelope. The book thus becomes the child's own book. This series will be found not only to furnish a pleasing and interesting task for the children, but will teach them the main facts with regard to the life of each of the great musicians--an educational feature worth while. * * * * * This series of the Child's Own Book of Great Musicians includes at present a book on each of the following: Bach Grieg Mozart Beethoven Handel Nevin Brahms Haydn Schubert Chopin Liszt Schumann Dvorák MacDowell Tschaikowsky Foster Mendelssohn Verdi Wagner Printed in U. S. A. [Illustration: No. 1] [Illustration: No. 19] [Illustration: No. 16] [Illustration: No. 14] [Illustration: No. 18] [Illustration: No. 4] [Illustration: No. 20] [Illustration: No. 5] [Illustration: No. 7] [Illustration: No. 6] [Illustration: No. 8] [Illustration: No. 15] [Illustration: No. 21] [Illustration: No. 12] [Illustration: No. 2] [Illustration: No. 3] [Illustration: No. 9] [Illustration: No. 10] [Illustration: No. 13] [Illustration: No. 17] [Illustration: No. 11] Franz Schubert The Story of the Boy Who Wrote Beautiful Songs This Book was made by _____________________ Philadelphia Theodore Presser Co. 1712 Chestnut Str. Copyright, 1916, by THEO. PRESSER CO. Printed in the U.S.A. [Illustration: No. 1 Cut the picture of Schubert from the sheet of pictures. Paste in here. Write the composer's name below and the dates also.] BORN .................................. DIED .................................. The Story of the Boy Who Wrote Beautiful Songs. One might say of Schubert that he was born with a spring of melody in his heart and a song on his lips. Can anyone make a melody more lovely than this? [Illustration: No. 2 FROM SCHUBERT'S SONG "TROUT."] Play it or have someone play it to you. Is it not worth remembering all one's life? Schubert composed many kinds of music, but his songs are most loved by everybody. They are sung all over the world. And just because he never let a song come from his lips that did not first come from his heart. Is not this a jolly one? [Illustration: No. 3 FROM SCHUBERT'S SONG "WANDERING."] Schubert's full name was FRANZ PETER SCHUBERT. He was born in Vienna, in a very simple house that looks quite old-fashioned. Over the doorway there is a bust of Schubert, a few inches high. And a sign on the house says: Franz Schubert's Birthplace. [Illustration: No. 4 FRANZ SCHUBERT'S BIRTHPLACE.] Dates are easy to remember if we write them. So you must ask your teacher when Schubert was born and put in the date in the next sentence. Franz Schubert was born in......... At that time the great American authors Washington Irving, James Fenimore Cooper, and William Cullen Bryant were all boys. [Illustration: No. 5 IRVING.] [Illustration: No. 6 COOPER.] [Illustration: No. 7 BRYANT.] You may not know so much about them now, but some day they will be quite as good friends as any you will ever make. Even though these boys were a little older than Franz Schubert, let us always think of them together. Then, of course, we should think of Schubert together with the composers who lived when he did. Here are some whose names you can remember very easily. [Illustration: No. 8 VON WEBER.] [Illustration: No. 9 ROSSINI.] [Illustration: No. 10 CZERNY.] [Illustration: No. 11 DONIZETTI.] Czerny was born in the year 1794, and wrote many studies for the piano. How much older was he than Franz Schubert? Von Weber wrote operas and conducted them himself. He was born eleven years before Schubert. Rossini was an Italian composer of operas, born in 1792, five years before Schubert. Schubert's life was so short, however, that Rossini lived forty years longer than the great song writer. Donizetti was an Italian opera composer. One of his well-known operas was Lucia di Lammermoor. He was born in 1797, just as Schubert was. Franz's father was a schoolmaster, and so was Franz himself for three years. He taught the little children of Vienna their A-B-C's, and how to do sums. Of course, he helped them to learn to read. Sometimes we find it quite hard to take one piano lesson or violin lesson a week. But from the time when Franz Schubert was a very little boy he had lessons every week for violin, voice, and piano. A little later he began to study harmony with a very famous man who knew Mozart. His name was ANTONIO SALIERI. [Illustration: No. 12 ANTONIO SALIERI.] With so many lessons and with school work just as we have it, Franz must have been a very busy boy. He was quite poor and often very hungry; but in spite of that he was always good natured and full of fun. At eleven years of age he became a singer in the chapel of the Emperor. It was here that Salieri was director. Franz sang in the choir until he was nearly seventeen. Then he became a schoolmaster, because, of course, he had to earn his living. Wherever he was Franz was thinking music and composing it. Once he wrote a song called _The Serenade_ at a table outside an inn. An artist has made a picture of this. [Illustration: No. 13 SCHUBERT WRITING "THE SERENADE."] Once Schubert was seen by his boyhood friends busily writing a new song. So quick did he write that the ink was hardly dry on one sheet before the next one was done. He was writing the music to a beautiful fairy poem by the great German poet Goethe. The poem is called _The Erl-King_, and tells how the fairy Erl-King chases a father who is rushing on horseback with his dying child in his arms. Finally, just as the father reaches his courtyard the child dies. It is a beautiful song sung by the greatest singers. Goethe, the great poet, is not known to have met Schubert. He paid little attention to his music. Here is his picture. [Illustration: No. 14 JOHANN WOLFGANG GOETHE.] Sometime you will learn about Joseph Haydn, who died in Vienna when little Franz was twelve years old. Papa Haydn, as he was called, was music master in a famous family called the Esterhazys. Let us put a picture of Joseph Haydn here just to remember that he was an old man of seventy-seven when little Franz was a boy of twelve. [Illustration: No. 15 JOSEPH HAYDN.] Well, Franz Schubert also lived for a time with the Esterhazy family. He was piano teacher to the children of Count Johann. Franz was then twenty-one years old. In what year was he twenty-one? A good friend of Schubert's was Michael Vogl. He was a famous singer, who did all he could to make Schubert's songs known. They took little vacation trips together and were good companions. When you read more about this singer's friendship for Franz Schubert you will like him for being so kind to one who had very little pleasure in life. He looks like a good friend even in a picture--do you not think so? [Illustration: No. 16 SCHUBERT ACCOMPANYING VOGL AS HE SINGS.] Once when Schubert and Vogl were enjoying a vacation tour in the mountains, Franz read Scott's _Lady of the Lake_, which was printed in the year 1810, when Schubert was thirteen years old. Schubert set some of this poem to music. A fact you will remember when you read it in school. Perhaps you could remember at the same time that Scott was a little older than Schubert and just one year younger than Beethoven. Beethoven lived in Vienna at that time and Schubert with two friends went to see him. Beethoven was very deaf, and those who met him had to write down what they wanted to say with a large pencil, such as is used by carpenters. Schubert was so modest and nervous upon meeting the great master that he could not even write his replies. Here is the picture of the way Beethoven looked as he walked down the street in those days: [Illustration: No. 17 BEETHOVEN IN VIENNA.] Once when Schubert was very ill a friend sent him some books to read. They were _The Last of the Mohicans_, _The Spy_, _The Pilot_, and _The Pioneer_. Now these books were written by the American author, whose name you must find for yourself. [Illustration: No. 18 SCHUBERT'S WORK ROOM.] See what a simple work room Schubert had. Here are his Clavier and chair and a few books. Schubert had music in his mind and soul all the time. It is said that one of his favorite walks was down by a mill, where he was inspired to write some beautiful songs. [Illustration: No. 19 SCHUBERT BY THE MILL IN THE WOODS.] This is the way that Franz Schubert wrote his name. [Illustration: No. 20] * * * * * FACTS ABOUT FRANZ PETER SCHUBERT. When you have read this page and the next make a story about Schubert's life. Write it in your own words. When you are quite sure you cannot improve it, copy it on pages 14, 15, and 16. 1. Schubert was born in Vienna. 2. His birthday was January 31, 1797. 3. He died in Vienna in 1828. 4. When Schubert was born Beethoven was twenty-seven years old. 5. Schubert was a schoolmaster. 6. He had his first music lessons from his father, who was also a schoolmaster and who played the violin. 7. His brother taught him to play the piano, and he studied singing so as to join the Emperor's Choir. 8. Then he studied harmony with a famous man named Salieri. 9. When Franz was thirteen he composed two piano pieces, at fourteen he wrote two songs, and when he was sixteen he wrote a symphony. 10. When he was eighteen Franz wrote more than a hundred songs. 11. He composed _The Erl-King_ when he was nineteen. 12. In all, Schubert wrote over six hundred songs, lots of piano pieces, nine symphonies, and many other compositions. 13. What other composer also wrote nine symphonies? Perhaps you may not know this; if not, ask your teacher. 14. Schubert made many good friends. 15. With them and his music he found all his happiness. 16. Once when he was very ill he read some books by an American author. Do you remember the author's name? 17. Do you remember the name of any one of the books? 18. One of Schubert's most beautiful symphonies was called _The Unfinished_, because he did not live to complete it. TEN QUESTIONS ABOUT SCHUBERT. 1. Where was Schubert born? 2. When was Schubert born? 3. Name two American authors who were boys when Schubert was born. 4. Name two composers who lived at the same time. 5. What was the father of Franz Schubert? 6. Who taught Schubert harmony? 7. Give the name of a famous song by Schubert. 8. What famous musician died in Vienna when Schubert was twelve years old? 9. Who was the noted singer who helped to make Schubert's songs famous? 10. When did Schubert die? THE STORY OF FRANZ PETER SCHUBERT Written by.................................... On (date)..................................... [Illustration: No. 21] Transcriber's Notes: In the list of composers in the instructions on how to use the book, the "r with a caron" in the name Dvorák was replaced with a regular "r". On page 7, "WOLFANG" was replaced with "WOLFGANG" 
44461	----	[Transcriber's Note: Underscores are used as delimiter for _italics_] TRAVELS IN UNKNOWN AUSTRIA [Illustration] [Illustration: MARY THURN-TAXIS] WANDERINGS THROUGH UNKNOWN AUSTRIA BY RANDOLPH Ll. HODGSON WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY MARY, PRINCESS OF THURN AND TAXIS London MACMILLAN AND CO. Limited NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1896 _All rights reserved_ CONTENTS PAGE INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER I Duino 7 CHAPTER II Duino--_continued_ 17 CHAPTER III Miramar 29 CHAPTER IV The Timavo and San Giovanni 39 CHAPTER V A Rainy Day 51 CHAPTER VI Aquileia 62 CHAPTER VII Villa Vicentina 76 CHAPTER VIII Sagrado and Gradisca 85 CHAPTER IX On Ghosts 96 CHAPTER X Capodistria 108 CHAPTER XI Goritz 121 CHAPTER XII On Nothing at all 132 CONCLUSION 141 ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE Mary Thurn-Taxis _Frontispiece_ Headpiece to Introduction 1 Tailpiece to Introduction 5 Castle Duino 6 Headpiece to Chapter I. 7 Duino from the Sea 8 Door-knocker 10 Boreas 12 The Roman Tower 14 Tailpiece to Chapter I. 16 The Balcony 18 Portrait of Matthew Hofer (Van Dyck) 21 The Banqueting Hall 22 The Riviera 25 A Recess in the Library 26 Tailpiece to Chapter II. 28 Initial Letter to Chapter III. 29 Miramar 32 The Rising Moon 36 Tailpiece to Chapter III. 38 Initial Letter to Chapter IV. 39 Springs of the Timavo 41 Castle Duino from the Roman Road 48 Tailpiece to Chapter IV. 50 Initial Letter to Chapter V. 51 The Grotto Room 53 Castle Duino from the Moat 57 The Ruin 59 Tailpiece to Chapter V. 61 Initial Letter to Chapter VI. 62 Fishing Boat (Bragozzo) 66 Grado--the Harbour 67 The Church at Grado 68 Entrance to Castle Duino 74 Tailpiece to Chapter VI. 75 Initial Letter to Chapter VII. 76 Little River near Villa Vicentina 78 Villa Vicentina 79 Tailpiece to Chapter VII. 84 Initial Letter to Chapter VIII. 85 Palazzo Finetti 90 House at Gradisca 91 Tomb of Nicolao della Torre 92 Tailpiece to Chapter VIII. 95 Initial Letter to Chapter IX. 96 The White Lady 98 The White Lady 99 Tin-ho--First-class Mandarin 101 Tailpiece to Chapter IX. 107 Initial Letter to Chapter X. 108 The Town Hall 115 Door-knocker 118 Café at Capodistria 119 Initial Letter to Chapter XI. 121 A Cast 125 Girl from Duino 129 Castle Duino from the Railway 130 Tailpiece to Chapter XI. 131 Initial Letter to Chapter XII. 132 Lawn-tennis Ground 138 Entrance to the Village of Duino 139 Initial Letter to Conclusion 141 Tailpiece to Conclusion 143 [Illustration: Wanderings through unknown Austria] INTRODUCTION Here where the world is quiet. Swinburne. We were talking the other day of the many and interesting books of travel that have been written lately, books so full of valuable information and precise descriptions that you almost feel that Inner Africa and the North Pole are as familiar to you as Piccadilly and Oxford Street. "It is a blessing that such books exist," said our host, who has rather a philosophical turn of mind. "Of course, I never read them; personally, I think that reading and writing are decidedly a mistake; but if I _wanted_ to know anything about these countries there would not be the slightest necessity to travel about; other people have done that for me. To speak the truth, I do _not_ want to know anything about foreign parts. One book of Stanley, for instance, is enough to make me hate the very idea of Inner Africa; and as to the North Pole, I cannot describe my feelings with regard to the raving lunatics who imagine they have anything to do there. I am all for a quiet life, you know. I stick to my principles--the summer in Cairo, the winter in bed." This speech was received with icy coldness. We are not philosophically inclined, I am sorry to say, and though I should not much like Inner Africa on account of the heat, I have always cherished the idea of some day making a trip to the North Pole. This I said with my usual diffidence and modesty, but of course I was hooted by the rest of the company, and one energetic lady explained at great length that the North Pole is a "humbug." Another lady (the one who is my collaborator now) confessed a great partiality for travelling. "Only," she said, "it is not at all necessary to go so far; there are many wonderful countries in Europe which are very little known. For instance," she added, turning to me, "I always wonder how very little you English know of Austria. The fact that Vienna is a pretty town, where everything English is particularly liked; that Prague is a fine old city, and that here and there we have first-rate shooting, is about all that is known of Austria by foreigners. And it is a pity! Who really has seen the wonderful mountains of the Tyrol, mountains that are just as fine as any in Switzerland; the charming lakes of the Salzkammergut; the green valleys of that greenest of lands, Styria? Who has spoken of the mysterious charm of the great Bohemian forests of oak and pine, the quaint little towns of Carinthia, the beautiful banks of the blue Danube? How very few people know the _puzsta_, the immense plains of Hungary; and who has explored the wildernesses of Galicia and Transylvania, or the wonderful beauty of the Dalmatian coasts from the Bocche di Cattaro up to here, where we are on the shores of the Adriatic Sea? And just here--this little spot so full of memories and classic associations--who has ever heard even the names of Istria and the Littoral? And yet how pretty and interesting the scenery is in this unknown part of Austria. The azure waters of the Adriatic, the wonderful southern sky, the Italian landscapes, the many relics of old Roman life and grandeur, everything combines to make this country worthy to be seen and admired. Do you know," she concluded, "you ought to write a book about it." "Write a book!" I exclaimed, duly horrified,--"I, who hate even to write a letter of ten lines!" "Writing a book is quite different, I am sure," was the answer; "and I don't mean a learned, scientific work. Write a simple sketch of this part of the country. Begin with Duino, where we are now. Then we will make excursions to other places near here, and you can write about them. If you will do it, I will try to make the illustrations." This was another thing; and though our host looked rather gloomy at the idea of having any book-writing going on under his roof (a thing decidedly against his principles), I promised I would think about it. At first I felt very much as an unhappy being feels who is about to make his first speech; he knows there are lots of things to be said, but for the life of him he cannot remember what they are. Now, however, I have written the Introduction and made the first plunge. I am writing the rest to please my collaborator and myself. I do not intend to be apologetic. If other people like this scribble, all well and good; if they do _not_, they should not read it. [Illustration] [Illustration: CASTLE DUINO] CHAPTER I DUINO Hast thou seen that lordly castle, That Castle by the Sea? Golden and red above it The clouds float gorgeously. Longfellow. [Illustration] I never read an account of any pile of stones, dignified by the name of "castle" and situated near the sea, that did not begin with these lines of Longfellow's. It is not the force of example, however, that makes me prefix them to this attempt at a description of one, but it is the fact that they really suit Duino. It looks lordly and imposing enough standing out grand and massive on frowning cliffs two hundred feet above the sea, grim and gray, like some old sentinel keeping a constant watch over the blue waters of the Adriatic stretching at its feet. [Illustration: DUINO FROM THE SEA] The view from it is magnificent: before you the open sea; on both sides, extending in graceful curves, the coast, amethyst-hued; far on the left the white houses of Trieste, and rather nearer, the Imperial Castle of Miramar; on the right, just on the horizon, the tower of Aquileia, famous in Roman times; and in the dim distance the snow-clad Alps. From the land side the castle looks perhaps even more stern and severe, and like the fortress it was in old days. Not a window is to be seen, only the bare fortifications and the old walls clad with ivy, almost as old to all appearance as the walls themselves. What appeals to one most is the restfulness and quiet of the place. The old castle, with its towers and battlements, its cloisters and courtyard, stands just as it has stood for centuries. You are out of the world here, the bustling, hurrying, work-a-day world of to-day, and back again in a world of two or three hundred years ago. It is a nice, sad sort of feeling that comes over one: you think of your debts, of the friends of your youth that are dead and gone, of your elderly relation from whom you have expectations, and who will _not_ die, and other melancholy things of a like nature; but your troubles seem far away, and are quite pleasant--"grateful and comforting." [Illustration: DOOR-KNOCKER] The place seems peopled with ghosts--ghosts of a bygone age. There is a legend that on certain nights of the year a troop of phantom horsemen ride into the courtyard, and even in daylight you almost expect something of the sort to happen--you listen for the clank of arms and the ring of the horses' hoofs. Modern dress seems out of place, you feel you ought to be in armour yourself. Every nook and corner, every stone, seems to have a story to tell. What a pity they cannot speak and tell all they have seen! The castle must have been well-nigh impregnable in the old days, and probably extended to the ruin one sees on the right, on entering it. Between the two--the ruin and the inhabited part--there is a sort of half garden, half wilderness, known as the "Riviera"--a delightful spot. Ilex, cypresses, laurels, and olive-trees grow in luxuriant profusion. Little winding paths tempt you to explore them. There is a long, old, steep flight of steps with the trees meeting over them in a roof of green leaves, leading down to the sea. Old-fashioned flowers abound, and grow almost wild--purple irises, great blue periwinkles, honey-scented "dragons' mouths," and roses of every kind. Butterflies that are rare in England are common enough here--huge yellow swallow-tails, the graceful "White Admiral," glorious "Camberwell Beauties" flit from flower to flower. There are swarms of nightingales; and pigeons and starlings have formed a perfect colony in the cliff under the ruin; a pair of kestrels have their nest here too. There are snakes in the long grass, and bright-coloured lizards bask in the sunshine. Notice the big doors as you enter the castle--there is "Salve!" on one of them. It is pleasant to know one is "welcome," but one always is in Austria--it is the land of hospitality. [Illustration: BOREAS] On the other door is an ancient knocker--interesting if you have a passion for old things. That ugly face over the archway is a portrait of Mr. Boreas, the personification of the North Wind. He is represented as continually blowing. As a matter of fact he does blow rather strongly here, and in the spring almost perpetually. One of the most picturesque parts of the castle is the old courtyard, with its big square tower, its glistening statues, its dark cloisters, its graceful balconies, and with the ivy entwining and creeping over everything. The tower is said to be Roman. There are rooms here that have been walled up for centuries and are so still--nobody knows why. It is said in the village too that somewhere in the tower is "the buried treasure." I should very much like to find _that_! Those coats of arms in mosaic on the wall of the covered passage are the arms of some of the various owners of Duino. "Ditthalm, 1139," is the earliest date there. War was the principal amusement of those times, and these first "Lords of Duino" certainly had enough of it. It mattered little to them which side they were on. If there were a war, or a petty feud, or anything going on in which hard blows might be struck, there they were, on one side or the other. They must have been fine fellows in their way, these old warriors, and have kept the citizens of Trieste and the neighbouring little towns in a perpetual state of alarm. [Illustration: THE ROMAN TOWER] * * * * * Here I had written some beautiful sentiments about the chivalry and loyalty and manliness of "the men of old." I felt rather pleased with my handiwork. It was full of nice poetic sentences, with a dash of enthusiasm, and here and there a fine contempt for our "degenerate time." So I went to my collaborator and wanted her appreciation. I cannot say she _did_ appreciate my flight of eloquence--I did not find her quite so enthusiastic as I had expected. "Don't be so ridiculous," she exclaimed. "What do we know about the men of old? I have not the slightest respect for them. I am sure they were exactly as men are now--if anything I think they were worse; but I don't know anything about it, and you don't either, so please stop that nonsense and stick to the present times--they may be 'degenerate,' but they are much more comfortable." No, I decidedly think she was _un_sympathetic! * * * * * Duino changed hands many times. In 1465 it was the property of the Emperor Frederick III., and in 1508 it belonged to the city of Venice. In 1669 it came into the possession of the Della Torre (the old Lords of Milan), and from them it descended to Prince Egon-Carl Hohenlohe, the father of the present owner, our host. There is a portrait of Dante in the covered passage. He came to visit Pagano Della Torre here about the year 1320, and is said to have frequented the little island near the bathing place in the "Riviera." The neighbourhood of Duino was very different in his time from what it is now; tradition says the hills were covered with forests of red pine, and that the country generally was swarming with game. The game now is conspicuous by its absence; there is one solitary hare left, which inhabits Dante's island, by the way. Poor old Dante! He looks very melancholy and unhappy, but we can most of us sympathise with him. There are not many of us, however easily the wheels of life may have run, who do not feel a pang of something like regret when now and then the thought of some one gone out of our lives comes over us. Fate plays tricks with us all. Death, the force of circumstances--it matters little what the cause of our separation was; we have drifted apart, and there is nothing left us but a memory--a dream of what might have been. [Illustration] CHAPTER II DUINO--_continued_ Full of long-sounding corridors it was, That over-vaulted grateful gloom, Thro' which the livelong day my soul did pass, Well pleased, from room to room. Tennyson. The covered passage before mentioned leads one straight to the principal staircase. It is a graceful winding staircase, and rare and interesting prints cover the walls. On the first landing, after passing through two anterooms (the second of which contains a collection of fine old Viennese china), one enters the dining-room. It is a large room with a balcony, from which there is a beautiful view of Miramar and the sea. There are some most appropriate pictures of eatables by various Dutch masters on the walls. It was a curious taste of these gentlemen to paint things to eat. Perhaps they were on the verge of starvation--that might account for it. I should have thought they might have found more interesting studies, though, than "gralloched" hares and fishes with their necks broken. I know nothing of Art (this is constantly dinned into me), so can speak absolutely without prejudice. An old telescope that once belonged to Nelson, and was presented by him to Count Della Torre (Thurn), Admiral of the King of Naples, is in this room. It is a very good glass; one can see things through it almost as well as with the naked eye, but it requires some manipulation to get the focus right. [Illustration: THE BALCONY] People dine well in Austria, but you get a superabundance of veal. Veal for lunch, veal for dinner, veal cooked in many ways and concealed under numerous devices, but always veal. There is a fearful invention called "Schnitzl" that is the worst form of all. Foreigners say we English live on beef and mutton, but in Austria they live on veal, so we have the pull over them in the way of variety. One never sees grown-up cattle here. Poor things! they don't get the chance of reaching years of maturity, they are always killed in the first spring of their youth. Opening into the dining-room is a small drawing-room. This contains mostly family portraits. The most noticeable among them is the portrait of the late Princess Hohenlohe. She must have been very beautiful, and has a very English appearance. She was the last Della Torre. There are two pictures here that I am convinced are by Morland. No one knew this before, so I am very proud at having made the discovery. Some other animal pictures are ascribed to a Venetian artist--Longhi--portraits of horses. They are extraordinary horses--very fat, and they appear to have been taught to beg, as they are almost all standing up on their hind legs. I am told this is a playful habit that Spanish steeds had. You go up another flight of stairs and arrive at the door of the gallery. This is a long passage, especially designed for ghosts to walk in--not the sort of place one would care to be left alone in after dark. There are some very fine pictures of the Venetian and Dutch schools here. One of the best is the "Entrance of the Dogaressa Morosina Morosini into Venice," by Tintoretto--all the figures are said to be portraits. At the further end of the gallery is the great banqueting hall. There is a portrait here by Van Dyck of one Matthew Hofer, a former owner of Duino. An old chronicle calls him "a tempestuous and arrogant youth, who had always his hand on his sword, and whose whole life was a drama of blood." In his portrait he has a proud and handsome face, with dark melancholy eyes. The other full-length portraits represent some of the Lords of Milan--Della Torre--who after many years of unending civil wars were vanquished by the rival family, the Visconti, and obliged to fly from Milan. They took refuge near their kinsman, Pagano IV., then Patriarch of Aquileia, and soon gained wealth and great power in their adopted country. They were a turbulent and overbearing race, and many are the tales still told by the people of their violent or heroic deeds. [Illustration: PORTRAIT OF MATTHEW HOFER (Van Dyck)] Notice the painting of the gentleman on the ferocious-looking horse, that appears determined to jump on you whichever part of the room you retire to. He was quite a character, and had a special talent for eloping with other people's wives. On one occasion he was condemned to be beheaded, and the soldiers of the Emperor were sent to Duino to arrest him. He treated them with great hospitality, and gave them a splendid banquet--probably in this very room. After dinner he retired to his own apartment, and as all the entrances to the castle were securely guarded, the unsuspicious soldiers thought nothing of it. Suddenly they heard a shot from the sea, rushed to find out what it was, and perceived their former prisoner on board a ship in full sail. Our friend fired the shot to let his would-be captors know they need not wait for him--a proof of his kindly and considerate nature! There was an underground passage leading from the library (the entrance may still be seen) to the shore. The soldiers did not know this, and their host had omitted to inform them of the fact. [Illustration: THE BANQUETING HALL] It is said that he was retaken years afterwards and deprived of his head; but there is another account that he made a compact with the devil and escaped again, this time on a black horse, one of His Satanic Majesty's own particular breed, that carried him safely over the sea to Aquileia, where horse and rider disappeared, and were seen no more. The old man on the gray steed who is so cruelly trampling down four poor individuals very scantily clothed, is Napoleon I. Della Torre. One story says he rode over his own children in this way, but it is a base calumny; the children are four cities which he conquered for Milan, allegorically represented in the picture. In the library I examined the entrance to the famous underground passage. You see a trap-door cleverly concealed in the wooden floor, and on lifting it, a small staircase leads you down to a very diminutive room, built in the thickness of the massive outer wall. On your left is the passage. It is very small--in fact, you have to proceed on your hands and knees, and after a few yards you are stopped by a quantity of stones and earth. The father of "our host" wished to have the old passage reopened, and set people to work, but it seems they were so frightened at finding a number of human bones mixed with the soil and rubbish, that it was impossible to persuade them to work on. They said it would be dangerous to clear it, as the castle would inevitably fall in consequence--a mere excuse, of course. I think the mysterious passage must descend through the terrace tower which rises against the middle of the side of the castle that faces the sea, and come out somewhere in the "Riviera," meeting the old staircase spoken of in the preceding chapter. [Illustration: THE RIVIERA] I must say this passage interested me much more than all the many books of the library, but I noticed an enormous old "missal," most elaborately painted by hand on parchment, a very valuable work of the fifteenth century. There is a charming little recess in the library, where there are some beautiful miniatures, one or two fine old pastels, and some splendid old china; this corner would be a paradise for an antiquary. [Illustration: A RECESS IN THE LIBRARY] A portrait of "Martin the Giant," a big man clad in armour, looks down threateningly from one of the dark corners of the room. He was a great warrior and statesman in his native Lombardy, but finally went off to the Crusades, and after showing great prowess, is said to have been taken and skinned alive by the Saracens (1147). The walls of the drawing-room, next to the library, are covered with pictures, mostly of religious subjects. I suppose I ought to expatiate on them, but the artistic side of my nature is exhausted, and I should probably admire the wrong ones. What I can safely speak of is the view from the large terrace over the afore-mentioned tower, where we used to have breakfast. It was charming to sit there in the early morning and look out upon that grand expanse of boundless sea, with the little wavelets dancing in the sunshine; it was almost cool too at that time of the morning. * * * * * Here the "energetic lady" remarks in an undertone that at this early hour she believes I was generally in bed, and that she did not remember having _once_ seen me at breakfast on the terrace. Fortunately I can allow such remarks to pass unnoticed. * * * * * There is a mysterious charm about all these old rooms, they are so quiet, so restful, with their stained floors, their black oak carving, the tapestried hangings, and the old furniture. There are no bright colours, everything is subdued; no glare, always a sombre half-light. One feels inclined to walk softly in them, and speak in whispers, so as not to disturb their restfulness. There is something almost sad about their silence; they belong to a time long ago, not to the present day, and they seem to be waiting--waiting for the years that have passed to come again. [Illustration] CHAPTER III [Illustration] MIRAMAR And round about his home the glory That blushed and bloomed Is but a dim-remembered story Of the old time entombed. E. A. Poe. On Friday, 31st May, we all went to Miramar, eleven of us. We drove to Nabresina, the nearest station to Duino, went from there to Miramar by train (it gave some trouble to the engine-driver, as he had to stop the train on purpose for us to get out), and then walked from the station to the castle. It was a stupid way of getting there; it would have been much better to have driven all the way, but the directress of our party did not think so. I suppose she thought we should enjoy the various modes of travelling. It was rather a pity we had not relays of saddle-horses and bicycles to meet us somewhere--we should have had still more variety. We might have crawled the last bit too on our hands and knees, but I didn't think of it at the time. I used to like railway travelling. When I was very small I could have no greater treat than to be taken somewhere by train--now I don't. I still like to _see_ a train. If I am in the country and feel lonely, I walk to the nearest railway line and wait for an express to rush by. That cheers me. I don't wish to be in it--the sight of it is enough. It must be an English express, however; a Continental express merely irritates one, and deepens the melancholy; I feel I can walk faster than it can travel. We arrived at the Imperial Castle at last. The gardens are very pretty. There are numbers of terraces, and flights of steps, and cedar-trees, and little Italian gardens. There are big palm-trees, and strange foreign-looking shrubs, and beautiful beds of old-fashioned monthly roses. * * * * * I had written so far in this chapter when I thought I had better consult my collaborator. I found her making a sketch in pen and ink. "That is very nice," I said. "I really know those things are trees." "I am glad you realise what they are," she answered with icy coldness. "Won't you read what you have written?" I did so, and then the storm burst. "You call _that_ a description of those beautiful gardens!" she said. "Have you no poetry in your nature? Have you no appreciation of the beautiful? Why don't you say much more of the terraces, the marble staircases? Why don't you speak of the funereal cypresses clear-cut against the sky, the dark green of the ilex contrasting with the gray of the olives? Why don't you write about the white starry blossom of the jasmine, the sweet scent of the honeysuckle, the tea-roses creeping up and festooning the rough stems of the towering palm-trees, and shedding their perfume on the soft summer air, the glistening of the water in the fountains, the azure blue of the sea, the whiteness of the marble statues gleaming through the dark foliage, the mysterious appearance of the Italian gardens with their staircases leading down to the deep-hued waters of the Adriatic? Why don't you say something about the liquid notes of the nightingale, the faint whispering of the trees overhead, the 'Lovers' Walk?' Oh! you _are_ stupid." Perhaps I am. I have written all I could remember of our conversation. I hope she will be satisfied now. * * * * * [Illustration: MIRAMAR] The castle was built about the middle of the present century by the Emperor Maximilian. We saw the rooms that had been his. They are built to exactly resemble the cabins on board his ship when he was Admiral of the Austrian Fleet. Every one knows his tragic story: how he, persuaded by the promise of French support, went off to be Emperor of Mexico; how the French deserted him (France has done many things she may well be ashamed of, but nothing more dastardly than this); how he was captured by the rebel Mexicans, and finally shot by them. Poor fellow! one would have thought that with all he had he might have been content without being Emperor of Mexico. But who knows what dreams of glory and heroic adventures passed through his brain! He was a poet and an enthusiast, a man worshipped by the people, and in his veins flowed the blood of Charles V., who once had been the master of those far countries where his destiny called him. And what must have been his thoughts when he, the son of the German Cæsars, stood forsaken and betrayed before the handful of rebels who put an end to all his golden dreams? In any case his end was worthy of his noble nature. There is an incident in connection with it not generally known. One of the few Mexicans who remained faithful to him was Mejia, one of his generals. He was also captured by the rebels, and was condemned to be shot with the Emperor, but with this difference: for the Emperor a company of picked shots had been selected, and for Mejia they had chosen a number of raw and young recruits, unaccustomed to the use of the rifle. The Emperor, whose experienced eye had immediately remarked the cruel intention of the Mexicans, ordered his companion, as the last boon he could grant him, to exchange places with him. Mejia obeyed, and was killed instantaneously; but the Emperor died a lingering and miserable death. People say he was so disfigured that when his embalmed body arrived in Vienna, no one, not even the Grand Master of the Court, could be quite sure of his identity. I do not admire the castle. It is new, and looks new, and is built in no particular style, though the first intention was evidently to make it Gothic. One sees the love of the unfortunate Emperor for Spanish and Moorish things, by the way in which they are dotted here and there. The interior too is rather tasteless. There are some fine things, but the arrangement is bad. A beautiful cabinet that once belonged to Marie Antoinette is in one of the rooms; it has some wonderful old Wedgwood china on the doors. We were shown round by the most melancholy attendant it has ever been my lot to meet with. He seemed to find it a heartrending business, and his voice sounded as if he were continually on the verge of tears. I was quite glad when the inspection was over. I am tender-hearted myself, and do not like to wantonly distress any one. After viewing the castle we went out into the gardens again, and (I am sorry to have to confess it) ate some provisions that we had brought with us, on one of the flights of marble steps. Then we wandered about in the gloaming till it was time for our train. It was a lovely evening:-- Skies strewn with roses fading, fading slowly, While one star, trembling, watched the daylight die. The nightingale's rich music and the soft murmur of the waves were the only sounds. All the clamour and bustle of the day were over. The moon rose and flooded the calm sea with a pathway of melted silver; the stars came out one by one, and seemed to smile on us. It was the time when all evil thoughts go out of one's heart, when heaven itself seems nearer in the dim light. On such an evening I always think of the old familiar words of the "blessing" after the sermon, "The peace of God, which passeth all understanding." [Illustration: THE RISING MOON] We had an exciting adventure during our return journey in the train. We had started, and the conductor was just examining our tickets--having carefully left the door open--when the Vienna "express" crawled by (I almost said _tore_, but I cannot tell a lie). Some projecting portion of it caught our carriage door, sent it to with a violent crash, smashing the door and half tearing it from its hinges. The crash was like a cannon-shot, and the explosion was followed by the tinkling of the shower of broken glass that fell over and around us. For the moment we could not understand what had happened, and all looked fearfully around, expecting to see pieces of ourselves lying about the wrecked compartment. Fortunately, we were all whole and unhurt, however. Of course, there was the wildest excitement in our railway carriage. "The Seal" kept congratulating himself on not having been nearer the broken window, and explaining what dreadful injuries would have ensued for him if he had been. The directress of our party--the "Energetic Lady"--abused an unfortunate stationmaster, who came at the next stoppage to inquire about the accident, in such a way that the poor man shrank back terrified and in tears. The "Learned Fair Man" started a scientific theory (in which he dragged in Darwin) to explain the matter; but the "Learned Dark Man" (with Schopenhauer in the background) had another scientific explanation exactly the reverse. The "Fat Boy" thought Anarchists had an especial grudge against himself; the "Thin Boy" profited by the occasion to bleed copiously from the nose--a pastime he had indulged in at intervals throughout the whole day, and the other boy lost immediately the one bag of the party. The two other ladies, who had not been in the baneful compartment, explained at great length all their misgivings, presentiments, and extraordinary perceptions; whilst my collaborator shrieked excitedly-- "There! that's a beautiful incident for the book." "Bother the book!" I answered with pensive grace. After this the drive home was dull and uneventful. We were almost smothered in dust, but that was merely a trifling inconvenience, which the beauty of the night and the glorious moonlight quite made up for. [Illustration] CHAPTER IV THE TIMAVO AND SAN GIOVANNI O water whispering Still through the dark into mine ears. D. G. Rossetti. I made two excursions to the Timavo and San Giovanni. The first was with the "Fat Boy." It was a rainy sort of day, and there was nothing to be done in the way of exercise but to go for a walk, so I beguiled the "Fat Boy" into accompanying me. I like to take him for walks. I feel I am doing good to suffering humanity--he may get rid of a little of his superfluous flesh by the exertion. I cannot say that up to now he has exhibited much thankfulness for my philanthropic efforts. We took Pixner, the gamekeeper, and his two dogs with us. Pixner is much looked up to in the village of Duino as a great traveller and linguist. He spent one or two years in England as servant to "our host," and was commonly known there as "Mr. Pig-nose"--his own name being found difficult to pronounce. San Giovanni is not far from Duino--only a walk of half an hour or so. It is classic ground, for does not the world-famed Timavo make here its appearance into the light of day? Antenor potuit mediis elapsus Achivis Illyricos penetrare sinus atque intima tutus regna Liburnorum et fontem superare Timavi, unde per ora novem vasto cum murmure montis it mare proruptum et pelago premit arva sonanti. Virgil's _Aeneid_, Book I. 242-246. The "nine mouths" of Virgil have now sunk to three, however. It is a most extraordinary thing, this river, all at once, seeming to come from nowhere, there it is, not a little feeble, trickling streamlet, but a wide, fast-flowing river. There is no doubt that the original springs are somewhere underground, and that it runs for a considerable distance in the bowels of the earth. Every now and then on the neighbouring hill-side you come to a hole in the ground where you hear the rush of the water, and the splash if you drop a stone down. The ground about this neighbourhood is a perfect honeycomb. [Illustration: SPRINGS OF THE TIMAVO] Almost all the classic authors speak of the Timavo. I had carefully compiled a list of these old gentlemen with a kind of history of the river, but I will spare the reader, and merely say that they believed it to be the entrance to the Infernal Regions, and that the Argonauts are said to have come here after they had annexed the Golden Fleece. After having gazed at the place where the Timavo first appears, we went on to the little church of San Giovanni. This is very old, and is built on the foundations of a temple erected by the Greeks in honour of Diomed--either the Greek hero or the Thracian Diomed who was celebrated for his horses. The latter gentleman seems to have had a stud in the neighbourhood of San Giovanni. The horses from this part of the country were very celebrated, and eagerly sought after for the Olympian games. It is interesting to note that one of the great annual events here is the horse-fair of Duino, which takes place in the month of June. The Romans built a temple on the same site later on, the temple of the "Speranza Augusta"; and there was another temple--that of the Nymphs--somewhere near it. Villas and country houses were here in abundance; it was then quite a fashionable watering-place on account of the warm springs in the neighbourhood. There is still a miserable little bathing-place at some distance from San Giovanni, a most abandoned and dismal-looking house, though the waters have still their ancient reputation for great healing power. In Roman times the view from this now solitary spot must have been very beautiful: the murmuring springs of the Timavo, the great lake (now a marsh), with its banks bright with glistening white monuments and the neighbouring boundless forests, which fable said were inhabited by the most extraordinary creatures. The wine of the country was very famous. It was the favourite beverage of Julia (or Livia), the wife of Augustus, who died in Aquileia at the age of eighty-three. She gave all the credit of her long life to the wine! Pliny the younger is our informant on this point. Battles were continually fought on the Timavo towards the end of the Roman Empire and in the Middle Ages. Its banks were the scene of many a fierce conflict between the Roman legions and the Barbarians, whilst, later on, the German Emperors would generally choose this way to sweep down from the north upon Italy. The Venetian and Imperial troops often fought here, and the different lords of the land being always at war with each other, the country round about was kept pretty lively. The "pigeon-holes" among the rocks are very interesting. They are like the shafts of extinct volcanoes, and descend to a great depth into the earth. The pigeons, which are identically the same bird as the old-fashioned English "Blue-rock," make their nests in the sides. There is good shooting to be had at these holes in September by lying in wait for the pigeons as they come home in the evening. * * * * * The second time we went by sea, in a diminutive cutter bearing the proud name of _St. George_. I dislike yachting on the whole--there is always either too much wind or none at all. In my case it is generally the latter. It is enough for me to go out in a yacht for a cruise of an hour or two, and you may be sure that yacht will become becalmed, and the unhappy people on board will have to choose between a night "on the ocean wave" and a row home in a small boat. I seem to be a sort of Jonah, and live in expectation of being thrown overboard every time I go on a yacht. A steamer does away with the fear of being becalmed, but then there is the smell of the engines. Do not mistake me, it is not that I fear sea-sickness, For I can weather the roughest gale That ever wind did blow. In fact, I am an excellent sailor. Once I did feel rather queer, but that was a dispensation of Providence in fulfilment of the old adage "Pride goes before a fall." I was crossing the Channel--Dover to Calais. We had a small steamer, a choppy sea, and there was a young man with a Kodak on board. I abominate amateur photographers. They are offensive. It is the fact that they insist on photography being an art that makes them so objectionable. Photography is _not_ an art. One merely requires a good apparatus and a knowledge of how to work it, and there you are--a good photographer. That is _my_ idea on the subject. Well, this young man was _particularly_ offensive. He wore a knickerbocker suit, and skipped about with his Kodak and took "snap-shots" at everything. He did not "speak to the man at the wheel," but he "shot" him instead. He photographed the sea, the sky, the sea-gulls, the passing steamers, his fellow-passengers; but then he became sea-sick. His Kodak fell from his nerveless hand, and he looked very ill. I revelled in his misery, I "chortled in my joy"; but the Fates were on my track. Half an hour before we reached Calais I began to feel very miserable. I thought I was dying. Somebody came to me, a sailor, or a steward, or an admiral, or something of that sort, and asked me if I felt ill. I said I did, that my last hour had come, that I wanted to throw myself overboard and hasten the end. He would not let me do this. I should feel all right when we landed, he said. I knew this was impossible, it was merely uselessly lengthening my sufferings; but, curiously enough, he was right. At the time I was unable to understand my misery, but I see through it now. My wretchedness was intended to teach me a lesson--the lesson of never laughing at people in adversity. I learnt it, and since then have never suffered evil effects from being on the sea. This is a long digression, but I wish to explain the disgust I felt on our going to San Giovanni by sea. We were not becalmed on this occasion, but there was next to no wind, the sun was blazing hot, and as we were constantly tacking, and the _St. George_ is a very small boat, my life was in perpetual danger from the eccentricities of the boom. I was very unhappy, and not in the mood to admire the beauties of nature that were constantly pointed out to me. But Checco was a comfort. Checco is captain, crew, and cabin-boy combined of the _St. George_, a great character and a philosopher. A nice-looking man too, tall and broad-shouldered, with a bronzed skin and snowy white hair (though, in fact, he is not old) and extraordinarily bright blue eyes--they look as if all the light and colour of the sea were reflected in them. He is a proud man is Checco, and generally very silent. He only talks to particular chums, but then he _does_ talk. The "Fat Boy" is the proud possessor of his confidence, and to him Checco unfolds his theories; he even puts the two learned men in the shade with regard to theories. On this particular occasion he was explaining earthquakes. (There have been some here lately.) This is what Checco said to the "Fat Boy": "People are very much afraid of earthquakes, you know. I am not afraid, for it is no use. What must be, must be. But I say, What is the reason for them? I will tell you: it is the doing of those mad winds. When I was young, things were quite different on the sea. The winds blew steadily. Either it was Bora, or Levante, or Scirocco, or Libeccio, and you knew how long it would blow in the same direction. It was a pleasure to sail a boat _then_. But now the winds blow all ways at once, and are always fighting against one another. The weaker winds _must_ give way, and what becomes of _them_? They rush into the earth--you know all the holes and grottoes there are everywhere--and so cause the earthquakes. Yes, you can believe me, it is all the doing of those mad winds." Checco was silent and gazed out over the blue sea, and the "Fat Boy" pondered over his words. Then he began again, still looking at the distant horizon: "Everything was different when I was a young man--the winds were not mad, the girls _were_ pretty. When we came out of church on Sundays, and the girls, as is the fashion, gave the red carnation they wore to the man they liked best, none of the fellows got as many as I did. But now I have white hair, you see.... Still none of my boys are as tall as I am, and I have never tried my whole strength yet." Then Checco relapsed into silence, and not even the "Fat Boy" could draw another word from him. [Illustration: CASTLE DUINO FROM THE ROMAN ROAD] * * * * * We sailed up the Timavo. The wind had freshened, and I must confess it was really rather pleasant. Wild ducks rose from the reeds with a great splashing and flapping of wings, and occasionally a snipe would dart away with its peculiar twisting zigzag flight and harsh cry. At San Giovanni we landed, and walked home. Our path, for part of the way, lay along an old Roman road, and then we passed through a little wood of stunted trees (the last remnant of the "boundless forests" of old times), which in autumn is one pink carpet of heavily-scented cyclamens. We skirted the deer park, where some twenty or thirty fallow deer lead a cheerless existence and are fed on hay all the year round. The ground in the park is covered with stones, not a blade of grass is to be seen, only the hardy ilex seems able to flourish on the barren soil. It has a curious appearance, this little tract of country round Duino, with its dull gray rocks. A few bushes manage to extract enough nourishment from somewhere to exist, but every cranny and crevice in the stones is gay and bright with wild flowers. Monotonous and almost melancholy is the scenery, and yet it has a charm of its own; the sun shines so brightly, the sky is so blue; and then there is always the sea, ever changeful and ever beautiful, and the old gray castle in the distance, towering above all, and watching over the silent land. [Illustration] CHAPTER V A RAINY DAY The rain came down upon my head Unsheltered, and the heavy wind Rendered me mad, and deaf, and blind. E. A. Poe. It was not quite so bad as all that. I did not go out in the rain, and at present I am neither deaf nor blind. I cannot be sure about the madness. It was very wet, though, but it cleared up before the evening. A really wet day may be dreary, but still it is rather pleasant to have one sometimes. The rain affords such a grand excuse to be idle and do nothing. One can lounge about, and smoke, and read the newspapers or a novel all day, and justly feel it is quite impossible to be energetic. I am often told that my besetting sin is laziness. I am not sure whether it is true, but all I can say is, it is very pleasant to spend a lazy day occasionally. One must have piles of work waiting to be done, or it loses its charm. If there is really nothing to do, one is bored, and wants something to fill up the time. On this particular day, however, I was not lazy--far from it. We explored the castle thoroughly from dungeon to attic, with a view to discovering new beauties for "the book." I must say that occasionally I almost repent of my rashness in promising to write this book; my collaborator is so intensely business-like, and keeps me at it from early morn till dewy eve. I never have a moment's rest. It somewhat detracts too from the pleasure of going anywhere to know that you have to write an account of everything you see afterwards. [Illustration: THE GROTTO ROOM] We began with the "grotto room." This is a summer drawing-room that we usually sit in. It is a big room, with a tiled floor and an arched roof; the latter and the walls are of cement, thickly studded with little bits of stalactite, that glisten and gleam when the place is lighted up, and give a fairy-like appearance to it. Birds of paradise and sea-gulls, suspended by invisible wires, swing from the vaulted roof and appear to be hovering about the room. Enormous shells, quaint Venetian lamps and mirrors, funny old china, are scattered all about. There is a curious old sedan chair standing in one corner, and near it are two pianos. I never made out the mystery of those two pianos. I believe they are near relations, and that they would be heart- (or string-) broken if they were to be separated. There is a massive marble mantelpiece at the farther end, surmounted by two shields, one bearing the Hohenlohe leopards, and the other the tower and crossed lilies of the Della Torre. Altogether it is a quaint room, without any particular order or style, but very comfortable, and it has one great advantage in being cool. I have spent many a weary hour here, labouring over these sketches, or gazing out through the coloured glass at the sea and the glorious sunsets. The sunsets at Duino are magnificent--the whole western sky is one flaming blaze of colour, of every tint, from the deepest crimson to the faintest daffodil. The most beautiful moment is, I think, when the sun has sunk to rest behind the distant Alps, that stand out pearly-gray against the rose-coloured sky, and the sea in the foreground glows like a huge bowl of melted gold. We went next to see the dungeons. They are by no means cheerful--two little damp and musty rooms, destitute of furniture, with grated windows and enormously thick walls--you see their immense thickness when you enter. The last man who was confined here (it was not so very long ago) hung himself. He is now said to haunt them. Poor fellow! one cannot wonder that he should have availed himself of the only possible way of escape open to him. We then penetrated a little room where the family archives are kept. It has a massive iron door, and shelves full of dusty, musty old parchments. We unearthed a grand treasure here--an old manuscript diary of a tour through France and Italy at the beginning of this century, written by an Englishman of the name of Cockburn. Fired by this discovery we rushed up the tower stairs to another little room, formerly used as a study by an old priest who had once belonged to the household. We found it just as he had left it: the chair, the pens, the old ink-bottle, and he, poor old man, dead years ago! He wrote a book in Italian about Duino and the neighbourhood. It has been very useful to us in some respects, though it is very confused. We came down the tower stairs again, and I was shown the door of the walled-up rooms; it has been carefully built up flush with the wall, and recently whitewashed over, so as to conceal it. Then we explored all the funny little staircases and passages that are everywhere about the castle, and form a perfect labyrinth. The rain had cleared off by this time, and the sun was struggling to show himself through the clouds, so we went out, the "Other Boy" accompanying us. First we went down into the old moat, long dry and overgrown with grass and nettles, but in one corner some white lilies rise pure and stately, and bloom unseen in this neglected spot. Some fragments of Roman columns have been built into the wall of the castle--one sees them from the moat. Then we explored some terraces that are round the outside walls, where enormous yellow roses cling to the crumbling stones and lemon-scented verbenas grow wild. We made another interesting discovery here--at least it would be interesting if the general opinion about it is correct. We found a hole in the wall of the tower under the terrace. My collaborator maintains it is the beginning of a ventilating shaft that communicates with the underground passage, but I am afraid it is nothing but a rat-hole. We descended some rickety stairs, and after inspecting a sculptured Madonna, who, half overgrown with ivy, looks down on the occasional passers-by (people admire her; I do _not_, as she has her nose on one side), proceeded to the battlements. There are two old field-pieces here that formerly belonged to the French Republic. They have the _fasces_ engraved upon them and the inscription, "An VII. République francaise 6 Fructidor." I could not discover the history of these guns. I was told a hazy story about Duino being in the hands of the French in the beginning of this century; of its being stormed, taken, and partially burnt by the English, and that the English captain was always drunk; but the story lacks confirmation--particularly the last part of it. [Illustration: CASTLE DUINO FROM THE MOAT] In any case, the French were here, and took away all the contents of the armoury. In 1813, too, Trieste being in the possession of the French, Admiral Freemantle sailed up the Adriatic with some English men-of-war, whilst General Nugent advanced on the land side with the Austrian troops. The French commander retired into the citadel, and was there besieged by the English and Austrians. On October 24th the French surrendered. This being so, it is quite possible that there was a siege of Duino, as it is very strongly situated and has always been an object for attack. Even as recently as 1866, in the war between Austria and Italy, the Italians had intended to land at Duino, had not their fleet been destroyed in the battle of Lissa. We went down the old staircase to the little bathing-place near Dante's island. There is a strong wire net in the water to guard against the sharks. "Our host" disapproves of this net. He maintains that if any one bathing at Duino is unfortunate enough to be eaten by the one solitary shark that cruises in the Adriatic, he or she is the victim of such extraordinary bad luck that it is much better for him or her to be finished off at once. Then we wandered through the "Riviera" to the old ruin and the little sombre wood "sacred to Diana." The ruined castle rises dark and threatening on a massive and perpendicular rock, which is on three sides surrounded by the sea. The position is immensely strong--one can only approach by one little narrow path that could easily have been held in the old days by two or three resolute men. There is not much to be seen in the ruin. It is all crumbling to pieces and is half-smothered with creepers and grass. In one vaulted arch, probably once part of the chapel, there are faint traces of fresco-painting; and there are one or two enormous stone bullets lying about that must have been thrown from some kind of catapult. Every provision was made for a siege. One sees the old well, which still holds water. [Illustration: THE RUIN] Just under the old ruined castle the ground sinks and forms a hollow, and there a little wood of ilex-trees has grown, through whose dark and thick evergreen foliage no ray of sunlight seems ever to penetrate. It is a weird and uncanny sort of place: the trees seem black, the ground is black, and no grass or flowers grow there. Only on some bit of old crumbling masonry the ivy has extended a funereal pall. No birds seem to nestle in this solitary spot, and the earth smells damp, whilst you shiver a little in the cool shade of the sacred trees. It is peculiarly quiet and silent under the ilex; and if, sitting there in the long summer afternoons, you get drowsy and dreamy, thinking perhaps of times long, long ago, you would not wonder very much if, through the dark green of the melancholy trees that make a dome of shade over your head, a white form should glide, swift and silent--glide down from the golden light beyond into the darkness and gloom of the ilex wood. Dream or reality, what does it matter, since both pass away in the night of time, and after a while are remembered no more? How many may have come under the old, old ilex-trees in drowsy hot summer afternoons, or later, when the silver moon tried with her trembling rays to pierce the dark gloom of the wood! how many, each with his burden of joy or sorrow--gone--forgotten--faded away! Dream or reality, what does it matter? [Illustration] CHAPTER VI AQUILEIA We were a gallant company. Byron. On Tuesday, 4th June, we had a regular "day out." We were twelve--the original eleven who went to Miramar, with the addition of "our host." We started at 7.30 in the morning, and this involved getting up at six. There is nothing I object to more than early rising. Since my earliest infancy I have always been told what an excellent thing it is to get up early, and the ancient proverb (which you may have heard)-- Early to bed and early to rise Makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise-- has been repeated to me so often that I actually know it by heart. I do not believe in it, though; I infinitely prefer the sentiments contained in the old Scotch song-- I would rather go supperless to my bed Than rise in the morning early. It was not a matter of going supperless to bed in this case, but it meant (at least to our host and myself--we were late) starting without breakfast. We rose to the occasion. Rather than keep the rest of the party waiting, we went without breakfast, and had the satisfaction of feeling martyrs for the rest of the day. My collaborator, our host, the Thin Boy, and myself were in the first carriage. We kept congratulating ourselves and each other on this fact all the way. There was plenty of dust, clouds of it, and we could dimly discern the other carriages behind us, and their miserable occupants being half-smothered, whilst we were in the pure fresh air of the morning. It was a very pretty drive of about two hours to Aquileia, past marshy meadows bright with flowers, and vineyards with their graceful festoons of vines, the fresh and luxuriant green of the plain contrasting strangely with the gray barrenness of the neighbouring hills, through the little old-fashioned town of Monfalcone. It is quite an Italian town, with its big piazza, graceful church tower, and balconied houses--closely shuttered, of course; the inhabitants seem to have a horror of fresh air. After Monfalcone the scenery too becomes quite Italian, though we are still in Austria. The plain continues fresh and green as ever, but the hills fade away in the blue distance. We cross that bluest of rivers, the Isonzo, drive between green hedges fragrant with wild roses and honeysuckle, pass a long, low, house covered with roses, with a lovely garden and a grass lawn-tennis ground (the only grass court I have seen on the Continent), go over numerous little brooks that wind along under the dark shadow of overhanging bushes, and are generally haunted by promising families of downy yellow ducklings, and at last reach Aquileia. Here we had what was a second breakfast to most of the party, of coffee and rolls. Our host did not eat anything. He said he couldn't eat when he had risen in "the middle of the night." It was a mild rebuke, but it passed unnoticed. We intended to go to Grado before seeing Aquileia, so after this meal we sought our steamer, a launch that plies daily between the two places. It did not require much seeking, firstly, because it rested on the placid waters of the canal close to our "hotel," and, secondly, as it guided us to its whereabouts, with great consideration, by a series of most unearthly screams of the whistle, and by disgorging vast quantities of evil-smelling smoke. The scenery is rather pretty after leaving Aquileia. High reeds and grass grow down to the water's edge, larks carol joyously in the sky, reed-warblers twitter among the rushes, and bright-hued dragonflies dart hither and thither. There is a smell of new-mown hay in the air (which causes the Fat Boy to sneeze thirty-seven times without stopping), and one sees the peasants at work, with the big, gentle, sleepy-looking oxen drawing the waggons. One soon leaves the canal behind, and comes out into numberless shallow lagoons of salt water, with dreary sandbanks, and lonely-looking posts to mark the deeper channels. There are a few dismal huts on some of the sandbanks, and in one place a church tower stands alone in its glory--the rest of the church has fallen down. We saw no living thing there except a solitary eagle. It is a desolate and melancholy sort of place, and I for one was very glad when we came out into "blue water" and Grado hove in sight. It forms a pretty picture, this little Venetian-like town, the blue sea, and the fleet of fishing boats with their brightly-coloured sails. [Illustration: FISHING BOAT (BRAGOZZO)] Grado is a sea-bathing place, or _would_ be one, if anybody went there. The bathing sheds are a very imposing-looking building, there is an excellent sandy beach, the water is lukewarm, and drowning is quite impossible on account of its shallowness. What Grado wants is a good waking up. If the inhabitants were a little more speculative; if they would build a good hotel and open a railway line, etc., it might become a flourishing place. At present there is no accommodation for visitors, so no visitors go there. We bathed, of course, all of us, with the exception of the two learned men, who had different theories with regard to bathing, and who were disputing thereon. We enjoyed it very much, except the Seal, who did not take at all kindly to his native element, and found it cold; he evidently felt, too, that his life was in danger, as he explained to everyone the dreadful end he might come to if a larger wave than usual were to carry him away. [Illustration: GRADO--THE HARBOUR] After our bath we returned to the hotel, very hungry. Our lunch included a dish called Risotto, which, I am told, can only be made to perfection in this part of the world; it is very good. Owing to the bathing and the lunch, the latter being much prolonged by the voracious appetites of the "Seal" and the "Fat Boy," we had no time to see the town thoroughly, but we managed to make a hurried inspection of the church before our steamer left. It is a fine old building, with two rows of marble columns in the interior, the capitals of which are all different, and remind one of those in the church of St. Mark at Venice. The Byzantine pulpit, a very old episcopal seat behind the altar, and some sarcophagi with inscriptions and carvings in a little courtyard near the church, are also interesting. [Illustration: THE CHURCH AT GRADO] Our return journey to Aquileia was not exciting. We were all sleepy, and hot, and rather irritable. On reaching it we proceeded to the hotel, and refreshed ourselves with sundry cooling drinks, and then set out to view the town. Aquileia was founded B.C. 183 or 181, after the second war against Hannibal. It was one of the twelve fortified towns built to repel the attacks of the Barbarians, and at the same time such towers as Duino, Monfalcone, and Sagrado were erected as watch-towers. Aquileia was a very extensive and important place under the Romans, and possessed a population of half a million. With the decline of the Roman power the glory of Aquileia departed. The town withstood many attacks from the Barbarians, but after a siege of some months it was finally burnt down and quite destroyed by the Huns under Attila. Some of the inhabitants escaped to Grado, and others sought refuge among the neighbouring lagoons. There is a museum of Roman remains containing a collection of statues, pottery, glass, etc. The old glass is very beautiful, its colouring wonderful, and two of the many statues are particularly fine, one of a Venus or a nymph, very much mutilated, and an almost perfect one of the family of Tiberius. The rest of the statues and carvings, though interesting, did not seem to be of great artistic value, still I was struck by a fine mosaic pavement representing the rape of Europa. When one reflects that all this collection has been made up of things (one could almost say) casually found, one can form some idea of the valuable treasures still left in the soil. Probably Aquileia could rival Pompeii or Herculaneum--in any case, it was a much more important place. In the last year or two some Austrian noblemen have begun to interest themselves in making excavations. It is to be hoped they will continue the work, and that successful results may follow. After some time Aquileia was rebuilt, but not on the same extensive scale. It seems that Charlemagne came to the town for the sake of the hunting that was to be had in the big forests then existing round Isonzo and Timavo. Old chronicles say that wild boar, wild goats, and pheasants were the principal objects of pursuit, but unfortunately there is no record of the "bags." When one sees the general barrenness of the country now, it is difficult to believe it was once all one dense forest through which the great Emperor and his nobles chased the flying game, whilst the woodland rang with the deep music of the hounds. The church is extremely old--it dates back to 1031--and the arches and pillars of the interior are very graceful. There is a most curious monument in the church--a sort of little temple of white marble surrounded by marble columns that support a modern wooden roof. The inside is quite empty--no trace of fittings left. What it was used for is a riddle not yet solved. Very interesting is a small chapel with the tombs of the four Della Torre who were Patriarchs of Aquileia. The power of the Patriarchs lasted for fourteen centuries. They were not only very great Church dignitaries, but possessed immense secular influence, and in spite of their peaceful profession were brave warriors. The Lords of Duino were generally their firm allies. We read that when Bertram, Patriarch of Aquileia, defeated the troops of Goritz at Osoppo (1340) he himself celebrated mass in his camp in full armour, it being Christmas Eve. Hence arose the custom, long existing in this part of the country, that on that night the priest should bless the people with the cross of the sword. It was to visit one of the Della Torre, who lies buried here, that Dante in 1320 came to Duino, which was at that time a dependency of the Patriarch of Aquileia. A crypt is under the church, containing the relics of various saints. Formerly an immense treasure was there too, but it is said that about 1820 an organised band of some hundreds of people from Udine and Goritz made a raid on the church and stole all that was left of it. The most valuable part, and among other treasures a copy of the Gospel of St. Mark, written in the fifth century, had been taken away long before, and is to be seen now in the neighbouring town of Cividale, where the Patriarchs had in later time transported their seat. Some old Byzantine fresco-paintings of saints are at the east end, very much faded, but still discernible. On the roof above them are some hideous modern abominations. It is a great pity that in the last century all the old frescoes were whitewashed over, and in some places _repainted_. Now people are trying to discover the old paintings, but it will be a long and difficult task. The font is outside the church. It is enclosed in a circular wall, and is of unusual size--a relic of Roman times, as it seems. We were completely exhausted after going round the town, and returned to the hotel with the ladies, clamouring for ices. I think we spent the greater part of this day in eating and drinking. After all, it was an impression of sadness that I took with me as we left the town behind us. Turning round, one could only see a few humble peasants' houses rising gray and desolate against the golden glory of the setting sun. No trace of gorgeous temples, of thronged streets, of the mighty legions who started from this very spot to vanquish the Barbarians and to conquer new and immense lands for Rome. No trace of the great Emperor's passage as, surrounded by his fantastic knights, he hunted the deer through the vast forests. Nothing even of feudal times. The luxurious palace of the Patriarchs has disappeared, their armies gone, their treasure dispersed; only a few tombs remain in a silent and deserted church. And yet, if energy and intelligence were to be expended in this abandoned spot where now the peasant drives his plough, a new world would rise in all the glory of white marble limbs--a new world, and yet so old! Shaking off the sleep of centuries from their solemn eyes, the gods and the nymphs, the heroes and the statesmen would live again, and once more Aquileia would rise from her ashes, the proud daughter of Imperial Rome. [Illustration: ENTRANCE TO CASTLE DUINO] The drive home in the cool of the evening--a wonderful soft June evening--was very pleasant. The air was heavy with sweet scents, the sun was setting in a crimson sky and flooding the green vineyards with golden rays, whilst the dark shadows grew longer and longer, and the blue mists veiled the distant hills. But our peaceful enjoyment was spoiled by the gloominess of "our host," who, having met a bicycle on the way, failed absolutely and entirely to recover his equanimity. He talked to us with great eloquence on the subject (bicycles are against his principles), but we gradually grew more and more sleepy, and only the view of the old castle rising dark against the paling sky (and the hope of our dinner) had the power to rouse our despondent and drooping spirits again. [Illustration] CHAPTER VII VILLA VICENTINA Gray twilight pour'd On dewy pastures, dewy trees, Softer than sleep--all things in order stored, A haunt of ancient Peace. Tennyson. My collaborator and I drove to Villa Vicentina on Friday, June 7th. We took a lady who is possessed with the photographic mania with us, thinking she might be useful, and the Other Boy to carry her camera, etc. There was no rising at unearthly hours in the morning this time--we started at a respectable hour in the afternoon. The early part of our drive was along the same road by which we went to Aquileia--the long white road bordered with poplars leading through the marshes. After passing through Monfalcone and crossing the bridge over the Isonzo, however, we turned to the right. Hedges of acacia shadowed the road; the flowers are over, here, by June, but the leaves have still their first freshness, the beautiful tender green that the sun seems to love to illumine and brighten into golden yellow. We crossed a little river, a placid stream fringed with graceful willows and bordered with blue forget-me-nots, flowing through the level meadows and sweet-smelling vineyards, and at last came to the gate of Villa Vicentina. The house stands some distance from the road in a large park that, with its huge trees and rich grass, reminds one of dear old England. The trees are really magnificent, mostly white poplars ("the light quivering aspen"), venerable oaks, and towering sombre pines. We got out of our carriage, and walked part of the way to the house Mid mystic trees, where light falls in Hardly at all. I like big trees, particularly on a hot day; it is so cool and pleasant under their green shade, where no sunlight comes but in little chequered patches here and there, when outside everything is bathed in the scorching rays, and you see the air tremulous with heat. [Illustration: LITTLE RIVER NEAR VILLA VICENTINA] The Villa Vicentina formerly belonged to Princess Baciocchi, the sister of Napoleon I. Her daughter left it to the late Prince Imperial, and after his death it became the property of the Empress Eugénie. She never comes here--it is left in charge of an old caretaker and his wife, who, with another lady, possibly their daughter, and a female servant, appear to form the establishment. There is nothing particular about the house--it is an ordinary country villa. All the finer things have been taken away too, but there are still some bits of interesting furniture. [Illustration: VILLA VICENTINA] * * * * * It was a strange feeling, not without a tinge of sadness, that stole over one whilst going up and down the deserted staircases and peeping into the empty rooms. Here and there a marble bust with the classic profile of the Buonapartes, an engraving, a faded water-colour, on the scanty remnants of furniture the Imperial eagle, some old firearms, the slender hand of beautiful Pauline Borghese cast in marble, a few bits of rare china, and everywhere the peculiar smell of damp and age that pervades long-unused houses. Where are the eagles now that once spread their wings over all Europe? Where are the famous beauties? Where are the glorious dreams? But where are the snows of yester-year? * * * * * To be truthful, this last bit is not mine. My collaborator has just been worrying the life out of me to make me grow enthusiastic about Napoleon, but it is useless--quite useless. I am _not_ enthusiastic about him, nor about his eagles, nor about his dreams. In fact, I cannot bear him, and he and Wagner make my life a burden. I do not admire them--I wish they had never existed. When those two unhappy beings are mentioned I know people will "jump on" me and abuse me. I bear it all as a martyr, but I absolutely cannot write with enthusiastic admiration about "old Nap" or stay in the room when there is Wagner music going on. So my collaborator has found it necessary to add these lines to my sketch. I do not call this fair, for when _I_ write something _she_ does not like, I have no rest till it is cut out. I know that some time or other Wagner will be brought in somehow, and I protest against it even now. It is a comfort that "our host" is of my opinion about Wagner. He says that he has lost all respect for him since he once went to see some Zulus that were exhibited somewhere, and found that those simple and unsophisticated savages with their war-music could make ever so much more noise than a whole orchestra playing Wagner. He says, too, that, after all, he only once went to a Wagner opera, and discovered that the unhappy tenor or baritone was obliged to make a whole shoe on the stage. No humbug, you know. He had to begin from the beginning and to make that whole shoe (a real serviceable article--no pretence about it) to perfection and to sing all the time till he had finished it. Our host could not stand it. He left the house to give the poor man a chance, and when he came back after two hours, there was the unhappy fellow still hammering away at his shoe, singing quite feebly, for he had no breath left in him. This time he went away for good, and never went to a Wagner opera again. There! that has done me good. * * * * * The gardens are beautiful--nice old-fashioned gardens where one could wander about all day with pleasure. There is a pretty conservatory with some wonderful climbing geraniums. What delighted us most was a little walk about a hundred yards long, and quite straight, with a trellis-work covered with creepers--a perfect tunnel. At the farther end is an old stone table and seat, where we intended to have tea. It was a charming spot, but unfortunately we were almost devoured by mosquitoes--they seem to be particularly ferocious and bloodthirsty there. The lady-photographer took some photographs, but I am sorry to say _she_ is an utter fraud. Generally there is nothing at all on the plate, and if there is, you are quite at a loss to know whether the photograph represents a landscape, a dog, or a flash of lightning. We had brought a huge basket, like a Noah's ark, with us, which contained the "tea-things." My collaborator told me during the drive that they (the tea-things) had originally been packed in a much larger basket, but that she (with characteristic thoughtfulness) had taken them all out and repacked them again in this "small" one. Personally I had looked forward to tea all afternoon. It was very hot, and I was thirsty, so it was with feelings of joyous expectancy that I began unpacking the following articles:-- 1. Two forks. 2. Some butter (in a liquid state) wrapped up in white paper. 3. The poems of Rossetti (neatly bound). 4. Three drawing pencils. 5. Two cups (without saucers). 6. A telescope. 7. Three tablets of Pears' soap (unscented). 8. A little bottle containing something--we didn't dare to open it. I fancy it was poison, and had some connection with photography. 9. A bottle of milk (sour). 10. Two enormous bottles of spirit of wine (to boil the kettle). 11. No kettle! 12. No tea!! Happily the "Photographic Lady" (who considers tea a diabolical beverage) had some cake and some cherries mixed up with her apparatus, so, after all, our "tea" was rather a success--our tea on the old stone bench of Villa Vicentina, where the mosquitoes flourish! There is a tree in the garden that was brought from the Emperor's grave in St. Helena. This is the end of the chapter. I finish it up quickly, or my collaborator will have a fit of enthusiasm again. [Illustration] CHAPTER VIII SAGRADO AND GRADISCA Blossoms of grape-vines scent the sunny air. Longfellow. The usual quartette went to Sagrado and Gradisca--two little Italian-like towns--on Saturday, 15th June. There is one great drawback about Duino--there are only two roads. One goes to Trieste and the other doesn't. It is rather monotonous always driving along the same road. Familiarity breeds contempt, and even poplar-trees and marshes pall on one in time. However, "what can't be cured must be endured," and if you do not want to go to Trieste you must go the other way, even if it has grown almost too familiar. We branched off on a new road after passing through Monfalcone, and soon came to Sagrado. It is quite a little place, more of a village than a town, but there is an old villa standing in a large park, which was the attraction here. Two magnificent cypresses stand at the entrance-gate, one on each side, and the park is beautiful, full of fine trees, especially oaks overgrown with ivy. It forms a great contrast to the surrounding country, which towards Duino is barren and stony in the extreme. One has a magnificent view from the villa. It stands on a hill, and the valley of the Isonzo stretches below it. Far on the left one catches a glimpse of the sea. Before one, far as the eye can reach, is the plain, covered with vineyards, like waves of a billowy sea of emerald green, with tiny villages nestling here and there (the "Photographic Lady" says you can count two thousand of them, but I am afraid some untruthful person has imposed on her credulity), and the blue river winding through it, like some giant snake; and on the right, rising higher and higher as they fade away into the shadowy distance, are the snow-capped Alps. The house is an old villa of the Italian style, with stuccoed walls, and on the floor the pretty Italian "terrazzi." In the hall, just when you enter, one is struck by four quaint old pictures of four men almost life-size; they are dressed in the peasant's costume of the country, of last century, and each holds a little money-bag in his hand. It seems that these worthy people were four farmers, who, when a former owner of the property (one of the Della Torre) was in financial difficulties and on the verge of ruin, came forward and paid off his debts. In gratitude to them he had their portraits painted and put in his entrance-hall. What a pity it is that people don't do this sort of thing nowadays! If any one feels inclined to follow the example of the four farmers and pay off _my_ debts, I will faithfully promise to have his photograph taken and placed on my writing-table. I am only sorry I cannot rise to oil-paintings and entrance-halls. From the pretty marble staircase you enter a charming drawing-room in the Italian Louis XVI. style. The walls are green marmorino, with ornaments of white stucco, and big mirrors let into them. There is a very large dining-hall of great height, with its walls and ceiling painted in fresco. No one lives in the villa at present. The gardens must have been very pretty--all terraces and staircases--when they were kept in the style of the time. They are rather neglected now, and seem to be only inhabited by a perfect army of nightingales. A queer little red house is at the farther end of the garden, with a crypt under it and an imitation tomb. The walls are covered with mottoes--Greek, Latin, French, etc., and there is one in English: "Happiness is of a retired nature, and an enemy of pomp and noise." The individual who built the house must have been very much struck by this last motto, for it seems that he used to live in this little dismal-looking place all alone, in the one room over the crypt, leaving his smiling villa untenanted at the top of the hill. We had tea in the park. It is a great mistake to wander about to find a suitable spot for tea--you are sure to pick out the worst possible place. It is much better to stop under the first shady tree one comes to, and to sit down there. On this occasion the ladies chose the situation, and when tea was about half over we found we were sitting on an ant-heap. It was hardly worth moving then, though, so we stayed where we were, and pretended to be very much interested in the movements of the ants. I made the tea. I have a way of my own for making it, which is, I believe, sometimes practised by homeless wanderers in foreign countries--it is very superior to civilised methods. I am not selfish, and I have not taken out a patent for it, so I have no objection to presenting my method to the world, free, gratis, and for nothing. This is my recipe. Boil the water in the kettle, and when fiercely boiling put in your tea (one teaspoonful for each person and one for the kettle) and stir up the mixture. Let it go on boiling for a few seconds, and then pour out and drink. You will find you have excellent tea in this way. _N.B._--It is as well to have a strainer with you to get rid of the tea-leaves. My collaborator had often stayed at the villa as a child, and had hosts of acquaintances. I was interested to know who the various ladies and gentlemen who kept addressing her were, but her explanations were so confusing that I soon gave up inquiring. I remember that one lady was "the sister-in-law of a gardener, who was the step-brother of a cousin of the late wife of the man with the wig, who was the old butler." I cannot grasp such involved relationships--they are too much for _my_ intellect. I made the acquaintance of the "man with the wig" afterwards. We called to ask him to order supper to be ready for us at the little inn when we came back from Gradisca. Then we drove on to Gradisca. You cross the Isonzo to get there, and there is a lovely view from the bridge, of the blue river and the distant Alps. Gradisca is a nice little old-fashioned town. The inhabitants are evidently not accustomed to visitors, and we caused an immense sensation. The "Photographic Lady" took several photographs, and she was always the centre of an admiring crowd. They were rather disappointed, I fancy, not to see any results then and there. They caused the lady great annoyance by going and standing before the camera to get a better view of the performance--in fact, she got quite angry, and abused them in all the four languages of the country. [Illustration: PALAZZO FINETTI] [Illustration: HOUSE AT GRADISCA] There is a fine old palace in Gradisca that once belonged to the Della Torre. The whole of this part of the country seems to have belonged to them, and everywhere--in churches, on old houses, over doors--you see the tower with crossed lilies that was their coat of arms. In this particular house I was struck by a charming courtyard with graceful "loggia" and a flight of steps from both sides to the ground. [Illustration: TOMB OF NICOLAO DELLA TORRE] We went to see two churches. The first contained nothing interesting, but the second is worth seeing. There is a tomb there erected to the memory of Nicolao Della Torre in a private burial-chapel. The monument is very large, with a recumbent figure of the gentleman lying in full armour. He must have been of unusual size, with a fine regular face and a long flowing beard, and is very much like the portraits of Martin the Giant. He, too, fought against the infidels, being General of the Imperial troops that protected the Hungarian frontier against the Turks. He was badly wounded in one of the battles, but his end was not so tragic as that of his ancestor, and he now lies peacefully in the little church of Gradisca, enjoying at last the strange old motto of his family--"Tranquillité." The stuccoed ceiling of the chapel, which seems to be particularly fine, was pointed out to me, but somehow I had had too much of churches and monuments for one day, so I was not so appreciative as I suppose I ought to have been. In any case, I was again the victim of sundry abuse. After all this sight-seeing it was a pleasure to wander quietly and aimlessly through the quaint little streets, meeting only an occasional donkey or dirty baby, who stared very much, whilst at the windows one would sometimes catch a glimpse of a pair of big black eyes following one curiously from behind a row of red carnations. We admired the old walls of the town, which was strongly fortified in ancient times--enormous black walls with battlements, and beneath them a sort of green lawn shadowed by numerous chestnut-trees, the fashionable promenade of the high life of Gradisca. We drove back to Sagrado and had supper in the little inn. The "man with the wig" waited on us with a beaming face. I did not feel at all happy, for we had the most horrid wine it has ever been my lot to drink. It is the wine of the country, and said to be the pure juice of the grape (everything nasty seems to be "the pure juice of the grape"). One drinks it diluted with water, and it has a most extraordinary bitter taste. The ladies assured me that I should soon grow accustomed to it, and then I should never like any other wine as well. I had my own opinion on the subject, but I had to smile and look pleasant. We drove home in the evening. I had foretold a thunderstorm all the afternoon, but had been laughed to scorn by everybody. My prophecies were correct, however, for we had hardly left Sagrado when the storm began. I never saw more vivid lightning--the whole sky was lighted up by it, and it was almost incessant. The weird effect was increased, too, by the fireflies--there must have been millions of them flitting hither and thither, like the lost souls of the departed. We had a great argument as to whether we should remain at Monfalcone till the storm had passed over. The ladies were in favour of waiting, the coachman and I were for going on, and the boy was neutral, being fast asleep. Our eloquence prevailed--we hurried on. It was a desperate race, but we had the satisfaction of beating the worst of the storm by some ten seconds. After all, I did not think much of Sagrado and Gradisca, and I can only say I hope people will be as bored in reading this chapter as I have been in writing it. [Illustration] CHAPTER IX ON GHOSTS All houses wherein men have lived and died Are haunted houses. Through the open doors The harmless phantoms on their errands glide, With feet that make no sound upon the floors. We meet them at the doorway, on the stair, Along the passages they come and go, Impalpable impressions on the air, A sense of something moving to and fro. There are more guests at table than the hosts Invited; the illuminated hall Is thronged with quiet, inoffensive ghosts, As silent as the pictures on the wall. Longfellow. Ghosts! There is a charm in the very word. Tales of gruesome apparitions told over a blazing fire at Christmas-time come back to one--tales told long years ago, when, after hearing them, one was almost afraid to go to bed; when one started at every shadow on the stairs and imagined it was some dark denizen of the spirit world come to carry us off; when, being fairly in bed and the light out, we drew the sheets over our heads to shut out the phantoms that appeared in the darkness. From my earliest childhood I was always a firm believer in ghosts--the good old-fashioned ghost, I mean,--the unhappy lady or gentleman who appears at twelve o'clock at night with wailings and groans, and rattles chains and carries his or her head under his or her arm. That is the sort of ghost _I_ like. I have a contempt for the feeble ghost of to-day--the spirit that raps on tables and moves chairs, that writes letters backwards that no one can read, and never shows itself or behaves in a rational manner. The modern ghost is very degenerate. [Illustration: THE WHITE LADY] My collaborator is a member of the Society for Psychical Research, so I must be careful what I say, or I shall be abused again. We had a grand _séance_ on the evening of 16th June. It was held in the "Emperor's Room"--so called because the Emperor Leopold I. is said to have slept there. His portrait is painted on the ceiling, which, by the way, is of wonderful Venetian stucco, with cupids and garlands of fruits and flowers all over it. It is a haunted room. It is not the Emperor that appears here, however, but a much more interesting sort of person--the White Lady. She had a cruel husband who threw her down the cliff under the ruin. Her body may still be seen, as she was turned into stone, a gigantic woman wrapped in a long white garment--everlastingly climbing up the cliff, but never getting any higher. Her spirit returns to the castle and searches for her lost children. On nights when the moon is full one can hear the rustling of her robes, as she wanders disconsolately about in the "Emperor's Room." [Illustration: THE WHITE LADY] We carried out our _séance_ on the most approved methods. Eight of us--my collaborator, the Energetic Lady, the Photographic Lady, Miss Umslopogaas, the two learned men, the Seal, and myself--sat round a little oval table with both our hands on it, and clasped each other's little fingers. The learned Dark Man calculated that there were eighty fingers on that table. "Better eighty fingers on one table than eighty tables on one finger" remarked our host. He was rather a nuisance (our host, I mean), as he insisted on walking about the room and smoking cigarettes. He also kept turning up the lamp (ghosts dislike much light, and it is necessary to respect their feelings) to see how we were getting on. [Illustration: TIN-HO--FIRST-CLASS MANDARIN] There was also a dog in the room. This dog rejoices in the name of "Tin-ho"--he is a Chinese animal. I believe he is the last of his race, or something of that sort, and is the most cherished possession of the Energetic Lady. He is one of the banes of my life--he, Napoleon I., and Wagner. I like animals--in fact, I love them--especially cats and dogs. But _this_ dog is too much for me. I have made the most friendly overtures to him. I have called him by the most endearing terms. I have even learned some Italian (he only understands that language) especially for his benefit, and have said _poverissima bellissima_ to him with a pathos that would have moved a stone statue to tears. But it is of no use. He is as unfriendly as ever, and treats me with contempt. Now I kick him, whenever the Energetic Lady is not anywhere near him, which is not very often, by the way. I have not explained yet who Miss Umslopogaas is. She is a lady who is staying here, and her proper name is difficult to pronounce--at least, I cannot conquer it. I began by calling her Miss Asparagus, but that sounds too much like a vegetable, and is familiar besides. Umslopogaas is quite as much like what I can imagine her real name to be, and has the advantage of sounding more foreign. Well, we sat round that table for an hour and a half. My collaborator was delighted at the beginning--she was sure the Seal was a perfect medium, as he trembled all over and felt cold. (I have my own private opinion about it.) The table, too, moved occasionally (no wonder, when the Seal was shaking like an aspen leaf), so she was convinced something was about to happen. At last something did happen! An unearthly shriek rang through the haunted chamber. There was a sound of scuffling and struggling, a smothered exclamation. The Photographic Lady leaped a foot from her chair and showed a tendency to go into hysterics. The Seal's teeth chattered with fright. But, after all, it was only our host who had trodden on the dog. We sat on. The Photographic Lady flirted with the learned Fair Man, and Miss Umslopogaas pinched the little finger of the learned Dark Man; but no ghost appeared. I think there were too many of us, or we were not serious enough, or the vagaries of our host and the dog were too much for the spirits. But, in any case, our _séance_ was a failure, and we had no manifestations at all. We gave it up then, and took to telling ghost-stories. The Photographic Lady related an experience of her own. Some three or four years ago she went into the great banqueting hall in the evening, and there saw the figure of a man. He was of immense height, elderly, and with a long flowing beard, and his face was vividly impressed on her memory. He advanced towards her, and then suddenly disappeared. According to her own account she was not at all frightened. At the time she did not know who it was, but on visiting the church at Gradisca some time later, she recognised the ghost at once as the Della Torre who is carved in stone on the tomb there, an ancestor of her own. The Energetic Lady had had a strange experience in the same room. She was there alone, and a _chair_ began to move about of its own accord. It moved forwards--it moved backwards--it moved sideways, and then in a slow and stately manner it waltzed round and round. With her usual energy, she chased it, caught it, _sat down_ on it, but it continued its antics, she still sitting on it. She said it was an uncomfortable sensation and confessed to feelings of alarm--in fact, she left the apartment in haste. At this point the Seal said he should retire, as he did not like to talk of such things. Miss Umslopogaas also took her departure--she did not consider ghosts quite proper. She thought they should not appear in people's bedrooms uninvited. Some of them were so insufficiently clothed too! The two learned men disputed on ghosts generally. They had different theories on the matter. My collaborator listened with a look of supreme contempt. She does not care to relate _her_ experiences to the common herd. I was so crushed by her superior manner that I was too modest to tell any story. I never saw a ghost myself, but an intimate friend of mine has had that pleasure. Our host was not bashful, however. This is what _he_ said: "I like ghosts, because they never come. If there are ten persons in a room, eight are fools, one is a rascal, the tenth might be all right ... but _he_ is generally dead. I have no objection to _his_ coming. Still, as 'Happiness is of a retired nature,' I think him very considerate never to do so." I did not see any point in this, but every one else seemed to find it very amusing. Suddenly the great clock in the tower began striking--slowly--twelve! Then we all went to bed. * * * * * We are all haunted by ghosts--ghosts of old friends, old scenes. We sit alone, and the past rises up before us. They are all with us again--the friends of our childhood, of our school-days, of our "Varsity" life. Once more we feel the warm clasp of their hands, once more we hear the merry voices and look into the kindly faces we knew long years ago. Picture follows picture. We see the old garden where we played as children, our brothers and sisters, our child-friends, the old house, the flowers, the green lawn. It is all so familiar, and yet it was all so long ago. The scene changes: a long, low room, desks hacked with pocket-knives and stained with ink, a hot, drowsy afternoon, a hum of voices, the master's desk, the master himself in cap and gown, a crowd of boys. The scene changes again. Stately buildings appear before us, old courts and cloisters, the gleam of the river. Old familiar sounds ring in our ears: the thud of the oars in the rowlocks, the click of the cricket-bat, the tramp of feet on the football field. Fair faces pass before us too. We hear the rustle of their dresses, their girlish laughter, their soft voices, we see the bright eyes that look into ours, the rosy lips that murmured words we shall never forget. There are things of which I may not speak; There are dreams that cannot die! There are thoughts that make the strong heart weak, And bring a pallor into the cheek, And a mist before the eye. And a verse of a sweet old song Is haunting my memory still: A boy's will is the wind's will, And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts. Where are they all--those friends of other days? Gone--some dead--all scattered; we have lost sight of most of them. Some are sleeping on distant battlefields or beneath the waves of the hungry sea, some are preaching their message of peace in busy town or quiet village, some fighting with disease and death in the crowded hospitals of great cities, some working their way upwards through dusty law-courts or in foreign lands. But here--in Shadow-Land--they one and all come back to us. [Illustration] CHAPTER X CAPODISTRIA Happy star reign now! Here comes Bohemia. Shakespeare (_The Winter's Tale_). This chapter is remarkable, since it introduces a new and interesting character to the public, to wit the "Gentle Lunatic," who rushed down upon us from the wild and boundless forests of Bohemia. We journeyed to Capodistria on Saturday, 22nd June, the "Gentle One" filling the place of the "Other Boy" in the usual quartette. We left Duino at 8 o'clock in the morning (another early start), and drove to Nabresina; from thence we went to Trieste by train. Our train was half an hour late, for which we abused the "Photographic Lady," as she had made all the arrangements for the journey. It is marvellous how our arrangements always go wrong! We have tried all the ladies in turn as superintendent-in-chief: the "Energetic One," who did not want any railway guide or any advice, but knew everything generally; the "Photographic Lady," who smothered herself and everybody else with books, time-tables, etc., asked every one's opinion collectively and singly, and made an elaborate plan beforehand; my collaborator, who did not care a rap how things went, supposed they would be sure to come right somehow, and when they did _not_, said it was destiny; but none of them answered. We were always in a hopeless muddle, either starting too soon, or too late, or not at all. We were very much annoyed by the dilatory conduct of our train, even when it arrived at Nabresina. It is extraordinary the length of time it takes to start a continental train! A bell rings violently and then tolls _one_. This is to inform the passengers that the train is in the station. A long interval follows. The bell rings more violently than before and then tolls _two_. This shows that in the course of time the train will proceed. There is no hurry, however. You have plenty of time still to make a substantial meal and pay calls on any friends you may have in the neighbourhood of the station. The bell rings a third time and tolls _three_. The conductor suggests the advisability of taking your seat, the engine-driver and stoker go for their last drink, and the stationmaster begins to play with a little horn he wears suspended round his neck. The conductors--there are generally two or three of them on each train--having ascertained that none of the passengers have any particular wish to remain any longer, step out upon the platform, shout _ready_, and blow whistles. The stationmaster, with an air of immense importance, sounds his toy trumpet, the engine utters a scream of defiance to the world generally, and after a decent interval, to avoid the semblance of haste, the train crawls out of the station. It is an imposing ceremony, but as it is repeated at every small station on the line, it grows somewhat monotonous and makes railway-travelling rather a formidable and lengthy business. At last, however, our train, having rested sufficiently, proceeded slowly on its journey, and we arrived in the course of time at Trieste. We drove to the Hotel Delorme, and ordered lunch to be ready in an hour. The "Gentle Lunatic" announced his intention of going to find some tame turtles. He said he meant to buy a dozen, and we could take them home in our pockets. He could dispose of six, and we three should have two each. We argued and remonstrated, but it was of no use--he went. Meanwhile the two ladies and I set out to see the Church of St. Just, a very fine church--in fact, one of the oldest Christian basilicae. It is a great pity that the beautiful old columns are covered with red damask. They look like a forest of pillars, and divide the church into five aisles. Two of the many altars are bright with very ancient Byzantine gold-grounded mosaics. The "Photographic Lady" took a photograph of the interior and carried on a flirtation with a young verger, to whom she promised a photograph, whether of herself or the church we were unable to discover. We were then joined by the "Gentle One," who was quite heart-broken, as he had not been able to find his turtles. Trieste is a nice town. It is a pity it is not a pleasure resort instead of a mercantile place, as it is beautifully situated on green hills sloping quite gently down to the sea; the surroundings are pretty, and brightened with villas and flower-covered cottages. We went on to Capodistria by steamer. There was a very motley crowd of passengers on board--peasants returning from market, business people bound for an afternoon's pleasure-seeking, persons of all sorts and conditions. The "Photographic Lady" was delighted that, in one particular at least, her researches with regard to our arrangements were correct--namely, that the steamer had left Trieste at one o'clock. To prove her accuracy, she asked the "G. L." soon after starting to tell her the time. But his answer was somewhat vague, and his method of ascertaining the time appeared to us peculiar. He took out his watch, looked at it for a long time, gazed fixedly at the sun, shut his eyes, seemed by the contortion of his features to be going through some abstruse calculation, and then said it was between one and two o'clock. This nettled the lady, and she replied rather warmly that she wanted to know the _exact time_. With a mournful smile he took out his watch again, went through the previous programme, and gave the same answer. At this we all insisted on seeing his watch for ourselves, and then the mystery was explained. It had no glass! it had no hands! We suggested that such a watch must be rather inconvenient, but he assured us it was the best watch he had ever had in his life; for more than ten years it had been in this state, during which time it had gone absolutely perfectly, and had never needed the slightest attention beyond winding up. It took us three-quarters of an hour to reach Capodistria. It looks very quaint and old-fashioned this little out-of-the-way town, with its red-roofed houses, blue sky above, and blue sea all around, and the great gaunt prison lighted up by the golden rays of the sun, and forming a bright patch of yellow in the landscape. My collaborator says the prison spoils the appearance of the town, but I maintain that it forms a pleasing contrast to the old gray walls of the houses. Capodistria was formerly Byzantine, but in 1278 it became Venetian. Under the Republic of Venice it was a very flourishing place, and is said to have been the richest town in Istria. There were many wealthy patrician families, renowned for their luxurious living, inhabiting it. With the fall of the Venetian Republic, Capodistria declined, and it is now a small unimportant town. It was formerly known by the name of "the Gentlewoman of Istria." On arriving, we found that we had made a mistake of two hours in the time of the return steamer, a discovery that threw all our plans out of gear, but we comforted ourselves with the reflection that it gave us more time to see the place. We engaged a chariot and drove off to inspect the town. It was a remarkable conveyance. The "G. L." selected it, and it appeared as if he had chosen the dirtiest he could find. It was small too. We could only just squeeze in, and were very much cramped for room; but any trifling defects in the carriage were amply made up for by the horse. This was indeed a noble animal, and high spirited in the extreme; the driver too was perfectly reckless, so we dashed off at the rate of some sixty miles an hour, the chariot pitching and tossing like a small boat in an angry sea. The "piazza" is quite the sight of Capodistria, and is very picturesque. A church stands on one side of it, and before one is an old Town Hall, turreted on both sides, with graceful Venetian windows, innumerable inscriptions, coats-of-arms, and other carvings, and the whole crowned by the Venetian lion. A pretty outer staircase with little marble columns runs along part of the front of the building, and under it there is a deep and sombre archway, through which one sees a narrow street, with great, high, irregularly built houses almost meeting above it. [Illustration: THE TOWN HALL] I believe we went to see three churches in this little town, but I have seen such a superabundance of churches lately, that I cannot remember the characteristic features of any of the three. I know that in one there was a quantity of fine old silver, and that we were shown round another by a most obsequious monk, clad in russet brown, who explained its beauties to us in a confidential manner. I remember, too, that we saw some pictures. In one church (the "G. L." says it was in the big one on the piazza) there was a very fine one of Benedetto Carpaccio--the Madonna in the company of some saints, and with two little angels playing the banjo (it may be a guitar) at her feet. In the church where we interviewed the monk there was a big altar-piece of Cima da Conegliano, very much spoilt by having been restored, and a most curious picture of Vittore Carpaccio, with a garland of angels' heads (hundreds of them), some painted in natural colours and some bright _red_. (Red-headed angels--this is art!) By the way, I was told that in Venice there is a very old picture attributed to the same Carpaccio, and said to represent the Lords of Duino taking tribute from the town of Zara; the Lords of Duino, in quaint armour, with their ladies and soldiers, on the one side of the picture; on the other, the representatives of the vanquished town bringing gold, etc., and in the background a turreted castle--Duino, and a town near it--Trieste. As Carpaccio was a native of Capodistria, it is very probable that he painted this triumph of some of the most powerful barons of his country. After this came more sight-seeing. We visited a funny old drinking-fountain known as the "Bridge" (why, I know not), and watched the women drawing water. It is a sleepy and dull little town, with small streets and dark forbidding-looking houses. There are hardly any shops, but in one quaint sort of jeweller's stall the fashionable ornaments of Istria were pointed out to me. These are ear-rings--little crowned negroes' heads in black and white enamel, and the height of fashion among the fishermen is to wear both in one ear. One sees very few people in the streets. Here and there a dark-eyed girl strolling along with the peculiar shuffling gait caused by the "zoccoli"--the wooden slippers of the Venetian women. [Illustration: DOOR-KNOCKER] Everywhere are relics of Venice--the carved cisterns on the piazzas, the winged lions on the houses, where you find inscriptions bearing some of the most illustrious names of the Republic, but everywhere, too, silence, abandonment, and decay. There are some fine old palaces, but the windows are shut, and they seem deserted. On one we admired a wonderful old bronze knocker of most refined workmanship, and as the house with its arched windows and marble balconies looked particularly nice, we explored the interior. There, too, we found the large Venetian entrance-hall and an imposing-looking staircase, but no soul appeared. Then we repaired to a _café_ on the piazza. It was formerly an open "loggia," but between the stately marble columns some mean commercial soul has put glass windows, and the interior is dishonoured by the usual little marble tables and black leather seats. The ladies ordered coffee and sponge-cakes, I drank beer, and the "Gentle Lunatic" asked for a cup of hot water--his favourite drink. [Illustration: CAFÉ AT CAPODISTRIA] One of the "G. L.'s" passions is his liking for low acquaintances. Hardly had we finished our repast and gone out, before he formed a new friendship of this kind. An old beggar with a long gray beard approached, and the two immediately fraternised. They sat down on a stone bench together, and discussed politics and literature. In the meantime another beggar came up, whom the first beggar introduced as "the greatest poet of Capodistria." The poet was proud, however, and evidently averse to becoming intimate with strangers; at any rate, after having received with lofty condescension the "tip" diffidently offered to him by the "G. L.," he went majestically off. It was with the greatest difficulty that we finally separated the two friends, who parted with mutual expressions of everlasting esteem. We then once more mounted our chariot, and betook ourselves to the steamer. So good-bye to "the Gentlewoman of Istria," lying placidly asleep by the blue waters of the Adriatic. Though changed and abandoned, you can still distinguish some of the charms that won for her that poetic name. May she dream of the glorious time long ago--the glorious time of her youth, when she was growing and blooming in the shade of the mighty wings that Saint Mark's lion was once spreading over land and sea! CHAPTER XI [Illustration] GORITZ In the greenest of our valleys. E. A. Poe. On Monday, 24th June, we went to Goritz--my collaborator, the "Gentle Lunatic," and I. Our party had already broken up--the "Energetic Lady" and the "Seal," Miss Umslopogaas, the two learned men, the Thin Boy, the Other Boy, even "our host"--all had gone. And now we left too. My collaborator was going on to Venice from Goritz, and the G. L. and I, after picking up the Fat Boy at Nabresina, were going to Vienna by the night train. We drove to Monfalcone, and then went on by rail. Goritz is charmingly situated in the smiling valley of the Isonzo. I have spoken of the beauty of this valley before, but never does it strike one so pleasantly as when one approaches Goritz. It is a forest of vineyards surrounded by tier upon tier of majestic mountains, that rise higher and higher, until they are lost to sight among the clouds, and in the centre of the mass of greenery, on the banks of the blue river, nestles the little town. Not much is known of the early history of Goritz. From the twelfth century, however, it seems to have played an important part in the history of the country, and the Counts of Goritz stand out prominently as a powerful and warlike family, second in importance only to the Patriarchs of Aquileia. They were celebrated for their munificence and for the splendour of the tournaments promoted by them. By the way, an old chronicle says that in 1224 a great tournament, arranged by Mainardo II., Count of Goritz, was held at Trieste. To this came Ulrich of Lichtenstein, the German Minnesänger, who always went about dressed as Venus. Unfortunately the details of his dress are wanting. After the extinction of the family, Goritz came into the possession of the Emperors. The Venetians attempted to conquer it, and indeed appear to have held it for a short time. The town seems to have kept up its reputation of gaiety, as later chronicles speak of the lavish hospitality of the nobility residing there. It is now quite a lively little place, with broad streets and good shops, and its outskirts are one charming garden full of pretty villas. There is not much to be seen in the way of antiquities--an old castle, by no means beautiful, perched on a hill, and some churches. It was a very hot day. It is all very well to talk poetically of the sunny South, but for my part I wish it was not so confoundedly warm. We were taken to an antiquary's shop by my collaborator, and spent most of the morning there--she in looking over the things in a business-like manner, the G. L. in wandering aimlessly around, and I in sitting on the back stairs. (I found it the coolest place.) We lunched with Count and Countess C., and, to speak truly, my pleasantest recollections of Goritz are associated with that lunch. I must say I had spent rather a miserable sort of morning, what with the heat and the antiquary's shop, but these troubles were soon forgotten on our arriving at their house. It is an old-fashioned, rambling house, with low, dim rooms, furnished with a charming disregard to all pretence at style--old carved furniture side by side with little modern round tables, and valuable paintings of the last century hanging by oleographs of to-day. Every room, too, is a menagerie--dogs, cats, monkeys, snakes, birds of all sorts, are everywhere. I like a house of this kind--there is an entire absence of that bugbear _Art_ (art with a big capital "A," you know), and most charming of all are its inhabitants. They are brother and sister, and both on the verge of eighty, the Countess the personification of goodness and the Lady Bountiful of the town, and the Count a curious mixture of the beau of the beginning of the century, poet, artist, and philosopher rolled into one. In spite of their age they both look marvellously young, and are more gay and active than the majority of young people I know. We ate our lunch--which was excellent, by the way--in a little cool room that opens into the garden. The latter is as quaint as the house--roses and red currants grow together in luxuriant profusion. There is a delightful little arbour overgrown with white jasmine, and an old flight of steps that leads up to what was probably once a fortification, but is now a fine bed of cabbages with a border of hollyhocks, and the whole overshadowed by an enormous cherry-tree. Just outside the garden rises a big modern building, and from this, every now and then, a chorus of sweet girlish voices floated forth upon the still summer air. They were factory girls spinning silk, I was told, and singing over their work. [Illustration: A CAST] After lunch we adjourned to the Count's study--the most remarkable room in the house perhaps. It is lower than the street, very large and vaulted, full of old furniture and curiosities of every kind; here and there casts of famous sculptures, very white against the dark walls; on the many tables a litter of books and papers, except on one, where we were told to admire a collection of paper-knives. It is an extraordinary thing that passion for collections. I knew a man once who collected _pipes_. He had one hundred and sixty-three when I saw him last, and he had stolen them all. I have no sympathy with this sort of thing, and quite disapproved of his actions--in fact, I withdrew from his acquaintance. I have too much affection for my own pipes to know such people. The "Gentle One" told me that a friend of his collected _old hats_. He labelled each hat with the name of its former owner, and studied his character from his head-covering. He knew a family too who collected buttons. They were accustomed to secretly steal them from their visitors' overcoats, with a view to scientifical and psychological research--of course! Now I collect money. Do not think me a miser. I do not hoard it up--I spend it. I shall be delighted to receive help with my collection. I have no false pride--any contribution, however small, will be thankfully received, and acknowledged by return of post. In the afternoon the "Gentle Lunatic" and I drove round to inspect the place. We made a sort of grand tour of the town, and then went out to a little village from which there is a view. It is a lovely view, too. You stand on a hill and look down into a valley, or rather glen; far below one flows the Isonzo, bluer than any sea or any sky, winding along, with a little cascade here and there, between banks thickly covered with oak woods, whilst above everything tower the mountains. Another interesting place near Goritz is the church and convent of Castagnavizza, not on account of the buildings, which are nothing remarkable, but because the last princes of the French Royal Family are buried there. They all lie in a little chapel (a Della Torre burial-ground, by the way), in simple coffins--Charles X. and his sons, the unfortunate Duchess of Angoulême, and, last of all, the Count and Countess of Chambord. It is a very gloomy vault, and one cannot help thinking of all the splendour and glory of Versailles, of all the memories of that long lineage of kings, and contrasting them with this their last resting-place, so humble and forsaken in a strange land--the royal lilies withered in a foreign soil. After this visit one is glad to get out into the sunshine again and to ramble through the streets of the gay little town. There are four languages generally spoken in Goritz--Italian, Slav, Friulan, and German. Friulan is an extraordinary language, a sort of Italian dialect, only spoken in the Friul, as the neighbourhood of Goritz is called. German is, of course, the State language, but Italian is universally spoken all over the Littoral. The lower classes do not understand a word of German, and I have found that hardly any one understands _my_ German. I had a forcible illustration of this not long ago. I was lunching with the Gentle Lunatic at a hotel, when an acquaintance of his came in and sat at our table. With my accustomed modesty, I said little or nothing until the G. L. suggested that I might air some of my German. I promptly opened conversation with a sentence I had learned from an exercise book--"The dog is more faithful than the cat." It was perhaps not the sort of remark one would as a rule make to a stranger, but I thought he would in all probability agree with my sentiments, and then it was one of the few complete German sentences I knew. The reply, however, was not what I expected. Instead of answering, "Yes, but have you seen the penknife of my grandmother's female gardener?" or something of that sort, he turned to the Gentle One--"Tell him," he said, "I am very sorry, but I have forgotten all my English." It was a crushing blow--he had mistaken my best German sentence for English! [Illustration: GIRL FROM DUINO] The people of the Littoral are of the Italian type. Many of the women are very handsome, and they have almost all fine eyes, large and black, and soft and velvety-looking. They hold themselves very well too, probably from being accustomed to carry baskets and bundles on their heads. Only the better class women wear hats. The peasants wear nothing but their own luxuriant hair, or merely a coloured kerchief thrown gracefully over their heads. The height of fashion at present is a black kerchief with large red spots. The people generally are a good-natured, cheerful race. "They are dirty, they are rough and ready, but they have the heart in the right place," as the G. L.'s English butler says, and his words exactly describe them. [Illustration: CASTLE DUINO FROM THE RAILWAY] We stopped at an open-air _café_ in driving back and drank some beer, and then we returned to Count C.'s and ate ices. Beer and ices are _not_ a nice mixture. Don't try it if you have not already done so. We saw my collaborator off, and then started ourselves for Vienna. The railway line runs quite close to Duino, so we had one more glimpse of the old castle from the train. There had been a thunder-storm in the afternoon, and the sky was still covered with black clouds. The sea was leaden-coloured and the far horizon blotted out by thick gray mist and rain streaks, but as we flattened our noses against the window-pane to "take a last fond look," one bright ray from the setting sun shone through the darkness of the thunder-clouds. It brightened the old gray walls of the castle, and bathed them in rosy light; it lingered lovingly round the great Roman tower, and lit up the red and white Hohenlohe banner that floated in the breeze. And so I saw Duino for the last time. [Illustration] CHAPTER XII ON NOTHING AT ALL Story! God bless you! I have none to tell, sir. My collaborator is to blame for this chapter. She found that when the eleven chapters already written and the Introduction and the Conclusion (reckoning the two last as chapters) were added together, the result would be thirteen. And so I am to write one more, and there is nothing to write about. I feel myself to be a martyr offered up on the altar of superstition. Superstition is all very well, but I think it can be carried too far. I was a victim to this fatal number 13 only the other day. I came in to lunch rather late, and was just going to sit down, when the "Energetic Lady" jumped up from the table with a howl of despair, taking her plate with her, and began to eat at a sideboard. She had seen that when I sat down there would be thirteen at table. Of course, I could not allow _her_ to be made uncomfortable, so the result was that I had to go and sit at a little table by myself, and eat my lunch in lonely misery. I have known people too (I will not mention names) who would not start on a journey, or arrive at a place--in fact, I believe they absolutely do nothing--on the thirteenth of the month. I am rather superstitious myself about some things. I confess I always throw three grains of salt over my left shoulder if I should by any chance spill some; also I always tap my first and fourth fingers on something wooden, and say "unberufen" when I have made some such remark as "I have not had toothache for more than three years"; and then I invariably take off my hat to a single magpie. But then you cannot call these things superstitions--they are merely the force of habit. "For use almost can change the stamp of nature," as Shakespeare says. Speaking of superstitions reminds me that I have known people who believe implicitly in dreams. I have a near relation who says he always dreams that he has a tooth pulled out before the death of any one of the family or of an intimate friend. I had a curious dream the other night. I dreamed I was sitting in a little room with a big sheet of paper before me, on which was written in large letters, "On the Philosophy of Life." I was to write an article on the subject. I had absolutely no ideas about the Philosophy of Life, and felt very miserable. Whilst I was pondering over it the door opened, and in came _Slip_. Slip is a small fox terrier, and a particular friend of mine. I cannot say he looks very reputable--he has a sort of rakish appearance about him, and is, in fact, a great rascal, always up to any mischief, with funny ears that flap about when he runs, and small eyes--he always shuts one and winks at you when he feels in safe society. So in came Slip, winking and smiling as dogs can smile, and I asked him immediately for _his_ ideas on the subject. I was not at all surprised when he began to speak and answered as follows: "Don't you worry your head about things of that sort. Men are never true philosophers--we dogs know that well. Take your pipe and your cap and let's go for a stroll. It's a glorious evening, and I know a particular spot where there are rabbits. Bother the 'Philosophy of Life.' Tell me rather why rabbits, and rats too, have such confoundedly small holes? Come along, old fellow!" He made some steps towards the door, wagging his little stump of a tail and flapping his funny ears with a knowing look; but all at once he stopped, turned back, came to me, took me by the hand, and winking more than ever, said confidentially in an undertone, "But believe me, my friend, _women_ are at the root of all evil." I awoke, and am still pondering over that dream. By the way, I heard a touching anecdote about a dog the other day. It is quite true. I knew the dog well--in fact, we were on the most intimate terms. He was a pug, and a very ancient one, and for some time had been in failing health. His constitution was breaking up, but no one imagined that his end was so near. This dog had a wife, but she lived at a house some little distance from his home. One night the dog became worse--as a matter of fact he was dying. Though he must have felt that his last hour had come, that poor dog dragged himself to the abode of his wife, up a flight of stairs, And there by her side He lay down and died. (This poetry is original.) Did you ever hear of a more touching exhibition of domestic affection? Some of my best friends have been dogs. A dog never bothers nor worries one, nor tells one things for one's good, nor remarks how foolish one was to do so and so, nor says, "You see if you had only taken my advice that would never have happened." And who can enter into all one's moods better than a dog? You want to go out, you feel gay and joyous--doggie is game enough, and frisks and barks around you. You want to sit quietly by the fire and think--doggie will sit quietly by the fire and think too. And when you feel utterly miserable and wish you were dead, who comes and licks your hand and looks up with silent sympathy in his big, honest, loving brown eyes, which say as plainly as eyes can speak, "Never mind, old chap, you always have me, you know. _I_ shall never leave you." Dear faithful old doggie! They say you have only instinct and no soul, and will never go to heaven--more's the pity--but if ever there was a true friend you are one. Faäithful an' true--them words be i' Scriptur--an faäithful an' true Ull be fun' upo' four short legs ten Times fur one upo' two. * * * * * [Illustration: LAWN-TENNIS GROUND] I remember that I have not said anything about the tennis-court at Duino. It was formerly a riding-school, but the roof has been taken off, and the walls make excellent "fielders." Here we were accustomed to disport ourselves every evening. It was interesting to notice the various _characteristic_ (that word will please my collaborator--she says one ought always to notice the characteristic features of everything) styles of play: the "Energetic Lady," with her dress pinned up, a large white hat on her head, and a look of intense determination on her face; the "Photographic Lady" progressing about the court with a series of little jumps and bounds, and expressing her feelings by sundry squeaks and screams; my collaborator "serving" with tremendous vigour, but leaving all the after play to her partner and Destiny; Miss Umslopogaas not playing at all, but looking on sweetly with great success; our host playing brilliantly as long as the ball came obligingly to him, but never running at all (a thing distinctly against his principles); the "Gentle Lunatic" rushing madly about; the "Seal" in gorgeous apparel, trotting along with bristling moustache, and revenging his failures on the unoffending balls; the ponderous "Fat Boy" with the ground shaking and trembling beneath his elephantine tread; the "Thin Boy" tying himself into intricate knots; the "Other Boy" posing in various elegant statue-like attitudes; and the two learned men, each with a distinct but equally unsuccessful theory. [Illustration: ENTRANCE TO THE VILLAGE OF DUINO] Lawn-tennis is very popular in Austria, and quite a fashionable game; whilst (alas!) the glorious games of cricket and football are almost unknown. No wonder, though; cricket and football must be begun in one's earliest boyhood, and boys here are so overburdened with learning that they have very little time for out-of-door sports. I think the educational system on the Continent is a great mistake. They cram all sorts of knowledge into the heads of the miserable children, never thinking of their bodily development and health. What is the result? Every other child one meets wears spectacles, and the sickly appearance of schoolboys generally is something depressing. All work and no play Makes Jack a dull boy. Make a note of this, all ye professors and schoolmasters! The moral side, too, is, as a rule, not enough thought of. Surely to teach a boy to fear God, honour the King, Queen, Emperor, or whatever the ruling power is, to be a gentleman, and speak the truth, are, after all, more important factors in his education than all the languages and sciences under the sun. There! I have preached my little sermon, so will finish the chapter. There is not much in it about "Nothing at all." It would be rather an interesting subject. I will write about it some other time. CONCLUSION What ... I did not well I meant well. Shakespeare (_The Winter's Tale_). And now these sketches are finished, and there is nothing left but to take farewell. It is always painful to say good-bye, whether to friends or places. Life is a curious drama, and the scenes change very quickly. Accident, destiny, fate (call it what you like) sends us to some place; we stay there a few days, or weeks, or years; we make friends, we are on the most intimate terms with them; something calls us away; we never return to the well-known spot, and the friends there pass out of our lives--place and friends alike are but a memory. Memories! how they crowd in on us, and how each year adds to their number! Look back down the fading river of years, and see how they stand out--monuments of bygone days--till they are finally lost in the sea of forgetfulness. Thank God, the pleasant ones last the longest! It seems as if old Time loves to wipe out the painful recollections, and to keep the pleasant ones ever fresh and green. * * * * * I am writing in a railway carriage. The "Gentle Lunatic" is snoring sweetly on the seat opposite me, and the train is taking us every minute farther and farther from Duino. Good-bye, old castle! May your old walls withstand the wear and tear of many another century. They have been very happy days that I have spent in them, but they are all over. Only in dreams shall I behold your old battlements and towers, the sea in all its blueness breaking at your feet, the sun setting in a sky of golden glory and gilding your gray stones with its dying rays. Good-bye to all the friends who have made up our party! If ever these sketches should be printed, and you should read them, I hope you will none of you be offended at anything I have written. In case you should be so, I apologise most humbly beforehand, and trust you will forgive me. And to you, my collaborator, I must also say good-bye for the present. To you I dedicate these little sketches. If they bring back to you one pleasant thought of the days in Duino, Where the world is quiet, they will have fulfilled their mission. [Illustration] _Printed by_ R. & R. Clark, Limited, _Edinburgh_. 
37638	----	[Illustration: Book Cover] CHILD OF THE REGIMENT. NEW YORK: P. J. COZANS, PUBLISHER, 107 NASSAU STREET, CORNER OF ANN. [Illustration] LITTLE MARY. Not many years ago a terrible battle was fought between the soldiers of Napoleon Bonaparte and the Austrians, at a small village in Italy. The Austrians were severely beaten, and the houses of the village were set on fire by the cannon, and all burned or torn down; the poor villagers were driven from their homes, and thousands of soldiers were killed or wounded, and left to die on the ground; the Austrians tried to get away from the French, but the furious soldiers of Napoleon pursued them with their bayonets, or trampled them to death with their horses. [Illustration] In the French army was a regiment of soldiers who were called _guards_; they were all dressed alike, in blue coats and white pantaloons, trimmed with crimson and gold: they were terrible fellows to fight, and their enemies were very much afraid of them, or they were always in the thickest of the battle, clearing their way with the points of their bayonets. While this regiment was pursuing the Austrians, near the burning village, one of the Guards, an old man, saw a sweet little girl who could scarcely walk; her papa and mama had been driven from their homes, and her papa, who carried her in his arms, was killed by the soldiers. Mary, for that was her name, held up her little hands crying bitterly, as she lay among the killed and wounded; and the Old Guard, who was a brave but kind soldier, pitied her, and took her in his arms, and when the battle was ended, carried her to his tent, and calling his comrades together, told them of the little girl he had found; and no one knowing who she was, or who her parents were, they called her Mary, the Child of the Regiment, and agreed to take care of her as well as they could. Poor little Mary, she had no mama to undress her at night, and make her a little bed, but the good old Guard, gave her some of his supper and laid her down on some straw, for the soldiers have no other beds in their tents; and after laying his coat over her to keep her warm, and his haversack under her head, she sobbed awhile, and fell asleep to forget the scenes of that dreadful day. The next morning the old Guard awoke little Mary, and washed her face, and combed her hair as well as he could, for he had never taken care of a child in his life, and was almost afraid to touch her with his hard and rough hands, which he thought only fit to shoulder arms or charge bayonet with; and after taking some dried meat and hard bread for breakfast, he took her out to let her see the soldiers: they were delighted with Mary, and many of them ran to take her up in their arms, but she liked the Old Guard best, and wanted to be with him, for she was afraid of their glittering muskets, as she remembered how terrible they looked only the day before, when the noise of their guns, and deafening hurrahs had almost frightened her to death; but they were kind to her, and she afterwards loved them very much, for she said the whole of the twenty-first regiment was her father, as they called her their child, and took care of her. [Illustration] The old Guard then took little Mary to live with him, and she learned to sew and play with her doll, which he had bought for her; and delighted in filling his canteen with water, and polishing his epaulettes; she would also sing and dance with him; which pleased him very much, for he loved no body but her; as he was a great many miles from his home, and had marched all the way with the army. [Illustration] At other times, when the old Guard was not with her, she amused herself by rambling through the fields gathering wild flowers, or climbing the mountains to see the army in the valley below. At length the regiment was ordered home, and took little Mary with them. She suffered many hardships in travelling so great a journey, for sometimes she had to walk a long way, or ride on a baggage waggon, which was no better than a cart; and in crossing the Alps, they frequently slept on the cold ground, without any fire or even their suppers; and as the mountains were covered with snow and ice, poor little Mary passed many bitter nights and tedious days; and often thought of the peaceful and happy home she had lost for ever; but the old Guard was kind to her, and often carried her on his back or in his arms a great way: and after many lone weeks, during which time a great number of the poor soldiers died from suffering and toil, they arrived in France. [Illustration] By this time she had grown up to be a fine girl; she always lived with the regiment, and had almost forgotten her papa and mama, and the battle. The old Guard had never tried to find any of her friends, for he thought they were all killed when the village was destroyed; at any rate nobody had ever enquired for her; and they had no hopes of finding out who she was or who her parents were. While the regiment stayed in France they were quartered near a large city, where Mary used to buy fruit and flowers for herself, and many things to please the Old Guard. She was delighted with the town, and wished to live there very much; upon which the regiment agreed to send her to a boarding school, where she soon became acquainted with many little girls who were amiable and kind, and much amused with her stories about the army, particularly the battle and her journey across the Alps. [Illustration] During Mary's stay in the town she became acquainted with a school-boy named Rodolph, who was in the same class with her. He was a sprightly, daring little fellow, and on one occasion threw himself between Mary and a mad ox that was rushing furiously along the street, and would probably have gored her to death but for the courage of Rodolph, who succeeded in rescuing her. From this time Mary became much attached to him, and they frequently took many pleasant rambles together, and the Old Guard called him a little corporal, and said he might one day be an officer. Rodolph was the son of a poor widow, who had lost her husband in battle, and was in consequence reduced in circumstances, and scarcely able to support herself and send him to school; but more misfortunes came upon them, and they were at a loss what to do to save themselves from the poor-house. Rodolph was proud, and could not bear the thought of poverty and want, and was determined to do something to relieve the distress of his mother. One day, while occupied with these thoughts, the fife and drum of a recruiting party met his ears, and as a large sum of money was offered to those who would join the army, and a military life (as related by little Mary) he thought would be the most likely to suit him, he stepped forward to the ranks, took his gun, held up his head, and became a soldier in a minute. Rodolph rushed home to present the money to his mother, who was almost distracted when she heard what he had done; as the regiment he had joined was ordered into immediate service, and he would soon be in all the hardships and horrors of war, from which she never expected he would return. [Illustration] War is a horrible thing, and Rodolph before long was seen upon the field of victory; here he behaved so bravely that he was made a corporal, and afterwards a sergeant; and at another hard fought battle attracted the notice of his officer, and was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant. But good fortune was in store for the young soldier, in a way that he would never have thought of; it happened that the wife of the colonel of the regiment to which Rodolph belonged, who had followed her husband to the field of battle, was surprised one day while alone, by two stragglers from the enemy who were proceeding to rob and perhaps murder her; when very fortunately Rodolph and another soldier who happened near the spot, and drawing their swords, attacked the robbers boldly; Rodolph's comrade however received a severe wound, and he was therefore left alone to defend himself and the lady against the ruffians; but Rodolph was fearless and fought desperately; he wounded the two villains, and conveyed the lady in safety to the tent of the officer. [Illustration] The colonel scarcely knew how to show his gratitude; he gave Rodolph a large sum of money which he immediately sent home to his mother, and gave him also the command of a company of soldiers, after raising him to the rank of captain. How happy was Rodolph when he was thus raised from a common soldier and many hardships, to independence and honour, notwithstanding all the dangers and sufferings he had encountered. Another officer was, however, very much displeased with the good fortune which had attended one whom he considered to be so much below him, and took every opportunity to insult and injure him. Rodolph bore this for some time with great patience, but at last the gentleman became so ugly and troubled him so much, that he could not bear it any longer; and the consequence was, though he knew it was very wrong, that he was forced to fight a duel, or else be looked upon as a coward by the rest of his companions in arms. They at length met to fight, and Rodolph not wishing to harm his enemy, fired his pistol in the air, but the other taking advantage of Rodolph, severely wounded him. It was sometime before Rodolph recovered, but he did at last, and by earnestly entreating the officers to save the man who had thus acted treacherously towards him, he escaped a severe punishment which he otherwise would have met with. The noble conduct of Rodolph filled him with gratitude; he asked his forgiveness, which was instantly granted, and they became the best of friends. [Illustration] After the war was over, the army returned to France, and great was the joy of Rodolph at the thought of once more beholding his mother, and to think he had now the means of rendering her comfortable for life. On entering the town he flew to the home of his parent, for he had been away a long while; and he was so altered with his splendid uniform, bright sword and epaulettes, that his mother scarcely knew him; but her joy at once more seeing him, knew no bounds. [Illustration] Rodolph had been home but a short time, when the thoughts of his little companion would not let him remain long without trying to see her. He repaired immediately to the school, but all were strange faces, and nobody seemed to know him or little Mary either. He next visited the camp, but found the regiment had gone back to Italy a long time since, and Mary of course was with them. Poor Rodolph returned, with bitter disappointment, and determined to join the army again, and die on the field of battle. With this resolution, after taking an affectionate leave of his mother, he returned to tent, and was soon again amid the roar of cannon and the clash of arms; for Rodolph had been so long surrounded by danger and the busy scenes of a soldier's life, that the peaceful home of his boyhood seemed wearisome to him. [Illustration] [Illustration] We now return to little Mary, who was at school, making friends of every one she became acquainted with, and carefully studying her lessons, and most always at the head of her class. On entering the room one morning, and looking round, she saw that Rodolph was not there. He staid away the next day, and the next; when Mary heard he had been seen in company with some recruiting soldiers, and she trembled for fear he had gone with them. She immediately hastened to the camp, and almost the first thing she saw was Rodolph, with his musket shouldered, and the perspiration streaming down his cheeks, while the rough, harsh voice of an old corporal ordered him instantly to his quarters. [Illustration] Mary waved her hand to him, but he did not see her. The tears rolled down from her eyes, as she turned from him--for she knew the hardships he would have to suffer--and hurrying home, threw herself in the arms of the Old Guard, and wept as though she had lost her only friend. The next day she heard of his departure, and went to her studies, with the hope that he might return and spend some happy hours with her once more. After the regiment had stayed a long-time in France, it returned to Italy again; and coming to a beautiful village, the Old Guard told Mary it was the place where the battle was fought, and showed her the place where he found her. Mary could not remember the spot nor any thing else which she saw, for it was a long while ago, and she was a very little girl at that time. The houses which had been burned down were all built up again, and the little boys and girls were all playing about as though nothing had ever happened. On the arrival of the soldiers, they all ran to look at the Guards and hear the drums. [Illustration] It soon became known that a young lady was with the regiment, and the story of her and the Old Guard was told to almost every one, and that she once lived in that beautiful village, and was found on the battle-field and carried off by the French soldiers. It was not long before the story of little Mary was told to a lady, who lived in a beautiful mansion or villa near the quarters of the regiment. Her husband, who was an officer, was killed in battle, and her little child lost in the crowd of people and soldiers who were trying to save themselves, on that terrible day the French soldiers came to fight the Austrians. The dead body of her husband was found, but nothing was ever known of the little child. The more she thought of the story of Mary the more she thought of her own little girl; and ordering her carriage directed it to be driven to the camp; where she found the tent of the Old Guard, and inquired for little Mary. When the lady saw her she was surprised, to see such a beautiful girl with the soldiers--for Mary was now a young lady, and had been many years with the regiment. She asked the Old Guard many questions concerning the battle; and heard how she was found on the field, surrounded by cannons, and horses, and killed and wounded soldiers; that she was crying bitterly, and sat by the side of a dead officer. The lady heard the Old Guard, and wept while he was telling the story, for she began to think that Mary was her long lost little girl. But when the Old Guard brought the dress, and a necklace and locket which she had on her neck, all of which he had carefully kept, and showed them to the lady, she cried for joy, and clasped Mary in her arms; for it was indeed her little Mary; and she kissed her over and over again. The dress was the same she had worn on the morning of the battle, and the necklace was a present from her papa, the officer who was killed; and the letters on it were for her name, which was Mary St. Clair. The Old Guard was surprised and delighted to know that little Mary was an officer's daughter, and that her parents were so rich and great; but the tears came in the old soldier's eyes when he thought she must leave him; and Mary could not bear the thought of parting with him forever. But Mrs. St. Clair, Mary's mother, was determined they should not be separated, when she heard how kind the Old Guard had been to her; and, after procuring his discharge, invited him to live with them. The party at length set out for the villa, and the soldiers of the Guards took leave of her with tears in their eyes, and rushed from the ranks to kiss her for the last time. [Illustration] [Illustration] Mary was delighted with her ride, but more pleased with her beautiful home, and the splendid apartments, and the costly furniture. Mary was immediately introduced to many young ladies and gentlemen, and soon became one of the liveliest and most beautiful women in Italy. The Old Guard dressed himself in his best uniform, which he would never exchange for any other dress: for although Mrs. St. Clair wanted to have him dress like a gentleman, he always refused, saying he had always lived and was determined to die a soldier. Not long after this, a great Ball was given by some of the nobility, and all the officers of the army, far and near, were invited. The assembly was brilliant, and imposing; the bright uniforms and gay dresses glittered by the light of chandeliers, and music and festivity seemed to delight them all. As Mary was leaning on the arm of the Old Guard, she noticed a young captain of infantry continually gazing on her, whose face appeared familiar. He stepped forward and mentioned her name, and in an instant they were in each other's arms; it was Rodolph. The wars were ended, and in travelling about the country, he had accidentally received an invitation. As soon as Mary entered the room, he remembered her, and after making himself known, enjoyed her society for the evening. The Old Guard died at the villa, and Mary and Rodolph were married, and lived at the village the rest of their lives. [Illustration] PHILIP J. COZANS, PUBLISHER AND BOOKSELLER, MANUFACTURER AND IMPORTER OF VALENTINES, No. 107 Nassau Street, N. Y. * * * * * NEW ILLUMINATED TOYS. JUST PUBLISHED, A NEW 8vo. EDITION, CONSISTING OF LITTLE MARY, OR THE CHILD OF THE REGIMENT. THE FAIRY AND THE CHILDREN. THE LITTLE SOLDIER OF THE REVOLUTION. THE AMERICAN GENERAL TOM THUMB. EIGHT PRETTY STORIES FOR CHILDREN. JACK THE GIANT KILLER. The above are a NEW SERIES, with matter and illustrations principally original. They are highly coloured, printed on superfine paper, and have been got up without regard to expense. They cannot be surpassed in this country. ALSO, A 12 mo. EDITION; ILLUSTRATED, COLOURED COVERS, CONSISTING OF JOCKO AND MINETTE. COOK ROBIN. MOTHER HUBBARD. RHYMES, CHIMES, AND JINGLES. NURSERY MELODIES. BLUE BEARD. THE JUVENILE GIFT, Containing the above, bound together--Cover illuminated with Gold and Colours. * * * * * ALWAYS ON HAND, AN EXTENSIVE ASSORTMENT OF PLAIN AND COLOURED TOY BOOKS, SONG BOOKS, ALMANACKS, PLAYS, CARDS, MOTTO VERSES, BLANK BOOKS, STATIONERY, &c. WHOLESALE AND RETAIL. ALSO, THE GUIDE TO PAINTING IN WATER COLOURS, WITH COLOURED PLATES PRICE 25 CENTS. YOUTH'S NEW; PRIMARY; AND PROGRESSIVE DRAWING BOOKS. THE ART OF GOOD BEHAVIOR, CONTAINING DIRECTIONS FOR GIVING AND ATTENDING PARTIES, BALLS, WEDDINGS, DINNERS, ETC. INCLUDING THE NECESSARY PREPARATIONS AND ARRANGEMENTS FOR THE MARRIAGE CEREMONY. * * * * * [Symbol: Hand Pointing] COUNTRY ORDERS attended to with punctuality--and liberal discount to the trade. Transcriber's Note * Obvious punctuation and spelling errors repaired. 
5307	----	THE LETTERS OF WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART. (1769-1791.) In Two Volumes. Vol. I. By Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Translated, From The Collection Of Ludwig Nohl, By Lady Wallace With A Portrait And Facsimile New York and Philadelphia: 1866. TABLE OF CONTENTS PREFACE THE LETTERS OF W.A. MOZART, VOLUME I FIRST PART: ITALY/VIENNA/MUNICH 1770-1776 SECOND PART: MUNICH/AUGSBURG/MANNHEIM SEPT. 1777-MARCH 1778 THIRD PART: PARIS MARCH 1778-JANUARY 1779 FOURTH PART: MUNICH/IDOMENEO NOVEMBER 1780-JANUARY 1781 CONTENTS OF VOLUME I. [LETTERS LISTED BY DATE] PREFACE A full and authentic edition of Mozart's Letters ought to require no special apology; for, though their essential substance has already been made known by quotations from biographies by Nissen, Jahn, and myself, taken from the originals, still in these three works the letters are necessarily not only very imperfectly given, but in some parts so fragmentary, that the peculiar charm of this correspondence--namely, the familiar and confidential mood in which it was written at the time--is entirely destroyed. It was only possible to restore, and to enable others to enjoy this charm--a charm so novel, even to those already conversant with Mozart's life, that the most familiar incidents acquire fresh zest from it--by an ungarbled edition of these letters. This is what I now offer, feeling convinced that it will be welcome not only to the mass of Mozart's admirers, but also to professional musicians; for in them alone is strikingly set forth how Mozart lived and labored, enjoyed and suffered, and this with a degree of vivid and graphic reality which no biography, however complete, could ever succeed in giving. Who does not know the varied riches of Mozart's life? All that agitated the minds of men in that day--nay, all that now moves, and ever will move, the heart of man--vibrated with fresh pulsation, and under the most manifold forms, in his sensitive soul, and mirrored itself in a series of letters, which indeed rather resemble a journal than a correspondence. This artist, Nature had gifted in all respects with the most clear and vigorous intellect that ever man possessed. Even in a language which he had not so fully mastered as to acquire the facility of giving expression to his ideas, he contrived to relate to others all that he saw and heard, and felt and thought, with surprising clearness and the most charming sprightliness, combined with talent and good feeling. Above all, in his letters to his father when travelling, we meet with the most minute delineations of countries and people, of the progress of the fine arts, especially in the theatres and in music; we also see the impulses of his own heart and a hundred other things which, in fascination, and universal as well as artistic interest, have scarcely a parallel in our literature. The style may fail to a certain degree in polish, that is, in definite purpose in expressing what he wished to say in an attractive or congenial form,--an art, however, which Mozart so thoroughly understood in his music. His mode of writing, especially in the later letters from Vienna, is often very slovenly, evidencing how averse the Maestro was to the task. Still these letters are manifestly the unconstrained, natural, and simple outpourings of his heart, delightfully recalling to our minds all the sweetness and pathos, the spirit and grace, which have a thousand times enchanted us in the music of Mozart. The accounts of his visit to Paris may, indeed, lay claim to a certain aesthetic value, for they are written throughout with visible zest in his own descriptions, and also with wit, and charm, and characteristic energy. As these combined merits can only become apparent by an ungarbled series of the letters, I have resolved, after many long years of zealous research in collecting them, to undertake the work,--that is, to publish the letters entire that have come to my knowledge. It now only remains for me to give some words of explanation as to the method I have pursued in editing them. In the first place, this edition, (being transcribed closely from the originals,) if compared with the letters already published, will prove that the latter are open to many corrections, both in trivial and more important respects. I have forborne, however, attracting attention to the deviations from the original text, either in Nissen or Jahn. I have no wish to be punctilious about trifles, where, as in the case of Jahn, the principal points are correct. Further, by this faithful production of the letters, (nothing being omitted but the constant repetition of forms of greeting and subscription,) we find many an additional feature in the Maestro's life, and chiefly various facts with regard to the creation and publication of his works, which may serve to complete and to amend various statements in Dr. Ludwig Ritter von Kochel's "Chronological Thematic Catalogue of the Musical Compositions of W. A. Mozart," (Leipzig, Breitkopf and Hartel). This will be effected not only by the hitherto unpublished letters, though comparatively few in number, but also by passages being given in full, which have been hitherto suppressed as of no consequence. I have referred to Nissen and Jahn only when, in spite of all my inquiries, I could not discover the proprietor of the original, or procure a correct copy. I must also remark that all letters without a special address are written to his father. I have only adhered to Mozart's defective orthography in his few letters of early date, and in the rest adopted the more modern fashion. I did so for this simple reason, that these defects form a charm in his juvenile letters, from being in accordance with their boyish contents, while, with regard to the others, they only tend to distract the attention from the substance of the letters, instead of imparting additional interest to them. Biographers can, and ought always to render faithfully the original writing, because quotations alternate with the text of the biographer; but in a regular and uninterrupted series of letters this attraction must be very sparingly used, or it will have a pernicious effect. The explanatory remarks, and also the supplementary Lexicon, in which I have availed myself of Jahn's catalogue, will make the letters more intelligible to the world at large. The Index, too, has been most carefully prepared to facilitate references. Lastly, I return my best thanks to the keeper of the Archives of the Mozarteum in Salzburg, to Herr Jellinck, and to all the librarians and collectors of autographs who have assisted me in my task, either by furnishing me with copies of their Mozart letters, or by letting me know where I could procure them. I would also earnestly request all who may possess any Mozart letters to send me an exact transcript of them in the interest of Art; for those here given allude to many still unknown, which are no doubt scattered about here and there, waiting to be brought to light. With respect to myself, the best reward I aspire to in return for the many sacrifices this collection has cost me, is, that my readers may do justice to the purpose which chiefly guided me throughout this publication,--my desire being not merely to benefit science, and to give a graphic description of the amiability and purity of heart which so distinguished this attractive man, (for such was my aim in my "Life of Mozart,") but above all to draw attention afresh to the unremitting zeal with which Mozart did homage to every advance in Art, striving to make music more and more the interpreter of man's innermost being. I also wished to show how much his course was impeded by the sluggishness and stupidity of the multitude, though partly sustained by the sympathy of kindred souls, till the glorious victory was won over routine and imbecility. Amidst all the fatiguing process of copying and collating letters already so familiar to me, these considerations moved me more vividly than ever; and no work on the Maestro can ever bring them with such force before the intelligent reader as this connected succession of letters, containing his own details of his unwearied artistic struggles and productions. May these letters, then, kindle fresh zeal in our artists of the present day, both in youthful genius and in laurel-crowned Maestri!--especially may they have the happiest influence on those who devote themselves to that phase of Art in which Mozart attained the highest renown!--may they impart that energetic courage which is derived from the experience that incessant efforts for the progress of Art and its appliances enlarge the limits of human intellect, and can alone insure an immortal crown! LUDWIG NOHL. MUNICH, October 1, 1864. FIRST PART--ITALY, VIENNA, MUNICH.--1770 TO 1776. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born in Salzburg on the 17th January, 1756. His father, Leopold Mozart, belonged to a respectable tradesman's family in the free city of Augsburg. Conscious of being gifted with no small portion of intellectual endowments, he followed the impulse that led him to aim at a higher position in life, and went to the then celebrated University of Salzburg in order to study jurisprudence. As he did not, however, at once succeed in procuring employment in this profession, he was forced, from his straitened means, to enter the service of Canon Count Thun as valet. Subsequently, however, his talents, and that thorough knowledge of music by which he had already (according to the custom of many students) gained some part of his livelihood, obtained for him a better position. In the year 1743 he was received into the band (Kapelle) of the Salzburg cathedral by Archbishop Sigismund; and as his capabilities and fame as a violinist increased, the same Prince shortly afterwards promoted him to the situation of Hof-Componist (Court Composer) and leader of the orchestra, and in 1762 he was appointed Hof-Kapellmeister (conductor of the Court music). In 1747 Leopold Mozart married Anna Maria Pertlin, a foster-child of the Convent of St. Gilgen. The fruits of this marriage were seven children, two of whom alone survived,--Maria Anna, (the fourth), called Nannerl, born in 1751; and the youngest, Wolfgang Amadeus Johannes Chrysostomus. The daughter at a very early age displayed a most remarkable talent for music, and when her father began to give her instructions in it, an inborn and passionate love of this art was soon evident in her little brother of three years old, who at once gave tokens of a degree of genius far surpassing all experience, and really bordering on the marvellous. In his fourth year he could play all sorts of little pieces on the piano. He only required half an hour to learn a minuet, and one hour for a longer movement; and in his fifth year he actually composed some pretty short pieces, several of which are still extant. [Footnote: The Grand Duchess Helene Paulowna, a few weeks ago, made a present to the Mozarteum of the music-book from which Mozart learned music, and in which he wrote down his first compositions.] The wonderful acquirements of both these children, to which Wolfgang soon added skilful playing on the violin and organ, induced their father to travel with them. In January, 1702, when the boy was just six years old, they went first to Munich, and in the autumn to Vienna, the children everywhere on their journey exciting the greatest sensation, and being handsomely remunerated. Leopold Mozart, therefore, soon afterwards resolved to undertake a longer journey, accompanied by his whole family. This lasted more than three years, extending from the smaller towns in West Germany to Paris and London, while they visited, on their way back, Holland, France, and Switzerland. The careful musical instruction which the father perseveringly bestowed on his son, went hand in hand with the most admirable education, and the boy was soon as universally beloved for his amiable disposition and natural simplicity and candor, as admired for his rare gifts and acquirements. After nearly a year passed at home in unremitting musical instruction, and practice of various instruments as well as composition, the father once more set off with all his family to Vienna,--on this occasion with a view to Wolfgang paving the way to Italy by the composition of an opera, (Italy, at that time, being the Eldorado of music.) He succeeded in procuring the scrittura of an opera buffa, "La Finta semplice;" but, when finished, although the Emperor himself had intrusted the composition to the boy, the cabals of envious singers effectually prevented its being performed. But a German operetta which the lad of twelve also wrote at that time, "Bastien und Bastienne," was given in private, at the summer residence of the Mesmer family, in the suburb called Landstrasse. The father, too, had some compensation by the Emperor commissioning his son to compose a solemn mass for the consecration of the new Waisenhaus church, which Wolfgang himself directed with the conductor's baton, in presence of the Imperial Family, on the 7th December, 1768. Immediately on their return home, the young virtuoso was appointed archiepiscopal Concertmeister. He passed almost the whole of the year 1769 in Salzburg, chiefly engaged in the composition of masses. We also see him at that time eagerly occupied in improving his knowledge of Latin, although two years previously he had composed a comedy in that language,--"Apollo et Hyacinthus." From this study proceeds the first letter which is still extant from his hand:-- 1. Salzburg, 1769. MY DEAR YOUNG LADY,-- I beg you will pardon the liberty I take in plaguing you with these few lines, but as you said yesterday that there was nothing you could not understand in Latin, and I might write what I chose in that language, I could not resist the bold impulse to write you a few Latin lines. When you have deciphered these, be so good as to send me the answer by one of Hagenauer's servants, for my messenger cannot wait; remember, you must answer this by a letter. [Footnote: By a messenger of the Hagenauer family, in whose house, opposite the inn of "Den drei Allurten," Mozart was born, and with whom his family were on the most intimate terms.] "Cuperem scire, de qua causa, a quam plurimis adolescentibus ottium usque adeo oestimetur, ut ipsi se nec verbis, nec verberibus ad hoc sinant abduci." [Footnote: "I should like to know the reason why indolence is so highly prized by very many young men, that neither by words nor blows will they suffer themselves to be roused from it."] WOLFGANG MOZART. The father's plan to go to Italy, there to lay the foundation of a European reputation for his son, was realized in the beginning of December, 1769, and during the journey, the boy, who was at that time just entering his fifteenth year, subjoined to his father's reports scraps of his own writing, in which, in true boyish fashion, he had recourse to all kinds of languages and witticisms, but always exhibiting in his opinions on music the closest observation, the gravest thought, and the most acute judgment. 2. Verona, Jan. 1770. MY VERY DEAREST SISTER,-- I have at last got a letter a span long after hoping so much for an answer that I lost patience; and I had good cause to do so before receiving yours at last. The German blockhead having said his say, now the Italian one begins. Lei e piu franca nella lingua italiana di quel che mi ho immaginato. Lei mi dica la cagione perche lei non fu nella commedia che hanno giocata i Cavalieri. Adesso sentiamo sempre una opera titolata Il Ruggiero. Oronte, il padre di Bradamante, e un principe (il Signor Afferi) bravo cantante, un baritono, [Footnote: "You are more versed in the Italian language than I believed. Tell me why you were not one of the actors in the comedy performed by the Cavaliers. We are now hearing an opera called 'Il Ruggiero.' Oronte, the father of Bradamante, is a Prince (acted by Afferi, a good singer, a baritone)."] but very affected when he speaks out a falsetto, but not quite so much so as Tibaldi in Vienna. Bradamante innamorata di Ruggiero (ma [Footnote: "Bradamante is enamored of Ruggiero, but"]--she is to marry Leone, but will not) fa una povera Baronessa, che ha avuto una gran disgrazia, ma non so la quale; recita [Footnote: "Pretends to be a poor Baroness who has met with some great misfortune, but what it is I don't know, she performs"] under an assumed name, but the name I forget; ha una voce passabile, e la statura non sarebbe male, ma distuona come il diavolo. Ruggiero, un ricco principe innamorato di Bradamante, e un musico; canta un poco Manzuolisch [Footnote: Manzuoli was a celebrated soprano, from whom Mozart had lessons in singing when in London.] ed ha una bellissima voce forte ed e gia vecchio; ha 55 anni, ed ha una [Footnote: "She has a tolerable voice, and her appearance is in her favor, but she sings out of tune like a devil Ruggiero, a rich Prince enamored of Bradamante, is a musico, and sings rather in Manzuoli's style, and has a fine powerful voice, though quite old; he is fifty-five, and has a"] flexible voice. Leone is to marry Bradamante--richississimo e, [Footnote: "Immensely rich."] but whether he is rich off the stage I can't say. La moglie di Afferi, che ha una bellissima voce, ma e tanto susurro nel teatro che non si sente niente. Irene fa una sorella di Lolli, del gran violinista che habbiamo sentito a Vienna, a una [Footnote: "Afferi's wife has a most beautiful voice, but sings so softly on the stage that you really hear nothing at all. A sister of Lolli, the great violinist whom we heard at Vienna, acts Irene; she has a"] very harsh voce, e canta sempre [Footnote: "Voice, and always sings"] a quaver too tardi o troppo a buon' ora. Granno fa un signore, che non so come si chiame; e la prima volta che lui recita. [Footnote: "Slow or too fast. Ganno is acted by a gentleman whose name I never heard. It is his first appearance on the stage."] There is a ballet between each act. We have a good dancer here called Roessler. He is a German, and dances right well. The very last time we were at the opera (but not, I hope, the very last time we ever shall be there) we got M. Roessler to come up to our palco, (for M. Carlotti gives us his box, of which we have the key,) and conversed with him. Apropos, every one is now in maschera, and one great convenience is, that if you fasten your mask on your hat you have the privilege of not taking off your hat when any one speaks to you; and you never address them by name, but always as "Servitore umilissimo, Signora Maschera." Cospetto di Bacco! that is fun! The most strange of all is that we go to bed at half-past seven! Se lei indovinasse questo, io diro certamente che lei sia la madre di tutti gli indovini. [Footnote: "If you guess this, I shall say that you are the mother of all guessers."] Kiss mamma's hand for me, and to yourself I send a thousand kisses, and assure you that I shall always be your affectionate brother. Portez-vous bien, et aimez-moi toujours. 3. Milan, Jan. 26, 1770. I REJOICE in my heart that you were so well amused at the sledging party you write to me about, and I wish you a thousand opportunities of pleasure, so that you may pass your life merrily. But one thing vexes me, which is, that you allowed Herr von Molk [an admirer of this pretty young girl of eighteen] to sigh and sentimentalize, and that you did not go with him in his sledge, that he might have upset you. What a lot of pocket-handkerchiefs he must have used that day to dry the tears he shed for you! He no doubt, too, swallowed at least three ounces of cream of tartar to drive away the horrid evil humors in his body. I know nothing new except that Herr Gellert, the Leipzig poet, [Footnote: Old Mozart prized Gellert's poems so highly, that on one occasion he wrote to him expressing his admiration.] is dead, and has written no more poetry since his death. Just before beginning this letter I composed an air from the "Demetrio" of Metastasio, which begins thus, "Misero tu non sei." The opera at Mantua was very good. They gave "Demetrio." The prima donna sings well, but is inanimate, and if you did not see her acting, but only singing, you might suppose she was not singing at all, for she can't open her mouth, and whines out everything; but this is nothing new to us. The seconda donna looks like a grenadier, and has a very powerful voice; she really does not sing badly, considering that this is her first appearance. Il primo uomo, il musico, sings beautifully, but his voice is uneven; his name is Caselli. Il secondo uomo is quite old, and does not at all please me. The tenor's name is Ottini; he does not sing unpleasingly, but with effort, like all Italian tenors. We know him very well. The name of the second I don't know; he is still young, but nothing at all remarkable. Primo ballerino good; prima ballerina good, and people say pretty, but I have not seen her near. There is a grotesco who jumps cleverly, but cannot write as I do--just as pigs grunt. The orchestra is tolerable. In Cremona, the orchestra is good, and Spagnoletta is the name of the first violinist there. Prima donna very passable--rather ancient, I fancy, and as ugly as sin. She does not sing as well as she acts, and is the wife of a violin-player at the opera. Her name is Masci. The opera was the "Clemenza di Tito." Seconda donna not ugly on the stage, young, but nothing superior. Primo uomo, un musico, Cicognani, a fine voice, and a beautiful cantabile. The other two musici young and passable. The tenor's name is non lo so [I don't know what]. He has a pleasing exterior, and resembles Le Roi at Vienna. Ballerino primo good, but an ugly dog. There was a ballerina who danced far from badly, and, what is a capo d'opera, she is anything but plain, either on the stage or off it. The rest were the usual average. I cannot write much about the Milan opera, for we did not go there, but we heard that it was not successful. Primo uomo, Aprile, who sings well, and has a fine even voice; we heard him at a grand church festival. Madame Piccinelli, from Paris, who sang at one of our concerts, acts at the opera. Herr Pick, who danced at Vienna, is now dancing here. The opera is "Didone abbandonata," but it is not to be given much longer. Signor Piccini, who is writing the next opera, is here. I am told that the title is to be "Cesare in Egitto." WOLFGANG DE MOZART, Noble of Hohenthal and attached to the Exchequer. 4. Milan, Feb. 10, 1770. SPEAK of the wolf, and you see his ears! I am quite well, and impatiently expecting an answer from you. I kiss mamma's hand, and send you a little note and a little kiss; and remain, as before, your----What? Your aforesaid merry-andrew brother, Wolfgang in Germany, Amadeo in Italy. DE MORZANTINI. 5. Milan, Feb. 17, 1770. Now I am in for it! My Mariandel! I am so glad that you were so tremendously merry. Say to nurse Urserl that I still think I sent back all her songs, but if, engrossed by high and mighty thoughts of Italy, I carried one off with me, I shall not fail, if I find it, to enclose it in one of my letters. Addio, my children, farewell! I kiss mamma's hands a thousand times, and send you a thousand kisses and salutes on your queer monkey face. Per fare il fine, I am yours, &c. 6. Milan, Carnival, Erchtag. MANY kisses to mamma and to you. I am fairly crazed with so much business, [Footnote: Concerts and compositions of every kind occupied Mozart. The principal result of his stay in Milan was, that the young maestro got the scrittura of an opera for the ensuing season. As the libretto was to be sent to them, they could first make a journey through Italy with easy minds. The opera was "Mitridate, Re di Ponto."] so I can't possibly write any more. 7. Milan, March 3, 1770. CARA SORELLA MIA,-- I am heartily glad that you have had so much amusement. Perhaps you may think that I have not been as merry as you; but, indeed, I cannot sum up all we have done. I think we have been at least six or seven times at the opera and the feste di ballo, which, as in Vienna, begin after the opera, but with this difference, that at Vienna the dancing is more orderly. We also saw the facchinata and chiccherata. The first is a masquerade, an amusing sight, because the men go as facchini, or porters; there was also a barca filled with people, and a great number on foot besides; and five or six sets of trumpets and kettledrums, besides several bands of violins and other instruments. The chiccherata is also a masquerade. What the people of Milan call chicchere, we call petits maitres, or fops. They were all on horseback, which was a pretty sight. I am as happy now to hear that Herr von Aman [Footnote: The father had written in a previous letter, "Herr von Aman's accident, of which you wrote to us, not only distressed us very much, but cost Wolfgang many tears. You know how sensitive he is"] is better, as I was grieved when you mentioned that he had met with an accident. What kind of mask did Madame Rosa wear, and Herr von Molk, and Herr von Schiedenhofen? Pray write this to me, if you know it; your doing so will oblige me very much. Kiss mamma's hands for me a thousand million times, and a thousand to yourself from "Catch him who can!" Why, here he is! 8. Bologna, March 24, 1770. Oh, you busy creature! Having been so long idle, I thought it would do me no harm to set to work again for a short time. On the post-days, when the German letters come, all that I eat and drink tastes better than usual. I beg you will let me know who are to sing in the oratorio, and also its title. Let me hear how you like the Haydn minuets, and whether they are better than the first. From my heart I rejoice to hear that Herr von Aman is now quite recovered; pray say to him that he must take great care of himself and beware of any unusual exertion. Be sure you tell him this. I intend shortly to send you a minuet that Herr Pick danced on the stage, and which every one in Milan was dancing at the feste di ballo, only that you may see by it how slowly people dance. The minuet itself is beautiful. Of course it comes from Vienna, so no doubt it is either Teller's or Starzer's. It has a great many notes. Why? Because it is a theatrical minuet, which is in slow time. The Milan and Italian minuets, however, have a vast number of notes, and are slow and with a quantity of bars; for instance, the first part has sixteen, the second twenty, and even twenty-four. We made the acquaintance of a singer in Parma, and also heard her to great advantage in her own house--I mean the far-famed Bastardella. She has, first, a fine voice; second, a flexible organ; third, an incredibly high compass. She sang the following notes and passages in my presence. [Here, Mozart illustrates with about 20 measures of music] 9. Rome, April 14, 1770. I AM thankful to say that my stupid pen and I are all right, so we send a thousand kisses to you both. I wish that my sister were in Rome, for this city would assuredly delight her, because St. Peter's is symmetrical, and many other things in Rome are also symmetrical. Papa has just told me that the loveliest flowers are being carried past at this moment. That I am no wiseacre is pretty well known. Oh! I have one annoyance--there is only a single bed in our lodgings, so mamma may easily imagine that I get no rest beside papa. I rejoice at the thoughts of a new lodging. I have just finished sketching St. Peter with his keys, St. Paul with his sword, and St. Luke with--my sister, &c., &c. I had the honor of kissing St. Peter's foot at San Pietro, and as I have the misfortune to be so short, your good old WOLFGANG MOZART was lifted up! 10. Rome, April 21, 1770. CARA SORELLA MIA,-- Pray try to find the "Art of Ciphering" which you copied out, but I have lost it, and know nothing about it. So pray do write it out again for me, with some other copies of sums, and send them to me here. Manzuoli has entered into a contract with the Milanese to sing in my opera [see Nos. 2-6]. For this reason he sang four or five arias to me in Florence, and also some of my own, which I was obliged to compose in Milan (none of my theatrical things having been heard there) to prove that I was capable of writing an opera. Manzuoli asks 1000 ducats. It is not yet quite certain whether Gabrielli will come. Some say Madame de' Amicis will sing in it; we shall see her in Naples. I wish that she and Manzuoli could act together; we should then be sure of two good friends. The libretto is not yet chosen. I recommended one of Metastasio's to Don Ferdinando [Count Firmiani's steward, in Milan] and to Herr von Troyer. I am at this moment at work on the aria "Se ardore e speranza." 11. Rome, April 25, 1770. CARA SORELLA MIA,-- Io vi accerto che io aspetto con una incredibile premura tutte le giornate di posta qualche lettere di Salisburgo. Jeri fummo a S. Lorenzo e sentimmo il Vespero, e oggi matina la messa cantata, e la sera poi il secondo vespero, perche era la festa della Madonna del Buonconsiglio. Questi giorni fummi nel Campidoglio e viddemmo varie belle cose. Se io volessi scrivere tutto quel che viddi, non bastarebbe questo foglietto. In due Accademie suonai, e domani suonero anche in una.--Subito dopo pranzo giuochiamo a Potsch [Boccia]. Questo e un giuoco che imparai qui, quando verro a casa, ve l'imparero. Finita questa lettera finiro una sinfonia mia, che comminciai. L'aria e finita, una sinfonia e dal copista (il quale e il mio padre) perche noi non la vogliamo dar via per copiarla; altrimente ella sarebbe rubata. WOLFGANGO in Germania. AMADEO MOZART in Italia. Roma caput mundi il 25 Aprile anno 1770 nell' anno venture 1771. [Footnote: "DEAREST SISTER,-- "I assure you that I always expect with intense eagerness my letters from Salzburg on post-days. Yesterday we were at S. Lorenzo and heard vespers, and to-day at the chanted mass, and in the evening at the second vespers, because it was the Feast of the Madonna del Buonconsiglio. A few days ago we were at the Campidoglio, where we saw a great many fine things. If I tried to write you an account of all I saw, this sheet would not suffice. I played at two concerts, and to-morrow I am to play at another. After dinner we played at Potsch [Boccia]. This is a game I have learnt, and when I come home, I will teach it to you. When I have finished this letter, I am going to complete a symphony that I have begun. The aria is finished. The copyist (who is my father) has the symphony, because we do not choose it to be copied by any one else, or it might be stolen. "WOLFGANGO in Germany. "AMADEO MOZART in Italy. "Rome, mistress of the world: April 25, 1770."] 12. Naples, May 19, 1770. CARA SORELLA MIA,-- Vi prego di scrivermi presto e tutti i giorni di posta. Io vi ringrazio di avermi mandata questi "Art of Ciphering," [FOOTNOTE: "I beg you will write to me soon, indeed every post-day. I thank you for having sent me the 'Art of Ciphering.'"] e vi prego, se mai volete avere mal di testa, di mandarmi ancora un poco di questi "books." [FOOTNOTE: "And I beg if you ever want to have a headache, that you will send me some more."] Perdonate mi che scrivo si malamente, ma la razione e perche anche io ebbi un poco mal di testa. [FOOTNOTE: "of the same kind. Excuse my writing so badly, but the reason is that I have a bit of a headache myself."] Haydn's twelfth minuet, which you sent me, pleases me very much; you have composed an inimitable bass for it, and without the slightest fault. I do beg that you will often exercise yourself in such things. Mamma must not forget to see that the guns are both polished up. Tell me how Master Canary is? Does he still sing? and still whistle? Do you know why I am thinking about the canary? Because we have one in our ante-room that chirps out a G sharp just like ours. [Footnote: Mozart was extremely fond of animals, and later in life had always birds in his room.] A propos, Herr Johannes [Hagenauer], no doubt, received the letter of congratulation which we intended to write to him? But if he has not got it, I will tell him myself, when we meet in Salzburg, what ought to have been in it. Yesterday we wore our new clothes; we were as handsome as angels. My kind regards to Nandl; she must not fail to pray diligently for me. Jomelli's opera is to be given on the 30th. We saw the king and queen at mass in the court chapel at Portici, and we also saw Vesuvius. Naples is beautiful, but as crowded with people as Vienna or Paris. As for London and Naples, I think that in point of insolence on the part of the people Naples almost surpasses London; because here the lazzaroni have their regular head or leader, who receives twenty-five ducati d'argento monthly from the king for keeping the lazzaroni in order. Madame de' Amicis sings in the opera--we were there. Caffaro is to compose the second opera, Ciccio di Majo the third, but who is to compose the fourth is not yet known. Be sure you go regularly to Mirabell, to hear the Litanies, and listen to the "Regina Coeli" or the "Salve Regina," and sleep sound, and take care to have no evil dreams. My most transcendent regards to Herr von Schiedenhofen--tralaliera! tralaliera! Tell him to learn the repetition minuet on the piano, to be sure to DO so, and DO not let him forget it. He must DO this in order to DO me the favor to let me accompany him some day or other. DO give my best compliments to all my friends, and DO continue to live happily, and DO not die, but DO live on, that you may be able to DO another letter for me, and I DO one for you, and thus we shall go on DOING till we can DO something worth DOING; but I am one of those who will go on DOING till all DOINGS are at an end. In the mean time I DO subscribe myself Your W. M. 13. Naples, May 29, 1770. Jeri l'altro fummo nella prova dell' opera del Sign. Jomelli, la quale e una opera che e ben scritta e che me piace veramente. Il Sign. Jomelli ci ha parlato ed era molto civile. E fummo anche in una chiesa a sentir una Musica la quale fu del Sign. Ciccio di Majo, ed era una bellissima Musica. Anche lui ci parlci ed era molto compito. La Signora de' Amicis canto a meraviglia. Stiamo Dio grazia assai bene di salute, particolarmente io, quando viene una lettera di Salisburgo. Vi prego di scrivermi tutti giorni di posta, e se anche non avete niente da scrivermi, solamente vorrei averlo per aver qualche lettera tutti giorni di posta. Egli non sarebbe mal fatto, se voi mi scriveste qualche volta una letterina italiana. [FOOTNOTE: "The other day we attended the rehearsal of Signor Jomelli's opera, which is well written and pleases me exceedingly. Signor Jomelli spoke to us and was very civil. We also went to a church to hear a mass by Signor Ciccio di Majo, and it was most beautiful music. Signora de' Amicus sang incomparably. We are, thank God, very well, and I feel particularly so when a letter from Salzburg arrives. I beg you will write to me every post-day, even if you have nothing to write about, for I should like to have a letter by every post. It would not be a bad idea to write me a little letter in Italian."] 14. Naples, June 5, 1770. Vesuvius is smoking fiercely! Thunder and lightning and blazes! Haid homa gfresa beim Herr Doll. Das is a deutscha Compositor, und a browa Mo. [Footnote: "Today we dined with Herr Doll, he is a good composer and a worthy man" [Vienna Patois]] Now I begin to describe my course of life.--Alle 9 ore, qualche volta anche alle dieci mi svelgio, e poi andiamo fuor di casa, e poi pranziamo da un trattore, e dopo pranzo scriviamo, e poi sortiamo, e indi ceniamo, ma che cosa? Al giorno di grasso, un mezzo pollo ovvero un piccolo boccone d'arrosto; al giorno di magro un piccolo pesce; e di poi andiamo a dormire. Est-ce que vous avez compris?--Redma dafir Soisburgarisch, don as is gschaida. Wir sand Gottlob gesund da Voda und i. [Footnote: "I rise generally every morning at 9 o'clock, but sometimes not till 10, when we go out. We dine at a restaurateur's, after dinner I write, and then we go out again, and afterwards sup, but on what? on jours gras, half a fowl, or a small slice of roast meat, on jours maigres a little fish, and then we go to sleep. Do you understand? Let us talk Salzburgisch, for that is more sensible. Thank God, my father and I are well" [Patois]] I hope you and mamma are so also. Naples and Rome are two drowsy cities. A scheni Schrift! net wor? [Footnote: "Fine writing, is it not?" [Patois.]] Write to me, and do not be so lazy. Altrimente avrete qualche bastonate di me. Quel plaisir! Je te casserai la tete. [Footnote: "Otherwise I will cudgel you soundly. What a pleasure--to break your head!"] I am delighted with the thoughts of the portraits [of his mother and sister, who had promised to have their likenesses taken], und i bi korios wias da gleich sieht; wons ma gfoin, so los i mi und den Vodan a so macho. Maidli, lass Da saga, wo list dan gwesa he? [Footnote: "And I am anxious to see what they are like, and then I will have my father and myself also taken. Fair maiden, say, where have you been, eh?" [Patois.]] The opera here is Jomelli's; it is fine, but too grave and old-fashioned for this stage. Madame de' Amicis sings incomparably, and so does Aprile, who used to sing at Milan. The dancing is miserably pretentious. The theatre beautiful. The King has been brought up in the rough Neapolitan fashion, and at the opera always stands on a stool, so that he may look a little taller than the Queen, who is beautiful and so gracious, for she bowed to me in the most condescending manner no less than six times on the Molo. 15. Naples, June 16, 1770. I AM well and lively and happy as ever, and as glad to travel. I made an excursion on the Mediterranean. I kiss mamma's hand and Nannerl's a thousand times, and am your son, Steffl, and your brother, Hansl. 16. Rome, July 7, 1770. CARA SORELLA MIA,-- I am really surprised that you can compose so charmingly. In a word, the song is beautiful. Often try something similar. Send me soon the other six minuets of Haydn. Mademoiselle, j'ai l'honneur d'etre votre tres-humble serviteur et frere, CHEVALIER DE MOZART. [He had received from the Pope the cross of the Order of the Golden Spur.] 17. Bologna, July 21, 1770. I WISH mamma joy of her name-day, and hope that she may live for many hundred years to come and retain good health, which I always ask of God, and pray to Him for you both every day. I cannot do honor to the occasion except with some Loretto bells, and wax tapers, and caps, and gauze when I return. In the mean time, good-bye, mamma. I kiss your hand a thousand times, and remain, till death, your attached son. 18. Io vi auguro d'Iddio, vi dia sempre salute, e vi lasci vivere ancora cent' anni e vi faccia morire quando avrete mille anni. Spero che voi impararete meglio conoscermi ni avvenire e che poi ne giudicherete come ch' egli vi piace. Il tempo non mi permette di scriver motto. La penna non vale un corno, ne pure quello che la dirigge. Il titolo dell' opera che ho da comporre a Milano, non si sa ancora. [Footnote: "My prayer to God is, that He may grant you health, and allow you to live to be a hundred, and not to die till you are a thousand years old. I hope that you will learn to know me better in future, and that you will then judge of me as you please. Time does not permit me to write much. My pen is not worth a pin, nor the hand that guides it. I don't yet know the title of the opera that I am to compose at Milan."] My landlady at Rome made me a present of the "Thousand and One Nights" in Italian; it is most amusing to read. 19. Bologna, August 4, 1770. I GRIEVE from my heart to hear that Jungfrau Marthe is still so ill, and I pray every day that she may recover. Tell her from me that she must beware of much fatigue and eat only what is strongly salted [she was consumptive]. A propos, did you give my letter to Robinsiegerl? [Sigismund Robinig, a friend of his]. You did not mention it when you wrote. I beg that when you see him you will tell him he is not quite to forget me. I can't possibly write better, for my pen is only fit to write music and not a letter. My violin has been newly strung, and I play every day. I only mention this because mamma wished to know whether I still played the violin. I have had the honor to go at least six times by myself into the churches to attend their splendid ceremonies. In the mean time I have composed four Italian symphonies [overtures], besides five or six arias, and also a motett. Does Herr Deibl often come to see you? Does he still honor you by his amusing conversation? And the noble Herr Carl von Vogt, does he still deign to listen to your tiresome voices? Herr von Schiedenhofen must assist you often in writing minuets, otherwise he shall have no sugar-plums. If time permitted, it would be my duty to trouble Herr von Molk and Herr von Schiedenhofen with a few lines; but as that most indispensable of all things is wanting, I hope they will forgive my neglect, and consider me henceforth absolved from this honor. I have begun various cassations [a kind of divertimento], so I have thus responded to your desire. I don't think the piece in question can be one of mine, for who would venture to publish as his own composition what is, in reality, written by the son of the Capellmeister, and whose mother and sister are in the same town? Addio--farewell! My sole recreations consist in dancing English hornpipes and cutting capers. Italy is a land of sleep; I am always drowsy here. Addio--good-bye! 20. Bologna, August 21, 1770. I AM not only still alive, but in capital spirits. To-day I took a fancy to ride a donkey, for such is the custom in Italy, so I thought that I too must give it a trial. We have the honor to associate with a certain Dominican who is considered a very pious ascetic. I somehow don't quite think so, for he constantly takes a cup of chocolate for breakfast, and immediately afterwards a large glass of strong Spanish wine; and I have myself had the privilege of dining with this holy man, when he drank a lot of wine at dinner and a full glass of very strong wine afterwards, two large slices of melons, some peaches and pears for dessert, five cups of coffee, a whole plateful of nuts, and two dishes of milk and lemons. This he may perhaps do out of bravado, but I don't think so--at all events, it is far too much; and he eats a great deal also at his afternoon collation. 21. Bologna, Sept. 8, 1770. NOT to fail in my duty, I must write a few words. I wish you would tell me in your next letter to what brotherhoods I belong, and also let me know the prayers I am bound to offer up for them. I am now reading "Telemachus," and am already in the second volume. Good-bye for the present! Love to mamma. 22. I HOPE that mamma and you are both well, but I wish you would answer my letters more punctually in time to come; indeed, it is far easier to answer than to originate. I like these six minuets far better than the first twelve; we often played them to the Countess [Pallivicini, at whose country-seat, near Bologna, father and son spent some months]. We only wish we could succeed in introducing a taste for German minuets into Italy, as their minuets last nearly as long as entire symphonies. Forgive my bad writing; I could write better, but I am in such a hurry. 23. Bologna, Sept. 29, 1770. IN order to fill up papa's letter, I intend to add a few words. I grieve deeply to hear of Jungfrau Marthe's long-continued illness, which the poor girl bears, too, with such patience. I hope, please God, she may still recover. If not, we must not grieve too much, for the will of God is always best, and God certainly knows better than we do whether it is most for our good to be in this world or in the next. But it will cheer her to enjoy this fine weather once more after all the rain. 24. Bologna, Oct. 6, 1770. I AM heartily glad that you have been so gay; I only wish I had been with you. I hope Jungfrau Marthe is better. To-day I played the organ at the Dominicans. Congratulate the .... from me, and say that I sincerely wish they may live to see the fiftieth anniversary of Father Dominikus's saying mass, and that we may all once more have a happy meeting. [Footnote: Jahn observes that he probably alludes to their intimate friends, the merchant Hagenauer's family, with whom old Mozart had many pecuniary transactions for the purpose of his travels, and whose son entered the church in 1764.] My best wishes to all Thereserls, and compliments to all my friends in the house and out of the house. I wish I were likely soon to hear the Berchtesgadner symphonies, and perhaps blow a trumpet or play a fife in one myself. I saw and heard the great festival of St. Petronius in Bologna. It was fine, but long. The trumpeters came from Lucca to make the proper flourish of honor, but their trumpeting was detestable. 25. Milan, Oct. 20, 1770. MY DEAR MAMMA,-- I cannot write much, for my fingers ache from writing out such a quantity of recitative. I hope you will pray for me that my opera ["Mitridate Re di Ponto"] may go off well, and that we soon may have a joyful meeting. I kiss your hands a thousand times, and have a great deal to say to my sister; but what? That is known only to God and myself. Please God, I hope soon to be able to confide it to her verbally; in the mean time, I send her a thousand kisses. My compliments to all kind friends. We have lost our good Martherl, but we hope that by the mercy of God she is now in a state of blessedness. 26. Milan, Oct. 27, 1770. MY VERY DEAREST SISTER,-- You know that I am a great talker, and was so when I left you. At present I replace this very much by signs, for the son of this family is deaf and dumb. I must now set to work at my opera. I regret very much that I cannot send you the minuet you wish to have, but, God willing, perhaps about Easter you may see both it and me. I can write no more.--Farewell! and pray for me. 27. Milan, Nov. 3, 1770. MY VERY DEARLY LOVED SISTER,-- I thank you and mamma for your sincere good wishes; my most ardent desire is to see you both soon in Salzburg. In reference to your congratulations, I may say that I believe Herr Martinelli suggested your Italian project. My dear sister, you are always so very clever, and contrived it all so charmingly that, just underneath your congratulations in Italian, followed M. Martini's compliments in the same style of penmanship, so that I could not possibly find you out; nor did I do so, and I immediately said to papa, "Oh! how I do wish I were as clever and witty as she is!" Then papa answered, "Indeed, that is true enough." On which I rejoined, "Oh! I am so sleepy;" so he merely replied, "Then stop writing." Addio! Pray to God that my opera may be successful. I am your brother, W. M., whose fingers are weary from writing. 28. Milan, Dec. 1, 1770. DEAREST SISTER,-- As it is so long since I wrote to you, I thought that I might perhaps pacify your just wrath and indignation by these lines. I have now a great deal to work at, and to write for my opera. I trust all will go well, with the help of God. Addio! As ever, your faithful brother, WOLFGANG MOZART. 29. MY DARLING SISTER,-- It is long since I have written to you, having been so much occupied with my opera. As I have now more time, I shall attend better to my duty. My opera, thank God, is popular, as the theatre is full every evening, which causes great surprise, for many say that during all the time they have lived in Milan they never saw any first opera so crowded as on this occasion. I am thankful to say that both papa and I are quite well, and I hope at Easter to have an opportunity of relating everything to mamma and you. Addio! A propos, the copyist was with us yesterday, and said that he was at that moment engaged in transcribing my opera for the Lisbon court. Good-bye, my dear Madlle. sister, Always and ever your attached brother. 30. Venice, Feb 15, 1771 MY VERY DEAR SISTER,-- You have, no doubt, heard from papa that I am well. I have nothing to write about, except my love and kisses to mamma. Give the enclosed--Al sig. Giovanni. La signora perla ricono la riverisce tanto come anche tutte le altre perle, e li assicuro che tutte sono inamorata di lei, e che sperano che lei prendera per moglie tutte, come i Turchi per contenar tutte sei. Questo scrivo in casa di Sign. Wider, il quale e un galant' uomo come lei melo scrisse, ed jeri abbiamo finito il carnavale da lui, cenardo da lui e poi ballammo ed andammo colle perle in compagnie nel ridotto nuovo, che mi piacque assai. Quando sto dal Sign. Wider e guardando fuori della finestra vedo la casa dove lei abito quando lei fu in Venezia. Il nuovo non so niente. Venezia mi piace assai. Il mio complimento al Sign., suo padre e madre, sorelle, fratelli, e a tutti i miei amici ed amiche. Addio! [Footnote: "To Herr Johannes [Hagenauer] The fair 'pearl' has the same high opinion of you that all the other 'pearls' here have. I assure you that they are all in love with you, and their hope is that you will marry them all (like the Turks), and so please them every one. I write this in the house of Signor Wider, who is an excellent man and exactly what you wrote to me, yesterday we finished the Carnival in his house. We supped there and then danced, and went afterwards, in company with the 'pearls,' to the new masquerade, which amused me immensely. When I look out of the window at Signor Wider's, I see the house that you inhabited in Venice. I have no news. I like Venice very well. My compliments to your father and mother, brothers and sisters, and all my friends. Adieu!"] 31. Venice, Feb. 20, 1771. I AM still well, and, thank God, in the land of the living. Madame de' Amicis has been singing at S. Benedetto. Say to Herr Johannes that the Widerischen Berlein family are constantly speaking of him (particularly Madlle. Catherine), so he must soon return to Vienna to encounter the attacca--that is, in order to become a true Venetian, you must allow yourself to be bumped down on the ground. They wished to do this to me also, but though seven women tried it, the whole seven together did not succeed in throwing me down. Addio! The travellers arrived again at home towards the end of March, 1771. The marriage of the Archduke Ferdinand with the Princess of Modena, which took place in the October of that year, was attended with great festivities, and recalled the father and son to Italy in the course of a few months, Wolfgang having received a command from the Empress Maria Theresa to compose a dramatic serenata in honor of these nuptials. 32. Verona, August 18, 1771. DEAREST SISTER,-- I have not slept more than half an hour, for I don't like to sleep after eating. You may hope, believe, think, be of opinion, cherish the expectation, desire, imagine, conceive, and confidently suppose, that we are in good health; but I can tell you so to a certainty. Wish Herr von Heffner a happy journey from me, and ask him if he has seen Annamindl? [Wolfgang, who was then fifteen, had taken advantage of his leisure during their short stay in Salzburg to fall in love for the first time. We shall find frequent allusions to this subject. See also No. 25.] 33. Milan, August 23, 1771. MY VERY DEAR SISTER,-- We suffered much from heat in the course of our journey, and the dust constantly dried us up so impertinently that we should have been choked, or died of thirst, if we had not been too sensible for that. For a whole month past (say the Milanese) there has been no rain here; to-day a slight drizzle began, but the sun has now come out again, and it is once more very warm. What you promised me (you well know my meaning, you kind creature!) don't fail to perform, I entreat. I shall be indeed very grateful to you. I am at this moment actually panting from the heat--I tear open my waistcoat! Addio--good-bye! WOLFGANG. Above us we have a violinist, below us is another, next to us a singing-master, who gives lessons, and, in the room opposite, a hautboy-player. This is famous for a composer--it inspires so many fine thoughts. 34. Milan, August 31, 1771. MY DEAREST SISTER,-- We are quite well, thank God! I have been eating quantities of fine pears, peaches, and melons in your place. My greatest amusement is to talk by signs to the dumb, which I can do to perfection. Herr Hasse [the celebrated opera composer] arrived here yesterday, and to-day we are going to pay him a visit. We only received the book of the Serenata last Thursday. [Footnote: It was "Ascanio in Alba" that Wolfgang got to compose for Milan; and it was this music which made Hasse exclaim, "This boy will cause us all to be forgotten."] I have very little to write about. Do not, I entreat, forget about THE ONE OTHER, where no other can ever be. You understand me, I know. 35. Milan, Sept. 13, 1771. DEAR SISTER,-- I write only for writing's sake. It is indeed very inconvenient, because I have a severe cold. Say to Fraulein W. von Molk that I rejoice at the thoughts of Salzburg, in the hope that I may again receive the same kind of present for the minuets which was bestowed on me at a similar concert. She knows all about it. 36. Milan, Sept. 21, 1771. I AM well, God be praised! I can't write much. 1st, I have nothing to say. 2d, my fingers ache from writing. I often whistle an air, but no one responds. Only two arias of the Serenata are still wanting, and then it will be finished. I have no longer any fancy for Salzburg; I am afraid I might go mad too. [He had heard that several persons there had lost their reason.] 37. Milan, Oct. 5, 1771. I AM in good health, but always sleepy. Papa has snatched from my pen all that I had to write about, which is, that he has already written everything. Signora Gabrielli is here, and we are soon going to see her, as we wish to become acquainted with all distinguished singers. 38. Milan, Oct. 26, 1771. MY work being now completed, I have more time to write, but have nothing to say, as papa has written you all I could have said. I am well, thank God! but have no news, except that in the lottery the numbers 35, 59, 60, 61, and 62 have turned up prizes, so if we had selected these we should have won; but as we did not put in at all we neither won nor lost, but only laughed at those who did the latter. The two arias encored in the Serenata were those of Manzuoli, and Girelli, the prima donna, I hope you may be well amused in Triebenbach with shooting, and (weather permitting) with walking. 39. Milan, Nov. 2, 1771. Papa says that Herr Kerschbaumer travels with profit and observation, and we can testify that he conducts himself very judiciously; at all events he can give a more satisfactory account of his journey than some of his friends, one of whom said that he could not see Paris properly because the houses there were too high. To-day Hasse's opera is to be given; as papa, however, is not going, I can't go either. [FOOTNOTE: Hasse had also a festal opera to compose, but Leopold Mozart writes, "I am sorry to say that Wolfgang's Serenata has totally eclipsed Hasse's opera."] Fortunately I know all the airs thoroughly by heart, so I can see and hear them in my own thoughts at home. 40. Milan, Nov. 24, 1771. DEAREST SISTER,-- Herr Manzuoli, the musico, who has always been considered and esteemed as the best of his class, has in his old age given a proof of his folly and arrogance. He was engaged at the opera for the sum of 500 gigliati (ducats), but as no mention was made in the contract of the Serenata, he demanded 500 ducats more for singing in it, making 1000. The court only sent him 700 and a gold box, (and enough too, I think,) but he returned the 700 ducats and the box, and went away without anything. I don't know what the result of this history will be--a bad one, I fear! 41. Milan, Nov. 30, 1771. That you may not suppose I am ill, I write you a few lines. I saw four fellows hanged in the Dom Platz. They hang here just as they do in Lyons. We now find the father and son once more in Salzburg, in the middle of December, 1771. Archbishop Sigismund died, and on the 14th of March, 1772, Archbishop Hieronymus was elected, who was destined to cause much sorrow to Mozart. Soon after, in honor of the procession and homage of the new prince, he composed the allegorical azione teatrale "Il sogno di Scipione." In October he resumed his travels, having undertaken the scrittura for the approaching Carnivals both at Milan and at Venice. 42. Bologna, Oct. 28, 1772. We have got to Botzen already. Already? rather not till now. I am hungry, thirsty, sleepy, and lazy, but I am quite well. We saw the monastery in Hall, and I played the organ there. When you see Nadernannerl, tell her I spoke to Herr Brindl (her lover), and he charged me to give her his regards. I hope that you kept your promise and went last Sunday to D----N----[in cipher]. Farewell! write me some news. Botzen--a pig-sty! 43. Milan, Nov. 7, 1772. Don't be startled at seeing my writing instead of papa's. These are the reasons: first, we are at Herr von Oste's, and the Herr Baron Christiani is also here, and they have so much to talk about, that papa cannot possibly find time to write; and, secondly, he is too lazy. We arrived here at 4 o'clock this afternoon, and are both well. All our good friends are in the country or at Mantua, except Herr von Taste and his wife, who send you and my sister their compliments. Herr Misliweczeck [a young composer of operas from Paris] is still here. There is not a word of truth either in the Italian war, which is so eagerly discussed in Germany, or in the castles here being fortified. Forgive my bad writing. Address your letters direct to us, for it is not the custom here, as in Germany, to carry the letters round; we are obliged to go ourselves to fetch them on post-days. There is nothing new here; we expect news from Salzburg. Not having a word more to say, I must conclude. Our kind regards to all our friends. We kiss mamma 1,000,000,000 times (I have no room for more noughts); and as for my sister, I would rather embrace her in persona than in imagination. 44. CARISSIMA SORELLA,-- Spero che voi sarete stata dalla Signora, che voi gia sapete. Vi prego, se la videte di farla un Complimento da parte mia. Spero e non dubito punto che voi starete bene di salute. Mi son scordato di darvi nuova, che abbiamo qui trovato quel Sign. Belardo, ballerina, che abbiamo conosciuto in Haye ed in Amsterdam, quello che attaco colla spada il ballerino, il Sign. Neri, perche credeva che lui fosse cagione che non ebbe la permission di ballar in teatro. Addio, non scordarvi di me, io sono sempre il vostro fidele fratello. [FOOTNOTE: "DEAREST SISTER,--I hope you have been to see the lady--you know who. I beg that when you see her you will give her my compliments. I hope, and do not doubt, that you are in good health. I forgot to tell you that we found Signor Belardo here, a dancer whom we knew at the Hague and at Amsterdam--the same person who attacked Signor Neri with a sword, because he thought he was the cause of his not obtaining permission to dance in the theatre. Adieu! Do not forget me, always your faithful brother."] 45. Milan, Nov. 21, 1772. I thank you exceedingly--you know for what. I cannot possibly write to Herr von Heffner. When you see him, make him read aloud what follows. I hope he will be satisfied with it:-- "I am not to take it amiss that my unworthy friend has not answered my letter; as soon as he has more leisure, he will certainly, beyond all doubt, positively and punctually send me a reply." 46. Milan, Nov. 28, 1772. We both send our congratulations to Herr von Aman; tell him from me that, owing to his having all along made a mystery of the affair, I feel much annoyed, for I fear I may have said more than I ought about his bride. I thought he had been more straightforward. One thing more. Say to Herr von Aman that, if he wishes to have a right merry wedding, he must be so kind as to wait till we return, so that what he promised me may come to pass, namely, that I was to dance at his wedding. Tell Herr Leitgeb [a horn-player in the Archbishop's orchestra] that he must come straight to Milan, for he is sure to succeed well here; but he must come soon. Pray let him know this, for I am anxious about it. 47. Milan, Dec. 5, 1772. I have now about fourteen pieces to write, and then I shall have finished. [Footnote: He alludes to his Milan opera, "Lucio Silla."] Indeed, the trio and the duet may be considered as four. I cannot possibly write much, for I have no news, and in the next place I scarcely know what I am writing, as all my thoughts are absorbed in my opera, so there is some danger of my writing you a whole aria instead of a letter. I have learned a new game here, called mercanti in fiera. As soon as I come home we can play at it together. I have also learned a new language from Frau von Taste, which is easy to speak, though troublesome to write, but still useful. It is, I own, rather a little childish, but will do capitally for Salzburg. My kind regards to pretty Nandl and to the canary, for these two and yourself are the most innocent creatures in our house. Fischietti [the Archbishop's Capellmeister] will no doubt soon begin to work at his opera buffa (translated into German, his CRAZY opera!). Addio! The following letter of Wolfgang's shows the sparkling state of his spirits, caused by the completion of his opera. At each line he turns the page, so that one line stands, as it were, on the head of the other. The father, too, in the joy of his heart that the arduous work was drawing to a close, and with it his long journey, writes four lines, one above another, round the edge of the page, so that the whole forms a framework for a sketch of a burning heart and four triangles (symbols of fidelity), and a bird on the wing from whose beak a distich is streaming:-- Oh! fly to seek my child so fair Here, and there, and everywhere! Wolfgang adds:-- 48. Milan, Dec. 18, 1772. I HOPE, dear sister, that you are well, dear sister. When this letter reaches you, dear sister, my opera will be in scena, dear sister. Think of me, dear sister, and try, dear sister, to imagine with all your might that my dear sister sees and hears it also. In truth, it is hard to say, as it is now eleven o'clock at night, but I do believe, and don't at all doubt, that in the daytime it is brighter than at Easter. My dear sister, to-morrow we dine with Herr von Mayer; and do you know why? Guess! Because he invited us. The rehearsal to-morrow is to be in the theatre. The impresario, Signor Cassiglioni, has entreated me not to say a word of this to a soul, as all kinds of people would come crowding in, and that we don't wish. So, my child, I beg, my child, that you won't say one syllable to any one on the subject, or too many people would come crowding in, my child. Approposito, do you know the history that occurred here? Well, I will relate it to you. We were going home straight from Count Firmiani's, and when we came into our street we opened our door, and what do you think happened? We went in. Good-bye, my pet. Your unworthy brother (frater), WOLFGANG. On the 26th of December "an incomparable performance" of "Lucio Silla" took place; it was eminently successful, and continued to fill the house night after night in the most surprising way. The father writes home regularly, and Wolfgang subjoins the usual postscripts, which, however, at this time contain nothing worth quoting. We give only part of an Italian letter which he writes for practice:-- 49. .... Vi prego di dire al Sig. Giovanni Hagenauer da parte mia, che non dubiti, che andro a veder sicuramente in quella bottega delle armi, se ci sono quei nomi [?] che lui desidera, e che senza dubbio doppo averlo trovato le portero meco a Salisburgo. Mi dispiace che il Sig. Leitgeb e partito tanto tardi da Salisburgo [see No. 46] che non trovera piu in scena la mia opera e forte non ci trovera nemeno, se non in viaggio. Hieri sera era la prima prova coi stromenti della seconda opera, ma ho sentito solamente il primo atto, perche a secondo mene andiedi essendo gia tardi. In quest' opera saranno sopra il balco 24 cavalli e . . . mondo di gente, che saro miracolo se non succede qualche disgrazia. La musica mi piace; se piace al replico non so, perche alle prime prove non e lecito l' andarci che alle personne che sono del Teatro. Io spero che domani il mio padre potra uscir di casa. Sta sera fa cativissimo tempo. La Signora Teyber e adesso a Bologna e il carnevale venturo recitera a Turino e l'anno sussiquente poi va a cantare a Napoli. [Footnote: "Pray say from me to Johannes Hagenauer, that he may entirely rely on my going to the armorer's shop, to see if I can procure what he desires, and after getting it I will not fail to bring it with me to Salzburg. I regret that Herr Leitgeb delayed so long leaving Salzburg [see No. 46], for he will no longer find my opera in scena, nor will he find us either unless we meet on our travels. Yesterday evening was our first rehearsal of the second opera with instruments, but I only heard the first act, for I went away at the second, because it was so very late. In this opera there are to be twenty-four horses and a crowd of people on the stage at the same time, so it will be surprising if no accident happens. The music pleases me; whether it will please others I cannot tell, for no persons but those belonging to the theatre are permitted to attend the first rehearsals. I hope that papa will be able to leave the house to-morrow. The weather is detestable this evening. Madame Teyber is now at Bologna; she is to act at Turin in the ensuing Carnival, and the year following she is to sing at Naples."] After enjoying some more of the amusements of the Carnival, they arrived again in Salzburg about the middle of March. This place, or rather their position at court there, was in the highest degree repugnant to both; so the father, in the course of his travels, applied to the Grand-Duke of Tuscany for an appointment for his son. As, however, nothing was to be got in that quarter, he directed his views to the Imperial capital itself; and thus, at the end of three months, we find him again with his son in Vienna. From thence Wolfgang often wrote to his loved ones at home. 50. Vienna, August 14, 1773. I HOPE that your Majesty [Footnote 1: O. Jahn remarks that this epithet is a reminiscence of a fantastic game that often amused the boy on his journeys. He imagined a kingdom, the inhabitants of which were endowed with every gift that could make them good and happy.] enjoys the best state of health; and yet that now and then--or rather sometimes--or, better still, from time to time--or, still better, qualche volta, as the Italians say--your Majesty will impart to me some of your grave and important thoughts (emanating from that most admirable and solid judgment which, in addition to beauty, your Majesty so eminently possesses; and thus, although in such tender years, my Queen casts into the shade not only the generality of men but even the gray-haired). P. S. This is a most sensible production. 51. Vienna, August 21, 1773. When we contemplate the benefit of time, and yet are not entirely oblivious of the estimation in which we ought to hold the sun, then it is quite certain, Heaven be praised! that I am quite well. My second proposition is of a very different character. Instead of sun, let us put moon, and instead of benefit, science; then any one, gifted with a certain amount of reasoning powers, will at once draw the conclusion that--I am a fool because you are my sister. How is Miss Bimbles? [the dog.] I beg you will convey all sorts of amiable messages from me to her. I also send my kind remembrances to M. Kreibich [conductor of the Imperial chamber-music], whom we knew at Presburg and also at Vienna; and very best regards from Her Majesty the Empress, Frau Fischerin, and Prince Kaunitz. Oidda! GNAGFLOW TRAZOM. 52. Vienna, Sept. 15, 1773. WE are quite well, thank God; on this occasion we have contrived to make time to write to you, although we have so much business to do. We hope you also are well. Dr. Niderl's death grieved us very much. I assure you we cried a good deal, and moaned and groaned. Our kind regards to "Alle gute Geister loben Gott den Herrn" [to all good spirits who praise the Lord], and to all our friends. We graciously remain Yours, WOLFGANG. Given from our capital of Vienna. The travellers returned home the end of September, for no situation was to be found in Vienna either; indeed, they did not even give a public concert there. Wolfgang remained in his native town during the whole of the ensuing year, writing instrumental and church music. At length he received a commission from the Elector of Bavaria, Maximilian III., to write an opera buffa for the Carnival of 1775,--"La finta Giardiniera." 53. Munich, Dec. 28, 1774. My Dearest Sister, I entreat you not to forget, before your journey, [FOOTNOTE: Nannerl had also the most eager desire to see the new opera, and the father at last succeeded in getting a lodging for her in the large market place, in the house of a widow, "a black-eyed brunette," Frau von Durst.] to perform your promise, that is, to make a certain visit. I have my reasons for this. Pray present my kind regards in that quarter, but in the most impressive and tender manner--the most tender; and, oh!----but I need not be in such anxiety on the subject, for I know my sister and her peculiarly loving nature, and I feel quite convinced that she will do all she can to give me pleasure--and from self-interest, too--rather a spiteful hit that! [Nannerl was considered a little selfish by her family.] 54. Munich, Dec. 30, 1774. I BEG my compliments to Roxalana, who is to drink tea this evening with the Sultan, All sorts of pretty speeches to Madlle. Mizerl; she must not doubt my love. I have her constantly before my eyes in her fascinating neglige. I have seen many pretty girls here, but not one whose beauty can be compared with hers. Do not forget to bring the variations on Ekart's menuet d'exaude, and also those on Fischer's minuet. I was at the theatre last night. The play was "Der Mode nach der Haushaltung," which was admirably acted. My kind regards to all my friends. I trust that you will not fail to--Farewell! I hope to see you soon in Munich. Frau von Durst sends you her remembrances. Is it true that Hagenauer is become a professor of sculpture in Vienna? Kiss mamma's hand for me, and now I stop for to-day. Wrap yourself up warmly on your journey, I entreat, or else you may chance to pass the fourteen days of your visit in the house, stifling beside a stove, unable once to move. I see the vivid lightning flash, and fear there soon will be a crash! Your brother. 55. To HIS MOTHER. Munich, Jan. 11, 1775. WE are all three well, Heaven be praised! I cannot possibly write much, for I must go forthwith to the rehearsal. Tomorrow the grand rehearsal takes place, and on the 13th my opera is to be in scena. I am much vexed that you should cast any slight on Count Seeau [Intendant of the Munich Theatre], for no one can be more kind or courteous, and he has more good breeding than many of his degree in Munich. Herr von Molk was in such a state of wonder and admiration at the opera seria when he heard it, that we felt quite ashamed of him, for it clearly showed every one that he had never in his life seen anything but Salzburg and Innspruck. Addio! 56. To HIS MOTHER. Munich, Jan. 14, 1775. GOD be praised! My opera was given yesterday, the 13th, and proved so successful that I cannot possibly describe all the tumult. In the first place, the whole theatre was so crammed that many people were obliged to go away. After each aria there was invariably a tremendous uproar and clapping of hands, and cries of Viva Maestro! Her Serene Highness the Electress and the Dowager (who were opposite me) also called out Bravo! When the opera was over, during the interval when all is usually quiet till the ballet begins, the applause and shouts of Bravo! were renewed; sometimes there was a lull, but only to recommence afresh, and so forth. I afterwards went with papa to a room through which the Elector and the whole court were to pass. I kissed the hands of the Elector and the Electress and the other royalties, who were all very gracious. At an early hour this morning the Prince Bishop of Chiemsee [who had most probably procured the scrittura for his young friend Wolfgang] sent to congratulate me that the opera had proved such a brilliant success in every respect. As to our return home, it is not likely to be soon, nor should mamma wish it, for she must know well what a good thing it is to have a little breathing time. We shall come quite soon enough to----. One most just and undeniable reason is, that my opera is to be given again on Friday next, and I am very necessary at the performance, or it might be difficult to recognize it again. There are very odd ways here. 1000 kisses to Miss Bimberl [the dog]. The Archbishop of Salzburg, who was very reluctant to admit the merits of his Concertmeister, was an involuntary witness of the universal approbation bestowed on Wolfgang's opera, although he would not go to hear it himself. On the 18th of January, 1775, Wolfgang added the following lines to his father's letter:-- 57. MY DEAR SISTER, [FOOTNOTE: Nannerl had not yet gone home, but was enjoying the Carnival in various masks.] How can I help the clock choosing at this moment to strike a quarter after seven o'clock? It is not papa's fault either. Mamma will hear all the rest from you. At present there is no fair sailing for me, as the Archbishop is staying here, though not for long. It is currently reported that he is to remain till he sets off again! I only regret that he is not to see the first masked ball. Your faithful FRANZ v. NASENBLUT. Milan, May 5, 1756. Immediately after Ash Wednesday the trio returned to Salzburg, where Mozart remained uninterruptedly for another year and a half, actively engaged in the duties of his situation. He wrote the following letter on the 4th of September, 1776, to the celebrated Pater Martini in Bologna:-- 58. MOLTO REVDO PADE MAESTRO, PADRONE MIO STIMATISSIMO,--La venerazione, la stima e il rispetto, che porto verso la di lei degnissima persona mi spinse di incommodarla colle presente e di mandargli un debole pezzo di mia musica, rimmettendola alla di lei maestrale giudicatura. Scrissi l'anno scorso il Carnevale una opera buffa ("La finta Giardiniera") a Monaco in Baviera. Pochi giorni avanti la mia partenza di la desiderava S. A. Elletorale di sentire qualche mia musica in contrapunto: era adunque obligato di scriver questo Motetto in fretta per dar tempo a copiar il spartito per Sua Altezza ed a cavar le parti per poter produrlo la prossima domenica sotto la Messa grande in tempo del Offertorio. Carissimo e stimatissimo Sigr. P. Maestro! Lei e ardentemente pregato di dirmi francamente e senza riserva il di lei parere. Viviamo in questo mondo per imparare sempre industriosamente, e per mezzo dei raggionamenti di illuminarsi l'un l'altro e d'affatigarsi di portar via sempre avanti le scienze e le belle arti. Oh quante e quante volte desidero d'esser piu vicino per poter parlar e raggionar con Vostra Paternita molto Revda. Vivo in una paese dove la musica fa pocchissimo fortuna, benche oltre di quelli che ci hanno abandonati, ne abbiamo ancora bravissimi professori e particolarmente compositori di gran fondo, sapere e gusto. Per il teatro stiamo male per mancanza dei recitanti. Non abbiamo Musici e non gli averemo si facilmente, giache vogliono esser ben pagati: e la generosita, non e il nostro difetto. Io mi diverto intanto a scrivere per la camera e per la chiesa: e ne son quivi altri due bravissimi contrapuntisti, cioe il Sgr. Haydn e Adlgasser. Il mio padre e maestro della chiesa Metropolitana, che mi da l'occasione di scrivere per la chiesa, quanto che ne voglio. Per altro il mio padre gia 36 anni in servizio di questa Corte e sapendo, che questo Arcivescovo non puo e non vuol vedere gente avanzata in eta, non lo se ne prende a core, si e messo alla letteratura per altro gia suo studio favorito. La nostra musica di chiesa e assai differente di quella d'Italia e sempre piu, che una Messa con tutto il Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, la Sonata all' Epistola, l'Offertorio osia Motetto, Sanctus ed Agnus Dei, ed anche la piu solenne, quando dice la Messa il Principe stesso, non ha da durare che al piu longo 3 quarti d'ora. Ci vuole un studio particolare per queste sorte di compositione, e che deve pero essere una Messa con tutti stromenti--Trombe di guerra, Tympani ecc. Ah! che siamo si lontani Carissmo Sgr. P. Maestro, quante cose che avrai a dirgli!--Reverisco devotamente tutti i Sgri. Filarmonici: mi raccommando via sempre nelle grazie di lei e non cesso d'affligermi nel vedermi lontano dalla persona del mondo che maggiormente amo, venero e stimo, e di cui inviolabilmente mi protesto di V. Pta molto Rda umilissmo e devotssmo servitore, WOLFGANGO AMADEO MOZART. Salisburgo, 4 Settembre, 1776. [FOOTNOTE: To Father Martini. "Salzburg, Sept. 4, 1776. "MOST REVEREND AND ESTEEMED FATHER AND MAESTRO,-- "The veneration, the esteem, and the respect I feel for your illustrious person, induce me to intrude on you with this letter, and also to send you a small portion of my music, which I venture to submit to your masterly judgment. Last year, at Monaco, in Bavaria, I wrote an opera buffa ("La finta Giardiniera") for the Carnival. A few days previous to my departure from thence, his Electoral Highness wished to hear some of my contrapuntal music; I was therefore obliged to write this motett in haste, to allow time for the score to be copied for his Highness, and to arrange the parts so that it might be produced on the following Sunday at grand mass at the offertory. Most dear and highly esteemed Maestro, I do entreat you to give me unreservedly your candid opinion of the motett. We live in this world in order always to learn industriously, and to enlighten each other by means of discussion, and to strive vigorously to promote the progress of science and the fine arts. Oh, how many and many a time have I desired to be nearer you, that I might converse and discuss with your Reverence! I live in a country where music has very little success, though, exclusive of those who have forsaken us, we have still admirable professors, and more particularly composers of great solidity, knowledge, and taste. We are rather badly off at the theatre from the want of actors. We have no MUSICI, nor shall we find it very easy to get any, because they insist upon being well paid, and generosity is not a failing of ours. I amuse myself in the mean time by writing church and chamber music, and we have two excellent contrapuntists here, Haydn and Adlgasser. My father is maestro at the Metropolitan church, which gives me an opportunity to write for the church as much as I please. Moreover, my father has been thirty-six years in the service of this court, and knowing that our present Archbishop neither can nor will endure the sight of elderly people, he does not take it to heart, but devotes himself to literature, which was always his favorite pursuit Our church music is rather different from that of Italy, and the more so, as a mass including the Kyne, Gloria, Credo, the Sonata all Epistola, the Offertory or Motett, Sanctus, and Agnus Dei, and even a solemn mass, when the Prince himself officiates, must never last more than three-quarters of an hour. A particular course of study is required for this class of composition. And what must such a mass be, scored with all the instruments, war-drums, cymbals, &c, &c! Oh! why are we so far apart, dearest Signor Maestro? for how many things I have to say to you! I devoutly revere all the Signori Filarmonici. I venture to recommend myself to your good opinion, I shall never cease regretting being so distant from the person in the world whom I most love, venerate, and esteem. I beg to subscribe myself, reverend Father, always your most humble and devoted servant, "WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART"] SECOND PART.--MUNICH, AUGSBURG, MANNHEIM.--SEPTEMBER 1771 TO MARCH 1778. On the 22d of December, 1777, Mozart's father wrote as follows to Padre Martini in Bologna:--"My son has been now five years in the service of our Prince, at a mere nominal salary, hoping that by degrees his earnest endeavors and any talents he may possess, combined with the utmost industry and most unremitting study, would be rewarded; but in this hope we find ourselves deceived. I forbear all allusion to our Prince's mode of thinking and acting; but he was not ashamed to declare that my son knew nothing, and that he ought to go to the musical training school in Naples to learn music. And why did he say all this? In order to intimate that a young man should not be so absurd as to believe that he deserved a rather higher salary after such a decisive verdict had issued from the lips of a prince. This has induced me to sanction my son giving up his present situation. He therefore left Salzburg on the 23d of September" [with his mother]. 59. Wasserburg, Sept. 23, 1777. Mon Tres-Cher Pere,-- God be praised! we reached Waging, Stain, Ferbertshaim, and Wasserburg safely. Now for a brief report of our journey. When we arrived at the city gates, we were kept waiting for nearly a quarter of an hour till they could be thrown open for us, as they were under repair. Near Schinn we met a drove of cows, and one of these very remarkable, for each side was a different color, which we never before saw. When at last we got to Schinn, we met a carriage, which stopped, and ecce, our postilion called out we must change. "I don't care," said I. Mamma and I were parleying, when a portly gentleman came up, whose physiognomy I at once recognized; he was a Memmingen merchant. He stared at me for some time, and at last said, "You surely are Herr Mozart?" "At your service," said I; "I know you, too, by sight, but not your name. I saw you, a year ago, at Mirabell's [the palace garden in Salzburg] at a concert." He then told me his name, which, thank God! I have forgotten; but I retained one of probably more importance to me. When I saw this gentleman in Salzburg, he was accompanied by a young man whose brother was now with him, and who lives in Memmingen. His name is Herr Unhold, and he pressed me very much to come to Memmingen if possible. We sent a hundred thousand loves to papa by them, and to my sister, the madcap, which they promised to deliver without fail. This change of carriages was a great bore to me, for I wished to send a letter back from Waging by the postilion. We then (after a slight meal) had the honor of being conveyed as far as Stain, by the aforesaid post-horses, in an hour and a half. At Waging I was alone for a few minutes with the clergyman, who looked quite amazed, knowing nothing of our history. From Stain we were driven by a most tiresome phlegmatic postilion--N. B., in driving I mean; we thought we never were to arrive at the next stage. At last we did arrive, as you may see from my writing this letter. (Mamma is half asleep.) From Ferbertshaim to Wasserburg all went on well. Viviamo come i principi; we want nothing except you, dear papa. Well, this is the will of God; no doubt all will go on right. I hope to hear that papa is as well as I am and as happy. Nothing comes amiss to me; I am quite a second papa, and look after everything.[Footnote: The father had been very uneasy at the idea of allowing the inexperienced youth, whose unsuspicious good-nature exposed him still more to danger, to travel alone; for the mother also was not very expert in travelling.] I settled from the first to pay the postilions, for I can talk to such fellows better than mamma. At the Stern, in Wasserburg, we are capitally served; I am treated here like a prince. About half an hour ago (mamma being engaged at the time) the Boots knocked at the door to take my orders about various things, and I gave them to him with the same grave air that I have in my portrait. Mamma is just going to bed. We both beg that papa will be careful of his health, not go out too early, nor fret, [Footnote: The Father was strongly disposed to hypochondria.] but laugh and be merry and in good spirits. We think the Mufti H. C. [the Archbishop Hieronymus Colloredo] a MUFF, but we know God to be compassionate, merciful, and loving. I kiss papa's hands a thousand times, and embrace my SISTER MADCAP as often as I have to-day taken snuff. I think I have left my diplomas at home? [his appointment at court.] I beg you will send them to me soon. My pen is rude, and I am not refined. 60. Munich, Sept. 26, 1777. WE arrived safely in Munich on the afternoon of the 24th, at half-past four o'clock. A complete novelty to me was being obliged to drive to the Custom House, escorted by a grenadier with a fixed bayonet. The first person we knew, who met us when driving, was Signor Consoli; he recognized me at once, and showed the utmost joy at seeing me again. Next day he called on us. I cannot attempt to describe the delight of Herr Albert [the "learned landlord" of the Black Eagle, on the Kaufinger Gasse, now Hotel Detzer]; he is indeed a truly honest man, and a very good friend of ours. On my arrival I went to the piano, and did not leave it till dinner-time. Herr Albert was not at home, but he soon came in, and we went down to dinner together. There I met M. Sfeer and a certain secretary, an intimate friend of his; both send their compliments to you. Though tired by our journey, we did not go to bed till late; we, however, rose next morning at seven o'clock. My hair was in such disorder that I could not go to Count Seeau's till half-past ten o'clock. When I got there I was told that he had driven out to the chasse. Patience! In the mean time I wished to call on Chorus-master Bernard, but he had gone to the country with Baron Schmid. I found Herr von Belvall deeply engaged in business; he sent you a thousand compliments. Rossi came to dinner, and at two o'clock Consoli, and at three arrived Becke [a friend of Mozart's and an admirable flute-player], and also Herr von Belvall. I paid a visit to Frau von Durst [with whom Nannerl had lived], who now lodges with the Franciscans. At six o'clock I took a short walk with Herr Becke. There is a Professor Huber here, whom you may perhaps remember better than I do; he says that the last time he either saw or heard me was at Vienna, at Herr von Mesmer's, junior. He is neither tall nor short, pale, with silvery-gray hair, and his physiognomy rather like that of Herr Unterbereiter. This gentleman is vice-intendant of the theatre; his occupation is to read through all the comedies to be acted, to improve or to spoil, to add to or to put them aside. He comes every evening to Albert's, and often talks to me. To-day, Friday, the 26th, I called on Count Seeau at half-past eight o'clock. This was what passed. As I was going into the house I met Madame Niesser, the actress, just coming out, who said, "I suppose you wish to see the Count?" "Yes!" "He is still in his garden, and Heaven knows when he may come!" I asked her where the garden was. "As I must see him also," said she, "let us go together." We had scarcely left the house when we saw the Count coming towards us about twelve paces off; he recognized and instantly named me. He was very polite, and seemed already to know all that had taken place about me. We went up the steps together slowly and alone; I told him briefly the whole affair. He said that I ought at once to request an audience of his Highness the Elector, but that, if I failed in obtaining it, I must make a written statement. I entreated him to keep this all quite private, and he agreed to do so. When I remarked to him that there really was room for a genuine composer here, he said, "I know that well." I afterwards went to the Bishop of Chiemsee, and was with him for half an hour. I told him everything, and he promised to do all he could for me in the matter. At one o'clock he drove to Nymphenburg, and declared positively he would speak to the Electress. On Sunday the Count comes here. Herr Joannes Kronner has been appointed Vice-Concertmeister, which he owes to a blunt speech of his. He has produced two symphonies--Deo mene liberi [God preserve me from such]--of his own composition. The Elector asked him, "Did you really compose these?" "Yes, your Royal Highness!" "From whom did you learn?" "From a schoolmaster in Switzerland, where so much importance is attached to the study of composition. This schoolmaster taught me more than all your composers here, put together, could teach me." Count Schonborn and his Countess, a sister of the Archbishop [of Salzburg], passed through here to-day. I chanced to be at the play at the time. Herr Albert, in the course of conversation, told them that I was here, and that I had given up my situation. They were all astonishment, and positively refused to believe him when he said that my salary, of blessed memory, was only twelve florins thirty kreuzers! They merely changed horses, and would gladly have spoken with me, but I was too late to meet them. Now I must inquire what you are doing, and how you are. Mamma and I hope that you are quite well. I am still in my very happiest humor; my head feels as light as a feather since I got away from that chicanery. I have grown fatter already. 61. Munich, Sept. 29, 1777. TRUE enough, a great many kind friends, but unluckily most of them have little or nothing in their power. I was with Count Seeau yesterday, at half-past ten o'clock, and found him graver and less natural than the first time; but it was only in appearance, for to-day I was at Prince Zeill's [Bishop of Chiemsee--No. 56], who, with all courtesy, said to me, "I don't think we shall effect much here. During dinner, at Nymphenburg, I spoke privately to the Elector, who replied: 'It is too soon at this moment; he must leave this and go to Italy and become famous. I do not actually reject him, but these are too early days as yet.'" There it is! Most of these grandees have such paroxysms of enthusiasm for Italy. Still, he advised me to go to the Elector, and to place my case before him as I had previously intended. I spoke confidentially at dinner to-day with Herr Woschitka [violoncellist in the Munich court orchestra, and a member of the Elector's private band], and he appointed me to come to-morrow at nine o'clock, when he will certainly procure me an audience. We are very good friends now. He insisted on knowing the name of my informant; but I said to him, "Rest assured that I am your friend and shall continue to be so; I am in turn equally convinced of your friendship, so you must be satisfied with this." But to return to my narrative. The Bishop of Chiemsee also spoke to the Electress when tete-a-tete with her. She shrugged her shoulders, and said she would do her best, but was very doubtful as to her success. I now return to Count Seeau, who asked Prince Zeill (after he had told him everything). "Do you know whether Mozart has not enough from his family to enable him to remain here with a little assistance? I should really like to keep him." Prince Zeill answered: "I don't know, but I doubt it much; all you have to do is to speak to himself on the subject." This, then, was the cause of Count Seeau being so thoughtful on the following day. I like being here, and I am of the same opinion with many of my friends, that if I could only remain here for a year or two, I might acquire both money and fame by my works, and then more probably be sought by the court than be obliged to seek it myself. Since my return here Herr Albert has a project in his head, the fulfilment of which does not seem to me impossible. It is this: He wishes to form an association of ten kind friends, each of these to subscribe 1 ducat (50 gulden) monthly, 600 florins a year. If in addition to this I had even 200 florins per annum from Count Seeau, this would make 800 florins altogether. How does papa like this idea? Is it not friendly? Ought not I to accept it if they are in earnest? I am perfectly satisfied with it; for I should be near Salzburg, and if you, dearest papa, were seized with a fancy to leave Salzburg (which from my heart I wish you were) and to pass your life in Munich, how easy and pleasant would it be! For if we are obliged to live in Salzburg with 504 florins, surely we might live in Munich with 800. To-day, the 30th, after a conversation with Herr Woschitka, I went to court by appointment. Every one was in hunting-costume. Baron Kern was the chamberlain on service. I might have gone there last night, but I could not offend M. Woschitka, who himself offered to find me an opportunity of speaking to the Elector. At 10 o'clock he took me into a narrow little room, through which his Royal Highness was to pass on his way to hear mass, before going to hunt. Count Seeau went by, and greeted me very kindly: "How are you, dear Mozart?" When the Elector came up to me, I said, "Will your Royal Highness permit me to pay my homage and to offer your Royal Highness my services?" "So you have finally left Salzburg?" "I have left it forever, your Royal Highness. I only asked leave to make a journey, and being refused, I was obliged to take this step, although I have long intended to leave Salzburg, which is no place for me, I feel sure." "Good heavens! you are quite a young man. But your father is still in Salzburg?" "Yes, your Royal Highness; he humbly lays his homage at your feet, &c., &c. I have already been three times in Italy. I have written three operas, and am a member of the Bologna Academy; I underwent a trial where several maestri toiled and labored for four or five hours, whereas I finished my work in one. This is a sufficient testimony that I have abilities to serve any court. My greatest wish is to be appointed by your Royal Highness, who is himself such a great &c., &c." "But, my good young friend, I regret that there is not a single vacancy. If there were only a vacancy!" "I can assure your Royal Highness that I would do credit to Munich." "Yes, but what does that avail when there is no vacancy?" This he said as he was moving on; so I bowed and took leave of his Royal Highness. Herr Woschitka advises me to place myself often in the way of the Elector. This afternoon I went to Count Salern's. His daughter is a maid of honor, and was one of the hunting-party. Ravani and I were in the street when the whole procession passed. The Elector and the Electress noticed me very kindly. Young Countess Salern recognized me at once, and waved her hand to me repeatedly. Baron Rumling, whom I had previously seen in the antechamber, never was so courteous to me as on this occasion. I will soon write to you what passed with Salern. He was very kind, polite, and straightforward.--P. S. Ma tres-chere soeur, next time I mean to write you a letter all for yourself. My remembrances to B. C. M. R. and various other letters of the alphabet. Adieu! A man built a house here and inscribed on it: "Building is beyond all doubt an immense pleasure, but I little thought that it would cost so much treasure." During the night some one wrote underneath, "You ought first to have counted the cost." 62. Munich, Oct. 2, 1777. YESTERDAY, October 1st, I was again at Count Salern's, and to-day I even dined with him. I have played a great deal during the last three days, and with right good will too. Papa must not, however, imagine that I like to be at Count Salern's on account of the young lady; by no means, for she is unhappily in waiting, and therefore never at home, but I am to see her at court to-morrow morning, at ten o'clock, in company with Madame Hepp, formerly Madlle. Tosson. On Saturday the court leaves this, and does not return till the 20th. To-morrow I am to dine with Madame and Madlle. de Branca, the latter being a kind of half pupil of mine, for Sigl seldom comes, and Becke, who usually accompanies her on the flute, is not here. On the three days that I was at Count Salern's I played a great many things extempore--two Cassations [Divertimentos] for the Countess, and the finale and Rondo, and the latter by heart. You cannot imagine the delight this causes Count Salern. He understands music, for he was constantly saying Bravo! while other gentlemen were taking snuff, humming and hawing, and clearing their throats, or holding forth. I said to him, "How I do wish the Elector were only here, that he might hear me play! He knows nothing of me--he does not know what I can do. How sad it is that these great gentlemen should believe what any one tells them, and do not choose to judge for themselves! BUT IT IS ALWAYS SO. Let him put me to the test. He may assemble all the composers in Munich, and also send in quest of some from Italy and France, Germany, and England and Spain, and I will undertake to write against them all." I related to him all that had occurred to me in Italy, and begged him, if the conversation turned on me, to bring in these things. He said, "I have very little influence, but the little that is in my power I will do with pleasure." He is also decidedly of opinion that if I could only remain here, the affair would come right of itself. It would not be impossible for me to contrive to live, were I alone here, for I should get at least 300 florins from Count Seeau. My board would cost little, for I should be often invited out; and even were it not so, Albert would always be charmed to see me at dinner in his house. I eat little, drink water, and for dessert take only a little fruit and a small glass of wine. Subject to the advice of my kind friends, I would make the following contract with Count Seeau:--I would engage to produce every year four German operas, partly buffe and partly serie; from each of these I should claim the profits of one performance, for such is the custom here. This alone would bring me in 500 florins, which along with my salary would make up 800 florins, but in all probability more; for Reiner, an actor and singer, cleared 200 florins by his benefit, and I am VERY MUCH BELOVED HERE, and how much more so should I be if I contributed to the elevation of the national theatre of Germany in music! And this would certainly be the case with me, for I was inspired with the most eager desire to write when I heard the German operettas. The name of the first singer here is Keiserin; her father is cook to a count here; she is a very pleasing girl, and pretty on the stage; I have not yet seen her near. She is a native of this place. When I heard her it was only her third appearance on the stage. She has a fine voice, not powerful, though by no means weak, very pure, and a good intonation. Her instructor is Valesi; and her style of singing shows that her master knows how to sing as well as how to teach. When she sustains her voice for a couple of bars, I am quite surprised at the beauty of her crescendo and decrescendo. She as yet takes her shakes slowly, and this I highly approve of, for it will be all the more pure and clear if she ever wishes to take it quicker; besides, it is easier when quick. She is a great favorite with the people here, and with me. Mamma was in the pit; she went as early as half-past four o'clock to get a place. I, however, did not go till half-past six o'clock, for I can go to any box I please, being pretty well known. I was in the Brancas' box; I looked at Keiserin with my opera-glass, and at times she drew tears from my eyes. I often called out bravo, bravissimo, for I always remembered that it was only her third appearance. The piece was Das Fischermadchen, a very good translation of Piccini's opera, with his music. As yet they have no original pieces, but are now anxious soon to give a German opera seria, and a strong wish prevails that I should compose it. The aforesaid Professor Huber is one of those who wish this. I shall now go to bed, for I can sit up no longer. It is just ten o'clock. Baron Rumling lately paid me the following compliment: "The theatre is my delight--good actors and actresses, good singers, and a clever composer, such as yourself." This is indeed only talk, and words are not of much value, but he never before spoke to me in this way. I write this on the 3d of October. To-morrow the court departs, and does not return till the 20th. If it had remained here, I would have taken the step I intended, and stayed on here for a time; but as it is, I hope to resume my journey with mamma next Tuesday. But meanwhile the project of the associated friends, which I lately wrote to you about, may be realized, so that when we no longer care to travel we shall have a resource to fall back upon. Herr von Krimmel was to-day with the Bishop of Chiemsee, with whom he has a good deal to do on the subject of salt. He is a strange man; here he is called "your Grace,"--that is, THE LACKEYS do so. Having a great desire that I should remain here, he spoke very zealously to the Prince in my favor. He said to me, "Only let me alone; I will speak to the Prince, and I have a right to do so, for I have done many things to oblige him." The Prince promised him that I should POSITIVELY be appointed, but the affair cannot be so quickly settled. On the return of the court he is to speak to the Elector with all possible earnestness and zeal. At eight o'clock this morning I called on Count Seeau. I was very brief, and merely said, "I have only come, your Excellency, to explain my case clearly. I have been told that I ought to go to Italy, which is casting a reproach on me. I was sixteen months in Italy, I have written three operas, and all this is notorious enough. What further occurred, your Excellency will see from these papers." And after showing him the diplomata, I added, "I only show these and say this to your Excellency that, in the event of my being spoken of, and any injustice done me, your Excellency may with good grounds take my part." He asked me if I was now going to France. I said I intended to remain in Germany; by this, however, he supposed I meant Munich, and said, with a merry laugh, "So you are to stay here after all?" I replied, "No! to tell you the truth, I should like to have stayed, if the Elector had favored me with a small sum, so that I might then have offered my compositions to your Excellency devoid of all interested motives. It would have been a pleasure to me to do this." At these words he half lifted his skull-cap. At ten o'clock I went to court to call on Countess Salern. I dined afterwards with the Brancas. Herr Geheimrath von Branca, having been invited by the French Ambassador, was not at home. He is called "your Excellency." Countess Salern is a Frenchwoman, and scarcely knows a word of German; so I have always been in the habit of talking French to her. I do so quite boldly, and she says that I don't speak at all badly, and that I have the good habit of speaking slowly, which makes me more easily understood. She is a most excellent person, and very well-bred. The daughter plays nicely, but fails in time. I thought this arose from want of ear on her part, but I find I can blame no one but her teacher, who is too indulgent and too easily satisfied. I practised with her to-day, and I could pledge myself that if she were to learn from me for a couple of months, she would play both well and accurately. At four o'clock I went to Frau von Tosson's, where I found mamma and also Frau von Hepp. I played there till eight o'clock, and after that we went home; and at half-past nine a small band of music arrived, consisting of five persons--two clarionet-players, two horns, and one bassoon. Herr Albert (whose name-day is to-morrow) arranged this music in honor of me and himself. They played rather well together, and were the same people whom we hear during dinner at Albert's, but it is well known that they are trained by Fiala. They played some of his pieces, and I must say they are very pretty: he has some excellent ideas. To-morrow we are to have a small musical party together, where I am to play. (Nota bene, on that miserable piano! oh, dear! oh, dear! oh, dear!) I beg you will excuse my horrid writing, but ink, haste, sleep, and dreams are all against me. I am now and forever amen, your dutiful son, A. W. MOZART. 63. Munich, Oct. 6, 1777. Mamma cannot write; in the first place, she is not inclined, and, secondly, she has a headache. So I must hold the pen for her and keep faith with her. I am just going with the Professor to call on Madlle. Keiserin. Yesterday we had in our house a clerical wedding, or altum tempus ecclesiasticum. There was dancing, but I only danced four minuets, and was in my own room again by eleven o'clock, for, out of fifty young ladies, there was only one who danced in time--Madlle. Kaser, a sister of Count Perusa's secretary. The Professor thought fit to leave me in the lurch, so I did not go to Madlle. Keiserin, because I don't know where she lives. Last Saturday, the 4th, on the stately and solemn occasion of the name-day of his Royal Highness the Archduke Albert, we had a select music-party at home, which commenced at half-past three o'clock and finished at eight. M. Dubreil, whom papa no doubt remembers, was also present; he is a pupil of Tartini's. In the forenoon he gave a lesson on the violin to the youngest son, Carl, and I chanced to come in at the time, I never gave him credit for much talent, but I saw that he took great pains in giving his lesson; and when we entered into conversation about violin, concert, and orchestral playing, he reasoned very well, and was always of my opinion, so I retracted my former sentiments with regard to him, and was persuaded that I should find him play well in time, and a correct violinist in the orchestra. I, therefore, invited him to be so kind as to attend our little music rehearsal that afternoon. We played, first of all, the two quintets of Haydn, but to my dismay I could scarcely hear Dubreil, who could not play four continuous bars without a mistake. He could never find the positions, and he was no good friend to the sospirs [short pauses]. The only good thing was that he spoke politely and praised the quintets; otherwise--As it was, I said nothing to him, but he kept constantly saying himself, "I beg your pardon, but really I am out again! the thing is puzzling, but fine!" I invariably replied, "It does not in the least signify; we are only among ourselves." I then played the concertos in C, in B, and in E flat, and after that a trio of mine. This was finely accompanied, truly! In the adagio I was obliged to play six bars of his part. As a finale, I played my last divertimento in B; they all pricked up their ears. I played as if I had been the greatest violin-player in all Europe. The Sunday after, at three o'clock, we were at a certain Herr von Hamm's. The Bishop of Chiemsee set off to-day for Salzburg. N. B.--I send my sister, by him, "6 duetti a clavicembalo e violino," by Schuster. I have often played them here; they are by no means bad. If I remain long enough, I intend to compose six in this style, for it is much liked here. 64. Munich, Oct. 11, 1777. WHY have I not as yet written anything about Misliweczeck? [See No. 43.] Because I was only too glad not to think of him; for when he is spoken of I invariably hear how highly he praises me, and what a kind and true friend he is of mine; but then follow pity and lamentation. He was described to me, and deeply was I distressed. How could I bear that Misliweczeck, my intimate friend, should be in the same town, nay, even in the same corner of the world with me, and neither see him nor speak to him? Impossible! so I resolved to go to visit him. On the previous day, I called on the manager of the Duke's Hospital to ask if I might see my friend in the garden, which I thought best, though the doctors assured me there was no longer any risk of infection. The manager agreed to my proposal, and said I should find him in the garden between eleven and twelve o'clock, and, if he was not there when I came, to send for him. Next day I went with Herr von Hamm, secretary in the Crown Office, (of whom I shall speak presently,) and mamma to the Duke's Hospital. Mamma went into the Hospital church, and we into the garden. Misliweczeck was not there, so we sent him a message. I saw him coming across, and knew him at once from his manner of walking. I must tell you that he had already sent me his remembrances by Herr Heller, a violoncello-player, and begged me to visit him before I left Munich. When he came up to me, we shook hands cordially. "You see," said he, "how unfortunate I am." These words and his appearance, which papa is already aware of from description, so went to my heart that I could only say, with tears in my eyes, "I pity you from my heart, my dear friend." He saw how deeply I was affected, so rejoined quite cheerfully, "Now tell me what you are doing; when I heard that you were in Munich, I could scarcely believe it; how could Mozart be here and not long ago have come to see me?" "I hope you will forgive me, but I had such a number of visits to make, and I have so many kind friends here." "I feel quite sure that you have indeed many kind friends, but a truer friend than myself you cannot have." He asked me whether papa had told me anything of a letter he had received. I said, "Yes, he did write to me," (I was quite confused, and trembled so much in every limb that I could scarcely speak,) "but he gave me no details." He then told me that Signor Gaetano Santoro, the Neapolitan impresario, was obliged, owing to impegni and protezione, to give the composition of the opera for this Carnival to a certain Maestro Valentini; but he added, "Next year he has three at liberty, one of which is to be at my service. But as I have already composed six times for Naples, I don't in the least mind undertaking the less promising one, and making over to you the best libretto, viz. the one for the Carnival. God knows whether I shall be able to travel by that time, but if not, I shall send back the scrittura. The company for next year is good, being all people whom I have recommended. You must know that I have such influence in Naples that, when I say engage such a one, they do so at once." Marquesi is the primo uomo, whom he, and indeed all Munich too, praises very highly; Marchiani is a good prima donna; and there is a tenor, whose name I cannot recall, but Misliweczeck says he is the best in all Italy. He also said, "I do beg of you to go to Italy; there one is esteemed and highly prized." And in truth he is right. When I come to reflect on the subject, in no country have I received such honors, or been so esteemed, as in Italy, and nothing contributes more to a man's fame than to have written Italian operas, and especially for Naples. He said he would write a letter for me to Santoro, which I was to copy out when I went to see him next day; but finding it impossible to return, he sent me a sketch of the letter to-day. I was told that when Misliweczeck heard people here speaking of Becke, or other performers on the piano, he invariably said, "Let no one deceive himself; none can play like Mozart; in Italy, where the greatest masters are, they speak of no one but Mozart; when his name is mentioned, not a word is said of others." I can now write the letter to Naples when I please; but, indeed, the sooner the better. I should, however, first like to have the opinion of that highly discreet Hofcapellmeister, Herr von Mozart. I have the most ardent desire to write another opera. The distance is certainly great, but the period is still a long way off when I am to write this opera, and there may be many changes before then. I think I might at all events undertake it. If, in the mean time, I get no situation, eh, bien! I shall then have a resource in Italy. I am at all events certain to receive 100 ducats in the Carnival; and when I have once written for Naples I shall be sought for everywhere. As papa well knows, there is an opera buffa in Naples in spring, summer, and autumn, for which I might write for the sake of practice, not to be quite idle. It is true that there is not much to be got by this, but still there is something, and it would be the means of gaining more honor and reputation than by giving a hundred concerts in Germany, and I am far happier when I have something to compose, which is my chief delight and passion; and if I get a situation anywhere, or have hopes of one, the scrittura would be a great recommendation to me, and excite a sensation, and cause me to be more thought of. This is mere talk, but still I say what is in my heart. If papa gives me any good grounds to show that I am wrong, then I will give it up, though, I own, reluctantly. Even when I hear an opera discussed, or am in a theatre myself and hear voices, oh! I really am beside myself! To-morrow, mamma and I are to meet Misliweczeck in the Hospital garden to take leave of him; for he wished me last time to fetch mamma out of church, as he said he should like to see the mother of so great a virtuoso. My dear papa, do write to him as often as you have time to do so; you cannot confer a greater pleasure on him, for the man is quite forsaken. Sometimes he sees no one for a whole week, and he said to me, "I do assure you it does seem so strange to me to see so few people; in Italy I had company every day." He looks thin, of course, but is still full of fire and life and genius, and the same kind, animated person he always was. People talk much of his oratorio of "Abraham and Isaac," which he produced here. He has just completed (with the exception of a few arias) a Cantata, or Serenata, for Lent; and when he was at the worst he wrote an opera for Padua. Herr Heller is just come from him. When I wrote to him yesterday I sent him the Serenata that I wrote in Salzburg: for the Archduke Maximilian ["Il Re Pastore"]. Now to turn to something else. Yesterday I went with mamma immediately after dinner to take coffee with the two Fraulein von Freysinger. Mamma, however, took none, but drank two bottles of Tyrolese wine. At three o'clock she went home again to make preparations for our journey. I, however, went with the two ladies to Herr von Hamm's, whose three young ladies each played a concerto, and I one of Aichner's prima vista, and then went on extemporizing. The teacher of these little simpletons, the Demoiselles Hamm, is a certain clerical gentleman of the name of Schreier. He is a good organ-player, but no pianist. He kept staring at me with an eye-glass. He is a reserved kind of man who does not talk much; he patted me on the shoulder, sighed, and said, "Yes--you are--you understand--yes--it is true--you are an out-and-outer!" By the by, can you recall the name of Freysingen--the papa of the two pretty girls I mentioned? He says he knows you well, and that he studied with you. He particularly remembers Messenbrunn, where papa (this was quite new to me) played most incomparably on the organ. He said, "It was quite startling to see the pace at which both hands and feet went, but quite inimitable; a thorough master indeed; my father thought a great deal of him; and how he humbugged the priests about entering the Church! You are just what he was then, as like as possible; only he was a degree shorter when I knew him." A propos, a certain Hofrath Effeln sends you his kind regards; he is one of the best Hofraths here, and would long ago have been made chancellor but for one defect--TIPPLING. When we saw him for the first time at Albert's, both mamma and I thought, "What an odd-looking fish!" Just imagine a very tall man, stout and corpulent, and a ridiculous face. When he crosses the room to another table, he folds both hands on his stomach, stoops very low, and then draws himself up again, and makes little nods; and when this is over he draws back his right foot, and does this to each individual separately. He says that he knows papa intimately. I am now going for a little to the play. Next time I will write more fully, but I can't possibly go on to-day, for my fingers do ache uncommonly. Munich, October 11th, at 1/4 to 12 at night, I write as follows:--I have been at the Drittl comedy, but only went in time for the ballet, or rather the pantomime, which I had not before seen. It is called "Das von der fur Girigaricanarimanarischaribari verfertigte Ei." It was very good and funny. We are going to-morrow to Augsburg on account of Prince Taxis not being at Ratisbon but at Teschingen. He is, in fact, at present at his country-seat, which is, however, only an hour from Teschingen. I send my sister, with this, four preludes; she will see and hear for herself the different keys into which they lead. My compliments to all my kind friends, particularly to young Count Arco, to Madlle. Sallerl, and to my best of all friends, Herr Bullinger; I do beg that next Sunday at the usual eleven-o'clock music he will be so good as to make an authoritative oration in my name, and present my regards to all the members of the orchestra and exhort them to industry, that I may not one day be accused of being a humbug, for I have everywhere extolled their orchestra, and I intend always to do so. 65. Augsburg, Oct. 14, 1777. I HAVE made no mistake in my date, for I write before dinner, and I think that next Friday, the day after to-morrow, we shall be off again. Pray hear how generous the gentlemen of Augsburg are. In no place was I ever so overwhelmed with marks of distinction as here. My first visit was to the Stadtpfleger Longo Tabarro [Burgomaster Langenmantl]. My cousin, [Footnote: Leopold Mozart had a brother in Augsburg, a bookbinder, whose daughter, "das Basle" (the cousin), was two years younger than Mozart.] a good, kind, honest man and worthy citizen, went with me, and had the honor to wait in the hall like a footman till my interview with the high and mighty Stadtpfleger was over. I did not fail first of all to present papa's respectful compliments. He deigned graciously to remember you, and said, "And pray how have things gone with him?" "Vastly well, God be praised!" I instantly rejoined, "and I hope things have also gone well with you?" He then became more civil, and addressed me in the third person, so I called him "Sir"; though, indeed, I had done so from the first. He gave me no peace till I went up with him to see his son-in-law (on the second floor), my cousin meanwhile having the pleasure of waiting in the staircase-hall. I was obliged to control myself with all my might, or I must have given some polite hint about this. On going upstairs I had the satisfaction of playing for nearly three-quarters of an hour on a good clavichord of Stein's, in the presence of the stuck-up young son, and his prim condescending wife, and the simple old lady. I first extemporized, and then played all the music he had, prima, vista, and among others some very pretty pieces of Edlmann's. Nothing could be more polite than they all were, and I was equally so, for my rule is to behave to people just as they behave to me; I find this to be the best plan. I said that I meant to go to Stein's after dinner, so the young man offered to take me there himself. I thanked him for his kindness, and promised to return at two o'clock. I did so, and we went together in company with his brother-in-law, who looks a genuine student. Although I had begged that my name should not be mentioned, Herr von Langenmantl was so incautious as to say, with a simper, to Herr Stein, "I have the honor to present to you a virtuoso on the piano." I instantly protested against this, saying that I was only an indifferent pupil of Herr Sigl in Munich, who had charged me with a thousand compliments to him. Stein shook his head dubiously, and at length said, "Surely I have the honor of seeing M. Mozart?" "Oh, no," said I; "my name is Trazom, and I have a letter for you." He took the letter and was about to break the seal instantly, but I gave him no time for that, saying, "What is the use of reading the letter just now? Pray open the door of your saloon at once, for I am so very anxious to see your pianofortes." "With all my heart," said he, "just as you please; but for all that I believe I am not mistaken." He opened the door, and I ran straight up to one of the three pianos that stood in the room. I began to play, and he scarcely gave himself time to glance at the letter, so anxious was he to ascertain the truth; so he only read the signature. "Oh!" cried he, embracing me, and crossing himself and making all sorts of grimaces from intense delight. I will write to you another day about his pianos. He then took me to a coffee-house, but when we went in I really thought I must bolt, there was such a stench of tobacco-smoke, but for all that I was obliged to bear it for a good hour. I submitted to it all with a good grace, though I could have fancied that I was in Turkey. He made a great fuss to me about a certain Graf, a composer (of flute concertos only); and said, "He is something quite extraordinary," and every other possible exaggeration. I became first hot and then cold from nervousness. This Graf is a brother of the two who are in Harz and Zurich. He would not give up his intention, but took me straight to him--a dignified gentleman indeed; he wore a dressing-gown that I would not be ashamed to wear in the street. All his words are on stilts, and he has a habit of opening his mouth before knowing what he is going to say; so he often shuts it again without having said anything. After a great deal of ceremony he produced a concerto for two flutes; I was to play first violin. The concerto is confused, not natural, too abrupt in its modulations, and devoid of all genius. When it was over I praised it highly, for, indeed, he deserves this. The poor man must have had labor and study enough to write it. At last they brought a clavichord of Stein's out of the next room, a very good one, but inch-thick with dust. Herr Graf, who is director here, stood there looking like a man who had hitherto believed his own modulations to be something very clever, but all at once discovers that others may be still more so, and without grating on the ear. In a word, they all seemed lost in astonishment. 66. Augsburg, Oct. 17, 1777. WITH regard to the daughter of Hamm, the Secretary of War, I can only say that there can be no doubt she has a decided talent for music, for she has only learned three years, and can play a number of pieces very well. I find it difficult, however, to explain distinctly the impression she makes on me while she is playing; she seems to me so curiously constrained, and she has such an odd way of stalking over the keys with her long bony fingers! To be sure, she has had no really good master, and if she remains in Munich she will never become what her father wishes and hopes, for he is eager beyond measure that she should one day be a distinguished pianiste. If she goes to papa at Salzburg, it will be a twofold benefit to her, both as to music and common sense, of which she certainly has no great share. She has often made me laugh very much, and you would have amusement enough for your trouble. She is too absent to think of eating much. You say I ought to have practised with her? I really could not for laughing, for when I occasionally played something with the right hand, she instantly said bravissimo, and that in the voice of a little mouse. I will now relate to you as briefly as possible the Augsburg history to which I have already alluded. Herr von Fingerle, who sent his compliments to you, was also at Herr Graf's. The people were very civil, and discussed the concert I proposed to give, all saying, "It will be one of the most brilliant concerts ever given in Augsburg. You have a great advantage in having made the acquaintance of our Stadtpfleger Langenmantl; besides, the name of Mozart has much influence here." So we separated mutually pleased. I must now tell you that Herr von Langenmantl, junior, when at Herr Stein's, said that he would pledge himself to arrange a concert in the Stube, [Footnote: The Bauernstube, the Patrician Casino.] (as something very select, and complimentary to me,) for the nobility alone. You can't think with what zeal he spoke, and promised to undertake it. We agreed that I should call on him the next morning for the answer; accordingly I went; this was on the 13th. He was very polite, but said that as yet he could not say anything decided. I played there again for an hour, and he invited me next day, the 14th, to dinner. In the forenoon he sent to beg that I would come to him at eleven o'clock, and bring some pieces with me, as he had asked some of the professional musicians, and they intended to have some music. I immediately sent some music, and went myself at eleven, when, with many lame excuses, he coolly said, "By the by, I could do nothing about the concert; oh, I was in such a rage yesterday on your account. The patrician members of the Casino said that their cashbox was at a very low ebb, and that you were not the kind of virtuoso who could expect a souverain d'or." I merely smiled, and said, "I quite agree with them." N. B.--He is Intendant of Music in the Casino, and the old father a magistrate! but I cared very little about it. We sat down to dinner; the old gentleman also dined up-stairs with us, and was very civil, but did not say a word about the concert. After dinner I played two concertos, something out of my head, and then a trio of Hafeneder's on the violin. I would gladly have played more, but I was so badly accompanied that it gave me the colic. He said to me, good-naturedly, "Don't let us part company to-day; go to the play with us, and return here to supper." We were all very merry. When we came back from the theatre, I played again till we went to supper. Young Langenmantl had already questioned me in the forenoon about my cross, [Footnote: Mozart, by his father's desire, wore the "Order of the Golden Spur," conferred on him by the Pope.] and I told him exactly how I got it, and what it was. He and his brother-in-law said over and over again, "Let us order a cross, too, that we may be on a par with Herr Mozart." I took no notice of this. They also repeatedly said, "Hallo! you sir! Knight of the Spur!" I said not a word; but during supper it became really too bad. "What may it have cost? three ducats? must you have permission to wear it? Do you pay extra for leave to do so? We really must get one just like it." An officer there of the name of Bach, said, "For shame! what would you do with the cross?" That young ass, Kurzen Mantl, winked at him, but I saw him, and he knew that I did. A pause ensued, and then he offered me snuff, saying, "There, show that you don't care a pinch of snuff for it." I still said nothing. At length he began once more in a sneering tone: "I may then send to you to-morrow, and you will be so good as to lend me the cross for a few minutes, and I will return it immediately after I have spoken to the goldsmith about it. I know that when I ask him its value (for he is a queer kind of man) he will say a Bavarian thaler; it can't be worth more, for it is not gold, only copper, ha! ha!" I said, "By no means--it is lead, ha! ha!" I was burning with anger and rage. "I say," rejoined he, "I suppose I may, if need be, leave out the spur?" "Oh, yes," said I, "for you have one already in your head; I, too, have one in mine, but of a very different kind, and I should be sorry to exchange mine for yours; so there, take a pinch of snuff on that!" and I offered him snuff. He became pale with rage, but began again: "Just now that order looked so well on that grand waistcoat of yours." I made no reply, so he called the servant and said "Hallo! you must have greater respect for my brother-in-law and myself when we wear the same cross as Herr Mozart; take a pinch of snuff on that!" I started up; all did the same, and showed great embarrassment. I took my hat and my sword, and said, "I hope to have the pleasure of seeing you to-morrow." "To-morrow I shall not be here." "Well, then, the next morning, when I shall still be here." "Ho, ho! you surely don't mean to"--"I mean nothing; you are a set of boors, so good-night," and off I went. Next day I told the whole story to Herr Stein, Herr Geniaulx, and to Herr Director Graf--I don't mean about the cross, but how highly disgusted I was at their having bragged so much about a concert, and now it had come to nothing. "I call this making a fool of a person and leaving him in the lurch. I am very sorry that I ever came here. I could not possibly have believed that in Augsburg, my papa's native town, such an insult could have been offered to his son." You cannot imagine, dear papa, how angry and indignant these three gentlemen were, saying, "Oh, you must positively give a concert here; we don't stand in need of the patricians." I, however, adhered to my resolution and said, "I am willing to give a small farewell concert at Herr Stein's, for my few kind friends here who are connoisseurs." The Director was quite distressed, and exclaimed, "It is abominable--shameful; who could have believed such a thing of Langenmantl! Par Dieu! if he really wished it, no doubt it would have been carried through." We then separated. The Director went down-stairs with me in his dressing-gown as far as the door, and Herr Stein and Geniaulx walked home with me. They urged us to make up our mind to stay here for a time, but we remained firm. I must not forget to say that, when young Langenmantl lisped out to me, in his usual cool indifferent way, the pleasant news as to my concert, he added, that the patricians invited me to their concert next Thursday. I said, "I will come as one of the audience." "Oh, we hope you will give us the pleasure of hearing you play also." "Well, perhaps I may; why not?" But having received so grievous an insult the next evening, I resolved not to go near him again, to steer clear of the whole set of patricians, and to leave Augsburg. During dinner, on the 16th, I was called out by a servant-maid of Langenmantl's, who wished to know whether he might expect me to go with him to the concert? and he begged I would come to him immediately after dinner. I sent my compliments in return, that I had no intention of going to the concert; nor could I come to him, as I was already engaged (which was quite true); but that I would call next morning to take leave of him, as on Saturday next, at furthest, I was to leave Augsburg. In the meantime Herr Stein had been to see the other patricians of the Evangelical party, and spoke so strongly to them that these gentlemen were quite excited. "What!" said they, "shall we permit a man who does us so much honor to leave this without even hearing him? Herr von Langenmantl, having already heard him, thinks that is enough." At last they became so excited that Herr Kurzenmantl, the excellent youth, was obliged to go to Herr Stein himself to entreat him, in the name of the patricians, to do all in his power to persuade me to attend the concert, but to say that I must not expect great things. At last I went with him, though with considerable reluctance. The principal gentlemen were very polite, particularly Baron Belling, who is a director or some such animal; he opened my music-portfolio himself. I brought a symphony with me, which they played, and I took a violin part. The orchestra is enough to throw any one into fits. That young puppy Langenmantl was all courtesy, but his face looked as impertinent as ever; he said to me, "I was rather afraid you might have escaped us, or been offended by our jokes the other evening." "By no means," said I coolly; "you are still very young; but I advise you to be more cautious in future, for I am not accustomed to such jokes. The subject on which you were so facetious did you no credit, nor did it answer your purpose, for you see I still wear the order; you had better have chosen some other topic for your wit." "I assure you," said he, "it was only my brother-in-law who"--"Let us say no more about it," said I. "We had nearly been deprived of the pleasure of seeing you altogether," he rejoined. "Yes; had it not been for Herr Stein, I certainly should not have come; and, to tell you the truth, I am only here now to prevent you Augsburg gentlemen being the laughing-stock of other countries, which would have been the case if I had told them that I was eight days in the city where my father was born, without any one there taking the trouble to hear me!" I played a concerto, and all went off well except the accompaniment; and as a finale I played a sonata. At the close, Baron Belling thanked me in the warmest manner in the name of all the company; and, begging me to consider only their good will, presented me with two ducats. They give me no peace here till I agree to give a public concert next Saturday. Perhaps--but I own I am heartily sick of it all. I shall be indeed glad when I arrive at a place where there is a court. I may with truth say that, were it not for my kind cousins, my regrets would be as numberless as the hairs on my head for ever having come to Augsburg. I must write you some account of my fair cousin, but you must excuse my deferring this till to-morrow, for one ought to be quite fresh to praise her as highly as she deserves. The 17th.--I now write early in the morning to say that my cousin is pretty, intelligent, lovable, clever, and gay, probably because she has lived so much in society; she was also some time at Munich. We do, indeed, exactly suit each other, for she too is rather inclined to be satirical, so we banter our friends most merrily together. [The Mozart family were both well known and dreaded for their somewhat sharp tongues.] 67. Augsburg, Oct. 17, 1777. I must now tell you about the Stein pianos. Before seeing these, Spath's pianos were my favorites; but I must own that I give the preference to those of Stein, for they damp much better than those in Ratisbon. If I strike hard, whether I let my fingers rest on the notes or lift them, the tone dies away at the same instant that it is heard. Strike the keys as I choose, the tone always remains even, never either jarring or failing to sound. It is true that a piano of this kind is not to be had for less than three hundred florins, but the pains and skill which Stein bestows on them cannot be sufficiently repaid. His instruments have a feature of their own; they are supplied with a peculiar escapement. Not one in a hundred makers attends to this; but, without it, it is impossible that a piano should not buzz and jar. His hammers fall as soon as they touch the strings, whether the keys be held down by the fingers or not. When he has completed an instrument of this class, (which he told me himself,) he tries all kinds of passages and runs on it, and works away at it, testing its powers till it is capable of doing anything, for he labors not for his own benefit alone, (or he might be saved much trouble,) but for that of music. He often says, "If I were not such a passionate lover of music, playing also myself a little on the piano, I should long ago have lost patience with my work, but I like my instruments to respond to the player, and to be durable." His pianos do really last well. He warrants the sounding-board neither breaking nor cracking; when he has finished one, he exposes it in the air to rain, snow, sun, and every kind of devilry, that it may give way, and then inserts slips of wood which he glues in, making it quite strong and solid. He is very glad when it does crack, for then he is pretty sure nothing further can happen to it. He frequently makes cuts into them himself, and then glues them up, thus making them doubly strong. He has three of these pianos at this moment finished, and I played on them again to-day. We dined to-day with young Herr Gassner, who is the handsome widower of a lovely young wife; they were only married two years. He is an excellent and kind young man; he gave us a capital dinner. A colleague of the Abbe Henri Bullinger, and Wishofer also dined there, and an ex-Jesuit, who is at present Capellmeister in the cathedral here. He knows Herr Schachtner well [court-trumpeter at Salzburg], and was leader of his band in Ingolstadt; he is called Father Gerbl. Herr Gassner, and one of his wife's unmarried sisters, mamma, our cousin, and I went after dinner to Herr Stein's. At four o'clock came the Capellmeister and Herr Schmittbauer, the organist of St. Ulrich, a worthy good old man. I played at sight a sonata of Becke's, which was rather difficult, but very poor, al solito. The astonishment of the Capellmeister and the organist was indescribable. I have played my six sonatas by heart repeatedly, both here and in Munich. The fifth in G, I played at the distinguished Casino concert, and the last in D, which has an incomparable effect on Stein's pianos. The pedals, pressed by the knees, are also better made by him than by any one else; you scarcely require to touch them to make them act, and as soon as the pressure is removed not the slightest vibration is perceptible. To-morrow perhaps I shall come to his organs, that is, write to you about them, and I reserve for the last the subject of his little daughter. When I said to Herr Stein that I should like to play on one of his organs, as the organ was my passion, he seemed surprised, and said, "What! such a man as you, so great a pianist, like to play on an instrument devoid of sweetness and expression, with no gradations from piano to forte, but always going on the same?" "That does not signify; the organ always was, both in my eyes and ears, the king of all instruments." "Well, just as you please." So we went together. I could readily perceive from his conversation that he did not expect me to do great things on his organ, evidently thinking that I should handle it in the style of a piano. He told me that by Schobert's own desire he had taken him also to the organ, "and very nervous it made me," said he, "for Schobert had told everybody, and the church was nearly full. I did not doubt the man's spirit, fire, and execution; still, this does not much suit the organ. But the moment he began my opinion was entirely changed." I only said in reply, "Do you then think, Herr Stein, that I am likely to run wild on the organ?" "Oh! you!"--When we came to the organ-loft, I began a prelude, when he laughed. A fugue followed. "I can now quite understand why you like to play the organ," said he, "when you can play in this manner." At first the pedal was a little awkward for me, as it was without the breaks, beginning with C, then D E in one row, whereas with us D and E are above, just where E flat and F sharp are here; but I quickly mastered it. I went also to try the old organ at St. Ulrich's. The stair that leads to it is really dreadful. I requested that some other person might play the organ for me, that I might go down and listen to it, for above the organ has no effect; but I profited very little by this, for the young leader of the choir, a priest, made such reckless runs on the organ that it was impossible to understand them, and when he attempted harmonies they proved only discords, being always false. Afterwards they would insist on our going to a coffee-room, for mamma and my cousin were with us. A certain Father Emilian, a conceited jackass and a sorry witling, was very sweet on my cousin, and wished to have his jest with her, but she made a jest of him. At last, when rather tipsy, (which soon occurred,) he began to talk about music, and sang a canon, saying, "I never in my life heard anything finer." I said, "I regret that I can't sing it with you, for nature has not given me the power of intoning." "No matter," said he. So he began. I made the third, but I sang different words--thus: "Pater Emilian, oh! thou numskull"--sotto voce to my cousin; then we laughed on for at least half an hour. The Pater said to me, "If we only could be longer together, we could discuss the art of musical composition." "In that case," said I, "our discussion would soon come to an end." A famous rap on the knuckles for him! TO BE CONTINUED. 68. Augsburg, Oct. 23, 1777. MY concert took place yesterday. Count Wolfeck interested himself much in it, and brought some chanoinesses with him. I went to his lodgings the very day I arrived, but he was not here at that time. A few days ago he returned, and on hearing that I was still in Augsburg, he did not wait for a visit from me, but at the very moment when I was taking my hat and sword to go to call on him he walked in. I must now give you a description of the last few days before my concert. Last Saturday I was at St. Ulrich's, as I already told you. Some days before my cousin took me with him to present me to the Prelate of the Holy Cross, a kind excellent old man. Previous to going to St. Ulrich's last Saturday, I went with my cousin to the Monastery of the Holy Cross, as the first time I was there neither the Deacon nor the Procurator was at home, and my cousin told me that the Procurator was very jolly. [Here mamma inserts a few lines--which frequently occurs in the letters. She says at the close:] "I am quite surprised that Schuster's duets [see No. 63] are still"--Wolfgang: "Oh, he has got them." Mamma: "No, indeed; he always writes that he has not got them." Wolfgang: "I hate arguing; I am sure he has got them, so there's an end of it." Mamma: "You are mistaken." Wolfgang: "No; I am right. I will show it to mamma in his own writing." Mamma: "Well, where is it?" Wolfgang: "Here; read it." She is reading it at this moment. Last Sunday I attended service at the Holy Cross, and at ten o'clock we went to Herr Stein's, where we tried over a couple of symphonies for the concert. Afterwards I dined with my cousin at the Holy Cross, where a band played during dinner. Badly as they play in the monastery, I prefer it to the Augsburg orchestra. I played a symphony, and a concerto in B of Vanhall's, on the violin, with unanimous applause. The Dean is a kind, jovial man, a cousin of Eberlin [deceased Capellmeister of Salzburg]. His name is Zeschinger. He knows papa well. At night, after supper, I played the Strassburg concerto; it went as smooth as oil; every one praised the fine pure tone. A small clavichord was then brought in, on which I preluded, and played a sonata and the Fischer variations. Some of those present whispered to the Dean that he ought to hear me play in the organ style. I asked him to give me a theme, which he declined, but one of the monks did so. I handled it quite leisurely, and all at once (the fugue being in G minor) I brought in a lively movement in the major key, but in the same tempo, and then at the end the original subject, only reversed. At last it occurred to me to employ the lively movement for the subject of the fugue also, I did not hesitate long, but did so at once, and it went as accurately as if Daser [a Salzburg tailor] had taken its measure. The Dean was in a state of great excitement. "It is over," said he, "and it's no use talking about it, but I could scarcely have believed what I have just heard; you are indeed an able man. My prelate told me beforehand that in his life he never heard any one play the organ in a more finished and solid style" (he having heard me some days previously when the Dean was not here). At last some one brought me a fugued sonata, and asked me to play it. But I said, "Gentlemen, I really must say this is asking rather too much, for it is not likely I shall be able to play such a sonata at sight." "Indeed, I think so too; it is too much; no one could do it," said the Dean eagerly, being all in my favor. "At all events," said I, "I can but try." I heard the Dean muttering all the time behind me, "Oh, you rogue! oh, you knave!" I played till 11 o'clock, bombarded and besieged, as it were, by fugue themes. Lately, at Stein's, he brought me a sonata of Becke's, but I think I already told you this. A propos, as to his little girl, [Footnote: Nanette, at that time eight years old; afterwards the admirable wife of Andreas Streicher, the friend of Schiller's youth, and one of Beethoven's best friends in Vienna.] any one who can see and hear her play without laughing must be Stein [stone] like her father. She perches herself exactly opposite the treble, avoiding the centre, that she may have more room to throw herself about and make grimaces. She rolls her eyes and smirks; when a passage comes twice she always plays it slower the second time, and if three times, slower still. She raises her arms in playing a passage, and if it is to be played with emphasis she seems to give it with her elbows and not her fingers, as awkwardly and heavily as possible. The finest thing is, that if a passage occurs (which ought to flow like oil) where the fingers must necessarily be changed, she does not pay much heed to that, but lifts her hands, and quite coolly goes on again. This, moreover, puts her in a fair way to get hold of a wrong note, which often produces a curious effect. I only write this in order to give you some idea of pianoforte-playing and teaching here, so that you may in turn derive some benefit from it. Herr Stein is quite infatuated about his daughter. She is eight years old, and learns everything by heart. She may one day be clever, for she has genius, but on this system she will never improve, nor will she ever acquire much velocity of finger, for her present method is sure to make her hand heavy. She will never master what is the most difficult and necessary, and in fact the principal thing in music, namely, time; because from her infancy she has never been in the habit of playing in correct time. Herr Stein and I discussed this point together for at least two hours. I have, however, in some degree converted him; he asks my advice now on every subject. He was quite devoted to Becke, and now he sees and hears that I can do more than Becke, that I make no grimaces, and yet play with so much expression that he himself acknowledges none of his acquaintances have ever handled his pianos as I do. My keeping so accurately in time causes them all much surprise. The left hand being quite independent in the tempo rubato of an adagio, they cannot at all comprehend. With them the left hand always yields to the right. Count Wolfeck and others, who have a passionate admiration for Becke, said lately publicly in a concert that I beat Becke hollow. Count Wolfeck went round the room saying, "In my life I never heard anything like this." He said to me, "I must tell you that I never heard you play as you did to-day, and I mean to say so to your father as soon as I go to Salzburg." What do you think was the first piece after the symphony? The concerto for three pianos. Herr Demmler took the first part, I the second, and Herr Stein the third. I then played a solo, my last sonata in D, for Durnitz, and afterwards my concerto in B; then again a solo in the organ style, namely, a fugue in C minor, then all of a sudden a splendid sonata in C major, finishing with a rondo, all extempore. What a noise and commotion there was! Herr Stein did nothing but make faces and grimaces of astonishment. Herr Demmler was seized with fits of laughter, for he is a queer creature, and when anything pleases him exceedingly, he can't help laughing heartily; indeed, on this occasion he actually began to swear! Addio! 69. Augsburg, Oct. 25, 1777. The receipts of the concert were 90 florins, without deducting the expenses. Including, therefore, the two ducats we took in the Casino concert, we had 100 florins. The expenses of the concert did not exceed 16 florins 30 kreutzers; the room I had gratis. I believe most of the musicians will make no charge. We have now ALTOGETHER lost about 26 or 27 florins. This is not of much moment. I am writing this on Saturday the 25th. This morning early I received the letter with the sad news of Frau Oberbereiterin's death. Madlle. Tonerl can now purse up her mouth, or perhaps open it wide, and shut it again as empty as ever. As to the baker's daughter, I have no objection to make; I foresaw all this long ago. This was the cause of my reluctance to leave home, and finding it so difficult to go. I hope the affair is not by this time known all over Salzburg? I beg you, dear papa, most urgently to keep the matter quiet as long as possible, and in the mean time to pay her father on my account any expenses he may have incurred by her entrance into the convent, which I will repay gladly when I return to Salzburg. I thank you most truly, dear papa, for your good wishes on my name-day. Do not be uneasy on my account, for I have always God before my eyes, I acknowledge His omnipotence, I dread His wrath; but I also know His love, His compassion and mercy towards His creatures, and that He will never forsake His servants. When His will is done I am resigned; so I never can fail to be happy and contented. I shall certainly also strive to live as strictly as possible in accordance with your injunctions and advice. Thank Herr Bullinger a thousand times for his congratulations. I mean to write to him soon and thank him myself, but I may in the mean time assure him that I neither know nor have any better, more sincere, or truer friend than himself. I beg also humbly to thank Madlle. Sallerl; pray tell her I mean to enclose some verses to show my gratitude to her in my letter to Herr Bullinger. Thank my sister also; she is to keep the Schuster duets, and give herself no further trouble on the subject. In your first letter, dear papa, you write that I lowered myself by my conduct to that lad Langenmantl. Anything but that! I was only straightforward, no more. I see you think he is still a boy; he is one or two and twenty, and a married man. Can any one be considered a boy who is married? I have never gone near him since. I left two cards for him to-day, and excused myself for not going in, having so many indispensable calls to make. I must now conclude, for mamma insists absolument on going to dinner, and then to pack. To-morrow we go straight to Wallerstein. My dear little cousin, who sends you her regards, is anything but a prude. She dressed a la Francaise to please me yesterday. She looked at least 5 per cent, prettier in consequence. Now, Addio! On the 26th of October the mother and son set off to Mannheim. The mother writes that Wolfgang intended to write to Augsburg, "but he will scarcely be able to do so to-day, for he is now at the rehearsal of the oratorio; so I must beg you to accept my humble self instead." Wolfgang then adds:-- 70. Mannheim, Oct. 30, 1777. I must beg you also to accept my insignificancy. I went to-day with Herr Danner to M. Cannabich's [Director of the Elector's orchestra]. He was uncommonly polite, and I played something for him on his piano, which is a very good one. We went together to the rehearsal. I could scarcely help laughing when I was presented to the musicians, because, though some who knew me by renomme were very civil and courteous, the rest, who knew nothing whatever about me, stared in such a ludicrous way, evidently thinking that because I am little and young nothing great or mature is to be found in me; but they shall soon find it out. Herr Cannabich is to take me himself to-morrow to Count Savioli, the Intendant of Music. One good thing is that the Elector's name-day is close at hand. The oratorio they are rehearsing is Handel's, but I did not stay to hear it, for they first rehearsed a Psalm Magnificat of the Vice-Capellmeister here, [Abbe] Vogler, which lasted a good hour. I must now conclude, for I have still to write to my cousin. 71. Mannheim, Nov. 4, 1777. I am at Cannabich's every day, and mamma went with me there to-day. He is a very different man from what he formerly was, [FOOTNOTE: Mozart had been at his house, when a boy, with his father.] and the whole orchestra say the same. He is very fond of me. He has a daughter who plays the piano very nicely, and in order to make him still more friendly towards me I am working just now at a sonata for her, which is finished all but the Rondo. When I had completed the first allegro and andante, I took it to him myself and played it over; you can't think what applause this sonata receives. There chanced to be some of the musicians there at the moment--young Danner, Lang, who plays the French horn, and the hautboy-player, whose name I forget, but who plays remarkably well, and has a pleasing delicate tone [Ramm]. I made him a present of a concerto for the hautboy; it is being copied in Cannabich's room. The man is wild with delight. I played him the concerto to-day at Cannabich's, and THOUGH KNOWN TO BE MINE it pleased very much. No one said that it was NOT WELL COMPOSED, because people here don't understand these things. They ought to apply to the Archbishop; he would soon put them on the right scent. [FOOTNOTE: The Archbishop never was satisfied with any of the compositions that Mozart wrote for his concerts, but invariably had some fault to find with them.] I played all my six sonatas to-day at Cannabich's. Herr Kapellmeister Holzbauer went with me to-day to Count Savioli's. Cannabich was there at the time. Herr Holzbauer said to the Count in Italian that I wished to have the honor of playing before his Serene Highness the Elector. "I was here fifteen years ago," said I, "but now I am older and more advanced, and I may say in music also"--"Oh!" said the Count, "you are"--I have no idea whom he took me for, as Cannabich interrupted him, but I affected not to hear, and entered into conversation with the others. Still I observed that he was speaking of me very earnestly. The Count then said to me, "I hear that you play the piano very tolerably?" I bowed. I must now tell you about the music here. On Saturday, All-Saints' day, I attended high mass. The orchestra is very good and numerous. On each side ten or eleven violins, four tenors, two hautboys, two flutes, and two clarionets, two corni, four violoncellos, four bassoons, and four double basses, besides trumpets and kettle-drums. This should give fine music, but I would not venture to produce one of my masses here. Why? From their being short? No, everything is liked short. From their church style? By no means; but solely because NOW in Mannheim, under present circumstances, it is necessary to write chiefly for the instruments, for nothing can possibly be conceived worse than the voices here. Six soprani, six alti, six tenori, and six bassi, to twenty violins and twelve bassi, are in the same proportion as 0 to 1. Is it not so, Herr Bullinger? It proceeds from this:--The Italians are miserably represented: they have only two musici here, and they are already old. This race is dying out. These soprano singers, too, would prefer singing counter-tenor; for they can no longer take the high notes. The few boys they have are wretched. The tenor and bass just like our singers at funerals. Vogler, who lately conducted the mass, is barren and frivolous--a man who imagines he can do a great deal, and does very little. The whole orchestra dislike him. To-day, Sunday, I heard a mass of Holzbauer's, which is now twenty-six years old, but excellent. He writes very well, and has a good church style, arranges the vocal parts as well as the instrumental, and writes good fugues. They have two organists here; it would be worth while to come to Mannheim on purpose to hear them--which I had a famous opportunity of doing, as it is the custom here for the organist to play during the whole of the Benedictus. I heard the second organist first, and then the other. In my opinion the second is preferable to the first; for when I heard the former, I asked, "Who is that playing on the organ?" "Our second organist." "He plays miserably." When the other began, I said, "Who may that be?" "Our first organist." "Why, he plays more miserably still." I believe if they were pounded together, something even worse would be the result. It is enough to kill one with laughing to look at these gentlemen. The second at the organ is like a child trying to lift a millstone. You can see his anguish in his face. The first wears spectacles. I stood beside him at the organ and watched him with the intention of learning something from him; at each note he lifts his hands entirely off the keys. What he believes to be his forte is to play in six parts, but he mostly makes fifths and octaves. He often chooses to dispense altogether with his right hand when there is not the slightest need to do so, and plays with the left alone; in short, he fancies that he can do as he will, and that he is a thorough master of his organ. Mamma sends her love to you all; she cannot possibly write, for she has still to say her officium. We came home very late from the grand opera rehearsal. I must go to-morrow after high mass to the illustrious Electress; she is resolved absolument to teach me to knit filee. I am very eager about this, as she and the Elector wish that I should knit in public next Thursday at the great gala concert. The young Princess here, who is a child compared with the Electress, knits very prettily. The Zweenbruck and his Zwobrucken (Deux Ponts) arrived here at eight o'clock. A propos, mamma and I earnestly beg you, dear papa, to send our charming cousin a souvenir; we both regretted so much having nothing with us, but we promised to write to you to send her something. We wish two things to be sent--a double neckerchief in mamma's name, like the one she wears, and in mine some ornament; a box, or etui, or anything you like, only it must be pretty, for she deserves it. [FOOTNOTE: The father was still in possession of many of the ornaments and jewels presented to these children during their artistic tours.] She and her father took a great deal of trouble on our account, and wasted much time on us. My cousin took the receipts for me at my concert. Addio! 72. Mannheim, Nov. 5, 1777. My dear Coz--Buzz,-- I have safely received your precious epistle--thistle, and from it I perceive--achieve, that my aunt--gaunt, and you--shoe, are quite well--bell. I have to-day a letter--setter, from my papa--ah-ha, safe in my hands--sands. I hope you also got--trot, my Mannheim letter--setter. Now for a little sense--pence. The prelate's seizure--leisure, grieves me much--touch, but he will, I hope, get well--sell. You write--blight, you will keep--cheap, your promise to write to me--he-he, to Augsburg soon--spoon. Well, I shall be very glad--mad. You further write, indeed you declare, you pretend, you hint, you vow, you explain, you distinctly say, you long, you wish, you desire, you choose, command, and point out, you let me know and inform me that I must send you my portrait soon--moon. Eh, bien! you shall have it before long--song. Now I wish you good night--tight. The 5th.--Yesterday I conversed with the illustrious Electress; and to-morrow, the 6th, I am to play in the gala concert, and afterwards, by desire of the Princess, in their private apartments. Now for something rational! I beg of you--why not?--I beg of you, my very dear cousin--why not?--when you write to Madame Tavernier in Munich, to convey a message from me to the two Demoiselles Freysinger--why not? odd enough! but why not?--and I humbly ask pardon of Madlle. Josepha--I mean the youngest, and pray why not? why should I not ask her pardon? strange! but I don't know why I should not, so I do ask her pardon very humbly--for not having yet sent the sonata I promised her, but I mean to do so as soon as possible. Why not? I don't know why not. I can now write no more--which makes my heart sore. To all my kind friends much love--dove. Addio! Your old young, till death--breath, WOLFGANG AMADE ROSENCRANZ. Miennham, eht ht5 rebotoc, 7771. 73. Mannheim, Nov. 8, 1777. This forenoon, at Herr Cannabich's, I wrote the Rondo of the sonata for his daughter; so they would not let me leave them all day. The Elector and the Electress, and the whole court, are very much pleased with me. Both times I played at the concert, the Elector and she stood close beside me at the piano. After the music was at an end, Cannabich managed that I should be noticed by the court. I kissed the Elector's hand, who said, "I think it is now fifteen years since you were here?" "Yes, your Highness, it is fifteen years since I had that honor." "You play inimitably." The Princess, when I kissed her hand, said, "Monsieur, je vous assure, on ne peut pas jouer mieux." Yesterday I went with Cannabich to pay the visit mamma already wrote to you about [to Duke Carl Theodor's children], and there I conversed with the Elector as if he had been some kind friend. He is a most gracious and good Prince. He said to me, "I hear you wrote an opera at Munich" ["La finta Giardiniera"]? "Yes, your Highness, and, with your gracious permission, my most anxious wish is to write an opera here; I entreat you will not quite forget me. I could also write a German one, God be praised!" said I, smiling. "That may easily be arranged." He has one son and three daughters, the eldest of whom and the young Count play the piano. The Elector questioned me confidentially about his children. I spoke quite honestly, but without detracting from their master. Cannabich was entirely of my opinion. The Elector, on going away, took leave of me with much courtesy. After dinner to-day I went, at two o'clock, with Cannabich to Wendling's, the flute-player, where they were all complaisance. The daughter, who was formerly the Elector's favorite, plays the piano very prettily; afterwards I played. I cannot describe to you the happy mood I was in. I played extempore, and then three duets with the violin, which I had never in my life seen, nor do I now know the name of the author. They were all so delighted that I--was desired to embrace the ladies. No hard task with the daughter, for she is very pretty. We then went again to the Elector's children; I played three times, and from my heart too,--the Elector himself each time asking me to play. He seated himself each time close to me and never stirred. I also asked a certain Professor there to give me a theme for a fugue, and worked it out. Now for my congratulations! My very dearest papa,--I cannot write poetically, for I am no poet. I cannot make fine artistic phrases that cast light and shadow, for I am no painter; I can neither by signs nor by pantomime express my thoughts and feelings, for I am no dancer; but I can by tones, for I am a musician. So to-morrow, at Cannabich's, I intend to play my congratulations both for your name-day and birthday. Mon tres-cher pere, I can only on this day wish for you, what from my whole heart I wish for you every day and every night--health, long life, and a cheerful spirit. I would fain hope, too, that you have now less annoyance than when I was in Salzburg; for I must admit that I was the chief cause of this. They treated me badly, which I did not deserve, and you naturally took my part, only too lovingly. I can tell you this was indeed one of the principal and most urgent reasons for my leaving Salzburg in such haste. I hope, therefore, that my wish is fulfilled. I must now close by a musical congratulation. I wish that you may live as many years as must elapse before no more new music can be composed. Farewell! I earnestly beg you to go on loving me a little, and, in the mean time, to excuse these very poor congratulations till I open new shelves in my small and confined knowledge-box, where I can stow away the good sense which I have every intention to acquire. 74. Mannheim, Nov. 13, 1777. We received your last two letters, and now I must answer them in detail. Your letter desiring me to inquire about Becke's parents [in Wallerstein, No. 68] I did not get till I had gone to Mannheim, so too late to comply with your wish; but it never would have occurred to me to do so, for, in truth, I care very little about him. Would you like to know how I was received by him? Well and civilly; that is, he asked where I was going. I said, most probably to Paris. He then gave me a vast deal of advice, saying he had recently been there, and adding, "You will make a great deal by giving lessons, for the piano is highly prized in Paris." He also arranged that I should dine at the officers' table, and promised to put me in the way of speaking to the Prince. He regretted very much having at that moment a sore throat, (which was indeed quite true,) so that he could not go out with me himself to procure me some amusement. He was also sorry that he could have no music in honor of me, because most of the musical people had gone that very day on some pedestrian excursion to--Heaven knows where! At his request I tried his piano, which is very good. He often said Bravo! I extemporized, and also played the sonatas in B and D. In short, he was very polite, and I was also polite, but grave. We conversed on a variety of topics--among others, about Vienna, and more particularly that the Emperor [Joseph II.] was no great lover of music. He said, "It is true he has some knowledge of composition, but of nothing else. I can still recall (and he rubbed his forehead) that when I was to play before him I had no idea what to play; so I began with some fugues and trifles of that kind, which in my own mind I only laughed at." I could scarcely resist saying, "I can quite fancy your laughing, but scarcely so loud as I must have done had I heard you!" He further said (what is the fact) that the music in the Emperor's private apartments is enough to frighten the crows. I replied, that whenever I heard such music, if I did not quickly leave the room it gave me a headache. "Oh! no; it has no such effect on me; bad music does not affect my nerves, but fine music never fails to give me a headache." I thought to myself again, such a shallow head as yours is sure to suffer when listening to what is beyond its comprehension. Now for some of our news here. I was desired to go yesterday with Cannabich to the Intendant, Count Savioli, to receive my present. It was just what I had anticipated--a handsome gold watch. Ten Carolins would have pleased me better just now, though the watch and chain, with its appendages, are valued at twenty Carolins. Money is what is most needed on a journey; and, by your leave, I have now five watches. Indeed, I have serious thoughts of having a second watch-pocket made, and, when I visit a grandee, to wear two watches, (which is indeed the fashion here,) that no one may ever again think of giving me another. I see from your letter that you have not yet read Vogler's book. [FOOTNOTE: Ton Wissenschaft und Ton Kunst.] I have just finished it, having borrowed it from Cannabich. His history is very short. He came here in a miserable condition, performed on the piano, and composed a ballet. This excited the Elector's compassion, who sent him to Italy. When the Elector was in Bologna, he questioned Father Valoti about Vogler. "Oh! your Highness, he is a great man," &c., &c. He then asked Father Martini the same question. "Your Highness, he has talent; and by degrees, when he is older and more solid, he will no doubt improve, though he must first change considerably." When Vogler came back he entered the Church, was immediately appointed Court Chaplain, and composed a Miserere which all the world declares to be detestable, being full of false harmony. Hearing; that it was not much commended, he went to the Elector and complained that the orchestra played badly on purpose to vex and annoy him; in short, he knew so well how to make his game (entering into so many petty intrigues with women) that he became Vice-Capellmeister. He is a fool, who fancies that no one can be better or more perfect than himself. The whole orchestra, from the first to the last, detest him. He has been the cause of much annoyance to Holzbauer. His book is more fit to teach arithmetic than composition. He says that he can make a composer in three weeks, and a singer in six months; but we have not yet seen any proof of this. He despises the greatest masters. To myself he spoke with contempt of Bach [Johann Christian, J. Sebastian's youngest son, called the London Bach], who wrote two operas here, the first of which pleased more than the second, Lucio Silla. As I had composed the same opera in Milan, I was anxious to see it, and hearing from Holzbauer that Vogler had it, I asked him to lend it to me. "With all my heart," said he; "I will send it to you to-morrow without fail, but you won't find much talent in it." Some days after, when he saw me, he said with a sneer, "Well, did you discover anything very fine--did you learn anything from it? One air is rather good. What are the words?" asked he of some person standing near. "What air do you mean?" "Why, that odious air of Bach's, that vile--oh! yes, pupille amate. He must have written it after a carouse of punch." I really thought I must have laid hold of his pigtail; I affected, however, not to hear him, said nothing, and went away. He has now served out his time with the Elector. The sonata for Madlle. Rosa Cannabich is finished. Last Sunday I played the organ in the chapel for my amusement. I came in while the Kyrie was going on, played the last part, and when the priest intoned the Gloria I made a cadence, so different, however, from what is usually heard here, that every one looked round in surprise, and above all Holzbauer. He said to me, "If I had known you were coming, I would have put out another mass for you." "Oh!" said I, "to puzzle me, I suppose?" Old Toeschi and Wendling stood all the time close beside me. I gave them enough to laugh at. Every now and then came a pizzicato, when I rattled the keys well; I was in my best humor. Instead of the Benedictus here, there is always a voluntary, so I took the ideas of the Sanctus and worked them out in a fugue. There they all stood making faces. At the close, after Ita missa est, I played a fugue. Their pedal is different from ours, which at first rather puzzled me, but I soon got used to it. I must now conclude. Pray write to us still at Mannheim. I know all about Misliweczeck's sonatas [see No. 64], and played them lately at Munich; they are very easy and agreeable to listen to. My advice is that my sister, to whom I humbly commend myself, should play them with much expression, taste, and fire, and learn them by heart. For these are sonatas which cannot fail to please every one, are not difficult to commit to memory, and produce a good effect when played with precision. 75. Mannheim, Nov. 13, 1777. Potz Himmel! Croatians, demons, witches, hags, and cross batteries! Potz Element! air, earth, fire, and water! Europe, Asia, Africa, and America! Jesuits, Augustines, Benedictines, Capucins, Minorites, Franciscans, Dominicans, Carthusians, and Knights of the Cross! privateers, canons regular and irregular, sluggards, rascals, scoundrels, imps, and villains all! donkeys, buffaloes, oxen, fools, blockheads, numskulls, and foxes! What means this? Four soldiers and three shoulder-belts! Such a thick packet and no portrait! [FOOTNOTE: The "Basle" (his cousin) had promised him her portrait. She sent it subsequently to Salzburg, where it still hangs in the Mozarteum.] I was so anxious about it--indeed, I felt sure of getting it, having yourself written long ago to say that I should have it soon, very soon. Perhaps you doubt my keeping my promise [about the ornaments--see No. 71], but I cannot think this either. So pray let me have the likeness as quickly as you can; and I trust it is taken as I entreated--in French costume. How do I like Mannheim? As well as I can any place where my cousin is not. I hope, on the other hand, that you have at all events received my two letters--one from Hohenaltheim, and one from Mannheim--this, such as it is, being the third from here, but making the fourth in all. I must conclude, for we are just going to dinner, and I am not yet dressed. Love me as I love you, and then we shall never cease loving each other. Adieu! J'espere que vous aurez deja pris quelque lection dans la langue francaise, et je ne doute point que--ecoutez!--que vous aurez bientot le francais mieux que moi; car il y a certainement deux ans que je n'ai pas ecrit un mot de cette langue. Encore adieu! Je vous baise les mains. 76. Mannheim, Nov. 14-16, 1777. I, Johannes, Chrysostomus, Amadeus, Wolfgangus, Sigismundus, Mozart, plead guilty to having both yesterday and the day before (and very often besides) stayed away from home till twelve o'clock at night, from ten o'clock till the aforesaid hour, I being in the presence and company of M. Cannabich, his wife and daughter, the Herrn Schatzmeister, Ramm, and Lang, making doggerel rhymes with the utmost facility, in thought and word, but not in deed. I should not, however, have conducted myself in so reckless a manner if our ringleader, namely, the so-called Lisel (Elisabeth Cannabich), had not inveigled and instigated me to mischief, and I am bound to admit that I took great pleasure in it myself. I confess all these my sins and shortcomings from the depths of my heart; and in the hope of often having similar ones to confess, I firmly resolve to amend my present sinful life. I therefore beg for a dispensation if it can be granted; but, if not, it is a matter of indifference to me, for the game will go on all the same. Lusus enim suum habet ambitum, says the pious singer Meissner, (chap. 9, p. 24,) and also the pious Ascenditor, patron of singed coffee, musty lemonade, milk of almonds with no almonds in it, and, above all, strawberry ice full of lumps of ice, being himself a great connoisseur and artist in these delicacies. The sonata I composed for Madlle. Cannabich I intend to write out as soon as possible on small paper, and to send it to my sister. I began to teach it to Madlle. Rose three days ago, and she has learned the allegro. The andante will give us most trouble, for it is full of expression, and must be played with accuracy and taste, and the fortes and pianos given just as they are marked. She is very clever, and learns with facility. Her right hand is very good, but the left is unhappily quite ruined. I must say that I do really feel very sorry for her, when I see her laboring away till she is actually panting for breath; and this not from natural awkwardness on her part, but because, being so accustomed to this method, she cannot play in any other way, never having been shown the right one. I said, both to her mother and herself, that if I were her regular master I would lock up all her music, cover the keys of the piano with a handkerchief, and make her exercise her right and left hand, at first quite slowly in nothing but passages and shakes, &c., until her hands were thoroughly trained; and after that I should feel confident of making her a genuine pianiste. They both acknowledged that I was right. It is a sad pity; for she has so much genius, reads very tolerably, has great natural aptitude, and plays with great feeling. Now about the opera briefly. Holzbauer's music [for the first great German operetta, "Gunther von Schwarzburg"] is very beautiful, but the poetry is not worthy of such music. What surprises me most is, that so old a man as Holzbauer should still have so much spirit, for the opera is incredibly full of fire. The prima donna was Madame Elisabeth Wendling, not the wife of the flute-player, but of the violinist. She is in very delicate health; and, besides, this opera was not written for her, but for a certain Madame Danzi, who is now in England; so it does not suit her voice, and is too high for her. Herr Raaff, in four arias of somewhere about 450 bars, sang in a manner which gave rise to the remark that his want of voice was the principal cause of his singing so badly. When he begins an air, unless at the same moment it recurs to your mind that this is Raaff, the old but once so renowned tenor, I defy any one not to burst out laughing. It is a fact, that in my own case I thought, if I did not know that this is the celebrated Raaff, I should be bent double from laughing, but as it is--I only take out my handkerchief to hide a smile. They tell me here that he never was a good actor; that people went to hear, but not to see him. He has by no means a pleasing exterior. In this opera he was to die, singing in a long, long, slow air; and he died laughing! and towards the end of the aria his voice failed him so entirely that it was impossible to stand it! I was in the orchestra next Wendling the flute-player, and as he had previously criticized the song, saying it was unnatural to sing so long before dying, adding, "I do think he will never die!" I said in return, "Have a little patience; it will soon be all over with him, for I can hear he is at the last gasp!" "And I too," said he, laughing. The second singer, Madlle. Strasserin, sang very well, and is an admirable actress. There is a national stage here, which is permanent like that at Munich; German operettas are sometimes given, but the singers in them are wretched. Yesterday I dined with the Baron and Baroness von Hagen, Oberstjagermeister here. Three days ago I called on Herr Schmalz, a banker, to whom Herr Herzog, or rather Nocker and Schidl, had given me a letter. I expected to have found a very civil good sort of man. When I gave him the letter, he read it through, made me a slight bow, and said nothing. At last, after many apologies for not having sooner waited on him, I told him that I had played before the Elector. "Really!" Altum silentium. I said nothing, he said nothing. At last I began again: "I will no longer intrude on you. I have the honor to"--Here he interrupted me. "If I can be of any service to you, I beg"--"Before I leave this I must take the liberty to ask you"--"Not for money?" "Yes, if you will be so good as to"--"Oh! that I can't do; there is nothing in the letter about money. I cannot give you any money, but anything else"--"There is nothing else in which you can serve me--nothing whatever. I have the honor to take my leave." I wrote the whole history yesterday to Herr Herzog in Augsburg. We must now wait here for the answer, so you may still write to us at Mannheim. I kiss your hand, and am your young brother and father, as in your last letter you say "I am the old man and son." To-day is the 16th when I finish this, or else you will not know when it was sent off. "Is the letter ready?" "Yes, mamma, here it is!" 77. Mannheim, Nov. 20, 1777. The gala began again yesterday [in honor of the Elector's name-day]. I went to hear the mass, which was a spick-and-span new composition of Vogler's. Two days ago I was present at the rehearsal in the afternoon, but came away immediately after the Kyrie. I never in my life heard anything like it; there is often false harmony, and he rambles into the different keys as if he wished to drag you into them by the hair of your head; but it neither repays the trouble, nor does it possess any originality, but is only quite abrupt. I shall say nothing of the way in which he carries out his ideas. I only say that no mass of Vogler's can possibly please any composer (who deserves the name). For example, I suddenly hear an idea which is NOT BAD. Well, instead of remaining NOT BAD, no doubt it soon becomes good? Not at all! it becomes not only BAD, but VERY BAD, and this in two or three different ways: namely, scarcely has the thought arisen when something else interferes to destroy it; or he does not finish it naturally, so that it may remain good; or it is not introduced in the right place; or it is finally ruined by bad instrumentation. Such is Vogler's music. Cannabich composes far better than when we knew him in Paris, but what both mamma and I remarked here at once in the symphonies is, that one begins just like another, always slow and unisono. I must now, dear papa, write you something about the Holy Cross in Augsburg, which I have always forgotten to do. I met with a great many civilities there, and the Prelate is the most good-natured man in the world--a kind, worthy old simpleton, who may be carried off at any moment, for his breath fails sadly. He recently--in fact, the very day we left--had an attack of paralysis. He, and the Dean and Procurator, begged us when we came back to Augsburg to drive straight to the Holy Cross. The Procurator is as jolly as Father Leopold at Seeon. [FOOTNOTE: A cloister in Lower Bavaria, that Wolfgang often visited with his father, as they had a dear friend there, Father Johannes.] My cousin told me beforehand what kind of man he was, so we soon became as well acquainted as if we had known each other for twenty years. I lent him the mass in F, and the first of the short masses in C, and the offertorium in counterpoint in D minor. My fair cousin has undertaken to be custodian of these. I got back the offertorium punctually, having desired that it should be returned first. They all, and even the Prelate, plagued me to give them a litany, De venerabili. I said I had not got it with me. I really was by no means sure; so I searched, but did not find it. They gave me no peace, evidently thinking that I only wished to evade their request; so I said, "I really have not the litany with me; it is at Salzburg. Write to my father; it is his affair. If he chooses to give it to you, well and good; if not, I have nothing to do with it." A letter from the Deacon to you will therefore probably soon make its appearance. Do just as you please, but if you do send him one, let it be the last in E flat; they have voices enough for anything, and a great many people will be assembled at that time; they even write for them to come from a distance, for it is their greatest festival. Adieu! 78. Mannheim, Nov. 22, 1777. THE first piece of information that I have to give you is, that my truthful letter to Herr Herzog in Augsburg, puncto Schmalzii, has had a capital effect. He wrote me a very polite letter in return, expressing his annoyance that I should have been received so uncourteously by detto Schmalz [melted butter]; so he herewith sent me a sealed letter to detto Herr Milk, with a bill of exchange for 150 florins on detto Herr Cheese. You must know that, though I only saw Herr Herzog once, I could not resist asking him to send me a draft on Herr Schmalz, or to Herrn Butter, Milk, and Cheese, or whom he would--a ca! This joke has succeeded; it is no good making a poor mouth! We received this forenoon (the 21st) your letter of the 17th. I was not at home, but at Cannabich's, where Wendling was rehearsing a concerto for which I have written the orchestral accompaniments. To-day at six o'clock the gala concert took place. I had the pleasure of hearing Herr Franzl (who married a sister of Madame Cannabich's) play a concerto on the violin; he pleased me very much. You know that I am no lover of mere difficulties. He plays difficult music, but it does not appear to be so; indeed, it seems as if one could easily do the same, and this is real talent. He has a very fine round tone, not a note wanting, and everything distinct and well accentuated. He has also a beautiful staccato in bowing, both up and down, and I never heard such a double shake as his. In short, though in my opinion no WIZARD, he is a very solid violin-player.--I do wish I could conquer my confounded habit of writing crooked. I am sorry I was not at Salzburg when that unhappy occurrence took place about Madame Adlgasserin, so that I might have comforted her; and that I would have done--particularly being so handsome a woman. [Footnote: Adlgasser was the organist of the cathedral. His wife was thought very stupid. See the letter of August 26, 1781.] I know already all that you write to me about Mannheim, but I never wish to say anything prematurely; all in good time. Perhaps in my next letter I may tell you of something VERY GOOD in your eyes, but only GOOD in mine; or something you will think VERY BAD, but I TOLERABLE; possibly, too, something only TOLERABLE for you, but VERY GOOD, PRECIOUS, and DELIGHTFUL for me! This sounds rather oracular, does it not? It is ambiguous, but still may be divined. My regards to Herr Bullinger; every time that I get a letter from you, usually containing a few lines from him, I feel ashamed, as it reminds me that I have never once written to my best and truest friend, from whom I have received so much kindness and civility. But I cannot try to excuse myself. I only beg of him to do so for me as far as possible, and to believe that, as soon as I have a little leisure, I will write to him--as yet I have had none; for from the moment I know that it is even possible or probable that I may leave a place, I have no longer a single hour I can call my own, and though I have now a glimmer of hope, still I shall not be at rest till I know how things are. One of the oracle's sayings must come to pass. I think it will be the middle one or the last--I care not which, for at all events it will be something settled. I no doubt wrote to you that Holzbauer's grand opera is in German. If not, I write it now. The title is "Gunther von Schwarzburg," but not our worshipful Herr Gunther, barber and councillor at Salzburg! "Rosamunde" is to be given during the ensuing Carnival, the libretto being a recent composition of Wieland's, and the music also a new composition of Herr Schweitzer. Both are to come here. I have already seen some parts of the opera and tried it over on the piano, but I say nothing about it as yet. The target you have had painted for me, to be given in my name to the shooting-match, is first-rate, and the verses inimitable. [Footnote: For cross-bow practice, attended weekly by a circle of his Salzburg friends. On the target was represented "the melancholy farewell of two persons dissolved in tears, Wolfgang and the 'Basle.'"] I have now no more to write, except that I wish you all a good night's rest, and that you may all sleep soundly till this letter comes to wake you. Adieu! I embrace from my heart--cart, my dear sister--blister, and am your dutiful and attached son, WOLFGANG AMADE MOZART, Knight of the Golden Spur, Member of the great Verona Academy, Bologna--oui, mon ami! 79. Mannheim, Nov. 26, 1777. --MOREOVER, every one acquainted with Mannheim, even the nobility, advised me to come here. The reason why we are still in this place is that I have some thoughts of remaining the winter here, and I am only waiting for an answer from the Elector to decide my plans. The Intendant, Count Savioli, is a very worthy gentleman, and I told him to inform the Elector that, this being such severe weather for travelling, I am willing to remain here to teach the young Count [Carl Theodor's son]. He promised me to do his best for me, but said that I must have patience till the gala days were over. All this took place with the consent and at the SUGGESTION of Cannabich. When I told him that I had spoken to Savioli and what I had said, he replied he really thought it was more likely to be brought about than not. Indeed, Cannabich spoke to the Elector on the subject before the Count did so; and now I must wait to hear the result. I am going to call on Herr Schmalz to draw my 150 florins, for my landlord would no doubt prefer the sound of gold to that of music. I little thought that I should have the gift of a watch here, [see No. 74,] but such is again the case. I would have been off long ago, but every one says to me, "Where do you intend to go for the winter? Travelling is detestable in such weather; stay here." Cannabich also wishes it very much; so now I have taken steps to do so, and as such an affair cannot be hurried, I must wait with patience, and I hope soon to be able to send you good news. I have already two pupils certain, besides the ARCH ones, who certainly won't give me less than a louis each monthly. Without these I could not indeed manage to remain. Now let the matter rest as it is, or as it may be, what avail useless speculations? What is to occur we do not know; still in so far we do! what God wills! Now for a cheerful allegro--non siete si pegro. [Footnote: "Don't be so desponding."] If we do leave this, we shall go straight to--where? To Weilburg, or whatever the name of the place may be, to the Princess, sister of the Prince of Orange, whom we knew so well at the Hague. There we shall stay--N. B., so long as we like the officers' table, and no doubt receive at least six louis-d'or. A few days ago Herr Sterkel came here from Wurzburg. The day before yesterday, the 24th, I dined with Cannabich's, and again at Oberstjager von Hagen's, and spent the evening al solito with Cannabich, where Sterkel joined us, [Footnote: Abbe Sterkel, a favorite composer and virtuoso on the piano, whom Beethoven, along with Simrock, Ries, and the two Rombergs, visited in the autumn of 1791, in Aschaffenberg.] and played five duets [sonatas with violin], but so quick that it was difficult to follow the music, and neither distinctly nor in time. Every one said the same. Madlle. Cannabich played my six sonatas, and in fact better than Sterkel. I must now conclude, for I cannot write in bed, and I am too sleepy to sit up any longer. 80. Mannheim, Nov. 29, 1777. I RECEIVED this morning your letter of the 24th, and perceive that you cannot reconcile yourself to the chances of good or bad fortune, if, indeed, the latter is to befall us. Hitherto, we four have neither been very lucky nor very unlucky, for which I thank God. You make us many reproaches which we do not deserve. We spend nothing but what is absolutely necessary, and as to what is required on a journey, you know that as well or better than we do. No one BUT MYSELF has been the cause of our remaining so long in Munich; and had I been alone I should have stayed there altogether. Why were we fourteen days in Augsburg? Surely you cannot have got my letters from there? I wished to give a concert. They played me false, so I thus lost eight days. I was absolument determined to go away, but was not allowed, so strong was the wish that I should give a concert. I wished to be urged to do so, and I was urged. I gave the concert; this accounts for the fourteen days. Why did we go direct to Mannheim? This I answered in my last letter. Why are we still here? How can you suppose that I would stay here without good cause? But my father, at all events, should--Well! you shall hear my reasons and the whole course of the affair; but I had quite resolved not to write to you on the subject until I could say something decided, (which even yet I cannot do,) on purpose to avoid causing you care and anxiety, which I always strive to do, for I knew that uncertain intelligence would only fret you. But when you ascribe this to my negligence, thoughtlessness, and indolence, I can only regret your having such an opinion of me, and from my heart grieve that you so little know your son. I am not careless, I am only prepared for the worst; so I can wait and bear everything patiently, so long as my honor and my good name of Mozart remain uninjured. But if it must be so, so let it be. I only beg that you will neither rejoice nor lament prematurely; for whatever may happen, all will be well if we only have health; for happiness exists--merely in the imagination. Last Thursday week I went in the forenoon to wait on Count Savioli, and asked him if it were possible to induce the Elector to keep me here this winter, as I was anxious to give lessons to his children. His answer was, "I will suggest it to the Elector, and if it depends on me, the thing will certainly be done." In the afternoon I went to Cannabich's, and as I had gone to Savioli by his advice, he immediately asked me if I had been there. I told him everything, on which he said, "I should like you very much to spend the winter with us, but still more to see you in some permanent situation." I replied, "I could wish nothing better than to be settled near you, but I don't see how it is possible. You have already two Capellmeisters, so I don't know what I could have, for I would not be subordinate to Vogler." "That you would never be," said he. "Here not one of the orchestra is under the Capellmeister, nor even under the Intendant. The Elector might appoint you Chamber Court composer; only wait a little, and I will speak to Count Savioli on the subject." On the Thursday after there was a grand concert. When the Count saw me, he apologized for not having yet spoken to the Elector, these being still gala days; but as soon as they were over (next Monday) he would certainly speak to his Royal Highness. I let three days pass, and, still hearing nothing whatever, I went to him to make inquiries. He said, "My good M. Mozart, (this was yesterday, Friday,) today there was a chasse, so it was impossible for me to ask the Elector, but to-morrow at this hour I will certainly give you an answer." I begged him not to forget it. To tell you the truth, when I left him I felt rather indignant, so I resolved to take with me the easiest of my six variations of the Fischer minuet, (which I wrote here for this express purpose,) to present to the young Count, in order to have an opportunity to speak to the Elector myself. When I went there, you cannot conceive the delight of the governess, by whom I was most politely received. When I produced the variations, and said that they were intended for the young Count, she said, "Oh! that is charming, but I hope you have something for the Countess also." "Nothing as yet," said I, "but if I stay here long enough to have time to write something I will do so." "A propos," said she, "I am so glad that you stay the winter here." "I? I have not heard a word of it." "That does surprise me; how very odd! for the Elector told me so himself lately; he said, 'By the by, Mozart remains here all winter.'" "Well, when he said so, he was the only man who could say so, for without the Elector I of course cannot remain here;" and then I told her the whole story. We agreed that I should come the next day (that is, to-day) at four o'clock, and bring some piece of music for the Countess. She was to speak to the Elector before I came; and I should be certain to meet him. I went today, but he had not been there at all; but I shall go again to-morrow. I have written a Rondo for the Countess. Have I not then sufficient cause to stay here and await the result? As this important step is finally taken, ought I at this moment to set off? I have now an opportunity of speaking to the Elector myself. I shall most probably spend the winter here, for I am a favorite with his Royal Highness, who thinks highly of me, and knows what I can do. I hope to be able to give you good news in my next letter. I entreat you once more neither to rejoice nor to be uneasy too soon, and not to confide the affair to any one except Herr Bullinger and my sister. I send my sister the allegro and the andante of the sonata I wrote for Madlle. Cannabich. The Rondo will follow shortly; the packet would have been too heavy had I sent it with the others. You must be satisfied with the original, for you can more easily get it copied for six kreutzers a sheet than I for twenty-four. Is not that dear? Adieu! Possibly you have heard some stray bits of this sonata; for at Cannabich's it is sung three times a day at least, played on the piano and violin, or whistled--only sotto voce, to be sure. 81. Mannheim, Dec. 3, 1777. I CAN still write nothing certain about my fate here. Last Monday, after going three days in succession to my ARCH pupils, morning and afternoon, I had the good fortune at last to meet the Elector. We all, indeed, thought that I had again come in vain, as it was so late in the day, but at length we saw him coming. The governess made the Countess seat herself at the piano, and I placed myself beside her to give her a lesson, and it was thus the Elector found us on entering. We rose, but he desired us to continue the lesson. When she had finished playing, the governess addressed him, saying that I had written a beautiful Rondo. I played it, and it pleased him exceedingly. At last he said, "Do you think that she will be able to learn it?" "Oh! yes," said I; "I only wish I had the good fortune to teach it to her myself." He smiled, and said, "I should also like it; but would it not be prejudicial to her to have two masters?" "Oh, no! your Highness," said I; "it all depends on whether she has a good or a bad one. I hope your Highness will place trust and confidence in me." "Oh, assuredly," said he. The governess then said, "M. Mozart has also written these variations on the Fischer minuet for the young Count." I played them, and he seemed to like them much. He now began to jest with the Countess. I thanked him for his present of a watch. He said, "I must reflect on your wish; how long do you intend to remain here?" My answer was, "As long as your Highness commands me to do so;" and then the interview was at an end. I went there again this morning, and was told that the Elector had repeated yesterday, "Mozart stays here this winter." Now I am fairly in for it; so you see I must wait. I dined to-day (for the fourth time) with Wendling. Before dinner, Count Savioli came in with Capellmeister Schweitzer, who arrived yesterday evening. Savioli said to me, "I spoke again yesterday to the Elector, but he has not yet made up his mind." I answered, "I wish to say a few words to you privately;" so we went to the window. I told him the doubt the Elector had expressed, and complained of the affair dragging on so long, and said how much I had already spent here, entreating him to persuade the Elector to engage me permanently; for I fear that he will give me so little during the winter that it will be impossible for me to remain. "Let him give me work; for I like work." He said he would certainly suggest it to him, but this evening it was out of the question, as he was not to go to court; to-morrow, however, he promised me a decided answer. Now, let what will happen. If he does not engage me, I shall, at all events, apply for a sum of money for my travelling expenses, as I have no intention to make him a present of the Rondo and the variations. I assure you I am very easy on the subject, because I feel quite certain that, come what may, all will go right. I am entirely submissive to the will of God. Your letter of the 27th arrived yesterday, and I hope you received the allegro and andante of the sonata. I now enclose the Rondo. Schweitzer is a good, worthy, upright man, dry and candid like our Haydn; only his mode of speaking is more polished. There are some very beautiful things in his new opera, and I don't doubt that it will prove a great success. "Alceste" is much liked, and yet it is not half so fine as "Rosamunde." Being the first German operetta no doubt contributed very much to its popularity; but now--N. B., on minds chiefly attracted by novelty--it scarcely makes the same impression. Herr Wieland, whose poetry it is, is also to come here this winter. That is a man I should indeed like to see. Who knows? Perhaps I may. When you read this, dear papa, please God, all will be settled. If I do stay here, I am going to Paris during Lent with Herr Wendling, Herr Ramm, the hautboy-player, who plays admirably, and Ballet-master Cauchery. Wendling assures me I shall never regret it; he has been twice in Paris, and has only just returned from there. He says, "It is, in fact, the only place where either real fame or money is to be acquired. You are a man of genius; I will put you on the right path. You must write an opera seria and comique, an oratorio, and every kind of thing. Any one who composes a couple of operas in Paris receives a certain sum yearly. There is also the Concert Spirituel and the Academie des Amateurs, where you get five louis-d'or for a symphony. If you teach, the custom is three louis-d'or for twelve lessons; and then you get your sonatas, trios, and quartets published by subscription. Cannabich and Toeschi send a great part of their music to Paris." Wendling is a man who understands travelling. Write me your opinion of this scheme, I beg; it seems to me both wise and profitable. I shall travel with a man who knows all the ins and outs of Paris (as it now is) by heart, for it is very much changed. I should spend very little--indeed, I believe not one half of what I do at present, for I should only have to pay for myself, as mamma would stay here, and probably with the Wendlings. On the 12th of this month, Herr Ritter, who plays the bassoon beautifully, sets off for Paris. If I had been alone, this would have been a famous opportunity for me; indeed, he spoke to me himself about it. Ramm (hautboy-player) is a good, jolly, worthy man, about thirty-five, who has travelled a great deal, so has much experience. The first and best musicians here like me very much, and respect me too. They always call me Herr Capellmeister. I cannot say how much I regret not having at least the copy of a mass with me, for I should certainly have had it performed, having lately heard one of Holzbauer's, which is also in our style. If I had only a copy of the Misericordias! But so it is, and it can't be helped now. I would have had one transcribed here, but copying does cost so much. Perhaps I should not have got as much for the mass itself as I must have paid for the copy. People here are by no means so very liberal. 82. Mannheim, Dec. 6, 1777. I CAN tell you nothing certain yet. I begin to be rather tired of this joke; I am only curious to know the result. Count Savioli has spoken three times to the Elector, and the answer was invariably a shrug of the shoulders, and "I will give you an answer presently, but--I have not yet made up my mind." My kind friends here quite agree with me in thinking that this hesitation and reserve are rather a favorable omen than the reverse. For if the Elector was resolved not to engage me, he would have said so at once; so I attribute the delay to Denari siamo un poco scrocconi [we are a little stingy of our money]. Besides, I know for certain that the Prince likes me; a buon canto, so we must wait. I may now say that it will be very welcome to me if the affair turns out well; if not, I shall much regret having lingered here so long and spent so much money. At all events, whatever the issue may be, it cannot be an evil one if it be the will of God; and my daily prayer is that the result may be in accordance with it. You have indeed, dear papa, rightly guessed the chief cause of Herr Cannabich's friendship for me. There is, however, another small matter in which he can make use of me--namely, he is obliged to publish a collection of all his ballets arranged for the piano. Now, he cannot possibly write these out himself in such a manner that the work may be correct and yet easy. For this purpose I am very welcome to him; (this was the case already with one of his contredanses.) He has been out shooting for the last week, and is not to return till next Tuesday. Such things contribute, indeed, very much to our good friendship; but, independent of this, he would at least never be inimical to me, for he is very much changed. When a man comes to a certain age, and sees his children grown up, he then no doubt thinks a little differently. His daughter, who is fifteen, and his eldest child, is a very pretty, pleasing girl. She has great good sense for her age, and an engaging demeanor; she is rather grave and does not talk much, but what she does say is always amiable and good-natured. She caused me most indescribable pleasure yesterday, by playing my sonata in the most admirable manner. The andante (which must not be played QUICK) she executed with the greatest possible feeling; and she likes to play it. You know that I finished the first allegro when I had been only two days here, and that I had then only seen Madlle. Cannabich once. Young Danner asked me how I intended to compose the andante. "Entirely in accordance with Madlle. Rose's character," said I. When I played it, it seemed to please much. Danner mentioned afterwards what I had said. And it is really so; she is just what the andante is. To-day I dined for the sixth time with Wendling, and for the second time in the company of Herr Schweitzer. To-morrow, by way of a change, I dine there again; I actually have my board there. I must now go to bed, so I wish you good-night. I have this moment returned from Wendling's, and as soon as I have posted this letter I am going back there, for the opera is to be rehearsed in camera caritatis, as it were. I am going to Cannabich's afterwards, at half-past six o'clock, to give my usual daily music-lesson. A propos, I must correct a statement of mine. I said yesterday that Madlle. Cannabich was fifteen; it seems, however, that she is only just thirteen. Our kind regards to all our friends, especially to Herr Bullinger. 83. Mannheim, Dec. 10, 1777. ALL is at an end, for the present, with the Elector. I went to the court concert the day before yesterday, in the hope of getting an answer. Count Savioli evidently wished to avoid me; but I went up to him. When he saw me he shrugged his shoulders. "What!" said I, "still no answer?" "Pardon me!" said he, "but I grieve to say nothing can be done." "Eh, bien!" said I, "the Elector might have told me so sooner!" "True," said he, "but he would not even now have made up his mind, if I had not driven him to it by saying that you had already stayed here too long, spending your money in a hotel." "Truly, that is what vexes me most of all," I replied; "it is very far from pleasant. But, at all events, I am very much indebted to you, Count, (for he is not called "your Excellency,") for having taken my part so zealously, and I beg you will thank the Elector from me for his gracious, though somewhat tardy information; and I can assure him that, had he accepted my services, he never would have had cause to regret it." "Oh!" said he, "I feel more convinced of that than perhaps you think." When I told Herr Wendling of the final decision, he colored and said, quite indignantly, "Then we must find the means; you must, at least, remain here for the next two months, and after that we can go together to Paris. To-morrow Cannabich returns from shooting, and then we can talk further on the subject." I left the concert immediately, and went straight to Madame Cannabich. On my way thither, Herr Schatzmeister having come away from the concert with me, I told him all about it, as he is a good worthy man and a kind friend of mine. You cannot conceive how angry he was. When we went into Madame Cannabich's house, he spoke first, saying, "I bring you a man who shares the usual happy fate of those who have to do with courts." "What!" said Madame, "so it has all come to nothing?" I told her the whole, and in return they related to me numbers of similar things which had occurred here. When Madlle. Rose (who was in the third room from us, busy with the linen) had finished, she came in and said to me, "Do you wish me to begin now?" as it was the hour for her lesson. "I am at your orders," said I. "Do you know," said she, "that I mean to be very attentive to-day?" "I am sure you will," answered I, "for the lessons will not continue much longer." "How so? What do you mean?--Why?" She turned to her mamma, who told her. "What!" said she, "is this quite certain? I cannot believe it." "Yes--yes; quite certain," said I. She then played my sonata, but looked very grave. Do you know, I really could not suppress my tears; and at last they had all tears in their eyes--mother, daughter, and Schatzmeister, for she was playing the sonata at the moment, which is the favorite of the whole family. "Indeed," said Schatzmeister, "if the Herr Capellmeister (I am never called anything else here) leaves us, it will make us all weep." I must say that I have very kind friends here, for it is under such circumstances that we learn to know them; for they are so, not only in words but in deeds. Listen to this! The other day I went, as usual, to dine with Wendling, when he said to me, "Our Indian friend (a Dutchman, who lives on his own means, and is an amateur of all the fine arts, and a great friend and admirer of mine) is certainly an excellent fellow. He will give you twenty florins to write for him three little easy short concertos, and a couple of quattros for a leading flute. Cannabich can get you at least two pupils, who will play well; and you could write duets for the piano and violin, and publish them by subscription. Dinner and supper you will always have with us, and lodgings you have at the Herr Hofkammerrath's; so all this will cost you nothing. As for your mother, we can easily find her a cheap lodging for these two months, till you have had time to write about the matter to your father, when she will leave this for Salzburg and we for Paris." Mamma is quite satisfied; so all that is yet wanting is your consent, of which I feel so sure that, if the time for our journey were now come, I would set off for Paris without waiting for your reply; for I could expect nothing else from a sensible father, hitherto so anxious for the welfare of his children. Herr Wendling, who sends you his compliments, is very intimate with our dear friend Grimm, who, when he was here, spoke a great deal about me to Wendling; this was when he had just come from us at Salzburg. As soon as I receive your answer to this letter, I mean to write to him, for a stranger whom I met at dinner to-day told me that Grimm was now in Paris. As we don't leave this till the 8th of March, I beg you, if possible, to try to procure for me, either through Herr Mesmer at Vienna, or some one else, a letter to the Queen of France, if it can be done without much difficulty; if not, it does not much matter. It would be better if I could have one--of that there is no doubt; this is also the advice of Herr Wendling. I suppose what I am now writing must appear very strange to you, because you are in a city where there are only stupid enemies, and weak and simple friends, whose dreary daily bread at Salzburg is so essential to them, that they become flatterers, and are not to be depended on from day to day. Indeed, this was why I wrote you nothing but childish nonsense, and jokes, and folly; I wished to await the event here, to save you from vexation, and my good friends from blame; for you very unwarrantably accuse them of working against me in an underhand way, which they certainly never did. Your letters obliged me to relate the whole affair to you. I entreat you most earnestly not to distress yourself on the subject; God has willed it so. Reflect also on this most undoubted truth, that we cannot do all we wish. We often think that such and such a thing would be very good, and another equally bad and evil, and yet if these things came to pass, we should sometimes learn that the very reverse was the case. I must now go to bed. I shall have plenty of work to do during the two months of my stay,--three concertos, two quartets, five or six duets for the piano, and I also have thoughts of composing a new grand mass, and dedicating it to the Elector. Adieu! I will write to Prince Zeill next post-day to press forward matters in Munich; if you would also write to him, I should be very glad. But short and to the point--no cringing! for that I cannot bear. It is quite certain that he can do it if he likes, for all Munich told me so [see Nos. 56 and 60]. 84. Mannheim, Dec. 14, 1777. I CAN only write a few words, as I did not get home till four o'clock, when I had a lesson to give to the young lady of the house. It is now nearly half-past five, so time to close my letter. I will ask mamma to write a few days beforehand, so that all our news may not be of the same date, for I can't easily do this. The little time that I have for writing must be devoted to composition, for I have a great deal of work before me. I entreat you to answer me very soon as to my journey to Paris. I played over my concertone on the piano to Herr Wendling, who said it was just the thing for Paris; if I were to play that to Baron Bach, he would be in ecstasies. Adieu! 85. [A P.S. TO A LETTER FROM HIS MOTHER.] Mannheim, Dec. 18, 1777. IN the greatest haste and hurry! The organ that was tried to-day in the Lutheran church is very good, not only in certain registers, but in its whole compass. [Footnote: The mother writes: "A Lutheran of degree called on us to-day, and invited Wolfgang, with all due politeness, to try their new organ."] Vogler played on it. He is only a juggler, so to speak; as soon as he wishes to play in a majestic style, he becomes dull. Happily this seems equally tedious to himself, so it does not last long; but then, what follows? only an incomprehensible scramble. I listened to him from a distance. He began a fugue, in chords of six notes, and presto. I then went up to him, for I would far rather see than hear him. There were a great many people present, and among the musicians Holzbauer, Cannabich, Toeschi, &c. A quartet for the Indian Dutchman, that true benefactor of man, will soon be finished. A propos, Herr told me that he had written to you by the last post. Addio! I was lately obliged to direct the opera with some violins at Wendling's, Schweitzer being unwell. 86. Mannheim, Dec. 20, 1777. I WISH you, dearest papa, a very happy new-year, and that your health, so precious in my eyes, may daily improve, for the benefit and happiness of your wife and children, the satisfaction of your true friends, and for the annoyance and vexation of your enemies. I hope also that in the coming year you will love me with the same fatherly tenderness you have hitherto shown me. I on my part will strive, and honestly strive, to deserve still more the love of such an admirable father. I was cordially delighted with your last letter of the 15th of December, for, thank God! I could gather from it that you are very well indeed. We, too, are in perfect health, God be praised! Mine is not likely to fail if constant work can preserve it. I am writing this at eleven at night, because I have no other leisure time. We cannot very well rise before eight o'clock, for in our rooms (on the ground-floor) it is not light till half-past eight. I then dress quickly; at ten o'clock I sit down to compose till twelve or half-past twelve, when I go to Wendling's, where I generally write till half-past one; we then dine. At three o'clock I go to the Mainzer Hof (an hotel) to a Dutch officer, to give him lessons in galanterie playing and thorough bass, for which, if I mistake not, he gives me four ducats for twelve lessons. At four o'clock I go home to teach the daughter of the house. We never begin till half past four, as we wait for lights. At six o'clock I go to Cannabich's to instruct Madlle. Rose. I stay to supper there, when we converse and sometimes play; I then invariably take a book out of my pocket and read, as I used to do at Salzburg. I have already written to you the pleasure your last letter caused me, which is quite true; only one thing rather vexed me, the inquiry whether I had not perchance forgotten to go to confession. I shall not say anything further on this. Only allow me to make you one request, which is, not to think so badly of me. I like to be merry, but rest assured that I can be as serious as any one. Since I quitted Salzburg (and even in Salzburg) I have met with people who spoke and acted in a way that I should have felt ashamed to do, though they were ten, twenty, and thirty years older than myself. I implore of you therefore once more, and most earnestly, to have a better opinion of me. 87. Mannheim, Dec. 27, 1777. A PRETTY sort of paper this! I only wish I could make it better; but it is now too late to send for any other. You know, from our previous letters, that mamma and I have a capital lodging. It never was my intention that she should live apart from me; in fact, when the Hofkammerrath Serrarius so kindly offered me his house, I only expressed my thanks, which is by no means saying yes. The next day I went to see him with Herr Wendling and M. de Jean (our worthy Dutchman), and only waited till he should himself begin the subject. At length he renewed his offer, and I thanked him in these words: "I feel that it is a true proof of friendship on your part to do me the honor to invite me to live in your house; but I regret that unfortunately I cannot accept your most kind proposal. I am sure you will not take it amiss when I say that I am unwilling to allow my mother to leave me without sufficient cause; and I certainly know no reason why mamma should live in one part of the town and I in another. When I go to Paris, her not going with me would be a considerable pecuniary advantage to me, but here for a couple of months a few gulden more or less do not signify." By this speech my wish was entirely fulfilled,--that is, that our board and lodging do not at all events make us poorer. I must go up-stairs to supper, for we have now chatted till half-past ten o'clock. I lately went with my scholar, the Dutch officer, M. de la Pottrie, into the Reformed church, where I played for an hour and a half on the organ. It came right from my heart too. We--that is, the Cannabichs, Wendlings, Serrariuses, and Mozarts--are going to the Lutheran Church, where I shall amuse myself gloriously on the organ. I tried its tone at the same rehearsal that I wrote to you about, but played very little, only a prelude and a fugue. I have made acquaintance with Herr Wieland. He does not, however, know me as I know him, for he has heard nothing of me as yet. I had not at all imagined him to be what I find him. He speaks in rather a constrained way, and has a childish voice, his eyes very watery, and a certain pedantic uncouthness, and yet at times provokingly condescending. I am not, however, surprised that he should choose to behave in this way at Mannheim, though no doubt very differently at Weimar and elsewhere, for here he is stared at as if he had fallen from the skies. People seem to be so ceremonious in his presence, no one speaks, all are as still as possible, striving to catch every word he utters. It is unlucky that they are kept so long in expectation, for he has some impediment in his speech which causes him to speak very slowly, and he cannot say six words without pausing. Otherwise he is, as we all know, a man of excellent parts. His face is downright ugly and seamed with the small-pox, and he has a long nose. His height is rather beyond that of papa. You need have no misgivings as to the Dutchman's 200 florins. I must now conclude, as I should like to compose for a little time. One thing more: I suppose I had better not write to Prince Zeill at present. The reason you no doubt already know, (Munich being nearer to Salzburg than to Mannheim,) that the Elector is at the point of death from small-pox. This is certain, so there will be a struggle there. Farewell! As for mamma's journey home, I think it could be managed best during Lent, by her joining some merchants. This is only my own idea; but what I do feel quite sure of is, that whatever you think right will be best, for you are not only the Herr Hofcapellmeister, but the most rational of all rational beings. If you know such a person as papa, tell him I kiss his hands 1000 times, and embrace my sister from my heart, and in spite of all this scribbling I am your dutiful son and affectionate brother. 88. Mannheim, Jan. 7, 1778. I HOPE you are both well. I am, thank God! in good health and spirits. You may easily conceive my sorrow at the death of the Elector of Bavaria. My sole wish is that our Elector here may have the whole of Bavaria, and transfer himself to Munich. I think you also would like this. This forenoon at twelve o'clock, Carl Theodor was proclaimed at court Duke of Bavaria. At Munich, Count Daun, Oberststallmeister, immediately on the death of the Prince, received homage in the name of the Elector, and sent the dragoons to ride all round the environs of the city with trumpets and kettledrums, and to shout "Long live our Elector, Carl Theodor!" If all goes well, as I hope it may, Count Daun will receive a very handsome present. His aid-de-camp, whom he dispatched here with the tidings, (his name is Lilienau,) got 3000 florins from the Elector. 89. Mannheim, Jan 10, 1778 YES, indeed! I also wish that from my heart. [Footnote: In the mother's letter, she had written, "May God grant us the blessing of peace'" for there was much talk about the invasion of Bavaria by the Prussians and Austrians, on account of the succession.] You have already learned my true desire from my last letter. It is really high time that we should think of mamma's journey home, for though we have had various rehearsals of the opera, still its being performed is by no means certain, and if it is not given, we shall probably leave this on the 15th of February. When that time arrives, (after receiving your advice on the subject,) I mean to follow the opinions and habits of my fellow-travellers, and, like them, order a suit of black clothes, reserving the laced suit for Germany, as it is no longer the fashion in Paris. In the first place, it is an economy, (which is my chief object in my Paris journey,) and, secondly, it wears well and suits both country and town. You can go anywhere with a black coat. To-day the tailor brought Herr Wendling his suit. The clothes I think of taking with me are my puce-brown spagnolet coat, and the two waistcoats. Now for something else. Herr Wieland, after meeting me twice, seems quite enchanted with me. The last time, after every sort of eulogium, he said, "It is really fortunate for me having met you here," and pressed my hand. To-day "Rosamunde" has been rehearsed in the theatre; it is well enough, but nothing more, for if it were positively bad it could not be performed, I suppose,--just as some people cannot sleep without lying in a bed! But there is no rule without an exception, and I have seen an instance of this; so good night! Now for something more to the purpose. I know for certain that the Emperor intends to establish a German opera in Vienna, and is eagerly looking out for a young Capellmeister who understands the German language, and has genius, and is capable of bringing something new into the world. Benda at Gotha has applied, but Schweitzer is determined to succeed. I think it would be just the thing for me, but well paid of course. If the Emperor gives me 1000 gulden, I will write a German opera for him, and if he does not choose to give me a permanent engagement, it is all the same to me. Pray write to every kind friend you can think of in Vienna, that I am capable of doing credit to the Emperor. If he will do nothing else, he may at least try me with an opera, and as to what may occur hereafter I care not. Adieu! I hope you will put the thing in train at once, or some one may forestall me. 90. Mannheim, Jan. 17, 1778. NEXT Wednesday I am going for some days to Kirchheim-Boland, the residence of the Princess of Orange. I have heard so much praise of her here, that at last I have resolved to go. A Dutch officer, a particular friend of mine, [M. de la Pottrie,] was much upbraided by her for not bringing me with him when he went to offer his new-year's congratulations. I expect to receive at least eight louis-d'or, for as she has a passionate admiration of singing, I have had four arias copied out for her. I will also present her with a symphony, for she has a very nice orchestra and gives a concert every day. Besides, the copying of the airs will not cost me much, for a M. Weber who is going there with me has copied them. He has a daughter who sings admirably, and has a lovely pure voice; she is only fifteen. [Footnote: Aloysia, second daughter of the prompter and theatrical copyist, Weber, a brother of Carl Maria von Weber's father.] She fails in nothing but in stage action; were it not for that, she might be the prima donna of any theatre. Her father is a downright honest German who brings up his children well, for which very reason the girl is persecuted here. He has six children,--five girls and a son. He and his wife and children have been obliged to live for the last fourteen years on an income of 200 florins, but as he has always done his duty well, and has lately provided a very accomplished singer for the Elector, he has now actually 400 florins. My aria for De' Amicis she sings to perfection with all its tremendous passages: she is to sing it at Kirchheim-Boland. Now for another subject. Last Wednesday there was a great feast in our house, [at Hofkammerrath Serrarius's,] to which I was also invited. There were fifteen guests, and the young lady of the house [Pierron, the "House Nymph"] was to play in the evening the concerto I had taught her at eleven o'clock in the forenoon. The Herr Kammerrath and Herr Vogler called on me. Herr Vogler seems quite determined to become acquainted with me, as he often importuned me to go to see him, but he has overcome his pride and paid me the first visit. Besides, people tell me that he is now very different, being no longer so much admired; for at first he was made quite an idol of here. We went up-stairs together, when by degrees the guests assembled, and there was no end to talking. After dinner, Vogler sent for two pianos of his, which were tuned alike, and also his wearisome engraved sonatas. I had to play them, while he accompanied me on the other piano. At his urgent request I sent for my sonatas also. N. B.--Before dinner he had scrambled through my sonata at sight, (the Litzau one which the young lady of the house plays.) He took the first part prestissimo--the Andante allegro--and the Rondo more prestissimo still. He played great part of the bass very differently from the way in which it is written, inventing at times quite another harmony and melody. It is impossible to do otherwise in playing at such a pace, for the eyes cannot see the notes, nor the hands get hold of them. What merit is there in this? The listeners (I mean those worthy of the name) can only say that they have SEEN music and piano-playing. All this makes them hear, and think, and feel as little--as he does. You may easily believe that this was beyond all endurance, because I could not venture to say to him MUCH TOO QUICK! besides, it is far easier to play a thing quickly than slowly; some notes may then be dropped without being observed. But is this genuine music? In rapid playing the right and left hands may be changed, and no one either see or hear it; but is this good? and in what does the art of reading prima vista consist? In this--to play the piece in the time in which it ought to be played, and to express all the notes and apoggiaturas, &c., with proper taste and feeling as written, so that it should give the impression of being composed by the person who plays it. His fingering also is miserable; his left thumb is just like that of the late Adlgasser, all the runs downwards with the right hand he makes with the first finger and thumb! 91. Mannheim, Feb. 2 1778. I COULD no delay writing to you till the usual Saturday arrived, because it was so long since I had the pleasure of conversing with you by means of my pen. The first thing I mean to write about is how my worthy friends and I got on at Kirchheim-Boland. It was simply a holiday excursion, and nothing more. On Friday morning at eight o'clock we drove away from here, after I had breakfasted with Herr Weber. We had a capital covered coach which held four; at four o'clock we arrived at Kirchheim-Boland. We immediately sent a list of our names to the palace. Next morning early, Herr Concertmeister Rothfischer called on us. He had been already described to me at Mannheim as a most honorable man, and such I find him to be. In the evening we went to court, (this was on Saturday,) where Madlle. Weber sang three airs. I say nothing of her singing, but it is indeed admirable. I wrote to you lately with regard to her merits; but I cannot finish this letter without writing further about her, as I have only recently known her well, so now first discover her great powers. We dined afterwards at the officers' table. Next day we went some distance to church, for the Catholic one is rather far away. This was on Sunday. In the forenoon we dined again with the officers. In the evening there was no music, because it was Sunday. Thus they have music only 300 times during the year. In the evening we might have supped at court, but we preferred being all together at the inn. We would gladly have made them a present also of the dinners at the officers' table, for we were never so pleased as when by ourselves; but economy rather entered our thoughts, since we were obliged to pay heavily enough at the inn. The following day, Monday, we had music again, and also on Tuesday and Wednesday. Madlle. Weber sang in all thirteen times, and played twice on the piano, for she plays by no means badly. What surprises me most is, that she reads music so well. Only think of her playing my difficult sonatas at sight, SLOWLY, but without missing a single note. I give you my honor I would rather hear my sonatas played by her than by Vogler. I played twelve times, and once, by desire, on the organ of the Lutheran church. I presented the Princess with four symphonies, and received only seven louis-d'or in silver, and our poor dear Madlle. Weber only five. This I certainly did not anticipate! I never expected great things, but at all events I hoped that each of us would at least receive eight louis-d'or. Basta! We were not, however, losers, for I have a profit of forty-two florins, and the inexpressible pleasure of becoming better acquainted with worthy upright Christian people, and good Catholics, I regret much not having known them long ago. The 4th.--Now comes something urgent, about which I request an answer. Mamma and I have discussed the matter, and we agree that we do not like the sort of life the Wendlings lead. Wendling is a very honorable and kind man, but unhappily devoid of all religion, and the whole family are the same. I say enough when I tell you that his daughter was a most disreputable character. Ramm is a good fellow, but a libertine. I know myself, and I have such a sense of religion that I shall never do anything which I would not do before the whole world; but I am alarmed even at the very thoughts of being in the society of people, during my journey, whose mode of thinking is so entirely different from mine (and from that of all good people). But of course they must do as they please. I have no heart to travel with them, nor could I enjoy one pleasant hour, nor know what to talk about; for, in short, I have no great confidence in them. Friends who have no religion cannot be long our friends. I have already given them a hint of this by saying that during my absence three letters had arrived, of which I could for the present divulge nothing further than that it was unlikely I should be able to go with them to Paris, but that perhaps I might come later, or possibly go elsewhere; so they must not depend on me. I shall be able to finish my music now quite at my ease for De Jean, who is to give me 200 florins for it. I can remain here as long as I please, and neither board nor lodging cost me anything. In the meantime Herr Weber will endeavor to make various engagements for concerts with me, and then we shall travel together. If I am with him, it is just as if I were with you. This is the reason that I like him so much; except in personal appearance, he resembles you in all respects, and has exactly your character and mode of thinking. If my mother were not, as you know, too COMFORTABLY LAZY to write, she would say precisely what I do. I must confess that I much enjoyed my excursion with them. We were pleased and merry; I heard a man converse just like you; I had no occasion to trouble myself about anything; what was torn I found repaired. In short, I was treated like a prince. I am so attached to this oppressed family that my greatest wish is to make them happy, and perhaps I may be able to do so. My advice is that they should go to Italy, so I am all anxiety for you to write to our good friend Lugiati [impresario], and the sooner the better, to inquire what are the highest terms given to a prima donna in Verona--the more the better, for it is always easy to accept lower terms. Perhaps it would be possible to obtain the Ascensa in Venice. I will be answerable with my life for her singing, and her doing credit to my recommendation. She has, even during this short period, derived much profit from me, and how much further progress she will have made by that time! I have no fears either with regard to her acting. If this plan be realized, M. Weber, his two daughters, and I, will have the happiness of visiting my dear papa and dear sister for a fortnight, on our way through Salzburg. My sister will find a friend and companion in Madlle. Weber, for, like my sister in Salzburg, she enjoys the best reputation here, owing to the careful way in which she has been brought up; the father resembles you, and the whole family that of Mozart. They have indeed detractors, as with us, but when it comes to the point they must confess the truth; and truth lasts longest. I should be glad to go with them to Salzburg, that you might hear her. My air that De' Amicis used to sing, and the bravura aria "Parto m' affretto," and "Dalla sponda tenebrosa," she sings splendidly. Pray do all you can to insure our going to Italy together. You know my greatest desire is--to write operas. I will gladly write an opera for Verona for thirty zecchini, solely that Madlle. Weber may acquire fame by it; for, if I do not, I fear she may be sacrificed. Before then I hope to make so much money by visiting different places that I shall be no loser. I think we shall go to Switzerland, perhaps also to Holland; pray write to me soon about this. Should we stay long anywhere, the eldest daughter [Josepha, afterwards Madaine Hofer, for whom the part of the Queen of the Night in the "Flauto magico" was written] would be of the greatest use to us; for we could have our own menage, as she understands cooking. Send me an answer soon, I beg. Don't forget my wish to write an opera; I envy every person who writes one; I could almost weep from vexation when I hear or see an aria. But Italian, not German--seria, not buffa! I have now written you all that is in my heart; my mother is satisfied with my plan. The mother, however, adds the following postscript:-- "No doubt you perceive by the accompanying letter that when Wolfgang makes new friends he would give his life for them. It is true that she does sing incomparably; still, we ought not to lose sight of our own interests. I never liked his being in the society of Wendling and Ramm, but I did not venture to object to it, nor would he have listened to me; but no sooner did he know these Webers than he instantly changed his mind. In short, he prefers other people to me, for I remonstrate with him sometimes, and that he does not like. I write this quite secretly while he is at dinner, for I don't wish him to know it." A few days later Wolfgang urges his father still more strongly. 92. Mannheim, Feb. 7, 1778. HERR SCHIEDENHOFEN might have let me know long ago through you that his wedding was soon to take place [see Nos. 7, 10, 19], and I would have composed a new minuet for the occasion. I cordially wish him joy; but his is, after all, only one of those money matches, and nothing else! I hope never to marry in this way; I wish to make my wife happy, but not to become rich by her means; so I will let things alone, and enjoy my golden freedom till I am so well off that I can support both wife and children. Herr Schiedenhofen was forced to choose a rich wife; his title imposed this on him. The nobility must not marry for love or from inclination, but from interest, and all kinds of other considerations. It would not at all suit a grandee to love his wife after she had done her duty, and brought into the world an heir to the property. But we poor humble people are privileged not only to choose a wife who loves us, and whom we love, but we may, can, and do take such a one, because we are neither noble, nor highborn, nor rich, but, on the contrary, lowly, humble, and poor; we therefore need no wealthy wife, for our riches being in our heads, die with us, and these no man can deprive us of unless he cut them off, in which case we need nothing more. I lately wrote to you my chief reason for not going to Paris with these people, but another is that I have reflected well on what I have to do in Paris. I could not get on passably without pupils, which is a kind of work that does not suit me--of this I have a strong example here. I might have had two pupils: I went three times to each, but finding one of them not at home, I never went back. I am willing to give lessons out of complaisance, especially when I see genius, and inclination and anxiety to learn; but to be obliged to go to a house at a certain hour, or else to wait at home, is what I cannot submit to, if I were to gain twice what I do. I find it impossible, so must leave it to those who can do nothing but play the piano. I am a composer, and born to become a Kapellmeister, and I neither can nor ought thus to bury the talent for composition with which God has so richly endowed me (I may say this without arrogance, for I feel it now more than ever); and this I should do were I to take many pupils, for it is a most unsettled metier; and I would rather, SO TO SPEAK, neglect the piano than composition, for I look on the piano to be only a secondary consideration, though, thank God! a very strong one too. My third reason is, that I am by no means sure our friend Grimm is in Paris. If he is, I can go there at any time with the post-carriage, for a capital one travels from here to Paris by Strassburg. We intended at all events to have gone by it. They travel also in this way. Herr Wendling is inconsolable at my not going with them, but I believe this proceeds more from self-interest than from friendship. Besides the reason I gave him (about the three letters that had come during my absence), I also told him about the pupils, and begged him to procure something certain for me, in which case I would be only too glad to follow him to Paris, (for I can easily do so,)--above all, if I am to write an opera, which is always in my thoughts; but French rather than German, and Italian rather than French or German. The Wendlings, one and all, are of opinion that my compositions would please much in Paris. I have no fears on the subject, for, as you know, I can pretty well adapt or conform myself to any style of composition. Shortly after my arrival I composed a French song for Madlle. Gustel (the daughter), who gave me the words, and she sings it inimitably. I have the pleasure to enclose it for you. It is sung every day at Wendling's, for they are quite infatuated with it. 93. Mannheim, Feb. 14, 1778. I PERCEIVE by your letter of the 9th of February that you have not yet received my last two letters. Wendling and Kamm leave this early to-morrow morning. If I thought that you would be really displeased with me for not going to Paris with them, I should repent having stayed here; but I hope it is not so. The road to Paris is still open to me. Wendling has promised to inquire immediately about Herr Grimm, and to send me information at once. With such a friend in Paris, I certainly shall go there, for no doubt he will bring something to bear for me. The main cause of my not going with them is, that we have not been able to arrange about mamma returning to Augsburg. The journey will not cost much, for there are vetturini here who can be engaged at a cheap rate. By that time, however, I hope to have made enough to pay mamma's journey home. Just now I don't really see that it is possible. Herr de Jean sets off to-morrow for Paris, and as I have only finished two concertos and three quartets for him, he sent me 96 florins (having made a mistake of four florins, thinking this sum the half of the 200); he must, however, pay me in full, for such was the agreement I made with Wendling, and I can send him the other pieces. It is not surprising that I have been unable to finish them, for I never have a single quiet hour here. I can only write at night, so I cannot rise early; besides, one is not always disposed to work. I could, to be sure, scrawl away all day, but a thing of this kind goes forth to the world, and I am resolved not to have cause to be ashamed of my name on the title-page. Moreover, you know that I become quite obtuse when obliged to write perpetually for an instrument that I cannot bear; so from time to time I do something else, such as duets for the piano and violin, and I also worked at the mass. Now I have begun the pianoforte duets in good earnest, in order to publish them. If the Elector were only here, I would very quickly finish the mass; but what must be must be! I am very grateful to you, dear papa, for your fatherly letter; I will preserve it as a treasure, and always refer to it. Pray do not forget about my mother's journey from Augsburg to Salzburg, and let me know the precise day; and I beg you will also remember the arias I mentioned in my last letter. If I recollect rightly, there are also some cadenzas which I once jotted down, and at all events an aria cantabile with coloraturas? I wish to have these first, for they will serve as exercises for Madlle. Weber. I have just taught her an andantino cantabile of Bach's. Yesterday there was a concert at Cannabich's, where from first to last all the music was of my composition, except the first symphony, which was Cannabich's. Madlle. Rose played my concerto in B, then Herr Ramm (by way of a change) played for the fifth time the hautboy concerto dedicated to Ferlendi, which makes a great sensation here. It is now quite Ramm's cheval de bataille. Madlle. Weber sang De' Amicis's aria di bravura quite charmingly. Then I played my old concerto in D, because it is such a favorite here, and likewise extemporized for half an hour, after which Madlle. Weber sang De' Amicis's air, "Parto m' affretto;" and, as a finale, my symphony "Il Re Pastore" was given. I do entreat you urgently to interest yourself in Madlle. Weber; it would make me so happy if good-fortune were to attend her. Husband and wife, five children, and a salary of 450 florins! Don't forget about Italy, and my desire to go there; you know my strong wish and passion. I hope all may go right. I place my trust in God, who will never forsake us. Now farewell, and don't forget all my requests and recommendations. These letters alarmed the father exceedingly, so he wrote a long and very earnest letter to his son as follows:--"The object of your journey was to assist your parents, and to contribute to your dear sister's welfare, but, above all, that you might acquire honor and fame in the world, which you in some degree did in your boyhood; and now it rests entirely with you to raise yourself by degrees to one of the highest positions ever attained by any musician. This is a duty you owe to a kind Providence in return for the remarkable talents with which He has gifted you; and it depends wholly on your own good sense and good conduct, whether you become a commonplace artist whom the world will forget, or a celebrated Capellmeister, of whom posterity will read hereafter in books,--whether, infatuated with some pretty face, you one day breathe your last on a straw sack, your wife and children in a state of starvation, or, after a well-spent Christian life, die peacefully in honor and independence, and your family well provided for." He goes on to represent to him how little he has hitherto fulfilled the object of his journey, and, above all, the folly of wishing to place so young a girl on the Italian stage as a prima donna, both time and great training being previously required. Moreover, it would be quite unworthy of him to wander about the world with strangers, and to compose at random merely for money. "Get off to Paris without delay. Take your place by the side of really great people. Aut Caesar aut nihil. The very idea of Paris should have guarded you from all passing fancies." To this Wolfgang replies:-- 94. Mannheim, Feb. 19, 1778. I ALWAYS thought that you would disapprove of my journey with the Webers, but I never had any such intention--I mean, UNDER PRESENT CIRCUMSTANCES. I gave them my word of honor to write to you to that effect. Herr Weber does not know how we stand, and I certainly shall tell it to no one. I wish my position had been such that I had no cause to consider any one else, and that we were all independent; but in the intoxication of the moment I forgot the present impossibility of the affair, and also to tell you what I had done. The reasons of my not being now in Paris must be evident to you from my last two letters. If my mother had not first begun on the subject, I certainly would have gone with my friends; but when I saw that she did not like it, I began to dislike it also. When people lose confidence in me, I am apt to lose confidence in myself. The days when, standing on a stool, I sang Oragna fiaguta fa, [Footnote: Words sounding like Italian, but devoid of meaning, for which he had invented a melody. Nissen gives it in his Life of Mozart, p. 35.] and at the end kissed the tip of your nose, are indeed gone by; but still, have my reverence, love, and obedience towards yourself ever failed on that account? I say no more. As for your reproach about the little singer in Munich [see No. 62], I must confess that I was an ass to write such a complete falsehood. She does not as yet know even what singing means. It was true that, for a person who had only learned music for three months, she sang surprisingly; and, besides, she has a pleasing pure voice. The reason why I praised her so much was probably my hearing people say, from morning to night, "There is no better singer in all Europe; those who have not heard her have heard nothing." I did not venture to disagree with them, partly because I wished to acquire friends, and partly because I had come direct from Salzburg, where we are not in the habit of contradicting any one; but as soon as I was alone I never could help laughing. Why, then, did I not laugh at her in my letter to you? I really cannot tell. The bitter way in which you write about my merry and innocent intercourse with your brother's daughter, makes me justly indignant; but as it is not as you think, I require to give you no answer on the subject. I don't know what to say about Wallerstein; I was very grave and reserved with Becke, and at the officers' table also I had a very serious demeanor, not saying one word to anybody. But let this all pass; you only wrote it in a moment of irritation [see No. 74]. Your remarks about Madlle. Weber are just; but at the time I wrote to you I knew quite as well as you that she is still too young, and must be first taught how to act, and must rehearse frequently on the stage. But with some people one must proceed step by step. These good people are as tired of being here as--you know WHO and WHERE, [meaning the Mozarts, father and son, in Salzburg,] and they think everything feasible. I promised them to write everything to my father; but when the letter was sent off to Salzburg, I constantly told her that she must have a little patience, for she was still rather too young, &c. They take in all I say in good part, for they have a high opinion of me. By my advice, Herr Weber has engaged Madlle. Toscani (an actress) to give his daughter lessons in acting. All you write of Madlle. Weber is true, except, that she sings like a Gabrielli, [see Nos. 10, 37,] for I should not at all like her to sing in that style. Those who have heard Gabrielli say, and must say, that she was only an adept in runs and roulades; but as she adopted so uncommon a reading, she gained admiration, which, however, did not last longer than hearing her four times. She could not please in the long run, for roulades soon become very tiresome, and she had the misfortune of not being able to sing. She was not capable of sustaining a breve properly, and having no messa di voce, she could not dwell on her notes; in short, she sang with skill, but devoid of intelligence. Madlle. Weber's singing, on the contrary, goes to the heart, and she prefers a cantabile. I have lately made her practise the passages in the Grand Aria, because, if she goes to Italy, it is necessary that she should sing bravuras. The cantabile she certainly will never forget, being her natural bent. Raaff (who is no flatterer), when asked to give his sincere opinion, said, "She does not sing like a scholar, but like a professor." So now you know everything. I do still recommend her to you with my whole heart, and I beg you will not forget about the arias, cadenzas, &c. I can scarcely write from actual hunger. My mother will display the contents of our large money-box. I embrace my sister lovingly. She is not to lament about every trifle, or I will never come back to her. 95. Mannheim, Feb. 22, 1778. I HAVE been now two days confined to the house, and taking antispasmodics, black powders, and elderflower tea as a sudorific, because I have had a catarrh, a cold in my head, sore throat, headache, pains in my eyes, and earache; but, thank God, I am now better, and hope to be able to go out tomorrow, being Sunday. I got your letter of the 16th and the two unsealed letters of introduction for Paris. I rejoice that my French song pleases you [see No. 92]. You must forgive my not writing much this time, but I really cannot--I am so afraid of bringing back my headache, and, besides, I feel no inclination to write to-day. It is impossible to write all we think--at least, I find it to be so. I would rather say it than write it. My last letter told you the whole thing just as it stands. Believe what you please of me, only nothing bad. There are people who think no one can love a poor girl without evil designs. But I am no Brunetti [a violinist in Salzburg], no Misliweczeck. I am a Mozart; and, though young, still a high-principled Mozart. Pardon me if, in my eagerness, I become somewhat excited--which is, I suppose, the term, though I might rather say, if I write as I feel. I might have said a great deal on this subject, but I cannot--I feel it to be impossible. Among my many faults I have also that of believing that those friends who know me, do so thoroughly. Then many words are not necessary; and if they do not know me, oh! how could I find words sufficient? It is painful enough to employ words and letters for such a purpose. This, however, is not at all meant to apply to you, dearest papa. No! You understand me too well, and you are too kind to try to deprive any one of his good name. I only meant it for--you can guess to whom I allude--to people who can believe such a thing. I have resolved to stay in the house to-day, although Sunday, as it is snowing heavily. To-morrow I must go out, for our "house-nymph," Madlle. Pierron, my highly esteemed pupil, who has usually a French concert every Monday, intends to scramble through my hochgrafliche Litzau concerto. I also mean, for my sins, to let them give me something to hack away at, and show that I can do something too prima fista; for I am a regular greenhorn, and all I can do is to strum a little on the piano! I must now conclude, being more disposed to-day to write music than letters. Don't forget the cadenzas and the cantabile. Many thanks for having had the arias written out so quickly, for it shows that you place confidence in me when I beg a favor of you. 96. Mannheim, Feb. 28, 1778. I HOPE to receive the arias next Friday or Saturday, although in your last letter you made no further mention of them, so I don't know whether you sent them off on the 22d by the post-carriage. I hope so, for I should like to play and sing them to Madlle. Weber. I was yesterday at Raafl's to take him an aria that I lately wrote for him [Kochel, No. 295]. The words are--"Se al labbro mio non credi, nemica mia." I don't think they are by Metastasio. The aria pleased him beyond all measure. It is necessary to be very particular with a man of this kind. I chose these words expressly, because he had already composed an aria for them, so of course he can sing it with greater facility, and more agreeably to himself. I told him to say honestly if it did not suit his voice or please him, for I would alter it if he wished, or write another. "Heaven forbid!" said he; "it must remain just as it is, for nothing can be more beautiful. I only wish you to curtail it a little, for I am no longer able to sustain my voice through so long a piece." "Most gladly," I answered, "as much as ever you please; I made it purposely rather long, for it is always easy to shorten, but not so easy to lengthen." After he had sung the second part, he took off his spectacles, and, looking at me deliberately, said, "Beautiful! beautiful! This second part is quite charming;" and he sang it three times. When I went away he cordially thanked me, while I assured him that I would so arrange the aria that he would certainly like to sing it. I think an aria should fit a singer as accurately as a well-made coat. I have also, for practice, arranged the air "Non so d' onde viene" which has been so charmingly composed by Bach. Just because I know that of Bach so well, and it pleases me and haunts my ear, I wished to try if, in spite of all this, I could succeed in writing an aria totally unlike the other. And, indeed, it does not in the very least resemble it. I at first intended this aria for Raaff; but the beginning seemed to me too high for Raaff's voice, but it pleased me so much that I would not alter it; and from the orchestral accompaniment, too, I thought it better suited to a soprano. I therefore resolved to write it for Madlle. Weber. I laid it aside, and took the words "Se al labbro" for Raaff. But all in vain, for I could write nothing else, as the first air always came back into my head; so I returned to it, with the intention of making it exactly in accordance with Madlle. Weber's voice. It is andante sostenuto, (preceded by a short recitative,) then follows the other part, Nel seno destarmi, and after this the sostenuto again. When it was finished, I said to Madlle. Weber, "Learn the air by yourself, sing it according to your own taste, then let me hear it, and I will afterwards tell you candidly what pleases and what displeases me." In the course of a couple of days I went to see her, when she sang it for me and accompanied herself, and I was obliged to confess that she had sung it precisely as I could have wished, and as I would have taught it to her myself. This is now the best aria that she has, and will insure her success whereever she goes. [Footnote: This wonderfully beautiful aria is appended to my Life of Mozart.--Stuttgart, Bruckmaun, 1863.] Yesterday at Wendling's I sketched the aria I promised his wife [Madame Wendling was a fine singer], with a short recitative. The words were chosen by himself from "Didone": "Ah non lasciarmi no." She and her daughter quite rave about this air. I promised the daughter also some French ariettes, one of which I began to-day. I think with delight of the Concert Spirituel in Paris, for probably I shall be desired to compose something for it. The orchestra is said to be good and numerous, so my favorite style of composition can be well given there--I mean choruses, and I am very glad to hear that the French place so much value on this class of music. The only fault found with Piccini's [Gluck's well-known rival] new opera "Roland" is that the choruses are too meagre and weak, and the music also a little monotonous; otherwise it was universally liked. In Paris they are accustomed to hear nothing but Gluck's choruses. Only place confidence in me; I shall strive with all my might to do honor to the name of Mozart. I have no fears at all on the subject. My last letters must have shown you HOW THINGS ARE, and WHAT I REALLY MEANT. I do entreat of you never to allow the thought to cross your mind that I can ever forget you, for I cannot bear such an idea. My chief aim is, and always will be, to endeavor that we may meet soon and happily, but we must have patience. You know even better than I do that things often take a perverse turn, but they will one day go straight--only patience! Let us place our trust in God, who will never forsake us. I shall not be found wanting; how can you possibly doubt me? Surely it concerns me also to work with all my strength, that I may have the pleasure and the happiness (the sooner the better, too) of embracing from my heart my dearest and kindest father. But, lo and behold! nothing in this world is wholly free from interested motives. If war should break out in Bavaria, I do hope you will come and join me at once. I place faith in three friends--and they are powerful and invincible ones--namely, God, and your head and mine. Our heads are, indeed, very different, but each in its own way is good, serviceable, and useful; and in time I hope mine may by degrees equal yours in that class of knowledge in which you at present surpass me. Farewell! Be merry and of good cheer! Remember that you have a son who never intentionally failed in his filial duty towards you, and who will strive to become daily more worthy of so good a father. After these frank confessions, which would, he knew, restore the previous good understanding between him and his father, Mozart's genuine good heart was so relieved and lightened, that the natural balance of his mind, which had for some weeks past been entirely destroyed, was speedily restored, and his usual lively humor soon began to revive. Indeed, his old delight in doggerel rhymes and all kinds of silly puns seems to return. He indulges fully in these in a letter to his Basle (cousin), which is undoubtedly written just after the previous one. 97. Mannheim, Feb. 28, 1778. MADEMOISELLE, MA TRES-CHERE COUSINE,-- You perhaps think or believe that I must be dead? Not at all! I beg you will not think so, for how could I write so beautifully if I were dead? Could such a thing be possible? I do not attempt to make any excuses for my long silence, for you would not believe me if I did. But truth is truth; I have had so much to do that though I have had time to think of my cousin, I have had no time to write to her, so I was obliged to let it alone. But at last I have the honor to inquire how you are, and how you fare? If we soon shall have a talk? If you write with a lump of chalk? If I am sometimes in your mind? If to hang yourself you're inclined? If you're angry with me, poor fool? If your wrath begins to cool?--Oh! you are laughing! VICTORIA! I knew you could not long resist me, and in your favor would enlist me. Yes! yes! I know well how this is, though I'm in ten days off to Paris. If you write to me from pity, do so soon from Augsburg city, so that I may get your letter, which to me would be far better. Now let us talk of other things. Were you very merry during the Carnival? They are much gayer at Augsburg at that time than here. I only wish I had been there that I might have frolicked about with you. Mamma and I send our love to your father and mother, and to our cousin, and hope they are well and happy; better so, so better! A propos, how goes on your French? May I soon write you a French letter? from Paris, I suppose? Now, before I conclude, which I must soon do because I am in haste, (having just at this moment nothing to do,) and also have no more room, as you see my paper is done, and I am very tired, and my fingers tingling from writing so much, and lastly, even if I had room, I don't know what I could say, except, indeed, a story which I have a great mind to tell you. So listen! It is not long since it happened, and in this very country too, where it made a great sensation, for really it seemed almost incredible, and, indeed, between ourselves, no one yet knows the result of the affair. So, to be brief, about four miles from here--I can't remember the name of the place, but it was either a village or a hamlet, or something of that kind. Well, after all, it don't much signify whether it was called Triebetrill or Burmsquick; there is no doubt that it was some place or other. There a shepherd or herdsman lived, who was pretty well advanced in years, but still looked strong and robust; he was unmarried and well-to-do, and lived happily. But before telling you the story, I must not forget to say that this man had a most astounding voice when he spoke; he terrified people when he spoke! Well! to make my tale as short as possible, you must know that he had a dog called Bellot, a very handsome large dog, white with black spots. Well! this shepherd was going along with his sheep, for he had a flock of eleven thousand under his care, and he had a staff in his hand, with a pretty rose-colored topknot of ribbons, for he never went out without his staff; such was his invariable custom. Now to proceed; being tired, after having gone a couple of miles, he sat down on a bank beside a river to rest. At last he fell asleep, when he dreamt that he had lost all his sheep, and this fear awoke him, but to his great joy he saw his flock close beside him. At length he got up again and went on, but not for long; indeed, half an hour could scarcely have elapsed, when he came to a bridge which was very long, but with a parapet on both sides to prevent any one falling into the river. Well; he looked at his flock, and as he was obliged to cross the bridge, he began to drive over his eleven thousand sheep. Now be so obliging as to wait till the eleven thousand sheep are all safely across, and then I will finish the story. I already told you that the result is not yet known; I hope, however, that by the time I next write to you, all the sheep will have crossed the bridge; but if not, why should I care? So far as I am concerned, they might all have stayed on this side. In the meantime you must accept the story so far as it goes; what I really know to be true I have written, and it is better to stop now than to tell you what is false, for in that case you would probably have discredited the whole, whereas now you will only disbelieve one half. I must conclude, but don't think me rude; he who begins must cease, or the world would have no peace. My compliments to every friend, welcome to kiss me without end, forever and a day, till good sense comes my way; and a fine kissing that will be, which frightens you as well as me. Adieu, ma chere cousine! I am, I was, I have been, oh! that I were, would to heavens I were! I will or shall be, would, could, or should be--what?--A blockhead! W. A. M. 98. Mannheim, March 7, 1778. I have received your letter on the 26th February, and am much obliged to you for all the trouble you have taken about the arias, which are quite accurate in every respect. "Next to God comes papa" was my axiom when a child, and I still think the same. You are right when you say that "knowledge is power"; besides, except your trouble and fatigue, you will have no cause for regret, as Madlle. Weber certainly deserves your kindness. I only wish that you could hear her sing my new aria which I lately mentioned to you,--I say, hear her sing it, because it seems made expressly for her; a man like you who really understands what portamento in singing means, would certainly feel the most intense pleasure in hearing her. When I am happily settled in Paris, and our circumstances, please God, improved, and we are all more cheerful and in better humor, I will write you my thoughts more fully, and ask you to do me a great kindness. I must now tell you I was so shocked that tears came to my eyes, on reading in your last letter that you are obliged to go about so shabbily dressed. My very dearest papa, this is certainly not my fault; you know it is not. We economize in every possible way here; food and lodging, wood and light, cost us nothing, which is all we could hope for. As for dress, you are well aware that, in places where you are not known, it is out of the question to be badly dressed, for appearances must be kept up. My whole hopes are now centred in Paris, for German princes are all niggards. I mean to work with all my strength, that I may soon have the happiness of extricating you from your present distressing circumstances. 99. Mannheim, March. 11, 1778. I HAVE duly received your letter of the 26th February, and learn from it with great joy that our best and kindest of all friends, Baron Grimm [the well-known Encyclopedist, with whom Mozart had become acquainted during his last visit to France], is now in Paris. The vetturino has offered to convey us to Paris by Metz (which, as you probably know, is the shortest route) for eleven louis-d'or. If to-morrow he agrees to do it for ten, I shall certainly engage him, and perhaps at eleven, for even then it will be the cheapest way for us, which is the main point, and more convenient too, for he will take our carriage--that is, he will place the body on wheels of his own. The convenience is great, as we have so many small packages that we can stow away quite comfortably in our own carriage, which we cannot do in the DILIGENCE, and besides we shall be alone and able to talk as we like. But I do assure you that if, after all, we go in the DILIGENCE, my sole annoyance is the bore of not being able to say what we choose and wish, though, as it is very necessary that we should take the cheapest conveyance, I am still rather disposed to do so. THIRD PART.--PARIS.--MARCH 1778 TO JANUARY 1779. 100. Paris, March 24, 1778. YESTERDAY (Monday, the 23d), at four o'clock in the afternoon, we arrived here, thank God! safely, having been nine days and a half on our journey. We thought we really could not have gone through with it; in my life I never was so wearied. You may easily imagine what it was to leave Mannheim and so many dear kind friends, and then to travel for ten days, not only without these friends, but without any human being--without a single soul whom we could associate with or even speak to. Now, thank Heaven! we are at our destination, and I trust that, with the help of God, all will go well. To-day we are to take a fiacre and go in quest of Grimm and Wendling. Early to-morrow I intend to call on the Minister of the Palatinate, Herr von Sickingen, (a great connoisseur and passionate lover of music, and for whom I have two letters from Herr von Gemmingen and M. Cannabich.) Before leaving Mannheim I had the quartet transcribed that I wrote at Lodi one evening in the inn there, and also the quintet and the Fischer variations for Herr von Gemmingen [author of the "Deutsche Hausvater"], on which he wrote me a most polite note, expressing his pleasure at the souvenir I had left him, and sending me a letter to his intimate friend Herr von Sickingen, adding, "I feel sure that you will be a greater recommendation to the letter than the letter can possibly be to you;" and, to repay the expense of writing out the music, he sent me three louis-d'or; he also assured me of his friendship, and requested mine in return. I must say that all those who knew me, Hofrathe, Kammerrathe, and other high-class people, as well as all the court musicians, were very grieved and reluctant to see me go; and really and truly so. We left on Saturday, the 14th, and on the previous Thursday there was an afternoon concert at Cannabich's, where my concerto for three pianos was given. Madlle. Rose Cannabich played the first, Madlle. Weber the second, and Madlle. Pierron Serrarius (our "house-nymph") the third. We had three rehearsals of the concerto, and it went off well. Madlle. Weber sang three arias of mine, the "Aer tranquillo" from the "Re Pastore," [Footnote: A festal opera that Mozart had composed in 1775, in honor of the visit of the Archduke Maximilian Francis to Salzburg.] and the new "Non so d' onde viene." With this last air my dear Madlle. Weber gained very great honor both for herself and for me. All present said that no aria had ever affected them like this one; and, indeed, she sang it as it ought to be sung. The moment it was finished, Cannabich exclaimed, "Bravo! bravissimo maestro! veramente scritta da maestro!" It was given for the first time on this occasion with instruments. I should like you to have heard it also, exactly as it was executed and sung there, with such precision in time and taste, and in the pianos and fortes. Who knows? you may perhaps still hear her. I earnestly hope so. The members of the orchestra never ceased praising the aria and talking about it. I have many kind friends at Mannheim (both highly esteemed and rich) who wished very much to keep me there. Well! where I am properly paid, I am content to be. Who can tell? it may still come to pass. I wish it may; and thus it ever is with me--I live always in hope. Herr Cannabich is an honorable, worthy man, and a kind friend of mine. He has only one fault, which is, that although no longer very young, he is rather careless and absent,--if you are not constantly before his eyes, he is very apt to forget all about you. But where the interests of a real friend are in question, he works like a horse, and takes the deepest interest in the matter; and this is of great use, for he has influence. I cannot, however, say much in favor of his courtesy or gratitude; the Webers (for whom I have not done half so much), in spite of their poverty and obscurity, have shown themselves far more grateful. Madame Cannabich and her daughter never thanked me by one single word, much less thought of offering me some little remembrance, however trifling, merely as a proof of kindly feeling; but nothing of the sort, not even thanks, though I lost so much time in teaching the daughter, and took such pains with her. She can now perfectly well perform before any one; as a girl only fourteen, and an amateur, she plays remarkably well, and for this they have to thank me, which indeed is very well known to all in Mannheim. She has now neatness, time, and good fingering, as well as even shakes, which she had not formerly. They will find that they miss me much three months hence, for I fear she will again be spoiled, and spoil herself; unless she has a master constantly beside her, and one who thoroughly understands what he is about, she will do no good, for she is still too childish and giddy to practise steadily and carefully alone. [Footnote: Rosa Cannabich became, indeed, a remarkable virtuoso. C L. Junker mentions her, even in his musical almanac of 1783, among the most eminent living artists.] Madlle. Weber paid me the compliment kindly to knit two pairs of mits for me, as a remembrance and slight acknowledgment. M. Weber wrote out whatever I required gratis, gave me the music-paper, and also made me a present of Moliere's Comedies (as he knew that I had never read them), with this inscription:--"Ricevi, amico, le opere di Moliere, in segno di gratitudine, e qualche volta ricordati di me." [Footnote: "Accept, my dear friend, Moliere's works as a token of my gratitude; and sometimes think of me."] And when alone with mamma he said, "Our best friend, our benefactor, is about to leave us. There can be no doubt that your son has done a great deal for my daughter, and interested himself much about her, and she cannot be too thankful to him." [Footnote: Aloysia Weber became afterwards Madame Lange. She had great fame as a singer. We shall hear more of her in the Vienna letters.] The day before I set off, they would insist on my supping with them, but I managed to give them two hours before supper instead. They never ceased thanking me, and saying they only wished they were in a position to testify their gratitude, and when I went away they all wept. Pray forgive me, but really tears come to my eyes when I think of it. Weber came down-stairs with me, and remained standing at the door till I turned the corner and called out Adieu! In Paris he at once plunged into work, so that his love-affair was for a time driven into the background. Compositions for the Concert Spirituel, for the theatre, and for dilettanti, as well as teaching and visits to great people, occupied him. His mother writes: "I cannot describe to you how much Wolfgang is beloved and praised here. Herr Wendling had said much in his favor before he came, and has presented him to all his friends. He can dine daily, if he chooses, with Noverre [the famed ballet-master], and also with Madame d'Epinay" [Grimm's celebrated friend]. The mother herself scarcely saw him all day, for on account of their small close apartment, he was obliged to compose at Director Le Gros's house. She had (womanlike) written to the father about the composition of a Miserere. Wolfgang continues the letter, more fully explaining the matter. 101. Paris, April 5, 1778. I MUST now explain more, clearly what mamma alludes to, as she has written rather obscurely. Capellmeister Holzbauer has sent a Miserere here, but as the choruses at Mannheim are weak and poor, whereas here they are strong and good, his choruses would make no effect. M. Le Gros (Director of the Concert Spirituel) requested me therefore to compose others; Holzbauer's introductory chorus being retained. "Quoniam iniquitatem meam," an allegro, is the first air by me. The second an adagio, "Ecce enim in iniquitatibus." Then an allegro, "Ecce enim veritatem dilexisti" to the "ossa humiliata." Then an andante for soprano, tenor, and bass Soli; "Cor mundum," and "Redde mihi," allegro to "ad se convertentur." I also composed a recitative for a bass air, "Libera me de sanguinibus," because a bass air of Holzbauer's follows. The "sacrificium Deo spiritus" being an aria andante for Raaff, with a hautboy and a bassoon solo obligato. I have added a short recitative with hautboy and bassoon, for here recitative is much liked. "Benigne fac" to "muri Jerusalem" andante moderate. Chorus. Then "Tunc acceptabis" to "super altare," allegro and tenor solo (Le Gros) and chorus. Finis. [None of this music is known.] I must say that I am right glad to have done with this task, for it is really detestable not to be able to write at home, and to be hurried into the bargain; but now, God be praised! it is finished, and I hope it will make some effect. M. Gussec, whom you no doubt know, when he saw my first chorus, said to Le Gros (I was not present) that it was charming, and could not fail to be successful, that the words were so well arranged, and, above all, admirably set to music. He is a kind friend of mine, but very reserved. I am not merely to write an act for an opera, but an entire one in two acts. The poet has already completed the first act. Noverre [ballet-master], with whom I dine as often as I please, managed this, and indeed suggested the idea. I think it is to be called "Alexander and Roxana." Madame Jenome is also here. I am about to compose a sinfonie concertante,--flute, Wendling; oboe, Ramm; French horn, Punto; and bassoon, Ritter. Punto plays splendidly. I have this moment returned from the Concert Spirituel. Baron Grimm and I often give vent to our wrath at the music here; N.B.--when tete-a-tete, for in public we call out "Bravo! bravissimo!" and clap our hands till our fingers tingle. 102. Paris, May 1, 1778. THE little violoncellist Zygmatofsky and his unprincipled father are here. Perhaps I may already have written you this; I only mention it cursorily, because I just remember that I met him at a house which I must now tell you about. I mean that of the Duchesse de Chabot. M. Grimm gave me a letter to her, so I drove there, the purport of the letter being chiefly to recommend me to the Duchesse de Bourbon, who when I was last here [during Mozart's first visit to Paris] was in a convent, and to introduce me afresh to her and recall me to her memory. A week elapsed without the slightest notice of my visit, but as eight days previously she had appointed me to call on her, I kept my engagement and went. I waited half an hour in a large room without any fire, and as cold as ice. At last the Duchess came in, and was very polite, begging me to make allowances for her piano, as none of her instruments were in good order, but I might at least try it. I said that I would most gladly play something, but at this moment it was impossible, as my fingers were quite benumbed from the cold, so I asked her at all events to take me to a room where there was a fire. "Oh! oui, Monsieur, vous avez raison"--was her answer. She then seated herself, and drew for a whole hour in company with several gentlemen, all sitting in a circle round a large table, and during this time I had the honor to wait. The windows and doors were open, so that not only my hands, but my body and my feet were cold, and my head also began to ache. Moreover, there was altum silentium, and I really did not know what to do from cold, headache, and weariness. I again and again thought to myself, that if it were not on M. Grimm's account I would leave the house at once. At last, to cut matters short, I played on the wretched, miserable piano. What however vexed me most of all was, that the Duchess and all the gentlemen did not cease drawing for a single moment, but coolly continued their occupation; so I was left to play to the chairs and tables, and the walls. My patience gave way under such unpropitious circumstances. I therefore began the Fischer variations, and after playing one half of them I rose. Then came eulogiums without end. I, however, said all that could be said--which was, that I could do myself no justice on such a piano, but I should be very glad to fix some other day to play, when a better instrument might be found. But the Duchess would not hear of my going away; so I was obliged to wait till her husband came in, who placed himself beside me and listened to me with great attention, while, as for me, I became unconscious of all cold and all headache, and, in spite of the wretched piano, played as I CAN play when I am in the right mood. Give me the best piano in Europe, and listeners who understand nothing, or don't wish to understand, and who do not sympathize with me in what I am playing, I no longer feel any pleasure. I afterwards told all this to M. Grimm. You write to me that I ought to pay a good many visits in order to make new acquaintances, and to renew former ones. This is, however, impossible, from the distances being so great, and it is too muddy to go on foot, for really the mud in Paris is beyond all description. To go in a carriage entails spending four or five livres a day, and all for nothing; it is true the people say all kinds of civil things, but there it ends, as they appoint me to come on such and such a day, when I play, and hear them exclaim, "Oh! c'est un prodige, c'est inconcevable, c'est etonnant!" and then, Adieu! At first I spent money enough in driving about, and to no purpose, from not finding the people at home. Unless you lived here, you could not believe what an annoyance this is. Besides, Paris is much changed; the French are far from being as polite as they were fifteen years ago; their manner now borders on rudeness, and they are odiously self-sufficient. I must proceed to give you an account of the Concert Spirituel. By the by, I must first briefly tell you that my chorus-labors were in a manner useless, for Holzbauer's Miserere was too long in itself, and did not please, so they gave only two of my choruses instead of four, and chose to leave out the best; but this was of no great consequence, for many there were not aware that any of the music was by me, and many knew nothing at all about me. Still, at the rehearsal great approbation was expressed, and I myself (for I place no great reliance on Parisian praise) was very much satisfied with my choruses. With regard to the sinfonie concertante there appears to be a hitch, and I believe that some unseen mischief is at work. It seems that I have enemies here also; where have I not had them? But this is a good sign. I was obliged to write the symphony very hurriedly, and worked very hard at it. The four performers were and are perfectly enchanted with the piece. Le Gros had it for the last four days to be copied, but I invariably saw it lying in the same place. Two days ago I could not find it, though I searched carefully among the music; and at last I discovered it hidden away. I took no notice, but said to Le Gros, "A propos, have you given my sinfonie to be copied?" "No; I forgot all about it." As, of course, I have no power to compel him to have it transcribed and performed, I said nothing; but I went to the concert on the two days when the sinfonie was to have been performed, when Ramm and Punto came to me in the greatest rage to ask me why my sinfonie concertante was not to be given. "I don't know. This is the first I hear of it. I cannot tell." Ramm was frantic, and abused Le Gros in the music-room in French, saying how very unhandsome it was on his part, etc. I alone was to be kept in the dark! If he had even made an excuse--that the time was too short, or something of the kind!--but he never said a syllable. I believe the real cause to be Cambini, an Italian maestro; for at our first meeting at Le Gros's, I unwittingly took the wind out of his sails. He composes quintets, one of which I heard at Mannheim; it was very pretty, so I praised it, and played the beginning to him. Ritter, Ramm, and Punto were all present, and gave me no peace till I agreed to continue, and to supply from my own head what I could not remember. I therefore did so, and Cambini was quite excited, and could not help saying, "Questa e una gran testa!" Well, I suppose after all he did not quite relish this, [The symphony in question has also entirely disappeared.] If this were a place where people had ears to hear or hearts to feel, and understood just a little of music, and had some degree of taste, these things would only make me laugh heartily, but as it is (so far as music is concerned) I am surrounded by mere brute beasts. But how can it be otherwise? for in all their actions, inclinations, and passions, they are just the same. There is no place in the world like Paris. You must not think that I exaggerate when I speak in this way of the music here; refer to whom you will, except to a Frenchman born, and (if trustworthy) you will hear the same. But I am now here, and must endure it for your sake. I shall be grateful to Providence if I get away with my natural taste uninjured. I pray to God every day to grant me grace to be firm and steadfast here, that I may do honor to the whole German nation, which will all redound to His greater honor and glory, and to enable me to prosper and make plenty of money, that I may extricate you from your present emergencies, and also to permit us to meet soon, and to live together happily and contentedly; but "His will be done in earth as it is in heaven." I entreat you, dearest father, in the meantime, to take measures that I may see Italy, in order to bring me to life again. Bestow this great happiness upon me, I implore you! I do hope you will keep up your spirits; I shall cut my way through here as I best can, and trust I shall get off safely. Adieu! 103. Paris, May 14, 1778. I HAVE already so much to do that I don't know how I am to manage when winter comes. I think I wrote to you in my last letter that the Duc de Guines, whose daughter is my pupil in composition, plays the flute inimitably, and she the harp magnificently; she has a great deal of talent and genius, and, above all, a wonderful memory, for she plays all her pieces, about 200 in number, by heart. She, however, doubts much whether she has any genius for composition, especially as regards ideas or invention; but her father (who, entre nous, is rather too infatuated about her) declares that she certainly has ideas, and that she is only diffident and has too little self-reliance. Well, we shall see. If she acquires no thoughts or ideas, (for hitherto she really has none whatever,) it is all in vain, for God knows I can't give her any! It is not the father's intention to make her a great composer. He says, "I don't wish her to write operas, or arias, or concertos, or symphonies, but grand sonatas for her instrument and for mine." I gave her to-day her fourth lesson on the rules of composition and harmony, and am pretty well satisfied with her. She made a very good bass for the first minuet, of which I had given her the melody, and she has already begun to write in three parts; she can do it, but she quickly tires, and I cannot get her on, for it is impossible to proceed further as yet; it is too soon, even if she really had genius, but, alas! there appears to be none; all must be done by rule; she has no ideas, and none seem likely to come, for I have tried her in every possible way. Among other things it occurred to me to write out a very simple minuet, and to see if she could not make a variation on it. Well, that utterly failed. Now, thought I, she has not a notion how or what to do first. So I began to vary the first bar, and told her to continue in the same manner, and to keep to the idea. At length this went tolerably well. When it was finished, I told her she must try to originate something herself--only the treble of a melody. So she thought it over for a whole quarter of an hour, AND NOTHING CAME. Then I wrote four bars of a minuet, saying to her, "See what an ass I am! I have begun a minuet, and can't even complete the first part; be so very good as to finish it for me." She declared this was impossible. At last, with great difficulty, SOMETHING CAME, and I was only too glad that ANYTHING AT ALL CAME. I told her then to complete the minuet--that is, the treble only. The task I set her for the next lesson was to change my four bars, and replace them by something of her own, and to find out another beginning, even if it were the same harmony, only changing the melody. I shall see to-morrow what she has done. I shall soon now, I think, receive the poetry for my two-act opera, when I must first present it to the Director, M. de Vismes, to see if he will accept it; but of this there can be no doubt, as it is recommended by Noverre, to whom De Vismes is indebted for his situation. Noverre, too, is soon to arrange a new ballet, for which I am to write the music. Rudolf (who plays the French horn) is in the royal service here, and a very kind friend of mine; he understands composition thoroughly, and writes well. He has offered me the place of organist at Versailles if I choose to accept it: the salary is 2000 livres a year, but I must live six months at Versailles and the remaining six in Paris, or where I please. I don't, however, think that I shall close with the offer; I must take the advice of good friends on the subject. 2000 livres is no such very great sum; in German money it may be so, but not here. It amounts to 83 louis-d'or 8 livres a year--that is, 915 florins 45 kreutzers of our money, (which is certainly a considerable sum,) but only to 383 ecus 2 livres, and that is not much, for it is frightful to see how quickly a dollar goes here! I am not at all surprised that so little is thought of a louis-d'or in Paris, for it does not go far. Four dollars, or a louis-d'or, which are the same, are gone in no time. Adieu! 104. Paris, May 29, 1778. I AM pretty well, thank God! but still I am often puzzled to know what to make of it all. I feel neither hot nor cold, and don't take much pleasure in anything. What, however, cheers and strengthens me most is the thought that you, dearest papa, and my dear sister, are well; that I am an honest German, and though I cannot SAY, I may at all events THINK what I please, and, after all, that is the chief thing. Yesterday I was for the second time at Count Sickingen's, ambassador from the Elector Palatine; (I dined there once before with Wendling and Ramm.) I don't know whether I told you what a charming man he is, and a great connoisseur and devoted lover of music. I passed eight hours quite alone with him. The whole forenoon, and afternoon too, till ten o'clock at night, we were at the piano, playing all kind of music, praising, admiring, analyzing, discussing, and criticizing. He has nearly thirty scores of operas. I must not forget to tell you that I had the satisfaction of seeing your "School for the Violin" translated into French; I believe it is about eight years since the translation appeared. I have just returned from a music-shop where I went to buy a sonata of Schobert's for one of my pupils, and I mean to go again soon to examine the book more closely, that I may write to you about it minutely, for to-day I have not time to do this. 105. Paris, June 12, 1778. I MUST now write something that concerns our Raaff. [Footnote: Mozart wrote the part of Idomeneo for Raaff in the year 1781.] You no doubt remember that I did not write much in his favor from Mannheim, and was by no means satisfied with his singing--in short, that he did not please me at all. The cause, however, was that I can scarcely say I really heard him at Mannheim. The first time was at the rehearsal of Holzbauer's "Gunther," when he was in his every-day clothes, his hat on his head, and a stick in his hand. When he was not singing, he stood looking like a sulky child. When he began to sing the first recitative, it went tolerably well, but every now and then he gave a kind of shriek, which I could not bear. He sang the arias in a most indolent way, and yet some of the notes with too much emphasis, which is not what I like. This has been an invariable habit of his, which the Bernacchi school probably entails; for he is a pupil of Bernacchi's. At court, too, he used to sing all kinds of airs which, in my opinion, by no means suited his voice; so he did not at all please me. When at length he made his debut here in the Concert Spirituel, he sang Bach's scena, "Non so d' onde viene" which is, besides, my great favorite, and then for the first time I really heard him sing, and he pleased me--that is, in this class of music; but the style itself, the Bernacchi school, is not to my taste. He is too apt to fall into the cantabile. I admit that, when he was younger and in his prime, this must have made a great impression and taken people by surprise; I could like it also, but there is too much of it, and it often seems to me positively ludicrous. What does please me in him is when he sings short pieces--for instance, andantinos; and he has likewise certain arias which he gives in a manner peculiar to himself. Let each occupy his proper place. I fancy that bravura singing was once his forte, which is even still perceptible in him, and so far as age admits of it he has a good chest and a long breath; and then his andantino! His voice is fine and very pleasing; if I shut my eyes and listen to him, I think his singing very like Meissner's, only Raaff's voice seems to me more agreeable. I speak of the present time, for I never heard either in his best days. I can therefore only refer to their style or method of singing, for this a singer always retains. Meissner, as you know, had the bad habit of purposely making his voice tremble at times,--entire quavers and even crotchets, when marked sostenuto,--and this I never could endure in him. Nothing can be more truly odious; besides, it is a style of singing quite contrary to nature. The human voice is naturally tremulous, but only so far as to be beautiful; such is the nature of the voice, and it is imitated not only on wind instruments, but on stringed instruments, and even on the piano. But the moment the proper boundary is passed it is no longer beautiful, because it becomes unnatural. It seems to me then just like an organ when the bellows are panting. Now Raaff never does this,--in fact, he cannot bear it. Still, so far as a genuine cantabile goes, Meissner pleases me (though not altogether, for he also exaggerates) better than Raaff. In bravura passages and roulades, Raaff is indeed a perfect master, and he has such a good and distinct articulation, which is a great charm; and, as I already said, his andantinus and canzonetti are delightful. He composed four German songs, which are lovely. He likes me much, and we are very intimate; he comes to us almost every day. I have dined at least six times with Count von Sickingen, and always stay from one o'clock till ten. Time, however, flies so quickly in his house that it passes quite imperceptibly. He seems fond of me, and I like very much being with him, for he is a most friendly, sensible person, possessing excellent judgment and a true insight into music, I was there again to-day with Raaff. I took some music with me, as the Count (long since) asked me to do so. I brought my newly completed symphony, with which, on Corpus Christi day, the Concert Spirituel is to commence. The work pleased them both exceedingly, and I am also well satisfied with it. Whether it will be popular here, however, I cannot tell, and, to say the truth, I care very little about it. For whom is it to please? I can answer for its pleasing the few intelligent Frenchmen who may be there; as for the numskulls--why, it would be no great misfortune if they were dissatisfied. I have some hope, nevertheless, that even the dunces among them may find something to admire. Besides, I have been careful not to neglect le premier coup d'archet; and that is sufficient. All the wiseacres here make such a fuss on that point! Deuce take me if I can see any difference! Their orchestra begins all at one stroke, just as in other places. It is too laughable! Raaff told me a story of Abaco on this subject. He was asked by a Frenchman, in Munich or elsewhere,--"Monsieur, vous avez ete a Paris?" "Oui." "Est-ce que vous etiez au Concert Spirituel?" "Oui." "Que dites-vous du premier coup d'archet? avez-vous entendu le premier coup d'archet?" "Oui, j'ai entendu le premier et le dernier." "Comment le dernier? que veut dire cela?" "Mais oui, le premier et le dernier; et le dernier meme m'a donne plus de plaisir." [Footnote: The imposing impression produced by the first grand crash of a numerous orchestra, commencing with precision, in tutti, gave rise to this pleasantry.] A few days afterwards his kind mother was taken ill. Even in her letters from Mannheim she often complained of various ailments, and in Paris also she was still exposed to the discomfort of cold dark lodgings, which she was obliged to submit to for the sake of economy; so her illness soon assumed the worst aspect, and Mozart experienced the first severe trial of his life. The following letter is addressed to his beloved and faithful friend, Abbe Bullinger, tutor in Count Lodron's family in Salzburg. (Private.) 106. Paris, July 3, 1778. MY VERY DEAR FRIEND,-- Mourn with me! This has been the most melancholy day of my life; I am now writing at two o'clock in the morning. I must tell you that my mother, my darling mother, is no more. God has called her to Himself; I clearly see that it was His will to take her from us, and I must learn to submit to the will of God. The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away. Only think of all the distress, anxiety, and care I have endured for the last fourteen days. She died quite unconscious, and her life went out like a light. She confessed three days before, took the sacrament, and received extreme unction. The last three days, however, she was constantly delirious, and to-day, at twenty minutes past five o'clock, her features became distorted, and she lost all feeling and perception. I pressed her hand, I spoke to her, but she did not see me, she did not hear me, and all feeling was gone. She lay thus till the moment of her death, five hours after, at twenty minutes past ten at night. There was no one present but myself, Herr Heiner, a kind friend whom my father knows, and the nurse. It is quite impossible for me to describe the whole course of the illness to-day. I am firmly convinced that she must have died, and that God had so ordained it. All I would ask of you at present is to act the part of a true friend, by preparing my father by degrees for this sad intelligence. I have written to him by this post, but only that she is seriously ill; and now I shall wait for your answer and be guided by it. May God give him strength and courage! My dear friend, I am consoled not only now, but have been so for some time past. By the mercy of God I have borne it all with firmness and composure. When the danger became imminent, I prayed to God for only two things--a happy death for my mother, and strength and courage for myself; and our gracious God heard my prayer and conferred these two boons fully on me. I entreat you, therefore, my best friend, to watch over my father for me; try to inspire him with courage, that the blow may not be too hard and heavy on him when he learns the worst. I also, from my heart, implore you to comfort my sister. Pray go straight to them, but do not tell them she is actually dead--only prepare them for the truth. Do what you think best, say what you please; only act so that my mind may be relieved, and that I may not have to dread another misfortune. Support and comfort my dear father and my dear sister. Answer me at once, I entreat. Adieu! Your faithful W. A. M. 107. Paris, July 3, 1778. MONSIEUR MON TRES-CHER PERE,-- I have very painful and sad news to give you, which has, in fact, been the cause of my not having sooner replied to your letter of the 11th. My dearest mother is very ill. She has been bled according to her usual custom, which was indeed very necessary; it did her much good, but a few days afterwards she complained of shivering and feverishness; then diarrhoea came on and headache. At first we only used our home remedies, antispasmodic powders; we would gladly have had recourse to the black powder, but we had none, and could not get it here. As she became every moment worse, could hardly speak, and lost her hearing, so that we were obliged to shout to her, Baron Grimm sent his doctor to see her. She is very weak, and still feverish and delirious. They do give me some hope, but I have not much. I hoped and feared alternately day and night for long, but I am quite reconciled to the will of God, and hope that you and my sister will be the same. What other resource have we to make us calm? More calm, I ought to say; for altogether so we cannot be. Whatever the result may be, I am resigned, knowing that it comes from God, who wills all things for our good, (however unaccountable they may seem to us;) and I do firmly believe (and shall never think otherwise) that no doctor, no man living, no misfortune, no casualty, can either save or take away the life of any human being--none but God alone. These are only the instruments that He usually employs, but not always; we sometimes see people swoon, fall down, and be dead in a moment. When our time does come, all means are vain,--they rather hurry on death than retard it; this we saw in the case of our friend Hefner. I do not mean to say by this that my mother will or must die, or that all hope is at an end; she may recover and be restored to health, but only if the Lord wills it thus. After praying to God with all my strength for health and life for my darling mother, I like to indulge in such consolatory thoughts, and, after doing so, I feel more cheerful and more calm and tranquil, and you may easily imagine how much I require comfort. Now for another subject. Let us put aside these sad thoughts, and still hope, but not too much; we must place our trust in the Lord, and console ourselves by the thought that all must go well if it be in accordance with the will of the Almighty, as he knows best what is most profitable and beneficial both for our temporal and spiritual welfare. I have composed a symphony for the opening of the Concert Spirituel, which was performed with great applause on Corpus Christi day. I hear, too, that there is a notice of it in the "Courrier de l'Europe," and that it has given the greatest satisfaction. I was very nervous during the rehearsal, for in my life I never heard anything go so badly. You can have no idea of the way in which they scraped and scrambled through my symphony twice over; I was really very uneasy, and would gladly have had it rehearsed again, but so many things had been tried over that there was no time left. I therefore went to bed with an aching heart and in a discontented and angry spirit. Next day I resolved not to go to the concert at all; but in the evening, the weather being fine, I made up my mind at last to go, determined that if it went as badly as at the rehearsal, I would go into the orchestra, take the violin out of the hands of M. La Haussaye, the first violin, and lead myself. I prayed to God that it might go well, for all is to His greater honor and glory; and ecce, the symphony began, Raaff was standing beside me, and just in the middle of the allegro a passage occurred which I felt sure must please, and there was a burst of applause; but as I knew at the time I wrote it what effect it was sure to produce, I brought it in once more at the close, and then rose shouts of "Da capo!" The andante was also liked, but the last allegro still more so. Having observed that all last as well as first allegros here begin together with all the other instruments, and generally unisono, mine commenced with only two violins, piano for the first eight bars, followed instantly by a forte; the audience, as I expected, called out "hush!" at the soft beginning, and the instant the forte was heard began to clap their hands. The moment the symphony was over I went off in my joy to the Palais Royal, where I took a good ice, told over my beads, as I had vowed, and went home, where I am always happiest, and always shall be happiest, or in the company of some good, true, upright German, who, so long as he is unmarried, lives a good Christian life, and when he marries loves his wife, and brings up his children properly. I must give you a piece of intelligence that you perhaps already know--namely, that the ungodly arch-villain Voltaire has died miserably like a dog--just like a brute. This is his reward! You must long since have remarked that I do not like being here, for many reasons, which, however, do not signify as I am actually here. I never fail to do my very best, and to do so with all my strength. Well, God will make all things right. I have a project in my head, for the success of which I daily pray to God. If it be His almighty will, it must come to pass; but, if not, I am quite contented. I shall then at all events have done my part. When this is in train, and if it turns out as I wish, you must then do your part also, or the whole work would be incomplete. Your kindness leads me to hope that you will certainly do so. Don't trouble yourself by any useless thoughts on the subject; and one favor I must beg of you beforehand, which is, not to ask me to reveal my thoughts more clearly till the time comes. It is very difficult at present to find a good libretto for an opera. The old ones, which are the best, are not written in the modern style, and the new ones are all good for nothing; for poetry, which was the only thing of which France had reason to be proud, becomes every day worse, and poetry is the only thing which requires to be good here, for music they do not understand. There are now two operas in aria which I could write, one in two acts, and the other in three. The two-act one is "Alexandra et Roxane," but the author of the libretto is still in the country; the one in three acts is "Demofonte" (by Metastasio). It is a translation interspersed with choruses and dancing, and specially adapted to the French stage. But this one I have not yet got a sight of. Write to me whether you have Schroter's concertos in Salzburg, or Hullmandell's sonatas. I should like to buy them to send to you. Both of them are beautiful. With regard to Versailles, it never was my intention to go there. I asked the advice of Baron Grimm and other kind friends on the point, and they all thought just as I did. The salary is not much, and I should be obliged to live a dreary life for six months in a place where nothing is to be gained, and my talents completely buried. Whoever enters the king's service is forgotten in Paris; and then to become an organist! A good appointment would be most welcome to me, but only that of a Capellmeister, and a well-paid one too. Now, farewell! Be careful of your health; place your trust in God, and then you will find consolation. My dearest mother is in the hands of the Almighty. If He still spares her to us, as I wish He may, we will thank Him for this blessing, but if He takes her to Himself, all our anguish, misery, and despair can be of no avail. Let us rather submit with firmness to His almighty will, in the full conviction that it will prove for our good, as he does nothing without a cause. Farewell, dearest papa! Do what you can to preserve your health for my sake. 108. Paris, July 9, 1778. I HOPE you are prepared to receive with firmness most melancholy and painful intelligence. My last letter of the 3d must have shown you that no good news could be hoped for. That very same day, the 3d, at twenty minutes past ten at night, my mother fell asleep peacefully in the Lord; indeed, when I wrote to you she was already in the enjoyment of heavenly bliss, for all was then over. I wrote to you in the night, and I hope you and my dear sister will forgive me for this slight but very necessary deception; for, judging of your grief and sorrow by my own, I could not prevail on myself to startle you suddenly by such dreadful intelligence; but I hope you have now summoned up courage to hear the worst, and that, after at first giving way to natural and only too just anguish and tears, you will eventually submit to the will of God, and adore His inscrutable, unfathomable, and all-wise providence. You can easily conceive what I have had to endure, and what courage and fortitude I required to bear with composure seeing her become daily worse and worse; and yet our gracious God bestowed this boon on me. I have, indeed, suffered and wept, but what did it avail? So I strove to be comforted, and I do hope, my dear father, that my dear sister and you will do likewise. Weep, weep, as you cannot fail to weep, but take comfort at last; remember that God Almighty has ordained it, and how can we rebel against Him? Let us rather pray to Him and thank Him for His goodness, for she died a happy death. Under these heart-rending circumstances there were three things that consoled me--my entire and steadfast submission to the will of God, and the sight of her easy and blessed death, which made me feel that in a moment she had become so happy; for how far happier is she now than we are! Indeed, I would fain at that moment have gone with her. From this wish and longing proceeded my third source of consolation--namely, that she is not lost to us forever, that we shall see her again, and live together far more happily and blessedly than in this world. The time as yet we know not, but that does not disturb me; when God wills it I am ready. His heavenly and holy will has been fulfilled. Let us therefore pray a pious Vater unser for her soul, and turn our thoughts to other matters, for there is a time for everything. I write this in the house of Madame d'Epinay and M. Grimm, with whom I now live; I have a pretty little room with a very agreeable prospect, and am as happy as it is possible to be under my present circumstances. It will be a great aid in restoring my tranquillity, to hear that my dear father and sister submit with calmness and fortitude to the will of God, and trust Him with their whole heart, in the entire belief that He orders all for the best. My dearest father, do not give way! My dearest sister, be firm! You do not as yet know your brother's kind heart, because he has not yet had an opportunity to prove it. Remember, my loved ones both, that you have a son and a brother anxious to devote all his powers to make you happy, knowing well that the day must come when you will not be hostile to his wish and his desire,--not certainly such as to be any discredit to him,--and that you will do all that lies in your power to make him happy. Oh! then we shall all live together as peacefully, honorably, and contentedly as it is possible to do in this world, and at last in God's good time all meet again above--the purpose for which we were destined and created. I received your last letter of the 29th, and see with pleasure that you are both, thank God! in good health. I could not help laughing heartily at Haydn's tipsy fit. Had I been there, I certainly should have whispered in his ear "Adlgasser!" It is really disgraceful in so clever a man to render himself incapable by his own folly of performing his duties at a festival instituted in honor of God; when the Archbishop too and his whole court were present, and the church full of people, it was quite abominable.[Footnote: The father had written, "Haydn (organist of the church of the Holy Trinity) played the organ in the afternoon at the Litany, and the Te Deum laudamus, but in such a dreadful manner that we were quite startled, and thought he was about to undergo the fate of the deceased Adlgasser [who was seized with paralysis when playing the organ] It turned out, however, that he was only rather intoxicated, so his head and hands did not agree"] This is one of my chief reasons for detesting Salzburg--those coarse, slovenly, dissipated court musicians, with whom no honest man of good breeding could possibly live! instead of being glad to associate with them, he must feel ashamed of them. It is probably from this very cause that musicians are neither loved nor respected with us. If the orchestra were only organised like that at Mannheim! I wish you could see the subordination that prevails there--the authority Cannabich exercises; where all is done in earnest. Cannabich, who is the best director I ever saw, is both beloved and feared by his subordinates, who, as well as himself, are respected by the whole town. But certainly they behave very differently, have good manners, are well dressed (and do not go to public-houses to get drunk). This can never be the case in Salzburg, unless the Prince will place confidence either in you or me and give us full powers, which are indispensable to a conductor of music; otherwise it is all in vain. In Salzburg every one is master--so no one is master. If I were to undertake it, I should insist on exercising entire authority. The Grand Chamberlain must have nothing to say as to musical matters, or on any point relating to music. Not every person in authority can become a Capellmeister, but a Capellmeister must become a person of authority. By the by, the Elector is again in Mannheim. Madame Cannabich and also her husband correspond with me. If what I fear were to come to pass, and it would be a sad pity if it did,--namely, that the orchestra were to be much diminished,--I still cherish one hope. You know that there is nothing I desire more than a good appointment,--good in reputation, and good in money,--no matter where, provided it be in a Catholic country. You fenced skilfully indeed with Count Stahremberg [FOOTNOTE: A prebendary of Salzburg, to whom the father had "opened his heart," and told him all that had occurred in Salzburg. Wolfgang's reinstatement in his situation was being negotiated at the time.] throughout the whole affair; only continue as you have begun, and do not allow yourself to be deluded; more especially be on your guard if by any chance you enter into conversation with that silly goose---; [FOOTNOTE: He probably alludes to the Archbishop's sister, Countess Franziska von Walles, who did the honors of her brother's court, and who, no doubt, also interfered in this matter.] I know her, and believe me, though she may have sugar and honey on her lips, she has gall and wormwood in her head and in her heart. It is quite natural that the whole affair should still be in an unsettled state, and many things must be conceded before I could accept the offer; and even if every point were favorably adjusted, I would rather be anywhere than at Salzburg. But I need not concern myself on the matter, for it is not likely that all I ask should be granted, as I ask a great deal. Still it is not impossible; and if all were rightly organized, I would no longer hesitate, but solely for the happiness of being with you. If the Salzburgers wish to have me, they must comply with my wishes, or they shall never get me. So the Prelate of Baumburg has died the usual prelatical death; but I had not heard that the Prelate of the Holy Cross [in Augsburg] was also dead. I grieve to hear it, for he was a good, honest, upright man. So you had no faith in Deacon Zeschinger [see No. 68] being made prelate? I give you my honor I never conjectured anything else; indeed, I do not know who else could have got it; and what better prelate could we have for music? My friend Raaff leaves this to-morrow; he goes by Brussels to Aix-la-Chapelle and Spa, and thence to Mannheim, when he is to give me immediate notice of his arrival, for we mean to correspond. He sends numerous greetings to you and to my sister. You write that you have heard nothing for a very long time of my pupil in composition; very true, but what can I say about her? She will never be a composer; all labor is vain with her, for she is not only vastly stupid, but also vastly lazy. I had previously answered you about the opera. As to Noverre's ballet, I only wrote that he might perhaps arrange a new one. He wanted about one half to complete it, and this I set to music. That is, six pieces are written by others, consisting entirely of old trumpery French airs; the symphony and contre-danses, and about twelve more pieces, are contributed by me. This ballet has already been given four times with great applause. I am now positively determined to write nothing more without previously knowing what I am to get for it: but this was only a friendly act towards Noverre. Herr Wendling left this last May. If I were to see Baron Bach, I must have very good eyes, for he is not here but in London. Is it possible that I did not tell you this? You shall find that, in future, I will answer all your letters minutely. It is said that Baron Bach will soon return here; I should be glad of that for many reasons, especially because at his house there will be always opportunity to try things over in good earnest. Capellmeister Bach will also soon be here; I believe he is writing an opera. The French are, and always will be, downright donkeys; they can do nothing themselves, so they must have recourse to foreigners. I talked to Piccini at the Concert Spirituel; he is always most polite to me and I to him when we do by chance meet. Otherwise I do not seek much acquaintance, either with him or any of the other composers; they understand their work and I mine, and that is enough. I already wrote to you of the extraordinary success my symphony had in the Concert Spirituel. If I receive a commission to write an opera, I shall have annoyance enough, but this I shall not much mind, being pretty well accustomed to it--if only that confounded French language were not so detestable for music! It is, indeed, too provoking; even German is divine in comparison. And then the singers--but they do not deserve the name, for they do not sing, but scream and bawl with all their might through their noses and throats. I am to compose a French oratorio for the ensuing Lent, to be given at the Concert Spirituel. M. Le Gros (the director) is amazingly well-disposed towards me. You must know that (though I used to see him every day) I have not been near him since Easter; I felt so indignant at his not having my symphony performed. I was often in the same house visiting Raaff, and thus passed his rooms constantly. His servants often saw me, when I always sent him my compliments. It is really a pity he did not give the symphony--it would have been a good hit; and now he has no longer the opportunity to do so, for how seldom are four such performers to be found together! One day, when I went to call on Raaff, I was told that he was out, but would soon be home; so I waited. M. Le Gros came into the room and said, "It is really quite a marvel to have the pleasure of seeing you once more." "Yes; I have a great deal to do." "I hope you will stay and dine with us to-day?" "I regret that I cannot, being already engaged." "M. Mozart, we really must soon spend a day together." "It will give me much pleasure." A long pause; at length, "A propos, are you disposed to write a grand symphony for me for Corpus Christi day?" "Why not?" "May I then rely on this?" "Oh, yes! if I may, with equal confidence, rely on its being performed, and that it will not fare like the sinfonie concertante." This opened the flood-gates; he excused himself in the best way he could, but did not find much to say. In short, the symphony [Kochel, No. 297] was highly approved of; and Le Gros is so satisfied with it that he says it is his very best symphony. The andante, however, has not the good fortune to please him; he declares that it has too many modulations, and is too long. He derives this opinion from the audience forgetting to clap their hands as loudly, and to be as vociferous, as at the end of the first and last movements. But this andante is a great favorite WITH MYSELF, as well as with all connoisseurs, amateurs, and the greater part of those who heard it. It is the exact reverse of what Le Gros says, for it is both simple and short. But in order to satisfy him (and no doubt some others) I have written a fresh one. Each good in its own way--each having a different character. The last pleases me the best. The first good opportunity I have, I will send you this sinfonie concertante, and also the "School for the Violin," some pieces for the piano, and Vogler's book ("Ton Wissenschaft und Kunst"), and then I hope to have your opinion of them. On August 15th, Ascension Day, my sinfonie, with the new andante, is to be performed for the second time. The sinfonie is in Re, the andante in Sol, for here one must not say in D or in G. Le Gros is now all for me. Take comfort and pray without ceasing; this is the only resource we have. I hope you will cause a holy mass to be said in Maria Plain and in Loretto. I have done so here. As for the letter to Herr Bahr, I don't think it is necessary to send it to me; I am not as yet acquainted with him; I only know that he plays the clarionet well, but is in other respects no desirable companion, and I do not willingly associate with such people; no credit is derived from them, and I really should feel positively ashamed to give him a letter recommending me to him--even if he could be of service to me; but it so happens that he is by no means in good repute here. Many do not know him at all. Of the two Staunitz, the junior only is here [Mannheim composer]. The elder of the two (the veritable Hafeneder composer) is in London. They are wretched scribblers, gamblers, and drunkards, and not the kind of people for me. The one now here has scarcely a coat to his back. By the by, if Brunetti should ever be dismissed, I would be glad to recommend a friend of mine to the Archbishop as first violin; he is a most worthy man, and very steady. I think he is about forty years of age, and a widower; his name is Rothfischer. He is Concertmeister at Kirchheim-Boland, with the Princess of Nassau-Weilberg [see No. 91]. Entre nous, he is dissatisfied, for he is no favorite with his Prince--that is, his music is not. He urged me to forward his interests, and it would cause me real pleasure to be of use to him, for never was there such a kind man. 109. Paris, July 18, 1778. I HOPE you got my last two letters. Let us allude no more to their chief purport. All is over; and were we to write whole pages on the subject, we could not alter the fact. The principal object of this letter is to congratulate my dear sister on her name-day. I think I wrote to you that M. Raaff had left this, but that he is my very true and most particular friend, and I can entirely depend on his regard. I could not possibly write to you, because I did not myself know that he had so much affection for me. Now, to write a story properly, one ought to begin from the beginning. I ought to tell you, first, that Raaff lodged with M. Le Gros. It just occurs to me that you already know this; but what am I to do? It is written, and I can't begin the letter again, so I proceed. When he arrived, we happened to be at dinner. This, too, has nothing to do with the matter; it is only to let you know that people do dine in Paris, as elsewhere. When I went home I found a letter for me from Herr Weber, and the bearer of it was Raaff. If I wished to deserve the name of a historian, I ought here to insert the contents of this letter; and I can with truth say that I am very reluctant to decline giving them. But I must not be too prolix; to be concise is a fine thing, which you can see by my letter. The third day I found him at home and thanked him; it is always advisable to be polite. I no longer remember what we talked about. An historian must be unusually dull who cannot forthwith supply some falsehood--I mean some romance. Well! we spoke of the fine weather; and when we had said our say, we were silent, and I went away. Some days after--though what day it was I really forget, but one day in the week assuredly--I had just seated myself, at the piano of course; and Ritter, the worthy Holzbeisser, was sitting beside me. Now, what is to be deduced from that? A great deal. Raaff had never heard me at Mannheim except at a concert, where the noise and uproar was so great that nothing could be heard; and HE had such a miserable piano that I could not have done myself any justice on it. Here, however, the instrument was good, and I saw Raaff sitting opposite me with a speculative air; so, as you may imagine, I played some preludes in the Fischietti method, and also played a florid sonata in the style and with the fire, spirit, and precision of Haydn, and then a fugue with all the skill of Lipp, Silber, and Aman. [Footnote: Fischietti was Capellmeister in Salzburg; Michael Haydn and Lipp, organists.] My fugue-playing has everywhere gained me the greatest applause. When I had quite finished, (Raaff all the time calling out Bravo! while his countenance showed his true and sincere delight,) I entered into conversation with Ritter, and among other things said that I by no means liked being here; adding, "The chief cause of this is music; besides, I can find no resources here, no amusement, no agreeable or sociable intercourse with any one,--especially with ladies, many of whom are disreputable, and those who are not so are deficient in good breeding." Ritter could not deny that I was right. Raaff at last said, smiling, "I can quite believe it, for M. Mozart is not WHOLLY here to admire the Parisian beauties; one half of him is elsewhere--where I have just come from." This of course gave rise to much laughing and joking; but Raaff presently said, in a serious tone, "You are quite right, and I cannot blame you; she deserves it, for she is a sweet, pretty, good girl, well educated, and a superior person with considerable talent." This gave me an excellent opportunity strongly to recommend my beloved Madlle. Weber to him; but there was no occasion for me to say much, as he was already quite fascinated by her. He promised me, as soon as he returned to Mannheim, to give her lessons, and to interest himself in her favor. I ought, by rights, to insert something here, but I must first finish the history of our friendship; if there is still room, I may do so. He was in my eyes only an every-day acquaintance, and no more; but I often sat with him in his room, so by degrees I began to place more confidence in him, and at last told him all my Mannheim history,--how I had been bamboozled and made a fool of, adding that perhaps I might still get an appointment there. He neither said yes nor no; and on every occasion when I alluded to it he seemed each time more indifferent and less interested in the matter. At last, however, I thought I remarked more complacency in his manner, and he often, indeed, began to speak of the affair himself. I introduced him to Herr Grimm and to Madame d'Epinay. On one occasion he came to me and said that he and I were to dine with Count Sickingen some day soon; adding, "The Count and I were conversing together, and I said to him, 'A propos, has your Excellency heard our Mozart?' 'No; but I should like very much both to see and to hear him, for they write me most astonishing things about him from Mannheim.' 'When your Excellency does hear him, you will see that what has been written to you is rather too little than too much.' 'Is it possible?' 'Beyond all doubt, your Excellency.'" Now, this was the first time that I had any reason to think Raaff interested in me. Then it went on increasing, and one day I asked him to come home with me; and after that he often came of his own accord, and at length every day. The day after he left this, a good-looking man called on me in the forenoon with a picture, and said, "Monsieur, je viens de la part de ce Monsieur," showing me a portrait of Raaff, and an admirable likeness. Presently he began to speak German; and it turned out that he was a painter of the Elector's, whom Raaff had often mentioned to me, but always forgot to take me to see him. I believe you know him, for it must be the very person Madame Urspringer, of Mayence, alludes to in her letter, because he says he often met us at the Urspringers'. His name is Kymli. He is a most kind, amiable man, well-principled, honorable, and a good Christian; one proof of which is the friendship between him and Raaff. Now comes the best evidence of Raaff's regard for me, and the sincere interest he takes in my welfare: it is, that he imparts his intentions rather to those whom he can trust than to those more immediately concerned, being unwilling to promise without the certainty of a happy result. This is what Kymli told me. Raaff asked him to call on me and to show me his portrait, to see me often, and to assist me in every way, and to establish an intimate friendship with me. It seems he went to him every morning, and repeatedly said to Kymli, "I was at Herr Mozart's again yesterday evening; he is, indeed, a wonderful little fellow; he is an out-and-outer, and no mistake!" and was always praising me. He told Kymli everything, and the whole Mannheim story--in short, all. The fact is, that high-principled, religious, and well-conducted people always like each other. Kymli says I may rest assured that I am in good hands. "Raaff will certainly do all he can for you, and he is a prudent man who will set to work cleverly; he will not say that it is your wish, but rather your due. He is on the best footing with the Oberststallmeister. Rely on it, he will not be beat; only you must let him go his own way to work." One thing more. Father Martini's letter to Raaff, praising me, must have been lost. Raaff had, some time since, a letter from him, but not a word about me in it. Possibly it is still lying in Mannheim; but this is unlikely, as I know that, during his stay in Paris, all his letters have been regularly forwarded to him. As the Elector justly entertains a very high opinion of the Padre Maestro, I think it would be a good thing if you would be so kind as to apply to him to write again about me to Raaff; it might be of use, and good Father Martini would not hesitate to do a friendly thing twice over for me, knowing that he might thus make my fortune. He no doubt would express the letter in such a manner that it could be shown, if need be, to the Elector. Now enough as to this; my wish for a favorable issue is chiefly that I may soon have the happiness of embracing my dear father and sister. Oh! how joyously and happily we shall live together! I pray fervently to God to grant me this favor; a new leaf will at last be turned, please God! In the fond hope that the day will come, and the sooner the better, when we shall all be happy, I mean, in God's name, to persevere in my life here, though so totally opposed to my genius, inclinations, knowledge, and sympathies. Believe me, this is but too true,--I write you only the simple truth. If I were to attempt to give you all my reasons, I might write my fingers off and do no good. For here I am, and I must do all that is in my power. God grant that I may not thus impair my talents; but I hope it will not continue long enough for that. God grant it! By the by, the other day an ecclesiastic called on me. He is the leader of the choir at St. Peter's, in Salzburg, and knows you very well; his name is Zendorff; perhaps you may not remember him? He gives lessons here on the piano--in Paris. N. B., have not you a horror of the very name of Paris? I strongly recommend him as organist to the Archbishop; he says he would be satisfied with three hundred florins. Now farewell! Be careful of your health, and strive to be cheerful. Remember that possibly you may ere long have the satisfaction of tossing off a good glass of Rhenish wine with your son--your truly happy son. Adieu! 20th.--Pray forgive my being so late in sending you my congratulations, but I wished to present my sister with a little prelude. The mode of playing it I leave to her own feeling. This is not the kind of prelude to pass from one key to another, but merely a capriccio to try over a piano. My sonatas [Kochel, Nos. 301-306] are soon to be published. No one as yet would agree to give me what I asked for them, so I have been obliged at last to give in, and to let them go for 15 louis-d'or. It is the best way too to make my name known here. As soon as they appear I will send them to you by some good opportunity (and as economically as possible) along with your "School for the Violin," Vogler's book, Hullmandel's sonatas, Schroter's concertos, some of my pianoforte sonatas, the sinfonie concertante, two quartets for the flute, and a concerto for harp and flute [Kochel, No. 298, 299]. Pray, what do you hear about the war? For three days I was very depressed and sorrowful; it is, after all, nothing to me, but I am so sensitive that I feel quickly interested in any matter. I heard that the Emperor had been defeated. At first it was reported that the King of Prussia had surprised the Emperor, or rather the troops commanded by Archduke Maximilian; that two thousand had fallen on the Austrian side, but fortunately the Emperor had come to his assistance with forty thousand men, but was forced to retreat. Secondly, it was said that the King had attacked the Emperor himself, and entirely surrounded him, and that if General Laudon had not come to his relief with eighteen hundred cuirassiers, he would have been taken prisoner; that sixteen hundred cuirassiers had been killed, and Laudon himself shot dead. I have not, however, seen this in any newspaper, but to-day I was told that the Emperor had invaded Saxony with forty thousand troops. Whether the news be true I know not. This is a fine griffonage, to be sure! but I have not patience to write prettily; if you can only read it, it will do well enough. A propos, I saw in the papers that, in a skirmish between the Saxons and Croats, a Saxon captain of grenadiers named Hopfgarten had lost his life, and was much lamented. Can this be the kind, worthy Baron Hopfgarten whom we knew at Paris with Herr von Bose? I should grieve if it were, but I would rather he died this glorious death than have sacrificed his life, as too many young men do here, to dissipation and vice. You know this already, but it is now worse than ever. N. B. I hope you will be able to decipher the end of the prelude; you need not be very particular about the time; it is the kind of thing that may be played as you feel inclined. I should like to inflict twenty-five stripes on the sorry Vatel's shoulders for not having married Katherl. Nothing is more shameful, in my opinion, than to make a fool of an honest girl, and to play her false eventually; but I hope this may not be the case. If I were her father, I would soon put a stop to the affair. 110. Paris, July 31, 1778. I HOPE you have got my two letters of the 11th and 18th. Meantime I have received yours of the 13th and 20th. The first brought tears of sorrow to my eyes, as I was reminded by it of the sad death of my darling mother, and the whole scene recurred vividly to me. Never can I forget it while I live. You know that (though I often wished it) I had never seen any one die, and the first time I did so it was fated to be my own mother! My greatest misery was the thoughts of that hour, and I prayed earnestly to God for strength. I was heard, and strength was given to me. Melancholy as your letter made me, still I was inexpressibly happy to find that you both bear this sorrow as it ought to be borne, and that my mind may now be at ease about my beloved father and sister. As soon as I read your letter, my first impulse was to throw myself on my knees, and fervently to thank our gracious God for this blessing. I am now comparatively happy, because I have no longer anything to dread on account of the two persons who are dearest to me in this world; had it been otherwise, such a terrible misfortune would have utterly overwhelmed me. Be careful therefore of your precious health for my sake, I entreat, and grant to him who flatters himself that he is now what you love most in the world the joy and felicity soon to embrace you. Your last letter also caused my tears to flow from joy, as it convinced me more than ever of your fatherly love and care. I shall strive with all my might still more to deserve your affection. I thank you for the powder, but am sure you will be glad to hear that I do not require to use it. During my dear mother's illness it would have been very useful, but now, thank God! I am perfectly well and healthy. At times I have fits of melancholy, but the best way to get rid of them is by writing or receiving letters, which always cheers me; but, believe me, these sad feelings never recur without too good cause. You wish to have an account of her illness and every detail connected with it; that you shall have; but I must ask you to let it be short, and I shall only allude to the principal facts, as the event is over, and cannot, alas! now be altered, and I require some space to write on business topics. In the first place, I must tell you that NOTHING could have saved my mother. No doctor in the world could have restored her to health. It was the manifest will of God; her time was come, and God chose to take her to Himself. You think she put off being bled too long? it may be so, as she did delay it for a little, but I rather agree with the people here, who dissuaded her from being bled at all. The cause of my mother's illness was internal inflammation. After being bled she rallied for some days, but on the 19th she complained of headache, and for the first time stayed in bed the whole day. On the 20th she was seized first with shivering and then with fever, so I gave her an anti-spasmodic powder. I was at that time very anxious to send for another doctor, but she would not allow me to do so, and when I urged her very strongly, she told me that she had no confidence in any French medical man. I therefore looked about for a German one. I could not, of course, go out and leave her, but I anxiously waited for M. Heina, who came regularly every day to see us; but on this occasion two days passed without his appearing. At last he came, but as our doctor was prevented paying his usual visit next day, we could not consult with him; in fact, he did not come till the 24th. The previous day, when I had been expecting him so eagerly, I was in great trouble, for my mother suddenly lost her sense of hearing. The doctor, an old German about seventy, gave her rhubarb in wine. I could not understand this, as wine is usually thought heating; but when I said so, every one exclaimed, "How can you say so? Wine is not heating, but strengthening; water is heating." And all the time the poor invalid was longing for a drink of fresh water. How gladly would I have complied with her wish! My dear father, you cannot conceive what I went through, but nothing could be done, except to leave her in the hands of the physician. All that I could do with a good conscience, was to pray to God without ceasing, that He would order all things for her good. I went about as if I had altogether lost my head. I had ample leisure then to compose, but I was in such a state that I could not have written a single note. The 25th the doctor did not come; on the 26th he visited her again. Imagine my feelings when he all at once said to me, "I fear she will scarcely live through the night; she may die at any moment. You had better see that she receives the sacrament." So I hurried off to the end of the Chaussee d'Antin, and went on beyond the Barriere to find Heina, knowing that he was at a concert in the house of some count. He said that he would bring a German priest with him next morning. On my way back I looked in on Madame d'Epinay and M. Grimm for a moment as I passed. They were distressed that I had not spoken sooner, as they would at once have sent their doctor. I did not tell them my reason, which was, that my mother would not see a French doctor. I was hard put to it, as they said they would send their physician that very evening. When I came home, I told my mother that I had met Herr Heina with a German priest, who had heard a great deal about me and was anxious to hear me play, and that they were both to call on me next day. She seemed quite satisfied, and though I am no doctor, still seeing that she was better I said nothing more. I find it impossible not to write at full length--indeed, I am glad to give you every particular, for it will be more satisfactory to you; but as I have some things to write that are indispensable, I shall continue my account of the illness in my next letter. In the mean time you must have seen from my last letter, that all my darling mother's affairs and my own are in good order. When I come to this point, I will tell you how things were arranged. Heina and I regulated everything ourselves. Now for business. Do not allow your thoughts to dwell on what I wrote, asking your permission not to reveal my ideas till the proper time arrived. Pray do not let it trouble you. I cannot yet tell you about it, and if I did, I should probably do more harm than good; but, to tranquillize you, I may at least say that it only concerns myself. Your circumstances will be made neither better nor worse, and until I see you in a better position I shall think no more about the matter. If the day ever arrives when we can live together in peace and happiness, (which is my grand object),--when that joyful time comes, and God grant it may come soon!--then the right moment will have arrived, and the rest will depend on yourself. Do not, therefore, discompose yourself on the subject, and be assured that in every case where I know that your happiness and peace are involved, I shall invariably place entire confidence in you, my kind father and true friend, and detail everything to you minutely. If in the interim I have not done so, the fault is not solely mine. [FOOTNOTE: He had evidently in his thoughts, what was indeed manifest in his previous letters, a speedy marriage with his beloved Aloysia.] M. Grimm recently said to me, "What am I to write to your father? What course do you intend to pursue? Do you remain here, or go to Mannheim?" I really could not help laughing: "What could I do at Mannheim now? would that I had never come to Paris! but so it is. Here I am, and I must use every effort to get forward." "Well," said he, "I scarcely think that you will do much good here." "Why? I see a number of wretched bunglers who make a livelihood, and why, with my talents, am I to fail? I assure you that I like being at Mannheim, and wish very much to get some appointment there, but it must be one that is honorable and of good repute. I must have entire certainty on the subject before I move a step." "I fear," said he, "that you are not sufficiently active here--you don't go about enough." "Well," said I, "that is the hardest of all for me to do." Besides, I could go nowhere during my mother's long illness, and now two of my pupils are in the country, and the third (the Duke de Guines's daughter) is betrothed, and means no longer to continue her lessons, which, so far as my credit is concerned, does not distress me much. It is no particular loss to me, for the Duke only pays me what every one else does. Only imagine! I went to his house every day for two hours, being engaged to give twenty-four lessons, (but it is the custom here to pay after each twelve lessons.) They went into the country, and when they came back ten days afterwards, I was not apprised of it; had I not by chance inquired out of mere curiosity, I should not have known that they were here. When I did go, the governess took out her purse and said to me, "Pray excuse my only paying you at present for twelve lessons, for I have not enough money." This is a noble proceeding! She then gave me three louis-d'or, adding, "I hope you are satisfied; if not, I beg you will say so." M. le Duc can have no sense of honor, or probably thinks that I am only a young man and a thick-headed German, (for this is the way in which the French always speak of us,) and that I shall be quite contented. The thick-headed German, however, was very far from being contented, so he declined receiving the sum offered. The Duke intended to pay me for one hour instead of two, and all from economy. As he has now had a concerto of mine for harp and flute, for the last four months, which he has not yet paid me for, I am only waiting till the wedding is over to go to the governess and ask for my money. What provokes me most of all is that these stupid Frenchmen think I am still only seven years old, as they saw me first when I was that age. This is perfectly true, for Madame d'Epinay herself told me so quite seriously. I am therefore treated here like a beginner, except by the musicians, who think very differently; but most votes carry the day! After my conversation with Grimm, I went the very next day to call on Count Sickingen. He was quite of my opinion that I ought to have patience and wait till Raaff arrives at his destination, who will do all that lies in his power to serve me. If he should fail, Count Sickingen has offered to procure a situation for me at Mayence. In the mean time my plan is to do my utmost to gain a livelihood by teaching, and to earn as much money as possible. This I am now doing, in the fond hope that some change may soon occur; for I cannot deny, and indeed at once frankly confess, that I shall be delighted to be released from this place. Giving lessons is no joke here, and unless you wear yourself out by taking a number of pupils, not much money can be made. You must not think that this proceeds from laziness. No! it is only quite opposed to my genius and my habits. You know that I am, so to speak, plunged into music,--that I am occupied with it the whole day,--that I like to speculate, to study, and to reflect. Now my present mode of life effectually prevents this. I have, indeed, some hours at liberty, but those few hours are more necessary for rest than for work. I told you already about the opera. One thing is certain--I must compose a great opera or none. If I write only smaller ones, I shall get very little, for here everything is done at a fixed price, and if it should be so unfortunate as not to please the obtuse French, it is all up with it. I should get no more to write, have very little profit, and find my reputation damaged. If, on the other hand, I write a great opera, the remuneration is better, I am working in my own peculiar sphere, in which I delight, and I have a greater chance of being appreciated, because in a great work there is more opportunity to gain approval. I assure you that if I receive a commission to write an opera, I have no fears on the subject. It is true that the devil himself invented their language, and I see the difficulties which all composers have found in it. But, in spite of this, I feel myself as able to surmount these difficulties as any one else. Indeed, when I sometimes think in my own mind that I may look on my opera as a certainty, I feel quite a fiery impulse within me, and tremble from head to foot, through the eager desire to teach the French more fully how to know, and value, and fear the Germans. Why is a great opera never intrusted to a Frenchman? Why is it always given to a foreigner? To me the most insupportable part of it will be the singers. Well, I am ready. I wish to avoid all strife, but if I am challenged I know how to defend myself. If it runs its course without a duel, I should prefer it, for I do not care to wrestle with dwarfs. God grant that some change may soon come to pass! In the mean time I shall certainly not be deficient in industry, trouble, and labor. My hopes are centred on the winter, when every one returns from the country. My heart beats with joy at the thought of the happy day when I shall once more see and embrace you. The day before yesterday my dear friend Weber, among other things, wrote to me that the day after the Elector's arrival it was publicly announced that he was to take up his residence in Munich, which came like a thunder-clap on Mannheim, wholly, so to say, extinguishing the universal illumination by which the inhabitants had testified their joy on the previous day. The fact was also communicated to all the court musicians, with the addition that each was at liberty to follow the court to Munich or to remain in Mannheim, (retaining the same salaries,) and in a fortnight each was to give a written and sealed decision to the Intendant. Weber, who is, as you know, in the most miserable circumstances, wrote as follows:--"I anxiously desire to follow my gracious master to Munich, but my decayed circumstances prevent my doing so." Before this occurred there was a grand court concert, where poor Madlle. Weber felt the fangs of her enemies; for on this occasion she did not sing! It is not known who was the cause of this. Afterwards there was a concert at Herr von Gemmingen's, where Count Seeau also was. She sang two arias of mine, and was so fortunate as to please, in spite of those Italian scoundrels [the singers of Munich], those infamous charlatans, who circulated a report that she had very much gone off in her singing. When her songs were finished, Cannabich said to her, "Mademoiselle, I hope you will always continue to fall off in this manner; tomorrow I will write to M. Mozart in your praise." One thing is certain; if war had not already broken out, the court would by this time have been transferred to Munich. Count Seeau, who is quite determined to engage Madlle. Weber, would have left nothing undone to insure her coming to Munich, so that there was some hope that the family might have been placed in better circumstances; but now that all is again quiet about the Munich journey, these poor people may have to wait a long time, while their debts daily accumulate. If I could only help them! Dearest father, I recommend them to you from my heart. If they could even for a few years be in possession of 1000 florins! 111. To HERR BULLINGER. Paris, August 7, 1778. MY VERY DEAR FRIEND,-- Allow me above all to thank you most warmly for the proof of friendship you gave me by your interest in my dear father--first in preparing, and then kindly consoling him for his loss [see No. 106]. You played your part admirably. These are my father's own words. My kind friend, how can I sufficiently thank you? You saved my father for me. I have you to thank that I still have him. Permit me to say no more on the subject, and not to attempt to express my gratitude, for I feel too weak and incompetent to do so. My best friend, I am forever your debtor; but patience! It is too true that I am not yet in a position to repay what I owe you, but rely on it God will one day grant me the opportunity of showing by deeds what I am unable to express by words. Such is my hope; till that happy time, however, arrives, allow me to beg you to continue your precious and valued friendship to me, and also to accept mine afresh, now and forever; to which I pledge myself in all sincerity of heart. It will not, indeed, be of much use to you, but not on that account less sincere and lasting. You know well that the best and truest of all friends are the poor. The rich know nothing of friendship, especially those who are born to riches, and even those whom fate enriches often become very different when fortunate in life. But when a man is placed in favorable circumstances, not by blind, but reasonable good fortune and merit, who during his early and less prosperous days never lost courage, remaining faithful to his religion and his God, striving to be an honest man and good Christian, knowing how to value his true friends,--in short, one who really deserves better fortune,--from such a man no ingratitude is to be feared. I must now proceed to answer your letter. You can be under no further anxiety as to my health, for you must have ere this received three letters from me. The first, containing the sad news of my mother's death, was enclosed, my dear friend, to you. You must forgive my silence on the subject, but my thoughts recur to it constantly. You write that I should now think only of my father, tell him frankly all my thoughts, and place entire confidence in him. How unhappy should I be if I required this injunction! It was expedient that you should suggest it, but I am happy to say (and you will also be glad to hear it) that I do not need this advice. In my last letter to my dear father, I wrote to him all that I myself know up to this time, assuring him that I would always keep him minutely informed of everything, and candidly tell him my intentions, as I place entire faith in him, being confident of his fatherly care, love, and goodness. I feel assured that at a future day he will not deny me a request on which my whole happiness in life depends, and which (for he cannot expect anything else from me) will certainly be quite fair and reasonable. My dear friend, do not let my father read this. You know him; he would only fancy all kinds of things, and to no purpose. Now for our Salzburg affair. You, my dear friend, are well aware how I do hate Salzburg, not only on account of the injustice shown to my father and myself there, which was in itself enough to make us wish to forget such a place, and to blot it out wholly from our memory. But do not let us refer to that, if we can contrive to live respectably there. To live respectably and to live happily, are two very different things; but the latter I never could do short of witchcraft,--it would indeed be supernatural if I did,--so this is impossible, for in these days there are no longer any witches. Well, happen what may, it will always be the greatest possible pleasure to me to embrace my dear father and sister, and the sooner the better. Still I cannot deny that my joy would be twofold were this to be elsewhere, for I have far more hope of living happily anywhere else. Perhaps you may misunderstand me, and think that Salzburg is on too small a scale for me. If so, you are quite mistaken. I have already written some of my reasons to my father. In the mean time, let this one suffice, that Salzburg is no place for my talent. In the first place, professional musicians are not held in much consideration; and, secondly, one hears nothing. There is no theatre, no opera there; and if they really wished to have one, who is there to sing? For the last five or six years the Salzburg orchestra has always been rich in what is useless and superfluous, but very poor in what is useful and indispensable; and such is the case at the present moment. Those cruel French are the cause of the band there being without a Capellmeister. [FOOTNOTE: The old Capellmeister, Lolli, had died a short time previously.] I therefore feel assured that quiet and order are now reigning in the orchestra. This is the result of not making provision in time. Half a dozen Capellmeisters should always be held in readiness, that, if one fails, another can instantly be substituted. But where, at present, is even ONE to be found? And yet the danger is urgent. It will not do to allow order, quiet, and good-fellowship to prevail in the orchestra, or the mischief would still further increase, and in the long run become irremediable. Is there no ass-eared old periwig, no dunderhead forthcoming, to restore the concern to its former disabled condition? I shall certainly do my best in the matter. To-morrow I intend to hire a carriage for the day, and visit all the hospitals and infirmaries, to see if I can't find a Capellmeister in one of them. Why were they so improvident as to allow Misliweczeck to give them the slip, and he so near too? [See No. 64.] He would have been a prize, and one not so easy to replace,--freshly emerged, too, from the Duke's Clementi Conservatorio. He was just the man to have awed the whole court orchestra by his presence. Well, we need not be uneasy: where there is money there are always plenty of people to be had. My opinion is that they should not wait too long, not from the foolish fear that they might not get one at all,--for I am well aware that all these gentlemen are expecting one as eagerly and anxiously as the Jews do their Messiah,--but simply because things cannot go on at all under such circumstances. It would therefore be more useful and profitable to look out for a Capellmeister, there being NONE at present, than to write in all directions (as I have been told) to secure a good female singer. [FOOTNOTE: In order the better to conciliate Wolfgang, Bullinger had been desired to say that the Archbishop, no longer satisfied with Madlle. Haydn, intended to engage another singer; and it was hinted to Mozart, that he might be induced to make choice of Aloysia Weber; (Jahn, ii. 307.) Madlle. Haydn was a daughter of Lipp, the organist, and sent by the Archbishop to Italy to cultivate her voice. She did not enjoy a very good reputation.] I really can scarcely believe this. Another female singer, when we have already so many, and all admirable! A tenor, though we do not require one either, I could more easily understand--but a prima donna, when we have still Cecarelli! It is true that Madlle. Haydn is in bad health, for her austere mode of life has been carried too far. There are few of whom this can be said. I wonder that she has not long since lost her voice from her perpetual scourgings and flagellations, her hair-cloth, unnatural fasts, and night-prayers! But she will still long retain her powers, and instead of becoming worse, her voice will daily improve. When at last, however, she departs this life to be numbered among the saints, we still have five left, each of whom can dispute the palm with the other. So you see how superfluous a new one is. But, knowing how much changes and novelty and variety are liked with us, I see a wide field before me which may yet form an epoch. [FOOTNOTE: Archbishop Hieronymus, in the true spirit of Frederick the Great, liked to introduce innovations with an unsparing hand; many, however, being both necessary and beneficent.] Do your best that the orchestra may have a leg to stand on, for that is what is most wanted. A head they have [the Archbishop], but that is just the misfortune; and till a change is made in this respect, I will never come to Salzburg. When it does take place, I am willing to come and to turn over the leaf as often as I see V. S. [volti subito] written. Now as to the war [the Bavarian Succession]. So far as I hear, we shall soon have peace in Germany. The King of Prussia is certainly rather alarmed. I read in the papers that the Prussians had surprised an Imperial detachment, but that the Croats and two Cuirassier regiments were near, and, hearing the tumult, came at once to their rescue, and attacked the Prussians, placing them between two fires, and capturing five of their cannon. The route by which the Prussians entered Bohemia is now entirely cut up and destroyed. The Bohemian peasantry do all the mischief they can to the Prussians, who have besides constant desertions among their troops; but these are matters which you must know both sooner and better than we do. But I must write you some of our news here. The French have forced the English to retreat, but it was not a very hot affair. The most remarkable thing is that, friends and foes included, only 100 men were killed. In spite of this, there is a grand jubilation here, and nothing else is talked of. It is also reported that we shall soon have peace. It is a matter of indifference to me, so far as this place is concerned; but I should indeed be very glad if we were soon to have peace in Germany, for many reasons. Now farewell! Your true friend and obedient servant, WOLFGANG ROMATZ. 112. St. Germains, August 27, 1778. I WRITE to you very hurriedly; you will see that I am not in Paris. Herr Bach, from London [Johann Christian], has been here for the last fortnight. He is going to write a French opera, and is only come for the purpose of hearing the singers, and afterwards goes to London to complete the opera, and returns here to put it on the stage. You may easily imagine his joy and mine when we met again; perhaps his delight may not be quite as sincere as mine, but it must be admitted that he is an honorable man and willing to do justice to others. I love him from my heart (as you know), and esteem him; and as for him, there is no doubt that he praises me warmly, not only to my face, but to others also, and not in the exaggerated manner in which some speak, but in earnest. Tenducci is also here, Bach's dearest friend, and he expressed the greatest delight at seeing me again. I must now tell you how I happen to be at St. Germains. The Marechal de Noailles lives here, as you no doubt know, (for I am told I was here fifteen years ago, though I don't remember it.) Tenducci is a great favorite of his, and as he is exceedingly partial to me, he was anxious to procure me this acquaintance. I shall gain nothing here, a trifling present perhaps, but at the same time I do not lose, for it costs me nothing; and even if I do not get anything, still I have made an acquaintance that may be very useful to me. I must make haste, for I am writing a scena for Tenducci, which is to be given on Sunday; it is for pianoforte, hautboy, horn, and bassoon, the performers being the Marechal's own people--Germans, who play very well. I should like to have written to you long since, but just as I had begun the letter (which is now lying in Paris) I was obliged to drive to St. Germains, intending to return the same day, and I have now been here a week. I shall return to Paris as soon as I can, though I shall not lose much there by my absence, for I have now only one pupil, the others being in the country. I could not write to you from here either, because we were obliged to wait for an opportunity to send a letter to Paris. I am quite well, thank God, and trust that both of you are the same. You must have patience--all goes on slowly; I must make friends. France is not unlike Germany in feeding people with encomiums, and yet there is a good hope that, by means of your friends, you may make your fortune. One lucky thing is, that food and lodging cost me nothing. When you write to the friend with whom I am staying [Herr Grimm], do not be too obsequious in your thanks. There are some reasons for this which I will write to you some other time. The rest of the sad history of the illness will follow in the next letter. You desire to have a faithful portrait of Rothfischer? He is an attentive, assiduous director, not a great genius, but I am very much pleased with him, and, best of all, he is the kindest creature, with whom you can do anything--if you know how to set about it, of course. He directs better than Brunetti, but is not so good in solo-playing. He has more execution, and plays well in his way, (a little in the old-fashioned Tartini mode,) but Brunetti's style is more agreeable. The concertos which he writes for himself are pretty and pleasant to listen to, and also to play occasionally. Who can tell whether he may not please? At all events, he plays a thousand million times better than Spitzeger, and, as I already said, he directs well, and is active in his calling. I recommend him to you heartily, for he is the most good-natured man! Adieu! 113. Paris, Sept. 11, 1778. I HAVE received your three letters. I shall only reply to the last, being the most important. When I read it, (Heina was with me and sends you his regards,) I trembled with joy, for I fancied myself already in your arms. True it is (and this you will yourself confess) that no great stroke of good fortune awaits me; still, when I think of once more embracing you and my dear sister, I care for no other advantage. This is indeed the only excuse I can make to the people here, who are vociferous that I should remain in Paris; but my reply invariably is, "What would you have? I am content, and that is everything; I have now a place I can call my home, and where I can live in peace and quiet with my excellent father and beloved sister. I can do what I choose when not on duty. I shall be my own master, and have a certain competency; I may leave when I like, and travel every second year. What can I wish for more?" The only thing that disgusts me with Salzburg, and I tell you of it just as I feel it, is the impossibility of having any satisfactory intercourse with the people, and that musicians are not in good repute there, and--that the Archbishop places no faith in the experience of intelligent persons who have seen the world. For I assure you that people who do not travel (especially artists and scientific men) are but poor creatures. And I at once say that if the Archbishop is not prepared to allow me to travel every second year, I cannot possibly accept the engagement. A man of moderate talent will never rise above mediocrity, whether he travels or not, but a man of superior talents (which, without being unthankful to Providence, I cannot deny that I possess) deteriorates if he always remains in the same place. If the Archbishop would only place confidence in me, I could soon make his music celebrated; of this there can be no doubt. I also maintain that my journey has not been unprofitable to me--I mean, with regard to composition, for as to the piano, I play it as well as I ever shall. One thing more I must settle about Salzburg, that I am not to take up the violin as I formerly did. I will no longer conduct with the violin; I intend to conduct, and also accompany airs, with the piano. It would have been a good thing to have got a written agreement about the situation of Capellmeister, for otherwise I may have the honor to discharge a double duty, and be paid only for one, and at last be superseded by some stranger. My dear father, I must decidedly say that I really could not make up my mind to take this step were it not for the pleasure of seeing you both again; I wish also to get away from Paris, which I detest, though my affairs here begin to improve, and I don't doubt that if I could bring myself to endure this place for a few years, I could not fail to succeed. I am now pretty well known--that is, the people all know ME, even if I don't know them. I acquired considerable fame by my two symphonies; and (having heard that I was about to leave) they now really want me to write an opera, so I said to Noverre, "If you will be responsible for its BEING PERFORMED as soon as it is finished, and will name the exact sum that I am to receive for it, I will remain here for the next three months on purpose," for I could not at once decline, or they would have thought that I distrusted myself. This was not, however, done; and I knew beforehand that they could not do it, for such is not the custom here. You probably know that in Paris it is thus:--When the opera is finished it is rehearsed, and if these stupid Frenchmen do not think it good it is not given, and the composer has had all his trouble for nothing; if they approve, it is then put on the stage; as its popularity increases, so does the rate of payment. There is no certainty. I reserve the discussion of these matters till we meet, but I must candidly say that my own affairs begin to prosper. It is no use trying to hurry matters--chi va piano, va sano. My complaisance has gained me both friends and patrons; were I to write you all, my fingers would ache. I will relate it to you personally and place it clearly before you. M. Grimm may be able to help CHILDREN, but not grown-up people; and--but no, I had better not write on the subject. Yet I must! Do not imagine that he is the same that he was; were it not for Madame d'Epinay, I should be no longer in this house. And he has no great cause to be so proud of his good deeds towards me, for there were four houses where I could have had both board and lodging. The worthy man does not know that, if I had remained in Paris, I intended to have left him next month to go to a house that, unlike his, is neither stupid nor tiresome, and where a man has not constantly thrown in his face that a kindness has been done him. Such conduct is enough to cause me to forget a benefit, but I will be more generous than he is. I regret not remaining here only because I should have liked to show him that I do not require him, and that I can do as much as his Piccini, although I am only a German! The greatest service he has done me consists in fifteen louis-d'or which he lent me bit by bit during my mother's life and at her death. Is he afraid of losing them? If he has a doubt on the subject, then he deserves to be kicked, for in that case he must mistrust my honesty (which is the only thing that can rouse me to rage) and also my talents; but the latter, indeed, I know he does, for he once said to me that he did not believe I was capable of writing a French opera. I mean to repay him his fifteen louis-d'or, with thanks, when I go to take leave of him, accompanied by some polite expressions. My poor mother often said to me, "I don't know why, but he seems to me somehow changed." But I always took his part, though I secretly felt convinced of the very same thing. He seldom spoke of me to any one, and when he did, it was always in a stupid, injudicious, or disparaging way. He was constantly urging me to go to see Piccini, and also Caribaldi,--for there is a miserable opera buffa here,--but I always said, "No, I will not go a single step," &c. In short, he is of the Italian faction; he is insincere himself, and strives to crush me. This seems incredible, does it not? But still such is the fact, and I give you the proof of it. I opened my whole heart to him as a true friend, and a pretty use he made of this! He always gave me bad advice, knowing that I would follow it; but he only succeeded in two or three instances, and latterly I never asked his opinion at all, and if he did advise me to do anything, I never did it, but always appeared to acquiesce, that I might not subject myself to further insolence on his part. But enough of this; we can talk it over when we meet. At all events, Madame d'Epinay has a better heart. The room I inhabit belongs to her, not to him. It is the invalid's room--that is, if any one is ill in the house, he is put there; it has nothing to recommend it except the view,--only four bare walls, no chest of drawers--in fact, nothing. Now you may judge whether I could stand it any longer. I would have written this to you long ago, but feared you would not believe me. I can, however, no longer be silent, whether you believe me or not; but you do believe me, I feel sure. I have still sufficient credit with you to persuade you that I speak the truth. I board too with Madame d'Epinay, and you must not suppose that he pays anything towards it, but indeed I cost her next to nothing. They have the same dinner whether I am there or not, for they never know when I am to be at home, so they can make no difference for me; and at night I eat fruit and drink one glass of wine. All the time I have been in their house, now more than two months, I have not dined with them more than fourteen times at most, and with the exception of the fifteen louis-d'or, which I mean to repay with thanks, he has no outlay whatever on my account but candles, and I should really be ashamed of myself more than of him, were I to offer to supply these; in fact I could not bring myself to say such a thing. This is my nature. Recently, when he spoke to me in such a hard, senseless, and stupid way, I had not nerve to say that he need not be alarmed about his fifteen louis-d'or, because I was afraid of offending him; I only heard him calmly to the end, when I asked whether he had said all he wished--and then I was off! He presumes to say that I must leave this a week hence--IN SUCH HASTE IS HE. I told him it was impossible, and my reasons for saying so. "Oh! that does not matter; it is your father's wish." "Excuse me, in his last letter he wrote that he would let me know in his next when I was to set off." "At all events hold yourself in readiness for your journey." But I must tell you plainly that it will be impossible for me to leave this before the beginning of next month, or at the soonest the end of the present one, for I have still six arias to write, which will be well paid. I must also first get my money from Le Gros and the Duc de Guines; and as the court goes to Munich the end of this month, I should like to be there at the same time to present my sonatas myself to the Electress, which perhaps might bring me a present. I mean to sell my three concertos to the man who has printed them, provided he gives me ready money for them; one is dedicated to Jenomy, another to Litzau; the third is in B. I shall do the same with my six difficult sonatas, if I can; even if not much, it is better than nothing. Money is much wanted on a journey. As for the symphonies, most of them are not according to the taste of the people here; if I have time, I mean to arrange some violin concertos from them, and curtail them; in Germany we rather like length, but after all it is better to be short and good. In your next letter I shall no doubt find instructions as to my journey; I only wish you had written to me alone, for I would rather have nothing more to do with Grimm. I hope so, and in fact it would be better, for no doubt our friends Geschwender and Heina can arrange things better than this upstart Baron. Indeed, I am under greater obligations to Heina than to him, look at it as you will by the light of a farthing-candle. I expect a speedy reply to this, and shall not leave Paris till it comes. I have no reason to hurry away, nor am I here either in vain or fruitlessly, because I shut myself up and work, in order to make as much money as possible. I have still a request, which I hope you will not refuse. If it should so happen, though I hope and believe it is not so, that the Webers are not in Munich, but still at Mannheim, I wish to have the pleasure of going there to visit them. It takes me, I own, rather out of my way, but not much--at all events it does not appear much to me. I don't believe, after all, that it will be necessary, for I think I shall meet them in Munich; but I shall ascertain this to-morrow by a letter. If it is not the case, I feel beforehand that you will not deny me this happiness. My dear father, if the Archbishop wishes to have a new singer, I can, by heavens! find none better than her. He will never get a Teyberin or a De' Amicis, and the others are assuredly worse. I only lament that when people from Salzburg flock to the next Carnival, and "Rosamunde" is given, Madlle. Weber will not please, or at all events they will not be able to judge of her merits as they deserve, for she has a miserable part, almost that of a dumb personage, having only to sing some stanzas between the choruses. She has one aria where something might be expected from the ritournelle; the voice part is, however, alla Schweitzer, as if dogs were yelping. There is only one air, a kind of rondo in the second act, where she has an opportunity of sustaining her voice, and thus showing what she can do. Unhappy indeed is the singer who falls into Schweitzer's hands; for never while he lives will he learn how to write for the voice. When I go to Salzburg I shall certainly not fail to plead zealously for my dear friend; in the mean time you will not neglect doing all you can in her favor, for you cannot cause your son greater joy. I think of nothing now but the pleasure of soon embracing you. Pray see that everything the Archbishop promised you is made quite secure, and also what I stipulated, that my place should be at the piano. My kind regards to all my friends, and to Herr Bullinger in particular. How merry shall we be together! I have all this already in my thoughts, already before my eyes. Adieu! 114. Nancy, Oct. 3, 1778. PRAY excuse my not having told you of my journey previous to leaving Paris. But I really cannot describe to you the way in which the whole affair was hurried forward, contrary to my expectations, wish, or will. At the very last moment I wanted to send my luggage to Count Sickingen's, instead of to the bureau of the diligence, and to remain some days longer in Paris. This, I give you my honor, I should at once have done had I not thought of you, for I did not wish to displease you. We can talk of these matters better at Salzburg. But one thing more--only fancy how Herr Grimm deceived me, saying that I was going by the diligence, and should arrive at Strassburg in five days; and I did not find out till the last day that it was quite another carriage, which goes at a snail's pace, never changes horses, and is ten days on the journey. You may easily conceive my rage; but I only gave way to it when with my intimate friends, for in his presence I affected to be quite merry and pleased. When I got into the carriage, I received the agreeable information that we should be travelling for twelve days. So this is an instance of Grimm's good sense! It was entirely to save money that he sent me by this slow conveyance, not adverting to the fact that the expense would amount to the same thing from the constant living at inns. Well, it is now past. What vexed me most in the whole affair was his not being straightforward with me. He spared his own money, but not mine, as he paid for my journey, but not for my board. If I had stayed eight or ten days longer in Paris, I could have paid my own journey, and made it comfortably. I submitted to this conveyance for eight days, but longer I could not stand it--not on account of the fatigue, for the carriage was well hung, but from want of sleep. We were off every morning at four o'clock, and thus obliged to rise at three. Twice I had the satisfaction of being forced to get up at one o'clock in the morning, as we were to set off at two. You know that I cannot sleep in a carriage, so I really could not continue this without the risk of being ill. I would have taken the post, but it was not necessary, for I had the good fortune to meet with a person who quite suited me--a German merchant who resides in Paris, and deals in English wares. Before getting into the carriage we exchanged a few words, and from that moment we remained together. We did not take our meals with the other passengers, but in our own room, where we also slept. I was glad to meet this man, for, being a great traveller, he understands it well. He also was very much disgusted with our carriage; so we proceed to-morrow by a good conveyance, which does not cost us much, to Strassburg. You must excuse my not writing more, but when I am in a town where I know no one, I am never in a good humor; though I believe that if I had friends here I should like to remain, for the town is indeed charming--handsome houses, spacious streets, and superb squares. I have one request to make, which is to give me a large chest in my room that I may have all my things within my reach. I should like also to have the little piano that Fischietti and Rust had, beside my writing-table, as it suits me better than the small one of Stein. I don't bring many new things of my own with me, for I have not composed much. I have not yet got the three quartets and the flute concerto I wrote for M. de Jean; for when he went to Paris he packed them in the wrong trunk, so they are left at Mannheim. I can therefore bring nothing finished with me except my sonatas [with violin]; M. Le Gros purchased the two overtures from me and the sinfonie concertante, which he thinks exclusively his own; but this is not the case, for I have it still fresh in my head, and mean to write it out again as soon as I am at home. The Munich company of comedians are, I conclude, now acting? [in Salzburg.] Do they give satisfaction? Do people go to see them? I suppose that, as for the operettas, the "Fischermadchen" ("La Pescatrice" of Piccini), or "Das Bauernmadchen bei Hof" ("La Contadina in Corte," by Sacchini), will be given first? The prima donna is, no doubt, Madlle. Keiserin, whom I wrote to you about from Munich. I have heard her, but do not know her. At that time it was only her third appearance on any stage, and she had only learned music three weeks [see No. 62]. Now farewell! I shall not have a moment's peace till I once more see those I love. 115. Strassburg, Oct. 15, 1778. I GOT your three letters safely, but could not possibly answer them sooner. What you write about M. Grimm, I, of course, know better than you can do. That he was all courtesy and civility I do not deny; indeed, had this not been the case, I would not have stood on such ceremony with him. All that I owe M. Grimm is fifteen louis-d'or, and he has only himself to blame for their not being repaid, and this I told him. But what avails any discussion? We can talk it over at Salzburg. I am very much obliged to you for having put my case so strongly before Father Martini, and also for having written about me to M. Raaff. I never doubted your doing so, for I am well aware that it rejoices you to see your son happy and pleased, and you know that I could never be more so than in Munich; being so near Salzburg, I could constantly visit you. That Madlle. Weber, or rather MY DEAR WEBERIN, should now receive a salary, and justice be at last done to her merits, rejoices me to a degree natural in one who feels such deep interest in all that concerns her. I still warmly recommend her to you; though I must now, alas! give up all hope of what I so much wished,--her getting an engagement in Salzburg,--for the Archbishop would never give her the salary she now has. All we can now hope for is that she may sometimes come to Salzburg to sing in an opera. I had a hurried letter from her father the day before they went to Munich, in which he also mentions this news. These poor people were in the greatest distress about me, fearing that I must be dead, a whole month having elapsed without any letter from me, (owing to the last one being lost;) an idea that was confirmed by a report in Mannheim that my poor dear mother had died of a contagious disease. So they have been all praying for my soul. The poor girl went every day for this purpose into the Capuchin church. Perhaps you may laugh at this? I did not; on the contrary, I could not help being much touched by it. To proceed. I think I shall certainly go by Stuttgart to Augsburg, because I see by your letter that nothing, or at least not much, is to be made in Donaueschingen; but I will apprise you of all this before leaving Strassburg. Dearest father, I do assure you that, were it not for the pleasure of soon embracing you, I would never come to Salzburg; for, with the exception of this commendable and delightful impulse, I am really committing the greatest folly in the world. Rest assured that these are my own thoughts, and not borrowed from others. When my resolution to leave Paris was known, certain facts were placed before me, and the sole weapons I had to contend against or to conquer these, were my true and tender love for my kind father, which could not be otherwise than laudable in their eyes, but with the remark that if my father had known my present circumstances and fair prospects, (and had not got different and false impressions by means of a kind friend,) he certainly would not have written to me in such a strain as to render me wholly incapable of offering the least resistance to his wish; and in my own mind I thought, that had I not been exposed to so much annoyance in the house where I lived, and the journey come on me like a sudden thunder-clap, leaving me no time to reflect coolly on the subject, I should have earnestly besought you to have patience for a time, and to let me remain a little longer in Paris. I do assure you that I should have succeeded in gaining fame, honor, and wealth, and been thus enabled to defray your debts. But now it is settled, and do not for a moment suppose that I regret it; but you alone, dearest father, you alone can sweeten the bitterness of Salzburg for me; and that you will do so, I feel convinced. I must also candidly say that I should arrive in Salzburg with a lighter heart were it not for my official capacity there, for this thought is to me the most intolerable of all. Reflect on it yourself, place yourself in my position. At Salzburg I never know how I stand; at one time I am everything, at another absolutely nothing. I neither desire SO MUCH nor SO LITTLE, but still I wish to be SOMETHING--if indeed I am something! In every other place I know what my duties are. Elsewhere those who undertake the violin stick to it,--the same with the piano, &c., &c. I trust this will be regulated hereafter, so that all may turn out well and for my happiness and satisfaction. I rely wholly on you. Things here are in a poor state; but the day after to-morrow, Saturday the 17th, I MYSELF ALONE, (to save expense,) to please some kind friends, amateurs, and connoisseurs, intend to give a subscription concert. If I engaged an orchestra, it would with the lighting cost me more than three louis-d'or, and who knows whether we shall get as much? My sonatas are not yet published, though promised for the end of September. Such is the effect of not looking after things yourself, for which that obstinate Grimm is also to blame. They will probably be full of mistakes, not being able to revise them myself, for I was obliged to devolve the task on another, and I shall be without my sonatas in Munich. Such an occurrence, though apparently a trifle, may often bring success, honor, and wealth, or, on the other hand, misfortune. 116. Strassburg, Oct. 20, 1778. You will perceive that I am still here, by the advice of Herr Frank and other Strassburg magnates, but I leave this to-morrow. In my last letter I mentioned that on the 17th I was to give a kind of sample of a concert, as concerts here fare worse than even at Salzburg. It is, of course, over. I played quite alone, having engaged no musicians, so that I might at least lose nothing; briefly, I took three louis-d'or. The chief receipts consisted in the shouts of Bravo! and Bravissimo! which echoed on every side. Prince Max of Zweibrucken also honored the concert by his presence. I need not tell you that every one was pleased. I intended then to pursue my journey, but was advised to stay till the following Saturday, in order to give a grand concert in the theatre. I did so, and, to the surprise, indignation, and disgrace of all the Strassburgers, my receipts were exactly the same. The Director, M. de Villeneuve, abused the inhabitants of this most detestable town in the most unmeasured terms. I took a little more money, certainly, but the cost of the band (which is very bad, but its pay very good), the lighting, printing, the guard at the door, and the check-takers at the entrances, &c., made up a considerable sum. Still I must tell you that the applause and clapping of hands almost deafened me, and made my ears ache; it was as if the whole theatre had gone crazy. Those who were present, loudly and publicly denounced their fellow-citizens, and I told them all that if I could have reasonably supposed so few people would have come, I would gladly have given the concert gratis, merely for the pleasure of seeing the theatre well filled. And in truth I should have preferred it, for, upon my word, I don't know a more desolate sight than a long table laid for fifty, and only three at dinner. Besides, it was so cold; but I soon warmed myself, for, to show the Strassburg gentlemen how little I cared, I played a very long time for my own amusement, giving a concerto more than I had promised, and, at the close, extemporizing. It is now over, but at all events I gained honor and fame. I have drawn on Herr Scherz for eight louis-d'or, as a precaution, for no one can tell what may happen on a journey; and I HAVE is better than I MIGHT HAVE HAD. I have read the fatherly well-meaning letter which you wrote to M. Frank when in such anxiety about me. [Footnote: "Your sister and I confessed, and took the Holy Communion," writes the father, "and prayed to God fervently for your recovery. Our excellent Bullinger prays daily for you also."] When I wrote to you from Nancy, not knowing myself, you of course could not know, that I should have to wait so long for a good opportunity. Your mind may be quite at ease about the merchant with whom I am travelling; he is the most upright man in the world, takes more care of me than of himself, and, entirely to oblige me, is to go with me to Augsburg and Munich, and possibly even to Salzburg. We actually shed tears when we think that we must separate. He is not a learned man, but a man of experience, and we live together like children. When he thinks of his wife and family whom he has left in Paris, I try to comfort him, and when I think of my own people he speaks comfort to me. On the 31st of October, my name-day, I amused myself (and, better still, others) for a couple of hours. At the repeated entreaties of Herr Frank, de Berger, &c., &c., I gave another concert, by which, after paying the expenses, (not heavy this time,) I actually cleared a louis-d'or! Now you see what Strassburg is! I wrote at the beginning of this letter that I was to leave this on the 27th or 28th, but it proved impossible, owing to a sudden inundation here, when the floods caused great damage. You will probably see this in the papers. Of course travelling was out of the question, which was the only thing that induced me to consent to give another concert, being obliged to remain at all events. To-morrow I go by the diligence to Mannheim. Do not be startled at this. In foreign countries it is expedient to follow the advice of those who know from experience what ought to be done. Most of the strangers who go to Stuttgart (N.B., by the diligence) do not object to this detour of eight hours, because the road is better and also the conveyance. I must now, dearest father, cordially wish you joy of your approaching name-day. My kind father, I wish you from my heart all that a son can wish for a good father, whom he so highly esteems and dearly loves. I thank the Almighty that He has permitted you again to pass this day in the enjoyment of perfect health, and implore from Him the boon, that during the whole of my life (and I hope to live for a good many years to come) I may be able to congratulate you every year. However strange, and perhaps ridiculous, this wish may seem to you, I do assure you it is both sincere and well-intended. I hope you received my last letter from Strassburg. I wish to write nothing further of M. Grimm, but it is entirely owing to his stupidity in pressing forward my departure so much, that my sonatas are not yet engraved, or at all events that I have not got them, and when I do I shall probably find them full of mistakes. If I had only stayed three days longer in Paris, I could have revised them myself and brought them with me. The engraver was desperate when I told him that I could not correct them, but must commission someone else to do so. Why? Because, being resolved not to be three days longer in the same house with Grimm, I told him that on account of the sonatas I was going to stay with Count Sickingen, when he replied, his eyes sparkling with rage, "If you leave my house before you leave Paris, I will never in my life see you again. In that case do not presume ever to come near me, and look on me as your bitterest enemy." Self-control was indeed very necessary. Had it not been for your sake, who knew nothing about the matter, I certainly should have replied, "Be my enemy; by all means be so. You are so already, or you would not have prevented me putting my affairs in order here, which would have enabled me to keep my word, to preserve my honor and reputation, and also to make money, and probably a lucky hit; for if I present my sonatas to the Electress when I go to Munich, I shall thus keep my promise, probably receive a present, and make my fortune besides." But as it was, I only bowed, and left the room without saying a syllable. Before quitting Paris, however, I said all this to him, but he answered me like a man totally devoid of sense, or rather like a malicious man who affects to have none. I have written twice to Herr Heina, but have got no answer. The sonatas ought to have appeared by the end of September, and M. Grimm was to have forwarded the promised copies immediately to me, so I expected to have found them in Strassburg; but M. Grimm writes to me that he neither hears nor sees anything of them, but as soon as he does they are to be forwarded, and I hope to have them ere long. Strassburg can scarcely do without me. You cannot think how much I am esteemed and beloved here. People say that I am disinterested as well as steady and polite, and praise my manners. Every one knows me. As soon as they heard my name, the two Herrn Silbermann and Herr Hepp (organist) came to call on me, and also Capellmeister Richter. He has now restricted himself very much; instead of forty bottles of wine a day, he only drinks twenty! I played publicly on the two best organs that Silbermann has here, in the Lutheran and New Churches, and in the Thomas Church. If the Cardinal had died, (and he was very ill when I arrived,) I might have got a good situation, for Herr Richter is seventy-eight years of age. Now farewell! Be cheerful and in good spirits, and remember that your son is, thank God! well, and rejoicing that his happiness daily draws nearer. Last Sunday I heard a new mass of Herr Richter's, which is charmingly written. 117. Mannheim, November 12, 1778. I arrived here safely on the 6th, agreeably surprising all my kind friends. God be praised that I am once more in my beloved Mannheim! I assure you, if you were here you would say the same. I am living at Madame Cannabich's, who, as well as her family and all my good friends here, was quite beside herself with joy at seeing me again. We have not yet done talking, for she tells me of all the events and changes that have taken place during my absence. I have not been able to dine once at home since I came, for people are fighting to have me; in a word, just as I love Mannheim, so Mannheim loves me; and, though of course I don't know it positively, still I do think it possible that I may get an appointment here. But HERE, not in Munich, for my own belief is that the Elector will soon once more take up his residence in Mannheim, for he surely cannot long submit to the coarseness of the Bavarian gentlemen. You know that the Mannheim company is in Munich. There they hissed the two best actresses, Madame Toscani and Madame Urban. There was such an uproar that the Elector himself leant over his box and called out, "Hush!" To this, however, no one paid any attention; so he sent down Count Seeau, who told some of the officers not to make such a noise, as the Elector did not like it; but the only answer he got was, that they had paid their money, and no man had a right to give them any orders. But what a simpleton I am! You no doubt have heard this long ago through our.... I have now something to say. I may PERHAPS make forty louis-d'or here. To be sure, I should have to stay six weeks, or at most two months, in Mannheim. Seiler's company is here, whom you no doubt already know by reputation. Herr von Dalberg is the director. He will not hear of my leaving this till I have written a duodrama for him, and indeed I did not long hesitate, for I have often wished to write this style of drama. I forget if I wrote to you about it the first time that I was here. Twice at that time I saw a similar piece performed, which afforded me the greatest pleasure; in fact, nothing ever surprised me so much, for I had always imagined that a thing of this kind would make no effect. Of course you know that there is no singing in it, but merely recitation, to which the music is a sort of obligato recitativo. At intervals there is speaking while the music goes on, which produces the most striking effect. What I saw was Benda's "Medea." He also wrote another, "Ariadne auf Naxos," and both are truly admirable. You are aware that of all the Lutheran Capellmeisters Benda was always my favorite, and I like those two works of his so much that I constantly carry them about with me. Conceive my joy at now composing the very thing I so much wished! Do you know what my idea is?--that most operatic recitatives should be treated in this way, and the recitative only occasionally sung WHEN THE WORDS CAN BE THOROUGHLY EXPRESSED BY THE MUSIC. An Academie des Amateurs is about to be established here, like the one in Paris, where Herr Franzl is violin leader, and I am at this moment writing a concerto for violin and piano. I found my dear friend Raaff still here, but he leaves this on the 8th. He has sounded my praises here, and shown sincere interest in me, and I hope he will do the same in Munich. Do you know what that confounded fellow Seeau said here?--that my opera buffa had been hissed at Munich! Fortunately he said so in a place where I am well known; still, his audacity provokes me; but the people, when they go to Munich, will hear the exact reverse. A whole flock of Bavarians are here, among others Fraulein de Pauli (for I don't know her present name). I have been to see her because she sent for me immediately. Oh! what a difference there is between the people of the Palatinate and those of Bavaria! What a language it is! so coarse! and their whole mode of address! It quite annoys me to hear once more their hoben and olles (haben and alles), and their WORSHIPFUL SIR. Now good-bye! and pray write to me soon. Put only my name, for they know where I am at the post-office. I am so well known here that it is impossible a letter for me can be lost. My cousin wrote to me, and by mistake put Franconian Hotel instead of Palatine Hotel. The landlord immediately sent the letter to M. Serrarius's, where I lodged when I was last here. What rejoices me most of all in the whole Mannheim and Munich story is that Weber has managed his affairs so well. They have now 1600 florins; for the daughter has 1000 florins and her father 400, and 200 more as prompter. Cannabich did the most for them. It is quite a history about Count Seeau; if you don't know it, I will write you the details next time. I beg, dearest father, that you will make use of this affair at Salzburg, and speak so strongly and so decidedly, that the Archbishop may think it possible I may not come after all, and thus be induced to give me a better salary, for I declare I cannot think of it with composure. The Archbishop cannot pay me sufficiently for the slavery of Salzburg. As I said before, I feel the greatest pleasure at the thought of paying you a visit, but only annoyance and misery in seeing myself once more at that beggarly court. The Archbishop must no longer attempt to play the great man with me as he used to do, or I may possibly play him a trick,--this is by no means unlikely,--and I am sure that you would participate in my satisfaction. 118. Mannheim, Nov. 24, 1778. MY DEAR BARON VON DALBERG,-- I called on you twice, but had not the good fortune to find you at home; yesterday you were in the house, but engaged, so I could not see you. I hope you will therefore excuse my troubling you with these few lines, as it is very important to me to explain myself fully. Herr Baron, you are well aware that I am not an interested man, particularly when I know that it is in my power to do a service to so great a connoisseur and lover of music as yourself. On the other hand, I also know that you certainly would not wish that I should be a loser on this occasion; I therefore take the liberty to make my final stipulations on the subject, as it is impossible for me to remain here longer in uncertainty. I agree to write a monodrama for the sum of twenty-five louis-d'or, and to stay here for two months longer to complete everything, and to attend all the rehearsals, &c., but on this condition, that, happen what may, I am to be paid by the end of January. Of course I shall also expect free admission to the theatre. Now, my dear Baron, this is all that I can do, and if you consider, you will admit that I certainly am acting with great discretion. With regard to your opera, I do assure you I should rejoice to compose music for it, but you must yourself perceive that I could not undertake such a work for twenty-five louis-d'or, as it would be twice the labor of a monodrama (taken at the lowest rate). The chief obstacle would be your having told me that Gluck and Schweitzer are partially engaged to write this work. But were you even to give me fifty louis-d'or, I would still as an honest man dissuade you from it. An opera without any singers! what is to be done in such a case? Still, if on this occasion there is a prospect of its being performed, I will not hesitate to undertake the work to oblige you; but it is no trifling one--of that I pledge you my word. I have now set forth my ideas clearly and candidly, and request your decision. 119. Mannheim, Dec. 3, 1778. I MUST ask your forgiveness for two things,--first, that I have not written to you for so long; and secondly, that this time also I must be brief. My not having answered you sooner is the fault of no one but yourself, and your first letter to me at Mannheim. I really never could have believed--but silence! I will say no more on the subject. Lot us have done with it. Next Wednesday, the 9th, I leave this; I cannot do so sooner, because, thinking that I was to be here for a couple of months, I accepted some pupils, and of course wish to make out the twelve lessons. I assure you that you have no idea what kind and true friends I have here, which time will prove. Why must I be so brief? Because my hands are more than full. To please Herr Gemmingen and myself, I am writing the first act of the melodramatic opera (that I was commissioned to write), but now do so gratis; I shall bring it with me and finish it at home. You see how strong my inclination must be for this kind of composition. Of course Herr von Gemmingen is the poet. The duodrama is called "Semiramis." Next Wednesday I set off, and do you know how I travel? With the worthy prelate, the Bishop of Kaisersheim. When a kind friend of mine mentioned me to him, he at once knew my name, expressing the pleasure it would be to him to have me as a travelling companion. He is (though a priest and prelate) a most amiable man. I am therefore going by Kaisersheim and not by Stuttgart; but it is just the same to me, for I am very lucky in being able to spare my purse a little (as it is slender enough) on the journey. Be so good as to answer me the following questions. How do the comedians please at Salzburg? Is not the young lady who sings, Madlle. Keiserin? Does Herr Feiner play the English horn? Ah! if we had only clarionets too! You cannot imagine the splendid effect of a symphony with flutes, hautboys, and clarionets. At my first audience of the Archbishop I shall tell him much that is new, and also make some suggestions. Oh, how much finer and better our orchestra might be if the Archbishop only chose! The chief cause why it is not so, is that there are far too many performances. I make no objection to the chamber-music, only to the concerts on a larger scale. A propos, you say nothing of it, but I conclude you have received the trunk; if not, Herr von Grimm is responsible for it. You will find in it the aria I wrote for Madlle. Weber. You can have no idea of the effect of that aria with instruments; you may not think so when you see it, but it ought to be sung by a Madlle. Weber! Pray, give it to no one, for that would be most unfair, as it was written solely for her, and fits her like a well-fitting glove. 120. Kaisersheim, Dec. 18, 1778. I ARRIVED here safely on Sunday the 13th, God be praised! I travelled in the most agreeable way, and had likewise the inexpressible pleasure to find a letter from you here. The reason that I did not forthwith answer it was, because I wished to give you sure and precise information as to my departure, for which I had not fixed any time; but I have at length resolved, as the prelate goes to Munich on the 26th or 27th, to be again his companion. I must tell you, however, that he does not go by Augsburg. I lose nothing by this; but if you have anything to arrange or transact where my presence is wanted, I can at any time, if you wish it, (being so near,) make a little expedition from Munich. My journey from Mannheim to this place would have been most agreeable to a man, leaving a city with a light heart. The prelate and his Chancellor, an honest, upright, and amiable man, drove together in one carriage, and Herr Kellermeister, Father Daniel, Brother Anton, the Secretary, and I, preceded them always half an hour, or an hour. But for me, to whom nothing could be more painful than leaving Mannheim, this journey was only partly agreeable, and would not have been at all so, but rather very tiresome, if I had not from my early youth been so much accustomed to leave people, countries, and cities, and with no very sanguine hope of soon or ever again seeing the kind friends I left. I cannot deny, but at once admit, that not only I myself, but all my intimate friends, particularly the Cannabichs, were in the most pitiable distress during the last few days after my departure was finally settled. We felt as if it were not possible for us to part. I set off at half-past eight o'clock in the morning, and Madame Cannabich did not leave her room; she neither would nor could take leave of me. I did not wish to distress her, so left the house without seeing her. My very dear father, I can safely say that she is one of my best and truest friends, for I only call those friends who are so in every situation, who, day and night, think how they can best serve the interests of their friend, applying to all influential persons, and toiling to secure his happiness. Now I do assure you such is the faithful portrait of Madame Cannabich. There may indeed be an alloy of self-interest in this, for where does anything take place--indeed, how can anything be done in this world--without some alloy of selfishness? What I like best in Madame Cannabich is, that she never attempts to deny this. I will tell you when we meet in what way she told me so, for when we are alone, which, I regret to say, is very seldom, we become quite confidential. Of all the intimate friends who frequent her house, I alone possess her entire confidence; for I alone know all her domestic and family troubles, concerns, secrets, and circumstances. We were not nearly so well acquainted the first time I was here, (we have agreed on this point,) nor did we mutually under stand each other so well; but living in the same house affords greater facilities to know a person. When in Paris I first began fully to appreciate the sincere friendship of the Cannabichs, having heard from a trustworthy source the interest both she and her husband took in me. I reserve many topics to explain and to discuss personally, for since my return from Paris the scene has undergone some remarkable changes, but not in all things. Now as to my cloister life. The monastery itself made no great impression on me, after having seen the celebrated Abbey of Kremsmunster. I speak of the exterior and what they call here the court square, for the most renowned part I have yet to see. What appears to me truly ridiculous is the formidable military. I should like to know of what use they are. At night I hear perpetual shouts of "Who goes there?" and I invariably reply, "Guess!" You know what a good and kind man the prelate is, but you do not know that I may class myself among his favorites, which, I believe, does me neither good nor harm, but it is always pleasant to have one more friend in the world. With regard to the monodrama, or duodrama, a voice part is by no means necessary, as not a single note is sung, but entirely spoken; in short, it is a recitative with instruments, only the actor speaks the words instead of singing them. If you were to hear it even with the piano, it could not fail to please you, but properly performed, you would be quite transported. I can answer for this; but it requires a good actor or actress. I shall really feel quite ashamed if I arrive in Munich without my sonatas. I cannot understand the delay; it was a stupid trick of Grimm's, and I have written to him to that effect. He will now see that he was in rather too great a hurry. Nothing ever provoked me so much. Just reflect on it. I know that my sonatas were published in the beginning of November, and I, the author, have not yet got them, therefore cannot present them to the Electress, to whom they are dedicated. I have, however, taken measures in the mean time which will insure my getting them. I hope that my cousin in Augsburg has received them, or that they are lying at Josef Killiau's for her; so I have written to beg her to send them to me at once. Until I come myself, I commend to your good offices an organist, and also a good pianist, Herr Demmler, from Augsburg. I had entirely forgotten him, and was very glad when I heard of him here. He has considerable genius; a situation in Salzburg might be very useful in promoting his further success, for all he requires is a good leader in music; and I could not find him a better conductor than you, dear father, and it would really be a pity if he were to leave the right path. [See No. 68.] That melancholy "Alceste" of Schweitzer's is to be performed in Munich. The best part (besides some of the openings, middle passages, and the finales of some arias) is the beginning of the recitative "O Jugendzeit," and this was made what it is by Raaff's assistance; he punctuated it for Hartig (who plays Admet), and by so doing introduced the true expression into the aria. The worst of all, however, (as well as the greater part of the opera,) is certainly the overture. As for the trifles that are not to be found in the trunk, it is quite natural that under such circumstances something should be lost, or even stolen. The little amethyst ring I felt I ought to give to the nurse who attended my dear mother, whose wedding-ring was left on her finger. [A large blot.] The ink-bottle is so full, and I am too hasty in dipping in my pen, as you will perceive. As for the watch, you have guessed rightly. I sold it, but only got five louis-d'or for it, and that in consideration of the works, which were good; for the shape, as you know, was old-fashioned and quite out of date. Speaking of watches, I must tell you that I am bringing one with me--a genuine Parisian. You know what sort of thing my jewelled watch was--how inferior all the so-called precious stones were, how clumsy and awkward its shape; but I would not have cared so much about that, had I not been obliged to spend so much money in repairing and regulating it, and after all the watch would one day gain a couple of hours, and next day lose in the same proportion. The one the Elector gave me did just the same, and, moreover, the works were even worse and more fragile. I exchanged these two watches and their chains for a Parisian one which is worth twenty louis-d'or. So now at last I know what o'clock it is; with my five watches I never got so far as that before! At present, out of four, I have, at all events, one on which I can depend. 121. Kaisersheim, Dec. 23, 1778. MA TRES-CHERE COUSINE,-- I write to you in the greatest haste, and in the deepest sorrow and remorse, and with the determined purpose to tell you that it is my intention to set off to-morrow to Munich. I would, I assure you, gladly have gone to Augsburg, but the prelate was resolved to claim me, for which you cannot blame me. It is my loss, so don't be cross. I may perhaps make an escapade from Munich to Augsburg, but this is by no means certain. If you will be as glad to see me, as I shall be to see you, do come to the good town of Munich. Be sure you come by the new year, that I may see your face so dear, and escort you far and near. One thing I very much regret, which is that I cannot give you house-room, because I am not at an hotel, but am living with--whom do you think? I should like to know this myself [with the Webers]. But now Spassus apart. For that very reason, and for my sake, it would be advisable you should come; perhaps you may have a great part to play, but at all events come. I can then pay you in my own mighty person all proper compliments. Now adieu, angel of piety! I await you with anxiety. Your sincere cousin, W. A. MOZART. P.S.--Write to me forthwith to Munich, Poste Restante, a little note of twenty-four pages, but do not mention where you are to lodge, that I may not find you out nor you me. 122. Munich, Dec. 29, 1778. I WRITE from the house of M. Becke [flute-player; see No. 60]. I arrived here safely, God be praised! on the 25th, but have been unable to write to you till now. I reserve everything till our glad, joyous meeting, when I can once more have the happiness of conversing with you, for to-day I can only weep. I have far too sensitive a heart. In the mean time, I must tell you that the day before I left Kaisersheim I received the sonatas; so I shall be able to present them myself to the Electress. I only delay leaving this till the opera [Footnote: Schweitzer's "Alceste." (See No. 120.)] is given, when I intend immediately to leave Munich, unless I were to find that it would be very beneficial and useful to me to remain here for some time longer. In which case I feel convinced, quite convinced, that you would not only be satisfied I should do so, but would yourself advise it. I naturally write very badly, for I never learned to write; still, in my whole life I never wrote worse than this very day, for I really am unfit for anything--my heart is too full of tears. I hope you will soon write to me and comfort me. Address to me, Poste Restante, and then I can fetch the letter myself. I am staying with the Webers. I think, after all, it would be better, far better, to enclose your letter to me to our friend Becke. I intend (I mention it to you in the strictest secrecy) to write a mass here; all my best friends advise my doing so. I cannot tell you what friends Cannabich and Raaff have been to me. Now farewell, my kindest and most beloved father! Write to me soon. A happy new-year! More I cannot bring myself to write to-day. This letter is scrawled hurriedly, quite unlike the others, and betrays the most violent agitation of mind. During the whole journey there was nothing to which Mozart looked forward with such joy as once more seeing his beloved Madlle. Weber in Munich. He had even destined "a great part" for the Basle (his cousin) in the affair; but he was now to learn that Aloysia had been faithless to him. Nissen relates: "Mozart, being in mourning for his mother, appeared dressed, according to the French custom, in a red coat with black buttons; but soon discovered that Aloysia's feelings towards him had undergone a change. She seemed scarcely to recognize one for whose sake she had once shed so many tears. On which Mozart quickly seated himself at the piano and sang, "Ich lass das Madel gern das mich nicht will," ["I gladly give up the girl who slights me."] His father, moreover, was displeased in the highest degree by Wolfgang's protracted absence, fearing that the Archbishop might recall his appointment; so Wolfgang became very uneasy lest he should not meet with a kind reception from his father on his return home." 123. Munich, Dec. 31, 1778. I HAVE this instant received your latter from my friend Becke. I wrote to you from his house two days ago, but a letter such as I never wrote before; for this kind friend said so much to me about your tender paternal love, your indulgence towards me, your complaisance and discretion in the promotion of my future happiness, that my feelings were softened even to tears. But, from your letter of the 28th, I see only too clearly that Herr Becke, in his conversation with me, rather exaggerated. Now, distinctly, and once for all, as soon as the opera ("Alceste") is given, I intend to leave this, whether the diligence goes the day after or the same night. If you had spoken to Madame Robinig, I might have travelled home with her. But be that as it may, the opera is to be given on the 11th, and on the 12th (if the diligence goes) I set off. It would be more for my interest to stay here a little longer, but I am willing to sacrifice this to you, in the hope that I shall have a twofold reward for it in Salzburg. I don't think your idea about the sonatas at all good; even if I do not get them, I ought to leave Munich forthwith. Then you advise my not being seen at court; to a man so well known as I am here such a thing is impossible. But do not be uneasy. I received my sonatas at Kaisersheim; and, as soon as they are bound, I mean to present them to the Electress. A. propos, what do you mean by DREAMS OF PLEASURE? I do not wish to give up dreaming, for what mortal on the whole compass of the earth does not often dream? above all DREAMS OF PLEASURE--peaceful dreams, sweet, cheering dreams if you will--dreams which, if realized, would have rendered my life (now far rather sad than pleasurable) more endurable. The 1st.--I have this moment received, through a Salzburg vetturino, a letter from you, which really at first quite startled me. For Heaven's sake tell me, do you really think that I can at once fix a day for my journey; or is it your belief that I don't mean to come at all? When I am so very near, I do think you might be at ease on that point. When the fellow had explained his route to me, I felt a strong inclination to go with him, but at present I really cannot; to-morrow or next day I intend to present the sonatas to the Electress, and then (no matter how strongly I may be urged) I must wait a few days for a present. Of one thing I give you my word, that to please you I have resolved not to wait to see the opera, but intend to leave this the day after I receive the present I expect. At the same time I confess I feel this to be very hard on me; but if a few days more or less appear of such importance to you, so let it be. Write to me at once on this point. The 2d.--I rejoice at the thoughts of conversing with you, for then you will first comprehend how my matters stand here. You need have neither mistrust nor misgivings as to Raaff, for he is the most upright man in the world, though no lover of letter-writing. The chief cause of his silence, however, is no doubt that he is unwilling to make premature promises, and yet is glad to hold out some hope too; besides, like Cannabich, he has worked for me with might and main. 124. Munich, Jan. 8, 1779. [Footnote: The second grand aria that Mozart wrote for Aloysia, bears the same date.] I HOPE you received my last letter, which I meant to have given to the vetturino, but having missed him I sent it by post. I have, in the mean time, got all your letters safely through Herr Becke. I gave him my letter to read, and he also showed me his. I assure you, my very dear father, that I am now full of joy at returning to you, (but not to Salzburg,) as your last letter shows that you know me better than formerly. There never was any other cause for my long delay in going home but this doubt, which gave rise to a feeling of sadness that I could no longer conceal; so I at last opened my heart to my friend Becke. What other cause could I possibly have? I have done nothing to cause me to dread reproach from you; I am guilty of no fault; (by a fault I mean that which does not become a Christian, and a man of honor;) in short, I now rejoice, and already look forward to the most agreeable and happy days, but only in the society of yourself and my dear sister. I give you my solemn word of honor that I cannot endure Salzburg or its inhabitants, (I speak of the natives of Salzburg.) Their language, their manners, are to me quite intolerable. You cannot think what I suffered during Madame Robinig's visit here, for it is long indeed since I met with such a fool; and, for my still further annoyance, that silly, deadly dull Mosmayer was also there. But to proceed. I went yesterday, with my dear friend Cannabich, to the Electress to present my sonatas. Her apartments are exactly what I should like mine one day to be, very pretty and neat, just like those of a private individual, all except the view, which is miserable. We were there fully an hour and a half, and she was very gracious. I have managed to let her know that I must leave this in a few days, which will, I hope, expedite matters. You have no cause to be uneasy about Count Seeau; I don't believe the thing will come through his hands, and even if it does, he will not venture to say a word. Now, once for all, believe that I have the most eager longing to embrace you and my beloved sister. If it were only not in Salzburg! But as I have not hitherto been able to see you without going to Salzburg, I do so gladly. I must make haste, for the post is just going. My cousin is here. Why? To please me, her cousin; this is, indeed, the ostensible cause. But--we can talk about it in Salzburg; and, on this account, I wished very much that she would come with me there. You will find a few lines, written by her own hand, attached to the fourth page of this letter. She is quite willing to go; so if it would really give you pleasure to see her, be so kind as to write immediately to her brother, that the thing may be arranged. When you see her and know her, she is certain to please you, for she is a favorite with every one. Wolfgang's pleasantries, in the following; letter to his cousin, show that his good humor was fully restored. He was received at home with very great rejoicings, and his cousin soon followed him. 125. Salzburg, May 10, 1779. DEAREST, sweetest, most beauteous, fascinating, and charming of all cousins, most basely maltreated by an unworthy kinsman! Allow me to strive to soften and appease your just wrath, which only heightens your charms and winning beauty, as high as the heel of your slipper! I hope to soften you, Nature having bestowed on me a large amount of softness, and to appease you, being fond of sweet pease. As to the Leipzig affair, I can't tell whether it may be worth stooping to pick up; were it a bag of ringing coin, it would be a very different thing, and nothing less do I mean to accept, so there is an end of it. Sweetest cousin, such is life! One man has got a purse, but another has got the money, and he who has neither has nothing; and nothing is even less than little; while, on the other hand, much is a great deal more than nothing, and nothing can come of nothing. Thus has it been from the beginning, is now, and ever shall be; and as I can make it neither worse nor better, I may as well conclude my letter. The gods know I am sincere. How does Probst get on with his wife? and do they live in bliss or in strife? most silly questions, upon my life! Adieu, angel! My father sends you his uncle's blessing, and a thousand cousinly kisses from my sister. Angel, adieu! A TENDER ODE. [Footnote: A parody of Klopstock's "Dein susses Bild, Edone"] TO MY COUSIN. THY sweet image, cousin mine, Hovers aye before me; Would the form indeed were thine! How I would adore thee! I see it at the day's decline; I see it through the pale moonshine, And linger o'er that form divine By all the flowers of sweet perfume I'll gather for my cousin,--By all the wreaths of myrtle-bloom I'll wreathe her by the dozen,--I call upon that image there To pity my immense despair, And be indeed my cousin fair [Footnote: These words are written round the slightly sketched caricature of a face.] FOURTH PART.--MUNICH.--IDOMENEO.--NOVEMBER 1780 TO JANUARY 1781. MOZART now remained stationary at Salzburg till the autumn of 1780, highly dissatisfied at being forced to waste his youthful days in inactivity, and in such an obscure place, but still as busy as ever. A succession of grand instrumental compositions were the fruits of this period: two masses, some vespers, the splendid music for "Konig Thamos," and the operetta "Zaide" for Schikaneder. At length, however, to his very great joy, a proposal was made to him from Munich to write a grand opera for the Carnival of 1781. It was "Idomeneo, Konig von Greta." At the beginning of November he once more set off to Munich in order to "prepare an exact fit," on the spot, of the different songs in the opera for the singers, and to rehearse and practise everything with them. The Abbate Varesco in Salzburg was the author of the libretto, in which many an alteration had yet to be made, and these were all to be effected through the intervention of the father. 126. Munich, Nov. 8, 1780. FORTUNATE and pleasant was my arrival here,--fortunate, because no mishap occurred during the journey; and pleasant, because we had scarcely patience to wait for the moment that was to end this short but disagreeable journey. I do assure you it was impossible for us to sleep for a moment the whole night. The carriage jolted our very souls out, and the seats were as hard as stone! From Wasserburg I thought I never could arrive in Munich with whole bones, and during two stages I held on by the straps, suspended in the air and not venturing to sit down. But no matter; it is past now, though it will serve me as a warning in future rather to go on foot than drive in a diligence. Now as to Munich. We arrived here at one o'clock in the forenoon, and the same evening I called on Count Seeau [the Theatre Intendant], but as he was not at home I left a note for him. Next morning I went there with Becke. Seeau has been moulded like wax by the Mannheim people. I have a request to make of the Abbate [Gianbattista Varesco]. The aria of Ilia in the second act and second scene must be a little altered for what I require,--"Se il padre perdei, in te lo ritrovo" This verse could not be better; but now comes what always appeared unnatural to me,--N.B. in an aria,--I mean, to speak aside. In a dialogue these things are natural enough, for a few words can be hurriedly said aside, but in an aria, where the words must be repeated, it has a bad effect; and even were this not the case, I should prefer an uninterrupted aria. The beginning may remain if he chooses, for it is charming and quite a natural flowing strain, where, not being fettered by the words, I can write on quite easily; for we agreed to bring in an aria andantino here in concert with four wind instruments, viz. flute, hautboy, horn, and bassoon; and I beg that you will let me have the air as soon as possible. Now for a grievance. I have not, indeed, the honor of being acquainted with the hero Del Prato [the musico who was to sing Idamante], but from description I should say that Cecarelli is rather the better of the two, for often in the middle of an air our musico's breath entirely fails; nota bene, he never was on any stage, and Raaff is like a statue. Now only for a moment imagine the scene in the first act! But there is one good thing, which is, that Madame Dorothea Wendling is arci-contentissima with her scena, and insisted on hearing it played three times in succession. The Grand Master of the Teutonic Order arrived yesterday. "Essex" was given at the Court Theatre, and a magnificent ballet. The theatre was all illuminated. The beginning was an overture by Cannabich, which, as it is one of his last, I did not know. I am sure, if you had heard it you would have been as much pleased and excited as I was, and if you had not previously known the fact, you certainly could not have believed that it was by Cannabich. Do come soon to hear it, and to admire the orchestra. I have no more to say. There is to be a grand concert this evening, where Mara is to sing three airs. Tell me whether it snows as heavily in Salzburg as here. My kind regards to Herr Schikaneder [impresario in Salzburg], and beg him to excuse my not yet sending him the aria, for I have not been able to finish it entirely. 127. Munich, Nov. 13, 1780. I WRITE in the greatest haste, for I am not yet dressed, and must go off to Count Seeau's. Cannabich, Quaglio, and Le Grand, the ballet-master, also dine there to consult about what is necessary for the opera. Cannabich and I dined yesterday with Countess Baumgarten, [Footnote: He wrote an air for her, the original of which is now in the State Library at Munich.] nee Lerchenteld. My friend is all in all in that family, and now I am the same. It is the best and most serviceable house here to me, for owing to their kindness all has gone well with me, and, please God, will continue to do so. I am just going to dress, but must not omit the chief thing of all, and the principal object of my letter,--to wish you, my very dearest and kindest father, every possible good on this your name-day. I also entreat the continuance of your fatherly love, and assure you of my entire obedience to your wishes. Countess la Rose sends her compliments to you and my sister, so do all the Cannabichs and both Wendling families, Ramm, Eck father and son, Becke, and Herr del Prato, who happens to be with me. Yesterday Count Seeau presented me to the Elector, who was very gracious. If you were to speak to Count Seeau now, you would scarcely recognize him, so completely have the Mannheimers transformed him. I am ex commissione to write a formal answer in his name to the Abbate Varesco, but I have no time, and was not born to be a secretary. In the first act (eighth scene) Herr Quaglio made the same objection that we did originally,--namely, that it is not fitting the king should be quite alone in the ship. If the Abbe thinks that he can be reasonably represented in the terrible storm forsaken by every one, WITHOUT A SHIP, exposed to the greatest peril, all may remain as it is; but, N. B., no ship--for he cannot be alone in one; so, if the other mode be adopted, some generals or confidants (mates) must land from the ship with him. Then the king might address a few words to his trusty companions, and desire them to leave him alone, which in his melancholy situation would be quite natural. The second duet is to be omitted altogether, and indeed with more profit than loss to the opera; for if you will read the scene it evidently becomes cold and insipid by the addition of an air or a duet, and very irksome to the other actors, who must stand, by all the time unoccupied; besides, the noble contest between Ilia and Idamante would become too long, and thus lose its whole interest. Mara has not the good fortune to please me. She does too little to be compared to a Bastardella [see No. 8], (yet this is her peculiar style,) and too much to touch the heart like a Weber [Aloysia], or any judicious singer. P.S.--A propos, as they translate so badly here, Count Seeau would like to have the opera translated in Salzburg, and the arias alone to be in verse. I am to make a contract that the payment of the poet and the translator should be made in one sum. Give me an answer soon about this. Adieu! What of the family portraits? Are they good likenesses? Is my sister's begun yet? The opera is to be given for the first time on the 26th of January. Be so kind as to send me the two scores of the masses that I have with me, and also the mass in B. Count Seeau is to mention them soon to the Elector; I should like to be known here in this style also. I have just heard a mass of Gruan's; it would be easy to compose half a dozen such in a day. Had I known that this singer, Del Prato, was so bad, I should certainly have recommended Cecarelli. 128. Munich, Nov. 15, 1780. The aria is now admirable, but there is still an alteration to be made recommended by Raaff; he is, however, right, and even were he not, some courtesy ought to be shown to his gray hairs. He was with me yesterday, and I played over his first aria to him, with which he was very much pleased. The man is old, and can no longer show off in an aria like that in the second art,--"Fuor del mar ho un mare in seno," &c. As, moreover, in the third act he has no aria, (the one in the first act not being so cantabile as he would like, owing to the expression of the words,) he wishes after his last speech, "O Creta fortuinata, O me felice," to have a pretty aria to sing instead of the quartet; in this way a superfluous air would be got rid of, and the third act produce a far better effect. In the last scene also of the second act, Idomeneo has an aria, or rather a kind of cavatina, to sing between the choruses. For this it would be better to substitute a mere recitative, well supported by the instruments. For in this scene, (owing to the action and grouping which have been recently settled with Le Grand,) the finest of the whole opera, there cannot fail to be such a noise and confusion in the theatre, that an aria, would make a very bad figure in this place, and moreover there is a thunderstorm which is not likely to subside during Raaff's aria! The effect, therefore, of a recitative between the choruses must be infinitely better. Lisel Wendling has also sung through her two arias half a dozen times, and is much pleased with them. I heard from a third person that the two Wendlings highly praised their arias, and as for Raaff he is my best and dearest friend. I must teach the whole opera myself to Del Prato. He is incapable of singing even the introduction to any air of importance, and his voice is so uneven! He is only engaged for a year, and at the end of that time (next September) Count Seeau will get another. Cecarelli might try his chance then serieusement. I nearly forgot the best of all. After mass last Sunday, Count Seeau presented me, en passant, to H.S.H. the Elector, who was very gracious. He said, "I am happy to see you here again;" and on my replying that I would strive to deserve the good opinion of His Serene Highness, he clapped me on the shoulder, saying, "Oh! I have no doubt whatever that all will go well--a piano piano si va lontano." Deuce take it! I cannot write everything I wish. Raaff has just left me; he sends you his compliments, and so do the Cannabichs, and Wendlings, and Ramm. My sister must not be idle, but practise steadily, for every one is looking forward with pleasure to her coming here. My lodging is in the Burggasse at M. Fiat's [where the marble slab to his memory is now erected]. 129. Munich, Nov. 22, 1780. I SEND herewith, at last, the long-promised aria for Herr Schikaneder. During the first week that I was here I could not entirely complete it, owing to the business that caused me to come here. Besides, Le Grand, the ballet-master, a terrible talker and bore, has just been with me, and by his endless chattering caused me to miss the diligence. I hope my sister is quite well. I have at this moment a bad cold, which in such weather is quite the fashion here. I hope and trust, however, that it will soon take its departure,--indeed, both phlegm and cough are gradually disappearing. In your last letter you write repeatedly, "Oh! my poor eyes! I du not wish to write myself blind--half-past eight at night, and no spectacles!" But why do you write at night, and without spectacles? I cannot understand it. I have not yet had an opportunity of speaking to Count Seeau, but hope to do so to-day, and shall give you any information I can gather by the next post. At present all will, no doubt, remain as it is. Herr Raaff paid me a visit yesterday morning, and I gave him your regards, which seemed to please him much. He is, indeed, a worthy and thoroughly respectable man. The day before yesterday Del Frato sang in the most disgraceful way at the concert. I would almost lay a wager that the man never manages to get through the rehearsals, far less the opera; he has some internal disease. Come in!--Herr Panzacchi! [who was to sing Arbace]. He has already paid me three visits, and has just asked me to dine with him on Sunday. I hope the same thing won't happen to me that happened to us with the coffee. He meekly asks if, instead of se la sa, he may sing se co la, or even ut, re, mi, fa, sol, la. I am so glad when you often write to me, only not at night, and far less without spectacles. You must, however, forgive me if I do not say much in return, for every minute is precious; besides, I am obliged chiefly to write at night, for the mornings are so very dark; then I have to dress, and the servant at the Weiser sometimes admits a troublesome visitor. When Del Prato comes I must sing to him, for I have to teach him his whole part like a child; his method is not worth a farthing. I will write more fully next time. What of the family portraits? My sister, if she has nothing better to do, might mark down the names of the best comedies that have been performed during my absence. Has Schikaneder still good receipts? My compliments to all my friends, and to Gilofsky's Katherl. Give a pinch of Spanish snuff from me to Pimperl [the dog], a good wine-sop, and three kisses. Do you not miss me at all? A thousand compliments to all--all! Adieu! I embrace you both from my heart, and hope my sister will soon recover. [Nannerl, partly owing to her grief in consequence of an unfortunate love-affair, was suffering from pains in the chest, which threatened to turn to consumption.] 180. Munich, Nov. 24, 1780. I beg you will convey to Madlle. Katharine Gilofsky de Urazowa my respectful homage. Wish her in my name every possible happiness on her name-day; above all, I wish that this may be the last time I congratulate her as Mademoiselle. What you write to me about Count Seinsheim is done long ago; they are all links of one chain. I have already dined with, him once, and with Baumgarten twice, and once with Lerchenfeld, father of Madlle. Baumgarten. Not a single day passes without some of these people being at Cannabich's. Do not be uneasy, dearest father, about my opera; I do hope that all will go well. No doubt it will be assailed by a petty cabal, which will in all probability be defeated with ridicule; for the most respected and influential families among the nobility are in my favor, and the first-class musicians are one and all for me. I cannot tell you what a good friend Cannabich is--so busy and active! In a word, he is always on the watch to serve a friend. I will tell you the whole story about Mara. I did not write to you before on the subject, because I thought that, even if you knew nothing of it, you would be sure to hear the particulars here; but now it is high time to tell you the whole truth, for probably additions have been made to the story,--at least, in this town, it has been told in all sorts of different ways. No one can know about it better than I do, as I was present, so I heard and witnessed the whole affair. When the first symphony was over, it was Madame Mara's turn to sing. I then saw her husband come sneaking in behind her with his violoncello in his hand; I thought she was going to sing an aria obligato with violoncello accompaniment. Old Danzi, the first violoncello, also accompanies well. All at once Toeschi (who is a director, but has no authority when Cannabich is present) said to Danzi (N. B., his son-in-law), "Rise, and give Mara your place." When Cannabich saw and heard this, he called out, "Danzi, stay where you are; the Elector prefers his own people playing the accompaniments." Then the air began, Mara standing behind his wife, looking very sheepish, and still holding his violoncello. The instant they entered the concert-room, I took a dislike to both, for you could not well see two more insolent-looking people, and the sequel will convince you of this. The aria had a second part, but Madame Mara did not think proper to inform the orchestra of the fact previously, but after the last ritournelle came down into the room with her usual air of effrontery to pay her respects to the nobility. In the mean time her husband attacked Cannabich. I cannot write every detail, for it would be too long; but, in a word, he insulted both the orchestra and Cannabich's character, who, being naturally very much irritated, laid hold of his arm, saying, "This is not the place to answer you." Mara wished to reply, but Cannabich threatened that if he did not hold his tongue he would have him removed by force. All were indignant at Mara's impertinence. A concerto by Ramm was then given, when this amiable couple proceeded to lay their complaint before Count Seeau; but from him, also, as well as from every one else, they heard that they were in the wrong. At last Madame Mara was foolish enough to speak to the Elector himself on the subject, her husband in the mean time saying in an arrogant tone, "My wife is at this moment complaining to the Elector--an unlucky business for Cannabich; I am sorry for him." But people only burst out laughing in his face. The Elector, in reply to Madame Mara's complaint, said, "Madame, you sang like an angel, although your husband did not accompany you;" and when she wished to press her grievance, he said, "That is Count Seeau's affair, not mine." When they saw that nothing was to be done, they left the room, although she had still two airs to sing. This was nothing short of an insult to the Elector, and I know for certain that, had not the Archduke and other strangers been present, they would have been very differently treated; but on this account Count Seeau was annoyed, so he sent after them immediately, and they came back. She sang her two arias, but was not accompanied by her husband. In the last one (and I shall always believe that Herr Mara did it on purpose) two bars were wanting--N. B., only in the copy from which Cannabich was playing. When this occurred, Mara seized Cannabich's arm, who quickly got right, but struck his bow on the desk, exclaiming audibly, "This copy is all wrong." When the aria was at an end, he said, "Herr Mara, I give you one piece of advice, and I hope you will profit by it: never seize the arm of the director of an orchestra, or lay your account with getting at least half a dozen sound boxes on the ear." Mara's tone was now, however, entirely lowered; he begged to be forgiven, and excused himself as he best could. The most shameful part of the affair was that Mara (a miserable violoncellist, all here declare) would never have been heard at court at all but for Cannabich, who had taken considerable trouble about it. At the first concert before my arrival he played a concerto, and accompanied his wife, taking Danzi's place without saying a word either to Danzi or any one else, which was allowed to pass. The Elector was by no means satisfied with his mode of accompanying, and said he preferred his own people. Cannabich, knowing this, mentioned to Count Seeau, before the concert began, that he had no objection to Mara's playing, but that Danzi must also play. When Mara came he was told this, and yet he was guilty of this insolence. If you knew these people, you would at once see pride, arrogance, and unblushing effrontery written on their faces. My sister is now, I hope, quite recovered. Pray do not write me any more melancholy letters, for I require at this time a cheerful spirit, a clear head, and inclination to work, and these no one can have who is sad at heart. I know, and, believe me, deeply feel, how much you deserve rest and peace, but am I the obstacle to this? I would not willingly be so, and yet, alas! I fear I am. But if I attain my object, so that I can live respectably here, you must instantly leave Salzburg. You will say, that may never come to pass; at all events, industry and exertion shall not be wanting on my part. Do try to come over soon to see me. We can all live together. I have a roomy alcove on my first room in which two beds stand. These would do capitally for you and me. As for my sister, all we can do is to put a stove into the next room, which will only be an affair of four or five florins; for in mine we might heat the stove till it is red-hot, and leave the stove-door open into the bargain, yet it would not make the room endurable--it is so frightfully cold in it. Ask the Abbate Varesco if we could not break off at the chorus in the second act, "Placido e il mare" after Elettra's first verse, when the chorus is repeated,--at all events after the second, for it is really far too long. I have been confined to the house two days from my cold, and, luckily for me, I have very little appetite, for in the long run it would be inconvenient to pay for my board. I have, however, written a note to the Count on the subject, and received a message from him that he would speak to me about it shortly. By heavens! he ought to be thoroughly ashamed of himself. I won't pay a single kreutzer. 131. Munich, Dec. 1, 1780. THE rehearsal went off with extraordinary success; there were only six violins in all, but the requisite wind-instruments. No one was admitted but Count Seeau's sister and young Count Seinsheim. This day week we are to have another rehearsal, with twelve violins for the first act, and then the second act will be rehearsed (like the first on the previous occasion). I cannot tell you how delighted and surprised all were; but I never expected anything else, for I declare I went to this rehearsal with as quiet a heart as if I had been going to a banquet. Count Seinsheim said to me, "I do assure you that though I expected a great deal from you, I can truly say this I did not expect." The Cannabichs and all who frequent their house are true friends of mine. After the rehearsal, (for we had a great deal to discuss with the Count,) when I went home with Cannabich, Madame Cannabich came to meet me, and hugged me from joy at the rehearsal having passed off so admirably; then came Ramm and Lang, quite out of their wits with delight. My true friend the excellent lady, who was alone in the house with her invalid daughter Rose, had been full of solicitude on my account. When you know him, you will find Ramm a true German, saying exactly what he thinks to your face. He said to me, "I must honestly confess that no music ever made such an impression on me, and I assure you I thought of your father fifty times at least, and of the joy he will feel when he hears this opera." But enough of this subject. My cold is rather worse owing to this rehearsal, for it is impossible not to feel excited when honor and fame are at stake, however cool you may be at first. I did everything you prescribed for my cold, but it goes on very slowly, which is particularly inconvenient to me at present; but all my writing about it will not put an end to my cough, and yet write I must. To-day I have begun to take violet syrup and a little almond oil, and already I feel relieved, and have again stayed two days in the house. Yesterday morning Herr Raaff came to me again to hear the aria in the second act. The man is as much enamored of his aria as a young passionate lover ever was of his fair one. He sings it the last thing before he goes to sleep, and the first thing in the morning when he awakes. I knew already, from a sure source, but now from himself, that he said to Herr von Viereck (Oberststallmeister) and to Herr von Kastel, "I am accustomed constantly to change my parts, to suit me better, in recitative as well as in arias, but this I have left just as it was, for every single note is in accordance with my voice." In short, he is as happy as a king. He wishes the interpolated aria to be a little altered, and so do I. The part commencing with the word era he does not like, for what we want here is a calm tranquil aria; and if consisting of only one part, so much the better, for a second subject would have to be brought in about the middle, which leads me out of my way. In "Achill in Sciro" there is an air of this kind, "or che mio figlio sei." I thank my sister very much for the list of comedies she sent me. It is singular enough about the comedy "Rache fur Rache"; it was frequently given here with much applause, and quite lately too, though I was not there myself. I beg you will present my devoted homage to Madlle. Therese von Barisani; if I had a brother, I would request him to kiss her hand in all humility, but having a sister only is still better, for I beg she will embrace her in the most affectionate manner in my name. A propos, do write a letter to Cannabich; he deserves it, and it will please him exceedingly. What does it matter if he does not answer you? You must not judge him from his manner; he is the same to every one, and means nothing. You must first know him well. 132. Munich, Dec. 5, 1780. The death of the Empress [Maria Theresa] does not at all affect my opera, for the theatrical performances are not suspended, and the plays go on as usual. The entire mourning is not to last more than six weeks, and my opera will not be given before the 20th of January. I wish you to get my black suit thoroughly brushed to make it as wearable as possible, and forward it to me by the first diligence; for next week every one must be in mourning, and I, though constantly on the move, must cry with the others. With regard to Raaff's last aria, I already mentioned that we both wish to have more touching and pleasing words. The word era is constrained; the beginning good, but gelida massa is again hard. In short, far-fetched or pedantic expressions are always inappropriate in a pleasing aria. I should also like the air to express only peace and contentment; and one part would be quite as good--in fact, better, in my opinion. I also wrote about Panzacchi; we must do what we can to oblige the good old man. He wishes to have his recitative in the third act lengthened a couple of lines, which, owing to the chiaro oscuro and his being a good actor, will have a capital effect. For example, after the strophe, "Sei la citta del pianto, e questa reggia quella del duol," comes a slight glimmering of hope, and then, "Madman that I am! whither does my grief lead me?" "Ah! Creta tutta io vedo." The Abbato Varesco is not obliged to rewrite the act on account of these things, for they can easily be interpolated. I have also written that both I and others think the oracle's subterranean speech too long to make a good effect. Reflect on this. I must now conclude, having such a mass of writing to do. I have not seen Baron Lehrbach, and don't know whether he is here or not; and I have no time to run about. I may easily not know whether he is here, but he cannot fail to know positively that I am. Had I been a girl, no doubt he would have come to see me long ago. Now adieu! I have this moment received your letter of the 4th December. You must begin to accustom yourself a little to the kissing system. You can meanwhile practise with Maresquelli, for each time that you come to Dorothea Wendling's (where everything is rather in the French style) you will have to embrace both mother and daughter, but--N. B., on the chin, so that the paint may not be rubbed off. More of this next time. Adieu! P.S.--Don't forget about my black suit; I must have it, or I shall be laughed at, which is never agreeable. 133. Munich, Dec. 13, 1780. Your last letters seemed to me far too short, so I searched all the pockets in my black suit to see if I could not find something more. In Vienna and all the Imperial dominions, the gayeties are to be resumed six weeks hence,--a very sensible measure, for mourning too long is not productive of half as much good to the deceased as of injury to the living. Is Herr Schikaneder to remain in Salzburg? If so, he might still see and hear my opera. Here people, very properly, cannot comprehend why the mourning should last for three months, while that for our late Elector was only six weeks. The theatre, however, goes on as usual. You do not write to me how Herr Esser accompanied my sonatas--ill, or well? The comedy, "Wie man sich die Sache deutet," is charming, for I saw it--no, not saw it, but read it, for it has not yet been performed; besides, I have been only once in the theatre, having no leisure to go, the evening being the time I like best to work. If her Grace, the most sensible gracious Frau von Robinig, does not on this occasion change the period of her gracious journey to Munich, her Grace will be unable to hear one note of my opera. My opinion, however, is, that her Grace in her supreme wisdom, in order to oblige your excellent son, will graciously condescend to stay a little longer. I suppose your portrait is now begun, and my sister's also, no doubt. How is it likely to turn out? Have you any answer yet from our plenipotentiary at Wetzlar? I forget his name--Fuchs, I think. I mean, about the duets for two pianos. It is always satisfactory to explain a thing distinctly, and the arias of Esopus are, I suppose, still lying on the table? Send them to me by the diligence, that I may give them myself to Herr von Dummhoff, who will then remit them post-free. To whom? Why, to Heckmann--a charming man, is he not? and a passionate lover of music. My chief object comes to-day at the close of my letter, but this is always the case with me. One day lately, after dining with Lisel Wendling, I drove with Le Grand to Cannabich's (as it was snowing heavily). Through the window they thought it was you, and that we had come together. I could not understand why both Karl and the children ran down the steps to meet us, and when they saw Le Grand, did not say a word, but looked quite discomposed, till they explained it when we went up-stairs. I shall write nothing more, because you write so seldom to me--nothing, except that Herr Eck, who has just crept into the room to fetch his sword which he forgot the last time he was here, sends his best wishes to Thresel, Pimperl, Jungfer Mitzerl, Gilofsky, Katherl, my sister, and, last of all, to yourself. Kiss Thresel for me; a thousand kisses to Pimperl. 134. Munich, Dec. 16, 1780. HERR ESSER came to call on me yesterday for the first time. Did he go about on foot in Salzburg, or always drive in a carriage, as he does here? I believe his small portion of Salzburg money will not remain long in his purse. On Sunday we are to dine together at Cannabich's, and there he is to let us hear his solos, clever and stupid. He says he will give no concert here, nor does he care to appear at court; he does not intend to seek it, but if the Elector wishes to hear him,--"Eh, bien! here am I; it would be a favor, but I shall not announce myself." But, after all, he may be a worthy fool--deuce take it! cavalier, I meant to say. He asked me why I did not wear my Order of the Spur. I said I had one in my head quite hard enough to carry. He was so obliging as to dust my coat a little for me, saying, "One cavalier may wait upon another." In spite of which, the same afternoon--from forgetfulness, I suppose--he left his spur at home, (I mean the outward and visible one,) or at all events contrived to hide it so effectually that not a vestige of it was to be seen. In case I forget it again, I must tell you that Madame and Madlle. Cannabich both complain that their throats are daily becoming larger owing to the air and water here, which might at last become regular goitres. Heaven forbid! They are indeed taking a certain powder--how do I know what? Not that this is its name; at all events, it seems to do them no good. For their sakes, therefore, I took the liberty to recommend what we call goitre pills, pretending (in order to enhance their value) that my sister had three goitres, each larger than the other, and yet at last, by means of these admirable pills, had got entirely rid of them! If they can be made up here, pray send me the prescription; but if only to be had at Salzburg, I beg you will pay ready money for them, and send a few cwt. of them by the next diligence. You know my address. There is to be another rehearsal this afternoon of the first and second acts in the Count's apartments; then we shall only have a chamber rehearsal of the third, and afterwards go straight to the theatre. The rehearsal has been put off owing to the copyist, which enraged Count Seinsheim to the uttermost. As for what is called the popular taste, do not be uneasy, for in my opera there is music for every class, except for the long-eared. A propos, how goes on the Archbishop? Next Monday I shall have been six weeks away from Salzburg. You know, dear father, that I only stay there to oblige you, for, by heavens! if I followed my own inclinations, before coming here I would have torn up my last diploma; for I give you my honor that not Salzburg itself, but the Prince and his proud nobility, become every day more intolerable to me. I should rejoice were I to be told that my services were no longer required, for with the great patronage that I have here, both my present and future circumstances would be secure, death excepted, which no one can guard against, though no great misfortune to a single man. But anything in the world to please you. It would be less trying to me if I could only occasionally escape from time to time, just to draw my breath. You know how difficult it was to get away on this occasion; and without some very urgent cause, there would not be the faintest hope of such a thing. It is enough to make one weep to think of it, so I say no more. Adieu! Come soon to see me at Munich and to hear my opera, and then tell me whether I have not a right to feel sad when I think of Salzburg. Adieu! 135. Munich, Dec. 19, 1780. THIS last rehearsal has been as successful as the first, and satisfactorily proved to the orchestra and all those who heard it, their mistake in thinking that the second act could not possibly excel the first in expression and novelty. Next Saturday both acts are again to be rehearsed, but in a spacious apartment in the palace, which I have long wished, as the room at Count Seeau's is far too small. The Elector is to be in an adjoining room (incognito) to hear the music. "It must be a life-and-death rehearsal," said Cannabich to me. At the last one he was bathed in perspiration. Cannabich, whose name-day this is, has just left me, reproaching me for discontinuing this letter in his presence. As to Madame Duschek, the thing is impossible at present, but I will do what I can with pleasure after my opera is given. I beg you will write to her and say, with my compliments, that next time she comes to Salzburg we can square accounts. It would delight me if I could get a couple of cavaliers like old Czernin,--this would be a little yearly help; but certainly not for less than 100 florins a year, in which case it might be any style of music they pleased. I trust that you are now quite recovered; indeed, after the friction performed by a Barisani Theres, you cannot be otherwise. You have no doubt seen by my letters that I am well and happy. Who would not feel happy to have completed such a great and laborious work--and completed it, too, with honor and renown? Three arias alone are wanting--the last chorus in the third act, and the overture and ballet; and then--Adieu partie! One more indispensable remark, and I have done. The scene between father and son in the first act, and the first scene in the second act between Idomenco and Arbace, are both too long, and sure to weary the audience, particularly as in the first the actors are both bad, and in the second one of them is also very inferior; besides, the whole details are only a narrative of what the spectators have already seen with their own eyes. The scenes will be printed just as they are. I only wish the Abbate would point out to me how not only to curtail them, but very considerably to curtail them; otherwise I must do it myself, for the scenes cannot remain as they are--I mean, so far as the music is concerned. I have just got your letter, which, being begun by my sister, is without a date. A thousand compliments to Thresel--my future upper and under nursery-maid to be. I can easily believe that Katherl would gladly come to Munich, if (independent of the journey) you would allow her to take my place at meals. Eh! bien. I can contrive it, for she can occupy the same room with my sister. 136. Munich, Dec 27, 1780. I HAVE received the entire opera, Schachtner's letter, your note, and the pills. As for the two scenes to be curtailed, it was not my own suggestion, but one to which I consented--my reason being that Raaff and Del Prato spoil the recitative by singing it quite devoid of all spirit and fire, and so monotonously. They are the most miserable actors that ever trod the stage. I had a desperate battle royal with Seeau as to the inexpediency, unfitness, and almost impossibility of the omissions in question. However, all is to be printed as it is, which at first he positively refused to agree to, but at last, on rating him soundly, he gave way. The last rehearsal was splendid. It took place in a spacious apartment in the palace. The Elector was also within hearing. On this occasion it was rehearsed with the whole orchestra, (of course I mean those who belong to the opera.) After the first act the Elector called out Bravo! rather too audibly, and when I went into the next room to kiss his hand he said, "Your opera is quite charming, and cannot fail to do you honor." As he was not sure whether he could remain for the whole performance, we played the concerted aria and the thunderstorm at the beginning of the second act, by his desire, when he again testified his approbation in the kindest manner, and said, laughing, "Who could believe that such great things could be hidden in so small a head?" Next day, too, at his reception, he extolled my opera much. The ensuing rehearsal will probably take place in the theatre. A propos, Becke told me, a day or two ago, that he had written to you about the last rehearsal but one, and among other things had said that Raaff's aria in the second act is not composed in accordance with the sense of the words, adding, "So I am told, for I understand Italian too little to be able to judge." I replied, "If you had only asked me first and written afterwards! I must tell you that whoever said such a thing can understand very little Italian. The aria is quite adapted to the words. You hear the mare, and the mare funesto; and the passages dwell on the minacciar, and entirely express minacciar (threatening). Moreover, it is the most superb aria in the opera, and has met with universal approbation." Is it true that the Emperor is ill? Is it true that the Archbishop intends to come to Munich? Raaff is the best and most upright man alive, but--so addicted to old-fashioned routine that flesh and blood cannot stand it; so that it is very difficult to write for him, but very easy if you choose to compose commonplace arias, as for instance the first one, "Vedromi intorno." When you hear it, you will say that it is good and pretty, but had I written it for Zonca it would have suited the words better. Raaff likes everything according to rule, and does not regard expression. I have had a piece of work with him about the quartet. The more I think of the quartet as it will be on the stage, the more effective I consider it, and it has pleased all those who have heard it on the piano. Raaff alone maintains that it will not be successful. He said to me confidentially, "There is no opportunity to expand the voice; it is too confined." As if in a quartet the words should not far rather be spoken, as it were, than sung! He does not at all understand such things. I only replied, "My dear friend, if I were aware of one single note in this quartet which ought to be altered, I would change it at once; but there is no single thing in my opera with which I am so pleased as with this quartet, and when you have once heard it sung in concert you will speak very differently. I took every possible pains to conform to your taste in your two arias, and intend to do the same with the third, so I hope to be successful; but with regard to trios and quartets, they should be left to the composer's own discretion." On which he said that he was quite satisfied. The other day he was much annoyed by some words in his last aria--rinvigorir and ringiovenir, and especially vienmi a rinvigorir--five i's! It is true, this is very disagreeable at the close of an air. 137. Munich, Dec. 30. 1780. A HAPPY New-Year! Excuse my writing much, for I am over head and ears in my work. I have not quite finished the third act; and as there is no extra ballet, but only an appropriate divertissement in the opera, I have the honor to write that music also, but I am glad of it, for now the music will be all by the same master. The third act will prove at least as good as the two others,--in fact, I believe, infinitely better, and that it might fairly be said, finis coronat opus. The Elector was so pleased at the rehearsal that, as I already wrote to you, he praised it immensely next morning at his reception, and also in the evening at court. I likewise know from good authority that, on the same evening after the final rehearsal, he spoke of my music to every one he conversed with, saying, "I was quite surprised; no music ever had such an effect on me; it is magnificent music." The day before yesterday we had a recitative rehearsal at Wendling's, and tried over the quartet all together. We repeated it six times, and now it goes well. The stumbling-block was Del Prato; the wretch can literally do nothing. His voice is not so bad, if he did not sing from the back of the throat; besides, he has no intonation, no method, no feeling. He is only one of the best of the youths who sing in the hope of getting a place in the choir of the chapel. Raaff was glad to find himself mistaken about the quartet, and no longer doubts its effect. Now I am in a difficulty with regard to Raaff's last air, and you must help me out of it. He cannot digest the rinvigorir and ringiovenir, and these two words make the whole air hateful to him. It is true that mostrami and vienmi are also not good, but the worst of all are the two final words; to avoid the shake on the i in the first word rinvigorir, I was forced to transfer it to the o. Raaff has now found, in the "Natal di Giove," which is in truth very little known, an aria quite appropriate to this situation. I think it is the ad libitum aria, "Bell' alme al ciel diletto" and he wishes me to write music for these words. He says, "No one knows it, and we need say nothing." He is quite aware that he cannot expect the Abbate to alter this aria a third time, and he will not sing it as it is written. I beg you will send me an immediate reply. I shall conclude, for I must now write with all speed; the composing is finished, but not the writing out. My compliments to dear Thresel: the maid who waits on me here is also named Thresel, but, heavens! how inferior to the Linz Thresel in beauty, virtue, charms--and a thousand other merits! You probably know that the worthy musico Marquesi, the Marquessius di Milano, has been poisoned in Naples, but how? He was enamored of a Duchess, whose rightful lover became jealous, and sent three or four fellows to give him his choice between drinking poison out of a cup and being assassinated. He chose the former, but being an Italian poltroon he died ALONE, and allowed his murderers to live on in peace and quiet. I would at least (in my own room) have taken a couple with me into the next world, if absolutely obliged to die myself. Such an admirable singer is a great loss. Adieu! 138. Munich, Jan. 3, 1780. MY head and my hands are so fully occupied with my third act, that it would not be wonderful if I turned into a third act myself, for it alone has cost me more trouble than the entire opera; there is scarcely a scene in it which is not interesting to the greatest degree. The accompaniment of the underground music consists merely of five instruments, namely, three trombones and two French horns, which are placed on the spot whence the voice proceeds. The whole orchestra is silent at this part. The grand rehearsal positively takes place on the 20th, and the first performance on the 22d. All you will both require is to bring one black dress, and another for every-day wear, when you are only visiting intimate friends where there is no ceremony, and thus save your black dress a little; and if my sister likes, one pretty dress also, that she may go to the ball and the Academie Masquee. Herr von Robinig is already here, and sends his regards to you. I hear that the two Barisanis are also coming to Munich; is this true? Heaven be praised that the cut on the finger of the Archbishop was of no consequence! Good heavens! how dreadfully I was alarmed at first! Cannabich thanks you for your charming letter, and all his family beg their remembrances. He told me you had written very humorously. You must have been in a happy mood. No doubt we shall have a good many corrections to make in the third act when on the stage; as for instance scene sixth, after Arbace's aria, the personages are marked, "Idomeneo, Arbace, &c., &c." How can the latter so instantly reappear on the spot? Fortunately he might stay away altogether. In order to make the matter practicable, I have written a somewhat longer introduction to the High Priest's recitative. After the mourning chorus the King and his people all go away, and in the following scene the directions are, "Idomeneo kneels down in the Temple." This is impossible; he must come accompanied by his whole suite. A march must necessarily be introduced here, so I have composed a very simple one for two violins, tenor, bass, and two hautboys, to be played a mezza voce, and during this time the King appears, and the Priests prepare the offerings for the sacrifice. The King then kneels down and begins the prayer. In Elettra's recitative, after the underground voice has spoken, there ought to be marked exeunt. I forgot to look at the copy written for the press to see whether it is there, and whereabouts it comes. It seems to me very silly that they should hurry away so quickly merely to allow Madlle. Elettra to be alone. I have this moment received your few lines of January 1st. When I opened the letter I chanced to hold it in such a manner that nothing but a blank sheet met my eyes. At last I found the writing. I am heartily glad that I have got an aria for Raaff, as he was quite resolved to introduce the air he had discovered, and I could not possibly (N. B., with a Raaff) have arranged in any other way than by having Varesco's air printed, but Raaff's sung. I must stop, or I shall waste too much time. Thank my sister very much for her New-Year's wishes, which I heartily return. I hope we shall soon be right merry together. Adieu! Remembrances to friends, not forgetting Ruscherle. Young Eck sends her a kiss, a sugar one of course. 139. Munich, Jan. 10, 1780. My greatest piece of news is that the opera is put off for a week. The grand rehearsal is not to take place till the 27th--N. B., my birthday--and the opera itself on the 29th. Why? Probably to save Count Seeau two hundred gulden. I, indeed, am very glad, because we can now rehearse frequently and more carefully. You should have seen the faces of the Robinigs when I told them this news. Louisa and Sigmund are delighted to stay; but Lise, that SNEAKING MISERY, has such a spiteful Salzburg tongue that it really drives me distracted. Perhaps they may still remain, and I hope so on Louisa's account. In addition to many other little altercations with Count Seeau, I have had a sharp contention with him about the trombones. I call it so, because I was obliged to be downright rude, or I never should have carried my point. Next Saturday the three acts are to be rehearsed in private. I got your letter of the 8th, and read it with great pleasure; the burlesque, too, I like very much. Excuse my writing more at this time; for, in the first place, as you see, my pen and ink are bad, and, in the second, I have still a couple of airs to write for the last ballet. I hope you will send no more such letters as the last, of only three or four lines. 140. Munich, Jan. 18, 1780. PRAY forgive a short letter, for I must go this very moment, ten o'clock (in the forenoon of course), to the rehearsal. There is to be a recitative rehearsal for the first time to-day in the theatre. I could not write before, having been so incessantly occupied with those confounded dances. Laus Deo, I have got rid of them at last, but only of what was most pressing. The rehearsal of the third act went off admirably. It was considered very superior to the second act. The poetry is, however, thought far too long, and of course the music likewise, (which I always said it was.) On this account the aria of Idamante, "No la morte io non pavento" is to be omitted, which was, indeed, always out of place there; those who have heard it with the music deplore this. Raaff's last air, too, is still more regretted, but we must make a virtue of necessity. The prediction of the oracle is still far too long, so I have shortened it; but Varesco need know nothing of this, because it will all be printed just as he wrote it. Madame von Robinig will bring with her the payment both for him and Schachtner. Herr Geschwender declined taking any money with him. In the meantime say to Varesco in my name, that he will not get a farthing from Count Seeau beyond the contract, for all the alterations were made FOR ME and not for the Count, and he ought to be obliged to me into the bargain, as they were indispensable for his own reputation. There is a good deal that might still be altered; and I can tell him that he would not have come off so well with any other composer as with me. I have spared no trouble in defending him. The stove is out of the question, for it costs too much. I will have another bed put up in the room that adjoins the alcove, and we must manage the best way we can. Do not forget to bring my little watch with you. We shall probably make an excursion to Augsburg, where we could have the little silly thing regulated. I wish you also to bring Schachtner's operetta. There are people who frequent Cannabich's house, who might as well hear a thing of the kind. I must be off to the rehearsal. Adieu! The father and sister arrived on the 25th of January, and the first performance of the opera took place a few days afterwards; then the family amused themselves for some little time with the gayeties of the Carnival. The Archbishop had gone to Vienna; and, desiring to appear in the Imperial city in the full splendor of a spiritual prince, he had taken with him, in addition to fine furniture and a large household, some of his most distinguished musicians. On this account, therefore, Mozart, in the middle of March, also received the command to go to Vienna. He set off immediately. END OF VOL. I. CONTENTS OF VOLUME I. [LETTERS LISTED BY DATE] FIRST PART ITALY VIENNA MUNICH 1770-1776 LETTER 1. Salzburg, 1769 2. Verona, Jan 7, 1770 3. Milan, Jan 26, 1770 4. Milan, Feb. 10, 1770 5. Milan, Feb 17, 1770 6. Milan, Carnival, Erchtag, 1770 7. Milan, Mar 3, 1770 8. Bologna, Mar 24, 1770 9. Rome, April 14, 1770 10. Rome, April 21, 1770 11. Rome, April 25, 1770 12. Naples, May 19, 1770 13. Naples, May 29, 1770 14. Naples, June 5, 1770 15. Naples, June 16, 1770 16. Rome, July 17, 1770 17. Bologna, July 21, 1770 18. Bologna, July, 1770 19. Bologna, August 4, 1770 20. Bologna, August 21, 1770 21. Bologna, Sept 8, 1770 22. Bologna, Sept 22, 1770 23. Bologna, Sept 29, 1770 24. Bologna, Oct 6, 1770 25. Milan, Oct. 20, 1770 26. Milan, Oct. 27, 1770 27. Milan, Nov 3, 1770 28. Milan, Dec 1, 1770 29. Milan, Jan, 1771 30. Venice, Feb 15, 1771 31. Venice, Feb 20, 1771 32. Verona, Aug 18, 1771 33. Milan, Aug 23, 1771 34. Milan, Aug 31, 1771 35. Milan, Sept 13, 1771 36. Milan, Sept 21, 1771 37. Milan, Oct 5, 1771 38. Milan, Oct 26, 1771 39. Milan, Nov 2, 1771 40. Milan, Nov. 24, 1771 41. Milan, Nov 30, 1771 42. Bologna, Oct 28, 1772 43. Milan, Nov 7, 1772 44. Milan, Nov, 1772 45. Milan, Nov 21, 1772 46. Milan, Nov 28, 1772 47. Milan, Dec 5, 1772 48. Milan, Dec 18, 1772 49. Milan, Jan 23, 1773 50. Vienna, Aug 14, 1773 51. Vienna, Aug 21, 1773 52. Vienna, Sept. 15, 1773 53. Munich, Dec. 28, 1774 54. Munich, Dec. 30, 1774 55. Munich, Jan. 11, 1775 56. Munich, Jan. 14, 1775 57. Munich, Jan., 1775 58. Salzburg, Sept. 4, 1776 SECOND PART. MUNICH AUGSBURG MANNHEIM SEPTEMBER 1777 to MARCH 1778 59. Wasserburg, Sept. 23, 1777 60. Munich, Sept. 26, 1777 61. Munich, Sept. 29, 1777 62. Munich, Oct. 2, 1777 63. Munich, Oct. 6, 1777 64. Munich, Oct. 11, 1777 65. Augsburg, Oct. 14, 1777 66. Augsburg, Oct. 17, 1777 67. Augsburg, Oct. 17, 1777 68. Augsburg, Oct. 23, 1777 69. Augsburg, Oct. 25, 1777 70. Mannheim, Oct. 30, 1777 71. Mannheim, Nov. 4, 1777 72. Mannheim, Nov. 5 1777 73. Mannheim, Nov. 8, 1777 74. Mannheim, Nov. 13, 1777 75. Mannheim, Nov. 13, 1777 76. Mannheim, Nov. 14-16, 1777 77. Mannheim, Nov. 20, 1777 78. Mannheim, Nov. 22, 1777 79. Mannheim, Nov. 26, 1777 80. Mannheim, Nov. 29, 1777 81. Mannheim, Dec. 3, 1777 82. Mannheim, Dec. 6, 1777 83. Mannheim, Dec. 10, 1777 84. Mannheim, Dec. 14, 1777 85. Mannheim, Dec. 18, 1777 86. Mannheim, Dec. 20, 1777 87. Mannheim, Dec. 27, 1777 88. Mannheim, Jan. 7, 1778 89. Mannheim, Jan. 10, 1778 90. Mannheim, Jan. 17, 1778 91. Mannheim, Feb. 2-4, 1778 92. Mannheim, Feb. 7, 1778 93. Mannheim, Feb. 14, 1778 94. Mannheim, Feb. 19, 1778 95. Mannheim, Feb. 22, 1778 96. Mannheim, Feb. 28, 1778 97. Mannheim, end of Feb, 1778 98. Mannheim, Mar. 7, 1778 99. Mannheim, Mar. 11, 1778 THIRD PART. PARIS. MARCH 1778 to JANUARY 1779 100. Paris, Mar. 24, 1778 101. Paris, April 5, 1778 102. Paris, May 1, 1778 103. Paris, May 14, 1778 104. Paris, May 29, 1778 105. Paris, June 12 1778 106. Paris, July 3, 1778 107. Paris, July 3, 1778 108. Paris, July 9, 1778 109. Paris, July 18, 1778 110. Paris, July 31, 1778 111. Paris, Aug 7, 1778 112. St Germains, Aug 27, 1778 113. Paris, Sept 11, 1778 114. Nancy, Oct 3, 1778 115. Strassburg, Oct 15, 1778 116. Strassburg, Oct 26, 1778 117. Mannheim, Nov 12, 1778 118. Mannheim, Nov 24, 1778 119. Mannheim, Dec 3, 1778 120. Kaisersheim, Dec 18, 1778 121. Kaisersheim, Dec 23, 1778 122. Munich, Dec 29, 1778 123. Munich, Dec 31, 1778 124. Munich, Jan 8, 1779 125. Salzburg, May 10, 1779 FOURTH PART MUNICH IDOMENEO NOVEMBER 1780 to JANUARY 1781 126. Munich, Nov 8, 1780 127. Munich, Nov 13, 1780 128. Munich, Nov 15, 1780 129. Munich, Nov 22, 1780 130. Munich, Nov 24, 1780 131. Munich, Dec 1, 1780 132. Munich, Dec 5, 1780 133. Munich, Dec 13, 1780 134. Munich, Dec 16, 1780 135. Munich, Dec 19, 1780 136. Munich, Dec 27, 1780 137. Munich, Dec 30, 1780 138. Munich, Jan 3, 1781 139. Munich, Jan 10, 1781 140. Munich, Jan 18, 1781 
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43614	----	THE VALLEYS OF TIROL THEIR TRADITIONS AND CUSTOMS AND HOW TO VISIT THEM BY MISS R. H. BUSK AUTHOR OF 'PATRAÑAS' 'SAGAS FROM THE FAR EAST' 'FOLK-LORE OF ROME' ETC. WITH FRONTISPIECE AND THREE MAPS LONDON LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 1874 All rights reserved PREFACE. There are none who know Tirol but are forward to express regret that so picturesque and so primitive a country should be as yet, comparatively with other tracks of travel, so little opened up to the dilettante explorer. It is quite true, on the other hand, that just in proportion as a country becomes better known, it loses, little by little, its merit of being primitive and even picturesque. Intercourse with the world beyond the mountains naturally sweeps away the idiosyncracies of the mountaineers; and though the trail of progress which the civilized tourist leaves behind him cannot absolutely obliterate the actual configuration of the country, yet its original characteristics must inevitably be modified by the changes which his visits almost insensibly occasion. The new traditions which he brings with him of vast manufacturing enterprise and rapid commercial success cannot but replace in the minds of the people the old traditions of the fire-side and the Filò, with their dreams of treasure-granting dwarfs and the Bergsegen dependent on prayer. The uniform erections of a monster Hotel Company, 'convenient to the Railway Station,' supersede the frescoed or timbered hostelry perched on high to receive the wayfarer at his weariest. The giant mill-chimneys, which sooner or later spring up from seed unwittingly scattered by the way-side, not only mar the landscape with their intrinsic deformity, but actually strip the mountains of their natural covering, and convert wooded slopes into grey and barren wastes; [1] just as the shriek of the whistle overpowers the Jödel-call, and the barrel-organ supersedes the zitther and the guitar. Such considerations naturally make one shrink from the responsibility of taking a part (how insignificant soever) in directing the migration of tourists into such a country as Tirol. I have heard a Tirolese, while at the same time mourning that the attractions of his country were so often passed over, express this feeling very strongly, and allege it as a reason why he did not give the result of his local observations to the press; and I listened to his apprehensions with sympathy. But then these changes must be. The attempt to delay them is idle; nor would individual abstention from participating in the necessary movement of events have any sensible effect in stemming the even course of inevitable development. Circumstances oblige us continually to co-operate in bringing about results which we might personally deprecate. 'In whatsoe'er we perpetrate We do but row; we're steered by fate.' And after all, why should we deprecate the result? We all admire the simple mind and chubby face of childhood; yet who (except the sentimental father in the French ballad, 'Reste toujours petit!') would wish to see his son in petticoats and leading-strings all his days. The morning mists which lend their precious charm of mystery to the sunrise landscape must be dispelled as day advances, or day would be of little use to man. The day cannot be all morning; man's life cannot be all infancy; and we have no right so much as to wish--even though wishes avail nothing--that the minds of others should be involved in absurd illusions to which we should scorn to be thought a prey ourselves. Nature has richly endowed Tirol with beauty and healthfulness; and they must be dull indeed who, coming in search of these qualities, do not find them enhanced a hundredfold by the clothing of poetry with which the people have superindued them. Who, in penetrating its mountain solitudes, would not thank the guide who peoples them for him with mysterious beings of transcendent power; who interprets for him, in the nondescript echoes of evening, the utterances of a world unknown; and in the voices of the storm and of the breeze the expression of an avenging power or the whisperings of an almighty tenderness. But then--if this is found to be something more than poetry, if the allegory which delights our fancy turns out to be a grotesque blunder in the system of the peasant who narrates it,--it cannot be fair to wish that he should continue subject to fallacious fancies, in order that we may be entertained by their recital. It is one thing for a man who has settled the grounds of his belief (or his unbelief) to his best satisfaction in any rational way, to say, 'I take this beautiful allegory into my repertory; it elevates my moral perceptions and illustrates my higher reaches of thought;' but it is quite another thing if one reasons thus with himself, 'My belief is so and so, because a certain supernatural visitation proves it;' when actually the said supernatural visitation never took place at all, and was nothing but an allegory, or still less, a mere freak of fancy in its beginning. Perhaps if the vote could be taken, and if desires availed anything, the general consensus of thinking people would go in favour of the desire that there had been no myths, no legends. But the vote would involve the consequence that we should have antecedently to be possessed of a complete innate knowledge of the forces of being, corresponding to the correct criteria, which we flatter ourselves do indwell us of the principles of beauty and of harmony. If there are any who are sanguine enough to believe that science will one of these days give us a certain knowledge of how everything came about, it is beyond dispute that for long ages past mankind has been profoundly puzzled about the question, and it cannot be an uninteresting study to trace its gropings round and round it. Perfect precision of ideas again would involve perfect exactness of expression. No one can fail to regret the inadequacies and vagaries of language which so often disguise instead of expressing thought, and lead to the most terrible disputes just where men seek to be most definite. If we could dedicate one articulate expression to every possible idea, we should no longer be continually called to litigate on the meanings of creeds and documents, and even verbal statements. But when we had attained all this, we should have surrendered all the occupation of conjecture and all the charms of mystery; we should have parted with all poetry and all jeux d'esprit. If knowledge was so positive and language so precise that misunderstanding had no existence, then neither could we indulge in metaphor nor égayer la matière with any play on words. In fact, there would be nothing left to say at all! Perhaps the price could not be too high; but in the meantime we have to deal with circumstances as they are. We cannot suppress mythology, or make it non-existent by ignoring it. It exists, and we may as well see what we can make of it, either as a study or a recreation. Conjectures and fancies surround us like thistles and roses; and as brains won't stand the wear of being ceaselessly carded with the thistles of conjecture, we may take refuge in the alternative of amusing ourselves on a holiday tour with plucking the roses which old world fancy has planted--and planted nowhere more prolifically than in Tirol. In speaking of Tirol as comparatively little opened up, I have not overlooked the publications of pioneers who have gone before. The pages of Inglis, though both interesting and appreciative, are unhappily almost forgotten, and they only treat quite incidentally of the people's traditions. But as it is the most salient points of any matter which must always arrest attention first, it has been chiefly the mountains of Tirol to which attention has hitherto been drawn. Besides the universally useful 'Murray' and others, very efficient guidance to them has of late years been afforded in the pages of 'Ball's Central Alps,' in some of the contributions to 'Peaks, Passes, and Glaciers;' in the various works of Messrs. Gilbert and Churchill; and now Miss A. B. Edwards has shown what even ladies may do among its Untrodden Peaks. The aspects of its scenery and character, for which it is my object on the other hand to claim attention, lie hidden among its Valleys, Trodden and Untrodden. And down in its Valleys it is that its traditions dwell. [2] If the names of the Valleys of Tirol do not at present awaken in our mind stirring memories such as cling to other European routes whither our steps are invited, ours is the fault, in that we have overlooked their history. The past has scattered liberally among them characteristic landmarks dating from every age, and far beyond the reach of dates. Every stage even of the geological formation of the country--which may almost boast of being in its courage and its probity, as it does boast of being in the shape in which it is fashioned, the heart of Europe--is sung of in popular Sage as the result of some poetically conceived agency; humdrum physical forces transformed by the wand of imagination into personal beings; now bountiful, now retributive; now loving; now terrible; but nearly always rational and just. To the use of those who care to find such gleams of poetry thrown athwart Nature's work the following pages are dedicated. The traditions they record do not claim to have been all gathered at first hand from the stocks on which they were grown or grafted. A life, or several lives, would hardly have sufficed for the work. In Germany, unlike Italy, myths have called into being a whole race of collectors, and Tirol has an abundant share of them among her offspring. Not only have able and diligent sons devoted themselves professionally to the preservation of her traditions, but every valley nurtures appreciative minds to whom it is a delight to store them in silence, and who willingly discuss such lore with the traveller who has a taste for it. That a foreigner should attempt to add another to these very full, if not exhaustive collections, would seem an impertinent labour of supererogation. My work, therefore, has been to collate and arrange those traditions which have been given me, or which I have found ready heaped up; to select from the exuberant mass those which, for one reason or another, appeared to possess the most considerable interest; and to localise them in such a way as to facilitate their study both by myself and others along the wayside; not neglecting, however, any opportunity that has come in my way of conversing about them with the people themselves, and so meeting them again, living, as it were, in their respective homes. This task, as far as I know, has not been performed by any native writer. [3] The names of the collectors I have followed are, to all who know the country, the best possible guarantee of the authenticity of what they advance; and I subjoin here a list of the chief works I have either studied myself or referred to, through the medium of kind helpers in Tirol, so as not to weary the reader as well as myself with references in every chapter:-- Von Alpenburg: Mythen und Sagen Tirols. Brandis: Ehrenkränzel Tirols. H. J. von Collin: Kaiser Max auf der Martinswand: ein Gedicht. Das Drama des Mittelalters in Tirol. A. Pickler. Hormayr: Taschenbuch für die Vaterländische Geschichte. Meyer: Sagenkränzlein aus Tirol. Nork: Die Mythologie der Volkssagen und Volksmärchen. Die Oswaldlegende und ihre Beziehung auf Deutscher Mythologie. Oswald v. Wolkenstein: Gedichte. Reprint, with introduction by Weber. Perini: I Castelli del Tirolo. Der Pilger durch Tirol; geschichtliche und topographische Beschreibung der Wallfahrtsorte u. Gnadenbilder in Tirol u. Vorarlberg. A. Pickler: Frühlieder aus Tirol. Scherer: Geographie und Geschichte von Tirol. Simrock: Legenden. Schneller: Märchen und Sagen aus Wälsch-Tirol. Stafler: Das Deutsche Tirol und Vorarlberg. Die Sage von Kaiser Max auf der Martinswand. J. Thaler: Geschichte Tirols von der Urzeit. Der Untersberg bei Salzburg, dessen geheimnissvolle Sagen der Vorzeit, nebst Beschreibung dieses Wunderberges. Vonbun: Sagen Vorarlbergs. Weber: Das Land Tirol. Drei Bänder. Zingerle: König Laurin, oder der Rosengarten in Tirol. Die Sagen von Margaretha der Maultasche. Sagen, Märchen u. Gebräuche aus Tirol. Der berühmte Landwirth Andreas Hofer. I hope my little maps will convey a sufficient notion of the divisions of Tirol, the position of its valleys and of the routes through them tracked in the following pages. I have been desirous to crowd them as little as possible, and to indicate as far as may be, by the size and direction of the words, the direction and the relative importance of the valleys. Of its four divisions the present volume is concerned with the first (Vorarlberg), the fourth (Wälsch-Tirol), and with the greater part of the valleys of the second (Nord or Deutsch-Tirol.) In the remoter recesses of them all some strange and peculiar dialects linger, which perhaps hold a mine in store for the philologist. Yet, though the belief was expressed more than thirty years ago [4] that they might serve as a key to the Etruscan language, I believe no one has since been at the pains to pursue this most interesting research. In the hope of inducing some one to enter this field of enquiry, I will subjoin a list of some few expressions which do not carry on their face a striking resemblance to either of the main languages of the country, leaving to the better-informed to make out whence they come. The two main languages (and these will suffice the ordinary traveller for all practical purposes), are German in Vorarlberg and North Tirol, Italian in Wälsch-Tirol, mixed with occasional patches of German; and in South-Tirol with a considerable preponderance of these patches. A tendency to bring about the absorption of the Italian-speaking valleys into Italy has been much stimulated in modern times, and in the various troubled epochs of the last five-and-twenty years Garibaldian attacks have been made upon the frontier line. The population was found stedfast in its loyalty to Austria, however, and all these attempts were repulsed by the native sharp-shooters, with little assistance from the regular troops. An active club and newspaper propagandism is still going on, promoted by those who would obliterate Austria from the map of Europe. For them, there exists only German-Tirol and the Trentino. And the Trentino is now frequently spoken of as a province bordering on, instead of as in reality, a division of, Tirol. Although German is generally spoken throughout Vorarlberg, there is a mixture of Italian expressions in the language of the people, which does not occur at all in North-Tirol: as fazanedle, for a handkerchief (Ital. fazzoletto.) gaude, gladness (Ital. gaudio.) guttera, a bottle (Ital. gutto a cruet.) gespusa, a bride (Ital. sposa). gouter, a counterpane (Ital. coltre). schapel, the hat (peculiar to local costume), (Ital. cappello, a hat). The k in many German words is here written with ch; and no doubt such names as the Walgau, Walserthal, &c., commemorate periods of Venetian rule. Now for some of the more 'outlandish' words:-- baschga' (the final n, en, rn, &c. of the German form of the infinitive is usually clipped by the Vorarlbergers, even in German words, just as the Italians constantly clip the final letters of their infinitive, as anda' and andar' for andare, to walk, &c.) to overcome. batta', to serve. pütze' or buetza', to sew or to piece. häss, clothing. res, speech. tobel, a ravine. feel, a girl; spudel, an active girl; schmel, a smiling girl. hattel, a goat; mütl, a kid. Atti, [5] father, and datti, 'daddy.' frei, pleasant. zoana, a wattled basket. schlutta and schoope, a smock-frock. täibe, anger. kîba', to strive. rêra', to weep. [6] musper, merry. tribiliera', to constrain. waedle, swift. raetig werden, to deliberate. Tripstrüll, = Utopia. wech, spruce, also vain. laegla, a little vessel. hengest, a friendly gathering of men. [7] koga, cursed, also corrupted. fegga, a wing. krom, a gift. blaetz, a patch. grind, a brute's head, a jolterhead. bratza, a paw, an ugly hand. briegga', to pucker up the face ready for crying. deihja, a shepherd's or cattle-herd's hut. [8] also dieja, which is generally reserved for a hut formed by taking advantage of a natural hole, leaving only a roof to be supplied. garreg, prominent. (I think that gareggiante in Italian is sometimes used in a similar sense.) Other words in Vorarlberg dialect are very like English, as:-- Witsch, a witch. Pfülle, a pillow. rôt, wrath. gompa', to jump. gülla, a gulley. also datti and schmel, mentioned already. Aftermötig (after-Monday) is a local name for Tuesday. In Wälsch-Tirol, they have carega, a chair. bagherle, a little carriage, a car. troz, a mountain path. Malga, [9] equivalent to Alp, a mountain pasture. zufolo, [10] a pipe. And Turlulù (infra, p. 432) is nearly identical in form and sound with a word expounded in Etrus. Researches, p. 299. Of 'Salvan' and 'Gannes,' I have already spoken. [11] But all this is, I am aware, but a mere turning over of the surface; my only wish is that some one of stronger capacity will dig deeper. Of many dialects, too, I have had no opportunity of knowing anything at all. Here are, however, a few suggestive or strange words from North and South Tirol:-- Pill, which occurs in various localities [12] of both those provinces to designate a place built on a little hill or knoll, is identical with an Etruscan word to which Mr. Isaac Taylor gives a similar significance. [13] I do not overlook Weber's observation that 'Pill is obviously a corruption of Büchel (the German for a knoll), through Bühel and Bühl;' but, which proceeds from which is often a knotty point in questions of derivation, and Weber did not know of the Etruscan 'pil.' Ziller and celer I have already alluded to, [14] though of course it may be said that the Tirolean river had its name from an already romanised Etruscan word, and does not necessarily involve direct contact with the Etruscan vocabulary. Grau-wutzl is a name in the Zillerthal for the Devil. Disel, for disease of any kind. Gigl, a sheep. Kiess, a heifer. Triel, a lip. Bueg, a leg. knospen stands in South-Tirol for wooden shoes, and fokazie for cakes used at Eastertide. (Focaccia is used for 'cake' in many parts of Italy, and 'dar pan per focaccia' is equivalent to 'tit for tat' all over the Peninsula.) It remains only to excuse myself for the spelling of the word Tirol. I have no wish to incur the charge of 'pedantry' which has heretofore been laid on me for so writing it. It seems to me that, in the absence of any glaring mis-derivation, it is most natural to adopt a country's own nomenclature; and in Tirol, or by Tirolean writers, I have never seen the name spelt with a y. I have not been able to get nearer its derivation than that the Castle above Meran, which gave it to the whole principality, was called by the Romans, when they rebuilt it, Teriolis. Why they called it so, or what it was called before, I have not been able to learn. The English use of the definite article in naming Tirol is more difficult to account for than the adoption of the y, in which we seem to have been misled by the Germans. We do not say 'the France' or 'the Italy;' even to accommodate ourselves to the genius of the languages of those countries, therefore, that we should have gone out of our way to say 'the Tyrol' when the genius of that country's language does not require us so to call it, can have arisen only from a piece of carelessness which there is no need to repeat. CONTENTS. Page CHAPTER I. VORARLBERG. Introductory remarks on the use of myths, legends, and traditions; their imagery beyond imitation; have become a study; now a science; Prof. M. Müller; Rev. G. W. Cox--Karl Blind on attractions for the English in Germanic mythology; mythological persons of Tirol--Mythological symbols in art; in poetry; Dante on popular traditions; their record of thoughts and customs; Tullio Dandolo; Depping; Tirolean peasants 1 Our introduction to Tirol--Excursions round Feldkirch; the Katzenthurm; St. Fidelis; St. Eusebius--Rankweil--Fridolins- kapelle--Valduna--S. Gerold--Route into Tirol by Lindau--Bregenz, birthplace of Flatz--Legend of Charlemagne; of Ulrich and Wendelgard--Ehreguota--Riedenberg school--the natural preserves of Lustenau--Merboth, Diedo, and Ilga--Embs; its chronicles; Swiss embroidery; Sulphur baths; Jews' synagogue--Lichtenstein; Vaduz; Hot sulphur-baths of Pfäffers; Taminaschlund; Luziensteig 12 From Feldkirch to Innsbruck--The Pass of Frastanz; Shepherd lad's heroism; the traitor's fate--S. Joder and the Devil--Bludenz--Montafon; who gave it its arms--Prazalanz--The Tear-rill; Kirschwasser--Dalaas-- Silberthal--Das Bruederhüsle--Engineering of the Arlberg pass-- Stanzerthal--Hospice of St. Christof--Wiesburg--Ischgl; its 'skullery' --Landeck--Legend of Schrofenstein--Sharpshooter's monument--Auf dem Fern--Nassereit--Tschirgants Branch road to Füssen--Plansee--Lechthal --Imst--Pitzthal--Growth of a modern legend--Heiterwang--Ehrenberger Klauze Archenthal--Vierzehn Nothhelfer 24 A border adventure; our party; our plans; our route--Aarau--Rorschach; its skeleton-Caryatidæ--Oberriet--Our luggage overpowers the station- master--Our wild colt--Our disaster--Our walk--Our embroideress guide --The Rhine ferry--The Rhætian Alps--Altenstadt--Schattenburg--British missionaries to Tirol--Feldkirch, festa, costumes--Our luggage again --Our new route--Our postilion--The Stase-saddle--The Devil's House --The Voralberger-ghost 39 CHAPTER II. NORTH TIROL--UNTERINNTHAL--(RIGHT INN-BANK). KUFSTEIN TO ROTTENBURG. Kufstein--Pienzenau's unlucky joke--Ainliffen--Rocsla Sandor; the Hungarian lovers--National anthem--Thierberg--A modern pilgrim-- Der Büsser--Public memorials of religion--Zell--Ottokapelle--Kundl --S. Leonhard auf der Wiese; its sculptures--Henry II.'s vow--The Auflänger-Bründl--Rattenberg--Rottenburg--St. Nothburga; her integrity, charity, persecution, patience, piety, observance of Sunday; judgment overtakes Ottilia: Nothburga's restoration; legend of her burial--Henry VI. of Rottenburg and Friedrich mit der leeren Tasche--Character of each--Henry's literary tastes; his mysterious fate--The fire spares Nothburga's cell--Mining legend 53 CHAPTER III. NORTH TIROL--UNTERINNTHAL--(RIGHT INN-BANK). THE ZILLERTHAL. The Zillerthal--Conveyances--Etruscan remnant--Thurnegg and Tratzberg across the river--Strass--Corn or coin?--The two churches of Schlitters--Castles of the Zillerthal--The peace of Kropfsberg--'The only Fügen'--The patriot Riedl--Zell--Expulsion of Lutherans--Hippach--Hainzenberg; ultra co-operative gold mines--Mayrhof--Garnet mills--Mariä-Rastkapelle--Hulda--Tributary valleys--Duxerthal--Hinter-Dux--Hardiness of the people--Legends of the frozen wall--Dog's-throat valley--The Devil's path--The Zemmer glacier--Schwarzensteingrund 79 CHAPTER IV. NORTH TIROL--UNTERINNTHAL--(RIGHT INN-BANK). ZILLERTHAL CUSTOMS--THE WILDSCHÖNAU. Zillerthal customs--Games--Spirits play with gold skittles--Pedlar of Starkenberg--Dances: Schnodahüpfl: Hosennagler--Cow-fights-- Kirchtag--Primizen and Sekundizen--Carneval--Christnacht-- Kloubabrod--Sternsingen--Gömacht--Weddings--Zutrinken--Customs of other valleys--The cat, patron of courtship 92 Kundl again--Wiltschenau--Niederaich--Kundlburg--Oberau--Niederrau --Thierberg--Silver-mines--Legends of dwarfs and Knappen--Moidl and the gold-cave--Legend of the Landmark--Der Umgehende Schuster-- Perchtl, Pilate's wife--Comparative mythologists--Wodin, Wilder Jäger, Wilhelm Tell--Symbolism in tales of enchanted Princesses-- Perahta, the daughter of Dagha--Brixlegg--Burgleckner--Claudia de' Medici--Biener's dying challenge--The Bienerweible--Sandbichler, the Bible-commentator 110 CHAPTER V. NORTH TIROL--UNTERINNTHAL. LEFT INN-BANK. Jenbach--Wiesing--Thiergarten--Kramsach--Brandenberger Ache-- Voldepp--The Mooserthal--The Mariathal--Rheinthalersee--Achenrain --Mariathal, village and ruined Dominican convent--Georg von Freundsberg--The Brandenbergerthal--Steinberg--Heimaththal, Freiheitthal--The gold-herds of the Reiche Spitze--Die Kalte Pein--Mariastein--The irremovable image--Jenbach--Wiesing--The Thiergarten--The Achenthal--The Käsbachthal--The Blue Achensee-- Skolastica--Pertisau--Buchau, Nature's imitation fortress-- Tegernsee--The Achen-pass--The judgment of Achensee--Playing at ball in St. Paul's cathedral--Legend of Wildenfeld--Eben--The escape of the vampire--Stans--Joseph Arnold--Tirolean artists-- The Stallenthal--St. Georgenberg--Unsere liebe Frau zur Linde-- Viecht, Benedictine monastery, library, sculpture--Vomperthal-- Sigmundslust--Sigismund the Monied--Terfens--Marialarch-- Volandseck--Thierberg--S. Michael's--S. Martin's--The Gnadenwald --Baumkirchen--Fritzens--External tokens of faith--The holy family at home--Frost phantoms--Hall; Münzthurm; Sandwirthszwanziger; salt-works; Speckbacher; Waldaufischer- Kapelle; S. Saviour's; institutions of Hall--Johanniswürmchen; Bauernkrieg--Excursions round Hall; the Salzberg; the explorations of the 'Fromme Ritter;' grandeur of the salt-mines; salt-works; visit of Hofer and Speckbacher; the Salzthal--Absam; the dragons of Schloss Melans; Count Spaur's ride to Babylon; combat with the toad--Max Müller on legends--The image on the window-pane; the Gnadenmutter von Absam; Stainer the violin-maker --Mils--Grünegg--Schneeberg--The Gnadenwald--The Glockenhof; the Glockengiesser; his temptation, condemnation, and dying request-- The Loreto-kirche--Heiligenkreuz--Taur--Thürl--The Kaisersäule-- St. Romedius, St. Vigilius and the bear; the spectre priest--Rum, landslip 125 CHAPTER VI. NORTH TIROL--UNTERINNTHAL--(RIGHT INN-BANK). SCHWATZ. Schwatz, its situation; effigy of S. John Nepomuk; his example; the village frescoes; a hunt for a breakfast; the lessons of traveller's fare; market; church; its size disproportioned to the population; the reason of this--Schwatz a Roman station; silver-mines; prosperity; importance; influence of miners of Saxony; reformation; riots; polemical disputes; decline; copper and iron works; other industries; misfortunes. History of the parish church; peculiar construction; the Knappenhochaltar; monuments; Hans Dreyling; altar-pieces; Michaels-kapelle; its legend; churchyard; its reliquary and holy oil; the Robler and the gossip's corpse; penance and vision of the unmarried--Franciscan church--characteristics of the inns; singular use of the beds; guitar playing--Blessed Sacrament visits the sick--Freundsberg; the ruined castles of Tirol; Georg von Freundsberg; his prowess, strength, success; devotion of his men; sung of as a hero; his part in the siege of Rome, sudden death, and ruin of his house; tower; chapel--Weird-woman; her story; her legends; Oswald Milser of Seefeld; the bird-catcher of the Goaslahn; strange birds; chamois; the curse of the swallow--Hospital; chapel--Tobacco; factory girls at benediction--Pews in German churches 168 CHAPTER VII. NORTH TIROL--UNTERINNTHAL--(RIGHT INN-BANK). EXCURSIONS FROM SCHWATZ. Falkenstein; exhausted mines; religious observances of miners; tokens of their craft--Buch--Margareth--Galzein--Kugelmoos--The Schwaderalpe --The Kellerspitze--Troi--Arzberg--Heiligenkreuzkapelle--Baierische- Rumpel--Pill--The Weerthal, Schloss Rettenberg; its spectre warder-- The Kolsassthal--Wattens--Walchen--Mols--The Navisthal--Lizumthal; the Blue Lake--Volders--Voldererthal--Hanzenheim--Friedberg--Aschbach, why it is in the parish of Mils--Hippolitus Guarinoni, page to St. Charles, physician of the poor; religious zeal; church of St. Charles, Servitenkloster, the Stein des Gehorsams; analogous legend--Rinn; S. Anderle's martyrdom; the Judenstein; lettered lilies--Aversion to Jews--Voldererbad--Ampass--Lans--The Patscherkofl--The Lansersee; the poor proprietor and the unjust noble--Sistrans; legend of its champion wrestler--Heiligenwasser 200 CHAPTER VIII. NORTH TIROL--THE INNTHAL. INNSBRUCK. Our greeting; characteristics of the people; Innsbruck's treatment of Kaiser Max; the OEstereichischer hof; our apartment; mountain view; character of the town; its history--Wilten; the minster; myth of Haymon the giant; his burial-place; parish church; Marienbild unter den vier Säulen; relic of the thundering legion--First record of Innsbruck; chosen for seat of government; for residence by Friedl mit der leeren Tasche--Character of Tirolean rulers--the Goldene-Dachl-Gebäude--Sigismund the Monied; his reception of Christian I.; condition of Tirol in his time; his castles; abdication--Maximilian; builds the Burg; magnificence of his reign; legends of him; his decline--Charles Quint; cedes Tirol to Ferdinand I.; his wise administration; quiets popular agitation; Charles Quint's visits to Innsbruck; attacked by Maurice, Elector of Saxony; carried into Carinthia in a litter; death of Maurice--Ferdinand I., the Hof-Kirche; Maximilian's cenotaph; its bas-relief; statues; Mirakel-Bild des H. Anton; Fürstenchor; abjuration of Queen Christina--Introduction of Jesuits; results--The 'Fromme Siechin'--Ferdinand II.; his peaceful tastes; romantic attachment; Philippine Welser; ménage at Schloss Ambras; collections; curiosities; portraits; Philippine's end 225 CHAPTER IX. NORTH TIROL--THE INNTHAL. INNSBRUCK (continued). Wallenstein's vow--Theophrastus Paracelsus; his mysterious dealings --The Tummelplatz--The Silberne Kapelle--Earthquake and dearth; their lessons--Ferdinand's devotion to the Blessed Sacrament; analogous legend of Rudolf of Hapsburg--Ferdinand's second marriage --The Capuchin Church--Maximilian the Deutschmeister; introduces the Servites--Paul Lederer--Maximilian's hermitage--S. Lorenzo of Brindisi--Dreiheiligkeitskirche--Provisions against ravages of the Thirty Years' War--The Siechenhaus--Leopold V.; dispensed from his episcopal jurisdiction and vows; Marries Claudia de' Medici-- Friedrich v. Tiefenbach--Festivities at Innsbruck--The Hofgarten-- Kranach's Madonna, Mariähülfskirche built to receive it; translation to the Pfarr-kirche under Ferdinand Karl--Ferdinand Karl--Regency of Claudia de' Medici; administrative ability; Italian influences-- Sigismund Franz--Claudia Felicita--Charles of Lotharingia--War of succession; Bavarian inroad of 1703; the Pontlatzerbrücke; Baierische-Rumpel--St. Annensäule--Joseph I.--Karl Philipp; builds the Land-haus and gymnasium, restores the Pfarrkirche; stucco and marble decorations; frescoes; preservation of Damian Asam-- Strafarbeitshaus--Church of S. John Nepomuk; his popularity; canonisation--Maria Theresa; her partiality for Innsbruck; example; Prussian prisoners; marriage of Leopold; death of Francis I.; the Triumphpforte, the Damenstift--Joseph II.--Archduchess Maria Elizabeth--Pius VI. passes through Innsbruck--Leopold II.--Repeal of Josephinischen measures--Francis II.--Outbreak of the French revolution---Das Mädchen v. Spinges--The Auferstehungsfeier-- Archduchess Maria Elizabeth--Gottesacker--Treaty of Pressburg-- 'The Year Nine'--Andreas Hofer--Peace of Schönbrunn--Speckbacher; successes at Berg Isel; Hofer as Schützen-Kommandant; his moderation, simplicity, subordination; his betrayal; last hours; firmness; execution--Restoration of Austrian rule--Hofer's monument--Tirolese loyalty in 1848--The Ferdinandeum; its curiosities--Early editions of German authors--Paintings on cobweb --The Schiess-stand--Policy of the Viennese Government, constitutional opposition of Tirol--Population of Innsbruck 265 CHAPTER X. NORTH TIROL--OBERINNTHAL. INNSBRUCK TO ZIRL AND SCHARNITZ--INNSBRUCK TO THE LISENS-FERNER. Excursions from Innsbruck--Mühlau; new church; Baronin Sternbach --Judgment of Frau Hütt--Büchsenhausen--Weierburg--Mariä-Brunn-- Hottingen; monuments in the Friedhof--Schloss Lichtenthurm--The Höttingerbild; the student's Madonna; stalactites--Excursion to Zirl--Grossen Herr-Gott Strasse--Kranebitten--The Schwefelloch-- The Hundskapelle--The Zirlerchristen--Gross Solstein--The Martinswand; danger of the Emperor Maximilian; Collin's ballad; who led the Kaiser astray?--His importance in Europe; efforts to rescue him; the Blessed Sacrament visits him; unknown deliverer --Martinsbühl--Traditions of Kaiser Max--Zirl--Fragenstein; its hidden treasure--Leiten--Reit--Seefeld--The Heilige Blutskapelle --The Seekapelle--Scharnitz--Isarthal--Porta Klaudia--Dirstenöhl --The beggar-woman's prayer; vision of the peasant of Dorf 310 Unter-Perfuss--Selrainthal--The Melach--Rothenbrunn--Fatscherthal --The Hohe Villerspitz--Sonnenberg--Magdalenen-Bründl--Character of the Selrainthalers--Ober-Perfuss; Peter Anich--Kematen--Völs; the Blasienberg; S. Jodok--The Galwiese--The Schwarze-Kreuzkapelle; Hölzl's vow--Ferneck--Berg Isel--Noise of the rifle practice--Count v. Stachel--Natters and Mutters--Waidburg--The Nockspitze--Götzens --Schloss Völlenberg; Oswald v. Wolkenstein--Birgitz--Axams--The Sendersthal 329 CHAPTER XI. WÄLSCH-TIROL. THE WÄLSCHEROLISCHE-ETSCHTHAL AND ITS TRIBUTARY VALLEYS. Val di Lagarina--Borghetto--Ala--Roveredo--Surrounding castles--Dante at Lizzana--The Slavini di S. Marco--La Busa del Barbaz; its myths--Serravalle--Schloss Junk--The Madonna del Monte--Industries--Chapel of S. Columban--Trent, Festa of St. Vigilius; comparison between Trent and Rome; the Domkirche; its notabilia; Sta. Maria Maggiore; seat of the council; assenting crucifix; centenary celebration; legend of the organ-builder--Church of St. Peter; Chapel of S. Simonin; club; museum; Palazzi; Palazzo Zambelli, Teufelspalast; its legend; General Gallas--The Madonna alle Laste; view of Trent--Dos Trento--St. Ingenuin's garden; St. Albuin's apples--Lavis--French spoliation--Restitution--Wälsch Michel 340 Tributary valleys--Val di Non; Annaunia--Rochetta Pass Wälschmetz--Visiaun--Spaur Maggiore--Denno--Schloss Belasis--The Seidenbaum--Tobel Wild-see--Cles; Tavola Clesiana; Roman remains; the Schwarzen Felder--SS. Sisinus, Martyrius and Alexander--Val di Sole--Livo--Magras; Val di Rabbi; San Bernardo--Malè--Charles Quint's visit--Pellizano--Val di Pejo--Cogolo--Corno de' tre Signori--Val Vermiglio--Tonale; the witches' sabbath there--Tregiovo--Cloz--U-Liebe Frau auf dem Gampen--Fondo--Sanzeno--Legend of the three brothers: mithraic bas-relief--The Tirolean Petrarch--St. Romediusthal; legend of St. Romedius; angelic consecration; conversion of the false penitents; extraordinary construction and arrangement of the building; romantic situation; fifteen centuries of uninterrupted veneration--Castel Thun; attachment of the people to the family; a Nonesade; aqueduct--Dombel; its Etruscan key; its import 358 The Avisiothal--Val di Cembra; its inaccessibility--Altrei; presentation of colours--Fleimserthal; Cavalese; its church a museum of Tirolese Art; local parliament; legend of its site; handsome new church--Fassathal--Moena--Analogous English and French traditions--Marriage customs of the valley--The Feuriger Verräther--Vigo--The Marmolata; its legends--St. Ulrich 374 CHAPTER XII. WÄLSCH-TIROL. VAL SUGANA--GIUDICARIA--FOLKLORE. Val Sugana--Baselga--The Madonna di Pinè; legend of the Madonna di Caravaggio--Pergine; miners; the Canoppa--The Schloss--Marriage customs of the valley--Lake Caldonazzo--St. Hermes at Calzeranica--Bosentino--Nossa signora del Feles--The sleeper of Valle del Orco--Caldonazzo--Lafraun; legend of the disunited brothers--Borgo, the Italian Meran--Franciscan convent; Castel Telvana; dangers of a carneval procession; Count Welsburg's vow--Gallant border defences--Stalactite caves of Costalta--Sette Comuni--Castelalto--Strigno--Castelrotto--Cima d'Asta--Quarazza garnet quarry--Ivano--Grigno; Legend of St. Udalric--Castel Tesino--Canal San Bovo to Primiero--Tale of Virginia Loss; humble heroism--Le Tezze; modern heroes 382 Judicarien; its divisions--Castel Madruzz; Cardinal Karl Madruzz; his dispensation; its conditions--Abraham's Garden--Sta. Massenza; Bishop's Summer Palace--Loreto-kapelle--The Rendenathal; St. Vigilius; his zeal; early admission to the episcopate; missionary labours; builds churches; overthrows idols; his stoning; his burial; the rock cloven for his body to pass; the Acqua della Vela; the bread of Mortaso--S. Zulian; his legend; his penitence--Caresolo; its frescoes; another memorial of Charles Quint; his estimation of Jews--New churches--Legends of Condino and Campiglio--Riva on the Garda-see; its churches; its olive branches--The Altissimo di Nago; view from S. Giacomo; optical illusion--Brentonico--The Ponte delle Streghe--Mori; tobacco cultivation 400 Character of Wälsch-Tirol folklore--Orco-Sagen; his transformations in many lands; transliterations of his name in Tirol--The Salvan and Gannes; perhaps Etruscan genii--Salvanel; Bedelmon; Salvadegh--The Beatrik, identified with Dietrich von Bern--The Angane--What came of marrying an Angana--The focarelli of Lunigiana--The Filò--Froberte--Donna Berta dal nas longh--The discriminating Salvan--The Angana's ring; tales of the Three Wishes and the Faithful Beasts; legend of the Drei Feyen of Thal Vent--Legend of St. Kümmerniss; her effigy in Cadore; the prevailing minstrel--Turlulù--Remnants of Etruscan language--'Storielle da rider'--The bear-hunters--The horrible snail--How to make a church tower grow--Social customs perhaps derived from Etruscan; similar to those of Lombardy and Lunigians--All Souls' Day; feast of Sta. Lucia; Christmas; St. Anthony's Day; Carneval; Giovedi de' Gnocchi; St. Urban--Popular sayings about thunder, crickets, brambles, cockchafers, swallows, scorpions--Astronomical riddles 408 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. Kufstein Frontispiece. MAPS. The Valleys of Tirol to face p. 12 Unterinnthal and Neighbourhood of Innsbruck 53 Wälsch-Tirol 341 THE VALLEYS OF TIROL THEIR TRADITIONS AND CUSTOMS. CHAPTER I. VORARLBERG. . . . . . Everywhere Fable and Truth have shed, in rivalry, Each her peculiar influence. Fable came, And laughed and sang, arraying Truth in flowers, Like a young child her grandam. Fable came, Earth, sea, and sky reflecting, as she flew, A thousand, thousand colours not their own.--Rogers. 'Traditions, myths, legends! what is the use of recording and propagating the follies and superstitions of a bygone period, which it is the boast of our modern enlightenment to have cast to the winds?' Such is the hasty exclamation which allusion to these fantastic matters very frequently elicits. With many they find no favour because they seem to yield no profit; nay, rather to set up a hindrance in the way of progress and culture. Yet, on the other hand, in spite of their seeming foolishness, they have worked themselves into favour with very various classes of readers and students. There is an audacity in their imagery which no mere sensation-writer could attempt without falling Phaeton-like from his height; and they plunge us so hardily into a world of their own, so preposterous and so unlike ours, while all the time describing it in a language we can understand without effort, that no one who seeks occasional relief from modern monotony but must experience refreshment in the weird excursions their jaunty will-o'the-wisp dance leads him. But more than this; their sportive fancy has not only charmed the dilettante; they have revealed that they hold inherent in them mysteries which have extorted the study of deep and able thinkers, one of whom [15] insisted, now some years ago, that 'by this time the study of popular tales has become a recognized branch of the studies of mankind;' while important and erudite treatises from his own pen and that of others [16] have elevated it further from a study to a science. All who love poetry and art, as well as all who are interested in the study of languages or races, all who have any care concerning the stirrings of the human mind in its search after the supernatural and the infinite, must confess to standing largely in debt, in the absence of more positive records of the earliest phases of thought, to these various mythologies. Karl Blind, in a recent paper on 'German Mythology,' [17] draws attention to some interesting considerations why the Germanic traditions, which we chiefly meet with in Tirol, should have a fascination for us in this country, in the points of contact they present with our language and customs. Not content with reckoning that 'in the words of the Rev. Isaac Taylor we have obtruded on our notice the names of the deities who were worshipped by the Germanic races' on every Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday of our lives, as we all know, he would even find the origin of 'Saturday' in the name of a god "Sætere" hidden, (a malicious deity whose name is but an alias for Loki,) of whom, it is recorded, that once at a great banquet he so insulted all the heavenly rulers that they chained him, Prometheus-like, to a rock, and made a serpent trickle down its venom upon his face. His faithful wife Sigyn held a cup over him to prevent the venom reaching his face, but whenever she turned away to empty the cup his convulsive pains were such that the earth shook and trembled.... Few people now-a-days, when pronouncing the simple word "Saturday," think or know of this weird and pathetic myth. [18]... When we go to Athens we easily think of the Greek goddess Athene, when we go to Rome we are reminded of Romulus its mythic founder. But when we go to Dewerstone in Devonshire, to Dewsbury in Yorkshire, to Tewesley in Surrey, to Great Tew in Oxfordshire, to Tewen in Herefordshire--have a great many of us even an inkling that these are places once sacred to Tiu, the Saxon Mars? When we got to Wednesbury, to Wanborough, to Woodnesborough, to Wembury, to Wanstrow, to Wanslike, to Woden Hill, we visit localities where the Great Spirit Wodan was once worshipped. So also we meet with the name of the God of Thunder in Thudersfield, Thundersleigh, Thursleigh, Thurscross, Thursby, and Thurso. The German Venus Freia is traceable in Fridaythorpe and Frathorpe, in Fraisthorpe and Freasley. Her son was Baldur, also called Phol or Pol, the sweet god of peace and light; his name comes out at Balderby, Balderton, Polbrook, Polstead and Polsden. Sætere is probably hidden in Satterleigh and Satterthwaite; Ostara or Eostre, the Easter goddess of Spring, appears in two Essex parishes, Good Easter and High Easter, in Easterford, Easterlake and Eastermear. Again Hel, the gloomy mistress of the underworld, has given her name to Hellifield, Hellathyrne, Helwith, Healeys and Helagh--all places in Yorkshire, where people seem to have had a particular fancy for that dark and grimy deity. Then we have Asgardby and Aysgarth, places reminding us of Asgard, the celestial garden or castle of the Æsir--the Germanic Olympus. And these instances might be multiplied by the hundred, so full is England to this day of the vestiges of Germanic mythology. Far more important is the fact that in this country, just as in Germany, we find current folk-lore; and quaint customs and superstitious beliefs affecting the daily life, which are remnants of the ancient creed. A rime apparently so bereft of sense as Ladybird, ladybird, fly away home! Thy house is on fire! Thy children at home! can be proved to refer to a belief of our forefathers in the coming downfall of the universe by a great conflagration. The ladybird has its name from having been sacred to our Lady Freia. The words addressed to the insect were once an incantation--an appeal to the goddess for the protection of the soul of the unborn, over whom in her heavenly abode she was supposed to keep watch and ward, and whom she is asked to shield from the fire that consumes the world.... If we ever wean men from the crude notions that haunt them, and yet promote the enjoyment of fancies which serve as embellishing garlands for the rude realities of life, we cannot do better than promote a fuller scientific knowledge of that circle of ideas in which those moved who moulded our very speech. We feel delight in the conceptions of the Greek Olympus. Painters and poets still go back to that old fountain of fancy. Why should we not seek for similar delight in studying the figures of the Germanic Pantheon, and the rich folk-lore connected with them? Why should that powerful Bible of the Norse religion, which contains such a wealth of striking ideas and descriptions in language the most picturesque, not be as much perused as the Iliad, the Odyssey, or the Æneid? Is it too much to say that many even of those who know of the Koran, of the precepts of Kou-fu-tsi and of Buddha, of the Zendavesta and the Vedas, have but the dimmest notion of that grand Germanic Scripture?... 'Can it be said that there is a lack of poetical conception in the figure of Wodan or Odin, the hoary ruler of the winds and the clouds, who, clad in a flowing mantle, careers through the sky on a milk-white horse, from whose nostrils fire issues, and who is followed at night by a retinue of heroic warriors whom he leads into the golden shield-adorned Walhalla? Is there a want of artistic delineation in Freia--an Aphrodite and Venus combined, who changes darkness into light wherever she appears--the goddess with the streaming golden locks and siren voice, who hovers in her sun-white robe between heaven and earth, making flowers sprout along her path and planting irresistible longings in the hearts of men? Do we not see in bold and well-marked outline the figure of the red-bearded, steel-handed Thor, who rolls along the sky in his goat-drawn car, and who smites the mountain giants with his magic hammer? Are these mere spectres without distinct contour?... are they not, even in their uncouth passions, the representatives of a primitive race, in which the pulse throbs with youthful freshness? Or need I allude to that fantastic theory of minor deities, of fairies and wood-women, and elfin and pixies and cobolds, that have been evolved out of all the forces of Nature by the Teutonic mind, and before whose bustling crowd even Hellenic imagination pales? 'Then what a dramatic power has the Germanic mythology! The gods of classic antiquity have been compared to so many statues ranged along a stately edifice ... in the Germanic view all is active struggle, dramatic contest, with a deep dark background of inevitable fate that controls alike gods and men.' Such are the Beings whom we meet wandering all over Tirol; transformed often into new personalities, invested with new attributes and supplemented with many a mysterious companion, the offspring of an imagination informed by another order of thought, but all of them more living, and more readily to be met with, than in any part of wonder-loving Germany itself. Apart from their mythological value, how large is the debt we owe to legends and traditions in building up our very civilization. Their influence on art is apparent, from the earliest sculptured stones unearthed in India or Etruria to the latest breathing of symbolism in the very reproductions of our own day. In poetry, no less a master than Dante lamented that their influence was waning at the very period ascribed a few years ago as the date of their taking rise. Extolling the simpler pursuits and pleasures of his people at a more primitive date than his own, 'One by the crib kept watch,' he says, 'studious to still the infant plaint with words which erst the parents' minds diverted; another, the flaxen maze upon the distaff twirling, recounted to her household, tales of Troy, Fiesole, and Rome.' [19] Their work is patent in his own undying pages, and in those of all true poets before and since. Besides all this, have they not preserved to us, as in a registering mirror, the manners and habits of thought of the ages preceding ours? Have they not served to record as well as to mould the noblest aspirations of those who have gone before? 'What are they,' asks an elegant Italian writer of the present day, [20] treating, however, only of the traditions of the earliest epoch of Christianity, 'but narratives woven beside the chimney, under the tent, during the halt of the caravan, embodying as in a lively picture the popular customs of the apostolic ages, the interior life of the rising (nascente) Christian society? In them we have a delightful opportunity of seeing stereotyped the great transformation and the rich source of ideas and sentiments which the new belief opened up, to illuminate the common people in their huts no less than the patricians in their palaces. Those even who do not please to believe the facts they expose are afforded a genuine view of the habits of life, the manner of speaking and behaving--all that expresses and paints the erudition of those men and of those times. Thus, it may be affirmed, they comment beautifully on the Gospels, and in the midst of fables is grafted a great abundance of truth. 'If we would investigate the cause of their multiplication, and of the favour with which they were received from the earliest times, we shall find it to consist chiefly in the need and love of the marvellous which governed the new society, notwithstanding the severity of its dogmas. Neophytes snatched from the superstitions of paganism would not have been able all at once to suppress every inclination for poetical fables. They needed another food according to their fancy. And indeed were they not great marvels (though of another order from those to which they were accustomed) which were narrated to them? The aggregate mass was, however, increased by the way in which they lived and the scarcity of communication; every uncertain rumour was thus readily dressed up in the form of a wonderful fact. 'Again, dogmatic and historical teaching continued long to be oral; so that when an apostle, or the apostle of an apostle, arrived in any city and chained the interest of the faithful with a narration of the acts of Jesus he had himself witnessed or received from the personal narrative of witnesses, his words ran along from mouth to mouth, and each repeater added something, suggested by his faith or by his heart. In this way his teaching constituted itself into a legend, which in the end was no longer the narrative of one, but the expression of the faith of all. 'Thus whoever looks at legends only as isolated productions of a period most worthy of study, without attending to the influence they exercised on later epochs, must even so hold them in account as literary monuments of great moment.' Nor is this the case only with the earliest legends. The popular mind in all ages has evinced a necessity for filling up all blanks in the histories of its heroes. The probable, and even the merely possible, is idealized; what might have been is reckoned to have happened; the logical deductions as to what a favourite saint or cobbold ought to have done, according to certain fixed principles of action previously ascribed to his nature, are taken to be the very acts he did perform; and thus, even those traditions which are the most transparently human in their origin, have served to show reflected in action the virtues and perfections which it is the boast of religion to inculcate. A Flemish writer on Spanish traditions similarly remarks, 'Peoples who are cut off from the rest of the world by such boundaries as seas, mountains, or wastes, by reason of the difficulty of communication thus occasioned, are driven to concentrate their attention to local events; and in their many idle hours they work up their myths and tales into poems, which stand them in stead of books, and, in fact, constitute a literature.' [21] Europe possesses in Tirol one little country at least in whose mountain fastnesses a store of these treasures not only lies enshrined, but where we may yet see it in request. Primitive and unsophisticated tillers of the soil, accustomed to watch as a yearly miracle the welling up of its fruits, and to depend for their hopes of subsistence on the sun and rain in the hand of their Creator, its children have not yet acquired the independence of thought and the habit of referring all events to natural causes, which is generated by those industries of production to which the human agent appears to be all in all. Among them we have the opportunity of seeing these expositions of the supernatural, at home as it were in their contemporary life, supplying a representation of what has gone before, only to be compared to the revelations of deep-cut strata to the geologist, and the unearthing of buried cities to the student of history. It is further satisfactory to find that, in spite of our repugnance to superstition, this unreasoning realization of the supernatural has in no way deteriorated the people. Their public virtues, seen in their indomitable devotion to their country, have been conspicuous in all ages, no less than their heroic labours in grappling with the obstacles of soil and climate; while all who have visited them concur in bearing testimony to their possession of sterling homely qualities, frugality, morality, hospitality; and, for that which is of most importance to the tourist, all who have been among them will bear witness to the justice of the remark in the latest Guide-book, that, except just in the more cultivated centres of Innsbruck, Brixen, and Botzen, you need take no thought among the Tiroleans concerning the calls on your purse. My first acquaintance with Tirol was made at Feldkirch, where I had to pay somewhat dearly for my love of the legendary and the primitive. Our plan for the autumn was to join a party of friends from Italy at Innsbruck, spend some months of long-promised enjoyment in exploring Tirol, and return together to winter in Rome. The arrangements of the journey had been left to me; and as I delight in getting beyond railways and travelling in a conveyance whose pace and hours are more under one's own control, I traced our road through France to Bâle, and then by way of Zurich and Rorschach and Oberriet to Feldkirch (which I knew to be a post-station) as a base of operations, for leisurely threading our mountain way through Bludenz and Landeck and the intervening valleys to Innsbruck. How our plan was thwarted [22] I will relate presently. I still recommend this line of route to others less encumbered with luggage, as leading through out-of-the-way and unfrequented places. The projected railway between Feldkirch and Innsbruck is now completed as far as Bludenz; and Feldkirch is reached direct by the new junction with the Rorschach-Chur railway at Buchsstation. [23] Feldkirch affords excursions, accessible for all, to the Margarethenkapf and the St. Veitskapf, from either of which a glorious view is to be enjoyed. The latter commands the stern gorges through which the Ill makes its final struggles before losing its identity in the Rhine--struggles which are often terrific and devastating, for every few years it carries down a whole torrent of pebbles for many days together. The former overlooks the more smiling tracts we traversed in our forced march, locally called the Ardetzen, hemmed in by noble mountain peaks. Then its fortifications, intended at one time to make it a strong border town against Switzerland, have left some few picturesque remains, and in particular the so-called Katzenthurm, named from certain clumsy weapons styled 'cat's head guns,' which once defended it, and which were ultimately melted down to make a chime of peaceful bells. And then it has two or three churches to which peculiar legends attach. Not the least curious of these is that of St. Fidelis, a local saint, whose cultus sprang up as late as the year 1622, when he was laid in wait for and assassinated by certain fanatical reprobates, whose consciences his earnest preaching had disturbed. He was declared a martyr, and canonized at Rome in 1746. The sword with which he was put to death, the bier on which his body was carried back into the town, and other things belonging to him, are venerated as relics. About eight miles outside the town another saint is venerated with a precisely similar history, but dating from the year 844. This is St. Eusebius, one of a band of Scotch missionaries, who founded a monastery there called Victorsberg, the oldest foundation in all Vorarlberg. St. Eusebius, returning from a pilgrimage one day, lay down to sleep in this neighbourhood, being overtaken by the darkness of night. Heathen peasants, who had resisted his attempts at converting them, going out early in the morning to mow, found him lying on the ground, and one of them cut off his head with his scythe. To their astonishment the decapitated body rose to its feet, and, taking up the head in its hands, walked straight to the door of the monastery, where the brethren took it in and laid it to rest in the churchyard. A little further (reached most conveniently by a by-path off the road near Altenstadt, mentioned below,) is Rankweil. In the church on Our Lady's Mount (Frauenberg) is a little chapel on the north side, where a reddish stone is preserved (Der rothe Stein in der Fridolinskapelle), of which the following story is told. St. Fridolin was a Scotch missionary in the seventh century, and among other religious houses had founded one at Müsigen. Two noblemen of this neighbourhood (brothers) held him in great respect, and before dying, one of them, Ursus by name, endowed the convent with all his worldly goods. Sandolf, the other, who did not carry his admiration of the saint to so great a length as to renounce his brother's rich inheritance, disputed the possession, and it was decided that Fridolin must give it up unless he could produce the testimony of the donor. Fridolin went in faith to Glarus, where Ursus had been buried two years before. At his call the dead man rose to his feet, and pushing the grave-stone aside, walked, hand-in-hand, with his friend back to Rankweil, where he not only substantiated Fridolin's statements, but so effectually frightened his brother that he immediately added to the gift all his own possessions also. But the story says that when the judgment requiring him to produce the testimony of the dead was first given, Fridolin went to pray in the chapel of Rankweil, and there a shining being appeared to him, and told him to go to Glarus and call Ursus; and as he spoke Fridolin's knees sank into the 'red stone,' making the marks now seen. [24] The reason given why this hill is called Our Lady's Mound is, that on it once stood a fortress called Schönberg. Schönberg having been burnt down, its owner, the knight of Hörnlingen, set about rebuilding it; but whatever work his workmen did in the day-time, was destroyed by invisible hands during the night. A pious old workman, too, used to hear a mysterious voice saying that instead of a fortress they should build a sanctuary in honour of the mother of God. The knight yielded to the commands of the voice, and the church was built out of the ruins of his castle. In this church, too, is preserved a singular antique cross, studded with coloured glass gems, which the people venerate because it was brought down to them by the mountain stream. It is obviously of very ancient workmanship, and an inscription records that it was repaired in 1347. Winding round the mountain path which from Rankweil runs behind Feldkirch to Satteins, the convent of Valduna is reached; and the origin of this sanctuary is ascribed to a legend, of which counterparts crop up in various places, of a hermit who passed half a life within a hollow tree, [25] and acquired the lasting veneration of the neighbouring people. Another mountain sanctuary which received its veneration from the memory of a tree-hermit, is S. Gerold, situated on a little elevation below the Hoch Gerach, about seven miles on the east side of Feldkirch. It dates from the tenth century. Count Otho, Lord of Sax in the Rhinethal, was out hunting, when the bear to which he was giving chase sought refuge at the foot of an old oak tree, whither his dogs durst not follow it. Living as a hermit within this oak tree Count Otho found his long lost father, S. Gerold, who years before had forsaken his throne and found there a life of contemplation in the wild. [26] The tomb of the saint and his two sons is to be seen in the church, and some curious frescoes with the story of his adventures. Another way to be recommended for entering Vorarlberg is by crossing Lake Constance from Rorschach to Lindau, a very pleasant trajet of about two hours in the tolerably well-appointed, but not very swift lake-steamers. Lindau itself is a charming old place, formed out of three islands on the edge of the lake; but as it is outside the border of Tirol, I will only note in favour of the honesty of its inhabitants, that I saw a tree laden with remarkably fine ripe pears overhanging a wall in the principal street, and no street-boy raised a hand to them. The first town in Tirol by this route is Bregenz, which reckons as the capital of Vorarlberg. It may be reached by boat in less than half an hour. It is well situated at the foot of the Gebhartsberg, which affords a most delightful, and in Tirol widely celebrated, view over Lake Constance and the Appenzel mountains and the rapid Rhine between; and here, at either the Post Hotel or the Black Eagle, there is no lack of carriages for reaching Feldkirch. Bregenz deserves to be remembered as the birth-place of one of the best modern painters of the Munich-Roman school, Flatz, who I believe, spends much of his time there. Among the objects of interest in Bregenz are the Capuchin Convent, situated on a wooded peak of the Gebhardsberg, founded in 1636; on another peak, S. Gebhard auf dem Pfannenberge, called after a bishop of Constance, who preached the Christian faith in the neighbourhood, and was martyred. Bregenz has an ancient history and high lineage. Its lords, who were powerful throughout the Middle Ages, were of sufficiently high estate at the time of Charlemagne that he should take Hildegard, the daughter of one of them, to be his wife, and there is a highly poetical popular tale about her. Taland (a favourite name in Vorarlberg) was a suitor who had, with jealous eye, seen her given to the powerful Emperor, and in the bitterness of his rejected affection, so calumniated her to Charlemagne, that he repudiated her and married Desiderata, the Lombard princess. [27] Hildegard accepted her trial with angelic resignation, and devoted her life to tending pilgrims at Rome. Meantime Taland, stricken with blindness, came to Rome in penitential pilgrimage, where he fell under the charitable care of Hildegard. Hildegard's saintly handling restored his sight--not only that of his bodily eyes, but also his moral perception of truth and falsehood. In reparation for the evil he had done, he now led her back to Charlemagne, confessed all, and she was once more restored to favour and honour. Bregenz has also another analogous and equally beautiful legend. One of its later counts, Ulrich V., was supposed by his people to have died in war in Hungary, about the year 916. Wendelgard, his wife, devoted her widowhood to the cloistral life, but took the veil under the condition that she should every year hold a popular festival and distribution of alms in memory of her husband. On the fourth anniversary, as she was distributing her bounty, a pilgrim came forward who allowed himself the liberty of kissing the hand which bestowed the dole. Wendelgard's indignation was changed into delight when she recognized that the audaciously gallant pilgrim was no other than her own lord, who, having succeeded in delivering himself from captivity, had elected to make himself thus known to her. Salomo, Bishop of Constance, dispensed her from her vow, and Ulrich passed the remainder of his life at Bregenz by her side. Another celebrated worthy of Bregenz, whose name must not be passed over, is 'Ehreguota' or 'Ehre Guta,' a name still dear to every peasant of Vorarlberg, and which has perpetuated itself in the appellation of Hergotha, a favourite Christian name there to the present day. She was a poor beggar-woman really named Guta, whose sagacity and courage delivered her country people from an attack of the Appenzell folk, to which they had nearly succumbed in the year 1408; it was the 'honour' paid her by her patriotic friends that added the byname of 'Ehre,' and made them erect a monument to her. One of the variants of the story makes her, instead of a beggar-woman, the beautiful young bride of Count Wilhelm of Montfort-Bregenz; some have further sought to identify her with the goddess Epona. Pursuing the journey southwards towards Feldkirch, every step is full of natural beauty and legendary interest. At first leaving Bregenz you have to part company with Lake Constance, and leave in the right hand distance the ruins of Castle Fussach. On the left is Riedenberg, which, if not great architecturally, is interesting as a highly useful institution, under the fostering care of the present Empress of Austria, for the education of girls belonging to families of a superior class with restricted means. From Fussach the road runs parallel to the Rhine; there is a shorter road by Dornbirn, but less interesting, which joins it again at Götzis, near Hohenembs. The two roads separate before Fussach at Wolfurth, where there is an interesting chapel, the bourne of a pilgrimage worth making if only for the view over the lake. The country between S. John Höchst and Lustenau is much frequented in autumn for the sake of the shooting afforded by the wild birds which haunt its secluded recesses on the banks of the Rhine at that season. At Lustenau there is a ferry over the Rhine. The favourite saints of this part of the country are Merboth, Diedo, and Ilga--two brothers and a sister of a noble family, hermit-apostles and martyrs of the eleventh century. Ilga established her hermit-cell in the Schwarzenberg, just over Dornbirn, where not only all dainty food, but even water, was wanting. The people of Dornbirn also wanted water; and though she had not asked the boon for herself, she asked it for her people, and obtained from the hard rock, a miraculous spring of sparkling water which even the winter cold could not freeze. Ilga used to fetch this water for her own use, and carry it up the mountain paths in her apron. One day she spilt some of it on the rock near her cell on her arrival, and see! as it touched the rock, the rock responded to the appeal, and from out there flowed a corresponding stream, which has never ceased to flow to this day. The most important and interesting spot between Bregenz and Feldkirch, is Embs or Hohenembs, with its grand situation, its picturesque buildings and its two ruined castles, which though distinguished as Alt and Neu Hohenembs, do not display at first sight any very great disparity of age; both repay a visit, but the view from Alt Hohenembs is the finer. The virtues and bravery of the lords of Hohenembs have been duly chronicled. James Von Embs served by the side of the chevalier Bayard in the battle of Ravenna, and having at the first onset received his death wound, raised himself up again to pour out his last breath in crying to his men, 'The King of France has been our fair ally, let us serve him bravely this day!' His grandson, who was curiously enough christened James Hannibal, was the first Count of Embs, and his descendants often figure in records of the wars of the Austrian Empire, particularly in those connected with the famous Schmalkaldischer Krieg, and are now merged in the family of Count Harrach. The 'Swiss embroidery' industry here crosses the Rhine, and, in the female gatherings which it occasions, as in the 'Filo' of the south, many local chronicles and legends are, or at least have been, perpetuated. In the parish church, I have been told by a traveller, that the cardinal's hat of S. Charles Borromeo is preserved, though why it should be so I cannot tell; and I think I have myself had it shown me both at Milan and, if I mistake not, also at the church in Rome whence he had his 'title.' The ascent to Neu Hohenembs has sufficient difficulty and danger for the unpractised pedestrian to give it special interest, which the roaring of the waterfall tends to excite. A little way beyond it the water was formerly turned to the purpose of an Italian pescheria (or fish-preserve for the use of the castle), which is not now very well preserved. Further up still are the ruins of Alt Hohenembs. There are also prettily situated sulphur baths a little way out of the town, much frequented from June to September by the country people. It is curious that the Jews, who have never hitherto settled in large numbers in any part of Tirol, have here a synagogue; and I am told that it serves for nearly a hundred families scattered over the surrounding country, though there are not a dozen even at Innsbruck. All I have met with of interest between this and Feldkirch, I have mentioned under the head of excursions from Feldkirch. Stretching along the bank of the Rhine to the south of Feldkirch, is the little principality of Lichtenstein or Liechtenstein, a territory of some three square miles and a half in extent, which yet gives its possessor--lately by marriage made a member of English society--certain seignorial rights. The chief industry of the people is the Swiss embroidery. Vaduz, its chief town, is situated in its centre, and above it, in the midst of a thick wood, is the somewhat imposing and well kept up castle of Lichtenstein. Further south, overhanging the Rhine, is Schloss Gutenberg, and beyond, a remarkable warm sulphur spring, which runs only in summer, at a temperature of 98° to 100° Fahrenheit; it is crowded by Swiss and Tiroleans from June to September, though unknown to the rest of the world. [28] It was discovered in the year 1240 by a chamois-hunter, and was soon after taken in charge by a colony of Benedictine monks, established close by at Pfäffers, who continued to entertain those who visited it until it was taken possession of by the Communal Council of Chur, and the monastery turned into a poor-house. The country round it is exceedingly wild and romantic, and there is a celebrated ravine called the Tamina-Schlund, of so-called immeasurable depth, where at certain hours of a sunny day a wonderful play of light is to be observed. Pfäffers is just outside the boundary of Tirol; the actual boundary line is formed by the Rhætian Alps, which are traversed by a pass called Luziensteig, after St. Lucius, 'first Christian king of Britain,' who, tradition says, preached the gospel to Lichtenstein. [29] The road from Feldkirch to Innsbruck first runs along the Illthal, which between Feldkirch and Bludenz is also called the Wallgau, and merges at Bludenz into the Walserthal on the left or north side. On the right or south side are the Montafonthal, Klosterthal, and Silberthal. Soon after leaving Feldkirch the mountains narrow upon the road, which crosses the Ill at Felsenau, forming what is called the gorge of the Ill, near Frastanz. Round this terrible pass linger memories of one of the direst struggles for independence the Tiroleans ever waged. In 1499 the Swiss hosts were shown the inlet, through the mountains that so well protect Tirol, by a treacherous peasant whom their gold had bought. [30] A little shepherd lad seeing them advance, in his burning desire to save his country, blew such a call to arms upon his horn that he never desisted till he had blown all the breath out of his little body. The subsequent battle was fierce and determined; and when it slackened from loss of men, the women rushed in and fought with the bravest. So earnestly was the cause of those who fell felt to be the cause of all, that even to the present time the souls of those who were slain that day are remembered in the prayers said as the procession nears the spot when blessing the fields on Rogation-Wednesday. On the heights above Valduna are the striking ruins of a convent of Poor Clares, one of those abandoned at the fiat of Joseph II. It was founded on occasion of a hermit declaring he had often seen a beautiful angel sitting and singing enchantingly on the peak. Below is a tiny lake, which lends an additional charm to the tranquil beauty of the spot. The patron saint of the Walserthal is St. Joder or Theodul (local renderings of Theodoric), and his legend is most fantastic. St. Joder went to Rome to see the Pope; the Pope, in commendation of his zeal, gave him a fine bell for his church. Homewards went St. Joder with his bell, but when he came to the mountains it was more than he could manage, to drag the bell after him. What did he then do? He bethought him that he had, by his prayers and exorcisms, conjured the devil out of the valley where he had preached the faith, so why should not prayer and exorcism conjure him to carry the bell for the service of his faithful flock? If St. Joder's faith did not remove mountains it removed the obstacles they presented, and many a bit of rude carving in mountain chapels throughout the Walserthal shows a youthful saint, in rich episcopal vestments, leading by a chain, like a showman his bear, the arch enemy of souls, crouched and sweating under the weight of the bell whose holy tones are to sound his own ban. [31] Bludenz retains some picturesque remnants of its old buildings. It belonged to the Counts of Sonnenberg, and hence it is said that it is often called by that name; but it is perhaps more probable that the height above Bludenz was called Sonnenberg, in contrast with Schattenberg, above Feldkirch, and that its lords derived their name from it. The story of the fidelity of Bludenz to Friedrich mit der leeren Tasche, I have narrated in another place. [32] The valley of Montafon has for its arms the cross keys of St. Peter, in memory of a traditionary but anachronistic journey of Pope John XXIII. to the Council of Constance, in 1414. [33] In memory of the same journey a joy-peal is rung on every Wednesday throughout the year. A little way south of Bludenz, down the Montafon valley, is a chapel on a little height called S. Anton, covering the spot where tradition says was once a mighty city called Prazalanz, destroyed by an avalanche. Near here is a tiny stream, of which the peasants tell the following story:--They say up the mountain lives a beautiful maiden, set to guard a treasure, and she can only be released when some one will thrice kiss a loathsome toad, [34] which has its place on the cover of the treasury, and the maiden feels assured no one will ever make the venture. She weeps evermore, and they call this streamlet the 'Trächnabächle'--the Tear-rill. The valley of Montafon is further celebrated for its production of kirschwasser. Opposite Dalaas is a striking peak, attaining an elevation of some 5,000 feet, called the Christberg. On the opposite side to Dalaas is a chapel of St. Agatha; in the days of the silver mining of Tirol, in the fifteenth century, silver was found in this neighbourhood. On one occasion a landslip imprisoned a number of miners in their workings. In terror at their threatened death, they vowed that if help reached them in time, they would build a chapel on the spot to commemorate their deliverance. Help did reach them, and they kept their vow. The chapel is built into the living rock where this occurred, and a grey mark on the rock is pointed out as a supernatural token which cannot be effaced, to remind the people of the deliverance that took place there. It is reached from Dalaas by a terribly steep and rugged path, running over the Christberg, near the summit of which may be found, by those whom its hardships do not deter, another chapel, or wayside shrine, consisting of an image of the Blessed Virgin under a canopy, with an alcoved seat beneath it for the votary to rest in, called 'Das Bruederhüsle,' and this is the reason of its name:--The wife of a Count Tanberg gave birth to a dead child; in the fulness of their faith, the parents mourned that to the soul of their little one Christian baptism had been denied, more than the loss of their offspring. In pursuance of a custom then in vogue in parts of Tirol, if not elsewhere, the Count sent the body of the infant to be laid on the altar of St. Joseph, in the parish church, in the hope that at the intercession of the fosterfather of the Saviour it might revive for a sufficient interval to receive the sacrament of admission into the Christian family. The servant, however, instead of carrying his burden to the church at Schruns (in Montafonthal), finding himself weary by the time he had climbed up the Christberg, dug a grave, and buried it instead. The next year there was another infant, also born dead; this time the Count determined to carry it himself to the church, and by the time he had toiled to the same spot he too was weary, and sat down to rest. As he sat he heard a little voice crying from under the ground, 'ätti, nüm mi' ô met!' [35] The Count turned up the soil, and found the body of his last year's infant. Full of joy he carried both brothers to the altar of St. Joseph, at Schruns; here, continues the legend, his prayer went up before the divine throne; both infants gave signs of life before devout witnesses; baptism could be validly administered, and they, laid to rest in holy ground. [36] After Dalaas the road assumes a character of real grandeur, both as an engineering work and as a study of nature. The size of the telegraph poles alone (something like fourteen inches in diameter) gives an idea of the sort of storms the road is built to resist; so do the veritable fortifications, erected here and there, to protect it from avalanches. The summit (6,218 ft.) of the Arlberg, whence the province has its name--and which in turn is named from Schloss Arlen, the ruins of which are to be observed from the road--is marked by a gigantic crucifix, overhanging the road. An inscription cut in the rock records that it was opened for traffic (after three hard years of labour) on St. James's day, 1787; but a considerable stretch of the road now used was made along a safer and more sheltered pass in 1822-4, when a remarkable viaduct called the Franzensbrücke was built. Two posts, striped with the local colours, near the crucifix above-named, mark the boundary of Vorarlberg and Oberinnthal. As we pass them we should take leave of Vorarlberg; but it may be convenient to mention in this place some few of the more salient of the many points of interest on the onward road to Innsbruck. The opening of the Stanzerthal, indeed, on which the road is carried, seems to belong of right to Vorarlberg, for its first post-halt of S. Christof came into existence through the agency of a poor foundling boy of that province, who was so moved by the sufferings of travellers at his date (1386), that he devoted his life to their service, and by begging collected money to found the nucleus of the hospice and brotherhood of S. Christof, which lasted till the time of Joseph II. The pass at its highest part is free from snow only from the beginning of July to September, and in the depth of winter it accumulates to a height of twenty feet. The church contains considerable remains of the date of its founder, Heinrich das Findelkind; of this date, or not much later, must be the gigantic statue of S. Christopher, patron of wayfarers. The Stanzerthal, without being less grand, presents a much more smiling prospect than that traversed during the later part of the journey through Vorarlberg. The waters of the Rosanna and the Trisanna flow by the way; the mountains stretch away in the distance, in every hue of brilliant colouring; the whole landscape is studded with villages clustering round their church steeples, while Indian-corn-fields, fruit-gardens in which the barberry holds no insignificant place, and vast patches of a deep-tinted wild flora, fill up the picture. At Schloss Wiesburg is the opening into the Patznaunthal, the chief village of which is Ischgl, where the custom I have heard of in other parts of Tirol, and also in Brittany, prevails, of preserving the skulls of the dead in an open vault in the churchyard, with their names painted on them. Nearly opposite it, off the left side of the road lies Grüns or Grins, so called because it affords a bright green patch amid the grey of the rocks. It was a more important place in mediæval times, for the road then ran beside it; the bridge with its pointed arches dates from the year 1639. Margareta Maultasch, with whose place in Tirolese history we must make acquaintance further on, had a house here which still contains some curious mural paintings. Landeck [37] is an important thriving little town, with the Inn flowing through its midst. It has two fine remains of ancient castles: Schloss Landeck, now used partly as a hospice; and Schloss Schrofenstein, of difficult access, haunted by a knight, who gave too ready ear to the calumnies of a rejected suitor of his wife, and must wander round its precincts wringing his fettered hands and crying 'Woe!' On the slope of the hill crowned by Schloss Landeck stands the parish church. Its first foundation dates from the fifteenth century, when a Landecker named Henry and his wife Eva, having lost their two children in a forest, on vowing a church in honour of the Blessed Virgin, met a bear and a wolf each carrying one of the children tenderly on its back. It has a double-bulbed tower of much later date, and it was restored with considerable care a few years back; but many important parts remain in their original condition, including some early sculpture. In the churchyard are two important monuments, one dating from the fifteenth century, of Oswald Y. Schrofenstein; the other, a little gothic chapel, consecrated on August 22, 1870, in memory of the Landeck contingent of the Tirolean sharpshooters, who assisted in defending the borders of Wälsch-Tirol in 1866. [38] About two or three miles from Landeck there is a celebrated waterfall, at a spot called Letz. Imst was formerly celebrated for its breed of canary-birds, which its townsmen used to carry all over Europe. The church contains a votive tablet, put up by some of them on occasion of being saved from shipwreck in the Mediterranean. It has a good old inn, once a knightly palace. From Imst the Pitzthal branches southwards; but concerning it I have not space to enlarge, as the more interesting excursion to Füssen, on the Bavarian frontier, must not be passed over. The pleasantest way of making this excursion is to engage a carriage for the whole distance at Imst, but a diligence or 'Eilwagen,' running daily between Innsbruck and Füssen, may be met at Nassereit, some three miles along the Gunglthal. At Nassereit I will pause a moment to mention a circumstance, bearing on the question of the formation of legends, which seemed to take considerable hold on the people, and was narrated to me with a manifest impression of belief in the supernatural. There was a pilgrimage from a place called Biberwier to a shrine of the Virgin, at Dormiz, on August 10, 1869. It was to gain the indulgence of the Vatican Council, and the priest of Biberwier in exhorting his people to treat it entirely as a matter of penance, and not as a party of pleasure, had made use of a figure of speech bidding them not to trust themselves to the bark of worldly pleasure, for, he assured them, it had many holes in it, and would swamp them instead of bearing them on to the joys of heaven. Four of the men, however, persisted in disregarding his warning, and in combining a trip to the Fernsee, one of two romantically situated mountain lakes overlooked by the ancient castle of Sigmundsburg, on a promontory running into it and with its Wirthshaus 'auf dem Fern' forming a favourite though difficult pleasure-excursion. The weather was treacherous; the boat was swamped in the squall which ensued, and all four men were drowned. From Nassereit also is generally made the ascent of the Tschirgants, the peak which has constantly formed a remarkable feature in the landscape all the way from Arlberg. The road to Füssen passes by Sigmundsburg, Fernsee and Biberwier mentioned in the preceding narrative also the beautiful Blendsee and Mittersee (accessible only to the pedestrian) or rather the by-paths leading to them. Leermoos is the next place passed,--a straggling, inconsiderable hamlet, but affording a pleasing incident in the landscape, when, after passing it, the steep road winds back upon it and reveals it again far far below you. It is, however, quite possible to put up for a night with the accommodation afforded by the Post inn, and by this means one of the most justly celebrated natural beauties may be enjoyed, in the sunset effects produced by the lighting up of the Zugspitzwand. Next is Lähn, whose situation disposes one to believe the tradition that it has its name from the avalanches (Lawinen, locally contracted into Lähne) by which the valley is frequently visited, and chiefly from a terrible one, in the fifteenth century, which destroyed the village, till then called Mitterwald. A carrier who had been wont to pass that way, struck with compassion at the desolation of the place, aided in providing the surviving inhabitants to rebuild their chapel, and tradition fables of him that they were aided by an angel. The road opens out once more as we approach Heiterwang; there is also a post-road hence to Ammergau; here, a small party may put up at the Rossl, for the sake of visiting the Plansee, the second largest lake of Tirol, on the right (east) of the road; on the left is the opening of the Lechthal, a difficult excursion even to the most practised pedestrian. For those who study convenience the Plansee may be better visited from Reutte. After Heiterwang the rocks close in again on the road as we pass through the Ehrenberger Klause, celebrated again and again through the pages of Tirolese history, from the very earliest times, for heroic defences; its castle is an important and beautiful ruin; and so the road proceeds to Reutte, Füssen, and the much visited Lustschloss of Schwangau; but as these are in Bavaria I must not occupy my Tirolese pages with them, but mention only the Mangtritt, the boundary pass, where a cross stands out boldly against the sky, in memory of S. Magnus, the apostle of these valleys. The devil, furious at the success of the saint with his conversion of the heathen inhabitants, sent a tribe of wild and evil men, says one version of the legend, a formidable dragon according to another, to exterminate him; he was thus driven to the narrow glen where the fine post-road now runs between the rocks beside the roaring Lech. Nothing daunted, the saint sprang across to the opposite rock whither his adversaries, who had no guardian angels' wings to 'bear them up', durst not pursue him; it is a curious fact for the comparative mythologist that the same pass bears also the name of Jusulte (Saltus Julii) and the tradition that Julius Cæsar performed a similar feat here on horseback. Near it is a poor little inn, called 'the White House,' where local vintages may be tasted. Reutte has two inns; the Post and Krone, and from it more excursions may be made than I have space to chronicle. That to Breitenwang is an easy one; a house here is pointed out as having been built on the spot where stood a poor hut which gave shelter in his last moments to Lothair II. 'the Saxon' overtaken by death on his return journey from the war in Italy, 1137; what remained of the old materials having been conscientiously worked into the building, down to the most insignificant spar; a tablet records the event. The church, a Benedictine foundation of the twelfth century, was rebuilt in the seventeenth, and contains many specimens of what Tirolese artists can do in sculpture, wood-carving, and painting. A quaint chapel in the churchyard has a representation in stucco of the 'Dance of Death.' The country between this and the Plansee is called the Achenthal, fortunately distinguished by local mispronounciation as the Archenthal from the better known (though not deservingly so) Achenthal, which we shall visit later. The Ache or Arche affords several water-falls, the most important of them, the Stuibfall, is nearly a hundred feet in height, and on a bright evening a beautiful 'iris' may be seen enthroned in its foam. At the easternmost extremity of the Plansee, to be reached either by pleasure boat or mountain path, near the little border custom-house, the Kaiser-brunnen flows into the lake, so called because its cool waters once afforded a refreshing drink to Ludwig of Brandenberg, when out hunting: a crucifix marks the spot. There is also a chapel erected at the end of the 17th century, in consequence of some local vow, containing a picture of the 'Vierzehn Nothhelfer;' and as the so-called 'Fourteen Helpers in Need' are a favourite devotion all over North-Tirol I may as well mention their legend here at our first time of meeting them. The story is that on the feast of the Invention of the Cross, 1445, a shepherd-boy named Hermann, serving the Cistercian monks of Langheim (some thirty miles south of Mayence) was keeping sheep on a farm belonging to them in Frankenthal not far from Würtzburg, when he heard a child's voice crying to him out of the long grass; he turned round and saw a beautiful infant with two tapers burning before it, who disappeared as he approached. On the vigil of S. Peter in the following year Hermann saw the same vision repeated, only this time the beautiful infant was surrounded by a court of fourteen other children, who told him they were the 'Vierzehn Nothelfer,' and that he was to build a chapel to them. The monks refused to believe Hermann's story, but the popular mind connected it with a devotion which was already widespread, and by the year 1448 the mysteriously ordered chapel was raised, and speedily became a place of pilgrimage. This chapel has been constantly maintained and enlarged and has now grown into a considerable church; and the devotion to the 'Fourteen Helpers in Need' spread over the surrounding country with the usual rapid spread of a popular devotion. [39] The chief remaining points of interest in the further journey to Innsbruck, taking it up where we diverged from it at Nassereit, are mentioned later in my excursions for Innsbruck. Before closing my chapter on Vorarlberg I must put on record, as a warning to those who may choose to thread its pleasant valleys, a laughable incident which cut short my first attempt to penetrate into Tirol by its means. Our line of route I have already named. [40] Our start was in the most genial of August weather; our party not only harmonious, but humorously inclined; all our stages were full of interest and pleasure, and their memory glances at me reproachfully as I pass them over in rigid obedience to the duty of adhering to my programme. But no, I must devote a word of gratitude to the friendly Swiss people, and their kindly hospitable manners on all occasions. The pretty bathing establishments on the lakes, where the little girls go in on their way to school, and swim about as elegantly as if the water were their natural element; the wonderful roofs of Aarau; its late-flowering pomegranates; and the clear delicious water, tumbling along its narrow bed down the centre of all the streets, where we stop to taste of the crystal brook, using the hollow of our hands, pilgrim fashion, and the kind people more than once come out of their houses to offer us glasses and chairs! I must bestow, too, another line of record on the charming village of Rorschach, the little colony of Catholics in the midst of a Protestant canton. Its delicious situation on the Boden-see; our row over the lake by moonlight, where we are nearly run down by one of the steamers perpetually crossing it in all directions, while our old boatman pours out and loses himself in the mazes of his legendary lore; the strange effect of interlacing moonbeams, interspersed by golden rays from the sanct lamps with Turner-like effect, seen through the open grated door of the church; the grotesque draped skeletons supporting the roof of one of the chapels, Caryatid fashion and the rustic procession on the early morning of the Assumption. So far all had gone passing well; my first misgiving arose when I saw the factotum of the Oberriet station eye our luggage, the provision of four English winterers in Rome, and a look of embarrassed astonishment dilate his stolid German countenance. It was evident that when he engaged himself as ticket-clerk, porter, 'and everyting,' he never contemplated such a pile of boxes being ever deposited at his station. We left him wrapt in his earnest gaze, and walked on to see what help we could get in the village. It was a collection of a half-dozen cottages, picturesque in their utter uncivilization, clustered round an inn of some pretensions. The host had apparently heard of the depth of English purses, and was delighted to make his premières armes in testing their capacity. Of course there was 'no arguing with the master of' the only horses to whose assistance we had to look for carrying us beyond the mountains, which now somehow struck us as much more plainly marked on the map than we had noticed before. His price had to be ours, and his statement of the distance, about double the reality, had to be accepted also. His stud was soon displayed before us. Three rather tired greys were brought in from the field, and made fast (or rather loose) with ropes to a waggon, on which our formidable Gepäck was piled, and took their start with funeral solemnity. An hour later a parcel of boys had succeeded in capturing a wild colt destined to assist his venerable parent in transporting ourselves in a 'shay,' of the Gilpin type, and to which we managed to hang on with some difficulty, the wild-looking driver good-naturedly volunteering to run by the side. Off we started with the inevitable thunder of German whip-cracking and German imprecations on the cattle, sufficient for the first twenty paces to astonish the colt into propriety. No sooner had we reached the village boundary, however, than he seemed to guess for the first time that he had been entrapped into bondage. With refreshing juvenile buoyancy he instantly determined to show us his indomitable spirit. Resisting all efforts of his companion in harness to proceed, he suddenly made such desperate assault and battery with his hind legs, that one or two of the ropes were quickly snapped, the Jehu sent sprawling in the ditch on one side, and the travelling bags on the other; so that, but for the staid demeanour of the old mare, we should probably in two minutes more have been 'nowhere.' Hans was on his feet again in an instant, like the balanced mannikins of a bull-fight, and to knot the ropes and make a fresh start required only a minute more; but another and another exhibition of the colt's pranks decided us to trust to our own powers of locomotion. A bare-footed, short-petticoated wench, who astonished us by proving that her rough hands could earn her livelihood at delicate 'Swiss' embroidery, and still more by details of the small remuneration that contented her, volunteered to pilot us through the woods where we had quite lost our way; and finding our luggage van waiting on the banks of the Rhine for the return of the ferry, we crossed with it and walked by its side for the rest of the distance. Our road lay right across the Ardetzen, a basin of pasture enclosed by a magnificent circuit of mountains,--behind us the distant eminences of Appenzell, before us the great Rhætian Alps, and at their base a number of smiling villages each with its green spire scarcely detaching from the verdant slopes behind. The undertaking, pleasant and bright at first, grew weary and anxious as the sun descended, and the mountains of Appenzell began to throw their long shadow over the lowland we were traversing, and yet the end was not reached. At last the strains of an organ burst upon our ears, lights from latticed windows diapered our path, and a train of worshippers poured past us to join in the melodies of the Church, sufficiently large to argue that our stopping-place was attained. We cast about to find the Gasthof zur Post to which we were bound, but all in vain, there was no rest for us. Here indeed, Feldkirch fuit, but here it was no more. In the year 909, the Counts of Montfort built themselves a castle on the neighbouring height of Schattenburg, (so called because the higher eminences around shade it from the sun till late in the morning,) and lured away the people from this pristine Feldkirch to settle themselves round the foot of their fortress. Some of the original inhabitants still clung to the old place, and its old Church of St. Peter, that very church whose earlier foundations, some say, were laid by monks from Britain, S. Columban and St. Gall, who, when the people were oppressed by their Frankish masters, came and lived among them, and by their preaching and their prayers rekindled the light of religion, working out at the same time their political relief; the former subsequently made his way, shedding blessings as he went, on to Italy, where he died at the age of ninety, in 615; the latter founded, and ended his days at the age of ninety-five, in the famous monastery which has given his name to the neighbouring Swiss Canton. The descendants of this remnant have kept up the original settlement to this day with the name of Altenstadt, while the first built street of the present thriving town of Feldkirch still retains its appellation of the Neustadt. It seemed a long stretch ere we again came upon an inhabited spot, but this time there was no mistake. All around were the signs of a prosperous centre, the causeways correctly laid out, new buildings rising on every side, and--I am fain to add--the church dark and closed; in place of the train of worshippers of unsophisticated Altenstadt, one solitary figure in mourning weeds was kneeling in the moonlight at a desk such as we often see placed under a cross against the outer wall of churches in Germany. Before five next morning I was awakened by the pealing organ and hearty voices of the Feldkirch peasants at Mass in the church just opposite my window. I dressed hastily, and descended to take my place among them. It was a village festival and Mass succeeded Mass at each of the gaily decorated altars, and before them assembled groups in quaint costumes from far and near. [41] As each half hour struck, a bell sounded, and a relic was brought round to the high altar rails, all the women in the church going up first, and then all the men, to venerate it. Our first care of the day was to engage our carriage for Innsbruck. We were at the Post hotel, and had the best chance there; for besides its own conveyances, there were those of the post-office, which generally in Germany afford great convenience. Not one was there, however, that would undertake our luggage over the mountain roads. The post-master and his men all declared that at every winding of the passes there would be too great risk of overturning the vehicle. It was in vain we argued that the same amount had often accompanied us over higher mountains in Italy; it was clear they were not prepared for it. There was a service for heavy goods by which it could be sent; there was no other way, and they did not advise that. They could not ensure any due care being taken of it, or that it should reach within three or four weeks. Four or five hours spent in weighing, measuring, arranging, and arguing, advanced our cause not a whit; there was no plan to be adopted but to return by Oberriet to Rorschach, cross lake Constance to Lindau, and make our way round by Augsburg, Munich, and Rosenheim! It was with great reluctance we relinquished the cherished project. Our now hated luggage deposited in a waggon, as the day before, we mounted our rather more presentable, and certainly better horsed vehicle, in no cheerful mood, for, besides the disappointment, there was the mortification which always attaches to a failed project and retraced steps. 'The Herrschaften are not in such bright spirits as the sun to-day!' exclaimed our driver, when, finally tired of cracking his whip and shouting to his horses, he found we still sat silent and crest-fallen. He wore the jauntiest costume to be found in Europe, after that of his Hungarian confrère, a short postilion jacket, bound and trimmed with yellow lace, a horn slung across his breast by a bright yellow cord, and a hat shining like looking-glass cocked on one side of his head, while his face expressed everything that is pleasant and jovial. 'How can one be anything but out of spirits when one is crossed by such a stupid set as the people of your town? Why, there is no part of Europe in which they will even believe it possible!' 'Well, you see they don't understand much, about here,' he replied, with an air of superiority, for he was a travelled postilion, as he took care to let us know. 'In Italy they manage better; they tie the luggage on behind, or underneath, where it is safe enough. Here they have only one idea--to stick it on the top, and in that way a carriage may be easily upset at a sharp turn. You cannot drive any new idea into these fellows; it is like an echo between their own mountains, whatever is once there, goes on and on and on.' I showed him the map, and traced before him the difference in the length of the route we should have taken and that we had now to pursue. I don't think he had ever understood a map before, for he seemed vastly pleased at the compliment paid to his intelligence. 'Ah!' he exclaimed, 'if we could always go as the crow flies, how quickly we should get to our journey's end; or if we had the Stase-Sattel, as they used to have--wasn't that fine!' 'The Stase-Sattel,' I replied, 'what is that?' 'What! don't you know about the Stase-Sattel--at that place, Bludenz, there,' and he pointed to it on the map, 'where you were telling me you wanted to have gone, there used to live an old woman named Stase, and folk said she was a witch. She had a wonderful saddle, on to which she used to set herself when she wanted anything, and it used to fly with her ever so high, and quicker than a bird. One day the reapers were in a field cooking their mess, and they had forgotten to bring any salt--and hupf! quick! before the pot had begun to boil she had flown off on her saddle to the salt-mines at Hall, beyond Innsbruck, and back with salt enough to pickle an ox. Another time there was a farmer who had been kind to her, whose crops were failing for the drought. She no sooner heard of his distress than up she flew in her saddle and swept all the clouds together with her broom till there was enough to make a good rainfall. Another time, a boy who had been sent with a message by his master to the next village had wasted all the day in playing and drinking with her; towards dusk he bethought himself that the gates would be shut and the dogs let loose, so that it was a chance if he reached the house alive. But she told him not to mind, and taking him up on her saddle, she carried him up through the air and set him down at home before the sun was an inch lower.' 'And what became of her?' I inquired. 'Became of her! why, she went the way of all such folk. They go on for a time, but God's hand overtakes them at the last. One day she was on one of her wild errands, and it was a Fest-tag to boot. Her course took her exactly over a church spire, and just as she passed, the Wandlung bell [42] tolled. The sacred sound tormented her so that she lost her seat and fell headlong to the ground. When they came out of church they found her lying a shapeless mass upon the stone step of the churchyard cross. Her enchanted saddle was long kept in the Castle of Landeck--maybe it is there yet; and even now when we want to tell one to go quickly on an errand, we say, "Fly on the saddle of Dame Stase."' 'You have had many such folk about here,' I observed seriously, with the view of drawing him out. 'Well, yes, they tell many such tales,' he answered; 'and if they're not true, they at least serve to keep alive the faith that God is over us all, and that the evil one has no more power than just what He allows. There's another story they tell, just showing that,' he continued. 'Many years ago there was a peasant (and he lived near Bludenz too) who had a great desire to have a fine large farm-house. He worked hard, and put his savings by prudently; but it wouldn't do, he never could get enough. One day, in an evil hour, he let his great desire get the better of him, and he called the devil in dreiteufelsnamen [43] to his assistance. It was not, you see, a deliberate wickedness--it was all in a moment, like. But the devil came, and didn't give him time to reflect. "I know what you want," he said; "you shall have your house and your barns and your hen-house, and all complete, this very night, without costing you a penny; but when you have enjoyed it long enough, your old worn-out carcass shall belong to me." The good peasant hesitated; and the devil, finding it necessary to add another bait, ran on: "And what is more, I'll go so far as to say that if every stone is not complete by the first cock-crow, I'll strike out even this condition, and you shall have it out and out." The peasant was dazzled with the prospect, and could not bring himself all at once to refuse the accomplishment of his darling hope. The devil shook him by the hand as a way of clenching the bargain, and disappeared. 'The peasant went home more alarmed than rejoiced, and full of fear above all that his wife should inquire the meaning of all the hammering and blustering and running hither and thither which was to be heard going on in the homestead, for she was a pious God-fearing woman. 'He remained dumb to all her inquiries, hour after hour through the night; but at last, towards morning, his courage failed him, and he told her all. She, like a good wife, gave back no word of reproach, but cast about to find a remedy. First she considered that he had done the thing thoughtlessly and rashly, and then she ascertained that at last he had given no actual consent. Finally, deciding matters were not as bad as might be, she got up, and bid him leave the issue to her. 'First she knelt down and commended herself and her undertaking to God and His holy saints; then in the small hours, when the devil's work was nearly finished, she took her lamp and spread out the wick so that it should give its greatest glare, and poured fresh oil upon it, and went out with a basket of grain to feed the hens. The cock, seeing the bright light and the good wife with her basket of food, never doubted but that it was morning, and springing up, he flapped his wings, and crowed with all his might. At that very moment the devil himself was coming by with the last roof-stone. [44] At the sound of the premature cock-crow he was so much astonished that he didn't know which way to turn, and sank into the ground bearing the stone still in his hand. 'The house belonged to the peasant by every right, but no stone could ever be made to stay on the vacant space. This inconvenience was the penance he had to endure for the desperate game he had played, and he took it cheerfully, and when the rain came in he used to kiss his good wife in gratitude for the more terrible chastisement from which she had saved him.' The jaunty postilion whipped the horses on as he thus brought his story to a close, or rather cracked his whip in the air till the mountains resounded with it, for he had slackened speed while telling his tale, and the day was wearing on. 'We must take care and not be late for the train,' he observed. 'The Herrschaften have had enough of the inn of Oberriet, and don't want to have to spend a night there, and we have no Vorarlberger-geist to speed us now-a-days.' 'Who was he?' I inquired eagerly. 'I suppose you know that all this country round about here is called the Vorarlberg, and in olden time there was a spirit that used to wander about helping travellers all along its roads. When they were benighted, it used to go before them with a light; when they were in difficulties, it used to procure them aid; if one lost his way, it used to direct him aright; till one day a poor priest came by who had been to administer a distant parishioner. His way had lain now over bog, now over torrent-beds. In the roughness of the way the priest's horse had cast a shoe. A long stretch of road lay yet before him, but no forge was near. Suddenly the Vorarlberger-geist came out of a cleft in the rock, silently set to work and shod the horse, and passed on its way as usual with a sigh. '"Vergeltsgott!" [45] cried the priest after it. '"God be praised!" exclaimed the spirit. "Now am I at last set free. These hundred years have I served mankind thus, and till now no man has performed this act of gratitude, the condition of my release." And since this time it has never been seen again.' We had now once more reached the banks of the Rhine. The driver of the luggage van held the ferry in expectation of us, and with its team it was already stowed on board. Our horses were next embarked, and then ourselves, as we sat, perched on the carriage. A couple of rough donkeys, a patriarchal goat, and half-a-dozen wild-looking half-clothed peasants, made up a freight which seemed to tax the powers of the crazy barge to the utmost; and as the three brawny ferrymen pulled it dexterously along the guide rope, the waters of the here broad and rapid river rose some inches through the chinks. All went well, however, and in another half-hour we were again astonishing the factotum of the Oberriet station with a vision of the 'Gepäck' which had puzzled him so immensely the day before. CHAPTER II. NORTH-TIROL--UNTERINNTHAL (RIGHT-INN BANK). KUFSTEIN TO ROTTENBURG. ... 'Peasant of the Alps, Thy humble virtues, hospitable home, And spirit patient, pious, proud, and free; Thy self-respect, grafted on innocent thoughts; Thy days of health, thy nights of sleep, thy toil By danger dignified, yet guiltless; hopes Of cheerful old age, and then a quiet grave With cross and garland over its green turf, And thy grandchildren's love for epitaph, This do I see!...' Byron (Manfred). When, after our forced détour, we next penetrated into Tirol, it was by the way of Kufstein. Ruffled as we had been in the meantime by Bavarian 'Rohheit,' we were glad to find ourselves again in the hands of the gentle Tirolese. Kufstein, however, is not gentle in appearance. Its vast fortress seems to shed a stifling gloom over the whole place; it looks so hard and selfish and tyrannical, that you long to get away from its influence. Noble hearts from honest Hungary have pined away within its cold strong grasp; and many a time, as my sketch-book has been turned over by Magyar friends, the page which depicted its outline--for it wears a grand and gallant form, such as the pencil cannot resist--has raised a deep sigh over the 'trauriges Andenken' it served to call up. [46] When Margaretha Maultasch ceded the country she found herself unable to govern, to Austria at the earnest request of her people, in 1363, it was stipulated that Kufstein, Kitzbühel, and Rattenberg, which had been added to it by her marriage with Louis of Bradenburg, should revert to Bavaria. These three dependencies were recovered by the Emperor Maximilian in 1504, the two latter accepting his allegiance gladly, the former holding out stoutly against him. The story of the reduction of this stronghold is almost a stain on his otherwise prudent and prosperous reign. Pienzenau, its commander, who was in the Bavarian interest, had particularly excited his ire by setting his men to sweep away with brooms the traces of the small damage which had been effected by his cannon, placed at too great a distance to do more than graze the massive walls. Philip von Recenau, Regent of Innsbruck, meantime cast two enormous field-pieces, which received the names of Weckauf and Purlepaus. These entirely turned the tide of affairs. Chronicles of the time do not mention their calibre, but declare that their missiles not only pierced the 'fourteen feet-thick wall' through and through, but entered a foot and a half into the living rock. Pienzenau's heart misgave him when he saw the work of these destructive engines, and hastened to send in his submission to the Emperor; but it was too late. 'So he is in a hurry to throw away his brooms at last, is he?' cried Maximilian. 'But he should have done it before. He has allowed the wall of this noble castle to be so disgracefully shattered, that he can make no amends but by giving up his own carcass to the same fate.' No entreaty could move the Emperor from carrying out this chastisement, and some five-and-twenty of the principal men who had held out against him were condemned to be beheaded on the spot. When eleven had fallen before the headsman's sword, Erich, Duke of Brunswick, sickening at the scene of blood, pleaded so earnestly with the Emperor, that he obtained the pardon of the rest. The eleven were buried by the pious country-people in a common grave; and who will may yet tread the ground where their remains rest in a little chapel built over their grave at Ainliff (dialectic for eleven), on the other side of the river Inn. Its situation near the frontier has made it the scene of other sieges, of which none is more endeared to Tiroleans than that of 1809, when the patriot Speckbacher distinguished himself by many a dauntless deed. If Kufstein has long had a truce to these stirring memories, many a fantastic story has floated out of it concerning the prisoners harboured there, even of late years. The Hungarian patriot brigand, Rocsla Sandor (Andrew Roshla), who won by his unscrupulous daring quite a legendary place in popular story, was long confined here. He was finally tried and condemned (but I think not executed) at Szeghedin, in July 1870; 454 other persons were included in the same trial, of whom 234 under homicidal charges; 100 homicides were laid to his charge alone, but there is no doubt that his services to the popular cause, at the same time that they condoned some of his excesses, in the popular judgment may have disposed the authorities to exaggerate the charges against him. The whole story is fantastic, and even in Kufstein, where he was almost an alien, there was admiration and sympathy underlying the shudder with which the people spoke of him. A much more interesting and no less romantic narrative, was told me of a Hungarian political prisoner, who formed the solitary instance of an escape from the stony walls of the fortress. His lady-love--and she was a lady by birth--with the heroic instincts of a Hungarian maiden, having with infinite difficulty made out where he was confined, followed him hither in peasant disguise, and with invincible perseverance succeeded, first in engaging herself as servant to the governor and then in conveying every day to her lover, in his soup, a hank of hemp. With this he twisted a rope and got safely away; and this occurred not more than six or seven years ago. St. Louis's day fell while we were at Kufstein--the name-day of the King of Bavaria; and being the border town, the polite Tiroleans make a complimentary fête of it. There was a grand musical Mass, which the officers from the Bavarian frontier attended, and a modest banquet was offered them after it. The peasants put on their holiday attire--passable enough as far as the men are concerned, but consisting mainly on the women's behalf in an ugly black cloth square-waisted dress, and a black felt broad-brimmed hat, with large gold tassels lying on the brim. After Mass the Bavarian national hymn was sung to the familiar strains of our own. All seemed gay and glad without. I returned to the primitive rambling inn; everyone was gone to take his or her part in the Kufstein idea of a holiday. There were three entrances, and three staircases; I took a wrong one, and in trying to retrace my steps passed a room through the half-open door of which I heard a sound of moaning, which arrested me. I could not find it in my heart to pass on. I pushed the door gently aside, and discovered a grey-haired old man lying comfortlessly on the bed in a state of torpor. I laid him back in a posture in which he could breathe more freely, opened his collar and gave him air, and with the aid of one or two simple means soon brought him back to consciousness. The room was barely furnished; his luggage was a small bundle tied in a handkerchief, his clothes betokened that he belonged to the respectable of the lower class. I was too desirous to converse with a genuine Tirolean peasant to refuse his invitation to sit down by his side. I had soon learnt his tale, which he seemed not a little pleased to find had an interest for a foreigner. His lot had been marked by severe trials. In early youth he had been called to lose his parents; in later life, the dear wife who had for a season clothed his home again with brightness and hope. In old age he had had a heavier trial still. His only child, the son whom he had reared in the hope that he would have been the staff of his declining years, whom he had brought up in innocence in childhood, and shielded from knowledge of evil in early youth, had gone from him, and he knew not where to find him. The boy had always had a fancy for a roving adventurous life, but it had been his hope to have kept him always near him, free from the contamination of great cities. I asked if it was not the custom in these parts for young men to go abroad and seek employment where it was more highly paid, and come back and settle on their earnings. But he shook his head proudly. It was so in Switzerland, it was so in some few valleys of Tirol, and the poor Engadeiners supplied all the cities of Europe with confectioners; but his son had no need to tramp the world in search of fortune. But what had made him most anxious was, that the night before his son left some wild young men had passed through the village. They were bold and uproarious, and his fear was that his boy might have been tempted to join them. He did not know exactly what their game was, but he had an idea they were gathering recruits to join the lawless Garibaldian bands in their attempts upon the Roman frontier. With their designs he was confident his son had no sympathy. If he had stopped to consider them, he would have shrunk from them with horror; and it was his dread that his spirited love of danger and excitement had carried him into a vortex from which he might by-and-by be longing to extricate himself in vain. It was to pray that the lad might be guided aright that he made this pilgrimage up the Thierberg--no easy journey for one of his years. He had come across hill and valley from a village of which I forget the name, but situated near Sterzing. 'But Sterzing itself is a place of pilgrimage,' I said, glad to turn to account my scanty knowledge of the sacred places of the country. 'Why did you come all this way?' 'Indeed is Sterzing,' he replied, 'a place of benedictions. It is the spot where Sterzing, our first hermit, lived, and left his name to our town. But this is the spot for those who need penance. There, in that place,' and as I followed the direction of his hand I saw through the low lattice window the lofty elevation of the Thierberg like a phantom tower, enveloped in mist, standing out against the clear sky beyond, and wondered how his palsied limbs had carried him up the steep. 'In that place, in olden time, lived a true penitent. Once it was a lordly castle, and he to whom it belonged was a rich and honoured knight; but on one occasion he forgot his knightly honour, and with false vows led astray an unthinking maiden of the village. Soon, however, the conviction of his sin came back to him clear as the sun's light, and without an hour's hesitation he put it from him. To the girl he made the best amends he could by first leading her to repentance, then procuring her admission to a neighbouring convent. But for him, from that day the lordly castle became as a hermit's cell, the sound of mirth and revelry and of friendly voices was hushed for ever. The memory of his own name even he would have wiped out, and would have men call him only, as they do to the present day, 'der Büsser'--the Penitent. And so many has his example brought to this shrine in a spirit of compunction, that the Church has endowed it with the indulgence of the Portiuncula.' What a picture of Tirolese faith it was! Instead of setting in motion the detective police, or the telegraph-wire, or the second column of the 'Times,' this old man had come many miles in the opposite direction from that his child was supposed to have taken, to bring his burden and lay it before a shrine he believed to have been made dear to heaven by tears of penance in another age, and there commend his petition to God that He might bring it to pass, accepting the suffering as a merited chastisement in a spirit of sincere penitence! He was feeling better, and I rose to go. He pressed my hand in acknowledgment of my sympathy, and I assured him of it. It was not a case for more substantial charity; I had gathered from his recital that he had no lack of worldly means. I only strove at parting to kindle a ray of hope. I said after all it might not be so bad as he imagined; his boy had been well brought up, and might perhaps be trusted to keep out of the way of evil. It was thoughtless of him not to seek his father's blessing and consent to his choice of an adventurous career, but it might be he had feared his opposition, and that he had no unworthy reason for concealing his plans. There was at least as much reason to hope as to despond, and he must look forward to his coming back, true to the instincts of his mountain home, wiser than he had set out. His pale blue eye glistened, and he gasped like one who had seen a vision. 'Ay! just so! Just so it appeared to me when I was on the Thierberg this morning! And now, in case my weak old heart did not see it clearly enough, God, in His mercy, has sent you to expound the thing more plainly to me. Now I know that I am heard.' Poor old man! I shuddered lest the hope so strongly entertained should prove delusive in the end. I may never know the result; but I felt that at all events as he was one who took all things at God's hands, nothing could, in one sense, come amiss; and for the present, at least, I saw that he went down to his house comforted. I strolled along the street, and, possessed with the type of the Tirolean peasant, as I received it from this old man, I conceived a feeling of deeper curiosity for all whom I met by the way. I thought of them as of men for whom an unseen world is a reality; who estimate prayer and sacraments and the intercession of saints above steam-power and electricity. At home one meets with one such now and then, but to be transported into a whole country of them was like waking up from a long sleep to find oneself in the age of St. Francis and St. Dominic. Whatever faults the Tirolese may have to answer for, they will not arise from religion being put out of sight. No village but has its hillside path marked with 'the Way of the Cross;' no bridge but carries the statue of S. John Nepomucene, the martyr of the Confessional; no fountain but bears the image of the local saint, a model of virtue to the place; no lone path unmarked by its way-side chapel, or its crucifix shielded from the weather by a rustic roof; no house but has its outer walls covered with memories of holy things; no room without its sacred prints and its holywater stoup. The churches are full of little rude pictures, recording scenes in which all the pleasanter events of life are gratefully ascribed to answers to prayer, while many who cannot afford this more elaborate tribute hang up a tablet with the words Hat geholfen ('He has helped me'), or more simply still, 'aus Dankbarkeit.' Longfellow has written something very true and pretty, which I do not remember well enough to quote; but most will call to mind the verses about leaving landmarks, which a weary brother seeing, may take heart again; and it is incalculable how these good people may stir up one another to hope and endurance by such testimonies of their trust in a Providence. Sometimes, again, the little tablets record that such an one has undertaken a journey. 'N. N. reiset nach N., pray for him;' and we, who have come so far so easily, smile at the short distance which is thought worthy of this importance. The Gott segne meine Reise--'May God bless my journey'--seems to come as naturally to them, however, as 'grace before meat' with us. But most of all, their care is displayed in regard to the dear departed. The spot where an accident deprived one of his life is sacred to all. 'The honourable peasant N. N. was run over here by a heavy waggon;'--'Here was N. N. carried away by the waters of the stream;' with the unfailing adjunct, 'may he rest in peace, let us pray for him;' or sometimes, as if there were no need to address the recommendation to his own neighbours, 'Stranger! pray for him.' The straggling village on the opposite bank of the Inn is called Zell, though appearing part of Kufstein. It affords the best points for viewing the gloomy old fortress, and itself possesses one or two chapels of some interest. At Kiefersfelden, at a short distance on the Bavarian border, is the so-called Ottokapelle, a Gothic chapel marking the spot where Prince Otho quitted his native soil when called to take possession of the throne of Greece. Kundl, about an hour from Kufstein, the third station, by rail, [47] though wretchedly provided with accommodation, is the place to stop at to visit the curious and isolated church of S. Leonhard auf der Wiese (in the meadow), and it is well worthy of a visit. In the year 1004 a life-sized stone image of St. Leonard was brought by the stream to this spot; 'floating,' the wonder-loving people said, but it may well be believed that some rapid swollen torrent had carried the image away in its wild course from some chapel on a higher level. The people not knowing whence it came, reckoned its advent a miracle, and set it up in the highway, that all who passed might know of it. It was not long before a no less illustrious wayfarer than the Emperor Henry II. came that way, and seeing the uncovered image set up on high, stopped to inquire its history. When he had heard it, he vowed that if his arms were prosperous in Italy he would on his return build the saint an honourable church. Success indeed attended him in the campaign, and he was crowned Emperor at Pavia, but St. Leonard and his vow were alike forgotten. The year 1012 brought him again into Italy through Tirol, and passing the spot where he had registered his vow before, his horse, foaming and stamping, refused to pass the image or carry him further. The circumstance reminded him of his promise, and he at once set to work to carry it out worthily. The church was completed within a few years, but an unhappy accident signalized its completion. A young man who had undertaken to place the ornament on the summit was seized with vertigo in the moment of completing his exploit, and losing his balance was dashed lifeless on to the ground below. [48] His remains were gathered up tenderly by the neighbours, and his skull laid as an offering at the foot of the crucifix on the high altar, where it yet remains. An inscription to the following effect is preserved in the church: 'A.D. 1019 Præsens ecclesia Sti. Leonhardi a sancto Henrico Imperatore exstructa, et anno 1020 a summo Pontifice Benedicto VIII. consecrata est,' though there would not seem to be any other record of the Pope having made the journey. S. Kunigunda, consort of Henry II., bore a great affection to the spot, and often visited it. The image of St. Leonard now in the church bears the date of 1481, and there is no record of the time when it was substituted for the original. [49] The interior has suffered a great deal during the whitewash period; but some of the original carvings are remarkable, particularly the grotesque creatures displayed on the main columns. On one a doubled-bodied lion is trampling on two dragons; on another a youth stands holding the prophetic roll of the book of revelation, and a hideous symbolical figure, with something of the form of a bear, cowers before him, showing a certain resemblance to the sculptures in the chapel-porch of Castle Tirol. Round the high altar are ten pilasters, each setting forth the figure of a saint, and all various. A great deal of the old work was destroyed, however, when it was rebuilt, about the year 1500. Between St. Leonhard and Ratfield runs the Auflängerbründl--so called from the Angerberg, celebrated as itself a very charming excursion from Kundl--a watercourse directed by the side of the road through the charity of the townspeople of Rattenberg and Ratfeld, in the year 1424, with the view that no wayfarer might faint by the way for want of a drink of pure and refreshing water. Rattenberg is a little town of some importance on account of the copper works in the neighbourhood, but not much frequented by visitors, though it has three passable inns. It is curious that the castle of Rottenburg near Rothholz, though so like in name, has a different derivation, the latter arising from the red earth of the neighbourhood, and the former from an old word Rat, meaning 'richness,' and in old documents it is found spelt Rat in berc (riches in the mountain). This was the favoured locality of the holy Nothburga's earthly career. St. Nothburga is eminently characteristic of her country. She was the poorest of village maidens, and yet attained the highest and most lasting veneration of her people by the simple force of virtue. She was born in 1280. The child of pious parents, she drank in their good instructions with an instinctive aptitude. Their lessons of pure and Christian manners seemed as it were to crystallize and model themselves in her conduct; she grew up a living picture of holy counsels. She was scarcely seventeen when the lord of Castle Rottenburg, hearing of her perfect life, desired to have her in his household. Her parents, knowing she could have no better protectors, when they were no more, than their honoured knight Henry of Rottenburg and his good wife Gutta, gladly accepted the proposal. [50] In her new sphere Nothburga showed how well grounded was her virtue. It readily adapted itself to her altered position, and she became as faithful and devoted to her employers as she had been loving and obedient to her parents. In time she was advanced to the highest position of trust in the castle, and the greatest delight of her heart was fulfilled when she was nominated to superintend the distribution of alms to the poor. Her prudence enabled her to distinguish between real and feigned need, and while she delighted in ministering to the one, she was firm in resisting the appeals of the other. Her general uprightness won for her the respect of all with whom she had to do, and she was the general favourite of all classes. Such bright days could not last; the enemy of God's saints looked on with envy, and desired to 'sift' her 'as wheat.' The knight's son, Henry VI., in progress of time brought home his bride, Ottilia by name; and according to local custom, the older Knight Henry ceded his authority to the young castellan, living himself in comparative retirement. Ottilia was young and thoughtless, and haughty to boot, and it was not without a feeling of bitter resentment that she saw both her husband and his parents looked to Nothburga to supply her deficiencies in the management of the household. She resolved to get rid of the faithful servant, and her fury against her was only increased in proportion as she realized that the perfect uprightness of her conduct rendered it impossible to discover any pretext for dismissing her. For Nothburga it was a life of daily silent martyrdom. There were a thousand mortifications in her mistress's power to inflict, and she lost no opportunity of annoying her, but never once succeeded in ruffling the gentleness of her spirit. 'My life has been too easy hitherto,' she would say in the stillness of her own heart; 'now I am honoured at last by admission to the way of the Cross.' There was no brightness, no praise, no subsequent hope of distinction, to be derived from her patience; they were stabs in the dark, seen by no human eye, which made her bleed day by day. Yet she would not complain, much less seek to change her service. She said it would have been ungrateful to her first benefactors and employers to leave them, so long as she could spend herself for them, and ungrateful to God to shirk the trial He had lovingly sent her. A crucial test of her fidelity, however, was at hand. The day came when Knight Henry and Gutta his wife were called to their long rest, and with them the chief protection of Nothburga departed. She was now almost at Ottilia's mercy. One of the first consequences of this change was that she was deprived of her favourite office of relieving the poor; and not only their customary alms were stopped, but their dole of food also; and as a final provocation, she was required to feed the pigs with the broken meat which she had been accustomed to husband for the necessitous. The good girl's heart bled to see the needy whom she had been wont to relieve turned hungry away. The only means that occurred to her of remedying the evil in some measure, was to deny herself her own food and distribute it among them. Restricting her own diet to bread and water, she saved a little basketful, which she would take down every evening when work was done to the foot of the Leuchtenburg, where the poorest of the castle dependents lived; and the blessing which multiplied the loaves in the wilderness made her scanty savings suffice to feed all who had come to beg of her. That Nothburga contrived to feed the poor of a whole district, in spite of her orders to the contrary, of course became in time a ground of complaint for Ottilia. She had now a plausible reason for stirring up the Knight Henry against her. He had always defended her, out of regard for his parents' memory; but coming one evening past the Leuchtenburg, at Ottilia's instigation, he met Nothburga with her little burden, and asked her what she carried. Here the adversary of the saints had prepared for her a great trial, says the legend. She, in her innocence, told fairly and honestly the import of her errand; but to the Knight's eyes, who had meantime untied her apron, the contents appeared, the legend says, to be wood shavings; and further, putting the wine-flask to his lips, it seemed to him to contain soap-suds. To her charitable intention he had made no objection, but at this, which appeared to him a studied affront, he was furious. He would listen to no explanation, but, returning at once to the castle, he gave Ottilia free and full leave to deal with the offending handmaiden as she pleased. Ottilia readily put the permission into effect by directing the castle guard to forbid her, on her return, ever again to pass the threshold of the castle. This blow told with terrible effect on the poor girl. During her service at the castle both her parents had died; she had now no home to resort to. Putting her trust in God, however, she retraced her steps alone through the darkness, and found shelter in a cottage of one of her clients. Her path was watched by the angels, who marked the track with fair seeds; and even to this day the hill-side which her feet so often pressed on her holy errand is said to be marked with a peculiar growth of flowers. The next day she applied to a peasant of Eben to engage her as a field labourer. The peasant was exceedingly doubtful of her capacity for the work after the comparatively delicate nature of her previous mode of life. Her hardy perseverance and determination, aided by the grace of God, on which she implicitly relied, overcame all obstacles, and old Valentine soon found that her presence brought a blessing on all his substance. She had been with him about a year, when one day, being Saturday, he was very anxious to gather in the remainder of his harvest before an apprehended storm, and desired Nothburga, with the other reapers, to continue their labours after the hour of eve, when the holy rest was reckoned to have commenced. Nothburga, usually so obedient to his wishes, had the courage to refuse to infringe the commandment of religion; and to manifest that the will of God was on her side, showed him her sickle resting from labour, suspended in the air. Valentine, convinced by the prodigy, yielded to her representations, and her piety was more and more honoured by all the neighbours. Soon after this, Ottilia, in the midst of her health and strength, was stricken with a dangerous illness. In presence of the fear of death she remembered her harsh treatment of Nothburga, and sent for her to make amends for the past. As the good girl reached her bed-side she was just under the influence of a frightful attack of fevered remorse. Her long golden hair waved in untended masses over the pillow, like the flames of purgatory; her eyes glared like wheels of fire. Unconscious of what was passing round her, and filled only with her distempered fancies, she cried piteously: 'Drive away those horrid beasts! don't let them come near me! And why do you let those pale-faced creatures pursue me with their hollow glances? If I did deny them food, I cannot help it now! Oh! keep those horrid swine off me! If I did give them the portion of the poor, it is no reason you should let them defile me and trample on me!' Nothburga was melted with compassion, and her glance of sympathy seemed to chase away the horrid vision. Come to herself, and calm again, Otillia recognized her and begged her pardon, which we may well believe she readily accorded; and shortly after, having reconciled herself to God with true compunction, she fell asleep in peace. [51] Henry proposed to Nothburga to come and resume her old post in the castle, and moreover to add to it that of superintending the nurture of his only boy. Nothburga gladly accepted his offer, but, in her strict integrity, insisted on accepting no remission from the three years' service under which she had bound herself to Valentine. This concluded, she was received back with open arms at Castle Rottenburg, whither she took with her one of Valentine's daughters to instruct in household duties, that she might be meet to succeed her when her time should come. Days of peace on earth are not for the saints. Her fight was fought out. The privations she had undergone in sparing her food for the poor, and her subsequent exposure in the field, brought on an illness, under which she shortly after sank. In conformity with her express desire, her body was laid on a bier, to which two young oxen were yoked, and left to follow their own course. The willing beasts tramped straight away over hill and dale and water-course till they came to the village of Eben, then consisting of but a couple of huts of the poor tillers of the soil, and Valentine's homestead; now, a thriving village, its two inns crowded every holiday with peasants, who make their excursions coincide with a visit of devotion to the peasant maiden's shrine. A small field-chapel of St. Ruprecht was then the only place of devotion, but here next morning the body of the holy maiden was found carefully laid at the foot of the altar, and here it was reverently buried, and for centuries it has been honoured by all the country round. [52] In 1434 the Emperor Maximilian, and Christopher, Prince-Bishop of Brixen, built a church over the spot, of which the ancient chapel served as the quire. In 1718 Gaspar Ignatius, Count of Künigl, the then Prince-Bishop, had the remains exhumed, and carried them with pomp to the neighbouring town of Schwatz, where they were left while the church was restored, and an open sarcophagus prepared for them to remain exposed for the veneration of the faithful, which was completed in 1738. In 1838 a centenary festival was observed with great rejoicing, and on March 27, 1862, the cycle of Nothburga's honour was completed in her solemn canonization at Rome. The lords of Rottenburg had had possession of this territory, and had been the most powerful family of Tirol, ever since the eighth century; one branch extending its sway over the valleys surrounding the Inn, and another branch commanding the country bordering the Etsch; Leuchtenburg and Fleims being the chief fortress-seats of these latter. Their vast power greatly harassed the rulers of Tirol. In every conflict between the native or Austrian princes and the Dukes of Bavaria their influence would always turn the scale, and they often seem to have exercised it simply to show their power. Their family pride grew so high, that it became a proverb among the people. It was observed that just during the period of the holy Nothburga's sojourn in the castle the halo of her humble spirit seemed to exercise a charm over their ruling passion. That was no sooner brought to a close than it once more burst forth, and with intenser energy, and by the end of a century more so blinded them that they ventured on an attempt to seize the supreme power over the land. Friedrich mit der leeren Tasche was not a prince to lose his rights without a worthy struggle; and then ensued one which was a noteworthy instance of the protection which royalty often afforded to the poor against the oppressions of a selfish aristocracy in the Middle Ages. Friedrich was the idol of the people: in his youth his hardy temperament had made him the companion not only of the mountain huntsman, but even of the mountain hewer of wood. Called to rule over the country, he always stood out manfully for the liberties of the peasant and the burghers of the little struggling communities of Tirol. The lords and knights who found their power thereby restricted were glad to follow the standard of Henry VI., Count of Rottenburg, in his rebellions. Forgetting all patriotism in his struggle for power, Henry called to his aid the Duke of Bavaria, who readily answered his appeal, reckoning that as soon as, by aiding Henry, he had driven Friedrich out, he would shortly after be able to secure the prize for himself. The Bavarian troops, ever rough and lawless, now began laying waste the country in ruthless fashion. A Bavarian bishop, moved to compassion by the sufferings of the poor people, though not of his own flock, pleaded so earnestly with the Duke, that he made peace with Friedrich, who was able to inflict due chastisement on Henry, for, powerful as he was, he was no match for him as a leader. He fell prisoner into Friedrich's hands, who magnanimously gave him his liberty; but, according to the laws of the time, his lands and fiefs were forfeit. Though the spirit of the high-minded noble was unbroken, the darling aim of his race which had devolved upon him for execution was defeated; his occupation gone, and his hopes quenched, he wandered about, the last of his race, not caring even to establish himself in any of the fiefs which he held under the Duke of Bavaria, and which consequently yet remained to him. The history of Henry VI. of Rottenburg has a peculiarly gloomy and fantastic character. Ambitious to a fault, it was one cause of his ill success that he exercised himself in the nobler pursuits of life rather than in the career of arms. Letters of his which are still preserved show that he owed the ascendancy he exercised over his neighbours quite as much to his strength of character and grasp of mind as to his title and riches. No complaint is brought against him in chronicles of the time of niggardliness towards the Church, or of want of uprightness or patience as a judge; he is spoken of as if he had learned to make himself respected as well as feared. But he lived apart in a lofty sphere of his own, seldom mixing in social intercourse, while his refined tastes prevented his becoming an adept in the art of war. Friedrich, on the other hand, who was a hero in the field by his bravery, was also the favourite of the people through his frank and ready-spoken sympathy. Henry had perhaps, on the whole, the finer--certainly the more cultivated--character, but Friedrich was more the man of the time; and it was this doom of succumbing to one to whom he felt himself superior which pressed most heavily on the last of the Rottenburgers. What became of him was never known; consequently many wild stories became current to account for his end: that he never laid his proud head low at the call of death, but yet wanders on round the precincts where he once ruled; that his untamable ambition made him a prey to the Power of Evil, who carried him off, body and soul, to the reward of the proud; that, shunning all sympathy and refusing all assistance, he died, untended and unknown, in a spot far from the habitations of men. It would appear most probable, however, that his death, like his life, was a contrast with the habits of his age: it is thought that, unable to bear his humiliation, he fell by his own hand within a twelvemonth of his defeat. The deliverance from this powerful vassal, and the falling in of his domains, tended greatly to strengthen and consolidate Friederich's rule over Tirol, and ultimately to render the government of the country more stable, and more beneficial to the people. Not long after Henry VI.'s disappearance a mysterious fire broke out in the old castle on two separate occasions, laying the greater part of it in ruins. But on each occasion it was noticed that the devouring element, at the height of its fury, spared the little room which was honoured as that in which the holy Nothburga had dwelt. A gentler story about this neighbourhood is of a boy tending sheep upon the neighbouring height, who found among some ruins a beautiful bird's-nest. What was his surprise, on examining his treasure, to find it full of broken shells which the fledglings had cast off and left behind them, but shells of a most singular kind. Still greater was his astonishment when, on showing them at home, his parents told him they were no shells, but pieces of precious ore. The affair caused the peasants to search in the neighbourhood, and led to the discovery of one of those veins of metal the working of which brought so great prosperity to Tirol in the fifteenth century, and which are not yet extinct. Their discovery was always by accident, and often by occasion of some curious incident, while the fact that such finds were to be hit upon acted as a strong stimulant to the imagination of a romantic and wonder-loving people, giving belief to all sorts of fables to tell how the treasure was originally deposited, and how subsequently it was preserved and guarded. CHAPTER III. NORTH TIROL--UNTERINNTHAL (RIGHT INN-BANK). THE ZILLERTHAL. 'I may venture to say that among the nations of Europe, and I have more or less seen them all, I do not know any one in which there is so large a measure of real piety as among the Tyroleans.... I do not recollect to have once heard in the country an expression savouring of scepticism.'--Inglis. The Zillerthal claims to bear the palm over all the Valleys of Tirol for natural beauty--a claim against which the other valleys may, I think, find something to say. There is an organised service of carriages (the road is only good for an einspanner--one-horse vehicle) into the Zillerthal, at both Brixlegg and Jenbach, taking between four and five hours to reach Zell, an hour and a-half more to Mayrhofen. Its greatest ornaments are the castles of Kropfsberg, Lichtwer, and Matzen; the Reiterkogel and the Gerlos mountains, forming the present boundary against Salzburg; and the Ziller, with its rapid current which gave it its name (from celer), [53] its tributary streams might very well have received the same appellation, for their celerity is often so impetuous that great damage is done to the inhabitants of the neighbourhood. Before starting for the Zillerthal I may mention two castles which may also be seen from Jenbach, though like it they belong in strictness to the chapter on the Left Inn-bank. One is Thurnegg by name, which was restored as a hunting-seat by Archduke Ferdinand; and at the instance of his second wife, the pious Anna Katharina of Mantua, he added a chapel, in order that his hunting-parties might always have the opportunity of hearing Mass before setting out for their sport. Another is Tratzberg, which derived its name from its defiant character. It is situated within an easy walk of Jenbach. Permission to visit it is readily given, for it counts as a show-place. It may be taken on the way to S. Georgenberg and Viecht, but it occupies too much time, and quite merits the separate excursion by its collections and its views. Frederick sold it in 1470 to Christian Tänzel, a rich mining proprietor of the neighbourhood, who purchased with it the right to bear the title of Knight of Tratzberg. No expense was spared in its decoration, and its paintings and marbles made it the wonder of the country round. In 1573 it passed into the hands of the Fuggers, and at the present day belongs to Count Enzenberg, who makes it an occasional residence. A story is told of it which is in striking contrast to that mentioned of Thurnegg. One of the knights of the castle in ancient time had a reputation for caring more for the pleasures of the chase than for the observances of religion. Though he could get up at an early hour enough at the call of his Jäger's horn, the chapel bell vainly wooed him to Mass. In vain morning by morning his guardian angel directed the sacred sound upon his ear; the knight only rolled himself up more warmly in the coverlet, and said, 'No need to stir yet, the dogs are not brought round till five o'clock.' 'Ding--dong--dang! Come--to--Mass! Ding--dong--dang!' sang the bells. 'No, I can't,' yawned the knight, and covered his ear with the bed-clothes. The bell was silent, and the knight knew that the pious people who had to work hard all day for their living, and yet spared half an hour to ask God's blessing on their labours, were gone into the chapel. He fancied he saw the venerable old chaplain bowing before the altar, and smiting his breast; he saw the faithful rise from their knees while the glad tidings of the Gospel were announced, and they proclaimed their faith in them in the Creed; he heard them fall on their knees again while the sacred elements were offered on the altar and the solemn words of the consecration pronounced; he saw little Johann, the farrier's son, bow his head reverently on the steps, and then sound the threefold bell which told of the most solemn moment of the sacred mysteries; and the chapel bell took up the note, and announced the joyful news to those whom illness or necessity forced to remain away. Then hark! what was that? The rocks under the foundation of the castle rattled together, and all the stones of its massive walls chattered like the teeth of an old woman stricken with fear. The three hundred and sixty-five windows of the edifice rattled in their casements, but above them all sounded the piercing sound of the knight's cry of anguish. The affrighted people rushed into the knight's chamber; and what was their horror when, still sunk in the soft couch where he was wont to take his ease, there he lay dead, while his throat displayed the print of three black and burning claws. The lesson they drew was that the knight, having received from his guardian angel the impulse to repair his sloth by at least then rising to pay the homage which the bell enjoined, had rejected even this last good counsel, thereby filling up the measure of his faults. For years after marks were shown upon the wall as having been sprinkled by his blood! The first little town that reckons in the Zillerthal is Strass, a very unpretending place, and then Schlitters. At Schlitters they have a story of a butcher who, going to Strass to buy an ox, had scarcely crossed the Zill and got a little way from home, than he saw lying by the way-side a heap of the finest wheat. Not liking to appropriate property which might have a legitimate owner, he contented himself with putting a few grains in his pocket, and a few into his sack, as a specimen. As he went by the way his pockets and his sack began to get heavier and heavier, till it seemed as if the weight would burst them through. Astonished at the circumstance he put in his hand, and found them all full of shining gold. As soon as he had recovered his composure, he set off at the top of his speed, and, heeding neither hill or dale, regained the spot where he had first seen the wheat. But it was no more to be seen. If he had had faith to commend himself to God on his first surprise, say the peasants, and made the holy sign of redemption, the whole treasure would have been his. There is another tradition at Schlitters of a more peculiar character. It is confidently affirmed that the village once boasted two churches, though but a very small one would supply the needs of the inhabitants. Hormayr has sifted the matter to the bottom, and explains it in this way. There lived in the neighbourhood two knights, one belonging to the Rottenburger, and the other to the Freundsberger family. Now the latter had a position of greater importance, but the former possessed a full share of family haughtiness, and would not yield precedence to any one. In order not to be placed on a footing of inferiority, or even of equality, with his rival, he built a second church, which he might attend without being brought into contact with him. No expense was spared, and the church was solidly built enough; but no blessing seemed to come on the edifice so built, no pains could ever keep it in repair, and at last, after crumbling into ruin, every stone of it disappeared. Kropfsberg is a fine ruin, belonging to Count Enzenberg, seen a little above Strass, on a commanding height between the high road and the Inn. It is endeared to the memory of the Tiroleans by having been the spot where, on St. Michael's Day, 1416, their favourite Friedrich mit der leeren Tasche was reconciled with his brother Ernst der Eiserne, who, after the Council of Constance had pronounced its ban on Frederick, had thought to possess himself of his dominions. The largest town of the Zillerthal is Fügen, a short distance below Schlitters, and the people are so proud of it, that they have a saying ever in their mouths, 'There is but one Vienna and one Fügen in the world!' It doubtless owes its comparative liveliness and prosperity to its château being kept up and often inhabited by its owners (the Countess of Dönhof and her family). This is also a great ornament to the place, having been originally built in the fifteenth century by the lords of Fieger, though unhappily the period of its rebuilding (1733) was not one very propitious to its style. The sculpture in the church by the native artist, Nissl, is much more meritorious. The church of Ried, a little further along the valley, is adorned with several very creditable pictures by native artists. It is the native place of one of the bravest of the defenders of throne and country, so celebrated in local annals of the early part of the century, Sebastian Riedl. He was only thirty-nine at his death in 1821. Once, on an occasion of his fulfilling a mission to General Blucher, he received from him a present of a hussar's jacket, which he wore at the battle of Katzbach, and it is still shown with pride by his compatriots. The Zillerthal was the only part of Tirol where Lutheranism ever obtained any hold over the people. The population was very thin and scattered, consequently they were out of the way of the regular means of instruction in their own faith; and it often happened, when their dwellings and lands were devastated by inundations, that they were driven to seek a livelihood by carrying gloves, bags, and other articles made of chamois leather, also of the horns of goats and cattle, into the neighbouring states of Germany. Hence they often came back imbued with the new doctrines, and bringing books with them, which may have spread them further. This went on, though without attracting much attention, till the year 1830, when they demanded permission to erect a church of their own. The Stände of Tirol were unanimous, however, to resist any infringement of the unity of belief which had so long been preserved in the country. The Emperor confirmed their decision, and gave the schismatics the option of being reconciled with the Church, or of following their opinions in other localities of the empire where Lutheran communities already existed. A considerable number chose the latter alternative, and peace was restored to the Zillerthal. Every facility was given them by the government for making the move advantageously, and the inhabitants, who had been long provoked by the scorn and ridicule with which the exiles had treated their time-honoured observances, held a rejoicing at the deliverance. At the farther end of the valley is Zell, which though smaller in population than Fügen, has come to be considered its chief town. Its principal inn, for there are several--zum Post--if I recollect right, claims to be not merely a Gasthaus, but a Gasthof. The Brauhaus, however, with less pretension, is a charming resort of the old-fashioned style, under the paternal management of Franz Eigner, whose daughters sing their local melodies with great zest and taste. The church, dedicated to St. Vitus, is modern, having been built in 1771-82; but its slender green steeple is not inelegant. It contains some meritorious frescoes by Zeiler. The town contains some most picturesque buildings, as the Presbytery, grandiloquently styled the Dechanthof, one or two educational establishments, several well-to-do private houses, and the town-hall, once a flourishing brewery, which failed--I can hardly guess how, for the chief industry of the place is supplying the neighbourhood with beer. A mile beyond Zell is Hainzenberg, where the process of gold-washing on a small scale may be studied, said to be carried on by the owner, the Bishop of Brizen, on a sort of ultra-co-operative principle, as a means of support to the people of the place, without profit to himself. There is also a rather fine waterfall in the neighbourhood, and an inn where luncheon may be had. The most interesting circumstance, perhaps, in connexion with Zell is the Kirchweih-fest, which is very celebrated in all the country round. I was not fortunate enough to be in the neighbourhood at the right time of year to witness it. On the other side of the Hainzenberg, where the mountain climber can take his start for the Gerlozalp, is a little sanctuary called Mariä-rastkapelle, and behind it runs a sparkling brook. Of the chapel the following singular account is given:--In olden time there stood near the stream a patriarchal oak sacred to Hulda; [54] after the introduction of Christianity the tree was hewn down, and as they felled it they heard Hulda cry out from within. The people wanted to build up a chapel on the spot in honour of the Blessed Virgin, and began to collect the materials. No sooner had the labourers left their work, however, than there appeared an army of ravens, who, setting themselves vigorously to the task, carried every stone and every balk of wood to a neighbouring spot. This happened day after day, till at last the people took it as a sign that the soil profaned by the worship of Hulda was not pleasing to heaven, and so they raised their chapel on the place pointed out by the ravens, where it now stands. After Mayrhof, the next village (with three inns), in the neighbourhood of which garnets are found and mills for working them abound, the Zillerthal spreads out into numerous branches of great picturesqueness, but adapted only to the hardy pedestrian, as the Floitenthal, the Sondergrundthal, the Hundskehlthal (Dog's-throat valley), the Stillupethal, with its Teufelsteg, a bridge spanning a giddy ravine, and its dashing series of waterfalls. The whole closed in by the Zemmer range and its glaciers, the boundary against South-Tirol, said to contain some of the finest scenery and best hunting-grounds in the country. It has been also called the 'el Dorado' of the botanist and the mineralogist. The most important of these by-valleys is the Duxerthal, by non-Tiroleans generally written Tuxerthal, a very high-lying tract of country, and consequently one of the coldest and wildest districts of Tirol. Nevertheless, its enclosed and secluded retreat retains a saying perhaps many thousand years old, that once it was a bright and fertile spot yielding the richest pastures, and that then the population grew so wanton in their abundance that they wasted their substance. Then there came upon them from above an icy blast, before which their children and their young cattle sank down and died; and the herbage was, as it were, bound up, and the earth was hardened, so that it only brought forth scarce and stunted herbs, and the mountain which bounded their pleasant valley itself turned to ice, and is called to this day die gefrorene Wand, the frozen wall. The scattered population of this remote valley numbered so few souls, that they depended on neighbouring villages for their ecclesiastical care, and during winter when shut in by the snow within their natural fastnesses, were cut off from all spiritual ministration, so that the bodies of those who died were preserved in a large chest, of which the remains are yet shown, until the spring made their removal to Mattrey possible. In the middle of the seventeenth century they numbered 645 souls, and have now increased to about 1,400; about the year 1686 they built a church of their own, which is now served by two or three priests. For the first couple of miles the valley sides are so steep, that the only level ground between them is the bed of an oft-times torrential stream, but yet they are covered almost to the very top with a certain kind of verdure; further on it widens out into the district of Hinterdux, which is a comparatively pleasant cheerful spot, with some of the small cattle (which are reared here as better adapted to the gradients on which they have to find their food,) browsing about, and sundry goats and sheep, quite at home on the steeps. But scarce a tree or shrub is to be seen--just a few firs, and here and there a solitary mountain pine; and in the coldest season the greatest suffering is experienced from want of wood to burn. The only resource is grubbing up the roots remaining from that earlier happier time, which but for this proof might have been deemed fabulous. The hardships which the inhabitants of this valley cheerfully undergo ought to serve as a lesson of diligence indeed. The whole grass-bearing soil is divided among them. The more prosperous have a cow or more of their own, by the produce of which they live; others take in cows from Innsbruck and Hall to graze. The butter they make becomes an article of merchandise, the transport of which over the mountain paths provides a hard and precarious livelihood for a yet poorer class; the pay is about a halfpenny per lb. per day, and to make the wage eke out a man will carry a hundred and a woman fifty to seventy pounds through all weathers and over dangerous paths, sleeping by night on the hard ground, the chance of a bundle of hay in winter being a luxury; and one of their snow-covered peaks is with a certain irony named the Federbett. They make some six or seven cwt. of cheese in the year, but this is kept entirely for home consumption. The care of these cattle involves a labour which only the strongest constitution could stand--a continual climbing of mountains in the cold, often in the dark, during great part of the year allowing scarcely four or five hours for sleep. Nor is this their only industry. They contrive also to grow barley and flax; this never ripens, yet they make from it a kind of yarn, which finds a ready sale in Innsbruck; they weave from it too a coarse linen, which helps to clothe them, together with the home-spun wool of their sheep. Also, by an incredible exercise of patience, they manage to heap up and support a sufficient quantity of earth round the rough and stony soil of their valley to set potatoes, carrots, and other roots. Notwithstanding all these hardships, they are generally a healthy race, remarkable for their endurance, frugality, and love of home. Neither does their hard life make them neglect the improvement of the mind; nowhere are schools more regularly attended, although the little children have many of them an hour or two's walk through the snow. The church is equally frequented; so that if the great cold be sent, as the legend teaches, as a chastisement, [55] the people seem to have had grace given them to turn it to good account. The Zemgrund, Zamsergrund, and the Schwarzensteingrund, are other pedestrian excursions much recommended from Mayrhof, but all equally require the aid of local guides, and have less to repay toil than those already described. Travellers who merely pass through Tirol by rail may catch a sight of the mountains which hem in the Duxerthal, just after passing the station of Steinach, on their left hand, when facing the south. CHAPTER IV. NORTH TIROL--UNTERINNTHAL (RIGHT INN-BANK). (ZILLERTHAL CUSTOMS.--THE WILDSCHÖNAU.) Deep secret springs lie buried in man's heart, Which Nature's varied aspect works at will; Whether bright hues or shadows she impart, Or fragrant odours from her breath distil, Or the clear air with sounds melodious fill; She speaks a language with instruction fraught, And Art from Nature steals her mimic skill, Whose birds, whose rills, whose sighing winds first taught That sound can charm the soul, and rouse each noble thought. Lady Charlotte Bury. We had parted from the Zillerthal, and had once more taken our places in the railway carriage at Jenbach for a short stage to reach Kundl, [56] as a base of operations for visiting the Wildschönau, as well as the country on the other side of the Inn. The entry was effected with the haste usual at small stations, where the advent of a traveller, much more of a party of tourists, is an exceptional event. The adjustment of our bags and rugs was greatly facilitated by the assistance of the only occupant of the compartment into which we were thrust; and when we had settled down and expressed our thanks for his urbanity, I observed that he eyed us with an amused but not unpleasant scrutiny. At last his curiosity overcame his reticence. 'I have frequent occasion to travel this way to Munich and Vienna,' he said, 'and I do not remember ever to have fallen in with any strangers starting from Jenbach.' The conversation so opened soon revealed that our new friend, though spending most of his time in the Bavarian and Austrian capitals, nevertheless retained all a mountaineer's fondness for the Tirolese land, which had given him birth some seventy years before. He was greatly interested in our exploration of the Zillerthal, but much annoyed that we were leaving instead of entering it; had it been the other way, he said, he would have afforded us an acquaintance with local customs such as, he was sure, no other part of Europe could outvie. I assured him I had been disappointed at not coming across them during our brief visit, but fully hoped on some future occasion to have better success. He warmly recommended me not to omit the attempt, and for my encouragement cited a local adage testifying to the attractions of the valley-- Wer da kommt in's Zillerthal Der kommt gewiss zum Zweitenmal. [57] He was interesting us much in his vividly-coloured sketches of peasant life, when the train came to a stand; the guard shouted 'Kundl,' and we were forced to part. He gave us an address in Munich, however, where we were afterwards fortunate enough to find him; and he then gave me some precious particulars, which I was not slow to garner. He seemed to know the people well, having lived much among them in his younger days, and claimed for them--perhaps with some little partiality--the character of being industrious, temperate, moral, and straightforward, even above the other dwellers in Tirol; and no less, of being physically the finest race. Their pure bracing mountain air, the severe struggle which nature wages with them in their cultivation of the fruits of the soil, and the hardy athletic pursuits with which they vary their round of agricultural labour, tend to maintain and ever invigorate this original stock of healthfulness. Their athletic games are indeed an institution to which they owe much, and which they keep up with a devotion only second to that with which they cultivate their religious observances. Every national and social festival is celebrated with these games. The favourite is the scheibenschiessen, or shooting at a mark, for accuracy in which they are celebrated in common with the inhabitants of all other districts of the country, but are beaten by none; their stutze (short-barrelled rifle) they regard more in the light of a friend and companion than a weapon, and dignify it with the household name of the bread-winner. Wrestling is another favourite sport; to be the champion wrestler of the hamlet is a distinction which no inhabitant of the Zillerthal would barter for gold. The best 'Haggler,' 'Mairraffer,' and 'Roblar'--three denominations of wrestlers--are regarded somewhat in the light of a superior order of persons, and command universal respect. In wilder times, it is true, this ran into abuse; and some who had attained excellence in an art so dangerous when misapplied betook themselves to a life of violence and freebooting; but this has entirely passed away now, and anything like a highway robbery is unheard of. The most chivalrous rules guard the decorum of the game, which every bystander feels it a point of honour to maintain; the use even of the stossring, a stout metal ring for the little finger, by which a telling and sometimes disfiguring blow may be given by a dexterous hand, is discouraged. It is still worn, however, and prized more than as a mere ornament--as a challenge of the wearer's power to wield it if he choose, or if provoked to show his prowess. Running in races--which, I know not why, they call springen--obtains favour at some seasons of the year. At bowls and skittles, too, they are famous hands; and in their passion for the games have originated a number of fantastic stories of how the fairies and wild men of the woods indulge in them too. Many a herdsman, on his long and solitary watch upon the distant heights, gives to the noises of nature which he has heard, but could not account for, an origin which lives in the imagination of those to whom he recounts it on his return home; and his fancies are recorded as actual events. But that the spirits play at skittles, and with gold and silver balls, is further confirmed by peasants who have lost their way in mists and snow-storms, and whose troubled dreams have made pleasant stories. One of these, travelling with his pedlar's pack, sought refuge from the night air in the ruined castle of Starkenberg, the proud stronghold of a feudal family, second only in importance to the Rottenburgers, and equally brought low by Friedrich mit der leeren Tasche. The pedlar was a bold wrestler, and felt no fear of the airy haunters of ruined castles. He made a pillow of his pack, and laid him down to sleep as cosily as if at home, in the long dank grass; nevertheless, when the clock of the distant village church--to whose striking he had been listening hour by hour with joy, as an earnest that by the morning light he would know how to follow its guiding to the inhabited locality it denoted--sang out the hour of midnight, twelve figures in ancient armour stalked into the hall, and set themselves to play at bowls, for which they were served with skulls. The pedlar was a famous player, and nothing daunted, took up a skull, and set himself to play against them, and beat them all; then there was a shout of joy, such as mortal ears had never heard, and the twelve spirits declared they were released. Scarcely had they disappeared, when ten more spirits, whom the pedlar concluded like the last to be retainers of the mighty Starkenberger of old, entered by different doors, which they carefully locked behind them, and then bringing our hero the keys, begged him to open the doors each with the right one. The pedlar was a shrewd fellow; and though doors, keys, and spirits were each alike of their kind, his observation had been so accurate that he opened each with the right key without hesitation, whereupon the ten spirits declared themselves released too. Then came in the Evil One, furious with the pedlar, who was setting free all his captives, and swore he would have him in their stead. But the pedlar demanded fair play, and offered to stake his freedom on a game with his Arch-Impiety. The pedlar won, and the demon withdrew in ignominy; but the released spirits came round their deliverer, and loaded him with as much gold and valuable spoil as he could carry. This story seemed to me to belong to a class not unfrequently met with, but yet differing from the ordinary run of legends on this subject, inasmuch as the spirits, who were generally believed to be bound to earth in penance, were released by no act of Christian virtue, and without any appeal to faith; and I could not help asking my old friend if he did not think this very active clever pedlar might have been one of those who according to his own version had indulged in freebooting tendencies, and that having with a true Zillerthaler's tendencies pined to return to his native valley, he had invented the tale to account for his accession of fortune, and the nature of his possessions. I think my friend was a little piqued at my unmasking his hero, but he allowed it was not an improbable solution for the origin of some similar tales. Prizes, he went on to tell me, are often set up for excellence in these games, which are cherished as marks of honour, without any reference to their intrinsic value. And so jealously is every distinction guarded, that a youth may not wear a feather or the sprig of rosemary, bestowed by a beloved hand, in his jaunty hat, unless he is capable of proving his right to it by his pluck and muscular development. Dancing is another favourite recreation, and is pursued with a zest which makes it a healthful and useful exercise too. The Schnodahüpfl and the Hosennagler are as dear to the Zillerthaler as the Bolera to the Andalusian or the Jota to the Aragonese; like the Spanish Seguidillas, too, the Zillerthalers accompany their dance with sprightly songs, which are often directed to inciting each other not to flag. Another amusement, in which they have a certain similarity with Spaniards, is cow-fighting. But it is not a mere sport, and cruelty is as much avoided as possible, for the beasts are made to fight only with each other, and only their natural weapons--each other's horns--are brought against them. The victorious cow is not only the glory and darling of her owner, who loads her with garlands and caresses; but the fight serves to ascertain the hardy capacity of the animals as leaders of the herd, an office which is no sinecure, when they have to make their way to and from steep pastures difficult of access. [58] Ram and goat fights are also held in the same way, and with the same object. The chief occasions for exercising these pastimes are the village festivals, the Kirchtag, or anniversary of the Church consecration, the Carnival season, weddings and baptisms, and the opening of the season for the Scheibenschiessen; also the days of pilgrimages to various popular shrines; and the Primizen and Sekundizen--the first Mass of their pastors, and its fiftieth anniversary--general festivals all over Tirol. A season of great enjoyment is the Carnival, which with them begins at the Epiphany. Their great delight then is to go out in the dusk of evening, when work is over, disguised in various fantastic dresses, and making their way round from house to house, set the inmates guessing who they can be. As they are very clever in arranging all the accessories of their assumed character, changing their voice and mien, each visit is the occasion of the most laughable mistakes. In the towns, the Carnival procession is generally got up with no little taste and artistic skill. The arch-buffoon goes on ahead, a loud and merry jingle of bells announcing his advent at every movement of the horse he bestrides, collects the people out of every house. Then follow, also mounted, a train of maskers, Turks, soldiers, gipsies, pirates; and if there happen to be among them anyone representing a judge or authority of any sort, he is always placed at the head of the tribe. In the evening, their perambulations over, they assemble in the inn, where the acknowledged wag of the locality reads a humorous diatribe, which touches on all the follies and events, that can be anyhow made to wear a ridiculous aspect, of the past year. Christmas--here called Christnacht as well as Weihnacht--is observed (as all over the country, but especially here) by dispensing the Kloubabrod, a kind of dough cake, stuffed with sliced pears, almonds, nuts, and preserved fruits. The making of this is a particular item in the education of a Zillerthaler maiden, who has a special interest in it, inasmuch as the one she prepares for the household must have the first cut in it made by her betrothed, who at the same time gives her some little token of his affection in return. Speaking of Christmas customs reminded my informant of an olden custom in Brixen, that the Bishop should make presents of fish to his retainers. This fish was brought from the Garda-see, and the Graf of Tirol and the Prince-bishop of Trent were wont to let it pass toll-free through their dominions. A curious letter is extant, written by Bishop Rötel, 'an sambstag nach Stæ. Barbaræ, 1444,' courteously enforcing this privilege. The Sternsingen is a favourite way of keeping the Epiphany in many parts of the country. Three youths, one of them with his face blackened, and all dressed to represent the three kings, go about singing from homestead to homestead; and in some places there is a Herod ready to greet them from the window with riming answers to their verses, of which the following is a specimen: it is the address of the first king-- König Kaspar bin ich gennant Komm daher aus Morgenland Komm daher in grosser Eil Vierzehn Tag, fünftausend Meil. Melchores tritt du herein. [59] Melchior, thus appealed to, stands forward and sings his lay; and then Balthazar; and then the three join in a chorus, in which certain hints are given that as they come from so far some refreshment would be acceptable; upon which the friendly peasant-wife calls them in, and regales them with cakes she has prepared ready for the purpose, and sends them on their mountain-way rejoicing. Possibly some such custom may have given rise to the institution of our 'Twelfth-cake.' In the OEtzthal they go about with the greeting, 'Gelobt sei Jesus Christus zur Gömacht.' [60] Another Tirolean custom connected with Epiphany was the blessing of the stalls of the cattle on the eve, in memory of the stable in which the Wise Men found the Holy Family. Their wedding fêtes seem to be among the most curious of all their customs. My friend gave me a detailed account of one, between two families of the better class of peasants, which he had attended some years back; and he believed they were little changed since. It is regarded as an occasion of great importance; and as soon as the banns had been asked in church, the bridegroom went round with a chosen friend styled a Hochzeitsbitter, to invite friends and relations to the marriage. The night before the wedding (for which throughout Tirol a Thursday is chosen, except in the Iselthal, where a preference for Monday prevails), there was a great dance at the house of the bride, who from the moment the banns have been asked is popularly called the Kanzel-Braut. 'Rather, I should say,' he pursued, 'it was in the barn; for though a large cottage, there was no room that would contain the numbers of merry couples who flocked in, and even the barn was so crowded, that the dancers could but make their way with difficulty, and were continually tumbling over one another; but it was a merry night, for all were in their local costume, and the pine-wood torches shed a strange and festive glare over them. The next morning all were assembled betimes. It was a bitterly cold day, but the snow-storm was eagerly hailed, as it is reckoned a token that the newly-wedded pair will be rich; we met first at the bride's house for what they called the Morgensuppe, a rough sort of hearty breakfast of roast meat, white bread, and sausages; and while the elder guests were discussing it, many were hard at work again dancing, and the young girls of the village were dressing up the bride--one of the adornments de rigueur being a knot of streamers of scarlet leather trimmed with gold lace, and blue arm-bands and hat-ribbons; these streamers are thought by the simple people to be a cure for goitres, and are frequently bound round them with that idea. At ten o'clock the first church bell rang, when all the guests hastily assembled round the table, and drank the health of the happy pair in a bowl from which they had first drank. Then they ranged themselves into a procession, and marched towards the church, the musicians leading the way. The nearest friends of the bridal pair were styled "train-bearers," and formed a sort of guard of honour round the bride, walking bare-headed, their hats, tastily wreathed with flowers, in their hands. The priest of the village walked by the bride on one side, her parents on the other. She wore a wreath of rosemary--a plant greatly prized here, as among the people of Spain and Italy, and considered typical of the Blessed Virgin's purity--in her hair; her holiday dress was confined by a girdle, and she held her rosary in her hand. The bridegroom was almost as showily dressed, and wore a crown of silver wire; beside him walked another priest, and behind them came the host of the village inn, a worthy who holds a kind of patriarchal position in our villages. He is always one of the most important men of the place, generally owns the largest holding of land, and drives one or two little trades besides attending to the welfare of his guests. But more than this, he is for the most part a man of upright character and pleasant disposition, and is often called to act as adviser and umpire in rural complications. 'The procession was closed by the friends and neighbours, walking two and two, husband and wife together; and the church bells rang merrily through the valley as it passed along. 'The ceremonial in the church was accompanied with the best music the locality could afford, the best singers from the neighbouring choirs lending their voices. To add to the solemnity of the occasion, lighted tapers were held by the bridal party at the Elevation; and it was amusing to observe how the young people shunned a candle that did not burn brightly, as that is held to be an omen of not getting married within the year. At the close of the function, the priest handed round to them the Johannissegen, a cup of spiced wine mixed with water, which he had previously blessed, probably so called in memory of the miracle at the wedding-feast recorded in the Gospel of that Apostle. 'The band then struck up its most jocund air, and full of mirth the gladsome party wended their way to the inn. After a light repast and a short dance, and a blithesome Trutzlied, they passed on, according to custom, to the next, and so on to all the inns within a radius of a few miles. This absorbed about three or four hours; and then came the real wedding banquet, which was a very solid and long affair--in fact, I think fresh dishes were being brought in one after another for three or four hours more. Even in this there was a memory of the Gospel narrative, for in token of their joy they keep for the occasion a fatted calf, the whole of which is served up joint by joint, not omitting the head; this was preceded by soup, and followed by a second course of sweet dumplings, with fruit and the inevitable pickled cabbage, which on this day is dignified with the title of Ehrenkraut. After this came a pause; and the musicians, who had been playing their loudest hitherto, held in too. The "best man" rose, and went through the formula of asking the guests whether they were content with what had been set before them, which of course was drowned in a tumult of applause. In a form, which serves from generation to generation with slight change, he then went on to remark that the good gifts of meat and drink of which they had partaken came from the hand of God, and called forth the gratitude of the receiver, adding, "Let us thank Him for them, and still more in that He has made us reasonable beings, gifting us with faith, and not brutes or unbelievers. If we turn to Him in this spirit, He will abide with us as with them of Cana in Galilee. Therefore, let all anger and malice and evil speaking be put away from us, who have just been standing before the most holy Sacrament, and let us be united in the bonds of brotherly love, that His Blood may not have been poured out for us in vain. And to you, dear friends, who have this day been united with the grace-giving benediction of the Church, I commend this union of heart and soul most of all, that the new family thus founded in our midst may help to build up the living edifice of a people praising and serving God, and that you walk in His way, and bring up children to serve Him as our forefathers have ever done." There was a good deal more in the same strain; and this exhortation to holy living, from one of themselves, is just a type of the intimate way in which religion enters into the life of the people. His concluding wish for the well-being of the newly married was followed by a loud "Our Father" and "Hail Mary" from the assembled throng. 'After this came a great number more dishes of edibles, but this time of a lighter kind; among them liver and poultry, but chiefly fruits and sweets; and among these many confections of curious devices, mostly with some symbolical meaning. When these were nearly despatched, wine and brandy were brought out by the host; and by this name you must understand the master of the inn; for, true to the paternal character of which I have already spoken, it is always his business to cater for and preside over bridal banquets. At the same time the guests produced their presents, which go by the name of Waisat, and all were set down in a circumstantial catalogue. They are generally meted out with an open hand, and are a great help to the young people in beginning their housekeeping. 'The musicians, who only got hasty snatches of the good things passing round, now began yet livelier strains, and the party broke up that the younger members might give themselves to their favourite pastime, dancing; and well enough they looked, the lads in brilliant red double-breasted waistcoats, their short black leather breeches held up with embroidered belts, and their well-formed high-pointed hats with jaunty brim, going through the intricate evolutions, each beating the time heartily, first on his thighs and then on his feet--schuhplatteln they call it--and followed through the mazy figures by his diandl (damsel), in daintily fitting satin bodice, and short but ample skirt. 'The older people still lingered over the table, and looked on at the dance, which they follow with great interest; but there is not a great deal of drinking, and it is seldom enough, even in the midst of an occasion for such exceptional good cheer, that any excess is committed. A taste for brandy--the poor brandy of their own manufacture--is however, I confess, a weakness of the Zillerthalers. The necessity for occasionally having recourse to stimulants results from the severity of the climate during part of the year, and the frequently long exposure to the mountain air which their calling requires of them. At the same time, anything like a confirmed drunkard is scarcely known among them. Its manufacture affords to many an occupation; and its use to all, of both sexes, is a national habit. They make it out of barley, juniper, and numbers of other berries (which they wander collecting over all the neighbouring alps), as well as rye, potatoes, and other roots--in fact, almost anything. Every commercial bargain, every operation in the field, every neighbourly discussion, every declaration of affection even, is made under its afflatus. An offer of a glass of the cordial will often make up a long-harboured quarrel, a refusal to share one is taken to be a studied affront; in fact, this zutrinken, as they call it, comes into every act and relation of life. In the moderate bounds within which they keep its use, it is undeniably a great boon to them; and many a time it has been the saving of life in the mountains to the shepherd and the milk-maid, the snow-bound labourer or retarded pedlar.' I was curious to know what customs the other valley had to replace those of the Ziller. My friend informed me they were very similar, only the Zillerthalers were celebrated for their attachment to and punctual observance of them. He had once attended a wedding in the Grödnerthal which was very similar to the one he had already described, yet had some distinct peculiarities. Though a little out of place, I may as well bring in his account of it here. There, the betrothal is called der Handschlag (lit. the hand-clasp), and it is always performed on a Saturday. The fathers of the bride and bridegroom and other nearest relations are always present as witnesses; and if the bride does not cry at the projected parting, it is said she will have many tears to shed during her married life. The first time the banns are asked it is not considered 'the thing' for the betrothed to be present, and they usually go to church on that occasion in some neighbouring village; on the second Sunday they are expected to appear in state, the bridegroom wearing his holiday clothes and a nosegay in his hat or on his right breast. The bride always wears the local costume, a broadish brimmed green hat, a scarlet boddice and full black skirt, though this is now only worn on such occasions; on the day of the wedding, to this is added a broad black satin ribbon round her head, and round her waist a leather girdle with a number of useful articles in plated copper hanging from it. On each side are arranged red and green streamers with very great nicety, and no change of fashion is suffered in their position; she is expected to wear a grave mien and modest deportment; this is particularly enjoined. The guests are also expected to don the popular costume; the girls green, the married women black hats. On the way to the church the bridegroom's father and his nearest neighbour came forward, and with many ceremonies asked the bride of her friends, and she went crying coyly with them. After the church ceremony, which concludes as in Zillerthal with the cup of S. Johannessegen, the bridesmaids hand in a basket decked with knots of ribbon, containing offerings for the priests and servers, and a wreath, which is fastened round the priest's arm who leads the bride out of church. The visit to the neighbouring inn follows; but at the wedding feast guests come in in masquerading dresses bringing all manner of comical presents. The dance here lasts till midnight, when the happy pair are led home by their friends to an accompaniment of music, for which they have a special melody. The next day again there are games, and the newly married go in procession with their friends to bear home the trousseau and wedding gifts, among which is always a bed and bedding. On their way back beggars are allowed to bar the way at intervals, who must be bought off with alms. On the Sunday following the bride is expected again to appear at church in the local costume, and in the afternoon all the guests of the wedding day again gather in the inn to present their final offering of good wishes and blessings. Girls who are fond of cats, they say, are sure to marry early; perhaps an evidence that household virtues are appreciated in them by the men; but of men, the contrary is predicated, showing that the other sex is expected to display hardihood in the various mountaineering and other out-door occupations. [61] Kundl, whither we were bound before being tempted to make this digression, gives entrance to the Wildschönau according to modern orthography, the Witschnau, or Wiltschnau, according to local and more correct pronunciation (sometimes corrupted into Mitschnau), as the name is derived from wiltschen, to flow, and au, water, the particular water in this case being the Kundler-Ache, which here flows into the Inn. It is a little valley improving in beauty as you pursue it eastwards, not more than seven leagues in length, and seldom visited, for its roads are really only fit for pedestrians; hence its secluded inhabitants have acquired a character for being suspicious of strangers, though proverbially hospitable to one another. One of its points of greatest interest is the church of St. Leonhard, described in the last chapter. Overhanging the road leading from it to Kundl, stand the remains of the castle of Niederaich, now converted into a farm stable, and its moat serving as a conduit of water for the cattle. At the time it was built by Ambrose Blank in the sixteenth century, the silver mines then in work made this a most flourishing locality. At that time, too, there stood overlooking the town the Kundlburg, of which still slighter traces remain, the residence of the Kummerspruggers, who, in the various wars, always supported the house of Bavaria. The chief industry of Kundl at present is the construction of the boats which navigate the Inn, and carry the rich produce of the Tirolean pastures to Vienna. Oberau is situated on a commanding plateau, and its unpretending inn 'auf dem Keller,' offers a good resting-place. The church was burnt down in 1719, and the present one, remarkable for its size if for nothing else, was completed just a hundred years ago. It is, however, remarkable also for its altar-piece--the Blessed Virgin between S. Barbara and S. Margaret--by a local artist, and far above what might be expected in so sequestered a situation. At a distance of three or four miles, Niederau is reached, passing first a sulphur spring, esteemed by the peasants of the neighbourhood. The openest and most smiling--most friendly, to use the German expression--part of the valley is between Auffach and Kelchsau, where is situated Kobach, near which may be seen lateral shafts of the old mines extending to a distance of many hundred feet. From Kelchsau a foot-path leads in an hour more to Hörbrunn, where there is a brisk little establishment of glass-works, whose productions go all over Tirol. Then westwards over the Plaknerjoch to Altbach, passing Thierberg (not the same as that mentioned near Kufstein), once the chief seat of the silver-works, its only remaining attraction being the beautiful view to be obtained from its heights over the banks of the Inn, and the whole extent of country between it and Bavaria. From Altbach it is an hour more back to Brixlegg. The memory of the former metallic wealth of the valley is preserved in numerous tales of sudden riches overtaking the people in all manner of different ways, as in the specimens already given. Here is a similar one belonging to this spot. A peasant going out with his waggon found one day in the way a heap of fine white wheat. Shocked that God's precious gift should be trodden under foot, he stopped his team and gathered up the grain, of which there was more than enough to fill all his pockets; when he arrived at his destination, he found them full of glittering pieces of money. The origin of the story doubtless may be traced to some lucky take of ore which the finder was able to sell at the market town; and the price which he brought home was spoken of as the actual article discovered. Another relic of the mining works may perhaps be found in the following instance of another class of stories, though some very like it doubtless refer to an earlier belief in hobgoblins closely allied to our own Robin Goodfellow. I think a large number date from occasions when the Knappen or miners, who formed a tribe apart, may have come to the aid of the country people when in difficulty. The Unterhausberg family was once powerful in Wiltschnau. When their mighty house was building, the great foundation-stone was so ponderous that it defied all the efforts of the builders to put it in its place. At last they sat down to dinner; then there suddenly came out of the mountain side a number of Wiltschnau dwarfs, who, without any effort, lowered the great stone into its appointed place; the men offered them the best portion of their dinner, but they refused any reward. The dwarfs were not always so urbane, however, and there are many stories of their tricks: lying down in the pathways in the dark to make the people tumble over them; then hiding behind a tree, and with loud laughter mocking the disaster; [62] throwing handfuls of pebbles and ashes at the peasant girls as they passed; getting into the store-room, and mixing together the potatoes, carrots, grain, and flour, which the housewife had carefully assorted and arranged. It was particularly on women that their tricks were played off; and this to such an extent that it became the custom, even now prevailing, never to send women to the Hochalm with the herds, though they go out into other equally remote mountain districts without fear, for their Kasa (the hut for shelter at night, here so called, in other parts Sennhütte,) was sure to be beset with the dwarfs, and their milk-pails overturned. All these feats may, I think, be ascribed in their origin to the Knappen. The neighbourhood of Thierberg has a story which I think also has its source in mining memories. 'On the way between Altbach and Thierbach you pass two houses bearing the name of "beim Thaler." In olden time there lived here a peasant of moderate means, who owned several head of cattle; Moidl, the maid, whose duty it was to take them out to pasture on the sunny hill-side, always looked out anxiously for the first tokens of spring; for she loved better to watch the cows and goats browsing the fresh grass, or venturously climbing the heights, to sitting in the chimney-corner dozing over the spinning-wheel. One day as she was at her favourite occupation, she heard a noise behind her, and turning round saw a door open in the mountain side, and two or three little men with long beards peeping out. Within, all was dazzling with gold like the brightest sunshine. The walls were covered with plates of gold, placed one over the other like scales, and knobs of gold like pine-apples studded the vault. The little men beckoned to Moidl to come in, but she, like a modest maiden, ran home to her father; when he returned with her, however, to the spot, the door was no more to be found.' I think it may very well be imagined that Moidl came unawares upon the opening of a lateral shaft, and listened to the accounts which the Knappen may have amused themselves with giving her of the riches of their diggings; while she may very naturally have been afraid to explore these. The disappearance of the mysterious opening is but the ordinary refrain of marvellous tales. The Witschnauers cannot be accused of any dreamy longings after the recurrence of such prosperous times. They are among the most diligent tillers of the land to be found anywhere; the plough is carried over places where the uneven gradients make the guiding of horses or oxen a too great expenditure of time; in such places they do not disdain to harness themselves to the plough, and even the women take their turn in relieving them. Of one husbandman of olden time it is narrated that he was even too eager in his thrift, and carried his furrow a little way on to his neighbour's land year by year, so that by the time he came to die he had appropriated a good strip of land not his own. His penance was, that after death he should continually tread up and down the stolen soil, dragging after him a red-hot ploughshare, in performing which his wail was often overhead-- O weh! wie is der Pflug so heiss Und niemand mir zu helfen weiss! [63] until one of his successors in the farm, being a particularly honourable man, removed the boundary-stone back to its original position. He had no sooner done so than he had the satisfaction of hearing the spectre cry-- Erlöst, Gott sei Dank, bin ich jetzt Der Markstein ist auch rechtgesetzt. [64] Another class of legends has also a home in this locality. It is told that a peasant from Oberau was going home from Thierbach, one Epiphany Eve. It was a cold night; his feet crunched the crisp snow at every step; the air was clear, and the stars shone brightly. The peasant's head, however, was not so clear as the sky, for he came from the tavern, where he had been spending a merry evening with his boon companions. Thus it happened that instead of walking straight on, he gave one backward step for every three forward, like the Umgehende Schuster; [65] and thus he went staggering about till he came to the Rastbank, which is even yet sought as a point where to rest and overlook the view. It struck twelve as he seated himself on the bench; then suddenly behind him he heard a sound of many voices, which came on nearer and nearer, and then the Berchtl in her white clothing, her broken ploughshare in her hand, and all her train of little people [66] swept clattering and chattering close past him. The least was the last, and it wore a long shirt which got in the way of its little bare feet, and kept tripping it up. The peasant had sense enough left to feel compassion, so he took his garter off and bound it for a girdle round the infant, and then set it again on its way. When the Berchtl saw what he had done, she turned back and thanked him, and told him that in return for his compassion his children should never come to want. This story, I think there is little doubt, may be genuine; your Wiltschenauer is as fond of brandy as your Zillerthaler, and under its influence the peasant may very likely have passed a troubled night on the Rastbank. What more likely to cross his fancy on the Epiphany Eve than the thought of a visit from the Berchtl and her children (they always appear in Tirol at that season, and in rags and tatters [67]); his own temperament being compassionate, that he should help the stumbling little one, and that the Berchtl should give him promise of reward was all that might be expected from certain premises. But what are those premises? Who was the Berchtl? If you ask a Tirolean peasant the question, he will probably tell you that the Perchtl (as he will call her) is Pontius Pilate's wife, [68] to whom redemption was given by reason of her intervention in favour of the Man of Sorrows, but that it is her penance to wander over the earth till the last day as a restless spirit; and that as the Epiphany was the season of favour to the Gentiles, among whose first-fruits she was, it is at that season she is most often seen, and in her most favourable mood. It must be confessed that some of his stories of her will betray a certain amount of inconsistency, for he will represent her carrying off children, wounding belated passengers, and performing many acts inconsistent with the character of a penitent soul, and more in accordance with that of the more ancient 'Lamia.' If you address your question to Grimm, or Wolf, Simrock, Kuhn, Schwartz, or Mannhardt, or any who have made comparative mythology their study, he will tell you that the stories about her (and probably all the other marvellous tales of the people also) are to be traced back to the earliest mythological traditions of a primeval glimmering of religion spread abroad over the whole world; and to the poetical forms of expression of a primitive population describing the wonderful but constantly repeated operations of nature. [69] That the wilder Jäger was originally the god Wodin, the hunter of unerring aim, that his impetuous course typifies the journey of the sun-god through the heavens, [70] his mighty arm represents his powerful rays; and in even so late a tale as 'that of William Tell, he will see the last reflections of the sun-god, whether we call him Indra, or Apollo, or Ulysses.' [71] He will tell you that all 'the countless legends of princesses kept in dark prisons and invariably delivered by a young bright knight can all be traced back to mythological traditions about the spring being released from the bonds of winter; the sun being rescued from the darkness of night; the dawn being brought back from the far west; the waters being set free from the prison of clouds.' [72] And of the Berchtl herself, he will tell you that she is Perahta (the bright), daughter of Dagha (the day), whose name has successively been transformed into Perchtl and Bertha; brightness or whiteness has made her to be considered the goddess of winter; who particularly visited the earth for twelve winter nights, and spoilt all the flax of those idle maidens who left any unspun on the last day of the year; [73] who carries in her hand a broken plough in token that the ground is hardened against tillage; whose brightness has also made her to be reckoned the all-producing earth-mother, with golden hair like the waving corn; the Hertha of the Swabian; the Jörtha of Scandinavian; [74] the Berecynthia of the Phrygian; [75] and to other nations known as Cybele, Rhea, Isis, Diana. [76] Such ideas were too deeply rooted in the minds of the people to be easily superseded; as my friend, the Feldkirch postilion, said, they went on and on like the echoes of their own mountains. 'The missionaries were not afraid of the old heathen gods; ... their kindly feeling towards the traditions, customs, and prejudices of their converts must have been beneficial; ... they allowed them the use of the name Allfadir, whom they had invoked in the prayers of their childhood, when praying to Him who is "our Father in heaven."' And as with the greater, so with the less, the mighty powers they had personified and treated as heroes and examples lived on in their imagination, and their glorious deeds came to be ascribed to the new athletes of a brighter faith. Then, 'although originally popular tales were reproductions of more ancient legends, yet after a time a general taste was created for marvellous stories, and new ones were invented in large numbers. Even in these purely imaginative productions, analogies may be discovered with more genuine tales, because they were made after the original patterns, and in many cases were mere variations on an ancient air.' [77] More than this, there came the actual accession of marvels derived from the acts inspired by the new faith; but it cannot be denied that the two became strangely blended in the popular mind. Brixlegg presents some appearance of thriving, through the smelting and wire-drawing works for the copper ore brought from the neighbourhood of Schwatz. It also enjoys some celebrity as the birthplace of the Tirolean historian Burgleckner, whose family had been respected here for generations; and it is very possible to put up for the night at the Herrenhaus. It is not much above a mile hence to Rattenberg, of which I have already spoken. Rattenberg was, in 1651, the scene of a tragic event, sad as the denouement of many a fiction. The high-spirited consort of Archduke Leopold V., Claudia de' Medici, who, at his death, governed the country so well, and by her sagacity kept her dominions at peace, while the rest of Germany was immersed in the horrors of the Thirty Years' War, yet did not altogether escape the charge of occasional harshness in collecting the revenues which she knew so well how to administer. Her chancellor, Wilhelm Biener, a trusty and devoted servant and counsellor, drew on himself considerable odium for his zeal in these matters. On one occasion he got into a serious controversy with Crosini, Bishop of Brixen, concerning the payment of certain taxes from which the prelate claimed exemption, and in the course of it wrote him a letter couched in such very unguarded terms, that the bishop, unused to be so dealt with, could not forbear exclaiming, 'The man deserves to lose the fingers that could write such an intemperate effusion!' The exclamation was not thought of again till years after. Claudia died in 1648, and then the hatred against Biener, which was also in some measure a hatred of races, for Claudia had many southerners at her court, broke forth without hindrance. He was accused [78] of appropriating the State money he had been so earnest in collecting, and though tried by two Italian judges, he was ultimately condemned, in 1651, to lose his head. Biener sent a statement of his case to the Archduke Ferdinand Karl; and the young prince, believing the honesty of his mother's faithful adviser, immediately ordered a reprieve. The worst enemy and prime accuser of the fallen favourite was Schmaus, President of the Council, this time a German, and he contrived by detaining the messenger to make him arrive just too late in Rattenberg, then still a strong fortress, where he lay confined, and where the sentence was to be carried out. Biener had all along steadfastly maintained his innocence; and stepping on to the scaffold, he had again repeated the assertion, adding, 'So truly as I am innocent, I summon my accuser before the Judgment-seat above before another year is out.' [79] When the executioner stooped to lift up the head before the people, he found lying by its side three fingers of his right hand, without having had any knowledge that he had struck them off, though he might have done so by the unhappy man having raised his hand in the way of the sword in the last struggle. The people, however, saw in it the fulfillment of the words of the bishop, as well as a ghastly challenge accompanying his dying message to President Schmaus. Nor did they forget to note that the latter died of a terrible malady some months before the close of the year. Biener's wife lost her senses when she knew the terrible circumstances of his death; the consolations of her director and of her son, who lived to his ninetieth year in the Francescan convent at Innsbruck, were alike powerless to calm her. She escaped in the night, and wandered out into the mountains no one knows whither. But the people say she lives on to be a witness of her husband's innocence, and may be met on lonely ways proclaiming it, but never harming any. Only, when anyone is to die in Büchsenhausen, [80] where her married life passed so pleasantly, the 'Bienerweible' will appear and warn them. It is a remarkable instance of the easy way in which one myth passes into another, that though this event happened but a little over two hundred years ago, the Bienerweible and the Berchtl are already confounded in the popular mind. [81] Another name prized in Tirolese annals, which must not be forgotten in connexion with Rattenberg, is Alois Sandbichler, the Bible commentator, who was born there in 1751. He passed a brilliant career as Professor in the University of Salzburg, but died at the age of eighty in his native village. The neighbourhood of Brixlegg is very pretty, and the views from the bridge by no means to be overlooked. CHAPTER V. NORTH TIROL--UNTERINNTHAL. (LEFT INN-BANK.) The hilles, where dwelled holy saintes, I reverence and adore Not for themselfe but for the saincts Which han been dead of yore. And now they been to heaven forewent, Their good is with them goe; Their sample onely to us lent, That als we mought doe soe.--Spenser. We have hitherto been occupied almost exclusively with the right bank of the Inn. We will now return to Jenbach, as a starting-point for the beauties of the left bank. Near the station of Jenbach is a 'Restauration,' which bears the singular title of 'zum Tolerantz.' In the town, which is at some little distance on the Käsbach stream, the 'Post' affords very decent accommodation; The dining-room of the more primitive 'Brau' is a neat building in the Swiss style, and commands a prospect which might more than compensate for even worse fare than it affords. Jenbach had its name from being situated on the further side of the Inn from that on which the old post-road had been carried. There are extensive iron-foundries and breweries, which give the place a busy aspect, and an air of prosperity. The excursions from Jenbach are countless. Between the stations of Brixlegg and Jenbach lie only Münster and Wiesing, with nothing remarkable, except that the church of Wiesing, having been struck by lightning in 1782, was rebuilt with stones taken from the neighbouring Pulverthurm, built by the Emperor Maximilian, in 1504, but destroyed by lightning at the same time as the church. Count Tannenberg's park (Thiergarten), near here, is a most curious enclosure of natural rock, aided by masonry, and stocked with deer, fish, and fowl. Then Kramsach, and in the woods near it the Hilariusbergl, once inhabited by two hermits, and still held sacred: also the strangely wild Rettengschöss and its marbles; and several remarkable Alpine peaks, particularly the Zireinalpe and its little lake, bearing a memory of Seirens in its traditions as well as in its name. Here another river Ache runs into the Inn, distinguished from that on the opposite side, as the Brandenberger Ache. At its debouche stands Voldepp, whence the Mariathal and the Mooserthal may be visited, and 'the neighbourhood is rich in marbles used in the churches of Innsbruck.' [82] The Mooserthal is remarkable for three small lakes, which can be formed and let off at pleasure; they are the property of the Barons of Lichtenthurm, who fatten carp in them. The lowest of the three, the Rheinthalersee, has the prettiest surroundings. Weber says they are all fed by subterranean currents from the mountains. Ball ('Central Alps') treats them as overflowings of the Inn. The most flourishing town of the Mariathal is Achenrain, where there are extensive brass-works. Mass is said for the out-lying operatives in the Castle-chapel of Lichtenthurm. The village of Mariathal is very snugly situated, almost hidden by its woods from the road. Its chief feature is the deserted convent of Dominicanesses founded in the thirteenth century by Ulrich and Konrad v. Freundsberg; their descendant, Georg v. Freundsberg, celebrated in the Thirty Years' War, whom we learn more about when we come to Schwatz, also endowed the nuns liberally, bidding them pray for him; his effigy may still be seen in the church of Mariathal; and the convent, even in its present condition, is a favourite pilgrimage. Hence a rocky defile of wild and varied beauty, and many miles in length, leads into the Brandenbergerthal, which reaches to the Bavarian frontier. Its highest point is the Steinberg, to be recognized in the distance by its pyramidal form, which is situated within what the Germans graphically term a cauldron (Gebirgskessel) of mountains, and is shut off from all communication with the outer world by the snow during the winter months. The Brandenbergers have been famous for their patriotism and defence of their independence during all the various conflicts with Bavaria, and they love to call their native soil the Heimaththal and the Freiheitthal. The only tale of the supernatural I have met with as connected with this locality is the following; it has a certain wild grasp, but its moral is not easy to trace; it is analogous, however, to many traditions of other places. 'One of the Jochs surrounding the Brandenbergerthal was celebrated for its rich grasses; on its "alm" [83] the cattle often found pasturage even late in the winter. The Senner [84] here watching his flocks was visited one Christmas Eve by an old man in thick winter clothing, with a mighty pine-staff in his hand; he begged the Senner on the coming night to heat his hut as hot as ever he could, assuring him he would have no cause to regret his compliance. The Senner thought it was a strange adventure, but congratulated himself that it might be the means of propitiating the goblins, of whose pranks in the winter nights he was not without his fears. So he heaped log upon log all day, till the hut was so hot he could hardly bear it. Then he crept under a bench in the corner where a little chink gave a breath from the outer air, and waited to see what would come to pass. Towards midnight he heard steps approaching nearer and nearer, and then there was a sound of heavy boots stamping off the snow. Immediately after, seven men stepped into the room in silence. Their boots and clothes were all frozen as hard as if they had been carved out of ice, and their very presence served to cool down the air of the hut to such an extent that the Senner was now obliged to rub his hands. When they had stood a considerable space round the fire without uttering a word, they all seven left the hut as silently and solemnly as they had entered it. The Senner now crawled out of his hiding-place, and a loud cry of joy burst spontaneously from his lips, for his hat, which he had left on the table, was full of bright shining golden zwanzigers. These seven, the legend goes on to say, 'were never seen but this once. They were the seven Goldherds of the Reiche Spitze (on the Salzburg frontier); for up there there are exhaustless treasures, but whatever a mortal takes of them during life, he must suffer the Cold Torment and keep watch over it after death; and of such there have been seven in the course of the world's ages.' With regard to 'the Cold Torment,' [85] they have the following legend in the neighbourhood of Innsbruck:--There was once a peasant who had been very unlucky, and got so deep in debt that he saw no way of extricating himself. Unable to bear the sight of his starving family, he wandered out into the forest, until at last he met a strange-looking man in the old Frankish costume, who came up to him and said, 'You are poor indeed, and know no means of help.' 'Most true,' replied the peasant; 'of money and good counsel I can use more than you can have to bestow.' 'I will help you,' said the strange-looking man; 'I will give you as much money as you can use while you live, and all you have to do for it will be to bear the Cold Torment for me after you die; nothing but that, only just to feel rather too cold, and all that time hence--what does it matter?' The peasant retraced his steps, and as he drew near home his children came out to meet him with their pinafores full of gold, and all about the house there were heaps of gold, more than he could use; and he lived a merry life till the time came for him to die. Then he remembered what was before him; so he called his wife to him, and got her to make him a whole suit of the thickest rough woollen cloth, and stockings, hood, and gloves of the same. In the night, before they had buried him, his boys saw him, just as the De profundis bell rang, get up from the bed in all this warm clothing, and shut the gate behind him, and go out into the forest to deliver the spirit which had enriched him. [86] To the north-east of this valley, and still on the left bank of the Inn, is the favourite pilgrimage of Maria-Stein. I have not learnt its origin, but there is a tradition that, in 1587, Baron Schurff, to whom the neighbouring Castle of Stein then belonged, being desirous to take the precious likeness of the Blessed Virgin honoured there to his Bavarian dwelling, thrice attempted the removal, and on each occasion it was found by the next morning restored to its original sanctuary, which is in a chapel at the top of a high tower. The castle was a dependency of the Freundsbergers of Schwatz, till the family died out. It was subsequently bestowed by the Archduke Sigismund on one of his supporters, to whom he gave also the title of Baron Schurff. Afterwards it came into possession of Count Paris von Klotz, who gave it to form a presbytery and school for which it is still used. Among its treasures was a Slave codex of Homilies of the early fathers; Count Klotz had a reprint made from it at Vienna. A little lake (Maria Steinersee) at no great distance affords excellent fish called Nasen, whence the neighbouring dale is called Nasenthal; and from several points there are most enjoyable views of the höhe Salve and the little towns of Wörgl, Kirchbühel, and Häring across the river. Jenbach affords also numerous mountain walks through the Achenthal: a favourite one is over the Mauriz Alp, to Maurach, which has many points of interest to the geologist. For those who are not fond of pedestrianism, there is a splendid drive along the road--one of the old highways to Bavaria and the north of Europe. An accident is of very rare occurrence; but some parts of it are rather frightful. For those whose nerves are proof against the fears suggested here and there, there is immense enjoyment to be found, as it winds its way along the romantic woody Käsbachthal, round--indeed through--the wild and overhanging rocks, or, supported on piles, runs close along the edge of the intensely blue Achen lake, under the over-arching Spiel-joch, steep as a wall. The first place to halt at is Skolastica, where there is a pretty, much-frequented swimming-school; and whence even ladies have ascended the Unnutzjoch over the Kögl. It is often crowded in the season, as also are all the little towns round the lake--Achenthal, Pertisau, Buchau. Several excellent varieties of fish, which are the property of the Monastery of Viecht, and the pleasure-fares across the waters, afford means of subsistence to a little population of boatmen, who have made their nests on the rocks wherever there is a foot of level ground. Pertisau, however, is on a green smiling spot, and is a relief to the majestic wildness of the rest of the surrounding scenery. A very extraordinary effect may be observed at a short distance out from Buchau. The mountain outline on the right hand appears to be that of a regular fortress, with all professional accessories, bidding defiance to the neighbourhood: it is only as the boat approaches quite near, that you see it is only one of those tours de force with which nature often surprises us; as, for example, in the portrait of Louis XVI. in the outline of the Traunstein, seen from Baura. From the village of Achenthal the road runs, through the Bavarian frontier, to the well-known baths and Bavarian royal Lustschloss--until 1803 a Benedictine monastery--of Tegernsee, through Pass-Achen, celebrated in the patriotic struggles of 1809. The Achensee is the largest and one of the most beautiful lakes of Tirol. It is fed partly by mountain streams, and partly by subterranean springs. The people tell a warning tale of its first rising. They say that in olden times there was a stately and prosperous town on what is now the bed of the lake; but the inhabitants in their prosperity forgot God so far, that the young lads played at skittles along the aisles of the church, even while the sacred office was being sung, and the Word of God preached. A day came; it was a great feast, but they drove their profane sport as usual, and no one said them nay; [87] and so a great flood rose up through the floor; rose above their heads; above the church roof; above the church steeple; and they say that even now, on a bright calm day, you may see the gilt ball of the steeple shining under the waters, and in the still moonshine you may hear the bell ring out the midnight hour. There are many other tales of such swift and righteous judgments lingering in Tirol. The lower eastern ridge of the Harlesanger or Hornanger Alpe, is, on account of its stern and barren character, called the Wildenfeld. This is how it received its name. Ages ago, it was a very paradise of beauty and fruitfulness. All the choicest Alpine grasses grew there in abundance; but with these riches and plenty the pride of the Senners and milkers waxed great too; and as a token of their reckless wastefulness, it is recorded that they used rich cheeses for paving-stones and skittles. One ancient Senner, like another Lot, raised his feeble but indignant voice against them, but they heeded him not. One day, as he mused over the sins of his people, a bright bird, with a plumage such as he had never seen before, fluttered round him, warbling, 'Righteous man, get thee hence! righteous man, get thee hence!' The old man saw the finger of God, and immediately followed the guiding flight of the bird to a place of safety, while a great peak from the Harlesanger fell over the too prosperous Joch, buried its impious inhabitants, and spread desolation all around. There is now a pilgrimage chapel. Another excursion, which must not be omitted, from Jenbach, is that to Eben, which lies a little off the high road, at some elevation, but in the midst of a delightful table-land (hence its name) of most fruitful character. As the burial-place of St. Nothburga, it is still a spot of great resort. Unhappily, not all those buried here were so holy as the peasant saint. A tradition is preserved of one wicked above others, though he seemed all fair to the outward eye, and the Church consequently admitted him to lie in holy ground. But he felt the Eye of One above upon him, and he could not rest; and in his struggles to withdraw himself from that all-searching gaze, he bored and bored on through the consecrated earth, till he had worked his way out into the common soil beyond. A horse-shoe, deeply graven in the 'Friedhof' boundary, and which no one has ever been able to wall up, marks the spot by which he passed; and the people call it the 'Escape of the Vampire.' [88] The unpretending village of Stans, situated in the midst of a very forest of fruit-trees, at no great distance from Jenbach, is the birth-place of Joseph Arnold, one of the religious artists, of whom Tirol has produced so many. Without winning, of some it may be said without meriting perhaps, much fame for themselves in the world, without attaining the honour of founding a school, they have laboured painstakingly and successfully to adorn their village temples, and keep alive the faith and devotion of their countrymen. Almost where-ever you go in Tirol you find praiseworthy copies of paintings, whose titles are connected with the celebrated shrines of Italy, modestly reproduced by them, or some fervent attempt at an original rendering of a sacred subject, by men who never aspired that their names should reach beyond the echoes of their own beloved mountains. The prior of Viecht, Eberhard Zobel, discovered the merits of Joseph Arnold and drew him from obscurity, or rather from one degree of obscurity to another less profound, had him instructed according to the best means within his attainment, and gave him occupation in the monastery. His homely aspirations made him content with the sphere to which he was native, and he never went far from it. The altarpiece in the church of Stans, representing St. Lawrence and St. Ulric, is his work and his gift. From Stans there is a path through the grand scenery of the Stallenthal, leading to the shrine of St. Georgenberg. For a time the pretty villages of the Innthal are lost to sight, and you pass a country known only to the wild game, the hunter, and the pilgrim; the bare rocky precipices relieved only here and there with woods, while the Stallen torrents run noisily below. Who could pass through such a neighbourhood and not think of the crowds of pilgrims who, through ages past, have approached the sacred spot in a spirit of faith and submission, bearing their sins and their sorrows, the burden of their afflictions, moral and physical, and have gone down to their homes comforted? A wonderful shrine it is: a rock which might seem marked out 'from the beginning' to be a shrine; shut out by Nature from earthly communication; piercing the very sky. You stand beneath it and long for an eagle's wings to bear you aloft: there seems no other means of access. Then a weary winding path is shown you, up which, with many sloping returns upon your former level, and crossing the roaring stream at a giddy height, you at last reach an Absatzbrücke--a bridge or viaduct--over the chasm, uniting the height you have been climbing, with the cliff of S. George. It is a long bridge, and only made of wood; and you fancy it trembles beneath your anxious tread, as you span the seemingly unfathomable abyss. A modest cross, which you cannot fail to observe at its head, records the marvellous preservation of a girl of twenty-one, named Monica Ragel, a farm-servant, who one fine morning in April 1831, in her zeal to gather the fairest flowers for the wreath she was weaving for the Madonna's altar, attempted to climb the treacherous steep, and losing her footing slipped down the cliff, a distance of one hundred and forty feet. The neighbours crowded to the spot, with all the haste the dangerous footing would admit, and though they had no hope of finding her alive. She was so far uninjured, however, that she was able to resume work within the week. The buildings found perched at this height cannot fail to convey a striking impression; and this still more do the earnest penitents, who may nearly always be found kneeling within. First, you come upon the little chapel of the 'Schmerzhaften Mutter,' with a little garden of graves of those who have longed to lie in death as they dwelt in life--near the shrine; among them is that of the Benedictine Magnus Dagn, whose knowledge of music is referred to in the following simple epitaph, 'Magnus nomine, major arte, maximus virtute.' Opposite it is the principal church, containing in one of its chapels one of those most strange of relics, which here and there have come down to us with their legends from 'the ages of faith.' In the year 1310, when Rupert I. was the fourteenth abbot of St. Georgenberg, a priest of the order [89] was saying Mass in this very chapel. Just at the moment of the consecration of the chalice a doubt started in his mind, whether it were possible that at his unworthy bidding so great a mystery should be accomplished as the fulfillment of the high announcement, 'This is My Blood.' In this condition of mind he concluded the words of consecration; and behold, immediately, in place of the white wine mingled with water in the chalice, he saw it fill with red blood, overflowing upon the corporal; some portion of this was preserved in a vial, set into a reliquary on the altar. Round the church are the remains of the original monastery, in which the monks of Veicht generally leave some of their number to minister both to the spiritual and corporal needs of pilgrims. It seems difficult to fix a date for the origin of this pilgrimage, one of the most ancient of Tirol. There is a record that in 992 a chapel was consecrated here to our Lady of Sorrows, by Albuin, Bishop of Brizen; but it was long before this [90] that Rathold, a young nobleman of Aiblingen in Bavaria, 'having learnt the hollowness of the joys his position promised him, made up his mind to forsake all, and live in the wilderness to God alone.' He wandered on, shunning the smooth and verdant plains of his native lands, and the smiling fruitful amenities of the Innthal, till at last he found himself surrounded by wild solitudes in the valley of the Stallen; plunging into its depths, his eye alighted on the almost inaccessible Lampsenjock. Then choosing for his dwelling a peak, on which a few limes had found a ledge and sown themselves, he cut a little cave for his shelter in the rock beneath them, and there he lived and prayed. But after a time a desire came over him to visit the shrines of the mightiest saints; so he took up his pilgrim staff once more, and sped over the mountains and over the plains, till he had knelt at the limine Apostolorum, and pressed his lips upon the soil, fragrant with the martyr's blood. Nor was his zeal yet satisfied. There was another Apostle the fame of whose shrine was great; and 'a year and a day' brought our pilgrim to S. Iago de Compostella. Then, having thus graduated in the school of the saints, he came back to his solitude under the lime-trees on the rock, to practise the lessons of Divine contemplation he had thus imbibed in the perfume of the holy places. He did not come back alone. From the great storehouse of Rome he had brought a treasure of sacred art--a picture of the Madonna, for which his own hands wrought a little sanctuary. From far and near pious people came to venerate the sacred image; and 'Unsere liebe Frau zur Linde,' was the watch-word, at the sound of which the sick and the oppressed revived with hope. One day, it chanced that a young noble, whom ardent love of the chase had led into this secluded valley, turned aside from following the wild chamois, to inquire what strange power fascinated the peasants into attempting yon steep ascent. Curious himself to see the wonder-working shrine, he scaled the peak, and found to his astonishment, in the modest guardian of the picture, the elder brother who long ago had 'chosen the better part.' In token of his joy at the meeting, he made a vow to build on the spot a chapel, as well as a place of shelter for the weary pilgrim. His undertaking was no sooner known than all the people of the neighbouring valleys, nobles and peasants, applied to have their part in the work. Thus supported, it was begun in right earnest; but the workmen had no sooner got it fairly in hand than all the blessing, which for so long had been poured out on the spot, seemed suddenly to be quenched. Nothing would succeed, and every attempt was baffled; and one thing, which was more particularly remarked, was that the men were continually having accidents, and wounding themselves with their tools. More strange still, every day two white doves flew down from above, and carefully picking out every chip and shaving on which blood had fallen, gathered them in their beaks and flew away. Finding that no progress could be made with the work, and that this manoeuvre of the doves continued day by day, the pious Reinhold resolved to follow them; and when he at last succeeded in finding their hiding-place, there lay before him, neatly fashioned out of the chips which the doves had carried away, a tiny chapel of perfectly symmetrical form. [91] The hermit saw in the affair the guiding hand of God, demanding of him the sacrifice of seven years' attachment to his cell; and cheerfully yielding obedience to the token, requested his brother that the chapel should be erected on the spot thus pointed out. Theobald willingly complied, and dedicated it to the patron of chivalry, St. George. The fame of Reinhold's piety, and of his wonderful chapel, was bruited far and near; and now, not all who came to visit him went back to their homes. Many youths of high degree, fired by the example of the hermit sprung out of their order, applied to join him in his life of austerity; and soon a whole colony had established itself, Camaldolese-fashion, in little huts round his. There seems to have been no lack of zealous followers to sustain the odour of sanctity of St. Georgenberg; early in the twelfth century, the Bishop of Brixen put them under the rule of S. Benedict, to whose monks Tirol, and especially Unterinnthal, already owed so great a debt of gratitude, for keeping alive the faith. His followers endowed it with much of the surrounding land, which the brothers, by hard manual labour, brought into cultivation. They were overtaken by many heavy trials in the course of centuries: at one time it was a fire, driven by the fierce winds, which ravaged their homestead; at another time, avalanches annihilated the traces of their industry. At last, the spirit of prudence prevailing on their earlier energetic hardiness, it was resolved to remove the monastery to Viecht, where the brothers already had a nucleus in a little hospital for the sick among them, and where also was the depôt for their cattle-dealing--a Viehzuchthof, [92] whence by corruption it derived its name. The execution of this idea was commenced in 1705. The abbot, Celestin Böhmen, a native of Vienna, had formerly held a grade of officer in the Austrian artillery. Nothing could exceed the zeal with which he took the matter in hand; and plans were laid out for raising the building on the most extensive and costly scale. So grand an edifice required large funds; and these were not slow to flow in, for St. Georgenberg was beloved by all the country round. When he saw the vast sums in his hand, however, the old spirit of the world, and its covetousness, crept over him again, and a morning came when, to the astonishment of the brotherhood, the abbot was nowhere to be found--nor the gold! The progress of the work was effectually arrested for the moment; but zeal overcame even the obstacle presented by this loss, and by 1750 Abbot Lambert had brought to completion the present edifice, in late Renaissance style, which, though imposing and substantial, forms but one wing of Celestin Böhmen's plan. If the spirit of the world came over Abbot Celestin in the cloister, the spirit of the cloister came back upon him in the world; and it was not many years before he came back, full of shame and contrition, making open confession of his fault, and placing himself entirely in the hands of his former subjects. Though at this time the monks were yet in the midst of their anxieties for the means for carrying on the work, they suffered themselves to be ruled by a spirit of Christian charity, and refused to give him up to the rigour of the law; and he ended his days with edifying piety at Anras, in the Pusterthal. A great festival was kept at Viecht, in 1845, in memory of the consecration, which was attended by sixty thousand persons, from Bavaria as well as Tirol. The library contains an interesting collection of MSS. and early printed books in many languages, and is particularly rich in works illustrative of Tirolean history. In the church are some of Nissl the elder's wood-carvings, which are always worth attention. The confessionals are adorned with figures of celebrated penitents, by his hand; and other noteworthy works will be found in a series of nine tableaux, showing forth the Passion; also the crucifix over the high altar, and four life-sized carvings. In all these he was assisted by his pupils, Franz Thaler, of Jenbach, who afterwards came to have the charge of the Vienna cabinet of antiquities, and Antony Hüber, the most successful of his school. Perhaps the finest specimen of all is a dead Christ, under the altar, remarkable for the anatomical knowledge displayed. Like many another mountain sanctuary isolated and exposed to the wind, this monastery has more than once been ravaged by fire; in 1868 it was in great part burnt down, and the church-building zeal of Tirol is still being exercised with great energy and open-handedness in building it up again. A festival was held there in October 1870, when five bells from the foundry of Grassmayr of Wilten were set up to command the echoes of the neighbourhood; great pains are now being taken to make the building fireproof. Close opposite Viecht lies Schwatz; [93] a number of straggling houses, called 'die lange Gasse,' on the Viecht side belong to it also; between them there is a bridge, which we will not cross now, but continue a little further along the left bank; this, though less rich in smiling pastures than the right, has many points of interest. The next village to Viecht is Vomp, situated at the entrance of the Vomperthal, the sternest and most barren in scenery or settlements of any valley of Tirol, and characterized by a hardy pedestrian as 'frightfully solitary, and difficult of access: even the boldest Jägers,' he adds, 'seldom pursue their game into it.' The village church of Vomp once possessed a priceless work of Albert Dürer, an 'Ancona,' showing forth in its various compartments the history of the Passion; but it was destroyed in 1809, when the French, under Deroi, set fire to the church in revenge for the havoc the Tirolean sharp-shooters had committed among their ranks. Joseph Arnold (in 1814) did his best to repair the loss, by painting another altar-piece, in which we see a less painful than the usual treatment of the martyrdom of St. Sebastian: the artist has chosen the moment at which the young warrior is being bound to the tree where he is to suffer so bravely. Above the village stands the once splendid castle of Sigmundslust, one of the hunting-seats of Sigismund the Monied (der Münzreiche), [94] now the villa of a private family of Innsbruck, Riccabona by name. Vomp is also the birth-place of Joseph Hell, the wood-carver. Crossing the Vomperbach, and the fertile plain it waters, you reach Terfens, which earned some renown in the wars of 'the year nine.' Outside the village is a little pilgrimage chapel, called Maria-Larch, honoured in memory of a mysterious image of the blessed Virgin, found under a larch fir on the spot, similar to the legend of that at Waldrast. [95] Passing the ruin of Volandseck, the still inhabited castle of Thierberg (the third of the name we have passed since we entered Tirol) and the village of S. Michael, you come to S. Martin, the parish church of which owes its endowment to a hermit of modern times. There was in the village a convent, deserted, because partly destroyed by fire. In 1638, George Thaler, of Kitzbühel, a man of some means and position, came to live here a life of sanctity: he devoted six hours a-day to prayer, six to sleep, and the rest to manual labour. He maintained a chaplain, and an old servant who waited on him for fifty years. At his death, he left all he possessed to supply the spiritual needs of the hamlet. After leaving S. Martin's, the scenery grows more pleasing: you enter the Gnadenwald, so called, because its first inhabitants were servants of the earlier princes of Tirol, who pensioned them off with holdings of the surrounding territory. It occupies the lowland bordering the river, which here widens a little, and affords in its recesses a number of the most romantic strolls. Embowered on its border, near the river, stands the village of Baumkirchen, with its outlying offshoot of Fritzens now surpassing it in importance, as it has been chosen for the railway-station. The advance of the iron road has not stamped out the native love for putting prominently forward the external symbols of religion. I one day saw a countryman alight here from the railway, who had been but to Innsbruck to purchase a large and handsome metal cross, to be set up in some prominent point of the village and it was considered a sufficiently important occasion for several neighbours to go out to meet him on his return with it. Again, on the newer houses, probably called into existence by the increased traffic, the old custom of adorning the exterior with frescoes of sacred subjects is well kept up. This is indeed the case on many other parts of the line; but at Fritzens, I was particularly struck with one of unusual merit, both in its execution and its adaptation to the domestic scene it was to sanctify. I would call the attention of any traveller, who has time to stop at Fritzens to see it: the treatment suggests that I should give it the title of 'the Holy Family at home,' so completely has the artist realized the lowly life of the earthly parents of the Saviour, and may it not be a comfort to the peasant artizan to see before his eyes the very picture of his daily toil sanctified in its exercise by the hands of Him he so specially reveres? An analogous incident, which I observed on another occasion, comes back to my memory: it happened, I think, one day at Jenbach. The train stopped to set down a Sister of Charity, who had come to nurse some sick person in the village. The ticket-collector, who was also pointsman, was so much occupied with his deferential bowing to her as he took her ticket, that he had to rush to his points 'like mad,' or his reverent feelings might have had serious consequences for the train! So religious indeed is your whole entourage while in Tirol, that I have remarked when travelling through just this part in the winter season, that the very masses of frozen water, arrested by the frost as they rush down the railway cuttings and embankments, assumed in the half-light such forms as Doré might give to prostrate spectres doing penance. The foot-path on to Hall leads through a continuance of the same diversified and well-wooded scenery we have been traversing hitherto; but if time presses, it is well to take the railway for this stage, and make Hall or Innsbruck a starting-point for visiting the intervening places. Hall is the busiest and most business-like place we have come to yet, and the first whose smoky atmosphere reminds us of home. There is not much to choose between its two inns the 'Schwarzer Bär' and the 'Schwarzer Adler.' The industry and the smoke of Hall arises from the salt-works, from which Weber also derives its name (from halos, salt; though why it should have been derived from the Greek he does not explain). The first effect which strikes you on arriving, after the smokiness, is the sky-line of its bizarrely-picturesque steeples, among the most bizarre of which is the Münzthurm (the mint-tower), first raised to turn into money the over-flowing silver stores of Sigismund the Monied; and last used to coin the Sandwirthszwänziger, the pieces of honest old Hofer's brief but triumphant dictatorship. The town has in course of time suffered severely from various calamities: fire, war, pestilence, inundation, and, on one occasion, in 1670, even from earthquake; the church tower was so severely shaken, that the watchman on its parapet was thrown to the ground; the people fled from their houses into the fields, where the Jesuit fathers stood addressing them, in preparation for their last end, which seemed imminent. Loss of life was, however, small; nevertheless, the Offices of the Church were for a long time held in the open air. Notwithstanding all these reverses, the trade in salt, and the advantageous municipal rights granted them in earlier times, have always enabled the people to recover and maintain their prosperity. In the various wars, they have borne their part with signal honour. One of their greatest feats, perhaps, occurred on May 29, 1809. Speckbacher had led his men to a gallant attack on the Bavarians at Volders, blowing up the bridge behind him, and then marched to the relief of Hall; the Bavarians were in possession of the town and bridge, and as they had several pieces of artillery, it was not easy for the patriots to carry it; nevertheless, as their ammunition was failing, and Speckbacher having refused to agree to a truce, because he saw the advantage accruing to him through this deficiency, they destroyed the Hall bridge, as they thought, and retreated homewards under cover of the night. Speckbacher discovered their flight early in the morning, and lost no time in addressing his men on the importance of at once taking possession of their native town: the men were as usual at one with him, and not one shrank from the perilous enterprise of regaining the left bank by such means as the tottering remains of the bridge afforded! Joseph Speckbacher, who shares with Andreas Hofer the glories of 'the year nine,' was a native of Rinn, a village on the opposite bank; but he is honoured with a grave in the Pfarrkirche, at Hall, bearing the following inscription, with the date of his death, 1820: Im Kampfe wild, doch menschlich; In Frieden still und den Gesetzen treu; War er als Krieger, Unterthan und Mensch, Der Ehre wie der Liebe werth. [96] Another object of interest, in the same churchyard, is a wooden crucifix, carved by Joseph Stocker in 1691; as well as the monuments of the Fiegers, and other high families of the middle ages. In the church itself is a 'Salvator Mundi' of Albert Dürer, on panel; the altarpiece of the high altar is by Erasmus Quillinus, a pupil of Rubens. One of the chapels, the Waldaufische Kapelle, was built in 1493-5, by one Florian von Waldauf, to whom an eventful history attaches. He was a peasant boy, whom his father's severity drove away from home: for a long time he maintained himself by tending herds; after that he went for a soldier in the Imperial army, where his talents brought him under the special notice of the Emperor Frederick, and his son Maximilian I., who took him into their councils and companionship. Maximilian made him knight of Waldenstein, and gifted him with lands and revenues. His love of adventure took him into many countries. On one journey, being in a storm at sea, the memory of his early wilfulness overcame him, and he vowed that if he came safe to land, he would build a chapel in his Tirolean home. He subsequently fixed on the Pfarrkirche of Hall, as that in which to fulfil his vow, being the parish church of the castle of Rettenberg which Maximilian had bestowed on him, and enriched it with a wondrous store of relics, which he had collected in his journeyings. Above 40,000 pilgrims flocked from every part of Tirol, to assist at the consecration; and a goodly sight it must have been, when singing and bearing the relics aloft, they streamed down the mountain side and across the river, the last of the procession not having yet left the gates of Castle Rettenberg, while the foremost had already reached the chapel. There are other churches in Hall; where that of S. Saviour now stands was once a group of crazy cottages; but one day, in the year 1406, in one of them a poor man lay dying, and the priest bore him the holy Viaticum, which knows no distinction between the palace and the hovel: the furniture was as rickety as the tenements themselves; the only table, on which the priest had deposited the sacred vessels, propped against the wall for support, gave way by some accident, and the Santissimo was thrown upon the floor. Johann von Kripp, a wealthy burgher, hearing of what had befallen, bought the cottages, and in reparation for the desecration, built a church on the spot, with the dedication, zum Erlöser. The town is well provided with educational and charitable institutions; the latter comprising a mad-house worth seeing, under Professor Kaplan, and a deaf and dumb school. The Franciscan monastery is, I think, the only unsuppressed religious house. In the Rathhaus is preserved a quaint old picture, representing the Emperor Sigismund, in hunting costume, coming to ask the assistance of the men of Hall against a conspiracy he had discovered in Innsbruck, assistance which loyal Hall was not slow to supply. Its situation made it a place of some importance to the defences of the country; and the regulations for calling the inhabitants under arms were very complete, so that this service was promptly rendered. An amusing story is told in evidence of the ready gallantry of the men of Hall. There was a time when Hall was at feud with the neighbouring village of Taur: the watchman, stationed on the tower by night-time, rang the alarm, and announced that the enemy was advancing with lanterns in their hands; at the call to arms, every man jumped from his bed, and seized his weapon, eager to display his prowess against the foe. Prudent Salzmair [97] Zott, anxious to spare the shedding of neighbours' blood, hastily donned a shirt of mail over his more penetrable night-gear, and proposed to ride out alone with a flag of truce, to know what meant the unseasonable attack. The warlike burghers with difficulty yielded to his representations, and not having the consolations of the fragrant weed wherewith to wile away their time, set to sharpening their swords and axes, and outvieing each other with many a fierce boast during his absence. Meantime, Salzmair Zott proceeded on his way without meeting the ghost of a foe, or one ray from their lanterns, till he came to Taur itself, where everything lay buried in peaceful silence. Only as he came back he discovered what had given rise to the alarm: it was midsummer-tide, and a swarm of little worms of St. John [98] was soaring and fluttering over the fields like a troop provided with lanterns. So with a hearty laugh he despatched the townsmen, ready for the fight, back to their beds. And even now this humorous imitation of the Bauernkrieg [99] is a by-word for Quixotic enterprises. Of all the numerous excursions round Hall, the strangest and most interesting is that to Salzberg, the source of the salt, the crystallizing of which and despatching it all over Tirol, to Engadein and to Austria, forms the staple industry of Hall. It is a journey of about three hours, though not much over eight miles, but rugged and steep, and in some parts rather frightful, particularly in the returning descent, for the Salzberg lies 6,300 feet above the sea: but there is a road for an einspanner all the way; entrance is readily obtained, and the gratuities for guide, lighting up, and boat over the subterranean salt lake, exceedingly moderate. There are records extant which shew that there were salt-works in operation in the neighbourhood of Hall early in the eighth century, but these would appear to have been fed by a salt spring which flowed at the foot of the mountain. In the year 1275, however, Niklas von Rohrbach, who seems to be always styled der fromme Ritter (the pious knight), frequently when on his hunting expeditions in the Hallthal, observed how the cattle and wild game loved to lick certain cliffs of the valley; this led him to test the flavour, and finding it rich in salt, he followed up the track till he came to the Salzberg itself, where he prudently conjectured there was an endless supply to be obtained. [100] Ever since this time the salt has been worked pretty much in the same way, namely, by hewing, later by blasting, vast chambers in the rock, which are then filled with water and closed up: at the end of some ten or twelve months, when the water is supposed to be thoroughly impregnated, it is run off through a series of conduits to Hall, where it is evaporated, a hundred pounds of brine yielding about a third the weight of salt. A considerable number of these chambers, an acre or two in extent, have been excavated in the course of time, and you are told that it would take more than a week to walk through all the passages connecting them. 'Cars filled with rubbish pass you as you thread them,' says an observant writer, 'with frightful rapidity; you step aside into a niche, and the young miners seated in the front look like gnomes directing infernal chariots. The crystallizations in some of these chambers lighted up by the torches of a party of visitors have a magical effect, and recall the gilded fret-work of some Moorish palaces. There is a tradition that Hofer and Speckbacher, who never, before their illustrious campaigns, had wandered so far as these few miles from their respective homes, took advantage of the lull succeeding their first triumph at Berg Isel, to come over and visit the strange labyrinths of the Salzberg. It is hardly possible to exaggerate the effect which such a scene might produce on minds so imaginative, and at the same time so unsophisticated. It is not difficult to believe that they regarded such a journey like a visit to the abode of the departed great, or that in presence of the oppressive grandeurs of nature they should have matured their spirit for the defence of their country which was to confound the strategy of practised generals. Returning through the dark forests of pine and the steep cliffs of the Hallthal, otherwise called the Salzthal, you are arrested by the hamlet of Absam, which in your hurry to push forward you overlooked in the morning. Before reaching it you observe to the east, on an eminence rising out of the plain, Schloss Melans, now serving as a villa to a family of Innsbruck. The peasants have a curious story to account for the rudely sculptured dragons which adorn some of the eave-boards of their houses, though no singular mode of ornamentation, and by others accounted for differently. [101] They say that in olden time there was a wonderful old hen which laid her first egg when seven years old, and when the egg was hatched a dragon crept out of it, [102] which made itself a home in the neighbouring moor, and the people in memory of the prodigy carved its likeness on their houses. In Absam itself once lived a noble family of the name of Spaur, which had a toad for a bearing on their shield, accounted for in the following way:--'A certain Count Spaur had committed a crime by which he had incurred the penalty of death; his kinsmen having put every means in motion to get the sentence remitted, his pardon was at last accorded them on the condition that he should ride to Babylon the Accursed, and bring home with him a monstrous toad which infested the tower. So the knight rode forth to Babylon the Accursed, and when he drew near the tower the monstrous toad came out and seized the bridle of the knight's horse; the knight, nothing daunted at the horrid apparition, lifted his good sword and hewed the monster to the ground, bringing the corpse back with him as a trophy.' What audacious tales! Could anyone out of a dream put such ideas together? No writer of fiction, none but one who believed them possible of accomplishment! 'Who can tell what gives to these simple old stories their irresistible witchery?' says Max Müller. 'There is no plot to excite our curiosity, no gorgeous description to dazzle our eyes, no anatomy of human passion to rivet our attention. They are short and quaint, full of downright absurdities and sorry jokes. We know from the beginning how they will end. And yet we sit and read and almost cry, and we certainly chuckle, and are very sorry when Snip, snip, snout, This tale's told out. Do they remind us of a distant home--of a happy childhood? Do they recall fantastic dreams long vanished from our horizon, hopes that have set never to rise again?... Nor is it dreamland altogether. There is a kind of real life in these tales--life such as a child believes in--a life where good is always rewarded; wrong always punished; where everyone, not excepting the devil, gets his due; where all is possible that we truly want, and nothing seems so wonderful that it might not happen to-morrow. We may smile at those dreams of inexhaustible possibility, but in one sense the child's world is a real world too.' A singular event, or curious popular fancy, obtained for Absam the honour of becoming a place of pilgrimage at the end of the last century. It was on January 17, 1797; a peasant's daughter was looking idly out of window along the way her father would come home from the field; suddenly, in the firelight playing on one of the panes, she discerned a well-defined image of the Blessed Virgin, 'as plain as ever she had seen a painting.' Of course the neighbours flocked in to see the sight, and from them the news of the wonderful image spread through all the country round; at last it made so much noise, that the Dean of Innsbruck resolved to investigate the matter. A commission was appointed for this object, among their number being two professors of chemistry, and the painter, Joseph Schöpf. Their verdict was that the image had originally been painted on the glass; that the colours, faded by time, had been restored to the extent then apparent by the action of the particular atmosphere to which they had been exposed. The people could not appreciate their arguments, nor realize that any natural means could have produced so extraordinary a result. For them, it was a miraculous image still, and accordingly they put their faith in it as such; nor was their faith without its fruit. It was a season of terrible trouble, a pestilence was raging both among men and beasts; General Joubert had penetrated as far into the interior as Sterzing; everyone felt the impotence of 'the arm of flesh' in presence of such dire calamities. The image on the peasant's humble window-pane seemed to have come as a token of heavenly favour; nothing would satisfy them but that it should be placed on one of the altars of the church, and the 'Gnadenmutter [103] von Absam' drew all the fearful and sorrowing to put their trust in Heaven alone. Suddenly after this the enemy withdrew his troops, the pestilence ceased its havoc, and more firmly than ever the villagers believed in the supernatural nature of the image on the window-pane. Absam has another claim to eminence in its famous violin-maker, Jacob Stainer, born in 1649. He learnt his art in Venice and Cremona, and carried it to such perfection, that his instruments fetched as high prices as those made in Cremona itself. Archduke Ferdinand Karl, Landesfürst of Tirol, attached him to his court. Stainer was so particular about the wood he used, that he always went over to the Gletscher forest clearings to select it, being guided in the choice by the sound it returned when he struck it with a hammer. Towards the end of his life the excitement of the love of his calling overpowered his strength of mind, and the treatment of insanity not being then brought to perfection at Absam, one has yet to go through the melancholy exhibition of the stout oaken bench to which he had to be strapped or chained when violent. [104] Mils affords the object of another pleasant excursion from Hall, reached through the North, or so called Mils, gate, in an easy half-hour; around it are the old castles of Grünegg and Schneeburg, the former a hunting-seat of Ferdinand II., now in ruins; the latter well-preserved by the present noble family of the name. Those who have a mind to enjoy a longer walk, may hence also find a way into the peaceful shady haunts of the Gnadenwald. Some two hundred years ago there lived about half way between Hall and Mils a bell-founder, who enjoyed the reputation of being a very worthy upright man, as well as one given to unfeigned hospitality; so that not only the weather-bound traveller, but every wayfarer who loved an hour's pleasant chat, knocked, as he passed by, at the door of the Glockenhof. Among all the visitors who thus sat at his board, none were so jovial as a party of wild fellows, whose business he was never well able to make out. They always brought their own meat and drink with them, and it was always of the best; and money seemed to them a matter of no account, so abundant was it. At last he ventured one day to inquire whence they acquired their seemingly boundless wealth. 'Nothing easier, and you may be as rich as we, if you will!' was the answer; and then they detailed their exploits, which proved them knights of the road. Opportunity makes the thief. The proverb was realized to the letter; the Glockengiesser had been honest hitherto, because he had never been tempted before; now the glittering prize was exposed to him, he knew not how to resist. His character for hospitality made the Glockenhof serve as a very trap. The facility increased his greed, and his cellars were filled with spoil and with the skeletons of the spoiled. Travellers thus disappeared so frequently that consternation was raised again and again, but who could ever suspect the worthy hearty Glockengiesser! Though the new trade throve so well, there was one quality necessary to its success in which the Glockengiesser was wanting, and that was caution. Just as if there had been nothing to hide, he let a party of sewing-women come one day from the village to set his household goods in order; and when they retired to rest at night, one of them, who could not sleep in a strange house, heard the master and his gang counting their money in the cellar. Astonished, she crept nearer, and over-heard their talk. 'We should not have killed that fellow,' said one; 'he wasn't worth powder and shot.' 'Pooh!' replied another, 'you can't expect to have good luck out of every murder. Why, how often a cattle-dealer kills a beast and doesn't turn a penny out of it.' The seamstress did not want to hear any more; she laid her charge at the town-hall of Hall next morning; the officers of justice arrested the bell-founder and his associates, and ample proofs of their guilt were found on the premises. Sentenced to death, in the solitude of his cell, he yielded to the full force of the reproaches of his conscience; he made no defence, but hailed his execution as a satisfaction of which his penitent soul acknowledged the justice. However, he craved two favours before his end; the one, to be allowed to go home and found a bell for the lieb' Frau Kirche in Mils; the second, that this bell might be sounded for the first time at his execution, which by local custom must be on a Friday evening at nine o'clock. [105] Both requests were granted, and his bell continued to serve the church of Mils till the fire of August 1791. Another walk from Hall is the Loreto-Kirche, intended as an exact copy of 'the Holy House,' by Archduke Ferdinand and his wife, the pious Anna Katharina of Gonzaga, who endowed it with a foundation for perpetual Masses for the repose of the souls of the reigning House of Austria; it was at one time a much visited pilgrimage, so that though it had three chaplains attached to it, monks from Hall had often to be sent for to supplement their ministrations. Ferdinand and Anna often made the pilgrimage on foot from Innsbruck, saying the 'stations' as they went, at certain little chapels which marked them by the way, and of which remains are still standing. It would be an interesting spot to trace out: I regret that we neglected to do so, and I do not know whether it is now well kept up. Starting again by the North gate of Hall, and taking the way which runs in the opposite direction from that leading to Mils, you come, after half an hour's walk through the pleasant meadows, to Heiligen Kreuz; its name was originally Gumpass, but it had its present name from the circumstance of a cross having been carried down stream by the Inn, and recovered from its waters by some peasants from this place, by whom it was set up here. So great is the popular veneration for any even apparent act of homage of Nature to 'Nature's God,' that great crowds congregated to see the cross which had been brought to them by the river; and it was found necessary in the seventeenth century to erect the spot into a distinct parish. Heiligen Kreuz is much resorted to for its sulphur baths, also by people from Hall as a pleasing change from their smoky town, on holidays. Striking out towards the mountains, another half-hour brings you to Taur, a charming little village, standing in the shelter of the Taureralpe. Almost close above it is the Thürl, a peak covered to a considerable height with rich pasture; at its summit, a height of 6,546 ft., is a wooden pyramid recording that it was climbed by the Emperor Francis I., and called the Kaisersäule. There are many legends of S. Romedius connected with Taur, one of which is worth citing, in illustration of the confidence of the age which conceived or adapted it, in the efficacy of faith and obedience. S. Romedius was a rich Bavarian, who in the fourth century owned considerable property in the Innthal, including Taur. On his return from a pilgrimage to Rome, he put himself at the disposal of S. Vigilius, the apostle of South Tirol, who despatched him to the conversion of the Nonsthal, where he lived and died in the odour of sanctity. He was not unmindful of his own Taur, but frequently visited it to pour out his spiritual benedictions. He was once there on such a visit, when he received a call from S. Vigilius. Regardless of his age and infirmities, he immediately prepared for the journey over the mountains to Trent. His nag, old and worn out like his master, he had left to graze on the pastures at the foot of the Taureralpe, so he called his disciple David, and bid him bring him in and saddle him. Great was the consternation of the disciple on making the discovery that the horse had been devoured by a bear. Saddened and cast down, he came to his master with the news. Nothing daunted, S. Romedius bid him go back and saddle the bear in its stead. The neophyte durst not gainsay his master, but went out trusting in his word; the bear meekly submitted to the bidding of the holy man, who bestrode him, and rode on this singular mount into Trent. It is only a fitting sequel that the legend adds, that at his approach all the bells of Trent rang out a gladsome peal of welcome, without being moved by human hands. The lords of Taur gave the name to the place by setting up their castle on the ruins of an old Roman tower (turris; altromanisch, tour). S. Romedius is not the only hero from among them; the chronicles of their race are full of the most romantic achievements; perhaps not the least of these was the construction of the fortress, the rambling ruins of which still attest its former greatness. Overhanging the bank of the Wildbach is the chapel of S. Romedius, inhabited by a hermit as lately as the seventeenth century, though the country-people are apt to confuse him with S. Romedius himself! [106] One dark night, as he was watching in prayer, he heard the sound of tapping against his cell window. Used to the exercise of hospitality, he immediately opened to the presumed wayfarer: great was his astonishment to see standing before him the spirit of the lately deceased parish priest, who had been his very good friend. 'Have compassion on me, Frater Joshue!' he exclaimed; 'for when in the flesh I forgot to say three Masses, for which the stipend had been duly provided and received by me, and now my penance is fearful;' as he spoke he laid his hand upon a wooden tile of the hermit's lowly porch, who afterwards found that the impression of his burning hand was branded into the wood. 'Now do you, my friend, say these Masses in my stead; pray and fast for me, and help me through this dreadful pain.' The hermit promised all he wished, and kept his promise; and when a year and a day had passed, the spirit tapped again at the window, and told him he had gained his release. The tile, with the brand-mark on it, may be seen hanging in the chapel, with an inscription under it attesting the above facts, and bearing date 7th February, 1660. [107] At a very short distance further is another interesting little village, Rum by name. It is situated close under the mountains, the soil of which is very friable. A terrible landslip occurred in 1770; the noise was heard as far as Innsbruck, where it was attributed to an earthquake. Whole fields were covered with the débris, some of which were said to be carried to a distance of a mile and a half; the village just escaped destruction, only an outlying smithy, which was buried, showed how near the danger had come. If time presses, this excursion may be combined with the last, and the Loreto-Kirche taken on the way back to Hall. CHAPTER VI. NORTH TIROL--UNTERINNTHAL (RIGHT INN-BANK). SCHWATZ. The world is full of poetry unwrit; Dew-woven nets that virgin hearts enthrall, Darts of glad thought through infant brains that flit, Hope and pursuit, loved bounds and fancies free-- Poor were our earth of these bereft.... Aubrey de Vere. It is time now to return to speak of Schwatz, of which we caught a glimpse across the river as we left Viecht; [108] and it is one of the most interesting towns, and centres of excursions, in Tirol. It was a morning of bright promise which first brought us there by the early hour of 8.15. To achieve this we had had to rise betimes; it was near the end of August, when the mid-day sun is overpowering; yet the early mornings were very cool, and the brisk breezes came charged with a memory of snow from the beautiful chains of mountains whose base we were hugging. The railway station, as if it dared not with its modern innovation invade the rural retreat of primitive institutions, was at a considerable distance from the village, and we had a walk of some fifteen or twenty minutes before we came within reach of even a chance of breakfast. My own strong desire to be brought quite within the influence of Tirolean traditions perhaps deadened my sensations of hunger and weariness, but it was not so with all of our party; and it was with some dismay we began to apprehend that the research of the primitive is not to be made without some serious sacrifice of 'le comfortable.' Our walk across the fields at last brought us to the rapid smiling river; and crowning the bridge, stood as usual S. John Nepomuk, his patient martyr's face gazing on the effigy of the crucified Saviour he is always portrayed as bearing so lovingly, seeming so sweetly all-enduring, that no light feeling of discontent could pass him unrestrained. Still the call for breakfast is an urgent one with the early traveller, and there seemed small chance of appeasing it. Near the station indeed had stood a deserted building, with the word 'Restauration' just traceable on its mouldy walls, but we had felt no inclination to try our luck within them; and though we had now reached the village, we seemed no nearer a more appetising supply. No one had got out of the train besides ourselves; not a soul appeared by the way. A large house stood prominently on our right, which for a moment raised our hopes, but its too close proximity to a little church forbad us to expect it to be a hostelry, and a scout of our party brought the intelligence that it was a hospital; another building further on, on the left, gave promise again, because painted all over with frescoes, which might be the mode in Schwatz of displaying a hotel-sign; but no, it proved to be a forge, and like the lintels marked by Morgiana's chalk, all the houses of Schwatz--as indeed most of the houses of Tirol--were found to be covered with sacred frescoes. At last a veritable inn appeared, and right glad we were to enter its lowly portal and find rest, even though the air was scented by the mouldering furniture and neighbouring cattle-shed; though the stiff upright worm-eaten chairs made a discordant grating on the tiled floor, and a mildewed canvas, intended to keep out flies, completed the gloom which the smallness of the single window began. A repeated knocking at last brought a buxom maid out of the cow-shed, who seemed not a little amazed at our apparition. 'Had she any coffee! coffee, at that time of day--of course not!' True, the unpunctuality of the train, the delivery of superfluous luggage to the care of the station-master, and our lingering by the way, had brought us to past nine o'clock--an unprecedented hour for breakfast in Schwatz. 'Couldn't we be content with wine? in a couple of hours meat would be ready, as the carters came in to dine then.' Meat and coffee at the same repast, and either at that hour, were ideas she could not at first take in. Nevertheless, when we detailed our needs, astonishment gave way to compassion, and she consented to drop her incongruous propositions, and to make us happy in our own way. Accordingly, she was soon busied in lighting a fire, running to fetch coffee and rolls--though she did not, as happened to me in Spain, ask us to advance the money for the commission--and very soon appeared with a tray full of tumblers and queer old crockery. The black beverage she at last provided consisted of a decoction of nothing nearer coffee than roasted corn, figs, [109] or acorns; and the rolls had the strangest resemblance to leather; but the milk and eggs were fine samples of dairy produce, for which Schwatz is famous, and these and the luscious fruit made up for the rest. I remember that the poet-author of one of the most charming books of travel, in one of the most charming countries of Europe, [110] deprecates the habit travel-writers have of speaking too much about their fare; and in one sense his remarks are very just. Where this is done without purpose or art, it becomes a bore; but 'love itself can't live on flowers;' and as, however humiliating the fact, it is decreed that the only absolutely necessary business of man's life is the catering for his daily bread, it becomes interesting to the observant to study the various means by which this decree is complied with by different races, in different localities. It is especially noteworthy that it is just in countries made supercilious by their culture that these matters of a lower order engross the most attention, and just those who consider themselves the most civilized who are the most dependent on what have been termed mere 'creature comforts.' These poor country folks, whom the educated traveller often passes by as unworthy of notice in their benighted ignorance and superstition--while they would not forego their salutation of the sacred symbol by the way-side, which marks their intimate appreciation of truths of the highest order--put us to shame, by their indifference to sublunary indulgences. We had come to Tirol to study their ways, and I hope we took our lesson on this occasion, well. We were not feasted with a sumptuous repast, such as might be found in any of the monster hotels, now so contrived, that you may pass through all the larger towns of Europe with such similarity to home-life everywhere, that you might as well never have left your fireside; but we were presented with an experience of the struggle with want; of that hardy face-to-face meeting with the great original law of labour, which our modern artificial life puts so completely out of sight, that it grows to regard it as an antiquated fable, and which can only be met amid such scenes. The matutinal peasants were packing up their wares--which when spread out had made a picturesque market of the main street--by the time we again sallied forth, and we were nearly losing what is always one of the prettiest sights in a foreign town. At the end rose the parish church, with a stateliness for which the smallness of the village had not prepared us; but Schwatz has a sad and eventful history to account for the disparity. Schwatz was once a flourishing Roman station, and even now remains are dug out which attest its ancient prosperity; but it had fallen away to the condition of a neglected Häusergruppe by the fourteenth century, when suddenly came the discovery of silver veins in the surrounding heights. A lively bull, [111] one day tearing up the soil with his horns in a frolic, laid bare a shining vein of ore. The name of Gertraud Kandlerin, the farm-servant who had charge of the herd to which he belonged, and brought the joyful tidings home to Schwatz, has been jealously preserved. From that moment Schwatz grew in importance and prosperity; and at one time there was a population of thirty thousand miners employed in the immediate neighbourhood. The Fuggers and Hochstetters of Augsburg were induced to come and employ their vast resources in working the riches of the mountains; and native families of note, laying aside the pursuit of arms, joined in the productive industry. Among these were the Fiegers, one of whom was the counsellor and intimate friend of the Emperor Maximilian, who followed his remains to their last resting-place, at Schwatz, when he died in ripe old age, leaving fifty-seven children and grandchildren, and money enough to enrich them all. His son Hanns married a daughter of the Bavarian house of Pienzenau; and when he brought her home, tradition says it was in a carriage drawn by four thousand horses. Many names, famous in the subsequent history of the country, such as the Tänzls, Jöchls, Tannenbergs, and Sternbachs, were thus first raised to importance. This outpouring of riches stimulated the people throughout the country to search for mineral treasures, and everywhere the miners of Schwatz were in request as the most expert, both at excavating and engineering. Nor this only within the limits of Tirol; they had acquired such a reputation by the middle of the sixteenth century, that many distant undertakings were committed to them too. They were continually applied to, to direct mining operations in the wars against the Turks in Hungary. Their countermines performed an effective part in driving them from before Vienna in 1529; and again, in 1739, they assisted in destroying the fortifications of Belgrade. Clement VII. called them to search the mountains of the Papal State in 1542; and the Dukes of Florence and Piedmont also had recourse to their assistance about the same time. In the same way, many knotty disputes about mining rights were sent from all parts to be decided by the experience of Schwatz; and its abundance attracted to it every kind of merchandise, and every new invention. One of the earliest printing-presses was in this way set up here. But a similarity of pursuit had established a community of interest between the miners of Schwatz and their brethren of Saxony; and when the Reformation broke out, its doctrines spread by this means among the miners of Schwatz, and led at one time to a complete revolution among them. Twice they banded together, and marched to attack the capital, with somewhat communistic demands. Ferdinand I., and Sebastian, Bishop of Brixen, went out to meet them on each occasion at Hall, and on each occasion succeeded in allaying the strife by their moderate discourse. Within the town of Schwatz, however, the innovators carried matters with a high hand, and at one time obtained possession of half the parish church, where they set up a Lutheran pulpit. Driven out of this by the rest of the population, they met in a neighbouring wood, where Joham Strauss and Christof Söll, both unfrocked monks, used to hold forth to them. A Franciscan, Christof von München, now came to Schwatz, to strengthen the faith of the Catholics, and the controversy waged high between the partisans of both sides; so high, that one day two excited disputants carried their quarrels so far before a crowd of admiring supporters, that at last the Lutheran exclaimed, 'If Preacher Söll does not teach the true doctrine, may Satan take me up into the Steinjoch at Stans!' and as he spoke, so, says the story, it befell: the astonished people saw him carried through the air and disappear from sight! The credit of the Lutherans fell very sensibly on the instant, and still more some days after, when the adventurous victim came back lame and bruised, and himself but too well convinced of his error. Nevertheless the strife was not cured. Somewhat later, there was an inroad of Anabaptists, under whose auspices another insurrection arose, and for the time the flourishing mining works were brought to a stand-still. At last the Government was obliged to interfere. The most noisy and perverse were made to leave the country, and the Jesuits from Hall were sent over to hold a mission, and rekindle the Catholic teaching. Peace and order were restored: four thousand persons were brought back to the frequentation of the sacraments; but the Bergsegen, [112] add the traditions, which had been the occasion of so much disunion, was never recovered. From that time forth the mining treasures of Schwatz began to fail; and after a long and steadily continued diminution of produce, silver ceased altogether to be found. Copper, and the best iron of Tirol, are still got out, and their working constitutes one of the chief industries of the place; the copper produced is particularly fit for wire-drawing, for which there is an establishment here. Another industry of Schwatz is a government cigar manufactory, [113] which employs between four and five hundred hands, chiefly women and children, who get very poorly paid--ten or twelve francs a-week, working from five in the morning till six in the evening, with two hours' interval in the middle of the day. There are pottery works, which also employ many hands; and many of the women occupy themselves in knitting woollen clothing for the miners. The pastures of the neighbourhood are likewise a source of rich in-comings to the town; but with all these industries together, Schwatz is far below the level of its early prosperity. Instead of its former crowded buildings, it now consists almost entirely of one street; and instead of being the cynosure of foreigners from all parts, is so little visited, that the people came to the windows to look at the unusual sight of a party of strangers as we passed by. In place of its early printing-press, its literary requirements are supplied by one little humble shop, where twine, toys, and traps, form the staple, and stationery and a small number of books are sold over and above; and where, because we spent a couple of francs, the master thereof seemed to think he had driven for that one day a roaring trade. Other misfortunes, besides the declension of its 'Bergsegen,' have broken over Schwatz. In 1611 it was visited by the plague, in 1670 by an earthquake; but its worst disaster was in the campaign of 1809, when the Bavarians, under the Duke of Dantzic, and the French, under Deroi, determined to strike terror into the hearts of the country-people by burning down the town. The most incredible cruelties are reported to have been perpetrated on this occasion, many being such as one cannot bear to repeat; so determined was their fury, that when the still air refused to fan the flames, they again and again set fire to the place at different points; and the people were shot down when they attempted to put out the conflagration. General Wiede was quartered in the palace of Count Tannenberg, a blind old man, with four blind children; his misfortunes, and the laws of hospitality, might have protected him at least from participation in the general calamity; but no, not even the hall where the hospitable board was spread in confidence for the unscrupulous guest, was spared. Once and again, as the inimical hordes poured into, or were driven out of, Tirol, Schwatz had to bear the brunt of their devastations, so that there is little left to show what Schwatz was. The stately parish church, however, suffered less than might have been expected: in the height of the conflagration, when all was noise and excitement, a young Bavarian officer, over whom sweet home lessons of piety exercised a stronger charm than the wild instincts of the military career which were effecting such havoc around, collected a handful of trusty followers, and, unobserved by the general herd, succeeded in rescuing it before great damage had been done. The building was commenced about 1470, [114] and consecrated in 1502. What remains of the original work is in the best style of the period; the west front is particularly noteworthy. The plan of the building is very remarkable, consisting of a double nave, each having its aisles, choir, and high-altar; this peculiar construction originated in the importance of the Knappen, or miners, at the time it was designed, and their contribution to the building fund entitling them to this distinct division of the church between them and the towns-people; one of the high-altars still goes by the name of the Knappenhochaltar. The roof, like those of most churches of Tirol and Bavaria, is of copper, and is said to consist of fifteen thousand tiles of that metal--an offering from the neighbouring mines. The emblem of two crossed pick-axes frequently introduced, further denotes the connexion of the mining trade with the building. Whitewash and stucco have done a good deal to hide its original beauties, but some fine monuments remain. One in brass, to Hanns Dreyling the metal-founder, date 1578, near the side ('south') door, should not be overlooked: the design embodies a Renaissance use of Ionic columns and entablature in connexion with mediæval symbols. Below, are seen Hanns Dreyling himself in the dress of his craft, his three wives, and his three sons habited as knights (showing the rise of his fortunes), all under the protection of S. John the Baptist. Above, is portrayed the vision of the Apocalypse, God the Father seated on His Throne, surrounded by a rainbow, with the Book of Seven Seals, and the Lamb; at His Feet the four Evangelists; around, the four-and-twenty elders, with their harps, some wearing their crowns, and some stretching them out as a humble offering before the Throne; in front kneels the Apostolic Seer himself, gazing, and with his right hand pointing, upwards, yet smiting his breast with the left hand, and weeping that no one was found worthy to open the seals of the book. Below the epitaph, the monument bears the following lines: Mir gab Alexander Colin den Possen Hanns Löffler hat mich gegossen. Alexander Colin, of Malines, and Hans Löffler, were, like Hans Dreyling, Schmelzherrn of eminence, and connected with him by marriage, thus they naturally devoted their best talent to honour their friend and master. We learnt to appreciate it better when we came to see their works at Innsbruck. The nine altar-pieces are mostly by Tirolean painters. The Assumption, on one high-altar, is by Schöpf; the Last Supper on the other--the Knappenhochaltar--by Bauer of Augsburg. The 'north' side door opens on to a narrow strip of grass, across which is a Michaels-kapelle, as the chapel we so often find in German churchyards--and where the people love to gather, and pray for their loved and lost--is here called. It is a most beautiful little specimen of middle-pointed, with high-pitched roof and traceried window. A picturesque stone-arched covered exterior staircase, the banister cornice of which represents a narrow water-trough, with efts chasing each other in and out of it, leads to the upper chapel, which was in some little confusion at the time of our visit, as it was under restoration; two or three artists were in the lower chapel, painting the images of the saints in the fresh colours the people love. After some searching, I found out a figure of a dead Christ, which I was curious to see; because, before coming to Schwatz, I had been told there was one which had been dearly prized for centuries by the people; that once on a time there had come night by night a large toad, and had stood before the image, resting on its hinder feet, the two front ones joined as if in token of prayer; and no one durst disturb it, because they said it must be a suffering soul which they saw under its form. I spoke to one of the artists about it, to see if this was the right image, and if the legend was still acknowledged. He answered as one who had little sympathy with the mysteries he was employed to delineate; he evidently cared nothing for legends, though willing to paint them for money. It was the first time I had met with this sort of spirit in the neighbourhood, and was not surprised to learn he was not of Tirol, but from Munich. A door opposite the last named opens into the churchyard, filled with the usual black and gold cast-iron crosses, and the usual sprinkling of some of a brighter colour; each with its stoup of holy water and weihwedel, [115] and its simple epitaph, 'Hier ruhet in Frieden....' Besides the large crucifix, which always stands in the centre promising redemption to the faithful departed, is a stout round pillar of large rough stones, surmounted by a lantern cap with five sharp points, each face glazed, and a lamp within before some relic, always kept alight, for the people think [116] that the holy souls come and anoint their burning wounds with the oil which piously feeds a churchyard lamp. Twinkling fitfully amid the evening shadows, over the graves, and over the human skulls and bones, of which there happened fortuitously to be a heap waiting re-sepulture after some late arrangement of the burying-ground, it disposed one to listen to the strange tales which are told of it. There was once a Robler of Schwatz, well-limbed, deep-chested, full of confidence and energy, who had won the right to wear the champion feather [117] against the whole neighbourhood. But not content to be the darling of his home, and the pride of his valley, he must needs prove himself the best against all comers. In fear of the shame of a reverse after all his boasts, he resolved to ensure himself against one, by having recourse to an act, originally designed probably as a test of possessing, but commonly believed by the people to be a means of winning, invincible strength of nerve, and which is described in the following narrative. Opportunity was not lacking. Death is ever busy, and one day laid low an old gossip, who was duly buried with all honour by her children and children's children to the third generation. Now was the time for our brave Robler. That first night that she rested in the 'field of peace,' he rose in the dead of the night--a dark starless night, just as it was when we stood there--and the lamp of the shrine resting its calm pale rays upon the graves. The great clock struck out twelve, with a rattling of its cumbersome machinery, which sounded like skeletons walking by in procession; our Robler quailed not, however, but approached the new grave, scattered the earth from over it with his spade, raised up the coffin, opened it, took out the corpse, dressed himself in its shroud, and lifted the ghastly burden on to his strong shoulders. Never had burden felt so heavy; it seemed to him as though he bore the Freundsberg on his back; though sinking and quailing, he bore it three times round the whole circuit of the enclosure, laid it back in the coffin, and lowered the coffin into the grave; triumphantly he showered the earth over it, and took quite a pleasure in shaping the hillock smoothly and well. Then suddenly, to his horror, with a click like the gripe of a skeleton, he heard the clapper of the old clock raised to mark the completion of the hour within which his task, to be effectual, must be accomplished. Meantime, it had come on to rain violently, and the big drops pattered on the stones, like dead men tramping all around him; it happened to fall heavily round us, and the simile was so striking, I could not forbear a grim smile. It seemed to him as if he never could dash through their midst in time; still he made the attempt boldly, and actually succeeded in swinging himself over the churchyard wall before the hammer had fallen, and, what was most important, still bearing round his shoulders the shroud of the dead. Nevertheless his heart was full of anxiety with the thought that he had disturbed the peace of the departed; it seemed to him as if the old gossip had run after him to claim her own, and with her burning hand had seized the fluttering garment, and torn a piece out of it, just as he cleared the wall. For days after, the sexton saw the piece, torn and burnt, fluttering over her grave, but never could make out how it got there. The Robler, however, was now proof against every attack; no one could wear a feather in his presence, for he was sure to overcome him, and make him renounce the prize. What did he gain, however, by his uncannily-earned prowess? A little temporary renown and honour, and the fear of his kind; but all through the rest of his life, at the Wandlung [118] of the Holy Mass, the pure white wafer, as the priest raised it aloft, seemed black to his eyes, and when he came to die, there was no father-confessor near to whisper absolution and peace. A most singular legend, also attached to this spot, dates from the time when the Jesuit Fathers held their missions after the expulsion of the Lutherans. With the fervour of new conversion, the people ascribed to their word the most wonderful powers; and their simple unwavering faith seems to have been a loan of that which removes mountains. Among those whom a spirit of penance moved to come and make a general confession of their past lives was a lady no longer young, of blameless character, but unmarried. The fathers, as I have already implied, enjoyed the most unbounded confidence of the people; and the most unusual penance was accepted in the simplest way. To this person the penance enjoined was, that she should for three nights watch through the hour of midnight in the church, and then come and give an account of what she had seen. Being apparently a person of a strong mind, she was satisfied with the assurance of the father that no harm would happen to her, and she fulfilled her task bravely. "When she came to narrate what had passed, she said that each night the church had been traversed by a countless train of men, women, and children, of every age and degree, dressed in a manner unlike anything she had seen or read of in the past; the features of all quite unknown to her, and yet exhibiting a certain likeness, which might lead her to believe they might be of her own family, and all wearing an expression indescribably sad; she was all anxiety to know what she could do for their relief, for she felt sure it was to move her to this that they had been revealed to her. The father told her, however, this was not at all the object of the vision: that the train of people she had seen was an appearance of the generations of unborn souls, who might have lived to the eternal honour and praise of God if she had not preferred her ease and freedom and independence to the trammels of the married state; 'for,' said he, 'your choice of condition was based on this, not on the higher love of God, and the desire of greater perfection. Now, therefore, reflect what profit your past life has borne to the glory of God, and strive to make it glorify Him in some way in the future.' The Franciscan church was built about the same time as the other, and has some remains of the beautiful architecture of its date. Over the credence table is a remarkable and very early painting on panel, of the genealogy of our Lord. Within the precincts of the monastery are some early frescoes, which I did not see; but they ought not to be overlooked. One subject, said to be very boldly and strikingly handled, is the commission to the Apostles to go out and preach the Gospel to the nations. The day was wearing on, and we had our night's lodging to provide; the inn where we had breakfasted did not invite our confidence, despite of the pretty Kranach's Madonna which smiled over the parlour, and the good-natured maid who deemed it her business to wait behind our chairs while we sipped our coffee; so we walked down the long street, and tried our luck at one and another. There were plenty of them: and they were easily recognized now we knew their token, for each has a forbidden-fruit-tree painted on the wall with some subject out of the New Testament surmounting it, to show the triumph of the Gospel over the Fall; while the good gifts of Providence, which mine host within is so ready to dispense, are typified by festoons of grape-vines, surrounding the picture. Those which let out horses have also a team cut out in a thin plate of copper, and painted proper, as heralds say, fixed at right angles to the doorpost. Nevertheless, the interiors were not inviting, and at more than one the bedding was all on the roof, airing; and the solitary maid, left in charge of the house while all the rest of the household were in the fields harvesting, declared the impossibility of getting so many beds as we wanted ready by the evening. Dinner at the Post having somehow indisposed us for it, we at last put up at the Krone, which was very much like a counterpart of our first experience. Nothing could exceed the pleasant willingness of the people of the house; but both their accommodation and their cleanliness was limited; and besides a repulsive look, there was an unaccountable odour, about the beds, which made sleeping in them impossible. My astonishment may be imagined, when on proceeding to examine whether there were any articles of bedding that would do to roll oneself up in on the floor, I found that the smell proceeded from layers of apples between the mattresses, which it seems to be the habit thus to preserve for winter use! The rooms were large and rambling, and filled with cumbersome furniture, some of which must, I think, have been made before the great fire of 1809. As in all the other houses, a guitar hung on the wall of the sitting-room; and after many coy refusals, the daughter of the house consented to sing to it one or two melodies very modestly and well. You do not sleep very soundly on the floor, and by six next morning the tingling of the Blessed Sacrament bell sufficed to rouse me in time to see how the Schwatzers honour 'das hochwürdigste Gut,' [119] as it passed them on its way to the sick. Two little boys in red cassocks went first, bearing red banners and holy-water; two followed in red and yellow, bearing a canopy over the priest, and four men carried lanterns on long poles. The rain of the previous night had filled the road with puddles, but along the whole way the peasants were on their knees. To all who are afflicted with long illnesses, it is thus carried at least every month. The morning was bright and hot, but the ruined castle on the neighbouring Freundsberg looked temptingly near; and we easily found a rough but not difficult path, past a number of crazy cottages, the inhabitants of which, however poor and hard worked, yet gave us the cheerful Christian greeting, 'Gelobt sei Jesus Christus!' as we passed. Near the summit the cottages cease; and after a short stretch in the burning sun, you appreciate the shade afforded by a tiny chapel, at the side of a crystal spring, welling up out of the ground, its waters cleverly guided into a conduit, formed of a hollowed tree, which supplies all the houses of the hill-side, and perhaps accounts for their being so thickly clustered there. The last wind of the ascent is the steepest and most slippery. The sun beat down relentlessly, but seemed to give unfailing delight to myriads of lizards, adders, and grasshoppers, who were darting and whirring over the crumbling stones in the maddest way. Historians, poets, or painters, have made some ruins so familiarly a part of the world's life, and their grand memories of departed glories have been so often recounted, that they seem stereotyped upon them. Time has shattered and dismantled them, but has robbed them of nothing, for their glories of all ages are concrete around them still. But poor Freundsberg! who thinks of it? or of the thousand and one ruined castles which mark the 'sky-line' of Tirol with melancholy beauty? Each has, however, had its throb of hope and daring, and its day of triumph and mastery, often noble, sometimes--not so often as elsewhere--base. Freundsberg is no exception. For two hundred years before the Christian era it was a fortress, we know: for how long before that we know not; and then again, we know little of what befell it, till many hundred years after, in the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries, its lords were known as mighty men of war. It reached its highest glory under Captain Georg, son of Ulrich and a Swabian heiress whose vast dowry tended to raise the lustre of the house. Georg von Freundsberg entered the career of arms in early youth, and rose to be a general at an age when other men are making their premières armes. At four-and-twenty he was reckoned by Charles Quint his most efficient leader. Over the Swiss, over the Venetians, wherever he led, he was victorious. The victory at Pavia was in great measure due to his prowess. His personal strength is recorded in fabulous terms; his foresight in providing for his men, and his art of governing and attaching them, were so remarkable, that they called him their father, and he could do with them whatever he would. They recorded his deeds in the terms in which men speak of a hero: they said that the strongest man might stand up against him with all his energy, and yet with the little finger of his left hand he could throw him down; that no matter at what fiery pace a horse might be running away, if he but stretched his hand across the path he brought it to a stand; that in all the Emperor's stores there was no field-piece so heavy but he could move it with ease with one hand. They sang of him: Georg von Freundsberg, von grosser Sterk, ein theurer Held; behielt das Feld in Streit und Krieg. den Feind niederslieg in aller Schlacht. er legt Got zu die Er und Macht.' [120] The last line would show that to a certain extent he was not untrue to the traditions of his country; nevertheless, his success in war, and his love for the Emperor, carried him so far away from them, that when the siege of Rome was propounded, he not only accepted a command in the attack on the 'Eternal City,' but raised twelve thousand men in his Swabian and Tirolean possessions to support the charge. None who have pondered the havoc and the horrors of that wanton and sacrilegious siege will care to extenuate the guilt of any participator in it. It is the blot on Georg von Freundsberg's character, and it was likewise his last feat. He died suddenly within the twelvemonth, aged only fifty-two, leaving his affairs in inextricable confusion, and his estate encumbered with debts incurred in raising the troops who were to assist in the desolation of the 'Holy City.' His brothers--Ulrich, Bishop of Trent, and Thomas, who like himself followed the military calling--earned a certain share of respect also; but no subsequent member of the family was distinguished, and the race came to an end in 1580. The castle fell into ruin; and as if a curse rested on it, when it was used again, it was to afford cover to the Bavarians in firing upon the people in 1809! I do not know by what local tradition, but some motive of affection still renders the chapel a place of pious resort; and a copy of Kranach's 'Mariähilf' adorns the altar. The remaining tower affords a pleasing outline. I returned to the chapel by the brook, and sat down to sketch it, though rather too closely placed under it to view it properly; there is always an indefinable satisfaction in making use of these places of pious rest, which brotherly charity has provided for the unknown wayfarer. When, after a time, I looked up from my paper, I saw sitting outside in the sun a strange old woman, the stealthy approach of whose shoeless feet I had not noticed. I advised her to come in and rest; and then I asked her how she came to walk unshod over the stones of the path, which were sharp and loose, as well as burning hot, while she carried a pair of stout shoes in her hand. 'That doesn't hurt,' she replied indignantly; 'it's the shoes that hurt. When you put your foot down you know where you put it, and you take hold of the ground; but when you have those things on, you don't know where your foot goes, and down you go yourself. That's what happened to me on this very path, and see what came of it.' And she bared her right arm, and showed that it had been broken, and badly set, and now was withered and useless--she could do no more work to support herself. I asked her how she lived, and she did not like the question, for begging, it seems, is forbidden. But I said it was a very hard law, and then she grew more confidential; and after a little more talk, her wild weird style, and her strong desire to tell my fortune, showed me she was one of those dangerous devotees who may be considered the camp-followers of the Christian army, whose chance of ingratiating themselves seems greatest where the faith is brightest, and who there work all manner of mischief, overlaying simple belief with pagan superstition; but at the same time, such an one is generally a very mine for the comparative mythologist, and in this individual instance not without some excuse in her misfortunes. For, besides the unlucky disablement already named, she had lost not only her house, home, and belongings, but all her relations also, in a fire. It is not surprising if so much misery had unhinged her mind. Her best means of occupation seemed to be, when good people gave her alms, to go to a favourite shrine, and pray for them; and I fully believe, from her manner, that she conscientiously fulfilled such commissions, for I did not discover anything of the hypocrite about her. Only once, when I had been explaining what a long way I had come on purpose to see the shrines of her country, she amused me by answering, in the most inflated style, that however far it might be, it could not be so far as she had come--she came from beyond mountains and seas, far, far, ever so far--till I looked at her again, and wondered if she were a gipsy, and was appropriating to her personal experience some of the traditional wanderings of her race. Presently she acknowledged that her birth-place was Seefeld, which I knew to be at no great distance from Innsbruck, perhaps ten miles from where we stood. Yet this tone of exaggeration may have arisen from an incapacity to take in the idea of a greater distance than she knew of previously, rather than from any intention to deceive; and her 'seas' were of course lakes, which when spoken of in the German plural have not even the gender to distinguish them. When she had once mentioned Seefeld, she grew quite excited, and told me no place I had come from could boast of such a marvellous favour as God had manifested to her Seefeld. I asked her to tell me about it. 'What! don't you know about Oswald Milser?' and I saw my want of recognition consigned me to the regions of her profoundest contempt. 'Don't you know about Oswald Milser, who by his pride quenched all the benefit of his piety and his liberality to the Church? who, when he went to make his Easter Communion one grüne Donnerstag, [121] insisted that it should be given him in one of the large Hosts, which the priest uses, and so distinguish him from the people. And when the priest, afraid to offend the great man, complied, how the weight bore him down, down into the earth;' and she described a circle with her finger on the ground, and bowed herself together to represent the action; 'and he clung to the altar steps, but they gave way like wax; and he sank lower and lower, [122] till he called to the priest to take the fearful Host back from him.' 'And what became of him?' I asked. 'He went into the monastery of Stamms, and lived a life of penance. But his lady was worse than he: when they told her what had taken place, she swore she would not believe it; "As well might you tell me," she said, and stamped her foot, "that that withered stalk could produce a rose;" and even as she spoke, three sweet roses burst forth from the dry branch, which had been dead all the winter. Then the proud lady, refusing to yield to the prodigy, rushed out of the house raving mad, and was never seen there again; but by night you may yet hear her wailing over the mountains, for there is no rest for her.' Her declamation and action accompanying every detail was consummate. I asked her if she knew no such stories of the neighbourhood of Schwatz. She thought for a moment, and then assuming her excited manner once more, she pointed to a neighbouring eminence. 'There was a bird-catcher,' she said, 'who used to go out on the Goaslahn there, following his birds; but he was quite mad about his sport, and could not let it alone, feast day or working day. One Sunday came, and he could not wait to hear the holy Mass. "I'll go out for an hour or two," he said; "there'll be time for that yet." So he went wandering through the woods, following his sport, and the hours flew away as fast as the birds; hour by hour the church bell rang, but he always said to himself he should be in time to catch the Mass of the next hour. The nine o'clock Mass was past, and the clock had warned him that it was a quarter to ten, and he had little more than time to reach the last Mass of the day. Just as he was hesitating to pack up his tackle, a beautiful bird, such as he had never seen before, with a gay red head, came hopping close to his decoy birds. It was not to be resisted. The bird-catcher could not take his eye off the bird. "Dong!" went the bell; hop! went the bird. Which should he follow? The bird was so very near the lime now; there must be time to secure him, and yet reach the church, at least before the Gospel. At last, the final stroke of the bell sounded; and at the same instant the beautiful bird hopped on to the snare. Who could throw away so fair a chance? Then the glorious plumage must be carefully cleansed of the bird-lime, which had assisted the capture, and the prize secured, and carefully stowed away at home. It would be too late for Mass then; and the bird-catcher felt the full reproach of the course he was tempted to pursue, nevertheless he could not resist it. On he went, homewards; now full of buoyant joy over his luck, now cast down with shame and sorrow over his neglected duty. He had thus proceeded a good part of his way, before he perceived that his burden was getting heavier and heavier; at last he could hardly get along under it. So he set it down, and began to examine into the cause. He found that the strange bird had swelled out so big, that it was near bursting the bars of its cage, while from its wings issued furious sulphurous fumes. Then he saw how he had been deceived; that the delusive form had been sent by the Evil One, to induce him to disobey the command of the Church. Without hesitation he flung the cursed thing from him, and watched it, by its trail of lurid flame, rolling down the side of the Goaslahn. But never, from that day forward, did he again venture to ply his trade on a holy day. 'Such things had happened to others also,' she said. 'Hunters had been similarly led astray after strange chamois; for the power of evil had many a snare for the weak. Birds too, though we deemed them so pretty and innocent, were, more often than we thought, the instruments of malice.' And it struck me as she spoke, that there were more crabbed stories of evil boding in her repertory than gentle and holy ones. 'There is the swallow,' she instanced: 'why do swallows always hover over nasty dirty marshy places? Don't you know that when the Saviour was hanging on the Cross, and the earth trembled, and the sun grew dark with horror, and all the beasts of the field went and hid themselves for shame, only the frivolous [123] swallows flitted about under the very shadow of the holy rood, and twittered their love songs as on any ordinary day. Then the Saviour turned His head and reproached the thoughtless birds; and mark my words, never will you see a swallow perched upon anything green and fresh.' I was sorry to part from her and her legendary store; but I was already due at the station, to meet friends by the train. She took my alms with glee, and then pursued her upward way barefooted, to make some promised orisons at the Freundsberg shrine. It was a glowing afternoon; and after crossing the unshaded bridge and meadows, to and from the railway, I was glad to stop and rest in a little church which stood open, near the river. It was a plain whitewashed edifice, ornamented with more devotion than taste. When I turned to come away, I found that the west wall was perforated with a screen of open iron-work, on the other side of which was an airy hospital ward. The patients could by this means beguile their weary hours with thoughts congenial to them suggested by the Tabernacle and the Crucifix. A curtain hung by the side, which could be drawn across the screen at pleasure. There were not more than four or five patients in the ward at the time, and in most instances decay of nature was the cause of disease. There is not much illness at Schwatz; but admittance to the simple accommodation of the hospital is easily conceded. Schwatz formerly had two, but the larger was burnt down in 1809. The remaining one seems amply sufficient for the needs of the place. There was 'Benediction' in the church in the evening, for it was, I forget what, saint's day. The church was very full, and the people said the Rosary in common before the Office began. A great number of the girls from the tobacco factory came in as they left work, and the singing was unusually sweet, which surprised me, as the Schwatzers are noted for their nasal twang and drawling accent in speaking. I learnt that there are several Italians from Wälsch-Tirol settled here, and they lead the choir. It is edifying to see the work-people, after their day's toil, coming into the church as if it was more familiar to them even than home; but one does not get used to seeing the uncovered heads of the women, though indeed with the rich and luxuriant braids of hair with which Nature endows them, they might be deemed 'covered' enough. A more familiar sight to an English eye is the seat-filled area of the German churches. Confessedly it is one of the home associations which one least cares to see reproduced, but the pews of the German churches are less objectionable than our own; they are lower, and not so crowded, and ample space is always left for processions, so they interfere far less with the architectural design. CHAPTER VII. NORTH TIROL--UNTERINNTHAL (RIGHT INN-BANK). EXCURSIONS FROM SCHWATZ. 'Partout où touche votre regard vous rencontrez au fond sous la forme qui passe, un mystère qui demeure ... chacun des mystères de ce monde est la figure, l'image de celui du monde supérieur; de sorte que tout ce que nous pouvons connaître dans l'ordre de la nature est la révélation même de l'ordre divin.'--Chevé, Visions de l'Avenir. Falkenstein, which may be reached by a short walk from Schwatz, is worth visiting on account of the information it affords as to the mode of working adopted in the old mines both of silver and copper. This was the locality where the greatest quantity of silver was got; it was particularly noted also for the abundance and beauty of the malachite, found in great variety and richness of tints; the turquoise was found also, but more rarely. The old shaft runs first horizontally for some two miles, and then sinks in two shafts to a depth of some two hundred and thirty fathoms. The engineering and hydraulic works seem to have been very ingenious, but the description of them does not come within the sphere of my present undertaking. It does, however, to observe that over this, as over everything else in Tirol, religion shed its halo. The miners had ejaculatory prayers, which it was their custom to utter as they passed in and out of their place of subterranean toil; and an appropriate petition for every danger, whether from fire-damp, land-slips, defective machinery, or other cause. Their greeting to each other, and to those they met by the way, in place of the national 'Gelobt sei Jesus Christus,' was 'Gott gebe euch Glück und Segen!' [124] For their particular patron they selected the Prophet Daniel, whose preservation in the rocky den of the lions, as they had seen it portrayed, seemed to bear some analogy with their own condition. Of their liberality in church-building I have already spoken; but many are the churches and chapels that bear the token--a crossed chisel and hammer on a red field--of their contribution to its expense. There are many other walks to be made from Schwatz. First there is Buch, so called from the number of beech-trees in the neighbourhood, which afford pleasant shade, and diversify the scenery, in which the castle of Tratzberg across the Inn [125] also holds an important part. Further on is Margareth, surrounded by rich pastures, which are watered by the foaming Margarethenbach. Then to the south-east is Galzein, with a number of dependent 'groups of houses,' particularly Kugelmoos, the view from which sweeps the Inn from Kufstein to Innsbruck. Beyond, again, but further south, is the Schwaderalpe, whence the iron worked and taken in depôt at Schwatz is got; and the Kellerspitze, with the little village of Troi, its twelve houses perched as if by supernatural handiwork on the spur of a rock, and once nearly as prolific as Falkenstein in its yield of silver. The exhausted--deaf (taub) as it is expressively qualified in German--borings of S. Anthony and S. Blaze are still sometimes explored by pedestrians. Arzburg also is within an hour's walk. It was once rich in copper ore, but is now comparatively little worked. Above it is the Heiligenkreuzkapelle, about which it is told, that when, on occasion of the baierische-Rumpel [126] in 1703, the bridge of Zirl was destroyed, the cross which surmounted it being carried away by the current, was here rescued and set up by the country-people, who still honour it by frequent pilgrimages. Starting again from Schwatz by the high-road, which follows pretty nearly the course of the Inn, you pass a succession of small towns, each of which heads a valley, to which it gives its name, receiving it first from the torrent which through each pours the aggregate of the mountain streams into the river, all affording a foot-way through the Duxerthal into the further extremity of the Zillerthal--Pill, Weer, Kolsass, Wattens, and Volders. First, there is Pill, a frequent name in Tirol, and derived by Weber from Bühl or Büchl, a knoll; it is the wildest and most enclosed of any of these lateral valleys, and exposed to the ravages of the torrent, which often in winter carries away both bridges and paths, and makes its recesses inaccessible even to the hardy herdsmen. The following story may serve to show how hardy they are:--Three sons of a peasant, whose wealth consisted in his grazing rights over a certain tract of the neighbouring slopes, were engaged one day in gathering herbage along the steep bank for the kids of their father's flock. The steep must have been difficult indeed on which they were afraid to trust mountain kids to cater for themselves; and the youngest of the boys was but six, the eldest only fifteen. The eldest lost his balance, and was precipitated into the roaring torrent, just then swollen to unusual proportions; he managed to cling fast behind one of the rocky projections which mark its bed, but his strength was utterly unable to bear him out of the stream. The second brother, aged ten, without hesitating, embraced the risk of almost certain death, let himself down the side of the precipice by clinging to the scanty roots which garnished its almost perpendicular side. Arrived at the bottom, he sprang with the lightness of a chamois across the foaming waters on to the rock where the boy was now slackening his exhausted hold, and succeeded in dragging him up on to the surface; but even there there seemed no chance of help, far out of sound as they were of all human ears. But the youngest, meantime, with a thoughtfulness beyond his years, had made his way home alone, and apprised the father, who readily found the means of rescuing his offspring. The break into the Weerthal is at some little distance from the high road; its church, situated on a little high-level plain, is surrounded with fir-trees. A little lake is pointed out, of which a similar legend is told to 'the judgment of Achensee,' which is indeed one not infrequently met with; it is said that it covers a spot where stood a mighty castle, once submerged for the haughtiness of its inhabitants, and the waters placed there that no one might again build on the site for ever. The greatest ornament of the valley is the rambling ruin of Schloss Rettenberg, on its woody height, once a fortress of the Rottenburgers; afterwards it passed to Florian Waldauf, whose history I have already given when speaking of Hall. [127] It was bought by the commune in 1810, and the present church built up out of the materials it afforded, the former church having been burnt down that year. The old site and its remains are looked upon by the people as haunted by a steward of the castle and his wife, who in the days of its prosperity dealt hardly with the widow and the orphan, and must now wander sighing and breathing death on all who come within their baleful influence. A shepherd once fell asleep in the noontide heat, while his sheep were browsing on the grass-grown eminence. When he woke, they were no longer in sight; at last he found them dead within the castle keep. 'Guard thy flock better,' shouted a hoarse voice, 'for this enclosure is mine, and none who come hither escape me.' None ventured within the precincts after this; but many a time those who were bold enough to peep through a fissure in the crazy walls reported that they had seen the hard-hearted steward as a pale, weary, grey-bearded man, sit sighing on the crumbling stones. The Kolsassthal merges into the Weerthal and is hardly distinguished from it, and affords a sort of counterpart, though on more broken ground, to the Gnadenwald on the opposite side of the river. It is from this abundance of shady woods that its name is derived, through the old German kuol, cool, and sazz, a settlement. In the church, the altar-piece of the Assumption is by Zoller. The church of Wattens has an altar-piece by a more esteemed Tirolean artist, Schöpf; it represents S. Laurence, to whom the church is dedicated. The many forges busily at work making implements of agriculture, nails, &c., keep you well aware of the thrift and industry of the place; its prosperity is further supported by a paper manufactory, which has always remained in the hands of the family which started it in 1559, and supplies the greater part of Tirol. A self-taught villager, Joseph Schwaighofer, enjoyed some reputation here a few years ago as a guitar maker. The Wattenserthal, like the Kolsassthal, is also very woody, and contains some little settlements of charcoal-burners; but it is also diversified by a great many fertile glades, which are diligently sought out for pasture. At Walchen, where a few shepherds' huts are clustered at the confluence of two mountain streams, the valley is broken into two branches--one, Möls, running nearly due south into the Navisthal, by paths increasing in difficulty as you proceed; the other, Lizumthal, by the south-east to Hinterdux, passing at the Innerlahn the so-called 'Blue Lake,' of considerable depth. [128] Following the road again, Volders is reached at about a mile from Wattens. As at the latter place, your ears are liberally greeted with the sounds of the smithy. Volders has quite a celebrity for its production of scythes; some ten or twelve thousand are said to be exported annually. The Post Inn affords tolerable quarters for a night or two while exploring the neighbourhood. The prolific pencil of Schöpf has provided the church with an altar-piece of the Holy Family; though an ancient foundation, it does not present any object of special interest. The Voldererthal runs beneath some peaks dear to Alpine climbers, the Grafmarterspitz, the Glunggeser, the Kreuzjoch, and the Pfunerjoch. Its entrance is commanded by the castles of Hanzenheim, sometimes called Starkelberg, from having belonged to a family of that name, and used as a hospital during the campaign of 1809; and Friedberg, which is still inhabited, having been carefully restored by the present owner, Count Albert von Cristalnigg. It was originally built in the ninth or tenth century, as a tower to guard the bridge; it gave its name to a powerful family, who are often mentioned in the history of Tirol. At the end of the thirteenth and beginning of the fourteenth centuries, it was one of the castles annexed by Friedrich mit der leeren Tasche. It contains also the Voldererbad, a mineral spring, which is much visited, but more conveniently reached by way of Windegg than through the valley itself. In the Voldererwald is a group of houses, Aschbach by name, which belongs ecclesiastically to the parish of Mils, on the opposite side; and the following story is given to account for the anomaly:--At the time when the territory of Volders belonged parochially to Kolsass (it must have been before the year 1630, as it was that year formed into an independent parish), the neighbourhood was once ravaged by the plague. A farmer of Aschbach being stricken by it, sent to beg the spiritual assistance of the priest of Kolsass. The priest attended to the summons; but when he reached the threshold of the infected dwelling, and saw what a pitiable sight the sick man presented, his fears got the better of his resolution, and he could not prevail on himself to enter the room. Not to leave his penitent entirely without comfort, however, he exhorted him to repentance, heard his confession, and absolved him from where he stood; and then uncovering the sacred Host, bid him gaze on it in a spirit of faith, and assured him he should thereby receive all the benefit of actual Communion. The visit thus completed, he hurried back to Kolsass in all speed. Meantime the sick man, not satisfied with the office thus performed, sent for the priest of Mils, who, supported by apostolic charity, approached him without hesitation, and administered the sacred mysteries. Contrary to all expectation, the farmer recovered, resumed his usual labours, and in due course garnered his harvest. In due course also came round the season for paying his tithe. With commendable punctuality the farmer loaded his waggon with the sacred tribute, and started alacritously on the way to Kolsass. Any one who watched him might have observed a twinkle of his eye, which portended some unusual dénouement to the yearly journey. As he approached Kolsass the twinkle kindled more humorously, and the oxen felt the goad applied more vigorously. The pastor of Kolsass turned out to see the waggon approaching at the unusual pace, and was already counting the tempting sheaves of golden corn. To his surprise, however, his frolicsome parishioner wheeled round his team before he brought it to a stand, and then cried aloud, 'Gaze, Father! yes, gaze in faith on the goodly sight, and believe me, your faith shall stand you in stead of the actual fruition!' With that he drove his waggon at the same pace at which he had come, straight off to the pastor of Mils, at whose worthy feet he laid the tithe. And this act of 'poetical justice' was ratified by ecclesiastical authority as a censure on the pusillanimity of the priest of Kolsass, by the transfer of the tithing of Aschbach to the parish of Mils. I have met a counterpart of this story both in England and in Spain; so true is it, as Carlyle has prettily said, that though many traditions have but one root they grow, like the banyan, into a whole overarching labyrinth. The stately Serviten-kloster outside Volders suggests another adaptation of this metaphor. From the root of one saint's maxims and example, what an 'over-arching labyrinth' of good works will grow up and spread over and adorn the face of the earth, even in the most distant parts. In the year 1590 there was born at Trent a boy named Hyppolitus Guarinoni, who was destined to graft upon Tirol the singular virtues of St. Charles Borromeo. Attached early to the household of the saintly Archbishop of Milan, Guarinoni grew up to embody in action his spirit of devotion and charity. By St. Charles's advice and assistance he followed the study of medicine, and took his degree in his twenty-fifth year. Shortly after, he was appointed physician in ordinary to the then ruler of Tirol, Archduke Ferdinand II. His fervent piety marked him as specially fit to be further entrusted with the sanitary care of the convent founded some years before by the Princesses Magdalen, Margaret, and Helena, Ferdinand's sisters, at Hall, and called the Königliche Damenstift. [129] All the time that was left free by these public engagements he spent by the bedsides of the poor of the neighbourhood. The care of the soul ever accompanied his care for their bodies, and many a wanderer owed his reconciliation with heaven to his timely exhortations. Just about this time the incursions of the new doctrines were making themselves felt in this part of Tirol, and some localities, which from their remoteness were out of the way of regular parochial ministrations, were beginning to listen to them. Guarinoni discovered this in the course of his charitable labours, for which no outlying Sennerhütte was inaccessible. In 1628 he obtained special leave, though a layman, from the Bishop of Brixen, to preach in localities which had no resident pastor; he further published a little work which he used to distribute among the people, designed to show them how many corporal infirmities are induced by neglect of the whole-some maxims of religion. Besides the restored unity of the faith in his country, two other monuments of his piety remain: the Church of St. Charles by the bridge of Volders, and the Sanctuary of Judenstein. In his moments of leisure it was his favourite occupation to commit to writing for the instruction of posterity the traditional details of the life of St. Nothburga, and of the holy child Andreas of Rinn, which were at his date even more rife in the mouths of the peasantry of the neighbourhood than at present. He only died in 1654, having devoted himself to these good works for nearly half a century. The church by which he endeavoured to bring under observation and imitation the distinguishing qualities of St. Charles, was erected on a spot famous in the Middle Ages as a bandit's den; the building occupied thirty-four years, and was consecrated but a short time before his death. Baron Karl von Fieger, from whom he bought the site, a few years later added to it the Servite monastery, which, though it exhibits all the vices of the architecture of its date, yet bears tokens that its imperfections are not due to any stint of means. Its three cupolas and other structural arrangements are designed in commemoration of the Holy Trinity--a mystery which is held in very special honour throughout Austria. In the decorations, later benefactors have carried on Guarinoni's intention, the acts of St. Charles being portrayed in the frescoes, completed in 1764, by which Knoller has earned some celebrity in the world of art for himself and for the church: they display his conversion from the stiffer German style of his master, Paul Trogger, to the Italian manner. That over the entrance conveys a tradition of St. Charles, predicting to Guarinoni, while his page, that he would one day erect a church in his honour; that of the larger cupola is an apotheosis of the saint. The picture of the high-altar sets forth the saint ministering to the plague-stricken; it is Knoller's boldest attempt at colouring. Near the entrance door may be observed a considerable piece of rock built into the wall, entitled by the people 'Stein des Gehorsams,' [130] its history being that at the time when the church was building it was detached from the rock above by a landslip, and threatened the workmen with destruction. Its course was arrested at the behest of a pious monk, who was overseeing the works. [131] After passing the Servitenkloster a footpath may easily be found which leads to Judenstein and Rinn, the seat of one of the much-contested mediæval beliefs accusing the Jews of the sacrifice of Christian children. It may be better, in describing this stem of this banyan, to visit Rinn the further place first, and take Judenstein on our way back. The country traversed is well wooded, and further diversified by the bizarre outlines of the steeples of Hall seen across the river, while the mighty Glunggeser-Spitz rises 7,500 feet above you. It invites a visit for its amenity and its associations, though the relics of the infant Saint 'Anderle' are no longer there. His father died, it would seem, while he was a child in arms; his mother earned her living in the fields, and while she was absent used to leave her boy at Pentzenhof in charge of his godfather, Mayr. One day, when he was about three years old--it was the 12th July 1462--she was cutting corn, when suddenly she saw three drops of blood upon her hand without any apparent means of accounting for the token, one with which many superstitions were connected. [132] Her motherly instincts were alarmed, and, without an instant's consideration, she threw down her sickle and hurried home. A little field-chapel to St. Isidor the husbandman, St. Nothburga, and St. Andrew of Rinn, was subsequently built upon this spot. Arrived at Mayr's house, the forebodings of her anxious heart were redoubled at not finding her darling playing about as he was wont. The faithless godfather, taken by surprise at her unexpected return, only stammered broken excuses in answer to her reiterated inquiries. At last he exclaimed, thinking to calm her frenzy, 'If he is not here, here is something better--a hat full of golden pieces, which we will share between us.' He took down his hat, but to his consternation instead of finding it heavy with its golden contents, there was nothing in it but withered leaves! At this sight he was overcome with fear and horror; his speech forsook him, and his senses together, and he ended his days raving mad. The distracted mother, meantime, pursued her inquiries and perquisitions; but all she could learn was that certain Jews, [133] returning from their harvesting at Botzen, had over-tempted Mayr by their offers and persuaded him to sell the child to them, but with the assurance that he should come to no harm. Little reassured by the announcement, she ran madly into the neighbouring birchwood, whither she had learned they had bent their steps, and there came upon the lifeless body of her treasure, hanging bloodless and mangled from a tree. A large stone near bore traces of having been used as a sacrificial stone, and the clothes, which had been rudely torn off, lay scattered about; the many wounds of his tender form showed by how cruel a martyrdom he had been called to share in the massacre of the Innocents. His remains were tenderly gathered and laid to rest, and his memory held in affection by all the neighbourhood; nevertheless, though there were many signs of the supernatural connected with the event, it did not receive all the veneration it might have been expected to call forth. About ten years later a similar event occurred at Trent, and the remains of the infant S. Simeon were treated with so great honour that the people of Rinn were awakened to an appreciation of the treasure they had suffered to lie in their churchyard almost unheeded. [134] The Emperor Maximilian I. contemplated building a church over the spot where the martyrdom occurred, hence call Judenstein. His intentions were frustrated by the knavery of the builder, and only a small chapel was built at this time; and though on occasion of its consecration the relics of the child martyr were carried thither in solemn procession, they were still for some time after preserved at Rinn. It was Hippolitus Gruarinoni to whom the honour is due of saving the spot from oblivion. The chisel of the Tirolese sculptor Nissl has set forth in grotesque design a group of Jews fulfilling their fearful deed. A portrait of Gruarinoni was likewise hung up there. The relics were translated thither with due solemnity in 1678. An afflux of pilgrims was immediately attracted, and the numerous tablets which crowd the walls attest the estimation in which it has been held. Then the people began to remember the wonders that had surrounded it. The ghost of Godfather Mayr, which for two centuries had been frequently met howling through the woods, now seemed to have found its rest, for it was never more seen or heard. And they recalled how a beautiful white lily, with strange letters on its petals, had bloomed spontaneously on the holy infant's grave; [135] that when a wilful boy, Pögler by name, snapped the stem while they were still pondering what the unknown letters might mean, he had his arm withered; and further that for generations after, every Pögler had died an untimely or a violent death. How in like manner, for seven consecutive winters, the birch-tree, on which the innocent child's body was hung by his persecutors, put forth fresh green sprouts as if in spring, and how when a thoughtless woodman one day hewed it down for a common tree, it happened that he met with a terrible accident on his homeward way, whereof he died. It may well be imagined that where such legends prevailed Jews obtained little favour; so that to the present day it is said there is but few Jew families settled among them, though they are numerous and influential in other parts of the Austrian dominion. [136] Another memory yet of Hippolitus Guarinoni lingers in the neighbourhood. By a path which branches off near Judenstein to the left (going from Volders and following the stream), the Volderbad is reached; a sulphur spring discovered and brought into notice by him, and now much frequented in summer, perhaps as much for its pleasant mountain breezes as for the medicinal properties of the waters. There is another interesting excursion which should be followed before reaching Innsbruck, but it is more easily made from Hall than from Volders, though still on the right bank of the Inn. The first village on it is Ampass, a walk of about four miles from Hall through the most charming scenery; it is so called simply as being situated on a pass between the hills traversed on the road to Hall. Then you pass the remains of the former seat of the house of Brandhausen; and following the road cut by Maria Theresa through the Wippthal to facilitate the commerce in wine and salt between Matrei and Hall, you pass Altrans and Lans, having always the green heights of the Patscherkofl smiling before you, an easy ascent for those who desire to practise climbing, from Lans, where the Wilder Mann affords possible quarters for a night. [137] A path branching off from the Mattrei road leads hence to Sistrans, a village whose church boasts of having been embellished by Claudia de' Medici. Its situation is delightful; the green plain is strewed with fifteen towns and villages, including Hall and Innsbruck, and behind these rise the great range of alps, while on the immediate foreground is the tiny Lansersee which will afford excellent Forellen for luncheon. The bed of this same Lansersee, it is said, was once covered with a flourishing though not extensive forest, its wood the only substance of a humble peasant, who had received it from his fathers. A nobleman living near took a fancy to the bit of forest ground, but instead of offering to purchase it, he endeavoured to set up some obsolete claim in a court of law. The judge, afraid to offend the powerful lord, decided in his favour. The poor man heard the sentence with as much grief at the dishonour done to his forefathers' honour as distress at his own ruin. 'There is no help for me on earth, I know,' said the poor man. 'I have no money to make an appeal. I may not contend in arms with one of noble blood. But surely He who sitteth in heaven, and who avenged Naboth, will not suffer this injustice. As for me, my needs are few; I refuse not to work; the sweat of my brow will bring me bread enough; but the inheritance of my fathers which I have preserved faithfully as I received it from them, shall it pass to another?' and in the bitterness of his soul he wept and fell asleep; but as he slept in peace a mighty roaring sound disturbed the slumbers of the unjust noble; it seemed to him in his dream as though the foundations of his castle were shattered and the floods passing over them. When they awoke in the morning the forest was no more to be seen--a clear calm lake mirrored the justice of heaven, and registered its decree that the trees of the poor man should never enrich the store of his unscrupulous neighbour. Sistrans was once famous for a champion wrestler who had long carried off the palm from all the country round; but like him of Schwatz, he was not content with his great natural strength; he was always afraid a stronger than he might arise and conquer him in turn; and so he determined to put himself beyond the reach of another's challenge. To effect this he arranged with great seeming devotion to serve the Mass on Christmas night; and while the priest's eye was averted, laid a second wafer upon the one that he had had laid ready. The priest, suspecting nothing, consecrated as usual; and then at the moment of the Wandlung, when the priest was absorbed in the solemnity of his act, as he approached to lift the chasuble he stealthily abstracted the Host he had surreptitiously laid on the altar. The precious talisman carefully concealed, he bound it on his arm the instant Mass was over; and from that day forth no one could stand against him. And not only this, but he had power too in a multitude of other ways. Had anyone committed a theft, it needed but to consult our wrestler; if he began saying certain words and walking solemnly along, immediately, step by step, were he far or near, the thief, wherever he was, was bound by secret and resistless impulse to tread as he trod, and bring back the booty to the place whence he had taken it. Was anyone's cattle stricken with sickness, it needed but to call our wrestler; a few words solemnly pronounced, and the touch of his potent arm, sufficed to restore the beast to perfect health. Moreover, no bird could escape his snare, no fox or hare or chamois outrun him for swiftness. Thus all went well; he had played a bold stake, and had won his game. But at last the time came for him to die. Weary of his struggles, and even of his successes, our wrestler would fain have laid his head to rest under the soft green turf of the field of peace, by the wayside of those who pass in to pray, and lulled by the sound of the holy bells. But in vain he lay in his bed; death came not. True, there were all his symptoms in due force--the glazed eye and palsied tongue and wringing agony; but for all that he could not die. At last, the priest, astonished at what he saw, asked him if he had not on his conscience some sin weighty above the wont, and so moved him to a sense of penance that he confessed his impiety with tears of contrition; and it was not till he had told all, and the priest had received the sacred particle he had misused, that, shriven and blessed, his soul could depart in peace. There is a spot outside Sistrans called the Todsünden-marterle, but whether it has any connection with this tradition, or whether it has one of its own, I have not been able to learn. A couple of hours further is the pilgrimage chapel of Heiligenwasser, which is much visited both by the pious and the valetudinarian. Its history is that in 1606 two shepherd boys keeping their father's herd upon the mountains lost two young kine. In vain they sought them through the toilful path and beneath the burning sun; the kine were nowhere to be found. At last in despair of any further labour proving successful, they fell on their knees and prayed with tears for help from above. Then a bright light fell upon them, and the Gnadenmutter appeared beside them, and bid them be of good cheer, for the cattle were gone home to their stall; moreover she added, 'Drink, children, for the day is hot, and ye are weary with wandering.' 'Drink!' exclaimed the famished children, 'where shall we find water? there is no water near!' but even as they spoke the Gnadenmutter was taken from their sight, but in the place where the light surrounding her had shone there welled up a clear and bubbling stream between the rocks, which has never ceased to flow since. The boys went home, but had not the courage to tell how great a favour had been bestowed on them; yet they never went by that way without turning to give glory to God, and say a prayer beneath the holy spring. Fifty years passed. One of them was an infirm old man, and no longer went abroad so far, the other was attended in his labours by the son of a neighbour, a lad who had been dumb from his birth. When the lad saw the herdsman kneel down by the spring and drink and pray, he knelt and drank and prayed too; when lo! no sooner had the water passed his lips than he found he had the power of speech like any other. The narration of the one wonder led to that of the other. The people readily believed, and before the year was out a chapel had been raised upon the spot. CHAPTER VIII. NORTH TIROL--THE INNTHAL. INNSBRUCK. Many centuries have been numbered, Since in death the monarch slumbered By the convent's sculptured portal, Mingling with the common dust; But his good deeds, through the ages Living in historic pages, Brighter grow and gleam immortal, Unconsumed by moth or rust. Longfellow. I shall not easily forget my first greeting at Innsbruck. We had come many days' journey from the north to a rendezvous with friends who had travelled many days' journey from the south; they were to arrive a week earlier than we, and were accordingly to meet us at the station and do the hosts' part. But it happened that the station was being rebuilt, and the order of 'No admittance except on business' was strictly enforced. The post-office was closed, being 'after hours,' and though the man left in charge, with true Tirolean urbanity, suffered us to come in and turn over the letters for ourselves, we failed to find the one conveying the directions we sought. So with no fixed advices to guide us, we wandered through the mountain capital in search of a chance meeting. We had nearly given up this attempt in its turn in despair of success, when 'Albina,' a little white Roman lupetto dog, belonging to the friends of whom we were in search, came bounding upon me. It was more than two years since I had taken leave of her in the Eternal City, but her affectionate sympathy was stronger than time or distance; and here, far from all aid in the associations of home, and while the rest of her party were yet a great way off--almost out of sight--she had spied me out, and came to give her true and hearty greeting. It is a pleasant association with Innsbruck, a revelation of that pure and lasting love which dog-nature seems to have been specially created to convey; but it was not of Innsbruck. Innsbruck--Schpruck, as the indigenous call it--though the chief, is the least Tirolean town of Tirol. It apes the airs and vices of a capital, without having the magnificence and convenience by which they are engendered. There is a page of Tirol's history blotted by a deed which Innsbruck alone, of all Tirol, could have committed, and which it indeed requires its long and otherwise uniformly high character for both exceeding hospitality and exceeding loyalty to cancel. The subject of it was its own Kaiser Max, whose prudence in governmental details and gallantry in the field and in the chase had raised him in the popular mind to the position of a hero. When he had come to them before, in his youth, in his might, and in his imperial pomp, he had been sung and fêted. The people had acclaimed him with joy, and his deeds were a very household epic; while he in turn had extended their borders by conquest, and their privileges by concessions. But now he had come back to them, worn out with war and cares and age. He felt that his end was near, and it was to Tirol, with which he had always stood in bonds of so much love, that he turned to spend his few declining years. But Innsbruck, when it saw him thus, seems to have forgotten his prowess and his benefits, and to have remembered only a pitiful squabble about payment of the score for the maintenance of his household at his last visit. A ruler who had spent himself in bettering the condition of his people might well, in the days of his weariness and sadness of heart, have expected to meet with more liberality at their hands; but from Innsbruck, where--little obscure provincial town as it was--he had so often held his court, which had been raised in importance and singularly enriched by royal marriages and receptions and other costly ceremonies celebrated there at his desire, and which by his example and instigation had become the residence of many nobles who had learnt under his administration to value peaceful study above the pursuit of war--from Innsbruck he had most of all to expect. And yet on this occasion, as he lay ailing and restless on his couch, the neighing and tramping of his horses disturbed his fitful slumbers; and rising in the early dawn to ascertain the cause, he beheld the team which had brought him from the Diet at Augsburg, left out unfed and untended in the streets, because the people said he should not run up another score with them. With a moderation he would not perhaps have practised in his younger days, he quietly went on his way, to die at Wels on the Trann. I have often pictured the pale sad face of the old Emperor as he turned from that sight, and thought of the sickness of his heart as one of history's most touching lessons of the world's inconstancy. Perhaps it predisposed me against Innsbruck; perhaps I was inclined to be a little unjust; but, at all events, it prepared me not to be surprised if its people should prove more sophisticated than their fellow-countrymen. It was quite what I expected, therefore, when I was told that in the older inns of the class wherein one generally finds a refreshing hospitality and primitiveness, the absence of comfort was not compensated by corresponding simplicity of manners. In the Oesterreichischer Hof, one of those provincial pieces of pretentiousness which those who travel to learn the characteristics of a country should, under ordinary circumstances, avoid, we found the pleasantness of its situation sufficient to make us forget all else; and indeed, considered as a copy of a Vienna hotel, it is not a bad attempt. There is a room which on Sundays is set apart for an English service. On a subsequent visit we found a large new hotel (Europa), rather near the railway station, preferable to it in some respects, and there are many others besides. I have spoken of the pleasant situation, and our apartment was situated so as fully to enjoy it; we had to ourselves a whole suite of little rooms, with a separate corridor running along the back of them, from the windows of which we could make acquaintance, under the alternating play of sunshine, moonbeam, or lightning, with the range of mountains which wall in Tirol. The Martinswand and Frauhütt, with their romantic memories; the Seegruben-spitze and the Kreuz-spitze, rugged and wild; the grand masses of the Brandjoch and the lesser Solstein, and the greater Solstein already wearing a lace-like veil of snow; while the quaint copper cupolaed towers of Innsbruck conceal the Rumerjoch and the Kaisersäule; and in the front of the picture, the roofs with their wooden tiles afford a view of the mysteries of apple-drying, and a thousand other local arts of domestic economy. If our furniture was not of the most elegant or abundant, it was all the more in keeping with such wild surroundings. The character of the town itself partakes of the same mixture of quaint picturesqueness with modern pretension which I have already observed in that of the people and the hotel. The Neustadt, as the chief street is called, remarkable for its width, tidiness, and good paving, is no less so for its old arcades in one part, and the steep gables in another, and the monuments of faith which adorn its centre line. At one end it is closed in by the stern gaunt mountain, at the other by Maria Theresa's triumphal arch. There are other streets again, straight, modern, and uniform; the Museum Strasse, and the Karl Strasse, and the Landhaus Gasse, [138] but you soon come to an end of them; and then you find yourself in a suburb of most primitive quality; your progress arrested, now by the advance of the iron road, now by the placid gentle Sill, now by the proudly flowing Inn. The mediæval history of Innsbruck is signalized by a number of fires which destroyed many of its antiquities. To the first of these it owes the suggestion that the town needed a water supply, acted upon by Meinhard II., and the monks of Wilten, in the formation of the Kleine Sill, which continues still as useful as ever; but other fires again and again laid it in ashes, so that very little of really old work survives, though there are many foundations of early date, the buildings of which have been again and again rebuilt. The very oldest of these is the monastery of Wilten, now a suburb a little way outside the Triumphpforte, originally the seat of the suzerains who created the town. The history of its origin is one of the most remarkable myths of the country, and is a very epitome of the history of the conflict of Heathendom with Christendom. The Romans had found here a flourishing town even in their time, and they made of it an important station, calling it Valdidena, whence its present name; coins and other relics of their sojourn are continually dug out of the soil. Tradition has it, however, that Etzel (Attila) laid the city in ruins on his way back from the terrible battle of Chalons. It continued, nevertheless, to be a convenient and consequently frequented station of the intercourse between the banks of the Po and the Rhine. When Dietrich von Bern (Theodoric of Verona) announced his expedition against Chriemhilde's Garden of Roses at Worms, one of the mightiest who responded to his appeal, and who did him the most signal service in taking the Rose-garden, was Heime, popularly called Haymon, a giant 'taller and more powerful than Goliath.' Returning in Theodoric's victorious train, he came through Tirol. As he approached Valdidena he found his passage barred by another giant named Thyrsus, living near Zirl, who has left his name to the little neighbouring hamlet of Tirschenbach. Thyrsus had heard of Haymon's prowess, and as his own had been unchallenged hitherto, he determined to provoke him to combat. Haymon was no less fierce than himself, and scarcely waited for his challenge to rush to the attack. But anyone who had looked on would have guessed from the first moment on which side the advantage would fall. Thyrsus was indeed terrible of aspect; higher in stature than Haymon, his shaggy hair covered a determined brow; his hardy skin was bronzed by exposure to weather and lying on the rocks; his sinews were developed by constant use, and their power attested by the tree torn up by the roots which he bore in his hand for a club; at each footfall the ground shook, for he planted his feet with a sound of thunder, and his stride was from hill to hill. But Haymon's every movement displayed him practised in each art of attack and defence. Less fierce of expression than Thyrsus, his eyes were ever on the watch to follow every moment of his antagonist, and like a wall of adamant he stood receiving all his thrusts with a studied patience, giving back none till his attacker's strength was well-nigh exhausted. Then he fell upon him and slew him. An effigy of the two giants yet adorns the wall of the wayside chapel at Tirschendorf. Haymon was still in the prime of manhood, being about thirty-five, and this was but one of his many successful combats. Nevertheless, it was destined to be his last, for a Benedictine monk of Tegernsee coming by while he was yet in the first flush of victory, succeeded so well in reasoning with him on the worthlessness of all on which he had hitherto set his heart, and on the superior attractions of a higher life, that he then and there determined to give up his sanguinary career, and henceforth devote his strength to the service of Christ. In pursuance of this design he determined to build with his own hands a church and monastery on the site of the ruined town of Valdidena, by the banks of the Sill. With his own hands he quarried the stone and felled the timber; but in the meantime the Evil One in the form of a huge dragon had taken possession of the place. Never did he let himself be seen; but when he came to lay the foundation, Haymon found every morning that whatever work he had done by day, the dragon had destroyed by night. Then he saw that he must watch by night as well as work by day, and by this means he discovered with what manner of adversary he had to deal. The dragon lashed the ground with his tail in fury, just as the wild wind stirs up the sea, and filled the air with the smoke and sparks he breathed out of his mouth. Haymon saw that with all his strength and science he could not overcome so terrible an enemy; nevertheless, he did not lose heart, but commended himself to God. Meantime, the streaks of morn began to appear over the sky, and at sight of them the dragon turned and fled. Haymon perceived his advantage, and pursued him; by-and-by the rocks bounding the path contracted, and at last they came to the narrow opening of a cave. As soon as the dragon had got his head in and could not turn, Haymon raised his sword with a powerful swing, and calling on God to aid his stroke, with one blow severed the monster's head from the trunk. As a trophy of his feat, he cut out the creature's sting, which was full two feet long, and subsequently hung it up in the Sanctuary, and something to represent it is still shown in the church of Wilten. After this, the building went on apace; and when it was completed, he took up a huge stone which had been left over from the foundation of the building, and flung it with the whole power of his arm. It sped over the plain for the space of nearly two miles, till it struck against the hill of Ambras, and rolled thence down again upon the plain, 'where it may yet be seen;' and with all the land between he endowed the monastery. Then he called thither a colony of Benedictines to inhabit it, and himself lived a life of penance as the lowest among them for eighteen years; and here he died in the year 878. Another benefit which he conferred on the neighbourhood was rebuilding the bridge of Innsbruck. [139] Tradition says he was buried on the right hand side of the high altar, and even preserves the following rough lines as his epitaph:-- Als Tag und Jahr verloffen war Achthundert schon verstrichen Zu siebzig acht hats auch schon g'macht Da Heymons Tod verblichen. Der tapfere Held hat sich erwählt En Kloster aufzuführen Gab alles hinein, gieng selbst auch drein, Wollts doch nicht selbst regieren. Hat löblich gelebt, nach Tugent gstrebt Ein Spiegel war er allen; Riss hin riss her, ist nicht mehr er, Ins Grab ist er hier g'fallen. Many fruitless searches have been made for his body; the last, in the year 1644, undermined great part of the wall of the church, and caused its fall. The popular belief in the existence of the giants Haymon and Thyrsis has found a forcible expression nevertheless in two huge wooden figures, placed at the entrance of the Minster Church. The parish church of Wilten has a more ancient and curious relic in the Mutter Gottes unter den vier Säulen, [140] of which it is said, that the Thundering Legion having been stationed at Valdidena about the year 137, had this image with them; that on one occasion of being ordered on a distant expedition they buried it under four trees, and never had the opportunity of recovering it. That when Rathold von Aiblingen made his pilgrimage to Rome, he brought back with him the secret of its place of concealment, exhumed it, set it up on the altar under a baldachino with four pillars, where it has never ceased to be an object of special veneration. This received a notable encouragement when Friedrich mit der leeren Tasche, wandering in secret through the country with his trusty Hans von Müllinen after the ban of the empire had been pronounced against him, knelt before this shrine, and prayed a blessing on his unchanging devotion to it. The sequel made him believe that his prayer was heard; and when he was once more established in his possessions, he caused himself and his friend to be portrayed kneeling at the shrine to seek protection under the fostering mantle of the Virgin, and had the picture hung on the wall of the church opposite. The name of Innsbruck first occurs in a record of the year 1027, on occasion of a concession granted to the chapel of S. Jakob in der Au--S. James's in the Field--probably the spot on which the stately Pfarrkirche now stands. Prior to this, the little settlement of inhabitants, whom the commerce between Germany and Italy had gathered round the Inn-bridge, could only satisfy the obligation of the Sunday and Holy-day mass by attendance in the church of Wilten; now, the faculty was granted to their own little chapel. Its situation made it a convenient entrepôt for many articles of heavy merchandise, and, as years went by, a dwelling-place of various merchants also. All this time it was a dependency of the monks of Wilten. In 1180, Berthold II. von Andechs, acquired from them by treaty certain rights over the prospering town. His successor, Otho I., surrounded it with walls and fortifications, and built himself a residence, on the entrance of which was chiselled the date of 1234, and the inscription,-- Dies Haus stehet in Gottes Hand Ottoburg ist es genannt. And on the same spot, in an old house overlooking the river Inn, some remains of this foundation may be traced, to which the name of Ottoburg still attaches. In 1239 it was treated to the privilege of being the only dépôt for goods between the Ziller and the Melach; other concessions followed, maintaining its ever-rising importance. In 1279 Bruno, Bishop of Brixen, consecrated a second church, the Morizkapelle, in the Ottoburg. But though both its temporal and spiritual lords appear to have encouraged its growth by every means in their power, and though there are records of occasional noble gatherings within its precincts, it was not till after the cession of Tirol to Austria by Margaretha Maultasch that the convenience of its central situation, and its water communication by the Inn and Danube with other towns of the empire, suggested its adoption as the seat of government of the country. The fidelity of the towns-people to Duke Rudolf IV. of Austria at the time of a Bavarian invasion, elicited a further outpouring of privileges from their ruler, putting beyond all dispute in a short time the priority of Innsbruck over all the towns of Tirol. Friederich mit der leeren Tasche made it his residence, and his base of operations for reducing the Rottenburgers and other powerful nobles, who during the late unsettled condition of the government had set at naught his power and oppressed the people. In this he received the warmest support of the Innsbruckers, which he in turn repaid by granting all their wishes. The singular loyalty of the Tirolese, and their good fortune in having been generally blessed with upright and noble-minded rulers, make their annals read like a continuous heroic romance. The deeds of their princes have for centuries been household words in every mountain home of Tirol. None have had a deeper place in their hearts than the fortunes of Friedl, and never was any man more fortunate in his misfortunes. Before they yet knew what manner of prince he was, the ban of the empire had made him a penniless wanderer. Reduced to a condition lower than their own, the peasants wherever he passed gathered round him, and swore to stand by him, and concealed his hiding-places with the closest fidelity. One night he came weary and wayworn to Bludenz in Vorarlberg, seeking shelter before the impending storm. The night-watch had the closest orders to beware of strangers, for an incursion of the imperial army was expected, and every stranger might be a spy; no entreaty of Friedl on his friend Hans could shake his obedience to orders. When the Prince declared who he was, the man said, 'Would it were Friedl indeed!' but added that he would not be taken in by the pretence, however well devised. At last the outcast obtained from him that he would send for an innkeeper to whom he was known. Mine host at once recognised his sovereign, and received him with joy. The Thorwächter trembled when he found what he had done, but Frederick commended his steadfastness heartily, and invited him to dine at his table next day. While he was here, the Emperor summoned the burghers to give up his prisoner; but the Bludenzers sent answer that 'they had sworn fealty to Duke Frederick and the House of Austria, and they would not break their oath.' This spirited reply would probably have brought an army to their gates had Frederick remained among them; but in order to save them from an attack, for which they were little prepared, he took his departure,--by stealth, or they would not have suffered him to depart, even for their own safety's sake. At other times he would earn his day's food by manual labour before he disclosed to his entertainers who he was, and then he would only partake of the same frugal fare, and the same hard lodging, as the peasants who received him. By these means he became deeply endeared to the people, who thus knew he was one who felt for their privations, and shared their feelings and opinions, and did not treat them with supercilious contempt like one of the nobles. When by these wanderings Frederick had discovered how deeply the people loved him, he arranged with the owner of the Rofnerhof in the Oetztal a plan by which, on occasion of a great fair at Landeck, always crowded by people from all the country round, he appeared in the character of principal actor in a peasant-comedy, which set forth the sufferings of a prince driven from his throne by cruel enemies, wandering homeless among his people, then calling them to arms, and leading them to victory. The excitement of the people at the representation exceeded his highest expectations. Loud sobs and cries accompanied his description of the Prince's woes; but when he came to sing of the people following their prince's call to arms, their ardour became quite irresistible. The enthusiasm was contagious; Frederick could no longer contain himself; he threw off his disguise, and declared himself their Friedl. It needed no more; unbidden they proffered their allegiance and their vows to defend his rights to the last drop of their blood. The enthusiasm of the Landeckers soon spread over the whole country; and when the Emperor Sigismund and Ernst der Eiserne and Frederick's other foes found his people were as firm as their own mountains in his defence, they gave up the attempt at further persecution, and concluded a truce with him. In his prosperity he did not forget the peasants who had stood by him so loyally. While he tamed the power of their oppressors, he did all he could to lighten their burdens; and to many, who had rendered him special service, he marked his gratitude by special favours. Thus, to Ruzo of the Rofnerhof he granted among other privileges the right of asylum on his demesne, which was put in use down to the year 1783. We have already seen his conflict with Henry of Rottenburg, [141] and in the same way he tamed the overgrown power of other nobles. In the course of our wanderings we shall often find the popular hero's name stored up in the people's lore. In connection with Innsbruck, he is well known to the most superficial tourist as the builder of the Goldene Dachl-gebäude. And what is the goldene Dachl-Gebäude?--It is a most picturesque addition to, and almost all remaining of, what in his time was the Fürstenburg, or princely palace, having a roof of shining gilt copper tiles, sufficiently low to be in sight of the passer-by; but the account the best English guide-book gives the tourist of its origin is so wanting in the true appreciation of Friedl's character, that I am fain to supply the Tirolese version of it. The above account says that it was built in 1425 'by Frederick, called in ridicule "Empty Purse," who, in order to show how ill-founded was the nickname, spent thirty thousand ducats on this piece of extravagance, which probably rendered the nickname more appropriate than before.' Now, to say that he was called 'Empty Purse' thus vaguely would imply that it was a name given by common consent, and generally adopted. To say that he built the Golden Roof only to show that such a nickname was ill-founded, is simply to accuse him of arrogance. To treat it as an extravagance which justified the accusation, is to convict him of folly. But the government of Frederick [142]--which is felt even yet in the present independent spirit of Tirol, which consolidated the country and made it respected, which set up the dignity of the Freihof and the Schildhof the foundation of a middle class as a dam against the encroachments of the nobility on the peasantry, which yet lives on in the hearts of the people, was an eminently prudent administration, and the story does not fit it. If, instead of resting satisfied with this compendious but flippant account, you ask the first true Tirolese you meet to expound it, he will tell you that Friedl had grown so familiar with peasant life that he despoiled himself to better the condition of his poorer subjects, not only by direct means, but by his expeditions in their defence, and also in forbearing to exact burdensome taxes. The nickname was not given him by general consent; nor at all, by the people; it was the cowardly revenge of those selfish nobles who could not appreciate the abnegation of his character. Frederick saw in it a reproach, offered not so much to himself as to his people; it seemed to say that the people who loved him so well withheld the subsidies which should make him as grand as other monarchs. To disprove the calumny, and to show that his people enabled him to command riches too, he made this elegant little piece of display, which served also to adorn his good town of Innsbruck; but he did not on that account alter his frugal management of his finances; so that when he came to die, though he had made none cry out that he had laid burdens on them, he yet left a replenished treasury. [143] This is still one of the notable ornaments of Innsbruck. The house is let to private families, but the 'gold-roofed' Erker, or oriel, is kept up as a beloved relic almost in its original condition. There is a curious old fresco within, the subject of which is disputed; and on the second floor there is a sculptured bas-relief, representing Maximilian and his two wives, Mary of Burgundy and Maria Bianca of Milan, and the seven coats of arms of the seven provinces under Maximilian's government. Sigismund 'the Monied,' Frederick's son and successor (1430-93), is more chargeable with extravagance, [144] but his extravagance was all for the advantage of Innsbruck. The reception he gave to Christian I., King of Denmark, when on his way to Rome, is a striking illustration of the resources of the country in his time. Sigismund went out to meet him at some miles' distance from the capital, with a train of three hundred horses, all richly caparisoned; his consort (Eleanor of Scotland) followed with her suite in two gilt carriages, and surrounded by fifty ladies and maidens on their palfreys. The King of Denmark stayed three days; every day was a festival, and the magnificent dresses of the court were worthy of being specially chronicled. There seems to have been no lack of satin and velvet and ermine, embroidery, and fringes of gold-work. Nor was mental culture neglected; for we find mention, at the same date, of public schools governed by 'a rector,' which would seem to imply that they had something beyond an elementary character. The impulse given to commerce by the working of the silver-mines also had the effect of causing some of the chief roads of the country to be made and improved. The most lasting traces of Sigismund's reign, however, are the ruined towers which adorn the mountain landscapes. Wherever we go in Tirol, we come upon some memory of his expensive fancy for building isolated castles as a pied à terre for his hunting and fishing excursions, still distinguished by such names as Sigmundskron, Sigmundsfried, Sigmundslust, Sigmundsburg, Sigmundsegg, and which we shall have occasion to notice as we go along. His wars were of no great benefit to the country, but his command of money enabled him to include Vorarlberg within his frontier. Sigismund was, however, entirely wanting in administrative qualities. This deficiency helped out his extravagance in dissipating the whole benefit which might have resulted to the public exchequer from the silver-works of his reign; and at last he yielded to the wholesome counsel of abdicating in favour of his cousin Maximilian. Maximilian (1493-1519) is another of the household heroes of Tirol. Even after he was raised to the throne of empire he still loved his Tirolean home, and his residence there further increased the importance of the town of Innsbruck. He built the new palace in the Rennplatz, called the Burg, which was completed for his marriage with Maria Bianca, daughter of Galeazzo Maria Sforza, of Milan. Splendid was the assemblage gathered in Innsbruck for this ceremonial. Three years later it was further astonished by the magnificence of the Turkish Embassy; and the discussion of various treaties of peace were also frequently the means of adding brilliancy to the court, and prosperity to the town. His other benefits to the city, and Innsbruck's unworthy return to him, I have already mentioned in the beginning of this chapter. Many a fantastic Sage is told of Maximilian in the neighbourhood, which we shall find in their due places. The fine hunting-ground Tirol affords was one of its greatest attractions for him; it led him, however, to introduce certain game-laws, and this was one principal element in bringing about the decline of his popularity in the last years of his life. At his death this disaffection broke out, and caused one of the most serious insurrectionary movements which have disturbed the even tenour of Tirolese loyalty. To this was added the influence of Lutheran teaching, the effects of which we have seen in the Zillerthal. This spirit of discontent had time to gain ground during the first years of Maximilian's grandson and successor, Charles Quint, whose immensely extended duties drew his attention off from Tirol. Very shortly after his accession, however, he made over the German hereditary dominions, including Tirol, to his brother Ferdinand, who established his family in this country. His wise administration and prudent concessions soon conciliated the people; though severe measures were also needed, and the year 1529 was signalized in Innsbruck by some terrible executions. These were forgotten when, in the year 1531, Charles Quint, returning victorious from Pavia, on his way to Augsburg stayed and held court at Innsbruck; Ferdinand met him on the Brenner pass, and accompanied him to the capital. When Charles reached the Burg, Ferdinand's children received him at the entrance; and the tenderness with which he greeted and kissed them was remarked by the people, on whom this token of homely affection had a powerful effect. Electors and princes, spiritual and temporal, came to pay their homage to the Emperor; and Innsbruck was so filled with the titled throng, that the Landtag had to remove its session to Hall. Ferdinand's other dominions, and the question of the threatened war with Turkey, necessitated frequent absences from Innsbruck. During one of these (in 1534) the Burg was burnt down, and his children were only rescued from their beds with difficulty. The great Hall, called the goldene Saal, and the state bedroom, which was so beautifully ornamented that it bore the title of das Paradies, were all reduced to ashes. In 1541 Innsbruck was once more honoured by a visit of the magnificent Emperor; and again, ten years later, he took up his residence there, that he might be near the Session of the Council of Trent. It was while he was living here peacefully in all confidence, and almost unattended, that Maurice, Elector of Saxony, having suddenly joined the Smalkald League, treacherously attempted to surprise him, marching with a considerable armed force through pass Fernstein. Charles, who was laid up with illness at the time, was enabled by the loyal devotion of the Tirolese to escape in the night-time and in a storm of wind and rain, being borne in a litter over the Brenner, and by difficult mountain paths through Bruneck into Carinthia. Maurice, baffled in his scheme, exercised his vengeance in plundering the imperial possessions, while his followers devastated the peasants' homes, the monastery of Stams, and other religious houses that lay in their way. The sufferings of the Tirolese on this occasion doubtless tended to confirm them in their aversion for the Lutheran League. Maurice's end was characteristic, and the Tirolese, ever on the look-out for the supernatural, were not slow to see in it a worthy retribution for his treatment of their Emperor. Albert of Brandenburg refused to join in the famous Treaty of Passau, subsequently concluded by Maurice and the other Lutheran leaders with the Emperor. This and other differences led to a sanguinary struggle between them, in the course of which Maurice was killed in battle at Sieverhausen. Ferdinand the First's reign has many mementos in Innsbruck. He built the Franciscan church, otherwise called the heiligen Kreuzkirche and the Hofkirche, which, tradition says, had been projected by his grandfather, Kaiser Max, though there is no written record of the fact; and he raised within it a most grandiose and singular monument to him, which has alone sufficed to attract many travellers to Tirol. The original object of the foundation of the church seems to have been the establishment of a college of canons in this centre, to oppose the advance of Lutheran teaching. It was begun in 1543, the first design having been rejected by Ferdinand as not grand enough, and consecrated in 1563. He seems to have been at some pains to find a colony of religious willing to undertake, and competent to fulfil, his requirements; and not coming to an agreement with any in Germany or the Netherlands, ultimately called in a settlement of Franciscans from Trent and the Venetian provinces, consisting of twenty priests and thirteen lay-brothers. The chief ornaments of the building itself are the ten large--but too slender--red marble columns, which support the plateresque roof. The greater part of the nave is taken up with Maximilian's monument--cenotaph rather, for he lies buried at Wiener-Neustadt, the oft-contemplated translation of his remains never having been carried into effect. It was Innsbruck's fault, as we have seen, that they were not originally laid to rest there, and it is her retribution to have been denied the honour of housing them hitherto. The monument itself is a pile upwards of thirteen feet long and six high, of various coloured marbles, raised on three red marble steps; on the top is a colossal figure, representing the Kaiser dressed in full imperial costume, kneeling, his face being directed towards the altar--a very fine work, cast in bronze by Luigi del Duca, a Sicilian, in 1582. The sides and ends are divided by slender columns into twenty-four fine white marble compartments, [145] setting forth the story of his achievements in lace-like relief. If the treatment of the facts is sometimes somewhat legendary, the details and accessories are most painstakingly and delicately rendered, great attention having been paid to the faithfulness of the costumes and buildings introduced, and the most exquisite finish lavished on all. They were begun in 1561 by the brothers Bernhard and Arnold Abel, of Cologne, who went in person to Genoa to select the Carrara tablets for their work; but they both died in 1563, having only completed three. Then Alexander Collin of Mechlin took up the work, and with the aid of a large school of artists completed them in all their perfection in three years more. Around it stands a noble guard of ancestors historical and mythological, cast in bronze, of colossal proportions, twenty-eight in number. It is a solemn sight as you enter in the dusk of evening, to see these stern old heroes keeping eternal watch round the tomb of him who has been called 'the last of the Knights,' der letzte Ritter. They have not, perhaps, the surpassing merit of the Carrara reliefs, but they are nobly conceived nevertheless. For lightness of poise, combined with excellence of proportion and delicacy of finish, the figure of our own King Arthur commends itself most to my admiration; but that of Theodoric is generally reckoned to bear away the palm from all the rest. They stand in the following order. Starting on the right side of the nave on entering, we have: 1. Clovis, the first Christian King of France. 2. Philip 'the Handsome,' [146] of the Netherlands, Maximilian's son, reckoned as Philip I. of Spain, though he never reigned there. 3. Rudolf of Hapsburg. 4. Albert II. the Wise, Maximilian's great-grandfather. 5. Theodoric, King of the Ostrogoths. (455-526.) 6. Ernest der Eiserne, Duke of Austria and Styria. (1377-1424.) 7. Theodebert, Duke of Burgundy. (640.) 8. King Arthur of England. 9. Sigmund der Münzreiche, Count of Tirol. (1427-96.) 10. Maria Bianca Sforza, Maximilian's second wife. (Died 1510.) 11. The Archduchess Margaret, Maximilian's daughter. 12. Cymburgis of Massovica, wife of Ernest der Eiserne. (Died 1433.) 13. Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, father of Maximilian's first wife. 14. Philip the Good, father of Charles the Bold. Founder of the Order of the Golden Fleece. This completes the file on the right side; on our walk back down the other side we come to-- 15. Albert II., Duke of Austria, and Emperor of Germany. (1397-1439.) 16. Emperor Frederick I., Maximilian's father. (1415-95.) 17. St. Leopold, Margrave of Austria; since 1506 the patron saint of Austria. (1073-1136.) 18. Rudolf, Count of Hapsburg, grandfather or uncle of 'Rudolf of Hapsburg.' 19. Leopold III., 'the Pious,' Duke of Austria, Maximilian's great-grandfather; killed at Sempach, 1439. 20. Frederick IV. of Austria, Count of Tirol, surnamed 'mit der leeren Tasche.' 21. Albert I., D. of Austria, Emperor. (Born 1248; assassinated by his nephew John of Swabia, 1308.) 22. Godfrey de Bouillon, King of Jerusalem in 1099. 23. Elizabeth, wife of the Emperor Albert II., daughter of Sigismund, King of Hungary and Bohemia. (1396-1442.) 24. Mary of Burgundy, Maximilian's first wife. (1457-82.) 25. Eleonora of Portugal, wife of the Emperor Frederick III., Maximilian's mother. 26. Cunigunda, Maximilian's sister, wife of Duke Albert IV. of Bavaria. 27. Ferdinand 'the Catholic.' 28. Johanna, daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella, and wife of Maximilian's son, Philip I. of Spain. There is a vast difference in the quality both of the design and execution of these statues; the greater number and the more artistic were cast by Gregor Löffler, who established a foundry on purpose at Büchsenhausen; the rest by Stephen and Melchior Godl, and Hanns Lendenstreich, who worked at Mühlau, a suburb of Innsbruck. All honour is due to them for the production of some of the most remarkable works of their age; but it was some unknown mind, probably that of some humble nameless Franciscan, to whom is due the conception and arrangement of this piece of symbolism. It originally included, besides the statues already enumerated, twenty-three others, of saints, which were to have received a more elevated station, and it is for this reason that they are much smaller in size. They are now placed in the so-called 'Silver Chapel,' and are too frequently overlooked; but it is necessary to take them into account in order worthily to criticize this great monument. They are as follows:--1. St. Adelgunda, daughter of Walbert, Count of Haynault. 2. St. Adelbert, Count of Brabant. 3. St. Doda, wife of St. Arnulf, Duke of the Moselle. 4. St. Hermelinda, daughter of Witger, Count of Brabant. 5. St. Guy, Duke of Lotharingia. 6. St. Simpert, Bishop of Augsburg, son of Charlemagne's sister Symporiana, who rebuilt the monastery of St. Magnus at Füssen. 7. St. Jodok, son of a king of Great Britain; he wears a palmer's dress. 8. St. Landerich, Bishop of Metz, son of St. Vincent, Count of Haynault, and St. Waltruda. 9. St. Clovis. 10. St. Oda, wife of Duke Conrad. 11. St. Pharaild, daughter of Witger, Count of Brabant. 12. St. Reinbert, brother of the last. 13. St. Roland, brother of St. Simpert. 14. St. Stephen, King of Hungary. 15. St. Venantius, martyr, son of Theodoric, Duke of Lotharingia. 16. St. Waltruda, mother of St. Landerich (No. 8). 17. St. Arnulf, husband of St. Doda (No. 3), afterwards Bishop of Metz. 18. St. Chlodulf, son of St. Waltruda (No. 16), also Bishop of Metz. 19. St. Gudula, sister of St. Albert, Count of Brabant. 20. St. Pepin Teuto, Duke of Brabant. 21. St. Trudo, priest, son of St. Adela. 22. St. Vincent, monk. 23. Richard Coeur-de-Lion. A series of men and women, all more or less closely connected with the House of Hapsburg, selected for the alleged holiness of their lives or deeds under one aspect or another. It needs no laboured argument to show the appropriateness of thus representing to the life the solidarity of piety and worth in the great hero's earthly family, though a few words may not be out of place to distinguish the characters allied only or chiefly by the ties of the great family of chivalry. These are--1. King Arthur (No. 8), representative of the mythology of the Round Table. 2. Roland (No. 13 in the series of the saints), representing the myths of the Twelve Peers of France. 3. Theodobert (No. 7), who received a hero's death in the plain of Chalons at the hand of Attila, to be immortalized in the Western Nibelungen Myths. 4. Theodoric (No. 5), celebrated as 'Dietrich von Bern' in the Eastern. 5. Godfrey de Bouillon (No. 22), representing the legendary glory of the Crusades. [147] The two other statues, of a later date--St. Francis and St. Clare--are by Moll, a native of Innsbruck, who became a sculptor of some note at Vienna. The picture of St. Anthony over the altar of the Confraternity of St. Anthony, on the Epistle side of this church, has a great reputation among the people, because it remained uninjured in a fire which in 1661 burnt down the church of Zirl, where it was originally placed. [148] Five years later it was brought hither for greater honour, and was let into a larger painting by Jele of Vienna, representing a multitude of sick and suffering brought by their friends to pray for healing before it. There is not much else in this church that is noteworthy (besides 'the Silver Chapel,' which belongs to the notice of Ferdinand II.). What there is may be mentioned in a few lines, namely--the Fürstenchor, or tribune for the royal family, high up on the right side of the chancel, with the adjoining little chapel and its paintings, and cedar-wood organ, the gift of Julius II. to Ferdinand I.; the quaint old clock; and the memory that Queen Christina of Sweden made her abjuration here 28th October 1655. Her conduct on the occasion was, according to local tradition, most edifying. She was dressed plainly in black silk, with no other ornament than a large cross on her breast, with five sparkling diamonds to recall the glorious Wounds of the Redeemer. The emphasis with which she repeated the Latin profession of faith after the Papal nuncio did not pass unnoticed. The Ambrosian Hymn was sung at the close of the ceremony, and the church bells and town cannon spoke the congratulations of the Innsbruckers on this and the subsequent days of her stay among them. Among other tokens of gladness, several mystery plays (which are still greatly in vogue in Tirol) were represented. Another public ceremony of her stay was the translation of Kranach's Madonna, the favourite picture of Tirol, brought to it by Leopold V. The original altar-piece of the Hofkirche, by Paul Troger--the Invention of the Cross--was removed by Maria Theresa to Vienna, because the figure of the Empress Helena was counted a striking likeness of herself. The introduction of the Jesuits into Tirol, and the subsequent building of the Jesuitenkirche in Innsbruck, and the labours of B. Peter Canisius among the people, was also the work of Ferdinand I. The peaceful prosperity which his wise government procured for the country, while wars and religious divisions were distracting the rest of Europe, gave opportunity for the development of its literature and art-culture. [149] One melancholy event of his reign was the outbreak in its last year, of a terrible epidemic, which committed appalling ravages. All who could, including the royal family, escaped to a distance; and those who had been stricken with it were removed to the Siechenhaus, and isolated from the rest of the population. As has frequently happened on similar occasions, the dread of the malady operated to deprive the sick of the help of which they stood in need. It was when the plague raged highest, and the majority were most absorbed with the thought of securing their own safety, that a poor woman of the people, named Magaretha Hueber, rising superior to the vulgar terror, took upon herself cheerfully the management of the desolate Siechenhaus. The example of her courage was all that was needed to bring out the Christian confidence and charity of the masses; and to her devotion was owing not only the relief of the plague-stricken, but the moral effect of her spirit and energy was also not without its fruit in staying the havoc of the contagion; and she is still remembered by the name of die fromme Siechen. Shortly before his death (which happened in 1564), Ferdinand had his second son, Ferdinand II., publicly acknowledged in the Landtag of Innsbruck, Landesfürst of Tirol. His own affection for the country had prevented him from suffering its interests to be ever neglected by the pressure of his vast rule; and now when his great age warned him that he would be able to watch over it no longer, he determined to give it once more the benefit of an independent government. Ferdinand II. seems to have had all the excellent administrative qualities of his father in the degree necessary for his restricted sphere of dominion. His disposition for the culture of peaceful arts was promoted by the happiness of his family life. The story of his early love, and his marriage in accordance with the dictates of his heart, in an age when matrimonial alliances were too often dictated by political considerations alone, have made one of the romances dearest to the popular mind. The natural retribution of a disturbance of the regular succession to the throne followed, but with Tirol's usual good fortune the consequences did not prove disastrous, as we shall see later on. Situated at the distance of a pleasant hour's walk from Innsbruck, and forming an exceedingly picturesque object in the views from it, is Schloss Ambras, in ancient times one of the chief bulwarks of the Innthal. Ferdinand I. bought it of the noble family of Schurfen at the time when he nominated his son to the government of the country, and it always remained Ferdinand II.'s favourite residence. Hither he brought home the beautiful Philippine Welser, whose grace and modesty had won his heart at first sight, as she leant forward from her turret window to cast her flowery greeting at the feet of the Emperor Charles Quint when he came into Augsburg, and the young and handsome prince rode by his side. Philippine had been betrothed by her father to the heir of the Fugger family, the richest and most powerful of Augsburg; but her eyes had met Ferdinand's, and that one glance had revealed to both that their happiness lay in union with each other. Fortunately for Philippine she possessed in her mother a devoted confidant and ally. True, Ferdinand could not rest till he had obtained a stolen interview with her; but the true German woman had confidence in the honour and virtue of the reigning House, and the words Philippine, who was truth itself, reported were those of true love, which knows no shame. Nevertheless, the Fugger was urgent, and old Welser--a sturdy upholder of his family tradition for upright dealing--never, they knew, could be brought to be wanting to his word. The warm love of youth, however, is ever a match for the steady calculation of age. While the fathers Welser and Fugger were counting their money-bags, Ferdinand had devised a plan which easily received the assent of Philippine's affection for him, the rather that her mother, for whom a daughter's happiness stood dearer than any other consideration, gave it her countenance and aid. At an hour agreed, Ferdinand appeared beneath the turret where their happiness was first revealed to them; at a little distance his horses were in waiting. Not an instant had he to wait; Philippine, already fortified by her mother's farewell benediction, joined him ere a pang of misgiving had time to enter his mind, an old and trusted family servant accompanying her. Safely the fugitives reached the chapel, where a friendly priest--Ferdinand's confessor, Johann Cavallerüs--waited to bless the nuptials of the devoted pair, the old servant acting as witness. Old Franz Welser was subsequently induced to give his approval and paternal benediction; and if his burgher pride was wounded by his daughter marrying into a family which might look down upon her connexions, he had the consoling reflection that he was able to give her a dowry which many princes might envy; and also in the discovery of a friendly antiquary, that even his lineage, if not royal, was not either to be despised, for it could be traced up to the same stock which gave Belisarius to the Empire! Ferdinand's marriage was, I believe, never known to his father; though there are stories of his being won over to forgive it by Philippine's gentle beauty and worth, but these are probably referable to the succeeding Emperor. However this may be, the devoted pair certainly lived for some time in blissful retirement at Ambras; and after his brother, Maximilian II., had acknowledged the legality of Ferdinand's marriage--on the condition that the offspring of it should never claim the rank of Archdukes of Austria--Ambras, which had been their first retreat, was so endeared to them, that they always loved to live there better than anywhere else. There were born to them two sons--Karl, who afterwards became a Cardinal and Bishop of Brixen; and Andreas, Markgrave of Burgau, to whom Ferdinand willed Ambras, on condition that he should maintain its regal beauties, and preserve undiminished the rich stores of books and rare manuscripts, coins, armour, objects of vertù, and curiosities of every sort which it had been the delight of his and Philippine's leisure hours to collect. This testamentary disposition the son judged would be best carried out by selling the place to the Emperor Rudolf II. in 1606; and Ambras has accordingly ever since been reckoned a pleasure-seat of the imperial family. The unfortunate love of centralization, more than the fear of foreign invasion, which was the ostensible pretext, deprived Tirol of these treasures. They were removed to Vienna in 1806, where they may be visited in the Belvedere Palace, the promise of restoring them, often made, not having yet been fulfilled. Among the remnants that are left, are still some tokens of Ferdinand's taste and genius, and some touching memorials of thirty years of happiness purer and truer than had often before been combined with the enjoyment of power. There are some pieces of embroidery, with which Philippine occupied her lonely hours while Ferdinand's public duties obliged him to be away from her, among them a well-executed Crucifixion; and some natural curiosities in the shape of gnarled and twisted roots, needing little effort of the imagination to convert into naturally--perhaps supernaturally--formed crucifixes, and which they had doubtless found pleasure in unearthing in the woods round Ambras. At the time of my visit the private chapel was being very well restored, and some frescoes very fairly executed by Wienhold, a local artist who has studied in Rome. There is still a small collection of armour, and a suit of clothes worn by a giant in the suite of Charles Quint, which would appear to have belonged to a man near eight feet high; also some portraits of the Hapsburg family and other rulers of Tirol; among them Margareta Maultasch, which, if it be faithful, disproves the story deriving her name from the size of her mouth; but of this I shall have occasion to speak later. Inglis mentions that among the relics is a piece of the tree on which Judas hanged himself, but it was not shown to me. The people, whose own experience fixes the law of suffering in their minds, will have it that these years of tranquil joy were not unalloyed; but that Philippine's mother-in-law embittered them by her jealous bickerings and reproaches, and that these in the end led her to make a sacrifice of her life to the exigencies of her husband's glory. The bath is yet pointed out at Ambras where she is said to have bled herself to death to make way for a consort more conformable to her husband's birth. All, even local, historians, however, are agreed in rejecting this tradition. [150] It has served nevertheless to endear her to the popular mind, for whom she is still a model of domestic virtues no less than a type of beauty. Scarcely is there a house in Tirol that is not adorned by her image. Among other traditions of her personal perfections, it is fabled that her skin was so delicate that the colour of the red wine could be seen softly opalized as it passed her slender throat. [151] CHAPTER IX. NORTH TIROL--THE INNTHAL. INNSBRUCK (continued). Ora conosce come s'innamora Lo Ciel del giusto rege, et al sembiante Del suo fulgore il fa vedere ancora. Dante Paradiso, xx. 63. [152] Another local tradition of Ambras attaches to a spot where Wallenstein, while a page in the household of Ferdinand and Philippine, fell unharmed from the window of the corridor leading to the dining-hall, making in the terrible moment a secret vow to the Blessed Virgin of his conversion if he escaped with life, which hastened the work begun doubtless by Philippine's devout example and teaching. There is another, again, more marvellous still, and dated from an earlier period, and shortly before the purchase of the castle by the reigning family. It is said that Theophrastus Paracelsus, of whom many weird stories are told, was at one time sojourning at Innsbruck--where, another tradition has it, he died--and in the course of his wanderings in search of plants of strange healing powers, came to this outlying and then neglected castle. A peasant woman seeing him pass her cottage weary and footsore, asked him to come in and rest and taste her freshly-baked cakes, of which the homely odour scented the air. The man of strange science thanked her for her hospitality, and in return touched the tongs upon the hearth with his wonder-working book, and behold the iron was turned into pure gold. The origin of such a legend as this is easy to trace; the book of the touch of which such virtue is fabled, plainly represents the learning of the studious savant, which brought him, as well as fame, pecuniary advantage, enabling him to astonish the peasants with payment in the precious metal not often seen by them. But there are many others told of him, the details of which are more complicated, and wander much further from the outline of fact. The way in which he became possessed of his wonder-working power is thus accounted for. [153] One Sunday morning, when he was after his custom wandering in search of plants in a forest on the heights not far from Innsbruck, he heard a voice calling him out of a tree. 'Who are you?' cried Paracelsus. 'I am he whom men call the Evil One,' answered the voice; 'but how wrong they are you shall judge; if you but release me out of this tree you shall see I am not evil at all.' 'How am I to set about it?' asked the clever Doctor. 'Only look straight up the stem of the pine opposite you, and you will see a bung with three crosses on it; all you have to do is to pull it out, and I am free; if you do this I will show you how good I am by giving you the two things you most desire, an elixir which shall turn all to gold, and another which shall heal every malady.' Paracelsus, lured by the tempting promise, pulled out the bung, and straightway an ugly black spider crawled out of the hole, and quickly transformed itself into an old man wrapped in a scarlet mantle. The demon kept his word, and gave the Doctor the promised phials, but immediately began threatening the frightful vengeance he would wreak on the exorcist who had confined him in the tree. Paracelsus now blamed himself for his too ready confidence in the character the demon had given himself for goodness, and bethought him of a means of playing on the imp's vanity. 'What a knowing man that same exorcist must be,' said Paracelsus, 'to turn a tall powerful fellow like you into a spider, and then drive you into a tree.' 'Not a bit of it,' replied the imp, piqued, 'he couldn't have done anything of the sort, it was all my own doing.' 'Your own doing!' exclaimed Paracelsus, with a mocking laugh. 'Is that likely? I have heard of people being transformed by some one of greater power than themselves, never by their own.' 'You shall see, though,' said the provoked imp; and with that he quickly resumed the form of a spider, and crawled back into the hole. [154] Paracelsus, it may well be imagined, lost no time in replacing the bung, on which he cut three fresh crosses to renew the spell; and never can he again be released, for it was agreed never to cut down this forest on account of the protection it afforded to the country against the avalanches. But, it may be asked, the wonder-working phials once vouchsafed to men, would surely be taken good care of. There is a legend to provide for that too. [155] When the other doctors of Innsbruck found that Paracelsus so far exceeded them in skill, they determined to poison him. Paracelsus had knowledge of their plot by his arts, he knew too that there was only one remedy against the poison they had adopted, and he shut himself up, telling his servant not to disturb him for five days. At the end of the fourth day, however, the curious servant came into his room and broke the spell. Paracelsus had employed a wonder-working spider to draw out the poison, which it would have done in the course of five days. Disturbed on the fourth, Paracelsus knew he must die. Determined that the jealous members of his profession should not profit by their crime, he sent his servant with the two phials and bid him stand in the middle of the Inn-bridge and throw them into the river. Where they fell into the river the water was streaked with molten gold. It remains to call attention to the splendid and truly Tirolean panoramic view from the pretty terrace of Ambras, with its luxuriant trellis of passion-flower and 'virgin vine.' Overhanging the village of Ambras is the so-called Tummelplatz, where in the lifetime of Ferdinand and Philippine, many a gay tournament was held, but since used as a burying-place; first for the military hospital, to which the castle was at one time devoted--and some seven or eight thousand patriots were interred here between 1796 and 1810--and afterwards for those who fell successfully resisting the Italian invasion of 1859. Whatever was the manner of Philippine's death, it was bitterly lamented by Ferdinand, who found the usual refuge of human grief in raising a splendid monument to her memory, in the so-called Silberne Kapelle in the Hofkirche. The chapel had been built by him to satisfy her devotion to the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception; and in her lifetime was so called from the solid silver image of the Blessed Virgin, and the bas-reliefs of the mysteries of the rosary in the same metal over the altar, itself a valuable ebony carving. She had loved to pray there, and it accordingly formed a fitting resting-place for her mortal remains. Her effigy in marble over her altar-shaped tomb is a figure of exceeding beauty, and is ascribed to Alexander Collin; it stands under a marble canopy. The upright slab is of white marble, carved in three compartments; the centre one bearing a modest inscription, and the other two, subjects recording her charity to the living and the dead; the outline of the town of Innsbruck, as it appeared in her day, forms the background. By his desire Ferdinand was buried near her; his monument is similarly sunk in the thickness of the wall, which is adorned with shields carved in relief, bearing the arms of his house painted with their respective tinctures; and on the tomb are marble reliefs, setting forth (after the manner of those on Maximilian's cenotaph) the public acts of his life. This chapel came to be used afterwards for Italian sermons by the consorts of subsequent rulers of Tirol, many of whom were Italians. In 1572 Innsbruck was visited by a severe shock of earthquake, which overthrew many buildings, and so filled the people with alarm, that temporary wooden huts were built in the open field where they took refuge. Ferdinand and Philippine had recourse to the same means of safety; and while living thus, their only daughter, Anna Eleonora, was born. In thanksgiving for this favour, and for the cessation of the panic, the royal pair vowed a pilgrimage to Seefeld, [156] which they accomplished on foot, accompanied by their sons; above two thousand Innsbruckers following them. The general sentiment of gratitude was further testified by the enactment on the part of Ferdinand, and the glad acceptance on the part of the people, of various rules of devotion, which have gone to form the subsequent habits of the people. Three years of dearth succeeded the earthquake, and were accepted by the pious ruler and people as a heavenly warning to lead them to increased faith and devotion. Many Lutheran books which had escaped earlier measures against them were spontaneously brought forward and burnt; special devotion to the Blessed Sacrament was promoted, Ferdinand himself setting the example; for whenever he met the Viaticum on the way to the sick, whether he was in a carriage or on horseback, he never failed to alight and kneel upon the ground, whatever might be its condition. This was indeed a special tradition of his house; it is told of Rudolf of Hapsburg, that one day as he was out hunting, a furious storm came on, soon swelling the mountain torrents and sweeping away paths and bridges. On the brink of a raging stream, which there was no means of crossing, stood a priest, weather-bound on his way to carry the last sacrament to a dying parishioner. Rudolf recognised the sound of the bell, and directed his steps by its leading to pay his homage to the 'hochwürdigste Gut.' He no sooner learned the priest's difficulty than he dismounted, and offered him his own horse. When the priest brought the animal back next day, the pious prince told him he could not think of himself again crossing a horse which had been honoured by having borne his Lord and Redeemer, and begged him to keep it for the future service of religion. While Philippine's relations never sought to overstep the limits which imperial etiquette had set them, Ferdinand seems to have treated them with kind cordiality. An instance of this was the magnificence with which he celebrated the marriage of her nephew, Johann von Kolourat, with her maid-of-honour, Katarina von Boimont, in 1580: the 'Neustadt' or principal street afforded space for tournaments and races which lasted many days, and attracted the remaining votaries of chivalry from all parts of Europe. The festivities were closed by a splendid pageant, in which Ferdinand took part as 'Olympian Jove.' In 1582 Ferdinand married Anna Katharina Gonzaga, daughter of the Duke of Mantua, who was no less pious than Philippine. The marriage was celebrated at Innsbruck with great pomp. She was the first to introduce the Capuchin Order into Germany. Some discussion in the general chapter of the Order preceded the decision which allowed the monks to accept the consequences of being exposed to a colder climate than that to which they had been used. The first stone of their monastery was laid by Ferdinand and Anna Katharina in August 1593, at the intersection of the Universitäts-gasse and the Sill-gasse. Ferdinand died the following year, regretted by all the people, but by none more than by Anna Katharina, who passed the remainder of her days in a convent she had founded at Innsbruck. She died in 1621, and desired the following inscription to be put on her tomb:--'Miserere mei Domine dum veneris in novissimo die.' The warning of the disastrous years 1572-4 was further turned to practical account by Ferdinand in his desire to relieve the distress of the peasants. In the first months of threatening famine he bought with his own means large stores of grain in Hungary and Italy, and opened depôts in various parts of Tirol, where it was sold at a reasonable price. To provide a means of earning money for those who were shut out of their ordinary labour, he laid out or improved some of the most important high roads; he likewise exerted himself in every way to promote the commerce of the country. His reign conferred many other benefits on the people. Many laws were amended and brought in conformity with the altered circumstances of the age; the principle of self-taxation was established, and other measures enacted which it does not belong to my present province to particularise. He introduced also the use of the Gregorian Calendar, and gave great encouragement to the cultivation of letters. It was by his care that the most authentic MSS. of the Nibelungen poems and other examples of early literature were preserved to us. As Ferdinand had no children by Anna Katharina, and those of Philippine were not allowed to succeed, [157] the rule over Tirol went back at his death to the Emperor Rudolf II., Maximilian's eldest son. In 1602, however, he gave over the government to his brother Maximilian, who is distinguished by the name of the Deutschmeister. Tirol was again fortunate in her ruler; Maximilian was as pious and prudent a prince as his predecessors. He promoted the educational establishments of the town, and was a zealous opponent of religious differences; he brought in the Order of Servites to oppose the remaining germs of Lutheran teaching; the church and monastery at the end of the Neustadt being built for them by Katharina Maria. There are some pictures in the church by Theophilus Polak, Martin Knoller, Grasmair, and other native artists; and the frescoes on the roof by Schöpf are worth attention. A fanatic named Paul Lederer, one of the very few Tirol has produced, rose in this reign, and carried away about thirty persons to join a kind of sect which he attempted to form; in accordance with the laws of the age, he was tried and executed, after which his followers were no more heard of. Maximilian was much attached to the Capuchins, and built himself a little hermitage within their precincts, which is still shown, where he spent all the time he could spare in prayer and meditation; following the rule of the monks, rising with them to their night Offices, and employing himself at manual labour in the field and in the workshop like one of them. His cell is paneled with plain wood, the bed and chair are of the most ordinary make, as are the ink-stand and other necessary articles, mostly his own handiwork; it has a window high up in the chancel, whence he could assist at the Offices in the church. The Empress Maria Theresa visited it in 1765, and seating herself in the stiff wooden chair, exclaimed, 'What men our forefathers were!' Another illustrious pilgrim, whose visit is treasured in the memories of the house, was St. Lorenzo of Brindisi, when on his way to found a house of the Order in Austria. The monks begged of him his Hebrew Bible, his walking-stick, and breviary, which are still treasured as relics. All the churches of Innsbruck and many throughout Tirol felt the benefit of Maximilian's devotion to the Church. His spirit was emulated by the townspeople, and when the fatal epidemic of 1611 ceased its ravages, the burghers of Innsbruck built the Dreiheiligkeitskirche [158] for the Jesuits, as a thank-offering that the plague was stayed. The temporal affairs of Tirol received no less attention from Archduke Maximilian than the spiritual. With the foresight of a true statesman, he discovered the coming troubles of the Thirty Years' War, and resolved that the defences of his country should be in a state to keep the danger at a distance from her borders. The fortified towers, especially those commanding the passes into the country, were all overlooked, and plans of them carefully prepared, all the fortifications being put in repair. The Landwehr, the living bulwarks, the ready defenders of their beloved mountain Vaterland, attracted his still more special attention, and he furnished them with a regulation suited to the needs of the times. He settled also several outstanding disputes with the Venetians, with Count Arco, and with neighbours over the north and west frontiers; and an internal boundary quarrel between the Bishops of Brixen and Trent. The death of Rudolf II., in 1612, had invested him with supreme authority over the country, and simplified his action in all these matters for the benefit of the commonwealth. Another outburst of pestilence occurred in 1611; the old Siechen-haus was not big enough for all the sick, and had no church attached to it. Two Jesuits--the professor of theology at their university, and Kaspar von Köstlan, a native of Brixen--assisted by a lay-brother, devoted themselves to the service of the sick; their example so edified the Innsbruckers, that in their admiration they readily provided the means, at their exhortation, to build a church. Hanns Zimmermann, Dean of the Burgomasters, bound himself by a vow to see to the erection of the building, and from that time it was observed the fury of the pestilence began to diminish. Maximilian bought the neighbouring house and appointed it for the residence of the chaplain of the Siechen-haus and the doctors. He gave also the altarpiece by Stötzl, representing the three Pestschutzheiligen, [159] and another quaint and curious picture of the plague-genius. Maximilian died in 1618, and a religious vow having kept him unmarried, the government was transferred to Leopold V., Archduke of Styria, again a most exemplary man. His father was Charles II., son of the Emperor Ferdinand I.; he had originally been devoted to the ecclesiastical state, and nominated Bishop of Strasburg and Passau; but out of regard for the exigencies of the country a dispensation, of which I think history affords only two or three other examples, was granted him from Rome. He married the celebrated Claudia de' Medici, Duchess of Urbino. Though also Governor of the Low Countries, he by no means neglected the affairs of Tirol. Some fresh attempts of Lutherans to interfere with its religious unity, as well as to foment political dissensions, were put down with a resolute hand. Friedrich von Tiefenbach, sometime notorious as a politico-religious leader in Moravia, was discovered in a hiding-place he had selected, in the wild caves at Pfäffers [160] below Chur, and tried and beheaded at Innsbruck in 1621. The selection of Innsbruck for the marriage of the Emperor Ferdinand II. with his second wife Eleonora, daughter of the Duke of Mantua, in 1622, revived the splendours of Maximilian's reign, for the Emperor stayed there some weeks with all his court; the Landwehr turned out three thousand strong to form his guard of honour. It was the depth of winter, but the bride braved the snow; the Count of Harrach was sent out to meet her on the Brenner Pass with six gilt sledges, and a vast concourse of people. It is recorded that the Emperor wore on the occasion an entirely white suit embroidered with gold and pearls, on his shoulders a short sky-blue cloak lined with cloth of gold, and a diamond chain round his neck. Eleonora, more in accordance with the season, wore a tight-fitting dress of carnation satin embroidered in gold, over it a sable jacket, and a hat with a plume of eagles' feathers. The banquet was entirely served by young Tirolean nobles. The Emperor's present to his bride was a pearl parure, costing thirty thousand ducats; and that of the town of Innsbruck a purse of eighteen thousand ducats. Leopold was confirmed by his imperial brother in the government on this occasion. His own marriage was celebrated with scarcely less state than the Emperor's in April 1626, an array of handsome tents being pitched in the meadows of Wilten, where the Landesschützen performed many marksmen's feats for the diversion of the company assembled for the ceremonial. This included the Archbishop of Salzburg, who officiated in the Church function, one hundred and fifty counts and barons, and three hundred of noble blood. The visit of the Grand Duke of Tuscany in 1628, and of Ferdinand, King of Hungary and Bohemia, in 1629, were other notable occasions of rejoicing for Innsbruck. Leopold benefited and adorned the town by the enclosure and planting of the Hofgarten, and the bronze equestrian statue of himself, still one of its chief ornaments; but his memory has been more deeply endeared to the people by the present of Kranach's Madonna, which they have copied in almost every church, household, and highway of the country. It is a little picture on panel, very like many of its date, in which the tenderness of devotion beams through and redeems all the stiffness of mannerism; but which we are apt to pass, I had almost said by the dozen, in the various galleries of Europe, with no more than a casual glance. With the Tirolese it was otherwise. Their faith-inspired eyes saw in it a whole revelation of Divine mercy and love; they gazed on the outpouring of maternal fondness and filial confidence in the unutterable communion of the Mother and the Son there portrayed; and deeming that where so much love reigned no petition could be rejected, they believed that answers to the frequent prayers of faith sent up before it were reaped an hundredfold, [161] and the fame of the benefits so derived was symbolized in the title universally given to the picture, of Mariähülfsbild. [162] Leopold being in the early part of his reign on a visit to the Elector of Saxony, on occasion of one of his journeys between Tirol and the Low Countries, and being lost in admiration of his collection of pictures at Dresden, received from him the offer of any painting he liked to select. There were many choice specimens, but the devotional conception of this picture carried him away from all the rest, and it became the object of his selection. He never parted from it afterwards, and it accompanied him in all his journeyings. When in Innsbruck, it formed the altar-piece of the Hofkapelle, whither the people crowded to kindle their devotion at its focus. After the withdrawal of the allied French, Swedish, and Hessian troops in 1647, the Innsbruckers, in thanksgiving for the success of their prayers before it, built the elegant little circular temple [163] on the left bank of the Inn, still called the Mariähülfskirche, thinking to enshrine it there; but Ferdinand Karl, who had then succeeded to his father Leopold, could not bear to part with it, and gave them a copy instead, by Paul Schor, inserted in a larger picture representing it borne by angels, and the notabilities of Innsbruck kneeling beneath it, the Mariähülfskirche being introduced into the background landscape. However, the number of people who pressed to approach it was so great that he was in a manner constrained to bestow it on the Pfarrkirche only two or three years later, where it now remains; it was translated thither during Queen Christina's visit, as I have mentioned above. It was borne on a car by six white horses, the crowded streets being strewn with flowers. It is a small picture, and has been let into a large canvas painted in Schöpf's best manner, with angels which appear to support it, and beneath St. James, patron of the church, and St. Alexius. A centenary festival was observed in memory of the translation by Maria Theresa in 1750, when all the precious ex votos, the thank-offerings for many granted prayers, were exposed to view under the light streaming from a hundred silver candelabra, the air around being perfumed by the flowers of a hundred silver vases. The procession was a splendid pageant, in which no expense seems to have been spared, the great Empress herself, accompanied by her son, afterwards Joseph II., heading it. This was repeated--in a manner corresponding with the diminished magnificence of the age--in 1850, the Emperor Ferdinand I., the Empress Anna, and other members of the Imperial family, taking their part in it. [164] The only remaining act of Leopold's reign which calls for mention in connexion with Innsbruck, was the erection of the monument to Maximilian the Deutschmeister, in the Pfarrkirche, almost the only one that was spared when the church was rebuilt after the earthquakes of 1667 and 1689, the others having been ruthlessly used--the headstones in building up the walls, the bronze ones in the bell-castings. Leopold's son, Ferdinand Karl, being under age at the time of his death, in 1632, he was succeeded by his widow, Claudia de' Medici, as regent. The troubles of the Thirty Years' War, in which Leopold like other German princes had had his chequered share, were yet raging. Claudia was equal to the exigencies of her time and country. She continued the measures of Maximilian the Deutschmeister for perfecting the defences of the country, and particularly all its inlets; and she encouraged the patriotic instincts of the people by constantly presiding at their shooting-practice. The Swedish forces, after taking Constance, advanced as far as the Valtelin, and Tirol was threatened with invasion on both sides at once. By her skilful measures, at every rumour of an inroad, the mountains bristled with the unerring marksmen of Tirol, securely stationed at their posts inaccessible to lowlanders. Nothing was spared to keep up the vigilance and spirit of the true-hearted peasants. By this constant watchfulness she saved the country from the horrors of war, in which almost the whole of the German Empire was at that time involved. During all this time she was also developing the internal resources, and consolidating the administration of the country. Two misfortunes, however, visited Innsbruck during her reign: a terrible pestilence, and a destructive fire in which the Burg suffered severely, the beautiful chapel of Ferdinand II. being consumed, and the body of Leopold, her husband, which was lying there at the time, rescued with difficulty. After this, Claudia spent some little time at Botzen, and also visited Florence. It may be questioned whether the introduction of the numerous Italians about her court was altogether for the benefit of Tirol. They brought with them certain ways and principles which were not altogether in accordance with the German character; and we have seen the effect of the jealousies of race in the tragic fate of her chancellor Biener. [165] Ferdinand Karl having attained his majority in 1646, Claudia withdrew from public affairs, and died only two years later. In his reign the introduction of the Italian element at court was apparent in the greater luxury of its arrangements, and in the greater cultivation of histrionic and musical diversions. The establishment of the theatre in Innsbruck is due to him. The marriage of his two sisters, Maria Leopoldina and Isabella Clara, and the frequent interchange of visits between him and the princes of Italy, further enlivened Innsbruck. The visit of Queen Christina, [166] of which I have already said enough for my limits, also took place in his reign (1655). Nor did Ferdinand Karl give himself up to amusement to the neglect of business, or of more manly pleasures. He maintained all his mother's measures for the encouragement of the Scheibenschiessen, and had the satisfaction of seeing the departure of the enemy's army from his borders, which was celebrated by the building of Mariähülfskirche. [167] To his love of the national sport of chamois-hunting his death has to be ascribed; for the neglect of an attack of illness while out on a mountain expedition near Kaltern after the wild game, gave it a hold on his constitution, which placed him beyond recovery. His death occurred in 1660, at the early age of thirty-four; he left no heir. He was succeeded by his only brother, Sigmund Franz, Bishop of Gurk, Augsburg, and Trent, who seems to have inherited all his mother's finer qualities without sharing her Italianizing tendencies. With a perhaps too sudden sternness, he purged the court and government of all foreign admixture, and reduced the sumptuous suite of his brother to dimensions dictated by usefulness alone. However popular this may have made him with the German population, the ousted Italians were furious; and his sudden death--which occurred while, after the pattern of his father, applying for a dispensation to marry, in 1665--was by the Germans ascribed to secret poisoning; his Tuscan physician Agricola having, it is alleged, been bribed to perpetrate the misdeed. Tirol now once more reverted to the Empire. Though Leopold I. came to Innsbruck to receive the homage of the people on his accession, and a gay ceremonial ensued, yet it lost much of its importance by having no longer a resident court. While there, however, Leopold had seen the beautiful daughter of Ferdinand Karl's widow, Claudia Felicità, who made such an impression upon him, that he married her on the death of his first wife. The ceremony was performed in Innsbruck by proxy only; but the dowager-archduchess provided great fêtes, in which the city readily concurred, and gave the bride thirty thousand gulden for her wedding present. Claudia Felicità, in her state at Vienna, did not forget the good town of Innsbruck; and by her interest with her husband, Tirol received a Statthalter in the person of Charles Duke of Lotharingia, husband of his sister Eleonora Maria, widow of the King of Poland. Charles took up his residence at Innsbruck; and though he was often absent with the army, the presence of his family revived the gaiety of the town; still it was not like the old days of the court. Charles, however, who had been originally educated for the ecclesiastical state, was a sovereign of unexceptionable principles and sound judgment; and he did many things for the benefit of Tirol, particularly in developing its educational establishments. He raised the Jesuit gymnasium of Innsbruck to the character of a university; and the privileges with which he endowed it, added to the salubrity of the situation, attracted alumni from far and near, who amounted to near a thousand in number. Nothing of note occurred in Tirol till 1703--the Duke of Lotharingia had died in 1696--which is a memorable year. The war of the Spanish Succession, at that time, found Maximilian, Elector of Bavaria, and some of the Italian princes, allied with France against Austria--thus there were antagonists of Austria on both sides of Tirol; nevertheless, no attack on it seems to have been apprehended; and thus, when a plan was concerted for entering Austria by Carinthia (the actual boundaries against Bavaria being too well defended to invite an entrance that way), and it was arranged that the Bavarian and Italian allies should assist the French in overrunning Tirol, everyone was taken by surprise. Maximilian easily overcame the small frontier garrison. At Kufstein he met a momentary check, but an accident put the fortress in his power. Possessed of this base of operations, he was not long in reducing the forts of Rottenburg Scharnitz, and Ehrenberg, and possessing himself of Hall and Innsbruck. He now reckoned the country his, and that it only remained to send news of his success to Vendôme, who had taken Wälsch-Tirol similarly by surprise and advanced as far as Trent, in order to carry out their concerted inroad through the Pusterthal. So sure of his victory was he, that he ordered the Te Deum to be sung in all the churches of Innsbruck. In the meantime the Tirolese had recovered from their surprise, and had taken measures for disconcerting and routing the invaders; the storm-bells and the Kreidenfeuer [168] rallied every man capable of bearing arms, to the defence of his country. The main road over the Brenner was quickly invested by the native sharp-shooters; there was no chance of passing that way. Maximilian thought to elude the vigilance of the people by sending his men round by Oberinnthal and the Finstermünz. The party trusted with this mission were commanded by a Bavarian and a French officer. They reached Landeck in safety, but all around them the sturdy Tirolese were determining their destruction. Martin Sterzinger, Pfleger or Judge, of Landeck, summoned the Landsturm of the neighbouring districts, and arranged the plan of operation. The enemy were suffered to advance on their way unhindered along the steep path, where the rocky sides of the Inn close in and form the terrible gorge which is traversed by the Pontlatzerbrücke; but when they arrived, no bridge was there! The mountaineers had been out in the night and cut it down. Beyond this point the steep side afforded no footing on the right bank, no means remained of crossing over to the left! The remnants of the bridge betrayed what had befallen, and quickly the command was given to turn back; in the panic of the moment many lost their footing, and rolled into the rapid river beneath. For those even who retained their composure no return was possible; the heights above were peopled with the ready Tirolese, burning to defend their country. Down came their shots like hail, each ball piercing its man; those who had no arms dashed down stones upon the foe. Only a handful escaped, but at Landeck these were taken prisoners; and there was not one even to carry the news to Maximilian. This famous success is still celebrated every year on the 1st of July by a solemn procession. Maximilian and Vendôme remained perplexed at hearing nothing from each other, and without means of communication; in vain they sent out scouts; money could not buy information from the patriotic Tirolese. Meantime, danger was thickening round each; the Landsturm was out, and every height was beset with agile climbers, armed with their unerring carbines, and with masses of rock to hurl down on the enemy who ventured along the road beneath them. The Bavarian and French leaders in the north and in the south only perceived how critical was their situation just in time to escape from it, and the waste and havoc they had made during their brief incursion was recompensed by the numbers lost in their retreat. The Bavarians held Kufstein for some time longer, but their precipitate withdrawal from all the rest of the country earned for the campaign, in the mouths of the Tirolese, the nickname of the Baierische-Rumpel. While brave arms had been defending the mountain passes, brave hearts of those whose arms were nerved only for being lifted up in prayer, not for war, were day by day earnestly interceding in the churches for the deliverance of their husbands, fathers, and brothers; and when, on the 26th of July, the land was found free of the foe, it was gratefully remembered that it was S. Anne's Day, and the so-called Annensäule, which adorns the Neustadt--the principal thoroughfare of Innsbruck--was erected in commemoration. It is composed of the marbles of the country; the lower part red, the column white, the effigy of the Immaculate Conception, which surmounts it and the surrounding rays, in gilt bronze. Round the base stand St. Vigilius and St. Cassian (two apostles of Tirol), and St. Anne and St. George; about them float angels, in the breezy style of the period. The monument was solemnly inaugurated on S. Anne's Day, 1706; and every year on that day a procession winds round it from the parish church, singing hymns of thanksgiving; and an altar, gaily dressed with fresh flowers, stands before it for eight days under the open sky. Leopold I. died in 1705, and was succeeded by his son, Joseph I., who reigned only six years. Charles VI., Leopold's younger son, followed, who appointed Karl Philipp, Palsgrave of Neuburg, Governor of Tirol. He was another pious ruler, and much beloved by the people; his memory being the more endeared to them, that he was their last independent prince. His reign benefited Innsbruck by the erection of the handsome Landhaus and the Gymnasium, and also by the extensive restoration of the Pfarrkirche. This occupied the site of the little chapel, the accorded privilege to which of hearing in it masses of obligation forms the earliest record of Innsbruck's history. It had grown with the growth of the town, and had been added to by various sovereigns, and we have seen it gifted with Kranach's Mariähilf. The earthquakes of 1667 and 1689 had left it so dilapidated, however, that Karl Philipp resolved to rebuild it on a much larger plan. He laid the first stone on May 12, 1717, in presence of his brother, the Bishop of Augsburg, and it was consecrated in 1724. It has the costliness and the vices of its date; its overloaded stucco ornaments are redeemed by the lavish use of the beautiful marbles of the country; the quarrying and fashioning these marbles occupied a hundred workmen, without counting labourers and apprentices, for the whole time during which the church was building. The frescoes setting forth the wonder-working patronage of St. James, on the roof and cupola, are by Kosmas Damian Asam, whose pencil, and that of his two sons, Kosmas and Egid, were entirely devoted to the decoration of churches and religious houses. There is a tradition, that as the fervent painter was putting the finishing touches to the figure of the saint, as he appears, mounted on his spirited charger as the patron of Compostella, in the cupola, he stepped back to see the effect of his work. Forgetting in his zeal the narrowness of the platform on which he stood, he would inevitably have been precipitated on to the pavement below, but that the strong arm of the saint he had been painting so lovingly, detached itself from the wall, and saved his client from the terrible fate! [169] Other works of this reign were the Strafarbeitshaus, a great improvement on the former prison; and the church of St. John Nepomuk, in the Innrain, then a new and fashionable street. The canonization of the great martyr to the seal of Confession took place in 1730. Though properly a Bohemian saint, his memory is so beloved all through southern Germany, that all its divisions seem to lay a patriotic claim to him. His canonization was celebrated by a solemn function in the Pfarrkirche, lasting eight days; and the people were so stirred up to fervour by its observance, that they subscribed for the building of a church in his honour, the governor taking the lead in promoting it. Maria Theresa succeeded her father, Charles VI., in 1742. She seems to have known how to attend to the affairs of every part of the Empire alike; and thus, while the whole country felt the benefit of her wise provisions, all the former splendours of the Tirolean capital revived. Maria Theresa frequently took up her residence at Innsbruck; and while benefiting trade by her expenditure, and by that of the visitors whom her court attracted, she set at the same time an edifying example of piety and a well-regulated life. Her associations with Innsbruck were nevertheless overshadowed by sad events more than once, though this does not appear to have diminished her affection for the place. When Marshal Daun took a whole division of the Prussian army captive at Maxen in 1758, the officers, nine in number, were sent to Innsbruck for safe custody. Here they remained till the close of the war, five years later. This, and the furnishing some of its famous sharpshooters to the Austrian contingent, was the only contact Tirol had with the Seven Years' War. Two years after (1765) Maria Theresa arranged that the marriage of her son (afterwards Leopold II.) with Maria Luisa, daughter of Charles III. of Spain, should take place there. The townspeople, sensible of the honour conferred on them, responded to it by adorning the city with the most festive display; not only with gay banners and hangings, but by improving the façades of their houses, and the roads and bridges, and erecting a triumphal arch of unusual solidity at the end of the Neustadt nearest Wilten, being that by which the royal pair would pass on their way from Italy; for Leopold was then Grand Duke of Tuscany. The theatre and public buildings were likewise put in order. Maria Theresa, with her husband Francis I., and all the Imperial family, arrived in Innsbruck on July 15, attracting a larger assemblage of great people than had been seen there even in its palmiest days. Banquets and gay doings filled up the interval till August 5, when Leopold and Maria Luisa made their entrance with unexampled pomp. The marriage was celebrated in the Pfarrkirche by Prince Clement of Saxony, Bishop of Ratisbon, assisted by seven other bishops. Balls, operas, banquets, illuminations, and the national Freischiessen, followed. But during all these fêtes, an unseasonable gloom, which is popularly supposed to bode evil, overclouded the August sky, usually so clear and brilliant in Innsbruck. On the 18th, a grand opera was given to conclude the festivities; on his way back from it Francis I. was seized with a fit, and died in the course of the night in the arms of his son, afterwards Joseph II. Though Maria Theresa's master mind had caused her to take the lead in all public matters, she was devotedly attached to her husband, and this sudden blow was severely felt by her. She could not bear that the room in which he expired should ever be again used for secular purposes, and had it converted into a costly chapel; at the same time she made great improvements and additions to the rest of the Burg. She always wore mourning to the end of her life, and always, when state affairs permitted, passed the eighteenth day of every month in prayer and retirement. A remarkable monument remains of both the affection and public spirit of this talented princess. Driving out to the Abbey of Wilten in one of the early days of mourning, while some of the tokens of the rejoicing, so unexpectedly turned into lamentation, were still unremoved, the sight of the handsome triumphal arch reminded her of a resolution suggested by Francis I. to replace it by one of similar design in more permanent materials. Her first impulse was to reject the thought as a too painful reminder of the past; but reflection on the promised benefit to the town prevailed over personal feelings, and she gave orders for the execution of the work; but to make it a fitting memorial of the occasion, she ordered that while the side facing the road from Italy should be a Triumphpforte, and recall by its bas-reliefs the glad occasion which caused its erection, the side facing the town should be a Trauerpforte, and set forth the melancholy conclusion of the same. The whole was executed by Tirolean artists, and of Tirolean marbles. She founded also a Damenstift, for the maintenance of twelve poor ladies of noble birth, who, without taking vows, bound themselves to wear mourning and pray for the soul of Francis I. and those of his house. Another great work of Maria Theresa was the development she gave to the University of Innsbruck. After her death, which took place in 1780, Joseph II., freed from the restraints of her influence, gave full scope to his plans for meddling with ecclesiastical affairs, for which his intercourse with Russia had perhaps given him a taste. Pius VI. did not spare himself a journey to Vienna, to exert the effect of his personal influence with the Emperor, who it would seem did not pay much heed to his advice, and so disaffected his people by his injudicious innovations, that at the time of his death the whole empire, which the skill of Maria Theresa had consolidated, was in a state of complete disorganization. [170] Though increased by his ill-gotten share of Poland, he lost the Low Countries, and Hungary was so disaffected, that had he not been removed by the hand of death (1790), it is not improbable it would have thrown off its allegiance also. Leopold II., his brother, who only reigned two years, saved the empire from dissolution by prudent concessions, by rescinding many of Joseph's hasty measures, and abandoning his policy of centralization. One religious house which Joseph II. did not suppress was the Damenstift of Innsbruck, of which his sister, the Archduchess Maria Elizabeth, undertook the government in 1781; and during the remainder of her life held a sort of court there which was greatly for the benefit of the city. Pius VI. visited her on his way back from Vienna on the evening of May 7, 1782. The whole town was illuminated, and all the religious in the town went out to meet him, followed by the whole body of the people. Late as was the hour (a quarter to ten, says a precise chronicle) he had no sooner reached the apartment prepared for him in the Burg, than he admitted whole crowds to audience, and the enthusiasm with which the religious Tirolese thronged round him surpasses words. Many, possessed with a sense of the honour of having the vicar of Christ in their very midst, remained all night in the surrounding Rennplatz, as it were on guard round his abode. In the morning, after hearing mass, he imparted the Apostolic Benediction from the balcony of the Burg, and proceeded on his way over the Brenner. Leopold II. had not been three months on the throne before he came to Innsbruck to receive the homage of his loyal Tirolese, who took this opportunity of winning from him the abrogation of many Josephinischen measures, particularly that reducing their University to a mere Lyceum. He was succeeded in 1792 by his son, Francis II.; but the mighty storm of the French Revolution was threatening, and absorbed all his attention with the preservation of his empire, and the defence of Tirol seems to have been overlooked. Year by year danger gathered round the outskirts of her mountain fastnesses. Whole hosts were engaged all around; yet there were but a handful, five thousand at most, of Austrian troops stationed within her frontier. The importance of obtaining the command of such a base of operations, which would at once have afforded a key to Italy and Austria, did not escape Bonaparte. Joubert was sent with fifteen thousand men to gain possession of the country, and advanced as far as Sterzing. Innsbruck was thrown into a complete panic, and I am sorry to have to record that the Archduchess Maria Elizabeth took her flight. The Austrian Generals, Kerpen and Laudon, did not deem it prudent, with their small contingent, to engage the French army. Nevertheless, the Tirolese, instead of being disheartened at this pusillanimity, with their wonted spirit rose as one man; a decisive battle was fought at Spinges, a hamlet near Sterzing, where a village girl fought so bravely, and urged the men on to the defence of their country so generously, that though her name is lost, her courage won her a local reputation as lasting as that of Joan of Arc or the 'Maid of Zaragoza,' under the title of Das Mädchen von Spinges. [171] Driven out hence, the French troops made the best of their way to join the main army in Carinthia. After this the enemy left Tirol at Peace for some years, with the exception of one or two border inroads, which were resolutely repulsed. One of these is so characteristic of the religious customs of Tirol, that, though not strictly belonging to the history of Innsbruck, I cannot forbear mentioning it. The French, under Massena, had in 1799 been twice repulsed from Feldkirch with great loss. Divisions which had never known a reverse were decimated and routed by the practised guns of the mountaineers. Thinking their victory assured, the peasants, after the manner of volunteer troops, had dispersed but too soon, to return to their flocks and tillage. Warily perceiving his advantage, Massena led his troops back over the border silently by night, intending in the morning to take the unsuspecting town by storm--a plan which did not seem to have a chance of failure. But it happened to be Holy Saturday. Suddenly, just as he was about to give the order for the attack, the bells of all the churches far and near, which had been so still during the preceding days, burst all together upon his ear with the jubilant Auferstehungsfeier. [172] General and troops, alike unfamiliar with religious times and seasons, took the sound for the alarm bells calling out the Landsturm. In the belief that they were betrayed, a precipitate retreat was ordered. But the night no longer covered the march; and the peasants, who were gathered in their villages for the Offices of the Church, were quickly collected for the pursuit. This abortive expedition cost the French army three thousand men. In the meantime the Archduchess had returned to Innsbruck, and all went on upon its old footing, as if there were no enemy to fear. So little was another disturbance expected, that the Archduchess devoted herself to the promotion of local improvements, including that of the Gottesacker. This is one of the favourite Sunday afternoon resorts of the Innsbruckers, and is well worthy of a visit. The site was first destined for the purpose by the Emperor Maximilian. It was gifted with all the indulgences accorded to the Campo Santo of Rome by the Pope, and in token of the same some earth from San Lorenzo fuori le mura was brought hither at the time of its consecration by the Bishop of Brixen in 1510. It has, according to the frequent German arrangement, an upper and a lower chapel; the former, dedicated to S. Anne; the latter, as usual, to S. Michael, though the people commonly call it die Veitskapelle, on account of some cures of S. Vitus' dance wrought here. The arcades which now surround the cemetery were the result of the introduction of Italian customs later in the sixteenth century. Some of the oldest and noblest names of Tirol are to be found upon the monuments here, some of which cannot fail to attract attention. The bas-reliefs sculptured by Collin for that of the Hohenhauser family, and those he prepared for his own, may be reckoned among his masterpieces. Some which are adorned with paintings would be very interesting if the weather had spared them more. The Archduchess had prepared her own resting-place here also, but was not destined to occupy it. The disastrous defeat of Austerlitz filled her with alarm, and she once more fled from Innsbruck, this time not to return. This was the year 1805, and a sad one it was for Tirol. The treaty of Pressburg had given Tirol to Bavaria, and Bavaria and Tirol had never in any age been able to understand each other. Willingly would the Tirolese have opposed their entrance; but the Bavarians, who knew every pass as well as themselves, were enabled to pour in the allied troops under Marshal Ney in such force, that they were beyond their power to resist. The fortresses near the Bavarian frontier were razed, and Innsbruck occupied. On February 11, 1806, Marshal Ney left, and the town was formally delivered over to Bavarian rule. The most unpopular changes of government were adopted, particularly in ecclesiastical matters and in forcing the peasants into the army; the University also was once more made into a Lyceum. But the Landsturm was not idle, and the Archduke Johann, Leopold's brother, came into Tirol to encourage them. Maturing their plans in secret, the patriots, under Andreas Hofer, who had been to Vienna in January to declare his plans and get them confirmed by his government, and Speckbacher, broke into Innsbruck on April 13, 1809, where the townspeople received them with loud acclamations; and after a desperate and celebrated conflict at Berg Isel, succeeded in completely ridding it of the invaders. The Bavarian arms on the Landhaus were shattered to atoms, and when the Eagle replaced them, the people climbed the ladders to kiss it. This was the first great act of the Befreiungskämpfe which have made 'the year Nine' memorable in the annals of Tirol, and, I may say of Europe, for it was one of the noblest struggles of determined patriotism those annals have to boast, and at the same time the most successful effort of volunteer arms. Hofer accepted the title of Schützenkommandant, and was lodged in the imperial Burg, while his peasant neighbours took the office of guards; but he altered nothing of his simple habits, nor his national costume. His frugal expenses amounted to forty-five kreuzers a day, and he lost no opportunity of expressing that he did nothing on his own account, but all in the name of the Emperor. On May 19 the Bavarians laid siege to the town; but the defenders of the country, supported by a few regular Austrian troops, obliged them by the end of a fortnight to decamp. On June 30 they returned with a force of twenty-four thousand men; but other feats of arms of the patriots in all parts of Tirol showed that its people were unconquerable, and for the third time Hofer took possession of Innsbruck. In the meantime, however, the Peace of Schönbrunn, of October 25, had nullified their achievements, though the memory of their bravery could never be blotted out, and always asserted its power. Nor could the brave people, even when bidden by the Emperor himself to desist, believe that his orders were otherwise than wrung from him, nor could their loyalty be quenched. Hofer's stern sense of subordination made him advise abstention from further strife, but the more ardent patriots refused to listen, and ended by leading him to join them. A desultory warfare was now kept up, with no very effectual result, but yet with a spirit and determination which convinced the Bavarians that they could never subdue such a people, and predisposed them to consent to the evacuation of their country in 1814; for they saw that Freedom from every hut Sent down a separate root, And when base swords her branches cut, With tenfold might they shoot. In the meantime a terrible wrong had been committed; the French, knowing the value of Hofer's influence in encouraging the country-people against them, set a price on his head sufficient to tempt a traitor to make know his hiding-place. He was taken, and thrown into prison at the Porta Molina at Mantua. Tried in a council of war, several voices were raised in honour of his bravery and patriotism; a small majority, however, had the cowardice to condemn him to death. He received the news of the sentence with the firmness which might have been expected of him, the only favour he condescended to ask being the spiritual assistance of a priest. Provost Manifesti was sent to him, and remained with him to the end. An offer was made him of saving his life by entering the French service, but he indignantly refused to join the enemies of his country. To Provost Manifesti he committed all he possessed, to be expended in the relief of his fellow-countrymen who were prisoners. He spent the early hours of the morning of the day on which he was to die, after mass, in writing his farewell to his wife, bidding her not to give way to grief, and to his other relations and friends, in which latter category was comprehended the population of the whole Passeyerthal, not to say all Tirol; recommending himself to their prayers, and begging that his name might be given out, and the suffrages of the faithful asked for him, in the village church where he had so often knelt in years of peace. He was forbidden to address his fellow-prisoners. He bore a crucifix, wreathed in flowers, in his hand as he walked to the place of execution, which he was observed repeatedly to kiss. There he took a little silver crucifix from his neck, a memorial of his first Communion, and gave it to Provost Manifesti. He refused to kneel, or to have his eyes bandaged, but stood without flinching to receive the fire of his executioners. His signal to them was first a brief prayer; then a fervently uttered 'Hoch lebe Kaiser Franz!' and then the firm command, 'Fire home!' His courage, however, unmanned the soldiers; ashamed of their task, they durst not take secure aim, and it took thirteen shots to send the undaunted soul of the peasant hero to its rest. It was February 20, 1810; he was only forty-five. The traditions of his courage and endurance, his probity and steadfastness, are manifold; but in connexion with Innsbruck we have only to speak of his brief administration there, which was untarnished by a single unworthy deed, a single act of severity towards prisoners of war, of whom he had numbers in his power who had dealt cruel havoc on his beloved valleys. The Emperor for whom he had fought so nobly returned to Innsbruck, to receive the homage of the Tirolese, on May 28, 1816, amid the loud rejoicings of the people, preceded by a solemn service of thanksgiving in the Pfarrkirche. Illuminations and fêtes followed till June 5, when the ceremony was wound up by a grand shooting-match, at which the Emperor presided and many prizes were distributed. The number who contended was 3,678, and 2,137 of them made the bull's-eye; among them were old men over eighty and boys of thirteen and fourteen. The claims of Hofer on his country's remembrance were not forgotten when she once more had leisure for works of peace. His precious remains, which had been carefully interred by the priest who consoled his last moments at Mantua, were brought to Innsbruck in 1823, and laid temporarily in the Servitenkloster. On February 21 they were borne in solemn procession by six of his brothers in arms, all the clergy and people following. The Abbot of Wilten sang the requiem office. The Emperor ordered the conspicuous and appropriate monument to mark the spot where they laid him, which is one of the chief ornaments of the Hofkirche. The pedestal bears the inscription-- Seinen in den Befreiungskämpfen gefallenen Söhnen das dankbare Vaterland, and the sarcophagus the words-- Absorbta est mors in victoria. Tirol had no reason to regret the restoration of the dynasty for which she had suffered so much. Most of her ancient privileges were restored to her, and in 1826 Innsbruck again received the honour of a University, and many useful institutions were founded. Francis came to Innsbruck again this year, and while there, received the visit of the Emperor of Russia and the King of Prussia. Another shooting-match was held before them, at which the precision of the Tirolese received much praise; and again for a short time in 1835. The Archduke John, who came in 1835 to live in Tirol, was received with great enthusiasm; his hardy feats of mountain climbing, and hearty accessible character, endearing him to all the people. The troubles of 1848 gave the Tirolese again an opportunity of showing that their ancient loyalty was undiminished. The Emperor Ferdinand, driven out of his capital, found that he had not reckoned wrongly in counting on a secure refuge in Tirol. It was the evening of May 16 that the Imperial pair came as fugitives to Innsbruck. Though there was hardly time to announce their advent before their arrival, the people went out to meet them, took their horses from the carriage, and themselves drew it into the town; and all the time they remained the towns-people and Landes-schützen mounted guard round the Burg. More than this, the Tirolese Kaiser-Jäger-Regiment volunteered for service against the insurgents, and fought with such determination that Marshal Radetsky pronounced that every man of them was a hero. With equal stout-heartedness the Landes-schützen repelled the attempted Italian invasion at several points of the south-western frontier, and kept the enemy at bay till the imperial troops could arrive. These services were renewed with equal fidelity the next year. A tablet recording the bravery of those who fell in this campaign--one of the officers engaged being Hofer's grandson--is let into the wall of the Hofkirche opposite Hofer's monument. It was this Emperor from whom the name of Ferdinandeum was given to the Museum, but it was rather out of compliment, and while he was yet Crown-Prince, than in memory of any signal co-operation on his part. It was projected in 1820 by Count Von Chotek, then Governor of Tirol. It comprises an association for the promotion of the study of the arts and sciences. The Museum contains several early illuminated MSS., in the production of which the Carthusians of Schnals and the Dominicans of Botzen acquired a singular pre-eminence. At a time when the nobles of other countries were occupied with far less enlightened pursuits, the peaceful condition of Tirol enabled its nobles, such as the Edelherrn of Monlan, Annaberg, Dornsberg, Runglstein, and others, to keep in their employment secretaries, copyists, and chaplains, busied in transcribing; and often sent them into other countries to make copies of famous works to enrich their collections. It has also some of the first works produced from the printing-press of Schwatz already mentioned. This press was removed to Innsbruck in 1529; Trent set one up about the same time. In the lower rooms of the Ferdinandeum is a collection of paintings by Tirolean artists, and specimens of the marbles, minerals, and other natural productions of the country. The great variation in the elevation of the soil affords a vast range to the vegetable kingdom, so that it can boast of giving a home to plants like the tobacco, which only germinates at a temperature of seventy degrees, and the edelweiss, which only blossoms under the snow. There is also a small collection of Roman and earlier antiquities, dug up at various times in different parts of Tirol, and specimens of native industries. Among the most singular items are some paintings on cobweb, of which one family has possessed the secret for generations, specimens of their works may be found in most of the museums of South Germany; these almost self-taught artists display great dexterity in the management of their strange canvas, and considerable merit in the delicate manipulation of their pigments; sometimes they even imitate fine line engravings in pen and ink without injuring the fragile surface. They delight specially in treating subjects of traditional interest, as Kaiser Max on the Martinswand, the beautiful Philippine Welser, the heroic Hofer, and the patron saints and particular devotions of their village sanctuaries. Kranach's Mariähilf is thus an object of most affectionate care. The 'web' is certainly like that of no ordinary spider; but it is reported that this family has cultivated a particular species for the purpose, and an artist friend who had been in Mexico mentioned to me having seen there spiders'-webs almost as solid as these. I was not able, however, to learn any tradition of the importation of these spiders from Mexico. In the first room on the second floor are to be seen the characteristic letter written, as I have said, by Hofer, shortly before his end, and other relics of him and the other patriots, such as the hat and breviary of the Franciscan Haspinger. Also an Italian gun taken by the Akademische Legion--the band of loyal volunteer students of Innsbruck university, in the campaign of 1848--and I think some trophies also of the success of Tirolese arms against the attempted invasion of the later Italian war, in which as usual the skill of these people as marksmen stood them in good stead. Anyone who wishes to judge of their practice may have plenty of opportunity in Innsbruck, for their rifles seem to be constantly firing away at the Schiess-stand; so constantly as to form an annoyance to those who are not interested in the subject. This Schiess-stand, or rifle-butt, was set up in 1863, in commemoration of the fifth centenary of Tirol's union with Austria and its undeviating loyalty. No history presents an instance of a loyalty more intimately connected with religious principle than the loyalty of Tirol; the two traditions are so inseparably interwoven that the one cannot be wounded without necessarily injuring the other. The present Emperor and Empress of Austria are not wanting to the devout example of their predecessors, but the modern theory of government leaves them little influence in the administration of their dominions. Meantime the anti-Catholic policy of the Central Government creates great dissatisfaction and uneasiness in Tirol. Other divisions of the empire had been prepared for such by laxity of manners and indifferentism to religious belief--the detritus, which the flood of the French revolution scattered more or less thickly over the whole face of Europe. But the valleys of Tirol had closed their passes to the inroads of this flood, and laws not having religion for their basis are there just as obnoxious in the nineteenth as they would have been in any former century. In concluding my notice of the capital of Tirol, it may be worth while to mention that the census of January 1870 gives it a population (exclusive of military) of 16,810, being an increase of 2,570 over the twelve preceding years. CHAPTER X. NORTH TIROL--OBERINNTHAL. INNSBRUCK TO ZIRL AND SCHARNITZ--INNSBRUCK TO THE LISENS-FERNER. I taught the heart of the boy to revel In tales of old greatness that never tire. Aubrey de Vere. Those who wish to visit the legend-homes of Tirol without any great measure of 'roughing,' will doubtless find Innsbruck the most convenient base of operations for many excursions of various lengths to places which the pedestrian would take on his onward routes. Those on the north and east, which have been already suggested from Hall and Schwatz, may also be treated thus. It remains to mention those to be found on the west, north-west, and south. But first there is Mühlau, also to the east, reached by an avenue of poplars between the right bank of the Inn and the railway; where the river is crossed by a suspension-bridge. There are baths here which are much visited by the Innsbruckers, and many prefer staying there to Innsbruck itself. A pretty little new Gothic church adorns the height; the altar is bright with marbles of the country, and has a very creditable altar-piece by a Tirolean artist. Mühlau was celebrated in the Befreiungskämpfe through the courage of Baroness Sternbach, its chief resident; everywhere the patriots gathered she might have been found in their midst, fully armed and on her bold charger, inspiring all with courage. Arrested in her château at Mühlau during the Bavarian occupation, no threats or insult could wring from her any admission prejudicial to the interests of her country, or compromising to her son. She was sent to Munich, and kept a close prisoner there, as also were Graf Sarnthein and Baron Schneeburg, till the Peace of Vienna. From either Mühlau or Innsbruck may be made the excursion to Frau Hütt, a curious natural formation which by a freak of nature presents somewhat the appearance of a gigantic petrifaction of a woman with a child in her arms. Of it one of the most celebrated of Tirolean traditions is told. In the time of Noe, says the legend, there was a queen of the giants living in these mountains, and her name was Frau Hütt. Nork makes out a seemingly rather far-fetched derivation for it out of the wife der Behütete (i.e. the behatted, or covered one), otherwise Odin, with the sky for his head-covering. However that may be, the legend says Frau Hütt had a son, a young giant, who wanted to cut down a pine tree to make a stalking-horse, but as the pine grew on the borders of a morass, he fell with his burden into the swamp. Covered over head and ears with mud, he came home crying to his mother, who ordered the nurse to wipe off the mud with fine crumb of white bread. This filled up the measure of Frau Hütt's life-long extravagance. As the servant approached, to put the holy gift of God to this profane use, a fearful storm came on, and the light of heaven was veiled by angry clouds; the earth rocked with fear, then opened a yawning mouth, and swallowed up the splendid marble palace of Frau Hütt, and the rich gardens surrounding it. When the sky became again serene, of all the former verdant beauty nothing remained; all was wild and barren as at present. Frau Hütt, who had run for refuge with her son in her arms to a neighbouring eminence, was turned into a rock. In place of our 'Wilful waste makes woeful want,' children in the neighbourhood are warned from waste by the saying, 'Spart eure Brosamen für die Armen, damit es euch nicht ergehe wie der Frau Hütt.' [173] Frau Hütt also serves as the popular barometer of Innsbruck; and when the old giantess appears with her 'night-cap' on, no one undertakes a journey. This excursion will take four or five hours. On the way, Büchsenhausen is passed, where, as I have already mentioned, Gregory Löffler cast the statues of the Hofkirche. I have also given already the legend of the Bienerweible. As a consequence of the state execution which occasioned her melancholy aberrations, the castle was forfeited to the crown. Ferdinand Karl, however, restored it to the family. It was subsequently sold, and became one of the most esteemed breweries of the country, the cellars being hewn in the living rock; and its 'Biergarten' is much frequented by holiday-makers. Remains of the old castle are still kept up; among them the chapel, in which are some paintings worth attention. On one of the walls is a portrait of the Chancellor's son, who died in the Franciscan Order in Innsbruck, in his ninety-first year. If time allows, the Weierburg and the Maria-Brunn may be taken in the way home, as it makes but a slight digression; or it may be ascended from Mühlau. The so-called Mühlauer Klamm is a picturesque gorge, and the torrent running through it forms some cascades. Weierburg affords a most delightful view of the picturesque capital, and the surrounding heights and valleys mapped out around. Schloss Weierburg was once the gay summer residence of the Emperor Maximilian, and some relics of him are still preserved there. Hottingen, which might be either taken on the way when visiting Frau Hütt or the Weierburg, is a sheltered spot, and one of the few in the Innthal where the vine flourishes. It is reached by continuing the road past the little Church of Mariähilf across the Inn; it had considerable importance in mediæval times, and has consequently some interesting remains, which, as well as the bathing establishment, make it a rival to Mühlau. In the church (dedicated to St. Nicholas) is Gregory Löffler's monument, erected to him by his two sons. The Count of Trautmannsdorf and other noble families of Tirol have monuments in the Friedhof. The tower of the church is said to be a remnant of a Roman temple to Diana. To the right of the church is Schloss Lichtenthurm, well kept up, and often inhabited by the Schneeburg family. On the woody heights to the north is a little pilgrimage chapel difficult of access, and called the Höttingerbilde. It is built over an image of our Lady found on the spot in 1764, by a student of Innsbruck who ascribed his rapid advance in the schools to his devotion to it. On the east side of the Höttinger stream are some remains of lateral mining shafts, which afford the opportunity of a curious and difficult, though not dangerous, exploration. There are some pretty stalactitic formations, but on a restricted scale. There is enough of interest in a visit to Zirl to make it the object of a day's outing; but if time presses it may be reached hence, by pursuing the main street of this suburb, called, I know not why, zum grossen Herr-Gott, which continues in a path along an almost direct line of about seven miles through field and forest, and for the last four or five following the bank of the Inn. Or the whole route may be taken in a carriage from Innsbruck, driving past the rifle-butt under Mariähilf. At a distance of two miles you pass Kranebitten, or Kranewitten, not far from which, at a little distance on the right of the road, is a remarkable ravine in the heights, which approach nearer and nearer the bank of the river. It is well worth while to turn aside and visit this ravine, which goes by the name of the Schwefelloch. It is an accessible introduction on a small scale to the wild and fearful natural solitudes we read of with interest in more distant regions. The uneven path is closed in by steep and rugged mountain sides, which spontaneously recall many a poet's description of a visit to the nether world. At some distance down the gorge, a flight of eight or nine rough and precarious steps cut in the rock, and then one or two still more precarious ladders, lead to the so-called Hundskirche, or Hundskapelle, [174] which is said to derive its name from having been the last resort of Pagan mysteries when heathendom was retreating before the advance of Christianity in Tirol. Further on, the rocks bear the name of the Wagnerwand (Wand being a wall), and the great and lesser Lehner; and here they seem almost to meet high above you and throw a strange gloom over your path, and the torrent of the Sulz roars away below in the distance; while the oft-repeated answering of the echo you evoke is more weird than utter silence. The path which has hitherto been going north now trends round to the west, and displays the back of the Martinswand, and the fertile so-called Zirlerchristen, soon affording a pleasing view both ways towards Zirl and Innsbruck. There is rough accommodation here for the night for those who would ascend the Gross Solstein, 9,393 feet; the Brandjoch, 7,628 feet; or the Klein Solstein, 8,018 feet--peaks of the range which keep Bavaria out of Tirol. As we proceed again on the road to Zirl, the level space between the mountains and the river continues to grow narrower and narrower, but what there is, is every inch cultivated; and soon we pass the Markstein which constitutes the boundary between Ober and Unter-Innthal. By-and-by the mountain slopes drive the road almost down to the bank, and straight above you rises the foremost spur of the Solstein, the Martinswand, so called by reason of its perpendicularity, celebrated far and wide in Sage and ballad for the hunting exploit and marvellous preservation of Kaiser Max. It was Easter Monday, 1490; Kaiser Max was staying at Weierburg, and started in the early morning on a hunting expedition on the Zirlergebirge. So far there is nothing very remarkable, for his ardent disposition and love of danger often carried him on beyond all his suite; but then came a marvellous accident, the accounts of the origin of which are various. There is no one in Innsbruck but has a version of his own to tell you. As most often reported, the chamois he was following led him suddenly down the very precipice I have described. The steepness of the terrible descent did not affright him; but in his frantic course one by one the iron spikes had been wrenched from his soles, till at last just as he reached a ledge, scarcely a span in breadth, he found he had but one left. To proceed was impossible, but--so also was retreat. There he hung, then, a speck between earth and sky, or as Collin's splendid popular ballad, which I cannot forbear quoting, has it:-- Hier half kein Sprung, Kein Adler-Schwung Denn unter ihm senkt sich die Martinswand Der steilste Fels im ganzen Land. Er starrt hinab In 's Wolkengrab Und starrt hinaus in 's Wolkenmeer Und schaut zurück, und schaut umher. Wo das Donnergebrüll zu Füssen ihm grollt Wo das Menschengewühl tief unter ihm rollt: Da steht des Kaisers Majestät Doch nicht zur Wonne hoch erhöht. Ein Jammersohn Auf luft 'gem Thron Findet sich Max nun plötzlich allein Und fühlt sich schaudernd, verlassen und klein. [175] But the singers of the high deeds of Kaiser Max could not bring themselves to believe that so signal a danger could have befallen their hero by mere accident. They must discover for it an origin to connect it with his political importance. Accordingly they have said that the minions of Sigismund der Münzreiche, dispossessed at his abdication, had plotted to lead Max, the strong redresser of wrongs, the last flower of chivalry, the hope of the Hapsburg House, the mainstay of his century, into destruction; that it was not that the innocent chamois led the Kaiser astray, but that the conspirators misled him as to the direction it had taken. Certainly, when one thinks of the situation of the empire at that moment, and of Hungary, the borderland against the Turks, suddenly deprived of its great King Matthias Corvinus, even while yet at war with them, only four days before [176]; when we think that the writers of the ballad had before their eyes the great amount of good Maximilian really did effect not only for Tirol, but for the empire and for Europe, and then contemplated the idea of his career being cut short thus almost at the outset, we can understand that they deemed it more consonant with the circumstances to believe so great a peril was incurred as a consequence of his devotion to duty rather than in the pursuit of pleasure. Here, then, he hung; a less fearless hunter might have been overawed by the prospect or exhausted by the strain. Not so Kaiser Max. He not only held on steadfastly by the hour, but was able to look round him so calmly that he at last discerned behind him a cleft in the rock, or little cave, affording a footing less precarious than that on which he rested. The ballad may be thought to say that it opened itself to receive him. The rest of the hunting party, even those who had nerve to follow him to the edge of the crag, could not see what had become of him. Below, there was no one to think of looking up; and if there had been, even an emperor could hardly have been discerned at a height of something like a thousand feet. The horns of the huntsmen, and the messengers sent in every direction to ask counsel of the most experienced climbers, within a few hours crowded the banks on both sides with the loyal and enthusiastic people; till at last the wail of his faithful subjects, which could be heard a mile off, sent comfort into the heart of the Kaiser, who stood silent and stedfast, relying on God and his people. Meantime, the sun had reached the meridian; the burning rays poured down on the captive, and gradually as the hours went by the rocks around him grew glowing hot like an oven. Exhausted by the long fast, no less than the anxiety of his position, and the sharp run that had preceded the accident, he began to feel his strength ebbing away. One desire stirred him--to know whether any help was possible before the insensibility, which he felt must supervene, overcame him. Then he bethought him of writing on a strip of parchment he had about him, to describe his situation, and to ask if there was any means of rescue. He tied the scroll to a stone with the cord of his hunting-horn, and threw it down into the depth. But no sound came in answer. In the meantime all were straining to find a way of escape. Even the old Archduke Sigismund who, though he is never accused of any knowledge of the alleged plot of his courtiers, yet may well be supposed to have entertained no very good feeling towards Maximilian, now forgot all ill-will, and despatched swift messengers to Schwatz to summon the cleverest Knappen to come with their gear and see if they could not devise a means for reaching him with a rope; others ran from village to village, calling on all for aid and counsel. Some rang the storm-bells, and some lighted alarm fires; while many more poured into the churches and sanctuaries to pray for help from on High; and pious brotherhoods, thousands in number, marching with their holy emblems veiled in mourning, and singing dirges as they came, gathered round the base of the Martinswand. The Kaiser from his giddy height could make out something of what was going on, but as no answer came, a second and a third time he wrote, asking the same words. And when still no answer came--I am following Collin's imaginative ballad--his heart sank down within him and he said, 'If there were any hope, most surely my people would have sent a shout up to me. So there is no doubt but that I must die here.' Then he turned his heart to God, and tried to forget everything of this earth, and think only of that which is eternal. But now the sun sank low towards the horizon. While light yet remained, once more he took his tablet and wrote; he had no cord left to attach it to the stone, so he bound it with his gold chain--of what use were earthly ornaments any more to him?--'and threw it down,' as the ballad forcibly says, 'into the living world, out of that grave high placed in air.' One in the crowd caught it, and the people wept aloud as he read out to them what the Kaiser had traced with failing hand. He thanked Tirol for its loyal interest in his fate; he acknowledged humbly that his suffering was a penance sent him worthily by heaven for the pride and haughtiness with which he had pursued the chase, thinking nothing too difficult for him. Now he was brought low. He offered his blood and his life in satisfaction. He saw there was no help to be hoped for his body; he trusted his soul to the mercy of God. But he besought them to send to Zirl, and beg the priest there to bring the Most Holy Sacrament and bless his last hour with Its Presence. When It arrived they were to announce it to him by firing off a gun, and another while the Benediction was imparted. Then he bid them all pray for steadfastness for him, while the pangs of hunger gnawed away his life. The priest of Zirl hastened to obey the summons, and the Kaiser's injunctions were punctually obeyed. Meantime, the miners of Schwatz were busy arranging their plan of operations--no easy matter, for they stood fifteen hundred feet above the Emperor's ledge. But before they were ready for the forlorn attempt, another deliverer appeared upon the scene with a strong arm, supported the almost lifeless form of the Emperor--for he had now been fifty-two hours in this sad plight--and bore him triumphantly up the pathless height. There he restored him to the people, who, frantic with joy, let him pass through their midst without observing his appearance. Who was this deliverer? The traditions of the time say he was an angel, sent in answer to the Kaiser's penitential trust in God and the prayers of the people. Later narrators say--some, that he was a bold huntsman; others, a reckless outlaw to whom the track was known, and these tell you there is a record of a pension being paid annually in reward for the service, if not to him, at least to some one who claimed to have rendered it. [177] The Monstrance, which bore the Blessed Sacrament from Zirl to carry comfort to the Emperor in his dire need, was laid up among the treasures of Ambras. Maximilian, in thanksgiving for his deliverance, resolved to be less reckless in his future expeditions, and never failed to remember the anniversary. He also employed miners from Schwatz to cut a path down to the hole, afterwards called the Max-Höhle, which had sheltered him, to spare risk to his faithful subjects, who would make the perilous descent to return thanks on the spot for his recovery; and he set up there a crucifix, with figures of the Blessed Virgin and S. John on either side large enough to be seen from below; and even to the present day men used to dangerous climbing visit it with similar sentiments. It is not often the tourist is tempted to make the attempt, and they must be cool-headed who would venture it. The best view of it is to be got from the remains of the little hunting-seat and church which Maximilian afterwards built on the Martinsbühl, a green height opposite it, and itself no light ascent. It is said Maximilian sometimes shot the chamois out of the windows of this villa. The stories are endless of his hardihood and presence of mind in his alpine expeditions. At one time, threatened by the descent of a falling rock, he not only was alert enough to spring out of the way in time, but also seized a huntsman following him, who was not so fortunate, and saved him from being carried over the precipice. At another he saw a branch of a tree overhanging a yawning abyss; to try his presence of mind he swung himself on to it, and hung over the precipice; but crack! went the branch, and yet he saved himself by an agile spring on to another tree. Another time, when threatened by a falling rock, his presence of mind showed itself in remaining quite still close against the mountain wall, in the very line of its course, having measured with his eye that there was space enough for it to clear him. But enough for the present. Zirl affords a good inn and a timely resting-place, either before returning to Innsbruck, or starting afresh to visit the Isarthal and Scharnitz. The ascent of the Gross Solstein is made from Zirl, as may also be that of the Martinswand. In itself Zirl has not much to arrest attention, except its picturesque situation (particularly that of its 'Calvarienberg,' to form which the living rocks are adapted), and its history, connecting it with the defence of the country against various attacks from Bavaria. Proceeding northwards along the road to Seefeld, and a little off it, you come upon Fragenstein, another of Maximilian's hunting-seats, a strong fortress for some two hundred years before his time, and now a fine ruin. There are many strange tales of a great treasure buried here, and a green-clad huntsman, who appears from time to time, and challenges the peasants to come and help him dig it out, but something always occurs to prevent the successful issue of the adventure. Once a party of excavators got so far that they saw the metal vessel enclosing it; but then suddenly arose such a frightful storm, that none durst proceed with the work; and after that the clue to its place of concealment was lost. Continuing the somewhat steep ascent, Leiten is passed, and then Reit, with nothing to arrest notice; and then Seefeld, celebrated by the legend my old friend told me on the Freundsberg. [178] The Archduke Ferdinand built a special chapel to the left of the parish church, called die Heilige Blutskapelle, in 1575, to contain the Host which had convicted Oswald Milser, and which is even now an object of frequent pilgrimage. The altar-piece was restored last year very faithfully, and with considerable artistic feeling, by Haselwandter, of Botzen. It is adorned with statues of the favourite heroes of the Tirolese legendary world, St. Sigismund and St. Oswald, and compartment bas-reliefs of subjects of Gospel history known as 'the Mysteries of the Rosary.' The tone of the old work has been so well caught, that it requires some close inspection to distinguish the original remains from the new additions. The Archduchess Eleonora provided the crystal reliquary and crown, and the rich curtains within which it is preserved. At a little distance to south-west of Seefeld, on a mountain-path leading to Telfs, is a little circular chapel, built by Leopold V. in 1628, over a crucifix which had long been honoured there. It is sometimes called the Kreuz-kapelle, but more often the zur-Seekapelle, though one of the two little lakes, whence the appellation, and the name of Seefeld too, was derived, dried out in 1807. There is also a legend of the site having been originally pointed out by a flight of birds similar to that I have given concerning S. Georgenberg. The road then falls more gently than on the Zirl side, but is rugged and wild in its surroundings, to Scharnitz, near which you meet the blue-green gushing waters of the Isar. Scharnitz has borne the brunt of many a terrible contest in the character of outpost of Tirolean defences: it is known to have been a fortress in the time of the Romans. It was one of the points strengthened by Klaudia de' Medici, who built the 'Porta Klaudia' to command the pass. Good service it did on more than one occasion; but it succumbed in the inroad of French and Bavarians combined, in 1805. It was garrisoned at that time by a small company of regular troops, under an English officer in the Austrian service named Swinburne, whose gallant resistance was cordially celebrated by the people. He was overwhelmed, however, by superior numbers and appliances, and at Marshal Ney's orders the fort was so completely destroyed, that scarcely a trace of it is now to be found. [179] It is the border town against Bavaria, and is consequently enlivened by a customs office and a few uniforms, but it is a poor place. I was surprised to be accosted and asked for alms by a decent-looking woman, whom I had seen kneeling in the church shortly before as this sort of thing is not common in Tirol. She told me the place had suffered sadly by the railway; for before, it was the post-station for all the traffic between Munich and Innsbruck and Italy. The industries of the place were not many or lucrative; the surrounding forests supply some employment to woodmen; and what she called Dirstenöhl, which seems to be dialectic for Steinöhl or petroleum, is obtained from the bituminous soil in the neighbourhood; it is obtained by a kind of distillation--a laborious process. The work lasted from S. Vitus' Day to the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin; that was now past, and her husband, who was employed in it, had nothing to do; she had an old father to support, and a sick child. Then she went on to speak of the devotion she had just been reciting in the church to obtain help, and evidently looked upon her meeting with me as an answer to it. It seemed to consist in saying three times, a petition which I wrote down at her dictation as follows:--'Gott grüsse dich Maria! ich grüsse dich drei und dreizig Tausend Mal; O Maria ich grüsse dich wie der Erzengel Gabriel dich gregüsset hat. Es erfreuet dich in deinen Herzen dass der Erzengel Gabriel den himmlischen Gruss zu dir gebracht hat. Ave Maria, &c.' She said she had never used that devotion and failed to obtain her request. I learnt that the origin she ascribed to it was this:--A poor girl, a cow-herd of Dorf, some miles over the Bavarian frontier, who was very devout to the Blessed Virgin, had been in the habit while tending her herds of saying the rosary three times every day in a little Madonna chapel near her grazing-ground. But one summer there came a great heat, which burnt up all the grass, and the cattle wandered hither and thither seeking their scanty food, so that it was all she could do to run after and keep watch over them. The good girl was now much distressed in mind; for the tenour of her life had been so even before, that when she made her vow to say the three rosaries, it had never occurred to her such a contingency might happen. But she knew also that neither must she neglect her supervision of the cattle committed to her charge. While praying then to Heaven for light to direct her in this difficulty, the simple girl thought she saw a vision of our Lady, bidding her be of good heart, and she would teach her a prayer to say instead, which would not take as long as the rosary, and would please her as well, and that she should teach it also to others who might be overwhelmed with work like herself. This was the petition I have quoted above. But the maid was too humble to speak of having received so great a favour, and lived and died without saying anything about it. When she came to die, however, her soul could find no rest, for her commission was unfulfilled; and whenever anyone passed alone by the wayside chapel where she had been wont to pray, he was sure to see her kneeling there. At last a pious neighbour, who knew how good she had been, summoned courage to ask her how it was that she was dealt with thus. Then the good girl told him what had befallen her long ago on that spot, and bid him fulfil the part she had neglected, adding, 'But tell them also not to think the mere saying the words is enough; they must pray with faith and dependence on God, and also strive to keep themselves from sin.' In returning from Zirl to Innsbruck, the left bank may be visited by taking the Zirl bridge and pursuing the road bordering the river; you come thus to Unterperfuss, another bourne of frequent excursion from Innsbruck, the inn there having the reputation of possessing a good cellar, and the views over the neighbourhood being most romantic, the Château of Ferklehen giving interest to the natural beauties around. Hence, instead of pursuing the return journey at once, a digression may be made through the Selrainthal (Selrain, in the dialect of the neighbourhood, means the edge of a mountain); and it is indeed but a narrow strip bordering the stream--the Melach or Malk, so called from its milk-white waters--which pours itself out by three mouths into the Inn at the debouchure of the valley. There is many a 'cluster of houses,' as German expresses [180] a settlement too small to be dignified with the name of village, perched on the heights around, but all reached by somewhat rugged paths. The first and prettiest is Selrain, which is always locally called Rothenbrunn, because the iron in the waters, which form an attraction to valetudinarian visitors, has covered the soil over which they flow with a red deposit. Small as it is, it boasts two churches, that to S. Quirinus being one of the most ancient in Tirol. The mountain path through the Fatscherthal, though much sought by Innsbruckers, is too rough travelling for the ordinary tourist, but affords a fine mountain view, including the magnificent Fernerwand, or glacier-wall, which closes it in, and the three shining and beautifully graduated peaks of the Hohe Villerspitz. At a short distance from Selrain may be found a pretty cascade, one of the six falls of the Saigesbach. Some four or five miles further along the valley is one of the numerous villages named Gries; and about five miles more of mountain footpath leads to the coquettishly perched sanctuary of St. Sigismund, the highest inhabited point of the Selrainthal. It is one of the many high-peaked buildings with which the Archduke Sigismund, who seems to have had a wonderful eye for the picturesque, loved to set off the heaven-pointing cones of the Tirolese mountains. Another opening in the mountains, which runs out from Gries, is the Lisenthal, in the midst of which lie Juvenau and Neurätz, the latter much visited by parties going to pick up the pretty crystal spar called 'Andalusiten.' Further along the path stands by the wayside a striking fountain, set up for the refreshment of the weary, called the Magdalenenbründl, because adorned with a statue of the Magdalen, the image of whose penitence was thought appropriate to this stern solitude by the pious founder. The Melach is shortly after crossed by a rustic bridge, and a path over wooded hills leads to the ancient village of Pragmar. Hence the ascent of the Sonnenberg or Lisens-Ferner is made. The monastery of Wilten has a summer villa on its lower slope, serving as a dairy for the produce of their pastures in the neighbourhood; a hospitable place of refreshment for the traveller and alpine climber, and with its chapel constituting a grateful object both to the pilgrim and the artist. The less robust and enterprising will find an easier excursion in the Lengenthal, a romantically wild valley, which forms a communication between the Lisenthal and the OEtzthal. The Selrainthalers are behind none in maintaining the national character. When the law of conscription--one of the most obnoxious results of the brief cession to Bavaria--was propounded, the youths of the Selrain were the first to show that, though ever ready to devote their lives to the defence of the fatherland, they would never be enrolled in an army in whose ranks they might be sent to fight in they knew not what cause--perhaps against their own brethren. The generous stand they made against the measure constituted their valley the rendezvous of all who would escape from it for miles round, and soon their band numbered some five hundred. During the whole of the Bavarian occupation they maintained their independence, and were among the first to raise the standard of the year 1809. A strong force was sent out on March 14 to reduce them to obedience, when the Selrainers gave good proof that it was not cowardice which had made them refuse to join the army. They repulsed the Bavarian regulars with such signal success, that the men of the neighbourhood were proud to range themselves under their banner, which as long as the campaign lasted was always found in the thickest of the fight. No less than eleven of their number received decorations for personal bravery. In peace, too, they have shown they know how to value the independence for which they fought; though their labours in the field are so greatly enhanced by the steepness of the ground which is their portion, that the men yoke themselves to the plough, and carry burdens over places where no oxen could be guided. Their industry and perseverance provide them so well with enough to make them contented, if not prosperous, that 'in Selrain hat jeder zu arbeiten und zu essen' (in Selrain there is work and meat enough for all) is a common proverb. The women, who are unable for the reason above noted to take so much part in field-labours as in some other parts, have found an industry for themselves in bleaching linen, and enliven the landscape by the cheerful zest with which they ply their thrifty toil. The path for the return journey from Selrain to Ober-Perfuss--or foot of the upper height--is as rugged as the other paths we have been traversing, but is even more picturesque. The church is newly restored, and contains a monument, with high-sounding Latin epitaph, to one Peter Anich, of whose labours in overcoming the difficulties of the survey and mensuration of his country, which has nowhere three square miles of plain, his co-villagers are justly proud. He was an entirely self-taught man, but most accurate in his observations, and he induced other peasants to emulate his studies. Ober-perfuss also has a mineral spring. A pleasant path over hills and fields leads in about an hour to Kematen, a very similar village; but the remains of the ruined hunting-seat of Pirschenheim, now used as an ordinary lodging-house, adds to its picturesqueness. Near by it may also be visited the pretty waterfall of the Sendersbach. A shorter and easier stage is the next, through the fields to Völs or Vels, which clusters at the foot of the Blasienberg, once the dwelling of a hermit, and still a place of pilgrimage and the residence of the priest of the village. The parish church of Vels is dedicated in honour of S. Jodok, the English saint, whose statue we saw keeping watch over Maximilian's tomb at Innsbruck. Another hour across the level ground of the Galwiese, luxuriantly covered with Indian corn, brings us back to Innsbruck through the Innrain; the Galwiese has its name from the echo of the hills, which close in the plain as it nears the capital; wiese being a meadow, and gal the same form of Schall--resonance, which occurs in Nachtigall, nightingale; and also, strangely enough, in gellen, to sound loudly (or yell). At the cross-road (to Axams) we passed some twenty minutes out of Völs, where the way is still wild, is the so-called Schwarze Kreuz-kapelle. One Blasius Hölzl, ranger of the neighbouring forest, was once overtaken by a terrible storm; the Geroldsbach, rushing down from the Götzneralp, had obliterated the path with its torrents; the reflection of each lightning flash in the waste of waters around seemed like a sword pointed at the breast of his horse, who shied and reared, and threatened to plunge his rider in the ungoverned flood. Hölzl was a bold forester, but he had never known a night like this; and as the rapidly succeeding flashes almost drove him to distraction, he vowed to record the deliverance on the spot by a cross of iron, of equal weight to himself and his mount, if he reached his fireside in safety. Then suddenly the noisy wind subsided, the clouds owned themselves spent, and in place of the angry forks of flame only soft and friendly sheets of light played over the country, and enabled him to steer his homeward way. Hölzl kept his promise, and a black metal cross of the full weight promised long marked the spot, and gave it its present name. [181] The accompanying figures of our Lady and S. John having subsequently been thrown down, it was removed to the chapel on Blasienberg. Ferneck, a pleasant though primitive bath establishment, is prettily situated on the Innsbruck side of the Galwiese, and the church there was also once a favourite sanctuary with the people; but when the neighbouring land was taken from the monks at Wilten, who had had it ever since the days of the penitent giant Haymon, it ceased to be remembered. Starting from Innsbruck again in a southerly direction, a little beyond Wilten, already described, we reach Berg Isel. Though invaded in part by the railway, it is still a worthy bourne of pilgrimage, by reason of the heroic victories of the patriots under Hofer. On Sunday and holiday afternoons parties of Innsbruckers may always be found refreshing these memories of their traditional prowess. It is also precious on less frequented occasions for the splendid view it affords of the whole Innthal. Two columns in the Scheisstand record the honours of April 29 and August 30, 1809, with the inscription, 'Donec erunt montes et saxa et pectora nostra Austriacæ domini mænia semper erunt.' I must confess, however, that the noise of the perpetual rifle-practice is a great vexation, and prevents one from preserving an unruffled memory of the patriotism of which it is the exponent; but this holds good all over Germany. Here, on May 29, fell Graf Johan v. Stachelburg, the last of his noble family, a martyr to his country's cause. The peasants among whom he was fighting begged him not to expose his life so recklessly, but he would not listen. 'I shall die but once,' he replied to all their warnings; 'and where could it befall me better than when fighting for the cause of God and Austria?' He was mortally wounded, and carried in a litter improvised from the brushwood to Mutters, where he lies buried. A little beyond the southern incline of Berg Isel a path strikes out to the right, and ascends the heights to the two villages of Natters and Mutters, the people of which were only in 1786 released from the obligation of going to Wilten for their Mass of obligation. Natters has some remains of one of Archduke Sigismund's high-perched hunting-seats, named Waidburg; he also instituted in 1446 a foundation for saying five Masses weekly in its chapel. There are further several picturesque mountain walks to be found in the neighbourhood of Innsbruck, under the grandly towering Nockspitze and the Patscherkofl. Or again from either Mutters or Natters there is a path leading down to Götzens, Birgitz, Axams, and Grintzens, across westwards to the southern end of the Selrainthal. Götzens (from Götze, an idol), like the Hundskapelle, received its name for having retained its heathen worship longer than the rest of the district around. The ruins, which you see on a detached peak as you leave Götzens again, are the two towers of Liebenberger, and Völlenberger the poor remains of Schloss Völlenberg, the seat of an ancient Tirolean family of that name, who were very powerful in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. It fell in to the Crown during the reign of Friedrich mit der leeren Tasche, by the death of its last male heir. Frederick converted it into a state-prison. The noblest person it ever harboured was the poet Oswald von Wolkenstein. Himself a knight of noble lineage, he had been inclined in the early part of Frederick's reign to join his influence with the rest of the nobility against him, because he took alarm at his familiarity with the common people. Frederick's sudden establishment of his power, and the energetic proceedings he immediately adopted for consolidating it, took many by surprise, Oswald von Wolkenstein among the rest. He was a bard of too sweet song, however, to be shut up in a cage, and Friedl was not the man to keep the minstrel in durance when it was safe to let him be at large. He had no sooner established himself firmly on the throne than he not only released the poet, but forgetting all cause of animosity against him, placed him at his court, and delighted his leisure hours with listening to his warbling. Oswald's wild and adventurous career had stored his mind with such subjects as Friedl would love to hear sung. But we shall have more to say of Oswald when we come to his home in the Grödnerthal. The next village is Birgitz; and the next, after crossing the torrent which rushes down from the Alpe Lizum, is Axams, one of the most ancient in the neighbourhood, after passing the opening to the lonesome but richly pastured Sendersthal, the slopes of which meet those of the Selrainthal. The only remaining valley of North Tirol which I have room here to treat is the Stubay Thal. [182] Of the three or four ways leading into it from Innsbruck, all rugged, the most remarkable is called by the people 'beim Papstl' because that traversed by Pius VI. when he passed through Tirol, as I have already narrated. The first place of any interest is Waldrast, a pilgrim's chapel, dating from the year 1465. A poor peasant was directed by a voice he heard in his sleep to go to the woods (Wald), and lay him down to rest (Rast), and it would be told him what he should do; hence the name of the spot. There the Madonna appeared to him, and bid him build a chapel over an image of her which appeared there, no one knew how, some years before. [183] A Servite monastery, built in 1624 on the spot, is now in ruins, but the pilgrimage is still often made. It may be reached from the railway station of Matrey. The ascent of the Serlesspitz being generally undertaken from here, it is called in Innsbruck the Waldrasterspitz. Fulpmes is the largest village of the Stubay Thal. The inhabitants are all workers in iron and steel implements, and among other things are reckoned to make the best spikes for the shoes of the mountain climbers. Their works are carried all over Austria and Italy, but less now than formerly. In the church are some pictures by a peasant girl of this place. Few will be inclined to pursue this valley further; and the only remaining place of any mark is Neustift, the marshy ground round which provides the Innsbruck market with frogs. The church of Neustift was built, at considerable cost, in the tasteless style of the last century. The wood carvings by the Tirolean artists Keller, Hatter, and Zatter, however, are meritorious. CHAPTER XI. WÄLSCH-TIROL. THE WÄLSCH-TIROLISCHE ETSCHTHAL AND ITS TRIBUTARY VALLEYS. It is not some Peter or James who has written these stories for a little circle of flattering contemporaries; it is a whole nation that has framed them for all times to come, and stamped them with the impress of its own mighty character.--Aksharounioff, Use of Fairy Tales. It is time that we turn our attention to the Traditions of South and Wälsch-Tirol, though it must not be supposed that we have by any means exhausted those of the North. There are so many indications that ere long the rule over the province, or Kreis, [184] as it is called, of Wälsch-Tirol, may some day be transferred to Italy, that, especially as our present view of it is somewhat retrospective, it is as well to consider it first, and before its homogeneity with the rest of the principality is destroyed. Wälsch, or Italian-Tirol sometimes, especially of late, denominated the Trentino, comprises the sunniest, and some at least, of the most beautiful valleys of Tirol. The Etschthal, or valley of the Adige, which takes its source from the little lake Reschen, also called der Grüne, from the colour of its waters, near Nauders, traverses both South and Wälsch-Tirol. That part of the Etschthal belonging to the latter Kreis takes a direct north to south direction down its centre. There branch out from it two main lines of valleys on the west, and two on the east. The northernmost line on the west side is formed of the Val di Non and the Val di Sole; on the east, of the Avisio valley under its various changes of name which will be noted in their place. The Southern line on the west is called Giudicaria, and on the east, Val Sugana, or valley of the Euganieren. The traveller's first acquaintance with the Wälschtirolische-Etschthal will probably, as in my own case, be made in the Val Lagarina, through which the railway of Upper Italy passes insensibly on to Tirolese soil, for you are allowed to get as far as Ala before the custom-house visitation reminds you that you have passed inside another government. It is a wild gorge along which you run, only less formidable than that which you saw so grimly close round you as you left Verona. If you could but lift that stony veil on your left, you would see the beautiful Garda-See sparkling beside you; but how vexatious soever the denial, the envious mountains interpose their stern steeps to conceal it. Their recesses conceal too, but to our less regret, the famous field of Rivoli. Borghetto is the first village on Tirolese soil, and Ala, in the Middle Ages called Sala, the first town. It thrives on the production of silk, introduced here from Lombardy about 1530. It has a picturesque situation, and some buildings that claim a place in the sketchbook. The other places of interest in the neighbourhood are most conveniently visited from Roveredo, or Rofreit as the Germans call it, a less important and pleasing town than Trent, but placed in a prettier neighbourhood. It received its name of Roboretum from the Latins, on account of the immense forests of oak with which it was surrounded in their time. The road leading through it, being the highway into the country, bristles all along its way with ancient strongholds, as Avio, Predajo, Lizzana, Castelbarco, Beseno, and others, which have all had their share in the numerous struggles for ascendancy, waged for so many years between the Emperor, the Republic of Venice, the Bishops of Trent, and the powerful families inhabiting them. The last-named preserves a tradition of more peaceful interest. At the time that Dante was banished from Florence, Lizzana was a seat of the Scaligers, and they had him for their visitor for some time during his wanderings. Not far from it is the so-called Slavini di San Marco, a vast Steinmeer, which seems, as it were, a ruined mountain, such vast blocks of rock lie scattered on every side. There is little doubt the poet has immortalized the scene he had the opportunity of contemplating here in his description of the descent to the Inferno, opening of Canto XII. It is said that a fine city, called San Marco, lies buried under these gigantic fragments, concerning which the country people were very curious, and were continually excavating to arrive at the treasure it was supposed to contain, till one day a peasant thus engaged saw written in fiery letters on one vast boulder, 'Beati quelli che mi volteranno' (happy they who turn me round). The peasant thought his fortune was made. There could be no doubt the promised happiness must consist in the riches which turning over the stone should disclose. Plenty of neighbours were ready to lend a hand to so promising a toil; and after the most unheard-of exertions, the monster stone was upheaved. But instead of a treasure they found nothing but another inscription, which said 'Bene mi facesti, perchè le coscie mi duolevano (you have done me a good turn, for I had a pain in my thighs). [185] As the peasants felt no great satisfaction in working with no better pay than this, the buried city of San Marco ceased from this time to be the object of their search. Nevertheless, near Mori, on the opposite (west) side of the river, is a deep cave called 'la Busa del Barbaz,' concerning which the saying runs, that it was, ages ago, the lurking-place of a cruel white-bearded old man, who lived on human flesh, and that whoso has the courage to explore the cave and discover his remains, will, immediately on touching them, be confronted by his spirit, who will tell the adventurous wight where an immense treasure lies hid. Some sort of origin for this fable may be found in an older tradition, which tells that idols, whose rites demanded human sacrifices, were cast down this cave by the first Christian converts of the Lenothal. The Slavini are closed by a rocky gorge, characteristically named Serravalle; and as the country again opens out another cave on the east bank is pointed out, which was for long years a resort of robbers, who plundered all who passed that way. These were routed out by the Prince-bishop of Trent in 1197, and a hospice for the relief of travellers built on the very spot which so long had been the terror of the wayfarer. The chapel was dedicated in honour of S. Margaret, and still retains the name. Roveredo itself is crowned by a fort--Schloss Junk, or Castel nuovo--which has stood many a siege, originally built by the Venetians; but it is more distinguished by its villas and manufactories. The silk trade was introduced here in 1580, and has continuously added to the prosperity of the place. Gaetano Tacchi established relations with England at the end of the last century, and the four brothers of the same name, who now represent her house, are the richest family in Roveredo. They have a very pretty family vault near the Madonna del Monte, a pilgrimage reached by a road which starts behind the Pfarrkirche of Sta. Maria. Another pilgrimage church newly established is the Madonna de Saletto. While the silk factories occupy the Italian hands, the Germans resident in Roveredo find employment at a newly-established tobacco factory. Much tobacco is grown in the Trentino. A great deal of activity is seen in Roveredo. The Corso nuovo is a broad handsome street with fine trees. A new and handsome road, between the town and railway station, was laid out in the autumn of 1869. Outside the town is the so-called Lenoschlucht, reached by the Strada nuova, which crosses it by a daring high arched bridge. The cliff rises sheer on the right hand, and overlooking the dangerous precipice is the little chapel of S. Columban, seemingly perched there by enchantment. It is built over the spot where a hermit, who was held in veneration by the neighbourhood, had his retreat. There are seven churches, but not much to remark in any of them. That of S. Rocchus was built in consequence of a vow made by the townspeople during the plague of 1630, to invite a settlement of Franciscans if it was stayed. The altar-piece is ascribed to Giovanni da Udine. There are several educational establishments, and a club which is devoted to propagandism of Italian tendencies. The time to see Trent to advantage is in the month of June, not only for the sake of the natural beauties of climate and scenery, but because then falls the festa of S. Vigilius (26th), the evangelizer of the country, and the churches are crowded with all the surrounding mountain population, who, after religious observances have been duly fulfilled, indulge in all their characteristic games and amusements, often in representations of sacred dramas, [186] and always wind up with their favourite and peculiar illumination of their mountain sides by disposing bonfires in devices over a whole slope. This custom is the more worth noting that it is thought to be a remnant of fire-worship, prevailing before the entrance of the Etruscans. [187] That their city was the see of S. Vigilius, and the seat of the great council of the Church, are reckoned by its people their greatest glories; and they delight to trace a parallel between their city and 'great Rome.' They reckon that it was founded in the time of Tarquinius Priscus by a colony of Etruscans, under a leader named Rhætius, who established there the worship of Neptune, whence the name of Tridentum or Trent. That they occupied and fortified the country, and subsequently became a power formidable to the Empire; but some twenty-five years before the Christian era, Rhætia, as the country round was called, was conquered by Drusus, son-in-law of Augustus, and colonized. An ancient inscription preserved in the Schloss Buon Consiglio shows that Trent was the centre of the local government, which was exactly modelled on that of Rome. S. Vigilius, who spread the light of the faith here, was a born Roman, and suffered martyrdom in a persecution emulating those of Rome in the year 400. The city endured sieges and over-running from many of the barbarous nations which over-ran and sacked Rome, and researches into the ancient foundations show that the accumulation of ruins has raised the soil, as in Rome, some feet above the original ground plan--Ranzi says more than four metres. The traces of three distinct lines of walls, showing just as in Rome the progressive enlargement of the city, have been found, as also remains of a considerable amphitheatre, and many of inlaid pavements, &c., showing that it was handsomely built and provided. To complete the parallel, it was under the régime of an ecclesiastical ruler that, after years of distress and turmoil, its peace and prosperity were restored. The Bishop of Trent still retains his title of Prince, but the deprivation of his territorial rule was one of the measures of secularization of Joseph II. There are sixteen churches in Trent, of which the most considerable is the Cathedral, dating from the eleventh century--with some remnants of sculpture, as the Lombard ornaments of the three porches, reckoned to belong to the seventh or eighth--a Romanesque building of massive design, built of the reddish-brown marble which abounds in the neighbourhood, with a Piazza and fountain before it. The interior is extensively decorated with frescoes. It is dedicated to S. Vigilius, whose relics are preserved in a silver sarcophagus. Among its other notabilia are a Madonna, by Perugino, and some good paintings of less esteemed masters; also a copy of the Madonna di San Luca of the Pantheon, presented in 1465 to the then Bishop of Trent, while on a visit to Rome, by the Pope, and ever since an object of popular veneration. As a curiosity, is shown a waxen image of the Blessed Virgin, modelled by a Jew. It also contains several curious brass monuments. The Church of Sta. Maria Maggiore, where the great Council was held, on this account, surpasses it in interest, though of small architectural merit. There is a legend that when the final Te Deum at the close of the Council was sung on December 4, 1563, [188] a crucifix, still pointed out in one of the side chapels [189] of the Cathedral, was seen to bow its head as if in token of approval of the constitutions that had been established. Sta. Maria Maggiore contains a picture of the Council, with the fathers in full session, which is not without interest, as all the costumes can still be made out, though quaint and faded and injured by lightning. It has also a very fine organ, the tone of which was so much esteemed at the time it was built, that it is said the Town Council determined to put out the eyes of the organ-builder, [190] lest he should endow any other city with as perfect an instrument. The meister, finding he could not prevail on the councilmen to relent, asked as a last favour to be allowed to play on his organ, which was willingly conceded; but as soon as he had obtained access to the instrument, he contrived to damage the stop imitating the human voice, which he had invented, and which had been its great merit, and thus punished the pride and cruelty of the municipality. In the remarkable Gothic Church of St. Peter is a chapel, built in commemoration of the infant St. Simeon, or Simonin, whose alleged martyrdom at the hands of the Jews, in 1472, I have already had reason to mention. Many relics of him are shown in the chapel, where a festa is still kept in his honour on March 24. The cutting of his name in the stone is still quite legible. My limits forbid my speaking in much detail of the secular buildings and institutions which are, however, not unworthy of attention. There are clubs and reading-rooms--in some of which aspirations after union with Italy are steadily propagated. The spirit of loyalty to Austria, though still strong in many breasts, has nothing like the same influence as in 1848-9, or in 1866, when the attacks and blandishments of the revolutionists of Italy were alike powerless to shake the allegiance of the Trentiners. No one will overlook the vast Schloss buon Consiglio in the Piazza d'Armi, said to be an Etruscan foundation. The public museum is a very creditable institution, enriched in 1846 by the legacy of Count Giovanelli's collection, chiefly of coins and medals; and paintings, not to be despised, are to be seen in the collections of the best families of the place--Palazzi Wolkenstein and Sizzo, Case Salvetti and Gaudenti. Two great ornaments of the city are the Palazzi Tabarelli, and Zambelli or Teufelspalast; and with the legend of the latter I must wind up my notice of Trent. Georg Fugger, a scion of the wealthy Anthony Fugger, of Augsburg, the entertainer of Charles Quint, was deeply enamoured of the spirited Claudia Porticelli, the acknowledged beauty of Trent. Claudia did not appear at all averse from the match, but she was too proud to yield herself all too readily; and besides, was genuinely possessed with the spirit of patriotism, to which mountain folk are never wanting. Accordingly, when the reply long pressed for from her lips came at last, it informed him that never would Claudia Porticelli of Tirolean Trent give her hand to one whose dwelling was afar from her native city; she wondered, indeed, that one who did not own so much as a little house to call a home in Trent, should imagine he possessed her sympathies. To another this answer would have amounted to a refusal, for it only wanted a day of the time already fixed, of long date beforehand, for the announcement of her final choice. But Georg Fugger, whose vast riches had long nursed him in the belief that 'money maketh man,' and that nothing was denied to him, would not yield up a hope so dearly cherished as that of making Claudia Porticelli his wife. To his determined mind there was a way of doing everything a man was resolved to do. To build a house, however, in one night, and that a house worthy of being the home of his Claudia, when men should call her Claudia Fugger, was a serious matter indeed. No human hands could do the work, that was clear; he must have recourse to help from which a good Christian should shrink; but the case was desperate; he had no choice. Nevertheless, Georg Fugger had no mind to endanger his soul either. The game he had to play was to get the Evil One to build the house, but also to guard from letting him gain any spiritual advantage against him; and his indomitable energy devised the means of securing the one and preventing the other. Without loss of time the devil was summoned, and the task of building the desired palace propounded. The tempter willingly accepted the undertaking, on his usual condition of the surrender of the soul of him in whose favour it was performed. Georg Fugger cheerfully signed the bond with his blood, only stipulating first for the insertion of one slight condition on his side--namely, that the devil should do one little other thing for him before he claimed his terrible guerdon. 'Whatever you like! it won't be too hard for me!' boasted the Evil One; and they separated, each well satisfied with the compact. 'The Devil's Palace has a splendid design, worthy the genius of Palladio,' writes a modern traveller, who has only seen it in its decadence. On the night in which it was built, it was resplendent with marbles and gilding and tasteful decoration; furnished it was too, to satisfy the most fastidious taste, and the requirements of the most luxurious. With pride the devil called Georg Fugger to come and survey the lordly edifice, and name his 'final condition.' Georg Fugger was prepared for him; he had taken a bushel of corn, and strewn it over all the floors of the vast building. 'Look here, Meister,' he said. 'If you can gather this corn up grain by grain, and deliver me back the whole number correctly, then indeed my soul will be yours; but if otherwise, my soul remains my own and the palace too. That is my final condition.' The devil accepted the task readily, and with no misgiving of his success. True, it took all the time that remained before sunrise to collect all the scattered grain; still he had performed harder feats before that day. But the hours ran by, and still there were five grains wanting to complete the count; where could those five grains be! With a flaring torch, lighted at his fiercest fire, he searched every corner through and through, but the five grains were nowhere to be seen, and daylight began to appear! 'Ah! the measure is well-heaped up, the Fugger won't discover they are missing,' so the fiend flattered himself. But Georg Fugger was keener than he seemed. Before his eyes he counted out the corn, and asked for the five missing grains. 'Stuff! the measure is piled up full enough, I can't be so particular as all that. The number must be there.' 'But it is not!' urged Fugger. 'Oh, you've miscounted,' rejoined the Evil One; 'I'm not going to be put off in that way. I've built your house, and I've collected your measure of corn, and your soul is mine; you can't prove that there were five more grains.' 'Yes, I can,' replied Fugger; 'reach out me your paw;' and the Devil, not guessing how he could convict him by that means, held out his great paw, with insolent confidence of manner. 'There!' cried Fugger, pointing to it as he spoke; 'there, under your own claws, lie the five grains! That corn had been offered before the Holy Rood, and by the power of the five Sacred Wounds it was kept from fulfilling your fell purpose. You had not collected the full number of grains into the measure by the morning light, so our bargain is at an end. Begone!' The Devil, self-convicted, had no refuge but to strive to alarm his victor by a show of fury, and with burning claw he began tearing down the wall so lately raised. But Fugger remained imperturbable, for he had fairly won the palace, and the Devil himself had no more power over it. He could only succeed in making a hole big enough for himself to escape by, which hole was for many and many years pointed out. But Fugger had also hereby established his claim to Claudia's hand, who rejoiced at the gentle violence thus done her; and many happy days they spent together in the Teufelspalast. In later years it passed from their family into the hands of Field-Marshal Gallas, who lived here in peaceful retirement after his renowned exploits in the Thirty Years' War, whence it was long called Palazzo Gallas or Golassi; but it has lately again changed hands, and thus acquired the name of Palazzo Zambelli. The suburbs of Trent, among other excursions, offer the pleasing pilgrimage of the Madonna alle Laste, [191] which is reached through the Porta dell' Aquila, on the east side of the city, by half an hour's climbing up a mountain path off the road to Bassano. On a spur of this declivity had stood from time immemorial a marble Maria-Bild, honoured by the veneration of the people. Somewhere about the year 1630 a Jew wantonly disfigured and damaged the sacred token, to the indignation of the whole neighbourhood. Christopher Detscher, a German artist, devoted himself to restoring it; but it was impossible altogether to obliterate the traces of the injury. By some means or other, however--the people said by miraculous intervention--it was altogether renewed in one night; and this prodigy so enhanced its fame, that there was no case so desperate but they believed it must obtain relief when pleaded for at such a shrine. A poor cowherd named Antonia, who had been deaf all her life, was said to have received the power of hearing after praying there; and a child, who had died before there was time to baptise it, a reprieve of existence long enough to receive that Sacrament. The grateful people now immediately set themselves to raise a stone chapel over it, and by their ready alms maintained a hermit on the spot to guard the sacred precincts. Twelve years later, by the bounty of Field-Marshal Gallas, a community of Carmelites was established on the spot, which continued to flourish down to the secularization of Joseph II. The convent buildings, however, yet serve the beneficent purpose of a Refuge for foundlings and orphans. The prospect from the precincts of the institution is very fine; between the distant ranges of mountains and the foreground slopes covered with peach trees, lies the grand old city of Trent, shaped, like the country of Tirol itself, in the form of a heart. [192] Very effective in accentuating the outline are the two old castles of the Buon' Consiglio and the Palazzo degli Alberi, both formerly fortress-residences of the Prince-Bishops of Trent, the former vieing with the castle of the Prince-Bishop of Salzburg in extent and grandeur. The curious isolated rock of Dos Trento is another centre of a splendid view. The Romans called it Verruca, a wart. It was strongly fortified by Augustus, and remains of inscriptions and bas-reliefs are built into the wall of the ancient church of St. Apollinaria, occupying the site of a temple of Saturn. The vantage ground it afforded in repelling the entry of the French in 1703 obtained for it the name of the Franzosenbühel. It has lately been newly fortified. A charming but somewhat adventurous excursion may be made on foot, by a path starting from the fort of the Dos Trento rock, to the cascade of Sardagna. Somewhere about this path, in the neighbourhood of Cadine, it is said, St. Ingenuin, [193] one of the early evangelizers of the country, planted a beautiful garden, which was a living model of the Garden of Eden; but so divinely beautiful was it, that to no mortal was it given to find it. Only the holy Albuin obtained by his prayers permission once to find entrance to 'St. Ingenuin's Garden.' Entranced with the delights of the place, he determined at least to bring back some sample of its produce. So he gathered some of its golden fruits, to show the children of earth. To this day a choice yellow apple, something like our golden pippin, grown in the neighbourhood, goes by the name of St. Albuin's apple. The only remaining towns of any note in the line of the Wälschtirolische Etschthal, are Lavis and S. Michel. Lavis is a pretty little well-built town (situated at the point where the torrents of the Cembra, Fleims, and Fassa valleys, under the name of the Avisio, are poured into the Etsch), remarkable for a red stone viaduct, nearly 3,000 feet long, near the railway station, over the Avisio. Lavis fell into possession of the French in 1796, when the church was burnt and the houses plundered. In 1841--forty-five years after--a French soldier sent a sum of one hundred gulden to the church, in reparation for having carried off a silver sanct-lamp for his share of the booty. Lavis has on many another occasions stood the early brunt of the attacks of Tirol's foes, and its people have testified their full share of loyalty. There is a tradition that the French, having on one occasion gained possession of it with a band two hundred strong, the people posted themselves on the neighbouring heights and harassed them in flank; but a cobbler of Lavis, indignant at the havoc the French were making, left this vantage ground, and running down into the town, shouting 'Follow me, boys!' dispersed the French troops before one of his fellows had time to come up! [194] San Michel, or Wälsch Michel, is the boundary town against the circle of South Tirol, once the last town on Venetian territory. There are imposing remains here of a fine Augustinian priory, which originated in a castle given up to this object by Ulrich Count of Eppan in 1143; the building has of late years been sadly neglected; it is now a school of agriculture. A little way before Wälsch Michel, the railway crosses, for the first time since leaving Verona, to the left bank of the Adige, by a handsome bridge called by the people 'the sechsmillionen Brücke.' Here we leave the Etschthal for a time, but we shall renew acquaintance with it in its northern stretch when we come to visit South Tirol. The two northern tributary valleys of the Etschthal on the west are the Val di Non [195] and Val di Sole; among the Germans, they go by the names of Nonsberg and Sulzberg, as if they considered the hills in their case more striking than the valleys. The Val di Non is entered at Wälschmetz or Mezzo Lombardo by the strangely wild and gloomy Rochettapass. Wälschmetz is a flourishing Italian-looking town, whence a stellwagen meets every train stopping at San Michel. Conveyances for exploring the valleys can be hired either at the 'Corona' or the 'Rosa.' The Rochetta is guarded by a ruined fort fantastically perched on an isolated spur of rock called Visiaun or Il Visione, said to have formed part of a system of telegraphic communication established by the Romans. In the church of Spaur Maggiore, or Spor, so called because the principal place in the neighbourhood, which at one time all belonged to the Counts of Spaur, is a Wunderbild of the Blessed Virgin, which has for centuries attracted pilgrims from the whole country round. The church of the next place of any importance, Denno, is remarkably rich in marbles, and handsome for its situation; a new altar-piece of some pretension, and a new presbytery, were completed here in August 1869. Flavone or Pflaun, the next village, is particularly proud of a rich silver-gilt cross, twenty-five pounds in weight, and set with pearls, a gift of a bishop of Trient. At the time of the French invasion it was taken to Vicenza, but as soon as peace and security were re-established the people would not rest till it was restored to them. The hamlet is adorned with a rather handsome municipal palazzo, built in the sixteenth century, when the ancient Schloss, which overhangs the Trisenega torrent, was pronounced unsafe after several earth-slips. This valley is, if possible, richer in such remains than any other: every mountain spur bristles with them. One of the most important and picturesque is the Schloss Belasis, near Denno, claiming to be the cradle of the family of that name, which has established itself with honour in several countries of Europe, including our own. Behind Pflaun are large forests, which constitute the riches of the higher, as the Seidenbaum [196] is of the lower, level of the valley. In its midst lies the Wildsee of Tobel, which, frozen in winter, serves for the transport of the timber growing on the further side. The safety of its condition for the purpose is ascertained by observing the time when the trace of the sagacious fox shows that he has trusted himself across. Cles, situated nearly at the northernmost reach of the valley, is a centre of the silk trade, and the factory-girls are remarkable for their tastefully adorned hair, though they all go barefooted. The site of a temple of Saturn, of considerable dimensions, has been found, coinciding with traditions of his worship having been popular here; and remains of an ancient civilization are continually dug up. There is a wild-looking plain outside the town, still called the Schwarzen Felder, or black fields, because tradition declares it to be the place where the Roman inhabitants burnt their dead. Here SS. Sisinius, Martyrius, and Alexander, are believed to have suffered death by fire on May 29, 397, because these zealous supporters and missionaries of St. Vigilius refused to take part in a heathen festival. St. Vigilius no sooner heard of their steadfast witnessing to the truth, than he repaired to the spot, and after zealously collecting and venerating their remains, preached so powerfully on their holy example, that great numbers were converted by his word. A church was shortly after built here, and being the first in the neighbourhood, was called Eccelesia, whence the name of Cles. The devout spirit of these saintly guides does not seem wanting to the present inhabitants; when the jubilee was held on occasion of the Vatican Council, more than two thousand persons went to Communion. At the not far distant village of Livo, on the same occasion, it was found necessary to erect a temporary building to supplement the large parish church, for the numbers who flocked in from the outlying parishes. The same thing occurred when the faithful were invited to join in prayers for the Pope after the Piedmontese invasion of Rome, September 20, 1870. On these 'Campi neri' was found, in the spring of 1869, a tablet since known as the 'Tavola Clesiana.' It is a thickish bronze tablet, about 18 in. by 13 in., with holes showing where it was attached to a wall by the corners. It bears an inscription in Roman character, the graving of which is quite distinct and unworn, as if newly executed. It is as follows, and has given rise to a great deal of controversy among archæologists, and between Professors Vallaury and Mommsen, concerning its bearing on the early history of Annaunia:-- Miunio . sIlano . q . sulpicio . camerino . CoS idibus . martIs . baIs . in . praetorio . edictum . ti . claudi . caesaris . augusti . germanici . propositum . fuit . id . quod . infra . scriptum . est . ti . claudius . caesar . augustus . germanicus . pont . maxim . trib . potest . VI . imp . XI . P . P . cos . designatus . IIII . dicit . cum . ex . veteribus . controversIs . petentibus . aliquamdiu . etiam . temporibus . ti . caesaris . patrui . meI . ad . quas . ordinandas . pinarium . apollinarem . miserat . quae . tantum . modo . inter . comenses . essent . quantum . memoria . refero . et . bergaleos . is que . primum . apsentia . pertinaci . patrui . meI . deinde . etiam . gaI . principatu . quod . ab . eo . non . exigebatur . referre . non . stulte . quidem . neglexerit . et . posteac . detulerit . camurius . statutus . ad . me . agros . plerosque . et . saltus . meI . iuris . esse . in . rem . praesentem . mIsi . plantam . iulium . amicum . et . comitem . meum . qui . cum . adhibitis . procuratoribus . meis . quisque . in . alia . regione . quique . in . vicinia . erant . summa . cura . inquisierit . et . cognoverit . cetera . quidem . ut . michi . demonstrata . commentario . facto . ab . ipso . sunt . statuat . pronuntietque . ipsi . permitto . Quod . ad . condicionem . anaunorum . et . tulliassium . et . sindunorum . pertinet . quorum . partem . delator . adtributam . tridentinis . partem . neadtributam . quidem . arguisse . dicitur . tam . et . si . animaduerto . nonnimium . firmam . id . genus . hominum . habere . civitatis . romanae . originem . tamen . cum . longa . usurpatione . in . possessionem . eius . fuisse . dicatur . et . ita . permixtum . cum . tridentinis . ut . diduci . ab . Is . sine . gravi . splendi . municipI . iniuria . non . possit . patior . eos . in . eo . iure in . quo . esse . existimaverunt . permanere . beneficio . meo . eo . quidem . libentius . quod . plerisque . ex . eo . genere . hominum . etiam . militare . in . praetorio . meo . dicuntur . quidam . vero . ordines . quoque . duxisse . nonnulli . collecti . in . decurias . romae . res . iudicare . Quod . beneficium . Is . ita . tribuo . ut . quaecumque . tanquam . cives . romani . gesserunt . egeruntque . aut . inter . se . aut . cum . tridentinis . alIsve . ratam . esse . iubeat . nominaque . ea . que . habuerunt . antea . tanquam . cives . romani . ita . habere . Is . permittam . A fragment of an altar was found at the same time, with the following words on it:-- SATURNO SACR L. PAPIRIUS L OPUS Livo is the first village of the Val di Sole, which runs in a south-westerly direction, forming nearly a right-angle with the Val di Non, than which it is wilder, and colder, and less inhabited. At Magras the Val di Rabbi strikes off to the north. Its baths are much frequented, and S. Bernardo is hence provided with four or five capacious hotels. A new church has just been built there, circular in form, with three altars, one of which is dedicated in honour of St. Charles Borromeo, who visited the place in 1583, and preached with so much fervour as effectually to arrest the Zuinglian teaching, which had lately been imported. Male is the chief place of Val di Sole, and contains about 1,500 inhabitants. At a retreat held here last Christmas by the Dean of Cles, so many of them as well as of the circumjacent hamlets were attracted, that not less than 3,000 went to communion. Further along the valley is Mezzana, the birthplace of Antonio Maturi, who, after serving in the campaigns of Prince Eugene, entered a Franciscan convent at Trent, whence he was sent as a missionary to Constantinople, and was made Bishop of Syra, and afterwards was employed as nuncio by Benedict XIV. It was almost entirely destroyed by fire a few years ago, but is being rapidly rebuilt. After this place the country becomes more smiling, and cheerful cottages are seen by the wayside, with an occasional edifice, whose solid stone-built walls suggest that it is the residence of some substantial proprietor. The valley widens out to a plain at Pellizano, round which lofty mountains rise on every side. The church here has a most singular fresco on the exterior wall, which is intended to record the circumstance that Charles Quint passed through in 1515. Some restoration or addition was made to the church at his expense, and a quaint inscription hints that he did it somewhat grudgingly. A few miles further the valley divides into two branches, the Val di Pejo and the Val di Vermiglio. At Cogolo, the chief place of Val di Pejo, had long been stored a magnificent monstrance, offered to the church by Count Megaezy, who, though resident in Hungary, owned it for his Stammort. [197] It had long been the admiration of the neighbourhood, and the envy of visitors; but it was stolen by sacrilegious hands in the troubles consequent on the invasion of the Trentino by 'Italianissimi,' in 1849. Count Guglielmo Megaezy sent the village a new one of considerable value and handsome design, whose reception was celebrated amid lights and flowers, ringing of bells and firing of mortaletti, July 18, 1869. This branch of the valley is closed in by the Drei Herren Spitz, or Corno de' tre Signori, the boundary-mark between the Valtellina, Bormio, and Tirol, and so called when they belonged to three different governments. The Val di Vermiglio is closed by Monte Tonale, the depression in whose slope forms the Tonal Pass into Val Camonica and the Bergamese territory. Monte Tonale was notorious in the sixteenth to early in the eighteenth century for its traditions of the Witches' Sabbath, and the trials for sorcery connected with them. [198] Freyenthurn, a ruin-crowned peak at no great distance, bears in its name a tradition of the worship of Freya. On the vine-clad height of Ozolo, above Revo, a few miles north of Cles, is a little village named Tregiovo, most commandingly situated; hence, on a fine day, may be obtained one of the most enchanting and remarkable views, sweeping right over the two valleys. Hence a path runs up the heights, and along due north past Cloz and Arz to Castelfondo, with its two castles overhanging the roaring cascade of the Noce. Along this path, where it follows the Novella torrent, numbers of pilgrims pass every year to one of the most famed sanctuaries of Tirol--Unsere liebe Frau im Walde, or auf dem Gampen, as the mountain on which it is perched is called by the Germans; and this reach of the Nonstal is almost entirely inhabited by Germans. The Italians call it le Pallade, and more commonly Senale. The chapel is on the site of an ancient hospice for travellers, which became disused, however, as early as the fourteenth century. A highly-prized Madonnabild, of great sweetness of expression, found in a swamp near the place, stands over the high-altar. A celebration of the seventh centenary of its being found was kept by a festival of three days from August 14, 1869, when crowds of pilgrimages, comprising whole populations of circumjacent villages, both German and Italian, might have been seen gathering round the shrine. Fondo, though but a few miles distant, is a thoroughly Italian town; and so great is the barrier this difference of tongue sets up, that great part of the population of the one never visits the other. It was nearly burnt down in 1865, and has hardly yet recovered from the catastrophe; the church, which occupies a very commanding situation, was saved, and its fine peal of six bells. Near it is St. Biagio, where was once the only convent the Nonsthal ever possessed. Near this again is Sanzeno, which, by a tradition a little different from that given at Denno, is made out to be the place of martyrdom of SS. Sisinius (supposed to be another form of the name of St. Zeno), Martyrius, and Alexander. Their relics, at all events, are venerated here in a marble urn behind the high-altar of the church, which bears the title of the Cathedral of the Val de Non; and the Roman remains, which are continually being discovered, [199] show that there were Romans here to have done the martyrdom. The legend is, that these saints were three brothers of noble family, of Cappadocia, who put themselves under the bidding of S. Vigilius, Bishop of Trent (who was already engaged in the conversion of the valley), A.D. 390. Their conversions were numerous during a series of years; but on May 23, 397, the inhabitants of the valley, who adhered to the old teaching, desirous to make their usual sacrifice to obtain a blessing on their crops, called upon the Christian converts to contribute a sheep for the purpose. On the Christians refusing a strife ensued, of which two of the three missionaries were the immediate victims; but the next day, the third, Alexander was also arrested; he was burnt alive, along with the corpses of his companions. A church was subsequently built on the spot where they were said to have suffered; their acts may be seen in a bas-relief of the seventeenth century. San Zeno is also famous for being the birth-place of Christopher Busetti, whose verses, no less than the details of his life, earned for him the title of the Tirolean Petrarch. A little east of San Zeno is the narrow inlet into the Romediusthal, so called from S. Romedius, whom we heard of at Taur, [200] having chosen it for a hermitage whence to evangelize the Nonsthal, and in which to end his days. A more secluded spot could not be found on the whole earth. Perpendicular rocks narrow it in, leaving scarcely a glimpse of the sky above; the torrent which files its way through it, called San Romedius-Bach, continually works a deeper and deeper bed. Two other torrents strive for possession of the gorge (Romediusschlucht), the Rufreddo and the Verdes, between them; near their confluence rises a stark isolated crag, from whose highest point, almost like a fortress, rises the far-famed hermitage, accessible only from one side. The legend has it that S. Vigilius, knowing his exalted piety, conceived the idea of consecrating the cell whence his holy prayers had been poured out, for a chapel, but was warned in a vision that angels had already fulfilled the sacred task. When this was known, it may be imagined that the veneration of the people for it knew no bounds, and the angelic consecration is still remembered by diligent pilgrimages every first Sunday in June; the Saint's feast is on January 15. The shrine is overladen with thank-offerings, which might attract the robber in so lonely a situation. Due precautions are taken for the preservation of the treasury; the chapel is surrounded by strong walls, and ingress is not permitted to strangers after nightfall. There is no record of any attempt having been made on it but once, some thirty years ago. On this occasion three men presented themselves at the gate, and urgently begged to be admitted to confession; their devotion was so well assumed, and their show of penitence so hearty, that the good priest could not refrain from letting them in. He had scarcely taken his seat in the confessional, however, than the three surrounded him, each presenting a pistol at his breast; all three missed fire, and the would-be robbers, convicted by the portent, knelt and made a real confession of their misdeeds, and left as really penitent as they had feigned to to be on arriving. The spot has never ceased to be honoured since the death of the saint, somewhere about 398. It is strange to stand between the walls of the living mountain and realize the fact. There are few shrines in all Europe which can boast of such antiquity, such unbroken tradition, and such exemption from desecration. The building is as singular and characteristic as the locality. The chapel, where the saint's remains rest, and where he himself raised the first sanctuary of the Nonsthal, is reached by one hundred and twenty-two steps, necessarily very steep; and on attaining the last, it must be a very steady head that can turn to survey the rise without giddiness. The interior is quite in keeping with the surroundings. Its light is dim and subdued, sufficient only to reveal the countless trophies of answered prayer which cover the dark red marble columns and enrichments. There are two other chapels at lower levels, one of the Blessed Sacrament, called del Santissimo, and one over the hermitage in the rock. Flanking this curious pile of chapels on chapels are, on one side, the priory or residence of the chaplain of the place, and on the other the Hospice for pilgrims and visitors, the whole forming a considerable corps de bâtiment, and enclosed by a wall which seems to have grown out of the rock. Another little crag, jutting up as if in emulation of that so gloriously crowned, was made into a Gottesacker, by a late prior, and its churchyard cross affords it a striking termination too; though not many monuments of the dead bristle from its sides as yet. This singularly interesting excursion may be made direct from S. Michel by those who have not time for visiting the whole valley. They will pass several striking old castles, particularly that of Thun, nearly opposite Castle Bellasi, the Stammschloss of one of the oldest and noblest German families, founded by one of the dearest companions and patrons of St. Vigilius. No other has given so many distinguished scions to the service of the Church; Sigmund von Thun was the representative of the Emperor at the Council of Trent. There is a strong attachment between it and the people of the valley, who delight in celebrating every domestic event by what they call a Nonesade, or poem in the dialect of the Val di Non. The castle is well kept up; the interior is characteristically decorated and arranged, and many curiosities are preserved in the library; its grounds also are charmingly laid out. It is supplied with water by a noble aqueduct, raised in 1548, right across the valley from Berg St. Peter; crowned also by an ancient castle, but in ruins. Few will have a prettier page in their sketch-book than they can supply it with here. Half way between Sanzeno and Fondo, by a path which forms a loop with that already mentioned, by Cloz and Arz, and just where the opening into the Romediusthal strikes off, is a village named Dambel or Dambl, where a very curious relic of antiquity, and an important one for throwing light on the history of the earlier inhabitants of the valley, was unearthed a couple of years ago. It is a stout, handsome bronze key, 14 1/2 in. long, the bow ornamented with scroll-work, which at first sight suggested the idea that it had formed part of a comparatively modern casting of the Pontifical arms. Closer inspection showed that on an octagonal ornament of the upper part of the stem was an inscription, not merely engraved, but deeply cut (it is thought with a chisel), and in perfect preservation, in characters described by a local antiquary as 'parte Runiche, parte Gotiche, del Greco e Latino del 388 dell' era volgare, descritte da Ufila; ma molte somigliano a quelle del Latino dell' Ionio 741 B. C.' The owner of the ground, Bartolo Pittschneider, the jeweller of the village, seems to have been digging the foundation for a rustic house, intending to make use of a remnant of a very ancient wall long thought to have formed part of a temple of Saturn. At a depth of about 18 or 20 in. he came to a sort of pavement, or tomb or cellar covering, of roughly-shaped stones resting against and sloping away from the base of the ancient wall, so as to form a little enclosure. Along with the key lay some other small objects, which unfortunately have been dispersed, [201] but among them were two bronze coins of Maximilian and Constantine the Great, thought to indicate the date of the burial of the key and not that of its manufacture. This key was subsequently sent to Padre Tarquini, [202] and a copy has been given me of his report upon it. He pronounced the inscription to be undoubtedly Etruscan, but at the same time he did not think the work of the key to be of older date than the fourth century of our era; inasmuch as there are other examples of Etruscan writing surviving to as late a date in remote districts; that its size and material (a mixture of silver and copper) denoted it to belong to some important edifice, and most probably to the very temple of Saturn amid whose ruins it was found buried. He found in it two new forms of letters not found in other Etruscan inscriptions, but says that similar aberrations are too common to excite surprise. He translated it in the following form:--'Ad introducendum virum (1) addictum igni in Vulcani (2) Vivus aduratur ob perversitatem--incidendo incide (3)--Sceleratus est; sectam facit; blasphemavit--In aspectu ejus ascendentes limen paveant, videntes hominem oblitum Ejus (4) præstare jubilationem retinenti ad cruciatum, tamquam hostem suum.' [203] It would be curious to know how Mr. Isaac Taylor would read the inscription by his different method, for Padre Tarquini found a curious coincidence of circumstances to afford an interpretation to his translation. It would seem that it was only after translating it as above that his attention was called to the Christian local tradition, and then he was struck with several points of contact between it and them. 1. The date which he had already assigned to the key is that given by the Bollandists to the martyrdom of St. Alexander and his two brothers. 2. It was found within the very precincts where he was said to have been burnt, and (his translation of) the inscription commemorates a human burnt sacrifice (il vivicomburio). 3. The inscription (by his translation) seems to allude to Christians, to their suffering expressly for propagating their religion. 4. The inscription points to the sacrifice having taken place in an elevated situation, as it uses the verb 'to ascend,' and the contemporary narrative of St. Vigilius to St. Chrysostom of the event, as it had happened before his eyes, says 'Itum est post hæc in religiosa fastigia, hoc est altum Dei templum ... in conspectu Saturni.' He further goes on to approve a conjecture of the local antiquary that the key was a votive offering made on occasion of the martyrdom of St. Alexander with SS. Zeno and Martyrius, in thanksgiving for the triumph over their teaching, and inscribed with the above lines as a perpetual warning to their followers. The Avisiothal--the northernmost eastern tributary of the Etschthal--consists of three valleys running into each other; the Val di Cembra, or Zimmerthal; the Val Fieme, or Fleimserthal; and the Val di Fassa, or Evasthal. The Val di Cembra is throughout impracticable for all wheeled traffic. Nature has made various rents and ledges in its porphyry sides, of which hardy settlers have taken advantage for planting their villages, and for climbing from one to another; but even their laborious energy has not sufficed to make roads over such a surface. This difficulty of access has not been without its effect in tending to keep up the honesty, hospitality, and piety of the people; but as few will be able to penetrate their recesses, their characteristics will be better sacrificed to the exigencies of space than those of others. I will only mention, therefore, the Church of Cembra, the Hauptort (about four hours' rugged walk from Lavis), which is an ancient Gothic structure well kept up, and adorned with paintings; and a peculiar festival which was celebrated on the Assumption-day, 1870, at Altrei, namely, the presentation of new colours to the Schiess-stand, by Karl von Hofer, on behalf of the Empress of Austria. One bears a Madonna, designed by Jele of Innsbruck, on a banner of green and white (the national colours); the other the names of the Empress ('Karolina Augusta') and the word 'All-treu,' the original name of the village, conferred on it by Henry Duke of Bohemia, when he permitted ten faithful soldiers to make a settlement here free of all taxes and customs. And yet the Italians, regardless of derivations, have made of it Anterivo. Cavalese (which can be reached in five hours by stellwagen running twice a day from the railway station at Neumarkt) stands near the point where the Val di Cembra (which runs nearly parallel to the railway between Lavis and Neumarkt) passes into the Fleimserthal. It is a charmingly picturesque, thriving little town, and should not be overlooked, for the church is a very museum of Tirolese art: painting, sculpture, and architecture, all being due to native artists, and highly creditable to national taste, culture, and devotion. Among these artists were Franz Unterberger, who was chosen by the Empress Catherine to execute copies from Raffael's Loggie, Alberti, Riccaboni, and others, whose fame has resounded beyond the echoes of their native mountains. Many private houses also contain works of Tirolese art. Cavalese stands on a plateau, overlooking a magnificent panorama, and shaded by a grove of leafy limes. Under these is a stone table, with stone seats arranged round it, where a sort of local parliament was formerly held. Respecting the appropriation of this plateau for the site of the church, tradition says that in early times, when the church was about to be built, the commune fixed upon this plateau, in the outskirts of the town, as the most beautiful, and therefore most appropriate, situation. But the old lady, part of whose holding it formed, could be induced on no consideration to give it up. Some little time after, however, she had a very serious illness; on her sick bed she vowed, that if restored to health she would devote as much of her fair meadow to the use of the church as a man could mow in one day. [204] She had no sooner registered her vow than health returned. The commune appointed a mower, and he mowed off the whole of the vast meadow in one day. The old lady always maintained that there was something uncanny about it, and anyone can see for themselves that no human mower could have done it. The Market-place is adorned with a very handsome tower. A new church is now building, after the design of Staidl, of Innsbruck, on the site of the little ruined church of St. Sebastian, which shows that the study of architecture is not neglected in Tirol. The space being very restricted, the novel expedient has been resorted to of placing the sacristy under the sanctuary, and with good effect to the external appearance. The former palace of the Bishops of Trent, now a prison, is not to be overlooked. Predazzo is the only other spot in this valley we will stop to look at. The extraordinary geological formation of the neighbourhood has attracted many men of science to the place, whose names may be seen in the strangers' book. The people are singularly thrifty and industrious. A high road connecting it with Primiero is just completed, which is to be continued to meet the railway projected between Belluno and Treviso. A new church is being raised there, of proportions and design quite remarkable for so remote a place. It was begun simultaneously with the troubles in Italy, in 1866, and a creditable amount has been since laid out upon it. The lofty vaulting of the nave is supported by ten monolithic columns of granite; the floor is paved with hard cement, arranged in patterns formed in colour; the smaller pillars, doors, steps, mouldings, are all of granite; much of the tracery is very artistic; the windows are of creditable painted glass, though not free from the German vice of over-shading. The architect is Michel Maier, of Trent; the elegant campanile by Geppert, of Innsbruck. It will be the largest church in the whole of Wälsch-Tirol, after the Cathedral of Trent. The interior arrangements and decoration bid fair to be worthy of the structure. There is some good polychrome in the presbytery, by Ciochetti, a young artist, native of the village of Moena, in Fassathal, who in the last five years has had eleven medals from the Academy of Fine Arts at Venice. It is the custom all through the valley that each village should have its own gay banner, which is carried before bridal processions to and from the church. But at Predazzo they have many other peculiarities; among these is the following:--The night before the wedding the bridegroom goes to the house of the bride, accompanied by a party of musicians, knocks at the door, and demands his bride. The eldest and least well-favoured member of the household is then brought to him, on which a humorous altercation takes place and a less ancient dame is brought, and so on, till all have been passed in review, and then the intended bride herself is brought at last, who admits the swain to the evening meal of the family. The friends and neighbours then come in, and bring their wedding gifts to the loving pair. The Fassathal begins just after Moena. One of its wildest legends is that of the feuriger Verräther. It dates from the time of the Roman invasion. The mountain-dwellers appear to have been as zealous defenders of their native fastnesses then as in later times, and it is said the conquering legions were long wandering round the confines without finding any who would lead them into the interior of the country. It was at last an inhabitant of the Fassathal who betrayed the narrow pass which was the key to their defences, and which cost the liberty of the nation--all for the sake of the proffered blood-money. But he was never suffered to enjoy it; for a flash like lightning, though under a clear sky, struck him to the earth, and ever since, the traitor has been to be met by night wrapt in flames, and howling piteously. Vigo is the principal town, and serves as the starting-point for the magnificent mountain excursions of the neighbourhood. The most difficult of these, and one only to be attempted by the well-seasoned Alpine climber, [205] is that of the massive snow-clad Marmolata, 10,400 feet high, surnamed the Queen of the Dolomites; but she is a severe and haughty queen, who knows how to hold her own, and keep intruders at a distance; and many who have been enchanted with her stern beauty from afar have rued the attempt at intruding on the cold solitude of her eternal penance. For the legends tell that in her youth she was covered with verdant charms, which made her the delight of the people; but they were not content to use with pious moderation the precious gifts she had in store, and for some sin of theirs--some say for selfish disregard of the law of charity to the poor; [206] some say for disregard of the Church's law forbidding to work on the hohe Unser-frauentag (the Assumption), [207] some say for unjust striving for the possession of the soil--the vengeance of Heaven overtook them, and the once smiling meadows were converted into the hard and barren glacier. Near Vigo is a little way-side chapel, highly prized, because near it some French soldiers in the invasion of 1809 lost their way, and the town was thus saved from their depredations; and the legend arose that the Madonnabild had stricken them blind. Several of them died of falls and hunger, and tradition says, that on wild nights notes of distress from a dying bugler's horn may be heard resounding still. The Avisio was once the boundary against Venetian territory; and St. Ulrich dying on its banks, on his return from Rome, exacted of his disciples a promise that they would carry his body across, so that he might find his final rest on German soil. CHAPTER XII. WÄLSCH-TIROL. VAL SUGANA.--GIUDICARIA.--FOLKLORE. Legends are echoes of the great child-voices from the primitive world; so rich and sweet that their sound is gone out into all lands. Val Sugana is watered by the Brenta through its whole course, running nearly direct east from Trent. It is reached by the Adler Thor, and over the handsome bridge of S. Ludovico, through luxuriant plantations of mulberries and vines, and with many a summer villa on either hand. The road leads (at a considerable and toilsome distance) to the low range of hills (in Tirol called a Sonnenberg) of Baselga, locally named Pinè, whose sides are studded with a number of villages and groups of houses. In one of these, Verda or Guarda by name, near the village of Montanaga, is the most celebrated pilgrimage of the Trentino--the Madonna di Pinè, also known as the Madonna di Caravaggio. It was the year 1729; a peasant girl, Domenika Targa, native of Verda, who was noted by all her neighbours for the angelic holiness of her life, had lost some of her herd upon the mountain one hot August day; in her distress, she knelt down to ask for help to bring back her charge faithfully. Suddenly the place was bathed in a light of glory, and before her stood a lady so benign and glorious, she could be none other than the Himmelskönigin. 'Go, my child, and tell them that you have seen me here, and that I have chosen this spot for my delight; and that their prayers will be heard which they offer before the picture of the Madonna di Caravaggio.' The light faded away, and Domenika turned to seek her flock. She found them all in order, waiting for her to drive them home. There was considerable discussion after this as to what 'Madonna di Caravaggio' might mean; and it was at last decided that it could mean nothing but the picture of the Madonna by Caldara, surnamed Caravaggio from his birthplace, venerated at Milan. Domenika could not leave her herds to go to Milan, and she was perplexed how to obey the vision. In her simple faith she addressed her prayer on high for further direction, and once more the heavenly sight was vouchsafed to her, and it was explained that the Madonnabild meant was not that of Milan, but the one in the little field-chapel of S. Anna, near Montanaga. Domenika did not fail to go there the next festival on which it was open, the Ascension Day, which was, that year, May 26. Above the faint light of the tapers tempered by the incense clouds, and amid the chanted litanies of the choir, the fair Queen once more appeared to her in garments of gold, and surrounded by a glittering train of attendants. Some months passed, and though the people had wondered at the marvel, nothing had been done to commemorate it; Domenika was kneeling, on September 8, the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin, in the Chapel of S. Anna. A sound of soft chanting broke on her ear, which she thought must be the procession of the parish coming up the hill to pray for rain. But as it grew nearer, the same heavenly radiance overspread the place, and once more she saw the Virgin Mother; but this time she looked stern, for the great favour of her visit had been overlooked, and she reasoned with Domenika on the ingratitude it betokened. Domenika honestly outspoke her inward cogitations on the subject--what could a poor cattle-herd do? It was given her to understand that much might be done even by such a poor peasant, if she exercised energy and devotion. With new strength and determination, she girt herself for the task of building a shrine over the spot so dear to her. At first she met with great ridicule and scorn, but she pursued her way so steadily and so humbly, that all were won to share her convictions. Offerings for the work began to flow in. Those who had no money gave their corn, or their grapes, their ornaments, and their very clothes. Year by year the new church rose, according as she could collect the means; and at last, on May 26, 1751, she had the consolation of seeing the complete edifice consecrated. It is a neat cruciform building, sixty-three feet long and fifty-three feet wide, with three marble altars, on one of which is a copy of the Madonna di Caravaggio of Milan painted by Jakob Moser after he had made three pilgrimages to the original. I was not able to ascertain what was supposed to have been intended in the first instance by calling the old picture in S. Anna's field-chapel the Madonna di Caravaggio. Possibly the little Milanese town, which has given two painters to fame, had produced some 'mute inglorious' 'Caravaggio,' who painted the earlier picture. The commemoration of Domenika's vision is celebrated every year in Val Pinè by pilgrimages on May 26 when the most striking gatherings of Tirolese costume are to be observed there. Pergine is the first large village on returning into the main valley, about six miles from Trent. It well deserves to be better known: the neighbourhood is of great beauty, and the form of the surrounding heights is well likened by the inhabitants to a theatre. The church, built in 1500-45, is spacious and handsome, adorned in the interior with red marble columns. In the churchyard are the remains of the older church, where every Lent German sermons are still preached for the benefit of the scattered German population, whose name for the place is Persen. The German and Italian elements within the village are blended with tolerable amity. From the fourteenth to the sixteenth centuries, silver, copper, lead, and iron, were got out in the neighbouring Fersinathal; and though the works are now nearly given up, the Knappen then formed an important portion of the community. They cast the bell as an offering to the church when building, and it is still called the Knappinn--by the Italians canòppa. The chief industry now is silk-spinning. The greatest ornament of the place is the Schloss of the Bishop of Trent, which is well kept up, and from the roof of which an incomparable view is obtained. Among the peculiar customs of the place those concerning marriages deserve to be recorded, as they tend to show the character of the people. Two young men of the bridegroom's friends are selected for the office of Brumoli so called; they have to carry, the one a barn-door fowl, the other a spinning-wheel, before the bride as she goes to and from church, to remind her of her household duties. After the wedding, as she returns with her husband to his house the door is suddenly closed as she approaches, and there is then carried on a dialogue, according to an established form, between her and her husband's mother--the latter requiring, and the former undertaking, that she will prove herself God-fearing and domesticated; that she will be faithful and devoted to her husband, and live in charity with all his family. The little ceremony complete, the mother-in-law throws wide the door, and receives her with open arms. On the south side of the valley, opposite Pergine, is the clear lake of Caldonazzo, whose waters reflect the bright green chestnut woods around it; it is the source of the Brenta, and one of the largest lakes of Tirol; about three miles long, and half as broad. Count Welfersheim, an Austrian general, and his adjutant, were drowned in attempting to walk over the thin ice on it in March 1871. On a rugged promontory jutting into its midst stands the most ancient sanctuary of the neighbourhood, San Cristofero; once a temple to Saturn and Diana, but adopted for a Christian church by the earliest evangelizers of the valley, for which reason the produce of the soil and waters yet pays tithe to the presbytery of Pergine. Other villages add to the surrounding beauties of the lake, particularly Campolongo, with its church of St. Teresa high above the green waters, and the church and hermitage of San Valentin; the latter is now used for a roccolo, or vogeltennen, by which numbers of birds of passage are caught on their migrations. The land is very poor. To eke out their living, most of the male inhabitants of the villages around are wont to go out every winter as pedlars, with various small articles manufactured in the valley, and with which they are readily trusted by those who stay behind. On their return, which is always at Easter, they distribute honourably what they have earned for each, deducting a small commission. So straightforward and honourable are they, that though they have little idea of keeping accounts, and the sums are generally made out with a bit of chalk on the inn table, yet it is said that such a thing as a dispute over the amounts is utterly unknown. The church of St. Hermes, at Calzeranica, is reckoned the most ancient of the whole neighbourhood; remains of an ancient temple, thought to have been to Diana of Antioch, have been found when repairing it. In the forest behind Bosentino, a neighbouring village, is a pilgrimage chapel called Nossa Signora del feles; die h. Jungfrau vom Farrenkraut--St. Mary of the Fern. Some two hundred years ago, Gianisello, a little dumb boy of Bosentino, who was minding his father's herd in the forest, was visited by a bright lady, who pointed to a tuft of fern growing under a chestnut tree, and bid him go and tell the village people she would have them built a chapel there. When the people heard the boy tell his story, who for all the twelve years of his life had never spoken a word before, they felt no doubt it was the Blessed Virgin he had seen. The chapel was soon built, and furnished with a painting embodying the little boy's story. In time of dearth, drought, epidemic, or other local calamity, many are the processions which may yet be seen wending their prayerful way to the chapel of St. Mary of the Fern. Among the wild and beautiful legends of this part of the valley is a variant of one familiar in every land. A young swain, the maiden of whose choice was called to an early grave, went wandering through the chestnut groves calling for his beloved, till he grew weary with crying, and laid him down in a cave to rest. A sweet sleep visited him, and he found himself in it at home as of old in the Valle del Orco, [208] with his Filomena on his arm; he led her to the village church, and the silver-haired pastor gave the marriage blessing, while all the village prayed around. He brought Filomena home to his old house, alle Settepergole, [209] his dear old father and mother welcomed her, and she brought sunshine into the cottage; and when they were called away the old walls were yet not without life and joy, for it resounded to the voice of the prattling little ones. The little ones grew up into stalwart lads and lasses, who earned homesteads of their own, and erewhile brought another tribe of prattling little ones to his knee; while Filomena smiled a bright sunshine over all, and they were so happy they prayed it might never end: but one day it seemed that the sunshine of Filomena's smile was not felt, for she was no longer there; then all grew pale and cold, and with a sudden chill he woke. It was grey morning as he rose from the cave; the cattle were lowing as they were led out to pasture; he looked out towards the chestnut groves, and watched in their waving foliage the strange effect which had been the charm of his childhood, looking like rippled ocean pouring abroad its flood. [210] But when he reached the village the sights and sounds were no more so familiar: the old church tower was capped with a steeple, of which he never saw the like; the folk he met by the way were all strangers, and stared at him as at one who comes from far. He wandered up and down all the day, and everything was yet strange. At evening the men came back from the fields, and again they gazed at him estranged: once he made bold to ask them for 'Zansusa,' the companion of his boyhood, but they shrugged their shoulders with a 'Chè Zansusa?' and passed on. He asked again for 'Piero,' almost as dear a friend, and they pointed to a 'Piero' with not one feature like his Peter. Once again he asked for 'Franceschi,' and they pointed to a grave, where his name was written indeed--'Franceschi,' who but the day before had walked with him in full life and health, to hang a fresh wreath on Filomena's cross! Ah! there was Filomena's cross, but how changed was that too! the bright gilding, on which his savings had been so willingly lavished, was tarnished and weather-worn, and not a leaf of his garland remained round it. He wandered no further, nor sought to fathom the mystery more; he knelt on the only spot of earth that had any charm for him. As his knees touched the hallowed soil consoling thoughts of her undying affection overflowed him. 'Here we are united again,' he said; 'in a little while we shall be united for ever.' 'At last have I found thee! these fifty years I have sought thee in vain!' The moonbeam kissed his forehead as he looked up, and the moonbeam bore her who had spoken. A fair form she wore, but still it was not the form of Filomena. 'Who are you, and wherefore sought you me?' he asked. 'I am Death,' replied the pale maiden, 'and for fifty years I have sought thee to lead thee to Filomena.' She beckoned as she spoke, and willingly he followed her whither the moonbeam led. The village of Caldonazzo, with its ancient castle, is another ornament of the lake. Further south is the village of Lavarone, or Lafraun, accessible only to the pedestrian. A house close to the edge of a little lake here is pointed out, which in olden time was the residence of two brothers, the owners of the meadow over which the lake is now spread. These two could never agree; their strife grew from day to day, till at last one night they called each other out to settle their quarrels once for all by mortal combat. The noise of the strife within had made them oblivious to the strife of the elements which was waging without. The gust which entered as the eldest turned to open the cottage door, and the blinding rain, drove them back; even their fierce passions seemed mastered by the fiercer fury without. In silence they returned into the room, and neither cared to raise his voice amid the angry voices of the storm, which now made themselves heard solemnly indeed. In sullen silence they passed the night, and during the silence there was time for reflection; each would have been glad to have backed out of the promised fight, but neither had the courage to propose a reconciliation. Sullenly they rose with the morning light; the pale gold rays rested on the trees, now calm and tranquil, and both shuddered to carry their vengeance out on to the fair scene; but neither dared speak, and once more the eldest opened the door. This time it was not the rain descending from above which drove him back; it was the flood rising from beneath! The Centa torrent had overflowed. The disputed meadow had become a lake, and with their united efforts they scarcely kept the waters banked out. The community of labour, of danger, and of distress, ended the strife; and though their worldly possessions were lost to them for ever, they had found a greater boon, the bond of fraternal charity. I must pass over Levico, near which the Brenta has its source, and the intervening villages; but Borgo di Val Sugan' demands our attention for its beautiful situation. The view over both may be enjoyed by mountain climbers from the neighbouring height of Vezzena. Borgo is commonly called the Italian Meran, for its likeness with that favourite watering-place. Its buildings extend over both sides of the Brenta, being united by a massive stone bridge, built in 1498. Those on the left bank were nearly destroyed by fire in 1862, but the rebuilding has been carried on with great spirit. Its ecclesiastical buildings do not date far back; the rebuilding of the parish church in 1727 nearly obliterated all traces of the earlier edifice; its chief glories are three paintings it possesses, one by Titian's brother, one by Karl Loth, and one by Rothmayr. The fine campanile was added in 1760. There is also a Franciscan convent, but it does not date back further than 1603, there is the following curious tradition of its origin. The Sellathal leading to Sette Comuni, is narrowed by two mighty cliffs--the Rochetta on the south, and the Grolina on the north, adorned with the ruined Castel San Pietro, [211] seemingly perched above all human reach. On a green knoll beneath it stand the lordly remains of Castel Telvana; its frescoes are now nearly faded away, only a room here and there is habitable; but its enduring walls and towers show of what strength it was in the days long gone by--days such as those in which Anna, wife of Siccone di Caldonazzo, defended it with so much spirit against all the might of Friedrich mit der leeren Tasche, that she obtained the right to an honourable capitulation. It was bought by the Counts of Welsburg in 1465, and henceforth it became an abode of pleasure rather than a mere fortress. Count Sigmund von Welsburg, who was its master towards the end of the sixteenth century, was particularly disposed to make his residence in their midst a boon to the inhabitants of Borgo, and entered heartily into all the pastimes of the people. It happened thus that the Carneval procession of the year 1598 was invited to take the Castel Telvana for its bourne; and that the women might not be fatigued by the ascent, the Count gallantly provided them all with horses from his own stud. The valley resounded with merriment as they wended their way up in their varied and fantastic attire. Arrived at the castle, good cheer was provided, which none were slow to turn to account, and the return was commenced in no less boisterous humour. At the most precarious spot of the giddy declivity, the courage of the foremost rider forsook her; the Count's high-couraged charger, which she bestrode, perceiving the slackened pressure on the rein, grew nervous and bewildered too, and uneasy to find himself for the first time subjected to devious guidance. The indecision of the first fair cavalier alarmed her sister, who followed next behind--a shriek was the expression of the alarm, which communicated itself to the next rider, and in a moment a panic had possessed the whole cavalcade, or nearly the whole; for the few who here and there still retained their presence of mind were powerless to make those before them advance, or to keep back the threatening tramp of those behind. The Count saw the danger, and the one remedy. First registering a vow, that if he succeeded in his daring enterprise he would build a convent to the honour of God and St. Francis, he set out along the brink of the narrow track, where there was scarce a foot-breadth between him and the abyss, past the whole file of the snorting horses and their terrified burdens. He had this in his favour, that every denizen of his stable recognised him as he went by, and his presence soothed their chafing. Arrived at last safely at the head of the leading steed, his hand on its mane was enough to restore its confidence; securely he led it to the full end of the dangerous pass, and all the others followed in docile order behind. The Count did not forget his vow, nor would he in his gratitude allow any other hand to diminish the outlay he had undertaken. The convent buildings are now in part turned to secular uses, though part is also used for a hospital, where all the sick of the town are freely tended. In the church is an altarpiece of Lazarus begging at the gate of Dives, by Lorenzo Fiorentini, a native artist. The pass I have mentioned between the Rochetta and the Grolina--the importance of which as a defence was not unknown to the Romans, of whose remains the town possesses a considerable collection dug up at different times--was not without its share of work in the French invasions of 1796 and 1809. In the former, a handful of Tirolese successfully repulsed five hundred of the enemy in an obstinate encounter of three hours' duration. In the latter, the place was attacked by tenfold greater numbers. General Ruska was so infuriated, not only by their determined and galling fire, but by the derisive shouts and gestures of the mountaineers, who carried their daring so far as to fling the dead bodies of the soldiers they had killed down under the wheels of his carriage, that he ordered the pillage and destruction of the town. His guns were ready planted to pour out their murderous fire, when the parish priest, heading a procession of aged house-fathers, came to implore him to spare their homes. At the same moment news was brought him that two Austrian battalions were advancing with dangerous haste. One or other of the considerations thus urged effected the deliverance of the town, which was only required to buy itself off at the price of a large supply of provisions. Borgo has further advantage of the mineral spring of Zaberle, and a creditable theatre. Silk-spinning is again the chief industry of the place; and there are several so-called Filatoriums, employing a great number of hands. The most remarkable excursions in the neighbourhood are to the deserted hermitage of San Lorenzo and the stalactite caves of Costalta, both in the Sellathal, whence there is a path leading to the curiously primitive and typically upright community of the Sette Comuni. Pursuing the valley further in its easterly course, I must not omit to mention Castelalto, not only remarkable for its share in the mediæval history of Tirol, but for being still well kept up. At Strigno, one of the largest hamlets of the valley, is another ancient castle, which after its abandonment in the fourteenth century acquired the name of Castelrotto. The parish church, rebuilt in 1827, contains a Madonna del Rosario by Domenichino; and a Mater Dolorosa in Carrara marble, by the Venetian sculptor Melchiori. This is the generally adopted starting-place for the Cima d'Asta, the highest peak of the Trentino (8,561 feet), and commanding a panorama of exceptional magnificence. Under favourable circumstances it is reached within thirty hours, sleeping in the open at Quarazza. The interest of the way is heightened by two considerable lakes; the lower, that of Quarazza, closed in by wall-like cliffs, is fed by a cascade from the higher lake, which receives several torrents. Near the summit is a garnet quarry. Just below Strigno is another inhabited castle, that of Ivano, belonging to the Count of Wolkenstein-Trostburg, who makes it a summer residence. The church is dedicated to S. Vindemian; near it was once a hermitage. Further down the valley is Ospedaletto, famous in border warfare, and once a hospice for travellers, served by monks, still a mountain-inn with a chapel attached. Grigno has another once-important castle. S. Udalric, Bishop of Augsburg, had occasion to pass through the village on his way to Rome in the time of Pope Sergius III. (A.D. 904-11), and left behind him so profound an impression of his sanctity, that the devotion of the people to his memory has never diminished. In the eleventh century a chapel was built in his honour, with the picturesque instinct of the people of that date, on the steep way leading to Castel Tesino. It was always kept in good condition till 1809, when it was desecrated by the French soldiery. It was restored within ten years, and a rustic piazza in front planted with lime trees, which have at the present time attained considerable dimensions. In July 1869, processions consisting of more than four thousand villagers met at this shrine, to pray for deliverance from the heavy rains, which were causing the inundation of their homesteads. From Grigno there is a path which few persons however will be tempted to follow, across the so-called Canal San Bovo, to Primiero, a country which has already been so ably laid open to the tourist that I need not attempt a fresh description of its beauties. If any one penetrates its recesses as far as the village of Canal San Bovo, I think they will not be sorry to have been advised to ask for a certain Virginia Loss, who has a touching story to tell them of her adventures. On a stormy day, the last of October 1869, she was making her way, though only thirteen, with her mother and another woman, along the dangerous path leading hither from the Fleimserthal, following their occupation of carriers. They had passed Panchià and Ziano, and were in the midst of the verdant tract known as the Sadole. The fierce wind that blew exhausted her poor mother's strength, and she saw no help but to lay down her burden by the way, and try to reach home with bare life. Domenica Orsingher, the other woman, however, who had already got on a good way beyond her, no sooner learned what she had done than, considering what a loss it must be to her, with a humble heroism went back to fetch the pack intending to carry it in addition to her own! The next day some men travelling by the same path found her body extended by the wayside. She had died of cold and exhaustion. The land is strong with such as these, Her heroes' destined mothers. Further along they found Elisabetta Loss and her daughter huddled together. On carrying the bodies to Cauria they succeeded in reviving only the child. Virginia has a tragic story to tell of; of how her mother sank to her rest, and her own unavailing and inexperienced efforts to call her to life; then the horror of the approaching night, the snow storm in which she expected to be covered up and lost to sight, yet had not strength to move away; and, worst of all, the circling flight of crows and ravens which she spent her last energies in driving with her handkerchief from her mother's face; and yet the presence of death, solitude and helplessness, made the approach of even those rapacious and ill-omened companions seem almost less unwelcome. The insensibility which ensued was probably the most welcome visitant of all. Le Tezze is a smaller village than Grigno, but one that has done good service to the patriotic cause, having many a time stayed the advance of invading hosts; and never more successfully than in the latest Garibaldian attempt on the Trentino, upon the cession of Venice by Austria after Sadowa. The tombs of the bold mountaineers who fell while driving back the tenfold numbers opposed to them are to be seen appropriately ranged along the stony declivity they defended so well. These graves are yearly visited by their brethren on the 14th of August. They fell devoted and undying, The very gale their deeds seems sighing; The waters murmur forth their name, The woods are peopled with their fame, The silent pillar, lone and gray, Claims kindred with their sacred clay. Le Tezze is the last Tirolean village of the valley, and the seat of the Austrian custom-house against Italy. On the other side of this frontier is the interesting Italian town of Primolano, whence there is an easier way into Primiero-thal than by crossing the Canal San Bovo. Val Sugana retains more of the German element than any other district of Wälsch-Tirol. Judicarien or Giudicaria bifurcates westwards and south-westwards from the Etschthal opposite Val Sugana. Its first (south-west) division is called the Sarcathal and reaches to the Lago di Garda. Though no part of the beautiful Italian lake actually belongs to Tirol the town of Riva overlooks it; the country round is most productive in wine, silk, lemons, figs, and other fruits. Its pleasant climate, the warmest in all Tirol, is due not only to its southern latitude, but also to its being the lowest land of the principality. Innsbruck is 1,820 feet above the sea-level, Riva but 220. From the western division of Giudicaria there branch out northwards Val Rendena, north-westwards Val Breguzzo and Val Daone, and southwards Val Bona. The Val di Ledro or Lederthal, forms a parallel return towards the Garda-See. Here an attempt at invasion headed by Garibaldi was repulsed by the Innsbruck Student-brigade in 1866 at a pass called Bezzecca. Giudicaria is little explored yet it contains some choice scenery and traditions. Castel Madruzz, which can be visited from Trent, is one of its most ancient and important castles. From the twelfth to the seventeenth century, the family which inhabited it and bore its name takes a foremost place in Tirol's history. In the church are shown the portraits of seven of the family ascribed to Titian. From 1530 to 1658 four of its members occupied the See of Trent, and were successively invested with the Cardinalitial dignity. Cardinal Karl Madruzz became the last of his house. All his kindred having died without heirs, he applied to Rome for permission to marry--a dispensation which we have seen once before accorded in favour of a Tirolese prince. Cardinal Madruzz preferred his suit successively before Urban VIII., Innocent X., and Alexander VII., and at last obtained it, coupled with the proviso that he should only marry in his own station. As this did not accord with his intentions, the favour so tardily granted was never acted on. This fine castle had fallen into sad neglect but it is being restored. From its deserted terraces a glorious view is obtained, which takes in the two lakes of Toblino to the north, and Cavedine to the south, both being fed by the same torrents. Round the Lago di Cavedine lie the flowery slopes which bear the name of Abraham's Garden. The Lake of Toblino is broken into by a picturesque promontory, bearing the castellated villa of the Prince-Bishops of Trent; though on flat ground, the round turrets at the angles with their pointed caps afford a wonderful relief to the landscape. The village is called Sta. Massenza, from the mother of S. Vigilius, who died here in the odour of sanctity, 381. Her relics were translated to Trent, 1120. At the foot of the height on which stands Schloss Madruzz is a double chapel, on the model of the Holy House of Loreto, the legend being inscribed on the walls. At the westernmost reach of Giudicaria, the Rendenathal branches off towards Val di Sole. It was the cradle of the evangelization of Tirol, for here S. Vigilius suffered martyrdom, 405, and the valley is rife with traditions of him. He appears to have been stirred with zeal for the propagation of the faith at a very early age; and his piety and earnestness were so apparent that he was consecrated Bishop of Trent at the age of twenty. He made many conversions, and built a church to SS. Gervasius and Protasius, A.D. 375. But he was not content with establishing the faith here, and sending out missionaries hence; he would wander himself on foot through all the valleys where paganism still lurked, overturning idols and building Christian sanctuaries--more than thirty trace their origin to his work. Nowhere did he meet with so much opposition as in the Rendenathal, which was the last to accept the yoke of Christ. But he was untiring in his apostolic labours, nor could he rest while one token of a false religion remained erect. It is not to be supposed that, though he made many fervent converts, he effected all this without also exciting the opposition and fury of those whose teaching he had come to supersede. Yet though many were the snares set for him, no conspiracy against him succeeded till he had cast down the last idol. It was at Mortaso, one of the remotest villages of this secluded dell, he stood announcing the 'glad tidings' of the Gospel from the pedestal of the image he had overthrown, and the population crowded round, earnestly garnering in his words. He had left off preaching, and just raised his hands in benediction, when a body of heathen men and women, who had long determined to compass his end, rushed upon the scene from the surrounding grove, and stoned him with the fragments of the image he had overthrown. His hearers would have defended him, but he knew that his hour was come, for his work was accomplished; and forbidding all strife, he knelt down, and folding his arms on his breast meekly rendered up his spirit, while his constancy won many to the faith. His disciples reverently gathered his remains and bore them to Trent; but as soon as his murderers were aware of their intent, they set out to follow them. The Christian party, delayed by the weight of their burden, found that their pursuers were fast gaining ground. In this strait, says the legend, they called upon the rocky wall before them-- Apritevi, O sassa, Che S. Vigilio passa, and behold before them suddenly appeared a cleft in the rock, through which they passed in safety, and which is pointed out to this day. Another narrow cleft is pointed out near Cadine, which is said to have been rent asunder at his bidding, when once, at an earlier stage of his labours, he deemed it right to flee from those who would have taken his life. The Acqua della Vela now passes through it, and a dent is shown which is said to mark the place where the saint impressed his hand on the obedient stone. It was this suggested to the bearers of the bier to make a similar appeal on behalf of his relics. It is commonly reported that in Mortaso the bread never rises properly; and they couple with it this tradition, that when the pieces of the broken idol sufficed not for all who would attack the saint, the women brought out loaves from the oven to complete the work. The Rendenathal also preserves the memory of S. Julian, called also Sent Ugiano and San Zulian in local dialect. His legend says he lived with his parents in an outlying house. On one occasion, at the time of day when they were usually at work in the fields, he heard the sound of persons entering the house, and turned and slew them, and only found afterwards that it was his parents whose lives he had taken. [212] Struck with horror he devoted himself to a life of penance, and made a vow to live so far from the habitations of men that he should no more hear the cheerful crowing of the cock or the holy chime of the church bells. After his death the people found that angels had planted roses on his grave which bloomed in winter, and they observed that no venomous reptile ever rested on it, while earth taken from it cured their sting. So they built a chapel in his honour on the border of the little lake which bears his name, at the opening of Val Génova. Another interesting church in the same locality is that of Caresolo. Its exterior walls are adorned with frescoes bearing date 1519, and inside is an inscription recording that it was restored by the munificence of Charles Quint. At Pelugo, near Tione, where the Rendenathal branches off, he found the castle in possession of a Jew, and so indignant was he to find a once Christian fortress so occupied, that he had him immediately ejected and the place exorcised. Here, as also at Massimeno and Caderzone, all inconsiderable mountain villages, new churches were consecrated during the Bishop of Trent's visitation in August 1869, showing that the spirit of S. Vigilius had not died out. In the Pfarrkirche at Condino is a Muttergottesbild, presented in 1620 by a parishioner who averred he had seen it shed tears. Of the church of Campiglio the legend runs, that when it was building, the people being much distressed by a dearth, and their means hardly sufficing, the angels used to bring stone, wood, and other materials in the night; and one pillar is pointed out which was raised before the eyes of the builders in broad day by invisible hands. The inn here occupies a hospice built by the Templars, hence its imposing appearance. Colini, who was locally called the Hofer of Wälsch-Tirol, for his brave leadership of his countrymen in 'the year nine,' kept it till his death in 1862. At Pinzolo is a thriving glass-house, supported by Milanese capital and Venetian art and industry. Riva, at the head of the Garda-See, is one of the most charming spots in Tirol. Its German name of Reif is not a mere corruption of the Italian name; it is an old German word, having the same signification, of a shore. The parish church is a really handsome edifice, and a great ornament to the town and neighbourhood. Outside the town is a curious octagonal church of the Immaculate Conception, built to enclose a wonder-working picture of the Blessed Virgin, by Cardinal Karl von Madruzz, who also founded a House of Friars Minor to attend to the spiritual necessities of the many pilgrims who came to visit it. The churches of S. Roch and S. Sebastian were built on occasion of visitations of the plague in 1522 and 1633. The neighbourhood supplies the whole of Tirol with twigs of olive to use in the office of Palm Sunday, and all kinds of southern produce grow on the banks of the lake. It was long considered the highest latitude at which the olive-tree would grow, but it has since been successfully cultivated as far north as Botzen. In order to gain a full enjoyment of the beautiful scenery around, the Altissimo di Nago should be ascended by all who have the courage for a six or seven hours' climb. From San Giacomo, however, where there is a poor Wirthshaus and chapel, reached in not more than two hours, the scene at sunrise is one of inconceivable beauty. Behind are ranges beyond ranges and peaks beyond peaks of lordly alps. Before you lies the blue Lago di Garda, and the vast Lombard plains studded with fair cities, amid which you will not fail to distinguish Milan, which some optical illusion brings so near that it seems it would take but an easy morning's walk to reach it. On the way hence to Mori, at about half distance, lies Brentonico, with a new church perched picturesquely as a mediæval one on a bold scarped rock. The old parish church has a fine crypt. The Castello del Dosso Maggiore is a noble ruin. There is a bridge over a deep defile in the outskirts, called the Ponte delle strege--the Witches' Bridge--being deemed too daring for human builders. Mori, though named from its mulberry trees, is more famed for its tobacco, which is reckoned the best grown in Tirol. Wälsch-Tirol has many traditions, customs and sayings, which differ from those of the rest of the Principality, more resembling those of Italy, and some of which it cannot be fanciful to trace back to an Etruscan connection. Some bear the impress of the Roman occupation, and all are strung together by an overpowering Germanic influence. The most prominent group--and their special home, I am assured, clusters round the Dolomite mountains--are those concerning certain beings called 'Salvan' and 'Gannes;' and traditions about 'Orco.' A local collector of such lore, to whom I am chiefly indebted for the above fact, is inclined to identify the 'Salvan' with 'Orco;' but I think it can be shown that they are distinct ideas. Both are only ordinarily, not always malicious, but the 'Salvan' is one of a number of sprites, Orco has the dignity of being one by himself. The Salvan in some respects takes the place of the wild man of the North, and of the satyr whom I also found called in Rome 'salvatico' and 'selvaggio.' [213] 'Orco' clearly takes the place of Orcus in Italy; and that of the 'Teufel' in German legend. Yet so are the traditions of neighbouring peoples intermingled, that the Germans, not content with their own devil, have sprightly imitations of Orco in their 'Nork' and Lorg, softened in the intermediate Deutsch Tirol into Norg. [214] In Norway the same appellation is found, hardened into Nök, Neck, Nikr, [215] which seems to bring us round to our own 'Old Nick;' for in Iceland he is 'Knikur,' and, perhaps, he gave his name to Orkney. [216] It is curious, in tracing the seemingly undoubtable connection between the Norg and Orco, to observe that though the Norg possesses almost invincible strength, and often prevails against giants, yet in stature he is always a dwarf, while Orco himself is considered a giant. But then it is the one essential characteristic of Orco which forms the link between all conceptions of him, whether men call him Orco, Nork, or Nyk, that he is a deceiver ever; a liar from the beginning; whenever he appears it is continually under some ever-changing, not-to-be-expected form, and only the wise guess what he is before it is too late. [217] Thus it happened to two young lads of Mori, who had been up the mountains to visit their sweet-hearts, and coming back, they met Orco prowling about after his manner when all good people are safe in bed asleep--this time in the form of an ass. The Mori lads, never thinking but that it was a common ass, jumped on its back. They soon found out their mistake, for Orco quickly resented their want of discrimination, and cantered off with them past an old building which had once been a prison, and skilfully chucked them both in at the window. It was some days before they contrived to crawl out again, and not till they were nearly starved. But we have in English another affinity with 'Orco,' besides 'Old Nick;' we have seen him take the place of our 'ogre' in deed as well as in name in the Roman fairy tales, and in Italy he is also the bugbear of the nursery which we have almost literally in 'Old Bogey.' And now Mr. I. Taylor has found another affinity for him if he be justified in identifying our 'ogre' with "the Tatar word, 'ugry,' a thief." [218] To return to Orco's place in Tirol, we find his name assumes nearly as many transliterations as his external appearance assumes changes. In Vorarlberg they have a Dorgi or Doggi (i being the frequent local abbreviation for the diminutive lein,--klein), there considered as one personation of the devil. The Doggi spreads over part of Switzerland, and overflows into Alsace as the Doggele. [219] In the zone of Tirol where the Italian and German elements of the population mingle, there is a class of mischievous irrepressible elfs called Orgen; soft, and round, and small, like cats without head or feet, who establish themselves in any part of a house performing all sorts of annoyances, but who are as afraid of egg-shells as the Norgs in other parts are said to be. Their chief home is in the Martelthal, south of Schlanders in the Vintschgau, and their name is devoted to the brightly shining peak seen from it--the Orgelspitz. In the Passeyer, on the north side of the Vintschgau, they go by the name of Oerkelen. Since we have seen him, too, divested of his 'r' in Doggi from Vorarlberg to Alsace, and the Germans have already given him an L in Lorg, he assumes a mysterious likeness to Loki himself, and as a sample of how elastic is language, and how misleading are mere sounds, though for no other purpose, it might be said, we had found in this Doggi a relation of the dog who guards the entrance to the regions of Orcus! The Salvan and Gannes, as described by the local observer above alluded to, seem to partake very much of the character of the good and evil genii of the Etruscans, though the traditions that remain of them refer almost exclusively to their action on this side the grave. 'Their Etruscan appellation,' says Mr. Dennis, 'is not yet discovered;' [220] when it is, it will be very satisfactory if it has any analogy with 'Gannes.' [221] The Gannes were gentle, beauteous, beneficent beings, delighting in being helpful to those they took under their protection; harmful to none. The Salvans were hideous, wild, and fierce, delighting in mischief and destruction, with fiery serpents for their chief companions. They seem to have done all the mischief they could as long as their sway lasted, but they were scared by advancing civilization; and I have a ludicrous description of how they stood gazing down in stupid wonderment from their Dolomite peaks, when the first ploughs were brought into use in the valleys. Schneller, who with all his appreciation of Wälsch-Tirol, looks at its traditions too much through German spectacles, gives us some little account of these beings too. [222] He has also a 'Salvanel,' who seems a male counterpart of his Gannes, helpful and soft-natured, with no vice save a tendency to steal milk. In return he teaches mankind to make butter and cheese, and other useful arts, and is specially kind to little children; his name bears some relation with the local word for the 'Jack-'o-lantern' reflection from glass or water. But he found also the 'Salvan' in his pernicious character under the names of 'Bedelmon,' 'Bildermon,' and 'Salvadegh.' But the most pernicious spirit that came in his way was the 'Beatrik,' who is an unmitigated fury, [223] and the natural enemy and antagonist of a gentle, helpful, beauteous spirit called Angane, Eguane, and Enguane, but possessed with his German ideas, he saw in the being so designated nothing but 'a witch, or perhaps a fairy-natured being.' [224] In another page he pairs them off more fairly with the 'Säligen Fräulein' of Germany. Here is a story of their ways which was given me, but I do not know if it was founded on his at page 215, or independently collected:--A young woodman was surprised one day to meet, in the midst of his lonely toil, a beautiful maiden, who nodded to him familiarly, and bid him 'good day' with more than common interest. Nor did her conversation end with 'good day;' she found enough to prattle about till night fell; and then, though the young woodman had been sitting by her side instead of attending to his work, he found he had a bigger faggot to carry home than he had ever made up with all his day's labour before. 'That was a sweet maiden, indeed,' he mused on his way home. 'And yet I doubt if she is all right. But her talk showed she was of the right stuff to make a housewife; but then Maddalena, what will she say? ha! let her say what she will, she won't stand comparing with her! I wonder if I shall see her again! And yet I don't think she's altogether right, either.' So he mused all through the lonely evening, and all through the sleepless night; and his first thought in the morning was of whether he should meet that strange maiden again in the wood. In the wood he did meet her, and again she wiled away the day with her prattle; and again and again they met. Maddalena sat at home weeping over her spinning-wheel, and wondering why he came no more to take her for a walk; but Maddalena was forgotten, and one day it was her fate to see her former lover and the strange maiden married in the parish church. The woodman was not surprised to find his seiren the model of a wife. The house was swept so clean, the clothes so neatly mended, the butter so quickly churned, that though all the villagers had been shy of the strange maiden, none could deny her excellent capacity. The woodman was very well satisfied with his choice; but as he had always a misgiving that there was something not quite right with her, he could not help nervously watching every little peculiarity. It was thus he came to notice that it was occasionally her custom to lay her long wavy tresses carefully outside the bedclothes at night; he thought this odd, and determined to watch her. One night, when she thought him asleep, and he was only feigning, he observed that she took a little box of salve from under her pillow, and rubbing it into her hair, said, Schiva boschi e schiva selva (shun woods and forests), and then was off and away in a trice. Determined to follow her, he took out the box of salve, and rubbing it into his hair, tried to repeat her saying, but he did not recall it precisely, and said instead, Passa boschi e passa selvi (away through woods and forests), and away he went, faster than he liked, while his clothes and his skin were torn by the branches of the trees. He came, however, to the precincts of a great palace, where was a fresh green meadow, on which were a number of kine grazing, and some were sleek and well-favoured, while some were piteously lean; and yet they all fed on the same pasture. The palace had so many windows that it took him a long while to count them, and when he had counted them he found there were three hundred and sixty-five. He climbed up and looked in at one of them--it was the window of a great hall, where a number of Enguane were dancing, and his wife in their midst. When he saw her, he called out to her; but when she heard his voice, instead of coming she took to flight, nor could he overtake her with all his strength for running. At last, after pursuing her for three days, he came to the hut of a holy hermit, who asked him wherefore he ran so fast; and when he had told him, the hermit bid him give up the chase, for an Enguane was not a proper wife for a Christian man. Then the woodman asked him to let him become a hermit too, and pass the remainder of his life under his guidance. To this the hermit consented; so he built him a house, and they lived together in holy contemplation. One day the woodman told the hermit of what he had seen when he went forth to seek his wife; and the hermit told him that the palace with three hundred and sixty-five windows represented this temporal world, with its years of three hundred and sixty-five days; but the fresh green meadow was the Church, in which the Redeemer gave His Flesh for the food of all alike; but that while some pastured on it to the gain of their eternal salvation, who were represented by the well-favoured kine, there were also the perverse and sinful, who eat to their own condemnation, and were represented by the lean and distressed kine. [225] It is less easy to collect local traditions in Wälsch-Tirol than in any other part of the principality, but legends and marvellous stories exist in abundance; and so long as the institution of the Filò (or out-house room where village gossips meet to spend their evenings in silk-spinning and recounting tales) last, they will not be allowed to die out: [226] it is said that there are some old ladies who can go on retailing stories by the week together! And though by the nature of the case these gatherings must consist almost exclusively of women, yet it is thought uncanny not to have any man about the place; in fact, that in such a case Froberte [227] is sure to play them some trick. They narrate that once when this happened, one of the women exclaimed, 'Only see! we have no man at all among us; let's be off, or something will happen!' All rose to make their escape at the warning, but before they had time to leave, a donna Berta knocked and came in. 'Padrona! donna Berta dal nas longh,' [228] said all the women together, trying to propitiate her by politeness; and the nearest offered her a chair. 'Wait a little, and you'll see another with a longer nose than I,' replied Froberte; and as she spoke, a second donna Berta knocked and entered, to whom the women gave the same greeting. 'Wait a bit, and you'll see another with a longer nose than I,' said the second donna Berta; and so it went on till there were twelve of them. Then the first said, 'What shall we be at?' To which the second made answer, 'Suppose we do a bit of washing:' and the others agreeing, they told the women to give them pails to fetch water with; but the women, knowing that their intention was to have suffocated them all in the wash-tubs, gave them baskets instead. Not noticing the trick, they went down to the Etsch with the baskets to fetch water, and when they found that all their labour was in vain, they ran back in a great fury; but in the meantime the women had all escaped to their home, and every one was safe in bed with her husband. But a Froberte came to the window of each and cried, 'It is well for you you have taken refuge with your husband!' The next night the women were determined to pay off the brava Berta for the fright they had had, so they got one of their husbands to hide himself in the crib of the oxen; had he sat down with them, the Froberte would not have come at all. Not seeing him, Froberte knocked and came in, and they greeted her and gave her a chair, just as on the previous night; and the whole twelve soon arrived. Before they could begin their washing operations, however, the man sprang out of the crib, and put them to flight with many hard blows; so that they did not return for many a long day. The last day of Carneval was called il giorno delle Froberte, probably because many wild pranks in which sober people allow themselves to indulge on that day of licence were laid on the shoulders of Mistress Bertha. But it is also said, that since the sitting of the Holy Council of Trent, the power for mischief of these elves has grown quite insignificant. Here are some few specimens of the multifarious stories of the Filò. [229] Once there was a man and his wife who had two daughters: one pretty, but vain and malicious; the other ugly, but docile and pious. The mother made a favourite of the pretty daughter, but set the ugly one to do all the work of the house; and though she worked from morning to night, was never satisfied with her. One day she sent her down to the stream to do the washing; but the stream was swollen with the heavy rains, and had become so rapid that it carried off her sister's shift. Not daring to go home without it, she ran by the side of the stream, trying to fetch it back. All her pains were vain; the stream went on tumbling and roaring till it swelled out into a big river, and she could no longer even distinguish the shift from the white foam on which it was borne along. At last, hungry and weary, she descried a house, where she knocked with a trembling hand, and begged for shelter. The good woman come to the door, but advised her not to venture in, for the Salvan would soon be home; but the child knew nothing about the Salvan, but a great deal about the storm, and as one was brooding, and night coming on, she crept in. She had not been long inside, when the Salvan came home, also seeking shelter from the storm. 'What stink is this I smell of Christian flesh?' he roared; and the child was too truthful to remained concealed, and so came forward and told all her tale. The Salvan was won by her artlessness, and not only allowed her a bed and a supper, but gave her a basketful of as much fine linen as she could carry, to make up for her loss. When her pretty sister saw what a quantity of fine linen the Salvan had given her, she determined to go and beg for some too; but when the Salvan saw her coming, he holloaed out, 'So you're the child who behaves so ill to your sister!' and he gave her such a rude drubbing, that she went back with very few clothes on that were not in rags. In selecting a specimen or two of the fiabe I will take first a group going by the name of 'Zuam' or 'Gian dall' Orso' (Bear-Johnny), [230] because the Wolf-boy group is a very curious one, and this is our nearest approach to it, [231] though it deals with a bear-child and not a wolf-child; [232] and because we have already found Orso and Orco confounded in Italian folk-lore at Rome. The following is from Val di Non:--A labourer and his wife had their little boy out with them as they worked in the fields. A she-bear came out of the woods and carried him off. She treated him well, however, and taught him to be strong and hardy, and when he was twenty years old she sent him to his parents. He had such an appetite that he eat them out of house and home, and then he made his mother go and beg all over the country till she had enough to buy him three hundredweight of iron to make him a club. Armed with this club, he went forth to seek fortune. In the woods he met a giant carrying a leaden club called Barbiscat ('Cat's Beard'), and the two made friends went out together till they met another giant, who carried a wooden club called Testa di Molton ('Ram's Head'). They made friends and went out together till they came to a house in a town where magicians lived. The giant with Barbiscat knocked first, and at midnight a magician came out and said, 'Earthworm, wherefore are you come?' then he of Barbiscat was frightened and ran away. The next night the giant with Testa di Molton knocked with the same result. But the third night Gian dall' Orso himself knocked, and he had no fear, but when the magician came out he knocked him down with many blows of his iron club, and went to fetch the other two giants. When they returned no magician was to be seen, only a trail of blood. They followed the trail till they came to a deep pit, and Zuam dall' Orso made the giants let him down by a rope. In a cave he found the wounded magician and three others besides, by slaying whom he delivered a beautiful maiden. The giants drew her up, but abandoned him. Then he saw a ring lying on the ground, and when he took it up and rubbed it two Moors appeared and asked him what he wanted. 'I want an eagle, to bear me up to earth,' he said. So they brought him a big eagle, 'but,' said they, 'he must be well fed the while.' So he bid them bring him two shins of beef, and fed him well the while, and the eagle bore him to the king; who finding he was the deliverer of his daughter, killed the two giants, and gave him plenty of gold and silver, with which he went back to his home and lived happily and in peace,--a very homely termination, welcome to the mountaineer's mind. In the Lederthal version he was so strong at two years old that he lifted up the mountain under which the bear's den was, and ran back to his mother; but at school he killed all the children, and knocked down the teacher and the priest, and was sent to prison. Here he lifted the door off its hinges, and went to the judge, and made him give him a sword, with which he went forth to seek fortune. With the two companions picked up by the wayside, who for once do not play him the trick of leaving him below in the cave, he delivers three princesses, and all are made happy. In another version, where he is called 'Filomusso the Smith,' and is nurtured by an ass instead of a bear, the provision of meat for feeding the eagle is exhausted before he reaches the earth, and he heroically tears a piece of flesh out of his own leg, and thus the flight can be completed. 2. The following version of the story of Joseph and his Brethren is quaint:--A king had three sons. The two elder were grown up, while Jacob (the Italian is not given) was still quite small, and was his father's pet. One day, when the king came back from hunting, he was quite out of sorts because he had lost the feather (la penna dell' uccello sgrifone) he was wont always to wear. When everyone had sought for it in vain, little Jacob came to him, and bid him eat and be of good cheer for he and his brothers would find the feather. The king promises his kingdom to whichever of the three finds it. Little Jacob finds the feather, and carries it full of joy to his brothers. The brothers, jealous that he should have the kingdom, kill him and take the feather to their father. A year after a shepherd finds little Jacob's bones, and takes one of them to make a fife, but as soon as he begins to play upon it the fife tells the whole story of the foul play. The shepherd takes it to the king, who convicts his two sons, has them put to death, and dies of grief. 3. Here is a homely version of Oidipous and the Sphinx:--A poor man owed a large debt and had nothing to pay it with. The rich man to whom he owed it came to demand the sum, and found only the poor man's little boy sitting by the hearth. 'What are you doing?' asked the rich man. 'I watch them come and go,' replied the boy. 'Do so many people come to you then?' enquired the rich man. 'No man,' replied the boy. Not liking to own himself puzzled, the rich man asked again, 'Where is your father?' 'He's gone to plug a hole with another hole,' replied the boy. Posed again, the rich man proceeded, 'And where's your mother?' 'She's baking bread that's already eaten,' replied the boy. 'You are either very clever or a great idiot,' now retorted the rich man; 'will you please to explain yourself?' 'Yes, if you will reward me by forgiving father his debt.' The rich man accepted the terms, and the boy proceeded. 'I'm boiling beans, and the bubbling water makes them seethe, and I watch them come and go. My father is gone to borrow a sum of money to pay you with, so to plug one hole he is making another. All the bread we have eaten for a fortnight past was borrowed of a neighbour, now mother is making some to pay it back with, so I may well say what she is making is already eaten.' The rich man expressed himself satisfied, and the poor man was delivered from the burden of his debt. 4. A poor country lad once went out into the wide world to seek fortune. As he went along he met a very old woman carrying a pail of water, with which she seemed sadly overladen. The poor lad ran after her, and carried it home for her. But she was an Angana, and to reward him she gave him a dog and a cat, and a little silver ring, which she told him to turn round whenever he was in difficulty. The boy walked on, thinking little about the old woman's ring, and not at all believing in its efficacy. When he got tired with his walking he laid down under a tree, but he was too hungry to sleep. As he lay tossing about he twirled the ring round without knowing what he was doing, and suddenly an old woman appeared before him, just like the one he had helped, and asked what he wanted of her. 'Something to eat and drink,' was the ready and natural answer. He had hardly spoken it when he found a table spread with good things before him. He made a good meal, nor did he neglect to feed his dog and cat well; and then they all had a good sleep. In the morning he reasoned, 'Why should I journey further when my ring can give one all one wants?' So he turned the ring round; and when the old woman appeared he asked for a house, and meadows, and farming-stock, and furniture; and then he paused to think of what more he could possibly desire; but he remembered the lessons of moderation his mother had taught him, and he said, 'No, it is not good for a man to have all he wants in this world.' So he asked for nothing more, but set to work to cultivate his land. One day when he was working on his land, a grand damsel came by with a number of servants riding after her. The damsel had lost her way, and had to ask him to lead her back to the right path. As they went, she talked to him about his house and his means, and his way of life; and before she had got to her journey's end they were so well pleased with each other that she agreed to go back with him and marry him; but it was the ring she was in love with rather than with him. They were no sooner married than she got possession of the ring, and by its power she ordered the farm-house to be changed into a palace, and the farm-servants into liveried retainers, and all manner of luxuries, and chests of coin. Nor was she satisfied with this. One day, when her husband was asleep in a summer-house, she ordered it to be carried up to the highest tip of a very high mountain, and the palace far away into her own country. When he woke he found himself all alone on the frightful height, with no one but the dog and cat, who always slept the one at his head and the other at his feet. Though he was an expert climber it was impossible to get down from so sharp a peak, so he sat down and gave himself up to despair. The cat and dog, however, comforted him, and said they would provide the remedy. They clambered down the rugged declivity, and ran on together till they came to a stream which puss could not cross, but the dog put her on his back and swam over with her; and without further adventure they made their way to the palace where their master's wife lived. With some cleverness they manoeuvred their way into the interior, but into the bed-room there seemed no chance of effecting an entrance. They paced up and down hour by hour, but the door was never opened. At last, when all was very still, a mouse came running along the corridor. The cat pounced on the mouse, who pleaded hard for mercy in favour of her seven small children. 'If I restore you to liberty,' said the cat, 'you must do something for me in return.' The mouse promised everything; and the cat instructed her to gnaw a hole in the door, and fetch the ring out of the princess's mouth, where she made no doubt she kept it at night for safety. The mouse kept her word, and obeying her directions punctually, soon returned with the ring; and off the cat and dog set on their return home, in high glee at their success. It rankled, however, in the dog's mind, that it was the cat who had all the glory of recovering the treasure; and by the time they had got back to the stream he told her that if she would not give him the satisfaction of carrying the ring the rest of the way, he would not carry her over it. The cat would not accept his view, and a fight ensued, in the midst of which the ring escaped them both and fell into the water, where it was caught by a fish. The cat was in despair, but the dog plunged in and seized the fish, and by regaining the ring earned equal right to the merit of its recovery, and they clambered together in amity. Their master was rejoiced to receive his ring once more, and by its power he got back his homestead and farm-stock, and sent for his mother to live with him, and all his life through took great care of his faithful dog and cat; but the perverse princess he ordered the ring to transfer in the summer-house to the peak whither she would have banished him. When all this was set in order he threw away the ring, because he said it was not well for a man to have all his wishes satisfied in this world. [233] The following legend of St. Kümmerniss is very popular in Tirol. Churchill, in his 'Titian's Country,' mentions a chapel on the borders of Cadore and Wälsch-Tirol, where she is represented just as there described, but he does not appear to have inquired into its symbolism. There was once a heathen king who had a daughter named Kümmerniss, who was fair and beautiful beyond compare. A neighbouring king, also a heathen, sought her in marriage, and her father gave his consent to the union; but Kümmerniss was distressed beyond measure, for she had vowed in her own heart to be the bride of heaven. Of course her father could not understand her motives, and to force her to marry put her into a hard prison. From the depths of the dungeon Kümmerniss prayed that she might be so transformed that no man should wish to marry her; and in conformity with her devoted petition, when they came to take her out of the prison they found that all her beauty was gone, and her face overgrown with long hair like a man's beard. When her father saw the change in her he was indignant, and asked what had befallen her. She replied that He whom she adored had changed her so, to save her from marrying the heathen king after she had vowed herself to be His bride alone. 'Then shall you die, like Him you adore,' was her father's answer. She meekly replied that she had no greater desire than to die, that she might be united with Him. And thus her pure life was taken a sweet sacrifice; and whoso would like her be altogether devoted to God, and like her obtain their petition from heaven, let them honour her, and cause her effigy to be painted in the church. So many believed they found the efficacy of her intercession, that they set up memorial images of her everywhere, and in one place they set one up all in pure gold. A poor minstrel once came by that way with his violin; and because he had earned nothing, and was near starving, he stood before St. Kümmerniss and played his prayer on his violin. Plaintive and more plaintive still grew his beseeching notes, till at last the saint, who never sent any away empty, shook off one of her golden shoes, and bid him take it for an alms. The minstrel carried the golden shoe to a goldsmith, and asked him to buy it of him for money; but the goldsmith, recognizing whence it came, refused to have anything to do with sacrilegious traffic, and accused him of stealing it. The minstrel loudly protested his innocence, and the goldsmith as loudly vociferated his accusation, till their clamour raised the whole village; and all were full of fury and indignation at the supposed crime of the minstrel. As their anger grew, they were near tearing him in pieces, when a grave hermit came by, and they asked him to judge the case. 'If it be true that the man obtained one shoe by his minstrelsy, let him play till he obtain the other in our sight,' was his sentence; and all the people were so pleased with it, that they dragged the minstrel back to the shrine of St. Kümmerniss. The minstrel, who had been as much astonished as anyone else at his first success, scarcely dared hope for a second, but it was death to shrink from the test; so he rested his instrument on his shoulder, and drew the bow across it with trembling hand. Sweet and plaintive were the shuddering voice-like tones he sent forth before the shrine; but yet the second shoe fell not. The people began to murmur; horror heightened his distress. Cadence after cadence, moan upon moan, wail upon wail, faltered through the air, and entranced every ear and palsied every hand that would have seized him; till at last, overcome with the intensity of his own passionate appeal, the minstrel sank unconscious on the ground. When they went to raise him up, they found that the second golden shoe was no longer on the saint's foot, but that she had cast it towards him. When they saw that, each vied with the other to make amends for the unjust suspicions of the past. The golden shoes were restored to the saint; but the minstrel never wanted for good entertainment for the rest of his life. 'Puss in Boots' figures in the Folklore of Wälsch-Tirol as 'Il Conte Martin della Gatta;' its chief point of variation is that no boots enter into it at all, otherwise the action of the cat is as usual in other versions. There is another class of stories in which the townspeople indulge at the expense of the uninstructed peasants in outlying districts, and which their extreme simplicity and naïveté occasionally justify. I must not close my notice of the Volklore of Wälsch-Tirol without giving some specimens of these. It may be generally observed that stories which have no particular moral point, and are designed only to amuse without instructing, are as frequent in the Trentino as they are rare in the German divisions of Tirol. Turlulù [234] was such a simple boy that he could not be made to do anything aright; and what was worst was, he thought himself so clever that he would always go off without listening to half his instructions. One day his mother sent him with her last piece of money to buy a bit of meat for a poor neighbour; 'And mind,' she said, 'that the butcher doesn't give you all bone.' 'Leave that to me!' cried Turlulù without waiting for an explanation; and off he went to the town. The butcher offered him a nice piece of leg of beef. 'No, no, there's bone to that,' cried Turlulù; 'that won't do.' The butcher, provoked, offered him a lump of lights. Turlulù seeing it look so soft, and no bone at all to it, went off with it quite pleased, but of course the poor neighbour had to starve. When his mother found what he had done, she was in great distress, for she had no money left; so she sent him with a piece of home-spun linen to try to sell it. 'But mind you don't waste your time talking to gossiping old women,' she said. 'Leave that to me, mother,' cried Turlulù; and off he ran. As he got near the market-place, he began crying, 'Fine linen! who wants to buy fine linen!' Several countrywomen, who had come up to town to make purchases, came to look at the quality. 'Go along, you gossiping old things; don't imagine I'm going to sell it to you!' cried Turlulù, and he ran away from them. As he ran on he saw a capitello [235] by the wayside. When he saw the image of the Blessed Virgin, looking so grave and calm, he said, 'Ah, you are no gossip, you shall have my linen;' and he threw it at her feet. 'Come, pay me!' he cried presently; but of course the figure moved not. 'Ah, I see, you've not got the money to-day; I will come back for it to-morrow.' When he came back on the morrow the linen had been picked up by a passer-by, but no money was forthcoming. 'Pay me now,' said Turlulù; but still the figure was immovable. Again and again he repeated the demand, till, finding it still unheeded, he took off his belt, and hit hard and fast upon the image. So great was his violence, that in a very short time he had knocked it to the ground; and lo and behold, inside the now uncovered pedestal were a heap of gold pieces, which some miser had concealed there for greater security. 'My mother herself will own this is good pay for the linen,' cried Turlulù, as he filled his pockets, 'and for once she won't find fault.' His way home lay along the edge of the pond, and as he passed the ducks were crying, 'Quack! quack! quack!' Turlulù thought they were saying Quattro, meaning that he had four pieces of gold. 'That's all you know about it,' cried Turlulù; 'I've got many more than four, many more.' But the ducks continued to cry 'Quack.' 'I tell you there are more than four,' reiterated Turlulù impetuously, but the ducks did not alter their strain. 'Then take them, and count them yourselves, and you'll see what a lot there are!' So saying, he threw the whole treasure into the mud; and as the ducks, scared by the noise, left off their 'quack,' he satisfied himself that he had convinced them, and went home to boast to his mother of the feat. A showman came through a village with a dancing-bear. The people went out to see him, and gave him plenty of halfpence. 'Suppose we try our luck, and go about showing a bear too; it seems a profitable sort of trade,' said one of the lookers-on to another. 'Ay, but where shall we find one?' objected the man addressed. 'Oh, there must be bears to be found; it needs only to go out and look for them.' They went out to look for a bear, and at last really found one, [236] which ran before them and plunged into a cave. 'I'll tell you what we'll do,' said the peasant who had proposed the adventure, 'I'll creep into the cave and seize the bear, and you take hold of my legs and pull us both out together.' The other assented; and in went the first. But the bear, instead of letting him seize it, bit off his head. The other pulled him out as agreed, but was much astonished to find him headless. 'Well, to be sure!' he cried, 'I never noticed the poor fellow came out this morning without his head. I must go home and ask his wife for it.' So saying, he ran back to the man's house. 'I say, neighbour,' he cried, 'did you happen to notice, when your husband went out this morning, whether he had his head on?' 'I never thought to look,' replied the wife, 'but I'll run up and see if he left it in bed; but tell me,' she added, 'will he catch cold for going out without his head on?' 'I don't know as to that,' replied the man; 'but if he should want to whistle he might find it awkward!' A woman working in the fields one day saw a snail, which spread out its horns as she looked at it. In great alarm, she ran to the chief man of the parish, and told him what she had seen. He, too, was horribly frightened, but he mastered his fear, as became the dignity of his office. In order to provide duly for the safety of his village, he sent two trustworthy men with a large sum of money to Trent, to buy a sharp sword; and till their return placed all the able-bodied men on guard. When the man brought the sharp sword back from Trent, he called the heads of the Commune together, and said to them: 'I will not exercise my right of sending any of you in peril of his life, but I ask you which of you is ready to encounter this great danger, and whoever has the courage shall receive a great reward.' Hereupon two of the most valiant came forward as volunteers, and were invested with the sharp sword. In solemn silence they marched boldly to the field where the snail was, and they saw him sitting on the edge of a rotten leaf; but at the moment when they had screwed up their courage to smite him with the edge of the sword, the breeze blew down the leaf and the snail with it. They, however, thought the snail was preparing to attack them, and ran away so fast that they tumbled over the edge of an abyss. The people of a certain village were envious because the church tower of the neighbouring village was higher than theirs. So they held a council to consider what remedy they could apply. No one could think of anything to propose, till the oldest and wisest of them at last rose and advised that a great heap of hay should be laid by the side of their tower, so that it might eat and grow strong, and increase in height. The counsel was received with applause, and every one cheerfully brought his quota to the common sacrifice, till there was a mighty heap of hay laid at the base of the church tower. All the horses and asses that went by, finding such a fine provision of provender laid out for them, ate the hay; but the people seeing the heap diminish, were quite satisfied, and said, 'Our tower must be beginning to grow, you see how fast it eats!' In Wälsch-Tirol the graves are not decked with flowers on All Souls' Day, as in Germany, but on the other hand it is customary for the parish clergy to gather their flocks round them, and say the Rosary kneeling amid the graves. Doles of bread, locally called cuzza, and alms, are given away to the poor on that day, and in some places a particular soup made of beans. The symbolism was formerly carried so far, that these alms, devoted to the refreshment of the souls of the departed, were actually laid on the graves, as if it was supposed that the holy souls would come out and partake of the material food. And thus some even placed vessels of cold water as a special means of solace from their purgatorial pains. [237] In the north of Italy, the feast of Sta. Lucia (December 13) holds the place of that of St. Nicholas among children in Germany; in Wälsch-Tirol the children have the advantage of keeping both. In Val Arsa, part of the loaves baked on Christmas Eve are kept, as Cross-buns used to be among us. In Folgareit they have a curious game for Christmas-tide. A number of heaps of flour, according to the number of the household, are arranged on the table by the father of the family, some little present being covered up in each; when they are thus prepared the family is admitted, and the choice of places decided by various modes of contest. In several parts, particularly in the Rabbithal, the Lombard [238] custom prevails of putting a huge log on the fire, called the Zocco di Natale and the Zocco di ogni bene, that it may burn all night and keep the Divine Infant from the cold. The idea, more or less prevalent all over Christendom, that beasts have the gift of speech on Christmas Eve, prevails here no less. A story is told of a peasant who determined to sit up and listen to what his oxen said. 'Where shall we have to go to-morrow?' he heard one say. 'We shall have to fetch the boards for our master's coffin,' replied his companion. The man was so shocked, that he went to bed and died next day. Animals are blessed on St. Anthony's day (January 18), as in Rome. Carnival is celebrated with representations partaking somewhat of the character of 'Passion Plays,' though always with more or less humorous treatment of their subject. Till lately there lingered a curious pastime at this season, in which on Giovedì grasso there was a contest, according to fixed rules, between the masked and unmasked inhabitants, for certain cakes (gnocchi) made of Indian corn, whence the day is still called Giovedì dei gnocchi. It commemorated a fight between the men of Trent and them of Feltre, who tried to carry off their provision while they were building the walls of Trent, in the time of Theodoric King of the Visigoths. S. Urban is considered the patron of vineyards in Etschland, and on his feast his images are hung with bunches of grapes. Here are a few specimens of their popular sayings and customs. When it thunders the children say, Domeniddio va in carozza. The chirping of a cricket, instead of being reckoned a lucky token, forebodes death. Sponsors are regarded a person's nearest relations, and at their funeral they go as chief mourners before all others. Marriages in May are avoided. The reason why the bramble always creeps along, instead of growing erect, is, because once a thorny bramble branch caught the hair of the Blessed Virgin; before that it grew erect like other trees. Cockchafers are blind, because one of them once flew into the Blessed Virgin's face and startled her; before that they had sight. Swallows are called uccelli della Madonna, but I have not ascertained the reason. Scorpions, which are venomous in Italy, are not so in the Italian Tirol, because one fell once into St. Vigilius' chalice at Mass. I will conclude with some popular riddles, showing a traditionary observation of the movements of the heavenly bodies, but not much humour: Due viandanti, Due ben stanti, E un cardinal? [239] Gh' è 'n prà Tutto garofalà: Quanca se vien el Papa con tutta la sô paperia En garòfol sol no l'è bon de portar via? [240] Piatto sopra piatto, Uomo ben armato, Donna ben vestita. Cavalleria ben fornita? [241] C'è un palazzo, vi son dodici camere, ognuna ne ha trenta travi, e vi son due che si corrono sempre l'uno dietro all' altro e non si raggiungono mai? [242] O mein Tirol! wie ich mit Schmerzentzücken Dich nun geschaut vor meinen feuchten Blicken. So lebt dein rührend Bild im tiefsten Sinn. Nimm denn, Tirol, des Schmerzbegeistrungstrunk'nen, Des ganz in dich Verlornen und Versunk'nen Liebvolles Lebewohl, mit Liebe hin! Eduard Silesius. NOTES [1] This is what the introduction of manufactories is doing in Italy at this moment. The director of a large establishment in Tuscany, which devours, to its own share, the growth of a whole hill-side every year, smiled at my simplicity when I expressed regret at hearing that no provision was made for replacing the timber as it is consumed. [2] Except the Legends of the Marmolata, which I have given in 'Household Stories from the Land of Hofer; or, Popular Myths of Tirol,' I hardly remember to have met any concerning its prominent heights. [3] I published much of the matter of the following pages in the first instance in the Monthly Packet, and I have to thank the Editor for my present use of them. [4] See Steub 'Über die Urbewohner Rätiens und ihren Zusammenhang mit den Etruskern. Münich, 1843,' quoted in Dennis' Cities and Cemeteries of Etruria, I. Preface, p. xlv. [5] See it in use below, p. 28, and comp. Etruscan Res. p. 302, note. [6] Somewhat like pleurer. A good many words are like French, as gutschle, a settle (couche); schesa, a gig; and gespusa, mentioned above, is like épouse; and au, for water, is common over N. Tirol, as well as Vorarlberg, e.g. infra, pp. 24, 111. &c. [7] Comp. Etrus. Res. 339-41. [8] Several places have received their name from having grown round such a hut; some of these occur outside Vorarlberg, as for instance Kühthei near St. Sigismund (infra, p. 331) in the Lisenthal, and Niederthei in the OEtzthal. [9] Comp. ma = earth, land, Etrus. Res. pp. 121, 285. [10] Comp. subulo, Etrus. Res. 324. Dennis i. 339. [11] Infra, p. 411. [12] See e.g., infra, p. 202. [13] Etrus. Res. p. 330. [14] P. 79. [15] Professor Max Müller, Chips from a German Workshop. [16] Rev. G. W. Cox, Prof. De Gubernatis, Dr. Dasent, &c. [17] In the Contemporary Review for March 1874. [18] Mr. Cox had pointed it out before him, however, and more fully, Mythology of the Aryan Nations, ii. 200. [19] L'una vegghiava a studio della culla, E consolando usava l'idioma, Che pria li padri e le madri trastulla: L'altra traendo alla rocca la chioma Favoleggiava con la sua famiglia De' Troiani, e di Fiesole, e di Roma. Dante. Paradiso, xv. 120 5. [20] Tullio Dandolo. [21] Depping, Romancero, Preface. [22] The usual fate of relying on Road-books. Ours, I forget whether Amthor's or Trautwein's, said there was regular communication between Oberriet and Feldkirch, and nothing could be further from the fact, as will be seen a few pages later. [23] If Pfäffers is visited by rail (see p. 23), it is convenient to take it before Feldkirch. [24] See further quaint details and historical particulars in Vonbun, Sagen Vorarlbergs, p. 103-5. [25] Vonbun, pp. 113-4. [26] Historical particulars in Vonbun, pp. 110-1. [27] Vonbun, pp. 86-7. [28] It may also be reached by railway as it is but three or four miles from Ragatz, two stations beyond Buchs (p. 13). [29] It has been suggested by an eminent comparative mythologist that it is natural Luc-ius should be said to have brought 'the Light of the Gospel' to men of Licht-enstein. [30] The traitor was loaded with heavy armour and thrown over the Ill precipice. See Vonbun's parallel with the tradition of the Tarpeian rock, p. 99 n. 2. [31] Notably at Raggal, Sonntag, Damüls, Luterns, and also in Lichtenstein.--Vonbun, pp. 107-8. [32] Infra, Chapter viii., p. 238. [33] Vonbun, pp. 92-3. [34] Some analogous cases quoted in Sagas from the Far East, pp. 365, 383-5. [35] Father! take me also with you. [36] Vonbun, pp. 115-7. [37] The story of its curious success against the Bavarians in 1703, p. 287-8. From Landeck there is a fine road (the description of which belongs to Snitt-Tirol), over the Finstermünz and Stelvio, to the baths of Bormio or Worms. [38] The chief encounter occurred at a place called Le Tezze, near Primolano, on the Venetian border, where the Tiroleans repulsed the Italians, in numbers tenfold greater than their own, and no further attempt was made. The anniversary is regularly observed by visiting the graves on August 14; mentioned below at Le Tezze. [39] Following are the names of the fourteen, but I have never met any one who could explain the selection. 1. S. Acatius, bishop in Asia Minor, saved from death in the persecutions under Decius, 250, by a miracle he performed in the judgment hall where he was tried, and in memory of which he carries a tree, or a branch of one, in pictures of him. 2. S. Ægidius (Giles, in German, Gilgen), Hermit, of Nimes, nourished in his cell by the milk of a hind, which, being hunted, led to the discovery of his sanctity, an episode constantly recurring in the legendary world. Another poetical legend concerning him is that a monk, having come to him to express a doubt as to the virginity of Our Lady, S. Giles, for all answer traced her name in the sand with his staff, and forthwith full-bloom lilies sprang up out of it. 3. S. Barbara. A maiden whom her heathen father shut up in a tower, that nothing might distract her attention from the life of study to which he devoted her; among the learned men who came to enjoy her elevated conversation came a Christian teacher, and converted her; in token of her belief in the doctrine of the Trinity she had three windows made in her tower, and by the token her father discovered her conversion, delivered her to judgment, and she suffered an incredible repetition of martyrdoms. She is generally painted with her three-windowed tower in her hand. 4. S. Blase, Bishop of Sebaste and Martyr, A.D. 288. He had studied medicine, and when concealed in the woods during time of persecution, the wild beasts used to bring the wounded of their number to his feet to be healed. Men hunting for Christians to drag to justice, found him surrounded by lions, tigers, and bears; even in prison he continued to exercise his healing powers, and from restoring to life a boy who had been suffocated by swallowing a fishbone, he is invoked as patron against sore throat. He too suffered numerous martyrdoms. 5. S. Christopher. 6. S. Cyriacus, Martyr, 309, concerning whom many legends are told of his having delivered two princesses from incurable maladies. 7. S. Dionysius, the Areopagite, converted by S. Paul, and consecrated by him Bishop of Athens, afterwards called to Rome by S. Peter, and made Bishop of Paris. 8. S. Erasmus, a bishop in Syria, after enduring many tortures there, he was thrown into prison, and delivered by an angel, who sent him to preach Christianity in Italy, he died at Gaeta 303. At Naples and other places he is honoured as S. Elmo. 9. S. Eustachius, originally called Placidus, a Roman officer, converted while hunting by meeting a stag which carried a refulgent cross between its horns; his subsequent reverses, his loss of wife and children, the wonderful meeting with them again, and the agency of animals throughout, make his one of the most romantic of legends. 10. S. George. 11. S. Catherine of Alexandria. 12. S. Margaret. 13. S. Pantaleone, another student of medicine; when, after many tortures, he was finally beheaded, the legend tells us that, in token of the purity of his life, milk flowed from his veins instead of blood, A.D. 380. 14. S. Vitus, a Sicilian, instructed by a slave, who was his nurse, in the Christian faith in his early years; his father's endeavours to root out his belief were unavailing, and he suffered A.D. 303, at not more than twelve years of age. The only link I can discover in this chain of saints is that they are all but one or two, whose alleged end I do not know, as S. Christopher, credited with having suffered a plurality of terrible martyrdoms. To each is of course ascribed the patronage over some special one of the various phases of human suffering. [40] P. 12. [41] Among these not the least remarkable were some specimens of the unbrimmed beaver hat, somewhat resembling the Grenadier's bear-skin, only shorter, which is worn by the women in various parts of Tirol and Styria. [42] The bell called in other countries the Elevation bell, is in Germany called the Wandlung, or change-of-the-elements bell. The idiom was worth preserving here, as it depicts more perfectly the solemnity of the moment indicated. [43] The threefold invocation, supposed to be supremely efficacious. [44] In Tirol the roofs are frequently made of narrow overlapping planks, weighed down by large stones. Hence the origin of the German proverb, 'If a stone fall from the roof, ten to one but it lights on a poor widow;'--equivalent to our 'Trouble never comes alone.' [45] 'May God reward it.' [46] The frontispiece to this volume (very much improved by the artist who has drawn it on the wood). [47] Of the Brixenthal and the Gebiet der grossen Ache we shall have to speak in a later chapter, in our excursion 'from Wörgl to Vienna.' [48] The comparative mythologist can perhaps tell us why this story crops up everywhere. I have had occasion to report it from Spain in Patrañas. Curious instances in Stöber Sagen des Elsasses. [49] S. Leonard is reckoned the patron of herds. See Pilger durch Tirol, p. 247. [50] Anna Maria Taigi, lately beatified in Rome, was also a maid-servant. [51] I have throughout the story reconciled, as well as I could, the various versions of every episode in which local tradition indulges. One favourite account of Ottilia's end, however, is so different from the one I have selected above, that I cannot forbear giving it also. It represents Ottilia rushing in despair from her bed and wallowing in the enclosure of the pigs, whence, with all Henry's care, she could not be withdrawn alive. All the strength of his retainers was powerless to restrain the beasts' fury, and she was devoured, without leaving a trace behind; only that now and then, on stormy nights, when the pigs are grunting over their evening meal, some memory of their strange repast seems to possess them, and the wail of Ottilia is heard resounding hopelessly through the valley. [52] Grimm has collected (Deutsche Sagen, Nos. 349 and 350) other versions of the tradition of oxen deciding the sites of shrines which, like the story of the steeple, meets us everywhere. A similar one concerning a camel is given in Stöber's Legends of Alsace. [53] It is perhaps to be reckoned among the tokens of Etruscan residence among the Rhætian Alps, for Mr. Isaac Taylor finds that the word belongs to their language. (Etruscan Researches, pp. 333, 380.) [54] 'Hulda was supposed to delight in the neighbourhood of lakes and streams; her glittering mansion was under the blue waters, and at the hour of mid-day she might be seen in the form of a beautiful woman bathing and then disappearing.'--Wolf, Deutsche Götterlehre. See also Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie, pp. 164-8. [55] One version of the legend says, the Frozen Wall was formed out of the quantities of butter the people had wasted. [56] This excursion was made on occasion of a different journey from that mentioned in Chapter i. Of course, if taken on the way from Kufstein to Innsbruck, you would take the Wildschönau before the Zillerthal. [57] Whoever comes into the Zillerthal is sure to visit it a second time. [58] In the Vintschgau (see infra) the leading cow has the title of Proglerin, from the dialectic word proglen, to carry one's head high. She wears also the most resounding bell. [59] 'Kaspar my name: from the East I came: I came thence with great speed: five thousand miles in fourteen days: Melchior, step in.' Zingerle gives a version of the whole set of rimes. [60] See Sitten Bräuche u. Meinungen des Tiroler Volks, p. 81. [61] Its origin may be traced further back than this, perhaps. The cat was held to be the sacred animal of Freia (Schrader, Germ. Myth.), and the word freien, to woo, to court, is derived from her name. (Nork.) [62] The merry mocking laugh was a distinguishing characteristic of Robin Goodfellow. 'Mr. Launcelot Mirehouse, Rector of Pestwood, Wilts, did aver to me, super verbum sacerdotis, that he did once heare such a lowd laugh on the other side of a hedge, and was sure that no human lungs could afford such a laugh.'--John Aubrey, in Thoms' Anecdotes and Traditions, Camb. Camden Society, 1839. [63] O woe! the plough like fire glows, And no one how to help me knows. [64] Released am I now, God be praised, And the bound-stone again rightly placed. [65] The haunting cobbler--a popular name for 'the wandering Jew'; in Switzerland they call him 'Der Umgehende Jud.' [66] (The souls of all unbaptized children.) Börner, Volkssagen, p. 133. [67] A precisely similar superstition is mentioned in Mrs. Whitcomb's recently published volume as existing in Devonshire. We shall meet Berchtl again in the neighbouring 'Gebiet der Grossen Ache' on our excursion from 'Wörgl to Vienna.' [68] Procula is the name given her in the Apocryphal Gospels. [69] 'It is now known that such tales are not the invention of individual writers, but that they are the last remnants--the detritus, if we may say so--of an ancient mythology; that some of the principal heroes bear the nicknames of old heathen gods; and that in spite of the powerful dilution produced by the admixture of Christian ideas, the old leaven of heathendom can still be discovered in many stories now innocently told by German nurses, of saints, apostles, and the Virgin Mary.'--Max Müller, Chips from a German Workshop. [70] Compare Cox's Mythology of the Aryan Nations, vol. ii. p. 364, and passim. [71] Max Müller. Review of Dasent's Works. [72] Max Müller. Comparative Mythology. [73] A tradition still held of the Berchtl in many parts of Tirol. [74] Nork. Mythologie der Volkssagen. [75] Abbé Banier. Mythology Explained from History. Vol. ii. Book 3, p. 564, note a. [76] Nork, Banier, &c. Cox's Mythology of the Aryan Nations, vol. i. pp. 317-8 and note, gives other connexions of the Legend; and at vol. ii. p. 306, and note to p. 365. [77] M. Müller. Review of Kelley's Indo-European Traditions. [78] Weber says the only accusation was grounded on a pasquinade against Claudia found among his papers, but that he should calumniate her seems inconsistent with his general character. Though his unsparing lampoons on his adversaries had excited them more than anything else against him. [79] Compare Gebhart, vol. ii. p. 240. [80] Near Innsbruck. [81] Staffler, Das Deutsche Tirol, vol. i. p. 751; and Thaler, Geschichte Tirols v. der Urzeit, p. 279. [82] Ball's Central Alps. [83] Pasture-ground lying at the base of a mountain. [84] Alpine herdsman. [85] Respecting the curious idea of the kalte Pein, consult Alpenburg, Mythen Tirols; Vernalken, Alpensagen; Beckstein, Thuringer Sagenbuch. See also Dr. Dasent's remarks about Hel in Popular Tales from the Norse; and Dante (notably Inferno, cantos vi. xxii. xxiv.) introduces cold among the pains of even the Christian idea of future punishment. [86] Here we have quite the Etruscan idea of providing against after-death needs with appliances connected with the mortal state. Dennis (Cities and Cemeteries of Etruria, vol. i. p. 34) mentions more material traces of Etruscan beliefs at Matrei, on the north side of the Brenner. Somewhat further south more important remains still have of late years been unearthed, as we shall have occasion to note by-and-by. The story in the text, in its depiction of self-devotion, has much analogy with a Chinese legend told to me by Dr. Samuel Birch, of the British Museum, concerning a man who sacrifices his own life in order to put himself on fighting terms with a cruel spirit which torments that of his dead companion. In its details it is like the story I have pointed out in Folklore of Rome (the 'Tale of the Pilgrim Husband,' pp. 361-3 and xvii), as the most devious from Christian teaching of any of the legends I have met with in Rome; and it is particularly noteworthy in connexion with Mr. Isaac Taylor's summary of the Etruscan creed (Etruscan Researches, p. 270). 'The Turanian creed was Animistic. The gods needed no gifts, but the wants of the ancestral spirits had to be supplied: the spirits of the departed were served in the ghost-world by the spirits of the utensils and ornaments which they had used in life.') And in effect we find in every collection of the contents preserved at the opening of Etruscan tombs, not only gems and jewellery and household utensils, but remains also of every kind of food. [87] There is something like this in Dean Milman's Annals of St. Paul's Cathedral:--'"Others," adds Bishop Braybroke, "by the instigation of the devil, do not scruple to play at ball, and other unseemly games, within the church (he is speaking of St. Paul's), breaking the costly painted windows, to the amazement of the spectators."' Speaking of the post-Reformation period, the Dean adds: 'If, when the cathedral was more or less occupied by sacred subjects, the invasion of the sanctuary by worldly sinners resisted all attempts at suppression; now, that the daily service had shrunk into mere forms of prayer, at best into a mere 'Cathedral Service,' ... it cannot be wondered at that the reverence, which all the splendour of the old ritual could not maintain, died away altogether as Puritanism rose in the ascendant.' Mr. Longman, however (The Three Cathedrals, p. 54-6), quotes the very stringent regulations which were issued for the repression of such practices: perhaps the legend constructor would say, these afford the reason why, though St. Paul's was profaned like the church of Achensee, it did not 'likewise perish.' [88] Nork (Mythologie der Volksagen, vol. ix. p. 83) gives other significations to horse-shoes found in the walls of old churches, but does not mention this instance. Concerning the origin of the superstition about vampires, see Cox's Mythology of the Aryan Nations, vol. i. p. 363; also p. 63 and p. 429. [89] Gebhart. [90] 'Probably early in the ninth century.'--Scherer. [91] Burglechner. Pilger durch Tirol. Panzer. Mülhenhof. [92] Lit. a 'cattle-breeding-farm.' [93] It follows that (when mountain scenery is not the special object with the tourist) it is better to visit Viecht when staying at Schwatz (Chapters vi. and vii.) than from Jenbach, at least it is a much less toilsome ascent on this side from Viecht to S. Georgenberg, the most interesting point of the pilgrimage. At S. Georgenberg there is a good mountain inn. [94] In his reign, 1440-90, it was that the silver-mines of Tirol were discovered; and the abundant influx, to the extent of 500 cwt. annually, of the precious metal into his treasury, led him to treat its stores as exhaustless; though the richest monarch of his time, his easy open-handed disposition continually led him into debt, and made his subjects finally induce him in his old age to resign in favour of his cousin, the Emperor Maximilian I. It is a token of the simplicity of the times, that one of the gravest reproaches against him was that he indulged in the luxury of silk stockings! He married Eleanor, daughter of James II. of Scotland. [95] See infra in the Stubayerthal. [96] In battle impetuous, yet merciful; in time of peace tranquil, and faithful to his country's laws; whether as a warrior, a subject, or an individual, worthy of honour as of love. [97] Steward of the salt-mines. [98] Johanniswürmchen, fire-flies. [99] Peasants' war. [100] Burglechner. [101] Colin de Plancy, Légendes des sept pechés capitaux, Appendice; and Nork, Mythologie der Volkssagen, point out that the dragon, sacred to Wodin, was placed on houses, town gates, and belfries, as a talisman against evil influences. See also some remarks on the two-fold character of dragons in mythology in Cox's Mythology of the Aryan Nations, i. 428. [102] Compare Leoprechting, Aus dem Lechrain, page 78. Müllenhof Sagen der Herzogthümer Schleswig Holstein u. Lauenburg, page 237. [103] Mother of mercy. [104] A touching story has been made out of his history in Alpen Blumen Tirols. [105] This was designed so as to coincide with the time when the faithful throughout the world were saying the De Profundis. [106] A similar fact for the comparative mythologist is recorded p. 123-4, in the case of the Bienerweible. While these sheets were preparing for the press, a singular one nearer home was brought under my notice. A little girl being asked at a national school examination, 'What David was before he was made king?' answered, 'Jack the Giant-killer.' This is a noteworthy instance of the hold of myths on the popular mind; it did not proceed from defective instruction, for the school is one of the very first in its reports, and the child not at all backward. [107] Concerning der feurige Mann, and the mark of his burning hand, see Stöber Sagen des Elsasses, p. 222-3. [108] At page 145. [109] 'Feigen-Kaffee,' made of figs roasted and ground to powder, is sold throughout Austria. [110] Aubrey de Vere's Greece and Turkey. [111] Burglechner. A.D. 1409. [112] Mineral wealth--lit. Mountain-blessing. [113] I was told there that it had been reckoned that 500,000 cigars are smoked per diem in Tirol. [114] The date of death on the tombstone of Lukas Hirtzfogel, whom tradition calls the architect of this church, is 1475. [115] Brush for sprinkling holy-water. [116] See note to p. 140. [117] See p. 95. [118] See note to p. 48. [119] 'The most precious good,' or 'possession;' a Tirolean expression for the Blessed Sacrament. [120] George of Freundsberg; a man of great strength; a worthy hero; master of the field in combat and war; in every battle the enemy fell before him. The honour and power he ascribed to God. [121] Maundy Thursday. [122] Stöber Sagen des Elsasses records a legend of a similar judgment befalling a man who, in fury at a long drought, shot off three arrows against heaven. [123] Leichtsinnig. [124] God prosper and bless you! [125] Supra, pp. 80-2. [126] Rout of the Bavarians. [127] See pp. 151-2. [128] Grimm (Deutsche Sagen, No. 492) gives an interesting legend of the Hasslacherbrunnlein (half way between Kolsass and Wattens) and of the resistance offered by the inhabitants of Tirol to the Roman invasion of their country. [129] The suppression of this and several other convents, in 1783, was a measure sufficiently unpopular to almost neutralize the popularity Joseph II. enjoyed as son of Maria Theresa. The suppression was not, however, accompanied by spoliation; the funds were devoted to provide a moderate stipend to a number of women of reduced circumstances belonging to noble families. [130] Stone of Obedience. [131] I have met with another sprout of this banyan at the Monastery of the Sacro Speco in the Papal State, where a huge fragment of rock, so nicely balanced that it looks as if a breath might send it over the cliff, is pointed out as having stood still for centuries at the word of S. Benedict, who bid it 'non dannegiare i sudditi miei.' [132] Wolf, Beiträge zur deutschen Mythologie, vol. ii. pp. 17-21. Müller, Niedersächsische Sagen, p. 51. Müllenhoff, Sagen der Herzogthümer Schleswig-Holstein u. Lanenburg, p. 184. [133] So strong is the prejudice in Tirol against Jews, that it is said to be most difficult to find any one who will consent to act the part of Judas in the Passion plays. There is a very strong personal dislike to Judas throughout Tirol, and I have also heard that the custom of burning him in effigy occurs in various places. Karl Blind, in the article quoted above, (p. 3,) accounts for this custom in the following way: 'After the appearance of fermenting matter it was said' (in what he calls the germanic mythology) 'that there rose in course of time--even as in Greek mythology--first a half-human, half-divine race of giants, and then a race of Gods; the Gods had to wage war against the giants and finally vanquished them. Evidently the giants represent a torpid barren state of things in nature, whilst the Gods signify the sap and fulness of life which struggles into distinct and beautiful form. There was a custom among the Germanic tribes of celebrating this victory over the uncouth Titans by a festival, when a gigantic doll was carried round in Guy Fawkes manner and at last burnt. To this day there are traces of the heathen practice. In some parts of Europe, so-called Judas-fires, which have their origin in the burning of the doll which represented the giants or jötun. In some places, owing to another perversion of things and words, people run about on that fête-day shouting 'burn the old Jew!' The jötun was in fact, when Christianity came in, first converted into Judas and then into a Jew, a transition to which the similarity of the sound of the words easily lent itself.' No doubt jötun sounds very like Juden but not all coincidences are consequences, and it is quite possible that the old heathen custom had quite died out before that of burning Judas in effigy began, as it certainly had before Guy Fawkes began to be so treated. The same treatment of Judas' memory occurs, too, in Spain on the day before Good Friday. [134] S. Simeon of Trent is commemorated in the Roman Breviary (on the 25th March). S. Andreas of Rinn has not received this honour. [135] Keller, in his Volkslieder, p. 242, gives an analogous legend of a poor idiot boy, who lived alone in the forest and was never heard to say any words but 'Ave Maria.' After his death a lily sprang up on his grave, on whose petals 'Ave Maria' might be distinctly read. It is a not unusual form of legend; Bagatta, Admiranda orbis Christiani, gives fifteen such. [136] The ballad concerning the analogous English Legend of Hugh of Lincoln seems to demand to be remembered here:-- HUGH OF LINCOLN (SHOWING THE CRUELTY OF A JEW'S DAUGHTER). A' the boys of merry Lincoln, Were playing at the ba', And up it stands him, sweet Sir Hugh, The flower among them a'. He kicked the ba' there wi' his feet, And keppit it wi' his knee, Till even in at the Jew's window, He gart the bonny ba' flee. 'Cast out the ba' to me, fair maid, Cast out the ba' to me;' 'Never a bit,' says the Jew's daughter, 'Till ye come up to me.' 'Come up, sweet Hugh! come up, dear Hugh! Come up and get the ba';' 'I winna come, I minna come, Without my bonny boys a'.' She's ta'en her to the Jew's garden, Where the grass grew long and green; She's pu'd an apple red and white, To wyle the bonny boy in. When bells were rung and mass was sung, And every bairn went home; Then ilka lady had her young son, But Lady Helen had none. She row'd her mantle her about, And sair, sair, 'gan to weep: And she ran into the Jew's house When they were all asleep. 'The lead is wondrous heavy, mither, The well is wondrous deep; A keen penknife sticks in my heart, 'Tis hard for me to speak.' 'Gae hame, gae hame, my mither dear, Fetch me my winding-sheet; And at the back of merry Lincoln, 'Tis there we twa shall meet.' Now Lady Helen she's gane hame, Made him a winding-sheet; And at the back o' merry Lincoln, The dead corpse did her meet. And a' the bells o' merry Lincoln Without men's hands were rung; And a' the books o' merry Lincoln, Were read without men's tongue; Never was such a burial Since Adam's days begun. [137] There is a carriage-road reaching nearly to the top of the Lanserkopf. [138] The best shops are in the Franziskanergruben. [139] Grimm, Deutsche Sagen, No. 139. [140] Under four pillars. [141] See p. 69. [142] Of the earlier history of Tirol we shall have to speak when we come to Schloss Tirol and Greifenstein. [143] Consult Zoller, Geschichte der Stadt Innsbruck; and Staffler, das Deutsche Tirol. [144] See p. 146. [145] For the convenience of the visitor to Innsbruck, but not to interrupt the text, I subjoin here a list of the subjects. (1.) The marriage of Maximilian (then aged eighteen) with Mary of Burgundy at Ghent. (2.) His victory over the French at Guinegate, when he was twenty. (3.) The taking of Arras thirteen years later; not only are the fighting folk and the fortifications in this worthy of special praise, but there is a bit of by-play, the careful finish of which must not be overlooked; and the figure of one woman in particular, who is bringing provisions to the camp, is a masterpiece in itself. (4.) Maximilian is crowned King of the Romans. The scene is the interior of the Cathedral of Aix-la-Chapelle: the Prince is seated on a sort of throne before the altar; the Electors are busied with their hereditary part in the ceremony; the dresses of the courtiers in the crowd, and the ladies high above in their tribune, are a perfect record for the costumier, so minute are they in faithfulness. (5.) The battle of Castel della Pietra, or Stein am Calliano, the landscape background of which is excellent; the Tirolese are seen driving the Venetians with great fury before them over the Etsch (Adige). (6.) Maximilian's entry into Vienna (1490), in course of the contest for the crown of Hungary after the death of Matthias Corvinus; the figure of Maximilian on his prancing horse is drawn with great spirit. (7.) The siege of Stuhlweissenburg, taken by Maximilian the same year; the horses in this tableau deserve particular notice. (8.) The eighth represents an episode which it must have required some courage to record among the acts of so glorious a reign; it shows Maximilian receiving back his daughter Margaret, when, in 1493, Charles VIII. preferred Anne of Brittany to her. The French envoys hand to the Emperor two keys, symbols of the suzerainty of Burgundy and Artois, the price of the double affront of sending back his daughter and depriving him of his bride, for Anne had been betrothed to him. [Margaret, though endowed with the high qualities of her race, was not destined to be fortunate in her married life: her hand was next sought by Ferdinand V. of Spain for his son Don Juan, who died very shortly after the marriage. She was again married, in 1508, to Philibert Duke of Savoy, who died without children three years later. As Governor of the Netherlands, however, her prudent administration made her very popular.] (9.) Maximilian's campaign against the Turks in Croatia. (10.) The League of Maximilian with Alexander VI., the Doge of Venice, and the Duke of Milan, against Charles VIII. of France; the four potentates stand in a palatial hall joining hands, and the French are seen in the background fleeing in dismay. (11.) The investiture at Worms of Ludovico Sforza with the Duchy of Milan. The portraits of Maximilian are well preserved on each occasion that he is introduced, but in none better than in this one: Maria Bianca is seen seated to the left of the throne, Sforza kneels before them; on the waving standard, which is the token of investiture, the ducal arms are plainly discernible. (12.) The marriage at Brussels, in 1496, of Philip der Schöne, Maximilian's son, with Juana of Spain; the Archbishop of Cambrai is officiating, Maximilian stands on the right side of his son: Charles Quint was born of this marriage. (13.) A victorious campaign in Bohemia in 1504. The 14th represents the episodes of the siege of Kufstein, recorded in the second chapter of these Traditions (1504). (15.) The submission of Charles d'Egmont to Maximilian, 1505. The Kaiser sits his horse majestically; the Duke of Gueldres stands with head uncovered; the battered battlements of the city are seen behind them. (16.) The League of Cambrai, 1508. The scene is a handsome tent in the camp near Cambray; Maximilian, Julius II., Charles VIII., and Ferdinand V., are supposed to meet, to unite in league against Venice. (17.) The Siege of Padua, 1509, the first result of this League; the view of Padua in the distance must have required the artist to have visited the place. (18.) The expulsion of the French from Milan, and reinstatement of Ludovico Sforza, 1512. (19.) The second battle of Guinegate: Maximilian fights on horseback; Henry VIII. leads the allied infantry, 1515. (20.) The conjunction of the Imperial and English forces before Terouenne: Maximilian and Henry are both on foot, 1513. (21.) The battle of Vicenza, 1513. (22.) The Siege of Marano, on the Venetian coast. The 23rd represents a noble hall at Vienna, such details as the pictures on the walls not being omitted: Maximilian is treating with Uladisaus, King of Hungary, for the double marriage of their offspring--Anna and Ludwig, children of the latter, with Ferdinand and Maria, grandchildren of the former--an alliance which had its consequence in the subsequent incorporation of Hungary with the Empire. (24.) The defence of Verona by the Imperial forces against the French and Venetians. [146] Called by the French Philippe 'le Beau,' in distinction from their own 'Philippe le Bel.' [147] This monument earned Ferdinand the title of the Lorenzo de' Medici of Tirol. [148] St. Anthony being the patron invoked against accidents by fire; also against erisypelas, which in some parts of England even is called 'St. Anthony's fire.' [149] Weber, Das Land Tirol, vol. i. p. 218. [150] Zoller Geschickte der Stadt Innsbruck, p. 272; and Weiesegger, vol. vi. p. 61. [151] I have met the same hyperbole in a piece of homely Spanish poetry. [152] 'Now he knows how the just monarch is beloved of Heaven; his beaming countenance yet testifies his joy.' [153] Nork, Mythologie der Volkssagen, p. 419. [154] Exactly the story of the fisherman and the Genius in the copper vessel of the Arabian Nights. It is found also in Grimm's story of the Spirit in the bottle, in the Norse tale of the Master Smith; in that of the Lad and the Devil (Dasent); and in the Gaelic tale of the Soldier (Campbell). [155] Von Alpenburg, Mythen u. Sagen Tirols. [156] See pp. 194, 270, 324-5. [157] They accepted their position with the usual Tirolese loyalty, and never attempted to found any claims to power on the circumstance of their birth. [158] Holy Trinity Church. [159] Patron saints against pestilence: viz. SS. Martha (because according to her legend she built a hospital and ended her life tending the sick), Sebastian (because a plague was stayed in Rome at his intercession), and Rocchus (because of the well-known legend of his self-devotion to the plague-stricken). [160] Mentioned in the chapter on Vorarlberg, p. 23. [161] Thirteen volumes were filled with the narrations of such 'answers' received between 1662 and 1665. [162] Picture of Mary 'Help of Christians'--Auxilium Christianorum. [163] Inglis says that Schor was the architect of this church, and that he had assisted in building the Vatican. [164] It is painted on panel, thirty inches by twenty-one; the figure of our Lady is three quarter-length, but appears to be sitting, as the foot of the Divine Infant seems to rest upon her knee. The tradition concerning it is, that it represents an episode of the Flight into Egypt, when, as the Holy Family rested under a palm-grove, they were overtaken by a band of robbers, headed by S. Demas, the (subsequently) penitent thief. The Holy Child is indeed represented clinging to His Mother--not as in fear, or even as if need were to suggest courage to her, but simply as if an attack sustained in common impelled a closer union of affection. [165] See pp. 123-4. [166] She was on her way to Rome, where she spent the rest of her life. Alexander VII. commissioned Bernini to rebuild the Porta del Popolo, and adorned it with its inscription, Felici, faustoque ingressui, in honour of her entry. [167] See p. 280. [168] Kreidenfeuer--alarm fires, from Krei, a cry. [169] A leading spiritualist, who has also a prominent position in the literary world, tells the story that one day he had missed his footing in going downstairs, and was within an ace of making as fatal a fall as Professor Phillips, when he distinctly felt himself seized, supported, and saved by an invisible hand. The analogy between the two convictions is curious. [170] Consult Cesare Cantù Storia Universale, § xvii. cap. 21. [171] Since writing the above, I have been assured by one who has frequently conversed with her, that the concealment of her name arose from her own modesty; it was Katharina Lanz. To avoid public notice, she went to live at a distance, and up to the time of her death in 1854, bore an exemplary character, living as housekeeper to the priest serving the mountain church of S. Vigilius, near Rost, the highest inhabited point of the Enneberg. When induced to speak of her exploits, she always made a point of observing that, though she brandished her hay-fork, she neither actually killed or wounded anyone. She had heard that the French soldiers were nothing loth to desecrate sacred places, and she stationed herself in the church porch determined to prevent their entrance; the churchyard had become the citadel of the villagers. From her post of observation she saw with dismay that her people were giving way. It was then she rushed out and rallied them; in her impetuosity she was very near running her hay-fork through a French soldier, but she was saved from the deed by her landlord, who, encouraged by her ardour, struck him down, pushing her aside. The success of her sally and her subsequent disappearance cast a halo of mystery round her story, and many were inclined to believe the whole affair was a heavenly apparition. [172] Celebration of the Resurrection. [173] Spare your bread for the poor, and escape the fate of Frau Hütt. See some legends forming a curious link between this, and that of Ottilia Milser in Stöber Sagen des Elsasses, pp. 257-8. [174] The dog's church or chapel. [175] His well-known daring, emulating that of the chamois and the eagle, was of no avail now; for straight under him sinks the Martin's Wall, the steepest cliff of the whole country-side. He gazes down through that grave of clouds. He gazes abroad over that cloud-ocean. He glances around, and his gaze recoils. With only the thunder-roll of the people's voices beneath, there stands the Kaiser's Majesty. But not raised aloft to receive his people's homage. A son of sorrow, on a throne of air, the great Maximilian all at once finds himself isolated, horror-stricken, and small. [176] 'With him,' says a Hungarian ballad, 'Righteousness went down into the grave: and the Sun of Pest-Ofen sank towards its setting.' [177] Primisser, who took great pains to collect all the various traditions of this event, mentions a favourite huntsman of the Emperor, named Oswald Zips, whom he ennobled as Hallaurer v. Hohenfelsen. This may have been the actual deliverer, or may have been supposed to be such, from the circumstance of the title being Hohenfelsen, or Highcliff; and that a patent of nobility was bestowed on a huntsman would imply that he had rendered some singular service: the family, however, soon died out. [178] See chapter on Schwatz. [179] To the Editor of the 'Monthly Packet.' Sir,--I think it possible that R. H. B. (to whom we owe the very interesting Traditions of Tirol), and perhaps others of your readers, may care to hear some of the particulars, as they are treasured by his family, of the defence of Scharnitz by Baron Swinburne. R. H. B. speaks of it in your number of last month. That defence was so gallant as to call forth the respect and admiration even of his enemies, and Baron Swinburne was given permission to name his own terms of surrender. He requested for himself, and those under him, that they might be allowed to retain their swords. This was granted, and the prisoners were sent to Aix-la-Chapelle, where everyone was asking in astonishment who were 'les prisonniers avec l'épée a côté.' The Eagles of Austria, that had been so nobly defended by the Englishman and his little band, never fell into the hands of the French. One of the Tirolese escaped, with the colours wrapped round his body under his clothes, and though he was hunted among the mountains for months, he was never taken; and some years after he came to his commander in Vienna and gave him the colours he had so bravely defended. They are now in possession of Baron Edward Swinburne, the son of the defender of Scharnitz, who himself won, before he was eighteen, the Order of 'the Iron Crown,' by an act that well deserves to be called 'a golden deed;' and ere he was twenty he had led his first and last forlorn hope, when he received so severe a wound as to cost him his leg, which has incapacitated him for further service. His father received the highest military decoration of Austria, that of 'Maria Teresa;' he fought at Austerlitz and Wagram; on the latter occasion he was severely wounded. Later in life, he was for many years Governor of Milan. Hoping that a short record of true and faithful services performed by Englishmen for their adopted country, may prove of some interest to your readers, and with many thanks to R. H. B. for what has been of so much interest to us, I am, Sir, yours faithfully, September, 1870. A. Swinburne. [180] Häusergruppe. [181] Such offerings are met with in other parts of Tirol; in one place we shall find a candle offered of equal weight to an infant's body. They present a striking analogy with the Sanskrit tulâdâna or weight-gift; the practice of offering to a temple or Buddhist college a gift of silver or even gold of the weight of the offerer's body appears not to have been infrequent and tolerably ancient. Lassen (Indische Alterthumskünde, vol. iii. p. 810) mentions an instance of the revival of the custom by a king named Shrikandradeva, who offered the weight of his own body in gold to the temple at Benares (circa 1025); and (vol. iv. p. 373) another in which Aloungtsethu, King of Birmah, in 1101, made a similar offering in silver to a temple which he built at Buddhagayâ. He refers also to earlier instances 'in H. Burney's note 19 in As. Res. vol. xx. p. 177, and one by Fell in As. Res. vol. xv. p. 474.' [182] I have occasion to give one of the most remarkable legends of the Oetzthal in the chapter on Wälsch-Tirol. [183] See a somewhat similar version in Nork's Mythologie der Volksagen, pp. 895-7. [184] Circle. [185] The sunnier and less thoughtful tone of mind in which the Italian particularly differs from the German character, is often to be traced in their legendary stories. Those of the Germans are nearly always made to convey some moral lesson; this is as often wanting in those of the Italians, who seem satisfied with making them means of amusement, without caring that they should be a medium of instruction. [186] The Passion Plays of the Brixenthal, however, are reckoned the best. The performers gather and rehearse in the spring, and go round from village to village through the summer months, only, as amphitheatres are improvised in the open. [187] It may be worth mentioning, as an instance of how the contagion of popular customs is transmitted, that on enquiring into some very curious grotesque ceremonies performed in Trent at the close of the carneval, and called its 'burial,' I learnt that it did not appear to be a Tirolean custom, but had been introduced by the soldiers of the garrison who, for a long time past, had been taken from the Slave provinces of the Austrian Empire, and thus a Slave popular custom has been grafted on to Tirol. Wälsch-Tirol, however, has its own customs for closing the carneval, too. In some places it is burnt in effigy; in some, dismissed with the following dancing-song (Schnodahüpfl) greeting, Evviva carneval! Chelige manca ancor el sal; El carneval che vien Lo salerem più ben! [188] A centenary celebration of the Council was held at Trent in 1863, at which the late lamented Cardinal von Reisach presided as legate a latere. [189] This chapel has lately been restored by Loth of Munich. [190] A variant of this tradition takes the more usual form of applying it to the architect of the edifice, as with the Kremlin. As Stöber gives it from Strasburg, it was there the maker of the great clock. [191] Laste is dialectic for a smooth, steep, almost inaccessible chalk cliff. [192] Hence Kaiser Max was wont to call Tirol 'the heart' and 'the shield' of his empire. [193] St. Ingenuin was Bishop of Säben or Seben, A.D. 585. The See, founded by St. Cassian, had been long vacant, and great errors and abuses had taken root among the people, who in some places had relapsed towards heathen customs. His success in reforming the manners of his flock was most extraordinary. He built a cathedral at Seben, where he is honoured on February 5, the anniversary of his death. St. Albuin, one of his successors, was a scion of one of the noblest families of Tirol; he removed the See to Brixen, A.D. 1004. [194] This is a local application of the widespread myth of the tailor, who kills 'seven at one blow,' identified by Vonbun (p. 71-2) with the Sage of Siegfried. Prof. Zarncke has also written a great deal to show Tirol's place in the Nibelungenlied. [195] Anciently Anaunium, and still by local scholars called Annaunia, a possession of the Nonia family, not unknown to Roman history. [196] The white mulberry, whose leaves feed the silkworm, rearing which forms one great industry of Wälsch-Tirol, is called the Seidenbaum, the silk tree. [197] Stammort, Cradle of his race. [198] See Un processo di Stregheria in Val Camonica, by Gabriele Rosa, pp. 85, 92; and Il vero nelle scienze occulte, by the same author, p. 43; and Tartarotti Congresso delle Lammie. lib. ii. § iv. It is one of the only four such spots anywhere existing where Italian is spoken. [199] A mithraic sacrifice with several figures, sculptured in bas-relief, in white Carrara marble, in very perfect preservation, bearing the inscription: ILDA MARIVS L. P. has just been found at this very spot. [200] See pp. 164-6. [201] Too many such remnants, which the plough and the builder's pick are continually unearthing, have been thus dispersed. It has been the favourite work of Monsignor Zanelli, of Trent, to stir up the local authorities to take account of such things, and so form a museum with them in Trent. [202] Padre Tarquini--one of the rare instances of a Jesuit being made a Cardinal--died, it may be remembered, in February last, only about two months after his elevation. He had devoted much time to the study of Etruscan antiquities; he published The Mysteries of the Etruscan Language Unveiled in 1857, and later a Grammar of the language of the Etruscans. [203] '(1.) Or it might be 'ad introductionem viri.' (2.) 'Vulcano' here (precisely as in another Etruscan inscription found a few years before at Cembra, and translated by Professor Giovanelli) for 'ignis.' (3.) An allusion to the custom of first piercing (sforacchiare) the bodies of persons to be burnt in sacrifice, which appears from the inscription found at S. Manno, near Perugia, and again from the appearance of the figures of human victims represented in the Tomba Vulcente. (4.) The deity of the place to which the key belonged, probably, therefore, Saturn.' [204] A Tag-mahd, or 'day's mowing,' is a regular land measure in North Tirol. [205] There is no record of her summit ever having been attained before the successful ascent of Herr Grohmann, in 1864. Mr. Tucker, an Englishman, accomplished it the next year. [206] I have given some of the most curious of these in a collection of Household Stories from the Land of Hofer. [207] There is no tradition more universally spread over Tirol than that which tells of judgments falling on non-observers of days of rest. They are, however, by no means confined to Tirol. Ludovic Lalanne, Curiosités des Traditions, vol. iv. p. 136, says that the instances he had collected showed it was treated as a fault most grievous to heaven. 'Matthieu Paris, à l'année 1200, raconte qu'une pauvre blanchisseuse ayant osé travailler un jour de fête fut punie d' une étrange façon; un cochon de lait tout noir s'attacha à sa mamelle gauche.' He relates one or two other curious instances--one of a young girl who, having insisted on working on a holiday, somehow got the knot of her thread twisted into her tongue, and every attempt to remove it gave intolerable pain. Ultimately she was healed by praying at the Lady-altar at Noyon, and here the knot of thread was long shown in the sacristy. I well remember the English counterpart in my own nursery. There were, indeed, two somewhat analogous stories; and I often wondered, without exactly daring to ask, why there was so much difference in the tone in which they were told, for the one seemed to me as good as the other. The first, which used to be treated as an utter imposture, was that a woman and her son surreptitiously obtained a consecrated wafer for purposes of incantation (we have had a Tirolean counterpart of this at Sistrans, supra pp. 221-2), and in pursuit of their weird operation had pierced it, when there flowed thereout such a prodigious stream of blood that the whole place was inundated, and all the people drowned. The second, which was told with something of seriousness in it, ('and they say, mind you, that actually happened,') was of a young lady who, having persisted in working on Sunday in spite of all her nurse's injunctions, pricked her finger. No one could stop the bleeding that ensued, and she bled to death for a judgment; and whether it was true or not, there was a monument to her in Westminster Abbey. Dean Stanley, who seems to have missed nothing that could possibly be said about the Abbey, finds place, I see, to notice even this tradition (pp. 219-20 and note), and identifies it with the monument of Elizabeth Russell (born 1575) in St. Edmund's Chapel. Madame Parkes-Belloc tells me she has often seen a wax figure of a lady (in the costume of two centuries later than Elizabeth Russell) under a glass case in Gosfield Hall, Essex (formerly a seat of the Buckingham family), of which a similar tradition is told. [208] It is significant of a symbolical intention that the story should thus allude to the Valle del Orco; the more so as I cannot hear of any such actual locality in Val Sugana, though 'Orco' has lent his name to more than one spot, as we shall see later. There is, however, a Val d'Inferno between this valley and Predazzo. [209] Settepergole--Seven Pergolas--the name of several farms in Wälsch-Tirol. Pergola is the name for a vine trellised to form an arbour, all over Italy. [210] This effect has often been noticed here by travellers. [211] Two bronze statuettes of Apollo were found here in June 1869. [212] Very like and very unlike the legend of S. Giuliano I met in Rome (Folklore of Rome), where he was supposed to be a native of Albano, and to have passed his penitential time at Compostella. G. Schott, Wallächische Märchen, pp. 281 and 375, gives a similar legend applied to Elias in place of St. Julian. [213] Folklore of Rome, p. 320. [214] I need not repeat the characteristics of the Tirolean Norg, which I have given in the translation of the 'Rose-garden' in Household Stories from the Land of Hofer. [215] Thorp's Northern Mythology, vol. ii. pp. 20-2. [216] Though of course mere similarity of sound may lead one absurdly astray; as if any one were to say that the old fables of rubbing a ring to produce the 'Slave of the ring' was the origin of the modern substitute of ringing to summon a servant! [217] Again, Mr. Cox (Mythology of the Aryan Nations, vol. ii. p. 221 et seq.) says, 'the Maruts or storm winds who attend on Indra ... became the fearful Ogres in the traditions of Northern Europe ... they are the children of Rudra, worshipped as the destroyer and reproducer and ... like Hermes, as the robber, the cheat, the deceiver, the master thief.' [218] Etruscan Researches, p. 376 and note. [219] Stöber, Sagen des Elsasses, p. 30. [220] Cities of Etruria, vol. ii. p. 65-8. [221] Selvan, at all events, is a word which, Mr. Isaac Taylor observes, is of frequent occurrence in Etruscan inscriptions (Et. Res. pp. 394-5), and its signification has not yet been fixed. And may not Gannes have some relation with Kan or Khan (p. 322)? [222] It is very disappointing that he has translated the great bulk of his vast collection of fiabe ('fiaba' in North Italian answers to the 'favola' of Rome) so utterly into German that, though we find all our old friends among them, all the distinctive expressions are translated away, and they are rendered valueless for all but mere childish amusement. Thus it is interesting to find in Wälsch-Tirol a diabolical counterpart of the Roman story of 'Pret' Olivo,' but it would have rendered it infinitely more interesting had the collector told us what was the word which he translates by 'Teufel,' for it is the rarest thing in the world for an Italian to bring the personified 'Diavolo' or 'Demonio' into any light story. In the same way it is interesting to find all the other tales with which we are familiar turn up here, but the real use of printing them at length would have been to point out their characteristics. What was the Italian used for the words rendered in the German by 'Witch?' Was it 'Gannes' or 'strega?' or for 'Giant' and 'Wild man:' was it 'l'om salvadegh' or 'salvan' or 'orco?' I cannot think it was 'gigante.' But all is left to conjecture. Among the few bits of Italian he does give are two or three 'tags' to stories, among them the one I met so continually in Rome 'Larga la foglia'--(it was still 'foglia' and not 'voglia') word for word. [223] Dr. Steub, in his Herbsttagen in Tirol, shows that the Beatrick may be identified with Dietrich von Bern. [224] Though nothing would seem simpler than to suppose the word derived from the Euganean inhabitants who left their name to Val Sugana. [225] It is curious to observe the story pass through all the stages of the supernatural agency traditional in the locality; first the good genius of the Etruscans merging next into the Germanic woodsprite, then assuming the vulgar characteristics of later imaginings about witchcraft, and then the Christian teaching 'making use of it,' as Professor de Gubernatis says, 'for its own moral end.' [226] A collection of the 'Costumi' of Tuscany I have, without a title-page, but I think published about 1835, laments the growing disuse in Lunigiana (i.e. the country round the Gulf of Spezia, so called from Luna, an Etruscan city, but 'not one of the twelve,' and including Carrara, Lucca, and Pisa) of the practice of recounting popular traditions at the Focarelli there. These seem to be autumn evening gatherings round a fire, but in the open air, often on a threshing-floor; while the able-bodied population is engaged in the preparation of flax, and some are spinning, the boys and girls dance, wrestle, and play games, and the old crones gossip; but now, says the writer, they begin to occupy themselves only with scandalous and idle reports, instead of old-world lore. [227] My readers will perhaps not recognize at first sight that this is a corruption of Frau Bertha, the Perchtl whom we met in North Tirol. In the Italian dialects of the Trentino she is also called la brava Berta and la donna Berta. [228] 'Your servant! Mistress Bertha of the long nose.' Such was supposed to be the correct form of addressing the sprite. [229] Many of these concern the earthly wanderings of Christ and his apostles. I have given one of the most sprightly and characteristic of Schneller's, too long to be inserted here, in The Month for September, 1870, entitled 'The Lettuce-leaf Barque.' [230] Gathered for the above-named collection by Herr Zacchea of the Fassathal, in the Val di Non, Lederthal, and Val Arsa. [231] I have mentioned the only other wolf-stories that I have met with in the chapter on Excursions round Meran; and at p. 31 of this volume. [232] Cox's Aryan Mythology, vol. i. p. 405. [233] I have thought this one of the best specimen tales, as the two stories of the Three Wishes and the Three Faithful Beasts are leading ones in every popular mythology. I have named a good many variants in connexion with their counterparts in the Folklore of Rome, and a more extensive survey of them, together with a most interesting analysis of their probable origin, will be found in Cox's Mythology of Aryan Nations, vol. i. pp. 144 and 375. I had thought that these, being strung together in the text version, was owing to a freak of memory of some narrator who, having forgotten the original conclusion of the former story, takes the latter one into it; but, curiously enough, in the note to the last-named page of Mr. Cox's work, he happens actually to establish an intrinsic identity of origin in the two stories. The Three Wishes story has also a strangely localized home in the Oetzthal, which, though properly belonging to the division of North Tirol, I prefer to cite here, for the sake of its analogies. Its particular home is in the so-called Thal Vent, on the frozen borders of the Gletscher described by Weber, as appalling to a degree in its loneliness, and in the roaring of its torrents, and the stern rugged inaccessibility of its peaks. Here, he says, three Selige Fräulein (Weber, like Schneller, translates everything inexorably into German; this may have been an Enguana) have their abode in a sumptuous subterranean palace, which no mortal might reach. They are also called die drei Feyen, he says, forming a further identification with the normal legend, but he does not account for the penetration of the French word into this unfrequented locality. They were kind and ancillary to the poor mountain folk, but the dire enemies of the huntsman, for he hunted as game the creatures who were their domestic animals (here we have the nucleus of a heap of various tales and legends of the pet creatures of fairies and hermits becoming the intermediaries of supernatural communication). The Thal Vent legend proceeds that a young shepherd once won the regard of the drei Feyen; they fulfilled all his wishes, and gave him constant access to their palace under the sole condition that he should never reveal its locality to any huntsman. After some years the youth one day incautiously let out the secret to his father, and from thenceforth the drei Feyen were inexorable in excluding him from their society. He pleaded and pleaded all in vain, and ultimately made himself a huntsman in desperation. But the first time he took aim at one of their chamois, the most beautiful of the three fairies appeared to him in so brilliant a light of glory, that he lost all consciousness of his actual situation and fell headlong down the precipice. [234] They are called 'Lustige Geschichte,' 'Storielle da rider.' The Germans have a saying that 'in jeder Sage haftet eine Sache;' the 'Sache' is perhaps more hidden in these than in others. I have pointed out counterparts of the following at Rome and elsewhere in Folklore of Rome. [235] Capitello, in Wälsch-Tirol, is the same as Bildstöcklein in the German provinces--a sacred image in a little shrine. [236] Bears exist to the present day in Tirol. Seven were killed last year. A prize of from five-and-twenty to fifty florins is given for killing one by various communes. [237] A distinct remnant of Etruscan custom. It is singular, too, that Mr. I. Taylor finds 'faba' to have been taken by the Romans from the Etruscans for a bean, but though the custom of connecting beans with the celebration of the departed is common all over Italy, I do not think the Etruscans provided their dead with beans except along with all other kinds of food (supra p. 130-1 note). [238] The little book of Costumi spoken of above, mentions the 'Zocco del Natale' as in use also in Lunigiana; it is generally of olive-tree, and household auguries are drawn from the crackling of leaves and unripe berries. It cites a letter of a certain Giovanni da Molta, dated 1388, showing that the custom has not undergone much change in five hundred years. [239] Two travellers, two prosperous ones, and a cardinal?--Answer. Sun and moon; earth and heaven; and the ocean. [240] There is a meadow overblown with carnations, yet if the Pope came with all his court, not one sole carnation would he be able to carry off?--Answer. The heaven beaming with stars. [241] Plate upon plate; a man fully armed; a lady well dressed; a stud well appointed?--Answer. Heaven and earth; the sun; the moon; the stars. [242] There is a palace with twelve rooms; each room has thirty beams, and two are ever running after each other through them without ever catching each other?--Answer. The palace is the year, the rooms the months, the beams the days, and day and night are always following each other without overlapping. [243] The simplicity of the people of this valley is celebrated in many 'Men of Gotham' stories. [244] Dennis, Cities and Cemeteries of Etruria, vol. 1, pp. xxxiv-v, mentions the Etruscan remains that had been found at Mattrey (of which he gives a cut) and other places in Tirol up to his time. [245] It is noteworthy that so prominent an enquirer into Etruscan antiquities should bear a patronymic so connected with Etruria as Tarquini. [246] In Abbé Dubois' introduction to his translation of the Pantcha Tantra, is a story called 'La fille d'un roi changé en garçon,' in which mention is made of a Brahman hermit who fixed his residence in a hollow tree. 
45755	----	produced from scanned images of public domain material from the Google Print project.) THE BURNING SECRET BY STEFAN ZWEIG LONDON: GEORGE ALLEN & UNWIN LTD. RUSKIN HOUSE 40 MUSEUM STREET, W.C.1 CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I THE PARTNER 9 II QUICK FRIENDSHIP 21 III THE TRIO 34 IV THE ATTACK 44 V THE ELEPHANTS 55 VI SKIRMISHING 64 VII THE BURNING SECRET 75 VIII SILENT HOSTILITY 86 IX THE LIARS 99 X ON THE TRAIL 114 XI THE SURPRISE ATTACK 127 XII THE TEMPEST 134 XIII DAWNING PERCEPTION 147 XIV DARKNESS AND CONFUSION 156 XV THE LAST DREAM 164 THE BURNING SECRET CHAPTER I THE PARTNER The train, with a shrill whistle, pulled into Summering. For a moment the black coaches stood still in the silvery light of the uplands to eject a few vivid human figures and to swallow up others. Exacerbated voices called back and forth; then, with a puffing and a chugging and another shrill shriek, the dark train clattered into the opening of the tunnel, and once more the landscape stretched before the view unbroken in all its wide expanse, the background swept clean by the moist wind. One of the arrivals, a young man pleasantly distinguished by his good dress and elastic walk, hurried ahead of the others and entered one of the hotel 'buses. The horses took the steep road leisurely. Spring was in the air. Up in the sky floated the white shifting clouds of May and June, light, sportive young creatures, playfully coursing the blue path of heaven, suddenly dipping and hiding behind the mountains, embracing and running away, crumpling up like handkerchiefs, elongating into gauzy scarfs, and ending their play by roguishly perching white caps on the mountain tops. There was unrest below, too, in the wind, which shook the lean trees, still wet from the rain, and set their limbs a-groaning softly and brought down a thousand shining drops. Sometimes a cool breath of snow descended from the mountains, and then there was a feel in the air both balmy and cutting. All things in the atmosphere and on the earth were in motion and astir with the ferment of impatience. The horses tossed their heads and snorted as they now trotted down a descent, the sound of their bells jingling far ahead of them. On arriving at the hotel, the young man made straight for the registry and looked over the list of guests. He was disappointed. "What the deuce have I come here for?" he thought in vexation. "Stuck 'way up here on top of the mountain all alone, no company; why it's worse than the office. I must have come either too early or too late. I never do have luck with my holidays. Not a single name do I know. If only there was a woman or two here to pick up a flirtation with, even a perfectly innocent one, if it must be, just to keep the week from being too utterly dismal." The young man, a baron not very high up in the country's nobility, held a government position, and had secured this short vacation not because he required it particularly, but because his colleagues had all got a week off in spring and he saw no reason for making a present of his "week off" to the government. Although not without inner resources, he was a thoroughly social being, his sociability being the very quality for which his friends liked him and for which he was welcomed in all circles. He was quite conscious of his inability to stay by himself and had no inclination to meet himself, as it were, but rather avoided his own company, feeling not the least urge to become intimately acquainted with his own soul. He knew he required contact with other human beings to kindle his talents and stir up the warmth and exuberance of his spirits. Alone he was like a match in a box, frosty and useless. He paced up and down the hall, completely out of sorts, stopping now and then irresolutely to turn the leaves of the magazines, or to glance at the newspapers, or to strike up a waltz on the piano in the music-room. Finally he sat down in a sulk and watched the growing dusk and the gray mist steal in patches between the fir-trees. After a long, vain, fretful hour he took refuge in the dining-room. As yet only a few of the tables were occupied. He took them in at a swift glance. No use. No one he knew, except--he responded to the greeting listlessly--a gentleman to whom he had spoken on the train, and farther off a familiar face from the metropolis. No one else. Not a single woman to promise even a momentary adventure. He became more and more impatient and out of sorts. Being a young man favored with a handsome face, he was always prepared for a new experience. He was of the sort of men who are constantly on the lookout for an opportunity to plunge into an adventure for the sake of its novelty, yet whom nothing surprises because, forever lying in wait, they have calculated every possibility in advance. Such men never overlook any element of the erotic. The very first glance they cast at a woman is a probe into the sensual, a searching, impartial probe that knows no distinction between the wife of a friend or the maid who opens the door to her house. One rarely realizes, in using the ready-made word "woman-hunter," which we toss in contempt at such men, how true the expression is and how much of faithful observation it implies. In their watchful alertness all the passionate instincts of the chase are afire, the stalking, the excitement, the cruel cunning. They are always at their post, always ready and determined to follow the tracks of an adventure up to the very brink of the precipice, always loaded with passion, not with the passion of a lover, but with the cold, calculating, dangerous passion of a gambler. Some of them are doggedly persevering, their whole life shaping itself, from this expectancy, into one perpetual adventure. Each day is divided for them into a hundred little sensual experiences--a passing look, a flitting smile, an accidental contact of the knees--and each year into a hundred such days, in which the sensual experience constitutes the ever-flowing, life-giving and quickening source of their existence. There was no partner for a game here--that the baron's experienced eye instantly detected. And there is nothing more exasperating than for a player with cards in his hands, conscious of his ability, to be sitting at the green table vainly awaiting a partner. The baron called for a newspaper, but merely ran his eyes down the columns fretfully. His thoughts were crippled and he stumbled over the words. Suddenly he heard the rustling of a dress and a woman's voice saying in a slightly vexed tone: "_Mais tais toi donc, Edgar._" Her accent was affected. A tall voluptuous figure in silk crackled by his table, followed by a small, pale boy in a black velvet suit. The boy eyed the baron curiously, as the two seated themselves at a table reserved for them opposite to him. The child was making evident efforts to be correct in his behavior, but propriety seemed to be out of keeping with the dark, restless expression of his eyes. The lady--the young man's attention was fixed upon her only--was very much betoiletted and dressed with conspicuous elegance. She was a type that particularly appealed to the baron, a Jewess with a somewhat opulent figure, close to, though not yet arrived at, the borderline of overmaturity, and evidently of a passionate nature like his, yet sufficiently experienced to hide her temperament behind a veil of dignified melancholy. He could not see her eyes, but was able to admire the lovely curve of her eyebrows arching clean and well-defined above a nose delicate yet nobly curved and giving her face distinction. It was her nose that betrayed her race. Her hair, in keeping with everything else about her, was remarkably luxuriant. Her beauty seemed to have grown sated and boastful with the sure sense of the wealth of admiration it had evoked. She gave her order in a very low voice and told the boy to stop making a noise with his fork, this with apparent indifference to the baron's cautious, stealthy gaze. She seemed not to observe his look, though, as a matter of fact, it was his keen, alert vigilance that had made her constrained. A flash lit up the gloom of the baron's face. His nerves responded as to an underground current, his muscles tautened, his figure straightened up, fire came to his eyes. He was not unlike the women who require a masculine presence to bring out their full powers. He needed the stimulation of sex completely to energize his faculties. The hunter in him scented the prey. His eyes tried to challenge hers, and her glance crossed his, but waveringly without ever giving an occasional relaxation of the muscles round her mouth, as if in an incipient smile, but he was not sure, and the very uncertainty of it aroused him. The one thing that held out promise was her constant looking away from him, which argued both resistance and embarrassment. Then, too, the conversation that she kept up with her child encouraged him, being obviously designed for show, while her outward calm, he felt, was forced and quite superficial, actually indicating the commencement of inner agitation. He was a-quiver. The play had begun. He made his dinner last a long while, and for a full half-hour, almost steadily, he kept the woman fixed with his gaze, until it had travelled over every line of her face and touched, unseen, every spot of her body. Outside the darkness fell heavily, the woods groaned as if in childish fear of the large, rain-laden clouds stretching out gray hands after them. The shadows deepened in the room, and the silence seemed to press the people closer together. Under the dead weight of the stillness, the baron clearly noted that the mother's conversation with her son became still more constrained and artificial and would soon, he was sure, cease altogether. He resolved upon an experiment. He rose and went to the door slowly, looking past the woman at the prospect outside. At the door he gave a quick turn, as if he had forgotten something, and caught her looking at him with keen interest. That titillated him. He waited in the hall. Presently she appeared, holding the boy's hand and paused for a while to look through some magazines and show the child a few pictures. The baron walked up to the table with a casual air, pretending to hunt for a periodical. His real intention was to probe deeper below the moist sheen of her eyes and perhaps even begin a conversation. The woman instantly turned away and tapped the boy's shoulder. "_Viens, Edgar. Au lit._" She rustled past the baron. He followed her with his eyes, somewhat disappointed. He had counted upon making the acquaintance that very evening. Her brusque manner was disconcerting. However, there was a fascination in her resistance, and the very uncertainty added zest to the chase. At all events he had found a partner, and the play could begin. CHAPTER II QUICK FRIENDSHIP The next morning, on entering the hall, the baron saw the son of the beautiful Unknown engaged in an eager conversation with the two elevator boys, to whom he was showing pictures in a book by Du Chaillu. His mother was not with him, probably not having come down from her room yet. The baron took his first good look at the boy. He seemed to be a shy, undeveloped, nervous little fellow, about twelve years old. His movements were jerky, his eyes dark and restless, and he made the impression, so often produced by children of his age, of being scared, as if he had just been roused out of sleep and placed in strange surroundings. His face was not unbeautiful, but still quite undecided. The struggle between childhood and young manhood seemed just about to be setting in. Everything in him so far was like dough that has been kneaded but not formed into a loaf. Nothing was expressed in clean lines, everything was blurred and unsettled. He was at that hobbledehoy age when clothes do not fit, and sleeves and trousers hang slouchily, and there is no vanity to prompt care of one's appearance. The child made a rather pitiful impression as he wandered about the hotel aimlessly. He got in everybody's way. He would plague the porter with questions and then be shoved aside, for he would stand in the doorway and obstruct the passage. Apparently there were no other children for him to play with, and in his child's need for prattle he would try to attach himself to one or other of the hotel attendants. When they had time they would answer him, but the instant an adult came along they would stop talking and refuse to pay any more attention to him. It interested the baron to watch the child, and he looked on smiling as the unhappy little creature inspected everything and everybody curiously, while he himself was universally avoided as a nuisance. Once the baron intercepted one of his curious looks. His black eyes instantly fell, when he saw himself observed, and hid behind lowered lids. The baron was amused. The boy actually began to interest him, and it flashed into his mind that he might be made to serve as the speediest means for bringing him and his mother together. He could overcome his shyness, since it proceeded from nothing but fear. At any rate, it was worth the trial. So when Edgar strolled out of the door to pet, in his child's need of tenderness, the pinkish nostrils of one of the 'bus horses, the baron followed him. Edgar was certainly unlucky. The driver chased him away rather roughly. Insulted and bored, he stood about aimlessly again, with a vacant, rather melancholy expression in his eyes. The baron now addressed him. "Well, young man, how do you like it here?" He attempted a tone of jovial ease. The child turned fairly purple and looked up in actual alarm, drawing his arms close to his body and twisting and turning in embarrassment. For the first time in his life a stranger was the one to address him and not he the stranger. "Oh," he managed to stammer out, choking over the last words, "thank you. I--I like it." "You do? I'm surprised," the baron laughed. "It's a dull place, especially for a young man like you. What do you do with yourself all day long?" Edgar was still too confused to give a ready answer. Could it be true that this stranger, this elegant gentleman, was trying to pick up a conversation with him--with him, whom nobody had ever before cared a rap about? It made him both shy and proud. He pulled himself together with difficulty. "I read, and we do a lot of walking. Sometimes we go out driving, mother and I. I am here to get well. I was sick. I must be out in the sunshine a lot, the doctor said." Edgar spoke the last with greater assurance. Children are always proud of their ailments. The danger they are in makes them more important, they know, in the eyes of their elders. "Yes, the sun is good for you. It will tan your cheeks. But you oughtn't to be standing round the whole day long. A fellow like you ought to be on the go, running, jumping, playing, full of spirits, and up to mischief, too. It strikes me you are too good. With that big fat book under your arm you look as though you were always poking in the house. By jingo, when I think of the kind of fellow I was at your age, I used to raise the devil, and every evening I came home with torn knickerbockers. Don't be so good, whatever you are." Edgar could not help smiling, and the consciousness of his own smile removed his fear. Now he was anxious to say something in reply, but it seemed self-assertive and impudent to answer this affable stranger, who spoke to him in such a friendly way. He never had been forward and was easily abashed, so that now he was in the greatest embarrassment from sheer happiness and shame. He would have liked to continue the conversation, but nothing occurred to him. Luckily the great yellow St. Bernard belonging to the hotel came up and sniffed at both of them and allowed himself to be petted. "Do you like dogs?" asked the baron. "Oh, very much. Grandma has one in her villa at Bains. When we stop there he stays with me the whole time. But that's only in the summer when we go visiting." "We have a lot of dogs at home on our estate, a full two dozen, I believe. If you behave yourself here I'll make you a present of one, brown with white ears, a pup still. Would you like to have it?" The child turned scarlet with joy. "I should say so." The words fairly burst from his lips in an access of eagerness. Then he caught himself up and stammered in distress and as if frightened: "But mother won't allow me to have a dog. She says she won't keep a dog in the house. It's too much of a nuisance." The baron smiled. The conversation had at last come round to the mother. "Is your mother so strict?" The child pondered and looked up for an instant as if to find out whether the stranger was to be trusted on such slight acquaintance. "No," he finally answered cautiously, "she's not strict, and since I've been sick she lets me do anything I want. Maybe she'll even let me keep a dog." "Shall I ask her?" "Oh, yes, please do," Edgar cried delightedly. "If _you_ do I'm sure she'll give in. What does he look like? White ears, you said? Can he do any tricks yet?" "Yes, all sorts of tricks." The baron had to smile at the sparkle of Edgar's eyes. It had been so easy to kindle that light in them. All at once the child's constraint dropped away, and all his emotionalism, kept in check till then by fear, bubbled over. In a flash the shy, intimidated child of a minute before turned into a boisterous lad. "If only his mother is transformed so quickly," the baron thought. "If only she shows so much ardor behind her reserve." Edgar went at him with a thousand questions. "What's the dog's name?" "Caro." "Caro!" he cried happily, somehow having to answer every word with a laugh of delight, so intoxicated was he with the unexpectedness of having someone take him up as a friend. The baron, amazed at his own quick success, resolved to strike while the iron was hot, and invited the boy to take a walk with him. This put Edgar, who for weeks had been starving for company, into a fever of ecstasy. During the walk the baron questioned him, as if quite by the way, about a number of apparent trifles, and Edgar in response blurted out all the information he was seeking, telling him everything he wanted to know about the family. Edgar was the only son of a lawyer in the metropolis, who evidently came of a wealthy middle-class Jewish family. By clever, roundabout inquiries the baron promptly elicited that Edgar's mother had expressed herself as by no means delighted with her stay in Summering and had complained of the lack of congenial company. He even felt he might infer from the evasive way in which Edgar answered his question as to whether his mother wasn't very fond of his father that their marital relations were none of the happiest. He was almost ashamed at having been able to extract these family secrets from the unsuspecting child, for Edgar, very proud that anything he had to say could interest a grown-up person, fairly pressed confidences upon his new friend. His child's heart beat with pride--the baron had put his arm on his shoulder while they were walking--to be seen in such close intimacy with a "man," and gradually he forgot he was a child and talked quite unconstrainedly, as if to an equal. From his conversation it was quite clear that he was a bright boy, in fact, a bit too precocious, as are most sickly children who spend much time with their elders, and his likes and dislikes were too marked. He took nothing calmly or indifferently. Every person or thing was discussed with either passionate enthusiasm or a hatred so intense as to distort his face into a mean, ugly look. There was something wild and jerky about his manner, accentuated perhaps by the illness he was just recovering from, which gave his talk the fieriness of fanaticism. His awkwardness seemed to proceed from the painfully suppressed fear of his own passion. Before the end of half an hour the baron was already holding the boy's throbbing heart in his hands. It is so infinitely easy to deceive children, those unsuspecting creatures whose love is so rarely courted. All the baron needed to do was to transport himself back to his own childhood, and the talk flowed quite naturally. Edgar felt himself in the presence of an equal, and within a few minutes had lost all sense of distance between them, and was perfectly at ease, conscious of nothing but bliss at having so unexpectedly found a friend in this lonely place. And what a friend! Forgotten were all his mates in the city where he lived, those little boys with their thin voices and inexperienced chatter. This one hour had almost expunged their faces. All his enthusiasm and passion now belonged to this new, this big friend of his. On parting the baron invited him to take a walk with him again the next morning. Edgar's heart expanded with pride. And, when from a little distance away the baron waved back to him like a real playmate, it was probably the happiest moment in his life. It is so easy to deceive children. The baron smiled as he looked after the boy dashing away. The go-between had been won. Edgar, he knew, would bore his mother with stories of the wonderful baron and would repeat every word he had said. At this he recalled complacently how cleverly he had woven in some compliments for the mother's consumption. "Your beautiful mother," he had always said. There was not the faintest shadow of doubt in his mind that the communicative boy would never rest until he had brought him and his mother together. No need now to stir a finger in order to shorten the distance between himself and the lovely Unknown. He could dream away idly and feast his eyes on the landscape, for a child's eager hands, he knew, were building the bridge for him to her heart. CHAPTER III THE TRIO The plan, as appeared only an hour later, proved to be excellent. It worked without a hitch. The baron chose to be a little late in entering the dining-room, and when Edgar saw him, he jumped up from his seat and gave him an eager nod and a beatific smile, at the same time pulling his mother's sleeve, saying something to her hastily, and pointing conspicuously to the baron. His mother reproved him for his demonstrativeness. She blushed and showed genuine discomfort, but could not help yielding to the boy's insistence and gave a glance across at the baron. This the baron instantly seized upon as the pretext for a deferential bow. The acquaintance was made. The lady had to acknowledge his bow. Yet from now on she kept her head bent still lower over her plate and throughout the rest of the meal sedulously avoided looking over at the baron again. Not so Edgar. Every minute or two he turned his eyes on the baron, and once he even tried to speak to him across the two tables, an impropriety which his mother promptly checked with a severe rebuke. As soon as dinner was over, Edgar was told he must go straight to bed, and an eager whispering began between him and his mother, which resulted in a concession to the boy. He was allowed to go to the baron and say good-night to him. The baron said a few kind words and so set the child's eyes ablaze again. Here the baron rose and in his adroit way, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, stepped over to the other table and congratulated his neighbor upon her bright, intelligent son. He told her what a pleasant time he had spent with him that morning--Edgar beamed--and then inquired about the boy's health. On this point he asked so many detailed questions that the mother was compelled to reply, and so was drawn irresistibly into a conversation. Edgar listened to it all in a sort of rapturous awe. The baron gave his name to the lady. The high sound of it, it seemed to him, made an impression on her. At any rate she lost her extreme reserve, though retaining perfect dignity. In a few minutes she took leave, on account of Edgar's having to go to bed, as she said by way of a pretext. Edgar protested he was not sleepy and would be happy to stay up the whole night. But his mother remained obdurate and held out her hand by way of good-night to the baron, who shook hands with her most respectfully. Edgar did not sleep well that night. A chaos of happiness and childish despair filled his soul. Something new had come to him that day. For the first time he had played a part in the life of adults. In his half-awake state he forgot that he was a child and all at once felt himself a grown man. Brought up an only child and often ailing, he had never had many friends. His parents, who paid little attention to him, and the servants had been the only ones to meet his craving for tenderness. The power of love is not properly gauged if it is estimated only by the object that inspires it, if the tension preceding it is not taken into account--that gloomy space of disillusionment and loneliness which stretches in front of all the great events of the heart. In Edgar there had been a heavily fraught, unexpended emotion lying in wait, which now burst out and rushed to meet the first human being who seemed to deserve it. He lay in the dark, happy and dazed. He wanted to laugh, but had to cry. For he loved the baron as he had never loved friend, father, mother, or even God. All the immature passion of his ending boyhood wreathed itself about his mental vision of the man whose very name had been unknown to him a few hours before. He was wise enough not to be disturbed by the peculiar, unexpected way in which the new friendship had been formed. What troubled him was the sense of his own unworthiness and insignificance. "Am I fit company for him?" he plagued himself. "I, a little boy, twelve years old, who has to go to school still and am sent off to bed at night before anyone else? What can I mean to him, what have I to offer him?" The painful sense of his impotence to show his feelings in some way or other made him most unhappy. On other occasions, when he had taken a liking for a boy, the first thing he had done was to offer to share his stamps and marbles and jacks. Now such childish possessions, which only the day before had still had vast importance and charm in his eyes, had depreciated in value. They seemed silly. He disdained them. He couldn't offer such things to his new friend. What possible way was there for him to express his feelings? The sense that he was small, only half a being, a mere child of twelve, grew upon him and tortured him more and more. Never before had he so vehemently cursed his childhood, or longed so heartily to wake up in the morning the person he had always dreamed of being, a man, big and strong, grown up like the others. His restless thoughts were mixed with the first bright dreams of the new world of manhood. Finally he fell asleep with a smile on his lips, but his sleep was constantly broken by the anticipation of the next morning's appointment. At seven o'clock he awoke with a start, fearful that he was too late already. He dressed hastily and astonished his mother when he went in to say good-morning because she had always had difficulty getting him out of bed. Before she could question him he was out of her room again. With only the one thought in his mind, not to keep his friend waiting, he dawdled about downstairs in the hotel, even forgetting to eat breakfast. At half-past nine the baron came sauntering down the lobby with his easy air and no indication that anything had been troubling _him_. He, of course, had completely forgotten the appointment for a walk, but he acted as though he were quite ready to keep his promise when the boy came rushing at him so eagerly. He took Edgar's arm and paced up and down the lobby with him leisurely. Edgar was radiant, although the baron gently but firmly refused to start on the walk at once. He seemed to be waiting for something. Every once in a while he gave a nervous glance at one of the various doors. Suddenly he drew himself up. Edgar's mother had entered the hall. She responded to the baron's greeting and came up to him with a pleasant expression on her face. Edgar had not told her about the walk. It was too precious a thing to talk about. But now the baron mentioned it and she smiled in approval. Then he went on to invite her to come along, and she was not slow in accepting. That made Edgar sulky. He gnawed at his lips. How provoking of his mother to have come into the lobby just then! The walk belonged to him and him alone. To be sure, he had introduced his friend to his mother, but only out of courtesy. He had not meant to share him with anybody. Something like jealousy began to stir in him when he observed the baron's friendliness to his mother. On the walk the dangerous sense the child had of his importance and sudden rise to prominence was heightened by the interest the two adults showed in him. He was almost the exclusive subject of their conversation. His mother expressed rather hypocritical solicitude on account of his pallor and nervousness, while the baron kept saying it was nothing to worry about and extolled his young "friend's" good manners and pleasant ways. It was the happiest hour of Edgar's life. Rights were granted him that he had never before been allowed. He was permitted to take part in the conversation without a prompt "keep quiet, Edgar." He could even express bold desires for which he would have been rebuked before. No wonder the deceptive feeling that he was grown up began to flourish in his imagination. In his bright dreams childhood already lay behind him like a suit he had outgrown and cast off. At the mother's invitation, the baron took his mid day meal at their table. She was growing friendlier all the time. The vis-à-vis was now a companion, the acquaintanceship a friendship. The trio was in full swing, and the three voices, the woman's, the man's and the child's, mingled in harmony. CHAPTER IV THE ATTACK The impatient hunter felt the time had come to creep up on his game. The three-sidedness of the sport annoyed him, and so did the tone of it. To sit there and chat was rather pleasant, but he was after more than mere talk. Social intercourse, with the mask it puts over desire, always, he knew, retards the erotic between man and woman. Words lose their ardor, the attack its fire. Despite their conversation together on indifferent matters, Edgar's mother must never forget his real object, of which, he was quite convinced, she was already aware. That his efforts to catch this woman were not to prove in vain seemed very probable. She was at the critical age when a woman begins to regret having remained faithful to a husband she has never truly loved, and when the purple sunset of her beauty still affords her a final urgent choice between motherliness and womanliness. The life whose questions seem to have been answered long before becomes a problem again, and for the last time the magnetic needle of the will wavers between the hope for an intense love experience and ultimate resignation. The woman has a dangerous decision to confront, whether she will live her own life or that of her children, whether she will be a woman first, or a mother first. The baron, who was very perspicacious in these matters, thought that he discerned in Edgar's mother this very vacillation between passion to live her own life and readiness to sacrifice her desires. In conversation she always omitted to mention her husband. Evidently he satisfied nothing but her bare external needs and not the snobbishness that an aristocratic way of living had excited in her. And as for her son, she knew precious little of the child's soul. A shadow of boredom, wearing the veil of melancholy in her dark eyes, lay over her life and obscured her sensuousness. The baron resolved to act quickly, yet at the same time to avoid any appearance of haste. Like an angler, who tempts the fish by dangling and withdrawing the bait, he would affect a show of indifference and let himself be courted while he was the one that was actually doing the courting. He would put on an air of haughtiness and bring into sharp relief the difference in their social ranks. There was fascination in the idea of getting possession of that lovely, voluptuous creature simply by stressing his pride, by mere externals, by the use of a high-sounding aristocratic name and the adoption of a cold, proud manner. The chase was already growing hot. He had to be cautious and not show his excitement. So he remained in his room the whole afternoon, filled with the pleasant consciousness of being looked for and missed. But his absence was felt not so much by the woman, upon whom the effect was intended, as by Edgar. To the wretched child it was simple torture. The whole afternoon he felt absolutely impotent and lost. With the obstinate faithfulness of a boy he waited long, long hours for his friend. To have gone away or done anything by himself would have seemed like a crime against their friendship, and he loafed the time away in the hotel corridors, his heart growing heavier and heavier as each moment passed. After a while his heated imagination began to dwell on a possible accident or an insult he might unwittingly have offered his friend. He was on the verge of tears from impatience and anxiety. So that when the baron came in to dinner in the evening, he received a brilliant greeting. Edgar jumped up and, without paying any attention to his mother's cry of rebuke or the astonishment of the other diners, rushed at the baron and threw his thin little arms about him. "Where have you been? Where have you been? We've been looking for you everywhere." The mother's face reddened at hearing herself included in the search. "_Sois sage, Edgar. Assieds toi_," she said rather severely. She always spoke French to him, though it by no means came readily to her tongue, and if any but the simplest things were to be said she invariably floundered. Edgar obeyed and went back to his seat, but kept on questioning the baron. "Edgar," his mother interposed, "don't forget that the baron can do whatever he wants to do. Perhaps our company bores him." Now she included herself, and the baron noted with satisfaction that the rebuke directed to the child was really an invitation for a compliment to herself. The hunter in him awakened. He was intoxicated, thoroughly excited at having so quickly come upon the right tracks and at seeing the game so close to the muzzle of his gun. His eyes sparkled, his blood shot through his veins. The words fairly bubbled from his lips with no conscious effort on his part. Like all men with pronouncedly erotic temperaments, he did twice as well, was twice himself when he knew a woman liked him, as some actors take fire when they feel that their auditors, the breathing mass of humanity in front of them, are completely under their spell. Naturally an excellent raconteur, with great skill in graphic description, he now surpassed himself. Besides, he drank several glasses of champagne, ordered in honor of the new friendship. He told of hunting big game in India, where he had gone at the invitation of an English nobleman. The theme was well chosen. The conversation had necessarily to be about indifferent matters, but this subject, the baron felt, would excite the woman as would anything exotic and unattainable by her. The one, however, upon whom the greater charm was exercised was Edgar. His eyes glowed with enthusiasm. He forgot to eat or drink and stared at the story-teller as if to snatch the words from his lips with his eyes. He had never expected actually to see a man who in his own person had experienced those tremendous things which he read about in his books--tiger hunts, brown men, Hindus, and the terrible Juggernaut, which crushed thousands of men under its wheels. Until then he had thought such men did not really exist and believed in them no more than in fairyland. A certain new and great feeling expanded his chest. He could not remove his eyes from his friend and stared with bated breath at the hands across the table that had actually killed a tiger. Scarcely did he dare to ask a question, and when he ventured to speak it was with a feverish tremor in his voice. His lively imagination drew the picture for each story. He saw his friend mounted high on an elephant caparisoned in purple, brown men to the right and to the left wearing rich turbans, and then suddenly the tiger leaping out of the jungle with gnashing teeth and burying its claws in the elephant's trunk. Now the baron was telling about something even more interesting, how elephants were caught by a trick. Old, domesticated elephants were used to lure the young, wild, high-spirited ones into the enclosure. The child's eyes flashed. Then, as though a knife came cutting through the air right down between him and the baron, his mother said, glancing at the clock: "_Neuf heures. Au lit._" Edgar turned white. To be sent to bed is dreadful enough to grown children at any time. It is the most patent humiliation in adult company, the proclamation that one is still a child, the stigma of being small and needing a child's sleep. But how much more dreadful at so interesting a moment, when the chance of listening to such wonderful things would be lost. "Just this one story, mother, just this one story about the elephants." He was about to plead, but bethought himself quickly of his new dignity. He was a grown-up person. One attempt was all he ventured. But that night his mother was peculiarly strict. "No, it's late already. Just go up. _Sois sage, Edgar._ I'll tell you the story over again exactly the way the baron tells it to me." Edgar lingered a moment. Usually his mother went upstairs with him. But he wasn't going to beg her in front of his friend. His childish pride made him want to give his pitiful withdrawal somewhat, at least, the appearance of being voluntary. "Will you really? Everything? All about the elephants and everything else?" "Yes, Edgar, everything." "To-night still?" "Yes, yes. But go on, go to bed now." Edgar was amazed that he was able to shake hands with the baron and his mother without blushing. The sobs were already choking his throat. The baron ran his hand good-naturedly through his hair and pulled it down on his forehead. That brought a forced smile to the boy's tense features. But the next instant he had to hurry to the door, or they would see the great tears well over his eyelids and trickle down his cheeks. CHAPTER V THE ELEPHANTS Edgar's mother stayed at table with the baron a while longer. But the two no longer spoke of elephants or hunting. An indefinable embarrassment instantly sprang up between them, and a faint sultriness descended upon their conversation. After a time they went out into the hall and seated themselves in a corner. The baron was more brilliant than ever. The woman was a little heated by her two glasses of champagne, so that the conversation quickly took a dangerous turn. The baron was not what is called exactly handsome. He was simply young and had a manly look in his dark-brown, energetic, boyish face, and he charmed her with his fresh, almost ill-bred movements. She liked looking at him at such close range and was no longer afraid to encounter his eyes. Gradually there crept into his language a boldness which vaguely disconcerted her. It was like a gripping of her body and then a letting go, an intangible sort of desire which sent the blood rushing to her face. The next moment, however, he would laugh again, an easy, unconstrained, boyish laugh, which made his little manifestations of desire seem like joking. Sometimes he said things she felt she ought to object to bluntly, but she was a natural-born coquette, and his trifling audacities only provoked in her the taste for more. She was carried away by his bold gaze, and at length got so far as to try to imitate him, answering his looks with little fluttering promises from her own eyes, and giving herself up to him in words and gestures. She permitted him to draw close to her, so that every now and then she felt the warm graze of his breath on her shoulders. Like all gamblers, the two forgot the passage of time and became so absorbed that they started in surprise when the lights in the hall were turned off at midnight. The woman jumped up in response to the first impulse of alarm she had felt. In the same moment she realized to what audacious lengths she had ventured. It was not the first time she had played with fire, but now her instincts, all aroused, told her the game had come perilously close to being in earnest. She shuddered inwardly at discovering that she no longer felt quite secure, that something in her was slipping and gliding down into an abyss. Her head whirled with alarm, with slight intoxication from the champagne, and with the ring of the baron's ardent language in her ears. A dull dread came over her. She had experienced the same sort of dread several times before in similar dangerous moments, but it had never so overpowered her. This extreme dizziness was something she had never before experienced. "Good-night," she said hastily. "See you in the morning again." She felt like running away, not so much from him as from the danger of the moment and from an odd, novel insecurity she felt within herself. But the baron held her hand in a tight but gentle grip and kissed it four or five times from the delicate tips of her fingers to her wrist. A little shiver went through her at the graze of his rough mustache on the back of her hand, and her blood ran warm and mounted to her head. Her cheeks glowed. There was a hammering at her temples. A wild unreasoning fear made her snatch her hand away. "Don't go, don't go," the baron pleaded in a whisper. But she was already gone, the awkwardness of her haste revealing plainly her fright and confusion. She was undergoing the excitement that the baron wanted. She was all confused, one moment in awful dread that the man behind might follow and put his arms round her, and the next instant regretting that he had not done so. In those few seconds the thing might have taken place that she had been dreaming of for years, the great adventure. She had always taken voluptuous delight in creeping up to the very edge of an adventure and then jumping back at the last moment, an adventure of the great and dangerous kind, not a mere fleeting flirtation. But the baron was too proud to push his advantage now, too assured of his victory to take this woman like a robber in a moment of weakness and intoxication. A fair sportsman prefers his game to show fight and to surrender quite consciously. The woman could not escape him. The virus, he knew, was already seething in her veins. She stopped on the landing above and pressed her hand to her throbbing heart. She had to rest a while. Her nerves were snapping. She heaved a great sigh, partly of relief at having escaped a danger, partly of regret. Her emotions were mixed, and all she was vividly conscious of was the whirl of her blood and a faint giddiness. With half-closed eyes she groped her way like a drunken woman to the door and breathed with relief when she felt the cool door-knob in her hand. At last she was safe. She opened the door softly and the next second started back in fright. Something had moved way back in the dark. In her excited state this was too much, and she was about to cry for help when a very, very sleepy voice came from within, saying: "Is that you, mother?" "Goodness gracious! What are you doing here?" She rushed to the sofa where Edgar was lying curled up trying to keep himself wide awake. She thought the child must be ill and needed attention. "I waited for you so long, and then I fell asleep." "What were you waiting for?" "You know. To hear about the elephants." "Elephants?" As she asked the question Edgar's mother remembered her promise. She was to tell him all about the elephant hunts and the baron's other adventures that very night. And so the simple child had crept into her room and in unquestioning faith had waited for her until he had dropped asleep. The absurdity of it enraged her, or rather she was angry with herself, and for that reason she wanted to outshriek the tiny whisper of her conscience telling her she had done a shameful wrong. "Go to bed at once, you nuisance!" she cried. Edgar stared at her. Why was she so angry? He hadn't done anything wrong. But his very amazement only made her angrier. "Go to bed at once," she shouted, in a rage, because she felt how unjust she was to the child. Edgar went without a word. He was dreadfully sleepy and felt only in a blur that his mother had not kept her promise and that somehow or other he was being treated meanly. Yet he did not rebel. His susceptibilities were dulled by sleepiness. Besides, he was angry with himself for having fallen asleep while waiting. "Like a baby," he said to himself in disgust before dropping off to sleep again. Since the day before he hated himself for being still a child. CHAPTER VI SKIRMISHING The baron had passed a bad night. It is rather vain to attempt to sleep after an adventure that has been abruptly broken off. Tossing on his bed and starting up out of oppressive dreams, the baron was soon regretting that he had not seized the moment. The next morning when he came down he was still sleepy and cross and in no mood to take up with Edgar, who at sight of him rushed out of a corner and threw his arms about his waist and began to pester him with a thousand questions. The boy was happy to have his big friend to himself once more without having to share him with his mother. He implored him not to tell his stories to her, but only to himself. In spite of her promise she had not recounted all those wonderful things she had said she would. Edgar assailed the baron with a hundred childish importunities and stormy demonstrations of love. He was so happy at last to have found him again and to be alone with him. He had been waiting for him since early in the morning. The baron gave the child rough answers. That eternal lying in wait, those silly questions--in short, the boy's unsolicited passion--began to annoy him. He was tired of going about all day long with a puppy of twelve, talking nonsense. All he cared for now was to strike while the iron was hot and get the mother by herself, the very thing it was difficult to do with this child forever inflicting his presence. For the first time the baron cursed his incautiousness in having inspired so much affection, for he saw no chance, on this occasion at least, to rid himself of his too, too devoted friend. At any rate it was worth the trial. The baron waited until ten o'clock, the time Edgar's mother had agreed to go out walking with him. He sat beside the boy, paying no attention to his chatter and even glancing through the paper, though every now and then tossing the child a crumb of talk so as not to insult him. When the hour hand was at ten and the minute hand was just reaching twelve, he asked Edgar, as though suddenly remembering something, to do him a favor and run across to the next hotel and find out if his cousin, Count Rosny, had arrived. Delighted at last to be of service to his friend, the unsuspecting child ran off as fast as his legs would carry him, careering down the road so madly that people looked after him in wonder. Count Rosny, the clerk told him, had not arrived, nor had he even announced his coming. Edgar again made post haste back to bring this information to his friend. But where was his friend? Nowhere in the hall. Up in his room perhaps. Edgar dashed up the stairs and knocked at his door. No answer. He ran down again and searched in the music-room, the café, the verandas, the smoking room. In vain. He hurried to his mother's room to see if she knew anything about the baron. But she was gone, too. When finally, in his despair, he applied to the porter, he was told the two had gone out together a few minutes before. Edgar waited for their return patiently. He was altogether unsuspecting and felt quite sure that they would come back soon because the baron wanted to hear whether or not his cousin had arrived. However, long stretches of time went by, and gradually uneasiness crept upon him. Ever since the moment when that strange, seductive man had entered his little life, never as yet tinged by suspicion, the child had spent his days in one continual state of tension and tremulousness and confusion. Upon such delicate organisms as those of children every emotion impresses itself as upon soft wax. Edgar's eyelids began to twitch again, and he was already a shade or two paler. He waited and waited, patiently, at first, then in wild excitement, on the verge of tears. Yet no suspicion crept into his child's soul. So blindly trustful was he of his wonderful friend that he fancied there must have been some misunderstanding, and he tortured himself fearing he had not executed his commission properly. But, when they came home at last, how odd that they lingered at the threshold talking gaily without showing the faintest surprise and without, apparently, having missed him very much. "We went out expecting to meet you, Eddie," said the baron, forgetting to ask if the count had arrived. When Edgar, in consternation that they must have been looking for him on the way between the two hotels, eagerly asseverated that he had taken the straight road and questioned them about the direction they had gone, his mother cut him off short with, "All right, Edgar, all right. Children must be seen and not heard." There, this was the second time, Edgar thought, flushing with anger, that his mother had so horridly tried to make him look small in front of his friend. Why did she do it? Why did she always want to set him down as a child when, he was convinced, he was no longer a child? Evidently she was jealous of his friend and was planning to get him all to herself. Yes, that was it, and it was she who had purposely led the baron the wrong way. But he wouldn't let her treat him like that again, he'd show her. He was going to be spiteful, he wasn't going to say a word to her at table, and he would speak only to his friend. However, it was not so easy to keep quiet as he thought it would be. Things went in a most unanticipated way. Neither his mother nor the baron noticed his attitude of spitefulness. Why, they did not even pay the slightest attention to him, who, the day before, had been the medium of their coming together. They talked over his head and laughed and joked as though he had disappeared under the table. His blood mounted to his head and a lump came into his throat. A horrid sense of his impotence overwhelmed him. Was it his doom to sit there quietly and look on while his mother stole away from him his friend, the one man he loved, while he, Edgar, made no movement in self-defence and used no other weapon than silence? He felt as though he must get up and pound the table with his clenched fists, just to make them take notice of him. But he restrained himself and merely put down his knife and fork and stopped eating. Even this it was a long time before they observed. It was not until the last course that his mother became conscious that he had not tasted his food and asked him if he were not feeling well. "Disgusting," he thought. "That's all she ever thinks of, whether I'm sick or not. Nothing else about me seems to matter to her." He told her shortly that he wasn't hungry, which quite satisfied her. Nothing, absolutely nothing forced them to pay attention to him. The baron seemed to have forgotten him completely, at least he never addressed a single remark to him. His eyeballs were getting hot with suppressed tears, and finally he had to resort to the childlike device of raising his napkin like a screen to hide the traitorous drops that rolled down his cheeks and salted his lips. When the meal finally came to an end, he drew a sigh of relief. During the meal his mother had proposed a drive to an interesting spot in the neighborhood and Edgar had listened with his lips between his teeth. So she was not going to allow him a single moment alone with his friend any more. But now, as they got up from table, came something even worse, and Edgar's anger went over into a fury of hate. "Edgar," said his mother, "you'll be forgetting everything you learned at school. You had better stay here this afternoon while we're out driving and do a little studying." He clenched his small fists again. There she was at it again, humiliating him in front of his friend, publicly reminding him that he was still a child who had to go to school and whose presence was merely tolerated by his elders. This time, however, her intentions were altogether too obvious, and Edgar was satisfied to turn away without replying. "Insulted again," she said, smiling, and then to the baron, "Do you really think it's so bad for him to spend an hour studying once in a while?" To this--something in the child's heart congealed--to this the baron, who called himself his friend and who had made fun of him for being a bookworm, made answer that an hour or two really couldn't do any harm. Was there an agreement between the two? Had they actually allied themselves against him? "My father," said the boy, his eyes flashing anger, "forbade my studying here. He wants me to get my health back here." Edgar hurled this out with all his pride in his illness, clinging desperately to his father's dictum and his father's authority. It came out like a threat, and to his immense astonishment it took effect, seeming actually to have made both of them uncomfortable, his mother especially, for she turned her eyes aside and began to drum on the table nervously with her fingers. For a while there was a painful silence, broken finally by the baron, who said with a forced laugh: "It's just as you say, Eddie. I myself don't have to take examinations any more. I failed in all my examinations long ago." Edgar gave no smile, but looked at the baron with a yearning, searching gaze, as if to probe to the innermost of his being. What was taking place in the baron's soul? Something between him and Edgar had changed, and the child knew not what or why. His eyes wandered unsteadily, in his heart went a little rapid hammer, his first suspicion. CHAPTER VII THE BURNING SECRET "What has made them so different?" the child pondered while sitting opposite them in the carriage. "Why don't they behave toward me as they did at first? Why does mamma avoid my eyes when I look at her? Why does he always try to joke when I'm around and make a silly of himself? They don't talk to me as they did yesterday or the day before yesterday. Their faces even seem different. Mamma's lips are so red she must have rouged them. I never saw her do that before. And he keeps frowning as though he were offended. Could I have said anything to annoy them? No, I haven't said a word. It cannot be on my account that they're so changed. Even their manner toward each other is not the same as it was. They behave as though they had been naughty and didn't dare confess. They don't chat the way they did yesterday, nor laugh. They're embarrassed, they're concealing something. They've got a secret between them that they don't want to tell me. I'm going to find it out. I must, I don't care what happens, I must. I believe I know what it is. It must be the same thing that grown-up people always shut me out from when they talk about it. It's what books speak of, and it comes in operas when the men and women on the stage stand singing face to face with their arms spread out, and embrace, and shove each other away. It must have something to do with my French governess, who behaved so badly with papa and was dismissed. All these things are connected. I feel they are, but I don't know how. Oh, to find it out, at last to find it out, that secret! To possess the key that opens all doors! Not to be a child any longer with everything kept hidden from one and always being held off and deceived. Now or never! I will tear it from them, that dreadful secret!" A deep furrow cut itself between the child's brows. He looked almost old as he sat in the carriage painfully cogitating this great mystery and never casting a single glance at the landscape, which was shading into all the delicate colors of the spring, the mountains in the freshened green of their pines, the valleys in the mistier greens of budding trees, shrubbery and young grass. All he had eyes for were the man and the woman on the seat opposite him, as though, with his hot gaze, as with an angling hook, he could snatch the secret from the shimmering depths of their eyes. Nothing gives so keen an edge to the intelligence as a passionate suspicion. All the possibilities of an immature mind are developed by a trail leading into obscurity. Sometimes it is only a single light door that keeps children out of the world that we call the real world, and a chance puff of wind may blow it open. Edgar, all at once, felt himself tangibly closer, closer than ever before, to the Unknown, the Great Secret. It was right next to him, still veiled and unriddled, but very near. It excited him, and it was this that lent him his sudden solemnity. Unconsciously he sensed that he was approaching the outer edges of childhood. The baron and Edgar's mother were both sensible of a dumb opposition in front of them without realizing that it emanated from the child. The presence of a third person in the carriage constrained them, and those two dark glowing orbs opposite acted as a check. They scarcely dared to speak or look up, and it was impossible for them to drop back into the light, easy conversational tone of the day before, so entangled were they already in ardent confidences and words suggestive of secret caresses. They would start a subject, promptly come to a halt, say a broken phrase or two, make another attempt, then lapse again into complete silence. Everything they said seemed always to stumble over the child's obstinate silence and fall flat. The mother was especially oppressed by her son's sullen quiescence. Giving him a cautious glance out of the corners of her eyes, she was startled to observe, for the first time, in the manner Edgar compressed his lips, a resemblance to her husband when he was annoyed. At that particular moment, when she was playing "hide-and-seek" with an adventure, it was more than ordinarily discomfiting to be reminded of her husband. The boy, only a foot or two away, with his dark, restless eyes and that suggestion behind his pale forehead of lying in wait, seemed to her like a ghost, a guardian of her conscience, doubly intolerable there in the close quarters of the carriage. Suddenly, for one second, Edgar looked up and met his mother's gaze. Instantly they dropped their eyes in the consciousness that they were spying on each other. Till then each had had implicit faith in the other. Now something had come between mother and child and made a difference. For the first time in their lives they set to observing each other, to separating their destinies, with secret hate already mounting in their hearts, though the feeling was too young for either to admit it to himself. When the horses pulled up at the hotel entrance, all three were relieved. The excursion had been a failure, each of them felt, though thy did not say so. Edgar was the first to get out of the carriage. His mother excused herself for going straight up to her room, pleading a headache. She was tired and wanted to be by herself. Edgar and the baron were left alone together. The baron paid the coachman, looked at his watch, and mounted the steps to the hall, paying no attention to Edgar and passed him with that easy sway of his slim back which had so enchanted the child that he had immediately begun to imitate the baron's walk. The baron brushed past him, right past him. Evidently he had forgotten him and left him to stand there beside the driver and the horses as though he did not belong to him. Something in Edgar broke in two as the man, whom in spite of everything he still idolized, slighted him like that. A bitter despair filled his heart when the baron left without so much as touching him with his cloak or saying a single word, when he, Edgar, was conscious of having done no wrong. His painfully enforced self-restraint gave way, the too heavy burden of dignity that he had imposed upon himself dropped from his narrow little shoulders, and he became the child again, small and humble, as he had been the day before. At the top of the steps he confronted the baron and said in a strained voice, thick with suppressed tears: "What have I done to you that you don't notice me any more? Why are you always like this with me now? And mamma, too? Why are you always sending me off? Am I a nuisance to you, or have I done anything to offend you?" The baron was startled. There was something in the child's voice that upset him at first, then stirred him to tenderness and sympathy for the unsuspecting boy. "You're a goose, Eddie. I'm merely out of sorts to-day. You're a dear boy, and I really love you." He tousled Edgar's hair, yet with averted face so as not to be obliged to see those great moist, beseeching child's eyes. The comedy he was playing was becoming painful. He was beginning to be ashamed of having trifled so insolently with the child's love. That small voice, quivering with suppressed sobs, cut him to the quick. "Go upstairs now, Eddie. We'll get along together this evening just as nicely as ever, you'll see." "You won't let mamma send me right off to bed, will you?" "No, no, I won't, Eddie," the baron smiled. "Just go on up. I must dress for dinner." Edgar went, made happy for the moment. Soon, however, the hammer began to knock at his heart again. He was years older since the day before. A strange guest, Distrust, had lodged itself in his child's breast. He waited for the decisive test, at table. Nine o'clock came, and his mother had not yet said a word about his going to bed. Why did she let him stay on just that day of all days, she who was usually so exact? It bothered him. Had the baron told her what he had said! He was consumed with regret, suddenly, that he had run after the baron so trustingly. At ten o'clock his mother rose, and took leave of the baron, who, oddly, showed no surprise at her early departure and made no attempt to detain her as he usually did. The hammer beat harder and harder at Edgar's breast. Now he must apply the test with exceeding care. He, too, behaved as though he suspected nothing and followed his mother to the door. Actually, in that second, he caught a smiling glance that travelled over his head straight to the baron and seemed to indicate a mutual understanding, a secret held in common. So the baron had betrayed him! That was why his mother had left so early. He, Edgar, was to be lulled with a sense of security so that he would not get in their way the next day. "Mean!" he murmured. "What's that?" his mother asked. "Nothing," he muttered between clenched teeth. He, too, had his secret. His secret was hate, a great hate for the two of them. CHAPTER VIII SILENT HOSTILITY The tumult of Edgar's conflicting emotions subsided into one smooth, clear feeling of hate and open hostility, concentrated and unadulterated. Now that he was certain of being in their way, the imposition of his presence upon them gave him a voluptuous satisfaction. Always accompanying them with the compressed strength of his enmity, he would goad them into madness. He gloated over the thought. The first to whom he showed his teeth was the baron, when he came downstairs in the morning and said "Hello, Edgar!" with genuine heartiness in his voice. Edgar remained sitting in the easy chair and answered curtly with a hard "G'd morning." "Your mother down yet?" Edgar kept his eyes glued to his newspaper. "I don't know." The baron was puzzled. "Slept badly, Eddie?" The baron was counting on a joke to help him over the situation again, but Edgar merely tossed out a contemptuous "No" and continued to study the paper. "Stupid," the baron murmured, shrugging his shoulders and walked away. Hostilities had been declared. Toward his mother Edgar's manner was cool and polite. When she made an awkward attempt to send him off to the tennis-court, he gave her a quiet rebuff, and his smile and the bitter curl at the corners of his mouth showed that he was no longer to be fooled. "I'd rather go walking with you, mamma," he said with assumed friendliness, looking her straight in the eyes. His answer was obviously not to her taste. She hesitated and seemed to be looking for something. "Wait for me here," she decided at length and went into the dining-room for breakfast. Edgar waited, but his distrust was lively, and his instincts, all astir, extracted a secret hostile intent from everything the baron and his mother now said. Suspicion was beginning to give him remarkable perspicacity sometimes. Instead, therefore, of waiting in the hall, as he had been bidden, he went outside to a spot from which he commanded a view not only of the main entrance but of all the exits from the hotel. Something in him scented deception. He hid himself behind a pile of wood, as the Indians do in the books, and when, about half an hour later, he saw his mother actually coming out of a side door carrying a bunch of exquisite roses and followed by the baron, the traitor, he laughed in glee. They seemed to be gay and full of spirits. Were they feeling relieved at having escaped him to be alone with their secret? They laughed as they talked, and turned into the road leading to the woods. The moment had come. Edgar, as though mere chance had brought him that way, strolled out from behind the woodpile and walked to meet them, with the utmost composure, allowing himself ample time to feast upon their surprise. When they caught sight of him they were quite taken aback, he saw, and exchanged a glance of astonishment. The child advanced slowly, with an assumed nonchalant air, never removing his mocking gaze from their faces. "Oh, here you are, Eddie. We were looking for you inside," his mother said finally. "The shameless liar!" the child thought, but held his lips set hard, keeping back the secret of his hate. The three stood there irresolutely, one watchful of the others. "Well, let's go on," said the woman, annoyed, but resigned, and plucked one of the lovely roses to bite. Her nostrils were quivering, a sign in her of extreme anger. Edgar stood still, as though it were a matter of indifference to him whether they walked on or not, looked up at the sky, waited for them to start, then followed leisurely. The baron made one more attempt. "There's a tennis tournament to-day. Have you ever seen one?" The baron was not worth an answer any more. Edgar merely gave him a scornful look and pursed his lips for whistling. That was his full reply. His hate showed its bared teeth. Edgar's unwished-for presence weighed upon the two like a nightmare. They felt very like convicts who follow their keeper gritting their teeth and clenching their fists in secret. Edgar neither did nor said anything out of the way, yet he became, every moment, more unbearable to them, with his watchful glances out of great moist eyes and his dogged sullenness which was like a prolonged growl at any attempt they made at an advance. "Go on ahead of us," his mother suddenly snapped, made altogether ill at ease by his intent listening to everything she and the baron were saying. "Don't be hopping right at my toes. It makes me fidgety." Edgar obeyed. But at every few steps he would face about and stand still, waiting for them to catch up if they had lingered behind, letting his gaze travel over them diabolically and enmeshing them in a fiery net of hate, in which, they felt, they were being inextricably entangled. His malevolent silence corroded their good spirits like an acid, his gaze dashed extinguishing gall on their conversation. The baron made no other attempts to court the woman beside him, feeling, infuriatedly, that she was slipping away from him because her fear of that annoying, obnoxious child was cooling the passion he had fanned into a flame with so much difficulty. After repeated unsuccessful attempts at a conversation they jogged along the path in complete silence, hearing nothing but the rustling of the leaves and their own dejected footsteps. There was active hostility now in each of the three. The betrayed child perceived with satisfaction how their anger gathered helplessly against his own little, despised person. Every now and then he cast a shrewd, ironic look at the baron's sullen face and saw how he was muttering curses between gritted teeth and had to restrain himself from hurling them out at him. He also observed with sarcastic glee how his mother's fury was mounting and that both of them were longing for an opportunity to attack him and send him away, or render him innocuous. But he gave them no opening, the tactics of his hate had been prepared too well in advance and left no spots exposed. "Let us go back," his mother burst out, feeling she could no longer control herself and that she must do something, if only cry out, under the imposition of this torture. "A pity," said Edgar quietly, "it's so lovely." The other two realized the child was making fun of them, but they dared not retort, their tyrant having learned marvellously in two days the supreme art of self-control. Not a quiver in his face betrayed his mordant irony. Without another word being spoken they retraced the long way back to the hotel. When Edgar and his mother were alone together in her room, her excitement was still seething. She tossed her gloves and parasol down angrily. Edgar did not fail to note these signs and was aware that her electrified nerves would seek to discharge themselves, but he courted an outburst and remained in her room on purpose. She paced up and down, seated herself, drummed on the table with her fingers, and jumped up again. "How untidy you look. You go around filthy. It's a disgrace. Aren't you ashamed of yourself--a boy of your age!" Without a word of opposition Edgar went to his mother's toilet table and washed and combed himself. His cold, obdurate silence and the ironic quiver of his lips drove her to a frenzy. Nothing would have satisfied her so much as to give him a sound beating. "Go to your room," she screamed, unable to endure his presence a second longer. Edgar smiled and left the room. How the two trembled before him! How they dreaded every moment in his presence, the merciless grip of his eyes! The worse they felt the more he gloated, and the more challenging became his satisfaction. Edgar tortured the two defenceless creatures with the almost animal cruelty of children. The baron, because he had not given up hope of playing a trick on the lad and was thinking of nothing but the goal of his desires, could still contain his anger, but Edgar's mother was losing her hold upon herself and kept constantly slipping. It was a relief to her to be able to shriek at him. "Don't play with your fork," she cried at table. "You're an ill-bred monkey. You don't deserve to be in the company of grown-up people." Edgar smiled, with his head tipped a trifle to one side. He knew his mother's outburst was a sign of desperation and took pride in having made her betray herself. His manner and glance were now as composed as a physician's. In previous days he might have answered back rudely so as to annoy her. But hate teaches many things, and quickly. How he kept quiet, and still kept quiet, and still kept quiet, until his mother, under the pressure of his silence, began to scream. She could stand it no longer. When they rose from table and Edgar with his matter-of-course air of attachment preceded to follow her and the baron, her pent-up anger suddenly burst out. She cast prudence to the winds and let out the truth. Tortured by his crawling presence she reared like a horse pestered by crawling flies. "Why do you keep tagging after me like a child of three? I don't want you around us all the time. Children should not always be with their elders. Please remember that. Spend an hour or two by yourself for once. Read something, or do whatever you want. Leave me alone. You make me nervous with your creepy ways and that disgusting hang-dog air of yours!" He had wrested it from her at last--the confession! He smiled, while the baron and his mother seemed embarrassed. She swung about, turning her back, and was about to leave, in a fury with herself for having admitted so much to her little son, when Edgar's voice came, saying coolly: "Papa does not want me to be by myself here. He made me promise not to be wild, and to stay with you." Edgar emphasized "Papa," having noticed on the previous occasion when he used the word that it had had a paralyzing effect upon both of them. In some way or other, therefore, he inferred, his father must be implicated in this great mystery and must have a secret power over them, because the very mention of him seemed to frighten and distress them. They said nothing this time either. They laid down their arms. The mother left the room with the baron, and Edgar followed behind, not humbly like a servitor, but hard, strict, inexorable, like a guard over prisoners, rattling the chains against which they strained in vain. Hate had steeled his child's strength. He, the ignorant one, was stronger than the two older people whose hands were held fast by the great secret. CHAPTER IX THE LIARS Time was pressing. The baron's holiday would soon come to an end, and the few days that remained must be exploited to the full. There was no use, both he and Edgar's mother felt, trying to break down the excited child's pertinacity. So they resorted to the extreme measure of disgraceful evasion and flight, merely to escape for an hour or two from under his yoke. "Please take these letters and have them registered at the post-office," his mother said to Edgar in the hall, while the baron was outside ordering a cab. Edgar, remembering that until then his mother had sent the hotel boys on her errands, was suspicious. Were they hatching something against him? He hesitated. "Where will you wait for me?" "Here." "For sure?" "Yes." "Now be sure to. Don't leave before I come back. You'll wait right here in the hall, won't you?" In the consciousness of his superiority he had adopted a commanding tone with his mother. Many things had changed since the day before yesterday. At the door he encountered the baron, to whom he spoke for the first time in two days. "I am going to the post-office to register these letters. My mother is waiting for me. Please do not go until I come back." The baron hastened past him. "All right. We'll wait." Edgar ran at top speed to the post-office, where he had to wait while a man ahead of him asked a dozen silly questions. Finally his turn came, and at last he was free to run back to the hotel, which he reached just in time to see the couple driving off. He turned rigid with anger, and had the impulse to pick up a stone and throw it at them. So they had escaped him after all, but by what a mean, contemptible lie! He had discovered the day before that his mother lied, but that she could so wantonly disregard a definite, expressed promise, shattered his last remnant of confidence. He could not understand life at all any more, now that he realized that the words which he had thought clothed a reality were nothing more than bursting bubbles. But what a dreadful secret it must be that drove grown-up people to such lengths, to lie to him, a child, and to steal away like criminals! In the books he had read, men deceived and murdered one another for money, power, empire, but what was the motive here? What were his mother and the baron after? Why did they hide from him? What were they, with their lies, trying to conceal? He racked his brain for answers to the riddle. Vaguely he divined that this secret was the bolt which, when unlocked, opened the door to let out childhood, and to master it meant to be grown up, to be a man at last. Oh, to know what it was! But he could no longer think clearly. His rage at their having escaped him was like a fire that sent scorching smoke into his eyes and kept him from seeing. He ran to the woods and in the nick of time reached a quiet dark spot, where no one could see him, and burst into tears. "Liars! Dogs! Mean--mean--mean!" He felt he must scream the words out to relieve himself of his frenzy. All the pent-up rage, impatience, annoyance, curiosity, impotence, and the sense of betrayal of the last few days, which he had suppressed in the fond belief that he was an adult and must behave like an adult, now gushed from him in a fit of weeping and sobbing. It was the final crying spell of his childhood. For the last time he was giving in to the bliss of weeping like a woman. In that moment of uncontrolled fury his tears washed away his whole childhood, trust, love, credulity, respect. The lad who returned to the hotel was different from the child that had left it. He was cool and level-headed. He went first to his room and washed his face carefully so that the two should not enjoy the triumph of seeing the traces of his tears. Then he planned his strategy and waited patiently, without the least agitation. There happened to be a good many guests in the hall when the carriage pulled up at the door. Two gentlemen were playing chess, a few others were reading their papers, and a group of ladies sat together talking. Edgar sat among them quietly, a trifle pale, with wavering glances. When his mother and the baron appeared in the doorway, rather embarrassed at encountering him so soon, and began to stammer out their excuses prepared in advance, he confronted them calmly, and said to the baron in a tone of challenge: "I have something to say to you, sir." "Very well, later, a little later." Edgar, pitching his voice louder and enunciating every word clearly and distinctly, said, so that everyone in the hall could hear: "No, now. You behaved like a villain. You knew my mother was waiting for me, and you----" "Edgar!" cried his mother, feeling all glances upon her, and swooped down on him. But Edgar, realizing that she wanted to shout him down, screamed at the top of his voice: "I say again, in front of everybody, you lied, you lied disgracefully. It was a dirty trick." The baron went white, the people stared, some laughed. The mother clutched the boy, who was quivering with excitement, and stammered out hoarsely: "Go right up to your room, or I'll give you a beating right here in front of everybody." But Edgar had already calmed down. He regretted he had been so violent and was discontented with himself that he had not coolly challenged the baron as he had intended to do. But his anger had been stronger than his will. He turned and walked to the staircase leisurely, with an air of perfect composure. "You must excuse him," the mother still went on, stammering, confused by the rather wicked glances fixed upon her, "he's a nervous child, you know." She was afraid of nothing so much as a scandal, and she knew she must assume innocence. Instead, therefore, of taking to instant flight, she went up to the desk and asked for her mail and made several other inquiries before rustling up the stairs as though nothing had happened. But behind her, she was quite conscious, she had left a wake of whispered comment and suppressed giggling. On the first landing she hesitated, the rest of the steps she mounted more slowly. She was always unequal to a serious situation and was afraid of the inevitable explanation with Edgar. She was guilty, she could not deny that, and she dreaded the child's curious gaze, which paralyzed her and filled her with uncertainty. In her timidity she decided to try gentleness, because in a battle the excited child, she knew, was the stronger. She turned the knob gently. Edgar was sitting there quiet and cool, his eyes, turned upon her at her entrance, not even betraying curiosity. He seemed to be very sure of himself. "Edgar," she began, in the motherliest of tones, "what got into you? I was ashamed of you. How can one be so ill-bred, especially a child to a grown-up person? You must ask the baron's pardon at once." "I will not." As he spoke Edgar was looking out of the window, and his words might have been meant for the trees. His sureness was beginning to astonish his mother. "Edgar, what's the matter with you? You're so different from what you were. You used to be a good, sensible child with whom a person could reason. And all at once you act as though the devil had got into you. What have you got against the baron? You liked him so much at first. He was so nice to you." "Yes, because he wanted to make your acquaintance." "Nonsense. How can you think anything like that?" The child flared up. "He's a liar. He's false through and through. Whatever he does is calculated and common. He wanted to get to know you, so he made friends with me and promised me a dog. I don't know what he promised you, or why he's so friendly with you, but he wants something of you, too, mamma, positively he does. If he didn't, he wouldn't be so polite and friendly. He's a bad man. He lies. Just take a good look at him once, and see how false his eyes are. Oh, I hate him!" "Edgar, how can you talk like that!" She was confused and did not know what to reply. The feeling stirred in her that the child was right. "Yes, he's a bad man, you can't make me believe he isn't. You must see he is. Why is he afraid of me? Why does he try to keep out of my way? Because he knows I can see through him and his badness." "How can you talk like that?" she kept protesting feebly. Her brain seemed to have dried up. All of a sudden a great fear came upon her, whether of the baron or the boy, she knew not. Edgar saw that his warning was taking effect, and he was lured on to win her over to his side and have a comrade in his hate and hostility toward the baron. He went over to her gently, put his arms about her, and said in a voice flattering with the excitement quivering in it: "Mamma, you yourself must have noticed that it isn't anything good that he wants. He's made you quite different. You're the one that's changed, not I. He set you against me just to have you to himself. I'm sure he means to deceive you. I don't know what he promised you, but whatever it is, he doesn't intend to keep his promise. You ought to be careful of him. A man who will lie to one person will lie to another person, too. He's a bad, bad man. You mustn't trust him." Edgar's voice, soft and almost tearful, seemed to speak out of her own heart. Since the day before an uncomfortable feeling had been rising in her which told her the same, with growing emphasis. But she was ashamed to tell her own child he was right, and she took refuge, as so many do when under the stress of overwhelming feeling, in rude rejoinder. She straightened herself up. "Children don't understand such things. You have no right to mix into such matters. You must behave yourself. That's all." Edgar's face congealed again. "Very well. I have warned you." "Then you won't ask the baron's pardon?" "No." They stood confronting each other, and the mother knew her authority was at stake. "Then you will stay up here and eat by yourself, and you won't be allowed to come to table and sit with us until you have asked his pardon. I'll teach you manners. You won't budge from this room until I give you permission to, do you hear?" Edgar smiled. That cunning smile seemed to be part of his lips now. Inwardly he was angry at himself. How foolish to have let his heart run away with him again and to have tried to warn her, the liar. His mother rustled out without giving him another glance. That caustic gaze of his frightened her. The child had become an absolute annoyance to her since she realized that he had his eyes open and said the very things she did not want to know or hear. It was uncanny to have an inner voice, her conscience, dissevered from herself, incorporated in her child, going about as her child, warning her and making fun of her. Until then the child had stayed alongside of her life, as an ornament, a toy, a thing to love and have confidence in, now and then perhaps a burden, but always something that floated along in the same current as her own life, keeping even pace with it. For the first time this something reared itself up and opposed her will. A feeling akin to hate mingled itself in her thoughts of her child now. And yet, as she was descending the stairs, a little tired, childish voice came from her own breast, saying, "You ought to be careful of him." On one of the landings was a mirror. The gleam of it struck her eyes, and she paused to scrutinize herself questioningly. She looked deeper and deeper into her own face until the lips of her image parted in a light smile and formed themselves as if to utter a dangerous word. The voice within her was still speaking, but she threw back her shoulders as though to shake off all those invisible thoughts gave her reflection in the glass a bright glance, caught up her skirt, and descended the rest of the stairs with the determined manner of a player who has tossed his last coin down on the table. CHAPTER X ON THE TRAIL The waiter, after serving Edgar with dinner in his room, closed and locked the door behind him. The child started up in a rage. His mother's doings! She must have given orders for him to be locked in like a vicious beast. "What's going on downstairs," he brooded grimly, "while I am locked in up here? What are they talking about, I wonder? Is the mystery taking place, and am I missing it? Oh, this secret that I scent all around me when I am with grown-ups, this thing that they shut me out from at night, and that makes them lower their voices when I come upon them unawares, this great secret that has been near me for days, close at hand, yet still out of reach. I've done everything to try to get at it." Edgar recalled the time when he had pilfered books from his father's library and had read them, and found they contained the mystery, though he could not understand it. There must be some sort of seal, he concluded, either in himself or in the others that had first to be removed before the mystery could be fathomed. He also recalled how he had begged the servant-girl to explain the obscure passages in the books and she had only laughed at him. "Dreadful," he thought, "to be a child, full of curiosity, and yet not to be allowed even to ask for information, always to be ridiculed by the grown-ups, as if one were a stupid good-for-nothing. But never mind, I'm going to find it out, and very soon, I feel sure I will. Already part of it is in my hands, and I mean not to let go till I hold the whole of it." He listened to find out if anyone were coming to the room. Outside, the trees were rustling in a strong breeze, which caught up the silvery mirror of the moonlight and dashed it in shivering bits through the network of the branches. "It can't be anything good that they intend to do, else they wouldn't have used such mean little lies to get me out of their way. Of course, they're laughing at me, the miserable creatures, because they're rid of me at last. But I'll be the one to laugh next. How stupid of me to allow myself to be locked in this room and give them a moment to themselves, instead of sticking to them like a burr and watching their every move. I know the grown-ups are always incautious, and _they_ will be giving themselves away, too. Grown-ups think we're still babies and always go to sleep at night. They forget we can pretend to be asleep and can go on listening, and we can make out we're stupid when we're really very bright." Edgar smiled to himself sarcastically when at this point his thoughts reverted to the birth of a baby cousin. The family in his presence had pretended to be surprised, and he had known very well they were not surprised, because for weeks he had heard them, at night when they thought he was asleep, discussing the coming event. And he resolved to fool his mother and the baron in the same way. "Oh, if only I could peep through the key-hole and watch them while they fancy they're alone and safe. Perhaps it would be a good idea to ring, and the boy would come and open the door and ask what I want. Or I could make a terrible noise smashing things, and then they'd unlock the door and I'd slip out." On second thought he decided against either plan, as incompatible with his pride. No one should see how contemptibly he had been treated, and he would wait till the next day. From beneath his window came a woman's laugh. Edgar started. Perhaps it was his mother laughing. She had good cause to laugh and make fun of the helpless little boy who was locked up when he was a nuisance and thrown into a corner like a bundle of rags. He leaned, circumspectly out of the window and looked. No, it wasn't his mother, but one of a group of gay girls teasing a boy. In looking out Edgar observed that his window was not very high above the ground, and instantly it occurred to him to jump down and go spy on his mother and the baron. He was all fire with the joy of his resolve, feeling that now he had the great secret in his grasp. There was no danger in it. No people were passing by--and with that he had jumped out. Nothing but the light crunch of the gravel under his feet to betray his action. In these two days, stealing around and spying had become the delight of his life, and intense bliss, mingled with a faint tremor of alarm, filled him now as he tiptoed around the outside of the hotel, carefully avoiding the lights. He looked first into the dining-room. Their seats were empty. From window to window he went peeping, always outside the hotel for fear if he went inside he might run up against them in one of the corridors. Nowhere were they to be seen, and he was about to give up hope when he saw two shadows emerge from a side entrance--he shrank and drew back into the dark--and his mother and her inseparable escort came out. In the nick of time, he thought. What were they saying? He couldn't hear, they were talking in such low voices and the wind was making such an uproar in the trees. His mother laughed. It was a laugh he had never before heard from her, a peculiarly sharp, nervous laugh, as though she had suddenly been tickled. It made a curious impression on the boy and rather startled him. "But if she laughs," he thought, "it can't be anything dangerous, nothing very big and mighty that they are concealing from me." He was a trifle disillusioned. "Yet, why were they leaving the hotel? Where were they going alone together in the night?" Every now and then great drifts of clouds obscured the moon, and the darkness was then so intense that one could scarcely see the white road at one's feet, but soon the moon would emerge again and robe the landscape in a sheet of silver. In one of the moments when the whole countryside was flooded in brilliance Edgar saw the two silhouettes going down the road, or rather one silhouette, so close did they cling together, as if in terror. But where were they going? The fir-trees groaned, the woods were all astir, uncannily, as though from a wild chase in their depths. "I will follow them," thought Edgar. "They cannot hear me in all this noise." Keeping to the edge of the woods, in the shadow, from which he could easily see them on the clear white road, he tracked them relentlessly, blessing the wind for making his footsteps inaudible and cursing it for carrying away the sound of their talk. It was not until he heard what they said that he could be sure of learning the secret. The baron and his companion walked on without any misgivings. They felt all alone in the wide resounding night and lost themselves in their growing excitement, never dreaming that on the high edges of the road, in the leafy darkness, every movement of theirs was being watched, and a pair of eyes was clutching them in a wild grip of hate and curiosity. Suddenly they stood still, and Edgar, too, instantly stopped and pressed close up against a tree, in terror that they might turn back and reach the hotel before him, so that his mother would discover his room was empty and learn that she had been followed. Then he would have to give up hope of ever wresting the secret from them. But the couple hesitated. Evidently there was a difference of opinion between them. Fortunately at that moment the moon was shining undimmed by clouds, and he could see everything clearly. The baron pointed to a side-path leading down into the valley, where the moonlight descended, not in a broad flood of brilliance, but only in patches filtering here and there through the heavy foliage. "Why does he want to go down there?" thought Edgar. His mother, apparently, refused to take the path, and the baron was trying to persuade her. Edgar could tell from his gestures that he was talking emphatically. The child was alarmed. What did this man want of his mother? Why did he attempt--the villain!--to drag her into the dark? From his books, to him the world, came live memories of murder and seduction and sinister crime. There, he had it, the baron meant to murder her. That was why he had kept him, Edgar, at a distance, and enticed her to this lonely spot. Should he cry for help? Murder! He wanted to shriek, but his throat and lips were dry and no sound issued from his mouth. His nerves were tense as a bow-string, he could scarcely stand upright on his shaking knees, and he put out his hand for support, when, crack, crack! a twig snapped in his grasp. At the sound of the breaking twig the two turned about in alarm and stared into the darkness. Edgar clung to the tree, his little body completely wrapped in obscurity, quiet as death. Yet they seemed to have been frightened. "Let's go home," he could now hear his mother say anxiously, and the baron, who, evidently, was also upset, assented. Pressed close against each other, they walked back very slowly. Their embarrassment was Edgar's good fortune. He got down on all fours and crept, tearing his hands and clothes on the brambles, through the undergrowth to the turn of the woods, from where he ran breathlessly back to the hotel and up the stairs to his room. Luckily the key was sticking on the outside, and in one second he was in his room lying on the bed, where he had to rest a few moments to give his pounding heart a chance to quiet down. After two or three minutes he got up and looked out of the window to await their return. They must have been walking very slowly indeed. It took them an eternity. Circumspectly he peeped out of the shadowed frame. There, at length, they came at a snail's pace, the moonlight shining on their clothes. They looked like ghosts in the greenish shimmer, and the delicious horror came upon him again whether it really might have been a murder, and what a dreadful catastrophe he had averted by his presence. He could clearly see their faces, which looked chalky in the white light. His mother had an expression of rapture that in her was strange to him, while the baron looked hard and dejected. Probably because he had failed in carrying out his purpose. They were very close to the hotel now, but it was not until they reached the steps that their figures separated from each other. Would they look up? Edgar waited eagerly. No. "They have forgotten all about me," he thought wrathfully, and then, in triumph, "but I haven't forgotten you. You think I am asleep or non-existent, but you'll find out you're mistaken. I'll watch every step you take until I have got the secret out of you, you villain, the dreadful secret that keeps me awake nights. I'll tear the strings that tie you two together. I am not going to go to sleep." As the couple entered the doorway, their shadows mingled again in one broad band that soon dwindled and disappeared. And once more the space in front of the hotel lay serene in the moonlight, like a meadow of snow. CHAPTER XI THE SURPRISE ATTACK Edgar moved away from the window, breathing heavily, in a shiver of horror. A gruesome mystery of this sort had never touched his life before, the bookish world of thrilling adventure, excitement, deception and murder having always belonged to the same realm as the wonderland of fairy tales, the realm of dreams, far away, in the unreal and unattainable. Now he was plunged right into the midst of this fascinatingly awful world, and his whole being quivered deliriously. Who was this mysterious being who had stepped into his quiet life? Was he really a murderer? If not, why did he always try to drag his mother to a remote, dark spot? Something dreadful, Edgar felt certain, was about to happen. He did not know what to do. In the morning he would surely write or telegraph his father--or why not that very moment? His mother was not in her room yet, but was still with that horrid person. The outside of the door to Edgar's room was hung with a portière, and he opened his door softly now, closed it behind him, and stuck himself between the door and the portière, listening for his mother's steps in the corridor, determined not to let her stay by herself a single instant. The corridor, at this midnight hour, was quiet and empty and lighted faintly by a single gas jet. The minutes stretched themselves into hours, it seemed, before he heard cautious footsteps coming up the stairs. He strained his ears to listen. The steps did not move forward with the quick, regular beat of someone making straight for his room, but sounded hesitating and dragging as though up a steep, difficult climb. Edgar also caught the sound of whispering, a pause, then whispering again. He was a-quiver with excitement. Was it both of them coming up together? Was the creature still sticking to her? The whispering was too low and far away for him to catch what they were saying. But the footsteps, though slowly and with pauses between, were drawing nearer. And now he could hear the baron's voice--oh, how he hated the sound of it!--saying something in a low, hoarse tone, which he could not get, and then his mother answering as though to ward something off: "No, no, not tonight!" Edgar's excitement rose to fever heat. As they came nearer he would be bound to catch everything they said. Each inch closer that they drew was like a physical hurt in his breast, and the baron's voice, how ugly it seemed, that greedy, grasping disgusting voice. "Don't be cruel. You were so lovely this evening." "No, no, I mustn't. I can't. Let me go!" There was such alarm in his mother's voice that the child was terrified. What did the baron want her to do? Why was she afraid? They were quite close up to him now, apparently right in front of the portière. A foot or two away from them was he, trembling, invisible, with a bit of drapery for his only protection. Edgar heard his mother give a faint groan as though her powers of resistance were weakening. But what was that? Edgar could hear that they had passed his mother's door and had kept on walking down the corridor. Where was he dragging her off to? Why was she not replying any more? Had he stuffed his hand kerchief into her mouth and was he squeezing her throat? Wild with this thought, Edgar pushed the portière aside and peeped out at the two figures in the dim corridor. The baron had his arm round the woman's waist and was forcing her along gently, evidently with little resistance from her. He stopped at his own door. "He wants to drag her in and commit the foul deed," though the child, and dashing the portière aside he rushed down the hall upon them. His mother screamed; something came leaping at her out of the dark, and she seemed to fall in a faint. The baron held her up with difficulty. The next instant he felt a little fist dealing him a blow that smashed his lips against his teeth, and a little body clawing at him catlike. He released the terrified woman, who quickly made her escape, and, without knowing against whom, he struck out blindly. The child knew he was the weaker of the two, yet he never yielded. At last, at last the great moment had come when he could unburden himself of all his betrayed love and accumulated hate. With set lips and a look of frenzy on his face he pounded away at the baron with his two small fists. By this time the baron had recognized his assailant. He, too, was primed with hate of the little spy who had been dogging him and interfering with his sport, and he hit back, striking out blindly. Edgar groaned once or twice, but did not let go, and did not cry for help. They wrestled a fraction of a minute in the dark corridor grimly and sullenly without the exchange of a single word. But pretty soon the baron came to his senses and realizing how absurd was this duel with a half-grown boy he caught hold of Edgar to throw him off. But Edgar, feeling his muscles weakening and conscious that the next moment he would be beaten, snapped, in a fury, at the strong, firm hand gripping at the nape of his neck. The baron could not restrain a slight outcry, and let go of Edgar, who seized the opportunity to run to his room and draw the bolt. The midnight struggle had lasted no more than a minute. No one in any of the rooms along the corridor had caught a sound of it. Everything was silent, wrapped in sleep. The baron wiped his bleeding hand with his handkerchief and peered into the dark uneasily to make sure no one had been watching or listening. All he saw was the one gas jet winking at him, he thought, sarcastically. CHAPTER XII THE TEMPEST Edgar woke up the next morning dazed, wondering whether it had not been a horrid dream, and with the sickly feeling that hangs on after a nightmare, his head leaden and his body like a piece of wood. It was only after a minute or so that he realized with a sort of alarm that he was still in his day clothes. He jumped out of bed and went to look at himself in the mirror. The image of his own pale, distorted face, with his hair all rumpled and a red, elongated swelling on his forehead, made him recoil with a shudder. It brought back to him the actuality painfully. He recalled the details of the battle in the corridor, and his rushing back to his room and throwing himself on to the bed dressed. He must have fallen asleep thus and dreamed everything over again, only worse and mingled with the warmish smell of fresh flowing blood. Footsteps crunched on the gravel beneath his window, voices rose like invisible birds, and the sun shone deep into the room. "It must be very late," he thought, glancing at his watch. But the hands pointed to midnight. In the excitement of the day before he had forgotten to wind it up. This uncertainty, this hanging suspended in time, disturbed him, and his sense of disgust was increased by his confusion of mind as to what had actually occurred. He dressed quickly and went downstairs, a vague sense of guilt in his heart. In the breakfast-room his mother was sitting at their usual table, alone. Thank goodness, his enemy was not present. Edgar would not have to look upon that hateful face of his. And yet, as he went to the table, he was by no means sure of himself. "Good morning," he said. His mother made no reply, nor even so much as glanced up, but kept her eyes fixed in a peculiarly rigid stare on the view from the window. She looked very pale, her eyes were red-rimmed, and there was that quivering of her nostrils which told so plainly how wrought up she was. Edgar bit his lips. Her silence bewildered him. He really did not know whether he had hurt the baron very much or whether his mother had any knowledge at all of their encounter. The uncertainty plagued him. But her face remained so rigid that he did not even attempt to look up for fear that her eyes, now hidden behind lowered lids, might suddenly raise their curtains and pop out at him. He sat very still, not daring to make the faintest sound, and raising the cup to his lips and putting it back on the saucer with the utmost caution, and casting furtive glances, from time to time, at his mother's fingers, which played with her spoon nervously and seemed, in the way they were bent, to show a secret anger. For a full quarter of an hour he sat at the table in an oppressive expectancy of something that never came. Not a single word from her to relieve his tension. And now as his mother rose, still without any sign of having noticed his presence, he did not know what to do, whether to remain sitting at the table or to go with her. He decided upon the latter, and followed humbly, though conscious how ridiculous was his shadowing of her now. He reduced his steps so as to fall behind, and she, still studiously refraining from noticing him, went to her room. When Edgar reached her door he found it locked. What had happened? He was at his wits' end. His assurance of the day before had deserted him. Had he done wrong, after all, in attacking the baron? And were they preparing a punishment for him or a fresh humiliation? Something must happen, he was positive, something dreadful, very soon. Upon him and his mother lay the sultriness of a brewing tempest. They were like two electrified poles that would have to discharge themselves in a flash. And for four solitary hours the child dragged round with him, from room to room, the burden of this premonition, until his thin little neck bent under the invisible yoke, and by midday it was a very humble little fellow that took his seat at table. "How do you do?" he ventured again, feeling he had to rend this silence, ominous as a great black storm cloud. But still his mother made no response, keeping her gaze fixed beyond him. Edgar, in renewed alarm, felt he was in the presence of a calculated, concentrated anger such as he had never before encountered. Until then his mother's scoldings had been outbursts of nervousness rather than of ill feeling and soon melted into a mollifying smile. This time, however, he had, as he sensed, brought to the surface a wild emotion from the deeps of her being, and this powerful something that he had evoked terrified him. He scarcely dared to eat. His throat was parched and knotted into a lump. His mother seemed not to notice what was passing in her son, but when she got up she turned, with a casual air, and said: "Come up to my room afterwards, Edgar, I have something to say to you." Her tone was not threatening, but so icy that Edgar felt as though each word were like a link in an iron chain being laid round his neck. His defiance had been crushed out of him. Silently, with a hang-dog air, he followed her up to her room. In the room she prolonged his agony by saying nothing for several minutes, during which he heard the striking of the clock, and outside a child laughing, and within his own breast his heart beating like a trip-hammer. Yet she, too, could not be feeling so very confident of herself either, because she kept her eyes averted and even turned her back while speaking to him. "I shall say nothing to you about the way you behaved yesterday. It was unpardonable, and it makes me feel ashamed to think of it. You have to suffer the consequences now of your own conduct. All I mean to say to you is that this is the last time you will be allowed to associate with your elders. I have just written to your father that either you must be put under a tutor or sent to a boarding-school where you will be taught manners. I sha'n't be bothered with you any more." Edgar stood with bowed head, feeling that this was only the preliminary, a threat of the real thing coming, and he waited uneasily for the sequel. "You will ask the baron's pardon." Edgar gave a start, but his mother would not be interrupted. "The baron left to-day, and you will write him a letter which I shall dictate." Edgar again made a movement, which his mother firmly disregarded. "No protestations. Here is the paper, and here are the pen and the ink. Sit down." Edgar looked up. Her eyes were steely with an inflexible determination. This hardness and composure in his mother were quite new and strange. He was frightened, and seated himself at the desk, keeping his face bent low. "The date--upper right-hand corner. Have you written it? Space. Dear Sir, colon. Next line. I have just learned to my regret--got that?--to my regret that you have already left Summering. Two m's in Summering. And so I must do by letter what I had intended to do in person, that is--faster, Edgar, you don't have to draw each letter--beg your pardon for what I did yesterday. As my mother told you, I am just convalescing from a severe illness and am very excitable. On account of my condition, I often exaggerate things and the next moment I am sorry for it." The back bent over the desk straightened up. Edgar turned in a flash. His defiance had leapt into life again. "I will not write that. It isn't true." "Edgar!" "It is not true. I haven't done anything that I should be sorry for. I haven't done anything bad that I need ask anybody's pardon for. I simply came to your rescue when you called for help." Every drop of blood left her lips, her nostrils widened. "I called for help? You're crazy." Edgar got angry and jumped up from his chair. "Yes, you did call for help, in the corridor, when he caught hold of you. You said, 'Let me go, let me go,' so loud that I heard it in my room." "You lie. I never was in the corridor with the baron. He went with me only as far as the foot of the stairs----" Edgar's heart stood still at the barefacedness of the lie. He stared at her with glassy eyeballs, and cried in a voice thick and husky with passion: "You--were not--in the hall? And he--he did _not_ have his arm round you?" She laughed a cold, dry laugh. "You were dreaming." That was too much. The child, by this time, knew that adults lie and resort to impudent little evasions, lies that slip through fine sieves, and cunning ambiguities. But this downright denial of an absolute fact, face to face, threw him into a frenzy. "Dreaming, was I? Did I dream this bump on my forehead, too?" "How do I know whom you've been rowdying with? But I am not going to argue with you. You are to obey orders. That's all. Sit down and finish the letter." She was very pale and was summoning all her strength to keep on her feet. In Edgar, a last tiny flame of credulity went out. To tread on the truth and extinguish it as one would a burning match was more than he could stomach. His insides congealed in an icy lump, and everything he now said was in a tone of unrestrained, pointed maliciousness. "So I dreamed what I saw in the hall, did I? I dreamed this bump on my forehead, and that you two went walking in the moonlight and he wanted to make you go down the dark path into the valley? I dreamed all that, did I? What do you think, that I am going to let myself be locked up like a baby? No, I am not so stupid as you think. I know what I know." He stared into her face impudently. To see her child's face close to her own distorted by hate broke her down completely. Her passion flooded over in a tidal wave. "Sit down and write that letter, or----" "Or what?" he sneered. "Or I'll give you a whipping like a little child." Edgar drew close to her and merely laughed sardonically. With that her hand was out and had struck his face. Edgar gave a little outcry, and, like a drowning man, with a dull rushing in his ears and flickerings in his eyes, he struck out blindly with both fists. He felt he encountered something soft, a face, heard a cry.... The cry brought him to his senses. Suddenly he saw himself and his monstrous act--he had struck his own mother. A dreadful terror came upon him, shame and horror, an impetuous need to get away seized him, to sink into the earth; he wanted to fly far away, far away from those eyes that were upon him. He made for the door and in an instant was gone, down the stairs, through the lobby, out on the road. Away, away, as though a pack of ravening beasts were at his heels. CHAPTER XIII DAWNING PERCEPTION After he had put a long stretch of road between him and the hotel, Edgar stopped running. He was panting heavily, and he had to lean against a tree to get his breath back and recover from the trembling of his knees. The horror of his own deed, from which he had been fleeing, clutched at his throat and shook him as with a fever. What should he do now? Where should he run away to? He was already feeling a sinking sensation of loneliness, there in the woods, only a mile or so from the house. Everything seemed different, unfriendlier, unkinder, now that he was alone and helpless. The trees that only the day before had whispered to him like brothers now gathered together darkly as if in threat. This solitariness in the great unknown world dazed the child. No, he could not stand alone yet. But to whom should he go? Of his father, who was easily excited and unapproachable, he was afraid. Besides, his father would send him straight back to his mother, and Edgar preferred the awfulness of the unknown to that. He felt as though he could never look upon his mother's face again without remembering that he had struck her with his fist. His grandmother in Bains occurred to him. She was so sweet and kind and had always petted him and come to his rescue when, at home, he was to be the victim of an injustice. He would stay with her until the first storm of wrath had blown over, and then he would write to his parents to ask their forgiveness. In this brief quarter of an hour he had already been so humbled by the mere thought of his inexperienced self standing alone in the world that he cursed the stupid pride that a mere stranger's lying had put into him. He no longer wanted to be anything but the child he had been, obedient and patient and without the arrogance that he now felt to be excessive. But how to reach Bains? He took out his little pocketbook and blessed his luck star that the ten-dollar gold piece given to him on his birthday was there safe and sound. He had never got himself to break it. Daily he had inspected his purse to see if it was there and to feast his eyes on the sight of it and gratefully polish it with his handkerchief until it shone like a tiny sun. But would the ten dollars be enough? He had travelled by train many a time without thinking that one had to pay, and still less how much one paid, whether ten or a hundred dollars. For the first time he got an inkling that there were facts in life upon which he had never reflected, and that all the many things that surrounded him and he had held in his hands and toyed with somehow contained a value of their own, a special importance. An hour before he had thought he knew everything. Now he realized he had passed by a thousand mysteries and problems without noticing them, and was ashamed that his poor little wisdom had stumbled over the first step it took into life. He grew more and more discouraged, and his footsteps lagged as he drew near the station. How often he had dreamed of this flight from home, of making a dash for the great Life, becoming king or emperor, soldier or poet! And now he looked timidly at the bright little building ahead of him and thought of nothing but whether his ten dollars would bring him to his grandmother at Bains. The rails stretched away monotonously into the country, the station was deserted. Edgar went to the window shyly and asked, whispering so that nobody but the ticket-seller should hear, how much a ticket to Bains cost. Amused and rather astonished eyes behind spectacles smiled upon the timid child. "Whole fare or half fare?" "Whole fare," stammered Edgar, utterly without pride. "Three dollars and thirty-five cents." "Give me a ticket, please." In great relief Edgar shoved the beloved bit of polished gold under the grating, change rattled on the ledge, and Edgar all at once felt immensely wealthy holding the strip of colored paper that guaranteed him his liberty, and with the sound of coin clinking in his pocket. On examining the timetable he found there would be a train in only twenty minutes, and he retired to a corner, to get away from the few people idling on the platform. Though it was evident they were harboring no suspicions, the child, as if his flight and his crime were branded on his forehead, felt that they were looking at nothing but him and were wondering why a mere boy such as he should be travelling alone. He drew a great sigh of relief when at last the first whistle sounded in the distance, and the rumbling came closer and closer, and the train that was to carry him out into the great world puffed and snorted into the station. It was not until Edgar took his seat in the train that he noticed he had secured only a third-class passage. Having always travelled first class, he was again struck with a sense of difference. He saw there were distinctions that had escaped him. His fellow-passengers were unlike those of his first-class trips, a few Italian laborers, with tough hands and uncouth voices, carrying pickaxes and shovels. They sat directly opposite, dull and disconsolate-eyed, staring into space. They must have been working very hard on the road, for some of them slept in the rattling coach, open-mouthed, leaning against the hard, soiled wood. "They have been working to earn money," came into Edgar's mind, and he set to guessing how much they earned, but could not decide. And so another disturbing fact impressed itself upon him, that money was something one did not always have on hand, but had to be made somehow or other. And for the first time he became conscious of having taken the ease in which he had been lapped as a matter of course and that to the right and the left of him abysms yawned which his eyes had never beheld. It came to him now with the shock of suddenness that there were trades and professions, that his life was hedged about by innumerable secrets, close at hand and tangible, though he had never noticed them. Edgar was learning a good deal in that single hour of aloneness and saw many things as he looked out of his narrow compartment into the great wide world. And for all his dark dread, something began to unfold itself gently within him, not exactly happiness as yet, rather a marvelling at the diversity of life. He had fled, he felt, out of fear and cowardice, yet it was his first independent act, and he had experienced something of the reality that he had passed by, until then, without heeding it. Perhaps he himself was now as much of a mystery to his mother and his father as the world had been to him. It was with different eyes that he looked out of the window. He was now viewing actualities, it seemed to him. A veil had been lifted from all things, and they were showing him the core of their purpose, the secret spring of their actions. Houses flew by as though torn away by the wind, and he pictured to himself the people living in them. Were they rich or poor, happy or unhappy? Were they filled with the same longing as he to know everything? And were there children in those houses like himself who had merely been playing with things? The flagmen who waved the train no longer seemed like scattered dolls, inanimate objects, toys stationed there by indifferent chance. Edgar now understood that the giving of the signal was their fate, their struggle with life. The wheels turned faster and faster, along serpentine windings the train made its way downward from the uplands, the mountains took on gentler curves and receded into the distance. The level was reached, and Edgar gave one final glance backward. There were the mountains like blue shadows, remote and inaccessible. And to Edgar it was as though his childhood were reposing up there where they lightly merged with the misty heavens. CHAPTER XIV DARKNESS AND CONFUSION When the train pulled into the station at Bains, the street lamps were already lit, and though the station was bright with its red and white and green signals, Edgar unexpectedly felt a dread of the approaching night. In the daytime he would still have been confident. People would have been thronging the streets, and you could sit down on a bench and rest, or look into the shop windows. But how would he be able to stand it when the people had all withdrawn into their homes and gone to bed for a night's peaceful sleep while he, conscious of wrongdoing, wandered about alone in a strange city? Just to have a roof over his head, not to spend another moment under the open heavens! That was his one distinct feeling. He hurried along the familiar way without looking to right or left until he reached his grandmother's villa. It was on a beautiful, broad avenue, placed, not free to the gaze of passersby but behind the vines and shrubbery and ivy of a well-kept garden, a gleam behind a cloud of green, a white, old-fashioned, friendly house. Edgar peeped through the iron grill like a stranger. No sound came from within and the windows were closed. Evidently the family and guests were in the garden behind the house. Edgar was about to pull the door-bell when something odd occurred. Suddenly the thing that only a few hours before had seemed quite natural to him had now become impossible. How was he to go into the house, how meet his grandmother and her family, how endure all the questions they would besiege him with, and how answer them? How would he be able to bear the looks they would give him when he would tell, as he would be obliged to, that he had run away from his mother? And, above all, how would he explain his monstrous deed, which he himself no longer understood? A door in the house slammed, and Edgar, in a sudden panic at being detected, ran off. When he reached the park he paused. It was dark there, and he expected to find it empty and thought it would be a good place to sit down in and rest and at last reflect quietly and come to some understanding with himself about his fate. He passed through the gateway timidly. A few lamps were burning near the entrance, giving the young leaves on the trees a ghostly gleam of transparent green, but deeper in the park, down the hill, everything lay like a single, black, fermenting mass in the darkness. Edgar, eager to be alone, slipped past the few people who were sitting in the light of the lamps, talking or reading. But even in the deep shadows of the unilluminated pathways it was not quiet. There were low whisperings that seemed to shun the light, sounds mingled with the rustling of the leaves, the scraping of feet, subdued voices, all mingled with a certain voluptuous, sighing, groaning sound that seemed to emanate from people and animals and nature, all in a disturbed sleep. It was a restlessness that had something foreboding in it, something sneaking, hidden, puzzling, a sort of subterranean stirring in the wood that was connected perhaps with nothing but the spring, yet had a peculiarly alarming effect upon the child. He cowered into a diminutive heap on a bench and tried to think of what he was to say at home. But his thoughts slipped away from him as on a slippery surface before he could grasp his own ideas, and in spite of himself he had to keep listening and listening to the muffled tones, the mystical voices of the darkness. How terrible the darkness was, how bewildering and yet how mysteriously beautiful! Were they animals, or people, or was it merely the ghostly hand of the wind that wove together all this rustling and crackling and whirring? He listened. It was the wind gently moving the tree tops. No, it wasn't, it was people--now he could see distinctly--couples arm in arm, who came up from the lighted city to enliven the darkness with their perplexing presence. What were they after? He could not make out. They were not talking to each other, because he heard no voices. All he could catch was the sound of their tread on the gravel and here and there the sight of their figures moving like shadows past some clear space between the trees, always with their arms round each other, like his mother and the baron in the moonlight. So the great, dazzling, portentous secret was here, too. Steps approached. A subdued laugh. Edgar, for fear of being discovered, drew deeper into the dark. But the couple now groping their way in the deep gloom had no eyes for him. They passed him by, closely locked, and they stopped only a few feet beyond his bench. They pressed their faces together. Edgar could not see clearly, but he heard a soft groan from the woman, and the man stammering mad, ardent words. A sort of sultry presentiment touched Edgar's alarm with a shudder that was sensual and pleasant. The couple stayed thus a minute or so, and then the gravel crunched under their tread again, and the sound of their footsteps died away in the darkness. A tremor went through Edgar. His blood whirled hot through his veins, and all of a sudden he felt unbearably alone in this bewildering darkness, and the need came upon him with elemental force for the sound of a friend's voice, an embrace, a bright room, people he loved. The whole perplexing darkness this night seemed to be inside his breast rending it. He jumped up. To be at home, just to be at home, anywhere at home in a warm, bright room, in some relation with people. What could happen to him then? Even if they were to scold and beat him, he would not mind all that darkness and the dread of loneliness. Unconsciously he made his way back to grandmother's villa, and found himself standing with the cool doorbell in his hand again. Now, he observed, the lighted windows were shining through the foliage, and he pictured each room belonging to each window and the people inside. This very proximity to familiar beings, the comforting sense of being near people who, he knew, loved him was delightful, and if he hesitated it was simply to taste this joy a little longer. Suddenly a terrified voice behind him shrieked: "Edgar! Why, here he is!" It was his grandmother's maid. She pounced on him and grabbed his hand. The door was pulled open from within, a dog jumped at Edgar, barking, people came running, and voices of mingled alarm and joy called out. The first to meet Edgar was his grandmother with outstretched arms, and behind her--he thought he must be dreaming--his mother. Tears came to Edgar's eyes, and he stood amid this ardent outburst of emotions quivering and intimidated, undecided what to say or do and very uncertain of his own feelings. He was not sure whether he was glad or frightened. CHAPTER XV THE LAST DREAM They had been looking for him in Bains for some time. His mother, in spite of her anger, had been alarmed when he did not return, and had had search made for him all over Summering. The whole place was aroused, and people were making every sort of dreadful conjecture when a man brought the news that he had seen the child at the ticket-office. Inquiry at the railroad station of course, brought out that Edgar had bought a ticket to Bains, and his mother, without hesitation, took the very next train after him, telegraphing first to his father and to his grandmother. The family held on to Edgar, but not forcibly. On the contrary, they led him with an air of suppressed triumph into the front room. And how odd it was that he did not mind their reproaches, because he saw happiness and love in their eyes. And even their assumed anger lasted only a second or two. His grandmother was embracing him again tearfully, no one spoke of his bad conduct, and he felt the wondrousness of the protection surrounding him. The maid took off his coat and brought him a warmer one, and his grandmother asked if he did not want something to eat. They pestered him with their inquiries and their tenderness, but stopped questioning him when they noticed how embarrassed he was. He experienced deliciously the sensation that he had so despised before of being wholly a child, and he was ashamed of his arrogance of the last few days when he had wanted to dispense with it all and exchange it for the deceptive joy of solitariness. The telephone rang in the next room. He heard his mother's voice in snatches, "Edgar--back. Got here--last train," and he marvelled that she had not flown at him in a passion. She had put her arms round him, with a peculiarly constrained expression in her eyes. He began to regret his conduct more and more, and he would have liked to extricate himself from his grandmother's and aunt's tenderness, to run to his mother and beg her pardon and tell her, by herself, oh, so humbly, that he wanted to be a child again and obey her. But when he rose, with a perfectly gentle movement, his grandmother asked in alarm where he was going. He felt ashamed. If he made a single step it frightened them. He had frightened them all terribly, and they were afraid he was going to run away again. How could he make them understand that nobody regretted his flight more than he did? The table was set, supper had been prepared for him hurriedly. His grandmother sat beside him without removing her eyes from him. She and his aunt and the maid held him fast in a quiet circle, the warmth of which calmed him wonderfully, and the only disturbing thought was that of his mother's absence from the room. If only she could have guessed how humble he was she would certainly have come in. From outside came the sound of a cab drawing up at the door. Everyone gave a start, so that Edgar also was upset. His grandmother went out, he could hear loud voices in the hall, and then it struck him it must be his father who had arrived. He observed timidly that he had been left alone in the room. To be alone even for those few moments made him nervous. His father was a stern man; he was the one person Edgar really feared. He listened. His father seemed to be excited; his voice was loud and expressed annoyance. Every now and then came his grandmother's and his mother's voices in mollifying tones, in attempts, evidently, to make him adopt a milder attitude. But his father's voice remained hard--hard as his foot-treads now coming nearer and nearer, and now stopping short at the door, which was next pulled violently open. The boy's father was a large man, and Edgar felt so very, very thin beside him as he entered the room, nervous and genuinely angry, it seemed. "What got into your head to run away? How could you give your mother such a fright?" His voice was wrathful and his hands made a wild movement. Edgar's mother came in and stood behind her husband, her face in shadow. Edgar made no reply. He felt he had to justify himself, but how tell the story of the way they had lied to him and how his mother had slapped him? Would his father understand? "Well, where's your tongue? What was the matter? You may tell me, you needn't be afraid. You must have had some good reason for running away. Did anyone do anything to you?" Edgar hesitated. At the recollection of the events in Summering, his anger began to flare up again, and he was about to bring his charge against his mother when he saw--his heart stood still--that she was making an odd gesture behind his father's back. At first he did not comprehend. But he kept his eyes fixed on her and noticed that the expression of her face was beseeching. Then very, very softly she lifted her finger to her mouth in sign that he should keep everything to himself. The child was conscious of a great wild joy pouring in a warm wave over his whole body. He knew she was giving him the secret to guard and that a human destiny was hanging in the balance on his child's lips. Filled with a jubilant pride that she reposed confidence in him he suddenly became possessed by a desire for self-sacrifice. He magnified his own wrong-doing in order to show how much of a man he had grown to be. Collecting his wits, he said: "No, no. There was no good reason for my running away. Mamma was very kind to me, but I didn't behave myself, and I was ashamed, and so--and so I ran away." The father looked at his son in amazement. Such a confession was the last thing he expected to hear. His wrath was disarmed. "Well, if you're sorry, then it's all right, and we won't say any more about it to-day. You'll be careful in the future, though, not to do anything of the sort again." He paused and looked at Edgar, and his voice was milder as he went on. "How pale you are, boy! But I believe you've grown taller in this short while. I hope you won't be guilty of such childish behavior again because really you're not a child any more, and you ought to be sensible." Edgar, the whole time, had kept looking at his mother. Something peculiar seemed to be glowing in her eyes, or was it the reflection of the light? No, it was something new, her eyes were moist, and there was a smile on her lips that said "Thank you" to him. They sent him to bed, but he was not now distressed at being left alone. He had such a wealth of things to think over. All the agony of the past days was dissipated by the tremendous sense of his first experience of life. He felt happy in a mysterious presentiment of future experiences. Outside, the trees were rustling in the gloomy night, but he was not scared. He had lost all impatience at having to wait for life now that he knew how rich it was. For the first time that day, it seemed to him, he had seen life naked, no longer veiled behind the thousand lies of childhood he saw it in its complete, fearful, voluptuous beauty. Never had he supposed that days could be crowded so full of transitions from sorrow to joy and back again, and it made him happy to think there were many more such days in store for him and that a whole life was waiting to reveal its mystery to him. A first inkling had come to him of the diversity of life. For the first time, he thought, he understood men's beings, that they heeded each other even when they seemed to be inimical, and that it was very sweet to be loved by them. He was incapable of thinking of anything or anybody with hate. He regretted nothing and had a sense of gratitude even to the baron, his bitterest enemy, because it was he who had opened the door for him to this world of dawning emotions. It was very sweet to be lying in the dark thinking thoughts that were mingled vaguely with dreams and were lapsing almost into sleep. Was it a dream or did Edgar really hear the door open and someone creep softly into his room? He was too sleepy to open his eyes and look. Then he felt a breath upon his face and the touch of another face, soft and warm and gentle, against his, and he knew it was his mother who was kissing him and stroking his hair. He felt her kisses and her tears, and responded to her caresses. He took them as reconciliation and gratitude for his silence. It was not until many years later that he really understood these silent tears and knew they were a vow, of this woman verging on middle age, to dedicate herself henceforth to her child and renounce adventure and all desire on her own behalf. They were a farewell. He did not know that she was thanking him for more than his silence. She was grateful that he had rescued her from a barren experience, and in these caresses was bequeathing him the bitter-sweet legacy of her love for his future life. Nothing of all this did the child lying there comprehend, but he felt it was blissful to be so loved and that by this love he was already entangled in the great secret of the world. When she had withdrawn her hand from his head and her lips from his lips, and with a light swish of her skirts had left the room, something warm remained behind, a breath upon Edgar's mouth. And a seductive longing came upon him to feel such soft lips upon his and to be so tenderly embraced often and often again. But this divination of the great secret, so longed for, was already clouded over by sleep. Once again all the happenings of the past hours flitted through Edgar's mind, once again the leaves in the book of his childhood were turned alluringly, then the child fell asleep, and the profounder dream of his life began. * * * * * Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber: actualy=> actually {pg 23} aimlesly=> aimlessly {pg 24} chilren=> children {pg 45} cry or rebuke=> cry of rebuke {pg 48} 
9955	----	BERTHA GARLAN BY ARTHUR SCHNITZLER I She was walking slowly down the hill; not by the broad high road which wound its way towards the town, but by the narrow footpath between the trellises of the vines. Her little boy was with her, hanging on to her hand and walking all the time a pace in front of her, because there was not room on the footpath for them to walk side by side. The afternoon was well advanced, but the sun still poured down upon her with sufficient power to cause her to pull her dark straw hat a little further down over her forehead and to keep her eyes lowered. The slopes, at the foot of which the little town lay nestling, glimmered as though seen through a golden mist; the roofs of the houses below glistened, and the river, emerging yonder amongst the meadows outside the town, stretched, shimmering, into the distance. Not a quiver stirred the air, and it seemed as if the cool of the evening was yet far remote. Bertha stooped for a moment and glanced about her. Save for her boy, she was all alone on the hillside, and around her brooded a curious stillness. At the cemetery, too, on the hilltop, she had not met anybody that day, not even the old woman who usually watered the flowers and kept the graves tidy, and with whom Bertha used often to have a chat. Bertha felt that somehow a considerable time had elapsed since she had started on her walk, and that it was long since she had spoken to anyone. The church clock struck--six. So, then, scarcely an hour had passed since she had left the house, and an even shorter time since she had stopped in the street to chat with the beautiful Frau Rupius. Yet even the few minutes which had slipped away since she had stood by her husband's grave now seemed to be long past. "Mamma!" Suddenly she heard her boy call. He had slipped his hand out of hers and had run on ahead. "I can walk quicker than you, mamma!" "Wait, though! Wait, Fritz!" exclaimed Bertha. "You're not going to leave your mother alone, are you?" She followed him and again took him by the hand. "Are we going home already?" asked Fritz. "Yes; we will sit by the open window until it grows quite dark." Before long they had reached the foot of the hill and they began to walk towards the town in the shade of the chestnut trees which bordered the high-road, now white with dust. Here again they met but few people. Along the road a couple of wagons came towards them, the drivers, whip in hand, trudging along beside the horses. Then two cyclists rode by from the town towards the country, leaving clouds of dust behind them. Bertha stopped mechanically and gazed after them until they had almost disappeared from view. In the meantime Fritz had clambered up onto the bench beside the road. "Look, mamma! See what I can do!" He made ready to jump, but his mother took hold of him by the arms and lifted him carefully to the ground. Then she sat down on the bench. "Are you tired?" asked Fritz. "Yes," she answered, surprised to find that she was indeed feeling fatigued. It was only then that she realized that the sultry air had wearied her to the point of sleepiness. She could not, moreover, remember having experienced such warm weather in the middle of May. From the bench on which she was sitting she could trace back the course of the path down which she had come. In the sunlight it ran between the vine-trellises, up and up, until it reached the brightly gleaming wall of the cemetery. She was in the habit of taking a walk along that path two or three times a week. She had long since ceased to regard such visits to the cemetery as anything other than a mere walk. When she wandered about the well-kept gravel paths amongst the crosses and the tombstones, or stood offering up a silent prayer beside her husband's grave, or, maybe, laying upon it a few wild flowers which she had plucked on her way up, her heart was scarcely any longer stirred by the slightest throb of pain. Three years had, indeed, passed since her husband had died, which was just as long as their married life had lasted. Her eyes closed and her mind went back to the time when she had first come to the town, only a few days after their marriage--which had taken place in Vienna. They had only indulged in a modest honeymoon trip, such as a man in humble circumstances, who had married a woman without any dowry, could treat himself to. They had taken the boat from Vienna, up the river, to a little village in Wachau, not far from their future home, and had spent a few days there. Bertha could still remember clearly the little inn at which they had stayed, the riverside garden in which they used to sit after sunset, and those quiet, rather tedious, evenings which were so completely different from those her girlish imagination had previously pictured to her as the evenings which a newly-married couple would spend. Of course, she had had to be content. She was twenty-six years old and quite alone in the world when Victor Mathias Garlan had proposed to her. Her parents had recently died. A long time before, one of her brothers had gone to America to seek his fortune as a merchant. Her younger brother was on the stage; he had married an actress, and was playing comedy parts in third-rate German theatres. She was almost out of touch with her relations and the only one whom she visited occasionally was a cousin who had married a lawyer. But even that friendship had grown cool as years had passed, because the cousin had become wrapped up in her husband and children exclusively, and had almost ceased to take any interest in the doings of her unmarried friend. Herr Garlan was a distant relation of Bertha's mother. When Bertha was quite a young girl he had often visited the house and made love to her in a rather awkward way. In those days she had no reasons to encourage him, because it was in another guise that her fancy pictured life and happiness to her. She was young and pretty; her parents, though not actually wealthy people, were comfortably off, and her hope was rather to wander about the world as a great pianiste, perhaps, as the wife of an artist, than to lead a modest existence in the placid routine of the home circle. But that hope soon faded. One day her father, in a transport of domestic fervour, forbade her further attendance at the conservatoire of music, which put an end to her prospects of an artistic career and at the same time to her friendship with the young violinist who had since made such a name for himself. The next few years were singularly dull. At first, it is true, she felt some slight disappointment, or even pain, but these emotions were certainly of short duration. Later on she had received offers of marriage from a young doctor and a merchant. She refused both of them; the doctor because he was too ugly, and the merchant because he lived in a country town. Her parents, too, were by no means enthusiastic about either suitor. When, however, Bertha's twenty-sixth birthday passed and her father lost his modest competency through a bankruptcy, it had been her lot to put up with belated reproaches on the score of all sorts of things which she herself had begun to forget--her youthful artistic ambitions, her love affair of long ago with the violinist, which had seemed likely to lead to nothing, and the lack of encouragement which the ugly doctor and the merchant from the country received at her hands. At that time Victor Mathias Garlan was no longer resident in Vienna. Two years before, the insurance company, in which he had been employed since he had reached the age of twenty, had, at his own request, transferred him, in the capacity of manager, to the recently-established branch in the little town on the Danube where his married brother carried on business as a wine merchant. In the course of a somewhat lengthy conversation which took place on the occasion of his farewell visit to Bertha's parents, and which created a certain impression upon her, he had mentioned that the principal reasons for his asking to be transferred to the little town were that he felt himself to be getting on in years, that he had no longer any idea of seeking a wife, and that he desired to have some sort of a home amongst people who were closely connected with him. At that time Bertha's parents had made fun of his notion, which seemed to them somewhat hypochondriacal, for Garlan was then scarcely forty years old. Bertha herself, however, had found a good deal of common sense in Garlan's reason, inasmuch as he had never appeared to her as, properly speaking, a young man. In the course of the following years Garlan used often to come to Vienna on business, and never omitted to visit Bertha's family on such occasions. After supper it was Bertha's custom to play the piano for Garlan's entertainment, and he used to listen to her with an almost reverent attention, and would, perhaps, go on to talk of his little nephew and niece--who were both very musical--and to whom he would often speak of Fraulein Bertha as the finest pianiste he had ever heard. It seemed strange, and Bertha's mother could not refrain from commenting now and again upon it, that, since his diffident wooing in the old days, Herr Garlan had not once ventured so much as to make the slightest further allusion to the past, or even to a possible future. And thus Bertha, in addition to the other reproaches to which she had to listen, incurred the blame for treating Herr Garlan with too great indifference, if not, indeed, with actual coldness. Bertha, however, only shook her head, for at that time she had not so much as contemplated the possibility of marrying this somewhat awkward man, who had grown old before his time. After the sudden death of her mother, which happened at a time when her father had been lying ill for many months, Garlan reappeared upon the scene with the announcement that he had obtained a month's holiday--the only one for which he had ever applied. It was clearly evident to Bertha that his sole purpose in coming to Vienna was to be of help to her in that time of trouble and distress. And when Bertha's father died a week after the funeral of her mother, Garlan proved himself to be a true friend, and one, moreover, blessed with an amount of energy for which she had never given him credit. He prevailed on his sister-in-law to come to Vienna, so that she could help Bertha to tide over the first few weeks of her bereavement, besides, in some slight degree, distracting her thoughts. He settled the business affairs capably and quickly. His kindness of heart did much to cheer Bertha during those sad days, and when, on the expiration of his leave, he asked her whether she would be his wife she acquiesced with a feeling of the most profound gratitude. She was, of course, aware of the fact that if she did not marry him she would in a few months' time have to earn her own living, probably as a teacher, and, besides, she had come to appreciate Garlan and had become so used to his company that she was able, in all sincerity, to answer "Yes," both when he led her to the altar and subsequently when, as they set off for their honeymoon, he asked her, for the first time, if she loved him. It was true that at the very outset of their married life she discovered that she felt no love for him. She just let him love her and put up with the fact, at first with a certain surprise at her own disillusionment and afterwards with indifference. It was not until she found that she was about to become a mother that she could bring herself to reciprocate his affection. She very soon grew accustomed to the quiet life of the little town, all the more easily because even in Vienna she had led a somewhat secluded existence. With her husband's family she felt quite happy and comfortable; her brother-in-law appeared to be a most genial and amiable person, if not altogether innocent of an occasional display of coarseness; his wife was good-natured, and inclined at times to be melancholy. Garlan's nephew, who was thirteen years old at the time of Bertha's arrival at the little town, was a pert, good-looking boy; and his niece, a very sedate child of nine, with large, astonished eyes, conceived a strong attachment for Bertha from the very first moment that they met. When Bertha's child was born, he was hailed by the children as a welcome plaything, and, for the next two years, Bertha felt completely happy. She even believed at times that it was impossible that her fate could have taken a more favourable shape. The noise and bustle of the great city came back to her memory as something unpleasant, almost hazardous; and on one occasion when she had accompanied her husband to Vienna, in order to make a few purchases and it so chanced, to her annoyance, that the streets were wet and muddy with the rain, she vowed never again to undertake that tedious and wholly unnecessary journey of three hours' duration. Her husband died suddenly one spring morning three years after their marriage. Bertha's consternation was extreme. She felt that she had never taken into consideration the mere possibility of such an event. She was left in very straitened circumstances. Soon, however, her sister-in-law, with thoughtful kindness, devised a means by which the widow could support herself without appearing to accept anything in the nature of charity. She asked Bertha to take over the musical education of her children, and also procured for her an engagement as music teacher to other families in the town. It was tacitly understood amongst the ladies who engaged her that they should always make it appear as if Bertha had undertaken these lessons only for the sake of a little distraction, and that they paid her for them only because they could not possibly allow her to devote so much time and trouble in that way without some return. What she earned from this source was quite sufficient to supplement her income to an amount adequate to meet the demands of her mode of living, and so, when time had deadened the first keen pangs and the subsequent sorrow occasioned by her husband's death, she was again quite contented and cheerful. Her life up to then had not been spent in such a way as to cause her now to feel the lack of anything. Such thoughts as she gave to the future were occupied by scarcely any other theme than her son in the successive stages of his growth, and it was only on rare occasions that the likelihood of marrying a second time crossed her mind, and then the idea was always a mere fleeting fancy, for as yet she had met no one whom she was able seriously to regard in the light of a possible second husband. The stirrings of youthful desires, which she sometimes felt within her in her waking morning hours, always vanished as the day pursued its even course. It was only since the advent of the spring that she had felt a certain disturbance of her previous sensation of well-being; no longer were her nights passed in the tranquil and dreamless sleep of heretofore, and at times she was oppressed by a sensation of tedium, such as she had never experienced before. Strangest of all, however, was the sudden access of lassitude which would often come over her even in the daytime, under the influence of which she fancied that she could trace the course of her blood as it circled through her body. She remembered that she had experienced a similar sensation in the days when she was emerging from childhood. At first this feeling, in spite of its familiarity, was yet so strange to her that it seemed as though one of her friends must have told her about it. It was only when it recurred with ever-increasing frequency that she realized that she herself had experienced it before. She shuddered, with a feeling as though she were waking from sleep. She opened her eyes. It seemed to her that the air was all a-whirl; the shadows had crept halfway across the road; away up on the hilltop the cemetery wall no longer gleamed in the sunlight. Bertha rapidly shook her head to and fro a few times as though to waken herself thoroughly. It seemed to her as if a whole day and a whole night had elapsed since she had sat down on the bench. How was it, then, that in her consciousness time passed in so disjointed a fashion? She looked around her. Where could Fritz have gone to? Oh, there he was behind her, playing with Doctor Friedrich's children. The nursemaid was on her knees beside them, helping them to build a castle with the sand. The avenue was now less deserted than it had been earlier in the evening. Bertha knew almost all the people who passed; she saw them every day. As, however, most of them were not people to whom she was in the habit of talking, they flitted by like shadows. Yonder came the saddler, Peter Nowak, and his wife; Doctor Rellinger drove by in his little country trap and bowed to her as he passed; he was followed by the two daughters of Herr Wendelein, the landowner; presently Lieutenant Baier and his _fiancée_ cycled slowly down the road on their way to the country. Then, again, there seemed to be a short lull in the movement before her and Bertha heard nothing but the laughter of the children as they played. Then, again, she saw that some one was slowly approaching from the town, and she recognized who it was while he was still a long way off. It was Herr Klingemann, to whom of late she had been in the habit of talking more frequently than had previously been her custom. Some twelve years ago or more he had moved from Vienna to the little town. Gossip had it that he had at one time been a doctor, and had been obliged to give up his practice on account of some professional error, or even of some more serious lapse. Some, however, asserted that he had never qualified as a doctor at all, but, failing to pass his examinations, had finally given up the study of medicine. Herr Klingemann, for his own part, gave himself out to be a philosopher, who had grown weary of life in the great city after having enjoyed it to satiety, and for that reason had moved to the little town, where he could live comfortably on what remained of his fortune. He was now but little more than five-and-forty. There were still times when he was of a genial enough aspect, but, for the most part, he had an extremely dilapidated and disagreeable appearance. While yet some distance away he smiled at the young widow, but did not hasten his steps. Finally he stopped before her and gave her an ironical nod, which was his habitual manner of greeting people. "Good evening, my pretty lady!" he said. Bertha returned his salutation. It was one of those days on which Herr Klingemann appeared to make some claim to elegance and youthfulness. He was attired in a dark grey frock coat, so tightly fitting that he might almost have been wearing stays. On his head was a narrow brimmed brown straw hat with a black band. About his throat, moreover, there was a very tiny red cravat, set rather askew. For a time he remained silent, tugging his slightly grizzled fair moustache upwards and downwards. "I presume you have come from up there, my dear lady?" he said. Without turning his head or even his eyes, he pointed his finger over his shoulder, in a somewhat contemptuous manner, in the direction of the cemetery behind him. Throughout the town Herr Klingemann was known as a man to whom nothing was sacred, and as he stood before her, Bertha could not help thinking of the various bits of gossip that she had heard about him. It was well known that his relations with his cook, whom he always referred to as his housekeeper, were of a somewhat more intimate nature than that merely of master and servant, and his name was also mentioned in connexion with the wife of a tobacconist, who, as he had himself told Bertha with proud regret, deceived him with a captain of the regiment stationed in the town. Moreover, there were several eligible girls in the neighbourhood who cherished a certain tender interest in him. Whenever these things were hinted at Herr Klingemann always made some sneering remark on the subject of marriage in general, which shocked the susceptibilities of many, but, on the whole, actually increased the amount of respect in which he was held. "I have been out for a short walk," said Bertha. "Alone?" "Oh, no; with my boy." "Yes--yes--of course, there he is! Good evening, my little mortal!"--he gazed away over Fritz's head as he said this--"may I sit down for a moment beside you, Frau Bertha?" He pronounced her name with an ironic inflection and, without waiting for her to reply, he sat down on the bench. "I heard you playing the piano this morning," he continued. "Do you know what kind of an impression it made upon me? This: that with you music must take the place of everything." He repeated the word "everything" and, at the same time, looked at Bertha in a manner which caused her to blush. "What a pity I so seldom have the opportunity of hearing you play!" he went on. "If I don't happen to be passing your open window when you are at the piano--" Bertha noticed that he kept on edging nearer to her, and that his arm was touching hers. Involuntarily she moved away. Suddenly she felt herself seized from behind, her head pulled back over the bench and a hand clasped over her eyes. For a moment she thought that it was Klingemann's hand, which she felt upon her lids. "Why, you must be mad, sir," she cried. "How funny it is to hear you call me 'Sir,' Aunt Bertha!" replied the laughing voice of a boy at her back. "Well, do let me at least open my eyes, Richard," said Bertha, trying to remove the boy's hands from her face. "Have you come from home!" she added, turning round towards him. "Yes, Aunt, and here's the newspaper which I have brought you." Bertha took the paper which he handed to her and began to read it. Klingemann, meanwhile, rose to his feet and turned to Richard. "Have you done your exercises already?" he asked. "We have no exercises at all now, Herr Klingemann, because our final examination is to take place in July." "So you will actually be a student by this time next year?" "This time next year! It'll be in the autumn!" As he said this Richard drummed his fingers along the newspaper. "What do you want, then, you ill-mannered fellow?" asked Bertha. "I say, Aunt, will you come and visit me when I am in Vienna?" "Yes, I should like to catch myself! I shall be glad to be rid of you!" "Here comes Herr Rupius!" said Richard. Bertha lowered the paper and looked in the direction indicated by her nephew's glance. Along the avenue leading from the town a maidservant came, pushing an invalid's chair, in which a man was sitting. His head was uncovered and his soft felt hat was lying upon his knees, from which a plaid rug reached down to his feet. His forehead was lofty; his hair smooth and fair and slightly grizzled at the temples; his feet were peculiarly large. As he passed the bench on which Bertha was seated he only inclined his head slightly, without smiling. Bertha knew that, had she been alone, he would certainly have stopped; moreover, he looked only at her as he passed by, and his greeting seemed to apply to her alone. It seemed to Bertha that she had never before seen such a grave look in his eyes as on this occasion, and she was exceedingly sorry, for she felt a profound compassion for the paralysed man. When Herr Rupius had passed by, Klingemann said: "Poor devil! And wifie is away as usual on one of her visits to Vienna, eh?" "No," answered Bertha, almost angrily. "I was speaking to her only an hour ago." Klingemann was silent, for he felt that further remarks on the subject of the mysterious visits of Frau Rupius to Vienna might not have been in keeping with his own reputation as a freethinker. "Won't he really ever be able to walk again?" asked Richard. "No," said Bertha. She knew this for a fact because Herr Rupius had told her so himself on one occasion when she had called on him and his wife was in Vienna. At that moment Herr Rupius seemed to her to be a particularly pitiful figure, for, as he was being wheeled past her in his invalid's chair, she had, in reading the paper, lighted upon the name of one whom she regarded as a happy man. Mechanically she read the paragraph again. "Our celebrated compatriot Emil Lindbach returned to Vienna a few days ago after his professional tour through France and Spain, in the course of which he met with many a triumphant reception. In Madrid this distinguished artist had the honour of playing before the Queen of Spain. On the 24th of this month Herr Lindbach will take part in the charity concert which has been organized for the relief of the inhabitants of Vorarlberg, who have suffered such severe losses as a result of the recent floods. A keen interest in the concert is being shown by the public in spite of the fact that the season is so far advanced." Emil Lindbach! It required a certain effort on Bertha's part to realize that this was the same man whom she had loved--how many?--twelve years ago. Twelve years! She could feel the hot blood mount up into her brow. It seemed to her as though she ought to be ashamed of having gradually grown older. The sun had set. Bertha took Fritz by the hand, bade the others good evening, and walked slowly homewards. She lived on the first floor of a house in a new street. From her windows she had a view of the hill, and opposite were only vacant sites. Bertha handed Fritz over to the care of the maid, sat down by the window, took up the paper and began to read again. She had kept the custom of glancing through the art news first of all. This habit had been formed in the days of her early childhood, when she and her brother, who was now an actor, used to go to the top gallery of the Burg-Theater together. Her interest in art naturally grew when she attended the conservatoire of music; in those days she had been acquainted with the names of even the minor actors, singers and pianists. Later on, when her frequent visits to the theatres, the studies at the conservatoire and her own artistic aspirations came to an end, there still lingered within her a kind of sympathy, which was not free from the touch of homesickness, towards that joyous world of art. But during the latter portion of her life in Vienna all these things had retained scarcely any of their former significance for her; just as little, indeed, as they had possessed since she had come to reside in the little town, where occasional amateur concerts were the best that was offered in the way of artistic enjoyment. One evening during the first year of her married life, she had taken part in one of these concerts at the "Red Apple" Hotel. She had played two marches by Schubert as a duet with another young lady in the town. On that occasion her agitation had been so great that she had vowed to herself never again to appear in public, and was more than glad that she had given up her hopes of an artistic career. For such a career a very different temperament from hers was necessary--for example, one like Emil Lindbach's. Yes, he was born to it! She had recognized that by his demeanour the very moment when she had first seen him step on to the daïs at a school concert. He had smoothed back his hair in an unaffected manner, gazed at the people below with sardonic superiority, and had acknowledged the first applause which he had ever received in the calm, indifferent manner of one long accustomed to such things. It was strange, but whenever she thought of Emil Lindbach she still saw him in her mind's eye as youthful, even boyish, just as he had been in the days when they had known and loved each other. Yet not so long before, when she had spent the evening with her brother-in-law and his wife in a restaurant, she had seen a photograph of him in an illustrated paper, and he appeared to have changed greatly. He no longer wore his hair long; his black moustache was curled downwards; his collar was conspicuously tall, and his cravat twisted in accordance with the fashion of the day. Her sister-in-law had given her opinion that he looked like a Polish count. Bertha took up the newspaper again and was about to read on, but by that time it was too dark. She rose to her feet and called the maid. The lamp was brought in and the table laid for supper. Bertha ate her meal with Fritz, the window remaining open. That evening she felt an even greater tenderness for her child than usual; she recalled once more to memory the times when her husband was still alive, and all manner of reminiscences passed rapidly through her mind. While she was putting Fritz to bed, her glance lingered for quite a long time on her husband's portrait, which hung over the bed in an oval frame of dark brown wood. It was a full-length portrait; he was wearing a morning coat and a white cravat, and was holding his tall hat in his hand. It was all in memory of their wedding day. Bertha knew for a certainty, at that moment, that Herr Klingemann would have smiled sarcastically had he seen that portrait. Later in the evening she sat down at the piano, as was a not infrequent custom of hers before going to bed, not so much because of her enthusiasm for music, but because she did not want to retire to rest too early. On such occasions she played, for the most part, the few pieces which she still knew by heart--mazurkas by Chopin, some passages from one of Beethoven's sonatas, or the Kreisleriana. Sometimes she improvised as well, but never pursued the theme beyond a succession of chords, which, indeed, were always the same. On that evening she began at once by striking those chords, somewhat more softly than usual; then she essayed various modulations and, as she made the last triad resound for a long time by means of the pedal--her hands were now lying in her lap--she felt a gentle joy in the melodies which were hovering, as it were, about her. Then Klingemann's observation recurred to her. "With you music must take the place of everything!" Indeed he had not been far from the truth. Music certainly had to take the place of much. But everything--? Oh, no! What was that? Footsteps over the way.... Well, there was nothing remarkable in that. But they were slow, regular footsteps, as though somebody was passing up and down. She stood up and went to the window. It was quite dark, and at first she could not recognize the man who was walking outside. But she knew that it was Klingemann. How absurd! Was he going to haunt the vicinity like a love-sick swain? "Good evening, Frau Bertha," he said from across the road, and she could see in the darkness that he raised his hat. "Good evening," she answered, almost confusedly. "You were playing most beautifully." Her only answer was to murmur "really?" and that perhaps did not reach his ears. He remained standing for a moment, then said: "Good night, sleep soundly, Frau Bertha." He pronounced the word "sleep" with an emphasis which was almost insolent. "Now he is going home to his cook!" thought Bertha to herself. Then suddenly she called to mind something which she had known for quite a long time, but to which she had not given a thought since it had come to her knowledge. It was rumoured that in his room there hung a picture which was always covered with a little curtain because its subject was of a somewhat questionable nature. Who was it had told her about that picture? Oh, yes, Frau Rupius had told her when they were taking a walk along the bank of the Danube one day last autumn, and she in her turn had heard of it from some one else--Bertha could not remember from whom. What an odious man! Bertha felt that somehow she was guilty of a slight depravity in thinking of him and all these things. She continued to stand by the window. It seemed to her as though it had been an unpleasant day. She went over the actual events in her mind, and was astonished to find that, after all, the day had just been like many hundreds before it and many, many more that were yet to come. II They stood up from the table. It had been one of those little Sunday dinner parties which the wine merchant Garlan was in the habit of occasionally giving his acquaintances. The host came up to his sister-in-law and caught her round the waist, which was one of his customs on an afternoon. She knew beforehand what he wanted. Whenever he had company Bertha had to play the piano after dinner, and often duets with Richard. The music served as a pleasant introduction to a game of cards, or, indeed, chimed in pleasantly with the game. She sat down at the piano. In the meantime the door of the smoking-room was opened; Garlan, Doctor Friedrich and Herr Martin took their seats at a small baize-covered table and began to play. The wives of the three gentlemen remained in the drawing-room, and Frau Martin lit a cigarette, sat down on the sofa and crossed her legs--on Sundays she always wore dress shoes and black silk stockings. Doctor Friedrich's wife looked at Frau Martin's feet as though fixed to the spot by enchantment. Richard had followed the gentlemen--he already took an interest in a game of taroc. Elly stood with her elbows leaning on the piano waiting for Bertha to begin to play. The hostess went in and out of the room; she was perpetually giving orders in the kitchen, and rattling the bunch of keys which she carried in her hand. Once as she came into the room Doctor Friedrich's wife threw her a glance which seemed to say: "Just look how Frau Martin is sitting there!" Bertha noticed all those things that day more clearly, as it were, than usual, somewhat after the manner in which things are seen by a person suffering from fever. She had not as yet struck a note. Then her brother-in-law turned towards her and threw her a glance, which was intended to remind her of her duty. She began to play a march by Schubert, with a very heavy touch. "Softer," said her brother-in-law, turning round again. "Taroc with a musical accompaniment is a speciality of this house," said Doctor Friedrich. "Songs without words, so to speak," added Herr Martin. The others laughed. Garlan turned round towards Bertha again, for she had suddenly left off playing. "I have a slight headache," she said, as if it were necessary to make some excuse; immediately, however, she felt as though it were beneath her dignity to say that, and she added: "I don't feel any inclination to play." Everybody looked at her, feeling that something rather out of the common was happening. "Won't you come and sit by us, Bertha?" said Frau Garlan. Elly had a vague idea that she ought to show her affection for her aunt, and hung on her arm; and the two of them stood side by side, leaning against the piano. "Are you going with us to the 'Red Apple' this evening?" Frau Martin asked of her hostess. "No, I don't think so." "Ah," broke in Herr Garlan, "if we must forgo our concert this afternoon we will have one in the evening instead--your lead, Doctor." "The military concert?" asked Doctor Friedrich's wife. Frau Garlan rose to her feet. "Do you really mean to go to the 'Red Apple' this evening?" she asked her husband. "Certainly." "Very well," she answered, somewhat flustered, and at once went off to the kitchen again to make fresh arrangements. "Richard," said Garlan to his son; "you might make haste and run over and tell the manager to have a table reserved for us in the garden." Richard hurried off, colliding in the doorway with his mother, who was just coming into the room. She sank down on the sofa as though exhausted. "You can't believe," she said to Doctor Friedrich's wife; "how difficult it is to make Brigitta understand the simplest thing." Frau Martin had gone and sat down beside her husband, at the same time throwing a glance towards Bertha, who was still standing silently with Elly beside the piano. Frau Martin stroked her husband's hair, laid her hand on his knee and seemed to feel that she was under the necessity of showing the company how happy she was. "I'll tell you what. Aunt," said Elly suddenly to Bertha; "let's go into the garden for a while. The fresh air will drive your headache away." They went down the steps into the courtyard, in the centre of which a small lawn had been laid out. At the back, it was shut off by a wall, against which stood a few shrubs and a couple of young trees, which still had to be propped up by stakes. Away over the wall only the blue sky was to be seen; in boisterous weather the rush of the river which flowed close by could be heard. Two wicker garden chairs stood with their backs against the wall, and in front of them was a small table. Bertha and Elly sat down, Elly still keeping her arm linked in her aunt's. "Tell you what, Elly?" "See, I am quite a big girl now; do tell me about him." Bertha was somewhat alarmed, for it struck her at once that her niece's question did not refer to her dead husband, but to some one else. And suddenly she saw before her mind's eye the picture of Emil Lindbach, just as she had seen it in the illustrated paper; but immediately both the vision and her slight alarm vanished, and she felt a kind of emotion at the shy question of the young girl who believed that she still grieved for her dead husband, and that it would comfort her to have an opportunity for talking about him. "May I come down and join you, or are you telling each other secrets?" Richard's voice came at that moment from a window overlooking the courtyard. For the first time Bertha was struck by the resemblance he bore to Emil Lindbach. She realized, however, that it might perhaps only be the youthfulness of his manner and his rather long hair that put her in mind of Emil. Richard was now nearly as old as Emil had been in the days of her studies at the conservatoire. "I've reserved a table," he said as he came into the courtyard. "Are you coming with us, Aunt Bertha?" He sat down on the back of her chair, stroked her cheeks, and said in his fresh, yet rather affected, way: "You will come, won't you, pretty Aunt, for my sake?" Mechanically Bertha closed her eyes. A feeling of comfort stole over her, as if some childish hand, as if the little fingers of her own Fritz, were caressing her cheeks. Soon, however, she felt that some other memory as well rose up in her mind. She could not help thinking of a walk in the town park which she had taken one evening with Emil after her lesson at the conservatoire. On that occasion he had sat down to rest beside her on a seat, and had touched her cheeks with tender fingers. Was it only once that that had happened? No--much oftener! Indeed, they had sat on that seat ten or twenty times, and he had stroked her cheeks. How strange it was that all these things should come back to her thoughts now! She would certainly never have thought of those walks again had not Richard by chance--but how long was she going to put up with his stroking her cheek? "Richard!" she exclaimed, opening her eyes. She saw that he was smiling in such a way that she thought that he must have divined what was passing through her mind. Of course, it was quite impossible, because, as a matter of fact, scarcely anybody in the town was aware that she was acquainted with Emil Lindbach, the great violinist. If it came to that, was she really acquainted with him still? It was indeed a very different person from Emil as he must now be that she had in mind--a handsome youth whom she had loved in the days of her early girlhood. Thus her thoughts strayed further and further back into the past, and it seemed altogether impossible for her to return to the present and chatter with the two children. She bade them good-bye and went away. The afternoon sun lay brooding heavily upon the streets of the little town. The shops were shut, the pavements almost deserted. A few officers were sitting at a little table in front of the restaurant in the market square. Bertha glanced up at the windows of the first story of the house in which Herr and Frau Rupius lived. It was quite a long time since she had been to see them. She clearly remembered the last occasion--it was the day after Christmas. It was then that she had found Herr Rupius alone and that he had told her that his affliction was incurable. She also remembered distinctly why she had not called upon him since that day: although she did not admit it to herself, she had a kind of fear of entering that house which she had then left with her mind in a state of violent agitation. On the present occasion, however, she felt that she must go up; it seemed as though in the course of the last few days a kind of bond had been established between her and the paralysed man, and as though even the glance with which he had silently greeted her on the previous day, when she was out walking, had had some significance. When she entered the room her eyes had, first of all, to become accustomed to the dimness of the light; the blinds were drawn and a sunbeam poured in only through the chink at the top, and fell in front of the white stove. Herr Rupius was sitting in an armchair at the table in the centre of the room. Before him lay stacks of prints, and he was just in the act of picking up one in order to look at the one beneath it. Bertha could see that they were engravings. "Thank you for coming to see me once again," he said, stretching out his hand to her. "You see what it is I am busy on just now? Well, it is a collection of engravings after the old Dutch masters. Believe me, my dear lady, it is a great pleasure to examine old engravings." "Oh, it is, indeed." "See, there are six volumes, or rather six portfolios, each containing twenty prints. It will probably take me the whole summer to become thoroughly acquainted with them." Bertha stood by his side and looked at the engraving immediately before him. It was a market scene by Teniers. "The whole summer," she said absent-mindedly. Rupius turned towards her. "Yes, indeed," he said, his jaw slightly set, as though it was a matter of vindicating his point of view; "what I call being thoroughly acquainted with a picture. By that I mean: being able, so to speak, to reproduce it in my mind, line for line. This one here is a Teniers--the original is in one of the galleries at The Hague. Why don't you go to The Hague, where so many splendid examples of the art of Teniers and so many other styles of painting are to be seen, my dear lady?" Bertha smiled. "How can I think of making such a journey as that?" "Yes, yes, of course, that's so," said Herr Rupius; "The Hague is a very beautiful town. I was there fourteen years ago. At that time I was twenty-eight, I am now forty-two--or, I might say, eighty-four"--he picked up the print and laid it aside--"here we have an Ostade--'The Pipe Smoker.' Quite so, you can see easily enough that he is smoking a pipe. 'Original in Vienna.'" "I think I remember that picture." "Won't you come and sit opposite to me, Frau Bertha, or here beside me, if you would care to look at the pictures with me? Now we come to a Falkenborg--wonderful, isn't it? In the extreme foreground, though, it seems so void, so cramped. Yes, nothing but a peasant lad dancing with a girl, and there's an old woman who is cross about it, and here is a house out of the door of which someone is coming with a pail of water. Yes, that is all--a mere nothing of course, but there in the background you see, is the whole world, blue mountains, green towns, the clouded sky above, and near it a tourney--ha! ha!--in a certain sense perhaps it is out of place, but, on the other hand, in a certain sense it may be said to be appropriate. Since everything has a background and it is therefore perfectly right that here, directly behind the peasant's house, the world should begin with its tourneys, and its mountains, its rivers, its fortresses, its vineyards and its forests." He pointed out the various parts of the picture to which he was referring with a little ivory paper-knife. "Do you like it?" he continued. "The original also hangs in the Gallery in Vienna. You must have seen it." "Oh, but it is now six years since I lived in Vienna, and for many years before that I had not paid a visit to the museum." "Indeed? I have often walked round the galleries there, and stood before this picture, too. Yes, in those earlier days I _walked_." He was almost laughing as he looked at her, and; her embarrassment was such that she could not make any reply. "I fear I am boring you with the pictures," Herr Rupius went on abruptly. "Wait a little; my wife will be home soon. You know, I suppose, that she always goes for a two hours walk after dinner now. She is afraid of becoming too stout." "Your wife looks as young and slender as ... well, I don't think she has altered in the very least since I have come to live here." Bertha felt as though Rupius' countenance had grown quite rigid. Then suddenly he said, in a gentle tone of voice which was not by any means in keeping with the expression of his face: "A quiet life in a little town such as this keeps me young, of course. It was a clever idea of mine and hers, for it occurred simultaneously to both of us, to move here. Who can say whether, had we stayed in Vienna, it might not have been all over already?" Bertha could not guess what he meant by the expression "all over"; whether he was referring to his own life, to his wife's youthfulness, or to something else. In any case, she was sorry that she had called that day; a feeling of shame at being so strong and well herself came over her. "Did I tell you," continued Rupius, "that it was Anna who got these portfolios for me? It was a chance bargain, for the work is usually very expensive. A bookseller had advertised it and Anna telegraphed at once to her brother to procure it for us. You know, of course, that we have many relations in Vienna, both Anna and myself. Sometimes, too, she goes there to visit them. Soon after they pay us a return visit. I should be very glad indeed to see them again, especially Anna's brother and his wife, I owe them a great deal of gratitude. When Anna is in Vienna, she dines and sleeps at their house--but, of course, you already know all that, Frau Bertha." He spoke rapidly and, at the same time, in a cool, businesslike tone. It sounded as though he had made up his mind to tell the same things to every one who should enter the room that day. It was the first time that he had as much as spoken to Bertha of the journeys of his wife to Vienna. "She is going again to-morrow," he continued; "I believe the matter in hand this time is her summer costume." "I think that is a very clever notion of your wife," said Bertha, glad to have found an opening for conversation. "It is cheaper, at the same time," added Herr Rupius. "Yes, I assure you it is cheaper even if you throw in the cost of the journey. Why don't you follow my wife's example?" "In that way, Herr Rupius?" "Why, in regard to your frocks and hats! You are young and pretty, too!" "Heavens above! On whose account should I dress smartly?" "On whose account! On whose account is it that my wife dresses so smartly?" The door opened and Frau Rupius entered in a bright spring costume, a red sunshade in her hand and a white straw hat, trimmed with red ribbon, on her dark hair, which was dressed high. A pleasant smile was hovering around her lips, as usual, and she greeted Bertha with a quiet cheerfulness. "Are you making an appearance in our house once more?" she said, handing her sunshade and hat to the maid, who had followed her into the room. "Are you also interested in pictures, Frau Garlan?" She went up close behind her husband and softly passed her hand over his forehead and hair. "I was just telling Frau Garlan," said Rupius, "how surprised I am that she never goes to Vienna." "Indeed," Frau Rupius put in; "why don't you do so? Moreover, you must certainly have some acquaintances there, too. Come with me one day--to-morrow, for example. Yes, to-morrow." Rupius gazed straight before him while his wife said this, as though he did not dare to look at her. "You are really very kind, Frau Rupius," said Bertha, feeling as though a perfect stream of joy was coursing through her being. She wondered, too, how it was that all this time the possibility of making such a journey had not once entered her mind, the more so as it could be accomplished with so little trouble. It appeared to her at that moment that such a journey might be a remedy for the strange sense of dissatisfaction under which she had been suffering during the past few days. "Well, do you agree, Frau Garlan?" "I don't really know--I daresay I could spare the time, for I have only one lesson to give tomorrow at my sister-in-law's, and she, of course, won't be too exacting; but wouldn't I be putting you to some inconvenience?" A slight shadow flitted across Frau Rupius' brow. "Putting me to inconvenience! Whatever are you dreaming of! I shall be very glad to have pleasant company during the few hours of the journey there and back. And in Vienna--oh, we shall be sure to have much to do together in Vienna." "Your husband," said Bertha, blushing like a girl who is speaking of her first ball, "has told me ... has advised me ..." "Surely, he has been raving to you about my dressmaker," said Frau Rupius, laughing. Rupius still sat motionless in his chair and looked at neither of them. "Yes, I should really like to ask you about her, Frau Rupius. When I see you I feel as if I should like to be well dressed again, just as you are." "That is easily arranged," said Frau Rupius. "I will take you to my dressmaker, and by so doing I hope also to have the pleasure of your company on my subsequent visits. I am glad for your sake as well," she said to her husband, touching his hand which was lying on the table. Then she turned to Bertha and added: "and for yours. You will see how much good it will do you. Wandering about the streets without being known to a soul has a wonderful effect on one's spirits. I do it from time to time, and I always come back quite refreshed and--" in saying this she threw a sidelong glance, full of anxiety and tenderness, in the direction of her husband--"and then I am as happy here as ever it is possible to be; happier, I believe, than any other woman in the world." She drew near her husband and kissed him on the temple. Bertha heard her say in a soft voice, as she did so: "Dearest!" Rupius, however, continued to stare before him as though he shrank from meeting his wife's glance. Both were silent and seemed to be absorbed in themselves, as though Bertha was not in the room. Bertha comprehended vaguely that there was some mysterious factor in the relations of these two people, but what that factor was she was not clever, or not experienced, or not good enough to understand. For a whole minute the silence continued, and Bertha was so embarrassed that she would gladly have gone away had it not been necessary to arrange with Frau Rupius the details of the morrow's journey. Anna was the first to speak. "So then it is agreed that we are to meet at the railway station in time for the morning train--isn't it? And I will arrange matters so that we return home by the seven o'clock train in the evening. In eight hours, you see, it is possible to get through a good deal." "Certainly," said Bertha; "provided, of course, that you are not inconveniencing yourself on my account in the slightest degree." Anna interrupted her, almost angrily. "I have already told you how glad I am that you will be travelling with me, the more so as there is not a woman in the town so congenial to me as you." "Yes," said Herr Rupius, "I can corroborate that. You know, of course, that my wife is on visiting terms with hardly anybody here--and as it has been such a long time since you came to see us I was beginning to fear that she was going to lose you as well." "However could you have thought such a thing? My dear Herr Rupius! And you, Frau Rupius, surely you haven't believed--" At that moment Bertha felt an overwhelming love for both of them. Her emotion was such that she detected her voice to be assuming an almost tearful tone. Frau Rupius smiled, a strange, deliberate smile. "I haven't believed anything. As a matter of fact there are some things over which I do not generally ponder for long. I have no great need of friends, but you, Frau Bertha, I really and truly love." She stretched out her hand to her. Bertha cast a glance at Rupius. It seemed to her that an expression of contentment should now be observable on his features. To her amazement, however, she saw that he was gazing into the corner of the room with an almost terrified look in his eyes. The parlourmaid came in with some coffee. Further particulars as to their plans for the morrow were discussed, and finally they drew up a tolerably exact time-table which, to Frau Rupius' slight amusement, Bertha entered in a little notebook. When Bertha reached the street again, the sky had become overcast, and the increasing sultriness foretold the approach of a thunderstorm. The first large drops were falling before she reached home, and she was somewhat alarmed when, on going upstairs, she failed to find the servant and little Fritz. As she went up to the window, however, in order to shut it, she saw the two come running along. The first thunderclap crashed out, and she started back in terror. Then immediately came a brilliant flash of lightning. The storm was brief, but unusually violent. Bertha went and sat on her bed, held Fritz on her lap, and told him a story, so that he should not be frightened. But, at the same time, she felt as though there was a certain connexion between her experiences of the past two days and the thunderstorm. In half an hour all was over. Bertha opened the window; the air was now fresh, the darkening sky was clear and distant. Bertha drew a deep breath, and a feeling of peace and hope seemed to permeate her being. It was time to get ready for the concert in the gardens. On her arrival she found her friends already gathered at a large table beneath a tree. It was Bertha's intention to tell her sister-in-law at once about her proposed visit to Vienna on the morrow, but a sense of shyness, as though there was something underhand in the journey, caused her to refrain. Herr Klingemann went by with his housekeeper towards their table. The housekeeper was getting on towards middle-age; she was a very voluptuous looking woman, taller than Klingemann, and, when she walked, always appeared to be asleep. Klingemann bowed towards them with exaggerated politeness. The gentlemen scarcely acknowledged the salutation, and the ladies pretended not to have noticed it. Only Bertha nodded slightly and gazed after the couple. "That is his sweetheart--yes, I know it for a positive fact," whispered Richard, who was sitting near his aunt. Herr Garlan's party ate, drank and applauded. At times various acquaintances came over from other tables, sat down with them for awhile, and then went away again to their places. The music murmured around Bertha without making any impression on her. Her mind was continuously occupied with the question as to how to inform them of her project. Suddenly, while the music was playing very loudly, she said to Richard: "I say, I won't be able to give you a music lesson to-morrow. I am going to Vienna." "To Vienna!" exclaimed Richard; then he called across to his mother; "I say, Aunt Bertha is going to Vienna to-morrow!" "Who's going to Vienna?" asked Garlan, who was sitting furthest away. "I am," answered Bertha. "What's this! What's this!" said Garlan, playfully threatening her with his finger. So, then, it was accomplished. Bertha was glad. Richard made jokes about the people who were sitting in the garden, also about the fat bandmaster who was always skipping about while he was conducting, and then about the trumpet-player whose cheeks bulged out and who seemed to be shedding tears when he blew into his instrument. Bertha could not help laughing very heartily. Jests were bandied about her high spirits and Doctor Friedrich remarked that she must surely be going to some rendezvous at Vienna. "I should like to put a stop to that, though!" exclaimed Richard, so angrily that the hilarity became general. Only Elly remained serious, and gazed at her aunt in downright astonishment. III Bertha looked out through the open carriage window upon the landscape: Frau Rupius read a book, which she had taken out of her little traveling-bag very soon after the train had started. It almost appeared as though she wished to avoid any lengthy conversation with Bertha, and the latter felt somewhat hurt. For a long time past she had been cherishing a wish to be a friend of Frau Rupius, but since the previous day this desire of hers had become almost a yearning, which recalled to her mind the whole-hearted devotion of the friendships of the days of her childhood. At first, therefore, she had felt quite unhappy, and had a sensation of having been abandoned, but soon the changing panorama to be seen through the window began to distract her thoughts in an agreeable manner. As she looked at the rails which seemed to run to meet her, at the hedges and telegraph poles which glided and leaped past her, she recalled to mind the few short journeys to the Salzkammergut, where she had been taken, when a child, by her parents, and the indescribable pleasure of having been allowed to occupy a corner seat on those occasions. Then she looked into the distance and exulted in the gleaming of the river, in the pleasant windings of the hills and meadows, in the azure of the sky and in the white clouds. After a time Anna laid down the book, and began to chat to Bertha and smiled at her, as though at a child. "Who would have foretold this of us?" said Frau Rupius. "That we should be going to Vienna together?" "No, no, I mean that we shall both--how shall I express it?--pass or end our lives yonder"--she gave a slight nod in the direction of the place from which they came. "Very true, indeed!" answered Bertha, who had not yet considered whether there was anything really strange in the fact or not. "Well, you, of course, knew it the moment you were married, but I--" Frau Rupius gazed straight before her. "So then your move to the little town," said Bertha, "did not take place until--until--" She broke off in confusion. "Yes, you know that, of course." In saying this Frau Rupius looked Bertha full in the face as if reproaching her for her question. But when she continued to speak she smiled gently, as though her thoughts were not occupied by anything so sad. "Yes, I never imagined that I should leave Vienna; my husband had his position as a government official, and indeed he would certainly have been able to remain longer there, in spite of his infirmity, had he not wanted to go away at once." "He thought, perhaps, that the fresh air, the quiet--" began Bertha, and she at once perceived that she was not saying anything very sensible. Nevertheless Anna answered her quite affably. "Oh, no, neither rest nor climate could do him any good, but he thought that it would be better for both of us in every way. He was right, too--what should we have been able to do if we had remained in the city?" Bertha felt that Anna was not telling her the whole story and she would have liked to beg her not to hesitate, but to open her whole heart to her. She knew, however, that she was not clever enough to express such a request in the right words. Then, as though Frau Rupius had guessed that Bertha was anxious to learn more, she quickly changed the subject of their conversation. She asked Bertha about her brother-in-law, the musical talent of her pupils, and her method of teaching; then she took up the novel again and left Bertha to herself. Once she looked up from the book and said: "You haven't brought anything with you to read, then?" "Oh, yes," answered Bertha. She suddenly remembered that she had bought a newspaper; she took it up and turned over the pages assiduously. The train drew near to Vienna. Frau Rupius closed her book and put it in the travelling-bag. She looked at Bertha with a certain tenderness, as at a child who must soon be sent away alone to meet an uncertain destiny. "Another quarter of an hour," she remarked; "and we shall be--well, I very nearly said, home." Before them lay the town. On the far side of the river chimneys towered up aloft, rows of tall yellow painted houses stretched away into the distance, and steeples ascended skywards. Everything lay basking in the gentle sunlight of May. Bertha's heart throbbed. She experienced a sensation such as might come over a traveller returning after a long absence to a longed-for home, which had probably altered greatly in the meantime, and where surprises and mysteries of all kinds awaited him. At the moment when the train rolled into the station she seemed almost courageous in her own eyes. Frau Rupius took a carriage, and they drove into the town. As they passed the Ring, Bertha suddenly leaned out of the window and gazed after a young man whose figure and walk reminded her of Emil Lindbach. She wished that the young man would turn round, but she lost sight of him without his having done so. The carriage stopped before a house in the Kohlmarkt. The two ladies got out and made their way to the third floor, where the dressmaker's workroom was situated. While Frau Rupius tried on her new costume, Bertha had various materials displayed to her from which she made a choice. The assistant took her measure, and it was arranged that Bertha should call in a week's time to be fitted. Frau Rupius came out from the adjoining room and recommended that particular care should be given to her friend's order. It seemed to Bertha that everybody was looking at her in a rather disparaging, almost compassionate manner, and, on looking at herself in the large pier glass she suddenly perceived that she was very tastelessly dressed. What on earth had put it into her head to attire herself on this occasion in the provincial Sunday-best, instead of in one of the simple plain dresses she usually wore? She grew crimson with shame. She had on a black and white striped foulard costume, which was three years out of date, so far as its cut was concerned, and a bright-coloured hat, trimmed with roses and turned up at an extravagant angle in front, which seemed to weigh heavily upon her dainty figure and made her appear almost ridiculous. Then, as if her own conviction needed further confirmation by some word of consolation, Frau Rupius said, as they went down the stairs: "You are looking lovely!" They stood in the doorway. "What shall be done now?" asked Frau Rupius. "What do you propose?" "Will you then ... I ... I mean ..." Bertha was quite frightened; she felt as though she was being turned adrift. Frau Rupius looked at her with kindly commiseration. "I think," she said, "that you are going to pay a visit to your cousin now, are you not? I suppose that you will be asked to stay to dinner." "Agatha will be sure to invite me to dine with her." "I will accompany you as far as your cousin's, if you would like me to; then I will go to my brother and, if possible, I will call for you at three in the afternoon." Together they walked through the most crowded streets of the central part of the town and looked at the shop windows. At first Bertha found the din somewhat confusing; afterwards, however, she found it more pleasant than otherwise. She gazed at the passers-by and took great pleasure in watching the well-groomed men and smartly-attired ladies. Almost all the people seemed to be wearing new clothes, and it seemed to her they all looked much happier than the people at home. Presently she stopped before the window of a picture-dealer's shop and immediately her eyes fell on a familiar portrait; it was the same one of Emil Lindbach as had appeared in the illustrated paper, Bertha was as delighted as if she had met an acquaintance. "I know that man," she said to Frau Rupius. "Whom?" "That man there"--she pointed with her finger at the photograph--"what do you think? I used to attend the conservatoire at the same time he did!" "Really?" said Frau Rupius. Bertha looked at her and observed that she had not paid the slightest attention to the portrait, but was thinking of something else. Bertha, however, was glad of that, for it seemed to her that there had been too much warmth lurking in her voice. All at once a gentle thrill of pride stirred within her at the thought that the man whose portrait hung there in the shop window had been in love with her in the days of his youth, and had kissed her. She walked on with a sensation of inward contentment. After a short time they reached her cousin's house on the Riemerstrasse. "So it's settled then," she said; "you will call for me at three o'clock, won't you?" "Yes," replied Frau Rupius; "that is to say--but if I should be a little late, do not on any account wait for me at your cousin's any longer than you want to. In any case, this much is settled: we will both be at the railway station at seven o'clock this evening. Good-bye for the present." She shook hands with Bertha and hurried away. Bertha gazed after her in surprise. Once more she felt forlorn, just as she had done in the train when Frau Rupius had read the novel. Then she went up the two flights of stairs. She had not sent her cousin word as to her visit, and she was a little afraid that her arrival might be somewhat inopportune. She had not seen Agatha for many years, and they had exchanged letters only at very rare intervals. Agatha received her without either surprise or cordiality, as though it was only the day before that they had seen each other for the last time. A smile had been playing around Bertha's lips--the smile of those who think that they are about to give some one else a surprise--she repressed it immediately. "Well, you are not a very frequent visitor, I must say!" said Agatha, "and you never let us have a word from you." "But, Agatha, you know it was your turn to write; you have been owing me a letter these last three months." "Really!" replied Agatha. "Well, you'll have to excuse me; you can imagine what a lot of work three children mean. Did I write and tell you that Georg goes to school now?" Agatha took her cousin into the nursery, where Georg and his two little sisters were just having their dinner given them by the nursery-governess. Bertha asked them a few questions, but the children were very shy, and the younger girl actually began to cry. "Do beg Aunt Bertha to bring Fritz with her next time she comes," said Agatha to Georg at length. It struck Bertha how greatly her cousin had aged during the last few years. Indeed, when she bent down to the children Agatha appeared almost like an old woman; and yet she was only a year older than Bertha, as the latter knew. By the time they had returned to the dining-room they had already told each other all that they had to say, and when Agatha invited Bertha to stay to dinner, it seemed that she spoke only for the mere sake of making some remark. Bertha accepted the invitation, nevertheless, and her cousin went into the kitchen to give some orders. Bertha gazed around the room, which was furnished economically and in bad taste. It was very dark, for the street was extremely narrow. She took up an album which was lying on the table. She found hardly any but familiar faces in it. At the very beginning were the portraits of Agatha's parents, who had died long ago; then came those of her own parents and of her brothers, of whom she scarcely ever heard; portraits of friends whom they both had known in earlier days, and of whom she now knew hardly anything; and, finally, there was a photograph, the existence of which she had long forgotten. It was one of herself and Agatha together, and had been taken when they were quite young girls. In those days they had been very much alike in appearance, and had been great friends. Bertha could remember many of the confidential chats which they had had together in the days of their girlhood. And that lovely creature there with the looped plaits was now almost an old woman! And what of herself? What reason had she, then, for still looking upon herself as a young woman? Did she not, perhaps, appear to others as old as Agatha had seemed to her? She resolved that, in the afternoon, she would take notice of the glances which passers-by bestowed upon her. It would be terrible if she really did look as old as her cousin! No, the idea was utterly ridiculous! She called to mind how her nephew, Richard always called her his "pretty aunt," how Klingemann had walked to and fro outside her window the other evening--and even the recollection of her brother-in-law's attentions reassured her. And, when she looked in the mirror which was hanging opposite to her, she saw two bright eyes gazing at her from a smooth, fresh face--they were her face and her eyes. When Agatha came into the room again Bertha began to talk of the far-away years of their childhood, but it seemed that Agatha had forgotten all about those early days, as though marriage, motherhood and week-day cares had obliterated both youth and its memories. When Bertha went on to speak of a students' dance they had both attended, of the young men who had courted Agatha, and of a bouquet which some unknown lover had once sent her, Agatha at first smiled rather absent-mindedly, then she looked at Bertha and said: "Just fancy you still remembering all those foolish things!" Agatha's husband came home from his Government office. He had grown very grey since Bertha had last seen him. At first sight he did not appear to recognize Bertha, then he mistook her for another lady, and excused himself by remarking that he had a very bad memory for faces. At dinner he affected to be smart, he inquired in a certain superior way about the affairs of the little town, and wondered, jestingly, whether Bertha was not thinking of marrying again. Agatha also took part in this bantering, although, at the same time, she occasionally glanced reprovingly at her husband, who was trying to give the conversation a frivolous turn. Bertha felt ill at ease. Later on she gathered from some words of Agatha's husband that they were expecting another addition to their family. Usually Bertha felt sympathy for women in such circumstances, but in this case the news created an almost unpleasant impression upon her. Moreover there was not a trace of love to be discerned in the tone of the husband's voice when he referred to it, but rather a kind of foolish pride on the score of an accomplished duty. He spoke of the matter as though it was a special act of kindness on his part that, in spite of the fact that he was a busy man, and Agatha was no longer beautiful, he condescended to spend his time at home. Bertha had an impression that she was being mixed up in some sordid affair which did not concern her in the least. She was glad when, as soon as he had finished his dinner, the husband went off--it was his custom, "his only vice," as he said with a smile, to play billiards at the restaurant for an hour after dinner. Bertha and Agatha were left together. "Yes," said Agatha, "I've got that to look forward to again." Thereupon she began, in a cold, businesslike way, to talk about her previous confinements, with a candour and lack of modesty which seemed all the more remarkable because they had become such strangers. While Agatha was continuing the relation of her experiences, however, the thought suddenly passed through Bertha's mind that it must be glorious to have a child by a husband whom one loved. She ceased to pay attention to her cousin's unpleasant talk; and her thoughts were only occupied by the infinite yearning for motherhood which had often come over her when she was quite a young girl, and she called to mind an occasion when that yearning had been more keen than it had ever been, either before or after. This had happened one evening when Emil Lindbach had accompanied her home from the conservatoire, her hand clasped in his. She still remembered how her head had begun to swim, and that at one moment she had understood what the phrase meant which she had sometimes read in novels: "He could have done with her just as he liked." Then she noticed that it had grown quite silent in the room, and that Agatha was leaning back in the corner of the sofa, apparently asleep. It was three by the clock. How tiresome it was that Frau Rupius had not yet arrived! Bertha went to the window and looked out into the street. Then she turned towards Agatha, who had again opened her eyes. Bertha quickly tried to begin a fresh conversation, and told her about the new costume which she had ordered in the forenoon, but Agatha was too sleepy even to answer. Bertha had no wish to put her cousin out, and took her departure. She decided to wait for Frau Rupius in the street. Agatha seemed very pleased when Bertha got ready to go. She became more cordial than she had been at any time during her cousin's visit, and said at the door, as if struck by some brilliant idea: "How the time does pass! I do hope you'll come and see us again soon." Bertha, as she stood before the door of the house, realized that she was waiting for Frau Rupius in vain. There was no doubt that it had been the latter's intention from the beginning to spend the afternoon without her. Of course, it did not necessarily follow that there was anything wicked in it; as a matter of fact there was nothing wicked in it, but it hurt Bertha to think that Anna had so little trust in her. She walked along with no fixed purpose. She had still more than three hours to while away before she was to be at the station. At first, she took a walk in the inner town, which she had passed through in the morning. It was really a pleasant thing to wander about unobserved like this, as a stranger in the crowd. It was long since she had experienced that pleasure. Some of the men who passed her glanced at her with interest, and more than one, indeed, stopped to gaze after her. She regretted that she was dressed to so little advantage, and rejoiced at the prospect of obtaining soon the beautiful costume she had ordered from the Viennese dressmaker. She would have liked to find some one following her. Suddenly the thought passed through her mind: would Emil Lindbach recognize her if she were to meet him? What a question! Such things never happened, of course. No, she was quite sure that she could wander about Vienna the whole day long without ever meeting him. How long was it since she had seen him? Seven--eight years.... Yes, the last time she had met him was two years before her marriage. She had been with her parents one warm summer evening in the Schweitzerhaus on the Prater; he had gone by with a friend and had stopped a few minutes at their table. Ah, and now she remembered also that amongst the company at their table there had been the young doctor who was courting her. She had forgotten what Emil had said on that occasion, but she remembered that he had held his hat in his hand during the whole time he was standing before her, which had afforded her inexpressible delight. Would he do the same now, she thought to herself, if she were to meet him? Where was he living now, she wondered. In the old days he had a room on the Weiden, near St. Paul's Church.... Yes, he had pointed out the window as they passed one day, and had ventured, as they did so, to make a certain remark--she had forgotten the exact words, but there was no doubt that they had been to the effect that he and she ought to be in that room together. She had rebuked him very severely for saying such a thing; she had even gone the length of telling him that if that was the sort of girl he thought she was, all was over between them. And, in fact, he had never spoken another word on the subject. Would she recognize the window again? Would she find it? It was all the same to her, of course, whether she went for a walk in this direction or that. She hurried towards the Weiden as though she had suddenly found an object for her walk. She was amazed at the complete change which had come over the neighbourhood. When she looked down from the Elizabeth Bridge she saw walls that rose from the bed of the Wien, half finished tracks, little trucks moving to and fro, and busy workmen. Soon she reached St. Paul's Church by the same road as she had so often followed in the old days. But then she came to a standstill; she was absolutely at a loss to remember where Emil had lived--whether she had to turn to the right or to the left. It was strange how completely it had escaped her memory. She walked slowly back as far as the Conservatoire, then she stood still. Above her were the windows from which she had so often gazed upon the dome of St. Charles' Church, and longingly awaited the end of the lesson so that she might meet Emil. How great had been her love for him, indeed; and how strange it was that it should have died so completely! And now, when she had returned to these scenes, she was a widow, had been so for years, and had a child at home who was growing up. If she had died, Emil would never have heard of it, or perhaps not until years afterwards. Her eyes fell on a large placard fixed on the entrance, gates of the Conservatoire. It was an announcement of the concert at which he was going to play, and there was his name appearing among a number of other great ones, many of which she had long since admired with gentle awe. "BRAHMS VIOLIN CONCERTO--EMIL LINDBACH, VIOLINIST TO THE COURT OF BAVARIA." "Violinist to the Court of Bavaria!"--she had never heard anything about that before. Gazing up at his name, which stood out in glittering letters, it seemed to her as though the next moment Emil himself might come out through the gate, his violin case in his hand, a cigarette between his lips. Of a sudden it all seemed so near, and nearer still when all at once from the windows above came floating down the long-drawn notes of a violin, just as she had so often heard in the old days. She thought she would like to come to Vienna for that concert--yes, even if she should be obliged to spend the night at an hotel! And she would take a seat right in front and see him quite close at hand. She wondered whether he, in his turn, would see her, and, if so, whether he would recognize her. She remained standing before the yellow placard, wholly absorbed in thought, until she felt that some young people coming out of the Conservatoire were staring at her and then she realized that she had been smiling to herself the whole time, as if lost in a pleasant dream. She proceeded to walk on. The district around the town-park had also changed, and, when she sought the places where she and Emil had often been for walks together, she found that they had quite' disappeared. Trees had been felled, boardings barred the way, the ground had been dug up, and in vain she tried to find the seat where she and Emil had exchanged words of love, the tone of which she remembered so well without being able to recall the actual phrases. Presently she reached the trim well-kept part of the park, which was full of people. But she had a sensation that many were looking at her, and that some ladies were laughing at her. And once more she felt that she was looking very countrified. She was vexed at being embarrassed, and thought of the time when, as a pretty young girl, she had walked, proud and unconcerned, along these very avenues. It seemed to her that she had fallen off so much since then, and become so pitiable. Her idea of sitting in the front row of the concert hall appeared presumptuous, almost unfeasible. It seemed also highly improbable now that Emil Lindbach would recognize her; indeed, it struck her as almost impossible that he should remember her existence. What a number of experiences he must have had! How many women and girls might well have loved him--and in a manner quite different from her own! And whilst she continued her way, walking, now along the less frequented avenues and at length out of the park upon the Ringstrasse again, she drew a mental picture of the beloved of her youth figuring in all manner of adventures, in which confused recollections of events depicted in the novels she had read and indistinctly formed ideas of his professional tours were strangely intermingled. She imagined him in Venice with a Russian princess in a gondola; then in her mind's eye she saw him at the court of the King of Bavaria, where duchesses listened to his playing, and fell in love with him; then in the boudoir of an opera singer; then at a fancy-dress ball in Spain, with crowds of alluring masqueraders about him. The further he seemed to soar away, unapproachable and enviable, the more miserable she felt herself to be, and all at once it seemed utterly inconceivable that she had so lightly surrendered her own hopes of an artistic career and given up her lover, in order to lead a sunless existence, and to be lost in the crowd. A shudder seemed to seize her as she recalled that she was nothing but the widow of an insignificant man, that she lived in a provincial town, that she earned her living by means of music lessons, and that she saw old age slowly approaching. Never had there fallen upon her way so much as a single ray of the brilliance which shone upon the road his footsteps would tread so long as he lived. And again the same shudder ran through her at the thought that she had always been content with her lot, and that, without hope and indeed, without yearning, she had passed her whole existence in a gloom, which, at that moment, seemed inexplicable. She reached the Aspernbrüke without in the least giving heed to where her footsteps were taking her. She wished to cross the street at this point, but had to wait while a great number of carriages drove by. Most of them were occupied by gentlemen, many of whom carried field-glasses. She knew that they were returning from the races at the Prater. There came an elegant equipage in which were seated a young man and a girl, the latter dressed in a white spring costume. Immediately behind was a carriage containing two strikingly dressed ladies. Bertha gazed long after them, and noticed that one of the ladies turned round, and that the object of her attention was the carriage which followed immediately behind, and in which sat a young and very handsome man in a long grey overcoat. Bertha was conscious of something very painful--uneasiness and annoyance at one and the same time. She would have liked to be the lady whom the young man followed; she would have liked to be beautiful, young, independent, and, Heaven knows, she would have liked to be any woman who could do as she wanted, and could turn round after men who pleased her. And at that moment she realized, quite distinctly, that Frau Rupius was now in the company of somebody whom she loved. Indeed why shouldn't she? Of course, so long as she stayed in Vienna, she was free and mistress of her own time--besides, she was a very pretty woman, and was wearing a fragrant violet costume. On her lips there hovered a smile such as only comes to those who are happy--and Frau Rupius was unhappy at home. All at once, Bertha had a vision of Herr Rupius sitting in his room, looking at the engravings. But on that day, surely, he was not doing so; no, he was trembling for his wife, consumed with an immense fear that some one yonder in the great city would take her away from him, that she would never return, and that he would be left all alone with his sorrow. And Bertha suddenly felt a thrill of compassion for him, such as she had never experienced before. Indeed, she would have liked to be with him, to comfort and to reassure him. She felt a touch on her arm. She started and looked up. A young man was standing beside her and gazing at her with an impudent leer. She stared at him, full in the face, still quite absentmindedly; then he said with a laugh: "Well?" She was frightened, and almost ran across the street, quickly passing in front of a carriage. She was ashamed of her previous desire to be the lady in the carriage she had seen coming from the Prater. It seemed as though the man's insolence had been her punishment. No, no, she was a respectable woman; in the depth of her soul she had an aversion to everything that savoured of the insolent.... No, she could no longer stay in Vienna, where women were exposed to such things! A longing for the peace of her home came over her, and she rejoiced in the prospect of meeting her little boy again, as in something extraordinarily beautiful. What time was it, though? Heavens, a quarter of seven! She would have to take a carriage; there was no question about that now, indeed! Frau Rupius had, of course, paid for the carriage in the morning, and so the one which she was now going to take would only cost her half, so to speak. She took her seat in an open cab, leaned back in the corner, in almost the same aristocratic manner as that of the lady she had seen in the white frock. People gazed after her. She knew that she was now looking young and pretty. Moreover, she was feeling quite safe, nothing could happen to her. She took an indescribable pleasure in the swift motion of the cab with its rubber-tyred wheels. She thought how splendid it would be if on the occasion of her next visit she were to drive through the town, wearing her new costume and the small straw hat which made her look so young. She was glad that Frau Rupius was standing in the entrance to the station and saw her arrive. But she betrayed no sign of pride, and acted as though it was quite the usual thing for her to drive up to the station in a cab. "We have still ten minutes to spare," said Frau Rupius. "Are you very angry with me for having kept you waiting? Just fancy, my brother was giving a grand children's party to-day, and the little ones simply wouldn't let me go. It occurred to me too late that I might really have called for you; the children would have amused you so much. I have told my brother that, next time, I will bring you and your boy with me." Bertha felt heartily ashamed of herself. How she had wronged this woman again! She could only press her hand and say: "Thank you, you are very kind!" They went on to the platform and entered an empty compartment. Frau Rupius had a small bag of cherries in her hand, and she ate them slowly, one after another, throwing the stones out of the window. When the train began to move out of the station she leaned back and closed her eyes. Bertha looked out of the window; she felt very tired after so much walking, and a slight uneasiness arose within her; she might have spent the day differently, more quietly and enjoyably. Her chilly reception and the tedious dinner at her cousin's came to her mind. After all, it was a great pity that she no longer had any acquaintances in Vienna. She had wandered like a stranger about the town in which she had lived twenty-six years. Why? And why had she not made the carriage pull up in the morning, when she saw the figure that seemed to have a resemblance to Emil Lindbach? True, she would not have been able to run or call after him--but if it had been really he, if he had recognized her and been pleased to see her again? They might have walked about together, might have told each other all that had happened during the long time that had passed since they had last known anything about one another; they might have gone to a fashionable restaurant and had dinner; some would naturally have recognized him, and she would have heard quite distinctly people discussing the question as to who "she" might really be. She was looking beautiful, too; the new costume was already finished; and the waiters served her with great politeness, especially a small youth who brought the wine--but he was really her nephew, who had, of course, become a waiter in that restaurant instead of a student. Suddenly Herr and Frau Martin entered the dining-hall; they were holding one another in such a tender embrace as if they were the only people there. Then Emil rose to his feet, took up the violin bow which was lying beside him, and raised it with a commanding gesture, whereupon the waiter turned Herr and Frau Martin out of the room. Bertha could not help laughing at the incident, laughing much too loudly indeed, for by this time she had quite forgotten how to behave in a fashionable restaurant. But then it was not a fashionable restaurant at all; it was only the coffee room at the "Red Apple," and the military band was playing somewhere out of sight. That, be it known, was a clever invention on the part of Herr Rupius, that military bands could play without being seen. Now, however, it was her turn that was immediately to follow. Yonder was the piano--but, of course, she had long since completely forgotten how to play; she would run away rather than be forced to play. And all at once she was at the railway station, where Frau Rupius was already waiting for her. "It is high time you came," she said. She placed in Bertha's hand a large book, which, by the way, was her ticket. Frau Rupius, however, was not going to take the train; she sat down, ate cherries and spat out the stones at the stationmaster, who took a huge delight in the proceedings. Bertha entered the compartment. Thank God, Herr Klingemann was already there! He made a sign to her with his screwed-up eyes, and asked her if she knew whose funeral it was. She saw that a hearse was standing on the other line. Then she remembered that the captain with whom the tobacconist's wife had deceived Herr Klingemann was dead--of course, it was the day of the concert at the "Red Apple." Suddenly Herr Klingemann blew on her eyes, and laughed in a rumbling way. Bertha opened her eyes--at that moment a train was rushing past the window. She shook herself. What a confused dream! And hadn't it begun quite nicely? She tried to remember. Yes, Emil played a part in it ... but she could not recollect what part. The dusk of evening slowly fell. The train sped on its way along by the Danube. Frau Rupius slept and smiled. Perhaps she was only pretending to be asleep. Bertha was again seized with a slight suspicion, and she felt rising within her a sensation of envy at the unknown and mysterious experiences which Frau Rupius had had. She, too, would gladly have experienced something. She wished that someone was sitting beside her now, his arm pressed against hers--she would fain have felt once more that sensation that had thrilled her on that occasion when she had stood with Emil on the bank of the Wien, and when she had almost been on the point of losing her senses and had yearned for a child.... Ah, why was she so poor, so lonely, so much in obscurity? Gladly would she have implored the lover of her youth: "Kiss me but once again just as you used to do, I want to be happy!" It was dark; Bertha looked out into the night. She determined that very night before she went to bed to fetch from the attic the little case in which she kept the letters of her parents and of Emil. She longed to be home again. She felt as though a question had been wakened within her soul, and that the answer awaited her at home. IV When, late in the evening, Bertha entered her room, the idea which she had taken into her head of going up to the attic at once and fetching down the case with the letters seemed to her to be almost venturesome. She was afraid that some one in the house might observe her on her nocturnal pilgrimage, and might take her for mad. She could, of course, go up the next morning quite conveniently and without causing any stir; and so she fell asleep, feeling like a child who has been promised an outing into the country on the following day. She had much to do the next forenoon; her domestic duties and piano lessons occupied the whole of the time. She had to give her sister-in-law an account of her visit to Vienna. Her story was that in the afternoon she had gone for a walk with her cousin, and the impression was conveyed that she had made an excuse to Frau Rupius at the request of Agatha. It was not until the afternoon that she went up to the attic and brought down the dusty travelling-case, which was lying beside a trunk and a couple of boxes--the whole collection covered with an old and torn piece of red-flowered coffee-cloth. She remembered that her object on the last occasion on which she had opened the case had been to put away the papers which her parents had left behind. On her return to her room she opened the case and perceived lying on top of the other contents a number of letters from her brothers and other letters, with the handwriting of which she was not familiar; then she found a neat little bundle containing the few letters which her parents had addressed to her: these were followed by two books of her mother's household accounts, a little copybook dating back to her own schooldays and containing entries of timetables and exercises, a few programmes of the dances which she had attended when a young girl, and, finally, Emil Lindbach's letters, which were wrapped up in blue tissue paper, torn here and there. And now she was able to fix the very day on which she had last held those letters in her hand, although she had not read them on that occasion. It was when her father had been lying ill for some time and, for whole days, she had not once gone outside the door. She laid the bundle aside. She wanted, first of all, to see all the other things which had been stored in the case, and concerning which she was consumed with curiosity. A number of letters lay in a loose heap at the bottom of the case, some with their envelopes and others without. She cast her eye over them at random. There were letters from old friends, a few from her cousin, and here was one from the doctor who had courted her in the old days. In it he asked her to reserve for him the first waltz at the medical students' dance. Here--what was it? Why, it was that anonymous letter which some one had addressed to her at the Conservatoire. She picked it up and read: "My Dear Fraulein, "Yesterday I again had the good fortune to have an opportunity of admiring you on your daily walk; I do not know whether I had also the good fortune to be observed by you." No, he had not had that good fortune. Then followed three pages of enthusiastic admiration, and not a single wish, not a single bold word. She had, moreover, never heard anything more of the writer. Here was a letter signed by two initials, "M.G." That was the impudent fellow who had once spoken to her in the street, and who in this letter made proposals--wait a minute, what were they? Ah, here was the passage which had sent the hot blood mounting to her brow when she had first read it: "Since I have seen you, and since you have looked on me with a glance so stern and yet seemingly so full of promise, I have had but one dream, but one yearning--that I might kiss those eyes!" Of course, she had not answered the letter; she was in love with Emil at the time. Indeed, she had even thought of showing him the letter, but was restrained by the fear of rousing his jealousy. Emil had never learned anything of "M. G." And that piece of soft ribbon that now fell into her hands?... A cravat ... but she had quite forgotten whose it was, and why she had kept it. Here again was a little dance album in which she had written the names of her partners. She tried to call the young men to mind, but in vain. Though, by the way, it was at that very dance that she had met that man who had said such passionate words to her as she had never heard from any other. It seemed as though he suddenly emerged a victor from among the many shadows that hovered around her. It must have happened during the time when she and Emil had been meeting each other less frequently. How strange it was ... or had it only been a dream? This passionate admirer had clasped her closely in his arms during the dance--and she had not offered the slightest resistance. She had felt his lips in her hair, and it had been incredibly pleasant ... Well, and then?--she had never seen him again. It suddenly seemed to her that, after all, in those days she had had many and strange experiences, and she was lost in amazement at the way in which all these memories had slumbered so long in the travelling case and in her soul.... But no, they had not slumbered; she had thought of all these things many a time: of the men who had courted her, of the anonymous letter, of her passionate partner at the dance, of the walks with Emil--but only as if they had been merely such things as go to constitute the past, the youth which is allotted to every young girl, and from which she emerges to lead the placid life of a woman. On the present occasion, however, it seemed to Bertha as if these recollections were, so to speak, unredeemed promises, as if in those experiences of distant days there lay destinies which had not been fulfilled; nay, more, as if a kind of deception had long been practised upon her, from the very day on which she had been married until the present moment; as if she had discovered it all too late; and here she was, unable to lift a finger to alter her destiny. Yet why should it seem so?... She thought of all these futile things, and there beside her, wrapped up in tissue paper, still lay the treasure, for the sake of which alone she had rummaged in the case--the letters of the only man she had loved, the letters written in the days when she had been happy. How many women might there be now who envied her because that very man had once loved her--loved her with a different, better, chaster love than that which he had given any of the women who had followed her in his affections. She felt herself most bitterly deceived that she, who could have been his wife if ... if ... her thoughts broke off. Hurriedly, as though seeking to rid her mind of doubt, or rather, indeed, of fear, she tore off the tissue paper and seized the letters. And she read--read them one after another. Long letters, short letters; brief, hasty notes, like: "To-morrow evening, darling, at seven o'clock!" or "Dearest, just one kiss ere I go to sleep!" letters that covered many pages, written during the walking tours which he and his fellow students had taken in the summer; letters written in the evening, in which he had felt constrained to impart to her his impressions of a concert immediately on returning home; endless pages in which he unfolded his plans for the future; how they would travel together through Spain and America, famous and happy ... she read them all, one after another, as though tortured by a quenchless thirst. She read from the very first, which had accompanied a few pieces of music, to the last, which was dated two and a half years later, and contained nothing more than a greeting from Salzburg. When she came to an end she let her hands fall into her lap and gazed fixedly at the sheets lying about. Why had that been the last letter? How had their friendship come to an end? How could it have come to an end? How had it been possible that that great love had died away? There had never been any actual rupture between Emil and herself; they had never come to any definite understanding that all was over between them, and yet their acquaintanceship had ended at some time or other--when?... She could not tell, because at the time when he had written that card to her from Salzburg she had still been in love with him. She had, as a matter of fact, met him in the autumn--indeed, during the winter of the same year everything had seemed once more to blossom forth. She remembered certain walks they had taken over the crunching snow, arm in arm, beside St. Charles' Church--but when was it that they had taken the last of these walks? They had, to be sure, never taken farewell of each other.... She could not understand it. How was it that she had been able so easily to renounce a happiness which it might yet have been within her power to retain? How had it come about that she had ceased to love him? Had the dullness of the daily routine of her home life, which weighed so heavily upon her spirits ever since she had left the Conservatoire, lulled her feelings to sleep just as it had blunted the edge of her ambitions? Had the querulous remarks of her parents on the subject of her friendship with the youthful violinist--which had seemed likely to lead to nothing--acted on her with such sobering effect? Then she recalled to mind that even at a later date, when some months had elapsed since she had last seen him, he had called at her parents' house, and had kissed her in the back room. Yes, that had been the last time of all. And then she remembered further that on that occasion she had noticed that his relation towards women had changed; that he must have had experiences of which she could know nothing--but the discovery had not caused her any pain. She asked herself how it all would have turned out if in those days she had not been so virtuous, if she had taken life as easily as some of the other girls? She called to mind a girl at the Conservatoire with whom she had ceased to associate on finding that her friend had an intrigue with a dramatic student. She remembered again the suggestive words which Emil had spoken as they were walking together past his window, and the yearning that had come over her as they stood by the bank of the Wien. It seemed inconceivable that those words had not affected her more keenly at the moment, that that yearning had been awakened within her only once, and then only for so short a time. With a kind of perplexed amazement she thought of that period of placid purity and then, with a sudden agonized feeling of shame which drove the blood to her temples, of the cold readiness with which she had given herself afterwards to a man whom she had never loved. The consciousness that whatever happiness she had tasted in the course of her married life had been gained in the arms of the husband she had not loved made her shudder with horror, for the first time, in its utter wretchedness. Had that, then, been life such as her thoughts had depicted to her, had that been the mystic happiness such as she had yearned for?... And a dull feeling of resentment against everything and everybody, against the living and the dead, began to smoulder within her bosom. She was angry with her dead husband and with her dead father and mother; she was indignant with the people amongst whom she was now living, whose eyes were always upon her so that she dared not allow herself any freedom; she was hurt with Frau Rupius, who had not turned out to be such a friend that Bertha could rely on her for support; she hated Klingemann because, ugly and repulsive as he was, he desired to make her his wife; and finally she was violently enraged with the man she had loved in the days of her girlhood, because he had not been bolder, because he had withheld from her the ultimate happiness, and because he had bequeathed her nothing but memories full of fragrance, yet full of torment. And there she was, sitting in her lonely room amongst the faded mementoes of a youth that had passed unprofitably and friendlessly; there she was, on the verge of the time when there would be no more hopes and no more desires--life had slipped through her fingers, and she was thirty and poor. She wrapped up the letters and the other things, and threw them, all crumpled as they were, into the case. Then she closed it and went over to the window. Evening was at hand. A gentle breeze was blowing over from the direction of the vine-trellises. Her eyes swam with unwept tears, not of grief, but of exasperation. What was she to do? She, who had, without fear and without hope, seen the days, nights, months, years extending into the future, shuddered at the prospect of the emptiness of the evening which lay before her. It was the hour at which she usually returned home from her walk. On that day she had sent the nursemaid out with Fritz--not so much as once did she yearn for her boy. Indeed, for one moment there even fell on her child a ray of the anger which she felt against all mankind and against her fate. And, in her vast discontent, she was seized with a feeling of envy against many people who, at ordinary times, seemed to her anything but enviable. She envied Frau Martin because of the tender affection of her husband; the tobacconist's wife because she was loved by Herr Klingemann and the captain; her sister-in-law, because she was already old; Elly, because she was still young; she envied the servant, who was sitting on a plank over there with a soldier, and whom she heard laughing. She could not endure being at home any longer; She took up her straw hat and sunshade and hurried into the street. There she felt somewhat better. In her room she had been unhappy; in the street she was no more than out of humour. In the main thoroughfare she met Herr and Frau Mahlmann, to whose children she gave music lessons. Frau Mahlmann was already aware that Bertha had ordered a costume from a dressmaker in Vienna on the previous day, and she began to discuss the matter with great weightiness. Later on, Bertha met her brother-in-law, who came towards her from the chestnut avenue. "Well," he said, "so you were in Vienna yesterday! Tell me, what did you do with yourself there? Did you have any adventures?" "What do you mean?" asked Bertha, looking at him in great alarm, as though she had done something she ought not, and had been found out. "What? You had no adventures? But you were with Frau Rupius; all the men must surely have run after you?" "What on earth has come into your head? Frau Rupius' conduct is irreproachable! She is one of the most well-bred ladies I know." "Quite so, quite so! I am not saying a word against Frau Rupius or you." She looked him in the face. His eyes were gleaming, as they often did when he had had a little too much to drink. She could not help recalling that somebody had once foretold that Herr Garlan would die of an apoplectic stroke. "I must pay another visit to Vienna myself one of these days," he said. "Why, I haven't been there since Ash Wednesday. I should like to see some of my acquaintances once again. The next time you and Frau Rupius go, you might just take me with you." "With pleasure," answered Bertha. "I shall have to go again, of course, before long, to have my costume tried on." Garlan laughed. "Yes, and you can take me with you, too, when you try it on." He sidled up closer to her than was necessary. It was a way he had always to squeeze up against her, and, moreover, she was accustomed to his jokes, but on the present occasion she thought him particularly objectionable. She was very much annoyed that he, of all men, always spoke of Frau Rupius in such a suspicious way. "Let us sit down," said Herr Garlan; "if you don't mind." They both sat down on a seat. Garlan took the newspaper from his pocket. "Ah!" said Bertha involuntarily. "Will you have it?" asked Garlan. "Has your wife read it yet?" "Tut, tut!" said Garlan disdainfully. "Will you have it?" "If you can spare it." "For you--with pleasure. But we might just as well read it together." He edged closer to Bertha and opened the paper. Herr and Frau Martin came along, arm in arm, and stopped before them. "Well, so you are back again from the momentous journey," said Herr Martin. "Ah, yes, you were in Vienna," said Frau Martin, nestling against her husband. "And with Frau Rupius, too," she added, as though that implied an aggravation of the offence. Once more Bertha had to give an account of her new costume. She told them all about it in a somewhat mechanical manner, indeed; but she felt, none the less, that it was long since she had been such an interesting personage as she was now. Klingemann went by, bowed with ironical politeness, and turned round to Bertha with a look which seemed to express his sympathy for her in having to be friendly with such people. It seemed to Bertha as though she were gifted that day with the ability to read men's glances. It began to grow dark. They set off together towards the town. Bertha suddenly grew uneasy at not having met her boy. She walked on in front with Frau Martin, who turned the conversation on to the subject of Frau Rupius. She badly wanted to find out whether Bertha had observed anything. "But what do you mean, Frau Martin? I accompanied Frau Rupius to her brother's house, and called for her there on my way back." "And are you convinced that she was with her brother the whole time?" "I really don't know what you expect Frau Rupius to do! Where would she have been then?" "Well," said Frau Martin; "really, you are an artless creature. I must say--or are you only putting on? Do you quite forget then ..." Then she whispered something into Bertha's ear, at which the latter grew very red. She had never heard such an expression from a woman. She was indignant. "Frau Martin," she said, "I am not so old myself either and, as you see, it is quite possible to live a decent life in such circumstances." Frau Martin was a little taken aback. "Yes, of course!" she said. "Yes, of course! You must, I dare say, think that I am a little over-nice in such matters." Bertha was afraid that Frau Martin might be about to give her some further and more intimate disclosures, and she was very glad to find that, at that moment, they had reached the street corner where she could say good-bye. "Bertha, here's your paper!" her brother-in-law called after her. She turned round quickly and took the paper. Then she hastened home. Fritz had returned and was waiting for her at the window. She hurried up to him. She embraced and kissed him as though she had not seen him for weeks. She felt that she was completely engrossed with love for her boy, a fact which, at the time, filled her with pride. She listened to his account of how he had spent the afternoon, where he had been, and with whom he had played. She cut up his supper for him, undressed him, put him to bed, and was satisfied with herself. Her state of mind of the afternoon, when she had rummaged among the old letters, had cursed her fate and had even envied the tobacconist's wife, seemed to her, at the thought of it, as an attack of fever. She ate a hearty supper and went to bed early. Before falling to sleep, however, it occurred to her that she would like to read the paper. She stretched her limbs, shook up the soft bolster so that her head should be higher, and held the paper as near the candle as possible. As her custom was, she first of all skimmed through the theatrical and art news. Even the short announcements, as well as the local reports, had acquired a new interest for her, since her trip to Vienna. Her eyelids were beginning to grow heavy when all at once she observed the name of Emil Lindbach amongst the personal news. She opened her eyes wide, sat up in bed and read the paragraph. "Emil Lindbach, violinist to the Court of Bavaria, whose great success at the Spanish Court we were recently in a position to announce, has been honoured by the Queen of Spain, who has invested him with the Order of the Redeemer." A smile flitted across her lips. She was glad, Emil Lindbach had obtained the Order of the Redeemer.... Yes ... the man whose letters she had been reading that very day ... the man who had kissed her--the man who had once written to her that he would never adore any other woman.... Yes, Emil--the only man in all the world in whom she really had still any interest--except her boy, of course. She felt as though this notice in the paper was intended only for her, as though, indeed, Emil himself had selected that expedient, so as to establish some means of communication with her. Had it not been he, after all, whose back she had seen in the distance on the previous day? All at once she seemed to be quite near to him; still smiling, she whispered to herself: "Herr Emil Lindbach, violinist to the Court of Bavaria, ... I congratulate you...." Her lips remained half open. An idea had suddenly come to her. She got up quickly, donned her dressing-gown, took up the light and went into the adjoining room. She sat down at the table and wrote the following letter as fluently as though some one were standing beside her and dictating it, word for word: "DEAR EMIL, "I have just read in the newspaper that the Queen of Spain has honoured you by investing you with the Order of the Redeemer. I do not know whether you still remember me"--she smiled as she wrote these words--"but, all the same, I will not let this opportunity slip without congratulating you upon your many successes, of which I so often have the pleasure of reading. I am living most contentedly in the little town where fate has cast me; I am getting on very well! "A few lines in reply would make me very happy. "Your old friend, "BERTHA. "P.S.--Kind regards also from my little Fritz (five years old)." She had finished the letter. For a moment she asked herself whether she should mention that she was a widow; but even if he had not known it before, it was quite obvious from her letter. She read it over and nodded contentedly. She wrote the address. "Herr Emil Lindbach, violinist to the Court of Bavaria, Holder of the Order of the Redeemer ..." Should she write all that? He was certain to have many other Orders also ... "Vienna ..." But where was he living at present? That, however, was of no consequence with such a celebrated name. Moreover the inaccuracy in the address would also show that she did not attach so very much importance to it all; if the letter reached him--well, so much the better. It was also a way of putting fate to the test.... Ah, but how was she to know for a certainty that the letter had arrived or not? The answer might, of course, quite easily fail to reach her if.... No, no, certainly not! He would be sure to thank her. And so, to bed. She held the letter in her hand. No, she could not go to bed now, she was wide awake again. And, moreover, if she did not post the letter until next morning it would not go before the midday train, and would not reach Emil before the day after. That was an interminably long time. She had just spoken to him, and were thirty-six hours to be allowed to elapse before her words reached his ears?... Supposing she did not wait, but went to the post now?... no, to the station? Then he would have the letter at ten o'clock the next morning. He was certain to be late in rising--the letter would be brought into his room with his breakfast.... Yes, she must post the letter at once! Quickly she dressed again. She hurried down the stairs--it was not yet late--she hastened along the main street to the station, put the letter in the yellow box, and was home again. As she stood in her room, beside the tumbled bed, and she saw the paper lying on the floor and the candle flickering, it seemed as though she had returned from a strange adventure. For a long time she remained sitting on the edge of the bed, gazing through the window into the bright, starlit night, and her soul was filled with vague and pleasurable expectations. V "My Dear Bertha! "I am wholly unable to tell you how glad I was to receive your letter. Do you really still think of me, then? How curious it is that it should have been an Order, of all things, that was the cause of my hearing from you again! Well, at all events, an Order has at least had some significance for once in a way! Therefore, I heartily thank you for your congratulations. But, apart from all that, don't you come to Vienna sometimes? It is not so very far, after all. I should be immensely pleased to see you again. So come soon! "With all my heart, "Your old "Emil." Bertha was sitting at breakfast, Fritz beside her. He was chatting, but she was not listening to him. The letter lay before her on the table. It seemed miraculous. Two nights and a day ago she had posted her letter, and here was his reply already. Emil had not allowed a day to pass, not even an hour! He had written to her as cordially as if they had only parted the previous day. She looked out of the window. What a splendid morning it was! Outside the birds were singing, and from the hills came floating down the fragrance of the early summer-tide. Bertha read the letter again and again. Then she took Fritz, lifted him up and kissed him to her heart's content. It was long since she had been so happy. While she was dressing she turned things over in her mind. It was Thursday; on Monday she had to go to Vienna again to try on the costume. That was four long days, just the same space of time as had elapsed since she had dined at her brother-in-law's--what a long time it seemed to have to wait. No, she must see Emil sooner than that. She could, of course, go the very next morning and remain in Vienna a few days. But what excuse could she make to the people at home?... Oh, she would be sure to find some pretext. It was more important to decide in what way she should answer his letter and tell him where she would meet him.... She could not write and say: "I am coming, please let me know where I can see you...." Perhaps he would answer: "Come to my rooms...." No, no, no! It would be best to let him have a definite statement of fact. She would write to the effect that she was going to Vienna on such and such a day and was to be found at such and such a place.... Oh, if she only had someone with whom she could talk the whole thing over!... She thought of Frau Rupius--she had a genuine yearning to tell her everything. At the same time she had an idea that, by so doing, she might become more intimate with her and might win her esteem. She felt that she had become much more important since the receipt of Emil's letter. Now she remarked, too, that she had been very much afraid that Emil might quite possibly have changed and become conceited, affected and spoiled--just as was the case with so many celebrated men. But there was not the slightest trace of such things in the letter; there was the same quick, heavy writing, the same warmth of tone, as in those earlier letters. What a number of experiences he might well have had since she had last seen him--well, had not she also had many experiences, and were they not all seemingly obliterated? Before going out she read Emil's letter again. It grew more like a living voice; she heard the cadence of the words, and that final "Come soon" seemed to call her with tender yearning. She stuck the letter into her bodice and remembered how, as a girl, she had often done the same with his notes, and how the gentle touch had sent a pleasant thrill coursing through her. First of all, she went to the Mahlmanns', where she gave the twins their music lesson. Very often the finger exercises, to which she had to listen there, were positively painful to her, and she would rap the children on the knuckles when they struck a false note. On the present occasion, however, she was not in the least strict. When Frau Mahlmann, fat and friendly as ever, came into the room and inquired whether Bertha was satisfied, the latter praised the children and added, as though suddenly inspired: "Now, I shall be able to give them a few days' holiday." "Holiday! How will that be, then, dear Frau Garlan?" "You see, Frau Mahlmann, I have no choice in the matter. What do you think, when I was in Vienna lately my cousin begged me so pressingly to be sure to come and spend a few days with her--" "Quite so, quite so," said Frau Mahlmann. Bertha's courage kept rising, and she continued to add falsehood to falsehood, taking a kind of pleasure in her own boldness: "I really wanted to put it off till June. But this very morning I had a letter from her, saying that her husband is going away for a time, and she is so lonely, and just now"--she felt the letter crackle, and had an indescribable desire to take it out; but yet restrained herself--"and I, think I shall perhaps take advantage of the opportunity...." "Well, to tell the truth," said Frau Mahlmann, taking Bertha by both hands, "if I had a cousin in Vienna, I would like to stay with her a week every fortnight!" Bertha beamed. She felt as though an invisible hand was clearing away the obstacles which lay in her path; everything was going so well. And, indeed, to whom, after all, was she accountable for her actions? Suddenly, however, the fear flashed through her mind that her brother-in-law really intended to go with her to Vienna. Everything became entangled again; dangers cropped up and suspicion lurked even under the good-natured smile of Frau Mahlmann.... Ah, she must on no account fail to take Frau Rupius into her confidence. Directly the lesson was over she went to call upon her. It was not until she had found Frau Rupius in a white morning gown, sitting on the sofa, and had observed the surprised glance with which the latter received her, that it struck Bertha that there was anything strange in her early visit, and she said with affected cheerfulness: "Good morning! I'm early to-day, am I not?" Frau Rupius remained serious. She had not the usual smile on her lips. "I am very glad to see you. The hour makes no difference to me." Then she threw her a questioning glance, and Bertha did not know what to say. She was annoyed, too, at the childish embarrassment, of which she could not rid herself in the presence of Frau Rupius. "I wanted," she said, at length, "to ask you how you felt after our trip." "Quite well," answered Frau Rupius, rather stiffly. But all at once her features changed, and she added with excessive friendliness: "Really, it was my place to have asked you. I am accustomed to those trips, you know." As she said this she looked through the window and Bertha mechanically followed her gaze, which wandered over to the other side of the market square to an open window with flowers on the sill. It was quite calm, and the repose of a summer day shrouded the slumbering town. Bertha would have dearly liked to sit beside Frau Rupius and be kissed upon the brow by her, and blessed; but at the same time she had a feeling of compassion towards her. All this puzzled her. For what reason, indeed, had she really come? And what should she say to her?... "I'm going to-morrow to Vienna to see the man who used to be in love with me when I was a girl?"... In what way did all that concern Frau Rupius? Would it really interest her in the very slightest degree? There she sat as if surrounded by something impenetrable; it was impossible to approach her. _She_ could not approach her, that was the trouble. Of course, there was a word by means of which it was possible to find the way to her heart, only Bertha did not know it. "Well, how is your little boy?" asked Frau Rupius, without taking her eyes off the flowers in the opposite window. "He is going on as well as ever. He is very well-behaved, and is a marvellously good child!" The last word she uttered with an intentional tenderness as though Frau Rupius was to be won over by that means. "Yes, yes," answered the latter, her tone implying that she knew he was good, and had not asked about that. "Have you a reliable nursemaid?" she added. Bertha was somewhat astonished at the question. "My maid has, of course, many other things to attend to besides her nurse's duties," she replied; "but I cannot complain of her. She is also a very good cook." "It must be a great happiness to have such a boy," said Frau Rupius very drily, after a short interval of silence. "It is, indeed, my only happiness," said Bertha, more loudly than was necessary. It was an answer which she had often made before, but she knew that, on that day, she was not speaking with entire sincerity. She felt the sheet of paper touch her skin, and, almost with alarm, she realized that she had also deemed it a happiness to have received that letter. At the same time it occurred to her that the woman sitting opposite her had neither a child nor even the prospect of having one, and Bertha would have been glad to take back what she had said. Indeed, she was on the point of seeking some qualifying word. But, as if Frau Rupius was able to see into her soul, and as if in her presence a lie was impossible, she said at once: "Your only happiness? Say, rather, 'a great happiness,' and that is no small thing! I often envy you on that score, although I really think that, apart from such considerations, life in itself is a joy to you." "Indeed, my life is so lonely, so...." Anna smiled. "Quite so, but I did not mean that. What I meant was that the fact that the sun is shining and the weather is now so fine also makes you glad." "Oh yes, very glad!" replied Bertha assiduously. "My frame of mind is generally dependent on the weather. During that thunderstorm a few days ago I was utterly depressed, and then, when the storm was over--" Frau Rupius interrupted her. "That is the case with every one, you know." Bertha grew low-spirited. She felt that she was not clever enough for Frau Rupius; she could never do any more than follow the ordinary lines of conversation, like the other women of her acquaintance. It seemed as though Frau Rupius had arranged an examination for her, which she had not passed, and, all at once, she was seized with a great apprehension at the prospect of meeting Emil again. What sort of a figure would she cut in his presence? How shy and helpless she had become during the six years of her narrow existence in the little town! Frau Rupius rose to her feet. The white morning gown streamed around her; she looked taller and more beautiful than usual, and Bertha was involuntarily reminded of an actress she had seen on the stage a very long time ago, and to whom at that moment Frau Rupius bore a remarkable resemblance. Bertha said to herself: If I were only like Frau Rupius I am sure I would not be so timid. At the same time it struck her that this exquisitely lovely woman was married to an invalid--might not the gossips be right then, after all? But here, again, she was unable to pursue further her train of thought; she could not imagine in what way the gossips could be right. And at that moment it dawned upon her mind how bitter was the fate to which Frau Rupius was condemned, no matter whether she now bore it or resisted it. But, as if Anna had again read Bertha's thoughts, and could not tolerate that the latter should thus insinuate herself into her confidence, the uncanny gravity of her face relaxed suddenly, and she said in an innocent tone: "Just fancy, my husband is still asleep. He has acquired the habit of remaining awake until late at night, reading and looking at engravings, and then he sleeps on until midday. As for that, it is quite a matter of habit; when I used to live in Vienna I was incredibly lazy about getting up." And thereupon she began to chat about her girlhood, cheerfully, and with a confiding manner such as Bertha had never before noticed in her. She told about her father, who had been an officer on the Staff, about her mother, who had died when she was quite a young woman; and about the little house in the garden of which she had played as a child. It was only now that Bertha learned that Frau Rupius had first become acquainted with her husband when he was just a boy; he had lived with his parents in the adjoining house, and had fallen in love with Anna and she with him, while they were both children. To Bertha the whole period of Frau Rupius' youth appeared as if radiant with bright sunbeams, a youth replete with happiness, replete with hope; and it seemed to her, moreover, that Frau Rupius' voice assumed a fresher tone when she went on to relate about the travels which she and her husband had undertaken in the early days of their married life. Bertha let her talk and hesitated to interrupt her with a word, as though she were a somnambulist wandering on the ridge of a roof. But while Frau Rupius was speaking of her past, a period through which the blessedness of being loved ever beamed brightly as its chiefest glory, Bertha's soul began to thrill with the hope of a happiness for herself such as she had not yet experienced. And while Frau Rupius was telling of the walking tours through Switzerland and the Tyrol, which she had once undertaken with her husband, Bertha pictured herself wandering by Emil's side on similar paths, and she was filled with such an immense yearning that she would dearly have liked at once to get up, go to Vienna, seek him out, fall into his arms, and at last, at last to taste those delights which had hitherto been denied her. Her thoughts wandered so far that she did not notice that Frau Rupius had long since fallen silent, and was sitting on the sofa, staring at the flowers in the window of the house over the way. The utter stillness brought Bertha back to reality; the whole room seemed to her to be filled with some mysterious atmosphere, in which the past and the future were strangely intermingled. She felt that there existed an incomprehensible connexion between herself and Frau Rupius. She rose to her feet, stretched out her hand, and, as if it were quite a matter of course, the two ladies kissed each other good-bye like a couple of old friends. On reaching the door Bertha remarked: "I am going to Vienna again to-morrow for a few days." She smiled as she spoke, like a girl about to be married. After leaving Frau Rupius, Bertha went to her sister-in-law. Her nephew was already sitting at the piano, improvising in a very wild manner. He pretended not to have noticed her enter, and proceeded to practise his finger exercises, which he played in an attitude of stiffness, assumed for the occasion. "We will play a duet to-day," said Bertha, endeavouring to find the volume of Schubert's marches. She paid not the least attention to her own playing, and hardly noticed how, in using the pedals, her nephew touched her feet. In the meantime Elly came into the room and kissed her aunt. "Ah, just so, I had quite forgotten that!" said Richard, and, whilst continuing to play, he placed his lips close to Bertha's cheek. Her sister-in-law came in with her bunch of keys rattling and a deep dejection on her pale and indistinct features. "I have given Brigitta notice," she said in a feeble tone. "I couldn't endure it any longer." "Shall I get you a maid in Vienna?" asked Bertha with a facility which even surprised her. And now for the second time she told the fiction which she had invented about her cousin's invitation, with even greater assurance than before, and, moreover, with a little amplification this time. Along with the secret joy which she found in the telling, she felt her courage increasing at the same time. Even the possibility of being joined by her brother-in-law no longer alarmed her. She felt, too, that she had an advantage over him, because of the way in which he was in the habit of sidling up to her. "How long are you thinking of staying in the town, then?" asked her sister-in-law. "Two or three days; certainly no longer. And in any case, of course, I should have had to go on Monday--to the dressmaker." Richard strummed on the keys, but Elly stood with both arms resting on the piano, gazing at her aunt with a look almost of terror. "Whatever is the matter with you?" asked Bertha involuntarily. "Why do you ask that?" said Elly. "You are looking at me," said Bertha, "as queerly as though--well, as though you did not like the idea of missing your music lessons for a couple of days." "No, it is not that," replied Elly, smiling. "But ... no, I can't tell you." "What is it, though?" asked Bertha. "No, please, I really can't tell you." She hugged her aunt, almost imploringly. "Elly," said her mother, "I cannot permit you to have any secrets." She sat down as though most deeply grieved and very tired. "Well, Elly," said Bertha, filled with a vague fear, "if I were to beg you--" "But you mustn't laugh at me, Aunt." "Certainly not." "Well, you see, Aunt, I was so frightened when you were away in Vienna that last time--I know very well it is silly--but it is because ... because of the number of carriages in the streets." Bertha drew a deep breath as of relief, and stroked Elly's cheeks. "I will be sure to take great care. You can be quite easy in your mind." Her sister-in-law shook her head. "I am afraid that Elly will turn out a most eccentric girl." Before Bertha left the house she arranged with her sister-in-law that she would come back to supper, and that she would hand over Fritz to the care of her relations while she as away in Vienna. After dinner, Bertha sat down at the writing table, read over Emil's letter a few more times, and made a rough draft of her reply. "My Dear Emil, "It was very good of you to answer me so soon. I was very happy"--she crossed out "very happy" and substituted "very glad"--"when I received your dear note. How much has changed since we last saw each other! You have become a famous virtuoso since then, which I, for my part, was always quite sure that you would be"--she stopped and struck out the whole sentence--"I also share your desire to see me soon again"--no, that was mere nonsense! This was better: "I should be immensely delighted to have an opportunity of talking to you once more."--Then an excellent idea occurred to her, and she wrote with great zest: "It is really strange that we have not met for so long, for I come to Vienna quite often; for instance, I shall be there this week-end...." Then she allowed her pen to drop and fell into thought. She was determined to go to Vienna the next afternoon, to put up at an hotel, and to sleep there, so as to be quite fresh the following day, and to breathe the air of Vienna for a few hours before meeting him. The next question was to fix a meeting place. That was easily done. "In accordance with your kind wish I am writing to let you know that on Saturday morning at eleven o'clock...." No, that was not the right thing! It was so businesslike, and yet again too eager--"if," she wrote, "you would really care to take the opportunity of seeing your old friend again, then perhaps you will not consider it too much trouble to go to the Art and History Museum on Saturday morning at eleven o'clock. I will be in the gallery of the Dutch School"--as she wrote that she seemed to herself rather impressive and, at the same time, everything of a suspicious nature seemed to be removed. * * * * * She read over the draft. It appeared to her rather dry, but, after all, it contained all that was necessary, and did not compromise her in any way. Whatever else was to happen would take place in the Museum, in the Dutch gallery. She neatly copied out the draft, signed it, placed it in an envelope, and hurried down the sunny street to post the letter in the nearest box. On arriving home again she slipped off her dress, donned a dressing-gown, sat down on the sofa, and turned over the leaves of a novel by Gerstacker, which she had read half a score of times already. But she was unable to take in a word. At first, she attempted to dismiss from her mind the thoughts which beset her, but her efforts met with no success. She felt ashamed of herself, but all the time she kept dreaming that she was in Emil's arms. Why ever did such dreams come to her? She had never, even for a moment, thought of such a thing! No, ... she would not think of it, either ... she was not that sort of woman.... No, she could not be anyone's mistress--and even on this occasion.... Yes, perhaps if she were to go to Vienna once more and again ... and again ... yes, much later--perhaps. And besides, he would not even so much as dare to speak of such a thing, or even to hint at it.... It was, however, useless to reason like this; she could no longer think of anything else. Ever more importunate came her dreams and, in the end, she gave up the struggle. She lolled indolently in the corner of the sofa, allowed the book to slip from her fingers and lie on the floor, and closed her eyes. When she rose to her feet an hour later a whole night seemed to have passed, and the visit to Frau Rupius seemed, in particular, to be far distant. Again she wondered at this confusion of time--in truth, the hours appeared to be longer or shorter just as they chose. She dressed in order to take Fritz for a walk. She was in the tired, indifferent mood which usually came over her after an unaccustomed afternoon nap. It was that mood in which it is scarcely possible to collect one's thoughts with any degree of completeness, and in which the usual appears strange, but as though it refers to some one else. For the first time, it seemed strange to Bertha that the boy, whom she was now helping into his coat, was her own child, whose father had long been buried, and for whom she had endured the pangs of motherhood. Something within her urged her to go to the cemetery again that day. She had not, however, the feeling that she had a wrong to make reparation for, but that she must again politely visit some one to whom she had become a stranger for no valid reason. She chose the way through the chestnut avenue. There the heat was particularly oppressive that day. When she passed out into the sun again a gentle breeze was blowing and the foliage of the trees in the cemetery seemed to greet her with a slight bow. As she passed through the cemetery gates with Fritz the breeze came towards her, cool, even refreshing. With a feeling of gentle, almost sweet, weariness, she walked through the broad centre avenue, allowed Fritz to run on in front, and did not mind when he disappeared from her sight for a few seconds behind a tombstone, though at other times she would not have allowed such behaviour. She remained standing before her husband's grave. She did not, however, look down at the flower-bed, as was her general custom, but gazed past the tombstone and away over the wall into the blue sky. She felt no tears in her eyes; she felt no emotion, no dread; she did not even realize that she had walked over the dead, and that there beneath her feet he, who had once held her in his arms, had crumbled into dust. Suddenly she heard behind her hurried footsteps on the gravel, such as she was not generally accustomed to hear in the cemetery. Almost shocked, she turned round. Klingemann was standing before her, in an attitude of greeting, holding in his hand his straw hat, which was fixed by a ribbon to his coat button. He bowed deeply to Bertha. "What a strange thing to see you here!" she said. "Not at all, my dear lady, not at all! I saw you from the street; I recognized you by your walk." He spoke in a very loud tone, and Bertha almost involuntarily murmured: "Hush!" A mocking smile at once made its appearance on Klingemann's face. "He won't wake up," he muttered, between his clenched teeth. Bertha was so indignant at this remark that she did not attempt to find an answer, but called Fritz, and was about to depart. Klingemann, however, seized her by the hand. "Stop," he whispered, gazing at the ground. Bertha opened her eyes wide; she could not understand. Suddenly Klingemann looked up from the ground and fixed his eyes on Bertha's. "I love you, you see," he said. Bertha uttered a low cry. Klingemann let go her hand, and added in quite an easy conversational tone: "Perhaps that strikes you as rather odd." "It is unheard of!--unheard of!" Once more she sought to go, and she called Fritz. "Stop! If you leave me alone now, Bertha...." said Klingemann, now in a suppliant tone. Bertha had recovered her senses again. "Don't call me Bertha!" she said, vehemently. "Who gave you the right to do so? I have no wish to say anything further to you ... and here, of all places!" she added, with a downward glance, which, as it were, besought the pardon of the dead. Meanwhile Fritz had come back. Klingemann seemed very disappointed. "My dear lady," he said, following Bertha, who, holding Fritz by the hand, was slowly walking away: "I recognize my mistake. I should have begun differently and not said that which seems now to have frightened you, until I had come to the end of a well-turned speech." Bertha did not look at him, but said, as though she were speaking to herself: "I would not have considered it possible; I thought you were a gentleman...." They were at the cemetery gate. Klingemann looked back again, and in his glance there was something of regret at not having been able to play out his scene at the graveside to a finish. Hat in hand, and twisting the ribbon, by which it was fastened, round his finger, and still keeping by Bertha's side, he went on to say: "All I can do now is to repeat that I love you, that you pursue me in my dreams--in a word, you must be mine!" Bertha came to a standstill again, as if she were terrified. "You will, perhaps, consider my remarks insolent, but let us take things as they are. You"--he made a long pause--"are alone in the world. So am I--" Bertha stared him full in the face. "I know what you are thinking of," said Klingemann. "That is all of no consequence; that is all done with the moment you give the word. I have a dim presentiment that we two suit each other very well. Yes, unless I am very much deceived, the blood should be flowing in your veins, my dear lady, as warm...." The glance which Bertha now gave him was so full of anger and loathing that Klingemann was unable to complete the sentence. He therefore began another. "Ah, when you come to think of it, what sort of a life is it that I am now leading? It is even a long, long time since I was loved by a noble woman such as you are. I understand, of course, your hesitation, or rather, your refusal. Deuce take it, of course it needs a bit of courage--with such a disreputable fellow as I am, too ... although, perhaps, things are not quite so bad. Ah, if I could only find a human soul, a kind, womanly soul!"--He emphasized the "womanly soul"--"Yes, my dear lady, it was as little meant to be my fate as it was yours to pine away and grow crabbed in such a hole of a town as this. You must not be offended if I ... if I--" The words began to fail him when he approached the truth. Bertha looked at him. He seemed to her at that moment to be rather ridiculous, almost pitiable, and very old, and she wondered how it was that he still had the courage, not so much as to propose to her, as even simply to court her favour. And yet, to her own amazement and shame, there overflowed from these unseemly words of a man who appeared absurd to her, the surge, so to speak, of desire. And when his words had died away she heard them again in her mind--but as though from the lips of another who was waiting for her in Vienna--and she felt that she would not be able to withstand this other speaker. Klingemann continued to talk; he spoke of his life as being a failure, but yet a life worth saving. He said that women were to be blamed for bringing him so low, and that a woman could raise him up again. Away back in his student days he had run away with a woman, and that had been the beginning of his misfortunes. He talked of his unbridled passions, and Bertha could not restrain a smile. At the same time she was ashamed of the knowledge which seemed to her to be implied by the smile.... "I will walk up and down in front of your window this evening," said Klingemann, when they reached the gate. "Will you play the piano?" "I don't know." "I will take it as a sign." With that he went away. In the evening she supped, as she had so often done, at her brother-in-law's house. At the table she sat between Elly and Richard. Mention was made of her approaching journey to Vienna as though it was really nothing more than a matter of paying a visit to her cousin, trying on the new costume at the dressmaker's, and executing a few commissions in the way of household necessities, which she had promised to undertake for her sister-in-law. Towards the end of supper, her brother-in-law smoked his pipe, Richard read the paper to him, her sister-in-law knitted, and Elly, who had nestled up close beside Bertha, leaned her childish head upon her aunt's breast. And Bertha, as her glance took in the whole scene, felt herself to be a crafty liar. She, the widow of a good husband, was sitting there in a family circle which interested itself in her welfare so loyally; by her side was a young girl who looked up at her as on an older friend. Hitherto she had been a good woman, honest and industrious, living only for her son. And now, was she not about to cast aside all these things, to deceive and lie to these excellent people, and to plunge into an adventure, the end of which she could foresee? What was it, then, that had come over her these last few days, by what dreams was she pursued, how was it that her whole existence seemed only to aspire towards the one moment when she would again feel the arms of a man about her? She had but to think of it and she was seized with an indescribable sensation of horror, during which she seemed devoid of will, as if she had fallen under the influence of some strange power. And while the words that Richard was reading beat monotonously upon her ear, and her fingers played with the locks of Elly's hair--she resisted for the last time; she resolved that she would be steadfast--that she would do no more than see Emil once again, and that, like her own mother who had died long ago, and like all the other good women she knew--her cousin in Vienna, Frau Mahlmann, Frau Martin, her sister-in-law, and ... yes, certainly Frau Rupius as well--she would belong only to him who made her his wife. As soon, however, as she thought of that, the idea flashed through her mind, like lightning: if he himself...if Emil.... But she was afraid of the thought, and banished it from her. Not with such bold dreams as these would she go to meet Emil. He, the great artist, and she, a poor widow with a child...no, no!--she would see him once again ... in the Museum of course, at the Dutch gallery ... once only, and that for the last time, and she would tell him that she did not wish for anything else than to see him that once. With a smile of satisfaction she pictured to herself his somewhat disappointed face; and, as if practising beforehand for the scene, she knitted her brow and assumed a stern cast of countenance, and had the words ready on her lips to say to him: "Oh, no, Emil, if you think that...." But she must take care not to say it in quite too harsh a tone, in order that Emil might not, as on that previous occasion ... twelve years before! ... cease to plead after only the one attempt. She intended that he should beg a second time, a third time--ah, Heaven knew, she intended that he should continue to plead until she gave way.... For she felt, there in the midst of all those good, respectable, virtuous people, with whom, indeed, she would soon no longer be numbered, that she would give way the moment he first asked her. She was only going to Vienna to be _his_, and after that, if needs must be, to die. On the afternoon of the following day Bertha set off. It was very hot, and the sun beat down upon the leather-covered seats of the railway carriage. Bertha had opened the window and drawn forward the yellow curtain, which, however, kept flapping in the breeze. She was alone. But she scarcely thought of the place towards which she was travelling; she scarcely thought of the man whom she was about to see again, or of what might be in store for her--she thought only of the strange words she had heard, an hour before her departure. She would gladly have forgotten them, at least for the next few days. Why was it that she had been unable to remain at home during those few short hours between dinner and her departure? What unrest had driven her on this glowing hot afternoon out from her room, on to the street, into the market, and bade her pass Herr Rupius' house? He was sitting there upon the balcony, his eyes fixed on the gleaming white pavement, and over his knees, as usual, was spread the great plaid rug, the ends of which were hanging down between the bars of the balcony railings; in front of him was the little table with a bottle of water and a glass. When he perceived Bertha his eyes became fixed upon her, as though he were making some request to her, and she observed that he beckoned her with a slight movement of the head. Why had she obeyed him? Why had she not taken his nod simply as a greeting and thanked him and gone upon her way? When, however, in answer to his nod, she turned towards the door of the house, she saw a smile of thanks glide over his lips and she found it still on his countenance when she went out to him on the balcony, through the cool, darkened room, and, taking his outstretched hand, sat down opposite to him on the other side of the little table. "How are you getting on?" she asked. At first he made no answer; then she observed from the working of his face that he wanted to say something, but seemed as if he was unable to utter a word. "She is going to ..." he broke out at length. These first words he uttered in an unnecessarily loud voice; then, as though alarmed at the almost shrieking tone, he added very softly: "My wife is going to leave me." Bertha involuntarily looked around her. Rupius raised his hands, as if to reassure her. "She cannot hear us She is in her room; she is asleep." Bertha was embarrassed. "How do you know?..." she stammered. "It is impossible--quite impossible!" "She is going away--away, for a time, as she says ... for a time ... do you understand?" "Why, yes, to her brother, I suppose." "She is going away for ever ... for ever! Naturally she does not like to say to me: Good-bye, you will never see me again! So she says: I should like to travel a little; I need a change; I will go to the lake for a few weeks; I should like to bathe; I need a change of air! Naturally she does not say to me: I can endure it no longer; I am young and in my prime and healthy; you are paralysed and will soon die; I have a horror of your affliction and of the loathsome state that must supervene before it is at an end. So she says: I will go away only for a few weeks, then I will come back again and stay with you." Bertha's painful agitation became merged in her embarrassment. "You are certainly mistaken," was all that she could answer. Rupius hastily drew up the rug, which was on the point of slipping down off his knees. He seemed to find it chilly. As he continued to speak, he drew the rug higher and higher, until finally he held it with both hands pressed against her breast. "I have seen it coming; for years I have seen this moment coming. Imagine what sort of an existence it has been; waiting for such a moment, defenceless and forced to be silent!--Why are you looking at me like that?" "Oh, no," said Bertha, looking down at the market square. "Well, I beg your pardon for referring to all this. I had no intention of doing so, but when I saw you walking past--well, thank you very much for having listened to me." "Please don't mention it," said Bertha, mechanically stretching out her hand to him. He did not notice it, however, and she let it lie upon the table. "Now it is all over," said Herr Rupius; "now comes the time of loneliness, the time of dread." "But has your wife ... she loves you, I'm sure of it!... I am quite certain that you are giving yourself needless anxiety. Wouldn't the simplest course be, Herr Rupius, for you to request your wife to forego this journey?" "Request?..." said Herr Rupius, almost majestically. "Can I pretend to have the right to do so? AH these last six or seven years have only been a favour which she has granted me. I beg you, consider it. During all these seven years not a word of complaint at the waste of her youth has passed her lips." "She loves you," said Bertha, decisively; "and that is the chief point." Herr Rupius looked at her for a long time. "I know what is in your mind, although you do not venture to say it. But your husband, my dear Frau Bertha, lies deep in the grave, and does not sleep by your side night after night." He looked up with a glance that seemed to ascend to Heaven as a curse. Time was getting on; Bertha thought of her train. "When is your wife going to start?" "Nothing has been said about that yet--but I am keeping you, perhaps?" "No, not at all, Herr Rupius, only.... Hasn't Anna told you? I'm going to Vienna to-day, you know." She grew burning red. Once more he gazed at her for a long time. It seemed to her as though he knew everything. "When are you coming back?" he asked drily. "In two or three days." She would have liked to say that he was mistaken, that she was not going to see a man whom she loved, that all these things about which he was worrying were sordid and mean, and really of not the slightest importance to women--but she was not clever enough to find the right words to express herself. "If you come back in two or three days' time you may, perhaps, find my wife still here. So, good-bye! I hope you will enjoy yourself." She felt that his glance had followed her as she went through the dark, curtained room and across the market square. And now, too, as she sat in the railway carriage, she felt the same glance and still in her ears kept ringing those words, in which there seemed to lie the consciousness of an immense unhappiness, which she had not hitherto understood. The torment of this recollection seemed stronger than the expectation of any joys that might be awaiting her, and the nearer she approached to the great city the heavier she became at heart. As she thought of the lonely evening that lay before her she felt as though she were travelling, without hope, towards some strange, uncertain destination. The letter, which she still carried in her bodice, had lost its enchantment; it was nothing but a piece of crackling paper, filled with writing, the corners of which were beginning to get torn. She tried to imagine what Emil now looked like. Faces bearing a slight resemblance to his arose before her mind's eye; many times she thought that she had surely hit upon the right one, but it vanished immediately. Doubts began to assail her as to whether she had done the right thing in travelling so soon. Why had she not waited, at least, until Monday? Then she was obliged, however, to confess to herself that she was going to Vienna to keep an appointment with a young man, with whom she had not exchanged a word for ten years, and who, perhaps, was expecting a quite different woman from the one who was travelling to see him on the morrow. Yes, that was the cause of all her uneasiness; she realized it now. The letter which was already beginning to chafe her delicate skin was addressed to Bertha, the girl of twenty; for Emil, of course, could not know what she looked like now. And, although for her own part, she could assure herself that her face still preserved its girlish features and that her figure, though grown fuller, still preserved the contours of youth, might he not see, in spite of all, how many changes a period of ten years had wrought in her, and, perhaps, even destroyed without her having noticed it herself? The train drew up at Klosterneuburg. Bertha's ears were assailed by the sound of many clear voices and the clatter of hurrying footsteps. She looked out of the window. A number of schoolboys crowded up to the train and, laughing and shouting, got into the carriages. The sight of them caused Bertha to call to mind the days of her childhood, when her brothers used to come back from picnics in the country, and suddenly there came before her eyes a vision of the blue room in which the boys had slept. She seemed to feel a tremor run through her as she realized how all the past was scattered to the wind; how those to whom she owed her existence had died, how those with whom she had lived for years under one roof were forgotten; how friendships which had seemed to have been formed to last for ever had become dissolved. How uncertain, how mortal, everything was! And he ... he had written to her as if in the course of those ten years nothing had changed, as if in the meantime there had not been funerals, births, sorrows, illnesses, cares and--for him, at least--so much good fortune and fame. Involuntarily she shook her head. A kind of perplexity in the face of so much that was incomprehensible came over her. Even the roaring of the train, which was carrying her along to unknown adventures, seemed to her as a chant of remarkable sadness. Her thoughts went back to the time, by no means remote, in fact no more than a few days earlier, when she had been tranquil and contented, and had borne her existence without desire, without regret and without wonder. However had it happened that this change had come over her? She could not understand. The train seemed to rush forward with ever-increasing speed towards its destination. Already she could see the smoke of the great city rising skywards as out of the depths. Her heart began to throb. She felt as if she was awaited by something vague, something for which she could not find a name, a thing with a hundred arms, ready to embrace her. Each house she passed knew that she was coming; the evening sun, gleaming on the roofs, shone to meet her; and then, as the train rolled into the station, she suddenly felt sheltered. Now for the first time, she realized that she was in Vienna, in _her_ Vienna, the town of her youth and of her dreams, that she was home. Had she not given the slightest thought to that before? She did not come from home--no, now she had arrived home. The din at the station filled her with a feeling of comfort, the bustle of people and carriages gladdened her, everything that was sorrowful had been shed from her. There she stood at the Franz Josef Station in Vienna, on a warm May evening, Bertha Garlan, young and pretty, free and accountable to no one, and on the morrow she was to see the only man whom she had ever loved--the lover who had called her. She put up at a little hotel near the station. She had determined to choose one of the less fashionable, partly for the sake of economy, and partly, too, because she stood in awe, to a certain extent, of smart waiters and porters. She was shown to a room on the third floor with a window looking out on the street. The chambermaid closed the window when the visitor entered, and brought some fresh water, the boots placed her box beside the stove, and the waiter placed before her the registration paper, which Bertha filled up immediately and unhesitatingly, with the pride that comes of a clear conscience. A feeling of freedom as regards external circumstances, such as she had not known for a long time, encompassed her; there were none of the petty domestic cares of the daily round, there was no obligation to talk to relations or acquaintances; she was at liberty that evening to do just as she liked. When she had changed her dress she opened the window. She had already been obliged to light the candles, but out of doors it was not yet quite dark. She leaned her elbows on the window-sill and looked down. Again she remembered her childhood, when she had often looked down out of the windows in the evenings, sometimes with one of her brothers, who had thrown his arm around her shoulders. She also thought of her parents with so keen an emotion that she was on the verge of tears. Down below the street lamps were already alight. Well, at all events, she must find something to do. She thought of what might be happening the next day at that hour.... She could not picture it to herself. At that moment, it just happened that a lady and gentleman drove by the hotel in a cab. If things turned out in accordance with her wishes, Emil and she should be going for a drive together into the country the next morning--yes, that would be nicest. Some quiet spot away from the town in a restaurant garden, a candle lamp on the table, and he beside her, hand in hand like a pair of young lovers. And then back again--and then.... No, she would rather not imagine anything further! Where was he now, she wondered. Was he alone? Or was he at that very instant engaged in talking with some one? And with whom--a man?--a woman?--a girl? But, after all, was it any concern of hers? For the present it was certainly not any concern of hers. And to Emil it mattered just as little that Herr Klingemann had proposed to her the previous day, that Richard, her precocious nephew, kissed her sometimes, and that she had a great admiration for Herr Rupius. She would be sure to ask him on the morrow--yes, she must be certain as regards all these points before she ... well, before she went with him in the evening into the country. So then she decided to go out--but where? She stopped, irresolute, at the door. All she could do was to go for a short walk and then have supper ... but again, where? A lady alone.... No, she would have supper here in her room at the hotel, and go to bed early so that she might have a good night's rest and look fresh, young and pretty in the morning. She locked the door and went out into the street. She turned towards the inner town, and proceeded at a very sharp pace, for she did not like walking alone in the evening. Soon she reached the Ring and went past the University, and on to the Town Hall. But she took no pleasure at all in this aimless rambling. She felt bored and hungry, and went back to her hotel in a tramcar. She had no great desire to seek her room. From the street she had already noticed that the dining-room of the hotel was barely lighted and evidently empty. She had supper there, after which she grew tired and sleepy and, with an effort, went up the three flights of stairs to her room. As she sat on the bed and undid her shoe laces, she heard ten o'clock chime in a neighbouring church steeple. When she awoke in the morning she hurried, first of all, to the window and drew up the blinds with a great longing to see the daylight and the town. It was a sunny morning, and the air was as fresh as if it had come flowing down from a thousand springs in the forests and hills into the streets of the town. The beauty of the morning acted on Bertha as a good omen; she wondered at the strange, foolish manner in which she had spent the previous evening--as if she had not quite correctly understood why she had come to Vienna. The certainty that the repose of a whole night no longer separated her from the longed-for hour filled her with a sense of great gladness. All at once, she could no longer understand how it was that she could have come to Vienna, as she had done just recently, without daring to make even an attempt to see Emil. Finally, too, she wondered how it was that she had, for weeks, months, perhaps years, needlessly deferred availing herself of the opportunity of seeing him. The fact that she had scarcely thought of him during the whole time, did not occur to her at first, but, when at length she did realize it, she was amazed at that, most of all. At last only four more hours were to be endured, and then she would see him. She lay down on the bed again; she reclined, at first, with her eyes wide open, and she whispered to herself, as though she wanted to intoxicate herself with the words: "Come soon!" She heard Emil himself speak the words, no longer far away, no, but as though he were close by her side. His lips breathed them on hers: "Come soon!" he said, but the words meant: "Be mine! be mine!" She opened her arms as though making ready to press her beloved to her heart. "I love you," she said, and breathed a kiss into the air. At length she got up and dressed. This time she had brought with her a simple grey costume, cut in the English fashion, which, according to the general opinion of her friends, suited her very well, and she was quite content with herself when she had completed her toilet. She probably did not look like a fashionable lady of Vienna, but, on the other hand, she had not the appearance of a fashionable lady from the country either; it seemed to her that she looked more like a governess in the household of some Count or Prince, than anything else. Indeed, as a matter of fact, there was something of the young, unmarried lady in her aspect; no one would have taken her for a married woman and the mother of a five-year-old boy. She thought, with a slight sigh, that truly she would have done better to have remained unmarried. But, as to that, she was feeling that day very much like a bride. Nine o'clock! Still two long hours to wait! What could she do in the meantime? She sat down at the table, ordered coffee and sipped it slowly. There was no sense in remaining indoors any longer; it was better to go out into the open air at once. For a time she walked about the streets of the suburb, and she took a particularly keen pleasure in the wind blowing on her cheeks. She asked herself: What was Fritz doing at that moment? Probably Elly was playing with him. Bertha took the road which led towards the public gardens; she was glad to go for a walk through the avenues, in which, many years ago, she had played as a child. She entered the garden by the gate opposite the Burg-theatre. At that early hour of the day there were but few people in the gardens. Children were playing on the gravel; governesses and nursemaids were sitting on the seats; little girls were running about along the steps of the Temple of Theseus and under its colonnade. Elderly people were walking in the shade of the avenues; young men, who were apparently studying from large writing books, and ladies, who were reading books, had taken their seats in the cool shade of the trees. Bertha sat on a seat and watched two little girls who were jumping over a piece of string, as she had so often done herself, when a child--it seemed to her, in just the same spot. A gentle breeze blew through the foliage; from afar she heard the calls and laughter of some children playing "catch." The cries came nearer and nearer; and then the children ran trooping past her. She felt a thrill of pleasure when a young man in a long overcoat walked slowly by and turned round to look at her for a second time, when he reached the end of the avenue. Then there passed by a young couple; the girl, who had a roll of music in her hand, was neatly but somewhat strikingly dressed; the man was clean-shaven and was wearing a light summer suit and a tall hat. Bertha thought herself most experienced when she fancied that she was able with certainty to recognize in the girl a student of music, and in her companion a young man who had just gone on the stage. It was very pleasant to be sitting there, to have nothing to do, to be alone, and to have people walking, running and playing like this before her. Yes, it would be nice to live in Vienna and be able to do just as she liked. Well, who could say how everything would turn out, what the next few hours would bring forth, what prospects for her future life that evening would open out before her? What was it then, that really forced her to live in that dreadful little town? After all, in Vienna she would be able to supplement her income by giving music lessons just as easily as at home. Why not, indeed? Moreover, in Vienna, better terms were to be obtained for music lessons.... Ah, what an idea!... if he came to her aid; if he, the famous musician, recommended her? Why, certainly it would only need one word from him. What if she were to speak to him on the subject? And would it not also be a most advantageous arrangement in view of her child? In a few years' time he would have to go to school, and then, of course, the schools were so much better in Vienna than at home. No, it was quite impossible for her to pass all her life in the little town--she would have to move to Vienna, and that, too, at no distant date. Moreover, even if she had to economise here, and--and.... In vain she attempted to restrain the bold thoughts which now came rushing along.... If she should take Emil's fancy, if he should again ... if he should still be in love with her ... if he should ask her to be his wife? If she could be a bit clever, if she avoided compromising herself in any way, and understood how to fascinate him--she felt rather ashamed of her craftiness. But, after all, was it so bad that she should think of such things, considering that she was really in love with him, and had never loved any other man but him? And did not the whole tone of his letter give her the right to indulge in such thoughts? And then, when she realised that in a few minutes she was to meet him who was the object of her hopes, everything began to dance before her eyes. She rose to her feet, and nearly reeled. She saw the young couple, who had previously walked past her, leave the gardens by the road leading to the Burgplatz. She went off in the same direction. Yonder, she saw the dome of the Museum, towering and gleaming. She decided to walk slowly, so as not to appear too excited or even breathless when she met him. Once more she was seized with a thrill of fear--suppose he should not come? But whatever happened, she would not leave Vienna this time without seeing him. Would it not, perhaps, even be better if he did not come, she wondered. She was so bewildered at that moment ... and supposing she was to say anything silly or awkward.... So much depended on the next few minutes--perhaps her whole future.... There was the Museum before her. Up the steps, through the entrance, and she was standing in the large, cool vestibule. Before her eyes was the grand staircase and, yonder, where it divided to right and left, was the colossal marble statue of Theseus slaying the Minotaur. Slowly she ascended the stairs and, as she looked round about her, she grew calmer. The magnificence of her surroundings captivated her. She looked up at the galleries which, with their golden railings, ran round the interior of the dome. She came to a stop. Before her was a door, above which appeared in gilt letters: "Dutch School." Her heart gave a sudden convulsive throb. Before her eyes lay the row of picture galleries. Here and there she saw people standing before the pictures. She entered the first hall, and gazed attentively at the first picture hanging at the very entrance. She thought of Herr Rupius' portfolio. And then she heard a voice say: "Good morning, Bertha." VI It was his voice. She turned round. He was standing before her, young, slim, elegant and rather pale. In his smile there was a suggestion of mockery. He nodded to Bertha, took her hand at the same time, and held it for a while in his own. It was Emil himself, and it was exactly as if the last occasion on which they had spoken to one another had been only the previous day. "Good morning, Emil," she said. They gazed at each other. His glance was expressive of much: pleasure, amiability, and something in the nature of a scrutiny. She realised all this with perfect clearness, whilst she gazed at him with eyes in which nothing but pure happiness was shining. "Well, then, how are you getting on, Bertha?" he asked. "Quite well." "It is really funny that I should ask you such a question after eight or nine years. Things have probably gone very differently with you." "Yes, indeed, that's true. You know, of course, that my husband died three years ago." She felt obliged to assume an expression of sorrow. "Yes, I know that, and I know, too, that you have a boy. Let me see, who could it have been that told me?" "I wonder who?" "Well, it'll come back to me presently. It is new to me, though, that you are interested in pictures." Bertha smiled. "Well, it wasn't really on account of the pictures alone. But you mustn't think that I am quite so silly as all that. I do take an interest in pictures." "And so do I. If the truth must be told, I think I would rather be a painter than anything else." "Yet you ought to be quite satisfied with what you have attained." "Well, that's a question that can't be disposed of in one word. Of course, I find it a very pleasant thing to be able to play the violin so well, but what does it all lead to? Only to this, I think: that when I am dead my name will endure for a short time. That--" his eyes indicated the picture before which they were standing--"that, on the other hand, is something different." "You are awfully ambitious, Emil!" He looked at her, but without evincing the slightest interest in her. "Ambitious? Well, it is not such a simple matter as all that. But let's talk about something else. What a strange idea to indulge in a theoretical conversation on the subject of art, when we haven't seen each other for a hundred years! So come, then, Bertha, tell me something about yourself! What do you do with yourself at home? How do you live? And what really put it into your head to congratulate me on getting that silly Order?" She smiled a second time. "I wanted to write to you again," she answered; "and, chiefly, I wanted to hear something of you once more; It was really very good of you to answer my letter at once." "Good? Not at all, my child! I was so pleased when, all of a sudden, your letter came--I recognised your writing at once. You know, you still have the same schoolgirl writing as.... Well, let us say, as in the old days, although I can't bear such expressions." "But why?" she asked, somewhat astonished. He looked at her, and then said in a rapid voice: "Well, tell me, how do you live? You must generally get very bored, I'm sure." "I haven't much time for that," she replied gravely. "I give lessons, you must know." "Oh!" His tone was one of such disproportionate pity that she felt constrained to add quickly: "Oh, not because there is really any pressing need for me to do so--although, of course, I find it very useful, because ..." she felt that it would be best to be quite frank with him ... "I could scarcely live on the slender means that I possess." "What is it, then, that you are actually a teacher of?" "What! Didn't I tell you that I give piano lessons?" "Piano lessons? Really? Yes, of course ... you used to be very talented. If you hadn't left the Conservatoire when you did ... well, of course, you would not have become one of the great pianistes, you know, but for certain things you had quite a pronounced aptitude. For instance, you used to play Chopin and the little things of Schumann very prettily." "You still remember that?" "After all, I dare say that you have chosen the better course." "In what way?" "Well, if it is impossible to master everything, it is better, no doubt, to get married and have children." "I have only one child." He laughed. "Tell me something about him, and all about your own life in general." They sat down on the divan in the little saloon on front of the Rembrandts. "What have I to tell you about myself? There is nothing in it of the slightest interest. Rather, you tell me about yourself"--she looked at him with admiration--"things have gone so splendidly with you, you are such a celebrated man, you see!" Emil twitched his underlip very slightly, as if discontented. "Why, yes," she continued, undaunted; "quite recently I saw your portrait in an illustrated paper." "Yes, yes," he said impatiently. "But I always knew that you would make a name for yourself," she added. "Do you still remember how you played the Mendelssohn Concerto at that final examination at the Conservatoire? Everybody said the same thing then." "I beg you, my dear girl, don't, please, let us have any more of these mutual compliments! Tell me, what sort of a man was your late husband?" "He was a good; indeed, I might say noble, man." "Do you know, though, that I met your father about eight days before he died?" "Did you really?" "Didn't you know?" "I am certain he didn't tell me anything about it." "We stood chatting with one another in the street for a quarter of an hour, perhaps. I had just returned then from my first concert tour." "Not a word did he tell me--not a single word!" She spoke almost angrily, as though her father had, at that time, neglected something that might have shaped her future life differently. "But why didn't you come to see us in those days?" she continued. "How did it happen at all that you had already suddenly ceased to visit us some considerable time before my father's death?" "Suddenly?--Gradually!" He looked at her a long time; and now his eyes glided down over her whole body, so that she mechanically drew in her feet under her dress, and pressed her arms against her body, as though to defend herself. "Well, how did it happen that you came to get married?" She related the whole story. Emil listened to her, apparently with attention, but as she spoke on and remained seated, he rose to his feet and gazed out through the window.... When she had finished with a remark about the good-nature of her relations, he said: "Don't you think that we ought to look at a few pictures now that we are here in the Museum?" They walked slowly through the galleries, stopping here and there before a picture. "Lovely! Exquisite!" commented Bertha many a time, but Emil only nodded. It seemed to Bertha that he had quite forgotten that he was with her. She felt slightly jealous at the interest which the paintings roused in him. Suddenly they found themselves before one of the pictures which she knew from Herr Rupius' portfolio. Emil wanted to pass on, but she stopped and greeted it, as she might an old acquaintance. "Exquisite!" she exclaimed. "Emil, isn't it beautiful? On the whole, I greatly admire Falckenborg's pictures." He looked at her, somewhat surprised. She became embarrassed, and tried to go on talking. "Because such an immense quantity--because the whole world--" She felt that this was dishonest, even that she was robbing some one who could not defend himself; and accordingly she added, repentantly, as it were: "You must know, there's a man living in our little town who has an album, or rather a portfolio, of engravings, and that's how I know the picture. His name is Rupius, he is very infirm; just fancy, he is quite paralysed." She felt obliged to tell Emil all this, for it seemed to her as though his eyes were unceasingly questioning her. "That might be a chapter, too," he said, with a smile, when she had come to an end; then he added more softly, as though ashamed of his indelicate joke: "There must certainly also be gentlemen in that little town who are not paralysed." She felt that she had to take poor Herr Rupius under her protection. "He is a very unhappy man," she said, and, remembering how she had sat with him on the balcony the previous day, a feeling of great compassion seized her. But Emil was following his own train of thought. "Yes," he said; "that is what I should really like to know--what experiences you have had." "You know them, already." "I mean, since the death of your husband." She understood now what he meant, and was a little offended. "I live only for my boy," she said, with decision. "I do not allow men to make love to me. I am quite respectable." He had to laugh it the comically serious way in which she made this confession of virtue. For her part, she felt at once that she ought to have expressed herself differently, and so she laughed, too. "How long are you going to stay, then, in Vienna?" asked Emil. "Till to-morrow, or the day after to-morrow." "So short a time as that? And where are you staying? I should like to know." "With my cousin," she replied. Something restrained her from mentioning that she had put up at an hotel. But immediately she was angry with herself for having told such a stupid lie, and she was about to correct herself. Emil, however, broke in quickly: "Perhaps you will have a little time to spare for me, too? I hope so, at least." "Oh, yes!" "So, then, we can arrange something now if you like"--he glanced at the clock--"Ah!" "Must you go?" she asked. "Yes, by twelve o'clock I ought really to...." She was seized with an intense uneasiness at the prospect of having to be alone again so soon, and she said: "I have plenty of time--as much as you like. But, of course, it must not be too late." "Is your cousin so strict then?" "But--" she said, "this time, as a matter of fact, I'm not staying with her, you see." He looked at her in astonishment. She grew red. "Usually I do stay with her.... I mean, sometimes.... She has such a large family, you know." "So you are staying at an hotel," he said, rather impatiently. "Well, there, of course, you are accountable to no one, and we can spend the evening together quite comfortably." "I shall be delighted. But I should like not to be too late ... even in an hotel I should like not to be too late...." "Of course not. We will just have supper, and you can be in bed long before ten o'clock." They paced slowly down the grand staircase. "So, if you are agreeable," said Emil, "we will meet at seven o'clock." She was on the point of replying: "So late as that?"--but, remembering her resolution not to compromise herself, she refrained and answered instead: "Very well, at seven." "Seven o'clock at ... where?... Out of doors, shall we say? In that case we could go wherever we fancied, life would lie before us, so to speak ... yes." He seemed to her just then remarkably absent-minded. They went through the entrance hall, and at the exit they stopped for a moment. "At seven o'clock, then--by the Elizabeth Bridge." "Very well; seven o'clock at the Elizabeth Bridge." Before them lay the square, with the Maria Théresa memorial, in the brilliant glare of the noonday sun. It was a warm day, but a very high wind had arisen. It seemed to Bertha that Emil was looking at her with a scrutinising glance. At the same time, he appeared to her cold and strange, a very different man from what he had been when standing before the pictures in the Museum. "Now we will say good-bye for the present," he said, after a time. It made her feel somewhat unhappy to think that he was going to leave her. "Won't you ... or can't I come with you a little way?" she said. "Well, no," he answered. "Besides, it is blowing such a gale. There's not much enjoyment to be had in walking side by side and having to hold your hat all the time, for fear it should blow away. Generally, it is difficult to converse if you are walking with a person in the street, and then, too, I have to be in such a hurry.... But perhaps I can see you to a carriage?" "No, no, I shall walk." "Yes, you can do that. Well, good-bye till we meet again this evening." He stretched out his hand to her, and walked quickly away across the square. She gazed after him for a long time. He had taken off his hat and held it in his hand, and the wind was ruffling his hair. He went across the Ring, then through the Town Gate, and disappeared from Bertha's view. Mechanically, and very slowly, she had followed him. Why had he suddenly grown so cold? Why had he taken his departure so quickly? Why didn't he want her to accompany him? Was he ashamed of her? She looked down at herself, wondering whether she was not dressed, after all, in a countrified and ridiculous manner. Oh, no, it could not be that! Moreover, she had been able to remark from the way in which people gazed at her that she was not looking ludicrous, but, on the contrary, decidedly pretty. Why, then, this sudden departure? She called to mind the period of their previous acquaintance, and it seemed to her that she could remember his having this strange manner even then. He would break off a conversation quite unexpectedly, whilst he suddenly became as though his thoughts had been carried away, and his whole being expressed an impatience which he could not master. Yes, she was certain that he had been like that in those days also, though, perhaps, less strikingly so than now. She remembered, as well, that she had sometimes make jokes on the subject of his capriciousness, and had laid the responsibility at the door of his artistic temperament. Since then he had become a greater artist, and certainly more absent and irresponsible than ever. The chimes of noon rang out from many a spire, the wind grew higher and higher, dust flew into her eyes. She had a whole eternity before her, with which she did not know what to do. Why wouldn't he see her, then, until seven o'clock? Unconsciously, she had reckoned on his spending the whole day with her. What was it that he had to do? Had he, perhaps, to make his preparations for the concert? And she pictured him to herself, violin in hand, by a cabinet, or leaning on a piano, just as, many years ago, he had played before the company at her home. Yes, that would be nice if she could only be with him now, sitting in his room, on a sofa, while he played, or even accompanying him on the piano. Would she, then, have gone with him if he had asked her? Why hadn't he asked her? No, of course, he could not have done so within an hour of seeing her again.... But in the evening--wouldn't he ask her that evening? And would she go with him? And, if she went, would she be able to deny him anything else that he might ask her? Indeed, he had a way of expressing everything so innocently. How easily he had managed to make those ten years seem as nothing! Had he not spoken to her as if they had seen each other daily all that time? "Good morning, Bertha. How are you, then?"--just as he might have asked if, on the previous evening, he had wished her "Good night!" and said "Good-bye till we meet again!" What a number of experiences he must have had since then! And who could tell who might be sitting on the sofa in his room that afternoon, while he leaned against the piano and played the violin? Ah, no, she would not think of it. If she followed up such thoughts to the end, would she not simply have to go home again? She walked past the railings of the public gardens, and could see the avenue where, an hour ago, she had sat, and through which clouds of dust were now sweeping. So, then, that for which she had so deeply yearned was over--she had seen Emil again. Had it been so lovely as she expected? Had she felt any particular emotion when walking by his side, his arm touching hers? No! Had his departure put her out of humour? Perhaps. Would she be able to go home again without seeing him once more? Good heavens, no! And a sensation almost of terror thrilled through her at the thought. Had not, then, her life during the past few days been, as it were, obsessed by him? And all the years that lay behind her, had they been meant for anything else, at all, than to lead her back to him at the right moment? Ah, if she only had a little more experience, if she were a little more worldly-wise! She would have liked to possess the capability of marking out for herself a definite course. She asked herself which would be the wiser--to be reserved or yielding? She would gladly have known what she was to do that evening, what she ought to do in order to win his heart with greater certainty. She felt that any move on her part, one way or the other, might have the effect of gaining him, or, just as well, of losing him. But she also realised that all her meditation was of no avail, and that she would do just as he wished. She was in front of the Votive Church, a spot where many streets intersected. The wind there was so violent as to be altogether intolerable. It was time to dine. But she decided that she would not go back to the little hotel that day. She turned towards the inner town. It suddenly occurred to her that she might meet her cousin, but that was a matter of supreme indifference to her. Or, supposing that her brother-in-law had followed her to Vienna? But that thought did not worry her either in the least. She had a feeling, such as she had never experienced before, that she had the right to dispose of her person and her time just as she pleased. She strolled leisurely along the streets, and amused herself by looking at the shop windows. On the Stephansplatz the idea came to her to go into the church for a while. In the dim, cool, and immense building a profound sensation of comfort came over her. She had never been of a religious disposition, but she could never enter a place of worship without experiencing a devotional feeling and, without clothing her prayers in definite form, she had yet always thought to find a way to send up her wishes to Heaven. At first she wandered round the church in the manner of a stranger visiting a beautiful edifice, then she sat down in a pew before a small altar in a side chapel. She called to mind the day on which she had been married, and she had a vision of her late husband and herself standing side by side before the priest--but the event seemed to be so infinitely far away in the past, and it affected her spirit as little as if her thoughts were occupied by strangers. But suddenly, as a picture changed in a magic lantern, she seemed to see Emil, instead of her husband, standing by her side, and the picture appeared to stand out so completely, without any co-operation on the part of her will, that she almost had to regard as a premonition, even as a prediction from Heaven itself. Mechanically, she folded her hands and said softly: "So be it." And, as though her will acquired thereby a further access of strength, she remained sitting in a pew a while longer and sought to hold the picture fast. After a few minutes she went out again into the street, where the broad daylight and the din of the traffic affected her as something new, something which she had not experienced for a long time, as though she had spent whole hours in the church. She felt tranquil, and hopes seemed to hover about her. She dined in the restaurant of a fashionable hotel in the Kärnthernstrasse.... She was not in the least embarrassed, and thought it very childish that she had not preferred to put up at a first-class hotel. On reaching her room again, she undressed and, such was the state of languor into which she had fallen as the result of the unusually rich meal and the wine she had taken, that she had to stretch herself out on the sofa and fall asleep. It was five o'clock before she awoke. She had no great desire to get up. Usually at that time ... what would she probably have been doing at that moment if she had not come to Vienna? If he had not answered her letter--if she had not written to him? If he had not received that Order? If she had never seen his portrait in the illustrated paper? If nothing had called his existence back into her memory? If he had become an insignificant, unknown fiddler in some suburban orchestra? What strange thoughts were these! Did she, then, love him merely because he was celebrated? What did it all mean? Did she, indeed, take any interest in his violin playing? ... Wouldn't he be dearer to her if he was not famous and admired? Certainly in that case she would have felt herself much nearer to him, much more allied to him; in that case, she would not have had this feeling of uncertainty about him, and also he would have been different in his manner towards her. As it was, of course, he was, indeed, very charming, and yet ... she realized it now ... something had come between them that day and had sundered them. Yes, and that was nothing else than the fact that he was a man whom the whole world knew, and she was nothing but a stupid little woman from the country. Suddenly she pictured him to herself as he had stood in the Rembrandt gallery at the Museum, and had looked out of the window while she had been telling him the story of her life in the little town; she remembered how he had scarcely bidden her good-bye, and how he had gone away from her, indeed, absolutely fled away from her. But, then, had she herself felt any emotion such as a woman would feel in the presence of the man she loved? Had she been happy when he had been speaking to her? Had she longed to kiss him when he was standing beside her?... Not at all. And now--was she pleased at the prospect of the evening she was going to spend with him? Was she pleased at the idea of seeing him again in a couple of hours? If she had the power, simply by expressing the wish, to transport herself just where she pleased, would she not, perhaps, at that, moment, rather be at home, with her boy, walking between the vine-trellises, without fear, without agitation, and with a clear conscience; as a good mother and a respectable woman, instead of lying in that uncomfortable room in the hotel, on a miserable sofa, restlessly, yet without longing, awaiting the next hours? She thought of the time, still so near, when all her concern was for nothing save her boy, the household, and her lessons--had she not been contented, almost happy?... She looked round her. The bare room with the ugly blue and white painted walls, the specks of dust and dirt on the ceiling, the cabinet with its half-open door, all seemed most repulsive to her. No, that was no place for her. Then she thought with displeasure, too, of the dinner in the fashionable hotel, and also of her strolling about in the town, her weariness, the wind and the dust. It seemed to her that she had been wandering about like a tramp. Then another thought came to her: what if something had happened at home!--Fritz might have caught the fever; they would telegraph to her cousin at Vienna, or they might even come to look for her, and they would not be able to find her, and all would know that she had lied like any disreputable person whose purpose it suits to do so.... It was terrible! How could she face them at home, her sister-in-law, her brother-in-law, Elly, her grown-up nephew Richard ... the whole town, which, of course, would hear the news at once.... Herr Rupius! No, in good truth, she was not intended for such things! How childishly and clumsily, after all, she had set about it, so that only the slightest accident was needed to betray her. Had she, then, failed to give the least thought to all these things? Had she only been obsessed with the idea of seeing Emil once more, and for that had hazarded everything ... her good name, even her whole future! For who could say whether the family would not renounce her, and she would lose her music lessons, if the truth came out?... The truth.... But what could come out? What had happened, then? What had she to reproach herself with? And with the comforting feeling of a clear conscience she was able boldly to answer: "Nothing." And, of course, there was still time.... She could leave Vienna directly by the seven o'clock train, be back by ten in her own home, in her own cosy room, with her beloved boy.... Yes, she could; to be sure, Fritz was not at home ... but she could have him brought back.... No, she would not do it, she would not return at once ... there was no occasion to do so--to-morrow morning would be quite time enough. She would say good-bye to Emil that very evening.... Yes, she would inform him at once that she was returning home early next morning, and that her only reason in coming had been to press his hand once more. Yes, that would be best. Oh, he could, of course, accompany her to the hotel; and, goodness knows, he could even have supper with her in the garden restaurant ... and she would go away as she had come.... Besides, she would see from his behaviour what he really felt towards her; she would be very reserved, even cold; it would be quite easy for her to act in that way, because she felt completely at her ease. It seemed to her as if all her desires had fallen into slumber again, and she had a feeling akin to a determination to remain respectable. As a young girl she had withstood temptation, she had been faithful to her husband; her whole widowhood had hitherto passed without attack.... Well, the long and the short of it was: if he wished to make her his wife she would be very glad, but she would reject any bolder proposal with the same austerity as ... as ... twelve years before, when he had showed her his window behind St. Paul's Church. She stood up, stretched herself, held up her hands, and went to the window. The sky had become overcast, clouds were moving down from the mountains, but the storm had subsided. She got ready to go out. VII Bertha had hardly proceeded a few steps from the hotel when it began to rain. Under her open umbrella she seemed to herself to be protected against unwelcome attentions from people she might meet. A pleasant fragrance was diffused throughout the air, as if the rain brought with it the aroma of the neighbouring woods, shedding it over the town. Bertha gave herself up wholly to the pleasure of the walk; even the object of her outing appeared before her mind's eye only vaguely, as if seen through a mist. She had at last grown so weary as the result of the profusion of her changing feelings that she no longer felt anything at all. She was without fear, without hope, without purpose. She walked on past the gardens, across the Ring, and rejoiced in the humid fragrance of the elder-trees. In the forenoon it had completely escaped her notice that everything was beautiful in an array of violet blossoms. An idea brought a smile to her lips: she went into a flower shop and bought a little bunch of violets. As she raised the flowers to her lips, a great tenderness came over her; she thought of the train going homewards at seven o'clock, and she rejoiced, as if she had outwitted some one. She walked slowly across the bridge, diagonally, and remembered how she had crossed it a few days ago in order to reach the neighbourhood of her former home, and to see Emil's window again. The throng of traffic at the bridge was immense; two streams, one coming from the suburb into the town, the other going in the opposite direction, poured by in confusion; carriages of all kinds rolled past; the air resounded with the jingling of bells, with whistling and with the shouts of drivers. Bertha tried to stand still, but was pushed forward. Suddenly she heard a whistle quite close by. A carriage pulled up, a head leaned out of the window ... it was Emil. He made a sign to her to come over to him. A few people immediately became attentive, and seemed very anxious to hear what the young man had to say to the lady who had gone up to his carriage. "Will you get in?" Emil asked in a low voice. "Get in...?" "Why, yes, it is raining, you see!" "Really, I would rather walk, if you don't mind." "Just as you like," said Emil. He got out quickly and paid the driver. Bertha observed, with some alarm, that about half a dozen people, who were crowding round her, were very anxious to see how this remarkable affair would turn out. "Come," said Emil. They quickly crossed the road, and thereby got away from the whole throng. They then walked slowly along a less frequented street by the bank of the Wien. "Why, Emil, you haven't brought your umbrella with you!" "Won't you take me under yours? Wait a moment, it won't do like this." He took the umbrella out of her hand, held it over both of them, and thrust his arm under hers. Now she felt that it was _his_ arm, and rejoiced greatly. "The country, unfortunately, is out of the question," he said. "What a pity." "Well, what have you been doing with yourself all day long?" She told him about the fashionable restaurant, in which she had had her dinner. "Now, why on earth didn't I know about that? I thought you were dining with your cousin. We might, of course, have had such a pleasant lunch together!" "You have had so much to do, I dare say," she said, a little proud at being able to infuse a slight tone of sarcasm into her voice. "Yes, that's true, in the afternoon, of course. I had to listen to half an opera." "Oh? How was that, then?" "There was a young composer with me--a very talented fellow, in his own way." She was very glad to hear that. So that, then, was the way in which he spent his afternoons. He stood still and, without letting go her arm, looked into her face. "Do you know that you have really grown much prettier? Yes, I am quite serious about it! But, tell me, first of all, tell me candidly, how the idea came to you to write to me." "Why, I have already told you." "Have you thought of me, then, all this time?" "A great deal." "When you were married, too?" "Certainly, I have always thought of you. And you?" "Often, very often." "But ..." "Well, what?" "You are a man, you see!" "Yes--but what do you mean by that?" "I mean that certainly you must have loved many women." "Loved ... loved ... yes, I suppose I have." "But I," she broke out with animation, as though the truth was too strong to be restrained within her; "I have loved no one but you." He took her hand and raised it to his lips. "I think we might rather leave that undecided, though," he said. "Look, I have brought some violets with me for you." He smiled. "Are they to prove that you have told me the truth? Anybody would think, from the way in which you said that, that you have done nothing else since we last met but pluck, or, at least, buy, violets for me. However, many thanks! But tell me, why didn't you want to get into the carriage?" "Oh, but you know, a walk is so nice." "But we can't walk forever.... We are having supper together, though?" "Yes, I shall be delighted--for instance, here in an hotel," she added hastily. At that time they were walking through quieter streets, and it was growing dusk. Emil laughed. "Oh, no, we will arrange things a little more cosily than that." Bertha cast her eyes down. "However, we mustn't sit at the same table as strangers," she said. "Certainly not. We will even go somewhere where there is nobody else at all." "What are you thinking of?" she asked. "I don't do that sort of thing!" "Just as you please," he answered, shrugging his shoulders. "Have you an appetite yet?" "No, not at all." They were both silent for a time. "Shall I not make the acquaintance of your boy some day?" he asked. "Certainly," she replied, greatly pleased; "whenever you wish." She began to tell him about Fritz, and then went on to speak about her family. Emil threw in a question at times, and soon he knew all that happened in the little town, even down to the efforts of Klingemann, of which Bertha gave him an account, laughingly, but with a certain satisfaction. The street lamps were alight; the rays glittered on the damp pavements. "My dear girl, we can't stroll about the streets all night, you know," said Emil suddenly. "No ... but I cannot come with you ... into a restaurant.... Just think, if I should happen to meet my cousin or anyone else!" "Make your mind easy, no one will see us." Quickly he passed through a gateway and closed the umbrella. "What are you going to do, then?" She saw a large garden before her. Near the walls, from which canvas shelters were stretched, people were sitting at tables, laid for supper. "There, do you mean?" "No. Just come with me." Immediately on the right of the gate was a small door, which had been left ajar. "Come in here." They found themselves in a narrow, lighted passage, on both sides of which were rows of doors. A waiter bowed and went in front of them, past all the doors. The last one he opened, allowed the guests to enter, and closed it again after them. In the centre of the little room stood a small table laid for three; by the wall was a blue velvet sofa, and opposite that hung a gilt framed oval mirror, before which Bertha took her hat off and, as she did so, she noticed that the names "Irma" and "Rudi" had been scratched on the glass. At the same time, she saw in the mirror Emil coming up behind her. He placed his hands on her cheeks, bent her head back towards himself, and kissed her on the lips. Then he turned away without speaking, and rang the bell. A very young waiter came in at once, as if he had been standing outside the door. When he had taken his order he left them, and Emil sat down. "Well, Bertha!" She turned towards him. He took her gently by the hand and still continued to hold it in his, when Bertha had taken a seat beside him on the sofa. Mechanically she touched her hair with her other hand. An older waiter came in, and Emil made his choice from the menu. Bertha agreed to everything. When the waiter had departed, Emil said: "Mustn't the question be asked: How is it that all this hasn't happened before to-day?" "What do you mean by that?" "Why didn't you write to me long ago?" "Well, I would ... if you had got your Order sooner!" He held her hand and kissed it. "But you come to Vienna fairly often!" "Oh, no." He looked up. "But you said something like that in your letter!" She remembered then, and grew red. "Well, yes ... often ... Monday was the last time I was here." The waiter brought sardines and caviar, and left the room. "Well," said Emil; "it is probably just the right time." "In what way?" "That we should have met again." "Oh, I have often longed for you." He seemed to be deep in thought. "And perhaps it is also just as well that things _then_ turned out as they did," he said. "It is on that very account that the recollection is so charming." "Yes, charming." They were both silent for a time. "Do you remember ..." she said, and then she began to talk of the old days, of their walks in the town-park, and of her first day at the Conservatoire. He nodded in answer to everything she said, held his arm on the back of the sofa, and lightly touched the lock of hair, which curled over the nape of her neck. At times he threw in a word. Then Emil himself recalled something which she had forgotten; he had remembered a further outing: a trip to the Prater one Sunday morning. "And do you still recollect," said Bertha, "how we ..." she hesitated to utter it--"once were almost in love with each other?" "Yes," he said. "And who knows ..." He was perhaps about to say: "It would have been better for me if I had married you"--but he did not finish the sentence. He ordered champagne. "It is not so long ago," said Bertha, "since I tasted champagne. The last time was about six months ago, at the party which my brother-in-law gave on the occasion of his fiftieth birthday." She thought of the company at her brother-in-law's, and it was amazing how remote from the present time it all seemed--the entire little town and all who lived there. The young waiter brought an ice-tub with the wine. At that moment it occurred to Bertha that Emil had certainly been there before, many a time, with other women. That, however, was a matter of tolerable indifference to her. They clinked glasses and drank. Emil embraced Bertha and kissed her. That kiss reminded her of something ... what could it have been, though?... Of the kisses she had received when a young girl?... Of the kiss of her husband?... No.... Then it suddenly occurred to her that it was exactly like the kisses which her young nephew Richard had lately given to her. The waiter came in with fruit and pastry. Emil put some dates and a bunch of grapes on a plate for Bertha. "Why don't you say something?" she asked. "Why do you leave me to do all the talking? And you know you could tell me so much!" "I?..." He slowly sipped the wine. "Why, yes, about your tours." "Good Heavens, one town is just like all the others. You must not, of course, lose sight of the fact that I only rarely travel for my own pleasure." "Quite so, of course." During the whole time she had not given a thought to the fact that it was Emil Lindbach, the celebrated violin virtuoso, with whom she was sitting there; and she felt bound to say: "By the way, you are playing in Vienna soon. I should be very glad to hear you." "Not a soul will hinder you from doing so," he replied drily. It passed through her mind that it would really be very much nicer for her to hear him play, not at the concert, but for herself alone. She had almost said so, but then it occurred to her that that would have meant nothing else than: "I will come with you"--and, who could say, perhaps very soon she would go with him. It would be as easy for her as ever, if she had had some wine.... Yet, not so, the wine was affecting her differently from usual--it was not the soft inebriation which made her feel a little more cheerful; it was better, lovelier. It was not the few drops of wine that made it so; it was the touch of his dear hand, as he stroked her brow and hair. He had sat down beside her and he drew her head onto his shoulder. How gladly would she have fallen asleep like that.... Yes, indeed, nothing else did she desire.... Then she heard him whisper: "Darling."... She trembled softly. Why was this the first time? Could she not have had all this before? Was there a grain of sense in living as she did?... After all, there was nothing wicked in what she was doing now.... And how sweet it was to feel the breath of a young man upon her eyelids!... No, not--not the breath of a young man... of a lover.... She had shut her eyes. She made not the slightest effort to open them again, she had not the least desire to know where she was, or with whom she was.... Who was it, after all?... Richard?... No.... Was she falling asleep, then?... She was there with Emil.... With whom?... But who was this Emil?... How hard it was to be clear as to who it was!... The breath upon her eyelids was the breath of the man she had loved when a girl ... and, at the same time, that of the celebrated artist who was soon to give a concert ... and, at the same time, of a man whom she had not seen for thousands and thousands of days ... and, at the same time, of a gentleman with whom she was sitting alone in a restaurant, and who, at that moment, could do with her just as he pleased.... She felt his kiss upon her eyes.... How tender he was ... and how handsome.... But what did he really look like, then?... She had only to open her eyes to be able to see him quite plainly.... But she preferred to imagine what he was like, without actually seeing him.... No, how funny--why, that was not in the least like his face!... Of course, it was the face of the young waiter, who had left the room a minute or two before.... But what did Emil look like, after all?... Like this?... No, no, of course, that was Richard's face.... But away ... away.... Was she then so low as to think of nothing but other men while she ... was with him?... If she could only open her eyes!... Ah! She shook herself violently, so that she almost pushed Emil away--and then she tore her eyes wide open. Emil gazed at her, smiling. "Do you love me?" he asked. She drew him towards her and kissed him of her own accord.... It was the first time that day that she had given him a kiss of her own accord, and in doing so she felt that she was not acting in accordance with her resolve of the morning.... She tried to think what that resolve had been.... To compromise herself in no way; to deny herself.... Yes, there had certainly been a time when that had been her wish, but why? She was in love with him, really and truly; and the moment had arrived which she had been awaiting for days.... No, for years! Still their lips remained pressed together.... Ah, she longed to feel his arms about her ... to be his, body and soul. She would not let him talk any more ... he would have to take her unto himself.... He would have to realize that no other woman could love him so well as she did.... Emil rose to his feet and paced up and down the little room a few times. Bertha raised her glass of champagne to her lips again. "No more, Bertha," said Emil, in a low tone. Yes, he was right, she thought. What was she really doing? Was she going to make herself drunk, then? Was there any need for that? After all, she was accountable to no one, she was free, she was young; she was determined to taste of happiness at last. "Ought we not to be thinking of going?" said Emil. Bertha nodded. He helped her to put on her jacket. She stood before the mirror and stuck the pin through her hat. They went. The young waiter was standing before the door; he bowed. A carriage was standing before the gate; Bertha got in; she did not hear what instructions Emil gave the driver. Emil took his seat by her side. Both were silent; they sat pressing closely against each other. The carriage rolled on, a long, long way. Wherever could it be, then, that Emil lived? But, perhaps, he had purposely told the driver to take a circuitous route, knowing, no doubt, how pleasant it was to drive together through the night like this. The carriage pulled up. Emil got out. "Give me your umbrella," he said. She handed it out to him and he opened it. Then she got out and they both stood under the shelter of the umbrella, on which the rain was rattling down. Was this the street in which he lived? The door opened; they entered the hall; Emil took a candle which the porter handed to him. Before them was a fine broad staircase. When they reached the first floor Emil opened a door. They passed through an ante-chamber into a drawing-room. With the candle which he held in his hand Emil lighted two others upon the table; then he went up to Bertha, who was still standing in the doorway, as though waiting, and led her further into the room. He took the pin out of her hat, and placed the hat upon the table. In the uncertain light of the two feebly-burning candles, Bertha could only see that a few coloured pictures were hanging on the wall--portraits of the Emperor and Empress, so it appeared to her--that, on one side, was a broad divan covered with a Persian rug and that, near the window, there was an upright piano with a number of framed photographs on the lid. Over the piano a picture was hanging, but Bertha was unable to make it out. Yonder, she saw a pair of red curtains hanging down beside a door, which was standing half open and through the broad folds something white and gleaming could be seen within. She could no longer restrain the question: "Do you live here?" "As you see." She looked straight before her. On the table stood a couple of little glasses, a decanter containing liqueur and a small epergne, loaded with fruit and pastry. "Is this your study?" asked Bertha. Mechanically her eyes sought for a desk such as violin players use. Emil put his arm round her waist and led her to the piano. He sat down on the piano stool and drew her on to his knees. "I may as well confess to you at once," he said to her, simply and almost drily, "that really I do not live here. It was only for our own sake ... that I have ... for a short while ... I deemed it prudent ... Vienna, you know, is a small town, and I didn't want to take you into my house at night-time." She understood, but was not altogether satisfied. She looked up. She was now able to see the outlines of the picture which was hanging above the piano.... It was a naked female figure. Bertha had a curious desire to examine the picture, close at hand. "What is that?" she asked. "It is not a work of art," said Emil. He struck a match and held it up, so as to throw the light on the picture. Bertha saw that it was merely a wretched daub, but at the same time she felt that the painted woman, with the bold laughing eyes, was looking down at her, and she was glad when the match went out. "You might just play something to me upon the piano," said Emil. She wondered at the coldness of his demeanour. Didn't he realize that she was with him?... But, on the other hand, did she herself feel any special emotion?... No.... A strange sadness seemed to come welling forth from every corner of the room.... Why hadn't he rather taken her to his own house?... What sort of a house was this, she wondered.... She regretted now that she had not drunk more wine.... She wished that she was not so sober.... "Well, won't you play something to me?" said Emil. "Just think how long it is since I have heard you." She sat down and struck a chord. "Indeed, I have forgotten everything." "Oh, do try!" She played very softly Schumann's Albumblatt, and she remembered how, a few days before, late in the evening, she had improvised as she was sitting at home, and Klingemann had walked up and down in front of the window. She could not help thinking also of the report that he had a scandalous picture in his room. And involuntarily, she glanced up again at the picture of the naked woman over the piano, but now the figure seemed to be gazing into space. Emil had brought a chair beside Bertha's. He drew her towards him and kissed her while her fingers first continued to play, and at length rested quietly upon the keys. Bertha heard the rain beating against the window-panes and a sensation as of being at home came over her. Then she felt as though Emil was lifting her up and carrying her. Without letting her out of his arms he had stood up and was slowly bearing her out of the room. She felt her right arm graze against the curtain.... She kept her eyes closed; she could feel Emil's cool breath upon her hair.... VIII When they went out into the street the rain had left off, but the air was permeated with a wondrous mildness and humidity. Most of the street lamps had already been extinguished; the one at the street corner was the nearest that was alight; and, as the sky was still overcast with clouds, deep darkness hung over the city. Emil had offered Bertha his arm; they walked in silence. From a church tower a clock struck--one. Bertha was surprised. She had believed that it must be nearly morning, but now she was glad at heart to wander mutely through the night in the still, soft air, leaning on his arm--because she loved him very much. They entered an open square; before them lay the Church of St. Charles. Emil hailed a driver who had fallen asleep, sitting on the footboard of his open carriage. "It is such a fine night," said Emil; "we can still indulge in a short drive before I take you to your hotel--shall we?" The carriage started off. Emil had taken off his hat; she laid it in her lap, an action which also afforded her pleasure. She took a sidelong glance at Emil; his eyes seemed to be looking into the distance. "What are you thinking of?" "I ... To tell the truth, Bertha, I was thinking of a melody out of the opera, which that man I was telling you about played to me this afternoon. But I can't get it quite right." "You are thinking of melodies now ..." said Bertha, smiling, but with a slight-tone of reproach in her voice. Again there was silence. The carriage drove slowly along the deserted Ringstrasse, past the Opera House, the Museum and the public gardens. "Emil?" "What do you want, my darling?" "When shall I at last have an opportunity of hearing you play again?" "I am playing at a concert to-day, as a matter of fact," he said, as if it were a joke. "No, Emil, that was not what I meant--I want you to play to me alone. You will do that just once ... won't you? Please!" "Yes, yes." "It would mean so much to me. I should like you to know that there was no one in the room except myself listening to you." "Quite so. But never mind that now, though." He spoke in such a decided tone of voice that it seemed as if he was defending something from her. She could not understand for what reason her request could have been distasteful to him, and she continued: "So then it is settled: to-morrow at five o'clock in the evening at your house?" "Yes, I am curious to see whether you will like it there." "Oh, of course I shall. Surely it will be much nicer being at your house than at that place where we have been this evening. And shall we spend the evening together? Do you know, I am just thinking whether I ought not to see my cousin...." "But, my dearest one, please, don't let us map out a definite programme." In saying this he put his arm round her neck, as if he wanted to make her feel the tenderness which was absent from the tone of his voice. "Emil!" "Well?" "To-morrow we will play the Kreatzer Sonata together--the Andante at least." "But, my dear child, we've talked enough about music; do let us drop the subject. I am quite prepared to believe that you are immensely interested in it." Again he spoke in that vague way, from which she could not tell whether he really meant what he said or had spoken ironically. She did not, however, venture to ask. At the same time her yearning at that moment to hear him play the violin was so keen that it was almost painful. "Ah, here we are near your hotel, I see!" exclaimed Emil; and, as if he had completely forgotten his wish to go for a drive with her before leaving her at her door, he called out the name of the hotel to the driver. "Emil--" "Well, dearest?" "Do you still love me?" Instead of answering he pressed her close to him and kissed her on the lips. "Tell me, Emil--" "Tell you what?" "But I know you don't like anybody to ask much of you." "Never mind, my child, ask anything you like." "What will you.... Tell me, what are you accustomed to do with your forenoons?" "Oh, I spend them in all sorts of ways. To-morrow, for instance, I am playing the violin solo in Haydn's Mass in the Lerchenfeld Church." "Really? Then, of course, I won't have to wait any longer than to-morrow morning before I can hear you." "If you want to. But it is really not worth the trouble.... That is to say, the Mass itself, of course, is very beautiful." "However does it happen that you are going to play in the Lerchenfeld Church?" "It is ... an act of kindness on my part." "For whom?" "For whom ... well, for Haydn, of course." A thrill of pain seemed to seize Bertha. At that moment she felt that there must be some special connexion between it and his taking part in the Mass at the Lerchenfeld Church. Perhaps some woman was singing in the Mass, who.... Ah, what did she know, after all?... But she would go to the church, yes, she must go ... she could let no other woman have Emil! He belonged to her, to her alone ... he had told her so, indeed.... And she would find a way to hold him fast... She had, she told herself, such infinite tenderness for him ... she had reserved all her love for him alone.... She would completely envelop him in it ... no more would he yearn for any other woman.... She would move to Vienna, be with him each day, be with him for ever. "Emil--" "Well, what is the matter with you, darling?" He turned towards her and looked at her rather uneasily. "Do you love me? Good Heavens, here we are already!" "Really?" said Emil, with surprise. "Yes--there, do you see?--that's where I am staying. So tell me, please, Emil, tell me once more--" "Yes, to-morrow at five o'clock, my darling. I am very glad." "No, not that.... Tell me, do you--" The carriage stopped. Emil waited by Bertha's side until the porter came out and opened the door, then he kissed her hand with the most ceremonious politeness, and said: "Good-bye till we meet again, dear lady." He drove away. Bertha's sleep that night was sound and heavy. When she awoke, the light of the morning sun was streaming around her. She remembered the previous evening, and she was very glad that something which she had imagined to be so hard, and almost grievous, had been done and had proved to be quite easy and joyous. And then she felt a thrill of pride on recollecting her kisses, which had had nothing in them of the timidity of a first adventure. She could not observe the slightest trace of repentance in her heart, although it occurred to her that it was conventional to be penitent after such things as she had experienced. Words, too, like "sin" and "love affair" passed through her mind, without being able to linger in her thoughts, because they seemed to be devoid of all meaning. She believed herself certain that she replied to Emil's tenderness just like a woman accomplished in the art of love, and was very happy in the thought that all those things which came to other women as the result of the experiences of nights of drunkenness had come to her from the depth of her feelings. It seemed to her as though in the previous evening she had discovered in herself a gift, of the existence of which she had hitherto had no premonition, and she felt a slight emotion of regret stir within her at not having turned that gift to the best advantage earlier. She remembered one of Emil's questions as to her past, on account of which she had not been so shocked as she ought to have been, and now, as she recalled it to mind, the same smile appeared on her lips, as when she had sworn that she had told him the truth, which he had not wanted to believe. Then she thought of their next meeting; she pictured to herself how he would receive her and escort her through his rooms. The idea came to her that she would behave just as if nothing at all had yet happened between them. Not once would he be able to read in her glance the recollection of the previous evening; he would have to win her all over again, he would have to woo her--not with words alone, but also with his music.... Yes.... Wasn't she going to hear him play that very forenoon?... Of course--in the Church.... Then she remembered the sudden jealousy which had seized her the previous evening.... Yes, but why?... It seemed to her now to be so absurd--jealousy of a singer who perhaps was taking part in singing the Mass, or of some other unknown woman. She would, however, go to the Church in any case. Ah, how fine it would be to stand in the dim light of the Church, unseen by him and unable to see him, and to hear only his playing, which would float down to her from the choir. And she felt as though she rejoiced in the prospect of a new tenderness which should come to her from him without his apprehending it. Slowly she got up and dressed herself. A gentle thought of her home rose up within her, but it was altogether without strength. She even found it a trouble to think of it. Moreover, she felt no penitence on that account; rather, she was proud of what she had done. She felt herself wholly as Emil's creature; all that had had part in her life previous to his advent seemed to be extinguished. If he were to demand of her that she should live a year, live the coming summer with him, but that then she should die--she would obey him. Her dishevelled hair fell over her shoulders. Memories came to her which almost made her reel. ... Ah, Heaven; why had all this come so late, so late? But there was still a long time before her--there were still five, still ten years during which she might remain beautiful.... Oh, there was even longer so far as he was concerned, if they remained together, since, indeed, he would change together with her. And again the hope flitted through her mind: if he should make her his wife, if they should live together, travel together, sleep together, night after night--but now she began to feel slightly ashamed of herself--why was it that these thoughts were for ever present in her mind? Yet, to live together, did it not mean something further--to have cares in common, to be able to talk with one another on all subjects? Yes, she would, before all things, be his friend. And that was what she would tell him in the evening before everything else. That day he would have at last to tell her everything, tell her about himself; he would have to unfold his whole life before her, from the moment when they had parted twelve years ago until--and she could not help being amazed as she pursued her thoughts--until the previous morning.... She had seen him again for the first time the morning before, and in the space of that one day she had become so completely his that she could no longer think of anything except him; she was scarcely any longer a mother ... no, nothing but his beloved. She went out into the brightness of the summer day. It occurred to her that she was meeting more people than usual, that most of the shops were shut--of course, it was Sunday! She had not thought of that at all. And now that, too, made her glad. Soon she met a very slender gentleman who was wearing his overcoat open and by whose side was walking a young girl with very dark, laughing eyes. Bertha could not help thinking that she and Emil looked just such another couple ... and she pictured to herself how beautiful it must be to stroll about, not merely in the darkness of the night, but, just as these two were doing, openly in the broad light of day, arm in arm, and with happiness and laughter shining in their eyes. Many a time, when a gentleman going past her looked into her face, she felt as though she understood the language of glances, like something new to her. One man looked at her with a sort of grave expression, and he seemed to say: Well, you are also just like the others! Presently came two young people who left off talking to each other when they saw her. She felt as though they knew perfectly well what had happened the previous night. Then another man passed, who appeared to be in a great hurry, and he cast her a rapid sidelong glance which seemed to say: Why are you walking about here as imposingly, as if you were a good woman? Yesterday evening you were in the arms of one of us. Quite distinctly she heard within her that expression "one of us," and, for the first time in her life, she could not help pondering over the fact that all the men who passed by were indeed men, and that all the women were indeed women; that they desired one another, and, if they so wished, found one another. And she had the feeling as though only on the previous day at that time she had been a woman apart, from whom all other women had secrets, whilst now she also was included amongst them and could talk to them. She tried to remember the period which followed her wedding, and she recalled to mind that she had felt nothing beyond a slight disappointment and shame. Very vague there rose in her mind a certain sentence--she could not tell whether she had once read it or heard it--namely: "It is always the same, indeed, after all." And she seemed to herself much cleverer than the person, whoever it might have been, man or woman, who had spoken or written that sentence. Presently she noticed that she was following the same route as she had taken on the previous morning. Her eye fell on an advertising column on which was an announcement of the concert in which Emil was one of those taking part. Delightedly she stopped before it. A gentleman stood beside her. She smiled and thought: if he knew that my eyes are resting upon the very name of the man who, last night, was my lover.... Suddenly, she felt very proud. What she had done she considered as something unique. She could scarcely imagine that other women possessed the same courage. She walked on through the public gardens in which there were more people than on the previous day. Once again she saw children playing, governesses and nursemaids gossiping, reading, knitting. She noticed particularly a very old gentleman who had sat down on a seat in the sun; he looked at her, shook his head and followed her with a hard and inexorable glance. The incident created a most unpleasant impression upon her, and she had a feeling of injury in regard to the did gentleman. When, however, she mechanically glanced back, she observed that he was gazing at the sunlit sand and was still shaking his head. She realized then that this was due to his old age, and she asked herself whether Emil, too, would not one day be just such an aged gentleman, who would sit in the sun and shake his head. And all at once she saw herself walking along by his side in the chestnut avenue at home, but she was just as young as she was now, and he was being wheeled in an invalid's chair. She shivered slightly. If Herr Rupius were to know.... No--never, never would he believe that of her! If he had supposed her capable of such things he would not have called her to join him on the balcony and told her that his wife was intending to leave him.... At that moment she was amazed at what seemed to her to be the great exuberance of her life. She had the impression that she was existing in the midst of such complex relations as no other woman did. And this feeling also contributed to her pride. As she walked past a group of children, of whom four were dressed exactly alike, she thought how strange it was that she had not for a moment considered the fact that her adventure of the previous day might possibly have consequences. But a connexion between that which had happened the day before between those wild embraces in a strange room--and a being which one day would call her "Mother" seemed to lie without the pale of all possibility. She left the garden and took the road to the Lerchenfelderstrasse. She wondered whether Emil was now thinking that she was on her way to him. Whether his first thought that morning had been of her. And it seemed to her now that previously her imagination had pictured quite differently the morning after a night such as she had spent.... Yes, she had fancied it as a mutual awakening, breast on breast, and lips pressed to lips. A detachment of soldiers came towards her. Officers paced along by the side of the pavement; one of them jostled her slightly, as he passed, and said politely: "I beg your pardon." He was a very handsome man, and he gave himself no further concern on her account, which vexed her a little. And the thought came to her involuntarily: had he also a beloved? And suddenly she knew for a certainty that he had been with the girl he loved the previous night; also that he loved her only, and concerned himself with other women as little as Emil did. She was now in front of the church. The notes of the organ came surging forth into the street. A carriage was standing there, and a footman was on the box. How came that carriage there? All at once, it was quite clear to Bertha that some definite connexion must have subsisted between it and Emil, and she resolved to leave the church before the conclusion of the Mass so as to see who might enter the carriage. She went into the crowded church. She passed forward between the rows of seats until she reached the High Altar, by which the priest was standing. The notes of the organ died away, the string orchestra began to take up the melody. Bertha turned her head in the direction of the choir. Somehow, it seemed strange to her that Emil should, incognito, so to speak, be playing the solo in a Haydn Mass here in the Lerchenfelder Church.... She looked at the female figures in the front seats. She noticed two--three--four young women and several old ladies. Two were sitting in the foremost row; one of them was very fashionably dressed in black silk, the other appeared to be her maid. Bertha thought that in any case the carriage must belong to that aristocratic old lady, and the idea greatly tranquillized her mind. She walked back again, half unconsciously keeping everywhere on the lookout for pretty women. There were still some who were passably good-looking; they all seemed to be absorbed in their devotions, and she felt ashamed that she alone was wandering about the church without any holy thoughts. Then she noticed that the violin solo had already begun. He was now playing--he! he!... And at that moment she was hearing him play for the first time for more than ten years. And it seemed to her that it was the same sweet tone as of old, just as one recognized the voices of people whom one has not met for years. The soprano joined in. If she could only see the singer! It was a clear, fresh voice, though not very highly trained, and Bertha felt something like a personal connexion between the notes of the violin and the song. It was natural that Emil should know the girl who was now singing.... But was there not something more in the fact of their performing together in the Mass than appeared on the surface? The singing ceased, the notes of the violin continued to resound, and now they spoke to her alone, as though they wished to reassure her. The orchestra joined in, the violin solo hovered over the other instruments, and seemed only to have that one desire to come to an understanding with her. "I know that you are there," it seemed to say, "and I am playing only for you...." The organ chimed in, but still the violin solo remained dominant over the rest. Bertha was so moved that tears rose to her eyes. At length the solo came to an end, as though engulfed in the swelling flood of sound from the other instruments, and it arose no more. Bertha scarcely listened, but she found a wonderful solace in the music sounding around her. Many a time she fancied that she could hear Emil's violin playing with the orchestra, and then it seemed quite strange, almost incredible, that she was standing there by a column, down in the body of the church and he was sitting at a desk up in the choir above, and the previous night they had been clasped in each other's arms, and all the hundreds of people there in the church knew nothing at all about it.... She must see him at once--she must! She wanted to wait for him at the bottom of the staircase.... She did not want to speak a word to him--no, but she wished to see him and also the others who came out--including the singer of whom she had been jealous. But she had got completely over that now; she knew that Emil could not deceive her.... The music had ceased; Bertha felt herself thrust forward towards the exit; she wanted to find the staircase, but it was at a considerable distance from her. Indeed, it was just as well that it was so ... no, she would not have dared to do it, to put herself forward, to wait for him--what would he have thought of her? He certainly would not have liked it! No, she would disappear with the crowd, and would tell him in the evening that she had heard him play. She was now positively afraid of being observed by him. She stood at the entrance, walked down the steps, and went past the carriage, just as the old lady and her maid were getting into it. Bertha could not help smiling when she called to mind in what a state of apprehension the sight of that carriage had thrown her, and it seemed to her that her suspicion in regard to the carriage having been removed, all the others must necessarily flicker out! She felt as though she had passed through an extraordinary adventure and was standing now on the brink of an absolutely new existence. For the first time it seemed to her to have a meaning; everything else had been but a fiction of the imagination and became as nothing in comparison with the happiness which was streaming through her pulses, while she slowly sauntered from the church through the streets of the suburbs towards her hotel. It was not until she had nearly reached her destination that she noticed that she had gone the whole way as though lost in a dream and could scarcely remember which way she had taken and whether she had met any people or not. As she was taking the key of her room the porter handed her a note and a bouquet of violets and lilac blossoms.... Oh, why had not she had a similar idea and sent Emil some flowers? But what could he have to write to her about? With a slight thrill of fear at her heart, she opened the letter and read: "DEAREST, "I must thank you once again for that delightful evening. To-day, unfortunately, it is impossible for me to see you. Don't be angry with me, my dear Bertha, and don't forget to let me know in good time on the next occasion when you come to Vienna." Ever your own, "EMIL." She went, she ran up the stairs, into her own room.... Why was he unable to see her that day? Why did he not at least tell her the reason? But then, after all, what did she know of his various obligations of an artistic and social nature?... It would certainly have been going too much into detail, and it would have appeared like an evasion if he had, at full length, given his reasons for putting her off. But in spite of that.... And then, why did he say: the next occasion when you came to Vienna?... Had she not told him that she would be remaining there a few days longer? He had forgotten that--he must have forgotten it! And immediately she sat down and wrote: "MY DEAREST EMIL, "I am very sorry indeed that you have had to put me off to-day, but luckily I am not leaving Vienna yet. Do please write to me at once, dearest, and tell me whether you can spare a little time for me to-morrow or the next day. "A thousand kisses from your "BERTHA." "P.S.--It is most uncertain when I shall be coming to Vienna again, and I should be very sorry in any case to go away without seeing you once more." She read the letter over. Then she added a further postscript: "I must see you again!" She hurried out into the street, handed the letter to a commissionaire, and impressed upon him strongly that he was on no account to come back without an answer. Then she went up to her room again and posted herself at the window. She wanted to keep herself from thinking, she wished only to look down into the street. She forced herself to fix her attention on the passers-by, and she recalled to mind a game, which she used to play as a child, and in which she and her brothers looked out of the window and amused themselves by commenting on how this or that passer-by resembled some one or other of their acquaintances. In the present circumstances, it was a matter of some difficulty for her to discover any such resemblances, for her room was situated on the third story; but, on the other hand, owing to the distance, it was easier for her to discover the arbitrary resemblances which she was looking for. First of all, came a woman who looked like her cousin Agatha; then some one who reminded her of her music teacher at the Conservatoire; he was arm in arm with a woman who looked like her sister-in-law's cook. Yonder was a young man who bore a resemblance to her brother, the actor. Directly behind him, and in the uniform of a captain, a person who was the image of her dead father came along the road; he stood still awhile before the hotel, glanced up, exactly as if he were seeking her, and then disappeared through the doorway. For a moment Bertha was as greatly alarmed as if it really had been her father, who had come as a ghost from the grave. Then she forced herself to laugh--loudly--and sought to continue the game, but she was not able to play it any longer with success. Her sole purpose now was to see whether the commissionaire was coming. At length she decided to have dinner, just to while away the time. After she had ordered it, she again went to the window. But now she no longer looked in the direction from which the commissionaire had to come, but her glances followed the crowded omnibuses and trams on their way to the suburbs. Then the captain, whom she had seen a short time before, struck her attention again, as he was just jumping on to a tram, a cigarette in his mouth. He no longer bore the slightest resemblance to her dead father. She heard a clatter behind her; the waiter had come into the room. Bertha ate but little, and drank her wine very quickly. She grew sleepy, and leaned back in the corner of the divan. Her thoughts gradually grew indistinct; there was a ringing in her ears like the echoes of the organ which she had heard in the church. She shut her eyes and, all at once, as though evoked by magic, she saw the room in which she had been with Emil the previous evening, and behind the red curtains she perceived the gleaming whiteness of the coverlet. It appeared that she herself was sitting again before the piano, but another man was holding her in a close embrace--it was her nephew Richard. With an effort she tore her eyes open, she seemed to herself depraved beyond all measure, and she felt panic-stricken as though some atonement would have to be exacted from her, for these visionary fancies. Once more she went to the window. She felt as if an eternity had passed since she had sent the commissionaire on his errand. She read through Emil's letter once again. Her glance lingered on the last words: "Ever your own"; and she repeated them to herself aloud and in a tender tone, and called to mind similar words which he had spoken the previous evening. She concocted a letter which was surely on the point of arriving and would certainly be couched in these terms: "My dearest Bertha! Heaven be thanked that you are going to remain in Vienna until to-morrow! I shall expect you for certain at my house at three o'clock," or: "to-morrow we will spend the whole day together," or even; "I have put off the appointment I had, so we can still see each other to-day. Come to me at once; longingly I am waiting for you!" Well, whatever his answer might be, she would see him again before leaving Vienna, although not that day perhaps. Indeed, anything else was quite unthinkable. Why, then, was she a prey to this dreadful agitation, as though all were over between them? But why was his answer so long in coming?... He had, in any case, gone out to dinner--of course, he had no one to keep house for him! So the earliest that he could be home again was three o'clock.... But if he were not to return home till the evening?... She had, indeed, told the commissionaire to wait in any case--even till the night, if necessary.... But what was she to do? Of course, she could not stand there looking out of the window all the time! The hours, indeed, seemed endless! She was ready to weep with impatience, with despair! She paced up and down the room; then she again stood at the window for a while, then she sat down and took up for a short time the novel which she had brought with her in her travelling bag; she attempted, too, to go to sleep--but did not succeed in doing so. At length four o'clock struck--nearly three hours had passed since she had begun her vigil. There was a knock at the door. The commissionaire came into the room and handed her a letter. She tore open the envelope and with an involuntary movement, so as to conceal the expression on her features from the stranger, she turned towards the window. She read the letter. "MY DEAREST BERTHA, "It is very good of you still to give me a choice between the next few days but, as indeed I have already hinted to you in my former letter, it is, unfortunately, absolutely impossible for me to do just as I like during that time. Believe me, I regret that it is so, at least as much as you do. "Once more a thousand thanks and a thousand greetings and I trust that we will be able to arrange a delightful time when next we meet. "Don't forget me completely, "Your "EMIL." When she had finished reading the letter she was quite calm; she paid the commissionaire the fee he demanded and found that, for a person in her circumstances, it was by no means insignificant. Then she sat down at the table and tried to collect her thoughts. She realized immediately that she could no longer remain in Vienna, and her only regret was that there was no train which could take her home at once. On the table stood the half empty bottle of wine, bread crumbs were scattered beside the plate, on the bed lay her spring jacket, beside it were the flowers which he had sent her that very morning. What could it all mean? Was it at an end? Indistinctly, but so that it seemed that it must bear some relation to her recent experiences, there occurred to her a sentence which she had once read. It was about men who desire nothing more than "to attain their object..." But she had always considered that to be a phrase of the novelists. But, after all, it was surely not a letter of farewell that she was holding in her hand, was it?... Was it really not a letter of farewell? Might not these kind words be also lies?... Also lies--that was it!... For the first time the positive word forced itself into her thoughts.... Lies!... Then it was certain that, when he brought her home the previous night, he had already made up his mind not to see her again. And the appointment for the present day and his desire to see her again that day were lies.... She went over the events of the previous evening in her mind, and she asked herself what could she have said or done to put him out of humour or disappoint him.... Really, it had all been so beautiful, and Emil had seemed so happy, just as happy as she had been ... was all that going to prove to have been a lie too?... How could she tell?... Perhaps, after all, she had put him out of humour without being aware that she was doing so.... She had, indeed, been nothing more or less than a good woman all her life.... Who could say whether she had not been guilty of something clumsy or stupid?... whether she had not been ludicrous and repellent in some moment when she had believed herself to be sacrificing, tender, enchanted and enchanting?... But what did she know of all these things?... And, all at once, she felt something almost in the nature of repentance that she had set out upon her adventure so utterly unprepared, that, until the previous day, she had been so chaste and good, that she had not had other lovers before Emil.... Then she remembered, too, that he had evaded her shy questions and requests on the subject of his violin playing, as if he had not wanted to admit her into that sphere of his life. He had thus remained strange to her, intentionally strange, so far as concerned the very things which were of the deepest and most vital importance to him. All at once she realized that she had no more in common with him than the pleasures of a night, and that the present morning had found them both as far apart from one another as they had been during all the years in which they had each led a separate existence. And then jealousy again flared up within her.... But she felt as though she was always thus, as though every conceivable emotion had always been present within her ... love and distrust, and hope and penitence, and yearning and jealousy ... and, for the first time in her life, she was so stirred, even to the very depths of her soul, that she understood those who in their despair have hurled themselves out of a window to meet their death.... And she perceived that the present state of affairs was impossible, that only certainty could be of any avail to her.... She must go to him and ask him ... but she must ask in the manner of one who is holding a knife to another's breast.... She hurried away through the streets, which were almost deserted, as though all Vienna had gone off into the country.... But would she find him at home?... Would he not, perhaps, have had a presentiment that the idea might come to her to seek him, to take him to task, and would he not have taken steps to evade the chance of such an occurrence?... She was ashamed of having had to think of that, too.... And if he was at home would she find him alone?... And if he was not alone, would she be admitted into his house? And if she found him in the arms of some other woman, what should she say?... Had he promised her anything? Had he sworn to be true to her? Had she even so much as demanded loyalty of him? How could she have imagined that he was waiting for her here in Vienna until she congratulated him on his Spanish Order?... Yes, could he not say to her: "You have thrown yourself on my neck and have desired nothing more than that I should take you as you are...." And if she asked herself--was he not right?... Had she not come to Vienna to be his beloved?--and for no other reason ... without any regard to the past, without any guarantee as to the future?... Yes, that was all she had come for! All other hopes and wishes had only transiently hovered around her passion, and she did not deserve anything better than that which had happened to her.... And if she was candid to herself, she must also admit that of all that she had experienced this had still been the best.... She stopped at a street corner. All was quiet around her; the summer air about her was heavy and sultry. She retraced her steps back to her hotel. She was very tired, and a new thought rose up convulsively within her: was it not possible that he had written to put her off only because he also was tired?... She seemed to herself very experienced when that idea occurred to her.... And yet another thought flashed through her mind: that he could also love no other woman in the way in which he had loved her.... And suddenly she asked whether, after all, the previous night would remain her only experience--whether she herself would belong to no other man save him? And she rejoiced in the doubt, as if, by cherishing it, she was taking a kind of revenge on his compassionate glance and mocking lips. And now she was back again in the cheerless room away up in the third storey of the hotel. The remains of her dinner had not yet been cleared away. Her jacket and the flowers were still lying on the bed. She took the flowers in her hand and raised them to her lips, as though about to kiss them. Suddenly, however, as though her whole anger burst forth again, she flung them violently to the ground. Then she threw herself on the bed, her face buried in her hands. After lying for some time in this position she felt her calmness gradually returning. It was perhaps just as well that she could return home that very day. She thought of her boy, how he was accustomed to lie in his little cot with his whole face beaming with laughter, if his mother leaned over the railings. She yearned for him. Also she yearned in some slight degree for Elly and for Frau Rupius. Yes, it was true--Frau Rupius, of course, was going to leave her husband.... What could there be at the bottom of it all?... A love affair?... But, strangely enough, she was now still less able than before to picture to herself the answer to that question. It was growing late, it was time for her to get ready for her departure.... So, then, she would be home again by Sunday evening. She sat in the carriage; on her lap lay the flowers, which she had picked up from the floor.... Yes, she was now travelling home, leaving the town where she ... had experienced something--that was the right expression, wasn't it?... Words which she had read or heard in connexion with similar circumstances kept recurring continually to her mind ... such words as: "bliss" ... "transports of love" ... "ecstasy" ... and a gentle thrill of pride stirred within her at having experienced what those words denoted. And yet another thought came to her which caused her to grow singularly calm: if he also--maybe--had an affair with another woman at that very time ... she had taken him from _her_ ... not for long indeed, but yet as completely as it was possible to take a man from a woman. She grew calmer and calmer, almost cheerful. It was, indeed, clear to her that she, Bertha, the inexperienced woman, could not, with one assault, completely obtain possession of her beloved.... But might she not be successful on a second occasion, she wondered? She was very glad that she had not carried out her determination to hasten to him at once. Indeed, she even formed the intention of writing him such a cold letter that he would fall into a mild fit of anger; she would be coquettish, subtle.... But she must have him again ... of that she was certain ... soon, and, if possible, forever!... And so her dreams went on and on as the train carried her homewards.... Ever bolder they grew as the humming of the wheels grew deeper and deeper, lulling her into a semi-slumberous state. On her arrival she found the little town buried in a deep sleep--she reached home and told the maidservant to fetch Fritz from her sister-in-law's the first thing in the morning. Then she slowly undressed herself. Her glance fell on the portrait of her dead husband, which hung over the bed. She asked herself whether it should remain in that position. Then the thought occurred to her that there are some women who come from their lovers and then are able to sleep by the side of their husbands, and she shuddered.... She could never have done such a thing while her husband had been alive!... And, if she _had_ done it, she would never have returned home again.... IX The next morning Bertha was wakened by Fritz. He had jumped on to her bed and had breathed softly on her eyelids. Bertha sat up, embraced and kissed him, and he immediately began to tell her how well he had fared with his uncle and aunt, how Elly had played with him, and how Richard had once had a fight with him without being able to beat him. On the previous day, too, he had learned to play the piano, and would soon be as clever at it as mamma. Bertha was content just to listen to him. "If only Emil could hear his sweet prattle now!" she thought. She considered whether, on the next occasion, she should not take Fritz with her to Vienna to see Emil, by doing which she would at once remove anything of a suspicious nature in such a visit. She thought only of the pleasant side of her experiences in Vienna, and of the letters which Emil had written to put her off scarcely anything remained in her memory, other than those words which had reference to a future meeting. She got up in an almost cheerful frame of mind and, whilst she was dressing herself, she felt a quite new tenderness for her own body, which still seemed to her to be fragrant with the kisses of her beloved. While the morning was yet young, she went to call on her relations. As she walked by the house of Herr Rupius she deliberated for a moment whether she should not go up and see him there and then. But she had a vague fear of being immediately involved again in the agitated atmosphere of the household, and she deferred the visit until the afternoon. At her brother-in-law's house Elly was the first to meet her, and she welcomed her as boisterously as if Bertha had returned from a long journey. Her brother-in-law, who was on the point of going out, jestingly shook a threatening finger at Bertha and said: "Well, have you had a good time?" Bertha felt herself blushing crimson. "Yes," he continued; "these are pretty stories that we hear about you!" He did not, however, notice her embarrassment and, as he went out of the door, greeted her with a glance which plainly meant: "You can't keep your secrets from me." "Father is always making jokes like that," said Elly. "I don't like him doing that at all!" Bertha knew that her brother-in-law had only been talking at random, as his usual manner was, and that, if she had told him the truth, he would not have believed her for a moment. Her sister-in-law came into the room, and Bertha had to relate all about her stay in Vienna. To her own surprise she succeeded very well in cleverly blending truth with fiction. She told how she had been with her cousin to the public gardens and the picture gallery; on Sunday she had heard Mass at St. Stephen's Church; she had met in the street a teacher from the Conservatoire; and finally she even invented a funny married couple, whom she represented as having had supper one evening at her cousin's. The further she proceeded with her lies, the greater was her desire to tell all about Emil as well, and to inform them how she had met in the street the celebrated violinist Lindbach, who had formerly been with her at the Conservatoire, and how she had had a conversation with him. But a vague fear of not being able to stop at the right time caused her to refrain from making any reference to him. Frau Albertine Garlan sat on the sofa in an attitude of profound lassitude, and nodded her head. Elly stood, as usual, by the piano, her head resting on her hands, and she gazed open-eyed at her aunt. From her sister-in-law's Bertha went on to the Mahlmanns' and gave the twins their music lesson. The finger exercises and scales which she had to hear were at first intolerable to her, but finally she ceased to listen to them at all, and let her thoughts wander at will. The cheerful mood of the morning had vanished, Vienna seemed to her to be infinitely distant, a strange feeling of disquietude came over her and suddenly the fear seized her that Emil might go away immediately after his concert. That would indeed be terrible! He might go away all of a sudden without her having seen him once more--and who could say when he would return? She wondered whether it would not be well to arrange to be in Vienna in any case on the day of the concert. She had to admit to herself that she had not: the slightest longing to hear him play. Indeed, it seemed to her that she would not in the least mind if he was not a violin virtuoso at all, if he was not even an artist, but just an ordinary kind of man--a bookseller, or something like that! If she could only have him for herself, for herself alone!... Meanwhile the twins played through their scales. It was surely a terrible doom to have to sit there and give these untalented brats music lessons. How was it that she had been in good spirits only just a little earlier that day?... Ah, those beautiful days in Vienna! Quite irrespective of Emil--the entire freedom, the sauntering about the streets, the walks in the public gardens.... To be sure, she had spent more money during her stay than she could afford; two dozen lessons to the Mahlmann twins would not recoup her the outlay.... And now, here she had to come back again to her relations, to give music lessons, and really it might even be necessary to look about for fresh pupils, for her accounts would not balance at all that year!... Ah, what a life!... In the street Bertha met Frau Martin, who asked her how she had enjoyed herself in Vienna. At the same time she threw Bertha a glance which clearly said: "I'm quite sure you don't enjoy life so much as I do with my husband!" Bertha had an overwhelming desire to shriek in that person's face: "I have had a much better time than you think! I have been with an enchanting young man who is a thousand times more charming than your husband! And I understand how to enjoy life quite as well as you do! You have only a husband, but I have a lover!--a lover!--a lover!"... Yet, of course, she said nothing of the kind, but related how she had gone with her cousin and the children for a walk in the public gardens. Bertha also met with some other ladies with whom she was superficially acquainted. She felt that her mental attitude towards those ladies had undergone a complete change since her visit to Vienna--that she was freer, superior. It seemed to her that she was the only woman in the town with any experience, and she was almost sorry that nobody knew anything about it, for although, publicly, they would have despised her, in their hearts all those women would have been filled with unutterable envy of her. And if, after all, they _had_ known who.... Although in that hole of a town there were certainly many who had not so much as heard Emil's name! If only there was some one in the world to whom she could open her heart! Frau Rupius--yes, there was Frau Rupius!... But, of course, she was in the habit of going away, of taking trips!... And, to tell the truth, thought Bertha, that was also a matter of indifference to her. She would only like to know how things would eventually turn out so far as she and Emil were concerned, she would like to know how matters actually stood. It was the uncertainty that was causing her that terrible uneasiness.... Had she only had a love affair with him, after all?... Ah, but why had she not gone to him once again?... But, of course, that was quite impossible!... That letter.... He didn't want to see her, that was it!... But then, on the other hand, he had sent her flowers.... And now she was back again with her relations. Richard was going to meet her and embrace her in his playful manner. She pushed him away. "Impudent boy!" she thought to herself. "I know very well what he means by doing that, although he himself does not know. I understand these things--I have a lover in Vienna!..." The music lesson took its course and, at the end of it, Elly and Richard played as a duet Beethoven's [Footnote: Query--Brahms (translator's note).] "Festival Overture" which was intended by them to be a birthday surprise for their father. Bertha thought only of Emil. She was nearly being driven out of her mind by this wretched strumming ... no, it was not possible to live on like that, whichever way she looked at it!... She was still a young woman, too.... Yes, that was the secret of it all, the real secret.... She would not be able to live on like that any more.... And yet it would not do for her ... any other man.... How could she ever think of such a thing!... What a very wicked person she must be, after all! Who could tell whether it had not been that trait in her character which Emil, with his great experience of life, had perceived in her, and which had been the cause of his being unwilling to see her any more?... Ah, those women surely had the best of it who took everything easily, and, when abandoned by one man, immediately turned to another.... But stay, whatever could it be that was putting such thoughts as these into her head? Had Emil, then, abandoned her?... In three or four days she would be in Vienna again; with him; in his arms!... And had she been able to live for three years as she had done?... Three?--Six years--her whole life!... If he only knew that, if he only believed that! Her sister-in-law came into the room and invited Bertha to have supper with them that evening.... Yes, that was her only distraction: to go out to dinner or supper occasionally at some other house than her own! If only there was a man in the town to whom she could talk!... And Frau Rupius was going off on her travels and leaving her husband.... Hadn't a love affair, maybe, something to do with that, Bertha wondered. The music lesson came to an end and Bertha took her leave. In the presence of her sister-in-law, too, she noticed that she had that feeling of superiority, almost of compassion, which had come over her when she had seen the other ladies. Yes, she was certain that she would not give up that one hour with Emil for a whole life such as her sister-in-law led. Moreover, as she thought to herself as she was walking homewards, she had not been able to arrive at a complete perception of her happiness, which, indeed, had all slipped by so quickly. And then that room, that whole house, that frightful picture.... No, no, it was all really hideous rather than anything else. After all, the only really beautiful moments had been those which had followed, when Emil had accompanied her to her hotel in the carriage, and her head had rested on his breast.... Ah, he loved her indeed; of course, not so deeply as she loved him; but how could that be possible? What a number of experiences he had had in his life! She thought of that now without any feeling of jealousy; rather, she felt a slight pity for him in having to carry so much in his memory. It was quite evident from his appearance that he was not a man who took life easily.... He was not of a cheerful disposition.... All the hours which she had spent with him seemed in her recollection as if encompassed by an incomprehensible melancholy. If she only knew all about him! He had told her so little about himself ... nothing, indeed, absolutely nothing!... But how would that have been possible on the very first day that they had met again? Ah! if only he really knew her! If she were only not so shy, so incapable of expressing herself! She would have to write to him again before seeing him.... Yes, she would write to him that very day. What a stupid concoction it was, that letter which she had sent him on the previous day! In truth, he could not have sent her any other answer than that which she had received. She would not write to him either defiantly or humbly.... No, after all, she was his beloved! She who, as she walked along the streets here in the little town, was regarded by every one who met her as one of themselves ... she was the beloved of that magnificent man whom she had worshipped since her girlhood. How unreservedly and unaffectedly she had given herself to him--not one of all the women she knew would have done that!... Ah, and she would do still more! Oh, yes! She would even live with him without being married to him, and she would be supremely indifferent to what people might say ... she would even be proud of her action! And later on he would marry her, after all ... of course he would. She was such a capable housekeeper, too.... And how much good it would be sure to do him, after the unsettled existence which he had been leading during the years of his wanderings, to live in a well-ordered house, with a good wife by his side, who had never loved any man but him. And now she was home again. Before dinner was served she had made all her preparations for writing the letter. She ate her dinner with feverish impatience; she scarcely allowed herself time to cut up Fritz's dinner and give it to him. Then, instead of undressing him herself and putting him to bed for his afternoon sleep, as she was always accustomed to do, she told the maid to attend to him. She sat down at the desk and the words flowed without effort from her pen, as though she had long ago composed in her head the whole letter. "My EMIL, MY BELOVED, MY ALL! "Since I have returned home again I have been possessed by an overwhelming desire to write to you, and I should like to say to you over and over again how happy, how infinitely happy, you have made me. I was angry with you at first when you wrote and said you could not see me on Sunday. I must confess that to you as well, for I feel that I am under the necessity of telling you everything that passes in my mind. Unfortunately, I could not do so while we were together; I had not the power of expressing myself, but now I can find the words and you must, I fear, put up with my boring you with this scribble. My dearest, my only one--yes, that you are, although it seems to me that you were not quite so certain of it as you ought to have been. I beseech you to believe that it is true. You see, I have no means, of course, wherewith to tell you this, other than these words, Emil, I have never, never loved any man, but you--and I will never love any other. Do with me as you will. I have no ties in the little town where I am living now--on the contrary, indeed, I often find it a terrible thing to be obliged to live my life here. I will move to Vienna, so as to be near you. Oh, do not fear that I will disturb you! I am not alone, you see, I have my boy, whom I _idolize_. I will cut down my expenses, and, in the long run, why shouldn't I succeed in finding pupils even in a large town like Vienna just as I do here, perhaps, indeed, even more easily than here, and in that way improve my position? Yet that is a secondary consideration, for I may tell you that it has long been my intention to move to Vienna if only for the sake of my dearly loved boy, when he grows older. "You cannot imagine how stupid the men are here! And I can no longer bear to look at any one of them at all, since I have again had the happiness of being in your company. "Write to me, my dearest! Yet you need not trouble to send me a whole long letter. In any case I shall be coming to Vienna again this week. I would have had to do so in any event, because of some pressing commissions, and you will then be able to tell me everything--just what you think of my proposal, and what you consider best for me to do. But you must promise me this, that, when I live in Vienna, you will often visit me. Of course, no one need know anything about it, if you do not care that they should. But you may believe me--every day on which I may be allowed to see you will be a red-letter day for me and that, in all the world, there is nobody who loves you in such a true and life-long manner as I do. "Farewell, my beloved! "Your "BERTHA." She did not venture to read over what she had written, but left the house at once so as to take the letter herself to the railway station. There she saw Frau Rupius, a few paces in front of her, accompanied by a maid who was carrying a small valise. What could that mean? She caught up Frau Rupius, just as the latter was going into the waiting room. The maid laid the valise on the large table in the centre of the room, kissed her mistress's hand, and departed. "Frau Rupius!" exclaimed Bertha, a note of inquiry in her voice. "I heard that you had returned already. Well, how did you get on?" said Frau Rupius, extending her hand in a friendly way. "Very well--very well indeed, but--" "Why, you are gazing at me as though you were quite frightened! No, Frau Bertha, I am coming back again--no later than to-morrow. The long journey that I had in view came to nothing, so I have had to--settle on something else." "Something else?" "Why, of course, staying at home. I shall be back again to-morrow. Well, how did you get on?" "I told you just now--very well." "Yes, of course, you did tell me before. But I see you are going to post that letter, are you not?" And then for the first time Bertha noticed that she was still holding the letter to Emil in her hand. She gazed at it with such enraptured eyes that Frau Rupius smiled. "Perhaps you would like me to take it with me? It is to go to Vienna, I presume?" "Yes," answered Bertha, and then she added resolutely, as though she was glad to be able to say it out at last: "to him." Frau Ropius nodded her head, as if satisfied. But she neither looked at Bertha nor made any reply. "I am so glad that I have met you again!" said Bertha. "You are the only woman here, you know, whom I trust; indeed, you are the only woman who could understand anything like this." "Ah, no," said Frau Rupius to herself, as though she were dreaming. "I do envy you so, because to-day in a few short hours you will see Vienna again. How fortunate you are!" Frau Rupius had sat down in one of the leather armchairs by the table. She rested her chin on her hand, looked at Bertha, and said: "It seems to me, on the other hand, that it is you who are fortunate." "No, I must, you see, remain here." "Why?" asked Frau Rupius. "You are free, you know. But go and put that letter into the box at once, or I shall see the address, and so learn more than you wish to tell me." "I will, though not because of that--but I should be glad if the letter went by this train and not later." Bertha hurried into the vestibule, posted the letter and at once returned to Anna, who was still sitting in the same quiet attitude. "I might have told you everything, you know," Bertha went on to say; "indeed I might say that I wished to tell you before I actually went to Vienna ... but--just fancy, isn't it strange? I did not venture to do so." "Moreover at that time, too, there probably had not been anything to tell," said Frau Rupius, without looking at Bertha. Bertha was amazed. How clever that woman was! She could see into everybody's thoughts! "No, at that time there had not been anything to tell," she repeated, gazing at Frau Rupius with a kind of reverence. "Just think--you will probably find it hard to believe what I am going to tell you now, but I should feel a liar if I kept it secret." "Well?" Bertha had sat down on a seat beside Frau Rupius, and she spoke in a lower tone, for the vestibule door was standing open. "I wanted to tell you this, Anna: that I do not in the least feel that I have done anything wicked, not even anything immoral." "It wouldn't be a very clever thing, either, if you had." "Yes, you are quite right.... What I really meant to say was rather that it seems to me as though I had done something quite good, as if I had done something outstanding. Yes, Frau Rupius, the fact of the matter is, I have been proud of myself ever since." "Well, there is probably no reason for that either," said Frau Rupius, as if lost in thought, stroking Bertha's hand, which lay upon the table. "I am aware of that, of course, and yet I am so proud and seem quite different from all the women whom I know. You see if you knew ... if you were acquainted with him--it is such a strange affair! You mustn't think, let me tell you, that it is an acquaintanceship which I have made recently--quite the contrary; I have been in love with him, you must know, ever since I was quite a young girl, no less than twelve years ago. For a long time we had completely lost sight of one another, and now--isn't it wonderful?--now he is my ... my ... my ... lover!" She had said it at last. Her whole face was radiant. Frau Rupius threw her a glance in which could be detected a little scorn and a great deal of kindliness. "I am glad that you are happy," she said. "How very kind you are indeed! But then, you see, on the other hand again, it is a dreadful thing that we are so far apart from one another; he, in Vienna; I, here--I don't think I shall ever be able to endure that. Moreover, I have ceased to feel that I belong to this place, least of all to my relations. If they knew ... no, if they knew! However, they would never be able to bring themselves to believe it. A woman like my sister-in-law, for instance--well, I am perfectly certain that she could never imagine such a thing to be in any way possible." "But you are really very ingenuous!" said Frau Rupius suddenly, almost with exasperation. Then she listened for a moment. "I thought I could hear the train whistling already." She rose to her feet, walked over to the large glass door leading on to the platform, and looked out. A porter came and asked for the tickets in order to punch them. "The train for Vienna is twenty minutes late," he remarked, at the same time. Bertha had stood up and gone over to Frau Rupius. "Why do you consider that I am ingenuous?" she asked shyly. "But, indeed, you know absolutely nothing about men," replied Frau Rupius, as if she were annoyed. "You haven't, you know, the slightest idea among what kind of people you are living. I can assure you, you have no reason at all to be proud." "I know, of course, that it is very stupid of me." "Your sister-in-law--that is delightful!--your sister-in-law!" "What do you mean, then?" "I mean that she has had a lover too!" "Whatever put such an idea as that into your head!" "Well, she is not the only woman in this town." "Yes, there are certainly women who ... but, Albertine--" "And do you know who it was? That is very amusing! It was Herr Klingemann!" "No, that is impossible!" "Of course, it is now a long time ago, about ten or eleven years." "But at that time, by the way, you yourself had not come to live here, Frau Rupius!" "Oh, I have heard it from the best source. It was Herr Klingemann himself who told me about it." "Herr Klingemann himself! But is it possible for a man to be so base as all that!" "I don't think there's the least doubt about that," answered Frau Rupius, sitting down on a seat near the door, whilst Bertha remained standing beside her, listening in amazement to her friend's words. "Yes, Herr Klingemann himself.... As soon as I came to the town, you must know, he did me the honour of making violent love to me, neck or nothing, so to speak. You know yourself, of course, what a loathsome wretch he is. I laughed him to scorn, which probably exasperated him a great deal, and evidently he thought that he would be able conclusively to prove to me how irresistible he was by recounting all his conquests." "But perhaps he told you some things which were not true." "A great deal, probably; but this story, as it happens, is true.... Ah, what a rabble these men are!" There was a note of the deepest hatred in Frau Rupius' voice. Bertha was quite frightened. She had never thought it possible that Frau Rupius could have said such things. "Yes, why shouldn't you know what kind of men they are amongst whom you are living?" continued Frau Rupius. "No, I would never have thought it possible! If my brother-in-law knew about it!--" "If he knew about it? He knows about it as well as you or I do!" "What do you say! No, no!" "Indeed, he caught them together--you understand me! Herr Klingemann and Albertine! So that, however much inclined he might have been to make the best of things, there was no doubt possible!" "But, for Heaven's sake--what did he do, then?" "Well, as you can see for yourself, he has not turned her out!" "Well, yes, the children ... of course!" "The children--pooh-pooh! He forgave her for the sake of convenience--and chiefly because he could do as he liked after that. You can see for yourself how he treats her. When all is said and done, she is but little better than his servant; you know as well as I do in what a miserable, brow-beaten way she slinks about. He has brought it to this, that, ever since that moment, she has always had to look upon herself as a woman who has been treated with mercy. And I believe she has even a perpetual fear that he is reserving the punishment for some future day. But it is stupid of her to be afraid of that, for he wouldn't look out for another housekeeper for anything.... Ah, my dear Frau Bertha, we are not by any means angels, as you know now from your own experiences, but men are infamous so long"--she seemed to hesitate to complete the phrase--"so long as they are men." Bertha was as though crushed; not so much on account of the things which Frau Rupius had told her as on account of the manner in which she had done so. She seemed to have become a quite different woman, and Bertha was pained at heart. The door leading to the platform was opened and the low, incessant tinkling of the telegraph was heard. Frau Rupius stood up slowly, her features assumed a mild expression, and, stretching out her hand to Bertha, she said: "Forgive me, I was only a little bit vexed. Things can be also very nice; of course, there are certainly decent men in the world as well as others. Oh, yes, things can be very nice, no doubt." She looked out on to the railway lines and seemed to be following the iron track into the distance. Then she went on to say with that same soft, harmonious voice which appealed so strongly to Bertha: "I shalt be home again to-morrow evening.... Oh, yes, of course, my travelling case!" She hurried to the table and took her valise. "It would have been a terrible catastrophe if I had forgotten that! I cannot travel without my ten bottles! Well, good-bye! And don't forget, though, that all I have been telling you happened ten years ago." The train came into the station. Frau Rupius hurried to a compartment, got in, and, looking out of the window, nodded affably to Bertha. The latter endeavoured to respond as cheerfully, but she felt that her wave of the hand to the departing Frau Rupius was stiff and forced. Slowly she walked homewards again. In vain she sought to persuade herself that all that she had heard was not the least concern of hers; the long past affair of her sister-in-law, the mean conduct of her brother-in-law, the baseness of Klingemann, the strange whims of that incomprehensible Frau Rupius; all had nothing to do with her. She could not explain it to herself, but somehow, it seemed to her as though all these things were mysteriously related to her own adventure. Suddenly the gnawing doubts appeared again.... Why hadn't Emil wanted to see her again? Not on the following day, or on the second or on the third day? How was it? He had attained his object, that was sufficient for him.... However had she been able to write him that mad, shameless letter? And a thrill of fear arose within her.... If he were to show her letter to another woman, maybe ... make merry over it with her.... No, how on earth could such an idea come into her head? It was ridiculous even to think of such a thing!... It was possible, of course, that he would not answer the letter and would throw it into the wastepaper basket--but nothing worse than that.... No.... However, she must just have patience, and in two or three days all would be decided. She could not say anything with certainty, but she felt that this unendurable confusion within her mind could not last much longer. The question would have to be settled, somehow. Late in the afternoon she again went for a walk amongst the vine-trellises with Fritz, but she did not go into the cemetery. Then she walked slowly down the hill and sauntered along under the chestnut trees. She chatted with Fritz, asked him about all sorts of things, listened to his stories and, as her frequent custom was, instilled some knowledge into his head on several subjects. She tried to explain to him how far the sun is distant from the earth, how the rain comes from the clouds, and how the bunches of grapes grow, from which wine is made. She was not annoyed, as often happened, if the boy did not pay proper attention to her, because she realized well enough that she was only talking for the sake of distracting her own thoughts. Then she walked down the hill, under the chestnut trees, and so back to the town. Presently she saw Herr Klingemann approaching, but the fact made not the slightest impression upon her. He spoke to her with forced politeness; all the time he held his straw hat in his hand and affected a great and almost gloomy gravity. He seemed very changed, and she observed, too, that his clothes in reality were not at all elegant, but positively shabby. Suddenly she could not help picturing him tenderly embracing her sister-in-law, and she felt extremely disgusted. Later on she sat down on a bench and watched Fritz playing with some other children, all the time making an effort to keep her attention fixed on him so that she would not have to think of anything else. In the evening she went to her relatives. She had a sensation as though she had had a presentiment of everything long before, for otherwise how could she have failed to have been struck before this by the kind of relations which existed between her brother-in-law and his wife? The former again made jocular remarks about Bertha's visit to Vienna. He asked when she was going there again, and whether they would not soon be hearing of her engagement. Bertha entered into the joke, and told how at least a dozen men had proposed to her, amongst others, a Government official; but she felt that her lips alone were speaking and smiling, while her soul remained serious and silent. Richard sat beside her, and his knee touched hers, by chance. And as he was pouring out a glass of wine for her and she seized his hand to stop him, she felt a comforting glow steal up her arm as far as her shoulder. It made her feel happy. It seemed to her that she was being unfaithful to Emil. And that was quite as she wished; she wanted Emil to know that her senses were on the alert, that she was just the same as other women, and that she could accept the embraces of her nephew in just the same way as she did his.... Ah, yes, if he only knew it! That was what she ought to have written in her letter, not that humble, longing letter!... But even while these thoughts were surging through her mind, she remained serious in the depths of her soul, and a feeling of solitude actually came over her, for she knew that no one could imagine what was taking place within her. Afterwards, when she was walking homewards through the deserted streets, she met an officer whom she knew by sight. With him he had a pretty woman whom she had never seen before. "Evidently a woman from Vienna!" she thought, for she knew that the officers often had such visitors. She had a feeling of envy towards the woman; she wished that she was also being accompanied by a handsome young officer at that moment.... And why not?... After all, everybody was like that.... And now she herself had ceased to be a respectable woman. Emil, of course, did not believe that, any more than anybody else, and, anyhow, it was all just the same! She reached home, undressed and went to bed. But the air was too sultry. She got up again, went to the window and opened it. Outside, all was dark. Perhaps somebody could see her standing there at the window, could see her skin gleaming through the darkness.... Indeed, she would not mind at all if anybody did see her like that!... Then she lay down on the bed again.... Ah, yes, she was no better than any of the others! And there was no good reason either why she should be.... Her thoughts grew indistinct.... Yes, he was the cause of it all, he had brought her to this, he had just taken her like a woman of the street--and then cast her off!... Ah, it was shameful, shameful!---how base men were! And yet ... it was delightful.... She fell asleep. X A warm rain was gently falling the next morning. Thus Bertha was able to endure her immense impatience more easily than if the sun had been blazing down. She felt as though during her sleep much had been smoothed out within her. In the soft grey of the morning everything seemed so simple and so utterly commonplace. On the morrow she would receive the letter she was expecting, and the present day was just like a hundred others. She gave her pupils their music lessons. She was very strict with her nephew that day and rapped him on the knuckles when he played unbearably badly. He was a lazy pupil--that was all. In the afternoon she was struck by an idea, which seemed to herself to be extremely praiseworthy. She had for a long time past intended to teach Fritz how to read, and she would make a start that very day. For a whole hour she slaved away, instilling a few letters into his head. The rain still kept falling; it was a pity that she could not go for a walk. The afternoon would be long, very long. Surely she ought to go and see Herr Rupius without further delay. It was too bad of her that she had not called on him since her return from Vienna. It was quite possible that he would feel somewhat ashamed of himself in her presence, because just lately he had been using such big words, and now Anna was still with him, after all.... Bertha left the house. In spite of the rain, she walked, first of all, out into the open country. It was long since she had been so tranquil as she was that day; she rejoiced in the day without agitation, without fear, and without expectation. Oh, if it could be always like that! She was astonished at the indifference with which she could think of Emil. She would be more than content if she should not hear another word from him, and could continue in her present state of tranquillity forever.... Yes, it was good and pleasant to be like that--to live in the little town, to give the few music lessons, which, after all, required no great effort, to educate her boy, to teach him to read, to write, and to count! Were her experiences of the last few days, she asked herself, worth so much anxiety--nay, so much humiliation? No, she was not intended for such things. It seemed as though the din of the great city, which had not disturbed her on her last visit, was now for the first time ringing in her ears, and she rejoiced in the beautiful calm which encompassed her in her present surroundings. Thus the state of profound lassitude into which her soul had fallen after the unaccustomed agitations of the last few days appeared to Bertha as a state of tranquillity that would be final.... And yet, only a short time later, when she was wending her way back to the town, the internal quietude gradually disappeared, and vague forebodings of fresh agitations and sorrows awoke within her. The sight of a young couple who passed her, pressed close to one another under an open umbrella, aroused in her a yearning for Emil. She did not resist it, for she already realized that everything within her was in such a state of upheaval that every breath brought some fresh and generally unexpected thing on to the surface of her soul. It was growing dusk when Bertha entered Herr Rupius' room. He was sitting at the table, with a portfolio of pictures before him. The hanging lamp was lighted. He looked up and returned her greeting. "Let me see; you, of course, came back from Vienna on the evening of the day before yesterday," he said. It sounded like a reproach, and Bertha had a sensation of guilt. "Well, sit down," he continued; "and tell me what happened to you in Vienna." "Nothing at all," answered Bertha. "I went to the Museum, and I have seen the originals of several of your pictures." Herr Rupius made no reply. "Your wife is coming back this very evening?" "I believe not"--he was silent for a time, and then said, with intentional dryness: "I must ask your pardon for having told you recently things which I am sure could not possibly have been of any interest to you. For the rest, I do not think that my wife will return to-day." "But.... She told me so herself, you know." "Yes, she told me also. She simply wanted to spare me the farewell, or rather the comedy of farewell. By that I don't mean anything at all untruthful, but just the things which usually accompany farewells: touching words, tears.... However, enough of that. Will you be good enough to come and see me at times? I shall be rather lonely, you know, when my wife is no longer with me." All this he said in a tone the sharpness of which was so little in keeping with the meaning of his words that Bertha sought in vain for a reply. Rupius, however, continued at once: "Well, and what else did you see besides the Museum?" With great animation, Bertha began to tell all sorts of things about her visit to Vienna. She also mentioned that she had met an old friend of her schooldays, whom she had not seen for a long time. Strangely, too, the meeting had taken place exactly in front of the Falckenborg picture. While she was speaking of Emil in this way without mentioning his name, her yearning for him increased until it seemed boundless, and she thought of writing to him again that day. Then she noticed that Herr Rupius was keeping his gaze fixed intently on the door. His wife had come into the room. She went up to him, smiling. "Here I am, back again!" she said, kissing him on the forehead; and then she held out her hand to Bertha. "Good evening, Frau Rupius," said Bertha, highly delighted. Herr Rupius spoke not a word, but signs of violent agitation could be seen on his face. His wife, who had not yet taken off her hat, turned away for a moment, and then Bertha noticed how Herr Rupius had rested his face on both his hands, and had begun to sob inwardly. Bertha left them. She was glad that Frau Rupius had returned; it seemed to be something in the nature of a good omen. By an early hour on the morrow she might receive the letter which would, perhaps, decide her fate. Her sense of restfulness had again completely vanished, but her being was filled with a different yearning from that which she had experienced before. She wished only to have Emil there, near her; she would have liked only to see him, to walk by his side. In the evening, after she had put her little boy to bed, she stopped on for a long time alone in the dining-room; she went to the piano and played a few chords, then she walked over to the window and gazed out into the darkness. The rain had ceased, the earth was imbibing the moisture, the clouds were still hanging heavily over the landscape. Bertha's whole being became imbued with yearning; everything within her called to him; her eyes sought to see him before her in the darkness; her lips breathed a kiss into the air, as though it could reach his lips; and, unconsciously, as if her wishes had to soar aloft, away from all else that surrounded her, she looked up to Heaven and whispered: "Give him back to me!..." Never had she been as at that moment. She had an impression that for the first time she now really loved him. Her love was free from all the elements which had previously disturbed it; there was no fear, no care, no doubt. Everything within her was the purest tenderness, and now, when a faint breeze came blowing and stirring the hair on her forehead, she felt as though it was a breath from the lips of Emil. The next morning came, but no letter. Bertha was a little disappointed, but not disquieted. Soon Elly, who had suddenly acquired a great liking for playing with Fritz, made her appearance. The servant, on returning from the market, brought the news that the doctor had been summoned in the greatest haste to Herr Rupius' house, though she did not know whether it was Herr Rupius or his wife who was ill. Bertha decided to go and inquire herself without waiting until after dinner. She gave the Mahlmaan twins their music lesson, feeling very absent-minded and nervous all the time, and then went to Herr Rupius' house. The servant told her that her mistress was ill in bed, but that it was nothing dangerous, although Doctor Friedrich had strictly forbidden that any visitors should be admitted. Bertha was frightened. She would have liked to speak to Herr Rupius, but did not wish to appear importunate. In the afternoon she made an attempt at continuing Fritz's education, but, do what she could, she met with no success. Again, she had the impression that her own hopes were influenced by Anna having been taken ill; if Anna had been well, it would have surely happened also that the letter would have arrived by that time. She knew that such an idea was utter nonsense, but she could not resist it. Soon after five o'clock she again set out to call on Herr Rupius. The maid admitted her. Herr Rupius himself wanted to speak to her. He was sitting in his easy-chair by the table. "Well?" asked Bertha. "The doctor is with her just at this moment--if you will wait a few minutes ..." Bertha did not venture to ask any questions, and both remained silent. After a few seconds, Doctor Friedrich came out from the bedroom. "Well, I cannot say anything definite yet," he said slowly; then, with a sudden resolution, he added: "Excuse me, Frau Garlan, but it is absolutely necessary for me to have a few words with Herr Rupius alone." Herr Rupius winced. "Then I won't disturb you," said Bertha mechanically, and she left them. But she was so agitated that it was impossible for her to go home, and she walked along the pathway leading between the vine-trellises to the cemetery. She felt that something mysterious was happening in that house. The thought occurred to her that Anna might, perhaps, have made an attempt to commit suicide. If only she did not die, Bertha said to herself. And immediately the thought followed: if only a nice letter were to come from Emil! She seemed to herself to be encompassed by nothing but dangers. She went into the cemetery. It was a beautiful, warm summer's day, and the flowers and blossoms were fragrant and fresh after the rain of the previous day. Bertha followed her accustomed path towards her husband's grave, but she felt that she had absolutely no object in going there. It was almost painful to her to read the words on the tombstone; they had no longer the least significance for her: "Victor Mathias Garlan, died the 6th June, 1895." It seemed to her, then, that any of her walks with Emil, which had happened ten years before, were nearer than the years she had spent by the side of her husband. Those years were as though they had not even existed ... she would not have been able to believe in them if Fritz had not been alive.... Suddenly the idea passed through her mind that Fritz was not Garlan's son at all ... perhaps he was really Emil's son.... Were not such things possible, after all?... And she felt at that moment that she could understand the doctrine of the Holy Ghost.... Then she was alarmed at the madness of her own thoughts. She looked at the broad roadway, stretching straight from the cemetery gate to the opposite wall, and all at once she knew, for a positive fact, that in a few days a coffin, with the corpse of Frau Rupius within it, would be borne along that road. She wanted to banish the idea, but the picture was there in full detail; the hearse was standing before the gate; the grave, which two men were digging yonder just at that moment, was destined for Frau Rupius; Herr Rupius was waiting by the open grave. He was sitting in his invalid chair, his plaid rug across his knees, and was staring at the coffin, which the black-garbed undertakers were slowly carrying along.... The vision was more than a mere presentiment; it was a precognition.... But whence had this idea come to her? Then she heard people talking behind her. Two women walked past her--one was the widow of a lieutenant-colonel who had recently died, the other was her daughter. Both greeted Bertha and walked slowly on. Bertha thought that these two women would consider her a faithful widow who still grieved for her husband, and she seemed to herself to be an impostor, and she retired hastily. Possibly there would be some news awaiting her at home, a telegram from Emil, perhaps--though that, indeed, would be nothing extraordinary ... after all, the two things were closely connected.... She wondered whether Frau Rupius still thought of what Bertha had told her at the railway station, and whether, perhaps, she would speak of it in her delirium ... however, that was a matter of indifference, indeed. The only matters of importance were that Emil should write and that Frau Rupius should get better.... She would have to call again and see Herr Rupius; he would be sure to tell her what the doctor had had to say.... And Bertha hastened homewards between the vine-trellises down the hill.... Nothing had arrived, no letter, no telegram.... Fritz had gone out with the maid. Ah, how lonely she was. She hurried to Herr Rupius' house once more, and the maid opened the door to her. Things were progressing very badly, Herr Rupius was unable to see anyone.... "But what is the matter with her? Don't you know what the doctor said?" "An inflammation, so the doctor said." "What kind of an inflammation?" "Or it might even be blood poisoning, he said. A nurse from the hospital will be here immediately." Bertha went away. On the square in front of the restaurant a few people were sitting, and one table, right in front, was occupied by some officers, as was usual at that time of the day. They didn't know what was going on up yonder, thought Bertha, otherwise they wouldn't be sitting there and laughing.... Blood poisoning--well, what could that mean?... Obviously Frau Rupius had attempted to commit suicide!... But why?... Because she was unable to go away--or did not wish to?--but she wouldn't die--no, she must not die! Bertha called on her relatives, so as to pass the time. Only her sister-in-law was at home; she already knew that Frau Rupius had been taken ill, but that did not affect her very much, and she soon began to talk of other things. Bertha could not endure it, and took her departure. In the evening she tried to tell Fritz stories, then she read the paper, in which, amongst other things, she found another announcement of the concert at which Emil was to play. It struck her as very strange that the concert was still an event which was announced to take place, and not one long since over. She was unable to go to bed without making one more inquiry at Herr Rupius' house. She met the nurse in the anteroom. It was the one Doctor Friedrich always sent to his private patients. She had a cheerful-looking face, and a comforting expression in her eyes. "The doctor will be sure to pull Frau Rupius through," she said. And, although Bertha knew that the nurse was always making such observations, she felt more reassured. She walked home, went to bed, and fell quietly asleep. XI The next morning Bertha was late in waking up. She was fresh after her good night's rest. A letter was lying beside the bed. And then, for the first time that morning, everything came back to her mind; Frau Rupius was very ill, and here was a letter from Emil. She seized it so hurriedly that she set the little candlestick shaking violently; she opened the envelope and read the letter. "My DEAR BERTHA, "Many thanks for your nice letter. I was very pleased to get it. But I must tell you that your idea of coming to live permanently in Vienna requires again to be carefully considered by you. Circumstances here are quite different from what you seem to imagine. Even the native, fully accredited musicians have the greatest difficulty in obtaining pupils at anything like decent fees, and for you it would be--at the beginning, at least--almost a matter of impossibility. Where you are now you have your assured income, your circle of relations and friends, your home; and, finally, it is the place where you lived with your husband, where your child was born, and so it is the place where you ought to be. "And, apart from all these considerations, it would be a very foolish procedure on your part to plunge into the exhausting struggle for a livelihood in the city. I purposely refrain from saying anything about the part which your affection for me (you know I return it with all my heart) seems to play in your proposals; to bring that in would carry the whole question over to another domain, and we must not let that happen. I will accept no sacrifice from you, under any condition. I need not assure you that I would like to see you again, and soon, too, for there is nothing I desire so much as to spend another such an hour with you as that which you recently gave me (and for which I am very grateful to you). "So, then, arrange matters, my child, in such a way that, say, every four or six weeks you can come to Vienna for a day and a night. We will often be very happy again, I trust. I regret I cannot see you during the next few days, and, moreover, I start off on a tour immediately after the concert. I have to play in London during the season there, and after that I am going on to Scotland. So I look forward to the joyful prospect of meeting you again in the autumn. "I greet you and kiss that sweet spot behind your ear, which I love best of all. "Your "EMIL." When Bertha had read the letter to the end, for some little time she sat bolt upright in the bed. A shudder seemed to pass through her whole body. She was not surprised; she knew that she had expected no other kind of letter. She shook herself.... Every four or six weeks ... excellent! Yes, for a day and a night.... It was shameful, shameful!... And how afraid he was that she might go to Vienna.... And then that observation right at the end, as if his object had been, while he was still at a safe distance, so to speak, to stimulate her senses, because that, forsooth, was the only kind of relations he desired to keep up with her.... It was shameful, shameful!... What sort of a woman had she been! She felt a loathing--loathing!... She sprang out of bed and dressed herself.... Well, what was going to happen after that?... It was over, over, over! He had not time to spare for her--no time at all!... One night every, six weeks, after the autumn.... Yes, my dear sir, I at once accept your honourable proposals with pleasure. Indeed, for myself, I desire nothing better! I will go on turning sour; I will go on giving music lessons and growing imbecile in this hole of a town.... You will fiddle away, turn women's heads, travel, be rich, famous and happy--and every four or six weeks I may hope to be taken for one night to some shabby room where you entertain your women of the street.... It was shameful, shameful, shameful!... Quick! She would get ready to go to Frau Rupius--Anna was ill, seriously ill--what mattered anything else? Before she went out, Bertha pressed Fritz to her heart, and she recalled the passage in Emil's letter: it is the place where your child was born.... Indeed, that was quite right, too; but Emil had not said that because it was true, but only to avoid the danger of having to see her more than once in six weeks. She hurried off.... How was it, then, that she did not feel any nervousness on Frau Rupius' account?... Ah, of course, she had known that Frau Rupius had been better the previous evening. But where was the letter, though?... She had again thrust it quite mechanically into her bodice. Some officers were sitting in front of the restaurant having breakfast. They were all covered with dust, having just returned from the manoeuvres. One of them gazed after Bertha. He was a very young man, and could only have obtained his commission quite recently.... Pray, don't be afraid, thought Bertha. I am altogether at your disposal. I have an engagement which takes me into Vienna only once every four or six weeks ... please, tell me when you would like ... The balcony door was open, the red velvet piano cover was hanging over the balustrade. Well, evidently order had been restored again--otherwise, would the cover have been hanging over the balustrade?... Of course not, so forward then, and upstairs without fear.... The maid opened the door. There was no need for Bertha to ask her any questions; in her wide-open eyes there was an expression of terrified amazement, such as is only called forth by the proximity of an appalling death. Bertha went in. She entered the drawing-room first; the door leading to the bedroom was open to its full extent. The bed was standing in the middle of the room, away from the wall, and free on all sides. At the foot was sitting the nurse, looking very tired, with her head sunk upon her breast, Herr Rupius was sitting in his invalid's chair by the head of the bed. The room was so dark that it was not until Bertha had come quite close that she could see Anna's face clearly. Frau Rupius seemed to be asleep. Bertha came nearer. She could hear the patient's breathing; it was regular, but inconceivably rapid--she had never heard a human being breathe like that before. Then Bertha felt that the eyes of the two others were fixed upon her. Her surprise at having been admitted in this unceremonious manner lasted only for a moment, since she understood that all precautionary measures had now become superfluous; the matter had been decided. Suddenly another pair of eyes turned towards Bertha. Frau Rupius opened her eyes, and was watching her friend attentively. The nurse made room for Bertha, and went into the adjoining room. Bertha sat down, moving her chair closer to the bed. She noticed that Anna was slowly stretching out her hand towards her. She grasped it. "Dear Frau Rupius," she said, "you are already getting on much better now, are you not?" She felt that she was again saying something awkward, but she knew she could not help doing so. It was just her fate to say such things in the presence of Frau Rupius, even in her last hour. Anna smiled; she looked as pale and young as a girl. "Thank you, dear Bertha," she said. "But whatever for, my dear, dear Anna?" She had the greatest difficulty in restraining her tears. At the same time, however, she was very curious to hear what had actually happened. A long interval of silence ensued. Anna closed her eyes again and appeared to sleep. Herr Rupius sat motionless in his chair. Bertha looked sometimes at Anna and sometimes at him. In any case, she must wait, she thought. She wondered what Emil would say if _she_ were suddenly to die. Ah, surely it would cause him some slight grief if he had to think that she whom he had held in his arms a few days before now lay mouldering in the grave. He might even weep. Yes, he would weep if she were to die ... wretched egoist though he was at other times.... Ah, but where were her thoughts flying to again? Wasn't she still holding her friend's hand in her own? Oh, if she could only save her!... Who was now in the worse plight--this woman who was doomed to die, or Bertha herself--who had been so ignominiously deceived? Was it necessary, though, to put it so strongly as that, because of one night?... Ah, but that had much too fine a sound!... for the sake of one hour--to humiliate her so--to ruin her so--was not that unscrupulous and shameless?... How she hated him! How she hated him!... If only he were to break down at the next concert, so that all the people would laugh him to scorn, and he would be put to shame, and all the papers would have the news--"The career of Herr Emil Lindbach is absolutely ended." And all his women would say: "Ah, I don't like that a bit, a fiddler who breaks down!"... Yes, then he would probably remember her, the only woman who had loved him since the days of her girlhood, who loved him truly ... and whom he was now treating so basely!... Then he would be sure to come back to her and beg her to forgive him--and she would say to him: "Do you see, Emil; do you see, Emil?"... for, naturally, anything more intelligent than that would not occur to her.... And there she was thinking again of him, always of him--and here somebody was dying, and she was sitting by the bed, and that silent person there was the husband.... It was all so quiet; only from the street, as though wafted up over the balcony and through the open door, came a confused murmur--men's voices, the rumble of the traffic, the jingle of a cyclist's bell, the clattering of a sabre on the pavement, and, now and then, the twitter of the birds--but it all seemed so far away, so utterly unconnected with actuality. Anna became restless and tossed her head to and fro--several times, quickly, quicker and quicker.... "Now it's beginning!" said a soft voice behind Bertha. She turned round. It was the nurse with the cheerful features; but Bertha now perceived that that expression did not denote cheerfulness at all, but was only the result of a strained effort never to allow sorrow to be noticeable, and she considered the face to be indescribably fearful.... What was it the nurse had said?... "Now it's beginning."... Yes, like a concert or a play ... and Bertha remembered that once the same words had been spoken beside her own bed, at the time when she began to feel the pangs of childbirth.... Suddenly Anna opened her eyes, opened them very wide, so that they appeared immense; she fixed them on her husband, and, vainly striving, meanwhile, to raise herself up, said in a quite clear voice: "It was only you, only you ... believe me, it was only you whom I have..." The last word was unintelligible, but Bertha guessed it. Then Herr Rupius bent down, and kissed the dying woman on the forehead. Anna threw her arms around him; his lips lingered long on her eyes. The nurse had gone out of the room again. Suddenly Anna pushed her husband away from her; she no longer recognized him; delirium had set in. Bertha rose to her feet in great alarm, but she remained standing by the bed. "Go now!" said Herr Rupius to her. She lingered. "Go!" he repeated, this time in a stern voice. Bertha realized that she must go. She left the room quietly on tip-toes, as though Anna might still be disturbed by the sound of footsteps. Just as she entered the adjoining room she saw Doctor Friedrich, who was taking off his overcoat and, at the same time, was talking to a young doctor, the assistant at the hospital. He did not notice Bertha, and she heard him say: "In any other case I would have notified the authorities, but, as this affair falls out as it does.... Besides, there would be a terrible scandal, and poor Rupius would be the worst sufferer--" then he saw Bertha--"Good day, Frau Garlan." "Oh, doctor, what is really the matter, then?" Doctor Friedrich threw his colleague a rapid glance. "Blood poisoning," he replied. "You are, of course, aware, my dear Frau Garlan, that people often cut their fingers and die as a result; the wound cannot always he located. It is a great misfortune.... Yes, indeed!" He went into the room, followed by the assistant. Bertha went into the street like one stupified. What could be the meaning of the words which she had overheard--"information?"--"scandal?" Yes, had Herr Rupius, perhaps, murdered his own wife?... No, what nonsense! But some injury had been done to her, it was quite obvious ... and it must have been, in some way, connected with the visit to Vienna; for she had been taken ill during the night subsequent to her journey.... And the words of the dying woman recurred to Bertha: "It was only you, only you whom I have loved!..." Had they not sounded like a prayer for forgiveness? "Loved only you"--but ... another ... of course, she had a lover in Vienna.... Well, yes, but what followed?... Yes, she had wished to go away, and had not done so after all.... What could it have been that she said on that occasion at the railway station?... "I have made up my mind to do something else."... Yes, of course, she had taken leave of her lover in Vienna, and, on her return--had poisoned herself?... But why should she do that, though, if she loved only her husband?... And that was not a lie, certainly not! Bertha could not understand.... Why ever had she gone away, then?... What should she do now, too?... She could not rest. She could neither go home nor to her relatives, she must go back again.... She wondered, too, whether Anna would have to die if another letter from Emil came that day?... In truth, she was losing her reason.... Of course, these two things had not the least connection between them ... and yet ... why was she unable to dissociate them one from the other?... Once more she hurried up the steps. Not a quarter of an hour had elapsed since she had left the house. The hall door was open, the nurse was in the anteroom. "It is all over," she said. Bertha went on. Herr Rupius was sitting by the table, all alone; the door leading to the death-chamber was closed. He made Bertha come quite close to him, then he seized the hand which she stretched out to him. "Why, why did she do it?" he said. "Why did she do _that_?" Bertha was silent. "It wasn't necessary," continued Herr Rupius, "Heaven knows, it wasn't necessary. What difference could the other men make to me--tell me that?" Bertha nodded. "The main point is to live--yes, that is it! Why did she do that?" It sounded like a suppressed wail, although he seemed to be speaking very quietly. Bertha burst into tears. "No, it wasn't necessary! I would have brought it up--brought it up as my own child!" Bertha looked up sharply. All at once she understood everything, and a terrible fear ran through her whole being. She thought of herself. If in that night she also ... in that one hour?... So great was her terror that she believed that she must be losing her reason. What had hitherto been scarcely more than a vague possibility floating through her mind now loomed suddenly before her, an indisputable certainty. It could not possibly be otherwise, the death of Anna was an omen, the pointing of the finger of God. At the same time there arose within her mind the recollection of the day, twelve years ago, when she had been walking with Emil on the bank of the Wien, and he had kissed her and for the first time she had felt an ardent yearning for a child. How was it that she had not experienced the same yearning when, recently, she felt his arms about her?... Yes, she knew now; she had desired nothing more than the pleasures of the moment; she had been no better than a woman of the streets. It would be only the just punishment of Heaven if she also perished in her shame, like the poor woman lying in the next room. "I would like to see her once more," she said. Rupius pointed towards the door. Bertha opened it, went up slowly to the bed on which lay the body of the dead woman, gazed upon her friend for a long time, and kissed her on both eyes. Then a sense of unequalled restfulness stole over her. She would have liked to have remained beside the corpse for hours together, for, in proximity to it, her own sorrow and disappointment became as nothing to her. She knelt down by the bed and clasped her hands, but she did not pray. All at once everything danced before her eyes. Suddenly a well-known attack of weakness came over her, a dizziness which passed off immediately. At first she trembled slightly, but then she drew a deep breath, as one who has been rescued, because, indeed, with the approach of that lassitude, she felt at the same time that, at that moment, not only her previous apprehensions, but all the illusion of that confused day, the last tremors of the desires of womanhood, everything which she had considered to be love, had begun to merge and to fade away into nothingness. And kneeling by the death-bed, she realized that she was not one of those women who are gifted with a cheerful temperament and can quaff the joys of life without trepidation. She thought with disgust of that hour of pleasure that had been granted her, and, in comparison with the purity of that yearning kiss, the recollection of which had beautified her whole existence, the shameless joys which she then had tasted seemed to her like an immense falsehood. The relations which had existed between the paralysed man in the room beyond and this woman, who had had to die for her deceit, seemed now to be spread out before her with wonderful clearness. And, while she gazed upon the pallid brow of the dead woman she could not help thinking of the unknown man, on account of whom Anna had had to die, and who, exempt from punishment, and, perhaps, remorseless, too, dared to go about in a great town and to live on, like any other--no, like thousands and thousands of others who had stared at her with covetous, indecent glances. Bertha divined what an enormous wrong had been wrought against the world in that the longing for pleasure is placed in woman just as in man: and that with women that longing is a sin, demanding expiation, if the yearning for pleasure is not at the same time a yearning for motherhood. She rose, threw a last farewell glance at her dearly loved friend, and left the death-chamber. Herr Rupius was sitting in the adjoining room, exactly as she had left him. She was seized with a profound desire to speak some words of consolation to him. For a moment it seemed to her as though her own destiny had only had this one purpose: to enable her fully to understand the misery of that man. She would have liked to have been able to tell him so, but she felt that he was one of those who desire to be alone with their sorrow. And so, without speaking, she sat down opposite to him. 
36854	----	Transcriber's Notes: 1. Page scan source: http://www.archive.org/details/chiefjusticenove00franiala 2. The diphthong oe is represented by [oe]. Heinemann's International Library. EDITOR'S NOTE. There is nothing in which the Anglo-Saxon world differs more from the world of the Continent of Europe than in its fiction. English readers are accustomed to satisfy their curiosity with English novels, and it is rarely indeed that we turn aside to learn something of the interior life of those other countries the exterior scenery of which is often so familiar to us. We climb the Alps, but are content to know nothing of the pastoral romances of Switzerland. We steam in and out of the picturesque fjords of Norway, but never guess what deep speculation into life and morals is made by the novelists of that sparsely peopled but richly endowed nation. We stroll across the courts of the Alhambra, we are listlessly rowed upon Venetian canals and Lombard lakes, we hasten by night through the roaring factories of Belgium; but we never pause to inquire whether there is now flourishing a Spanish, an Italian, a Flemish school of fiction. Of Russian novels we have lately been taught to become partly aware, but we do not ask ourselves whether Poland may not possess a Dostoieffsky and Portugal a Tolstoi. Yet, as a matter of fact, there is no European country that has not, within the last half-century, felt the dew of revival on the threshing-floor of its worn-out schools of romance. Everywhere there has been shown by young men, endowed with a talent for narrative, a vigorous determination to devote themselves to a vivid and sympathetic interpretation of nature and of man. In almost every language, too, this movement has tended to display itself more and more in the direction of what is reported and less of what is created. Fancy has seemed to these young novelists a poorer thing than observation; the world of dreams fainter than the world of men. They have not been occupied mainly with what might be or what should be, but with what is, and, in spite of all their shortcomings, they have combined to produce a series of pictures of existing society in each of their several countries such as cannot fail to form an archive of documents invaluable to futurity. But to us they should be still more valuable. To travel in a foreign country is but to touch its surface. Under the guidance of a novelist of genius we penetrate to the secrets of a nation, and talk the very language of its citizens. We may go to Normandy summer after summer and know less of the manner of life that proceeds under those gnarled orchards of apple-blossom than we learn from one tale of Guy de Maupassant's. The present series is intended to be a guide to the inner geography of Europe. It presents to our readers a series of spiritual Baedekers and Murrays. It will endeavour to keep pace with every truly characteristic and vigorous expression of the novelist's art in each of the principal European countries, presenting what is quite new if it is also good, side by side with what is old, if it has not hitherto been presented to our public. That will be selected which gives with most freshness and variety the different aspects of continental feeling, the only limits of selection being that a book shall be, on the one hand, amusing, and, on the other, wholesome. One difficulty which must be frankly faced is that of subject. Life is now treated in fiction by every race but our own with singular candour. The novelists of the Lutheran North are not more fully emancipated from prejudice in this respect than the novelists of the Catholic South. Everywhere in Europe a novel is looked upon now as an impersonal work, from which the writer, as a mere observer, stands aloof, neither blaming nor applauding. Continental fiction has learned to exclude, in the main, from among the subjects of its attention, all but those facts which are of common experience, and thus the novelists have determined to disdain nothing and to repudiate nothing which is common to humanity; much is freely discussed, even in the novels of Holland and of Denmark, which our race is apt to treat with a much more gingerly discretion. It is not difficult, however, we believe--it is certainly not impossible--to discard all which may justly give offence, and yet to offer to an English public as many of the masterpieces of European fiction as we can ever hope to see included in this library. It will be the endeavour of the editor to search on all hands and in all languages for such books as combine the greatest literary value with the most curious and amusing qualities of manner and matter. EDMUND GOSSE. THE CHIEF JUSTICE THE Chief Justice A NOVEL BY EMIL FRANZOS TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN BY MILES CORBET LONDON WILLIAM HEINEMANN 1890 [_All rights reserved_] INTRODUCTION. The remote Austrian province of Galicia has, in our generation, produced two of the most original of modern novelists, Leopold von Sacher-Masoch and Karl Emil Franzos. The latter, who is the author of the volume here presented to English readers, was born on the 25th of October 1848, just over the frontier, in a ranger's house in the midst of one of the vast forests of Russian Podolia. His father, a Polish Jew, was the district doctor of the town of Czorskow, in Galicia, where the boy received his first lessons in literature from his German mother. In 1858 Franzos was sent, on the death of his father, to the German College at Czernowitz; at the age of fourteen, according to the published accounts of his life, he was left entirely to his own resources, and gained a precarious livelihood by teaching. After various attempts at making a path for himself in science and in law, and finding that his being a Jew stood in the way of a professional career, he turned, as so many German Israelites have done before and since, to journalism, first in Vienna, then at Pesth, then in Vienna again, where he still continues to reside. In 1876 Franzos published his first book, two volumes entitled _Aus Halb-Asia_ ("From Semi-Asia"), a series of ethnological studies on the peoples of Galicia, Bukowina, South Russia, and Roumania, whom he described as in a twilight of semi-barbaric darkness, not wholly in the sunshine of Europe. This was followed in 1878 by _Vom Don zur Donau_ ("From the Don to the Danube"), a similar series of studies in ethnography. Meanwhile, in _Die Juden von Barnow_ ("The Jews of Barnow"), 1877, he had published his first collection of tales drawn from his early experience. He followed it in 1879 by _Junge Liebe_ ("Young Love"), two short stories, "Brown Rosa" and "Brandenegg's Cousins," extremely romantic in character, and written in an elaborate and somewhat extravagant style. These volumes achieved a great and instant success. The succeeding novels of Franzos have been numerous, and unequal in value. _Moschko von Parma_, 1880, was a pathetic study of the vicissitudes of a young Jewish soldier in the wars. In the same year Franzos published _Die Hexe_ ("The Witch"). The best known of his writings in this country is _Ein Kampf um's Recht_ ("A Battle for the Right"), 1882, which was published in English, with an Introduction by Mr. George MacDonald, and attracted the favourable, and even enthusiastic, notice of Mr. Gladstone. _Der Präsident_, which is here translated, appeared in Germany in 1884. EDMUND GOSSE. THE CHIEF JUSTICE. CHAPTER I. In the Higher Court of Bolosch, an important Germano-Slavonic town of northern Austria, there sat as Chief Justice some thirty years ago, one of the bravest and best of those men on whom true justice might hopefully rely in that sorely tried land. Charles Victor, Baron von Sendlingen, as he may be called in this record of his fate, was the last descendant of a very ancient and meritorious race which could trace its origin to a collateral branch of the Franconian Emperors, and which had once upon a time possessed rich lands and mines on the shores of the Wörther See: now indeed by reason of an adverse fate and the love of splendour of some of its scions, there had gradually come to be nothing left of all this save a series of high sounding titles. But the decline of fame and influence had not kept pace with the loss of lands and wealth; the Sendlingens had entered the service of the Hapsburgs and in the last two hundred years had given the Austrian Hereditary Dominions not only several brave generals, but an almost unbroken line of administrators and guardians of Justice. And so, although they were entirely dependent on their slender official salaries, they were reckoned with good reason among the first families of the Empire, and a Sendlingen might from his cradle count upon the office of Chief Justice of one of the Higher Courts. Even unkind envy, to say nothing of honest report, was obliged to admit that these hereditary patricians of Justice had always shown themselves worthy of their sacred office, and just as they regularly inherited certain physical characteristics--great stature, bright eyes and coal-black curly hair--so also gifted intellects, iron industry and a sense of duty which often enough bordered on self-denial, were always theirs. "The majesty of the Law is the most sacred majesty on earth." Thus spake the first of this family who had entered the service of the Imperial Courts of Justice, the Baron Victor Amadeus, Chief Judge of the Vienna Senate, in answer to an irregular demand of Ferdinand the Catholic, and his descendants held fast to the maxim in good days and evil, even in those worst days when Themis threatened, in this country also, to sink to the level of the venal mistress of Princes. The greatest of the Hapsburgs, Joseph II., knew how to value this at its right worth, and although he much disliked hereditary offices, he on this account appointed the Baron Charles Victor, in spite of his youth, as his father's successor in one of the most important offices of the State. This was the grandfather of that Sendlingen whose story is to be told here, a powerful man of unusual strength of will who had again raised the reputation of the family to a most flourishing condition. But although everything went so well with him, the dearest wish of his heart was not to be realized: he was not to transmit office and reputation to his son. This son, Franz Victor, our hero's father, had to pass his life wretchedly in an insignificant position, the only one among the Sendlingens who went to his grave in mature years, unrenowned and indeed despised. This fate had not overtaken him through lack of ability or industry. He too proved himself a true son of this admirable race; gifted, persevering, thorough, devoted heart and soul to his studies and his official duties. But a youthful escapade had embroiled him in the beginning of his career with father and relations: a girl of the lower orders, the daughter of the concierge at the Courts where his father presided, had become dear to him and in a moment of passion he had betrayed her. When the girl could no longer conceal the consequences of her fault, she went and threw herself at the feet of the Chief Justice imploring him to protect her from her parent's wrath. The old man could hardly contain his agony of indignation, but he summoned his son and having heard from his lips the truth of the accusation, he resolved the matter by saying: "The wedding will take place next Sunday. A Sendlingen may be thoughtless, he must never be a scoundrel." They were married without show and in complete secresy, and at once started for a little spot in the Tyrolean mountains whither Baron von Sendlingen had caused his son and heir to be transferred. This event made a tremendous sensation. For the first time a Sendlingen had married out of his rank, the daughter of a menial too, and constrained to it by his father! People hardly knew how to decide which of the two, father or son, had sinned most against the dignity of the family; similar affairs were usually settled by the nobles of the land in all secresy and without leaving a stain on their genealogical tree. Even Kaiser Franz, although his opinions about morality were so rigid, once signified something of the kind to the honourable old judge, but he received the same answer as was given to his son. The embittered old man was indeed equally steadfast in maintaining a complete severance of the bonds between him and his only son; the letters which every mail from the Tyrol brought, were left unopened, and even in his last illness he would not suffer the outcast to be recalled. After the death of the Judge, his son came to be completely forgotten: only occasionally his aristocratic relations used to recount with a shrug of the shoulders, that they had again been obliged to return a letter of this insolent fellow to the place where it came from. Nevertheless they learnt the contents of these letters from a good-natured old aunt: they told of the death of his first child, then of the birth of a boy whom he had called after his grandfather, and while he obstinately kept silence about the happiness or unhappiness of his marriage, he more and more urgently begged for deliverance from the God-forsaken corner of the globe in which he languished and for promotion to a worthier post. Although the only person who read these letters was, with all her pity, unable to help him, he never grew weary of writing. The tone of his letters became year by year more bitter and despairing, and whereas he had at first asked for special favours, he now fiercely demanded the cessation of these hostile intrigues. Perhaps the embittered man was unjust to his relations in making this reproach,--they seemed in no way to concern themselves about him whether to his interest or his injury--, but he really was badly treated, and leaving out the influence of his name, he was not even able to obtain what he might have expected according to the regulations of the service. An excellent judge of exemplary industry, he was forced to continue for years in this Tyrolean wilderness until at length, one day, he was promoted to a judgeship on the Klagenfurth Circuit. But he was not long able to enjoy his improved position: bitter repentance and the struggle with wretchedness had prematurely undermined his strength. He died, soon after his wife, and his last concern on earth was an imploring prayer to his relations to adopt his boy. This prayer would perhaps not have been necessary to secure the orphan that sympathy which his much-to-be-pitied father had in vain sought to obtain for himself. Charles Victor, now fourteen years of age, was carried off in a sort of triumph and brought to Vienna: even the Emperor gratefully remembered the faithful services which this noble house had for centuries rendered to his throne, and he caused its last surviving male to be educated at his expense in the Academy of Maria Theresa. The beautiful, slender boy won the sympathies of his natural guardians by his mere appearance, the serious expression peculiar to his family and his surprising resemblance to his grandfather; excellent gifts, a quiet, steady love of work and a self-contained, manly sweetness of disposition, made him dear to both his masters and his comrades. He was the best scholar at the Academy, and he justified the hopes which he had aroused by the brilliant success of his legal studies. But his eagerness to obtain a knowledge of the world and to see foreign countries was equally great, and the modest fortune left him by his grandfather made the fulfilment of these desires possible. When, being of age, he returned to Austria and entered on his legal duties, it needed no particular insight to prophesy a rapid advancement in his career. In fact after a brief term of office as judge-advocate in the Eastern provinces, he was transferred to Bohemia, and shortly afterwards married a beautiful, proud girl who had been much sought after, a daughter of one of the most important Counts of the Empire. Nobody was surprised that the lucky man had also this good luck, but the marriage remained childless. This only served to unite the stately pair more closely to one another, and this wedded love and the judge's triumphs on the Bench and in the world of letters, sufficed to fully occupy his life. His treatises on criminal law were among the best of the kind, and the practical nature of his judgments obtained for him the reputation of one of the most thorough and sagacious judges of Austria. And so it was more owing to his services than to the influence attached to the name and associations of this remarkable man, that he succeeded in scaling by leaps and bounds that ladder of advancement on the lowest rung of which, his unfortunate father had remained in life-long torture. As early as in his fortieth year he had obtained the important and honourable position of Chief Justice of Bolosch. The stormy times in which he lived served as a good test of his character and abilities. The fierce flames of 1848 had been extinguished and from the ruins rose the exhalation of countless political trials. Those were sad days, making the strongest demands on the independence of a Judge, and many an honest but weak man became the compliant servant of the Authorities. The Chief Justice von Sendlingen, a member of the oldest nobility, bound to the Imperial House by ties of personal gratitude, related by marriage to the leaders of the reaction, was nevertheless not one of the weak and cowardly judges; just as in that stormy year he had boldly confessed his loyalty to the Emperor, so now he showed that Justice was not to be abased to an instrument of political revenge. This boldness was indeed not without danger; his brother-in-law stormed, his wife was in tears; first warnings, then threats, rained in upon him, but he kept his course unmoved, acting as his sense of justice bade him. If those in authority did not actually interfere with him, he owed this entirely to his past services, which had made him almost indispensable. The methods of administering justice were constantly changed, juries were empanelled and then dismissed, the regulations of the Courts were repeatedly altered: everywhere there were cases in arrear, and confusion and uncertainty. The Bolosch Circuit was one of the few exceptions. The Chief Justice remained unmolested by the ministry, and the citizens honoured him as the embodiment of Justice, and lawyers as the ornament of their profession. Respected throughout the whole Empire, he was in his immediate circle the object of almost idolatrous love. And certainly the personal characteristics of this stately and serious man with his almost youthful beauty, were enough to justify this feeling. He was gentle but determined; dignified but affectionate: faithful in the extreme to duty, and yet no stickler for forms. When his wife died suddenly in 1850, the sympathetic love and veneration of all were manifested in the most touching manner. He felt the loss keenly, but only his best friend, Dr. George Berger, learnt how deep was the wound. This Dr. Berger was one of the most respected barristers of the town, and in spite of the difference of their political convictions--Berger was a Radical--he enjoyed an almost fraternal intimacy with Sendlingen. This faithful friend did what he could for the lonely Judge; and his best helper in the work of sympathy was his sense of duty which forbade a weak surrender to sorrow. He gradually became quiet and composed again, and some premature grey hairs at the temples alone showed how exceedingly he had suffered. In the midst of the regular work of his profession--it was in May, 1850--he was surprised by a laconic command from the Minister of Justice ordering him forthwith to surrender the conduct of his Court to the Judge next him in position, von Werner, and to be in Vienna within three days. This news caused general amazement; the reactionary party was growing stronger, and it was thought that this sudden call might mean the commencement of an inquiry into the conduct of this true but independent Judge. He himself was prepared for the worst, but his friend Berger took a more hopeful view; rudeness, he said, had become the fashion again in Vienna, and perhaps something good was in store for him. This supposition proved correct; the Minister wished the assistance of the learned specialist in drawing up a new Statute for the administration of Justice. The Commission of Inquiry, originally called for two months, continued its deliberations till the autumn. It was not till the beginning of November that Sendlingen started for home, having received as a mark of the Minister's gratitude the nomination as Chief Justice of the Higher Court at Pfalicz, a post which he was to enter upon in four months. This was a brilliant and unexampled appointment for one of his years, but the thought of leaving the much-loved circle of his labours made him sorrowful. And this feeling was increased when the citizens testified by a public reception at the station, how greatly they were rejoiced at his return. His lonely dwelling too had been decorated by a friendly hand, as also the Courts of Justice. He found it difficult to announce his departure in answer to the speech of welcome delivered by his Deputy. And indeed his announcement was received with exclamations of regret and amazement, and it was only by degrees that his auditors sufficiently recovered themselves to congratulate their beloved chief. Only one of them did so with a really happy heart, his Deputy, von Werner, an old, industrious if not very gifted official, who now likewise saw a certain hope of promotion. With a pleased smile, the little weazened man followed Sendlingen into his chambers in order to give him an account of the judicial proceedings of the last six months. Herr von Werner was a sworn enemy of all oral reports, and had therefore not only prepared two beautifully drawn-up lists of the civil and criminal trials, but had written a memorial which he now read out by way of introduction. Sendlingen listened patiently to this lengthy document. But when Werner was going to take up the lists with the same intention, the Chief Justice with a pleasant smile anticipated him. "We will look through them together," he said, and began with the criminal list. It contained the name, age and calling of the accused, the date of their gaol-delivery, their crime, as well as the present position of the trial. "There are more arrears than I expected," he said with some surprise. "But the number of crimes has unfortunately greatly increased," objected Herr von Werner, zealously. "Especially the cases of child-murder." "You are right." Sendlingen glanced through the columns specifying the crimes and then remained plunged in deep thought. "The number is nearly double," he resumed. "And it is not only here, but in the whole Empire, that this horrible phenomenon is evident! The Minister of Justice complained of it to me with much concern." "But what else could one expect?" cried old Werner. "This accursed Revolution has undermined all discipline, morals and religion! And then the leniency with which these inhuman women are treated--why it is years since the death-sentence has been carried out in a case of child-murder." "That will unfortunately soon be changed," answered Sendlingen in a troubled tone. "The Minister of Justice thinks as you do, and would like an immediate example to be made. It is unfortunate, I repeat, and not only because, from principle, I am an opponent of the theory of deterring by fear. Of all social evils this can least of all be cured by the hangman. And if it is so rank nowadays, I do not think the reason is to be found where you and His Excellency seek it, but in the sudden impoverishment, the uncertainty of circumstances and the brutality which, everywhere and always, follow upon a great war. The true physicians are the political economist, the priest and the schoolmaster!... Or have you ever perhaps known of a case among educated people?" "Oh certainly!" answered Herr von Werner importantly. "I have, as it happens, to preside to-morrow,--that is to say unless you will take the case--at the conclusion of a trial against a criminal of that class; at least she must be well-educated as she was governess in the house of a Countess. See here--Case No. 19 on the list." He pointed with his finger to the place. Then a dreadful thing happened. Hardly had Sendlingen glanced at the name which Werner indicated, than he uttered a hollow choking cry, a cry of deadly anguish. His face was livid, his features were distorted by an expression of unutterable terror, his eyes started out of their sockets and stared in a sort of fascination at the list before him. "Great Heavens!" cried Werner, himself much alarmed, as he seized his chief's hand. "What is the matter with you? Do you know this girl?" Sendlingen made no reply. He closed his eyes, rested both arms on the table and tried to rise. But his limbs refused to support him, and he sank down in his chair like one in a faint. "Water! Help!" cried Werner, making for the bell. A movement of Sendlingen's stopped him. "It is nothing," he gasped with white lips and parched throat. "An attack of my heart disease. It has lately--become--much worse." "Oh!" cried Werner with genuine sympathy. "I never even suspected this before. Everybody thought you were in the best of health. What do the doctors say?" Again there was no answer. Breathing with difficulty, livid, his head sunk on his breast, his eyes closed, Sendlingen lay back in his chair. And when he raised his eyelids Werner met such a hopeless, despairing look, that the old gentleman involuntarily started back. "May I," he began timidly, "call a doctor----" "No!" Sendlingen's refusal was almost angry. Again he attempted to rise and this time he succeeded. "Thank you," he said feebly. "I must have frightened you. I am better now and shall soon be quite well." "But you are going home?" "Why should I? I will rest in this comfortable chair for half an hour and then, my dear colleague, I shall be quite at your service again." The old gentleman departed but not without hesitation: even he was really attached to Sendlingen. The other officials also received the news of this attack with genuine regret, especially as Werner several times repeated in his important manner: "Any external cause is quite out of the question, gentlemen, quite out of the question. We were just quietly talking about judicial matters. Ah, heart disease is treacherous, gentlemen, very treacherous." Hardly had the door closed, when Sendlingen sank down in his chair, drew the lists towards him and again stared at that particular spot with a look on his face as if his sentence of death was written there. The entry read thus: "Victorine Lippert. Born 25th January 1834 at Radautz in the Bukowina. Governess. Child-murder. Transferred here from the District Court at Gölotz on the 17th June 1852. Confessed. Trial to be concluded 8th November 1852." The column headed "sentence" was still empty. "Death!" he muttered. "Death!" he repeated, loud and shrill, and a shudder ran through his every fibre. He sank back and hid his face which had suddenly become wasted. "O my God!" he groaned. "I dare not let her die--her blood would cry out against me, against me only." And he drew the paper towards him again and stared at the entry, piteously and beseechingly, as though he expected a miracle from Heaven, as though the letters must change beneath the intensity of his gaze. The mid-day bells of the neighbouring cathedral aroused him from his gloomy brooding. He rose, smoothed his disarranged hair, forced on his accustomed look of quiet, and betook himself to Werner's room. "You see," he said. "I have kept my word and am all right again. Are there any pressing matters to be rid of?" "Only one," answered Werner. "The Committee of Discipline has waited your return, as it did not wish to decide an important case without you." "Good, summon the Committee for five o'clock today." He now went the round of the other offices, answered the anxious inquiries with the assurance that he was quite well again, and then went down a long corridor to his own quarters which were in another wing of the large building. His step was still elastic, his face pale but almost cheerful. Not until he had given his servant orders to admit nobody, not even his friend Berger, and until he had bolted his study-door, did he sink down and then give himself up, without restraint, to the fury of a wild, despairing agony. CHAPTER II. For an hour or more the unhappy man lay groaning, and writhing like a worm under the intensity of his wretchedness. Then he rose and with unsteady gait went to his secretaire, and began to rummage in the secret drawers of the old-fashioned piece of furniture. "I no longer remember where it is," he muttered to himself. "It is long since I thought of the old story--but God has not forgotten it." At length he discovered what he was looking for: a small packet of letters grown yellow with time. As he unloosed the string which tied them, a small watercolour portrait in a narrow silver frame fell out: it depicted the gentle, sweet features of a young, fair, grey-eyed girl. His eyes grew moist as he looked at it, and bitter tears suddenly coursed down his cheeks. He then unfolded the papers and began to read: they were long letters, except the last but one which filled no more than two small sheets. This he read with the greatest attention of all, read and re-read it with ever-increasing emotion. "And I could resist such words!" he murmured. "Oh wretched man that I am." Then he opened the last of the letters. "You evidently did not yourself expect that I would take your gift," he read out in an undertone. And then: "I do not curse you; on the contrary, I ardently hope that you may at least not have given me up in vain." He folded the letters and tied them up. Then he undid them again and buried himself once more in their melancholy contents. A knock at the door interrupted him: his housekeeper announced that dinner was ready. This housekeeper was an honest, elderly spinster, Fräulein Brigitta, whom he usually treated with the greatest consideration. To-day he only answered her with a curt, impatient, "Presently!" and he vouchsafed no lengthier reply to her question how he was. But then he remembered some one else. "I must not fall ill," he said. "I must keep up my strength. I shall need it all!" And after he had locked up the letters, he went to the dining-room. He forced himself to take two or three spoonfuls of soup, and hastily emptied a glass of old Rhine-wine. His man-servant, Franz, likewise a faithful old soul, replenished it, but hesitatingly and with averted countenance. "Where is Fräulein Brigitta?" asked Sendlingen. "Crying!" growled the old man. "Hasn't got used to the new state of things! Nor have I! Nice conduct, my lord! We arrive in the morning ill, we say nothing to an old and faithful servant, we go straight into the Courts. There we fall down several times; we send for no doctor, but writhe alone in pain like a wounded stag." The faithful old fellow's eyes were wet. "I am quite well again, Franz," said Sendlingen re-assuringly. "We were groaning!" said the old man in a tone of the bitterest reproach. "And since when have we declined to admit Herr Berger?" "Has he been here?" "Yes, on most important business, and would not believe that we ourselves had ordered him to be turned away.... And now we are eating nothing," he continued vehemently, as Sendlingen pushed his plate from him and rose. "My Lord, what does this mean! We look as if we had seen a ghost!" "No, only an old grumbler!" He intended this for an airy pleasantry but its success was poor. "Do not be too angry with me." Then he returned to his chambers. "The old fellow is right," he thought. "It was a ghost, a very ancient ghost, and its name is Nemesis!" His eyes fell on the large calendar on the door: "7th November 1852" he read aloud. "A day like every other--and yet ..." Then he passed his hand over his brow as if trying to recall who he was, and rang the bell. "Get me," he said to the clerk who entered, "the documents relating to the next three criminal trials." He stepped to the window and awaited the clerk's return with apparent calm. He had not long to wait; the clerk entered and laid two goodly bundles of papers on the table. "I have to inform you, my lord," said the clerk standing at attention (he had been a soldier), "that only the papers relating to the trials of the 9th and 10th November are in the Court-house. Those for tomorrow's trial of Victorine Lippert for child-murder are still in the hands of Counsel for the accused, Dr. George Berger." Sendlingen started. "Did the accused choose her Counsel?" "No, my lord, she refused any defence because she is, so to speak, a poor despairing creature who would prefer to die. Herr von Werner therefore, ex-officio, allotted her Dr. Kraushoffer as Counsel, and, when he became ill, Dr. Berger. Dr. Kraushoffer was only taken ill the day before yesterday and therefore Dr. Berger has been allowed to keep the papers till tomorrow morning early. Does your Lordship desire that I should ask him for them?" "No. That will do." He went back to the niche by the window. "A poor creature who would prefer to die!" he said slowly and gloomily. Frightful images thronged into his mind, but the poor worn brain could no longer grasp any clear idea. He began to pace up and down his room rapidly, almost staggering as he went. "Night! night!" he groaned: he felt as if he were wandering aimlessly in pitchy darkness, while every pulsation of lost time might involve the sacrifice of a human life. Then his face brightened again, it seemed a good omen that Berger was defending the girl: he knew his friend to be the most conscientious barrister on the circuit. "And if I were to tell him fully what she is to me--" But he left the sentence unfinished and shook his head. "I could not get the words out," he murmured looking round quite scared, "not even to him!" "And why should I?" he then thought. "Berger will in any case, from his own love of justice, do all that is in his power." But what result was to be expected? The old judges, unaccustomed to speeches, regarded the concluding proceedings rather as a formality, and decided on their verdict from the documents, whatever Counsel might say. It depended entirely on their opinion and what Werner thought of the crime he had explained a few hours ago! And even if before that he had been of another opinion, now that he knew the opinion of the Minister of Justice.... "Fool that I am," said Sendlingen between his teeth, "it was I who told him!" Again he looked half-maddened by his anguish and wandered about the room wringing his hands. Suddenly he stopped. His face grew more livid, his brows contracted in a dark frown, his lips were tightly pressed together. A new idea had apparently occurred to him, a dark uncanny inspiration, against which he was struggling but which returned again and again, and took possession of him. "That would be salvation," he muttered. "If to-morrow's sentence is only for a short term of imprisonment, the higher Court would never increase it to a sentence of death!" He paced slowly to the window, his head bowed as if the weight of that thought lay upon his neck like a material burden, and stared out into the street. The early shades of the autumn evening were falling; on the other side of a window in a building opposite, a young woman entered with a lamp for her husband. She placed it on his work-table, and lightly touched his hair with her lips. Sendlingen saw it plainly, he could distinguish every piece of furniture in the room and also the features of the couple, and as he knew them, he involuntarily whispered their names. But his brain unceasingly continued to spin that dark web, and at times his thoughts escaped him in a low whisper. "What is there to prevent me? Nobody knows my relationship to her and she herself has no suspicion. I am entitled to it, and it would arouse no suspicion. Certainly it would be difficult, it would be a horrible time, but how much depends on me!" "Wretch!" he suddenly cried, in a hard, hoarse voice. "The world does not know your relationship, but you know it! What you intend is a crime, it is against justice and law!" "Oh my God!" he groaned: "Help me! Enlighten my poor brain! Would it not be the lesser crime if I were to save her by dishonourable means, than if I were to stand by with folded arms and see her delivered to the hangman! Can this be against Thy will, Thou who art a God of love and mercy? Can my honour be more sacred than her life?" He sank back and buried his face in his hands. "But it does not concern my honour alone," he said. "It would be a crime against Justice, against the most sacred thing on earth! O my God, have mercy upon me!" While he lay there in the dark irresolute, his body a prey to fever, his soul torn by worse paroxysms, he heard first of all a gentle, then a louder knocking at the door. At length it was opened. "My Lord!" said a loud voice: it was Herr von Werner. "Here I am," quickly answered Sendlingen rising. "In the dark?" asked old Werner with astonishment. "I thought perhaps you had forgotten the appointment--it is five o'clock and the members of the Committee of Discipline are waiting for us. Has your indisposition perhaps returned?" "No! I was merely sitting in deep thought and forgot to light the candles. Come, I am quite ready." "Will you allow me a question?" asked Werner, stepping forward as far as the light which streamed in from the corridor. "In fact it is a request. The clerk told me that you had been asking to see the documents relating to to-morrow's trial. Would you perhaps like to preside at it?" Sendlingen did not answer at once. "I am not posted up in the matter," he at length said with uncertain voice. "The case is very simple and a glance at the deed of accusation would sufficiently inform you. In fact I took the liberty of asking this question in order to have the documents fetched at once from Herr Berger. I myself--hm, my daughter, the wife of the finance counsellor, is in fact expecting, as I just learn, tomorrow for the first time--hm,--a happy event. It is natural that I should none the less be at the disposal of the Court, but--hm,--trusting to your official goodnature----" Sendlingen had supported himself firmly against the back of the chair. His pulses leapt and his voice trembled as he answered: "I will take the case." Then both the men started for the Court. When they came out into the full light of the corridor, Werner looked anxiously at his chief. "But indeed you are still very white!" he cried. "And your face has quite a strange expression. You appear to be seriously unwell, and I have just asked you----" "It is nothing!" interrupted Sendlingen impatiently. "Whom does our present transaction relate to?" "You will be sorry to hear of it," was the answer, "I know that you too had the best opinion of the young man. It relates to Herbich, an assistant at the Board of Trade office: he has unfortunately been guilty of a gross misuse of his official position." "Oh--in what way?" "Money matters," answered Werner cursorily, and he beckoned to a messenger and sent him to Berger's. They then entered the Court where the three eldest Judges were already waiting for them. The Chief Justice opened the sitting and called for a report of the case to be read. It was different from what one would have expected from Werner's intimation: Herbich had not become a criminal through greed of gain. His mother, an old widow, had, on his advice, lent her slender fortune which was to have served as her only daughter's dowry, to a friend of his, a young merchant of excellent reputation. Without any one suspecting it, this honourable man had through necessity gradually become bankrupt, and when Herbich one morning entered his office at the Board of Trade, he found the manager of a factory there who, to his alarm, demanded a decree summoning a meeting of his friend's creditors. Instead of fulfilling this in accordance with the duties of his office, he hurried to the merchant and induced him by piteous prayers to return the loan on the spot. Not till then did he go back to the office and draw up the necessary document. By the inquiries of other creditors whose fractional share had been diminished by this, the matter came to light. Herbich was suspended, though left at liberty. There was no permanent loss to the creditors, as the sister had in the meantime returned the whole of the amount to the administrator of the estate. The report recommended that the full severity of the law should take effect, and that the young man should not only be deprived of his position, but should forthwith be handed over to justice. Sendlingen had listened to the lengthy report motionless. Only once had he risen, to arrange the lampshade so that his face remained in complete shadow. Then he asked whether the committee would examine the accused. It was in no way bound to do so, though entitled to, and therefore Herbich had been instructed to hold himself in waiting at the Court at the hour of the inquiry. The conductor of the inquiry was opposed to any examination. Not so Baron Dernegg, one of the Judges, a comfortable looking man with a broad, kindly face. It seemed to him, he explained, that the examination was a necessity, as in this way alone could the motives of the act be brought fully to light. The Committee was equally divided on the subject: the casting vote therefore lay with Sendlingen. He hesitated a long while, but at length said with a choking voice: "It seems to me, too, that it would be humane and just to hear the unfortunate man." Herbich entered. His white, grief-worn face flushed crimson as he saw the Judges, and his gait was so unsteady that Baron Dernegg compassionately motioned him to sit down. The trembling wretch supported himself on the back of a chair as he began laboriously, and almost stutteringly, to reply to the Chief Justice's question as to what he had to say in his defence. He told of his intimate friendship with the merchant and how it was entirely his own doing that the loan had been made. When he came to speak of his offence his voice failed him until at length he blurted out almost sobbing: "No words can express how I felt then!... My sister had recently been betrothed to an officer. The money was to have served as the guarantee required by the war-office; if it was lost the wedding could not take place and the life's happiness of the poor girl would have been destroyed. I did not think of the criminality of what I was doing. I only followed the voice of my heart which cried out: 'Your sister must not be made unhappy through your fault!' My friend's resistance first made me conscious of what I had begun to do! I sought to reassure him and myself by sophisms, pointing out how insignificant the sum was compared with his other debts, and that any other creditor would have taken advantage of making the discovery at the last moment. I seemed to have convinced him, but, as for myself, I went away with the consciousness of being a criminal." He stopped, but as he continued his voice grew stronger and more composed. "A criminal certainly! But my conscience tells me that of two crimes I chose the lesser. But to no purpose: the thing came out; my sister sacrificed her money and her happiness. I look upon my act now as I did then. Happy is the man who is spared a conflict between two duties, whose heart is not rent, whose honour destroyed, as mine has been; but if he were visited as I was, he would act as I acted if he were a man at all! And now I await your verdict, for what I have left to say, namely what I once was, you know as well as I do!" A deep silence followed these words. It was for Sendlingen to break it either by another question or by dismissing the accused. He, however, was staring silently into space like one lost to his surroundings. At length he murmured: "You may go." The discussion among the Judges then began and was hotly carried on, as two opposite views were sharply outlined. Baron Dernegg and the fourth Judge were in favour of simple dismissal without any further punishment, while the promoter, supported by Werner, was in favour of his original proposition. The matter had become generally known, he contended, and therefore the dignity of Justice demanded a conspicuous satisfaction for the outraged law. The decision again rested with Sendlingen, but it seemed difficult for him to pronounce it. "It is desirable, gentlemen," he said, "that your verdict should be unanimous. Perhaps you will agree more easily in an informal discussion. I raise the formal sitting for a few minutes." But he himself took no part in their discussion, but stepped to the window. He pressed his burning forehead against the cool glass: his face again wore that expression of torturing uncertainty. But gradually his features grew composed and assumed a look of quiet resolve. When Werner approached and informed him that both parties still adhered obstinately to their own opinion, he stepped back to the table and said in a loud, calm voice: "I cast my vote for the opinion of Baron Dernegg. The dignity of Justice does not, in my opinion, require to be vindicated only by excessive severity; dismissal from office and ruin for life are surely sufficient punishment for a fatal _error_." Werner in spite of his boundless respect for superiors, could not suppress a movement of surprise. Sendlingen noticed it. "An error!" he repeated emphatically. "Whoever can put himself in the place of this unfortunate man, whoever can comprehend the struggles of his soul, must see that, according to his own ideas, he had indeed to choose between two crimes. His error was to consider that the lesser crime which in reality was the greater. I have never been a blind partisan of the maxim: 'Fiat justitia et pereat mundus,'--but I certainly do consider it a sacred matter that every Judge should act according to law and duty, even if he should break his heart in doing so! However, I repeat, it was an error, and therefore it seems to me that the milder of the two opinions enforces sufficient atonement." Then he went up to Werner. "Forgive me," he said, "if I withdraw my promise in regard to tomorrow's trial. I am really not well enough to preside." "Oh! please--hm!--well if it must be so." "It must be so," said Sendlingen, kindly but resolutely. "Good evening, gentlemen." CHAPTER III. Sendlingen went to his own quarters; his old manservant let him in and followed him with anxious looks into his study. "You may go, Franz!" he said shortly and sharply. "I am not at home to anybody." "And should Dr. Berger?" "Berger?" He shook his head decidedly. Then he seemed to remember some one else. "I will see him," he said, drawing a deep breath. The old man went out hesitatingly: Sendlingen was alone. But after a few minutes the voice of his friend was audible in the lobby, and Berger entered with a formidable bundle of documents under his arm. "Well, how goes it now?" cried the portly man, still standing in the doorway. "Better, certainly, as you are going to preside to-morrow. Here are the papers." He laid the bundle on the table and grasped Sendlingen's outstretched hand. "A mill-stone was rolled from my neck when the messenger came. In the first place, I knew you were better again, and secondly the chief object of my visit at noon to-day was attained without my own intervention." "Did you come on that account?" "Yes, Victor,--and not merely to greet you." The advocate's broad, open face grew very serious. "I wanted to draw your attention to to-morrow's trial, not only from motives of pity for the unfortunate girl, but also in the interests of Justice. Old Werner, who gets more and more impressed with the idea that he is combating the Revolution in every case of child-murder, is not the right Judge for this girl. 'There are cases,' once wrote an authority on criminal law, 'where a sentence of death accords with the letter of the law, but almost amounts to judicial murder.' I hope you will let this authority weigh with you, though you yourself are he. Now then, if Werner is put in a position to-morrow to carry out the practice to which he has accustomed himself in the last few weeks, we shall have one of these frightful cases." Sendlingen made no reply. His limbs seemed to grow rigid and the beating of his heart threatened to stop. "How--how does the case stand?" he at length blurted out hoarsely and with great effort. "Your voice is hoarse," remarked Berger innocently. "You must have caught cold on the journey. Well, as to the case." He settled himself comfortably in his chair. "It is only one of the usual, sad stories, but it moved me profoundly after I had seen and spoken to the poor wretch. Victorine Lippert is herself an illegitimate child and has never found out who her father was; even after her mother's death no hint of it was found among her possessions. As she was born in Radautz, a small town in the Bukowina, and as her mother was governess in the house of a Boyar, it is probable that she was seduced by one of these half-savages or perhaps even a victim to violence. I incline to the latter belief, because Hermine Lippert's subsequent mode of life and touching care for her child, are against the surmise that she was of thoughtless disposition. She settled in a small town in Styria and made a scanty living by music lessons. Forced by necessity, she hazarded the pious fraud of passing as a widow,--otherwise she and her child must have starved. After eight years a mere chance disclosed the deception and put an end to her life in the town. She was obliged to leave, but obtained a situation as companion to a kind-hearted lady in Buda-Pesth, and being now no longer able to keep her little daughter with her, she had her brought up at a school in Gratz. Mother and child saw one another only once a year, but kept up a most affectionate correspondence. Victorine was diligent in her studies, grave and accomplished beyond her years, and justified the hope that she would one day earn a livelihood by her abilities. This sad necessity came soon enough. She lost her mother when she was barely fifteen: the Hungarian lady paid her school fees for a short time, and then the orphan had to help herself. Her excellent testimonials procured her the post of governess in the family of the widowed Countess Riesner-Graskowitz at Graskowitz near Golotz. She had the charge of two small nieces of the Countess and was patient in her duties, in spite of the hardness of a harsh and utterly avaricious woman. In June of last year, her only son, Count Henry, came home for a lengthy visit." Sendlingen sighed deeply and raised his hand. "You divine the rest?" asked Berger. "And indeed it is not difficult to do so! The young man had just concluded his initiation into the diplomatic service at our Embassy in Paris, and was to have gone on to Munich in September as attaché. Naturally he felt bored in the lonely castle, and just as naturally he sought to banish his boredom by trying to seduce the wondrously beautiful, girlish governess. He heaped upon her letters full of glowing protestations--I mean to read some specimens to-morrow, and amongst them a valid promise of marriage--and the girl of seventeen was easily fooled. She liked the handsome, well-dressed fellow, believed in his love as a divine revelation and trusted in his oaths. You will spare me details, I fancy; this sort of thing has often happened." "Often happened!" repeated Sendlingen mechanically, passing his hand over his eyes and forehead. "Well to be brief! When the noble Count Henry saw that the girl was going to become a mother before she herself had any suspicion of it, he determined to entirely avoid any unpleasantness with his formidable mother, and had himself sent to St. Petersburg. Meantime a good-natured servant girl had explained her condition to the poor wretch and had faithfully comforted her in her boundless anguish of mind, and helped her to avoid discovery. Her piteous prayers to her lover remained unanswered. At length there came a letter--and this, too, I shall read to-morrow--in which the scoundrel forbade any further molestation and even threatened the law. And now picture the girl's despair when, almost at the same time, the countess discovered her secret,--whether by chance or by a letter of the brave count, is still uncertain. Certainly less from moral indignation than from fear of the expense, this noble lady was now guilty of the shocking brutality of having the poor creature driven out into the night by the men-servants of the house! It was a dark, cold, wet night in April: shaken with fever and weary to death, the poor wretch dragged herself towards the nearest village. She did not reach it; halfway, in a wood, some peasants from Graskowitz found her the next morning, unconscious. Beside her lay her dead, her murdered child." Sendlingen groaned and buried his face in his hands. "Her fate moves you?" asked Berger. "It is certainly piteous enough! The men brought her to the village and informed the police at Golotz. The preliminary examination took place the next day. It could only establish that the child had been strangled; it was impossible to take the depositions of the murderess: she was in the wildest delirium, and the prison-doctor expected her to die. But Fate," Berger rose and his voice trembled--"Fate was not so merciful. She recovered, and was sent first to Golotz and then brought here. She admitted that in the solitude of that dreadful night, overcome by her pains, forsaken of God and man, she formed the resolve to kill herself and the child--when and how she did the deed she could not say. I am persuaded that this is no lie, and I believe her affirmation that it was only unconsciousness that prevented her suicide. Doesn't that appear probable to you too?" Sendlingen did not answer. "Probable," he at length muttered, "highly probable!" Berger nodded. "Thus much," he continued, "is recorded in the judicial documents, and as all this is certainly enough to arouse sympathy, I went to see her as soon as the defence was allotted to me. Since that I have learnt more. I have learnt that a true and noble nature has been wrecked by the baseness of man. She must have been not only fascinatingly beautiful, but a character of unusual depth and purity. One can still see it, just as fragments of china enable us to guess the former beauty of a work of art. For this vessel is broken in pieces, and her one prayer to me was: not to hinder the sentence of death!... But I cannot grant this prayer," he concluded. "She must not die, were it only for Justice's sake! And a load is taken off my heart to think that a human being is to preside at the trial to-morrow, and not a rhetoric machine!" He had spoken with increasing warmth, and with a conviction of spirit which this quiet, and indeed temperate man, seldom evinced. His own emotion prevented him from noticing how peculiar was his friend's demeanour. Sendlingen sat there for a while motionless, his face still covered with his hands, and when he at length let them fall, he bowed his head so low that his forehead rested on the edge of the writing-table. In this position he at last blurted forth: "I cannot preside to-morrow." "Why not?" asked Berger in astonishment. "Are you really ill?" And as he gently raised his friend's head and looked into his worn face he cried out anxiously: "Why of course--you are in a fever." Sendlingen shook his head. "I am quite well, George! But even if it cost me my life, I would not hand over this girl to the tender mercies of others, if only I dared. But I dare not!" "You _dare_ not!" "The law forbids it!" "The law? You are raving!" "No! no!" cried the unhappy man springing up. "I would that I were either mad or dead, but such is not my good fortune! The law forbids it, for a father----" "Victor!" "Everything tallies, everything! The mother's name--the place--the year of birth--and her name is Victorine." "Oh my God! She is your----" "My daughter," cried the unfortunate wretch in piercing tones and then quite broke down. Berger stood still for an instant as if paralysed by pity and amazement! Then he hurried to his friend, raised him and placed him in his arm-chair. "Keep calm!" he murmured. "Oh! it is frightful!... Take courage!... The poor child!" He was himself as if crushed by the weight of this terrible discovery. Breathing heavily, Sendlingen lay there, his breast heaving convulsively; then he began to sob gently; far more piteously than words or tears, did these despairing, painfully subdued groans betray how exceedingly he suffered. Berger stood before him helplessly; he could think of no fitting words of comfort, and he knew that whatever he could say would be said in vain. The door was suddenly opened loudly and noisily; old Franz had heard the bitter lamenting and could no longer rest in the lobby. "My Lord!" he screamed, darting to the sufferer. "My dear good master." "Begone!" Sendlingen raised himself hastily. "Go, Franz--I beg!" he repeated, more gently. But Franz did not budge. "We are in pain," he muttered, "and Fräulein Brigitta may not come in and I am sent away! What else is Franz in the world for?" He did not go until Berger by entreaties and gentle force pushed him out of the door. Sendlingen nodded gratefully to his friend. "Sit here," he said, pointing to a chair near his own. "Closer still--so! You must know all, if only for her sake! You shall have no shred of doubt as to whom you are defending to-morrow, and perhaps you may discover the expedient for which I have racked my brain in vain. And indeed I desire it on my own account. Since the moment I discovered it I feel as if I had lost everything. Everything--even myself! You are one of the most upright men I know; you shall judge me, George, and in the same way that you will defend this poor girl, with your noble heart and clear head. Perhaps you will decide that some other course is opened to me beside----" He stopped and cast a timid glance at a small neat case that lay on his writing-table. Berger knew that it contained a revolver. "Victor!" he cried angrily and almost revolted. "Oh, if you knew what I suffer! But you are right, it would be contemptible. I dare not think of myself. I dare not slink out of the world. I have a duty to my child. I have neglected it long enough,--I must hold on now and pay my debt. Ah! how I felt only this morning, and now everything lies around me shivered to atoms. Forgive me, my poor brain can still form no clear thought! But--I will--I must. Listen, I will tell you, as if you were the Eternal Judge Himself, how everything came about." CHAPTER IV. After a pause he began: "I must first of all speak of myself and what I was like in those days. You have only known me for ten years: of my parents, of my childhood, you know scarcely anything. Mine was a frightful childhood, more full of venom and misery than a man can often have been condemned to endure. My parents' marriage--it was hell upon earth, George! In our profession we get to know many fearful things, but I have hardly since come across anything like it. How they came to be married, you know,--all the world knows. I am convinced that they never loved one another; her beauty pleased his senses, and his condescension may have flattered her. No matter! from the moment that they were indissolubly bound, they hated one another. It is difficult to decide with whom the fault began; perhaps it lay first of all at my father's door. Perhaps the common, low-born woman would have been grateful to him for having made her a Baroness and raised her to a higher rank in life, if only he had vouchsafed her a little patience and love. But he could not do that, he hated her as the cause of his misfortune, and she repaid him ten-fold in insult and abuse, and in holding him up, humbled enough already, to the derision and gossip of the little town. "Betwixt these two people I grew up. I should have soon got to know the terms they were on even if they had striven anxiously to conceal them, but that they did not do. Or rather: he attempted to do so, and that was quite sufficient reason for her to drag me designedly into their quarrels, for she knew that this was a weapon wherewith to wound him deeply. And when she saw that he idolized me as any poor wretch does the last hope and joy that fate has left him, she hated me. On that account and on that account alone, she knew that every scolding, every blow, she gave me, cut him to the quick. No wonder that I hated and feared her, as much as I loved and honoured my father. "What he had done I already accurately knew by the time I was a boy of six: he had married out of his rank and a Sendlingen might not do that! For doing so his father had disowned him, for doing so he had to go through life in trouble and misery, in a paltry hole and corner where the people mocked at his misfortune. My mother was our curse!--Oh, how I hated her for this, how by every fresh ill-usage at her hands, my heart was more and more filled with bitter rancour. "You shudder, George?" he said stopping in his story. "This glimpse into a child's soul makes you tremble? Well--it is the truth, and you shall hear everything that happened. "If I did not become wicked, I have to thank my father for it. I was diligent because it gave him pleasure. I was kind and attentive to people because he commanded it. He was often ill; what would have become of me if I had lost him then and grown up under my mother's scourge, I dare not think. I was spared this greatest evil: his protecting hand continued to be stretched out over me, and when we moved to Klagenfurth he began to live again. The intercourse with educated people revived him and he was once more full of hope and endeavour. My mother now began to be ill and a few months after our arrival she died. We neither of us rejoiced at her death, but what we felt as we stood by her open coffin was a sort of silent horror. "And now came more happy days, but they did not last long. Mental torture had destroyed my father's vitality, and the rough mountain-climate had injured his lungs. The mild air of the plain seemed to restore him for a time, but then the treacherous disease broke out in all its virulence. He did not deceive himself about his condition, but he tried to confirm me in hope and succeeded in doing so. When, after a melancholy winter, in the first days of spring, his cough was easier and his cheeks took colour, I, like a thoughtless boy, shouted for joy,--he however knew that it was the bloom of death. "And he acted accordingly. One May morning--I had just completed my fourteenth year--he came to my bed-side very early and told me to dress myself with all speed. 'We are going for an excursion,' he said. There was a carriage at the door. We drove through the slumbering town and towards the Wörther-see. It was a lovely morning, and my father was so affectionate--it seemed to me the happiest hour I had ever had! When we got to Maria Wörth, the carriage turned off from the lake-side and we proceeded towards the Tauer Mountains through a rocky valley, until we stopped at the foot of a hill crowned with a ruin. Slowly we climbed up the weed-grown path; every step cost the poor invalid effort and pain, but when I tried to dissuade him he only shook his head. 'It must be so!' he said, with a peculiarly earnest look. At length we reached the top. Of the old building, little remained standing except the outer walls and an arched gateway. 'Look up yonder,' he said, solemnly. 'Do you recognize that coat of arms?' It consisted of two swords and a St. Andrew's cross with stars in the field." "Your arms?" asked Berger. Sendlingen nodded. "They were the ruins of Sendlingen Castle, once our chief possession on Austrian soil. My father told me this, and began to recount old stories, how our ancestor was a cousin of Kaiser Conrad and had been a potentate of the Empire, holding lands in Franconia and Suabia, and how his grandson, a friend of one of the Hapsburgs, had come to Carinthia and there won fresh glory for the old arms. It was a beautiful and affecting moment,--at our feet the wild, lonely landscape, dreamily beautiful in the blue atmosphere of a spring day, no sound around us save the gentle murmur of the wind in the wild elder-trees, and with all this the tones of his earnest, enthusiastic voice. My father had never before spoken as he did then, and while he spoke, there rose before my eyes with palpable clearness the long line of honourable nobles who had all gloriously borne first the sword and then the ermine, and the more familiar their age and their names became, the higher beat my heart, the prouder were my thoughts and every thought was a vow to follow in their footsteps. "My father may have guessed what was passing in my heart, he drew me tenderly to him, and as he told me of his own father, the first judge and nobleman of the land, tears started from his eyes. 'He was the last Sendlingen worthy of the name,' he concluded, 'the last!' "'Father,' I sobbed, 'whatever I can and may do will be done, but you too will now have a better fate.' "'I!' he broke in, 'I have lived miserably and shall die miserably! But I will not complain of my fate, if it serves as a warning to you. Listen to me, Victor, my life may be reckoned by weeks, perhaps by days, but if I know my cousins aright, they will not let you stand alone after my death. They will not forget that you are a Sendlingen, so long as you don't forget it yourself. And in order that you may continue mindful of it, I have brought you hither before I die! Unhappy children mature early; you have been in spite of all my love, a very unhappy child, Victor, and you have long since known exactly why my life went to pieces. Swear to me to keep this in mind and that you will be strict and honourable in your conduct, as a Sendlingen is in duty bound to be.' "'I swear it!' I exclaimed amid my tears. "'One thing more!' he continued, 'I must tell you, although you are still a boy, but I have short time to stay and better now than not at all! It is with regard to women. You will resist my temptations, I am sure. But if you meet a woman who is noble and good but yet not of your own rank, and if your heart is drawn to her, imperiously, irresistibly, so that it seems as if it would burst and break within your breast unless you win her, then fly from her, for no blessing can come of it but only curses for you both. Curses and remorse, Victor--believe your father who knows the world as it is.... Swear to me that you will never marry out of your rank!' "'I swear it!' I repeated. "'Well and good,' he said solemnly. 'Now I have fulfilled my duty and am ready ... let us go, Victor.' "He was going to rise, but he had taxed his wasted lungs beyond their strength: he sank back and a stream of blood gushed from his lips. It was a frightful moment. There I stood, paralysed with fear, helpless, senseless, beside the bleeding man--and when I called for help, there was not a soul to hear me in that deep solitude. I had to look on while the blood gushed forth until my father utterly broke down. I thought he was dead but he had only fainted. A shepherd heard the cry with which I threw myself down beside him, he fetched the driver, they got us into the carriage and then to Klagenfurth. Two days later my poor father died." He stopped and closed his eyes, then drew a deep breath and continued: "You know what became of me afterwards. My dying father was not deceived in his confidence: the innocent boy, the last of the Sendlingens, was suddenly overwhelmed with favours and kindness. It was strange how this affected me, neither moving me, nor exalting, nor humbling me. Whatever kindness was done me, I received as my just due; it was not done to me, but to my race in requital for their services, and I had to make a return by showing myself worthy of that race. All my actions were rooted in this pride of family: seldom surely has a descendant of princes been more mightily possessed of it. If I strove with almost superhuman effort to fulfil all the hopes that were set on me at school, if I pitilessly suppressed every evil or low stirring of the heart, I owe it to this pride in my family: the Sendlingen had always been strong in knowledge, strict to themselves, just and good to others,--_must_ I not be the same? And if duty at times seemed too hard, my father's bitter fate rose before me like a terrifying spectre, and his white face of suffering was there as a pathetic admonition--both spurring me onward. But the same instinct too preserved me from all exultation now that praise and honour were flowing in upon me; it might be a merit for ordinary men to distinguish themselves, with a Sendlingen it was a duty! "And so I continued all those years, first at school, then at the University, moderate, but a good companion, serious but not averse to innocent pleasures. I had a liking for the arts, I was foremost in the ball-room and in the Students' Réunions,--in one thing only I kept out of the run of pleasure: I had never had a love-affair. My father's warning terrified me, and so did that old saying: 'A Sendlingen can never be a scoundrel!' And however much travelling changed my views in the next few years, in this one thing I continued true to myself. Certainly this cost me no great struggle. Many a girl whom I had met in the society I frequented appeared lovable enough, but I had not fallen in love with any, much less with a girl not of my own rank, of whom I hardly knew even one. "So I passed in this respect as an exemplary young man, too exemplary, some thought, and perhaps not without reason. But whoever had taken me at the time I entered upon my legal career, for an unfeeling calculator with a list of the competitors to be outstripped at all costs, in the place where other people carry a palpitating heart, would have done me a great injustice. I was ambitious, I strove for special promotion, not by shifts and wiles, but by special merit. And as to my heart,--oh! George, how soon I was to know what heart-ache was, and bliss and intoxication, and love and damnation!" He rose, opened his writing-table, and felt for the secret drawer. But he did not open it; he shook his head and withdrew his hand. "It would be of no use," he murmured, and remained for awhile silently brooding. "That was in the beginning of your career?" said Berger, to recall him. "Yes," he answered. "It was more than twenty years ago, in the winter of 1832. I had just finished my year of probation at Lemburg under the eyes of the nearest and most affectionate of my relations, Count Warnberg, who was second in position among the judges there. He was an uncle, husband of my father's only sister. He had evinced the most cruel hardness to his brother-in-law, to me he became a second father. At his suggestion and in accordance with my own wish, I was promoted to be criminal Judge in the district of Suczawa. The post was considered one of the worst in the circuit, both my uncle and I thought it the best thing for me, because it was possible here within a very short time, to give conclusive proof of my ability. Such opportunities, however, were more abundant than the most zealous could desire: in those days there prevailed in the southern border-lands of the Bukowina, such a state of things as now exists only in the Balkan Provinces or in Albania. It was perhaps the most wretched post in the whole Empire, and in all other respects exceptionally difficult. The ancient town, once the capital of the Moldavian Princes, was at that time a mere confusion of crumbling ruins and poverty-stricken mud-cabins crowded with dirty, half-brutalized Roumanians, Jews and Armenians. Moreover my only colleague in the place was the civil judge, a ruined man, whom I had never seen sober. My only alternative therefore was either to live like an anchorite, or to go about among the aristocracy of the neighborhood. "When I got to know these noble Boyars, the most educated of them ten times more ignorant, the most refined ten times more coarse, the most civilized ten times more unbridled than the most ignorant, the coarsest and the most unbridled squireen of the West, I had no difficulty in choosing: I buried myself in my books and papers. But man is a gregarious animal--and I was so young and spoiled, and so much in need of distraction from the comfortless impressions of the day, that I grew weary after a few weeks and began to accept invitations. The entertainments were always the same: first there was inordinate eating, then inordinate drinking, and then they played hazard till all hours. As I remained sober and never touched a card, I was soon voted a wearisome, insupportable bore. Even the ladies were of this opinion, for I neither made pretty speeches, nor would I understand the looks with which they sometimes favoured me. That I none the less received daily invitations was not to be wondered at; a real live Baron of the Empire was, whatever he might be, a rare ornament for their 'salons,' and to many of these worthy noblemen it seemed desirable in any case to be on a good footing with the Criminal Judge. "One of them had particular reason for this, Alexander von Mirescul, a Roumanianised Greek; his property lay close to the Moldavian frontier and passed for the head-quarters of the trade in tobacco smuggling. He was not to be found out, and when I saw him for the first time, I realized that that would be a difficult business; the little man with his yellow, unctuous face seemed as if he consisted not of flesh and bone, but of condensed oil. It was in his voice and manner. He was manifestly much better educated and better mannered than the rest, as he was also much more cunning and contemptible. I did not get rid of this first impression for a long while, but at length he managed to get me into his house; I gradually became more favourable to him as he was, in one respect at least, an agreeable exception; he was a tolerably educated man, his daughters were being brought up by a German governess and he had a library of German books which he really read. I had such a longing for the atmosphere of an educated household that one evening I went to see him. "This evening influenced years of my life, or rather, as I have learnt to-day, my whole life. I am no liar, George, and no fanciful dreamer, it is the literal truth: I loved this girl from the first instant that I beheld her." Berger looked up in astonishment. "From the first instant," Sendlingen repeated, and he struggled with all speed through his next words. "I entered, Mirescul welcomed me: my eye swept over black and grey heads, over well-known, sharp-featured, olive-faces. Only one was unknown to me: the face of an exquisitely beautiful girl encircled by heavy, silver-blond, plaited hair. Her slender, supple figure was turned away from me, I could only see her profile; it was not quite regular, the forehead was too high, the chin too peculiarly prominent; I saw all that, and yet I seemed as if I had never seen a girl more beautiful and my heart began to beat passionately. I had to tear my looks away, and talk to the lady of the house, but then I stared again, as if possessed, at the beautiful, white unknown who stood shyly in a corner gazing out into the night. 'Our governess, Fräulein Lippert,' said Frau von Mirescul, quietly smiling as she followed the direction of my looks. "'I know,' I answered nervously, almost impatiently; I had guessed that at once. Frau von Mirescul looked at me with astonishment, but I had risen and hurried over to the lonely girl: one of the most insolent of the company, the little bald Popowicz, had approached her. I was, afraid that he might wound her by some insulting speech. How should this poor, pale, timorous child defend herself alone against such a man? He had leant over her and was whispering something with his insolent smile, but the next instant he started back as if hurled against the wall by an invisible hand, and yet it was only a look of those gentle, veiled, grey eyes, now fixed in such a cold, hard stare that I trembled as they rested on me. But they remained fixed upon me and suddenly became again so pathetically anxious and helpless. "At length I was beside her: I no longer required to defend her from the elderly scamp, he had disappeared. I could only offer her my hand and ask: 'Did that brute insult you?' But she took my hand and held it tight as if she must otherwise have fallen, her eyelids closed in an effort to keep back her tears. 'Thank you,' she stammered. 'You are a German, are you not Baron Sendlingen? I guessed as much when you came in! Oh if you knew!' "But I do know all, I know what she suffers in this 'salon,' and now we begin to talk of our life among these people and our conversation flows on as if it had been interrupted yesterday. We hardly need words: I understand every sigh that comes from those small lips at other times so tightly closed, she, every glance that I cast upon the assembly. But my glances are only fugitive for I prefer looking straight into that beautiful face so sweetly and gently attractive, although the mouth and chin speak of such firm determination. She often changes colour, but it is more wonderful that I am at times suddenly crippled by the same embarrassment, while at the next moment I feel as if my heart has at length reached home after years and years,--perhaps a life-time's sojourn in a chill strange land. "An hour or more passed thus. We did not notice it; we did not suspect how much our demeanour surprised the others until Mirescul approached and asked me to take his wife in to supper. We went in; Hermine was not there. 'Fräulein Hermine usually retires even earlier,' remarked Frau von Mirescul with the same smile as before. I understood her, and with difficulty suppressed a bitter reply: naturally this girl of inferior rank, whose father had only been a schoolmaster, was unworthy of the society of cattle-merchants, horse-dealers and slave-drivers whose fathers had been ennobled by Kaiser Franz! "After supper I took my leave. Mirescul hoped to see me soon again and I eagerly promised: 'As soon as possible.' And while I drove home through the snow-lit winter's night, I kept repeating these words, for how was I henceforth to live without seeing her?" "After the first evening?" said Berger, shaking his head. "That was like a disease!" "It was like a fatality!" cried Sendlingen. "And how is it to be explained? I do not know! I wanted at first to show you her likeness, but I have not done so, for however beautiful she may have been, her beauty does not unsolve the riddle. I had met girls equally beautiful, equally full of character before, without taking fire. Was it because I met her in surroundings which threw into sharpest relief all that was most charming in her, because I was lonelier than I had ever been before, because I at once knew that she shared my feelings? Then besides, I had not as a young fellow lived at high pressure. I had not squandered my heart's power of loving; the later the passion of love entered my life, the stronger, the deeper would be its hold upon me. "Reasons like these may perhaps satisfy you; me they do not. He who has himself not experienced a miracle, but learns of it on the report of another, will gladly enough accept a natural explanation; but to him whose senses it has blinded, whose heart it has convulsed, to him it remains a miracle, because it is the only possible conception of the strange, overmastering feelings of such a moment. When I think of those days and how she and I felt--no words can tell, no subtlest speculation explain it. Look at it as you may, I will content myself by simply narrating the facts. "And it is a fact that from that evening I was completely metamorphosed. For two days I forced myself to do my regular duties, on the third I went to Oronesti, to Mirescul's. The fellow was too cunning to betray his astonishment, he brimmed over with pleasure and suggested a drive in sleighs, and as the big sleigh was broken we had to go in couples in small ones, I with Hermine. This arrangement was evident enough, but how could I show surprise at what made me so blessed? Even Hermine was only startled for a moment and then, like me, gave herself up unreservedly to her feelings. "And so it was in all our intercourse in the next two weeks. We talked a great deal and between whiles there were long silences; perhaps these blissful moments of speechlessness were precisely the most beautiful. During those days I scarcely touched her hand: we did not kiss one another, we did not speak of our hearts: the simple consciousness of our love was enough. It was not the presence of others that kept us within these bounds; we were much alone; Mirescul took care of that." "And did that never occur to you?" asked Berger. "Yes, at times, but in a way that may be highly significant of the spell under which my soul and senses laboured at the time. A man in a mesmeric trance distinctly feels the prick of a needle in his arm; he knows that he is being hurt; but he has lost his sense of pain. In some such way I looked upon Mirescul's friendliness as an insult and a danger, but my whole being was so filled with fantastic, feverish bliss that no sensation of pain could have penetrated my consciousness." "And did you never think what would come of this?" "No, I could swear to it, never! I speculated as little about my love, as the first man about his life: he was on the earth to breathe and to be happy; of death he knew nothing. And she was just the same; I know it from her letters later, at that time we did not write. And so we lived on, in a dream, in exaltation, without a thought of the morrow." "It must have been a cruel awakening," said Berger. "Frightful, it was frightful!" He spoke with difficulty, and his looks were veiled. "Immediately, in the twinkling of an eye, happiness was succeeded by misery, the most intoxicating happiness by the most lamentable, hideous misery.... One stormy night in March I had had to stay at Mirescul's because my horses were taken ill, very likely through the food which Mirescul had given them.... I was given a room next to Hermine's. "On the next day but one--I was in my office at the time--the customs superintendent of the neighbouring border district entered the room. He was a sturdy, honourable greybeard, who had once been a Captain in the army. 'We have caught the rascal at last,' he announced. 'He has suddenly forgotten his usual caution. We took him to-night in the act of unloading 100 bales of tobacco at his warehouses. Here he is!' "Mirescul entered, ushered in by two of the frontier guards. "'My dear friend!' he cried. 'I have come to complain of an unheard-of act of violence!' "I stared at him, speechless; had he not the right to call me his friend,--how often had I not called him friend in the last few weeks. "'Send these men away.' I was dumb. The superintendent looked at me in amazement. I nodded silently, he shrugged his shoulders and left the room with his officials. 'The long and the short of it is,' said Mirescul, 'that my arrest was a misunderstanding: the officials can be let off with a caution!' "'The matter must first be inquired into,' I answered at length. "'Among friends one's word is enough.' "'Duty comes before friendship.' "'Then you take a different view of it from what I do,' he answered coming still closer to me. 'It would have been my duty to protect the honour of a respectable girl living in my house as a member of the family. It would now be my duty to drive your mistress in disgrace and dishonour from my doors. I sacrifice this duty to my friendship!' "Ah, how the words cut me! I can feel it yet, but I cannot yet describe it. He went, and I was alone with my wild remorse and helpless misery." Sendlingen rose and walked up and down excitedly. Then he stood still in front of his friend. "That was the heaviest hour of my life, George--excepting the present. A man may perhaps feel as helpless who is suddenly struck blind. The worst torture of all was doubt in my beloved; the hideous suspicion that she might have been a conscious tool in the hands of this villain. And even when I stifled this thought, what abominations there were besides! I should act disgracefully if for her sake I neglected my duty, disgracefully if I heartlessly abandoned her to the vengeance of this man! She had a claim upon me--could I make her my wife? My oath to my dying father bound me, and still more, even though I did not like to admit it, my ambition, my whole existence as it had been until I knew her. My father's fate--my future ruined--may a man fight against himself in this way? Still--'A Sendlingen can never be a scoundrel'--and how altogether differently this saying affected me compared to my father! He had only an offence to expiate, I had a sacred duty to fulfil: he perhaps had only to reproach himself with thoughtlessness--but I with dishonour. "And did I really love her? It is incomprehensible to me now how I could ever have questioned it, how I could ever have had those hideous doubts: perhaps my nature was unconsciously revenging herself for the strange, overpowering compulsion laid on her in the last few weeks, perhaps since everything, even the ugliest things, had appeared beautiful and harmonious in my dream, perhaps it was natural, now that my heart had been so rudely shaken, that even the most beautiful things should appear ugly. Perhaps--for who knows himself and his own heart? "Enough! this is how I felt on that day and on the night of that day. Oh! how I writhed and suffered! But when at last the faint red light of early morning peeped in at my window, I was resolved. I would do my duty as a judge and a man of honour: I would have Mirescul imprisoned, I would make Hermine my wife. I no longer had doubts about her or my love, but even if it had not been so, my conscience compelled me to act thus and not otherwise, without regard to the hopes of my life. "I went to my chambers almost before it was day, had the clerk roused from bed and dictated the record of the superintendent's information and a citation to the latter. Then I wrote a few lines to Hermine, begging her to leave Mirescul's house at once and to come to me. 'Trust in God and me,' I concluded. This letter I sent with my carriage to Oronesti; two hours later I myself intended to set out to the place with gendarmes to search the house and arrest Mirescul. But a few minutes after my coachman had left the court, the Jewish waiter from the hotel of the little town brought me a letter from my dear one. 'I have been here since midnight and am expecting you.' The lady looked very unwell, added the messenger compassionately, and was no doubt ill. "I hastened to her. When she came towards me in the little room with tottering steps, my heart stood still from pity and fear; shame, remorse and despair--what ravages in her fresh beauty had they not caused in this short space? I opened my arms and with a cry she sank on my breast. 'God is merciful,' she sobbed. 'You do not despise me because I have loved you more than myself: so I will not complain.' "Then she told me how Mirescul--she had kept her room for the two last days for it seemed to her as if she could never look anyone in the face again--had compelled her to grant him an interview yesterday evening. He requested her to write begging me to take no steps against him, otherwise he would expose and ruin us both. 'Oh, how hateful it was!' she cried out, with a shudder. 'It seemed to me as if I should never survive the ignominy of that hour. But I composed myself; whatever was to become of me, you should not break your oath as Judge. I told him that I would not write the letter, that I would leave his house at once, and when he showed signs of detaining me by force, I threatened to kill myself that night. Then he let me go,--and now do you decide my fate: is it to be life or death!' "'You shall live, my wife,' I swore, 'you shall live for me.' "'I believe you,' said she, 'but it is difficult. Oh! can perfect happiness ever come from what has been so hideously disfigured!' "I comforted her as well as I could, for my heart gave utterance to the same piteous question. "Then we took counsel about the future; she could not remain in Suczawa: we could see what vulgar gossip there would be even without this. So we resolved that she should go to the nearest large town, to Czernowitz, and wait there till our speedy marriage. With that we parted: it was to have been a separation for weeks and it proved to be for a lifetime: I never saw the unhappy girl again. "How did it come about that I broke my oath? There is no justification for it, at best but an explanation. I do not want to defend myself before you any more than I have done: I am only confessing to you as I would to a priest if I were a believer in the Church. "A stroke of fate struck me in that hour of my growth, I might have overcome it but now came its pricks and stabs. When I left Hermine to return to my chambers, I met the customs superintendent. I greeted him. 'Have you received my citation?' I asked. He looked at me contemptuously and passed on without answering. 'What does this mean?' cried I angrily, catching hold of his arm. "'It means,' he replied, shaking himself loose, 'that in future I shall only speak to you, even on official matters, when my duty obliges me. That, for a time, is no longer necessary. You released Mirescul yesterday, you did not record my depositions. Both were contrary to your duty: I have advised my superiors in the matter and await their commands.' "He passed on; I remained rooted to the spot a long while like one struck down; the honourable man was quite right! "But I roused myself; now at least I would neglect my duty no longer. Scarcely, however, had I got back to my chambers, when my colleague, the Civil-Judge entered; he was as usual not quite sober, but it was early in the day and he had sufficient control of his tongue to insult me roundly. 'So you are really going to Oronesti,' he began. 'I should advise you not, the man[oe]uvre is too patent. After twenty-four hours nothing will be found, as we set about searching the house just to show our good intentions--eh?' "'I don't require to be taught by you,' I cried flaring up. "'Oh, but, perhaps you do, though!' he replied. 'I might for instance teach you something about the danger of little German blondes. But--as you like--I wish you every success!' "Smarting under these sensations, I drove to Oronesti. Mirescul met me in the most brazen-faced way; he protested against such inroads undertaken from motives of personal revenge. And he added this further protest to his formal deposition; he would submit to examination at the hands of any Judge but me who had yesterday testified that the accusation was a mistake and promised to punish the customs officials, and to-day suddenly appeared on the scene with gendarmes. Between yesterday and to-day nothing had happened except that he had turned my mistress out of his house, and surely this act of domestic propriety could not establish his guilt as a smuggler. You know, George, that I was obliged to take down his protest--but with what sensations! "The search brought to light nothing suspicious; the servants, carters, and peasants whom I examined had all been evidently well-drilled beforehand. I had to have Mirescul arrested: were there not the bales of tobacco which the superintendent had seized? Not having the ordinary means of transit at night, he had had them temporarily stored in one of the parish buildings at Oronesti under the care of two officials. I now had them brought at once to the town. "When I got back to my chambers in the evening and thought over the events of this accursed day, and read over the depositions in which my honour and my bride's honour were dragged in the mire, I had not a single consolation left except perhaps this solitary one, that my neglect would not hinder the course of justice, for the smuggled wares would clearly prove the wretch's guilt. "But even this comfort was to be denied me. The next morning Mirescul's solicitor called on me and demanded an immediate examination of the bales: his client, he said, maintained that they did not contain smuggled tobacco from Moldavia, but leaf tobacco of the country grown by himself and other planters, and which he was about to prepare for the state factories. The request was quite legitimate; I at once summoned the customs superintendent as being an expert; the old man appeared, gruffly made over the documents to my keeping and accompanied us to the cellars of the Court house where the confiscated goods had been stored. When his eye fell on them he started back indignantly, pale with anger: 'Scandalous!' he cried, 'unheard of! These bales are much smaller--they have been changed!' "'How is it possible?' "'You know that better than I do,' he answered grimly. "The bales were opened; they really contained tobacco in the leaf. My brain whirled. After I had with difficulty composed myself, I examined the two officials who had watched the goods at Oronesti; the exchange could only have been effected there; the men protested their innocence; they had done their duty to the best of their ability; certainly this was the third night which they had kept watch although the Superintendent, before hurrying to the town, had promised to release them within a few hours. This too I had to take down; the proof namely that my hesitation in doing my duty had not been without harm. And now my conscience forbade me to arrest Mirescul, although by not doing so, I only made my case worse. "So things stood when two days later an official from Czernowitz circuit arrived in Suczawa to inquire into the case. You know him George; he was a relation of yours, Matthias Berger, an honest, conscientious man. 'Grave accusations have been made against you,' he explained, 'by Mirescul's solicitor, by the Civil Judge and by the Customs Superintendent, But they contradict each other: I still firmly believe in your innocence: tell me the whole truth.' "But that I could not do: I could not be the means of dragging my bride's name into legal documents, even if I were otherwise to be utterly ruined. So in answer to the questions why I had delayed twenty-four hours, I could only answer that an overwhelming private matter had deprived me of the physical strength to attend to my duties. With regard to Hermine, I refused to answer any questions. Berger shook his head sadly; he was sorry for me, but he could not help me. He must suspend me from my functions while the inquiry lasted and appoint a substitute from Czernowitz: moreover he exacted an oath from me not to leave the place without permission of the Court. Mirescul was let out on bail. "A fortnight went by. It clings to my memory like an eternity of grief and misery. I have told you what I strove for and hoped for, you will be able to judge how I suffered. Four weeks before I was one of the most rising officers of the State: now I was a prisoner on parole, oppressed by the scorn and spite of men, held up to the ignominy of all eyes. I dared hope nothing from my relations, least of all from my uncle, Count Warnberg: I knew that he would not save me so that I might marry a governess about whom--Mirescul and his friends took care of that--there were the ugliest reports in circulation. And you will consider it human, conceivable, that every letter of Hermine's was a stab in my heart. "She wrote daily. When she spoke of her feelings during our brief span of joy, it seemed to me as if she depicted my own innermost experiences. This at least gave me the consolation of knowing that I was not tied to an unworthy woman: but the bonds were none the less galling and cut into the heart of my life. Only rarely, very gently, and therefore with a twofold pathos, did she complain of her fate; but her grief on my account was wild and passionate; she had heard of my plight but not through me. I sought to comfort her as well as I might; but ah me! there was no word of release or deliverance: how could I have broached it, how have claimed it from her? "One day there came her usual letter; it was written with a visibly trembling hand. My uncle had been to see her; he was hurrying from Lemberg in great anxiety to see me, and had stopped at Czernowitz to treat with her of the price for which she would release me. In every line there was the deepest pathos; she had shown him the door. "'He will implore you to leave me,' she concluded; 'act as your conscience bids you. And I will tell you something that I refused to tell Count Warnberg; he asked me whether I had another, a more sacred claim upon you. I don't know, Victor, but as I understand our bond in which I live and suffer, that does not affect it; if you will not make me your wife for my own sake, neither could regard for the mother of your child be binding on you!' "Two hours after I received this letter, my uncle arrived. I was terrified at the sight of him, his face was so dark, and hard, and strange. My father had once said to me shortly before his death: 'Take care never to turn that iron hand against you; it would crush you as it has crushed me.' I had never before understood these words, indeed I had completely forgotten them, but now they came back to me and I understood them before my uncle opened his mouth. "'Tell your story,' he began, and his voice sounded to me as if I had never heard it before. 'Tell the whole truth. This at least I expect of you. You surely don't wish to sink lower than--than another member of your family. A Sendlingen has at all events never lied! Now tell your story.' "I obeyed: he was told what you have just been told, though no doubt it sounded different; confused, passionate and scarcely intelligible. But he understood it; he had no single question to ask after I had finished. "'The same story as before,' he said, 'but uglier, much uglier. The father only sullied his coat of arms, the son his judge's honour as well.' "I fired up. I tried to defend myself, he would not allow it. 'Tirades serve no good purpose,' he said, coldly. 'You wish to convince me that you were not in criminal collusion with Mirescul? I have never thought so. That he is really guilty and can be convicted in spite of your neglect of duty? I have been through the papers and have just cross-examined the customs superintendent. The police are already on the way to re-arrest him; he will be put in prison. But your fault will be none the less in consequence; if there is no lasting stigma on the administration of justice, there is upon your honour. Your conduct in this man's house, your hesitation,--it would be bad for you if you had to suffer what you have merited! According to justice and the laws, your fate is sealed; it is only a question whether you will prove yourself worthy of pardon and pity!' "'In anything that you may ask,' I answered, 'except only in one thing: Hermine is to be my wife. A Sendlingen can never be a scoundrel.' "He drew himself up to his full height and stepped close up to me. 'Now listen to me, Victor, I will be brief and explicit. Whether you stain your honour by marrying this girl, or whether you do so by not marrying her, the all-just God above us knows. We, His creatures, can only judge according to our knowledge and conscience, and in my judgment, the girl is unworthy of you. In this matter there is your conviction against my conviction. But what I do know better than you is, that this marriage would load you with ignominy before the whole world! You will perhaps answer: better the contempt of others than self-contempt, but that is not the question. If you marry this girl, I am as sure as I am of my existence, that you will soon be ashamed of it, not only before others but in your own heart. For pure happiness could not come of such a beginning--it is impossible. The gossip of the world, the ruin of your hopes, would poison your mind and hers,--you would be wretched yourself and make her wretched, and would at length become bad and miserable. The man who forgets his duty to himself and to the world for a matter of weeks and then recovers himself, is worthy of commiseration and help; but he who is guilty of a moral suicide deserves no pity. And therefore listen to me and choose. If you marry this girl your subsequent fate is indifferent to me; you will very likely be stripped of your office; or in the most favourable event, transferred, by way of punishment, to some out of the way place where your father's fate may be repeated in you. If you give her up you may still be saved, for yourself, for our family and for the State: then I will do for you, what my conscience would allow me to do for any subordinate of whose sincere repentance I was convinced, and I will intercede for the Emperor's pardon as if you were my own son. To-morrow I return to Lemberg, whether alone or with you--you must decide by to-morrow.' He went." Sendlingen paused. "How I struggled with myself," he began again, but his voice failed him, until at length he gasped forth with hollow voice and trembling lips: "Oh! what a night it was! The next morning I wrote a farewell letter to Hermine, and started with Count Warnberg to Lemberg." Then there followed a long silence. At length Berger asked: "You did not know that she bore your child in her bosom?" "No, I know it to-day for the first time. In that last letter of mine I had offered her a maintenance: she declined it at once. Then I left that part of the country. A few months later I inquired after her; I could only learn that she had disappeared without leaving a trace. And then I forgot her, I considered that all was blotted out and washed away like writing from a slate, and rarely, very rarely, in the dusk, or in a sleepless night, did the strange reminiscence recur to me. But Fate keeps a good reckoning--O George! I would I were dead!" "No, no!" said Berger with gentle reproof. He was deeply moved, his eyes glistened with tears, but he constrained himself to be composed. "Thank God, you are alive and willing, and I trust able to pay your debt. How great this debt may be--or how slight--I will not determine. Only one thing I do know: you are, in spite of all, worthy of the love and esteem of men, even of the best men, of better men than I am. When I think of it all; your life up to that event and what it has been since, what you have made of your life for yourself and others, then indeed it overcomes me and I feel as if I had never known a fate among the children of men more worthy of the purest pity. This is no mere sad fate, it is a tragic one. Against the burden of such a fate, no parade of sophistry, no petty concealments or prevarications will be of avail. You say it is against your feelings to preside at to-morrow's trial?" "Yes," replied Sendlingen. "It seems to me both cowardly and dishonourable; cowardly, to sacrifice the law instead of myself, dishonourable to break my Judge's oath! But I shrink from doing so for another reason; an offence should not be expiated by an injustice; I dread the all-just Fates." "I cannot gainsay you," said Berger rising. "But in this one thing we are agreed. Let us wait for the verdict, and then we will consider what your duty is. It is long past midnight, the trial will begin in seven hours. I will try and get some sleep. I shall need all my strength to-morrow. Follow my example, Victor, perhaps sleep may be merciful to you." He seized his friend's hands and held them affectionately in his; his feelings again threatened to overcome him and he hastily left the room with a choking farewell on his lips. Sendlingen was alone. After brooding awhile, he again went to the secret drawer of his writing-table. At this moment the old servant entered. "We will go to bed now," he said. "We will do it out of pity for ourselves, and Fräulein Brigitta, and me!" His look and tone were so beseeching that Sendlingen could not refuse him. He suffered himself to be undressed, put out the lamp, and closed his eyes. But sleep refused to visit his burning lids. CHAPTER V. When the grey morning appeared, he could no longer endure to lie quietly in his bed while his soul was tormented with unrest, he got up, dressed himself, left his room and went out of doors. It was a damp, cold, horrid autumn morning: the fog clung to the houses and to the uneven pavement of the old town: a heavy, yellow vapor, the smoke of a factory chimney kept sinking down lower and lower. The lonely wanderer met few people, those who recognized him greeted him respectfully, he did not often acknowledge the greeting and when he did, it was unconsciously. Most of them looked after him in utter astonishment; what could have brought the Chief Justice so early out of doors? It seemed at times as if he were looking for something he had lost; he would walk along slowly for a stretch with his looks fixed on the ground, then he would stop and go back the same way. And how broken down, how weary he looked today!--as if he had suddenly become an old man, the people thought. Freezing with cold, while his pulses beat at fever-speed, he thus wandered for a long while aimlessly through the desolate streets, first this way, then that, until the morning bells of the Cathedral sounded in his ears. He stood still and listened as if he had never heard their mighty sound before; they appeared to vibrate in his heart; his features changed and grew gentler as he listened; a ray of tender longing gleamed in his white face, and, as if drawn by invisible cords, he hurried faster and faster towards the Cathedral. But when he stood before its open door and looked into the dark space, lit only by a dim light, the sanctuary lamp before the high-altar, he hesitated; he shook his head and sighed deeply, and his features again resumed their gloomy, painful look. He looked up at the Cathedral clock, the hands were pointing to seven. "An hour more," he murmured and went over towards the Court-House. It was a huge, straggling, rectangular building, standing on its own ground. In front were the Chief Justice's residence and the offices; at the back the criminal prison. He turned towards his own quarters. He had just set his foot on the steps, when a new idea seemed to occur to him. He hesitated. "I must," he hissed between his teeth and he clenched his hands till the nails ran painfully into the flesh; "I must, if only for a minute." He stepped back into the street, went around the building and up to the door at the back. It was locked; there was a sentinel in front of it. He rang the bell, a warder opened the door and seeing the Chief Justice respectfully pulled off his hat. "Fetch the Governor," muttered Sendlingen, so indistinctly that the man hardly understood him. But he hurried away and the Governor of the prison appeared. He was visibly much astonished. "Does your Lordship wish to make an inspection?" he asked. "No, only in one or two particular cases." "Which are they, my lord?" But the unhappy man felt that his strength was leaving him. "Later on," he muttered, groping for the handle of the door so as to support himself. "Another time." The Governor hastened towards him. "Your Lordship is ill again--just as you were yesterday--we are all much concerned! May I accompany you back to your residence? The nearest way is through the prison-yard, if you choose." He opened a door and they stepped out into the prison-yard; it was separated by a wall from the front building; the only means of communication was an unostentatious little door in the bare, high, slippery wall. It seemed to be seldom used; the Governor was a long time finding the key on his bunch and when at length it opened, the lock and hinges creaked loudly. "Thank you," said Sendlingen. "I have never observed this means of communication before." "Your predecessor had it made," answered the Governor, "so that he might inspect the prison without being announced. The key must be in your possession." "Very likely," answered Sendlingen, and he went back to his residence. Franz placed his breakfast before him. "There'll be a nice ending to this," he growled. "We are dangerously ill and yet we trapse about the streets in all weathers. Dr. Berger, too, is surprised at our new ways." "Has he been here already?" "He was here a few minutes ago, but will be back at eight.... But now we have got to drink our tea." He did not budge till the cup had been emptied. With growing impatience Sendlingen looked at the clock. "He can have nothing fresh to say," he thought. "He must guess my intention and want to hinder me. He will not succeed." But he did succeed. As he entered, Sendlingen had just taken up his hat and stick. "You are going to the trial?" began his faithful friend almost roughly, "You must not, Victor, I implore you. I forbid you. What will the judges think if you are too ill to preside, and yet well enough to be present with no apparent object. But the main thing is not to torment yourself, it is unmanly. Do not lessen your strength, you may require it." He wrested his hat from him and forced him into an armchair. "My restlessness will kill me if I stay here," muttered Sendlingen. "You would not be better in there, but worse. I shall come back to you at once; I think, I fear, it will not last long. Don't buoy yourself up with any hopes, Victor. Before a jury, I could get her acquitted, with other judges, at a different time, we might have expected a short term of imprisonment ... but now----" "Death!" Like a shriek the words escaped from his stifled breast. "But she may not, she will not die!" continued Berger. "I will set my face against it as long as there is breath in my body, nay, I would have done so even if she had not been your daughter. God bless you, Victor." Berger gathered up his bundle of papers and proceeded along the corridor and up some stairs, until he found himself outside the court where the trial was to take place. Even here a hum of noise reached him, for the court was densely crowded with spectators. As far as he could see by the glimmer of grey morning light that broke its difficult way in by the round windows, it was a well-dressed audience in which ladies preponderated. "Naturally," he muttered contemptuously. For a few seconds eye-glasses and opera-glasses were directed upon him, to be then again immediately turned on the accused. But her face could not be seen; she was cowering in a state of collapse on her wooden seat, her forehead resting on the ledge of the dock; her left arm was spread out in front of her, her right hung listlessly by her side. Public curiosity had nothing to sate itself on but the shudders that at times convulsed her poor body; one of the long plaits of her coal-black, wavy hair had escaped from beneath the kerchief on her head and hung down low, almost to the ground, touching the muddy boots of the soldier who did duty as sentinel close beside her. Berger stepped to his place behind her; she did not notice him until he gently touched her icy cold hand. "Be brave, my poor child," he whispered. She started up in terror. "Ah!" went from every mouth in Court: now at length they could see her face. Berger drew himself up to his full height; his eyes blazed with anger as he stepped between her and the crowd. "Oh, what crowds of people!" murmured the poor girl. Her cheeks and forehead glowed in a fever-heat of shame: but the colour soon went and her grief-worn face was white again; the look of her eyes was weary and faint. "To think that one should have to suffer so much before dying." "You will not die!" He spoke slowly, distinctly, as one speaks to a deaf person. "You will live, and after you have satisfied the justice of men, you will begin life over again. And when you do friendship and love will not be wanting to you." While he was saying this, and at the same time looking her full in the face, her resemblance to his friend almost overpowered him. She was like her father in the colour of her hair and eyes, in her mouth and her forehead. "Love and care are waiting for you!" he continued with growing warmth. "This I can swear. Do you hear? I swear that it is so! As regards the trial, I can only give you this advice: tell, as you have hitherto done, the whole truth. Bear up as well as you can; oppose every lie, every unjust accusation." She had heard him without stirring, without a sign of agreement or dissent. It was doubtful whether she had understood him. But he had not time to repeat his admonition; the Crown-advocate and the five Judges had entered with Werner at their head. If Berger had hitherto cherished any hope, it must have vanished now; two of the other Judges were among the sternest on the bench; the fourth never listened and then always chimed in with the majority; it was but a slender consolation to Berger when he finally saw the wise and humane Baron Dernegg take his place beside the judges. Werner opened the proceedings and the deed of accusation was then read out by the Secretary of the Court. Its compiler--a young, fashionably dressed junior Crown-advocate of an old aristocratic family, who had only been in the profession a short time,--listened to the recital of his composition with visible satisfaction. And indeed his representation of the matter was very effective. According to him the Countess Riesner-Graskowitz was one of the noblest women who ever lived, the Accused one of the most abandoned. A helpless orphan, called by unexampled generosity to fill a post which neither her years nor abilities had fitted her for, she had requited this kindness by entangling the young Count Henry in her wiles in order to force him into a marriage. After he had disentangled himself from these unworthy bonds, and after Victorine Lippert knew her condition, instead of repentantly confiding in her noble protectress, she had exhausted all the arts of crafty dissembling in order not to be found out. And when at length she was, as a most just punishment, suddenly dismissed from the castle, she in cold blood murdered her child so as to be free from the consequences of her fault. In his opinion, the Accused's pretended unconsciousness was a manifest fable, and the crime a premeditated one, as her conduct at the castle sufficiently proved. Her character was not against the assumption, she was plainly corrupted at an early age, being the daughter of a woman of loose character. "It is a lie! a scandalous lie!" Like a cry from the deepest recesses of the heart, these words suddenly vibrated through the Court with piercing clearness. It was the Accused who had spoken. She had listened to the greatest part of the document without a sound, without the slightest change of countenance, as if she were deaf. Only once at the place where it spoke of "manifest fable" she had gently and imperceptibly shaken her head; it was the first intimation Berger had that she was listening and understood the accusation. But now, hardly had the libel on her dead mother been read, when she rose to her feet and uttered those words so suddenly that Berger was not less motionless and dumfounded than the rest. And then broke forth the hubbub; such an interruption, and in such language, had never before occurred in Court. The spectators had risen and were talking excitedly; the crown-advocate stood there helplessly; even Herr von Werner had to clear his throat repeatedly before he could ejaculate "Silence!" But the command was superfluous for hardly had the poor girl uttered the words, when she fell back upon her seat, from thence to the ground, and was now lying in a faint on the boards. She was carried out; it was noticed by many and caused much scandal, that the counsel for the Accused lifted the lifeless body and helped carry it, instead of leaving this to the warders. The proceedings had to be interrupted. It was another half hour before the Accused appeared in Court again, leaning on Berger's arm, her features set like those of an animated corpse. There was a satirical murmur in the crowd, and Werner, too, reflected whether he should not, there and then, reprove the Counsel for unseemly behaviour. And this determined him to be all the severer in the reprimand which he addressed to the Accused on account of her unheard of impertinence. She should not escape her just punishment, the nature and extent of which he would determine by the opinion of the prison-doctor. Then the reading of the deed of accusation was finished; the examination began. There was a murmur of eager expectation among the spectators; their curiosity was briefly but abundantly satisfied. To the question whether she pleaded guilty, Victorine Lippert answered quietly but with a steadier voice than one would have supposed her capable of: "Yes!... What I know about my deed, I have already told in evidence. I deserve death, I wish to die. It is a matter of indifference to one about to die what men may think of her; God knows the truth. He knows that much, yes most, of what has just been read here, is incorrect. I do not contest it, but one thing I swear in the face of death, and may God have no mercy on me in my last hour if I lie; my mother was noble and good; no mother can ever have been better and no wife more pure. She trusted an unworthy wretch, and he must have been worse than ever any man was, if he could forsake her--but she was good. I implore you, read her testimonials, her letters to me--I beseech you, I conjure you, just a few of these letters.-For myself I have nothing to ask--" Her voice broke, her strength again seemed to forsake her and she sank down on her seat. There was a deep silence after she had ended: in her words, in her voice, there must have been something that the hearts of those present could not shut out; even the crown-advocate looked embarrassed. Herr von Werner alone was so resolutely armed to meet the Hydra of the social Revolution, which he was bent on combating in this forlorn creature, as to be above all pity. He would certainly have begun a wearisome examination and have spared the poor creature no single detail, but his daughter was expecting a happy event to-day, and Baron Sendlingen had, notwithstanding, not had sufficient professional consideration to take over the conduct of this trial, and the half hour's faint of the Accused had already unduly prolonged the proceedings--so he determined to cut the matter as short as was compatible with his position. The accused had just again unreservedly repeated her confession; further questions, he explained, would be superfluous. The examination of the witnesses could be proceeded with at once. This also was quickly got through. There were the peasants, who had found Victorine and her lifeless child on the morrow of the deed, and the prison doctor, none of whom could advance any fresh or material fact. The only witness of importance to the Accused was the servant-girl who had helped her in her last few months at the castle. The girl had been shortly after dismissed from the Countess' service, and in the preliminary inquiry, she had confirmed all Victorine's statements; if she to-day remained firm to her previous declarations, the accusation of premeditated murder would be severely shaken. To Berger's alarm she now evasively answered that her memory was weak,--she had in the meantime gone into service at Graskowitz again. In spite of this and of the protest of the defence, she was sworn: Berger announced his intention of appealing for a nullification of the trial. Then the depositions of the Countess and her son were read; the Court had declined to subp[oe]na them. The Countess had not spared time or trouble in depicting the murderess in all her abandonment; but the depositions which Count Henry had made at his embassy, were brief enough: as far as he recollected he had made the girl no promise of marriage, and indeed there was no reason for doing so. Berger demanded, as proof to the contrary, that the letters which had been taken from the Accused and put with the other papers, should he read aloud; this the Court also declined because they did not affect the question of her guilt. Then followed the speeches for and against. The Crown-Advocate was brief enough: the trial, he contended, had established the correctness of the charge. If ever at all, then in the present case, should the full rigour of the law be enforced. By her protestation that she had received a most careful bringing up from a most excellent mother, she had herself cut from under her feet the only ground for mitigation. All the more energetically and fully did Berger plead for the utmost possible leniency; his knowledge of law, his intellect and his oratorical gifts had perhaps never before been so brilliantly displayed. When he had finished, the people in Court broke out into tumultuous applause. The Judges retired to consider their verdict. They were not long absent; in twenty minutes they again appeared in Court. Werner pronounced sentence: death by hanging. The qualification of "unanimous" was wanting. Baron Dernegg had been opposed to it. There was much excitement among the spectators. Berger, although not unprepared for the sentence, could with difficulty calm himself sufficiently to announce that every form of appeal would be resorted to. The Accused had closed her eyes for a moment and her limbs trembled like aspen-leaves, but she was able to rise by herself to follow the warders. "Thank you," she said pressing Berger's hands. "But the appeal----" "Will be lodged by me," he said hastily interrupting her. "I shall come and see you about it to-day." He hurried away down the stairs. But when he got into the long corridor that led to Sendlingen's quarters, he relaxed his pace and at length stood still. "This is a difficult business," he murmured and he stepped to a window, opened it and eagerly drank in the cool autumn air as if to strengthen himself. When a few minutes after he found himself in Sendlingen's lobby, he met Baron Dernegg coming out of his friend's study. "Too late!" he thought with alarm. "And he has had to hear it from some one else." The usually comfortable-looking Judge was much excited. "You are no doubt coming on the same errand, Dr. Berger," he began. "I felt myself in duty bound to let the Chief Justice know about this sentence without delay. The way in which he received it showed me once more what a splendid man he is, the pattern of a Judge, the embodiment of Justice! I assure you, he almost fainted, this--hm!--questionable sentence affected him like a personal misfortune. Please do not excite him any more about it and talk of something else first." "Certainly," muttered Berger as he walked into the study. Sendlingen lay back in his arm-chair, both hands pressed to his face. His friend approached him without a word; it was a long, sad silence. "Victor," he said at last, gently touching his shoulder, "we knew it would be so!" Sendlingen let his hands fall. "And does that comfort me?" he cried wildly. And then he bowed his head still lower. "Tell me all!" he murmured. Berger then began to narrate everything. One thing only he omitted: how Victorine had spoken of her mother's betrayer. "This very day," he concluded, "I shall lodge a nullity appeal with the Supreme Court. Perhaps it will consider the reasons weighty enough to order a new trial; in any case when it examines the question, it will alter the sentence." "In any case?" cried Sendlingen bitterly. "We cannot but expect as much from the sense of justice of our highest Judges. Perhaps the chief witness's suspicious weakness of memory may prove a lucky thing for us. If she had stuck by her former depositions, or if the Court had not put her on her oath, then a simple appeal to the Supreme Court would alone have been possible. Now, the case is more striking and more sensational." "And therefore all the worse!" interrupted Sendlingen. "Woe to him for whom in these days the voice of the people makes itself heard; to the gentry in Vienna it is worse than the voice of the devil. Besides, just now, according to the opinion of the Minister of Justice, the world is to be rid of child-murder by the offices of the hangman! And this is the first case in educated circles, a much talked of case,--what a magnificent opportunity of striking terror!" "You take too black a view of the matter, Victor." "Perhaps!--and therefore an unjust view! But how can a man in my position be just and reasonable. Oh, George, I am so desolate and perplexed! What shall I do; merciful Heaven, what shall I do?" "First of all--wait!" answered Berger. "The decision of the Supreme Court will be known in a comparatively short time, at latest in two months!" "Wait--only two months!" Sendlingen wrung his hands. "Though what do I care for myself! But she--two months in the fear of death! To sit thus in a lonely cell without light or air, or consolation,--behind her unutterable misery, before her death----. Oh, she must either go mad or die!" "I shall often be with her, and Father Rohn, too, I hope. And then, too," he added, half-heartedly, "one or other of the ladies of the Women's Society for Befriending Female Criminals. Certainly these comforters are not worth much." "They are worth nothing," cried Sendlingen vehemently. "Oh, how they will torture the poor girl with their unctuous virtue and self-satisfied piety! I have to tolerate these tormentors, the Minister of Justice insists on it, but at least they shall not enter this cell, I will not allow it--or at least, only the single one among them who is any good, my old Brigitta----" "Your housekeeper?" asked Berger, in perplexity and consternation. "That must not be! She might guess the truth. The girl!" he hesitated again--"is like you, very like you Victor--and anyone who sees you so often and knows you so well as Brigitta----" "What does that matter?" Sendlingen rose. "She is discreet, and if she were not--what does it matter, I repeat. Do you suppose that I never mean to enter that cell?" "You! Impossible!" "I shall and I must! I will humour you in everything except in this one thing!" "But under what pretext? Have you ever visited and repeatedly visited other condemned criminals?" "What does that matter to me? A father must stand by his child!" "And will you tell other people so?" "Not until I am obliged; but then without a moment's hesitation. She, however, must be told at once, in fact this very day." "You must not do that, Victor. Spare the poor girl this sudden revelation." "Then prepare her beforehand! But to-morrow it must be!" Berger was helpless; he knew what Victorine would say to her father if she suddenly encountered him. "Give her a little more time!" he begged, "Out of pity for her shattered nerves and agitated mind, which will not bear any immediate shock." This was a request that Sendlingen could not refuse. "Very well, I will wait," he promised. "But you will not wish to prevent me from seeing her to-morrow. I have in any case to inspect the prison. But I promise you: I will not betray myself and the governor of the jail shall accompany me." CHAPTER VI. Weighed down by sorrow, Berger proceeded homewards. To the solitary bachelor Sendlingen was more than a friend, he was a dearly loved brother. He was struck to the heart, as by a personal affliction, with compassion for this fate, this terrible fate, so suddenly and destructively breaking in upon a beneficent life, like a desolating flood. Would this flood ever subside again and the soil bring forth flowers and fruit? The strong man's looks darkened as he thought of the future: worse than the evil itself seemed to him the manner in which it affected his friend. Alas! how changed and desolated was this splendid soul, how hopeless and helpless this brave heart! And it was just their last interview, that sudden flight from the most melancholy helplessness to the heights of an almost heroic resolve, that gave Berger the greatest uneasiness. "And it will not last!" he reflected with much concern. "Most certainly it will not! Perhaps even now, five minutes after, he is again lying back in his arm chair, broken down, without another thought, another feeling, save that of his misery! And could anything else be expected? That was not the energetic resolve of a clear, courageous soul, but the diseased, visionary effort of feverishly excited nerves! Again he does not know whether he will see her or what he ought to do.... And do I know, would any one know in the presence of such a fate?" Had he deserved this fate? "No!" cried Berger to himself. "No!" he passionately repeated as he paced up and down his study, trying to frame the wording of the appeal. Clumsy and uncouth, blind and cruel, seemed to him the power that had ordered things as they had come about. It seemed no better than some rude elemental force. "He can no more help it," he muttered, "than the fields can help a flood breaking in upon them." But he could not long maintain this view, comforting as it was to him, much as he strove to harbour it. "He has done wrong," he thought, "and retribution is only the severer because delayed." Other cases in his experience occurred to him: long concealed wrongs and sins that had afterwards come into the light of day, doubly frightful. "And such offences increase by the interest accruing until they are paid," he was obliged to think. From the moment that he heard his friend's story, all the facts it brought to light seemed to him like the diabolical sport of chance; but now he no longer thought it chance but in everything saw necessity, and he was overcome by the same idea to which he had given voice at the conclusion of his friend's narration, namely that this was no mere sad fate, but a tragic one. It was a singular idea, compounded of fear and reverence. When Berger reflected how one act dovetailed into another, how link fitted into link in the chain of cause and effect, how all these people could not have acted otherwise than they were obliged to act, how guilt had of necessity supervened, and now retribution, the strong man shuddered from head to foot: he had to bow his head before that pitiless, all-just power for which he knew no name ... But was it really all-just? If all these people, if Sendlingen and Victorine had not acted otherwise than their nature and circumstances commanded, why had they to suffer for it so frightfully? And why was there no end to this suffering, a great, a liberating, a redeeming end? "No!" cried an inward voice of his deeply agitated soul, "there must be such a glorious solution. It cannot be our destiny to be dragged into sin by blind powers which we cannot in any way control, like puppets by the cords in a showman's hands, and then again, when it pleases those powers, into still greater sins, or into an atonement a thousand times greater than the sin itself, and so, on and on, until death snaps the cords. No! that cannot be our destiny, and if it were, then we should be greater than this Fate, greater, juster, more reasonable! There must be in Sendlingen's case also, a solution bringing freedom, there _must_--and in his case precisely most of all! It would have been an extraordinary fate, no matter whom it had overtaken, but had it befallen a commonplace man, it would never have grown to such a crushing tragedy. A scoundrel would have lied to himself: 'She is not my daughter, her mother was a woman of loose character,' and he would have repeated this so often that he would have come to believe it. And if remorse had eventually supervened, he would have buried it in the confessional or in the bottle. "Another man, no scoundrel,--on the contrary! a man of honour of the sort whose name is Legion,--would not have hesitated for a moment to preside in Court in order to obtain by his authority as Chief Justice, the mildest possible sentence. Then he would have been assiduous in ameliorating the lot of the prisoner by special privileges, and after she had been set at liberty, he would have bought her, somewhere at a distance, a little millinery business or a husband, and every time he thought of the matter, he would have said with emotion: 'What a good fellow you are!' This has only become a tragic fate because it has struck one of the most upright, most sensitive and noble of men, and because this is so, there must come from that most noble and upright heart a solution, an act of liberation bursting these iron bonds! There must be a means of escape by which he and his poor child and Justice herself will have their due! There _must_ be--simply because he is what he is!" There was a gleam of light in Berger's usually placid, contented face, the reflection of the thought that filled his soul and raised him above the misery of the moment. Notwithstanding, his looks became serious and gloomy again. "But what is this solution?" he asked, continuing his over-wrought reflections. "And how shall this broken-down, sick man, weary with his tortures, find it? And I--I know of none, perhaps no one save himself can find it. 'Against the burden of such a fate, no parade of sophistry will be of any avail,' I said to him yesterday. But can small expedients be of any use? Will it be a solution if I succeed with my appeal, if the sentence of death is commuted to penal servitude for life or for twenty years? Can this lessen the burden of the fate?--for her, for him?" "What to do?" he suddenly exclaimed aloud. He wrung his hands and stared before him. Suddenly there was a curious twitching about his mouth, and his eyes gleamed with an almost weird light. "No, no!" he muttered vehemently, "how can such a thought even occur to me. I feel it, I am myself becoming ill and unstrung!" He bounded up with a heavy stamp and hastily passed his hand over his forehead, as though the thought which had just passed through his brain stood written there and must be swiftly wiped away. But that thought returned again and again and would not be scared away, that enticing but fearful thought; how she might be forcibly liberated from prison and carried off to new life and happiness in a distant country? "Madness!" he muttered and added in thought: "He would rather die and let her die, than give his consent to this or set his hand to such a deed! He whose conscience would not allow him to preside at the trial! And if in his perplexity and despair he were to go so far, I should have to bar the way and stop him even if it cost me my life.... What was it he said yesterday: 'An offence should not be expiated by an injustice!' and will he attempt it by another offence. 'Cowardly and dishonourable!' yes, that it would be, and not that great deed of which I dream; greater and more just than Fate itself." He seized the notes which he had made from the papers connected with the trial, and forced himself to read them through deliberately, to weigh them again point by point. This expedient helped him: that horrible thought did not return, but a new thought rose, bringing comfort in its train and took shape: "When a great act cannot be achieved, we should not on that account omit even the smallest thing that can possibly be done. I will set my energies against the sentence of death, because it is the most frightful thing that could happen!" And now he recovered courage and eagerness for work. He sat at his writing table hour after hour, marshalling his reasons and objections into a solid phalanx which in the fervour of the moment seemed to him as if they must sweep away every obstacle, even prejudice, even ill-will. He had bolted himself in, nobody was to disturb him, he only interrupted himself for a few minutes to snatch a hasty meal. Then he worked away until the last sentence stood on the paper. For the first time he now looked at the clock; it was pointing to ten. It was too late to visit the poor prisoner, and he was grieved that he had not kept his promise. If she was perhaps secretly nourishing the hope of being saved, she would now be doubly despairing. But it could not now be helped and he resolved to make good his remissness early the next morning. Sendlingen, however, he would go and see. "Perhaps he is in want of me," he thought. "I should be much surprised if he were not now more helpless than ever." He made his way through the wet, cold, foggy autumn night; things he had never dreamt of were in store for him. When he pulled the bell, the door was at once opened: Fräulein Brigitta stood before him. The candlestick in her hand trembled: the plump, well-nourished face of the worthy lady was so full of anguish that Berger started. "What has happened?" he cried. "Nothing!" she answered. "Nothing at all! It is only that I am so silly." But her hand was trembling so much that she had to put down her candle and the tears streamed down her cheeks as she continued with an effort: "He went out--and has not come back--and so I thought--but I am so silly." "So it seems," Berger roughly exclaimed, trying to encourage both her and himself, but a sudden anguish so choked his utterance that what he next said sounded almost unintelligible. "May he not pay a visit to a friend and stay to supper there? Is he so much under your thumb that he must give you previous notice of his intention? He is at Baron Dernegg's I suppose." "No," she sobbed. "He is not there, and Franz has already looked for him in vain in all the places where he might be. He was twice at your house, but your servant would not admit him. And now the old man is scouring the streets. He will not find him!" she suddenly screamed, burying her face in her hands. "Nonsense!" cried Berger almost angrily. He forced the trembling woman into a chair, sat down beside her and took her hand. "Let us talk like reasonable beings," he said, "like men, Fräulein Brigitta. When did he go out?" "Seven hours ago, just after his dinner, which he hardly touched; it must have been about four o'clock. And how he has been behaving ... and especially since mid-day yesterday.... Dr. Berger," she cried imploringly, clasping her hands, "what happened yesterday in Chambers? When he came back from Vienna he was still calm and cheerful. It must be here and yesterday that some misfortune struck him. I thought at first that it was illness, but I know better now: it is a misfortune, a great misfortune! Dr. Berger, for Christ's sake, tell me what it is!" She would have sunk down at his feet, if he had not hastily prevented her. "Be reasonable!" he urged, "It is an illness, Fräulein Brigitta,--the heart, the nerves." She shook her head vigorously. "I guess what it is." She pointed in the direction of the jail. "Something has happened in the prison over there that is a matter of life and death to him." He started. "Why do you suppose that?" "Because he behaved so strangely--just listen to this." But she had first the difficult task of calming herself before she could proceed. "Well, when I went into his room to-day to tell him dinner was ready, he was standing in front of his writing-table rummaging in all the drawers. 'What are you looking for, my Lord?' I asked. 'Nothing,' he muttered and he sent me away, saying he was just coming. Twenty minutes later I ventured to go back again; he was still searching. 'Have you ever,' he now himself asked, 'heard of any keys that my predecessor is said to have handed over?' 'Yes,' I replied, 'the keys of the residence.' 'No, others, and among them the key of the door which----' He checked himself suddenly and turned away as though he had already said too much. 'What door?' I asked in utter astonishment. He muttered something unintelligible and then roughly told me the soup could wait. It cuts me to the heart. Dear Heaven, how wretched he looks, and I am not accustomed to be spoken to by him in that way; but what does that matter? I went and spoke to Franz. 'Perhaps,' he said, 'he means the keys that are in the top drawer of his business table.' So we went and looked and there, sure enough, was a bunch of keys--quite rusty, Dr. Berger." "Go on, to the point," said Berger impatiently. "Well, I took them to him; as I said, a whole bunch with a written label on each. He looked through them with trembling hands. Dr. Berger, and at last his face lit up. 'That's the one!' he muttered and took the key off the bunch and put it in his breast pocket. Then he turned round and when he saw me--great Heaven! what eyes he had--wicked, frightened eyes. 'Are you still here?' he said flaring up into a rage. 'What do you want playing the spy here?' Yes, Dr. Berger, he said 'playing the spy'--and he has known me for fifteen years." "He is ill you see!" said Berger soothingly. "But go on!" "Then he sat down to dinner and there he behaved very strangely. God forgive me ... Usually he only drinks one glass of Rhine-wine--you know the sort--to-day he gulped down three glasses one after another, took a few spoonfuls of soup and then went back to his room. And then I said: Franz, I said--but you won't want to hear that. Dr. Berger. But what follows you must hear; it's very strange--God help us! only too strange." "Well?" "After about ten minutes or so, I heard his step in the lobby; the door slammed; well, he had gone out. 'By all that's sacred!' thinks I in great trouble of mind. Then Franz came in quite upset. 'Fräulein!' he whispered, 'he's going up and down in the court outside!' 'Impossible!' said I, 'what does he want there?' We went to the bedroom window that looks down into the court and there, sure enough, is his Lordship! He was going--or rather he was creeping along by the wall that separates our court from the prison yard. It was drizzling at the time and it was no longer quite light, but I could see his face plainly: it was the face of a man who doesn't know what to do--ah me! worse still--the face of a man who doesn't know what he's doing. And he behaved like it, Dr. Berger! He stopped in front of the little door in the wall, looked anxiously up at the windows to see if anyone was watching him--but the clerks and officials had all gone, we were the only people who saw him--he pulled out that key from his breast pocket and tried to unlock the door. For a long time he couldn't succeed, but at last the door opened. However, he only shut it again quickly and locked it. Then he began anxiously to pace up and down again. It was just as if he had only wanted to try whether the key would open the door. What do you think of that?" "The door through which one can get from here into the prison?" Berger spoke slowly, in a muffled tone, as if he were speaking to himself. Then he continued in the same tone: "Oh, how frightful that would be! This soul in the mire, this splendid soul!--Go on!" he then muttered as he saw that the housekeeper was looking at him in amazement. "Well, then he went quickly back through the hall into the street and on towards the square. Franz crept after him at a distance. He seemed at first as if he wanted to go to your house, then he came back here, but to the other door, on the prison side. There he stood, close up to it, for a long time, a quarter of an hour Franz says, and then went to the left down Cross Street and then--what do you think, Dr. Berger?" "Back the same way," said Berger slowly, "and again stood for a long time in front of the prison." "How can you know that?" asked the old lady in astonishment. Berger's answer was a strange one. "I can see it!" he said. And indeed, with the eyes of his soul, Berger could see his unhappy friend wandering about in the misty darkness, dragged hither and thither, by whirling, conflicting thoughts. "Perhaps he is at this moment standing there again!" He had not meant to say this, but the thought had involuntarily given itself voice. "What now!" Fräulein Brigitta crossed herself. "We will go and see at once! Come! Oh, that would be a good thing! I will just go and fetch my shawl. But you see I was right. This trouble is connected with the prison; some injustice has been done, and he feels it nearly because he is such a just judge." "Because he is such a just judge," repeated Berger, mechanically, without thinking of what he was saying, for while he spoke those words he was saying to himself: "He has gone mad!" Then, however, he shook off the spell of this horror that threatened to cripple both soul and body. "You stay at home," he said in a tone of command. "I will find him and bring him back, you may rely upon that. One thing more, where did Franz leave him?" "Ah, he was too simple! When his Lordship came into the square for the third time, Franz went up to him and begged him to come home. Upon that he became very angry and sent Franz off with the strongest language. But he called after him that he was going to Baron Dernegg's, only as I said, he has not been there, and----" "Keep up your spirits, Fräulein Brigitta! I shall be back soon." He went down the steps, "Keep up your spirits!" he called back to her once more; she was standing at the top of the steps holding the candle at arm's length before her. Berger stepped into the street and walked swiftly round the building to the prison door. He himself was in need of the exhortation he had given: he felt as if in the next moment he might see something frightful. But there was nothing to be seen when he at length reached the place and approached the door, nothing save the muddy slippery ground, the trickling, mouldy walls, the iron-work of the door shining in the wet--nothing else, so far as the red, smoky light of the two lanterns above the door could show through the fog and rain. And there was nothing to be heard save the low pattering of the rain-drops on the soft earth or, when a sudden gust of the east-wind blew, the creaking of some loosened rafter and a whirring, long-drawn, complaining sound that came from the bare trees on the ramparts when they writhed and bent beneath its icy breath. "Victor!" There was a movement in the sentry box by the door; the poor, frozen Venetian soldier of the Dom Miguel regiment who had sheltered himself inside as well as he could from the rain and cold, poked out his heavy sleepy head so that the shine of his wet leather shako was visible for an instant. He muttered an oath and wrapped himself the closer in his damp overcoat. Berger sighed deeply. A minute before he was sure he had seen the poor madman standing motionless in the desolate night, his eyes rigidly fixed upon the door that separated him from his daughter, and now that he was spared the sight, he could take no comfort, for a far worse foreboding convulsed his brain. Hesitatingly he returned to the front part of the building and, increasing his pace, he went down the street towards the market-place, aimlessly, but always swifter, as if he had to go where chance led him, so as to arrive in time to stop some frightful deed. The streets were deserted, nothing but the wind roamed through the drenching solitude, nothing but the voices of the night greeted his ear; that ceaseless murmur and rustle and stir, which, drowned by the noise of the day, moves in the dark stillness, as though dead and dumb things had now first found a voice to reach the sense of men. He often had to stop; it seemed to him as if he heard the piteous groaning of a sick man, or the half stifled cry for help of one wounded. But it was nothing; the wind had shaken some rotting roof, or somewhere in the far distance a watch-dog had given a short, sharp bark. The lonely wanderer held his breath in order to hear better, looked also perhaps into some dark corner and then hurried on. He reached the market place. Here he came upon human beings again, the sentries before the principal guard-house, and as he passed the column commemorative of the cholera in the middle of the square, there was the night-watchman who had pitched upon a dry sleeping place in one of the niches of the irregular monument. Berger stopped irresolutely; should he wake him up and question him? Another form at this moment emerged from a neighbouring street; a man who with bowed head and halting pace glided along by the houses: was this not Franz? Berger could not yet, by the light of the meagre lamps, accurately distinguish him in the all-pervading fog. But the man came nearer and nearer; he was behaving peculiarly; he was looking into every door-way, and when he came to the "Sign of the Arbour," a very ancient shop full of recesses, he went into each of these recesses, so that a spectator saw him alternately appearing and disappearing. When he at length reappeared just under a lamp Berger recognised him; it was really the old servant. "Like a faithful dog seeking his master," he said to himself as he hurried towards him. Franz rushed to meet him. "You know nothing of him?" "Be quiet, man. We will look for him together." "No, separately!" He seized Berger's arm and grasped it convulsively. "You by the river-side and I up here. There is not a moment to lose." Berger asked no more questions but hurried down the broad, inclined street that led to the river. Here, in Cross Street, where most of the pleasure-resorts were, there were still signs of life; he had repeatedly to get out of the way of drunken men who passed along bawling; poor forlorn looking girls brushed past him. In one of the quieter streets he noticed a moving light coming nearer and nearer: it was a large lantern in the hand of a servant who was carefully lighting the gentleman who followed him. Berger recognised the features of the little, wizened creature who, in spite of the awful weather was contentedly tripping along, with satisfaction in every lineament, under the shelter of a mighty umbrella; it was the Deputy Chief-Justice, Herr von Werner. He would have passed by without a word, but Werner recognised him and called to him. "Eh! eh! it's Dr. Berger!" he snickered. "Out so late! Hee, hee! I seem to be meeting all the important people! First--hee! hee! the Lord Chief Justice and now----" "Have you seen him?" "Why yes. You are surprised? So was I! Just as I stepped out of my son-in-law's house, he passed by. I called after him because I wanted to tell him the news. For you may congratulate me, Dr. Berger. Certainly, you annoyed me this morning, you annoyed me very much I but in my joy I will forgive you! My first grandson, a splendid boy, and how he can cry!" "Where did you see him? When?" "Eh! goodness me, what is the matter with you? It was scarcely five minutes ago, he was going--only fancy--towards Wurst Street. You seem upset! And he wouldn't listen to me! Why, what is the matter?" Berger made no reply. Without a word of farewell, he rushed precipitately down the street out of which Werner had come and turned to the right into a narrow, dirty slum which led by a steep incline to the river. This was Wurst Street, the poorest district of the town, the haunt of porters, boatmen and raftsmen; alongside the narrow quay in which the street ended, lay their craft; the corner building next the river was the public house which they frequented. A light still glimmered behind its small window-panes and, as Berger hurried by, the sound of rough song and laughter greeted his ears. He did not stop till he came right up to the river's edge. Its waters were swollen by the autumn rains; swift and tumultuous they coursed along its broad bed, perceptible to the ear only, not to the eye, so fearfully dark was the night. Berger could not even distinguish the wooden foot-bridge that here crossed the river, until he was close up to it. Hesitatingly he stepped upon the shaky structure. The bridge was scarcely two foot broad, its balustrade was rotten and the footway slippery. Over on the other side a solitary light, a lantern, was struggling against wind and fog; its reflection swayed uncertainly on the soaking bridge; when it suddenly flared up in the wind, its flickering, red light revealed for a moment the angry, swollen flood. Berger stood still irresolutely; the place was so desolate, so uncanny; should he stay any longer? Then suddenly a low cry escaped him and he darted forward a step. The lantern opposite had just flared up and by its reflection he had seen a man approach the bridge and step upon it. It seemed to Berger as if this were Sendlingen, but he did not know for certain, as the lantern was again giving only the faintest glimmer. The man approached nearer, slowly, and with uncertain step, groping for the balustrade as he came. Once more the lantern flared up--there was the long Inverness, the gray hat--Berger doubted no longer. "Victor!" He would have shouted at the top of his voice, but the word passed over his lips huskily, almost inaudibly: he would have darted forward ... but could only take one solitary step more, so greatly had the weirdness of the situation overpowered him. Sendlingen did not perceive him: he stopped scarcely ten paces from his friend and bent over the balustrade. Resting on both arms, there he stood, staring at the wild and turbulent water. Thus passed a few seconds. Again the lantern flickered up, for a moment only it gave a clear light. Sendlingen had suddenly raised himself and Berger saw, or thought he saw, that the unfortunate man was now only resting with one hand on the railing, that his body was lifted up.... "Victor!" In two bounds, in two seconds, he was beside him, had seized him, clasped him in his arms. "George!" Awful, thrilling was the cry--a cry for help?--or a cry of baffled rage? Then Berger felt this convulsive body suddenly grow stiff and heavy--he was holding an unconscious burden in his arms. CHAPTER VII. Shortly after there was such vigorous knocking at the windows of the little river-side inn that the panes were broken. The landlord and his customers rushed out into the street, cursing. But they ceased when they saw the scared looking figure with its singular burden; silently they helped to bring the prostrate form into the house. The landlord had recognized the features; he whispered the news to the others, and so great was the love and reverence that attached to this name, that the rough, half-drunken fellows stood about in the bare inn-parlor, as orderly and reverent as if they were in Church. The body lay motionless on the bench which they had fetched; a feather, held to the lips, scarcely moved, so feebly did the breath come and go. The one remedy in the poor place, the brandy with which his breast and pulses were moistened, proved useless; not till the parish doctor, whom a raftsman hurriedly fetched, had applied his essences, did the unconscious man begin to breathe more deeply and at length open his eyes. But his look was fixed and weird; the white lips muttered confused words. Then the deep red eyelids closed again; they showed, as did the tear-stains on his cheeks, how bitterly the poor wretch had been weeping in his aimless wanderings. "We must get him home at once," said the Doctor. "There is brain fever coming on." Berger sent to the hospital for a litter; it was soon on the spot; the sick man was carefully laid on it. The bearers stepped away rapidly; the doctor and Berger walked alongside. When they reached the market-place they came across Franz. "Dead?" he screamed; but when he heard the contrary, he said not another word, but hurried on ahead. In this way Fräulein Brigitta was informed; she behaved more calmly than Berger could have believed. The bed was all ready; the Doctor attached to the Courts was soon on the spot. He was of the same opinion as his colleague. "A mortal sickness," he told Berger, "the fever is increasing, his consciousness is entirely clouded. Perhaps it is owing to overwork at the Inquiry in Vienna?" he added. "He may have caught a severe cold on the top of it." The parish doctor departed, Franz was obliged to go to the chemist's; Berger and the resident doctor remained alone with the invalid. The barrister had a severe struggle with himself; should he tell the doctor the whole truth? To any unsuspecting person, Sendlingen's demeanor must have seemed like the paroxysm of a fever, but he knew better! Certainly the sufferer was physically ailing, but it was not under the weight of empty fancies that he was gently sobbing, or burying his anguish-stricken face in the pillow; the excess of his suffering, the terror of his lonely wanderings had completely broken down his strength; all mastery of self had vanished; he showed himself as he was; in a torment of helplessness. And that which seemed to the doctor the most convincing proof of a mind unhinged Berger understood only too well; as for instance when Sendlingen beckoned to him, and beseechingly whispered, as if filled with the deepest shame: "Go, George, can't you understand that I can no longer bear your looks?" After this Berger went out and sank into a chair in the lobby, and the gruesome scene rose before him again; the lonely bridge lit by the flickering lantern; the roaring current beneath him ... "Oh, what misery!" he groaned, and for the first time for many years, for the first time perhaps, since his boyhood, he broke out into sobs, even though his eyes remained dry. A rapid footstep disturbed him. It was Franz returning with the medicine. Berger told him to send the doctor to him at once. "Doctor," he said, "you shall know the truth as far as I am at liberty to tell it." A misfortune, he told him, had befallen Sendlingen, a misfortune great enough to crush the strongest man. "Your art," he concluded, "cannot heal the soul, I know. But you can give my poor friend what he most of all needs; sleep! Otherwise his torture will wear out both body and soul." The doctor asked no questions; for a long while he looked silently on the ground. Then he said, briefly: "Good! Fortunately I have the necessary means with me." He went back to the sick-room. Ten minutes later, he opened the door and made Berger come in. Sendlingen was in a deep sleep; and it must have been dreamless, for his features had smoothed themselves again. "How long will this sleep last?" asked Berger. "Perhaps till mid-day to-morrow," replied the doctor, "perhaps longer, since the body is so exhausted. At least, we shall know to-morrow whether there is a serious illness in store. But even if there is not, if it is only the torture of the mind that returns, it will be bad enough. Very bad, in fact. Do you know no remedy for it?" "None!" answered the honest lawyer, feebly. They parted without a word in the deepest distress. By earliest dawn, when the bells of the Cathedral rang forth for the first time, Berger was back again in his friend's lobby. "Thank God, he is still sleeping," whispered Fräulein Brigitta. "The worse has past, hasn't it?" "We will hope so," he replied, constrainedly. For a long time he stood at the window and stared out into the court-yard; involuntarily his gaze fixed itself on the little door in the wall which was so small and low that he had never noticed it before; now he observed it for the first time. Then he roused himself and went to the other part of the building to see his unfortunate client. "How is Victorine Lippert?" he asked of the Governor who happened to be at the door. "Poor thing!" he said, with a shrug of the shoulders. "It will soon be all over with her, and that will be the best thing for her." "Has she been suddenly taken ill?" "No, Dr. Berger, she is just the same as before, but the doctor does not think she will last much longer. 'Snuffed out like a candle,' he says. If she had any sort of hope to which her poor soul might cling; but as it is ... Herr von Werner had sent him to her to see what punishment she could bear for yesterday's scene in Court, but the doctor said to him afterward: 'It would be sheer barbarity! Let her die in peace!' But Herr von Werner was of opinion that he could not pass over the offence without some punishment, and that she would survive one day of the dark cell; he only relented when Father Rohn interceded for her. The priest was with her yesterday at two o'clock, and has made her peace with God. Do you still intend to appeal? Well, as you think best. But it will be labor in vain, Dr. Berger! She will die before you receive the decision." "God forbid!" cried Berger. The Governor shook his head. "She would be free in that case," he said. "Why should you wish her to live? What do you hope to attain? Commutation to penal servitude for life, or imprisonment for twenty years! Does that strike you as being better? I don't think so; in my profession it is impossible to believe it, Dr. Berger. Well, as you think best! If you want to speak to Victorine Lippert, the warder shall take you round." The Governor departed; Berger stood looking after him a long while. Then he stepped out into the prison yard and paced up and down; he felt the need of quieting himself before going into her cell. "That would be frightful," he thought. "And yet, perhaps, the man is right, perhaps it would really be best for her--and for him!" He tried to shake off the thought, but it returned. "And it would mean the end of this fearful complication, a sad, a pitiable end--but still an end!" But then he checked himself. "No, it would be no end, because it would be no solution. In misery he would drag out his whole existence; in remorse; in despair! No, on the contrary, her death might be the worst blow that could befal him! But what is to be done to prevent it? It would be possible to get her ordered better food, a lighter cell, and more exercise in the open. But all that would be no use if she is really as bad as the doctor thinks! She will die--O God! she will die before the decision of the Supreme Court arrives." More perplexed and despairing than before, he now repaired to her cell. The warder unlocked it and he entered. Victorine was reclining on her couch, her head pressed against the wall. At his entrance, she tried to rise, but he prevented her. "How are you?" he asked. "Better, I hope?" "Yes," she answered softly, "and all will soon be well with me." He knew what she meant and alas! it was only too plainly visible that this hope at least was not fallacious. Paler than she had latterly been it was almost impossible that she should become, but more haggard Berger certainly thought her; her whole bearing was more broken down and feeble. "She is right," he thought, but he forced himself and made every endeavour to appear more confident than he really was. "I am glad of that!" He tried to say it in the most unconstrained manner in the world, but could only blurt it out in a suppressed tone of voice. "I hope----" She looked at him, and, in the face of this look of immeasurable grief, of longing for death, the like of which he had never seen in any human eyes, the words died on his lips. It seemed to him unworthy any longer to keep up the pretence of not understanding her. "My poor child," he murmured, taking her hand, "I know. I know. But you are still young, why will you cease to hope? I have drawn up the appeal, I shall lodge it to-day--I am sure you will be pardoned." "That would be frightful!" she said in a low tone. "I begged you so earnestly to leave it alone. But I am not angry with you. You have done it because your pity constrained you, perhaps, too, your conscience and sense of justice--and to me it is all one! My life at all events, is only a matter of weeks: I shall never leave this cell alive! Thank Heaven! since yesterday afternoon this has become a certainty!" "The doctor told you? Oh, that was not right of him." "Do not blame him!" she begged. "It was an act of humanity. If he had only told me to relieve me of the fear of the hangman, he should be commended, not reproved. But it happened differently; at first he did not want to tell me the truth, it was evident from what he was saying, and when the truth had once slipped out, he could no longer deny it. He was exhorting me to hope, to cling to life, he spoke to me as you do, 'for otherwise' he said, 'you are lost! My medicines cannot give you vital energy!' His pity moved him to dwell on this more and more pointedly and decidedly. 'If you do not rouse yourself,' he said at last, 'you will be your own executioner.' He was frightened at what he had said almost before he had finished, and still more when I thanked him as for the greatest kindness he could have done me. He only left me to send Father Rohn. He came too, but----" She sighed deeply and stopped. "He surely didn't torture you with bigoted speeches?" asked Berger. "I know him. Father Rohn is a worthy man who knows life; he is a human being ..." "Of course! But just because he is no hypocrite he could say nothing that would really comfort me for this life. At most for that other life, which perhaps--no certainly!" she said hurriedly. "So many people believe in it, good earnest men who have seen and suffered much misfortune, how should a simple girl dare to doubt it? Certainly, Dr. Berger, when I think of my own life and my mother's life, it is not easy to believe in an all-just, all-merciful God. But I do believe in Him--yes! though so good a man as Father Rohn could only say: amends will be made up there. Only the way he said it fully convinced me! But, after all, he could only give me hope in death, not hope for life." "Certainly against his will," cried Berger. "You did not want to understand him." "Yes, Dr. Berger, I did want to understand him and understood him--in everything--excepting only one thing," she added hesitatingly. "But that was not in my power--I could not! And whatever trouble he took it was in vain." "And what was this one thing?" "He asked me if there was no one I was attached to, who loved me, to whom my life or death mattered? No, I answered, nobody--and then he asked--but why touch upon the hateful subject! let us leave it alone, Dr. Berger." "No," cried Berger, white with emotion, "I implore you, let us talk about it. He asked you whether you did not know your father." She nodded; a faint red overspread her pale cheeks. "And you answered?" "What I have told you: that I did not know him, that if he were living I should not love and reverence him as my father, but hate and despise him as the wretch who ruined my mother!" She had half raised herself, and had spoken with a strength and energy that Berger had not believed possible. Now she sank back on her couch. He sighed deeply. "And you adhered to that," he began again, "whatever Father Rohn might say? He told you that on the threshold of--that in your situation one should not hate, but forgive, that whoever hopes for God's mercy must not himself condemn unmercifully!" "Yes," she replied, "he said so, if perhaps in gentler words. For he seemed to feel that I did not require to depend on God's mercy, but only on His justice." "Forgive me!" muttered Berger. "For I know your fate and know you. But just because I know your affectionate nature and your need of affection----" He stopped. "Gently," he thought, "I must be cautious." "Don't consider me unfeeling," he then continued, "if I dwell upon this matter, however painful it may be to you. Just this one thing: does it follow that this man must be a wretch? Were there not perhaps fatal circumstances that bound him against his will and prevented him doing his duty to your poor mother?" "No," she answered. "I know there were not!" "You know there were not?" murmured Berger in the greatest consternation. "But do you know him?" "Yes. I know his heart, his character, and that is enough. What does it matter to me what his name is, or his station? Whether he is living or dead? To me he has never lived! I know him from my mother's judgment, and that she, the gentlest of women, could not judge otherwise, proves his unworthiness. Only one single time did she speak to me of him, when I was old enough to ask and to be told why people sometimes spoke of us with a shrug of the shoulders. 'If he had been thoughtless and weak,' she said to me, 'I could have forgiven him. But I have never known a man who viewed life more earnestly and intelligently: none who was so strong and brave and resolute as he. It was only from boundless selfishness, after mature, cold-blooded calculation that he delivered me to dishonor, because I was an obstacle in his career.' You see he was more pitiless than the man whom I trusted." "No," cried Berger in the greatest excitement. "You do him injustice!" "Injustice! How do you know that? Do you know him?" He turned away and was silent. "No," he then murmured, "how should I know him?" "Then why do you dissent from me with such conviction? Oh, I understand," she went on bitterly, "you, even you, don't think my mother's words trustworthy, and simply because she allowed herself to be deluded by a wretch!" "No, indeed!" returned Berger, trying to compose himself, "for I know how noble, how true and good your mother was, I know it from her letters. The remark escaped me unawares. But you are right. Let us drop this subject." Then he asked her if she would like to have some books. She answered in the negative and he left the cell. "Sendlingen must never see her!" he thought when he was back in the street. "If he were to enter her cell he would betray himself and then learn what she thinks of him! It would utterly crush him. That, at least, he shall be spared." But the next few minutes were to show him that he had been planning impossibilities. As he passed the Chief Justice's residence, an upstairs window opened; he heard his name called loud and anxiously. It was Fräulein Brigitta. "Quickly," cried she, beckoning him to come up. He hurried up the stairs, she rushed to meet him. "Heaven has sent you to us," she cried, weeping and wringing her hands. "How fortunate that I accidentally saw you passing. We were at our wits' end? He insists on going out. Franz is to dress him. We do not know what has excited him so. Father Rohn has been to see him, but he talked so quietly with him that we breathed again indeed. It is manifestly a sudden attack of fever, but we cannot use force to him." Berger hurried to the bedroom. Sendlingen was reclining in an arm-chair, Franz was attending to him. At his friend's entrance he coloured, and held up his hand deprecatingly. "They have fetched you," he cried impatiently. "It is useless! I am not going to be prevented!" Berger signed to Franz to leave the room. Not until the door was closed behind him did he approach the sick man, and take his hand, and look searchingly into his face. It reassured him to see that, though his eyes were dim, they no longer looked wild and restless as they did a few hours ago. "You are going to her?" he asked. "That must not be." "I must!" cried Sendlingen despairingly. "It is the one thought to which I cling to avoid madness. When I awoke--I was so perplexed and desolate, I felt my misery returning--then I heard Rohn's voice in the next room. They were going to send him away: I was still asleep, they said,--but I made him come in, because I wanted to hear some other voice than that of my conscience, and because I was afraid of myself. I did not dream that he was bringing me a staff by which I could raise myself again." "You asked him about her?" "No, by the merest chance he began to tell me of his talk with her yesterday, and how she was wasting away because there was no one on earth for whose sake she could or would rouse herself. Oh, what I felt! Despair shook my heart more deeply than ever, and yet I could have thanked him on my knees for these good tidings. Now my life has an object again, and I know why Fate has allowed me to survive this day." Berger was silent--should he, dared he, tell the truth? "Think it over a while," he begged. "If you were to betray yourself to the officials----" "I shall not do so. And if I did, how could that trouble me? Don't you see that a man in my situation cannot think of himself or any such secondary consideration?" "That would be no secondary consideration. And could you save her by such a step? The situation remains as it was!" "Are you cruel enough to remind me of that?" cried Sendlingen. "But, thank God! I am clear enough to give you the right answer instead of allowing myself to be oppressed by misery. Now listen; I shall do what I can! From the hangman, from the prison, I may not be able to save my child, but perhaps I can save her from despair, from wasting away. I shall say to her: live for your father, as your father lives for you! Perhaps this thought will affect her as it has affected me; it has saved me from the worst. Another night like last night, George!" He stopped and a shudder ran through his body. "Such a night shall not come again! I do not know what is to be done later on, but my immediate duty is clear. I have been fighting against the instinct that drew me to her, as against a suggestion of madness; I now see that it was leading me aright." He laid his hand on the bell to summon Franz. Berger prevented him, "Wait another hour," he implored. "I will not try to hinder you any more; I see that it would be useless, perhaps unjust. But let me speak to her first. Humour me in this one thing only. You agreed to do so yesterday." "So be it!" said Sendlingen. "But you must promise not to keep me waiting a minute longer than is absolutely necessary." Berger promised and took his leave. He was not a religious man in the popular sense of the word, and yet as he again rang the prison bell, he felt as if he must pray that his words would be of effect as a man only can pray for a favour for himself. The warder was astonished when he again asked admission to the cell, and Victorine looked at him with surprise. He went up to her. "Listen to me," he begged. "I have hitherto wished to conceal the truth from you, with the best intentions, but still it was not right. For falsehood kills and truth saves, always and everywhere--I ought to have remembered that. Well then; I know your father; he is my best friend, a man so noble and good, so upright and full of heart, as are few men on this poor earth." She rose. "If that were so my mother would have lied," she cried. "Can I believe you rather than my mother? Can you expect that of me?" "No," he replied. "Your mother judged him quite correctly. He did not betray her through thoughtlessness, nor forsake her through weakness. But much less still from cold-blooded calculation. No external constraint weighed upon him but an internal,--the constraint of education, of his convictions, of his views of the world and men, in short, of his whole being, so that he could hardly have acted differently. With all this there was such a fatal, peculiar concatenation of external circumstances, that it would have needed a giant soul not to have succumbed. We are all of us but men. I would not trust anyone I know, not even myself, to have been stronger than he was! Not one, Victorine! Will you believe me?" "My mother judged otherwise!" she replied. "And will you perhaps also attempt to justify the fact that he never concerned himself about his child?" "He knew nothing of you," cried Berger. "He did not dream that he had a child in the world! And one thing I can assure you: if he had accidentally heard that you were alive, he would not have rested until he had drawn you to his heart, he would have sheltered you in his arms, in his house, from the battle with misery and the wickedness of men. Not only his heart would have dictated this, but the absence of children by his marriage, and his sense of justice: so as to make good through you what he could no longer make good to your poor mother. If you could only imagine how he suffers!--You must surely be able to feel for him: a noble man, who suddenly learns that his offence is ten times greater than he had thought or dreamt; that he has a child in the world against whom also he has transgressed, and who learns all this at a moment when he can make no reparation--in such a moment--can you grasp this, Victorine?" Her face remained unmoved. "What shall I say?" she exclaimed gloomily. "If he really suffers, the punishment is only just. What did my mother not suffer on his account! And I!" "But can we ascribe all the blame to him?" he cried. "All, Victorine?" "Perhaps," she answered. "But if not all, then the most, so much that I will certainly believe you in one thing; if he is a human being at all, then he should now be suffering all the tortures of remorse. Still, as great as my sorrow, his cannot be! And is my guilt greater than his? And has he, too, to expiate it with honour and life?" "Quite possibly!" he cried. "Perhaps with his life, seeing that he cannot, situated as he now is, expiate it with his honour. Oh, if you knew all! If you knew what an unprecedented combination of circumstances has heightened the sense of his guilt, has increased his sorrow to infinite proportions. And you shall know all." "I will not hear it," she cried with a swift movement of repulsion, "I do not care, I may not care about it. I will not be robbed of my feelings against this man. I will not! His punishment is just--let us drop the subject." "Just! still this talk about just! You are young but you have experienced enough of life, you have suffered enough, to know how far this justice will bring us. An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth--shall this pitiless web of guilt and expiation continue to spin itself everlastingly from generation to generation? Can't you understand that this life would be unendurable if a high-minded deed, a noble victory over self, did not at times rend the web? You should understand this, poor child, you more than anyone. Do such a deed, forgive this unhappy man!" "Did he send you to me on this mission?" "No. I will be truthful in the smallest detail: I myself wrested from him permission to prepare you for his coming. I wished to spare you and him the emotions of a melancholy contest. For he does not even suspect what you think of him." "He does not suspect it?" she cried. "He thinks that the balance is struck, if he graces a fallen, a condemned creature with a visit! Oh, and this man is noble and sensitive!" "You are unjust to him in that, too," protested Berger. "And in that most of all. That he who can usually read the hearts of men like a book, has not thought of this most obvious and natural thing, shows best of all how greatly his misery has distracted and desolated him. He only wants one thing: to come to you, to console you, to console himself in you." "I will not see him, you must prevent it." "I cannot. I have tried in vain. He will come; his reason, perhaps his life, depend upon the way you may receive him." "Do not burden me with such responsibilities," she sobbed despairingly. "I cannot forgive him. But I desire nobody's death, I do not wish him to die. Tell him what you like, even that I forgive him, but keep him away, I implore you." She would have thrown herself at his feet but he prevented her. "No, not that," he murmured. "I will not urge any more. As God wills." A few minutes later he was again with Sendlingen. "She knows all," he told him, "except your name and station. She does not desire your visit--she--dreads the excitement." He stopped short and looked anxiously at his friend; he feared another sudden outburst of despair. But it did not come. Sendlingen certainly started as in pain, but then he drew himself up to his full height. "You are concealing the truth from me," he said. "She does not wish to see her mother's betrayer. I did not think of it before, but I read it at once in your looks of alarm. That is bad, very bad--but stop me, it cannot. Where the stranger has tried in vain the father will succeed. My heart tells me so." He called for his hat and stick and leaning on Berger's arm, went down the steps. In the street he loosed his hold: the energy of his soul had given his body new strength. With a firm step he walked to the prison door, and the quiver in his voice was scarcely perceptible as he gave the warder the order to open Victorine Lippert's cell. The official obeyed. The prisoner hardly looked up when she heard the bolts rattle yet another time. The warder felt himself in duty bound to call her attention to the importance of the visit she was about to receive. "His Lordship, the Chief Justice, Baron Sendlingen!" he whispered to her. "Inspection of the Cells. Stand up." He stepped back respectfully to admit Sendlingen and locked the door after him. The two were alone. Victorine had risen as she had been told: once only did she cast a transient and nonchalant look at the tall figure before her, then she remained standing with bowed head. Similar inspections had frequently taken place before; in each case the functionary had briefly asked whether the prisoner wished anything or had any complaint to make. This question she was waiting for now in order to reply as briefly in the negative; she wanted nothing more. But he was silent, and as she looked up surprised--"Merciful God!" she cried, and reeled back on to her couch, covering her face with her trembling hands. She knew who this man was at once, at the first glance. How she had recognised him with such lightning speed, she could not determine, even later when she thought the matter over. It was half dark in the cell, she had not properly seen his features and expression. Perhaps it was his attitude which betrayed him. With bowed head, his hands listlessly hanging by his sides, he stood there like a criminal before his judge. At her exclamation, he looked up and came nearer. "Victorine," he murmured. She did not understand him, so low was his stifled articulation. "My child!" he then cried aloud and darted towards her. She rose to her feet and stretched out her hands as if to repel him, gazing at him all the while with widely opened eyes. And again she did not know what it was that suddenly penetrated and moved her heart. Was it because his face seemed familiar to her, mysteriously familiar, as if she had seen it ever since she could think?... Yes, it was so! For what unknown to herself, had overpowered her, was the likeness to her own face. Or was it perhaps the silent misery of his face, the beseeching look of his eyes? She felt the bitter animosity to which she had despairingly clung, the one feeling of which she would not be robbed, suddenly melt away. "I cannot," she still faltered, but in the same breath she lifted up her arms. "Father!" she cried and threw herself on his breast. He caught her in his arms and covered her head and face with tears and kisses. Then he drew her upon his knees and laid her head on his breast. Thus they sat and neither spoke a word; only their tears flowed on and on. CHAPTER VIII. Half an hour might have passed since Sendlingen entered his daughter's cell: to Berger, who was pacing up and down outside as sentry, it seemed an eternity. The warder, too, was struck by the proceeding. This zealous, but very loquacious official, whom Berger had known for many years, approached him with a confidential smile. "There must--naturally enough--be something strange going on in there," he said as he pointed with a smirk towards the cell. "Something very strange." Berger at first stared at the man as much disconcerted as if he had said that he knew the secret. "What do you mean by that," he then said roughly. "Your opinions are not wanted." The warder looked at him amazed. "Well, such as we--naturally enough--are at least entitled to our thoughts," he replied. "There has been a run upon this cell since yesterday as if it contained a princess! First the doctor. Father Rohn and you, Herr Berger--and now his Lordship the Chief Justice, and all in little more than an hour's time. That doesn't occur every day, and I know the reason for it." Berger forced himself to smile. "Of course you do, because you're such a smart fellow, Höbinger! What is the reason of it?" "Well with you, Dr. Berger, I can--naturally enough--talk about the matter," replied the warder flattered, "although you are the prisoner's counsel and a friend of the Chief Justice. But in 1848 you made great speeches and were always on the side of the people; you will not betray me, Dr. Berger. Well--naturally enough--it is the old story: there is no such thing as equality in this world! If she, in there, were a servant-girl who had been led astray by a servant-man, not a soul would trouble their heads about her! But she is an educated person, and what is the principal thing--her seducer is a Count--that alters matters. Of course she had to be condemned--naturally enough--because the law requires it, but afterwards every care is taken of her, and if she were to get off with a slight punishment I, for one, shouldn't be surprised. Of course the Governor says that that's nonsense; if it were a case of favouritism he says, Herr von Werner would have behaved differently to her; the Vice Chief Justice, he says, has a very keen scent for favouritism; you, Höbinger, he says--naturally enough--are an ass! But I know what I know, and since his Lordship has taken the trouble to come, not in a general inspection, but on a special visit that is lasting longer than anything that has ever been heard or dreamt of, I am quite convinced that it is not I, but on the contrary, the Governor...." But the crafty fellow did not allow this disrespect to his superior to pass his lips, but contented himself by triumphantly concluding: "Naturally enough--is it not, Dr. Berger?" Berger thought it best to give no definite answer. If this chatter-box were to confide his suspicions to the other prison officials, it would at least be the most harmless interpretation and therefore he only said: "You think too much, Höbinger. That has often proved dangerous to many men." Another half hour had gone by and Berger's anxiety and impatience reached the highest pitch. He was uncertain whether to put a favourable or an unfavourable interpretation upon this long stay of Sendlingen's, and even if he had succeeded in touching his child's heart, yet any further talk in this place and under these conditions was a danger. How great a danger, Berger was soon to see plainly enough. The artful Höbinger was slinking about near the cell more and more restlessly. Only Berger's presence kept him from listening at the key-hole, or from opening the little peep-hole at the door, through which, unobserved by the prisoner, he could see the inside of every cell. The desire was getting stronger and stronger; his fingers itched to press the spring that would open it. At last, just as Berger had turned his back, he succumbed to his curiosity; the little wooden door flew open noiselessly--he was going to fix his eyes in the opening.... At that moment Berger happened to turn round. "What are you doing there?" he cried in such a way that the man started and stepped back. In a second Berger was beside him, had seized his arms and flung him aside. "What impertinence!" he cried. The warder was trembling in every limb. "For God's sake," he begged, "don't ruin me. I only wanted to see whether--whether his Lordship was all right." "That's a lie!" cried Berger with intentional loudness. "You have dared----" He did not require to finish the sentence; his object was attained: Sendlingen opened the door and came out of the cell. His face bore once more its wonted expression of kindly repose; he seemed to have recovered complete mastery of himself. "You can lock up again," he said to the warder. He seemed to understand what had just passed for he asked no questions. Still Höbinger thought it necessary to excuse himself. "My Lord," he stammered, "I only wanted to do my duty. It sometimes happens that--that criminals become infuriated and attack the visitors." "Does that poor creature in here strike you as being dangerous?" asked Sendlingen. It seemed to Berger almost unnatural that he could put forth the effort to say this, nay more, that he could at the same time force a smile. "My Lord----" "Never mind, Höbinger! You were perhaps a little inquisitive, but that shall be overlooked in consideration of your former good conduct. Besides, prisoners are allowed no secrets, at all events after their sentence." Turning to Berger he continued: "She must be taken to the Infirmary this afternoon, it is a necessity. Have you anything else to do here? No? Well, come back with me." It all sounded so calm, so business-like--Berger could hardly contain his astonishment. He would never have believed his friend capable of such strength and especially after such a night--after such an interview! "I admire your strength of nerve," cried he when they got out into the street. "That was a fearful moment." "Indeed it was!" agreed Sendlingen, his voice trembling for the first time. "If the fellow had cast one single look through the peep-hole, we should have both been lost! Fancy Höbinger, the warder, seeing the Chief Justice with a criminal in his arms!" "Ah then, it came to that?" "Should I otherwise be so calm? I am calm because I have now an object again, because I see a way of doing my duty. Oh, George, how right you were: happy indeed am I that I live and can pay my debt." "What do you think of doing?" "First of all the most important thing: to preserve her life, to prepare her for life. As I just said, she shall be allotted a cell in the Infirmary and have a patient's diet. I may do this without dereliction of duty: I should have to take such measures with anyone else if I knew the circumstances as accurately as I do in this case." "But you will not be able to visit her too often in the Infirmary," objected Berger. "Certainly not," replied Sendlingen. "I see that the danger is too great, and I told her so. Yes, you were right in that too: it is no secondary consideration whether our relationship remains undiscovered or not. I cannot understand how it was that I did not see this before: why, as I now see, _everything_ depends upon that. And I see things clearly now; this interview has worked a miracle in me, George--it has rent the veil before my eyes, it has dispelled the mist in my brain. I know I can see Victorine but seldom. On the other hand Brigitta will be with her daily: for she is a member of the 'Women's Society,' and it will strike nobody if she specially devotes herself to my poor child." "It will not strike others, but will she not herself guess the truth?" "Why, she shall know all! I will tell her this very day. She is entirely devoted to me, brave and sterling, the best of women. Besides I have no choice. Intercourse with a good, sensible woman is of the most urgent necessity to my poor dear. But I have not resolved on this step simply for that reason. I shall need this faithful soul later on as well." "I understand--after the term of imprisonment is at an end." Sendlingen stood still and looked at his friend; it was the old look full of wretchedness and despair. "Yes!" he said unsteadily. "Certainly, I had hardly thought of that. I do not indulge any extravagant hopes: I am prepared for anything, even for the worst. And just in this event Brigitta's help would be more than ever indispensable to me." "If the worst were to happen?" asked Bergen "How am I to understand that?" Sendlingen made no reply. Not until Berger repeated the question did he say, slowly and feebly: "Such things should not be talked about, not with anyone, not even with a best friend, not even with one's self. Such a thing is not even dwelt upon in thought; it is done when it has to be done." His look was fixed as he spoke, like a man gazing into a far distance or down into a deep abyss. Then his face became calm and resolved again. "One thing more," he said. "You have finished drawing up the appeal? May I read it? Forgive me, of course I have every confidence in you. But see! so much depends upon it for me, perhaps something might occur to me that would be of importance!" "What need of asking?" interrupted Berger. "It would be doing me a service. We will go through the document together this very day." When he called on his friend in the evening with this object, Fräulein Brigitta came out to see him. The old lady's eyes were red with crying, but her face was, as it were, lit up with a strong and noble emotion. "I have already visited her," she whispered to Berger. "Oh believe me, she is an angel, a thousand times purer than are many who plume themselves or their virtue. I bade her be of good cheer, and then I told her much about his Lordship--who knows better how, who knows him better? She listened to me peacefully, crying quietly all the time and I had to cry too--. But all will come right; I am quite sure of it. If the God above us were to let these two creatures perish, _these_ two----" Her voice broke with deep emotion. Berger silently pressed her hand and entered the study. He found his friend calm and collected. Sendlingen no longer complained; no word, no look, betrayed the burden that oppressed his soul. He dispatched his business with Berger conscientiously and thoroughly, and as dispassionately as if it were a Law examination paper. More than that--when he came to a place where Berger, in the exaltation of the moment, had chosen too strong an expression, he always stopped him: "That won't do: we must find calmer and more temperate words!" And usually it was he too who found these calmer and more temperate words. Down to the last word he maintained this clearness, this almost unnatural calm. Not until Berger had folded his paper and was putting it in his pocket did the consciousness of his misery seem to return. Involuntarily he stretched forth his hand towards the paper. "You want to refer to something again?" asked Berger. "No!" His hand dropped listlessly. "Besides it is all labour in vain. My lot is cast." "Your lot?" cried Berger. "However much you may be bound up with the fate of your child, you must not say that!" "_My_ lot, _only_ my lot!" Berger observed the same peculiar look and tone he had before noticed when Sendlingen said that such things should not be spoken of even to one's self.... But this time Berger wanted to force him to an explanation. "You talk in riddles," he began; but he got no further, for, with a decision that made any further questions impossible, Sendlingen interrupted him: "May I be spared the hour when you learn to know this riddle! Even you can have no better wish than this for me! Why vainly sound the lowest depths? Good night, George, and thanks a thousand, thousand times!" CHAPTER IX. Six weeks had elapsed since the dispatch of the appeal: Christmas was at the door. The days had come and gone quickly without bringing any fresh storm, any fresh danger, but certainly without dispelling even one of the clouds that hung threateningly over the heads of these two much-to-be-commiserated beings. Berger was with Sendlingen daily, and daily his questioning look received the same answer; a mute shake of the head--the decision had not yet arrived. The Supreme Court had had the papers connected with the trial brought under its notice; beyond the announcement of this self-evident fact, not a line had come from Vienna. This silence was certainly no good sign, but it did not necessarily follow that it was a bad one. To be sure the lawyer examining the case, unless, from the first, he attributed no importance whatever to Berger's statements, should have demanded more detailed information from the Court at Bolosch, and all the more because Baron Dernegg's dissentient vote was recorded in the papers. Still, perhaps this silence was simply to be explained by the fact that he had not had an opportunity of going into the case. Berger held fast to this consoling explanation, or at least pretended to do so, when the subject came up in conversation, which was seldom enough; he did not like to begin it, and Sendlingen equally avoided it. It almost seemed to Berger as if his unhappy friend welcomed the delay in the decision, as if he gladly dragged on in a torture of uncertainty from day to day--anything so as not to look the dread horror in the face. And indeed Sendlingen every morning sighed with relief, when the moment of horrid suspense had gone by, when he had looked through the Vienna mail and found nothing. But this did not arise from the motive which Berger supposed, but from a better feeling. Sendlingen rejoiced in every hour of respite that gave his poor child more time to gather strength of soul and body. The shattered health of Victorine mended visibly, day by day. The deathly pallor disappeared, her weakness lessened, the look of her eyes was clearer and steadier. The doctor observed it with glad astonishment and no little pride; he ascribed the improvement to his remedies, to the better nourishment and care which on his representations had been allotted her. When he boasted of it to his friend, Father Rohn, the good priest met him with as bantering a smile as his kind heart would allow; he knew better. If this poor child was blossoming again, the merit was entirely his. Had not the doctor himself said that she could only be saved by a change in her frame of mind? And had not this change really set in even more visibly than her physical improvement? A new spirit had entered into Victorine. She no longer sat gazing in melancholy brooding, she no longer yearned for death, and when the priest sought to nourish in her the hope of pardon--in the sincerest conviction, for he looked upon the confirmation of the death-sentence as an impossibility--she nodded to him, touched and grateful. She seemed, now, to understand him when he told her that the repentance of a sinner and his after life of good works, were more pleasing to the good God above than his death. And when he once more led the conversation to the man who, in spite of everything, was her father and perhaps at this moment was suffering the bitterest anguish on her account, when he begged her not to harden her heart against the unknown, he had the happiness of hearing her say with fervour in her looks and voice: "I have forgiven him from the bottom of my heart. The thought of him has completely restored me! Perhaps God will grant me to be a good daughter to him some day!" So the words of comfort and the exhortations of the good priest had really not been in vain. The true state of the case nobody even suspected; the secret was stringently kept. No doubt it struck many people and gave occasion to a variety of gossip, that Fräulein Brigitta visited the condemned prisoner almost daily, and the Chief Justice almost weekly, but a sufficient explanation was sought and found. Good-natured and inoffensive people thought that Victorine Lippert was a creature so much to be pitied, that these two noble characters were only following their natural instincts in according her a special pity; the malevolent adopted the crafty Höbinger's view, and talked of "favouritism"; the aristocratic betrayer and his mother the Countess, they said, had after all an uneasy conscience as to whether they had not behaved too harshly to the poor creature, and the representations they had made to their fellow-aristocrat, Baron von Sendlingen, had not been in vain. Certainly this report could only be maintained in uninitiated circles; anyone who was intimately acquainted with the aristocratic society of the province knew well enough, that the Countess Riesner-Graskowitz was assuredly the last person in the world to experience a single movement of pity for the condemned girl. Be that as it might, Sendlingen behaved in this case as he had all his life behaved in any professional matter: humanely and kindly, but strictly according to the law and without over-stepping his duty by a hair's breadth. The better attention, the separate cell in the Infirmary, would certainly have been allotted to any one else about whom the doctor had made the same representations. When Father Rohn, moved by his sense of compassion, sought to obtain some insignificant favour that went beyond these lines--it had reference to some absolutely trifling regulation of the house--the Governor of the gaol was ready to grant it, but the Chief Justice rigidly set his face against the demand. When Berger heard of this trivial incident, a heavy burden which he had been silently carrying for weeks, without daring to seek for certainty in a conversation on the subject, was rolled from his heart. He had put an interpretation on the mysterious words that Sendlingen had uttered the day after the trial, which had filled him with the profoundest sorrow,--more than that with terror. Now he saw his mistake: a man who so strictly obeyed his conscience in small matters where there was no fear of discovery, would assuredly in any greater conflict between inclination and duty, hold fast unrelentingly to justice and honour. He was soon to be strengthened in this view. It was three days before Christmas-day when he once more entered his friend's chambers. He found him buried in the perusal of letters which, however, he now pushed from him. "The mail from Vienna is not in yet," he said, "the train must have got blocked in the snow. But I have letters from Pfalicz. The Chief Justice of the Higher Court there, to whose position I am to succeed, asks whether it would not be possible for me to release him soon after the New Year, instead of at the end of February, as the Minister of Justice arranged. He is unwell, and ought to go South as soon as possible." "Great Heavens!" cried Berger. "Why, we have forgotten all about that." And indeed those stormy days and the succeeding weeks of silent, anxious suffering had hardly allowed him to think of Sendlingen's impending promotion and departure. "I have not," replied Sendlingen, gloomily. "The thought that I had to go, has often enough weighed me down more heavily than all my other burdens. How gladly I would stay here now, even if they degraded me to--to the post of Governor of the prison! But I have now no option. I have definitely accepted the position at Pfalicz and I must enter upon it." "And do you really think of departing at the New Year?" "No, that would be beyond my duty. I should be glad to oblige the invalid, but as you know, I cannot. I shall stay till the end of February; the decision must have come by that time." He again bent over a document that lay before him. Berger too, was silent, he went to the window and stared out into the grey dusk; it seemed as if the snow-storm would never cease. There was a knock at the door; a clerk of the Court of Record entered. "From the Supreme Court," he announced, laying a packet with a large seal on the table. "It has just arrived. Personally addressed to your lordship." The clerk departed; Berger approached the table. When he saw how excited Sendlingen was, how long he remained gazing at the letter, he shook his head. "That cannot be the decision," he said. "It would not be addressed to you. It is some indifferent matter, a question of discipline, a pension." Sendlingen nodded and broke the seal. But at the first glance a deathly pallor overspread his face, and the paper in his hands trembled so violently that he had to lay it on the table in order to read it to the end. "Read for yourself," he then muttered. Berger glanced through the paper; he too felt his heart beat impetuously as he did so. It was certainly not the decision, only a brief charge, but its contents were almost equivalent to it. The lawyers examining the appeal had, as Berger hoped, been struck by Baron Dernegg's dissentient vote and the motives for this. Dernegg was not of the opinion of his brother judges that this was a case of premeditated murder, maliciously planned months beforehand, but a deed done suddenly, in a paroxysm of despair, nay, most probably in a moment when the girl was not accountable for her actions. Against this more clement view, there certainly were the depositions of the Countess, and Victorine's attempts to conceal her condition. But on the other hand, her only _confidante_, the servant-girl, had deposed at the preliminary inquiry that Victorine had only made these attempts by her advice and with her help, and, moreover, with the sole object of staying in the house until the young Count should come to her aid. This testimony, however, she had withdrawn at the trial. Berger had chiefly based his appeal to nullify the trial, on the fact that the witness, in spite of this contradiction, had been put on her oath, and to the examining lawyer, also, this seemed a point of decisive importance. The Chief Justice was, therefore, commissioned to completely elucidate it by a fresh examination of the witness. Probably the charge had been directed to him personally because, as it stated, neither Herr von Werner nor any of the other judges who had been in favour of putting her on oath, could very well be entrusted with the inquiry. But if Sendlingen were actually too busy with other matters to conduct the examination, he might hand it over to the third Judge, Herr von Hoche. "What will you do?" asked Berger. "The matter is of the gravest importance. That the girl gave false evidence at the trial, that this was her return for being taken back into the Countess' service, we know for a certainty. The only question is whether we can convict her of it. An energetic Judge could without doubt do so, but will old Hoche, now over seventy, succeed? He is a good man, but his years weigh heavily upon him, he is dragging himself through his duties till the date of his retirement--four weeks hence--I fancy as best he can. And therefore once again--what will you do, Victor?" "I don't know," he murmured. "Leave me alone. I must think it out by myself. Forgive me! my conscience alone can decide in such a matter. Good-bye till this evening, George." Berger departed; his heart was as heavy as ever it had been. In the first ebullition of feeling, moved by his pity for these two beings, he had wished to compel his friend to undertake the inquiry, but now he had scruples. Was not the position the same as on the day of the trial? And if he then approved of his friend's resolution not to preside, could he now urge him to undertake a similar task? Certainly the conflict was now more acute, more painfully accentuated, but was Sendlingen's duty as a Judge any the less on that account? Again the thought rose in Berger's mind which a few weeks ago had comforted him and lifted him above the misery of the moment: that there was a solution of these complications, a great, a liberating solution--there must be, just because this man was what he was! But even now he did not know how to find this solution; one thing only was clear to him: if Sendlingen undertook the inquiry and thus saved his child, it would be an act for which there would be all manner of excuses but it would assuredly not be that great, saving act of which he dreamt! And yet if Hoche in his weakness ruined the case and did not bring the truth to light, if she perhaps had to die now that she had begun to hope again, now that she had waked to a new life ... Berger closed his eyes as if to shut out the terrible picture that obtruded itself upon him, and yet it rose again and again. At dusk, just as he was starting to his friend's, Fräulein Brigitta called to see him. "I am to tell you," she began, "that his Lordship wants you to postpone your visit until to-morrow. But it is not on that account that I have come, but because I am oppressed with anxiety. Has the decision arrived? He is as much upset again as he was on the day of the trial." Berger comforted her as well as he could. "It is only a momentary excitement," he assured her, "and will soon pass." "I only thought so because he is behaving just as he did then. It is a singular thing; he has been rummaging for those keys again. You know,--the one that opens the little door in the court-yard wall. I came in just in the nick of time to see him take it out of his writing-table drawer. And just as before, it seemed to annoy him to be surprised in the act.--Isn't that strange?" "Very strange!" he replied. But he added hastily: "It must have been a mere chance." "Certainly, it can only have been a coincidence," he thought after Brigitta had gone, "it would be madness to impute such a thing to him, to him who was horrified at the idea of conducting the trial and equally at the thought of conducting this examination. And yet when he first seized upon that key, the idea must certainly have taken a momentary possession of him, and that it should have returned to him to-day, to-day of all days." As he was the next day walking along the corridor that led to Sendlingen's chambers, he met Mr. Justice Hoche. The hoary old man, supporting himself with difficulty by the aid of a stick, was looking very testy. "Only think," he grumbled, "what an odious task the Chief Justice has just laid upon me. It will interest you, you were Counsel for the defence in the case." And he told him of the charge at great length. "Well, what do you say to that? Isn't it odious?" "It is a very serious undertaking!" said Berger. "The matter is one of the greatest importance." "Yes, and just for that reason," grumbled the old man, almost whimpering. "I do not want to undertake any such responsibility, now, when merely thinking gives me a head-ache. I suffer a great deal from head-aches, Dr. Berger. And it is such a ticklish undertaking! For you see either the maid-servant told the truth at the trial, in which case this fresh examination is superfluous, or she lied and _ergo_ was guilty of perjury and _ergo_ is a very tricky female! And how am I ever to get to the bottom of a tricky female, Dr. Berger?" "Did you tell the Chief Justice this?" asked Berger. "Oh, of course! For half an hour I was telling him about my condition and how I always get a head-ache now if I have to think. But he stuck to his point, 'you will have to undertake the matter: you must exert yourself!' Good Heavens! what power of exertion has one left at seventy years of age! Well, good morning, dear Dr. Berger! But it's odious--most odious!" Berger looked after the old man as he painfully hobbled along: "And in such hands," he thought, "rests the fate of my two friends." Under the weight of this thought, he had not the courage to face Sendlingen. He turned and went home in a melancholy mood. When the next day towards noon, he was turning homewards after a trial at which he had been the defending barrister, he again met Mr. Justice Hoche, who was just leaving the building, in the portico of the Courts. The old gentleman was manifestly in a high state of contentment. "Well," asked Berger, "is the witness here already? Have you begun the examination?" "Begun? I have ended it!" chuckled the old man. "And _re bene gesta_ one is entitled to rest. I shall let the law take care of itself to-day and go home. I haven't even got a head-ache over it; certainly it didn't require any great effort of thought--I soon got at the truth." "Indeed?--and what is the truth?" "H'm! I don't suppose it will be particularly agreeable to you," laughed the old Judge, leaning confidentially on Berger's arm. "Though for the matter of that you may be quite indifferent about it: you have done your duty, your appeal was certainly splendidly drawn up, but what further interest can you have in this person? For she is a thoroughly good-for-nothing person, and that's why she is dying so young! What stories that servant-girl has told me about her, stories, my dear doctor, that an old barrack-wall would have blushed to hear. She was hardly seventeen years old when she came to the Countess', but already had a dozen intrigues on her record, and what things she told her _confidante_ about them, and which were repeated to me to-day--why, it is a regular Decameron, my dear doctor, or more properly speaking: Boccaccio in comparison is a chaste Carthusian." Berger violently drew his arm out of the old man's. "That's a lie!" he said between his teeth. "A scandalous calumny!" The old Judge looked at him, quite put out of countenance. "Why, what an idea," he cried. "If it were not so, this servant-girl would be a tricky female." "So she is." "She is not! Oh, I know human nature. On the contrary, she is good-natured and stupid. No one could tell lies with such assurance, after having just been solemnly admonished to speak the truth. It is all incontestably true; all her adventures: and how from the first she had hatched a regular plot to corrupt the young Count. The crafty young person calculated in this way: if our _liaison_ has consequences, I shall perhaps inveigle the young man into a marriage, and if I don't succeed I shall kill the child and look out for another place!" "But just consider this one fact," cried Berger. "If this had actually been Victorine Lippert's plan she would certainly have reflected: if I can't force a marriage, I shall at least get a handsome maintenance! and in that case she would not have killed her child, but carefully have preserved its life." The old Judge meditatively laid his finger on his nose. "Look here, Dr. Berger," he said importantly, "that is a very reasonable objection. But it has been adduced already, not by me, to tell the truth, but by my assistant, a very wise young man. But the witness was able to give a perfectly satisfactory explanation on the subject. To be sure, she only did so after repeated questions and in a hesitating and uncertain manner--the good, kind-hearted girl could with difficulty bring herself to add still more to the criminal's load, but at length she had to speak out. Thus we almost accidentally extracted a very important detail that proved to be of great importance in determining the case. It is a truly frightful story. Only fancy, this mere girl, this Victorine Lippert, has always had a sort of thirst for the murder of little children. She repeatedly said to the girl long before the deed, before the young Count came to the Castle at all: 'Strange! but whenever I see a little child, I always feel my hands twitching to strangle it.' Frightful--isn't it. Dr. Berger?" "Frightful indeed!" cried Berger, "if you have believed this poorly-contrived story of the wretched, perjured woman--poorly-contrived, and invented in the necessity of the moment so as to meet the objection of your assistant, so as not to be caught in her net of lies, so as to render the Countess another considerable service." "Really, you will not listen to reason," said the old man, now seriously annoyed. "I feel my head-ache coming on again. Do you mean to say that you accuse the Countess of conniving at perjury! A lady of the highest aristocracy! Excuse me, Dr. Berger--that is going too far! You are a liberal, a radical, I know, but that doesn't make every Countess a criminal. But if this is really your opinion of the witness, take out a summons for perjury at once!" "It may come to that," replied Berger. The old man shook his head. "Spare yourself the trouble," he said good-naturedly, "it will prove ineffectual, but you may certainly get yourself into great difficulties. Why expose yourself, for the sake of such an abandoned creature, to an action for libel on the part of the Countess and her servant? How abandoned she is, you have no suspicion! I have, thank Heaven, concealed the worst of all from you, and you shall not learn it at my hands. You may read for yourself in the minutes. I do not wish to make a scene in the street. I was so enjoying this fine afternoon, and you have quite spoilt my good humour. Well, good-bye. Dr. Berger, I will forgive you. You have allowed yourself to be carried away by your pity, but you are bestowing it upon an unworthy creature! The witness gave me the impression of being absolutely trustworthy, and I have stated so in the minutes! I considered myself bound in conscience to do so." "Then you have a human life on your conscience!" Berger blurted out. He had not meant to say anything so harsh, but the words escaped him involuntarily. The old man started and clasped his hands. His face twitched, and bright tears stood in his eyes. "What have I done to you?" he moaned. "Why do you say such a horrible thing? Why do you upset me? I have always considered you a good man, and now you behave like this to me!" Berger stepped up to him and offered his hand. "Forgive me," he said, "your intention is good and pure, I know. And just for that reason I implore you to reflect well before you let the minutes go out of your hands." "That is already done. I have just handed them to the Chief Justice." "And what did he say?" "Nothing, what should he say? Certainly he too seemed to be put out about something, for when I was about to enter on a brief discourse, he dismissed me a little abruptly." "But it is open to you to demand the minutes back, and examine the witness again. Keep a sterner eye upon her, and the contradictions in which she gets involved will certainly become evident to you. At her first examination she could only say the best things of Victorine Lippert, at the trial she had lost her memory, and now of a sudden nothing is too bad." "Oh, you barristers!" cried the Judge. "How you twist everything! The kind-hearted creature wanted to save Victorine Lippert and pity moved her to lie at first: she has just openly and repentantly confessed that she did. But at the trial, before the Crucifix, before the Judges, her courage left her. She was silent, because like a good and chaste girl, she could not bring herself to speak before a crowd of people of all those repulsive details. You see, everything is explained. You are talking in vain." "In vain!" Berger sighed profoundly. "Good-bye," he said turning to go. But after he had gone a few steps, Hoche called after him. The old man's eyes were full of tears. "You are angry with me?" he said. "No." "Well, you have no reason to be angry, though I have--but I forgive you. By what you said you might easily have made me unhappy if the case had not been so clear. Certainly I am upset now. To-morrow is Christmas Eve; my children and grand-children will come and bring me presents, and I shall give them presents, and I shall think all the time: Hoche, what a frightful thing if you were a murderer! You will take back your words, won't you? I am no murderer, am I?" Berger looked at the childish old man. "O tragicomedy of life!" he thought, but added aloud: "No, Herr Hoche, you are no murderer." In the evening he went to see Sendlingen and look over the minutes which he too had the right of disputing. He would have been disconsolate enough if he had not already known their contents; as it was the extraordinary tone of the document cheered him a little. The 'wise young man' was perhaps himself an author, or at least had certainly read a great many cheap novels; the style in which he had reproduced the servant girl's imaginations was, in the worst sense of the word "fine!" How this lessened the danger of the contents was shown especially, by that worst fact of all which Hoche could not bring himself to pronounce, and which was of such monstrous baseness that the faith of even the most vapid of judges must have been shaken in all the rest. "That is quite harmless," said Berger. "More than that, these monstrous lies are just the one bit of luck in all our misfortunes." "Certainly!" Sendlingen agreed. "But we must not count too much upon them. The examining judge may not believe everything, but he will certainly not discredit everything. It could not be expected after Hoche's enthusiastic advocacy of the witness' credibility." "And yet these minutes must be sent off. Would it not be possible to hand over the inquiry to some one else?" "Impossible, or I would have done so yesterday. Either I or Hoche--the charge of the Supreme Court is clear enough! And _I_ could not do it! It seemed to me mean and cowardly, treacherous and paltry, to break my Judge's oath, trusting to the silence of the three people who beside me know the secret, trusting moreover never to have to undergo punishment for my offence. To this consideration it seemed to me that every other must give way." Berger was silent. "Would it not be possible to take out a summons for perjury?" he resumed. "No," cried Sendlingen, "it would be an utterly useless delay! Success in the present position of things is not to be hoped for." Berger bowed his head. "Then Justice will suffer once again," he said in deep distress. "I will not reproach you. When I put myself in your place--I cannot trust myself to say that I should have done the same. I only presume I should, but this one thing I do know, that in accordance with your whole nature you have acted rightly. Still, ever since the moment that I spoke to Hoche, I cannot silence a tormenting question. Ought fidelity to the Law be stronger than fidelity to Justice? You would not undertake the inquiry because a father may not take part in an examination conducted against his child, but were you justified in handing it over to a man who was no longer in a condition to find out the truth, to fulfil his duty? Has not justice suffered at your hands by your respect for the law, that justice, I mean, which speaks aloud in the heart of every man?" Sendlingen was staring gloomily at the floor. Then he raised his eyes and looked his friend full in the face. The expression of his countenance, the tone of his voice became almost solemn. "I have fought out for myself an answer to this question. I may not tell you what it is; but one thing I can solemnly swear: this outraged justice to which you refer will receive the expiation which is its due." CHAPTER X. Christmas was past, New Year had come, the year 1853, one of the most melancholy that the Austrian Empire had ever known. The atmosphere was more charged than ever, coercion more and more severe, the confederacy between the authorities of Church and State closer and closer. Melancholy reports alarmed the minds of peaceful citizens: the Italian Provinces were in a state of ferment, a conspiracy was discovered in Hungary, and a secret league of the Slavs at Prague. How strong or how weak these occult endeavours against the authority and peace of the state might be, no one knew. One thing only was manifest: the severity with which they were treated; and perhaps in this severity lay the greatest danger of all. It was the old sad story that so often repeats itself in the life of nations, and was then appearing in a new shape; tyranny had called forth a counter-tyranny and this, in its turn, a fresh tyranny. The police had much to do everywhere, and in some districts the Courts of Justice too. One of the greatest of the political investigations had, since Christmas 1852, devolved upon the Court at Bolosch. The middle classes of this manufacturing town were exclusively Germans, the working-classes principally Slavs. It was among these latter that the police believed they had discovered the traces of a highly treasonable movement. About thirty workmen were arrested and handed over to Justice. Sendlingen, assisted by Dernegg, personally conducted the investigation. He had made the same selection in all the political arrangements of the last few years, although he knew that any other would have been more acceptable to the authorities. Certainly neither he nor Dernegg were Liberals--much less Radicals--who sympathised with Revolution and Revolutionaries. On the contrary both these aristocrats had thoroughly conservative inclinations, at all events in that good sense of the word which was then and is now so little understood in Austria, and is so seldom given practical effect. They were, moreover, entirely honourable and independent judges. But there was a prejudice in those days against men of unyielding character, especially in the case of political trials. There was an opinion that "pedantry" was out of place where the interests of the state were at stake. Sendlingen, on the other hand, was convinced that a political investigation should not be conducted differently from any other, and it was precisely in this inquisition into the conduct of the workmen that he manifested the greatest zeal, but at the same time the most complete impartiality. Divers reasons had determined him to devote all his energy to the case. The diversion of his thoughts from his own misery did him good: the ceaseless work deadened the painful suspense in which he was awaiting the decision from Vienna. Moreover his knowledge of men and things had predisposed him to believe that these poor rough fellows had not so much deserved punishment as pity, and after a few days he was convinced of the justice of this supposition. These raftsmen and weavers and smiths who were all utterly ignorant, who had never been inside a school, who scarcely knew a prayer save the Lord's Prayer, who dragged on existence in cheerless wretchedness, were perhaps more justified in their mute impeachment of the body politic, than deserving of the accusations brought against them. They did not go to confession, they often sang songs that had stuck in their minds since 1848, and some of them had, in public houses and factories, delivered speeches on the injustice of the economy of the world and state as it was reflected in their unhappy brains. This was all; and this did not make them enemies of the State or of the Emperor. On the contrary, the record of their examination nearly always testified the opinion: "the only misfortune was that the young Emperor knew nothing of their condition, otherwise he would help them." Sendlingen's noble heart was contracted with pity, whenever he heard such utterances. And these men he was to convict of high treason! No! not an instant longer than was absolutely necessary should they remain away from their families and trades. On the Feast of the Epiphany Sendlingen was sitting in his Chambers examining a raftsman, an elderly man of herculean build with a heavy, sullen face, covered with long straggling, iron-grey hair; Johannes Novyrok was his name. The police had indicated him as particularly dangerous, but he did not prove to be worse than the rest. "Why don't you go to confession?" asked Sendlingen finally when all the other grounds of suspicion had been discussed. "Excuse me, my Lord," respectfully answered the man in Czech. "But do you go?" Sendlingen looked embarrassed and was about to sharply reprove him for his impertinent question, but a look at the man's face disarmed him. There was neither impertinence nor insolence written there, but rather a painful look of anxiety and yearning that strangely affected Sendlingen. "Why?" he asked. "Because I might be able to regulate my conduct by yours," replied the raftsman. "You see, my Lord, I differ from my brethren. People such as we, they think, have no time to sin, much less to confess. The God there used to be, must surely be dead, they say, otherwise there would be more justice in the world; and if he is still alive, he knows well enough that anyhow we have got hell on this earth and will not suffer us to be racked and roasted by devils in the next world. But I have never agreed with such sentiments; they strike me as being silly and when my mates say: rich people have a good time of it, let them go to confession,--why, its arrant nonsense. For I don't believe that any one on earth has a good time of it, not even the rich, but that everybody has their trouble and torment. And therefore I should very much like to hear what a wise and good man, who must understand these things much better than I do, has to say to it all. It might meet my case. And I happen to have particular confidence in you. In the first place because you're better and wiser than most men, so at least says every one in the town, and this can't be either hypocrisy or flattery, because they say so behind your back. But I further want to hear your opinion, because I know for certain that you have an aching heart and plenty of trouble." "How do you know that?" Novyrok glanced at the short-hand clerk sitting near Sendlingen and who was manifestly highly tickled at the simplicity of this ignorant workman. "I could only tell you," he said shyly, "if you were to send that young man out of the room. It is no secret, but such fledglings don't understand life yet." The young clerk was much astonished when Sendlingen actually made a sign to him to withdraw. "Thank you," said the raftsman after the door was shut "Well, how I know of your trouble? In the first place one can read it in your face, and secondly I saw you one stormy night--it may be eight weeks ago--wandering about the streets by yourself. You went down to the river; I was watchman on a raft at the time and I saw you plainly. There were tears running down your cheeks, but even if your eyes had been dry--well no one goes roaming alone and at random on such a night, unless he is in great trouble." Sendlingen bowed his head lower over the papers before him. Novyrok continued: "An hour later, your friend brought you into our inn whither I had come in the meanwhile after my mate had relieved me of the watch. You were unconscious. I helped to carry you and take you home.... I don't tell you this in the hope that you may punish me less than I deserve, but just that I may say to you: you too, my Lord, know what suffering is--do you find the thought of God comforting, and what do you think of confession?" Sendlingen made no reply; the recollection of that most fatal night of his existence and the solemn question of the poor fellow, had deeply moved him. "You must have experienced something, Novyrok," he said at length, "that has shaken your Faith." "Something, my Lord? Alas, everything!--Alas, my whole life! I don't believe there are many people to whom the world is a happy place, but such men as I should never have been born at all. I have never known father or mother, I came into the world in a foundling hospital on a Sylvester's Eve some fifty years ago--the exact date I don't know--and that's why they called me 'Novyrok' (New-Year). I had to suffer a great deal because of my birth; it is beyond all belief how I was knocked about as a boy and youth among strangers--even a dog knows its mother but I did not. And therefore one thing very soon became clear to me: many disgraceful things happen on this earth, but the most disgraceful thing of all is to bring children into the world in this way. Don't you think so, my Lord?" Sendlingen did not answer. "And I acted accordingly," continued Novyrok, "and had no love-affair, though I had to put great restraint upon myself. I don't know whether virtue is easy to rich people; to the poor it is very bitter. It was not until I became steersman of a raft and was earning four gulden a week that I married an honest girl, a laundress, and she bore me a daughter. That was a bright time, my Lord, but it didn't last long. My wife began to get sickly and couldn't any longer earn any thing; we got into want, although I honestly did my utmost and often, after the raft was brought to, I chopped wood or stacked coal all night through when I got the chance. Well, however poorly we had to live, we did manage to live; things didn't get really bad till she died. My mates advised me then to give the care of my child to other people--and go as a raftsman to foreign parts, on a big river, the Elbe or the Danube: 'Wages,' they said, 'are twice as much there and you, as an able raftsman, can't help getting on.' But I hadn't got it in my heart to leave my little daughter. Besides I was anxious about her; to be sure she was only just thirteen, and a good, honest child, but she promised to be very nice-looking. If you go away, I said to myself, you may perhaps stay away for many years, and there are plenty of men in this world without a conscience, and temptation is great! So I stayed, and so as not to be separated from her even for a week, I gave up being a raftsman and became a workman at a foundry. But I was awkward at the work, the wages were pitiful, and though my daughter, poor darling, stitched her eyes out of her head, we were more often hungry than full. I frequently complained, not to her, but to others, and cursed my wretched existence--I was a fool! for I was happy in those days; I did my duty to my child." Novyrok paused. Sendlingen sighed deeply. "And then?" he asked. "Then, my Lord," continued the raftsman, "then came the dark hour, when I yielded to my folly and selfishness. Maybe I am too hard on myself in saying this, for I thought more of my child's welfare than my own, and many people thought what I did reasonable. But otherwise I must accuse Him above, and before I do that I would rather accuse myself. But I will tell you what happened in a few words. A former mate of mine who was working at the salt shipping trade on the Traun, persuaded me to go with him, just for one summer, and the high wages tempted me. My girl was sixteen at that time; she was like a rose, my Lord, to look at. But before I went I told her my story, where I was born and who my mother very likely was, and I said to her: 'Live honestly, my girl, or when I come back in the autumn I will strike you dead, and then jump into the deepest part of the river.' She cried and swore to me she'd be good. But when I came back in the autumn----" He sobbed. It was some time before he added in a hollow voice: "Hanka was my daughter's name. Perhaps you remember the case, my Lord. It took place in this house. Certainly it's a long while ago; it will be seven years next spring." "Hanka Novyrok," Sendlingen laid his hand on his forehead. "I remember!" he then said. "That was the name of the girl who--who died in her cell during her imprisonment upon trial." "She hanged herself," said Novyrok, sepulchrally. "It happened in the night; the next morning she was to have come before the Judges. She had murdered her child." There was a very long silence after this. Novyrok then resumed: "You didn't examine me about the case, you would have understood me. The other Judge before whom I was taken didn't understand me when I said: 'This is a controversy between me and Him up above, for either He is at fault or I am.' The Judge at first thought that grief had turned my head, but when he understood what I said, he abused me roundly and called me a blasphemer. But I am not that. I believe in Him. I do not blaspheme Him, only I want to know how I stand with Him. It would be the greatest kindness to me, my Lord, if you could decide for me." "Poor fellow," said Sendlingen, "don't torment yourself any more about it; such things nobody can decide." Novyrok shook his head with a sigh. "A man like you ought to be able to make it out," he said, "although I can see that it is not easy. For look here--how does the case stand? A wretched blackguard, a linendraper for whom she used to sew, seduced her in my absence. If I had stayed here, it would not have happened. When I came back I learnt nothing about it, she hid it from me out of fear of what I had said to her at parting, and that was the reason why she killed her child, yes, and herself too in the end. For I am convinced that it was not the fear of punishment that drove her to death, but the fear of seeing me again, and no doubt, she also wished to spare me the disgrace of that hour. Now, my Lord, all this----" They were interrupted. A messenger brought in a letter which had just arrived. Sendlingen recognised the writing of the count, his brother-in-law, who was a Judge of the Supreme Court. He laid the letter unopened on the table; very likely belated New-year's wishes, he thought. "Go on!" he said to the Accused. "Well, my Lord, all this seems to tell against me, but it might be turned against Him too. I might say to Him: 'Wasn't I obliged to try and keep her from sin by using the strongest words? And why didst Thou not watch over her when I was far away; Hanka was Thy child too, and not only mine! And if Thou wouldst not do this, why didst Thou suffer us two to be born? Thou wilt make reparation, sayst Thou, in Thy Heaven? Well, no doubt it is very beautiful, but perhaps it is not so beautiful that we shall think ourselves sufficiently compensated.' You see, my Lord, I might talk like this--But if I were to begin. He too would not be silent, and with a single question He could crush me. 'Why did you go away?' He might ask me. 'Why did you not do your duty to your child? I, O fool, have untold children; you had only this one to whom you were nearest. You say in your defence that you did not act altogether selfishly, that you wanted to better her condition as well. May be, but you did think of _your own_ condition, _of yourself_ as well, and that a father may not do! I warned you by your own life, and by causing your conscience and presentiments to speak to you--why did you not obey Me? Besides you would not have starved here?' You see, my Lord, He might talk to me in this way and He would be right, for a father may not think of himself for one instant where his child's welfare is concerned. Isn't that so? "Yes, that is so!" answered Sendlingen solemnly. "Well, that is why I sometimes think: you should certainly go to confession! What do you advise, my Lord?" This time, too, Sendlingen could find no relevant answer, much as he tried to seek the right words of consolation for this troubled heart. He strove to lessen his sense of guilt, that sensitive feeling which had so deeply moved him, and finally assured him also of a speedy release. But Novyrok's face remained clouded; the one thing which he had wished to hear, a decision of his singular "controversy" with "Him," he had to do without, and when Sendlingen rang for the turnkey to remove the prisoner, the latter expressed his gratitude for "his Lordship's friendliness" but not for any comfort received. Not until he had departed did Sendlingen take up his brother-in-law's letter, which he meant hastily to run through. But after a few lines he grew more attentive and his looks became overcast. "And this too," he muttered, after he had read to the end, and his head sank heavily on his breast. The Count informed him, after a few introductory lines, of the purport of a conversation he had just had with the Minister of Justice. "You know his opinion," said the letter, "he honestly desires your welfare, and a better proof of this than your appointment to Pfalicz he could not have given you. All the more pained, nay angered, is he at your obstinate disregard of his wishes. He told you in plain language that he did not desire you and Dernegg to take part in any political investigations. You have none the less observed the same arrangement in the present investigation against the workmen. I warn you, Victor, not for the first time, but for the last. You are trifling with your future; far more important people than Chief Judges, however able, are now being sent to the right-about in Austria. The anger of the minister is all the greater, because your defiance this time is notorious. Scarcely a fortnight ago, the Supreme Court instructed you to undertake the brief examination of a witness; you handed the matter over to Hoche and excused yourself on the plea of the pressure of your regular work; and yet this work now suddenly allows you personally to conduct a complicated inquiry against some three dozen workmen." The letter continued in this strain at great length and concluded thus: "I implore you to assign the inquiry to Werner and to telegraph me to this effect to-day. If this is not done, you will tomorrow receive a telegram from the Minister commanding you to do so. And if you don't obey then, the consequences will be at once fatal to you. You know that I am no lover of the melodramatic, and you will therefore weigh well what I have said." His brother-in-law--and Sendlingen knew it--certainly never affected a melodramatic tone, and often as he had warned him, he had never before written in such a key. What should he do? It was against his conscience to submit and leave these poor fellows to their fate; but might he concern himself more about men who were strangers to him, than about the wellbeing of his own child? If he did not yield, would he not perhaps be suddenly removed from his office, and just at the moment when his unhappy daughter most of all required his help? He went to his residence in a state of grievous interior conflict, impotently drawn from one resolve to another. He sighed with relief when Berger entered; his shrewd, discreet friend could not have come at a more opportune moment. But he, too, found it difficult to hit upon the right counsel, or at least, to put it into words. "Don't let us confuse ourselves, Victor," he said at length. "First of all, you know as well as I do, that the Minister has no right to put such a command upon you. You are responsible to him that every trial in your Court shall be conducted with the proper formalities; the power to arrange for this is in your hands. And therefore they dare not seriously punish your insistence on your manifest right. Dismissal on such a pretext is improbable and almost inconceivable, especially when it is a question of a man of your name and services." "But it is possible." "Anything is possible in these days," Berger was obliged to admit. "But ought this remote possibility to mislead you? You would certainly not hesitate a moment, if consideration for your child did not fetter you. Should this consideration be more authoritative than every other? In my opinion, no!" "Because you cannot understand my feelings!" Sendlingen vehemently interposed. "A father may not think of himself when his child's welfare is concerned. The voice of nature speaks thus in the breast of every man, even the roughest, and should it be silent in me?" "My poor friend," said Berger, "in your heart, too, it has surely spoken loud enough. And yet, so far, you have not hesitated for a moment to fulfil your duty as a judge when it came into conflict with your inclination. You would not preside at the trial, you would not conduct the examination. The struggle is entering on a new phase, you cannot act differently now." "I must! I cannot help these poor people--besides Werner himself will hardly be able to find them guilty. And the cases are not parallel; I should have broken my oath if I had presided at the trial: I do not break it if I obey the Minister's command." "That is true," retorted Berger. "But I can only say: Seek some other consolation, Victor,--this is unworthy of you! For you have always been, like me, of the opinion that it is every man's duty to protect the right, and prevent wrong, so long as there is breath in his body! If I admonish you, it is not from any fanatical love of Justice, but from friendship for you, and because I know you as well as one man can ever know another. Your mind could endure anything, even the most grievous suffering, anything save one thing: the consciousness of having done an injustice however slight. If you submit, and if these men are condemned even to a few years' imprisonment, their fate would prey upon your mind as murder would on any one else. This I know, and I would warn you against it as strongly as I can.... Let us look at the worst that could happen, the scarcely conceivable prospect of your dismissal. What serious effect could this have upon the fate of your child? You perhaps cling to the hope of yourself imparting to her the result of the appeal; that is no light matter, but it is not so grave as the quiet of your conscience. It can have no other effect. If the purport of the decision is a brief imprisonment, you could have no further influence upon her destiny, whether you were in office or not; she would be taken to some criminal prison, and you would have to wait till her term of imprisonment was over before you could care for her. If the terms of the decision are imprisonment for life, or death (you see, I will not be so cowardly as not to face the worst), the only course left open to you is, to discover all to the Emperor and implore his pardon for your child. Is there anything else to be done?" Sendlingen was silent. "There is no other means of escape. And if it comes to this, if you have to sue for her pardon, it will assuredly be granted you, whether you are in office or not. It will be granted you on the score of humanity, of your services and of your family. It is inconceivable that this act of grace should be affected by the fact that you had just previously had a dispute with the Minister of Justice. It is against reason, still more against sentiment. The young Prince is of a chivalrous disposition." "That he is!" replied Sendlingen. "And it is not this consideration that makes me hesitate, I had hardly thought of it. It was quite another idea.... Thank you, George," he added. "Let us decide tomorrow, let us sleep upon it." He said this with such a bitter, despairing smile, that his friend was cut to the heart. The next morning when Berger was sitting in his Chambers engaged upon some pressing work, the door was suddenly flung open and Sendlingen's servant Franz entered. Berger started to his feet and could scarcely bring himself to ask whether any calamity had occurred. "Very likely it is a calamity," replied the old man, continuing in his peculiar fashion of speech which had become so much a habit with him, that he could never get out of it. "We were taken ill again in Chambers, very likely we fell down several times as before, we came home deadly pale but did not send in for the Doctor, but for you, sir." Berger started at once, Franz following behind him. As they went along, Berger fancied he heard a sob. He looked round: there were tears in the old servant's eyes. When they got into the residence, Berger turned to him and said: "Be a man, Franz." Then the old fellow could contain himself no longer; bright tears coursed down his cheeks. "Dr. Berger," he stammered. He had bent over his hand and kissed it before Berger could prevent him. "Have pity on me! Tell me what has been going on the last two months! We often speak to Brigitta about it--I am told nothing! Why? We know that this silence is killing me. I could long ago have learned it by listening and spying, but Franz doesn't do that sort of thing. If you cannot tell me, at least put in a word for me. Surely we do not want to kill me!" Berger laid his hand on his shoulder. "Be calm, Franz, we have all heavy burdens to bear." He then went into Sendlingen's room. "The minister's telegram?" he asked. "Worse!" "The decision? What is the result?" The question was superfluous; the result was plainly enough written in Sendlingen's livid, distorted features. Berger, trembling in every limb, seized the fatal paper that lay on the table. "Horrible!" he groaned--it was a sentence of death. He forced himself to read the motives given; they were briefly enough put. The Supreme Court had rejected the appeal to nullify the trial, although the credibility of the servant-girl had appeared doubtful enough to it, too. At the same time, the decision continued, there was no reason for ordering a new trial, as the guilt of the accused was manifest without any of the evidence of this witness. The Supreme Court had gone through this without noticing either her recent statement incriminating the Accused, nor her first favorable evidence. The Countess' depositions alone, therefore, must determine Victorine's conduct before the deed, and her motives for the deed. These seemed sufficient to the Supreme Court, not to alter the sentence of death. For a long time Berger held the paper in his hands as if stunned; at length he went over to his unhappy friend, laid his arms around his neck and gently lifted his face up towards him. But when he looked into that face, the courage to say a word of consolation left him. He stepped to the window and stood there for, perhaps, half an hour. Then he said softly, "I will come back this evening," and left the room. Towards evening he received a few lines from his friend. Sendlingen asked him not to come till to-morrow; by that time he hoped to have recovered sufficient composure to discuss quietly the next steps to be taken. He was of opinion that Berger should address a petition for pardon to the Emperor, and asked him to draw up a sketch of it. Berger read of this request with astonishment. He would certainly have lodged a petition for pardon, even if Victorine Lippert had been simply his client and not Sendlingen's daughter. But he would have done it more from a sense of duty than in the hope of success. That this hope was slight, he well knew. The petition would have to take its course through the Supreme Court, and it was in the nature of the case that the recommendation of the highest tribunal would be authoritative with the Emperor; exceptions had occurred, but their number was assuredly not sufficient to justify any confident hopes. All this Sendlingen must know as well as himself. Why, therefore, did he wish that the attempt should be made? In this desperate state of things, there was but one course that promised salvation; a personal audience with the Emperor. Why did Sendlingen hesitate to choose this course? Berger made up his mind to lay all this strongly before him, and when on the next day he rang the bell of the residence, he was determined not to leave him until he had induced him to take this step. "We are still in Chambers," announced Franz. "We want you to wait here a little. We have been examining workmen again since this morning early, and have hardly allowed ourselves ten minutes for food." "So he has none the less resolved to go on with that?" said Berger. Perhaps, he thought to himself, the telegram has not arrived yet. "None the less resolved?" cried Franz. "We have perhaps seldom worked away with such resolution and Baron Dernegg, too, was dictating to-day--I say it with all respect--like one possessed." Berger turned to go. It occurred to him that he had not seen Victorine for a week, and he thought he would use the interval by visiting her. "I shall be back in an hour," he said to Franz. "In the meanwhile I have something to do in the prison." "In the prison?" The old man's face twitched, he seized Berger's arm and drew him back into the lobby, shutting the door. "Forgive me, Dr. Berger. My heart is so full.... You are going to her--are you not? To our poor young lady, to Victorine?" "What? Since when?" ... "Do I know it?" interrupted Franz. "Since yesterday evening!" And with a strange mixture of pride and despair he went on: "We told me everything!... Oh, it is terrible. But we know what I am worth! My poor master! ah! I couldn't sleep all night for sorrow.... But we shall see that we are not deceived in me.... I have a favour to ask, Dr. Berger. Brigitta has the privilege naturally, because she is a woman and a member of the 'Women's Society.' But I, what can I appeal to? Certainly I have in a way, been in the law for twenty-five years, and understand more of these things than many a young fledgling who struts about in legal toggery, but--a lawyer I certainly am not--so, I suppose, Dr. Berger, it is unfortunately impossible?" "What? That you should pay her a visit? Certainly it is impossible, and if you play any pranks of that kind----" "Oh! Dr. Berger," said the old man imploringly. "I did but ask your advice because my heart is literally bursting. Well, if this is impossible, I have another favour, and this you will do me! Greet our poor young lady from me! Thus, with these words: 'Old Franz sends Fräulein Victorine his best wishes from all his heart--and begs her not to despair.... and--and wants to remind her that the God above is still living.'" Berger could scarcely understand his last words for the tears that choked, the old man's voice. He himself was moved; as yesterday, so to-day, Franz's tears strongly affected him, for the old servant was not particularly soft by nature. "Yes, yes, Franz," he promised, and then betook himself to the prison. He resolved to continue to be quite candid with Victorine, but not to mention the result of the appeal by a single word. But when he entered her cell, she came joyfully to meet him, her eyes glistening with tears. "How shall I thank you?" she cried much moved trying to take his hand. He fell back a step. "Thank me?--What for?" "Oh, I know," she said softly with a look at the door as if an eavesdropper might have been there. "My father told me that it was not official yet. He hurried to me this morning as soon as he had received the news, but it is still only private information, and for the present I must tell nobody! Whom else have I to thank but you?" "What?" he asked. And he added with an unsteady voice: "I have not seen him for the last few days. Has he had news from Vienna?" "To be sure! The Supreme Court has pardoned me. My imprisonment during trial is to be considered as punishment. In a few weeks I shall be quite free." Berger felt all the blood rush to his heart. "Quite free!" he repeated faintly. "In a few weeks!" And at the same time he was tortured by the importunate question: "Great God! he has surely gone mad? How could he do this? What is his object?" "Merciful Heaven!" she cried. "How pale you have turned. How sombre you look! Merciful Heaven! you have not received other news? He has surely not been deceived? Oh, if I had to die after all!--now--now----" She staggered. Berger took her hand and made her sink down on to the nearest chair. "I have no other news," he said as firmly as possible. "It came upon me with such a shock! I am surprised that he has not yet told me anything. But then, of course, he did not hear of it till to-day. If he has told you, you can, of course, look upon it as certain." "May I not?" She sighed with relief. "I need not tremble any more? Oh, how you frightened me!" "Forgive me--calm yourself!" He took up his hat again. "Are you going already? And I have not yet half thanked you!" "Don't mention it!" he said curtly, parrying her remark. "Au revoir," he added with more friendliness, and leaving the cell, hurried to Sendlingen's residence. He had just come in; Berger approached him in great excitement. "I have just been to see Victorine," he began. "How could you tell this untruth? How _could_ you?" Sendlingen cast down his eyes. "I had to do it. I was afraid that otherwise the news of her condemnation might reach her." "No," cried Berger. "Forgive my vehemence," he then continued. "I have reason for it. Such empty pretexts are unworthy of you and me. You yourself see to the regulation of the Courts and the prison. The Accused never hear their sentence until they are officially informed." "You do me an injustice," replied Sendlingen, his voice still trembling, and it was not till he went on that he recovered himself: "I have no particular reasons that I ought or want to hide from you. I told her in an ebullition of feeling that I can hardly account for to myself. When I saw her to-day she was much sadder, much more hopeless, than has been usual with her lately. She certainly had a presentiment--and I, in my flurry at this, feared that some report might already have reached her. Such a thing, in spite of all regulations, is not inconceivable; chance often plays strange pranks. In my eager desire to comfort her, those words escaped me. The exultation with which she received them, robbed me of the courage to lessen their favourable import afterwards! That is all!" Berger looked down silently for a while. "I will not reproach you," he then resumed. "How fatal this imprudence may prove, you can see as well as I. She was prepared for the worst and therefore anything not so bad, might perhaps have seemed like a favour of Heaven. Now she is expecting the best, and whatever may be obtained for her by way of grace, it will certainly dishearten and dispirit her. But there is no help for it now! Let us talk of what we can help! You want me to lodge a petition for pardon? It would be labour in vain!" "Well," said Sendlingen hesitatingly, "in some cases the Emperor has revoked the sentence of death in spite of the decision of the Supreme Court." "Yes, but we dared not build on this hope if we had no other. Fortunately this is the case. You must go to Vienna; only on your personal intercession is the pardon a _certainty_. And my petition could at best only get the sentence commuted to imprisonment for life, whereas your prayer would obtain a shorter imprisonment and, after a few years, remission of the remainder. You must go to-morrow, Victor--there is no time to lose." Sendlingen turned away without a word. "How am I to understand this?" cried Berger, anxiously approaching him. "You _will_ not?" The poor wretch groaned aloud, "I will----" he exclaimed. "But later on--later on----. As soon as your petition has been dispatched." "But why?" cried Berger. "I have hitherto appreciated and sympathised with your every sentiment and act, but this delay strikes me as being unreasonable, unpardonable. I would spare you if less depended on the cast, but as it is, I will speak out. It is unmanly, it is----" He paused. "Spare me having to say this to you, to you who were always so brave and resolute. There is no time to lose, I repeat. Who will vouch that it may not then be too late? If my petition is rejected, the Court will at the same time order the sentence to be carried out. Do you know so certainly that you will still be here then, that you will still have time then to hurry to Vienna? Think! Think!" Berger had been talking excitedly and paused out of breath. But he was resolved not to yield and was about to begin again when Sendlingen said: "You have convinced me; I will go to Vienna sooner, even before the dispatch of your petition." "Then you still insist that I shall proceed with it?" "Please; it can do no harm; it may do good. And at least we shall gain time by it. I cannot undertake the journey to Vienna until the inquiry against the working men is ended. In this, too, there is not a day to be lost; neither Dernegg nor I know whether there is not an order on the road that may in some way make us harmless. I trust we shall by that time have succeeded in proving that no punishable offence has been committed. I have received the Minister's telegram to-day, and at once replied that the inquiry was so complicated, and had already proceeded so far, that a change in the examining Judges would be impracticable." "I am glad that you have followed my advice," said Berger. "And in spite of these aggravated conditions! You hesitated as long as the decision was not known to you, as long as you simply feared it, and when your fears were confirmed, you were brave again and did not hesitate for an instant in doing your duty as an honourable man! Victor, few people would have done the like!" He reached out his hand to say good-bye. "You have now taken old Franz into your confidence?" he asked, "another participator in the secret--it would have been well to consider it first! But I will not begin to scold again. Adieu!" CHAPTER XI. More than two weeks had passed since this last interview. January of 1853 was drawing to a close and still there seemed no likelihood of an end to the investigations against the workmen. Berger observed this with great anxiety. He had long since presented the petition for pardon: the time was drawing near when it would be laid before the Emperor, and yet, whenever the subject of the journey to Vienna arose, Sendlingen had some reason or motive for urging that he could not leave and that there was still time. When he made such a remark Berger looked at him searchingly, as if he were trying to read his inmost soul and then departed sadly, shaking his head. Every day Sendlingen's conduct seemed to him more enigmatical and unnatural. For this was the one means of saving Victorine's life! If he still hesitated it could only proceed from fear of the agony of the moment, from cowardice! But as often as Berger might and did say this to himself, he did not succeed in convincing himself. For did not Sendlingen at the same time evince in another matter and where the welfare and sufferings of strangers to him were concerned, a moral courage rarely found in this country and under this government. The conflict between Sendlingen and the Minister of Justice had gradually assumed a very singular character; it had become a "thoroughly Austrian business," as Berger sometimes thought with the bitter smile of a patriot. To Sendlingen's respectful but decided answer, the Minister had replied as rudely and laconically as possible, commanding him to hand over the investigation forthwith to Werner. No one could now doubt any longer that a further refusal would prove dangerous, and Sendlingen sent his rejoinder,--a brief dignified protest against this unjustifiable encroachment--with the feeling that he had at the same time undersigned his own dismissal. And indeed in any other country a violent solution would have been the only one conceivable; but here it was different. Certainly a severe censure from the Minister followed and he talked of "further steps" to be taken, but the lightning that one might have expected after this thunder, did not follow. The same result, was, however, sought by circuitous means, attempts were made to weary the two Judges and to put them out of conceit with the case. When they proposed to the Court that the case against one of the Accused might be discontinued, the Crown-Advocate promptly opposed it and called the Supreme Court to his assistance. With all that, the police were feverishly busy and overwhelmed the two Judges by repeatedly bringing forward new grounds of suspicion against the prisoners, and these had to be gone through however evidently worthless they might be at the first glance. There was not a single person attached to the Law-Courts with all their diversity of character, who did not follow the struggle of Sendlingen for the independence of the Judge's position, with sympathy, and the townspeople were unanimous in their enthusiastic admiration. This courageous steadfastness was all the more highly reckoned as it was visibly undermining his strength. His hair grew gray, his bearing less erect, and his face now almost always bore an expression of melancholy disquiet. People were not surprised at this; it must naturally deeply afflict this man who was so manifestly designed to attain the highest places in his profession, perhaps even to become the Chief Judge of the Empire--to be daily and hourly threatened with dismissal. Only the three participators in the secret, and Berger in particular, knew that the unhappy man could scarcely endure any longer the torture of uncertainty about his child's fate. All the more energetic, therefore, were Berger's attempts to put an end at least to this unnecessary torment but again and again he spoke in vain. This occurred too on the last day in January. Sendlingen stood by his answer: "There is still time, the petition has not yet come into the Emperor's hands," and Berger was sorrowfully about to leave his Chambers, when the door was suddenly flung open and Herr von Werner rushed in. "My Lord," cried the old gentleman almost beside himself with joy and waving a large open letter in his hand like a flag, "I have just received this; this has just been handed to me. It means that I am appointed your successor, it is the decree." Sendlingen turned pale. "I congratulate you," he said with difficulty. "When are you to take over the conduct of the Courts?" "On the 22nd February," was the answer. "Oh, how happy I am! And you I am sure will excuse me! Why should the news distress you? You will in any case be leaving here at the end of February to----" he, stopped in embarrassment. "To go to Pfalicz as Chief Justice of the Higher Court there," he continued hastily. "We will continue to believe so, to suppose the contrary would be nonsensical. You have annoyed the Minister and he is taking a slight revenge--that is all! Good-bye, gentlemen, I must hurry to my wife!" The old gentleman tripped away smiling contentedly. "That is plain enough," said Sendlingen, after a pause, turning to his friend. "My successor is appointed without my being consulted: the decree is sent direct to him and not through me; more than that, I am not even informed at the same time, when I am to hand over the conduct of the Courts to him. To the minister I am already a dead man! But what can it matter to me in my position? Werner's communication only frightened me for a moment, while I feared that I had to surrender to him forthwith. But the 22nd February--that is three weeks hence. By that time _everything_ will be decided." Two days later, on Candlemas Day, on which in some parts of Catholic Austria people still observe the custom of paying one another little attentions, Sendlingen also received a present from the minister. The letter read thus: "You are to surrender the conduct of the Courts on the 22nd February to the newly appointed Chief Justice, Herr von Werner. Further instructions regarding yourself will be forwarded you in due course." The tone of this letter spoke plainly enough. For "further instructions" were unnecessary if the previous arrangement--his appointment to Pfalicz--was adhered to. His dismissal was manifestly decreed. All the functionaries of the Courts fell into the greatest state of excitement: who was safe if Sendlingen fell? And wherever the news penetrated, it aroused sorrow and indignation. On the evening of the same day the most prominent men of the town met so as to arrange a fête to their Chief Justice before his departure. It was determined to present him with an address and to have a farewell banquet. Berger, who had been at the meeting, left as soon as the resolution was arrived at, and hurried to Sendlingen for he knew that his friend would need his consolation to-day most of all. But Sendlingen was so calm that it struck Berger as almost peculiar. "I have had time to get accustomed to these thoughts," he said. "How do you think of living now?" asked Berger. "I shall move to Gratz," replied Sendlingen quickly; he had manifestly given utterance to a long-cherished resolve. "Won't you be too lonely there?" objected Berger. "Why won't you go to Vienna? By the inheritance from your wife, you are a rich man who does not require to select the Pensionopolis on the Mur on account of its cheapness. In Vienna you have many friends, there you will have the greatest incitement to literary work, besides you may not altogether disappear from the surface. Your career is only forcibly interrupted but not nearly ended. A change of system, or even a change in the members of the Ministry, would bring you back into the service of the State, and, perhaps, to a higher position than the one you are now losing." "My mind is made up. Brigitta is going to Gratz in a few days to take a house and make all arrangements." They talked about other things, about the fête that had been arranged to-day. "I will accept the address," Sendlingen explained, "but not the banquet. I have not the heart for it." Berger vehemently opposed this resolution; he must force himself to put in an appearance at least for an hour; the fête had reference not only to himself personally, but to a sacred cause, the independence of Judges. All this he unfolded with such warmth, that Sendlingen at length promised that he would consider it. The next morning the Vienna papers published the news of the measures taken with regard to Sendlingen, which they had learnt by private telegrams. A severe censorship hampered the Austrian press in those days; the papers had been obliged to accustom the public to read more between the lines than the lines themselves: and this time, too, they hit upon a safe method of criticism. As if by a preconcerted agreement, all the papers pronounced the news highly incredible; and that it was, moreover, wicked to attribute such conduct to the strict but just government which Austria enjoyed. A severer condemnation than this defence of the government against "manifestly malicious reports" could not easily be imagined, and the public understood it as it was intended. In a moment, Sendlingen's name was in every mouth, and the investigation against the workmen the talk of the day, first in the capital, soon throughout the whole country. A flood of telegrams and letters, inquiries and enthusiastic commendations, suddenly burst upon Sendlingen. Had there been room in his poor heart, in his weary tormented brain, for any lucid thought or feeling, he would now have been able, in the days of his disgrace, to have held up his head more proudly than ever. It was not saying too much when Berger told him that a whole nation was now showing how highly it valued him. But he scarcely noticed it and continued, dark and hopeless, to do his duty and to drag on the Sisyphus-task of his investigation in combat with both the police and the Crown lawyers. Suddenly those hindrances ceased. When Sendlingen one morning entered his Chambers soon after the news of his deposal had appeared in the papers, he for the first time, for weeks, found no information of the police on the table. That might be an accident, but when there was none the second day, he breathed again. The Superintendent of Police at Bolosch was, the zealous servant of his masters; if he in twice twenty-four hours did not discover the slightest trace of high treason, there must be good reason for it. In the same way nothing more was heard from the Crown-Advocate. "They have almost lost courage in the face of the general indignation!" cried Berger triumphantly. "Franz has just told me that Brigitta is to start the day after to-morrow for Gratz. Let her wait a few days, and so spare the old lady having to make the journey to Pfalicz by the very round about way of Gratz." "You cannot seriously hope that," said Sendlingen turning away, and so Berger went into Brigitta's room later on to bid her good-bye. The old lady was eagerly reading a book which she hastily put on one side as he entered. "I am disturbing you," he said. "What are you studying so diligently?" "Oh, a novel," she replied quickly. Her eyes were red and she must have been crying a great deal lately. "I thought perhaps it was a description of Gratz," said he jokingly. "It seems to me that you have a genuine fear of this weird city where life surges and swells so mightily!" And he attempted to remove her fears by telling her much of the quiet, narrow life of the town on the Mur. While he was speaking, the book, which she had laid on her workbox, slid to the ground and he picked it up before she had time to bend down for it. It was a French grammar. "Great heavens!" he cried in astonishment. "You are taking up the studies of your youth again, Fräulein Brigitta?" The old lady stood there speechless, her face crimson, as if she had been caught in a crime. "I have been told," she stammered, "that--that one can hardly get along there with only German." "In Gratz?" Berger could not help laughing heartily. "Who has been playing this joke upon you? Reassure yourself. You will get along with the French in Gratz without any grammar." Still laughing, he said good-bye and promised to visit her in Gratz. Meanwhile the excitement into which the press and the public were thrown by the "Sendlingen incident" grew daily. In Bolosch new proposals were constantly being made, to have the fête on a magnificent and uncommon scale. It did not satisfy the popular enthusiasm that the address to be presented was covered with thousands of signatures. A proposal was made in the town-council to call the principal street after Sendlingen: some of the prominent men of the town wanted to collect subscriptions for a "Sendlingen Fund" whose revenue should be devoted to such officers of the State as, like Sendlingen, had become the victims of their faithfulness to conviction; the gymnastic societies resolved upon a torch-light procession. The chairman of the Committee arranging the festivities--he was the head of the first Banking house of the town--was in genuine perplexity; he still did not know which acts of homage Sendlingen would accept and he sought Berger's interposition. "Save me," implored the active banker. "People are pressing me and the Chief Justice is dumb. Yesterday I hoped to get a definite answer from him but he broke off and talked of our business." "Business? What business?" asked Berger. "I am just doing a rather complicated piece of business for him," answered the Banker. "I thought that you, his best friend, would have known about it. He is converting the Austrian Stock in which his property was hitherto invested, into French, English and Dutch stock, and a small portion of it into ready money." "Why?" asked Berger in surprise. "He is going to stay in Austria?" "So I asked," replied the Banker, "and received an answer which I had, willy nilly, to take as pertinent. For he is hardly to be blamed, if after his experiences, his belief in the credit of the State has become a little shaky." Berger could not help agreeing with this, and therefore did not refer to it in his talk with Sendlingen. With regard to the fête he received a satisfactory answer. Sendlingen without any further hesitation, accepted the banquet and even the torch-light procession. Both were to take place on the 21st February, the last day of his term of office. All this was telegraphed to Vienna and was bravely used by the papers. Even in Bolosch, they said, these melancholy reports, so humiliating to every Austrian, were not seriously believed; how long would the government hesitate to contradict them? The demand was so universal, the excitement so great, that an official notice of a reassuring character was actually issued. The government, announced an official organ, had in no way interfered with the investigation; that this was evident, the present position of the inquiry, now without doubt near a close, sufficiently proved. With regard, however, to Sendlingen's dismissal there was some "misunderstanding" in question. As so often before, in the case of the like oracular utterances from a similar source, everybody was now asking what this really meant. Berger thought he had hit the mark and exultingly said to his friend: "Hurrah! they have now entirely lost their courage! They are only temporising so as not to have to admit that public opinion has made an impression upon them." Sendlingen shrugged his shoulders. "It is all one to me, George," he said. "Now--that I can understand," replied Berger warmly. "In a few months you will speak differently! When do you go to Vienna?" Sendlingen reflected. "On the seventeenth I should say," he at length replied hesitatingly. "That is to say if Dernegg and I can really dismiss the workmen on the sixteenth as we hope to do." This hope was realised; on the 16th February 1852, the workmen were released from prison. Their first step related to Sendlingen: in the name of all, Johannes Novyrok made a speech of thanks of which this was the peroration: "We know well what we ought to wish you in return for all you have done for us: good-luck and happiness for you and for all whom you love! But mere good wishes won't help you, and we can do nothing for you, although every man of us would willingly shed his blood for your sake, and as to praying, my Lord, it is much the same thing--you may remember, perhaps, what I have already said to you on the subject. And so we can only say: think of us when you are in affliction of mind and you will certainly be cheered! You can say to yourself: 'I have lifted these people out of their misfortune and lessened their burden as much as I could,'--and you will breathe again. For I believe this is the best consolation that any man can have on this poor earth. God bless you! for you are noble and good, and what you do is well done, and sin and evil are far from you. A thousand thanks, my Lord. Farewell!" "Farewell!" murmured Sendlingen, his voice choking as he turned away. ... On the next day, the 17th February, Sendlingen should have started by the morning train to Vienna; he had solemnly promised Berger to do so the evening before. The latter, therefore, was much alarmed when he accidentally heard, in the course of the afternoon, that Sendlingen was still in Chambers. He hastened to him. "Why have you again put off going?" he asked impetuously. Sendlingen had turned pale. "I have not been able to bring myself to it," he answered softly. "And you know what is at stake!" cried Berger in great excitement, wiping the cold sweat from his forehead. "Victor, this is cowardice!" "It is not," he replied as gently as before, but with the greatest determination. "If I had been a coward, I would long since have had the audience." Berger looked at him in astonishment. "I do not understand you," he said. "It may be a sophism by which you are trying to lull your conscience, but it is my duty to rouse you. O Victor!" he continued with passionate grief, "you can yourself imagine what it costs me to speak to you in this way. But I have no option." Sendlingen was silent. "I will talk about it later," he said. "Let me first tell you a piece of news that will interest you. I have received a letter from the Minister this morning.... You were right about their 'courage.'" He handed the letter to his friend. "The Minister reminds me that it is my duty, in consequence of the appointment made last November, to be in Pfalicz on the morning of the 1st March to take over the conduct of the Higher Court there." "After all!" cried Berger. "And how polite! Do you see now that we liberals and our newspapers are some good? The Minister has no other motive for beating a retreat." "Perhaps this letter, which came at the same time, may throw some light on it," observed Sendlingen taking up a letter as yet unopened. "It is from my brother-in-law. Count Karolberg!" He opened it and glanced at the first few lines. "True!" he exclaimed. "Just listen." "You do not deserve your good fortune," he read, "and I myself was fully persuaded that you were lost. But it seems that the Minister talked to us more sharply than he thought, and that from the first he meant nothing serious. That he kept you rather long in suspense, proved to be only a slight revenge which was perhaps permissible. He meant no harm; I feel myself in duty bound to say this to his credit." "And your brother-in-law is a clever man," cried Berger, "and himself a Judge! Does he not understand that this very explanation tells most of all against the Minister? Oh, I always said that it was another thoroughly Austrian----" A cry of pain interrupted him. "What is this?" cried Sendlingen horror-struck and gazing in deadly pallor at the letter. Berger took the letter out of his trembling hands, in the next instant he too changed colour. His eyes had lit upon the following passage. "When do you leave Bolosch? I hope that the last duty that you have to do in your office, will not affect your soft heart too much. Certainly it is always painful to order the execution of a woman, and especially such a young one, and perhaps you can leave the arrangements for the execution to your successor who fortunately is made of sterner stuff." The letter fell from Berger's hands. "O Victor----" he murmured. "Don't say a word," Sendlingen groaned; his voice sounded like a drowning man's. "No reproaches!--Do you want to drive me mad." Then he made a great effort over himself. "The warrant must have come already," he said, and he rang for the clerk and told him to bring all the papers that had arrived that day. The fatal document was really among them; it was a brief information to the Court at Bolosch stating that the Emperor had rejected the petition for pardon lodged by Counsel for the defence, and that he had confirmed the sentence of death. The execution, according to the custom then prevailing, was to be carried out in eight days. "I will not reproach you," said Berger after he had glanced through the few lines. "But now you must act. You must telegraph at once to the Imperial Chancellery and ask for an audience for the day after tomorrow, the nineteenth, and to-morrow you must start for Vienna!" "I will do so," said Sendlingen softly. "You _must_ do it!" cried Berger, "and I will see that you do. I will be back in the evening." When Berger returned at nightfall, Franz said to him in the lobby: "Thank God, we are going to Vienna after all!" and Sendlingen himself corroborated this. "I have already received an answer; the audience is granted for the nineteenth. I have struggled severely with myself," he then added, and continued half aloud, in an unsteady voice, as if he were talking to himself; "I am a greater coward than I thought. However fixed my resolve was, my courage failed me--and so I must go to Vienna." Berger asked no further questions, he was content with the promise. CHAPTER XII. The 18th February 1853, was a clear, sunny day. At midday the snow melted, the air was mild; there seemed a breath of spring on the country through which the train sped along, bearing the unhappy man to Vienna. But there was night in his heart, night before his eyes; he sat in the corner of his carriage with closed lids, and only when the train stopped, did he start up as from sleep, look out at the name of the station, and deeply sighing, fall back again into his melancholy brooding. Was the train too slow for him? There were moments when he wished for the wings of a storm to carry him to his destination, and that the time which separated him from the decisive moment might have the speed of a storm. And in the next breath, he again dreaded this moment, so that every second of the day which separated him from it, seemed like a refreshing gift of grace. Alas! he hardly knew himself what he should desire, what he should entreat, and one feeling only remained in his change of mood, despair remained and spread her dark shadow over his heart and brain. The train stopped again, this time at a larger station. There were many people on the platform, something extraordinary must have happened; they were crowding round the station-master who held a paper in his hand and appeared to be talking in the greatest excitement. The crowd only dispersed slowly as the train came in; lingeringly and in eager talk, the travellers approached the carriages. Sendlingen looked out; the guard went up to the station-master who offered him the paper; it must have been a telegram. The man read it, fell back a step turning pale and cried out: "Impossible!" upon which those standing around shrugged their shoulders. Sendlingen saw and heard all this; but it did not penetrate his consciousness. "Heldenberg," he said, murmuring the name of the station. "Two hours more." The train steamed off, up a hilly country and therefore with diminished speed. But to the unhappy man it was again going too swiftly--for each turn of the wheels was dragging him further away from his child, for a sight of whose white face of suffering, he was suddenly seized with a feverish longing, his poor child, that now needed him most of all. "Frightful!" he groaned aloud. His over-wrought imagination pictured how she had perhaps just received the news that she was to fall into the hangman's hands! It was possible that the sentence had passed through the Court of Records and been added to the rolls; some of the lawyers attached to the Courts might have read it, or some of the clerks--if one of them should tell the Governor, or the warders, if Victorine should accidentally hear or it! "Back!" he hissed, springing up. "I must go back." Fortunately he was alone, otherwise his fellow travellers would have thought him mad. And there was something of madness in his eyes as he seized his portmanteau from the rack, and grasped the handle of the door as if to open it and spring from the train. The guard was just going along the foot-board of the carriages, the engine whistled, the train slackened, and in the distance the roofs of a station were visible. The guard looked in astonishment at the livid, distorted features of the traveller; this look restored Sendlingen to his senses, and he sank back into his seat. "It is useless," he reflected. "I must go on to Vienna." The train pulled up, "Reichendorf! One minute's wait!" cried the guard. It was a small station, no one either got in or out; only an official in his red cap stood before the building. Nevertheless, the wait extended somewhat beyond the allotted time. The guards were engaged in eager conversation with the official. Sendlingen could at first hear every word. "There is no doubt about it!" said the official. "I arranged my apparatus so that I could hear it being telegraphed to Pfalicz and Bolosch. What a catastrophe." "And is the wound serious?" asked one of the guards. He was evidently a retired soldier, the old man's voice trembled as he put the question. "The accounts differ about that," was the answer. "Great Heavens! who would have thought such a thing possible in Austria!" "Oh! it can only have been an Italian!" cried the old soldier. "I was ten years there and know the treacherous brood!" Thus much Sendlingen heard, but without rightly understanding, without asking himself what it might mean. More than that, the sound of the voices was painful to him as it disturbed his train of thought; he drew up the window so as to hear no more. And now another picture presented itself to him as the train sped on, but it was no brighter or more consoling. He was standing before his Prince who had said to him: "It is frightful, I pity you, poor father, but I cannot help you! It is my duty to protect Justice without respect of persons; I confirmed the sentence of death not because I knew nothing of her father, and supposed him a man of poor origin, but because she was guilty, by her own confession and the Judges' verdict. Shall I pardon her now because she is the daughter of an influential man of rank, because she is your daughter? Is her guilt any the less for this, will this bring her child to life again? Can you expect this of me, you, who are yourself a Judge, bound by oath to judge both high and low with the same measure?" Thus had the Emperor spoken, and he had found no word to say against it--alas! no syllable of a word--and had gone home again. And it was a dark night--dark enough to conceal thieving and robbery or the blackest crime ever done by man--and he was creeping across the Court-yard at home; creeping towards the little door that opened into the prison. "Oh!" he groaned stretching out his hands as if to repel this vision, "not that!--not that!--And I am too cowardly to do it. I know--too cowardly! too cowardly!" Once more the train stopped, this time at a larger station. Sendlingen did not look out, otherwise he must have noticed that this was some extraordinary news that was flying through the land and filling all who heard it with horror. Pale and excited the crowd was thronging in the greatest confusion; all seemed to look upon what had happened as a common misfortune. Some were shouting, others staring as if paralyzed by fear, others again, the majority, were impatiently asking one another for fresh details. "It was a shot!" screamed an old gray-headed man in a trembling voice, above the rest, before he got into the train. "So the telegram to the prefect says." "A shot!" the word passed from mouth to mouth and some wept aloud.' "No!" cried another, "it was a stab from a dagger, the General himself told me so." Confused and unintelligible, the cries reached Sendlingen's ears till they were drowned by the rush of the wheels, and again nothing was to be heard save the noise of the rolling train. And again his over-wrought imagination presented another picture. The Emperor had heard his prayer and said: "I grant her her life, I will commute the punishment to imprisonment for life, for twenty years. More than this I dare not do; she would have died had she not been your daughter, but I dare not remit the punishment altogether, nor so far lessen it that she, a murderess, should suffer the same punishment as the daughter of a common man had she committed a serious theft." And to this too he had known of no answer, and had come home and had to tell his poor daughter that he had deceived her by lies. She had broken down under the blow, and had been taken with death in her heart to a criminal prison, and a few months later as he sat in his office and dignity at Pfalicz, the news was brought him that she had died. "Would this be justice?" cried a voice in his tortured breast. "Can I suffer this? No, no! it would be my most grievous crime, more grievous than any other." The train had reached the last station before Vienna, a suburb of the capital. Here the throng was so dense, the turmoil so great, that Sendlingen, in spite of his depression, started up and looked out. "Some great misfortune or other must have happened," he thought, as he saw the pale faces and excited gestures around him. But so great was the constraining force of the spell in which his own misery held his thoughts, that it never penetrated his consciousness so as to ask what had happened. He leant back in his corner, and of the Babel of voices outside only isolated, unintelligible sounds reached his ears. Here the people were no longer disputing with what weapon that deed had been done which filled them with such deep horror. "It was a stab from a dagger," they all said, "driven with full force into the neck." Their only dispute was as to the nationality of the malefactor. "It was a Hungarian!" cried some. "A Count. He did it out of revenge because his cousin was hanged." "That is a lie!" cried a man in Hungarian costume. "A Hungarian wouldn't do it--the Hungarians are brave--the Austrians are cowards--the blackguard was an Austrian, a Viennese!" "Oho!" cried the excited crowd, and in the same instant twenty fists were clenched at the speaker so that he began to retire. "A Lie! It was no Viennese! on the contrary, a Viennese came to the rescue!" "Yes, a Vienna citizen!" shouted others, "a butcher!" "Was not the assassin an Italian?" asked the guard of the train, and this was enough for ten others to yell: "It was a Milanese--naturally!--they are the worst of the lot!" while from another corner of the platform there was a general cry: "It was a Pole! a student! He belonged to a secret society and was chosen by lot!" Two Poles protested, the Hungarian and an Italian joined them; bad language flew all over the place; fists and sticks were raised; the police in vain tried to keep the peace. Then a smart little shoemaker's apprentice hit upon the magic word that quieted all. "It was a Bohemian!" he screeched, "a journeyman tailor from Pardubitz!" In a moment a hundred voices were re-echoing this. This cry alone penetrated the gloomy reflections in which Sendlingen was enshrouded, but he only thought for an instant: "Probably some particularly atrocious murder," and then continued the dark train of his thoughts.--Now he tried to rouse himself, to cheer himself by new hopes, and he strove hard to think the solution of which Berger had spoken, credible. He clung to it, he pictured the whole scene--it was the one comfort left to his unhappy mind. He chose the words by which he would move his Prince's heart, and as the unutterable misery of the last few months, the immeasurable torment of his present position once more rose before him, he was seized with pity for himself and his eyes moistened--assuredly! the Emperor, too, could not fail to be touched, he would hear him and grant him the life of his child. Not altogether, he could not possibly do that, but perhaps he would believe living words rather than dead documentary evidence and would see that the poor creature was deserving of a milder punishment. And when her term of punishment was over--oh! how gladly he would cast from him all the pomp and dignity of the world and journey with her into a foreign land where her past was not known--how he would sacrifice everything to establish her in a new life, in new happiness.... A consoling picture rose before him: a quiet, country seat, apart from the stream of the world, far, far away, in France or in Holland. Shady trees clustered around a small house and on the veranda there sat a young woman, still pale and with an expression of deep seriousness in her face, but her eyes were brighter already, and there was a look about her mouth as if it could learn to smile again. "Vienna." The train stopped; on the platform there was the same swaying, surging crowd as at the suburb, but it was much quieter for the police prevented all shouting and forming into groups. Sendlingen did not notice how very strongly the station was guarded. The consoling picture he had conjured up was still before his mind; like a somnambulist he pushed through the crowd and got into a cab. "To the Savage," he called to the driver; he gave the order mechanically, from force of habit, for he always stayed at this hotel. The shadows of the dusk had fallen upon the streets as the cab drove out of the station, the lamps' red glimmer was visible through the damp evening mist that had followed upon the sunny day. Sendlingen leant back in the cushions and closed his eyes to continue his dream; he did not notice what an unusual stir there was in the streets. It was as if the whole population was making its way to the heart of the city; the vehicles moved in long rows, the pedestrians streamed along in dense masses. There was no shouting, no loud word, but the murmur of the thousands, excitedly tramping along, was joined to a strange hollow buzz that floated unceasingly in the air, and grew stronger and stronger as the carriage neared the centre of the town. More and more police were visible, and at the Glacis there was even a battalion at attention, ready for attack at a moment's notice. Even this Sendlingen did not notice, it hardly entered his mind that the cab was driving much more slowly than usual. That picture of his brain was still before him and hope had visited his heart again. "Courage!" he whispered to himself. "One night more of this torment--and then she is saved! He is the only human being who can help us, and he will help us." His cab had at length made way through the crowd that poured in an ever denser throng across the Stefansplatz and up the Graben towards the Imperial Palace--and it was able to turn into the Kärtnerstrasse. It drew up before the hotel. The hall-porters darted out and helped Sendlingen to alight, the proprietor himself hurried forward and bowed low when he recognised him. "His Lordship, the Chief Justice!" he cried. "Rooms 7 and 8. What does your Lordship say to this calamity? It has quite dazed me!" "What has happened?" asked Sendlingen. "Your Lordship does not know?" cried the landlord in amazement. "That is almost impossible! A journey-man tailor from Hungary, Johann Libényi, attempted His Majesty's life to-day at the Glacis. The dagger of the miscreant struck the Emperor in the neck. His Majesty is severely wounded, if it had not been for the presence of mind of the butcher, Ettenreich----" He stopped abruptly, "What is the matter?" he cried darting towards Sendlingen. Sendlingen tottered, and but for his help would have fallen to the ground. CHAPTER XIII. On the evening of the next day Count Karolberg, Sendlingen's brother-in-law, entered his room at the hotel. "Well, here you are at last!" he cried, still in the door-way. "Is this the way to go on after a bad attack of the heart on the evening before? Three times to-day have I tried to get hold of you, the first time at nine in the morning and you had already gone out." "Thank you very much!" replied Sendlingen. "My anxiety for authentic news about the Emperor's condition, drove me out of doors betimes, and so I went to the Imperial Chancellery as early as was seemly. But I only learnt what is in all the papers: that there was no danger of his life, but that he would need quite three weeks of absolute rest to bring about his complete recovery. Meanwhile the Cabinet is to see to all current affairs: the sovereign authority of the Emperor is suspended, and none of the princes of the blood are to act as Regent during the illness." "But you surely did not inquire about that?" cried Count Karolberg in astonishment. "That goes without saying." "Goes without saying!" muttered Sendlingen, and for a moment his self-command left him and his features became so listless and gloomy that his brother-in-law looked at him much concerned. "Victor!" he said, "you are really ill! You must see Oppolzer to-morrow." "I cannot. I must go back to Bolosch to-night. I require two days at least, to arrange the surrender of matters to my successor. But then I shall come back here at once." "Good! You are going to spend the week before entering on your new position here; the Minister of Justice has just told me. It was very prudent of you to visit him at once." "It was only fitting that I should," said Sendlingen. Alas! not from any motives of fitness or prudence had he gone to the Minister of Justice; it was despair that drove him there after the information he got at the Chancellery, a remnant of a hope that by his help, he might at least attain the postponement of the execution till the Emperor was better again. Not until he was in the Minister's ante-room, and had already been announced, did he recover his senses and recognise that the Minister could as little command a postponement as he himself, and so he kept silence. "He was very friendly to me!" he added aloud. "He is completely reconciled to you," Count Karolberg eagerly corroborated. "He spoke to me of your ill-health with the sincerest sympathy, and told me that you had hinted at not accepting the post at Pfalicz but contemplated retiring. I hope that is far from being your resolve! If you require a lengthy cure somewhere in the South, leave of absence would be sufficient. How could you have the heart to renounce a career that smiles upon you as yours does?" "Of, course," replied Sendlingen, "I shall consider the subject thoroughly." He then asked to be excused for a minute in order to write a telegram to Bolosch. He sat down at the writing-table. He found the few words needed hard to choose. He crossed them out and altered them again and again--it was the first lie that that hand had ever set down. At length he had finished. The telegram read as follows: "George Berger, Bolosch. End desired as good as attained. Have procured postponement till recovery of decisive arbiter. Return to-morrow comforted. Victor." He then drove with Count Karolberg to his house and spent the evening there in the circle of his relations. He was quiet and cheerful at he used to be, and when he took his leave of the lady of the house to go to the station, he jokingly invited himself to dinner on the 22d of February. The weather had completely changed, since the morning heavy snow had fallen: the Bolosch train had to wait a long time at the next station till the snow-ploughs had cleared the line, and it was not till late next morning that it reached its destination. Sendlingen was deeply moved that, notwithstanding, the first face he saw on getting out of the train, was that of his faithful friend. And at the same time it frightened him: for how could he look him in the face? But in his impetuous joy, Berger did not observe how Sendlingen shrank at his gaze. "At last!" he cried, embracing him, and with moistened eyes, he pressed his hand, incapable of uttering a word. "Thank you!" said Sendlingen in an uncertain voice. "It--it came upon you as a surprise?" "You may imagine that!" cried Berger. "Soon after your departure, I heard the news of the attempt on the Emperor's life. I thought all was lost and was about to hurry to you when your telegram came. And then, picture my delight! I sent for Franz--the old man was mad with joy!" They had come out to the front of the station and had got into Berger's sleigh. "To my house!" he called to the driver! "What are you thinking of?" asked Sendlingen. "You forget that you have no longer a habitable home!" cried Berger. "There is such a veritable hurly-burly at the residence, that even Franz hardly knows his way about--where do you mean to stay?" "At the Hofmann Hotel," replied Sendlingen. "I have already commissioned Franz to take rooms there. It is impossible for me to stay with you, George. Please do not press me. I cannot do it." Berger looked at him astonished. "But why not? And how tragically it affects you? To the Hofmann Hotel!" he now ordered the driver. "But now tell me everything," he begged, when the sleigh had altered its direction. "Who granted you the postponement?" "The Archduke Ferdinand Maximilian," replied Sendlingen quickly, "the Emperor's eldest brother. I had an interview with him yesterday. The order to Werner to postpone the execution, should be here by the day after to-morrow. For my own part, I shall stay in Vienna until the Emperor has recovered. The Archduke himself could not give a final decision." "Once more my heartiest congratulations!" cried Berger. "I will faithfully watch over Victorine till you return. And now as to other things. Do you know whom this concerns?" He pointed to some bundles of fir-branches that were being unloaded at several houses. Here and there, too, some black and yellow, or black, red and yellow flags were being hung out. "You, Victor. The whole of Bolosch is preparing itself for to-morrow, it will be such a fête as the town has not seen for a long time. The Committee has done nothing either about the decorations or the illuminations. Both are spontaneous, and done without any preconcerted arrangement." "This must not take place!" cried Sendlingen impatiently. "I cannot allow it! It would rend my heart!" "I understand you," said Berger. "But in for a penny etc. Besides your heart may be easier now, than at the time you agreed to accept the torch-light procession and the banquet. Do not spoil these good people's pleasure, they have honorably earned your countenance. Every third man in Bolosch is inconsolable to-day because there are no more tickets left for the banquet, although we have hired the biggest room in the place, the one in the town-hall. The only compensation that we could offer them, was the modest pleasure of carrying a torch in your honour and at the same time burning a few holes in their Sunday clothes. Notwithstanding, torches have since yesterday become the subject of some very swindling jobbery." In this manner he gossiped away cheerfully until the sleigh drew up at the hotel. Herr Hofmann, the landlord, was almost speechless with pleasure. "What an honour," stammered the fat man, his broad features colouring a sort of purple-red. "Your Lordship is going to receive the procession on my balcony?" "Yes indeed," sighed Berger, "and it is I who got you this honour!" He drove away, promising to send Franz who was waiting at his house. After a short interval Franz appeared at the hotel; his face beamed as he entered his master's room, and a few minutes later, when he came out again, it was pale and distorted and his eyes seemed blinded; the old man was reeling like a drunkard as he went back to Berger's house to fetch the trunks to the hotel. Without making good his lost night's rest, Sendlingen betook himself to his Chambers. Herr von Werner was already waiting for him; they at once went to their task and began with the business of the Civil Court. It was not difficult work, but it consumed much time, especially as Werner in accordance with his usual custom would not dispatch the most insignificant thing by word of mouth. Seldom can any mortal have written his signature with the same pleasure as he to-day signed: "von Werner, Chief Justice." Sendlingen held out patiently, without a sign of discomposure, "like a lamb for the sacrifice" thought Baron Dernegg who was assisting with the transfer. They only interrupted their work to take a scanty meal in Chambers; twice, moreover, Franz sent for his master to make a brief communication. At length, about ten at night, the work was done. For the next day, when the affairs of the Criminal Court were to be disposed of, Werner promised to be more brief. "You had better, if you value your life," cried Dernegg laughing. "The Citizens of Bolosch won't be made fools of. Woe to you if you don't release the hero of to-morrow's fête in good time!" Sendlingen went to Berger who had now been waiting for him several hours with increasing impatience. "I shall never forgive Herr von Werner this!" he swore as they sat down to their belated meal. "And it is the last evening in which I shall have you to myself! Franz told me that you were going to Vienna by the express at four in the morning, Why will you not take a proper rest after the excitement of the fête? You had better go the day after to-morrow by the midday train." "I cannot," replied Sendlingen. "The Minister of Justice has asked me to attend an important conference the day after to-morrow, and therefore I am even thinking of going by the mail-train to-morrow. It starts shortly after midnight and----" "That is quite impossible!" interrupted Berger. "Just consider, the procession takes place between eight and nine, the banquet begins at ten, it will be eleven before the first speeches are made--then you are to reply in all speed, rush out, hurry to the hotel, change your clothes, fly to the station----Why, it is quite impossible, and the people would be justly offended if you fled from the feast in an hour's time as if it were a torment!" "And so it is!" cried Sendlingen. "When you consider what my feelings are likely to be at leaving Bolosch, then you will certainly not try to stop me, but will rather help me, so that the torment be not too long drawn out." Berger shrugged his shoulders. "You always get your own way!" he said. "But it is not right to offend the people and then victimise yourself all night in a train that stops at even the smallest stations." Then they talked of the political bearings, of the consequences, which the crime of the 18th February, the act of a half-witted creature, might have on the freedom of Austria. Victorine's name was not mentioned by either of them this time. Sendlingen never closed his eyes all that night, although Herr Hofmann had personally selected for him the best pillows in the hotel. It was a dark, wild night; the snow alone gave a faint glimmer. An icy northeast wind whistled its wild song through the streets, fit accompaniment to the thoughts of the sleepless man. Towards eight in the morning--it had just become daylight--he heard the sound of military music; the band was playing a buoyant march. At the same time there was a knock at his door and Franz entered. The old man was completely broken down. "We must dress," he said. "The band of the Jägers and the choral society are about to serenade. Besides I suppose we have not slept!" "Nor you either, Franz?" "What does that matter! But we will not survive it!" he groaned. "Oh! that this day, that this night, were already past." "It must be, Franz." "Yes, it must be!" The band came nearer and nearer. At the same time the footsteps, the laughter and shouts of a large crowd were audible. The old man listened. "That's the Radetzky March!" he said. "Ah! how merrily they are piping to our sorrow." The procession had reached the hotel. "Three cheers for Sendlingen!" cried a stentorian voice. The band struck up a flourish and from hundreds and hundreds of throats came the resounding shout: "Hip, hip, Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah!" Then the band played a short overture and the fingers followed with a chorus. Meanwhile Sendlingen had finished dressing; he went into the adjoining room, and, after the song was finished and the cheering had begun again, he opened a window and bowed his thanks. At his appearance the shouts were louder and louder; like the voice of a storm they rose again and again: "Hurrah for Sendlingen! Hurrah! Hurrah!" and mingling with them was the cry of the Czech workmen: "Slava--Na zdar!" All the windows in the street were open; the women waved their handkerchiefs, the men their hats; as far as the eye could see, bright flags were floating before the snow-covered houses, and decorations of fir were conspicuous in all the windows and balconies. The unhappy man stared in stupefaction at the scene beneath him, then a burning crimson flushed his pale face and he raised his hand as if to expostulate. The crowd put another interpretation on the sign and thought that he wanted to make a speech. "Silence," shouted a hundred voices together and there was a general hush. But Sendlingen quickly withdrew, while the cheering broke forth afresh. "My hat!" he cried to Franz. He wanted to escape to the Courts by the back door of the hotel. But it was too late; the door of the room opened, and the Committee entered and presented the address of the inhabitants of Bolosch. Then the mayor and town-council appeared bringing the greatest distinction that had ever been conferred on a citizen of Bolosch--not only the freedom of the city, but the resolution of the town-council to change the name of Cross Street forthwith into Sendlingen Street. Various other deputations followed: the last was that of the workmen. Their leader was Johannes Novyrok; he presented as a gift, according to a Slavonic custom, a loaf of bread and a plated salt-cellar, adding: "Look at that salt-cellar, my Lord! If you imagine that it is silver you will be much mistaken, it is only very thinly plated and cost no more than four gulden, forty kreutzer, and I must candidly say that the dealer has very likely swindled us out of a few groschen in the transaction; for what do we understand of such baubles? Well, four gulden and forty kreutzer, besides fifteen kreutzer for the bread and five kreutzer for the salt, make altogether five gulden of the realm. Now you will perhaps think to yourself, my Lord: Are these men mad that they dare offer _me_ such a trifling gift--but to that I answer: Five gulden are three hundred kreutzer of the realm, and these three hundred kreutzer were collected in this way: three hundred workmen of this town after receiving their wages last Saturday, each subscribed one kreutzer to give you a bit of pleasure. And now that you know this, you will certainly honour their trifling gift. We beg you to keep this salt-cellar on your table, so that your heart may be always rejoiced by the gift of poor men whose benefactor you have been." In the Law Courts, too, a solemn ovation was awaiting him. Two Judges received him at the entrance and conducted him to the hall of the Senate, where all the members of the Court were gathered. Werner handed him their parting-gift: a water-colour painting of the Courts of Justice, and an album with the photographs of all connected with them. "To the model of every judicial virtue," was stamped on it in gold letters. Then Dernegg stepped forward. A number of the Court officials had clubbed together to adorn the walls with Sendlingen's portrait. Dernegg made a sign and the curtain was withdrawn from the picture. "Not only to honour you," he continued turning to Sendlingen, "have we placed this picture here, but because we desire that your portrait should look down upon us to admonish and encourage us, whenever we are assembled here in solemn deliberation. It was here that four months ago you gave utterance to a sentiment that, to me, will always be more significant of your character than anything I ever heard you say. We were discussing the condemnation of an unfortunate government clerk. 'I have never been,' you said on that occasion, 'a blind adherent of the maxim Fiat justitia et pereat mundum--but at least it must so far be considered sacred, as binding each of us Judges to act according to law and duty, even if our hearts should break in doing so.' Such things are easily said, but hard to do. Fate, however, had decreed that you were, since then, to give a proof that this conviction had indeed been the loadstar of your life. Who should know that better than I, your colleague in those sorrowful days. You never hesitated, even when all that the heart of man may cling to, was at stake in your life." He had intended to go into this at greater length, but he came to a speedy conclusion when he saw how pale Sendlingen had turned. "Very likely his heart is troubling him again," he thought. But the attack seemed to pass quickly. Certainly Sendlingen only replied in a very few words, but he went to work again with Werner zealously. The three men--Dernegg was assisting to-day as well--betook themselves to the prison. In the Governor's office, the register of prisoners was gone through. Werner started when he saw the list of the sick. "So many?" he cried. "Our doctor would be more suited to a philanthropic institute than here. Here, for instance, I read: 'Victorine Lippert. Since the 9th November, 1852.' Why that must be the child-murderess, that impertinent person who made such a scene at the trial. And here it says further: 'Convalescent since the middle of December, but must remain in the infirmary till her complete recovery on account of grave general debility.' This person has been well for two months, and is still treated as if she were ill! Isn't that unjustifiable?" Sendlingen made no reply; he was holding one of the lists close to his eyes, so that his face was not visible. Dernegg, however, answered: "Perhaps the contrary would be unjustifiable. The doctor knows the case, we don't. He is a conscientious man." "Certainly," agreed Werner, "of course he is--but much too soft-hearted. Let us keep to this particular case. Well, this person has been tended as an invalid for more than two months. That adds an increase of more than twenty kreutzer daily to the public expenditure, altogether, since the middle of December, fourteen gulden of the realm. We should calculate, gentlemen, calculate. And is such a person worth so much money? Well, we can soon see for ourselves whether she is ill!" They began to go the rounds of the prison. That was soon done with, but in the first room of the Infirmary, Werner began a formal examination of the patients. Sendlingen went up to him. "Finish that tomorrow," he said sharply, in an undertone. "You are my successor, not my supervisor." Werner almost doubled up. "Excuse me--" he muttered in the greatest embarrassment. "You are right,--but I did not dream of offending you--you whom I honour so highly. Let us go." They went through the remainder of the rooms without stopping, until they came to the separate cells for female patients. Here, only two female warders kept guard. Werner looked through the list of the patients' names. "Why, Victorine Lippert is here," he said. "Actually in a separate cell. My Lord Chief Justice," he continued in an almost beseeching tone of voice, turning to Sendlingen, "this one case I should like at once to--I beg--it really consumes me with indignation--otherwise I must come over this afternoon." Sendlingen had turned away. "As you wish," he then muttered, and they entered her cell. Victorine had just sat down at her table and was reading the Bible. She looked up, a crimson flush overspread her face, trembling with a glad excitement she rose--the pardon must at length have arrived from Vienna, and the Judges were coming to announce it. The danger increased Sendlingen's strength. He had not been able to endure Dernegg's words of praise, but now that the questioning look of his child rested on him, now that his heart threatened to stand still from compassion and from terror of what the next moment might bring forth, not a muscle of his face moved. Perhaps it decisively affected his and Victorine's fate, that this unspeakable torture only lasted a few moments. "There we are!" Werner broke forth. "Rosy and healthy and out of bed. A nice sort of illness. But this shall be put a stop to to-day." With a low cry, her face turning white, Victorine staggered back. Werner did not hear her, he had already left the cell, the other two followed him. "It was on account of your request that I was so brief," said Werner in the corridor turning to Sendlingen. "Besides one glance is sufficient! Tell me yourself, my Lord, does she look as if she were ill?" "You must take the Doctor's opinion about that," said Dernegg. "That would be superfluous," said Sendlingen, his voice scarcely trembling. "The sentence of death is confirmed; she must be executed in a few days; the 25th February at the latest, as the sentence reached here on the seventeenth. I can only share your view," he continued turning to Werner, "she really looks healthy enough to be removed into the common prison. But what would be the good? We have not got any special 'black hole' in which condemned criminals spend the day before their execution, and one of these cells in the Infirmary is always used for the purpose." "You are right as usual," Werner warmly agreed. "She can remain in the cell for the two days: that will be the most practical thing to do. On the twenty-third, I will announce the sentence, on the twenty-fourth, the execution can take place." Sendlingen gave a deep sigh. "We have finished with the prisons now," he said, "let us go back to Chambers. Allow me to show you the nearest way." He beckoned to the Governor of the Prison to follow them. The cells of the Infirmary were in a short corridor that opened into the prison-yard. The Governor opened the door and they stepped out into the yard. "I have a key to this door," said Sendlingen to Werner, "as well as to that over there." He pointed to the little door in the wall which separated the prison-yard from the front part of the building. "I will hand both these keys over to you presently. My predecessor had this door made, so as to convince himself, from time to time, that the prison officials were doing their duty. But he forgot to tell me about this, and so the keys have been rusting unused in my official writing-table. I first heard of this accidentally a few months ago." "Certainly this means of access requires some consideration," observed Dernegg. "An attempt at escape would meet with very slight obstacles here. Anyone once in the Infirmary Corridor, would only need to break through two weak doors, the one in the yard and this one in the wall, and then get away scot free by the principal entrance which leads to the offices and private residence of the Chief Justice!" "What an idea!" laughed Werner. "In the first place: how would the fellow get out of the sick-room or out of his cell into the corridor of the female patients? He would first have to break through two or three doors. And if he should succeed in getting out into the yard, he would perhaps never notice the door, it is so hidden away; and if, groping about in the dark, he were to find it, he would not know where it led to, or whether there might not be a sentry on the other side with a loaded rifle. No, no, I think this arrangement is very ingenious, very ingenious, gentlemen, and I purpose often to make use of it." Sendlingen took no part in this talk; he had altogether become very taciturn and remained so, as they set to work again in Chambers. But the evening had long set in, the illumination of the town had begun, and the lights were burning in the windows of the room where they were working, before they had completed all the formalities. When all was finished, Sendlingen handed his successor the keys of which he had spoken. Franz was waiting outside with a carriage from the hotel. It was a nasty night; an icy wind was driving the snow-flakes before it. Notwithstanding Sendlingen wanted to proceed on foot. "My forehead burns," he complained. But Franz urged: "I have brought it on account of the crowds of people about. If we are recognised, we should never get along or escape from the cheering." So Sendlingen got in. This precaution proved to be well-founded. In spite of the stormy weather, the streets were densely packed with people slowly streaming hither and thither, and admiring the unwonted spectacle of the illuminations. The carriage could only proceed at a walking pace: Sendlingen buried himself deeper in its cushions so as not to be recognised. "The good people!" said old Franz who was sitting opposite him. "I have always known who it was I was serving, but how much we are loved and honoured in this town, was not manifest till to-night. But we are not looking at the illuminations, they are very beautiful." "And who is it they are there for!" cried Sendlingen burying his face in his hands. The carriage which had been going slower and slower, was now obliged to stop; it had come to the beginning of Cross Street which since the morning bore the superscription: "Sendlingen Street!" The inhabitants of this street in order to show themselves worthy of the honour, had illuminated more lavishly than anyone else, and as the Hofmann Hotel was situated here, the crowd had formed into such a dense mass at this point, that a passage through it was not to be thought of. Sendlingen had to quit the carriage and, half deafened with the cheers, he hurried through the ranks and breathed again when he reached the shelter of the hotel. There Berger, who had been impatiently awaiting him, met him. "Now quick into your dress clothes," he cried, "in ten minutes the procession will be here." Sendlingen had hardly finished dressing, when the sound of music and the shouts of the crowd, announced the approach of the procession. He was obliged to yield to his friend's pressure and go out on the balcony. There was a red glimmer from the direction of the river, and like a giant fire-serpent, the procession wound its way through the crowd. It stopped before the hotel, the torch-bearers formed themselves in line in the broad street. Unceasingly, endlessly, like the roar of wild waves, resounded the cheers. Berger's eyes sparkled. "This is a moment which few men live to see," he said. "Know this, and be glad of it! He who has won such love is, in spite of anything that could happen, one of the favoured of this earth!" Then they drove to the banquet at the town-hall. The large room was full to overflowing, and all agreed that this was the most brilliant assembly that had ever been gathered together within its walls, "But he deserves it," all said. "What has this man not suffered in the last few weeks through his fidelity to conviction! One can see it in his face--this agitation has broken his strength for years!" People therefore did not take it ill that his replies to the two toasts, "Our last honorary citizen" proposed by the Mayor, and the "Rock of Justice" proposed by the chairman of the committee, were very briefly put. He thanked them for the unmerited honour that had been done him, assured them that he would never forget their kindness, and, to be brief, made only the most commonplace remarks, without fulfilling either by his style or his thoughts, the expectation with which this speech had been looked forward to. Nevertheless, after he had finished, he was greeted with wild cheering, and the same thundering applause followed him as he left the hall towards eleven o'clock. Berger and Dernegg accompanied him to the hotel, then to the station. The first bell had already rung when they got there; so their farewell had to be brief. Silently, with moistened eyes, Sendlingen embraced his friend before he got into the train; Franz took his place in a second-class compartment of the same carriage. Both waved from the windows after the train had moved off and was gliding away, swifter and swifter, into the stormy night. * * * * * Next morning about nine o'clock, when Berger had just sat down at his writing-table, there was a violent knock at his door and a clerk of the Law Courts rushed in. "Dr. Berger!" he cried, breathlessly, "Herr von Werner urgently begs you to go to him at once. Victorine Lippert has escaped from the prison in the night." Berger turned deadly pale. "Escaped?" "Or been taken out!" continued the clerk. "Herr von Werner hopes you may be able to give some hint as to who could have interested themselves in the person." "Very well," muttered Berger. "I know little enough about the matter, but I will come at once." The clerk departed; Berger sat at his table a long time, staring before him, his head heavily sunk on his breast. "Unhappy wretch!" he thought. "Now I understand all!" Now he understood all: why Sendlingen had hesitated so long in taking the journey to Vienna, why he had taken Franz and Brigitta into his confidence, why he had spent the last two days at the hotel where he and his servant could make all preparations undisturbed, and why he had chosen the mail train which stopped at every station. The next station to Bolosch was not distant more than half an hour's drive by sleigh. "They must both have left the train there," he thought, "and hurried back in a sleigh that was waiting for them, then released Victorine and hastened away with her, perhaps to the first station where the express stops, perhaps in the opposite direction towards Pfalicz. At this moment, very likely, she is journeying under Franz's protection to some foreign country where Brigitta awaits her, somewhere in France, or England, or Italy, while he is hurrying to Vienna, so as not to miss his appointment with the Minister of Justice!" "Monstrous!" he groaned. And surely, the world had never before seen such a thing: such a crime committed by such a man, and on the very day when his fellow-citizens had done honour to him as the "Rock of Justice!" And such he would be for all time, in the eyes of all the world; it was not to be supposed that the very faintest suspicion would turn against him: he would go to Pfalicz and there continue to judge the crimes of others. The honest lawyer boiled over, he could no longer sit still but began to pace up and down excitedly. Bitter, grievous indignation filled his heart; the most sacred thing on earth had been sullied, Justice, and by a man whom of all men he had loved and honoured. And then this same love stirred in his heart again. He thought of last night, of the moment when he had stood by his friend, while the thousands surged below making the air ring with their cheers. Pity incontinently possessed his soul again. "What the poor wretch must have suffered at this moment!" he thought. "It is a marvel that he did not go mad. And what he must have suffered on his journey to Vienna, and long weeks before, when the resolve first took shape in him!" He bowed his head. "Judge not, that ye be not judged," cried a voice of admonition within him. His bitterness disappeared, and deep sorrow alone filled his heart: sin had bred other sins, crime, another crime and fresh remorse and despair. How to judge this deed, what was there to be said in condemnation, what in vindication of it: that deed of which he had once dreamed, it certainly was not; it was no great, liberating solution of these complications, but only an end of them, a hideous end! Certainly Victorine might have now suffered enough to have been granted freedom, and the opportunity of new life, and no less certainly would Sendlingen, honourable and loving justice in the extreme, carry in his conscience through life, the punishment for his crime--but Justice had been outraged, and this sacred thing would never receive the expiation that was its due. "A wrong should not be expiated by a crime!" Sendlingen had once said to him--but now he had done it himself. "Re-assure yourself," he had once exclaimed at a later date, "outraged Justice shall receive the expiation that is its due!" This would not, could not be--never--never! Berger roused himself and went forth on his bitter errand. When he reached the Courts of Justice, old Hoche, who had entered on his retirement some weeks ago, was just coming out. Berger was going to pass him with a brief salutation, but the old gentleman button-holed him. "What do you say to this?" he cried. "Monstrous, isn't it? I am heartily glad that the misfortune has not befallen Sendlingen! But do not imagine that I wish it to Herr von Werner. On the contrary, I have just given him a piece of advice--ha! ha! ha!--that should relieve him of his perplexity. You cross-examine Dr. Berger sharply, I said to him; that is the safest way of getting to know the secret of who took her out. For the way Dr. Berger interested himself in this person, is not to be described. Me, a Judge, he called a murderer for her sake, upon my word, a murderer. Ha! ha! ha! there you have it." Berger had turned pale. "This is not a subject of jest," he said, angrily. "Oh, my dear Dr. Berger!" replied the old man soothingly, "I have only advised Herr von Werner--and naturally without the slightest suspicion against you--to formally examine you on oath as a witness. For anyone connected with the prisoner is likely to know best. And besides: a record of evidence can never do any harm--_ut aliquid fecisse videatur_, you know. They will see in Vienna that Werner has taken a lot of trouble. Well, good-bye, my dear doctor, good-bye." He went. Berger strode up the steps. His face was troubled and a sudden terror shook his limbs. He had never thought of that. Supposing he should now be examined on oath? Could he then say: 'I have no suspicion who could have helped her?' Could he be guilty of perjury to save them both? "May God help them then," he hissed, "for I cannot." He entered the corridor that led to the Chief Justice's Chambers. The examination of the prison officials had just been concluded, but a few warders were standing about and attentively listening to the crafty Höbinger's explanation of this extraordinary case. "Favouritism!" Berger heard him say as he went by, "her lover, the young Count, has got her out." The two female warders of the Infirmary cells were there too, sobbing. Berger entered the Chief Justice's Chambers. Baron Dernegg and the Governor of the prison were with Werner. At a side-table sat a clerk; a crucifix and two unlighted candles were beside him. "At last!" cried Werner. "I begged you so particularly to come at once. There is not a moment to be lost. Light the candles!" he called to the clerk. "But that may be quite useless," cried Dernegg. "Do you know anything about the matter?" he then asked Berger. "No!" The sound came hoarsely, almost unintelligibly, from his stifled breast. Werner stood irresolute. "But Dr. Berger was her Counsel," he said, "and the authorities in Vienna----" "Must see that you have taken trouble," supplemented Dernegg. "They will hardly see this from documents with nothing in them. We have more important things to do now: the escape was discovered three hours ago, and the description of her appearance has not yet been drawn up and telegraphed to Vienna and the frontier stations." Werner still looked irresolutely at the lighted candles for a few seconds: to Berger they seemed an eternity of bitter anguish such as his conscience had never endured before. "Put out the candles! Come, the description of her appearance!" He seized the papers relating to the trial. "Please help me!" he said turning to Dernegg. "My head is swimming! O God! that I should have lived to see this day!" While the clerks were writing at the dictation of the two judges, Berger turned to the Governor and asked him how the escape had been effected. "It is like magic!" he replied. "When one of the female warders was taking her breakfast to her this morning, she found the door merely latched and the cell empty. The lock must have been opened from the inside. Her course can be plainly traced: she escaped through the yard; the locks of all the doors have been forced from inside by a file used by someone with great strength. This is the first riddle. Such a thing could hardly be done by the hand of the strongest man; it is quite impossible that Victorine Lippert had sufficient strength! The doctor vouches for it, and for the matter of that you knew her yourself, Dr. Berger." Berger shrugged his shoulders and the Governor continued: "You see the theory of external assistance forces itself imperatively upon us, and yet it is not tenable. The help cannot have come from outside, as all the locks were forced on the inside. And in the prison she can likewise have received no assistance. There is not one of the warders capable of such a crime, besides there is only one door between the general prison and the corridor of the female patients, and that was locked and remained locked. Since any external help is not to be thought of, we are obliged, difficult as it is, to credit Victorine Lippert with sufficient strength. But there we are confronted with the second riddle: how did she come by the file? And in the face of such incomprehensibilities, it is a small thing that she should also have been aware of an exit that is known to few!" "Mysterious in every way!" said Berger. "Most extraordinary!" To him the rationale of the thing was plain enough: Master and servant had by means of the official keys or of duplicates which they had had made, penetrated the prison, and on their return had filed the locks. By this ruse, all suspicion of external help would be removed, and at the same time, as far as Sendlingen could do so, it would be averted from the prison officials. Meanwhile the two Judges had drawn up the description of the fugitive's appearance, and Dernegg renewed his advice to telegraph it abroad at once. Werner objected that this was "a new method" that he would not agree to. "Everything according to rule!" he said. "We will publish the description in the official paper, distribute it among the police, and send a copy to Vienna. It is inconceivable that the person has got out of the country; where would she get the money from? We will therefore not telegraph, and that is enough!" But after the old man had roused himself to this judgment of Solomon, his self-control deserted him altogether. "What a calamity!" he moaned. "What a beginning to my life as Chief Justice! But I am innocent! Alas! I shall, none the less, receive a reprimand from the Minister which I shall carry about me all my life, unless Sendlingen saves me. But my friend Sendlingen, that best of colleagues, will speak for me and save me. Excuse me, gentlemen--but I shall have no peace, until I have written and asked for his help!" He sat down to his writing-table, the others took their leave. The next morning Berger received a letter from Vienna, the handwriting of the address was known to him and, with trembling hands, he opened the envelope. This was the letter. "I know that you cannot forgive me and I do not ask you to do so. One favour only do I implore: do not give up hope that the time will one day come when I shall again be worthy of your regard. The first step to this I took yesterday: I have left the service of the State for ever, and I do not doubt that I shall have courage to take the second step, the step that will resolve all; when God will grant me the grace to do this, I know not. Pray with me that I may not have too long to wait. "Farewell, George, farewell for ever! "Victor." Berger stared for a long while at these lines, his lips trembled--he was very sore at heart. Then he drew a candle towards him, lit it, and held the letter in its flame until it had turned to ashes. "Farewell, thou best and purest of men," he whispered to himself, and a sudden tear ran down his cheek. CHAPTER XIV. Three years had passed, it was the summer of 1856. Bright and hot, the June sun shone upon the Valley of the Rhine ripening the vineyards that hung upon its rocky declivities. The boat steaming down the Valley from Mayence to the holy city of Cologne, had its sheltering awning carefully stretched over the deck, and all went merrily on board, merrily as ever. More beautiful landscapes there may be in the world, but none that make the heart more glad. And so thought two grave-looking men who had come aboard at Mayence that morning. They had come from Austria, and were going to London; they did not want to miss the opportunity of seeing the beautiful river, but at the beginning of the journey they made but a poor use of the favourable day. They sat there oppressed and scarcely looking up, consulting together about the weighty business that lay on their shoulders. But an hour later, when they got into Nassau, they yielded to the charm of the scenery, and as they glided by Rüdesheim, they began to consider whether, after all, the Rhine was not the proper place to drink Rhine-wine, and when they passed the Castle called the Pfalz at Caub, they first saw this venerable building through their spectacles, and then through the green-gold light of the brimming glasses they were holding to their eyes. These two men were Dr. George Berger of Bolosch and a fellow barrister from Vienna. They had a difficult task to perform in London. One of the largest iron-foundries in Austria, that at Bolosch, had got into difficulties, and an attempt to stave off bankruptcy had failed, less from the action of the creditors, than from the miserable red-tapism of the Chief Justice of Bolosch, Herr von Werner. The foundry, which employed thousands of men, would be utterly ruined if it did not succeed in obtaining foreign capital. With this object, these two representatives of the firm were making their way to England. On the Rhine, everybody forgets their cares and this was their good-fortune too. And so greatly had the lovely river, which both now saw for the first time, taken possession of their hearts, that they could not part company with it even at Cologne, where most people went ashore. They resolved to continue the journey by the river as far as Arnhem, and they paced up and down the now empty deck cheerfully talking in the cool of the evening. No mountains, no castles, were any longer reflected in the stream, but the look of its shores was still pleasant, and when they saw the light of dying day spread its rosy net over the broad and swiftly flowing waters, they did not repent their resolve, and extolled the day that had ended as beautiful as it had begun. The shades of evening fell, the banks of the river grew more and more flat and bare, factories became more and more plentiful, and behind Dusseldorf, they saw the red glare of countless blast-furnaces, brightly glowing in the dark. This sight reminded them of their task. "Who knows," sighed Berger's friend Dr. Moldenhauer, "how soon these fires at home may not be extinguished! And why? Because of the narrow-mindedness of one single man. Nothing in my life ever roused my indignation more than our dealings with your Chief Justice! What pedantry! what shortsightedness! Now his predecessor, Baron Sendlingen, was a different sort of man!" Berger sighed deeply. "That he was!" he replied. "The Werners stay, the Sendlingens go," continued Dr. Moldenhauer. "And they are allowed to go cheerfully, nay, even forced to go! At least it was generally said that, when Baron Sendlingen suddenly retired a few years ago, it was not on account of heart-disease, as officially reported, but because he had had a difference with the Minister of Justice. The regret at this was so great that His Excellency had to hear many a reproach." "Perhaps unjustly for once," said Berger, heavy at heart. "I don't think so," cried Moldenhauer. "Sendlingen certainly went away in deep dudgeon, otherwise he would not have renounced his pension and then left Austria for ever. Even his brother-in-law, Count Karolberg, does not know where he has gone. You were very intimate with him, do you know?" "No!" "Count Karolberg thinks he may have died suddenly in some of his travels abroad." "That too is possible," answered Berger shortly; he was anxious to drop the subject. But Moldenhauer stuck to his theme. "What a thousand pities it is!" he continued. "How great a lawyer he was, his last work, 'On Responsibility and Punishment in Child-murder,' which appeared anonymously some three years ago, most clearly shows--You know the book of course." "Yes," said Berger, "but I doubt whether it is by Sendlingen." This was an untruth, he had never doubted it. "It is attributed to other writers as well," replied Dr. Moldenhauer, "but his brother-in-law is convinced that it is by him. He says he recognised the style and also some of the thoughts, which Sendlingen explained to him in conversation. Whoever the author may be, he need not have concealed his identity. The work is the finest ever written on this subject and has made a great sensation. It is chiefly owing to its influence, that our new penal code so definitely emphasizes the question of unsoundness of mind in such crimes, and has so materially lessened the punishment for them." He talked for a long time of the excellencies of the work, but Berger hardly heard him, and was silent and absent-minded for the rest of the evening. When Moldenhauer retired to his cabin for the night, Berger still remained on deck; he was fascinated, he said, by this wondrous spectacle of the night. And indeed the aspect of the scene was strange enough and not without its charm. The moon-light lay in a faint glimmer on the stream that here, having almost poured forth its endless waters, was slowly flowing with a gentle murmur towards its grave, the vast sandy plain of the sea. On the level shores, the dim light showed the distant, dusky outlines of solitary high houses and windmills, and then again came blast-furnaces, smoking and flaming, denser and denser was the forest of them the further the boat glided on, and, here and there, where one stood close to the shore, it threw its blood-red reflex far on to the waters reaching almost to the boat, so that its lurid light and the faint lustre of the celestial luminary, seemed to be struggling for the mastery of it. The lonely passenger on the deck kept his eyes riveted on the scene, but his thoughts were far away. His recent conversation had powerfully stirred up the memory of his unhappy friend. Since that last letter he had received no line, no sign or token of any sort from him. Why? he asked himself. From mistrust? Impossible. From caution? That would be exaggerated; the writing on the envelope would not betray to any meddlesome person in what corner of the earth he had buried himself with his child. Besides he had no need to be apprehensive of any inquiry; no one knew of his child, Victorine Lippert's escape from prison had never been cleared up, the investigation had soon after been discontinued without result. The Governor of the Prison had been reprimanded for want of care in searching the cell, the little door in the wall had been bricked up, so that Herr von Werner had never been able to make use of the arrangement which he had thought so "ingenious"--those were the only consequences. Among the prison officials as among the lower classes, the opinion was sometimes expressed that it was Count Riesner-Graskowitz who had liberated his sweetheart, but this was not believed in higher circles; against Sendlingen, however, there was never the slightest breath of suspicion. Sendlingen himself must know this well enough, otherwise he would not have dared to let his book appear, that curious work in which every reader might perceive beneath the stiff, solid legal terminology, the beatings of a deeply-moved heart. He had not put his name to it, but he must have known that his name would rise to the lips of anyone who had carefully read his earlier writings. If he had not feared this, he might well have ventured upon a letter. If he was none the less silent, it must be because he preferred to be silent. Had he, perhaps, thought Berger, not had the courage to take that second step, had he perhaps renounced the intention and was now ashamed to confess it? That would be superfluous anxiety indeed. Is there a man in the wide world, who would have the heart to blame him for this? Or was he silent because he could speak no more? The thought had never entered his head before; now in this lonely hour of night it overmastered him. Of course, his brother-in-law was right, he had died a sudden death and now slept his last sleep somewhere in a strange land and under a strange name. And if that were so, would it be cause for complaint? Would not Death have been a deliverer here? Softly murmuring, the waters of the river glided on, not a sound came from its banks; in deep and solemn stillness, night lay upon the land and waters. The solitary figure on deck alone could find no rest, and the early dawn was trembling in the East over the distant hills of Guelderland, ere he at length went in search of sleep. He had scarcely rested a couple of hours when the steward knocked at his cabin-door--the passengers were to come on deck, the boat was approaching Lobith, on the Dutch frontier, where the luggage had to be examined. The two travellers answered to the call. The steamer was already nearing the shore by the landing stage of the village of which the custom-house seemed the only inhabitable building. The Dutch Customs officers in their curious uniforms came on deck. The were speedily finished with the luggage of the two lawyers, as also with that of the few other passengers. On the other hand four mighty trunks, which the Captain had with him, gave them much trouble. They were full throughout of things liable to duty: new clothes, linen, lace and articles of luxury. They required troublesome measuring, weighing and calculation. Half an hour had passed, and scarcely the half had been gone through. "We shall miss the train at Arnhem," said Berger turning impatiently to the Captain. "We must be in London to-morrow, you are responsible for the delay." "I shall make up the time by putting on steam," he reassuringly said in his broad Cologne dialect. "Excuse me, Sir, but I did not imagine that women's finery would take up so much time." "You are getting a trousseau for a daughter, I suppose." "God forbid! Thank Heaven, I am unmarried. I have, out of pure goodnature, brought these things for someone else from Cologne and undertaken to pay the duty for him. It is the most convenient thing to him, though certainly not to me. But what would one not do for a compatriot. He is a Herr von Tessenau." "Tessenau?" The name seemed familiar to Berger, but he could not remember where he had heard or read it. "Yes, that is his name," said the captain. "He comes from Bavaria, and is said to have been in the diplomatic service. He is now living with his daughter at Oosterdaal House near Huissen, the station before Arnhem. I know both of them well, they sometimes use my boat for the journey to Arnhem, and as they are such nice people, I could not refuse them this service. The wedding, which is to take place the day after to-morrow, would otherwise have had to be postponed--ask women and lovers." "So Fräulein von Tessenau is the happy bride?" "The daughter of the old gentleman, yes--but she is a 'Frau,' a young widow. Her name is von Tessenau, because she was married to a cousin. It seems that she lost her husband after a brief married life, for she is still very young, scarcely twenty-two. A beautiful, gentle lady and still looks quite girlish. But I must hurry up these easy-going Mynheers." He turned to the Customs officers and paid them the required duty. They left the steamer which now began to proceed at a much greater speed. Notwithstanding this, Moldenhauer was pacing up and down excitedly, now and then consulting timetables and pulling out his watch every five minutes. It was another cause that robbed Berger of calm. "If it should be they?" The thought returned to him however often he might say: "Nonsense! an old father and a young daughter--the conjunction is common enough--and I know nothing else about them. That I must often have heard the name Tessenau tells rather against the supposition--for Sendlingen would hardly have chosen the name of some Austrian family for his pseudonym!" Still his indefinite presentiment gave him no rest, and he at length went up to the captain! "I once," he began, "knew a family of von Tessenau, and would be very pleased if I were perhaps unexpectedly to come across them here. The old gentleman, you say, comes from Bavaria?" "Yes, you must certainly be a countryman of his?" "No. I am an Austrian." "Then the two dialects must be very much alike for you speak just like him. That he comes from Bavaria I know for certain. Herr Willem van der Weyden told me so quite recently, and he must surely know, as he is to become his son-in-law." "Who is the bridegroom?" "A capital fellow," replied the captain. "A man of magnificent build--no longer young, somewhere in the forties I should say, but stately, brave and capable--all who know him, praise him. He holds a high position in Batavia, he is manager of the Java Mines. Some ten months ago he came back to Europe, after a long absence, on a year's furlough: to find a wife, people say. None seemed to please him however. Then he came to Arnhem where his brother is settled, and in an excursion in the country about, he accidentally got to know the young Frau von Tessenau at Oosterdaal House, and fell in love with her. There seemed at first to be great obstacles in the way; at all events he was always very melancholy when he rode on my boat from Arnhem to Huissen. Well one day he was very happy, the betrothal was solemnized, and now the wedding is to come off. Yes," added the Captain pleasantly, "when one is everlastingly taking the same journey, one gets to know people by degrees and kills time by sharing their joys and sorrows." "And is Herr van der Weyden going back to Java again?" "Yes, in a month from now, when his furlough will be up. He is naturally going to take his young wife with him, and the old gentleman is going to join them too. He has no other relations. The father and daughter lived hitherto in great retirement with an old house-keeper and an equally old man-servant. But if you are interested in the family, come and look over when we get to Huissen. The old man-servant at least, will be at the landing-stage to receive the trunks, and perhaps Herr von Tessenau himself." "Do you know what the man-servant is called?" Berger's voice trembled at this question. "Franz is his name." The captain did not notice how pale Berger had become, how hastily he turned away. "No more room for doubt," he thought. But the doubt did rise again. That some details agreed, might only be a coincidence, and the name of the man-servant--such a common name--was not sufficient proof. Besides how much was against the supposition! It was inconceivable that Sendlingen should have deceived his future son-in-law and passed off Victorine as a widow! "It would be outrageous to impute such a thing to him!" he thought. With growing impatience, he looked out for the landing-stage, the steamboat had long since left the river and was steaming along the narrow Pannerden Canal. The monotonous, fruitful, thoroughly Dutch landscape extended far and wide; rich meadows on which cattle were pasturing; narrow canals, on which heavily laden boats drawn by horses on the banks, slowly made their way; on the horizon a few windmills lazily turned by their large sails. At length a few large, villa-like buildings came in sight. "That is Huissen," said the Captain. "We will see who is at the landing-stage." He produced a telescope. "Right, there is the man-servant," he said, handing Berger the telescope. "See if you know the man." Berger only held the glass to his eye for a second and then handed it back to the Captain. "No," he said, "I don't know him, it must be another family of von Tessenau." He went down to the cabin and stayed there, till the boat had got well beyond the landing-stage. It had been Franz. Berger had to stay in London a week before his task was done. He left the completion of the agreement to his colleague, and began his journey home. At first he intended to go by Dover and Calais. But at the station in London he was overcome by his feelings; he could not let his friend depart forever without seeing him again. He went back by Holland, and the next day was in Arnhem. Not until he was in the carriage which he had hired to take him to Oosterdaal, was he visited by scruples, the same sort of feeling which a week before had kept him from remaining on the deck of the steamer. Was it not indelicate and selfish to gratify his own longing at the price of deeply and painfully stirring up his friend's heart? Sendlingen did not wish to see him again, otherwise he would have written and told him of his whereabouts. And what would he not feel if he was so suddenly reminded of the fatality of his life, if his wounds were suddenly torn open again just as they were beginning to heal? And when Berger thought of Victorine, he altogether lost courage to continue the journey. Unfriendly,--nay it would be cruel, inhuman, to remind the newly-married girl of the misery of the past, and to plunge her in fatal embarrassment. The roof of the house was already visible in the distance above the tops of the trees, when these reflections overmastered Berger. "Stop, back to Arnhem!" he ordered the driver. But that could not be done at once; the horses would have to be fed first, explained the driver. The carriage proceeded still nearer the house, and stopped at a little friendly-looking inn opposite the entrance to the avenue of poplars which led up to the door. While the driver drove into the yard, the landlady suggested to Berger to take the refreshment he had ordered in front of the house. This, however, he declined and entered the inn-parlour. His remorse increased every minute, and he feared to be seen, if by chance one of the occupants of the house went by. Sighing deeply, he looked out of the window at the driver leisurely unharnessing his horses. The landlady, a young, plump, little woman, tried to console him by telling him he would not have to wait more than an hour. She spoke in broken German; she had been maid to the young German lady up at the house, she said, and had learnt the language there. They were kind, good people at Oosterdaal, the driver had told her that the gentleman was going to have driven there, why had he given up the idea? They would certainly be very glad to see a countryman again, even if he were only a slight acquaintance. No German had ever come to see them, not even at the wedding. The festivities had altogether been very quiet, but very nice. Had the gentry no relations in Germany then? "How can I tell you," replied Berger impatiently. "I don't know them." "Indeed?" she asked astonished. "Then I suppose you have come to buy the house?" Several people had been with that intention, she added, but Herr von Tessenau had already made it over to his son-in-law, and he to his brother, Herr Jan van der Weyden. In a fortnight they were all going to Batavia. The Housekeeper, Fräulein Brigitta, too, and the old German man-servant. "But won't you go up to the house after all?" she asked again. Before he could answer, however, she cried out: "There they come!" and flew to the window. A carriage went by at a leisurely trot. "Do come here," cried the landlady. Berger had retired deeper into the room, but he could still plainly see his friend. Sendlingen was looking fresher and stronger than when he saw him last; but his hair had the silver-white hue of old age, although he could hardly have reached the middle of the fifties. But in the young, blooming, happy woman at his side, Berger would scarcely have recognized his once unfortunate client, if he had met her under other circumstances. She was just laughingly bending forward and straightening the tie of her husband opposite her. The stately, fair-haired man smilingly submitted to the operation. "How happy they are!" cried the landlady. "But they deserve it. Why the carriage is stopping," she cried, bending out of the window. "What an honour, they are going to come in." Berger turned pale. But in the next instant he breathed again: the carriage drove on. "Oh, no!" cried the landlady, "only Franz has got down! Good day!" she cried to the old man as he went by. "A glass of wine!" "No," answered Franz. "I am only to tell you to come up to the house. But for the matter of that as I _am_ here----" Then Berger heard his footsteps approaching on the floor outside; the door was opened. "Well, a glass of----" he began, but the words died on his lips. Pale as death, he started back and stared at Berger as if he had seen a ghost. "It is I, Franz," said Berger, himself very pale. "Don't be afraid--I only want----" "You have come to warn us?" he exclaimed, trembling all over as he approached Berger. "It is all discovered, is it not?" "No!" replied Berger. "Why, what is there to discover?" He made a sign to draw Franz's attention to the landlady, who was inquisitively drinking in the scene. "I am glad to see you," he said meaningly. "I am going to continue my journey at once." "Excuse me, Marie," said Franz, turning to her, "but I have something to say to this gentleman. He is an old acquaintance." "After all!" she cried, and left the room shaking her head. "She will listen," whispered Berger. "Come here, Franz, and sit beside me." "Oh, how terrified I am," he replied in the same whisper. "So people suspect nothing? It would have been frightful if misfortune had come now, now, when everything is going so well. Certainly my fears were foolish; how should it be found out? We had arranged everything with such care: even the duplicate keys were not made at Bolosch, but at Dresden, where Brigitta was waiting for us." "Enough!" said Berger, checking him. "I don't wish to know anything about it. How has Baron Sendlingen been since?" "Bad enough at first!" replied Franz. "We did not eat, nor sleep, and we fell into a worse decline than at Bolosch--but it was perhaps less from the fear of discovery than from remorse. And yet we had only done, what had to be done--isn't that so, Dr. Berger?" Berger looked on the ground and was silent. Old Franz sighed deeply. "If even you--" he began, but he interrupted himself and continued his story. "Gradually we became calmer again. Fear vanished though remorse remained, but for this too there was a salve in seeing how the poor child blossomed again. Then we began to write a book. It deals with the punishment of--h'm. Dr. Berger----" "I know the work," said Berger. "Indeed? We did not put our name to it. Well, while we were working at the book, we forgot our own sorrow, and later on, after the work had appeared and all the newspapers were saying that it would have great influence, there were moments when we seemed happy again. Then came this business with the Dutchman, and we got as sad and despairing as ever. But we took courage and told the man everything; our real name, and that we were only called von Tessenau here----" "How did he come by this name?" asked Berger. "It sounds so familiar to me." "Probably because it is one of the many titles of the family. Tessenau was the name of an estate in Carinthia, which once belonged to the family. We were obliged to choose this name, because on settling here it was necessary to prove our identity to the police. Well, we confessed this to Herr Willem and also what the young lady's plight was----" Berger gave a sigh of relief. "We said to him: she is not called von Tessenau because she was married to a cousin, but because we adopted the name here with the proper formalities. She was never married, she was betrayed by a scoundrel. That we said no more, nothing of the deed that brought her to prison, nothing of the way she was released--that, Dr. Berger, is surely excusable." "Of course!" assented Berger. "And Herr van der Weyden?" "Acted bravely and magnanimously, because he is a brave and magnanimous man, God bless him! He made her happy, her and himself. And now at length we got peace of heart once more. We are going to Batavia. May it continue as heretofore!" "Amen!" said Berger deeply moved. "Farewell, Franz." "You are not going up to the house?" "No. Don't tell him of my visit till you are on the sea. And say to him that I will always think of him with love and respect. With _respect_, Franz, do not forget that!" He shook hands with the old servant, got into his carriage, and drove back to Arnhem. CHAPTER XV. Three weeks later, on a glowing hot August day, the Austrian Minister of Justice sat in his office, conferring with one of his subordinates, when an attendant brought him a card; the gentleman, he said, was waiting in the ante-room and would not be denied admittance. "Sendlingen!" read the Minister. "This is a surprise; it has not been known for years whether he was alive or dead. Excuse me," he said to his companion, "but I cannot very well keep him waiting." The official departed, Sendlingen was shown in. He was very pale; the expression of his features was gloomy, but resolved. The Minister rose and offered his hand with the friendliest smile. "Welcome to Vienna," he cried. "I hope that you are completely recovered, and are coming to me to offer your services to the State once more." "No, your Excellency," replied Sendlingen. "Forgive me, if I cannot take your hand. I will spare you having to regret it in the next instant. For I do not come to offer you my services as Judge, but to deliver myself into the hands of Justice. I am a criminal and desire to undergo the punishment due to me." The Minister turned pale and drew back: "The man is mad," he thought. The thought must have been legible in his face, for Sendlingen continued: "Do not be afraid, I am in my senses. I have indeed abused my office in a fashion so monstrous, that perhaps nothing like it has ever happened before. I released from prison, by means of official keys, a condemned woman, who was to have been executed the next day, and suggested, furthered, and carried out her flight to a foreign country. Her name was Victorine Lippert: the crime was done on the night of 21-22 February, 1853." "I remember the case," muttered the Minister. "She escaped in the most mysterious way. But you! Why should you have done this?" "A father saved his child: Victorine is my natural daughter." The Minister wiped the sweat from his forehead. "This is a frightful business." He once more searchingly looked at his uncomfortable visitor. "He certainly seems to be in his senses," he thought. "Allow me to tell you how every thing came about?" The Minister nodded and pointed to a chair. Sendlingen remained standing. He began to narrate. Clearly and quietly, in a hollow, monotonous voice, he told of his relations with Herminie Lippert, then how he had made the discovery in the lists of the Criminal Court, and of his struggles whether he should preside at the trial or not. "I had the strength to refuse," he continued. "My sense of duty conquered. Sentence of death was pronounced. It was--and perhaps you will believe me although you hear it at such a moment, from such a man--it was a judicial murder, such as could have been decreed by a Court of Justice alone. And therefore my first thought was: against this wrong, wrong alone can help. I sought out the prison keys, and for some hours was firmly resolved to release my daughter. But then my sense of duty--perhaps more strictly speaking my egoism--conquered. For I said to myself that I, constituted as I was, could not commit this crime without some day making atonement for it. I knew quite well even then, that an hour would come in my life, like the present, and I could not find it in my heart to end as a criminal. But my conscience cried: 'Then your child will die!' and so suicide seemed to me the only thing left. I was resolved to kill myself; whether I could not bring myself to it at the last moment, whether a chance saved me--I do not know: there is a veil cast over that hour that I have never since been able to pierce. I survived, I saw my daughter, and recovered my clearness of mind; the voice of nature had conquered. I now knew that it was highly probable that there was no means that could save us both, that the question was whether I should perish, or she, and I no longer doubted that it must be I. I was resolved to liberate her, and then to expiate my crime; but until extreme necessity compelled, I wanted to act according to law and justice. That I did so, my conduct proves when the Supreme Court ordered a fresh examination of the chief witness. Everything depended upon that; I made over this inquiry also to another--who assuredly did not bring the truth to light. The Supreme Court confirmed the sentence of death; it was pronounced upon me, not upon my child; that extreme necessity had now arrived, I now knew that I must become a criminal, and only waited for the result of the Counsel's petition for pardon, because the preparations for the act required time, and because I first wanted to save some men unjustly accused of political offences." "I remember, the workmen," said the Minister. He still seemed dazed, it cost him an effort to follow the unhappy man's train of thought. "One thing only I do not understand," he slowly said, passing his hand over his forehead. "Why did you not discover yourself to me, or why did you not appeal to the Emperor for pardon?" "For two reasons," replied Sendlingen. "I have all my life striven to execute Justice without respect of persons. It was ever a tormenting thought to me that the Aristocrat, the Plutocrat, often receives where the law alone should decide, favours that would never fall to the lot of the poor and humble. And therefore it was painful to me to lay claim to such a favour for myself." "You are indeed a man of rare sense of justice," cried the Minister. "And that such a fate should have, befallen you....." He paused. "Is tragic indeed," supplemented Sendlingen, his lips trembling. "Certainly it is---- But I will not make, myself out better than I am; there was another reason why I hesitated to appeal to the Emperor. What would have been the result, your Excellency? Commutation to penal servitude for life, or for twenty years. The mere announcement of this punishment would have so profoundly affected this weakly, broken-down girl, that she would scarcely have survived it, and if she had--a complete pardon could not have been attained for ten, for eight, in the most favourable case for five years, and she would not have lived to see it. I was persuaded of that, quite firmly persuaded, still," his voice became lower, "I too was only a human being. When I received the confirmation of the death-sentence by the Emperor, cowardice and selfishness got the better of me, I journeyed to Vienna--it was the 18th February." "The date of the attempt!" cried the Minister. "What a frightful coincidence! Thus does fate sport with the children of men." "So I thought at first!" replied Sendlingen. "But then I saw that that coincidence had not decided my fate: it was sealed from the first. By my whole character and by all that had happened. In this sense there is a Fate, in this sense what happens in the world _must_ happen, and my fate is only a proof of what takes place in millions of cases. I returned to Bolosch and liberated my daughter. How I succeeded, I am prepared to tell my Judges so far as my own share in the act is concerned. I had no accomplice among the prison officials. Your Excellency will believe me, although I can only call to witness my own word, the word of honour of a criminal!" "I believe you," said the Minister. "You took the girl abroad?" "Yes, and sought to make good my neglect. Fate was gracious to me, my daughter is cared for. And I may now do that which I was from the first resolved to do, although I did not know when the day would be vouchsafed me to dare it--I may present myself to you, the supreme guardian of Justice in this land, and say: 'Deliver me to my Judges!'" Sendlingen was silent; the Minister, too, at first could find no words. White as a ghost, he paced up and down the room. "But there can be no question of such a thing!" he cried at length. "For thousands of reasons! We are not barbarians!" "It can be and must be! I claim my right!" "But just consider!" cried the Minister, wringing his hands. "It would be the most fearful blow that the dignity of Justice could receive. A former Chief-Justice as a criminal in the dock! A man like you! Besides you deserve no punishment! When I consider what you have suffered, how all this has come about--good God, I should be a monster if I were not moved, if I did not say: if this man were perhaps really a criminal, he has already atoned for it a thousand times over." "Then you refuse me justice?" "It would be injustice! Go in peace, my Lord, and return to your daughter." "I cannot. I could not endure the pangs of my conscience! If you refuse to punish me, I shall openly accuse myself!" "Great Heavens! this only was wanting!" The Minister drew nearer to him. "I beseech you, let these things rest in peace! Do not bring upon that office of which you were so long an ornament, the worst blemish that could befal it. And your act would have still worse consequences: it would undermine the authority of the State. Consider the times in which we live--the Revolution is smouldering under its ashes." "I cannot help it, your Excellency. Do your duty voluntarily, and do not oblige me to compel you to it." The Minister looked at him: in his face there was the quiet of immovable resolve. "A fanatic," he thought, "what shall I do with him?" He walked about the room in a state of irresolution. "My Lord," he then began, "you would oblige the State to take defensive measures. Accuse yourself openly by a pamphlet published abroad, and I would give out that you were mad. I should be believed, you need not doubt." "I do doubt it," replied Sendlingen. "I should take care that there was no room left for any question as to my sanity. Once more, and for the last time, I ask your Excellency, to what Court am I to surrender myself?" Again the Minister for a long while paced helplessly up and down. At length a saving thought seemed to occur to him. "Be it so," he said. "Do what you cannot help doing; we, on the other hand, will do what our duty commands. You naturally want to conceal where your daughter is now living?" Sendlingen turned still paler and made no reply. "But we shall endeavor to find out, even if it should cost thousands, and if we should have to employ all the police in the world. We shall find your daughter and demand her extradition. There is no state that would refuse to deliver a legally condemned murderess! You must decide, my Lord, whether this is to happen." Sendlingen's face had grown deadly pale--a fit of shuddering shook his limbs. There was a long silence in the room, it endured perhaps five minutes. At length Sendlingen muttered: "I submit to your Excellency's will. May God forgive you what you have just done to me." The Minister gave a sigh of relief. "I will take that on my conscience," he said. "I restore the father to his child. Farewell, my Lord." Sendlingen did not take the proffered hand, he bowed silently and departed. * * * * * Two days later Dr. George Berger received a letter of Sendlingen's, dated from Trieste. It briefly informed his friend of the purport of his interview with the Minister of Justice, and concluded as follows: "It is denied me to expiate my crime: it is impossible to me, a criminal, to go unpunished through life; so I am going to meet death. When you read this, all will be over. Break the news to my daughter, who has already set out on her journey, as gently as possible; hide the truth from her, I shall help you by the manner in which I am doing the deed. And do not forget Franz, he is waiting for me at Cologne; I was only able to get quit of him under a pretext. "Farewell, thou good and faithful friend, and do not condemn me. You once said to me: there must be a solution of these complications, a liberating solution. I do not know if there was any other, any better than that which has come to pass. For see, my child has received her just due, and so too has Justice: with a higher price than that of his life, nobody can atone for a crime. And I--I have seen my child's happiness, I have honourably paid all my debts, and now I shall find peace forever--I too have received my due!... And now I may hope for your respect again! "Farewell! and thanks a thousand times! "Victor." Berger, deeply moved, had just finished reading this letter, when his clerk entered with the morning paper in his hand. "Have you read this, Sir?" he asked. "Baron Sendlingen----" He laid the paper before his chief and this was what was in it: "A telegram from Vienna brings us the sad news that Baron von Sendlingen, the retired Chief Justice and one of the most highly esteemed men in Austria, fell overboard while proceeding by the Lloyd steamer last night from Trieste to Venice. He was on deck late in the evening and has not been seen since; very likely, while leaning too far over the bulwarks, a sudden giddiness may have seized him so that he fell into the sea and disappeared. The idea of suicide cannot for personal reasons be entertained for a moment; the last person he spoke to, the captain of the steamer, testifies to the cheerful demeanour of the deceased. He leaves no family, but everyone who knew him will mourn him. "All honour to his memory!" "All honour to his memory!" muttered Berger, burying his face in his hands. THE END. 
45895	----	http://www.freeliterature.org (Images generously made available by the Internet Archive.) THE ROAD TO THE OPEN BY ARTHUR SCHNITZLER AUTHORISED TRANSLATION BY HORACE SAMUEL LONDON: HOWARD LATIMER LIMITED GREAT QUEEN STREET, KINGSWAY 1913 I George von Wergenthin sat at table quite alone to-day. His elder brother Felician had chosen to dine out with friends for the first time after a longish interval. But George felt no particular inclination to renew his acquaintance with Ralph Skelton, Count Schönstein or any of the other young people, whose gossip usually afforded him so much pleasure; for the time being he did not feel in the mood for any kind of society. The servant cleared away and disappeared. George lit a cigarette and then in accordance with his habit walked up and down the big three-windowed rather low room, while he wondered how it was that this very room which had for many weeks seemed to him so gloomy was now gradually beginning to regain its former air of cheerfulness. He could not help letting his glance linger on the empty chair at the top end of the table, over which the September sun was streaming through the open window in the centre. He felt as though he had seen his father, who had died two months ago, sit there only an hour back, as he visualised with great clearness the very slightest mannerisms of the dead man, even down to his trick of pushing his coffee-cup away, adjusting his pince-nez or turning over the leaves of a pamphlet. George thought of one of his last conversations with his father which had occurred in the late spring before they had moved to the villa on the Veldeser Lake. George had just then come back from Sicily, where he had spent April with Grace on a melancholy and somewhat boring farewell tour before his mistress's final return to America. He had done no real work for six months or more, and had not even copied out the plaintive adagio which he had heard in the plashing of the waves on a windy morning in Palermo as he walked along the beach. George had played over the theme to his father and improvised on it with an exaggerated wealth of harmonies which almost swamped the original melody, and when he had launched into a wildly modulated variation, his father had smilingly asked him from the other end of the piano--"Whither away, whither away?" George had felt abashed and allowed the swell of the notes to subside, and his father had begun a discussion about his son's future with all his usual affection, but with rather more than his usual seriousness. This conversation ran through his mind to-day as though it had been pregnant with presage. He stood at the window and looked out. The park outside was fairly empty. An old woman wearing an old-fashioned cloak with glass beads sat on a seat. A nursemaid walked past holding one child by the hand while another, a little boy, in a hussar uniform, with a buckled-on sabre and a pistol in his belt, ran past, looked haughtily round and saluted a veteran who came down the path smoking. Further down the grounds were a few people sitting round the kiosk, drinking coffee and reading the papers. The foliage was still fairly thick, and the park looked depressed and dusty and altogether far more summer-like than usual for late September. George rested his arms on the window-sill, leant forwards and looked at the sky. He had not left Vienna since his father's death, though he had had many opportunities of so doing. He could have gone with Felician to the Schönstein estate; Frau Ehrenberg had written him a charming letter inviting him to come to Auhof; he could easily have found a companion for that long-planned cycle-tour through Carinthia and the Tyrol, which he had not the energy to undertake alone. But he preferred to stay in Vienna and occupy his time with perusing and putting in order the old family papers. He found archives which went as far back as his great-grandfather Anastasius von Wergenthin, who haled from the Rhine district and had by his marriage with a Fräulein Recco become possessed of an old castle near Bozen which had been uninhabitable for a long period. There were also documents dealing with the history of George's grandfather, a major of artillery who had fallen before Chlum in the year 1866. The major's son, the father of Felician and himself, had devoted himself to scientific studies, principally botany, and had taken at Innsbruck the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. At the age of twenty-four he had made the acquaintance of a young girl of an old family of Austrian officials, who had brought her up to be a singer, more with a view to rendering her independent of the limited, not to say impoverished, resources of the household, than because she had any real vocation. Baron von Wergenthin saw and heard her for the first time at a concert-performance of the Missa Solemnis and in the following May she became his wife. Three years later the health of the Baroness began to fail, and she was ordered South by the doctors. She did not recover as soon as was anticipated, with the result that the house in Vienna was given up, and the Baron and his family lived for several years a kind of hotel-life, as they travelled from one place to another. His business and studies frequently summoned the Baron to Vienna, but the sons never left their mother. The family lived in Sicily, Rome, Tunis, Corfu, Athens, Malta, Merano, the Riviera, and finally in Florence; never in very great style, but fairly well nevertheless, and without curtailing their expenditure sufficiently to prevent a substantial part of the Baron's fortune being gradually eaten up. George was eighteen when his mother died. Nine years had passed since then, but the memory of that spring evening was still as vivid as ever, when his father and brother had happened to be out, and he had stood alone and helpless by his mother's death-bed, while the talk and laughter of the passers-by had flowed in with the spring air through the hastily opened windows with all the jar of its unwelcome noise. The survivors took their mother's body back to Vienna. The Baron devoted himself to his studies with new and desperate zeal. He had formerly enjoyed the reputation of an aristocratic dilettante, but he now began to be taken quite seriously even in academic circles, and when he was elected honorary president of the Botanical Society he owed that distinction to something more than the accident of a noble name. Felician and George entered themselves as law students. But after some time their father himself encouraged the boys to abandon their university studies, and go in for a more general education and one more in accordance with their musical tendencies. George felt thankful and relieved at this new departure. But even in this sphere which he had chosen himself, he was by no means industrious, and he would often occupy himself for weeks on end with all manner of things that had nothing at all to do with his musical career. It was this same trait of dilettantism which made him now go through the old family documents as seriously as though he were investigating some important secrets of the past. He spent many hours busying himself with letters which his parents had exchanged in years gone by, wistful letters and superficial letters, melancholy letters and placid letters, which brought back again to life not merely the departed ones themselves but other men and women half sunk in oblivion. His German tutor now appeared to him again with his sad pale forehead just as he used to declaim his Horace to him on their long walks, there floated up in his mind the wild brown boyish face of Prince Alexander of Macedon in whose company George had had his first riding lessons in Rome; and then the Pyramids of Cestius limned as though in a dream with black lines on a pale blue horizon reared their peaks, just as George had seen them once in the twilight as he came home from his first ride in the Campagna. And as he abandoned himself still more to his reverie there appeared sea-shores, gardens and streets, though he had no knowledge of the landscape or the town that had furnished them to his memory; images of human beings swept past him; some of these, whom he had met casually on some trivial occasion, were very clear, others again, with whom he might at some time or other have passed many days, were shadowy and distant. When George had finished inspecting the old letters and was putting his own papers in order, he found in an old green case some musical jottings of his boyhood, whose very existence had so completely vanished from his memory, that if they had been put before him as the records of some one else he would not have known the difference. Some affected him with a kind of pleasant pain, for they seemed to him to contain promises which he was perhaps never to fulfil. And yet he had been feeling lately that something had been hatching within him. He saw his development as a mysterious but definite line which showed the way from those first promising notes in the green case to quite new ideas, and this much he knew--the two songs out of the "Westöstliche Divan" which he had set to music this summer on a sultry afternoon, while Felician lay in his hammock and his father worked in his armchair on the cool terrace, could not have been composed by your ordinary person. George moved back a step from the window as though surprised by an absolutely unexpected thought. He had never before realised with such clearness that there had been an absolute break in his life since his father's death down to to-day. During the whole time he had not given a single thought to Anna Rosner to whom he had sent the songs in manuscript. And he felt pleasurably thrilled at the thought that he could hear her melodious melancholy voice again and accompany her singing on that somewhat heavy piano, as soon as he wished. And he remembered the old house in the Paulanergasse, with its low door and badly lighted stairs which he had not been up more than three or four times, in the mood in which a man thinks of something which he has known very long and held very dear. A slight soughing traversed the leaves in the park outside. Thin clouds appeared over the spire of the Stephan Tower, which stood directly opposite the window, on the other side of the park, and over a largish part of the town. George was faced with a long afternoon without any engagements. It seemed to him as though all his former friendships during the two months of mourning had dissolved or broken up. He thought of the past spring and winter with all their complications and mad whirl of gaiety, and all kinds of images came back into his memory--the ride with Frau Marianne in the closed fiacre through the snow-covered forest. The masked ball at Ehrenberg's with Else's subtly-naive remarks about "Hedda Gabler" with whom she insisted she felt a certain affinity, and with Sissy's hasty kiss from under the black lace of her mask. A mountain expedition in the snow from Edlach up to the Rax with Count Schönstein and Oskar Ehrenberg, who, though very far from being a born mountaineer, had jumped at the opportunity of tacking himself on to two blue-blooded gentlemen. The evening at Ronacher's with Grace and young Labinski, who had shot himself four days afterwards either on account of Grace, debts, satiety, or as a sheer piece of affectation. The strange hot and cold conversation with Grace in the cemetery in the melting February snow two days after Labinski's funeral. The evening in the hot lofty fencing-room where Felician's sword had crossed the dangerous blade of the Italian master. The walk at night after the Paderewski concert when his father had spoken to him more intimately than ever before of that long-past evening on which his dead mother had sung in the Missa Solemnis in the very hall which they had just come out of. And finally Anna Rosner's tall quiet figure appeared to him, leaning on the piano, with the score in her hand, and her smiling blue eyes turned towards the keys, and he even heard her voice reverberating in his soul. While he stood like this at the window and looked down at the park which was gradually becoming animated, he felt a certain consolation in the fact that he had no close ties with any human being, and that there were so many people to whom he could attach himself once more and whose set he could enter again as soon as the fancy took him. He felt at the same time wonderfully rested and more in the vein for work and happiness than he had ever been. He was full of great bold resolutions and joyfully conscious of his youth and independence. He no doubt felt a certain shame at the thought that at any rate at the present moment his grief for his dead father was much alleviated; but he found a relief for this indifference of his in the thought of his dear father's painless end. He had been walking up and down the garden chatting with his two sons, had suddenly looked round him as though he heard voices in the distance, had then looked up towards the sky and had suddenly dropped down dead on the sward, without a cry of pain or even a twitching of the lips. George went back into the room, got ready to go out and left the house. He intended to walk about for a couple of hours wherever chance might take him, and in the evening to work again at his quintette, for which he now felt in the right mood. He crossed the street and went into the park. The sultriness had passed. The old woman in the cloak still sat on the seat and stared in front of her. Children were playing on the sandy playground round the trees. All the chairs round the kiosk were taken. A clean-shaven gentleman sat in the summer-house whom George knew by sight and who had impressed him by his likeness to the elder Grillparzer. By the pond George met a governess with two well-dressed children and received a flashing glance. When he got out of the Park into the Ringstrasse he met Willy Eissler who was wearing a long autumn overcoat with dark stripes and began to speak to him. "Good afternoon, Baron, so you've come back to Vienna again." "I've been back a long time," answered George. "I didn't leave Vienna again after my father's death." "Yes, yes, quite so.... Allow me, once again...." And Willy shook hands with George. "And what have you been doing this summer?" asked George. "All kinds of things. Played tennis, and painted, rotted about, had some amusing times and a lot of boring ones...." Willy spoke extremely quickly, with a deliberate though slight hoarseness, briskly and yet nonchalantly with a combination of the Hungarian, French, Viennese and Jewish accents. "Anyway, I came early to-day, just as you see me now, from Przemysl," he continued. "Drill?" "Yes, the last one. I'm sorry to say so. Though I'm nearly an old man, I've always found it a joke to trot about with my yellow epaulettes, clanking my spurs, dragging my sabre along, spreading an atmosphere of impending peril, and being taken by incompetent Lavaters for a noble count." They walked along by the side of the railing of the Stadtpark. "Going to Ehrenbergs' by any chance?" asked Willy. "No, I never thought of it." "Because this is the way. I say, have you heard, Fräulein Else is supposed to be engaged?" "Really?" queried George slowly. "And whom to?" "Guess, Baron." "Come, Hofrat Wilt?" "Great heavens!" cried Willy, "I'm sure it's never entered his head! Becoming S. Ehrenberg's son-in-law might result in prejudicing his government career--nowadays." George went on guessing. "Rittmeister Ladisc?" "Oh no, Fräulein Else is far too clever to be taken in by him." George then remembered that Willy had fought a duel with Ladisc a few years back. Willy felt George's look, twirled somewhat nervously his blonde moustache which drooped in the Polish fashion and began to speak quickly and offhandedly. "The fact that Rittmeister Ladisc and myself once had a difference cannot prevent me from loyally recognising the fact that he is, and always has been, a drunken swine. I have an invincible repulsion, which even blood cannot wash out, against those people who gorge themselves sick at Jewish houses and then start slanging the Jews as soon as they get on the door-steps. They ought to be able to wait till they got to the café. But don't exert yourself any more by guessing. Heinrich Bermann is the lucky man." "Impossible," said George. "Why?" asked Eissler. "It had to be some one sooner or later. Bermann is no Adonis, I agree, but he's a coming man, and Else's official ideal of a mixture of gentleman-rider and athlete will never turn up. Meanwhile she has reached twenty-four, and she must have had enough by now of Salomon's tactless remarks and Salomon's jokes." "Salomon?--oh, yes--Ehrenberg." "You only know him by the initial S? S of course stands for Salomon ... and as for only S standing on the door, that is simply a concession he made to his family. If he could follow his own fancy he would prefer to turn up at the parties Madame Ehrenberg gives in a caftan and side-curls." "Do you think so? He's not so very strict?" "Strict?... Really now! It's nothing at all to do with strictness. It is only cussedness, particularly against his son Oskar with his feudal ideals." "Really," said George with a smile, "wasn't Oskar baptised long ago? Why, he's a reserve officer in the dragoons." "That's why ... well, I've not been baptised and nevertheless ... yes ... there are always exceptions ... with good will...." He laughed and went on. "As for Oskar, he would personally prefer to be a Catholic. But he thought for the time being he would have to pay too dearly for the pleasure of being able to go to confession. There's sure to be a provision in the will to take care that Oskar doesn't 'vert over." They had arrived in front of the Café Imperial. Willy remained standing. "I've got an appointment here with Demeter Stanzides." "Please remember me to him." "Thanks very much. Won't you come in and have an ice?" "Thanks, I'll prowl about a little more." "You like solitude?" "It's hard to give an answer to so general a question," replied George. "Of course," said Willy, suddenly grew serious and lifted his hat. "Good afternoon, Baron." George held out his hand. He felt that Willy was a man who was continually defending a position though there was no pressing necessity for him to do so. "Au revoir," he said with real sincerity. He felt now as he had often done before, that it was almost extraordinary that Willy should be a Jew. Why, old Eissler, Willy's father, who composed charming Viennese waltzes and songs, was a connoisseur and collector, and sometimes a seller of antiquities, and objets d'art, and had passed in his day for the most celebrated boxer in Vienna, was, what with his long grey beard and his monocle, far more like a Hungarian magnate than a Jewish patriarch. Besides, Willy's own temperament, his deliberate cultivation of it and his iron will had made him into the deceptive counterpart of a feudal gentleman bred and born. What, however, distinguished him from other young people of similar race and ambition was the fact that he was accustomed to admit his origin, to demand explanation or satisfaction for every ambiguous smile, and to make merry himself over all the prejudices and vanities of which he was so often the victim. George strode along, and Willy's last question echoed in his ears. Did he love solitude?... He remembered how he had walked about in Palermo for whole mornings while Grace, following her usual habit, lay in bed till noon.... Where was she now...? Since she had said goodbye to him in Naples he had in accordance with their arrangement heard nothing from her. He thought of the deep blue night which had swept over the waters when he had travelled alone to Genoa after that farewell, and of the soft strange fairy-like song of two children who, nestling closely up against each other and wrapped, the pair of them, in one rug, had sat on the deck by the side of their sleeping mother. With a growing sense of well-being he walked on among the people who passed by him with all the casual nonchalance of a Sunday. Many a glad glance from a woman's eye met his own, and seemed as though it would have liked to console him for strolling about alone and with all the external appearances of mourning on this beautiful holiday afternoon. And another picture floated up in his mind.--He saw himself on a hilly sward, after a hot June day, late in the evening. Darkness all around. Deep below him a clatter of men, laughter and noise, and glittering fairy-lamps. Quite near, girls' voices came out of the darkness.... He lit the small pipe which he usually only smoked in the country; the flare of the vesta showed him two pretty young peasant wenches, still almost children. He chatted to them. They were frightened because it was so dark; they nestled up to him. Suddenly a whizz, rockets in the air, a loud "Ah!" from down below. Bengal lights flaring violet and red over the invisible lake beneath. The girls rushed down the hill and vanished. Then it became dark again and he lay alone and looked up into the darkness which swam down on him in all its sultriness. The night before the day on which his father died had been one such as this. And he thought of him for the first time to-day. He had left the Ringstrasse and taken the direction of the Wieden. Would the Rosners be at home on such a beautiful day? At all events the distance was so short that it was worth trying, and at any rate he fancied going there rather than to Ehrenbergs'. He was not the least in love with Else, and it was almost a matter of indifference to him whether or no she were really engaged to Heinrich Bermann. He had already known her for a long time. She had been eleven, he had been fourteen when they had played tennis with each other on the Riviera. In those days she looked like a gipsy girl. Black-blue tresses tossed round her cheeks and forehead, and she was as boisterous as a boy. Her brother had already begun to play the lord, and even to-day George could not help smiling at the recollection of the fifteen-year old boy appearing on the promenade one day in a light grey coat with white black-braided gloves and a monocle in his eye. Frau Ehrenberg was then thirty-four, and had a dignified appearance though her figure was too large; she was still beautiful, had dim eyes, and was usually very tired. George never forgot the day on which her husband, the millionaire cartridge-manufacturer, had descended on his family and had by the very fact of his appearance made a speedy end of the Ehrenbergian aristocracy. George still remembered in his mind's eye how he had sprung up during the breakfast on the hotel terrace; a small spare gentleman with a trimmed beard and moustache and Japanese eyes, in badly-creased white flannels, a dark straw hat with a red-and-white striped ribbon on his round head and with dusty black shoes. He always spoke very slowly and in an as it were sarcastic manner even about the most unimportant matters, and whenever he opened his mouth a secret anxiety would always lurk beneath the apparent calm of his wife's face. She tried to revenge herself by making fun of him; but she could never do anything with his inconsiderate manners. Oskar behaved whenever he had a chance as though he didn't belong to the family at all. A somewhat hesitating contempt would play over his features for that progenitor who was not quite worthy of him, and he would smile meaningly for sympathy at the young baron. Only Else in those days was really nice to her father. She was quite glad to hang on his arm on the promenade and she would often throw her arms round his neck before every one. George had seen Else again in Florence a year before his mother's death. She was then taking drawing lessons from an old grizzled German, about whom the legend was circulated that he had once been celebrated. He spread the rumour about himself that when he felt his genius on the wane he had discarded his former well-known name and had given up his calling, though what that was he never disclosed. If his own version was to be believed, his downfall was due to a diabolical female who had destroyed his most important picture in a fit of jealousy; and then ended her life by jumping out of the window. This man who had struck the seventeen-year-old George as a kind of fool and impostor was the object of Else's first infatuation. She was then fourteen years old, and had all the wildness and naïveté of childhood. When she stood in front of the Titian Venus in the Uffizi Gallery her cheeks would flush with curiosity, yearning and admiration, and vague dreams of future experiences would play in her eyes. She often came with her mother to the house which the Wergenthins had hired at Lungarno, and while Frau Ehrenberg tried in her languid blasé way to amuse the ailing baroness, Else would stand at the window with George, start precocious conversations about the art of the Pre-Raphaelites, and smile at her old childish games. Felician too would come in sometimes, slim and handsome, cast his cold grey eyes over the objects and people in the room, murmur a few polite words, sit down by his mother's bedside, and tenderly stroke and kiss her hand. He would usually soon go away again, though not without leaving behind, so far as Else was concerned, a very palpable atmosphere of old-time aristocracy, cold-blooded fascination and elegant contempt of death. She always had the impression that he was going to a gaming-table where hundreds of thousands were at stake, to a duel to the death or to a princess with red hair and a dagger on her dressing-table. George remembered that he had been somewhat jealous both of the erratic drawing-master and of his brother. The master was suddenly dismissed for reasons which were never specified, and soon afterwards Felician left for Vienna with Baron von Wergenthin. George now played to the ladies on the piano more frequently than before, both his own compositions and those of others, and Else would sing from the score easy songs from Schubert and Schumann in her small, rather shrill voice. She visited the galleries and churches with her mother and George; when spring came there were excursion parties up the Hill Road or to Fiesole, and George and Else exchanged smiling glances which were eloquent of a deeper understanding than actually existed. Their relations went on progressing in this somewhat disingenuous manner, when their acquaintance was renewed and continued in Vienna. Else seemed pleasurably thrilled all over again by the equable friendly manner with which George approached her, notwithstanding the fact that they had not seen each other for some months. She herself, on the other hand, grew outwardly more self-possessed and mentally more unsettled with each succeeding year. She had abandoned her artistic aspirations fairly early, and in the course of time she came to regard herself as destined to the most varied careers. She often saw herself in the future as a society woman, an organiser of battles of flowers, a patroness of great balls, taking part in aristocratic charity performances; more frequently she would believe herself called to sit enthroned as a great appreciator in an artistic salon of painters, musicians and poets. She would then dream again of a more adventurous life: a sensational marriage with an American millionaire, the elopement with a violin virtuoso or a Spanish officer, a diabolical ruination of all the men who came near her. Sometimes she would think a quiet life in the country by the side of a worthy landowner the most desirable consummation; and then she would imagine herself sitting with prematurely grey hair at a simply-laid table in a circle of numerous children while she stroked the wrinkles out of the forehead of her grave husband. But George always felt that her love of comfort, which was deeper than she guessed herself, would save her from any rash step. She would often confide in George without ever being quite honest with him; for the wish which she cherished most frequently and seriously of all was to become his wife. George was well aware of this, but that was not the only reason why the latest piece of intelligence about her engagement with Heinrich Bermann struck him as somewhat incredible--this Bermann was a gaunt clean-shaven man with gloomy eyes and straight and rather too long hair, who had recently won a reputation as a writer and whose demeanour and appearance reminded George, though he could not tell why, of some fanatical Jewish teacher from the provinces; there was nothing in him which could fascinate Else particularly or even make a pleasurable appeal. This impression was no doubt dispelled by subsequent conversation. George had left the Ehrenbergs' in company with him one evening last spring, and they had fallen into so thrilling a conversation about musical matters that they had gone on chatting till three o'clock in the morning on a seat in the Ringstrasse. It is strange, thought George, what a lot of things are running through my mind to-day which I had scarcely thought of at all since they happened. And he felt as though he had on this autumn evening emerged out of the grievous dreary obscurity of so many weeks into the light of day at last. He was now standing in front of the house in the Paulanergasse where the Rosners lived. He looked up to the second story. A window was open, white tulle curtains pinned together in the centre fluttered in the light breeze. The Rosners were at home. The housemaid showed George in. Anna was sitting opposite the door, she held a coffee-cup in her hand and her eyes were turned towards the newcomer. On her right her father was reading a paper and smoking a pipe. He was clean-shaven except for a pair of narrow grizzled whiskers on his cheeks. His thin hair of a strange greenish-grey hue was parted at the temples in front and looked like a badly-made wig. His eyes were watery and red-lidded. The stoutish mother, around whose forehead the memory of fairer years seemed as it were to hover, looked straight in front of her; her hands were contemplatively intertwined and rested on the table. Anna slowly put down her cup, nodded and smiled in silence. The two old people began to get up when George came in. "Please, don't trouble, please don't," said George. Then there was a noise from the wall at the side of the room. Josef, the son of the house, got up from the sofa on which he had been lying. "Charmed to see you, Herr Baron," he said in a very deep voice, and adjusted the turned-up collar of his yellow-check rather shabby lounge jacket. "And how have you been all this time, Herr Baron?" inquired the old man. He remained standing a gaunt and somewhat bowed figure, and refused to resume his seat until George had sat down. Josef pushed a chair between his father and sister, Anna held out her hand to the visitor. "We haven't seen one another for a long time," she said, and drank some of her coffee. "You've been going through a sad time," remarked Frau Rosner sympathetically. "Yes," added Herr Rosner. "We were extremely sorry to read of your great loss--and so far as we knew your father always enjoyed the best of health." He spoke very slowly all the time, as if he had still something more to say, stroking his head several times with his left hand, and nodded while he listened to the answer. "Yes, it came very unexpectedly," said George gently, and looked at the faded dark-red carpet at his feet. "A sudden death then, so to speak," remarked Herr Rosner and there was a general silence. George took a cigarette out of his case and offered one to Josef. "Much obliged," said Josef as he took the cigarette and bowed while he clicked his heels together without any apparent reason; while he was giving the Baron a light he thought the latter was looking at him, and said apologetically, with an even deeper voice than usual, "Office jacket." "Office jacket straight from the office," said Anna simply without looking at her brother. "The lady fancies she has the ironic gift," answered Josef merrily, but his manifest restraint indicated that under other conditions he would have expressed himself less agreeably. "Sympathy was universally felt," old Rosner began again. "I read an obituary in the _Neuen Freie Presse_ on your good father by Herr Hoffrat Kerner, if I remember rightly; it was highly laudatory. Science too has suffered a sad loss." George nodded in embarrassment, and looked at his hands. Anna began to speak about her past summer-outing. "It was awfully pretty in Weissenfeld," she said. "The forest was just behind our house with good level roads, wasn't it, papa? One could walk there for hours and hours without meeting a soul." "And did you have a piano out there?" asked George. "Oh yes." "An awful affair," observed Herr Rosner, "a thing fit to wake up the stones and drive men mad." "It wasn't so bad," said Anna. "Good enough for the little Graubinger girl," added Frau Rosner. "The little Graubinger girl, you see, is the daughter of the local shopkeeper," explained Anna: "and I taught her the elements of pianoforte, a pretty little girl with long blonde pig-tails." "Just a favour to the shopkeeper," said Frau Rosner. "Quite so, but I should like to remind you," supplemented Anna, "that apart from that I gave real lessons, I mean paid-for ones." "What, also in Weissenfeld?" asked George. "Children on a holiday. Anyway, it's a pity, Herr Baron, that you never paid us a visit in the country. I am sure you would have liked it." George then remembered for the first time that he had promised Anna that he would try to pay her a visit some time in the summer on a cycling tour. "I am sure the Baron would not have found a place like that really to his liking," began Herr Rosner. "Why not?" asked George. "They don't cater there for the requirements of a spoilt Viennese." "Oh, I'm not spoilt," said George. "Weren't you at Auhof either?" Anna turned to George. "Oh no," he answered quickly. "No, I wasn't there," he added less sharply. "I was invited though.... Frau Ehrenberg was so kind as to ... I had various invitations for the summer. But I preferred to stay in Vienna by myself." "I am really sorry," said Anna, "not to see anything more of Else. You know of course that we went to the same boarding-school. Of course it's a long time ago. I really liked her. A pity that one gets so out of touch as time goes on." "How is that?" asked George. "Well, I suppose the reason is that I'm not particularly keen on the whole set." "Nor am I," said Josef, who was blowing rings into the air.... "I haven't been there for years. Putting it quite frankly ... I've no idea, Baron, of your views on this question ... I'm not very gone on Israelites." Herr Rosner looked up at his son. "My dear Josef, the Baron visits the house and it will strike him as rather strange...." "I?" said George courteously. "I'm not at all on intimate terms with the Ehrenberg family, however much I enjoy talking to the two ladies." And then he added interrogatively, "But didn't you give singing lessons to Else last year, Fräulein Anna?" "Yes. Or rather ... I just accompanied her...." "I suppose you'll do so again this year?" "I don't know. She hasn't shown any signs of life, so far." "Perhaps she's giving it all up." "You think so? It would be almost better if she did," replied Anna softly, "for as a matter of fact, it was more like squeaking than singing. But anyway," and she threw George a look which, as it were, welcomed him afresh, "the songs you sent me are very nice. Shall I sing them to you?" "You've had a look at the things already? That is nice of you." Anna had got up. She put both her hands on her temples and stroked her wavy hair gently, as though making it tidy. It was done fairly high, so that her figure seemed even taller than it actually was. A narrow golden watch-chain was twined twice round her bare neck, fell down over her bosom, and vanished in her grey leather belt. With an almost imperceptible nod of her head she asked George to accompany her. He got up and said, "If you don't mind...." "Not at all, not at all, of course not," said Herr Rosner. "Very kind of you, Baron, to do a little music with my daughter. Very nice, very nice." Anna had stepped into the next room. George followed her and left the door open. The white tulle curtains were pinned together in front of the open window and fluttered slightly. George sat down at the cottage-piano and struck a few chords. Meanwhile, Anna knelt down in front of an old black partly gilded whatnot, and got out the music. George modulated the first chords of his song. Anna joined in and sang to George's song the Goethean words, Deinem Blick mich zu bequemen, Deinem Munde, deiner Brust, Deine Stimme zu vernehmen, War mir erst' und letzte Lust. She stood behind him and looked over his shoulder at the music. At times she bent a little forward, and he then felt the breath of her lips upon his temples. Her voice was much more beautiful than he remembered its having ever been before. They were speaking rather too loudly in the next room. Without stopping singing Anna shut the door. It had been Josef who had been unable to control his voice any longer. "I'll just pop in to the café for a jiffy," he said. There was no answer. Herr Rosner drummed gently on the table and his wife nodded with apparent indifference. "Goodbye then." Josef turned round again at the door and said fairly resolutely: "Oh, mamma, if you've got a minute to spare by any chance----" "I'm listening," said Frau Rosner. "It's not a secret, I suppose." "No. It's only that I've got a running account with you already." "Is it necessary to go to the café?" asked old Rosner simply, without looking up. "It's not a question of the café. The fact is ... you can take it from me that I'd prefer myself not to have to borrow from you. But what is a man to do?" "A man should work," said old Rosner gently, painfully, and his eyes reddened. His wife threw a sad and reproachful look at her son. "Well," said Josef, unbuttoning his office coat, and then buttoning it up again--"that really is ... for every single gulden-note----" "Pst," said Frau Rosner with a glance towards the door, which was ajar, and through which, now that Anna had finished her song, came the muffled sound of George's piano-playing. Josef answered his mother's glance with a deprecatory wave of his hand. "Papa says I ought to work. As though I hadn't already proved that I can work." He saw two pairs of questioning eyes turned towards him. "Yes of course I proved it, and if it had only depended on me I'd have managed to get along all right. But I haven't got the temperament to put up with things, I'm not the kind to let myself be bullied by any chief if I happen to come in a quarter of an hour late--or anything like that." "We know all about that," interrupted Herr Rosner wearily. "But after all, as we're already on the subject, you really must start looking round for something." "Look round ... good ..." answered Josef. "But no one will persuade me to go into any business run by a Jew. It would make me the laughing-stock of all my acquaintances ... of my whole set in fact." "Your set ..." said Frau Rosner. "What is your set? Café cronies?" "Well if you don't mind, now that we are on the subject," said Josef--"it's connected with that gulden-note, too. I've got an appointment at the café now with young Jalaudek. I'd have preferred to have told you when the thing had gone quite through ... but I see now that I'd better show my hand straight away. Well, Jalaudek is the son of Councillor Jalaudek the celebrated paper-merchant. And old Jalaudek is well-known as a very influential personage in the party ... very intimate with the publisher of the _Christliche Volksbote_: his name is Zelltinkel. And they're looking out on the _Volksbote_ for young men with good manners--Christians of course, for the advertisement business. And so I've got an appointment to-day with Jalaudek at the café, because he promised me his governor would recommend me to Zelltinkel. That would be ripping ... it would get me out of my mess. Then it wouldn't be long before I was earning a hundred or a hundred and fifty gulders a month." "O dear!" sighed old Rosner. The bell rang outside. Rosner looked up. "That must be young Doctor Stauber," said Frau Rosner and cast an anxious glance at the door, through which the sound of George's piano-playing came in even softer tones than before. "Well, mamma, what's the matter?" said Josef. Frau Rosner took out her purse and with a sigh gave her son a silver gulden. "Much obliged," said Josef and turned to go. "Josef," cried Herr Rosner, "it's really rather rude--at the very minute when we have a visitor----" "Oh thank you, but I mustn't have all the treats." There was a knock, Doctor Berthold Stauber came in. "I apologise profusely, Herr Doctor," said Josef, "I'm just going out." "Not at all," replied Doctor Stauber coldly, and Josef vanished. Frau Rosner invited the young doctor to sit down. He took a seat on the ottoman and turned towards the quarter from which the piano-playing could be heard. "Baron Wergenthin, the composer. Anna has just been singing," explained Frau Rosner, somewhat embarrassed. And she started to call her daughter in. Doctor Berthold gripped her arm lightly but firmly, and said amiably: "No, please don't disturb Fräulein Anna, please don't. I'm not in the least hurry. Besides, this is a farewell visit." The latter words seemed jerked out of his throat; but Berthold nevertheless smiled courteously, leant back comfortably in his corner and stroked his short beard with his right hand. Frau Rosner looked at him as if she were positively shocked. "A farewell visit?" Herr Rosner asked. "Has the party allowed you to take a holiday, Herr Stauber? Parliament has only been assembled a short time, as one sees in the papers." "I have resigned my seat," said Berthold. "What?" exclaimed Herr Rosner. "Yes, resigned," repeated Berthold, and smiled nervously. The piano-playing had suddenly stopped, the door which had been ajar was now opened. George and Anna appeared. "Oh, Doctor Berthold," said Anna, and held out her hand to the doctor, who had immediately got up. "Have you been here long? Perhaps you heard me singing?" "No, Fräulein, I'm sorry I was too late for that. I only caught a few notes on the piano." "Baron Wergenthin," said Anna, as though she were introducing. "But of course you know each other?" "Oh yes," answered George, and held out his hand to Berthold. "The Doctor has come to pay us a farewell visit," said Frau Rosner. "What?" exclaimed Anna in astonishment. "I'm going on a journey, you see," said Berthold, and looked Anna in the face with a serious, impenetrable expression. "I'm giving up my political career ... or rather," he added jestingly, "I'm interrupting it for a while." George leant on the window with his arms crossed over his breast and looked sideways at Anna. She had sat down and was looking quietly at Berthold, who was standing up with his hand resting on the back of the sofa, as though he were going to make a speech. "And where are you going?" asked Anna. "Paris. I'm going to work in the Pasteur Institute. I'm going back to my old love, bacteriology. It's a cleaner life than politics." It had grown darker. The faces became vague, only Berthold's forehead, which was directly opposite the window, was still bathed in light. His brows were twitching. He really has his peculiar kind of beauty, thought George, who was leaning motionless in the window-niche and felt himself bathed in a pleasant sense of peace. The housemaid brought in the burning lamp and hung it over the table. "But the papers," said Herr Rosner, "have no announcement at all so far of your resigning your seat, Doctor Stauber." "That would be premature," answered Berthold. "My colleagues and the party know my intention all right, but the thing isn't official yet." "The news is bound to create a great sensation in the circles affected by it," said Herr Rosner--"particularly after the lively debate the other day in which you showed such spirit and determination. I suppose you've read about it, Baron?" He turned to George. "I must confess," answered George, "that I don't follow the parliamentary reports as regularly as I really ought to." "Ought to," repeated Berthold meditatively. "There's no question of 'ought' about it really, although the session has not been uninteresting during the last few days--at any rate as a proof of how low a level a public body can sink to." "The debate was very heated," said Herr Rosner. "Heated?... Well, yes, what we call heated here in Austria. People were inwardly indifferent and outwardly offensive." "What was it all about then?" inquired George. "It was the debate arising out of the questions on the Golowski case.... Therese Golowski." "Therese Golowski ..." repeated George. "I seem to know the name." "Of course you know it," said Anna. "You know Therese herself. She was just leaving the house when you called the last time." "Oh yes," said George, "one of your friends." "I wouldn't go so far as to call her a friend; that seems to imply a certain mental sympathy that doesn't quite exist." "You certainly don't mean to repudiate Therese," said Doctor Berthold smiling, but dryly. "Oh no," answered Anna quickly. "I really never thought of doing that. I even admire her; as a matter of fact I admire all people who are able to risk so much for something that doesn't really concern them at all. And when a young girl does that, a pretty young girl like Therese"--she was addressing herself to George who was listening attentively--"I am all the more impressed. You know of course that Therese is one of the leaders of the Social Democratic Party?" "And do you know what I took her for?" said George. "For a budding actress." "You're quite a judge of character, Herr Baron," said Berthold. "She really did mean to go on the stage once," corroborated Frau Rosner coldly. "But just consider, Frau Rosner," said Berthold. "What young girl is there with any imagination, especially if she lives in cramped surroundings into the bargain, who has not at some time or other in her life at any rate coquetted with such an idea." "Your forgiving her is good," said Anna, smiling. It struck Berthold too late that this remark of his had probably touched a still sensitive spot in Anna's mind. But he continued with all the greater deliberation. "I assure you, Fräulein Anna, it would be a great pity if Therese were to go on the stage, for there's no getting away from the fact that she can still do her party a tremendous lot of good if she isn't torn away from her career." "Do you regard that as possible?" asked Anna. "Certainly," replied Berthold. "Therese is between two dangers, she will either talk her head off one fine day...." "Or?" inquired George, who had grown inquisitive. "Or she'll marry a Baron," finished Berthold curtly. "I don't quite understand," said George deprecatingly. "I only said 'Baron' for a joke, of course. Substitute Prince for Baron and I make my meaning clearer." "I see ... I can now get some idea of what you mean, Doctor.... But how did Parliament come to bother about her?" "Well, it's like this, last year--at the time of the great coal-strike--Therese Golowski made a speech in some Bohemian hole, which contained an expression which was alleged to be offensive to a member of the Imperial family. She was prosecuted and acquitted. One might perhaps draw the conclusion from this that there was no particular substance in the prosecution. Anyway the State Prosecutor gave notice of appeal, there was an order for a new trial, and Therese was sentenced to two months' imprisonment, which she is now serving, and as if that wasn't enough the Judge who had discharged her in the Court of first instance was transferred ... to somewhere on the Russian frontier, from where no one ever comes back. Well, we put a question over this business, which in my view was extremely tame. The Minister answered somewhat disingenuously amid the cheers of the so-called Constitutional parties. I ventured to reply in possibly somewhat more drastic terms than members are accustomed to use, and as the benches on the other side had no facts with which to answer me they tried to overwhelm me by shouts and abuse. And of course you can imagine what the strongest argument was, which a certain type of Conservatives used against my points." "Well?" queried George. "Hold your jaw, Jew," answered Berthold with tightly compressed lips. "Oh," said George with embarrassment, and shook his head. "Be quiet, Jew! Hold your jaw! Jew! Jew! Shut up!" continued Berthold, who seemed somewhat to revel in the recollection. Anna looked straight in front of her. George thought that this was quite enough. There was a short, painful silence. "So that was why?" inquired Anna slowly. "What do you mean?" asked Berthold. "That's why you're resigning your seat." Berthold shook his head and smiled. "No, not because of that." "You are, of course, above such coarse insults, Doctor," said Herr Rosner. "I won't go quite so far as that," answered Berthold, "but one always has to be prepared for things like that all the same. I'm resigning my seat for a different reason." "May one ask what it is?" queried George. Berthold looked at him with an air which was penetrating and yet distrait. He then answered courteously: "Of course you may. I went into the buffet after my speech. I met there, among others, one of the silliest and cheekiest of our democratic popular representatives, who, as he usually does, had made more row than any one else while I was speaking ... Jalaudek the paper-merchant. Of course I didn't pay any attention to him. He was just putting down his empty glass. When he saw me he smiled, nodded and hailed me as cheerily as though nothing had taken place at all. 'Hallo, Doctor, won't you have a drink with me?'" "Incredible!" exclaimed George. "Incredible?... No, Austrian. Our indignation is as little genuine as our enthusiasm. The only things genuine with us are our malice and our hate of talent." "Well, and what did you answer the man?" asked Anna. "What did I answer? Nothing, of course." "And you resigned your seat," added Anna with gentle raillery. Berthold smiled. But at the same time his eye-brows twitched, as was his habit when he was painfully or disagreeably affected. It was too late to tell her that as a matter of fact he had come to ask her for her advice, as he used to do in the old days. And at any rate he felt sure of this, he had done wisely in cutting off all retreat as soon as he entered the room by announcing the resignation of his seat as an already accomplished fact, and his journey to Paris as directly imminent. For he now knew for certain that Anna had again escaped him, perhaps for a long time. He did not believe for a minute that any man was capable of winning her really and permanently, and it never entered his head for a minute to be jealous of that elegant young artist who was standing so quietly by the window with his crossed arms. It had happened many times before that Anna had fluttered away for a time, as though fascinated by the magic of an element which was strange to her. Why only two years ago, when she was thinking seriously of going on the stage, and had already begun to learn her parts, he had given her up for a short time as completely lost. Subsequently when she had been compelled to relinquish her artistic projects, owing to the unreliability of her voice, she seemed as if she wanted to come back to him again. But he had deliberately refused to exploit the opportunities of that period. For he wanted before he made her his wife to have won some triumph, either in science or in politics, and to have obtained her genuine admiration. He had been well on the way to it. In the very seat where she was now sitting as she looked him straight in the face with those clear but alas! cold eyes, she had looked at the proofs of his latest medico-philosophical work which bore the title _Preliminary Observations on the Physiognomical Diagnosis of Diseases_. And then, when he finally left science for politics, at the time when he made speeches at election meetings and equipped himself for his new career by serious studies in history and political economy, she had sincerely rejoiced in his energy and his versatility. All this was now over. She had grown to eye more and more severely those faults of his of which he was quite aware himself, and particularly his tendency to be swept away by the intoxication of his own words, with the result that he came to lose more and more of his self-confidence in his attitude towards her. He was never quite himself when he spoke to her, or in her presence. He was not satisfied with himself to-day either. He was conscious, with an irritation which struck even himself as petty, that he had not given sufficient force to his encounter with Jalaudek in the buffet, and that he ought to have made his detestation of politics ring far more plausibly. "You are probably quite right, Fräulein Anna," he said, "if you smile at my resigning my seat on account of that silly incident. A parliamentary life without its share of comedy is an absolute impossibility. I should have realised it, played up to it and taken every opportunity of drinking with the fellow who had publicly insulted me. It would have been convenient, Austrian--and possibly even the most correct course to have taken." He felt himself in full swing again and continued with animation. "What it comes to in the end is that there are two methods of doing anything worth doing in politics. The one is a magnificent flippancy which looks on the whole of public life as an amusing game, has no true enthusiasm for anything, and no true indignation against anything, and which regards the people whose misery or happiness are ultimately at stake with consummate indifference. I have not progressed so far, and I don't know that I should ever have succeeded in doing so. Quite frankly, I have often wished I could have. The other method is this: to be ready every single minute to sacrifice one's whole existence, one's life, in the truest sense of the word, for what one believes to be right----" Berthold suddenly stopped. His father, old Doctor Stauber, had come in and been heartily welcomed. He shook hands with George, who had been introduced to him by Frau Rosner, and looked at him so kindly that George felt himself immediately drawn towards him. He looked younger than he was. His long reddish-yellow beard was only streaked by a few grey hairs, and his smoothly combed long hair fell in thick locks on to his broad neck. The strikingly high forehead gave a kind of majesty to the somewhat thick-set figure with its high shoulders. When his eyes were not making a special point of looking kind or shrewd they seemed to be resting behind the tired lids as though to gather the energy for the next look. "I knew your mother, Herr Baron," he said to George rather gently. "My mother, Herr Doctor...?" "You will scarcely remember it, you were only a little boy of three or four at the time." "You attended her?" asked George. "I visited her sometimes as deputy for Professor Duchegg, whose assistant I was. You used to live then in the Habsburgergasse, in an old house that has been pulled down long ago. I could describe to you even to-day the furniture of the room in which I was received by your father ... whose premature death I deeply regret.... There was a bronze figure on the secretary, a knight in armour to be sure with a flag, and a copy of a Vandyck from the Liechtenstein gallery hung on the wall." "Yes, quite right," said George, amazed at the doctor's good memory. "But I have interrupted your conversation," continued Doctor Stauber in that droning slightly melancholy and yet superior tone which was peculiar to him, and sat down in the corner of the sofa. "Doctor Berthold has just been telling us, to our great astonishment," said Herr Rosner, "that he has decided to resign his seat." Old Stauber directed a quiet look towards his son, which the latter answered with equal quietness. George, who had watched this play of the eyes, had the impression that there prevailed between these two a tacit understanding which did not need any words. "Yes," said Doctor Stauber. "I wasn't at all surprised. I've always felt as though Berthold were never really quite at home in Parliament, and I am really glad that he has now begun to pine as it were to go back to his real calling. Yes, yes, your real calling, Berthold," he repeated, as though to answer his son's furrowed brow. "You have not prejudiced your future by it, in the least. Nothing makes life so difficult as our frequent belief in consistency ... and our wasting our time in being ashamed of a mistake, instead of owning up to it and simply starting life again on a fresh basis." Berthold explained that he meant to leave in eight days at the outside. There would be no point in postponing his journey beyond that time, it would be possible too that he might not remain in Paris. His studies might necessitate travelling further afield. Further, he had decided not to make any farewell visits. He had, he added by way of explanation, completely given up all association with certain bourgeois sets, among whom his father had an extensive practice. "Didn't we meet each other once this winter at Ehrenbergs'?" asked George with a certain amount of satisfaction. "That's right," answered Berthold. "We are distantly related to the Ehrenbergs you know. The Golowski family is curiously enough the connecting link between us. It would be no good, Herr Baron, if I were to make any attempt to explain it to you in greater detail. I should have to take you on a journey through the registry offices and congregations of Temesvar Tarnopol and similar pleasant localities--and that you mightn't quite fancy." "Anyway," added old Doctor Stauber in a resigned tone, "the Baron is bound to know that all Jews are related to one another." George smiled amiably. As a matter of fact it rather jarred on his nerves. There was no necessity at all, in his view, for Doctor Stauber as well officially to communicate to him his membership of the Jewish community. He already knew it and bore him no grudge for it. He bore him no grudge at all for it; but why do they always begin to talk about it themselves? Wherever he went, he only met Jews who were ashamed of being Jews, or the type who were proud of it and were frightened of people thinking they were ashamed of it. "I had a chat with old Frau Golowski yesterday," continued Doctor Stauber. "Poor woman," said Herr Rosner. "How is she?" asked Anna. "How is she ... you can imagine ... her daughter in prison, her son a conscript--he is living in the barracks at the expense of the State ... just imagine Leo Golowski as a patriot ... and the old man sits in the café and watches the other people playing chess. He himself can't even run nowadays to the ten kreuzers for the chess money." "Therese's imprisonment must soon be over anyway," said Berthold. "It still lasts another twelve, fourteen days," replied his father.... "Come, Annerl"--he turned towards the young girl--"it would be really nice of you if you were to show yourself once more in Rembrandtstrasse; the old lady has taken an almost pathetic fancy to you. I really can't understand why," he added with a smile, while he looked at Anna almost tenderly. She looked straight in front of her and made no answer. The clock on the wall struck seven. George got up as though he had simply been waiting for the signal. "Going so soon, Herr Baron?" said Herr Rosner, getting up. George requested the company not to disturb themselves, and shook hands all round. "It is strange," said old Stauber, "how your voice reminds one of your poor father." "Yes, many people have said so," replied George. "I, personally, can't see any trace of it." "There isn't a man in the world who knows his own voice," remarked old Stauber, and it sounded like the beginning of a popular lecture. But George took his leave. Anna accompanied him, in spite of his slight remonstrance, into the hall and left the door half open--almost on purpose, so it struck George. "It's a pity we couldn't go on with our music any longer," she said. "I'm sorry too, Fräulein Anna." "I liked the song to-day even better than the first time, when I had to accompany myself, only it falls off a bit at the end.... I don't know how to express myself." "Oh, I know what you mean, the end is conventional. I felt so too. I hope soon to be able to bring you something better than that, Fräulein Anna." "But don't keep me waiting for it too long." "I certainly won't. Goodbye, Fräulein Anna." They shook hands with each other and both smiled. "Why didn't you come to Weissenfeld?" asked Anna lightly. "I am really sorry, but just consider, Fräulein Anna, I could scarcely get in the mood for society of any kind this year, you can quite appreciate that." Anna looked at him seriously. "Don't you think," she said, "that perhaps one might have been some help to you in bearing it?" "There's a draught, Anna," called out Frau Rosner from inside. "I'm coming in a minute," answered Anna with a touch of impatience. But Frau Rosner had already shut the door. "When can I come back?" asked George. "Whenever you like. At any rate ... I really ought to give you a written time-table, so that you may know when I'm at home, but that wouldn't be much good either. I often go for walks or go shopping in town or go to picture galleries or exhibitions----" "We might do that together one day," said George. "Oh, yes," answered Anna, took her purse out of her pocket and then took out a tiny note-book. "What have you got there?" asked George. Anna smiled and turned over the leaves of a little book. "Just wait.... I meant to go and see the Exhibition of Miniatures in the Royal Library at eleven on Thursday. If you too are interested in miniatures, we might meet there." "Delighted, I'm sure." "Right you are then, we can then arrange the next time for you to accompany my singing." "Done," said George and shook hands with her. It struck him that while Anna was chatting with him here outside, young Doctor Stauber would doubtless be getting irritated or offended inside, and he was surprised that he should be more disturbed by this circumstance than Anna, who struck him as on the whole a perfectly good-natured person. He freed his hand from hers, said good-bye and went. It was quite dark when George got into the streets. He strolled slowly over the Elizabeth Bridge to the Opera, past the centre of the town and undisturbed by the hubbub and traffic around him, listened mentally to the tune of his song. He thought it strange that Anna's voice which had so pure and sound a tone in a small room, should have no future whatsoever before it on the stage and concert platform, and even stranger that Anna scarcely seemed to mind this tragic fact. But of course he was not quite clear in his mind whether Anna's calmness really reflected her true character. He had known her more or less casually for some years, but an evening in the previous spring had been the first occasion when they had become rather more intimate. A large party had been got up on that occasion in the Waldsteingarten. They took their meal in the open air under the high chestnut-trees, and they all experienced the pleasure, excitement and fascination of the first warm May evening of the year. George conjured up in his mind all the people who had come: Frau Ehrenberg, the organiser of the party, dressed in an intentionally matronly style, in a dark loose-fitting foulard dress; Hofrat Wilt, wearing as it were the mask of an English statesman with all the sloppy aristocracy of his nonchalant demeanour, and his chronic and somewhat cheap superior manner towards everything and everybody; Frau Oberberger who looked like a rococo marquise with her grey powdered hair, her flashing eyes and her beauty spot on her chin; Demeter Stanzides with his white gleaming teeth and that pale forehead that showed all the weariness of an old race of heroes; Oskar Ehrenberg dressed with a smartness that smacked a great deal of the head clerk in a dressmaking establishment, a great deal of a young music-hall comedian and something, too, of a young society man; Sissy Wyner who kept switching her dark laughing eyes from one man to another, as though she had a merry secret understanding with every single member of the party; Willy Eissler who related in his hoarse jovial voice all kinds of jolly anecdotes of his soldier days and Jewish stories as well; Else Ehrenberg in a white English cloth dress with all the delicate melancholy of the spring flowing around her, while her _grande dame_ movements combined with her baby-face and delicate figure to invest her with an almost pathetic grace; Felician, cold and courteous, with haughty eyes which gazed between the members of the party to the other tables, and from the other tables beyond into the distance; Sissy's mother, young, red-cheeked and a positive chatter-box, who wanted to talk about everything at the same time and to listen to everything at the same time; Edmund Nürnberger with his piercing eyes and his thin mouth curving into that smile of contempt (which had almost become a chronic mask) for that whirligig of life, which he thoroughly saw through, though to his own amazement he frequently discovered that he was playing in the game himself; and then finally Heinrich Bermann in a summer suit that was too loose, with a straw hat that was too cheap and a tie that was too light, who one moment spoke louder than the others and at the next moment was more noticeably silent. Last of all Anna Rosner had appeared, self-possessed and without any escort, greeted the party with a slight nod and composedly sat down between Frau Ehrenberg and George. "I have asked her for you," said Frau Ehrenberg softly to George, who prior to this evening had scarcely given Anna a single thought. These words, which perhaps only originated in a stray idea of Frau Ehrenberg's, became true in the course of the evening. From the moment when the party got up and started on their merry expedition through the Volksprater George and Anna had remained together everywhere, in the side-shows and also on the journey home to town, which for the fun of the thing was done on foot, and surrounded though they were by all that buzz of jollity and foolishness they had finished by starting a perfectly rational conversation. A few days later he called and brought her as he had promised the piano score of "Eugen Onegin" and some of his songs; on his next visit she sang these songs over to him as well as many of Schubert's, and he was very pleased with her voice. Shortly afterwards they said goodbye to each other for the summer without a single trace of sentimentalism or tenderness. George had regarded Anna's invitation to Weissenfeld as a mere piece of politeness, just in the same way as he had thought his promise to come had been understood; and the atmosphere of to-day's visit when compared with the innocence of their previous acquaintance was bound to strike George as extremely strange. At the Stephansplatz George saw that he was being saluted by some one standing on the platform of a horse-omnibus. George, who was somewhat short-sighted, did not immediately recognise the man who was saluting him. "It's me," said the gentleman on the platform. "Oh, Herr Bermann, good evening." George shook hands with him. "Which way are you going?" "I'm going into the Prater. I'm going to dine down there. Have you anything special on, Baron?" "Nothing at all." "Well, come along with me then." George swung himself on to the omnibus, which had just begun to move on. They told each other cursorily how they had spent the summer. Heinrich had been in the Salzkammergut and subsequently in Germany, from which he had only come back a few days ago. "Oh, in Berlin?" hazarded George. "No." "I thought perhaps in connection with a new piece----" "I haven't written a new piece," interrupted Heinrich somewhat rudely. "I was in the Taunus and on the Rhine in several places." "What's he got to do on the Rhine?" thought George, although the topic did not interest him any further. It struck him that Bermann was looking in front of him in a manner that was not only absent-minded but really almost melancholy. "And how's your work getting on, my dear Baron?" asked Heinrich with sudden animation, while he drew closer round him the dark grey overcoat which hung over his shoulders.[1] "Have you finished your quintette?" "My quintette?" repeated George in astonishment. "Have I spoken to you about my quintette, then?" "No, not you, but Fräulein Else told me that you were working at a quintette." "I see, Fräulein Else. No, I haven't got much further with it. I didn't feel quite in the mood, as you can imagine." "Quite," said Heinrich, and was silent for a while. "And your father was still so young," he added slowly. George nodded in silence. "How is your brother?" asked Heinrich suddenly. "Quite well, thanks," answered George somewhat coldly. Heinrich threw his cigarette over the rail and immediately proceeded to light another. Then he said: "You must be surprised at my inquiring after your brother when I have scarcely ever spoken to him. But he interests me. He represents in my view a type which is absolutely perfect of its kind, and I regard him as one of the happiest men going." "That may well be," answered George hesitatingly. "But how do you come to think so seeing that you scarcely know him?" "In the first place his name is Felician Freiherr von Wergenthin-Recco," said Heinrich very seriously, and blew the smoke into the air. George looked at him with some astonishment. "Of course your name is Wergenthin-Recco, too," continued Heinrich, "but only George--and that's not the same by a long way, is it? Besides, your brother is very handsome. Of course you haven't got at all a bad appearance. But people whose real point is that they're handsome have really a much better time of it than others whose real point is that they're clever. If you are handsome you are handsome for always, while clever people, or at any rate nine-tenths of them, spend their life without showing a single trace of talent. Yes, that's certainly the case. The line of life is clearer so to speak when one is handsome than when one is a genius. Of course all this could be expressed far better." George was disagreeably affected. What's the matter with him? he thought. Can he perhaps be jealous of Felician ... on account of Else Ehrenberg? They got out at the Praterstern. The great stream of the Sunday crowd was flowing towards them. They went towards the Hauptallee, where there was no longer any crush, and strolled slowly on. It had grown cool. George made remarks about the autumnal atmosphere of the evening, the people sitting in the restaurants, the military bands playing in the kiosks. At first Heinrich answered offhandedly, and subsequently not at all, and finally seemed scarcely to be paying any attention. George thought this rude. He was almost sorry that he had joined Heinrich, all the more so as he made it an almost invariable practice not to respond straight away to casual invitations. The excuse he gave to himself was that it was simply out of absent-mindedness that he had done it on this occasion. Heinrich was walking close to him or even going a few steps in front, as if he were completely oblivious of George's presence. He still held tightly in both hands the overcoat which was swung round him, wore his dark grey felt hat pressed down over his forehead and looked extremely uncouth. His appearance suddenly began to jar keenly on George's nerves. Heinrich Bermann's previous remarks about Felician now struck him as in bad taste, and as quite devoid of tact, and it occurred to him at the psychological moment that practically all he knew of Heinrich's literary productions had gone against the grain. He had seen two pieces of his: one where the scene was laid in the lower strata of society, among artizans or factory workers, and which finished up with murder and fatal blows; the other a kind of satirical society comedy whose first production had occasioned a scandal and which had soon been taken out of the repertoire of the theatre. Anyway George did not then know the author personally, and had taken no further interest in the whole thing. He only remembered that Felician had thought the piece absolutely ridiculous, and that Count Schönstein had expressed the opinion that if he had anything to do with it pieces written by Jews should only be allowed to be performed by the Buda-Pesth Orpheum Company.[2] But Doctor von Breitner in particular, a baptised Jew with a philosophical mind, had given vent to his indignation that such an adventurer of a young man should have dared to have put a world on to the stage that was obviously closed to him, and which it was consequently impossible for him to know anything about. While George was remembering all this his irritation at the rude conduct and stubborn silence of his companion rose to a genuine sense of enmity, and quite unconsciously he began to think that all the insults which had been previously directed against Bermann had been in fact justified. He now remembered too that Heinrich had been personally antipathetic to him from the beginning, and that he had indulged in some ironic remark to Frau Ehrenberg about her cleverness in having lost no time in adding that young celebrity to the tame lions in her drawing-room. Else, of course, had immediately taken Heinrich's part, and explained that he was an interesting man, was in many respects positively charming, and had prophesied to George that sooner or later he would become good friends with him. And as a matter of fact George had preserved, as the result of that nocturnal conversation on the seat in the Ringstrasse in the spring of this year, a certain sympathy for Bermann which had survived down to the present evening. They had passed the last inns some time ago. The white high road ran by their side out into the night on a straight and lonely track between the trees, and the very distant music only reached them in more or less broken snatches. "But where are you going to?" Heinrich exclaimed suddenly, as though he had been dragged there against his will, and stood still. "I really can't help it," remarked George simply. "Excuse me," said Heinrich. "You were so deep in thought," retorted George coolly. "I wouldn't quite like to say 'deep.' But it often happens that one loses oneself in one's thoughts like this." "I know," said George, somewhat reconciled. "They were expecting you in August at Auhof," said Heinrich suddenly. "Expected? Frau Ehrenberg was certainly kind enough to invite me, but I never accepted. Did you stay there a fairly long time, Herr Bermann?" "A fairly long time? No. I was up there a few times, but only for an hour or so." "I thought you stayed there." "Not a bit of it. I stayed down at the hotel. I only occasionally went up to Auhof. There was too much noise and bustle there for me.... The house was positively packed with visitors. And I can't stand most of the people who go there." An open fiacre in which a gentleman and lady were sitting passed by. "Why, that was Oskar Ehrenberg," said Heinrich. "And the lady?" queried George, looking towards something bright that gleamed through the darkness. "Don't know her." They turned their steps through a dark side-avenue. The conversation stuck again. Finally Heinrich began: "Fräulein Else sang a few of your songs to me at Auhof. I'd heard some of them already too, sung by the Bellini, I think." "Yes, Bellini sang them last winter at a concert." "Well, Fräulein Else sang those songs and some others of yours as well." "Who accompanied her, then?" "I myself, as well as I could. I must tell you, my dear Baron, that as a matter of fact those songs impressed me even more than when I heard them the first time at the concert, in spite of the fact that Fräulein Else has considerably less voice and technique than Fräulein Bellini. Of course one must take into consideration on the other hand that it was a magnificent summer afternoon when Fräulein Else sang your songs. The window was open, there was a view of the mountains and the deep-blue sky opposite ... but anyway, you came in for a more than sufficient share of the credit." "Very flattering," said George, who felt pained by Heinrich's sarcastic tone. "You know," continued Heinrich, speaking as he frequently did with clenched teeth and unnecessary emphasis, "you know it is not generally my habit to invite people whom I happen to see in the street to join me in an omnibus, and I prefer to tell you at once that I regarded it as--what does one say?--a sign of fate when I suddenly caught sight of you on the Stephansplatz." George listened to him in amazement. "You perhaps don't remember as well as I do," continued Heinrich, "our last conversation on that seat in the Ringstrasse." George now remembered for the first time that Heinrich had then made a quite casual allusion to the libretto of an opera on which he was busy, and that he had offered himself as the composer of the music with equal casualness and more as a joke than anything else. He answered with deliberate coldness: "Oh yes, I remember." "Well, that binds you to nothing," answered Heinrich, even more coldly than the other. "All the less so since, to tell you the truth, I've not given my opera libretto a single thought till that beautiful summer afternoon when Fräulein Else sang your song. Anyway, what do you say to our stopping here?" The restaurant garden which they entered was fairly empty. Heinrich and George sat down in a little arbour next to the green wooden railing and ordered their dinner. Heinrich leant back, stretched out his legs, looked with probing almost cynical eyes at George, who maintained an obstinate silence, and said suddenly: "I don't think I am making a mistake if I venture to presume that you've not been exactly keen on the things I have done so far." "Oh," answered George, blushing a little, "what makes you think that?" "Well, I know my pieces ... and I know you." "Me!" queried George, feeling almost insulted. "Certainly," replied Heinrich in a superior manner. "Besides, I have the same feeling with regard to most men, and I regard this faculty as the only indisputable one I've really got. All my others, I think, are fairly problematical. My so-called art in particular is more or less mediocre, and a good deal too could be said against my character. The only thing which gives me a certain amount of confidence is simply the consciousness of being able to see right into people's souls ... right deep down, every one, rogues and honest people, men, women and children, heathens, Jews and Protestants, yes, even Catholics, aristocrats and Germans, although I have heard that that is supposed to be infinitely difficult, not to say impossible, for people like myself." George gave a slight start. He knew that Heinrich had been subjected to the most violent personal attacks by the clerical and conservative press, particularly with reference to his last piece. "But what's that got to do with me?" thought George. There was another one of them who had been insulted! It was really absolutely impossible to associate with these people on a neutral footing. He said politely, though coldly, with a semi-conscious recollection of old Herr Rosner's retort to young Dr. Stauber: "I really thought that people like you were above attacks of the kind to which you're obviously alluding." "Really ... you thought that?" queried Heinrich, in that cold almost repulsive manner which was peculiar to him on many occasions. "Well," he went on more gently, "that is the case sometimes. But unfortunately not always. It doesn't need much to wake up that self-contempt which is always lying dormant within us; and once that takes place there isn't a single rogue or a single scoundrel with whom we don't join forces, and quite sincerely too, in attacking our own selves. Excuse me if I say 'we.'" "Oh, I've frequently felt something of the same kind myself. Of course I have not yet had the opportunity of being exposed to the public as often as you and in the same way." "Well, supposing you did ... you would never have to go through quite what I did." "Why not?" queried George, slightly hurt. Heinrich looked him sharply in the face. "You are the Baron von Wergenthin-Recco." "So that's your reason! But you must remember that there are a whole lot of people going about to-day who are prejudiced against one for that very reason--and manage to cast in one's teeth the fact of one's being a baron whenever they get a chance." "Yes, yes, but I think you will agree with me that being ragged for being a baron is a very different matter than being ragged for being a 'Jew,' although the latter--you'll forgive me of course--may at times denote the better aristocracy. Well, you needn't look at me so pitifully," he added with abrupt rudeness. "I am not always so sensitive. I have other moods in which nothing can affect me in any way nor any person either. Then I feel simply this--what do you all know--what do you know about me...." He stopped, proudly, with a scornful look that seemed to pierce through the foliage of the arbour into the darkness. He then turned his head, looked round and said simply to George in quite a new tone: "Just look, we shall soon be the only ones left." "It is getting quite cold, too," said George. "I think we might still stroll a bit through the Prater." "Charmed." They got up and went. A fine grey cloud hung over a meadow which they passed. "The fraud of summer doesn't last after nightfall. It'll soon all be over," said Heinrich in a tone of unmitigated melancholy, while he added, as though to console himself: "Well, one will be able to work." They came into the Wurstelprater. The sound of music rang out from the restaurants, and some of the exuberant gaiety communicated itself to George. He felt suddenly swung out of the dismalness of an inn garden at autumn time and a somewhat painful conversation into a new world. A tout, in front of a merry-go-round, from which a gigantic hurdy-gurdy sent into the open air the pot-pourri cut of the "Troubadour" with all the effect of some fantastic organ, invited people to take a journey to London, Atzgersdorf and Australia. George remembered again the excursion in the spring with the Ehrenberg party. It was on this narrow seat inside the room that Frau Oberberger had sat with Demeter Stanzides, the lion of the evening, by her side, and had probably told him one of her incredible stories: that her mother had been the mistress of a Russian Grand Prince; that she herself had spent a night with an admirer in the Hallstadt cemetery, of course without anything happening; or that her husband, the celebrated traveller, had made conquests of seventeen women in one week in one harem at Smyrna. It was in this carriage upholstered in red velvet, with Hofrat Wilt as her _vis-à-vis_, that Else had lounged with lady-like grace, just as though she were in a carriage on Derby Day, while she yet managed to show by her manner and demeanour that, if it came to the point, she herself could be quite as childish as other persons of happier and less complex temperaments. Anna Rosner with the reins nonchalantly in her hand, looking dignified, but with a somewhat sly face, rode a white Arab; Sissy rocked about on a black horse that not only turned round in a circle with the other animals and carriages, but swung up and down as well. The boldest eyes imaginable flashed and laughed beneath the audacious _coiffure_ with its gigantic black feather hat, while her white skirt fluttered and flew over her low-cut patent leather shoes and open-work stockings. Sissy's appearance had produced so strange an effect on a couple of strangers that they called out to her a quite unambiguous invitation. There had then ensued a short mysterious interview between Willy, who immediately came on the spot, and the two somewhat embarrassed gentlemen, who first tried to save their faces by lighting fresh cigarettes with deliberate nonchalance and then suddenly vanished in the crowd. Even the side-show with its "Illusions" and "Illuminated Pictures" had special memories for George. It was here, while Daphne was turning into a tree, that Sissy had whispered into his ear a gentle "remember" and thus called to his memory that masked ball at Ehrenberg's at which she had lifted up her lace veil for a fleeting kiss, though presumably he had not been the only one. Then there was the hut where the whole party had had themselves photographed: the three young girls, Anna, Else and Sissy in the pose of classical goddesses and the men at their feet with ecstatic eyes, so that the whole thing looked like the climax of a transformation scene. And while George was thinking of these little episodes there floated up through his memory the way in which he and Anna had said goodbye to-day, and it seemed full of the most pleasant promise. A striking number of people stood in front of an open shooting gallery. Now the drummer was hit in the heart and beat quick strokes upon his drum, now the glass ball which was dancing to and fro upon a jet of water broke with a slight click, now a _vivandière_ hastily put her trumpet to her mouth and blew a menacing blast, now a little railway thundered out of a door which had sprung open, whizzed over a flying bridge and was swallowed up by another door. When the crowd began to thin, George and Heinrich made their way to the front and recognised that the good shots were Oskar Ehrenberg and his lady friend. Oskar was just aiming his gun at an eagle which was moving up and down near the ceiling with outstretched wings, and missed for the first time. He laid his weapon down in indignation, gazed round him, saw the two gentlemen behind him and saluted them. The young lady with her cheek resting on her gun threw a fleeting glance at the new arrivals, then aimed again with great keenness, and pressed the trigger. The eagle drooped its hit wings and did not move any more. "Bravo," shouted Oskar. The lady laid the weapon before her on the table. "That's my little lot," she said to the boy who wanted to load again. "I've won." "How many shots were there?" asked Oskar. "Forty," answered the boy, "that's eighty kreuzers." Oskar put his hand into his waistcoat pocket, threw a silver gulden down and received with condescension the thanks of the loading boy. "Allow me," he then said, while he placed both his hands on his hips, moved the top of his body slightly in front and put his left foot forward, "Allow me, Amy, to introduce the gentlemen who witnessed your triumph, Baron Wergenthin, Herr von Bermann ... Fräulein Amelie Reiter." The gentlemen lifted their hats, Amelie returned the greeting by nodding a few times with her head. She wore a simple foulard dress designed in white, and over it a light cloak of bright yellow bordered with lace and a black but extremely lively hat. "I know Herr von Bermann already," she said. She turned towards him. "I saw you at the first night of your play last winter, when you came on the stage to bow your acknowledgments. I enjoyed myself very much. Don't think I am saying this as a mere compliment." Heinrich thanked her sincerely. They walked on further between side-shows which were growing quieter and quieter, past inn gardens which were gradually becoming empty. Oskar thrust his right arm through his companion's left and then turned to George. "Why didn't you come to Auhof this year? We were all very sorry." "Unfortunately I didn't feel much in the mood for society." "Of course, I can quite understand," said Oskar with all proper seriousness. "I was only there myself for a few weeks. In August I strengthened my tired limbs in the waves of the North Sea; I was in the Isle of Wight, you know." "That must be very nice," said George. "Who is it that always goes there?" "You're thinking of the Wyners," replied Oskar. "When they used to live in London they went there regularly, but now they only go there every two or three years." "But they've kept the Y for Austrian consumption as well," said George with a smile. Oskar was serious. "Old Herr Wyner," he answered, "honestly earned his right to the Y. He went to England in his thirteenth year, became naturalised there and was made a partner when quite a young man in the great steel manufacturing concern which is still called Black & Wyner." "At any rate he got his wife from Vienna." "Yes, and when he died seven or eight years ago she came over here with her two children, but James will never get acclimatised here.... Lord Antinous, you know, that's what Frau Oberberger calls him. He is now back at Cambridge again where strangely enough he is studying Greek scholarship. Demeter was a few days in Ventnor, too." "Stanzides?" added George. "Do you know Herr von Stanzides, Herr Baron?" asked Amy. "Oh yes." "Then he does really exist?" she exclaimed. "Yes, but just you listen," said Oskar. "She put a lot of money on him this spring at Freudenau, and won a lot of money, and now she inquires if he really exists." "What makes you have doubts about Stanzides' existence, Fräulein?" asked George. "Well, you know, whenever I don't know where he is--Oskar, I mean--it's always a case of 'I've an appointment with Stanzides' or 'I'm riding with Stanzides in the Prater.' Stanzides this and Stanzides that, why it sounds more like an excuse than a name." "You be quiet now, will you?" said Oskar gently. "Not only does Stanzides exist," explained George, "but he has the most beautiful black moustache and the most fiery black eyes that are to be found anywhere." "That's quite possible, but when I saw him he looked more like a jack-in-the-box, yellow jacket, green cap, violet sleeves." "And she won forty gulden on him," added Oskar facetiously. "And where are the forty gulden?" sighed Fräulein Amelie.... Then she suddenly stood still and exclaimed: "But I've never yet been on it." "Well, that can be remedied," said Oskar simply. The Great Wheel was turning slowly and majestically in front of them with its lighted carriages. The young people passed the turnstile, climbed into an empty compartment and swept upwards. "Do you know, George, whom I got to know this summer?" said Oskar. "The Prince of Guastalla." "Which one?" asked George. "The youngest, of course, Karl Friedrich. He was there incognito. He's very thick with Stanzides, an extraordinary man. You take my word for it," he added softly, "if people like us said one hundredth part of the things the prince says, we'd never get out of prison our whole life long." "Look, Oskar," cried Amy, "at the tables and the people down there. It looks just like a little box, doesn't it? And that mass of lights over there, far off. I'm sure that's going to Prague, don't you think so, Herr Bermann?" "Possibly," answered Heinrich, knitting his forehead as he stared through the glass wall out into the night. When they left the compartment and got out into the open air the Sunday hubbub was subsiding. "Poor little girl," said Oskar Ehrenberg to George, while Amy went on in front with Heinrich, "she has no idea that this is the last time we are going out together in the Prater." "But why the last time?" asked George, not feeling particularly interested. "It's got to be," replied Oskar. "Things like this oughtn't to last longer than a year at the outside. Any way, you might buy your gloves from her after December," he added brightly, though with a certain touch of melancholy. "I am setting her up, you know, in a little business. I more or less owe her that, for I took her away from a fairly safe situation." "A safe one?" "Yes, she was engaged, to a case-maker. Did you know that there were such people?" In the meanwhile Amy and Heinrich were standing in front of a narrow moving staircase that went boldly up to a platform and waited for the others. All agreed that they ought not to leave the Prater before going for a ride on the switchback. They whizzed through the darkness down and up again in the groaning coach under the black tree-tops; and George managed to discover a grotesque motif in 3/4 time in the heavy rhythmic noise. While he was going down the moving staircase with the others, he knew that the melody should be introduced by an oboe and clarionet and accompanied by a cello and contra bass. It was clearly a _scherzo_ probably for a symphony. "If I were a capitalist," expounded Heinrich with emphasis, "I would have a switchback built four miles long to go over fields and hills, through forests and dancing-halls; I would also see that there were surprises on the way." Anyway, he thought that the time had come to develop more elaborately the fantastic element in the Wurstelprater. He himself, he informed them, had a rough idea for a merry-go-round that by means of some marvellous machinery was to revolve spiral-fashion above the ground, winding higher and higher till eventually it reached the top of a kind of tower. Unfortunately he lacked the necessary technical knowledge to explain it in greater detail. As they went on he invented burlesque figures and groups for the shooting galleries, and finally declared that there was a pressing need for a magnificent Punch and Judy show for which original authors should write pieces at once profound and frivolous. In this way they came to the end of the Prater where Oskar's carriage was waiting. Squashed, but none the less good-tempered, they drove to a wine-restaurant in the town. Oskar ordered champagne in a private room, George sat down by the piano and improvised the theme that had occurred to him on the switchback. Amy lounged back in the corner of the sofa, while Oskar kept whispering things into her ears which made her laugh. Heinrich had grown silent again and twirled his glass slowly between his fingers. Suddenly George stopped playing and let his hands lie on the keys. A feeling of the dreamlike and purposeless character of existence came over him, as it frequently did when he had drunk wine. Ages seemed to have passed since he had come down a badly-lighted staircase in the Paulanergasse, and his walk with Heinrich in the dark autumn avenue lay far away in the distant past. On the other hand he suddenly remembered, as vividly as though the whole thing had happened yesterday, a very young and very depraved individual, with whom he had spent many years ago a few weeks of that happy-go-lucky life which Oskar Ehrenberg was now leading with Amy. She had kept him waiting too long one evening in the street, he had gone away impatiently and had neither heard nor seen anything of her again. How easy life was sometimes.... He heard Amy's soft laugh and turned round. His look encountered that of Oskar, who seemed to be trying to catch his eye over Amy's blonde head. He felt irritated by that look and deliberately avoided it and struck a few chords again in a melancholy ballad-style. He felt a desire to describe all that had happened to him to-day, and looked at the clock over the door. It was past one. He caught Heinrich's eye and they both got up. Oskar pointed to Amy, who had gone to sleep on his shoulder, and intimated by a smile and a shrug of his shoulders that under such circumstances he could not think of going for the present. The two others shook hands with him, whispered good-night and slipped away. "Do you know what I've done?" said Heinrich. "While you were improvising so extraordinarily finely on that ghastly piano I tried to get the real hang of that libretto that I spoke to you about in the spring." "Oh, the opera libretto! that _is_ interesting. Won't you tell me?" Heinrich shook his head. "I should like to, but the unfortunate thing is, as you've already seen, that it's really not yet finished--like most of my other so-called plots." George looked at him interrogatively. "You had a whole lot of things on hand last spring, when we saw each other last." "Yes, I have made a lot of notes, but to-day I've done nothing more than sentences ... no words, no, just letters on white paper. It's just as if a dead hand had touched everything. I'm frightened the next time I tackle the thing that it will all fall to pieces like tinder. Yes, I've been going through a bad time, and who knows if there's a better one in store for me?" George was silent. Then he suddenly remembered the notice in the papers which he had read somewhere or other about Heinrich's father, the former deputy, Doctor Bermann. He suspected that that might be the reason. "Your father is ill, isn't he?" he asked. Heinrich answered without looking at him. "Yes, my father has been in a mental home since June." George shook his head sympathetically. Heinrich continued: "Yes, it's an awful business, even though I wasn't on very intimate terms with him during the last months it is indescribably awful, and goes on being so." "I can quite understand," said George, "not making any headway with one's work under circumstances like that." "Yes," answered Heinrich hesitatingly. "But it's not that alone. To be quite frank that business plays a comparatively subordinate part in my present mental condition. I don't want to make myself out better than I am. Better...! Should I be better...!" He gave a short laugh and then went on speaking. "Look here, yesterday I still thought that it was the accumulation of every possible misfortune that depressed me so. But to-day I've had an infallible proof that things of no importance at all, positively silly things in fact, affect me more deeply than very real things like my father's illness. Disgusting, isn't it?" George looked in front of him. Why do I still go on walking with him, he thought, and why does he take it quite for granted that I should? Heinrich went on speaking with clenched teeth and unnecessary vehemence of tone. "I received two letters this afternoon. Two letters, yes ... one from my mother, who had visited my father yesterday in the home. This letter contained the news that he is bad--very bad; to come to the point he won't last much longer"--he gave a deep breath--"and as you can imagine that involves all kinds of troubles, responsibilities for my mother and my sister and for myself. But just think of it, another letter came at the same time as that one; it contained nothing of importance so to speak--a letter from a person with whom I have been intimate for two years--and there was a passage in that letter which struck me as a little suspicious--one isolated passage ... otherwise the letter was very affectionate and very nice, like all her other letters ... and now, just imagine, the memory of that one suspicious passage, which another man wouldn't have noticed at all, has been haunting me and torturing me the whole day. I've not been thinking about my father in the lunatic asylum, nor about my mother and sister who are in despair, but only about that unimportant passage in that silly letter from a really by no means brilliant female. It eats up all my strength, it makes me incapable of feeling like a son, like a human being ... isn't it ghastly?" George listened coldly. It struck him as strange that this taciturn melancholy man should suddenly confide in so casual an acquaintance as himself, and he could not help feeling a painful sense of embarrassment when confronted with this unexpected revelation. He did not have the impression either that any particular sympathy for him on Heinrich's part was the real reason for all these confessions. He rather felt inclined to put it down to a want of tact, a certain natural lack of self-control, something which seemed very well described by the expression "bad breeding," which he had once heard applied to Heinrich--wasn't it by Hofrat Wilt? They went as far as the Burg gate. A starless sky lay over the silent town, there was a slight rustle in the trees of the park, they could hear somewhere or other the noise of a rolling carriage as it drove away into the distance. As Heinrich was silent again, George stood still and said in as kind a tone as he could: "I must now really say good-bye, dear Herr Bermann." "Oh," exclaimed Heinrich, "I now see that you've come with me quite a long way--and I've been tactless enough to tell you, or rather myself in your presence, a lot of things which can't interest you in the least.... Forgive me!" "What is there to forgive?" answered George gently. He felt a little moved by this self-reproach of Heinrich's and held out his hand. Heinrich took it, said "Good-bye, my dear Baron," and rushed off in a hurry, as though he had suddenly decided that any further word would be bound to be importunate. George looked after him with a mixture of sympathy and repulsion, and suddenly a free and almost happy mood came over him. He felt young, devoid of care and destined for the most brilliant future. He rejoiced at the winter which was coming, there were all kinds of possibilities: work, amusement, sentiment, while he was absolutely indifferent as to who it was from whom these joys might come. He lingered a moment by the Opera-house. If he went home through the Paulanergasse it would not be appreciably out of his way. He smiled at the memory of the serenades of his earlier years. Not far from here lay the street where he had looked up many a night at a window behind whose curtains Marianne had been accustomed to show herself when her husband had gone to sleep. This woman who was always playing with dangers in whose seriousness she herself did not believe had never really been worthy of George.... Another memory more distant than this one was much more gracious. When he was a boy of seventeen in Florence he had walked to and fro many a night before the window of a beautiful girl, the first creature of the other sex who had given her virgin self to him as yet untouched. And he thought of the hour when he had seen his beloved step on the arm of her bridegroom up to the altar, where the priest was to consecrate the marriage, of the look of eternal farewell which she had sent to him from under her white veil.... He had now arrived at his goal. The lamps were still burning at both ends of the short street, so that it was quite dark where he stood opposite the house. The window of Anna's room was open, and the pinned curtains fluttered lightly in the wind, just as in the afternoon. It was quite dark below. A soft tenderness began to stir in George's heart. Of all the beings who had ever refrained from hiding their inclination for him he thought Anna the best and the purest. She was also the first who brought the gift of sympathy for his artistic aspirations. She was certainly more genuine than Marianne, whose tears would roll over her cheeks whatever he happened to play on the piano; she was deeper too than Else Ehrenberg, who no doubt only wanted to confirm herself in the proud consciousness of having been the first to recognise his talent. And if any person was positively cut out to counteract his tendency to dilettantism and nonchalance and to keep him working energetically, profitably and with a conscious object that person was Anna. He had thought only last winter of looking out for a post as a conductor or accompanist at some German Opera; at Ehrenbergs' he had casually spoken of his intentions, which had not been taken very seriously. Frau Ehrenberg, woman of the world that she was, had given him the motherly advice rather to undertake a tour through the United States as a composer and conductor, whereupon Else had cut in, "And an American heiress shouldn't be sniffed at either." As he remembered this conversation he was very pleased with the idea of knocking about the world a bit, he wished to get to know foreign towns and foreign men, to win love and fame somewhere out in the wide world, and finally came to the conclusion that his life was slipping away from him on the whole in far too quiet and monotonous a fashion. He had long ago left the Paulanergasse, without having taken mentally any farewell of Anna, and was soon home. As he stepped into the dining-room he saw a light shining from Felician's room. "Good evening, Felician," he cried out. The door was opened and Felician came out still fully dressed. The brothers shook hands with each other. "Only just got home?" said Felician. "I thought you had been asleep quite a long time." As he spoke he looked past him, as his manner was, and nodded his head towards the right. "What have you been doing, then?" "I've been in the Prater," answered George. "Alone?" "No, I met people. Oskar Ehrenberg with his girl and Bermann the author. We shot and went on the switchback. It was quite jolly.... What have you got in your hand?" he said, interrupting his narrative. "Have you been out for a walk like that?" he added jestingly. Felician let the sword which he held in his right hand shine in the light of the lamp. "I've just taken it down from the wall, I begin to-morrow again in earnest. The tournament is in the middle of November, and I want to try what I can do this year against Forestier." "By Jove!" cried George. "A piece of cheek, you think, what? But it's still a long time before the middle of November. And the strange thing is I've got the feeling as though I had learnt something fresh in the very six weeks of this summer when I didn't have the thing in my hand at all. It's as though my arm had got new ideas in the meanwhile. I can't explain it properly." "I follow what you mean." Felician held the sword stretched out in front of him and looked at it affectionately. He then said: "Ralph inquired after you, so did Guido ... a pity you weren't there." "You spent the whole day with them?" "Oh no, I remained at home after dinner. You must have gone out straight away. I've been studying." "Studying?" "Yes, I must really do something serious now. I want to pass my Diplomatic exam, by May at the outside." "So you've quite made up your mind?" "Absolutely. There's no point in my remaining on any more in the Stadthalterei. The longer I stay there the clearer it becomes. Anyway, the time won't have been wasted. They don't mind at all if one has spent a year or two in Home Service." "So you'll probably be leaving Vienna in the autumn." "Presumably." "And where will they send you?" "If one only knew." George looked in front of him. "So the parting is as near as that?" But why did it affect him so much all of a sudden?... Why, he himself had determined to go away, and had quite recently spoken to his brother about his plans for next year. Was he still as sceptical as ever of his seriousness? If only they could have a good frank brotherly heart-to-heart talk as they had had on that evening after their father's funeral. As a matter of fact, it was only when life revealed its gloomy side to them that they felt absolutely in touch. Otherwise there was always this strange constraint between them both. There was obviously no help for it. They just had to talk more or less discreetly to each other like fairly intimate friends. And as though resigned to the situation George went on with his questions. "What did you do in the evening?" "I had supper with Guido and an interesting young lady." "Really?" "He's in silken dalliance again, you know." "Who is it, then?" "Conservatoire, Jewess, violin. But she didn't bring it with her. Not particularly pretty, but clever. She improves him and he respects her; he wants her to be baptised. A humorous affair I can tell you. You would have had quite a good time." George turned his eyes towards the sword which Felician still held in his hand. "Would you like to fence a bit?" he asked. "Why not?" answered Felician and fetched a second foil out of his room. Meanwhile George had moved the big table in the middle up against the wall. "I haven't had a thing in my hand since May," he said as he took hold of his sword. They took off their coats and crossed blades. George cried _touché_ the next second. "Come on," cried George, and thought himself lucky that it was his brother whom he had to face as he stood in an awkward position with the slender flashing weapon in his hand. Felician hit him as often as he wanted to without himself being touched a single time. He then lowered his sword and said: "You're too tired to-day, there's no point in it. But you should come more often to the club. I assure you it's a pity, with your talent." George was pleased by his brotherly praise. He laid his sword down on the table, took a deep breath and went to the wide centre window which was open. "What wonderful air," he said. A lonely lamp was shining from the park, there was absolute silence. Felician came up to George, and while the latter leant with both hands on the sill the elder brother remained upright and swept over street, park and town with one of his proud quiet glances. They were both silent for a long time. And they knew they were each thinking of the same thing: a May night of last spring when they had gone home together through the park and their father had greeted them with a silent nod of his head from the very same window by which they were now standing. And both felt a little shocked at the thought that they had enjoyed the whole day with such full gusto, without any painful memories of the beloved man who now lay beneath the ground. "Well, good-night," said Felician in a softer tone than usual as he held out his hand to George. He pressed it in silence and each went into his own room. George arranged the table lamp, took out some music paper and began to write. It was not the scherzo which had occurred to him when he had whizzed through the night with the others under the black tree-tops a few hours ago; and it was not the melancholy folk-ballad of the restaurant either; but a quite new _motif_ that swam up slowly and continuously as though from secret depths. George felt as though he had to allow some mysterious element to take its course. He wrote down the melody, which he thought should be sung by an _alto_ voice or played on the viola, and at the same time a strange accompaniment rang in his ears, which he knew would never vanish from his memory. It was four o'clock in the morning when he went to bed with the calmness of a man to whom nothing evil can ever come in all his life and for whom neither solitude nor poverty nor death possess any terror. [1] A special way of wearing a coat affected in Viennese artistic circles. [2] A company celebrated for its risqué plays. II Frau Ehrenberg sat with her knitting on the green velvet sofa in the raised bow-window. Opposite her Else was reading a book. The white head of the marble Isis gleamed from out the far dark part of the room behind the piano, while a streak of light from the next room played through the open door over the grey carpet. Else looked up from her book through the window to the high tops of the trees in the Schwarzenberg Park which were waving in the autumn wind and said casually: "We might perhaps ring up George Wergenthin, to know if he's coming this evening." Frau Ehrenberg let her knitting fall on her lap. "I don't know," she said. "You remember what a really charming condolence letter I wrote him and what a pressing invitation I gave him to come to Auhof. He didn't come and the coldness of his answer was quite marked. I wouldn't ring him up." "One shouldn't treat him like other people," answered Else. "He belongs to the people whom one has occasionally to remind that one is still alive. When he has been reminded he is extremely glad." Frau Ehrenberg went on with her knitting. "It really won't come to anything," she said quietly. "It's not meant to come to anything," retorted Else. "I thought you knew that by this time, mamma. We're good friends, nothing more--and even that only at intervals; or do you really think that I'm in love with him, mamma? Yes, when I was a little girl I was, in Nice, when we played tennis together, but that is long past." "Well--and Florence?" "In Florence--I was more in love with Felician." "And now?" asked Frau Ehrenberg slowly. "Now ... you're probably thinking of Heinrich Bermann ... but you're making a mistake, mother." "I prefer to be making a mistake. But this summer I really quite had the impression that----" "I tell you," interrupted Else a little impatiently, "it isn't anything and never was anything. On one solitary occasion, when we went out boating on a sultry afternoon, you saw us from your balcony with your opera-glasses, no doubt--it was only then that it became a little dangerous. And even supposing we had fallen on each other's neck--which as a matter of fact we never did--it wouldn't have meant anything. It was simply a summer flirtation." "And besides, he's supposed to be involved in a very serious love-affair," said Frau Ehrenberg. "You mean ... with that actress, mamma?" Frau Ehrenberg looked up. "Did he tell you anything about her?" "Tell...? Not in so many words, but when we went for walks together in the park or went out in the evening on the lake, why, he practically spoke of nothing but her--of course without mentioning her name ... and the better he liked me--men really are such awfully funny people--the more jealous he became about the other woman.... But if it were only that? What young man isn't involved in a serious love affair? Do you think by any chance, mamma, that George Wergenthin is not?" "In a serious one ... no, that will never happen to him. He's too cold, too superior for that ... he hasn't got enough temperament." "That's exactly why," explained Else, airing her knowledge of human nature. "He'll slip into some whirlpool or other and get taken out of his depth without his having noticed it, and some fine day he'll get married ... out of sheer indolence ... to some person or other who'll probably be absolutely indifferent to him." "You must have a definite suspicion," said Frau Ehrenberg. "I have." "Marianne?" "Marianne! but that's been over a long time, mamma. And that was never anything particularly serious, either." "Well, who is it then?" "Well whom do you think, mamma?" "I have no idea." "It's Anna," said Else curtly. "Which Anna?" "Anna Rosner, of course." "But...." "You can say 'but' as much as you like--it's a fact." "Else, you don't seriously think that Anna with her reserved character could so far forget herself as to----" "So far forget herself...? Really, mamma, the number of expressions you keep on using--anyway, I don't think that's quite a case of one's forgetting oneself." Frau Ehrenberg smiled, not without a certain pride. The bell rang outside. "It's he at last," said Else. "It might quite as well be Demeter Stanzides," observed Frau Ehrenberg. "Stanzides was to bring the Prince along sometime," said Else casually. "Do you think that will come off?" inquired Frau Ehrenberg, letting her knitting fall into her lap. "Why shouldn't it come off?" said Else. "They are so intimate." The door opened. As a matter of fact it was none of the expected visitors who came in, but Edmund Nürnberger. He was dressed, as always, with the greatest care, though not after the latest fashion. His tail coat was a little too short and an emerald pin was stuck in his voluminous satin tie. He bowed as soon as he had got to the door, though his demeanour expressed at the same time a certain irony at his own politeness. "Am I the first?" he inquired. "No one here yet? Not a Hofrat--nor a count--nor an author--nor a diabolical female?" "Only a woman who never was one, I'm sorry to say," answered Frau Ehrenberg as she shook hands with him. "And one ... who will perhaps become one sometime." "Oh, I am convinced," said Nürnberger, "that if she only takes it seriously, Fräulein Else will succeed in that." He stroked his smooth black somewhat glossy hair slowly with his left hand. Frau Ehrenberg expressed her regret that their expectation of his coming to Auhof had not been realised. Had he really spent the whole summer in Vienna? "Why do you wonder so much, my dear madam? Whether I am walking up and down among mountain scenery or by the shore of the sea or in my own room, it doesn't really matter much in the end." "But you must have felt quite lonely," said Frau Ehrenberg. "You certainly realise solitude more clearly when there's no one in the neighbourhood who shows any desire of talking to you.... But let's talk of more interesting and promising men than I am. How are all the numerous friends of your popular family?" "Friends!" repeated Else. "I should like first to know what you mean by the word?" "Well, all the people who say something agreeable to you from whatever motive, and whom you believe in when they say it." The door of the bedroom opened, Herr Ehrenberg appeared and greeted Nürnberger. "Are you ready packed?" asked Else. "Packed and ready," answered Ehrenberg, who had on a grey suit that was far too loose and was biting a fat cigar between his teeth. He turned to Nürnberger to explain.... "I'm off to-day, just as I am, to Corfu ... for the time being; the season is beginning and the Ehrenberg 'at homes' make me feel sick." "No one asks you," replied Frau Ehrenberg gently, "to honour them with your presence." "Cute answer, eh," said Ehrenberg, puffing at his cigar. "I don't mind, of course, staying away from your real 'at homes.' But when I'd like to dine quietly at home on a Thursday and there's an attaché sitting in one corner and a hussar in the other, and some one over there is playing his own compositions and some one else on the sofa is being funny, while by the window Frau Oberberger is fixing up an assignation with any one who happens to come along ... well, it really gets on my nerves. One can stand it once, but not a second time." "Do you think you'll remain away all the winter?" asked Nürnberger. "It's possible. I intend, you know, to go further, to Egypt, to Syria, probably to Palestine as well. Yes, it's perhaps only because one's getting older, perhaps because one reads so much about Zionism and so forth, but I can't help it, I should like to see Jerusalem before I die." Frau Ehrenberg shrugged her shoulders. "Those are matters," said Ehrenberg, "which my wife don't understand--and my children even less so. What do you know about it, Else? no, you don't know anything either. But when one reads what's going on in the world it often makes one inclined to think that there's no other way out for us." "For us?" repeated Nürnberger. "I've not observed up to the present that Anti-Semitism has done you any particular harm." "You mean because I've grown a rich man? Well if I were to tell you that I don't give any shakes for money, you would, of course, not believe me, and quite right too. But as sure as you see me here, I swear to you that I would give half my fortune to see the worst of our enemies on the gallows." "I'm only afraid," remarked Nürnberger, "that you would have the wrong ones hanged." "There's not much danger," replied Ehrenberg. "Even if you don't catch the man you're after, the man you do catch is bound to be one of them, too, right enough." "This is not the first time, my dear Herr Ehrenberg, that I observe that your standpoint towards this question is not ideally objective." Ehrenberg suddenly bit through his cigar and with fingers shaking with rage put it on the ash-tray. "If any one here's to tell me ... and even ... excuse me ... or perhaps you're baptised...? One can really never tell nowadays." "I'm not baptised," replied Nürnberger quietly. "But on the other hand I am certainly not a Jew either. I've ceased to belong to the congregation for a long time, for the simple reason that I never felt myself to be a Jew." "If some one were to bash in your top hat in the Ringstrasse because, if you will allow me to say so, you have a somewhat Jewish nose, you'd realise pretty quick that you were insulted because you were a Yiddisher fellow. You take my word for it." "But, papa, how excited you are getting," said Else, and stroked him on his bald reddish shiny head. Old Ehrenberg took her hand, stroked it and asked, apparently without any connection with what he had been saying before: "By-the-bye, shall I have the pleasure of seeing my son and heir before I leave?" Frau Ehrenberg answered: "Oskar's bound to be home soon." Ehrenberg turned to Nürnberger. "You will doubtless be glad to know that my son Oskar is an Anti-Semite as well." Frau Ehrenberg sighed gently. "It's a fixed idea of his," she said to Nürnberger. "He sees Anti-Semites everywhere, even in his own family." "That is the latest Jewish national disease," said Nürnberger. "I myself have only succeeded up to the present in making the acquaintance of one genuine Anti-Semite. I'm afraid I am bound to admit, dear Herr Ehrenberg, that it was a well-known Zionist leader." Ehrenberg could only make an eloquent gesture. Demeter Stanzides and Willy Eissler came in and immediately spread an atmosphere of vivid brilliancy around them. Demeter wore his uniform lightly and magnificently, as though it were a fancy costume rather than a military dress; Willy stood there in a dinner jacket looking tall and pale and as if he had been keeping late hours, and then immediately gathered up the reins of the conversation, while his pleasantly hoarse voice rasped through the air with amiable imperiousness. He gave an account of the preparations for an aristocratic theatrical performance in which he was adviser, producer and actor, just as he had been last year, and described a meeting of the young lords, where, if his account was to be believed, every one had behaved as though they were in a lunatic asylum, and then went on to treat them to a humorous dialogue between two countesses whose mannerisms he managed to take off in a most delightful way. Ehrenberg was always very amused by Willy Eissler. The vague feeling that this Hungarian Jew managed somehow or other to outwit and make a fool of that whole feudal set, whom personally he hated so much, filled him with respect for the young man. Else sat at the little table in the corner with Demeter and made him tell her about the _Isle of Wight_. "You were there with your friend?" she inquired, "weren't you, Prince Karl Friedrich?" "My friend the Prince?... that's not quite right, Fräulein Else. The Prince has no friends, nor have I. We're neither of us the type to have friends." "He must be an interesting man according to all one hears." "Interesting--I don't know about that. At any rate he's thought over a lot of things which people in his position are not usually accustomed to bother their heads about very much. Perhaps he'd have managed to do all kinds of things too, if he'd been left to himself. Well, who knows, it was perhaps better for him that they kept a tight hold on him, for him and for the country too in the long run. One man alone can do nothing--never in this life. That's why it's best to let matters slide and get out of things, as he did." Else looked at him somewhat coldly. "You're so philosophical to-day, what is it? It seems to me that Willy Eissler has spoilt you." "Willy spoilt me?" "Yes, you know you shouldn't associate with such clever people." "Why not?" "You should simply be young, shine, live, and then when there's nothing more to do, do whatever you like ... but without bothering about yourself and the world." "You should have told me that before, Fräulein Else; once a man's started getting clever...." Else shook her head. "But perhaps in your case it might have been avoided," she said quite seriously. And then they both had to laugh. The chandelier was lighted up. George Wergenthin and Heinrich Bermann had come in. Invited by a smile George sat down by Else's side. "I knew that you would come," she said disingenuously but warmly as she pressed his hand; she was more glad than she thought she would have been that he should sit opposite to her after so long an interval, that she could see again his proud gracious face and hear again his somewhat gentle yet warm voice. Frau Wyner appeared, a little woman with a high colour, jolly and awkward. Her daughter Sissy was with her. The groups got broken up in the "general post" of mutual greetings. "Well, have you composed that song for me yet?" Sissy asked George with laughing eyes and laughing lips, as she played with one of her gloves and moved about like a snake in her dark-green shimmering dress. "A song?" asked George. He really didn't remember. "Or waltz or something. But you promised me to dedicate something to me." While she spoke her looks were wandering round. They glowed into the eyes of Willy, passed caressingly by Demeter and addressed a sphinx-like question to Heinrich Bermann. It seemed as though will-o'-the-wisps were dancing through the drawing-room. Frau Wyner suddenly came up to her daughter. She flushed deeply. "Sissy is really so silly.... What are you thinking of, Sissy? Baron George has had more important things to do this year than to compose things for you." "Oh not at all," said George politely. "You buried your father, that's no trifle." George looked straight in front of him. But Frau Wyner went on speaking quite unperturbed. "And your father wasn't old, was he? And such a handsome man.... Is it true that he was a chemist?" "No," answered George calmly. "He was President of the Botanical Society." Heinrich with one arm on the shut piano-top was speaking to Else. "So you've been in Germany?" she asked. "Yes," replied Heinrich. "I've been back a fairly long time, four or five weeks." "And when are you going back again?" "I don't know, perhaps never." "Come, you don't believe that yourself--what are you working at?" she added quickly. "All kinds of things," he answered. "I'm going through a rather restless time. I sketch out a lot but I finish nothing. I'm very rarely keen on completing things, obviously I lose all my interest in things too quickly." "And people too," added Else. "Possibly. Only unhappily one's emotions remain attached to people after one's reason has long ago decided to have nothing more to do with them. A poet--if you will allow me to use the expression--must go away from every one who no longer presents any riddle to him ... particularly from any one whom he loves." "They say," suggested Else, "that it is just those whom we know least that we love." "That's what Nürnberger makes out, but it's not quite right. If it were really so, my dear Else, then life would probably be much more beautiful than it is. No, we know those whom we love much better than we do other people--but we know them with a feeling of shame, bitterness and with the fear that others may know them as well as we do. Love means this--being afraid that the faults which we have discovered in the person we love may be revealed to others. Love means this--being able to look into the future and curse this very gift.... Love means this--knowing some one so that it smashes one." Else leant on the piano in her childish lady-like way and listened to him curiously. How much she liked him in moments like this! She would have liked to have stroked his hair again consolingly, as she had done before on the lake when he had been torn by his love for that other woman, but when he suddenly retired into his shell, coldly and drily, and looked as though all his fire had been extinguished she felt that she could never live with him, and she would be bound to run away after a few weeks ... with a Spanish officer or a violin _virtuoso_. "It is a good thing," she said somewhat condescendingly, "that you see something of George Wergenthin. He'll have a sound influence on you. He is quieter than you are. I don't think that he is so gifted as you are, and I am sure that he is not so clever." "What do you know about his gifts?" interrupted Heinrich almost rudely. George came up and asked Else if they couldn't have the pleasure to-night of hearing one of her songs. She didn't want to. Besides she was principally studying opera parts nowadays. That interested her more. As a matter of fact she was far from having a lyrical temperament. George asked her jokingly if she didn't have perhaps the secret intention of going on the stage? "With my little bit of a voice!" said Else. Nürnberger was standing near them. "That wouldn't be an obstacle," he observed. "Why, I feel quite positive that a modern critic would soon turn up who would boom you as an important singer for the very reason that you have no voice, but who would discover some other gift in you by way of compensation, as, for instance, your gift for characterisation, just as we have to-day certain painters who have no sense of colour but only intellect; and celebrated authors who never have the vaguest ideas but who succeed in discovering the most unsuitable epithets for every noun they use." Else noticed that Nürnberger's manner of speaking got on George's nerves. She turned to him. "I should like to show you something," she said, and took a few steps towards the music-case. George followed her. "Here is a collection of old Italian folksongs. I should like you to show me the best. I myself don't know enough about it." "I can't understand," said George gently, "how you can stand any one like that man Nürnberger near you. He spreads around him an absolute atmosphere of distrust and malice." "As I've often told you, George, you're no judge of character. After all, what do you know about him? He's different from what you think he is; just ask your friend Heinrich Bermann." "Oh, I know well enough that he raves about him, too," replied George. "You're speaking about Nürnberger?" asked Frau Ehrenberg, who had just joined them. "George can't stand him," said Else in her casual way. "Well, you're doing him a great injustice, if that's the case. Have you ever read anything of his?" George shook his head. "Not even his novel which made so great a sensation fifteen or sixteen years ago? That is really a shame. We've just lent it to Hofrat Wilt. I tell you he was quite flabbergasted at the way in which the whole of present-day Austria is anticipated in that book, written all that time ago." "Really, is that so?" said George, without conviction. "You have no idea," continued Frau Ehrenberg, "of the applause with which Nürnberger was then hailed; one could go so far as to say that all doors sprang open before him." "Perhaps he found that enough," observed Else, with an air of meditative wisdom. Heinrich was standing by the piano engaged in conversation with Nürnberger, and was making an effort, as he frequently did, to persuade him to undertake a new work or to bring out an edition of previous writings. Nürnberger would not agree. He was filled with positive horror at the thought of seeing his name a prey to publicity again, of plunging again into a literary vortex which seemed to him as repulsive as it was fatuous. He had no desire to enter the competition. What was the point? Intriguing cliques that no longer made any attempt at concealment were at work everywhere. Did there remain a single man of sound talent and honest aspirations who did not have to face every minute the prospect of being dragged down into the dirt? Was there a blockhead in the country who could not boast of having been hailed as a genius in some rag or other? Had celebrity in these days anything at all to do with honour, and was being ignored and forgotten worth even a single shrug of regret? And who could know after all what verdicts would pass as the correct ones in the future? Were not the fools really the geniuses and the geniuses really the fools? It would be ridiculous to allow himself to be tempted to stake his peace of mind and even his self-respect on a game where even the greatest possible win held out no promise of any satisfaction. "None at all?" queried Heinrich. "I'll grant you as much as you like about fame, wealth, world-wide influence--but for a man, simply because all these things are of dubious advantage, to relinquish something so absolutely indubitable as the moments of inner consciousness of one's own power----" "Inner consciousness of power? Why don't you say straight away the happiness of creating?" "It does exist, Nürnberger." "It may be so; why, I even think I remember that I felt something like that myself now and then, a very long time ago ... only, as you no doubt know, as the years went by I completely lost the faculty of deceiving myself." "Perhaps you only think so," replied Heinrich. "Who knows if it is not that very faculty of self-deception which you have developed more strongly than any other as the years went by?" Nürnberger laughed. "Do you know how I feel when I hear you talk like that? just like a fencing-master feels who gets a thrust in the heart from one of his own pupils." "And not even one of his best," said Heinrich. Herr Ehrenberg suddenly appeared in the doorway, to the astonishment of his wife, who had presumed that he would be by now on his way to the station. He led a young lady by the hand. She was dressed simply in black, and had her hair done extraordinarily high after a fashion that was now out of date. Her lips were full and red, the eyes in the pale vivid face had a clear hard gaze. "Come along," said Ehrenberg with some malice in his small eyes, and led the visitor straight up to Else, who was chatting with Stanzides. "I've brought a visitor for you." Else held out her hand. "But this is nice." She introduced them--"Herr Demeter Stanzides--Fräulein Therese Golowski." Therese bowed slightly and let her gaze rest on him for a while with a little embarrassment as though she were scrutinising a beautiful beast, then she turned to Else: "If I had known that you had such a lot of visitors." "Do you know what she looks like?" said Stanzides softly to George. "Like a Russian student, don't you think?" George nodded. "That's about it. I know her. She is a school-friend of Fräulein Else's, and now she's playing a leading part among the Socialists. Just think of it! she's just been in prison for _lèse-majesté_, I believe." "Yes, I think I've read something about it," replied Demeter. "One should really get to know a person of that type more intimately. She's pretty. Her face might be made of ivory." "And her features show a lot of energy," added George. "Her brother too is an extraordinary fellow, a pianist and a mathematician, and the father's supposed to be a ruined Jewish skin-dealer." "It's really a strange race," observed Demeter. In the meanwhile Frau Ehrenberg had come up to Therese. She considered it correct not to show any surprise. "Sit down, Therese," she said. "And how have you been getting on all this time? Since you've devoted yourself to political life you don't bother about your old friends any more." "Yes, I'm afraid my work gives me very little time to pay private visits," replied Therese, thrusting out her chin, in a way that made her face look masculine and almost ugly. Frau Ehrenberg vacillated as to whether she should or should not make any reference to the term of imprisonment which Therese had just served. It was certainly to be borne in mind there was scarcely another house in Vienna where ladies who had been locked up a short time ago, were allowed to call. "And how is your brother?" asked Else. "He's doing his service this year," answered Therese. "You can imagine pretty well how he's getting on." And she looked ironically at Demeter's hussar uniform. "I suppose he doesn't get much opportunity there for playing the piano," said Frau Ehrenberg. "Oh, he's given up all thoughts of being a pianist," replied Therese. "He's all for politics now." And turning with a smile to Demeter she added: "Of course you won't give him away, Herr Oberlieutenant?" Stanzides laughed somewhat awkwardly. "What do you mean by politics?" asked Herr Ehrenberg. "Does he want to get into the Cabinet?" "Not in Austria at any rate," replied Therese. "He is a Zionist, you know." "What?" exclaimed Ehrenberg, and his visage beamed. "That's certainly a subject on which we don't quite agree," added Therese. "My dear Therese ..." began Ehrenberg. "You'll miss your train, my dear," interrupted his wife. "I'm not going to miss my train, and anyway, another one goes to-morrow. My dear Therese, this is the only thing I want to say--each person should find happiness in his own way. But in this case your brother and not you is the cleverer of you two. Excuse me, I'm perhaps a layman in politics, but I assure you, Therese, exactly the same thing will happen to you Jewish Social Democrats as happened to the Jewish Liberals and German Nationalists." "How do you mean?" asked Therese haughtily. "In what way will the same thing happen to us?" "In what way...? I'll tell you soon enough. Who created the Liberal movement in Austria?... the Jews. By whom have the Jews been betrayed and deserted? By the Liberals. Who created the National-German movement in Austria? the Jews. By whom were the Jews left in the lurch?... what--left in the lurch!... Spat upon like dogs!... By the National-Germans, and precisely the same thing will happen in the case of Socialism and Communism. As soon as you've drawn the chestnuts out of the fire they'll start driving you away from the table. It always has been so and always will be so." "We will wait and see," Therese replied quietly. George and Demeter looked at each other like two friends marooned together on a desert island. Oskar, who had come in during the middle of his father's speech, compressed his lips and was very embarrassed. But they all felt a kind of deliverance when Ehrenberg suddenly looked at his watch and took his leave. "We certainly shan't agree to-day," he said to Therese. Therese smiled. "Scarcely. Hope you will enjoy your journey and I want once more to ... to thank you in the name of...." "Hush!" said Ehrenberg and vanished. "What are you thanking papa for?" said Else. "For a gift of money for which I came to ask him in the most shameless manner. Apart from him there is not a single rich man in the circle of my acquaintances. I am not in a position to speak of the purpose for which it is wanted." Frau Ehrenberg came up to Bermann and Nürnberger, who were continuing their conversation over the top of the piano, and said softly: "Of course you know that she"--then she looked at Therese--"has just been released from prison." "I read about it," said Heinrich. Nürnberger half shut his eyes and cast a glance at the group in the corner where the three girls were talking to Stanzides and Willy Eissler and shook his head. "What cynicism are you suppressing?" said Frau Ehrenberg. "I was just thinking how easily it might have come about for Fräulein Else to have languished two months in prison and for Fräulein Therese to have held receptions in a stylish drawing-room as daughter of the house." "Easily come about?" "Herr Ehrenberg has had good luck, Herr Golowski bad luck.... Perhaps that is the only difference." "Look here, now, Nürnberger," said Heinrich, "you're not going to deny that such a thing as individuality exists in the world.... Else and Therese are rather different characters you know." "I think so too," observed Frau Ehrenberg. Nürnberger shrugged his shoulders. "They are both young girls, quite gifted, quite pretty ... everything else is more or less of an accidental appanage, just as it is with most young women--most people, in fact." Heinrich shook his head energetically. "No, no," he said, "life is really not as simple as all that." "That doesn't make it simpler, my dear Heinrich." Frau Ehrenberg turned her eyes towards the door and beamed. Felician had just come in. With all the sureness of a sleep-walker he walked up to the hostess and kissed her hand. "I have just had the pleasure of meeting Herr Ehrenberg on the steps; he told me he was going off to Corfu. It must be awfully beautiful out there." "You know Corfu?" "Yes, a memory of my childhood." He greeted Nürnberger and Bermann, and they all talked about the South for which Bermann longed and in which Nürnberger did not believe. George gave his brother a hand-shake which meant a salutation and a goodbye at the same time. As he unobtrusively disappeared through the open door of the dining-room he looked round again, noticed Marianne sitting in the furthest corner of the drawing-room and looking at him ironically through her lorgnette. This woman had always had the mysterious gift of suddenly being present without one realising where she came from. And then a veiled lady came up to him on the steps. "Don't be in such a hurry, you can surely wait another moment," she said. "One really shouldn't spoil women so.... I wonder if you'd be in such a hurry, you know, if you were going to keep an appointment with me...? But you prefer to be non-committal. Probably because you're afraid that my husband will shoot you when he comes back from Stockholm. I mean he's probably got as far as Copenhagen to-day. But he places absolute confidence in me. And he's quite right too. For I'm able to swear to you that no one has managed to get any further than a kiss on my hand.... No, to tell the full truth, on my neck, here. Of course, you believe, too, that I have had an affair with Stanzides? No, he wouldn't be at all in my line! I positively loathe handsome men. I couldn't find anything in your brother Felician either...." One could form no idea when the veiled lady would leave off speaking, for it was Frau Oberberger. Similar conduct in other women would have betokened a specific overture, but that was not so in her case. In spite of the dubious impression created by her whole manner the world had never been able to fix her so far with a single lover. She lived in a strange, but apparently happy, childless marriage. Her brilliant handsome husband, a geologist by profession, had undertaken scientific expeditions in days gone by, when, so Hofrat Wilt used to assert, he had set more store by the good travelling and facilities and unimpeachable cooking of the districts in question than on their being actually unexplored. But for some years past he had given up travelling in favour of lecturing and ladykilling. When he was at home he lived with his wife in the best _camaraderie_. George had frequently, though never seriously, considered the possibility of a liaison with Frau Oberberger. He was even one of those who had kissed her neck, a fact which she probably did not remember herself. And as she threw back her veil now George again surrendered himself with pleasure to the fascination of this face, which though no longer in its first flush of youth was yet both charming and animated. He wanted to take up the conversation, but she went on speaking. "Do you know you're very pale? a nice life you must be leading. What kind of a woman is it who is responsible for taking you away from me this time?" Hofrat Wilt, with his usual silent step, suddenly stood by them. With a casual air of gallantry and superiority he threw them a "Good-day, beauteous lady, Hullo, Baron," and started to go on. But Frau Oberberger thought it fitting to inform him first that Baron George was just going to one of his usual orgies--she then followed Hofrat up to the second story at the risk, as she remarked, of his being taken for her ninety-fifth lover if he presented himself at Ehrenberg's at the same time as she did. It was seven o'clock before George could settle himself in a fly and drive to Mariahilf. He felt quite exhausted by the two hours at Ehrenberg's and he was even more than usually glad at the meeting with Anna which was before him. Since that morning at the miniature exhibition they had seen each other nearly every day; in parks, picture-galleries, at her house. They usually talked about the little incidents of their life or gossiped about books or music. They did not often talk of the past, but when they did it was without doubts or misgivings. For so far as Anna was concerned the adventures from which George had just come were far from being surrounded with the uncanny atmosphere of mystery; while George gathered from her own jesting allusions that she herself had already experienced more than one infatuation, though that did not cause him to lose the serenity of his good spirits or even to ask her any further questions. He had kissed her for the first time eight days ago, in an empty room in the Liechtentein Gallery, and from that moment Anna had employed the familiar 'du,' as though a less intimate appellation would have rung somewhat false. The fly stopped at a street corner. George got out, lit a cigarette and walked up and down opposite the house out of which Anna was due to come. After a few minutes she came out of the door, he rushed across the street to meet her and kissed her hand ecstatically. Following her habit, for she was in the habit of reading on her journeys, she carried a book with her in a pressed leather cover. "It is quite cool, Anna," said George, took the book out of her hand and helped her into the jacket which she had been carrying over her arm. "I was a little bit late you see," she said, "and I was very impatient to see you. Yes," she added with a smile, "one's temperament will break out now and again. What do you think of my new dress?" she added as they walked on. "It suits you very well." "They thought at my lesson that I looked like a lady-in-waiting." "Who thought so?" "Frau Bittner herself and her two daughters whom I am teaching." "I should rather say, like an Arch-Duchess." Anna nodded with satisfaction. "And now tell me, Anna, all that's happened to you since yesterday." She began quite seriously: "Twelve o'clock, after I left you at the door of our house, dinner in the family circle. Rested a little in the afternoon, and thought about you. Pupils from four to six-thirty, then read 'Grüner Heinrich,' and the evening paper. Too lazy to go out again, messed about at home. Supper. The usual domestic scene." "Your brother?" queried George. She answered with a "Yes" that ruled out all further questions. "A little music after supper.... Even tried to sing." "Were you satisfied?" "It was quite good enough for me, anyway," she said, and George thought he detected a slight note of melancholy in her tone. She quickly went on with her report. "Went to bed at half-past ten, slept well, got up early at eight ... one can't lie in bed any longer in our house ... dressed till half-past nine, was about the house till eleven...." "... Messing about," added George. "Right. Then went on to Weils, gave the boy a lesson." "How old is he?" asked George. "Thirteen," replied Anna. "Well, after all that is not so young." "Quite so," said Anna. "But you can set your mind at rest when I inform you that he loves his Aunt Adele, a sentimental blonde of thirty-three, and is not thinking for the time being of breaking his troth to her.... Well, to continue the record. Got home at one-thirty, had my meal alone, thank Heaven! Father already at the office, mamma in a state of sleep. Rested again from three to four, thought even more about you, and more seriously too, than yesterday, then went shopping in town, gloves, safety pins and something for mamma, and then drove on the tram, reading all the way to Mariahilf, to the two Bittner kiddies.... So now you know all. Satisfied?" "Except for the boy of thirteen." "Well, I agree that that might be a bit upsetting. But now we should like to know if you haven't got even more sinister confessions to make to me." They were in a narrow silent street, which seemed quite strange to George, and Anna took his arm. "I have just come from Ehrenbergs'," he began. "Well?" queried Anna. "Did they try very much to inveigle you?" "No, I can't go so far as that. Of course they seemed a little hurt that I did not go to Auhof this summer," he added. "Did dear little Else perform?" Anna asked. "No; of course I don't know what happened after I left." "It won't be worth the trouble now," said Anna with exuberant mirth. "You are wrong, Anna. There are people there for whom it is quite worth while singing." "Who?" "Heinrich Bermann, Willy Eissler, Demeter Stanzides...." "Oh, Stanzides!" exclaimed Anna. "Now I am really sorry that I wasn't there too." "It seems to me," said George, "that that is a true word spoken in jest." "Quite so," replied Anna. "I think Demeter is really desperately handsome." George was silent for a few seconds and suddenly asked, with more emotion than he usually manifested: "Is it he then...?" "What 'he' do you mean?" "The one you ... loved more than me." She smiled, nestled closer up to him and answered simply, though a little ironically: "Am I really supposed to have been fonder of any one else than of you?" "You confessed it to me yourself," replied George. "But I also confess to you that I should love you in time more than I have loved or ever could love any one else." "Are you quite sure about that, Anna?" "Yes, George, I am quite certain of it." They had now come again into a more lively street and reluctantly let go of each other's arms. They remained standing in front of various shops. They discovered a photographer's show-case by a house-door and were very much amused by the laboriously-natural poses in which golden and silver wedding couples, cadets, cooks in their Sunday best and ladies in masked fancy dress were taken. George asked again in a lighter tone: "So it was Stanzides?" "What an idea! I have never spoken a hundred words to him in my life." They went on walking. "Leo Golowski, then?" asked George. She shook her head and smiled. "That was calf-love," she replied. "That really doesn't count. I should like to know the girl of sixteen who wouldn't have fallen in love in the country with a handsome youth who fights a duel with a real Count and then goes about for eight days with his arm in a sling." "But he didn't do it on your account, but for his sister's honour, as it were." "For Therese's honour? What makes you think that?" "You told me that the young man had spoken to Therese in the forest while she was studying '_Emilia Galotti_.'" "Yes, that is quite true. Anyway, she was quite glad to be spoken to. The only thing Leo objected to was that the young Count belonged to a club of young men who really behaved rather cheekily, and I think showed a touch of Anti-Semitism. So when Therese once went with her brother for a walk by the lake, and the Count came up and spoke to Therese as though he had known her for ages, while he mumbled his name off-handedly, for the benefit of Leo, Leo made a bow and introduced himself like this: 'Leo Golowski, Cracow Jew.' I don't know exactly what happened further; there was an exchange of words and the duel took place next day in the cavalry barracks at Klagenfurt." "So I am quite right," persisted George humorously. "He did fight for his sister's honour." "No, I tell you. I was there when he once discussed the matter with Therese, and said to her: 'So far as I am concerned you can do whatever amuses you. You can flirt with any one you like'...." "Only it's got to be a Jew, I suppose...." added George. Anna shook her head. "He's really not like that." "I know," replied George gently. "We have become quite good friends lately, your Leo and I. "Why, only yesterday evening we met at the café again and he was really quite condescending to me. I think he really forgives me my lineage. Besides, I haven't told you that Therese was at Ehrenbergs', too." And he described the appearance of the young girl in the Ehrenberg drawing-room and the impression she had made on Demeter. Anna smiled with pleasure. Later on, when they were again walking arm-in-arm in a quieter street, George began again. "But I still don't know who your great passion was." Anna was silent and looked straight in front of her. "Come, Anna, you promised me, didn't you?" Without looking at him she replied: "If you only had an idea how strange the whole thing seems to me to-day." "Why strange?" "Because the man you're trying to find out was quite an old man." "Thirty-five," said George jestingly; "isn't that so?" She shook her head seriously. "He was fifty-eight or sixty." "And you?" asked George slowly. "It is two years ago last summer. I was then twenty-one." George suddenly stood still. "I know now, it was your singing-master. Wasn't it?" Anna did not answer. "So it was he, then?" said George, without being really surprised, for he was aware that all the celebrated master's pupils fell in love with him in spite of his grey hairs. "And did you love him most," asked George, "of all the men you had come across?" "Strange, isn't it? but it's a fact all the same." "Did he know it?" "I think so." They had arrived at an open space with a small garden ... that was only scantily lighted. At the back there towered a church with a reddish glow. As though drawn to a quieter place they wandered on under dark softly-waving branches. "And what actually was there between you, if it is not a rude question?" Anna was silent, and that moment George felt that everything was possible--even that Anna should have been that man's mistress. But underneath the disquiet which he felt at that thought the desire arose gently and unconsciously to hear his fear confirmed. For if Anna had already belonged to some one else before she became his, the adventure could proceed as lightly and irresponsibly as possible. "I will tell you the whole story," said Anna at last. "It is really not so awful." "Well?" asked George, strangely excited. "Once, after the lesson," Anna began hesitatingly, "he gallantly helped me into my jacket. And then suddenly he drew me to him, took me in his arms and kissed me." "And you...?" "I ... I was quite intoxicated." "Intoxicated?..." "Yes, it was something indescribable. He kissed me on the forehead and the hair, and then he took my hand and murmured all sorts of things that I didn't hear properly...." "And...." "And then ... then voices came near, he let go my hand and it was all over." "All over?" "Yes, over ... of course it was all over." "I certainly don't think it such a matter of course. You saw him again, no doubt." "Of course, I still went on learning with him." "And...?" "I tell you it was over ... absolutely ... as though it had never happened." George was surprised that he should feel reassured. "And he never tried again?" he asked. "Never. It would have been so ridiculous, and as he was very clever he knew that quite well himself. It is quite true that up to then I had been very much in love with him, but after this episode he was nothing more to me than my old teacher. In some way he seemed even older than he really was. I don't know if you can really understand what I mean. It was as though he had spent all the remains of his youth in that moment." "I quite understand," said George. He believed her and loved her more than before. They went into the church. It was almost dark within the large building. There were only some dim candles burning in front of a side altar, and opposite, behind the small statue of a saint, there shone a feeble light. A broad stream of incense flowed between the dome and the flagstones. The verger was walking, jangling his keys softly. Motionless figures appeared vaguely on the seats at the back. George slowly walked forward with Anna and felt like a young husband on his honeymoon going sight-seeing in a church with his young wife. He said so to Anna. She only nodded. "But it would be very much nicer," whispered George, as they stood nestling close together in front of the chancel, "if we really were together somewhere abroad...." She looked at him ecstatically and yet interrogatively: and he was frightened at his own words. Supposing Anna had taken it as a serious declaration or as a kind of wooing? Was he not obliged to enlighten her that he had not meant it in that way?... He remembered the conversation which they had had a short time ago, when they had gone out hanging on to one umbrella on a rainy windy day in the direction of Schönbrunn. He had suggested to her she should drive into the town with him and dine with him in a private room in some restaurant; she had answered with that iciness in which her whole being was sometimes frozen: "I don't do that kind of thing." He had not pressed her further. And yet a quarter of an hour later she had said to him, apropos no doubt of a conversation about George's mode of life, but yet with a smile of many possibilities: "You have no initiative, George." And he had suddenly felt at that moment as though depths in her soul were revealing themselves, undreamt-of and dangerous depths, which it would be a good thing to beware of. He could not help now thinking of this again. What was passing within her mind?... What did she want and what was she ready for?... And what did he desire, what did he feel himself? Life was so incalculable. Was it not perfectly possible that he should go travelling about the world with her, live with her a period of happiness and finally part from her just as he had parted from many another?... Yet when he thought of the end that was inevitably bound to come, whether death brought it or life itself, he felt a gentle grief in his heart.... She still remained silent. Did she think again that he was lacking in initiative?... Or did she think perhaps "I am really going to succeed, I shall be his wife?..." He then felt her hand stroke his very gently, with a kind of new tenderness that did him great good. "George," she said. "What is it?" he asked. "If I were religious," she replied, "I should like to pray for something now." "What for?" said George, feeling almost nervous. "For you to do something, George--something that really counted. For you to become a genuine artist, a great artist." He could not help looking at the floor, as though for very shame that her thoughts had travelled on paths that were so much cleaner than his own. A beggar held open the thick green curtain. George gave the man a coin; they were in the open air. The street lights shone up, the noise of vehicles and closing shutters suddenly grew near. George felt as if a fine veil which the twilight of the church had woven around him and her had now been torn, and in a tone of relief he suggested a little ride. Anna agreed with alacrity. They got into an open fiacre, had the top pulled down over them, drove through the streets, then drove round the Ring, without seeing much of the buildings and gardens, spoke not a word and nestled closer and closer to each other. They were both conscious of each other's impatience and their own, and they knew it was no longer possible to go back. When they were near Anna's home George said: "What a pity that you have got to go home now." She shrugged her shoulders and smiled strangely. The depths, thought George again, but without fear and almost gaily. Before the vehicle stopped at the corner they arranged an appointment for the following morning in the Schwarzenberggarten and then got out. Anna rushed home and George slowly strolled towards the town. He considered whether he should go into the café. He did not really feel keen on it. Bermann would probably stay to supper at the Ehrenbergs' to-day, one could rarely count on Leo Golowski coming: and George was not much attracted by the other young people, most of them Jewish writers, with whom he had recently struck up a casual acquaintance, even though he had thought many of them not at all uninteresting. Speaking broadly, he found their tone to each other now too familiar, now too formal, now too facetious, now too sentimental: not one of them seemed really free and unembarrassed with the others, scarcely indeed with himself. Heinrich too had declared only the other day that he didn't want to have anything more to do with the whole set, who had become thoroughly antagonistic to him since his successes. George regarded it as perfectly possible that Heinrich, with his characteristic vanity and hypochondria, was scenting enmity and persecution where it was perhaps merely a case of indifference or antipathy. He for his part knew that it was not so much friendship that attracted him to the young author, as the curiosity to get to know a strange man more intimately. Perhaps also the interest of looking into a world which up to the present had been more or less foreign to him. For while he himself had remained somewhat reserved and had specially avoided any reference to his own relations with women, Heinrich had not only told him of his distant mistress, for whom he asserted he suffered pangs of jealousy, but also of a blonde and pretty young person with whom he had recently got into the habit of spending his evenings--merely to deaden his feelings as he ironically added; he not only told him of his life as a student and journalist in Vienna, which did not lie so far back, but also of his childhood and boyhood in that little provincial town in Bohemia where he had come into the world thirty years ago. The half-affectionate and half-disgusted tone, with its mixture of attachment and detachment, in which Heinrich spoke of his family and especially of his suffering father, who had been an advocate in that little town and a member of Parliament for a considerable period, struck George as strange and at times as almost painful. Why, he seemed to be even a little proud of the fact that when he was only twenty years old he had prophesied his blissfully confident parent's fate to the old man himself, exactly as it had subsequently fulfilled itself. After a short period of popularity and success the growth of the Anti-Semitic movement had driven him out of the German Liberal party, most of his friends had deserted and betrayed him, and a dissipated 'corps' student, who described at public meetings the Tschechs and Jews as the most dangerous enemies of Germanism, propriety and morality, while at home he thrashed his wife and had children by his servants, was his successor in the confidence of the electors and in Parliament. Heinrich, who had always felt a certain amount of irritation at his father's phrases, honest though they were, about Pan-Germanism, liberty and progress, had at first gloated over the spectacle of the old man's downfall. And it was only when the lawyer who had once been so much in demand began to lose his practice into the bargain, and the financial position of the family got worse from day to day, that the son began to experience a somewhat belated sympathy. He had given up his legal studies early enough, and had been compelled to come to the help of his family with his daily journalistic work. His first literary successes raised no echo in the melancholy household. There were sinister signs that madness was looming over his father, while now that the latter was falling into mental darkness his mother, for whom state and fatherland had ceased to exist, when her husband was not elected to Parliament, lost her grip of life and of the world. Heinrich's only sister, once a buxom clever girl, had developed melancholia after an unhappy passion for a kind of provincial Don Juan, and with morbid perverseness she put the blame for the family misfortune on the shoulders of her brother, though she had always got on with him perfectly well in her youth. Heinrich also told George about other relations whom he remembered in his early days, and a half-grotesque, half-pathetic series of strict bigoted old-fashioned Jews and Jewesses swept by George like shadows from another world. He eventually realised that Heinrich did not feel himself any homesickness for that small town with its miserable petty squabbles, or any call to return to the gloomy narrowness of his almost ruined family, and saw that Heinrich's egoism was at once his salvation and his deliverance. It was striking nine from the tower of the Church of St. Michael when George stood in front of the café. He saw Rapp the critic sitting by a window not completely covered by the curtain, with a pile of papers in front of him on the table. He had just taken his glasses off his nose and was polishing them, and the dull eyes brought a look of absolute deadness into a face that was usually so alive with clever malice. Opposite him with gestures that swept over vacancy sat Gleissner the poet in all the brilliancy of his false elegance, with a colossal black cravat in which a red stone scintillated. When George, without hearing their voices, saw the lips of these two men move, while their glances wandered to and fro, he could scarcely understand how they could stand sitting opposite each other for a quarter of an hour in that cloud of hate. It flashed across him at once that this was the atmosphere in which the life of the whole set played its comedy, and through which there darted many a redeeming flash of wit and self-analysis. What had he in common with these people? A kind of horror seized on him, he turned away and decided to look up his club once again instead of going into the café, the rooms of which he had not been in for months past. It was only a few steps away. George was soon walking up the broad marble staircase, went into the little dining-room with the light green curtain and was greeted as a long-lost friend by Ralph Skelton, the attaché of the English Embassy, and Doctor von Breitner. They talked about the tournament which was going to take place and about the banquet that was going to be organised in honour of the foreign fencing-masters; they gossiped about the new operetta at the Wiedner Theatre where Fräulein Lovan as a bayadère had come on to the stage almost naked, and about the duel between the manufacturer Heidenfeld and Lieutenant Novotny, in which the injured husband had fallen. George had a game of billiards with Skelton after the meal and won. He felt in better spirits and resolved henceforth to pay more frequent visits to these airy prettily-furnished rooms frequented by pleasant well-bred young men with whom one could converse lightly and pleasantly. Felician appeared, told his brother that it had been very amusing at the Ehrenbergs' and that Frau Marianne sent her regards. Breitner, with one of his celebrated huge cigars in his mouth, joined the brothers, and began to speak about the hanging of the portraits of some of those members of the club who had conferred services on it, mentioning particularly the one of young Labinski who had ended all by suicide in the previous year. And George could not help thinking of Grace, of that strange hot-and-cold conversation with her in the cemetery in the melting February snow and of that wonderful night on the moonlit deck of the steamer that had brought them both from Palermo to Naples. He scarcely knew which woman he longed for the most at this particular moment: for Marianne whom he had deserted, for Grace who had vanished, or for the fair young creature with whom he had walked about in a dusky church a few hours ago like a honeymoon couple in a foreign town, and who had wanted to pray to heaven for him to become a great artist. The memory stirred a gentler emotion. Was it not almost as though she set more store by his artistic future than by him himself?... No.... Not more. She had only just spoken out what had lain slumbering all the time at the bottom of her soul. It was simply that he forgot as it were only too frequently that he was an artist. But all that must be changed. He had begun and prepared so much. Just a little industry and success was assured. And next year he would go out into the world. He would soon get a post as conductor and with a sudden leap he would find himself launched in a profession that brought both money and prestige. He would get to know new people, a different sky would shine above him and white unknown arms stretched towards him mysteriously as though from distant clouds. And while the young people at his side were weighing very seriously the chances of the champions at the approaching tournament, George went on dreaming in his corner of a future full of work, fame and love. At the same time Anna was lying in her dark room. She was not asleep and her wide-open eyes were turned towards the ceiling. She had for the first time in her life the infallible feeling that there was a man in the world who could do anything he liked with her. Her mind was firmly made up to take all the happiness or all the sorrow that might lie in front of her, and she had a gentle hope, more beautiful than all her dreams of the past, of a serene and abiding happiness. III George and Heinrich dismounted from their cycles. The last villas lay behind them and the broad road with its gradual upward incline led into the forest. The foliage still hung fairly thickly on the trees, but every slight puff of wind brought away some leaves which slowly fluttered down. The shimmer of autumn floated over the yellow-reddish hills. The road ascended higher past an imposing restaurant garden approached by a flight of stone steps. Only a few people sat in the open air, most of them were in the glass verandah, as though they did not quite trust themselves to the faltering warmth of this late October day, through which a dangerous and chilly draught kept on penetrating. George thought of the melancholy memory of the winter evening on which he and Frau Marianne had paid a visit here, and had had the place to themselves. He had been bored as he had sat by her side and listened impatiently to her prattle about yesterday's concert in which Fräulein Bellini had sung songs; and when he had been obliged to get out of the carriage in a suburban street on his way back on account of Marianne's nervousness, he had taken a deep breath of deliverance. A similar feeling of release, of course, almost invariably came over him whenever he left a mistress, even after some more or less beautiful hours. Even when he had left Anna on her doorstep a few days ago, after the first evening of complete happiness, the first emotion of which he was conscious was the joy of being alone again. And immediately in its train, even before the feeling of gratitude and the dim realisation of a genuine affinity with this gentle creature who enveloped his whole being with such intimate tenderness had managed to penetrate his soul, there fluttered through it a wistful dream of voyages over a shimmering sea, of coasts which approached seductively, of walks along shores which would vanish again on the next day, of blue distances, freedom from responsibility and solitude. The next morning, when the atmosphere of the previous evening, pregnant as it was with memory and with presage, enveloped him as he woke up, the journey was of course put off to a later but not so distant though of course more convenient time. For George knew at this very hour, though without any touch of horror, that this adventure was predestined to have an end however sincerely and picturesquely it had begun. Anna had given herself to him without indicating by a word, a look or gesture that so far as she was concerned, what was practically a new chapter in her life was now beginning. And in the same way George felt quite convinced that the farewell to her, too, would be devoid of melancholy or of difficulty; a pressure of the hand, a smile and a quiet "it was very beautiful"; and he felt still easier in his mind when she came to him at their next meeting with a simple intimate greeting, quite free from that uneasy tone of nestling sorrow or accomplished fate which he had heard thrilling in the voice of many another woman, who had woken up to such a morning, though not for the first time in her life. A faintly-defined line of mountains appeared in the distance and then vanished again as the road mounted through thick-wooded country up to the heights. Pine-wood and leaf-bearing wood grew peacefully next to each other, and the foliage of beeches and birch-trees shimmered with its autumn tints through the quieter tints of the firs. Ramblers could be seen, some with knapsack, alpine-stock and nailed shoes, as though equipped for serious mountaineering; now and again cyclists would come whizzing down the road in a feverish rush. Heinrich told his companion of a cycle-tour which he had made along the Rhine at the beginning of September. "Isn't it strange," said George, "I have knocked about the world a fair bit, but I do not yet know the district where my ancestors' home was." "Really?" queried Heinrich, "and you feel no emotion when you hear the word Rhine spoken?" George smiled. "After all it is nearly a hundred years since my great-grandparents left Biebrich." "Why do you smile, George? It's a much longer time since my ancestors wandered out of Palestine, and yet many otherwise quite rational people insist on my heart throbbing with homesickness for that country." George shook his head irritably. "Why do you always keep bothering about those people? It will really soon become a positive obsession with you." "Oh, you think I mean the Anti-Semites? Not a bit of it. I am not touchy any more about them, not usually, at any rate. But you just go and ask our friend Leo what his views are on this question." "Oh, you mean him, do you? Well, he doesn't take it so literally but more or less symbolically ... or from the political standpoint," he added uncertainly. Heinrich nodded. "Both these ideas are very intimately connected in brains of that character." He sank into meditation for a while, thrust his cycle forward with slight impatient spurts and was soon a few paces in front again. He then began to talk again about his September tour. He thought of it again with what was almost emotion. Solitude, change of scene, movement: had he not enjoyed a threefold happiness? "I can scarcely describe to you," he said, "the feeling of inner freedom which thrilled through me. Do you know those moods in which all one's memories near or distant lose, as it were, their oppressive reality? all the people who have meant anything in one's life, whether it be grief, care or tenderness, seem to sweep by more like shadows, or, to put it more precisely, like forms which one has imagined oneself? And the creations of one's own imagination also come on the scene, of course, and are certainly quite as vivid as the people whom one remembers as having been real; and then one gets the most extraordinary complications between the figures of reality and of one's imagination. I could describe to you a conversation which took place between my great-uncle who is a rabbi and the Duke Heliodorus, the character you know who is the centre of my opera plot--a conversation which was amusing and profound to a degree which, speaking generally, neither life nor any opera libretto scarcely ever reaches.... Yes, such journeys are really wonderful, and so one goes on through towns which one has never seen before, and perhaps will never see again, past absolutely unknown faces which speedily vanish again for all eternity.... Then one whizzes again into the street between the rivers and the vineyards. Such moods really cleanse the soul. A pity that they are so rarely vouchsafed to one." George always felt a certain embarrassment whenever Heinrich became tragic. "Perhaps we might go on a bit," he said, and they jumped on to their machines. A narrow bumpy byroad between the forest and fields soon led them to a bare unimpressive two-storied house, which they recognised to be an inn by its brown surly signboard. On the green, which was separated from the house by the street, stood a large number of tables, many covered with cloths which had once been white, others with cloths which were embroidered. Ten or twelve young men who were members of a cycling club sat at some pushed-back tables. Several of them had taken off their coats, others with an affectation of smartness wore them with their sleeves hanging down. Designs in magnificent red and green knitting blazed on the sky-blue sweaters with their yellow edges. A chorus rang out to the sky with more power than purity: "Der Gott der Eisen wachsen liess, der wollte keine Knechte." Heinrich surveyed the company with a quick glance, half shut his eyes and said to George with clenched teeth and vehement emphasis: "I don't know if these youths are staunch, true and courageous, which they certainly think they are; but there is no doubt that they smell of wool and perspiration, and so I am all for our sitting down at a reasonable distance from them." What _does_ he want? thought George. Would he find it more congenial if a party of Polish Jews were to sit here and sing psalms? Both pushed their machines to a distant table and sat down. A waiter appeared in black evening dress sprinkled with the relics of grease and vegetables, cleared the table energetically with a dirty napkin, took their orders and went off. "Isn't it lamentable," said Heinrich, "that in the immediate outskirts of Vienna nearly all the inns should be in such a state of neglect? It makes one positively depressed." George thought that this exaggerated regret was out of place. "Oh well, in the country," he said, "you have got to take things as you find them. It is almost part of the whole thing." Heinrich would not admit the soundness of this point of view. He began to develop a plan for the erection of seven hotels on the borders of the Wienerwald, and was calculating that one would need at the outside three or four millions, when Leo Golowski suddenly appeared. He was in _mufti_, which, as was frequently the case with him, was not without a certain element of bizarreness. He wore to-day, in addition to a light-grey lounge suit, a blue velvet waistcoat and a yellow silk cravat with a smooth steel tie-ring. Both the others greeted him with delight and expressed their astonishment. Leo sat down by them. "I heard you fixing up your excursion yesterday evening, and when we were discharged from the barracks at nine o'clock to-day, I at once thought how nice it would be to have a chat for an hour or so in the open air with a couple of keen and congenial men. So I went home, threw myself into mufti and started off." He spoke in his usual tone, which always fascinated George with its charm and semi-naïveté, though when he thought of it afterwards it always seemed to possess a certain touch of irony, of insincerity in fact. He had a knack of conducting serious conversations with a cut-and-dried definiteness that really impressed George. He had recently had an opportunity of listening to discussions in the café between Leo and Heinrich on questions dealing with the theory of art, especially the relation between the laws of music and mathematics. Leo thought he was on the track of the fundamental cause of major and minor keys affecting the human soul in such different ways. George took pleasure in following the chain of his acute and lucid analysis, even though he was instinctively on his guard against the audacious attempt to ascribe all the magic and mystery of sound to the rule of laws, which were as inexorable as those in accordance with which the earth and the planets revolved, and must necessarily spring from the same origin as those eternal principles. It was only when Heinrich tried to carry Leo's theories still further, and to apply them for instance to the products of literary style, that George became impatient and immediately felt himself tacit ally of Leo who invariably smiled gently at Heinrich's tangled and fantastic expositions. The meal was served and the young men ate with appetite; Heinrich not less than the others, in spite of the fact that he expressed his opinion of the inferiority of the cooking in the most disparaging terms, and was inclined to regard the conduct of the proprietor, not merely as a sign of his personally low mind, but as characteristic of the decay of Austria in many other spheres. The conversation turned on the military position of the country, and Leo gave a satirical description of his comrades and superiors, with which both the others were very much amused. Much merriment, especially, was occasioned by a First-Lieutenant who had introduced himself to the volunteer contingent with the ominous words: "I shan't give you anything to laugh about, I am a fiend in human form." While they were still eating a gentleman came up to the table, clicked his heels together, put his hand to his cycle cap by way of salutation, addressed them with a facetious "All hail," added a friendly "Hallo" for the benefit of Leo, and introduced himself to Heinrich. "My name is Josef Rosner." He then cheerily began the conversation with these words: "I suppose you gentlemen are also on a cycling expedition...." As no one answered him he continued: "One must make the best of the last fine days, the splendid weather won't last much longer." "Won't you sit down, Herr Rosner?" asked George politely. "Much obliged but...." He pointed to his party.... "We have only just started out, we have still got a lot in front of us; going to ride down to Tull and then via Stockerau to Vienna. Excuse me, gentlemen." He took a wooden vesta from the table and lighted his cigarette with dignity. "What kind of a club are you in then, old chap?" asked Leo, and George was surprised at the "old chap," till it occurred to him that they had both known each other from boyhood. "This is the Sechshauser Cycle Club," replied Josef. In spite of the fact that no astonishment was expressed, he added: "Of course you are surprised, gentlemen, at a real Viennese like myself belonging to this suburban club, but it is only because a great friend of mine is the captain there. You see that fat chap there, just slipping into his coat. That is Jalaudek, the son of the town councillor and member of Parliament." "Jalaudek ..." repeated Heinrich with obvious loathing in his voice, and said nothing more. "Oh yes," said Leo, "that's the man, you know, who in a recent debate about the popular education board gave this magnificent definition of science. Didn't you read it?" He turned to the others. They did not remember. "'Science,'" quoted Leo, "'Science is what one Jew copies from another.'" All laughed. Even Josef, who, however, immediately started explaining: "He is really not that sort at all--I know him quite well--only he is so crude in political life ... simply because the opposing parties scratch each other's eyes out in our beloved Austria. But in ordinary life he is a very affable gentleman. The boy is much more Radical." "Is your club Christian Socialist or National German?" asked Leo courteously. "Oh, we don't make any distinction. Only of course as things are going nowadays...." He stopped with sudden embarrassment. "Come, come," said Leo encouragingly. "It is perfectly obvious that your club is not tainted by a single Jew. Why, one notices that a mile off." Josef thought it was best form to laugh. He then said: "Excuse me, no politics in the mountains! Anyway, as we are on this topic you are labouring under a delusion, gentlemen. For instance, we have a man in the club who is engaged to a Jewish girl. But they are beckoning to me already. Goodbye, gentlemen; so long, Leo; goodbye, all." He saluted again and swaggered off. The others, smiling in spite of themselves, followed him with their eyes. Then Leo suddenly turned to George and asked: "And how is his sister getting on with her singing?" "What?" said George, startled and blushing slightly. "Therese has been telling me," went on Leo quietly, "that you and Anna do music together sometimes. Is her voice all right now?" "Yes," replied George, hesitating, "I believe so; at any rate I think it is very pleasant, very melodious, especially in the deeper registers. It is a pity in my view that it is not big enough for larger rooms." "Not big enough?" repeated Leo meditatively. "How would you describe it?" Leo shrugged his shoulders and looked quietly at George. "It is like this," he said. "I personally like the voice very much, but even when Anna had the idea of going on the stage ... to speak quite frankly, I never thought anything would come of it." "You probably knew," replied George with deliberate casualness, "that Fräulein Anna suffers from a peculiar weakness of the vocal chords." "Yes, of course I knew that, but if she were cut out for an artistic career, really had it in her, I mean, she would certainly have overcome that weakness." "You think so?" "Yes, I do. That is my decided opinion. That's why I think that expressions like 'peculiar weakness' or 'her voice is not big enough' are more or less euphemisms for something more fundamental, more psychological. It's quite clear that her fate line says nothing about her being an artist, that's a fact. She was, so to speak, predestined from the beginning to end her days in respectable domesticity." Heinrich enthusiastically caught up the theory of the fate line, and led their thoughts in his own erratic way from the sphere of cleverness to the sphere of sophistry, and from the sphere of sophistry to the sphere of the nonsensical. He then suggested that they should bask for half an hour in the meadow in the sun. "It will probably not shine so warm again during this year." The others agreed. A hundred yards from the inn George and Leo stretched themselves out on their cloaks. Heinrich sat down on the grass, crossed his arms over his knees, and looked in front of him. At his feet the sward sloped down to the forest. Still deeper down rested the villas of Neuwaldegg, buried in loose foliage. The spire-crosses and dazzling windows of the town shone out from the bluish-grey clouds, and far away, as though lifted up by a moving haze, the plain swept away to a gradual darkness. Pedestrians were walking over the fields towards the inn. Some gave them a greeting as they passed, and one of them, a slim young man who led a child by the hand, remarked to Heinrich: "This is a really fine day, just like May." Heinrich felt at first his heart go out as it were involuntarily, as it often did towards casual and unexpected friendliness of this description. But he immediately pulled himself together, for of course he realised that the young man was only intoxicated, as it were, with the mildness of the day and the peace of the landscape; that at the bottom of his soul he too felt hostile to him, just like all the others who had strolled past him so harmlessly, and he himself found difficulty in understanding why the view of these gently sloping hills and the town merging into twilight should affect him with so sweet a melancholy, in view of the fact that the men who lived there meant so little good by him, and meant him even that little but rarely. The cycling club whizzed along the street which was quite close to them. The jauntily-worn coats fluttered, the badges gleamed and crude laughter rang out over the fields. "Awful people," said Leo casually without changing his place. Heinrich motioned down below with a vague movement of his head. "And fellows like that," he said with set teeth, "imagine that they are more at home here than we are." "Oh, well," answered Leo quietly, "they aren't so far out in that, those fellows there." Heinrich turned scornfully towards him: "Excuse me, Leo, I forgot for a moment that you yourself wish to count as only here on sufferance." "I don't wish that for a minute," replied Leo with a smile, "and you need not misunderstand me so perversely. One really can't bear a grudge against these people if they regard themselves as the natives and you and me as the foreigners. After all, it is only the expression of their healthy instinct for an anthropological fact which is confirmed by history. Neither Jewish nor Christian sentimentalism can do anything against that and all the consequences which follow from it." And turning to George he asked him in a tone which was only too courteous: "Don't you think so too?" George reddened and cleared his throat, but had no opportunity of answering, for Heinrich, on whose forehead two deep furrows now appeared, immediately began to speak with considerable bitterness. "My own instinct is at any rate quite as much a rule of conduct for me as the instinct of Herren Jalaudek Junior and Senior, and that instinct tells me infallibly that my home is here, just here, and not in some land which I don't know, the description of which doesn't appeal to me the least bit and which certain people now want to persuade me is my fatherland on the strength of the argument that that was the place from which my ancestors some thousand years ago were scattered into the world. One might further observe on that point that the ancestors of the Herren Jalaudek and even of our friend Baron von Wergenthin were quite as little at home here as mine and yours." "You mustn't be angry with me," retorted Leo, "but your standpoint in these matters is really somewhat limited. You are always thinking about yourself and the really quite irrelevant circumstance ... excuse my saying irrelevant circumstance, that you are an author who happens to write in the German language because he was born in a German country, and happens to write about Austrian people and Austrian conditions because he lives in Austria. But the primary question is not about you, or about me either, or even about the few Jewish officials who do not get promoted, the few Jewish volunteers who do not get made officers, the Jewish lecturers who either get their Professorship too late or not at all--those are sheer secondary inconveniences so to speak; we have to deal, in considering this question, with quite another class of men whom you know either imperfectly or not at all. We have to deal with destinies to which, I assure you, my dear Heinrich, that in spite of your real duty to do so, I am sure you have not yet given sufficient thorough thought. I am sure you haven't.... Otherwise you wouldn't be able to discuss all these matters in the superficial and the ... egoistic way you are now doing." He then told them of his experiences at the Bâle Zionist Congress in which he had taken part in the previous year, and where he had obtained a deeper insight into the character and psychological condition of the Jewish people than he had ever done before. With these people, whom he saw at close quarters for the first time, the yearning for Palestine, he knew it for a fact, was no artificial pose. A genuine feeling was at work within them, a feeling that had never become extinguished and was now flaming up afresh under the stress of necessity. No one could doubt that who had seen, as he had, the holy scorn shine out in their looks when a speaker exclaimed that they must give up the hope of Palestine for the time being and content themselves with settlements in Africa and the Argentine. Why, he had seen old men, not uneducated men either, no, learned and wise old men, weeping because they must needs fear that that land of their fathers, which they themselves would never be able to tread, even in the event of the realisation of the boldest Zionist plans, would perhaps never be open to their children and their children's children. George listened with surprise, and was even somewhat moved. But Heinrich, who had been walking up and down the field during Leo's narrative, exclaimed that he regarded Zionism as the worst affliction that had ever burst upon the Jews, and that Leo's own words had convinced him of it more profoundly than any previous argument or experience. National feeling and religion, those had always been the words which had embittered him with their wanton, yes malignant, ambiguity. Fatherland.... Why, that was nothing more than a fiction, a political idea floating in the air, changeable, intangible. It was only the home, not the fatherland which had any real significance ... and so the feeling of home was synonymous with the right to a home. And so far as religions were concerned, he liked Christian and Jewish mythology quite as much as Greek and Indian; but as soon as they began to force their dogmas upon him, he found them all equally intolerable and repulsive. And he felt himself akin with no one, no, not with any one in the whole world: with the weeping Jews in Ble as little as with the bawling Pan-Germans in the Austrian Parliament; with Jewish usurers as little as with noble robber-knights; with a Zionist bar-keeper as little as with a Christian Socialist grocer. And least of all would the consciousness of a persecution which they had all suffered, and of a hatred whose burden fell upon them all, make him feel linked to men from whom he felt himself so far distant in temperament. He did not mind recognising Zionism as a moral principle and a social movement, if it could honestly be regarded in that light, but the idea of the foundation of a Jewish state on a religious and national basis struck him as a nonsensical defiance of the whole spirit of historical evolution. "And you too, at the bottom of your heart," he explained, standing still in front of Leo, "you don't think either that this goal will ever prove attainable; why, you don't even wish it, although you fancy yourself in your element trying to get there. What is your home-country, Palestine? A geographical idea. What does the faith of your father mean to you? A collection of customs which you have now ceased to observe and some of which seem as ridiculous and in as bad taste to you, as they do to me." They went on talking for a long time, now vehemently and almost offensively, then calmly, and in the honest endeavour to convince each other. Frequently they were surprised to find themselves holding the same opinion, only again to lose touch with each other the next moment in a new contradiction. George, stretched on his cloak, listened to them. His mind soon took the side of Leo, whose words seemed to thrill with an ardent pity for the unfortunate members of his race, and who would turn proudly away from people who would not treat him as their equal. Soon he felt nearer again in spirit to Heinrich, who treated with anger and scorn the attempt, as wild as it was short-sighted, to collect from all the corners of the world the members of a race whose best men had always merged in the culture of the land of their adoption, or had at any rate contributed to it, and to send them all together to a foreign land, a land to which no homesickness called them. And George gradually appreciated how difficult those same picked men about whom Heinrich had been speaking, the men who were hatching in their souls the future of humanity, would find it to come to a decision. How dazed must be their consciousness of their existence, their value and their rights, tossed to and fro as they were between defiance and exhaustion, between the fear of appearing importunate and their bitter resentment at the demand that they must needs yield to an insolent majority, between the inner consciousness of being at home in the country where they lived and worked, and their indignation at finding themselves persecuted and insulted in that very place. He saw for the first time the designation Jew, which he himself had often used flippantly, jestingly and contemptuously, in a quite new and at the same time melancholy light. There dawned within him some idea of this people's mysterious destiny, which always expressed itself in every one who sprang from the race, not less in those who tried to escape from that origin of theirs, as though it were a disgrace, a pain or a fairy tale that did not concern them at all, than in those who obstinately pointed back to it as though to a piece of destiny, an honour or an historical fact based on an immovable foundation. And as he lost himself in the contemplation of the two speakers, and looked at their figures, which stood out in relief against the reddish-violet sky in sharply-drawn, violently-moving lines, it occurred to him, and not for the first time, that Heinrich who insisted on being at home here, resembled both in figure and gesture some fanatical Jewish preacher, while Leo, who wanted to go back to Palestine with his people, reminded him in feature and in bearing of the statue of a Greek youth which he had once seen in the Vatican or the Naples museum. And he understood again quite well, as his eye followed with pleasure Leo's lively aristocratic gestures, how Anna could have experienced a mad fancy for her friend's brother years ago in that summer by the seaside. Heinrich and Leo were still standing opposite each other on the grass, while their conversation became lost in a maze of words. Their sentences rushed violently against each other, wrestled convulsively, shot past each other and vanished into nothingness, and George noticed at some moment or other that he was only listening to the sound of the speeches, without being able to follow their meaning. A cool breeze came up from the plain, and George got up from the sward with a slight shiver. The others, who had almost forgotten his presence, were thus called back again to actualities, and they decided to leave. Full daylight still shone over the landscape, but the sun was couched faint and dark on the long strip of an evening cloud. "Conversations like this," said Heinrich, as he strapped his cloak on to his cycle, "always leave me with a sense of dissatisfaction, which even goes as far as a painful feeling in the neighbourhood of the stomach. Yes really. They just lead absolutely nowhere. And after all, what do political views matter to men who don't make politics their career or their business? Do they exert the slightest influence on the policy and moulding of existence? You, Leo, are just like myself; neither of us will ever do anything else, can ever do anything else, than just accomplish that which, in view of our character and our capacities, we are able to accomplish. You will never migrate to Palestine all your life long, even if Jewish states were founded and you were offered a position as prime-minister, or at any rate official pianist----" "Oh, you can't know that," interrupted Leo. "I know it for a certainty," said Heinrich. "That's why I'll admit, into the bargain, that in spite of my complete indifference to every single form of religion I would positively never allow myself to be baptised, even if it were possible--though that is less the case to-day than ever it was--of escaping once and for all Anti-Semitic bigotry and villainy by a dodge like that." "Hum," said Leo, "but supposing the mediæval stake were to be lighted again." "In that case," retorted Heinrich, "I hereby solemnly bind myself to take your advice implicitly." "Oh," objected George, "those times will certainly not come again." Both the others were unable to help laughing at George being kind enough to reassure them in that way about their future, in the name, as Heinrich observed, of the whole of Christendom. In the meanwhile they had crossed the field. George and Heinrich pushed their cycles forward up the bumpy by-road, while Leo at their side walked on the turf with his cloak fluttering in the wind. They were all silent for quite a time, as though exhausted. At the place where the bad path turned off towards the broad high road, Leo remained stationary and said: "We will have to leave each other here, I am afraid." He shook hands with George and smiled. "You must have been pretty well bored to-day," he said. George blushed. "I say now, you must take me for a...." Leo held George's hand in a firm grip. "I take you for a very shrewd man and also for a very good sort. Do you believe me?" George was silent. "I should like to know," continued Leo, "whether you believe me, George. I am keen on knowing." His voice assumed a tone of genuine sincerity. "Why, of course I believe you," replied George, still, however, with a certain amount of impatience. "I am glad," said Leo, "for I really feel a sympathy between us, George." He looked straight into his eyes, then shook hands once more with him and Heinrich and turned to go. But George suddenly had the feeling that this young man who with his fluttering cloak and his head slightly bent forward was striding down-hill in the middle of the broad street was not waiting to any "home," but to some foreign sphere somewhere, where no one could follow him. He found this feeling all the more incomprehensible since he had not only spent many hours recently with Leo in conversation at the café, but had also received all possible information from Anna about him, his family and his position in life. He knew that that summer at the seaside, which now lay six years back, as did Anna's youthful infatuation, had marked the last summer which the Golowski family had enjoyed free from trouble, and that the business of the old man had been completely ruined in the subsequent winter. It had been extraordinary, according to Anna's account, how all the members of the family had adapted themselves to the altered conditions, as though they had been long prepared for this revolution. The family removed from their comfortable house in the Rathaus quarter to a dismal street in the neighbourhood of the Augarten. Herr Golowski undertook all kinds of commission business while Frau Golowski did needlework for sale. Therese gave lessons in French and English and at first continued to attend the dramatic school. It was a young violin player belonging to an impoverished noble Russian family who awakened her interest in political questions. She soon abandoned her art, for which, as a matter of fact, she had always shown more inclination than real talent, and in a short time she was in the full swing of the Social Democratic movement as a speaker and agitator. Leo, without agreeing with her views, enjoyed her fresh and audacious character. He often attended meetings with her, but as he was not keen on being impressed by magniloquence, whether it took the form of promises which were never fulfilled or of threats which disappeared into thin air, he found it good fun to point out to her, on the way home, with an irresistible acuteness, the inconsistencies in her own speeches and those of the members of her party. But he always made a particular point of trying to convince her that she would never have been able to forget so completely her great mission for days and weeks on end, if her pity for the poor and the suffering were really as deep an emotion as she imagined. Leo's own life, moreover, had no definite object. He attended technical science lectures, gave piano lessons, sometimes went so far as to plan out a musical career, and practised five or six hours a day for weeks on end. But it was still impossible to forecast what he would finally decide on. Inasmuch it was his way to wait almost unconsciously for a miracle to save him from anything disagreeable, he had put off his year of service till he was face to face with the final time-limit, and now in his twenty-fifth year he was serving for the first time. Their parents allowed Leo and Therese to go their own way, and in spite of their manifold differences of opinion there seemed to be no serious discord in the Golowski family. The mother usually sat at home, sewed, knitted and crocheted, while the father went about his business with increasing apathy, and liked best of all to watch the chess-players in the café, a pleasure which enabled him to forget the ruin of his life. Since the collapse of his business he seemed unable to shake off a certain feeling of embarrassment towards his children, so that he was almost proud when Therese would give him now and again an article which she had written to read, or when Leo was good enough to play a game on Sundays with him on the board he loved so well. It always seemed to George as though his own sympathy for Leo were fundamentally connected with Anna's long-past fancy for him. He felt, and not for the first time, curiously attracted to a man to whom a soul which now belonged to him, had flown in years gone by. George and Heinrich had mounted their cycles, and were riding along a narrow road through the thick forest that loomed darker and darker. A little later, as the forest retreated behind them again on both sides, they had the setting sun at their back, while the long shadows of their bodies kept running along in front of their cycles. The slope of the road became more and more pronounced and soon led them between low houses which were overhung with reddish foliage. A very old man sat in a seat in front of the door, a pale child looked out of an open window. Otherwise not a single human being was to be seen. "Like an enchanted village," said George. Heinrich nodded. He knew the place. He had been here with his love on a wonderful summer day this year. He thought of it and burning longing throbbed through his heart. And he remembered the last hours that he had spent with her in Vienna in his cool room with the drawn-down blinds, through whose interstices the hot August morning had glittered in: he remembered their last walk through the Sunday quiet of the cool stone streets and through the old empty courtyards--and the complete absence of any idea that all this was for the last time. For it was only the next day that the letter had come, the ghastly letter in which she had written that she had wished to spare him the pain of farewell, and that when he read these words, she would already be quite a long way over the frontier on her journey to the new foreign town. The road became more animated. Charming villas appeared encircled with cosy little gardens, wooded hills sloped gently upwards behind the houses. They saw once again the expanse of the valley as the waning day rested over meadows and fields. The lamps had been lit in a great empty restaurant garden. A hasty darkness seemed to be stealing down from every quarter simultaneously. They were now at the cross-roads. George and Heinrich got off and lit cigarettes. "Right or left?" asked Heinrich. George looked at his watch. "Six,... and I've got to be in town by eight." "So I suppose we can't dine together?" said Heinrich. "I am afraid not." "It's a pity. Well, we'll take the short cut then through Sievering." They lit their lamps and pushed their cycles through the forest in a long serpentine. One tree after another in succession sprang out of the darkness into the radiance of the globes of light and retreated again into the night. The wind soughed through the foliage with increased force and the leaves rustled underneath. Heinrich felt a quite gentle fear, such as frequently came over him when it was dark in the open country. He felt, as it were, disillusioned at the thought of having to spend the evening alone. He was in a bad temper with George, and was irritated into the bargain at the latter's reserve towards himself. He resolved also, and not for the first time, not to discuss his own personal affairs with George any more. It was better so. He did not need to confide in anybody or obtain anybody's sympathy. He had always felt at his best when he had gone his own way alone. He had found that out often enough. Why then reveal his soul to another? He needed acquaintances to go walks and excursions with, and to discuss all the manifold problems of life and art in cold shrewd fashion--he needed women for a fleeting embrace; but he needed no friend and no mistress. In that way his life would pass with greater dignity and serenity. He revelled in these resolutions, and felt a growing consciousness of toughness and superiority. The darkness of the forest lost its terror, and he walked through the gently rustling night as though through a kindred element. The height was soon reached. The dark sky lay starless over the grey road and the haze-breathing fields that stretched on both sides towards the deceptive distance of the wooded hills. A light was shining from a toll-house quite near them. They mounted their cycles again and rode back as quickly as the darkness permitted. George wished to be soon at the journey's end. It struck him as strangely unreal that he was to see again in an hour and a half that quiet room which no one else knew of besides Anna and himself; that dark room with the oil-prints on the wall, the blue velvet sofa, the cottage piano, on which stood the photographs of unknown people and a bust of Schiller in white plaster; with its high narrow windows, opposite which the old dark grey church towered aloft. Lamps were burning all the way along. The roads again became more open and they were given a last view of the heights. Then they went at top speed, first between well-kept villas, finally through a populous noisy main road until they got deeper into the town. They got off at the Votive Church. "Good-bye," said George, "and I hope to see you again in the café to-morrow." "I don't know ..." replied Heinrich, and as George looked at him questioningly he added: "It is possible that I shall go away." "I say, that is a sudden decision." "Yes, one gets caught sometimes by...." "Lovesickness," filled in George with a smile. "Or fear," said Heinrich with a short laugh. "You certainly have no cause for that," said George. "Do you know for certain?" asked Heinrich. "You told us so yourself." "What!" "That you have news every day." "Yes, that is quite true, every day. I get tender ardent letters. Every day by the same post. But what does that prove? Why, I write letters which are yet more ardent and even more tender and yet...." "Yes," said George, who understood him. And he hazarded the question: "Why don't you stay with her?" Heinrich shrugged his shoulders. "Tell me yourself, George, wouldn't it strike you as slightly humorous for a man to burn his boats on account of a love affair like that and trot about the world with a little actress...." "Personally, I should regret it very much ... but humorous ... where does the humour come in?" "No, I have no desire to do it," said Heinrich in a hard voice. "But if you ... but if you were to take it very seriously ... if you asked her point blank ... mightn't the young lady perhaps give up her career?" "Possibly, but I am not going to ask her, I don't want to ask her. No, better pain than responsibility." "Would it be such a great responsibility?" asked George. "What I mean is ... is the girl's talent so pronounced, is she really so keen on her art, that it would be really a sacrifice for her to give the thing up." "Has she got talent?" said Heinrich. "Why, I don't know myself. Why, I even think she is the one creature in the world about whose talent I would not trust myself to give an opinion. Every time I have seen her on the stage her voice has rung in my ears like the voice of an unknown person, and as though, too, it came from a greater distance than all the other voices. It is really quite remarkable.... But you are bound to have seen her act, George. What's your impression? Tell me quite frankly." "Well, quite frankly ... I don't remember her properly. You'll excuse me, I didn't know then, you see.... When you talk of her I always see in my mind's eye a head of reddish-blonde hair that falls a little over the forehead--and very big black roving eyes with a small pale face." "Yes, roving eyes," repeated Heinrich, bit his lips and was silent for a while. "Good-bye," he said suddenly. "You'll be sure to write to me?" asked George. "Yes, of course. Any way I am bound to be coming back again," he added, and smiled stiffly. "_Bon voyage_," said George, and shook hands with him with unusual affection. This did Heinrich good. This warm pressure of the hand not only made him suddenly certain that George did not think him ridiculous, but also, strangely enough, that his distant mistress was faithful to him and that he himself was a man who could take more liberties with life than many others. George looked after him as he hurried off on his cycle. He felt again as he had felt a few hours before, on Leo's departure, that some one was vanishing into an unknown land; and he realised at this moment that in spite of all the sympathy he felt for both of them he would never attain with either that unrestrained sense of intimacy which had united him last year with Guido Schönstein and previously with poor Labinski. He reflected whether perhaps the fundamental reason for this was not perhaps the difference of race between him and them, and he asked himself whether leaving out of account the conversation between the two of them, he would of his own initiative have realised so clearly this feeling of aloofness. He doubted it. Did he not as a matter of fact feel himself nearer, yes even more akin, to these two and to many others of their race than to many men who came from the same stock as his own? Why, did he not feel quite distinctly that deep down somewhere there were many stronger threads of sympathy running between him and those two men, than between him and Guido or perhaps even his own brother? But if that was so, would he not have been bound to have taken some opportunity this afternoon to have said as much to those two men? to have appealed to them? "Just trust me, don't shut me out. Just try to treat me as a friend...." And as he asked himself why he had not done it, and why he had scarcely taken any part in their conversation, he realised with astonishment that during the whole time he had not been able to shake off a kind of guilty consciousness of having not been free during his whole life from a certain hostility towards the foreigners, as Leo called them himself, a kind of wanton hostility which was certainly not justified by his own personal experience, and had thus contributed his own share to that distrust and defiance with which so many persons, whom he himself might have been glad to take an opportunity to approach, had shut themselves off from him. This thought roused an increasing _malaise_ within him which he could not properly analyse, and which was simply the dull realisation that clean relations could not flourish even between clean men in an atmosphere of folly, injustice and disingenuousness. He rode homewards faster and faster, as though that would make him escape this feeling of depression. Arrived home, he changed quickly, so as not to keep Anna waiting too long. He longed for her as he had never done before. He felt as though he had come home from a far journey to the one being who wholly belonged to him. IV George stood by the window. The stone backs of the bearded giants who bore on their powerful arms the battered armorial bearings of a long-past race were arched just beneath him. Straight opposite, out of the darkness of ancient houses the steps crept up to the door of the old grey church which loomed amid the falling flakes of snow as though behind a moving curtain. The light of a street lamp on the square shone palely through the waning daylight. The snowy street beneath, which, though centrally situated, was remote from all bustle, was even quieter than usual on this holiday afternoon, and George felt once more, as indeed he always did when he ascended the broad staircase of the old palace that had been transformed into an apartment house, and stepped into the spacious room with its low-arched ceiling, that he was escaping from his usual world and had entered the other half of his wonderful double life. He heard a key grating in the door and turned round. Anna came in. George clasped her ecstatically in his arms, and kissed her on the forehead and mouth. Her dark-blue jacket, her broad-rimmed hat, her fur boa were all covered with snow. "You have been working then," said Anna, as she took off her things and pointed to the table where music paper with writing on it lay close to the green-shaded lamp. "I have just looked through the quintette, the first movement, there is still a lot to do to it." "But it will be extraordinarily fine then." "We'll hope so. Do you come from home, Anna?" "No, from Bittner's." "What, to-day, Sunday?" "Yes, the two girls have got a lot behind-hand through the measles, and that has to be made up. I am very pleased too, for money reasons for one thing." "Making your fortune!" "And then one escapes for an hour or two at any rate from the happy home." "Yes," said George, put Anna's boa over the back of a chair and stroked the fur nervously with his fingers. Anna's remark, in which he could detect a gentle reproach, as it were, a reproach too which he had heard before, gave him an unpleasant feeling. She sat down on the sofa, put her hands on her temples, stroked her dark blonde wavy hair backwards and looked at George with a smile. He stood leaning on the chest of drawers, with both hands in his jacket pocket, and began to tell her of the previous evening, which he had spent with Guido and his violinist. The young lady had, at the Count's wish, been for some weeks taking instruction in the Catholic religion with the confessor of an Arch-duchess; she, on her side, made Guido read Nietzsche and Ibsen. But according to George's account the only result of this course of study which one could report so far was that the Count had developed the habit of nicknaming his Mistress "the Rattenmamsell," after that wonderful character out of _Little Eyolf_. Anna had nothing very bright to communicate about her last evening. They had had visitors. "First," Anna told him, "my mother's two cousins, then an office friend of my father's to play tarok. Even Josef was domesticated for once and lay on the sofa from three to five. Then his latest pal, Herr Jalaudek, who paid me quite a lot of attention." "Really, really." "He _was_ fascinating. I'll just tell you: a violet cravat with yellow spots which puts yours quite into the shade. He paid me the honour too of suggesting that I should help him in a so-called charity-performance at the 'Wild Man,' for the benefit of the Wahringer Church Building Society." "Of course you accepted?" "I excused myself on account of my lack of voice and want of religious feeling." "So far as the voice is concerned...." She interrupted him. "No, George," she said lightly, "I have given up that hope at last." He looked at her and tried to read her glance, but it remained clear and free. The organ from the church sounded softly and dully. "Right," said George, "I have brought you the ticket for to-morrow's 'Carmen.'" "Thanks very much," she answered, and took the card. "Are you going too, dear?" "Yes, I have a box in the third tier, and I have asked Bermann to come. I am taking the music with me, as I did the other day at Lohengrin, and I shall practise conducting again. At the back, of course. You can have no idea what you learn that way. I should like to make a suggestion," he added hesitatingly. "Won't you come and have supper somewhere with me and Bermann after the theatre?" She was silent. He continued: "I should really like it if you got to know him better. With all his faults he is an interesting fellow and...." "I am not a Rattenmamsell," she interrupted sharply, while her face immediately assumed its stiff conventional expression. George compressed the corners of his mouth. "That doesn't apply to me, my dear child. There are many points of difference between Guido and me. But as you like." He walked up and down the room. She remained sitting on the ottoman. "So you are going to Ehrenbergs' this evening?" she asked. "You know I am. I have already refused twice recently, and I couldn't very well do so this time." "You needn't make any excuses, George, I am invited too." "Where to?" "I am going to Ehrenbergs' too." "Really?" he exclaimed involuntarily. "Why are you so surprised?" she asked sharply; "it is clear that they don't yet know that I am not fit to be associated with any more." "My dear Anna, what is the matter with you to-day? Why are you so touchy? Supposing they did know ... do you think that would prevent people from inviting you? Quite the contrary. I am convinced that you would really go up in Frau Ehrenberg's respect." "And the sweet Else, I suppose, would positively envy me. Don't you think so? Anyway, she wrote me quite a nice letter. Here it is. Won't you read it?" George ran his eye over it, thought its kindness was somewhat deliberate, made no further remark and gave it back to Anna. "Here is another one too, if it interests you." "From Doctor Stauber. Indeed? Would he mind if he knew that you gave it to me to read?" "Why are you so considerate all of a sudden?" and as though to punish him she added, "there are probably a great many things that he would mind." George read the letter quickly through to himself. Berthold described in his dry way, with an occasional tinge of humour, the progress of his work at the Pasteur Institute, his walks, his excursions and the theatres he had visited, and quite a lot of remarks also of a general character. But in spite of his eight pages the letter did not contain the slightest allusion to either past or future. George asked casually "How long is he staying in Paris?" "As you see he doesn't write a single word about his return." "Your friend Therese was recently of opinion that his colleagues in the party would like to have him back again." "Oh, has she been in the café again?" "Yes. I spoke to her there two or three days ago. She really amuses me a great deal." "Really?" "She starts off, of course, by always being very superior, even with me. Presumably because I am one of those who rot away their life with art and silly things like that, while there are so many more important things to do in the world. But when she warms up a bit it turns out that she is every bit as interested as we ordinary people in all kinds of silly things." "She easily gets warmed up," said Anna imperturbably. George walked up and down and went on speaking. "She was really magnificent the other day at the fencing tournament in the Musikverein rooms. By-the-bye, who was the gentleman who was up there in the gallery with her?" Anna shrugged her shoulders. "I did not have the privilege of being at the tournament, and besides, I don't know all Therese's cavaliers." "I presume," said George, "it was a comrade, in every sense of the term. At any rate he was very glum and was pretty badly dressed. When Therese clapped Felician's victory he positively collapsed with jealousy." "What did Therese really tell you about Doctor Berthold?" asked Anna. "Ho, ho!" said George jestingly, "the lady still appears to be keenly interested." Anna did not answer. "Well," reported George, "I can give you the information that they want to make him stand in the autumn for the Landtag. I can quite understand it too, in view of his brilliant gifts as a speaker." "What do you know about it? Have you ever heard him speak?" "Of course I have; don't you remember? At your place." "There is really no occasion for you to make fun of him." "I assure you I'd no idea of doing so." "I noticed at once that he struck you at the time as somewhat funny. He and his father, too. Why, you immediately ran away from them." "Not at all, Anna. You are doing me a great injustice in making such insinuations." "They may have their weaknesses, both of them, but at any rate they belong to the people whom one can count on. And that is something." "Have I disputed that, Anna? Upon my word, I have never heard you talk so illogically. What do you want me to do then? Did you want me by any chance to be jealous about that letter?" "Jealous? that would be the finishing touch. You with your past." George shrugged his shoulders. Memories swam up in his mind of similar wrangles in the course of previous relationships, memories of those mysterious sudden discords and estrangements which usually simply meant the beginning of the end. Had he really got as far as all that already with his good sensible Anna? He walked up and down the room moodily and almost depressed. At times he threw a fleeting glance towards his love who sat silent in her corner of the sofa, rubbing her hands lightly as though she were cold. The organ rang out more heavily than before in the silence of the room that had suddenly become so melancholy; the voices of singing men became audible and the window-panes rattled softly. George's glance fell on the little Christmas-tree which stood on the sideboard and whose candles had burnt the evening before last for the benefit of Anna and himself. Half-bored, half-nervous, he took a wooden vesta out of his pocket and began to light the little candles one after another. Then Anna's voice suddenly rang out to him. "There is no one I should prefer to old Doctor Stauber to confide in about anything serious." George turned coldly towards her and blew out a burning vesta which he still held in his hand. He knew immediately what Anna meant, and felt surprised that he had never given it another thought since their last meeting. He went up to her and took hold of her hand. Now for the first time she looked up. Her expression was impenetrable, her features immobile. "I say, Anna...." He sat down by her side on the ottoman with both her hands in his. She was silent. "Why don't you speak?" She shrugged her shoulders. "There is nothing new to tell you," she explained simply. "I see," he said slowly. It passed through his mind that her strange sensitiveness to-day was to be regarded as symptomatic of the condition to which she was alluding, and the uneasiness in his soul increased. "But you can't tell definitely for a good time yet," he said in a somewhat cooler tone than he really meant. "And ... even supposing ..." he added with artificial cheerfulness. "So you would forgive me?" she asked with a smile. He pressed her to him and suddenly felt quite transported. A vivid and almost pathetic feeling of love flamed up in him for the soft good creature whom he held in his arms, and who could never occasion him, he felt deeply convinced, any serious suffering. "It really wouldn't be so bad," he said cheerily, "you would just leave Vienna for a time, that's all." "Well, it certainly wouldn't be as simple as you seem all of a sudden to think it would." "Why not? You can soon find an excuse; besides, whom does it concern? Us two. No one else. But as far as I am concerned. I can get away any day as you know; can stay away too as long as I want to. I have not yet signed any contract for next year," he added with a smile. He then got up to put out the Christmas candles, whose tiny flames had almost burnt down to the end, and went on speaking with increasing liveliness. "It would be positively delightful; just think of it, Anna! We should go away at the end of February or the beginning of March. South, of course, Italy, or perhaps the sea. We would stay at some quiet place where no one knows us, in a beautiful hotel with enormous grounds. And wouldn't one be able to work there, by Jove?" "So that's why!" she said, as though she suddenly understood him. He laughed, held her more tightly in his arms and she pressed herself against his breast. There was no longer any noise from outside. The last sounds of the organ and the men's voices had died away. The snow curtains swept down in front of the window.... George and Anna were happy as they had never been before. While they were at peace in the darkness he spoke about his musical plans for the near future, and told her, so far as he was able, about Heinrich's opera plot. The room became filled with shimmering shadows. The clatter of a wedding-feast swept through the fantastic hall of an ancient king. A passionate youth stole in and thrust his dagger into the prince. A dark sentence was pronounced more sinister than death itself. A sluggish ship sailed on a darkling flood towards an unknown goal. At the youth's feet there rested a princess, who had once been the betrothed of a duke. An unknown man approached the shining boat with strange tidings; fools, star-gazers, dancers, courtiers swept past. Anna had listened in silence. When he had finished George was curious to learn what impression the fleeting pictures had made upon her. "I can't say properly," she replied. "I certainly feel quite puzzled to-day, how you are going to make anything real out of this more or less fantastic stuff." "Of course you can't realise it yet to-day--particularly after just hearing me describe it.... But you do feel, don't you? the musical atmosphere. I have already noted down a few _motifs_--and I should be really very glad if Bermann would soon get to work seriously." "If I were you, George ... may I tell you something?" "Of course, fire ahead." "Well, if I were you, I'd first get the quintette really finished. It can't want much doing to it now." "Not much, and yet ... besides, you mustn't forget that I've started all kinds of other things lately. The two pianoforte pieces, then the orchestra _scherzo_--I've already got pretty far with that. But it certainly ought to be made part of a symphony." Anna made no answer. George noticed that her thoughts were roving, and he asked her where she had run away to this time. "Not so far," she replied; "it only just passed through my mind what a lot of things can happen before the opera is really ready." "Yes," said George slowly, with a slight trace of embarrassment. "If one could just look into the future." She sighed quite softly and he pressed her nearer to him, almost as though he pitied her. "Don't worry, my darling, don't worry," he said. "I am here all right, and I always shall be here." He thought he felt what she was thinking; can't he say anything better than that?... anything stronger? anything to take away all my fear--take it away from me for ever? And he asked her disingenuously, as though conscious of running a risk: "What are you thinking of?" And as she was obstinately silent he said once more: "Anna, what are you thinking of?" "Something very strange," she answered gently. "What is it?" "That the house is already built, where it will come into the world--that we have no idea where ... that is what I couldn't help thinking of." "Thinking of that!" he said, strangely moved. And pressing her to his heart with a love that flamed up afresh, "I will never desert you, you two...." When the room was lighted again they were in very good spirits, plucked the last forgotten sweets from the branches of the little Christmas-tree and looked forward to their next meeting among people who were absolutely indifferent to them, as though it were quite a jolly adventure, laughed and talked exuberant nonsense. As soon as Anna had gone away George locked his music manuscript up in a drawer, put out the lamp and opened the window. The snow was falling lightly and thinly. An old man was coming up the steps and his laboured breathing sounded through the still air. Opposite the silent church towered aloft ... George remained awhile standing at the window. He felt almost convinced at this moment that Anna was mistaken in her surmise. He felt almost reassured as there came into his mind that remark of Leo Golowski's that Anna was destined to end her days in respectable middle-class life. Having a child by a lover really could not be part of her fate line. It was not part of his fate line either to carry the burden of serious obligation, to be tied fast from to-day and perhaps for all time to a person of the other sex; to become a father when he was still so young, a father ... the word sank into his soul, oppressive, almost sinister. He went into the Ehrenbergs' drawing-room at eight o'clock in the evening. He was met by the sound of waltz music. Old Eissler sat at the piano with his long grey beard almost drooping on to the keys. George remained at the entrance in order not to disturb him, and met welcoming glances from every quarter. Old Eissler was playing his celebrated Viennese dances and songs with a soft touch and powerful rhythm, and George enjoyed, as he always did, the sweet crooning melodies. "Splendid," said Frau Ehrenberg, when the old man got up. "Keep your big words for great occasions, Leonie," answered Eissler, whose time-honoured privilege it was to call all women and girls by their Christian names. And it seemed to do everybody good to hear themselves spoken to by this handsome old man with his deep ringing voice, in which there quivered frequently, as it were, a sentimental echo of the vivid days of his youth. George asked him if all his compositions had appeared in print. "Very few, dear Baron. Unfortunately I can scarcely write a single note." "It would certainly be an awful pity if these charming melodies were to be absolutely lost." "Yes, I have often told him that," put in Frau Ehrenberg, "but unfortunately he is one of those men who have never taken themselves quite seriously." "No, that is a mistake, Leonie. You know how I began my artistic career: I wanted to compose a great opera. Of course I was seventeen years old at the time and madly in love with a great singer." Frau Oberberger's voice rang out from the table towards the corner: "I am sure it was a chorus girl." "You are making a mistake, Katerina," answered Eissler. "Chorus girls were never my line. It was, as a matter of fact, a platonic love, like most of the great passions of my life." "Were you so clumsy?" queried Frau Oberberger. "I was often that as well," replied Eissler, in his sonorous voice and with dignity. "For as far as I can see I could have had as much luck as a hussar riding-master, but I don't regret having been clumsy." Frau Ehrenberger nodded appreciatively. "Then one would not be making a mistake, Herr Eissler," remarked Nürnberger, "if one attributed the chief part in your life to melancholy memories?" Frau Ehrenberger nodded again. She was delighted whenever any one was witty in her drawing-room. "Why did you say," she inquired, "that you could have had as much happiness as a hussar riding-master? It is not true for a minute that officers have any particular luck with women, even though my sister-in-law once had an affair with a First-Lieutenant...." "I don't believe in platonic love," said Sissy, and beamed through the room. Frau Wyner gave a slight shriek. "Fräulein Sissy is probably right," said Nürnberger; "at any rate I am convinced that most women take platonic love either as an insult or an excuse." "There are young girls here," Frau Ehrenberg reminded him gently. "One sees that already," said Nürnberger, "from the fact of their joining in the conversation." "All the same, I would like to take the liberty of adding a little anecdote to the chapter of platonic love," said Heinrich. "But not a Jewish one," put in Else. "Of course not. A blonde little girl...." "That proves nothing," interrupted Else. "Please let him finish his story," remonstrated Frau Ehrenberg. "Well then, a blonde little girl," began Heinrich again, "once expressed her conviction to me, quite different, you see, from Fräulein Sissy, that platonic love did, as a matter of fact, exist, and do you know what she suggested as a proof of it? giving ... an experience out of her own life. She had, you know, once spent a whole hour in a room with a lieutenant and...." "That is enough!" cried Frau Ehrenberg nervously. "And," finished Heinrich, quite unperturbed and in a reassuring voice, "nothing at all happened in that hour." "So the blonde girl says," added Else. The door opened. George saw a strange lady enter in a clear blue square-cut dress, pale, simple and dignified. It was only when she smiled that he realised that the lady was Anna Rosner, and he felt something like pride in her. When he shook hands with his love he felt Else's look turn towards him. They went into the next room, where the table was laid with a moderate show of festivity. The son of the house was not there. He was at Neuhaus at his father's factory. But Herr Ehrenberg suddenly turned up at the table when the supper was served. He had just come back from his travels, which as a matter of fact had taken him to Palestine. When he was asked by Hofrat Wilt about his experiences he was at first reluctant to let himself go; finally it turned out that he had been disappointed in the scenery, annoyed by the fatigue of the journey, and had practically seen nothing of the Jewish settlements which, according to reliable information, were in process of springing up. "So we have some ground to hope," remarked Nürnberger, "that we may keep you here even in the event of a Jewish state being founded in the imminent future?" Ehrenberg answered brusquely: "Did I ever tell you that I intended to emigrate? I am too old for that." "Really," said Nürnberger, "I didn't know that you had only visited the district for the benefit of Fräulein Else and Herr Oskar." "I am not going to quarrel with you, my dear Nürnberger. Zionism is really too good to serve as small talk at meals." "We'll take it for granted," said Hofrat Wilt, "that it is too good, but it is certainly too complicated, if only for the reason that everybody understands something different by it." "Or wants to understand," added Nürnberger, "as is usually the case with most catchwords, not only in politics either--that's why there is so much twaddle talked in the world." Heinrich explained that of all human creatures the politician represented in his eyes the most enigmatic phenomenon. "I can understand," he said, "pickpockets, acrobats, bank--directors, hotel--proprietors, kings ... I mean I can manage without any particular trouble to put myself into the souls of all these people. Of course the logical result is that I should only need certain alterations in degree, though no doubt enormous ones, to qualify myself to play in the world the rôle of acrobat, king or bank-director. On the other hand I have an infallible feeling that even if I could raise myself to the _n_th power I could never become what one calls a politician, a leader of a party, a member, a minister." Nürnberger smiled at Heinrich's theory of the politician representing a particular type of humanity, inasmuch as it was only one of the superficial and by no means essential attributes of his profession to pose as a special human type, and to hide his greatness or his insignificance, his feats or his idleness behind labels, abstractions and symbols. What the nonentities or charlatans among them represented, why, that was obvious: they were simply business people or swindlers or glib speakers, but the people who really counted, the people who did things--the real geniuses of course, they at the bottom of their souls were simply artists. They too tried to create a work, and one, too, that raised in the sphere of ideas quite as much claim to immortality and permanent value as any other work of art. The only difference was that the material in which they worked was one that was not rigid or relatively stable, like tones or words, but that, like living men, it was in a continual state of flux and movement. Willy Eissler appeared, apologised to his hostess for being late, sat down between Sissy and Frau Oberberger and greeted his father like a friend long lost. It turned out that though they both lived together they had not seen each other for several days. Willy was complimented all round on his success in the aristocratic amateur performance where he had played the part of a marquis with the Countess Liebenburg-Rathony in a French one-act play. Frau Oberberger asked him, in a voice sufficiently loud for her neighbours to catch it, where his assignations with the countess took place and if he received her in the same _pied-à-terre_ quarter as his more middle-class flames. The conversation became more lively, dialogues were exchanged and became intertwined all over the room. But George caught isolated snatches, including part of a conversation between Anna and Heinrich which dealt with Therese Golowski. He noticed at the same time that Anna would occasionally throw a dark inquisitive look at Demeter Stanzides, who had appeared to-night in evening dress with a gardenia in his buttonhole; and though he had no actual consciousness of jealousy he felt strangely affected. He wondered if at this moment she was really thinking that she was perhaps bearing a child by him under her bosom. The idea of "the depths ..." came to him again. She suddenly looked over to him with a smile, as though she were coming home from a journey. He felt an inner sense of relief and appreciated with a slight shock how much he loved her. Then he raised his glass to his lips and drank to her. Else, who up to this time had been chatting with her other neighbour Demeter, now turned to George. With her deliberately casual manner and with a look towards Anna she remarked: "She does look pretty, so womanly. But that's always been her line. Do you still do music together?" "Frequently," replied George coolly. "Perhaps I'll ask you to start accompanying me again at the beginning of the new year. I don't know why we have not done so before." George was silent. "And how are you getting on"--she threw a look at Heinrich--"with your opera?" "Nothing is done so far. Who knows if anything will come of it?" "Of course nothing will come of it." George smiled. "Why are you so stern with me to-day?" "I am very angry with you." "With me! Why?" "That you always go on giving people occasion to regard you as a dilettante." This was a home thrust. George actually felt a slight sense of malice against Else, then quickly pulled himself together and answered: "That perhaps is just what I am. And if one isn't a genius it is much better to be an honest dilettante than ... than an artist with a swollen head." "Nobody wants you to do great things all at once, but all the same one really should not let oneself go in the way you do in both your inner and your outward life." "I really don't understand you, Else. How can one contend.... Do you know that I am going to Germany in the autumn as a conductor?" "Your career will be ruined by your not turning up to the rehearsals at ten o'clock sharp." The taunt was still gnawing at George. "And who called me a dilettante, if I may ask?" "Who did? Good gracious, why it has already been in the papers." "Really," said George feeling reassured, for he now remembered that after the concert in which Fräulein Bellini had sung his songs a critic had described him as an aristocratic dilettante. George's friends had explained at the time that the reason for this malicious critique was that he had omitted to call on the gentleman in question, who was notoriously vain. So that was it once again. There were always extrinsic reasons for people criticising one unfavourably, and Else's touchiness to-day, what was it at bottom but sheer jealousy.... The table was cleared. They went into the drawing-room. George went up to Anna, who was leaning on the piano, and said gently to her: "You do look beautiful, dear." She nodded with satisfaction. He then went on to ask: "Did you have a pleasant talk with Heinrich? What did you speak about? Therese, isn't that so?" She did not answer, and George noticed with surprise that her eyelids suddenly drooped and that she began to totter. "What is the matter?" he asked, frightened. She did not hear him, and would have fallen down if he had not quickly caught hold of her by the wrists. At the same moment Frau Ehrenberg and Else came up to her. "Did they notice us?" thought George. Anna had already opened her eyes again, gave a forced smile and whispered: "Oh, it is nothing. I often stand the heat so badly." "Come along!" said Frau Ehrenberg in a motherly tone. "Perhaps you will lie down for a moment." Anna, who seemed dazed, made no answer and the ladies of the house escorted her into an adjoining room. George looked round. The guests did not seem to have noticed anything. Coffee was handed round. George took a cup and played nervously with his spoon. "So after all," he thought, "she will not finish up in middle-class life." But at the same time he felt as far away from her psychologically, as though the matter had no personal interest for him. Frau Oberberger came up to him. "Well, what do you really think about platonic love? You are an expert, you know." He answered absent-mindedly. She went on talking, as was her way, without bothering whether he was listening or answering. Suddenly Else returned. George inquired how Anna was, with polite sympathy. "I am certain it is not anything serious," said Else and looked him strangely in the face. Demeter Stanzides came in and asked her to sing. "Will you accompany me?" She turned to George. He bowed and sat down at the piano. "What shall it be?" asked Else. "Anything you like," replied Wilt, "but nothing modern." After supper he liked to play the reactionary at any rate in artistic matters. "Right you are," said Else, and gave George a piece of music. She sang the _Das Alte Bild_ of Hugo Wolf in her small well-trained and somewhat pathetic voice. George played a refined accompaniment, though he felt somewhat _distrait_. In spite of his efforts he could not help feeling a little annoyed about Anna. After all no one seemed to have really noticed the incident except Frau Ehrenberg and Else. After all, what did it really come to?... Supposing they did all know?... Whom did it concern? Yes, who bothered about it? Why, they are all listening to Else now, he continued mentally, and appreciating the beauty of this song. Even Frau Oberberger, though she is not a bit musical, is forgetting that she is a woman for a few minutes and her face is quiet and sexless. Even Heinrich is listening spell-bound and perhaps for the moment is neither thinking of his work, nor of the fate of the Jews, nor of his distant mistress. Is perhaps not even giving a single thought to his present mistress, the little blonde girl, to please whom he has recently begun to dress smartly. As a matter of fact he does not look at all bad in evening dress, and his tie is not a ready-made one, such as he usually wears, but is carefully tied.... Who is standing so close behind me? thought George, so that I can feel her breath over my hair.... Perhaps Sissy.... If the world were to be destroyed to-morrow morning it would be Sissy whom I should choose for to-night. Yes, I am sure of it. And there goes Anna with Frau Ehrenberg; it seems I am the only one who notices it, although I have got to attend simultaneously to both my own playing and Else's singing. I welcome her with my eyes. Yes, I welcome you, mother of my child.... How strange life is!... The song was at an end. The company applauded and asked for more. George played Else's accompaniment to some other songs by Schumann, by Brahms; and finally, by general request, two of his own, which had become distasteful to him personally, since somebody or other had suggested that they were reminiscent of Mendelssohn. While he was accompanying he felt that he was losing all touch with Else and therefore made a special effort in his playing to win back again her sense of sympathy. He played with exaggerated sensibility, he specifically wooed her and felt that it was in vain. For the first time in his life he was her unhappy lover. The applause after George's songs was great. "That was your best period," said Else gently to him while she put the music away, "two or three years ago." The others made kind remarks to him without going into distinctions about the periods of his artistic development. Nürnberger declared that he had been most agreeably disillusioned by George's songs. "I will not conceal the fact from you," he remarked, "that going by the views I have frequently heard you express, my dear Baron, I should have imagined them considerably less intelligible." "Quite charming, really," said Wilt, "all so simple and melodious without bombast or affectation." "And he is the man," thought George grimly, "who dubbed me a dilettante." Willy came up to him. "Now you just say, Herr Hofrat, that you can manage to whistle them, and if I know anything about physiognomy the Baron will send two gentlemen to see you in the morning." "Oh no," said George, pulling himself together and smiling; "fortunately, the songs were written in a period which I have long since got over, so I don't feel wounded by any blame or by any praise." A servant brought in ices, the groups broke up and Anna stood alone with George by the pianoforte. He asked her quickly "What does it really mean?" "I don't know," she replied, and looked at him in astonishment. "Do you feel quite all right now?" "Absolutely," she answered. "And is to-day the first time you have had anything like it?" asked George, somewhat hesitatingly. She answered: "I had something like it yesterday evening at home. It was a kind of faintness. It lasted some time longer, while we were sitting at supper, but nobody noticed it." "But why did you tell me nothing about it?" She shrugged her shoulders lightly. "I say, Anna dear," he said, and smiled guiltily, "I would like to have a word with you at any rate. Give me a signal when you want to go away. I will clear out a few minutes before you, and will wait by the Schwarzenbergplatz till you come along in a fly. I'll get in and we will go for a little drive. Does that suit you?" She nodded. He said: "Good-bye, darling," and went into the smoking-room. Old Ehrenberg, Nürnberger and Wilt had sat down at a green card-table to play tarok. Old Eissler and his son were sitting opposite each other in two enormous green leather arm-chairs and were utilising the opportunity to have a good chat with one another after all this time. George took a cigarette out of a box, lighted it and looked at the pictures on the wall with particular interest. He saw Willy's name written in pale red letters down below in the corner on the green field in a water-colour painted in the grotesque style, that represented a hurdle race ridden by gentlemen in red hunting-coats. He turned involuntarily to the young man and said: "I never knew that one before." "It is fairly new," remarked Willy lightly. "Smart picture, eh?" said old Eissler. "Oh, something more than that," replied George. "Yes, I hope to be able to look forward to doing something better than that," said Willy. "He is going to Africa, lion hunting," explained old Eissler, "with Prince Wangenheim. Felician is also supposed to be of the party, but he has not yet decided." "Why not?" asked Willy. "He wants to pass his diplomatic examination in the spring." "But that could be put off," said Willy; "lions are dying out, but unfortunately one can't say the same thing of professors." "Book me for a picture, Willy," called out Ehrenberg from the card-table. "You play the Mæcenas later on, father Ehrenberg?" said Willy. "As I've said, I'll take you two on."[1] "Raise you," replied Ehrenberg, and continued: "If I can order anything for myself, Willy, please paint me a desert landscape showing Prince Wangenheim being gobbled up by the lions ... but as realistic as possible." "You are making a mistake about the person, Herr Ehrenberg," said Willy; "the celebrated Anti-Semite you are referring to is the cousin of my Wangenheim." "For all I care," replied Ehrenberg, "the lions, too, may be making a mistake. Every Anti-Semite, you know, isn't bound to be celebrated." "You will ruin the party if you don't look out," admonished Nürnberger. "You should have bought an estate and settled in Palestine," said Hofrat Wilt. "God save me from that," replied Ehrenberg. "Well, since he has done that in everything up to the present," said Nürnberger, and put down his hand. "It seems to me, Nürnberger, that you are reproaching me again for not goin' about peddlin' ole clo'." "Then you would certainly have the right to complain of Anti-Semitism," said Nürnberger, "for who feels anything of it in Austria except the peddlars ... only they, one might almost say." "And some people with a sense of self-respect," retorted Ehrenberg. "Twenty-seven ... thirty-one ... thirty-eight.... Well, who's won the game?" Willy had gone back into the drawing-room again. George sat smoking on the arm of an easy-chair. He suddenly noticed old Eissler's look directed towards him in a strange benevolent manner and felt himself reminded of something without knowing what. "I had a few words the other day," said the old gentleman, "with your brother Felician at Schönstein's; it is striking how you resemble your poor father, especially to one like me, who knew your father as a young man." It flashed across George at once what old Eissler's look reminded him of. Old Doctor Stauber's eyes had rested on him at Rosner's with the same fatherly expression. "These old Jews!" he thought sarcastically, but in a remote corner of his soul he felt somewhat moved. It came into his mind that his father had often gone for morning walks in the Prater with Eissler, for whose knowledge of art he had had a great respect. Old Eissler went on speaking. "You, George, take after your mother more, I think." "Many say so. It is very hard to judge, oneself." "They say your mother had such a beautiful voice." "Yes, in her early youth. I myself never really heard her sing. Of course she tried now and again. Two or three years before her death a doctor in Meran even advised her to practise singing. The idea was that it should be a good exercise for her lungs, but unfortunately it wasn't much of a success." Old Eissler nodded and looked in front of him. "I suppose you probably won't be able to remember that my poor wife was in Meran at the same time as your late mother?" George racked his memory. It had escaped him. "I once travelled in the same compartment as your father," said old Eissler, "at night time. We were both unable to sleep. He told me a great deal about you two--you and Felician I mean." "Really...." "For instance, that when you were a boy you had played one of your own compositions to some Italian _virtuoso_, and that he had foretold a great future for you." "Great future.... Great heavens, but it wasn't a virtuoso, Herr Eissler. It was a clergyman, from whom, as a matter of fact, I learned to play the organ." Eissler continued: "And in the evening, when your mother had gone to bed, you would often improvise for hours on end in the room." George nodded and sighed quietly. It seemed as though he had had much more talent at that time. "Work!" he thought ardently, "work!..." He looked up again. "Yes," he said humorously, "that is always the trouble, infant prodigies so seldom come to anything." "I hear you want to be a conductor, Baron." "Yes," replied George resolutely, "I am going to Germany next autumn. Perhaps as an accompanist first in the municipal theatre of some little town, just as it comes along." "But you would not have any objection to a Court theatre?" "Of course not. What makes you say that, Herr Eissler? if it is not a rude question." "I know quite well," said Eissler with a smile, as he dropped his monocle, "that you have not sought out my help, but I can quite appreciate on the other hand that you would not mind perhaps being able to get on without the intermediaryship of agents and others of that kind.... I don't mean because of the commissions." George remained cold. "When one has once decided to take up a theatrical career one knows at the same time all that one's bargaining for." "Do you know Count Malnitz by any chance?" inquired Eissler, quite unconcerned by George's air of worldly wisdom. "Malnitz! Do you mean Count Eberhard Malnitz, who had a suite performed a few years ago?" "Yes, I mean him." "I don't know him personally, and as for the suite...." With a wave of the hand Eissler dismissed the composer Malnitz. "He has been manager at Detmold since the beginning of this season," he then said. "That is why I asked you if you knew him. He is a great friend of mine of long standing. He used to live in Vienna. For the last ten or twelve years we have been meeting every year in Carlsbad or Ischl. This year we want to make a little Mediterranean trip at Easter. Will you allow me, my dear Baron, to take an opportunity of mentioning your name to him, and telling him something about your plans to be a conductor?" George hesitated to answer, and smiled politely. "Oh please don't regard my suggestion as officious, my dear Baron. If you don't wish it, of course I will sit tight." "You misunderstand my silence," replied George amiably, but not without _hauteur_; "but I really don't know...." "I think a little Court theatre like that," continued Eissler, "is just the right place for you for the beginning. The fact of your belonging to the nobility won't hurt you at all, not even with my friend Malnitz, however much he likes to play the democrat, or even at times the anarchist ... with the exception of bombs, of course; but he is a charming man and really awfully musical.... Even though he isn't exactly a composer." "Well," replied George, somewhat embarrassed, "if you would have the kindness to speak to him.... I can't afford to let any chance slip. At any rate, I thank you very much." "Not at all, I don't guarantee success, it is just a chance, like any other." Frau Oberberger and Sissy came in, escorted by Demeter. "What interesting conversation are we interrupting?" said Frau Oberberger. "The experienced platonic lover and the inexperienced rake? One should really have been there." "Don't upset yourself, Katerina," said Eissler, and his voice had again its deep vibrating ring. "One sometimes talks about other things, such as the future of the human race." Sissy put a cigarette between her lips, allowed George to give her a light and sat down in the corner of the green leather sofa. "You are not bothering about me at all to-day," she began with that English accent of hers which George liked so well. "As though I positively didn't exist. Yes, that's what it is. I am really a more constant nature than you are, am I not?" "You constant, Sissy?"... He pushed an arm-chair quite near to her. They spoke of the past summer and the one that was coming. "Last year," said Sissy, "you gave me your word you would come wherever I was, and you didn't do it. This year you must keep your word." "Are you going into the Isle of Wight again?" "No, I am going into the mountains this time, to the Tyrol or the Salzkammergut. I will let you know soon. Will you come?" "But you are bound to have a large following anywhere." "I won't trouble about any one except you, George." "Even supposing Willy Eissler happens to stay in your vicinity?" "Oh," she said, with a wanton smile and put out her cigarette by pressing it violently upon the glass ash-tray. They went on talking. It was just like one of those conversations they had had so often during the last few years. It began lightly and flippantly, and eventually finished in a blaze of tender lies which were true for just one moment. George was once again fascinated by Sissy. "I would really prefer to go travelling with you," he whispered quite near her. She just nodded. Her left arm rested on the broad back of the ottoman. "If one could only do as one wanted," she said, with a look that dreamt of a hundred men. He bent down over her trembling arm, went on speaking and became intoxicated with his own words. "Somewhere where nobody knows us, where nobody bothers about any one, that is where I should like to be with you, Sissy, many days and nights." Sissy shuddered. The word "nights" made her shudder with fear. Anna appeared in the doorway, signalled to George with a look and then disappeared again. He felt an inward sense of reluctance, and yet he felt that this was just the psychological moment to leave Sissy. In the doorway of the drawing-room he met Heinrich, who accosted him. "If you are going you might tell me, I should like to speak to you." "Delighted! But I must ... promised to see Fräulein Rosner home, you see. I'll come straight to the café, so till then...." A few minutes later he was standing on the Schwarzenberg bridge. The sky was full of stars, the streets stretched out wide and silent. George turned up his coat collar, although it was no longer cold, and walked up and down. Will anything come of the Detmold business? he thought. Oh well, if it is not in Detmold it will be in some town or other. At any rate I mean real business now, and a great deal, a great deal will then lie behind me. He tried to consider the matter quietly. How will it all turn out? We are now at the end of December. We must go away in March--at the latest. We shall be taken for a honeymoon couple. I shall go walking with her arm-in-arm in Rome and Posilippo, in Venice.... There are women who grow very ugly in that condition ... but not she, no, not she.... There was always a certain touch of the mother in her appearance.... She must stay the summer in some quiet neighbourhood where no one knows her ... in the Thuringian Forest perhaps, or by the Rhine.... How strangely she said that to-day. The house in which the child will come into the world is already in existence. Yes.... Somewhere in the distance, or perhaps quite near here, that house is standing.... And people are living there whom we have never seen. How strange.... When will it come into the world? At the end of the summer, about the beginning of September. By that time, too, I am bound to have gone away. How shall I manage it?... And a year from to-day the little creature will be already four months old. It will grow up ... become big. There will be a young man there one fine day, my son, or a young girl; a beautiful little girl of seven, my daughter.... I shall be forty-four then.... When I am sixty-four I can be a grandfather ... perhaps a director of an opera or two and a celebrated composer in spite of Else's prophecies; but one has got to work for that, that is quite true. More than I have done so far. Else is right, I let myself go too much, I must be different ... I shall too. I feel a change taking place within me. Yes, something new is taking place within me also. A fly came out of the Heugasse, some one bent out of the window. George recognised Anna's face under the white shawl. He was very glad, got in and kissed her hand. They enjoyed their talk, joked a little about the party from which she had just come and found it really ridiculous to spend an evening in so inept a fashion. He held her hands in his and was affected by her presence. He got out in front of her house and rung. He then came to the open door of the carriage and they arranged an appointment for the following day. "I think we have got a lot to talk about," said Anna. He simply nodded. The door of the house was open. She got out of the fly, gave George a long look full of emotion and disappeared into the hall. My love! thought George, with a feeling of happiness and pride. Life lay before him like something serious and mysterious, full of gifts and full of miracles. When he went into the café, Heinrich was sitting in a window niche. Next to him was a pale young beardless man whom George had casually spoken to several times, in a dinner-jacket with a velvet collar but with a shirt-front of doubtful cleanliness. When George came in the young man looked up with ardent eyes from a paper that he was holding in his restless and not very well-kept hands. "Am I disturbing you?" said George. "Oh, not a bit of it," replied the young man, with a crazy laugh, "the larger the audience the better." "Herr Winternitz," explained Heinrich, as he shook hands with George, "was just reading me a series of his poems, but we will break off now." Slightly touched by the disappointed expression of the young man George assured him that he would be delighted to hear the poems if he might be permitted to do so. "It won't last much longer," explained Winternitz gratefully. "It is only a pity that you missed the beginning. I could----" "What! Does it all hang together?" said Heinrich in astonishment. "What, didn't you notice?" exclaimed Winternitz, and laughed again crazily. "I see," said Heinrich. "So it's always the same woman character whom your poems deal with. I thought it was always a different one." "Of course it is always the same one, but her special characteristic is that she always seems to be a fresh person." Herr Winternitz read softly but insistently, as though inwardly consumed. It appeared from his series that he had been loved as never a man had been loved before, but also deceived as never a man had been deceived before, a circumstance which was to be attributed to certain metaphysical causes and not at all to any deficiencies in his own personality. He showed himself, however, in his last poem completely freed of his passion, and declared that he was now ready to enjoy all the pleasures, which the world could offer him. This poem had four stanzas; the last verse of every stanza began with a "hei," and it concluded with the exclamation: "Hei, so career I through the world." George could not help recognising that the recitation had to a certain extent impressed him, and when Winternitz put the book down and looked around him with dilated pupils, George nodded appreciatively and said: "Very beautiful!" Winternitz looked expectantly at Heinrich, who was silent for a few seconds and finally remarked: "It is fairly interesting on the whole ... but why do you say 'hei,' if it isn't a rude question? Positively, no one will believe it." "What do you mean?" exclaimed Winternitz. "Rather ask your own conscience, if you honestly mean that 'hei.' I believe all the rest which you read to me, I mean I believe it in the highest sense of the term, although not a single word is true. I believe you when you tell me that you have been seducing a girl of fifteen, that you have been behaving like a hardened Don Juan, that you have been corrupting the poor creature in the most dreadful way. That she deceived you with ... what was it now?..." "A clown, of course," exclaimed Winternitz, with a mad laugh. "That a clown was the man she deceived you with, that on account of that creature you had adventures which grew more and more sinister, that you wanted to kill your mistress and yourself as well, and that finally you get fed up with the whole business and go travelling about the world, or even careering as far as Australia for all I care: yes, I can believe all that, but that you are the kind of man to cry out 'hei,' that, my dear Winternitz, is a rank swindle." Winternitz defended himself. He swore that this 'hei' had come from his most inward being, or at any rate from a certain element in his most inward being. When Heinrich made further objections, he gradually became more and more reserved, and finally declared that some time or other he hoped to win his way to that inward freedom where he would be allowed to cry out "hei." "That time will never come," replied Heinrich positively. "You may perhaps get some time to the epic or the dramatic 'hei,' but the lyrical or subjective 'hei' will remain, my dear Winternitz, a closed book to people like you and me for all eternity." Winternitz promised to alter the last poem, to make a point of continuing his development and to work at his inward purification. He stood up, a proceeding which caused his starched shirt front to crack and a stud to break, held out his somewhat clammy hand to Heinrich and George, and went off to the literary men's table at the back. George expressed discreet appreciation of the poems which he had heard. "I like him the best of the whole set, at any rate personally," said Heinrich. "He at least has the good sense to maintain with me a certain mutual reserve in really intimate matters. Yes, you need not look at me again as though you were catching me in an attack of megalomania, but I can assure you, George, I have had nearly enough of the sort of people" (he swept the further table with a cursory glance) "who have always got an 'ä soi' on their lips." "What is always on their lips?" Heinrich smiled. "You must know the story of the Polish Jew who was sitting in a railway compartment with an unknown man and behaved very conventionally--until he realised by some remark of the other's that he was a Jew too, and on the strength of it immediately proceeded to stretch out his legs on the seat opposite with an 'ä soi' of relief." "Quite good," said George. "It is more than that," explained Heinrich sternly, "it is deep; like so many other Jewish stories it gives a bird's-eye view into the tragi-comedy of present-day Judaism. It expresses the eternal truth that no Jew has any real respect for his fellow Jew, never. As little as prisoners in a hostile country have any real respect for each other, particularly when they are hopeless. Envy, hate, yes frequently, admiration, even love; all that there can be between them, but never respect, for the play of all their emotional life takes place in an atmosphere of familiarity, so to speak, in which respect cannot help being stifled." "Do you know what I think?" remarked George. "That you are a more bitter Anti-Semite than most of the Christians I know." "Do you think so?" he laughed; "but not a real one. Only the man who is really angry at the bottom of his heart at the Jews' good qualities and does everything he can to bring about the further development of their bad ones is a real Anti-Semite. But you are right up to a certain point, but I must finish by confessing that I am also an Anti-Aryan. Every race as such is naturally repulsive, only the individual manages at times to reconcile himself to the repulsive elements in his race by reason of his own personal qualities. But I will not deny that I am particularly sensitive to the faults of Jews. Probably the only reason is that I, like all others--we Jews, I mean--have been systematically educated up to this sensitiveness. We have been egged on from our youth to look upon Jewish peculiarities as particularly grotesque or repulsive, though we have not been so with regard to the equally grotesque and repulsive peculiarities of other people. I will not disguise it--if a Jew shows bad form in my presence, or behaves in a ridiculous manner, I have often so painful a sensation that I should like to sink into the earth. It is like a kind of shame that perhaps is akin to the shame of a brother who sees his sister undressing. Perhaps the whole thing is egoism too. One gets embittered at being always made responsible for other people's faults, and always being made to pay the penalty for every crime, for every lapse from good taste, for every indiscretion for which every Jew is responsible throughout the whole world. That of course easily makes one unjust, but those are touches of nervousness and sensitiveness, nothing more. Then one pulls oneself together again. That cannot be called Anti-Semitism. But there are Jews whom I really hate, hate as Jews. Those are the people who act before others, and often before themselves, as though they did not belong to the rest at all. The men who try to offer themselves to their enemies and despisers in the most cowardly and cringing fashion, and think that in that way they can escape from the eternal curse whose burden is upon them, or from what they feel is equivalent to a curse. There are of course always Jews like that who go about with the consciousness of their extreme personal meanness, and consequently, consciously or unconsciously, would like to make their race responsible. Of course that does not help them the least bit. What has ever helped the Jews? the good ones and the bad ones. I mean, of course," he hastily added, "those who need something in the way of material or moral help." And then he broke off in a deliberately flippant tone: "Yes, my dear George, the situation is somewhat complicated and it is quite natural that every one who is not directly concerned with the question should not be able to understand it properly." "No, you really should not...." Heinrich interrupted him quickly. "Yes, I should, my dear George, that is just how it is. You don't understand us, you see. Many perhaps get an inkling, but understand? no. At any rate we understand you much better than you do us. Although you shake your head! Do we not deserve to? We have found it more necessary, you see, to learn to understand you than you did to learn to understand us. This gift of understanding was forced to develop itself in the course of time ... according to the laws of the struggle for existence if you like. Just consider, if one is going to find one's way about in a foreign country, or, as I said before, in an enemy's country, to be ready for all the dangers and ambushes which lurk there, it is obvious that the primary essential is to get to know one's enemies as well as possible--both their good qualities and their bad." "So you live among enemies? Among foreigners! You would not admit as much to Leo Golowski. I don't agree with him either, not a bit of it. But how strangely inconsistent you are when you----" Heinrich interrupted him, genuinely pained. "I have already told you the problem is far too complicated to be really solved. To find a subjective solution is almost impossible. A verbal solution even more so. Why, at times one might believe that things are not so bad. Sometimes one really is at home in spite of everything, feels one is as much at home here--yes, even more at home--than any of your so-called natives can ever feel. It is quite clear that the feeling of strangeness is to some extent cured by the consciousness of understanding. Why, it becomes, as it were, steeped in pride, condescension, tenderness; becomes dissolved--sometimes, of course, in sentimentalism, which is again a bad business." He sat there with deep furrows in his forehead and looked in front of him. "Does he really understand me better?" thought George, "than I do him, or is it simply another piece of megalomania...?" Heinrich suddenly started as though emerging from a dream. He looked at his watch. "Half-past two! And my train goes at eight to-morrow." "What, you are going away?" "Yes, that is what I wanted to speak to you about so much. I shall have to say goodbye to you for a goodish time, I'm sorry to say. I am going to Prague. I am taking my father away, out of the asylum home to our own house." "Is he better, then?" "No, but he is in that stage when he is not dangerous to those near him.... Yes, that came quite quickly too." "And about when do you think you will be back?" Heinrich shook his shoulders. "I can't tell to-day, but however the thing develops, I certainly cannot leave my mother and sisters alone now." George felt a genuine regret at being deprived of Heinrich's society in the near future. "It's possible that you won't find me in Vienna again when you come back. I shall probably go away this spring, you see." And he almost felt a desire to take Heinrich into his confidence. "I suppose you are travelling south?" asked Heinrich. "Yes, I think so. To enjoy my freedom once again, just for a few months. Serious life begins next autumn, you see. I am looking out for a position in Germany at some theatre or other." "Really?" The waiter came to the table. They paid and went. They met Rapp and Gleissner together in the doorway. They exchanged a few words of greeting. "And what have you been doing all this time, Herr Rapp?" asked George courteously. Rapp took off his pince-nez. "Oh, my melancholy old job all the time. I am engaged in demonstrating the vanity of vanities." "You might make a change, Rapp," said Heinrich. "Try your luck for once and praise the splendour of splendours." "What is the point?" said Rapp, and put on his glasses. "That will prove itself in the course of time. But as a rule rotten work only keeps alive during its good fortune and its fame, and when the world at last realises the swindle, it has either been in the grave for a long time or has taken refuge in its presumable immortality." They were now in the street and all turned up their coat collars, since it had begun again to snow violently. Gleissner, who had had his first great dramatic success a few weeks ago, quickly told them that the seventh performance of his work, which had taken place to-day, had also been sold out. Rapp used that as a peg on which to hang malicious observations on the stupidity of the public. Gleissner answered with gibes at the impotence of the critic when confronted with true genius--and so they walked away through the snow with turned-up collar, quite enveloped in the steaming hate of their old friendship. "That Rapp has no luck," said Heinrich to George. "He'll never forgive Gleissner for not disappointing him." "Do you consider him so jealous?" "I wouldn't go as far as that. Matters are rarely sufficiently simple to be disposed of in a single word. But just think what a fate it is to go about the world in the belief that you carry with you as deep a knowledge of it as Shakespeare had, and to feel at the same time that you aren't able to express as much of it as, for instance, Herr Gleissner, although perhaps one is quite as much good as he is--or even more." They walked on together for a time in silence. The trees in the Ring were standing motionless with their white branches. It struck three from the tower of the Rathaus. They walked over the empty streets and took the way through the silent park. All around them the continuous fall of snow made everything shine almost brightly. "By the way, I have not told you the latest news," started Heinrich suddenly, looking in front of him and speaking in a dry tone. "What is it?" "That I have been receiving anonymous letters for some time." "Anonymous letters? What are the contents?" "Oh, you can guess." "I see." It was clear to George that it could only be something about the actress. Heinrich had returned in greater anguish than ever from the foreign town, where he had seen his mistress act the part of a depraved creature in a new play, with a truth and realism which he found positively intolerable. George knew that he and she had since then been exchanging letters full of tenderness and scorn, full of anger and forgiveness, full of broken anguish and laboured confidence. "The delightful messages," explained Heinrich, "have been coming along every morning for eight days. Not very pleasant, I can assure you." "Good gracious, what do they matter to you? You know yourself anonymous letters never contain the truth." "On the contrary, my dear George, they always do, but letters like that always contain a kind of higher truth, the great truth of possibilities. Men haven't usually got sufficient imagination to create things out of nothing." "That is a charming way of looking at things. Where should we all get to, then? It makes things a bit too easy for libellers of all kinds." "Why do you say libellers? I regard it as highly improbable that there are any libels contained in the anonymous letters which I have been receiving. No doubt exaggerations, embellishments, inaccuracies...." "Lies." "No, I am sure they are not lies; some, no doubt, but in a case like this how is one to separate the truth from the lies?" "There is a very simple way of dealing with that. You go there." "Me go there?" "Yes, of course that is what you ought to do. When you are on the spot you are bound to get at once to the real truth." "It would certainly be possible." They were walking under arcades on the wet stone. Their voices and steps echoed. George began again. "Instead of going on being demoralised with all this annoyance, I should try and convince myself personally as to how matters stood." "Yes, that would certainly be the soundest thing to do." "Well, why don't you do it?" Heinrich remained stationary and jerked out with clenched teeth: "Tell me, my dear George, have you not really noticed that I am a coward?" "Nonsense, one doesn't call that being a coward." "Call it whatever you like. Words never hit things off exactly. The more precisely they pretend to do so the less they really do. I know what I am. I would not go there for anything in the world. To make a fool of myself once more, no, no, no...." "Well, what will you do?" Heinrich shook his shoulders as though the matter really did not concern him. Somewhat irritated, George went on questioning him. "If you will allow me to make a remark, what does the ... lady chiefly concerned have to say?" "The lady who is chiefly concerned, as you call her, with a wit, which though unconscious is positively infernal, does not know for the time being anything about my getting anonymous letters." "Have you left off corresponding with her?" "What an idea! We write daily to each other as we did before. She the most tender and lying letters, I the meanest you can possibly imagine--disingenuous, reserved letters, that torture me to the quick." "Look here, Heinrich, you are really not a very noble character." Heinrich laughed out loud. "No, I am not noble. I clearly was not born to be that." "And when one thinks that after all these are sheer libels----" George for his part had of course no doubt that the anonymous letters contained the truth. In spite of that he was honestly desirous that Heinrich should travel to the actual spot, convince himself, do something definite, box somebody's ears or shoot somebody down. He imagined Felician in a similar position, or Stanzides or Willy Eissler. All of them would have taken it better or in a different way, one for which he certainly could have felt more sympathy. Suddenly the question ran through his brain as to what he would probably do, if Anna were to deceive him. Anna deceive him ... was that really possible? He thought of her look that evening, that dark questioning look which she had sent over to Demeter Stanzides. No, that did not signify anything, he was sure of it, and the old episodes with Leo and the singing-master, they were harmless, almost childish. But he thought of something that was different and perhaps more significant--a strange question which she had put to him the other day when she had stayed unduly late in his company and had had to hurry off home with an excuse. Was he not afraid, she had asked him, to have it on his conscience that he was making her into a liar? It had rung half like a reproach and half like a warning, and if she herself was so little sure of herself could he trust her implicitly? Did he not love her? He ... and did he not deceive her in spite of it, or was ready to do so at any moment, which, after all, came to the same thing? Only an hour ago, in the fly, when he held her in his arms and kissed her, she had of course no idea that he had other thoughts than for her. And yet at a certain moment, with his lips on hers, he had longed for Sissy. Why should it not happen that Anna should deceive him? After all, it might have already happened ... without his having an idea of it.... But all these ideas had as it were no substance, they swept through his mind, like fantastic almost amusing possibilities. He was standing with Heinrich in front of the closed door in the Floriani Gassi and shook hands with him. "Well, God bless you," he said; "when we see each other again I hope you will be cured of your doubts." "And would that be much good?" asked Heinrich. "Can one reassure oneself with certainties in matters of love? The most one can do is to reassure oneself with bad news, for that lasts, but being certain of something good is at the best an intoxication.... Well, goodbye, old chap. I hope we will see each other again in May. Then, whatever happens, I shall come here for a time, and we can talk again about our glorious opera." "Yes, if I shall be back again in Vienna in May. It may be that I shall not come back before the autumn." "And then go off again on your new career?" "It is quite possible that it will turn out like that," and he looked Heinrich in the face with a kind of childlike defiant smile that seemed to say: "I'm not going to tell you." Heinrich seemed surprised. "Look here, George, perhaps this is the very last time we are standing together in front of this door. Oh, I am far from thrusting myself into your confidence. This somewhat one-sided relationship will no doubt have to go on on its present lines. Well, it doesn't matter." George looked straight in front of him. "I hope things go all right," said Heinrich as the door opened, "and drop me a line now and then." "Certainly," answered George, and suddenly saw Heinrich's eyes resting upon him with an expression of real sympathy which he had never expected. "Certainly ... and you must write to me, too. At any rate give me news of how things are at home and what you are working at. At all events," he added sincerely, "we must continue to keep in touch with each other." The porter stood there with dishevelled hair and an angry sleepy expression, in a greenish-brown dressing-gown, with slippers on his bare feet. Heinrich shook hands with George for the last time. "Goodbye, my dear friend," he said, and then in a gentler voice, as he pointed to the porter: "I cannot keep him waiting any longer. You will find no particular difficulty in reading in his noble physiognomy, which is obviously the genuine native article, the names he is calling me to himself at this particular moment. Adieu." George could not help laughing. Heinrich disappeared. The door clanged and closed. George did not feel the least bit sleepy and determined to go home on foot. He was in an excited exalted mood. He was envisaging the days which were now bound to come with a peculiar sense of tension. He thought of to-morrow's meeting with Anna, the things they were going to talk over, the journey, the house that already stood somewhere in the world, which his imagination had already roughly pictured like a house out of a box of toys, light-green with a bright red roof and a black chimney. His own form appeared before him like a picture thrown on a white screen by a magic lantern: he saw himself sitting on a balcony in happy solitude, in front of a table strewn with music paper. Branches rocked in front of the railings. A clear sky hung above him, while below at his feet lay the sea, with a dreamy blueness that was quite abnormal. [1] A reference to the Faro game. V George gently opened the door of Anna's room. She still lay asleep in bed and breathed deeply and peacefully. He went out of the slightly darkened room, back again into his own and shut the door. Then he went to the open window and looked out. Clouds bathed in sunshine were sweeping over the water. The mountains opposite with their clearly-defined lines were floating in the brilliancy of the heavens, while the brightest blue was glittering over the gardens and houses of Lugano. George was quite delighted to breathe in once more the air of this June morning, which brought to him the moist freshness of the lake and the perfume of the plane-trees, magnolias and roses in the hotel park; to look out upon this view, whose spring-like peace had welcomed him like a fresh happiness every morning for the last three weeks. He drank his tea quickly, ran down the stairs as quickly and expectantly as he had once, when a boy, hurried off to his play, and took his accustomed way along the bank in the grey fragrance of the early shade. Here he would think of his own lonely morning walks at Palermo and Taormina in the previous spring, walks which he had frequently continued for hours on end, since Grace was very fond of lying in bed with open eyes until noon. That period of his life, over which a recent though no doubt much-desired farewell seemed to squat like a sinister cloud, usually struck him as more or less bathed in melancholy. But this time all painful things seemed to lie in the far distance, and at any rate he had it in his power to put off the end as long as he wanted, if it did not come from fate itself. He had left Vienna with Anna at the beginning of March, as it was no longer possible to conceal her condition. In January, in fact, George had decided to speak to her mother. He had more or less prepared himself for it, and was consequently able to make his communication quietly and in well-turned phraseology. The mother listened in silence and her eyes grew large and moist. Anna sat on the sofa with an embarrassed smile and looked at George as he spoke, with a kind of curiosity. They sketched out the plan for the ensuing months. George wanted to stay abroad with Anna until the early summer. Then a house was to be taken in the country in the neighbourhood of Vienna, so that her mother should not be far away in the time of greatest need, and the child could without difficulty be given out to nurse in the neighbourhood of the town. They also thought out an excuse for officious inquisitive people for Anna's departure and absence. As her voice had made substantial progress of late--which was perfectly true--she had gone off to a celebrated singing mistress in Dresden, to complete her training. Frau Rosner nodded several times, as though she agreed with everything, but the features of her face became sadder and sadder. It was not so much that she was oppressed by what she had just learnt, as she was by the realisation that she was bound to be so absolutely defenceless, poor middle-class mother that she was, sitting opposite the aristocratic seducer. George, who noticed this with regret, endeavoured to assume a lighter and more sympathetic tone. He came closer to the good woman, he took her hand and held it for some seconds in his own. Anna had scarcely contributed a word to the whole discussion, but when George got ready to go she got up, and for the first time in front of her mother she offered him her lips to kiss, as though she were now celebrating her betrothal to him. George went downstairs in better spirits, as though the worst were now really over. Henceforth he spent whole hours at the Rosners' more frequently than before, practising music with Anna, whose voice had now grown noticeably in power and volume. The mother's demeanour to George became more friendly. Why, it often seemed to him as though she had to be on her guard against a growing sympathy for him, and there was one evening in the family circle when George stayed for supper, improvised afterwards to the company from the Meistersingers and Lohengrin with his cigar in his mouth, could not help enjoying the lively applause, particularly from Josef, and was almost shocked to notice as he went home that he had felt quite as comfortable, as though it had been a home he had recently won for himself. When he was sitting over his black coffee with Felician a few days later the servant brought in a card, the receipt of which made a slight blush mount to his cheek. Felician pretended not to notice his brother's embarrassment, said good-bye and left the room. He met old Rosner in the doorway, inclined his head slightly in answer to his greeting and took no further notice. George invited Herr Rosner, who came in in his winter coat with his hat and umbrella, to sit down, and offered him a cigar. Old Rosner said: "I have just been smoking," a remark which somehow or other reassured George, and sat down, while George remained leaning on the table. Then the old man began with his accustomed slowness: "You will probably be able to imagine, Herr Baron, why I have taken the liberty of troubling you. I really wanted to speak to you in the earlier part of the day, but unfortunately I could not get away from the office." "You would not have found me at home in the morning, Herr Rosner," answered George courteously. "All the better then that I didn't have my journey for nothing. My wife has told me this morning ... what has happened...." He looked at the floor. "Yes," said George, and gnawed at his upper lip. "I myself intended.... But won't you take off your overcoat? It is very warm in the room." "No thank you, thank you, it is not at all too warm for me. Well, I was horrified when my wife gave me this information. Indeed I was, Herr Baron.... I never would have thought it of Anna ... never thought it possible ... it is ... really dreadful...." He spoke all the time in his usual monotonous voice, though he shook his head more often than usual. George could not help looking all the time at his head with its thin yellow-grey hair, and felt nothing but a desolate boredom. "Really, Herr Rosner, the thing is not dreadful," he said at last. "If you knew how much I ... and how sincere my affection for Anna is, you would certainly be very far from thinking the thing dreadful. At any rate, I suppose your wife has told you about our plans for the immediate future ... or am I making a mistake...?" "Not at all, Herr Baron, I have been informed of everything this morning. But I must say that I have noticed for some weeks that something was wrong in the house. It often struck me that my wife was very nervous and was often on the point of crying." "On the point of crying! There is really no occasion for that, Herr Rosner. Anna herself, who is more concerned than any one else, is very well and is in her usual good spirits...." "Yes, Anna at any rate takes it very well, and that, to speak frankly, is more or less my consolation. But I cannot describe to you, Baron, how hard hit ... how, I could almost say ... like a bolt from the blue ... I could never, no, never have ... have believed it...." He could not say any more. His voice trembled. "I am really very concerned," said George, "that you should take the matter like this, in spite of the fact that your wife is bound to have explained everything to you, and that the measures we have taken for the near future presumably meet with your approval. I would prefer not to talk about a time which is further, though I hope not too far off, because phrases of all kinds are more or less distasteful to me, but you may be sure, Herr Rosner, that I certainly shall not forget what I owe to a person like Anna.... Yes, what I owe to myself." He gulped. In all his memory there was no moment in his life in which he had felt less sympathy for himself. And now, as is necessarily the case in all pointless conversations, they repeated themselves several times, until Herr Rosner finally apologised for having troubled him, and took his leave of George, who accompanied him to the stairs. George felt an unpleasant aftermath in his soul for some days after this visit. The brother would be the finishing touch, he thought irritably, and he could not help imagining a scene of explanation in the course of which the young man would endeavour to play the avenger of the family honour, while George put him in his place with extraordinarily trenchant expressions. George nevertheless felt a sense of relief after the conversation with Anna's parents had taken place, and the hours which he spent with his beloved alone in the peaceful room opposite the church were full of a peculiar feeling of comfort and safety. It sometimes seemed to them both as though time stood still. It was all very well for George to bring guide-books, Burckhardt's _Cicerone_, and even maps to their meetings, and to plan out with Anna all kinds of routes; he did not as a matter of fact seriously think that all this would ever be realised. So far, however, as the house in which the child was to be born was concerned, they were both impressed with the necessity of its being found and taken before they left Vienna. Anna once saw an advertisement in the paper which she was accustomed to read carefully for that very object, of a lodge near the forest, and not far from a railway station, which could be reached in one and a half hours from Vienna. One morning they both took the train to the place in question and they had a memory of a snow-covered lonely wooden building with antlers over the door, an old drunken keeper, a young blonde girl, a swift sleigh-ride over a snowy winter street, an extraordinarily jolly dinner in an enormous room in the inn, and then home in a badly-lighted over-heated compartment. This was the only time that George tried to find with Anna the house that must be standing somewhere in the world and waiting to be decided upon. Otherwise he usually went alone by train or tramway to look round the summer resorts which were near Vienna. Once, on a spring day that had come straight into the middle of the winter, George was walking through one of the small places situated quite near town, which he was particularly fond of, where village buildings, unassuming villas and elegant country houses lay close upon each other. He had completely forgotten, as often happened, why he had taken the journey, and was thinking with emotion of the fact that Beethoven and Schubert had taken the same walk as he, many years ago, when he unexpectedly ran up against Nürnberger. They greeted each other, praised the fine day, which had enticed them so far out into the open, and expressed regret that they so rarely saw each other since Bermann had left Vienna. "Is it long since you heard anything of him?" asked George. "I have only had a card from him," replied Nürnberger, "since he left. It is much more likely he would correspond regularly with you than with me." "Why is it more likely?" inquired George, somewhat irritated by Nürnberger's tone, as indeed be frequently was. "Well, at any rate you have the advantage over me of being a new acquaintance, and consequently offering more exciting subject-matter for his psychological interest than I can." George detected in the accustomed flippancy of these words a certain sense of grievance which he more or less understood, for, as a matter of fact, Heinrich had bothered very little about Nürnberger of late, though he had previously seen a great deal of him, it being always his way to draw men to him and then drop them with the greatest lack of consideration, according as their character did or did not fit in with his own mood. "In spite of that I am not much better off than you," said George. "I haven't had any news of him for some weeks either. His father, too, appears to be in a bad way according to the last letter." "So I suppose it will soon be all up with the poor old man now." "Who knows? According to what Bermann writes me, he can still last for months." Nürnberger shook his head seriously. "Yes," said George lightly. "The doctors ought to be allowed in cases like that ... to shorten the matter." "You are perhaps right," answered Nürnberger, "but who knows whether our friend Heinrich, however much the sight of his father's incurable malady may put him off his work and perhaps many other things as well--who knows whether he might not all the same refuse the suggestion of finishing off this hopeless matter by a morphia injection?" George felt again repulsed by Nürnberger's bitter, ironic tone, and yet when he remembered the hour when he had seen Heinrich more violently upset by a few obscure words in the letter of a mistress than by his father's madness, he could not drive out the impression that Nürnberger's opinion of their friend was correct. "Did you know old Bermann?" he asked. "Not personally, but I still remember the time when his name was known in the papers, and I remember, too, many extremely sound and excellent speeches which he made in Parliament. But I am keeping you, my dear Baron. Goodbye. We will see each other no doubt one of these days in the café, or at Ehrenbergs'." "You are not keeping me at all," replied George with deliberate courtesy. "I am quite at large, and I am availing myself of the opportunity of looking at houses for the summer." "So you are going in the country, near Vienna this year?" "Yes, for a time probably, and apart from that a family I know has asked me if I should chance to run across...." He grew a little red, as he always did when he was not adhering strictly to the truth. Nürnberger noticed it and said innocently: "I have just passed by some villas which are to let. Do you see, for instance, that white one with the white terrace?" "It looks very nice. We might have a look at it, if you won't find it too dull coming with me. Then we can go back together to town." The garden which they entered sloped upwards and was very long and narrow. It reminded Nürnberger of one in which he had played as a child. "Perhaps it is the same," he said. "We lived for years and years you know in the country in Grinzing or Heiligenstadt." This "we" affected George in quite a strange way. He could scarcely realise Nürnberger's ever having been quite young, ever having lived as a son with his father and mother, as a brother with his sisters, and he felt all of a sudden that this man's whole life had something strange and hard about it. At the top of the garden an open arbour gave a wonderfully fine view of the town, which they enjoyed for some time. They slowly went down, accompanied by the caretaker's wife, who carried a small child wrapped in a grey shawl in her arms. They then looked at the house--low musty rooms with cheap battered carpets on the floor, narrow wooden beds, dull or broken mirrors. "Everything will be done up again in the spring," explained the caretaker, "then it will look very cheerful." The little child suddenly held out its tiny hand towards George, as if it wanted him to take it up in his arms. George was somewhat moved and smiled awkwardly. As he rode with Nürnberger into the town on the platform of the tramway and chatted to him he felt that he had never got so close to him on all the many previous occasions when they had been together, as during this hour of clear winter sunshine in the country. When they said goodbye it was quite a matter of course that they should arrange a new excursion on a day in the immediate future. And so it came about that George was several times accompanied by Nürnberger, when he continued his househunting in the neighbourhood of Vienna. On these occasions the fiction was still kept up that George was looking for a house for a family whom he knew, that Nürnberger believed it and that George believed that Nürnberger believed it. On these excursions Nürnberger frequently came to speak of his youth, to speak about the parents whom he had lost very early, of a sister who had died young and of his elder brother, the only one of his relatives who was still alive. But he, an ageing bachelor like Edmund himself, did not live in Vienna, but in a small town in Lower Austria, where he was a teacher in a public school, where he had been transferred fifteen years ago as an assistant. He could easily have managed afterwards to have got an appointment again in the metropolis, but after a few years of bitterness, and even defiance, he had become so completely acclimatised to the quiet petty life of the place where he was staying that he came to regard a return to Vienna as more a sacrifice than anything else, and he now lived on, passionately devoted to his profession and particularly to his studies in philology, far from the world, lonely, contented, a kind of philosopher in the little town. When Nürnberger spoke of this distant brother George often felt as though he were hearing him speak about some one who had died, so absolutely out of the question seemed every possibility of a permanent reunion in the future. It was in quite a different tone, almost as though he were speaking of a being who could return once again, that he would talk with a perpetual wistfulness of the sister who had been dead several years. It was on a misty February day, while they were at the railway station waiting for the train to Vienna, and walking up and down with each other on the platform, that Nürnberger told George the story of this sister, who when a child of sixteen had become possessed as it were by a tremendous passion for the theatre, and had run away from home without saying goodbye in a fit of childish romanticism. She had wandered from town to town, from stage to stage, for ten years, playing smaller and smaller parts, since neither her talent nor her beauty appeared to be sufficient for the career which she had chosen, but always with the same enthusiasm, always with the same confidence in her future, in spite of the disillusions which she experienced and the sorrow which she saw. In the holidays she would come to the brothers, who were still living together, sometimes for weeks, sometimes only for days, and tell them about the provincial halls in which she had acted as though they were great theatres; about her few successes as though they were triumphs which she had won, about the wretched comedians at whose side she worked as though they were great artists, tell them about the petty intrigues that took place around her as though they were powerful tragedies of passion. And instead of gradually realising the miserable world in which she was living a life which was as much to be pitied as that of any one else, she spun every year the essence of her soul into more and more golden dreams. This went on for a long time, until at last she came home, feverish and ill. She lay in bed for months on end with flushed cheeks, raving in her delirium of a fame and happiness which she had never experienced, got up once again in apparent health, and went away once more, only to come back home, this time after a few weeks, in complete collapse with death written on her forehead. Her brother now travelled with her to the South; to Arco, Meran, to the Italian Lakes, and it was only as she lay stretched out in southern gardens beneath flowering trees, far away from the whirl that had dazed and intoxicated her throughout the years that she realised at last that her life had been simply a racketing about beneath a painted sky and between paper walls--that the whole essence of her existence had been an illusion. But even the little everyday incidents, the apartments and inns of the foreign town, seemed to her memory simply scenes which she had played in as an actress by the footlights, and not scenes which she had really lived, and as she approached nearer and nearer to the grave, there awoke within her an awful yearning for that real life which she had missed, and the more surely she knew that it was lost to her for ever, the clearer became the gaze with which she realised the fullness of the world. And the strangest touch of all was the way in which, in the last weeks of her life, that talent to which she had sacrificed her whole existence without ever really possessing it manifested itself with diabolic uncanniness. "It seems to me, even to-day," said Nürnberger, "that I have never heard verses so declaimed, never seen whole scenes so acted, even by the greatest actress, as I did by my sister in the hotel room at Cadenabbia, looking out on to the Lake of Como, a few days before she died. Of course," he added, "it is possible, even probable, that my memory is deceiving me." "But why?" asked George, who was so pleased with this _finale_ that he did not want to have it spoiled. And he endeavoured to convince Nürnberger, who listened to him with a smile, that he could not have made a mistake, and that the world had lost a great actress in that strange girl who lay buried in Cadenabbia. George did not find on his excursions with Nürnberger the house in the country for which he was looking. In fact it seemed to become more difficult to find every time he went out. Nürnberger made occasional jokes about George's exacting requirements. He seemed to be looking for a villa which was to be faced in front by a well-kept road, while it was to have at the back a garden door which led into the natural forest. Eventually George himself did not seriously believe that he would now succeed in finding the desired house, and relied on the pressure of necessity after his return from his travels. It seemed more essential to get as soon as possible into touch with a doctor, but George put this off too from one day to another. But one evening Anna informed him that she had been suddenly panic-stricken by a new attack of faintness, had visited Doctor Stauber and explained her condition to him. He had been very nice, had not expressed any astonishment, had thoroughly reassured her and only expressed the wish to speak to George before they went away. A few days afterwards George went to see the doctor in accordance with his invitation. The consultation hours were over. Doctor Stauber received him with the friendliness which he had anticipated, seemed to treat the whole matter as being as regular and as much a matter of course as it could possibly be, and spoke of Anna just as though she had been a young wife, a method of procedure which affected George in a strange but not unpleasant way. When the practical discussion was over the doctor inquired about the destination of their journey. George had not yet mapped out any programme, only this much was decided, that the spring was to be spent in the south, probably in Italy. Doctor Stauber took the opportunity to talk about his last stay in Rome, which was ten years back. He had been in personal touch on this occasion, as he had been once before, with the director of the excavations and spoke to George in almost ecstatic terms of the latest discoveries on the Palatine, about which he had written monographs as a young man, which he had published in the antiquarian journals. He then showed George, and not without pride, his library, which was divided into two sections, medicine and the history of art, and took out and offered to lend him a few rare books, one printed in the year 1834 on the Vatican collections and also a history of Sicily. George felt highly excited as he realised with such vividness the rich days that lay in front of him. He was overcome by a kind of homesickness for places which he knew well and had missed for a long time. Half-forgotten pictures floated up in his memory, the pyramids of Cestius stood on the horizon in sharp outlines, as they had appeared to him when he had ridden back as a boy into the town at evening with the prince of Macedon; the dim church, where he had seen his first mistress step up to the altar as a bride, opened its doors; a bark under a dark sky with strange sulphur yellow sails drew near to the coast.... He began to speak about the several towns and landscapes of the south which he had seen as a boy and as a youth, explained the longing for those places which often seized on him like a genuine homesickness, his joy at being able to take in with mature appreciation all the differing things which he had longed for, reserved for himself and then forgotten, and many new things besides, and this time too in the society of a being who was able to appreciate and enjoy everything with him, and whom he held dear. Doctor Stauber, who was in the act of putting a book back on the shelf, turned round suddenly to George, looked gently at him and said: "I am very glad of that." As George answered his look with some surprise he added: "It was the first tender allusion to your relationship to Annerl that I have noticed in the course of the last hour. I know, I know that you are not the kind of man to take a comparative stranger into your confidence, but if only because I had no reason to expect it, it has really done me good. It came straight from your heart, one could see it; and I should have been really sorry for Annerl--excuse me, I always call her that--if I had been driven to think that you are not as fond of her as she deserves." "I really don't know," replied George coolly, "what gave you cause to doubt it, doctor." "Did I say anything about doubts?" replied Stauber good-humouredly. "But, after all, it has happened before that a young man who has had all kinds of experiences does not appreciate a sacrifice of this kind sufficiently, for it still is a sacrifice, my dear Baron. We can be as superior to all prejudices as much as we like--but it is not a trifle even to-day for a young girl of good family to make up her mind to do a thing like that, and I won't conceal it from you--of course I did not let Annerl notice anything--it gave even me a slight shock when she came to me the other day and told me all about it." "Excuse me, Herr Doctor," replied George, irritated but yet polite, "if it gave you a shock that is surely some proof against your being superior to prejudices...." "You are right," said Stauber with a smile, "but perhaps you will overlook this lapse when you consider that I am somewhat older than you and belong to another age. Even a more or less independent man ... which I flatter myself I am ... cannot quite escape from the influence of his age. It is a strange thing, but believe me, even among the young people, who have grown up on Nietzsche and Ibsen, there are quite as many Philistines as there were thirty years ago. They won't own up to it, but it does go against the grain with them, for instance, if some one goes and seduces their sister, or if one of their worthy wives suddenly takes it into her head that she wants to live her own life.... Many, of course, are consistent and carry their pose through ... but that is more a matter of self-control than of their real views, and in the old days, you know, the age to which I belong, when ideas were so immovably hide-bound, when every one for instance was quite sure of things like this: one has to honour one's parents or else one is a knave ... or ... one only loves really once in one's life ... or it's a pleasure to die for one's fatherland ... in that time, mind you, when every decent man held up some flag or other, or at any rate had something written on his banner ... believe me, the so-called modern ideas had more adherents than you suspect. The only thing was that those adherents did not quite know it themselves, they did not trust their own ideas, they thought themselves, as it were, debauchees or even criminals. Shall I tell you something, Herr Baron? There are really no new ideas at all. People feel with a new intensity--that's what it is. But do you seriously think that Nietzsche discovered the superman, Ibsen the fraud of life and Anzengruber the truth that the parents who desire love and honour from their children ought to 'come up to the scratch' themselves? Not a bit of it. All the ethical ideas have always been there, and one would really be surprised if one knew what absolute blockheads have thought of the so-called great new truths, and have even frequently given them expression long before the geniuses to whom we owe these truths, or rather the courage to regard these truths as true. If I have gone rather too far forgive me. I really only wanted to say ... and you will believe me, I am sure.... I know as well as you, Baron, that there is many a virgin girl who is a thousand times more corrupt than a so-called fallen woman; and that there is many a young man who passes for respectable who has worse things on his conscience than starting a _liaison_ with an innocent girl. And yet ... it is just the curse of my period ..." he interpolated with a smile, "I could not help it, the first moment Annerl told me her story certain unpleasant words which in their day had their own fixed meaning began to echo through my old head in their old tones, silly out-of-date words like ... libertine ... seduction ... leaving in the lurch ... and so on, and that is why I must ask you once more to forgive me, now that I have got to know you somewhat more intimately ... that is why I felt that shock which a modern man would certainly not own that he experienced. But to talk seriously once again, just consider a minute how your poor father, who did not know Anna, would have taken the matter. He was certainly one of the shrewdest and most unprejudiced men whom one can imagine ... and all the same you have not the slightest doubt that the matter would not have passed off without his feeling something of a shock as well." George could not help holding out his hand to the doctor. The unexpectedness of this sudden allusion caused so intense a longing to spring up within him that the only thing he could do to assuage it was to begin to talk of him who had passed away. The doctor was able to tell him of many meetings with the late baron, mostly chance casual encounters in the street, at the sessions of the scientific academy, at concerts. There came another of those moments in which George thought himself strangely guilty in his attitude towards the dead man and registered a mental vow to become worthy of his memory. "Remember me kindly to Annerl," said the doctor as he said goodbye, "but I would rather you did not tell her anything about the shock. She is a very sensitive creature, that you know well enough, and now it is particularly important to save her any excitement. Remember, my dear Baron, there is only one question before us now--to see that a healthy child comes into the world, everything else.... Well, give her my best regards. I hope we shall all see each other again in the summer in the best of health." George went away with a heightened consciousness of his responsibilities towards the being who had given herself to him and to that other who would wake up to existence in a few months. He thought first of making a will and leaving it behind with a lawyer. But on further consideration he thought it more proper to confide in his brother, who after all stood nearer to him in sentiment than any one else. But with that peculiar embarrassment which was characteristic of the really intimate relationship between the brothers he let day after day go by, until at last Felician's departure on the hunting expedition in Africa was quite imminent. The night before, on the way home from the club, George informed his brother that he was thinking of taking a long journey in the near future. "Really! For how long shall you be away?" asked Felician. George caught the note of a certain anxiety in these words and felt that it was incumbent on him to add: "It will probably be the last long journey I shall take for some years. I hope to find myself in a permanent position in the autumn." "So you have quite made up your mind?" "Yes, of course." "I am very glad, George, for different reasons, as you can imagine, that you want at last to do something serious. And besides, it's a very sound thing, that it is not a case of one of us going out into the world while the other remains at home alone. That would really have been rather sad." George knew quite well that Felician would get a foreign diplomatic post in the following autumn, but he had never realised so clearly that in a few months that brotherly life which had lasted for so many years, that common life in the old house opposite the park, yes, his whole youth so to speak, would be irrevocably over and done with. He saw life lying in front of him, serious, almost menacing. "Have you any idea," he asked, "where they will send you?" "There is some chance of Athens." "Would you like that?" "Why not? The society ought to be fairly interesting. Bernburg was there for three years and was sorry to leave. And they have transferred him to London, too, and that's certainly not to be sniffed at." They walked in silence for a while and took their usual way through the park. An atmosphere suggesting the approaching spring was around them, although small white flakes of snow still gleamed on the lawns. "So you are going to Italy?" asked Felician. "Yes." "As far down South as last spring?" "I don't know yet." Again a short silence. Suddenly Felician's voice came out of the darkness. "Have you heard anything of Grace since then?" "Of Grace?" repeated George, somewhat surprised, for it had been a long time since Felician had mentioned that name. "I have heard nothing more of Grace. Besides, that is what we arranged. We took farewell of each other for ever at Genoa. That is already more than a year ago...." A gentleman was sitting on a seat quite in the darkness in a fur coat with a top hat and white gloves. "Ah, Labinski," thought George for a whole minute; the next minute he of course remembered that he had shot himself. This was not the first time that he had thought he had seen him. A man had sat in broad daylight in the botanical garden at Palermo under a Japanese ash-tree whom George had taken for a whole second for Labinski; and recently George had thought he had recognised the face of his dead father behind the shut windows of a fiacre. The houses gleamed behind the leafless branches. One of them was the house in which the brothers lived. The time has come, thought George, for me to mention the matter at last. And to bring matters to a head, he observed lightly: "Besides, I am not going to Italy alone this year." "Hm! Hm!" said Felician, and looked in front of him. George felt at the same moment that he had not taken the right tone. He was apprehensive of Felician's thinking something like this: "Oh yes, he has got an adventure again with some shady person or other." And he added seriously: "I say, Felician, I have something serious I should like to talk to you about." "What! Serious!" "Yes." "Well, George," said Felician gently, and looked at him sideways, "what is up, then? You are not thinking of marrying by any chance?" "Oh no," replied George, and then felt irritated that he had repudiated that possibility with such definiteness. "No, it is not a question of marriage, but of something much more vital." Felician remained standing for a moment. "You have a child?" he asked seriously. "No, not yet. That's just it, that is why we are leaving." "Indeed," said Felician. They had got out of the park. Involuntarily both looked up to the window of their house, from which only a year ago their father had so often nodded his welcome to them both. Both felt with sorrow that somehow since their father's death they had gradually slipped away from each other--and felt at the same time a slight fear of how much further from each other life could still take them. "Come into my room," said George when they got upstairs. "That's the most comfortable place." He sat down on his comfortable chair by his secretary. Felician lounged in the corner on a little green leather ottoman which was near the writing-table and listened quietly. George told him the name of his mistress, spoke of her with heartfelt sympathy, and asked Felician, in case anything should happen to him, George, in the near future to undertake to look after the mother and her child. He left so much of his fortune as was still available to the child, of course. The mother was to have the usufruct until the child became of age. When George had finished Felician said with a smile after a short silence: "Oh well, you've got every reason to hope that you will come back as whole and sound from your journey as I will from Africa, and so our conversation has probably only an academic significance." "I hope so too, of course. But at any rate it reassures me, Felician, that you know all about my secret, and that I can be free from anxiety in every way." "Yes, of course you can." He shook hands with his brother. Then he got up and walked up and down the room. Finally he said: "You have no thought of legitimising your relationship?" "Not for the time being. One can never tell what the future may bring forth." Felician remained standing. "Well...." "Are you in favour of my marrying?" exclaimed George with some astonishment. "Not at all." "Felician, be frank, please." "Look here, one should not advise any one in affairs like that. Not even one's own brother." "But if I ask you, Felician? It seems to me as though there is something in the business you didn't quite like." "Well, it is like this, George.... You won't misunderstand me.... I know of course that you are not thinking of leaving her in the lurch. On the contrary, I am convinced that you will behave all through far more nobly than any ordinary man in your position. But the question is really this, would you have let yourself go into the thing if you had considered the consequences from every point of view?" "That of course is very hard to answer," said George. "I mean just this: Did you intend ... not to make her your companion for life, but to have a child by her all the same?" "Great heavens, who thinks of that? Of course if one had wanted to be so absolutely on the safe side----" Felician interrupted him. "Does she know that you are not thinking of marrying her?" "Why, you don't think, surely, I promised her marriage?" "No. But you did not promise to leave her stranded either." "It would have been equally mean if I had promised, Felician. The whole thing came about as affairs like that always do, developed without any definite plan right up to the present time." "Yes, that is all right. The only question is whether one is not more or less under an obligation to have definite plans in really vital matters." "Possibly.... But that was never my line, unfortunately." Felician remained standing in front of George, looked at him affectionately and nodded a few times. "That is quite true, George. You are not angry with me.... But now that we are talking about it.... Of course I am not suggesting I have any right to lecture you on your mode of life...." "Go ahead, Felician.... I mean if.... It really does me good." He stroked him lightly on the hand which lay on the back of the ottoman. "Well, there is not much more to be said. I only mean that in everything you do there is just ... the same lack of system. Look here, to talk of another important matter, I personally am quite convinced of your talent and many others are, too. But you really work damned little, don't you? And fame doesn't come of itself, even when one...." "Quite so. But I don't work as little as you think, Felician, it is only that work is such a peculiar business with people of my temperament. Frequently when one is out for a walk or even asleep one gets all kinds of ideas.... And then in the autumn...." "Yes, yes, we hope so, though I am afraid that you won't be able to live on your salary at the commencement, and it is very questionable how long your little money will hold out with your mode of life. I tell you candidly, when you mentioned a few moments ago the sum which you were able to leave to your child I had quite a shock." "Be patient, Felician. In three or five years, when I have my opera finished...." He spoke in an ironical tone. "Are you really writing an opera, George?" "I am beginning one shortly." "Who is doing the libretto for you?" "Heinrich Bermann. Of course you scowl again." "My dear George, I have always been very far from lecturing you in any way about the people you associate with. It is quite natural that you with your intellectual tastes should live in a different set and mix with different people to those I do, people whom I should probably find rather less to my taste. But so long as Herr Bermann's libretto is good you have my blessing ... and Herr Bermann, of course, too." "The libretto is not ready yet, only the scenario." Felician could not help laughing. "So that's how your opera stands! I only hope the theatre is already built at which you are going to get a post as conductor." "Come, come," said George, somewhat hurt. "Forgive me," replied Felician, "I have not really any doubts about your future. I should only like you yourself to do a bit more towards it. I really should be so ... proud, George, if you were to do anything great, and it, I'm sure, only depends on yourself. Willy Eissler, who is a man of genuine musical gifts, told me again only the other day that he thinks more of you than of most of the young composers." "On the strength of the few songs of mine which he knows? You're a good fellow, Felician, but there is really no need for you to encourage me. I already know what I have got in me, only I must be more industrious, and my going away will do me quite a lot of good. It does one good to get out of one's usual surroundings for a time, like this. And this time it is quite different from last. It is the first time, Felician, that I have had anything to do with a person who is absolutely my equal, who is more ... whom I can treat as a true friend as well, and the consciousness that I am going to have a child, and by her, too, is, in spite of all the accompanying circumstances, rather pleasant." "I can quite understand that," said Felician, and contemplated George seriously and affectionately. The clock on the writing-table struck two. "What, so late already," cried Felician, "and I have got to pack early to-morrow. Well, we can talk over everything at breakfast to-morrow. Well, good-night, George." "Good-night, Felician. Thank you," he added with emotion. "What are you thanking me for, George? You really are funny!" They shook hands and then kissed each other, which they had not done for quite a long time, and George resolved to call his child Felician if it was to be a boy, and he rejoiced at the good omen of a name which had so happy a ring. After his brother's departure George felt as deserted as though he had never had another friend. Living in the great lonely house, where he seemed to be weighed down by a mood like that which had followed the first weeks after his father's death, made him feel depressed. He regarded the days which still had to elapse before the departure as a transition period, in which it was not worth while starting anything. The hours he spent with his mistress in the room opposite the church became colourless and blank. A psychological change, too, seemed to be now taking place in Anna herself. She was frequently irritable, then taciturn again, almost melancholy, and George was often overcome by so great a sense of _ennui_ when he was with her that he felt quite nervous of the next month in which they would be thrown completely into each other's society. Of course the journey in itself promised change enough, but how would it be in the subsequent months which would have to be spent somewhere in the neighbourhood of Vienna? He must also think about a companion for Anna; but he was still putting off speaking to her about it, when Anna herself came to him with a piece of news which was calculated to remove that difficulty, and at the same time to raise another one, in the simplest way conceivable. Anna had recently, particularly since she had gradually given up her lessons, become more and more intimate with Therese, and had confided everything to her, and so it soon came about that Therese's mother was also in the secret. This lady was much more congenial to Anna than her own mother, who after a slight glimmer of understanding had held aloof, aggrieved and depressed, from her erring daughter. Frau Golowski not only declared herself ready to live with Anna in the country, but even promised to discover the little house which George had not been able to find, while the young couple were away. However much this willingness suited George's convenience, he found it none the less somewhat painful to be under an obligation to this old woman, who was a stranger to him, and in moments when he was out of temper it struck him as almost grotesque that it should be Leo's mother and Berthold's father, of all people, who should be fated to play so important a part in so momentous an event in Anna's life. George paid his farewell visit at Ehrenbergs' on a fine May afternoon three days before he went away. He had only rarely shown himself there since that Christmas celebration and his conversations with Else had remained on the most innocent of footings. She confessed to him, as though to a friend who could not now misunderstand remarks of that character, that she felt more and more unsettled at home. In particular the atmosphere of the house, as George had frequently noticed before, seemed to be permanently overcast by the bad relations between father and son. When Oskar came in at the door with his nonchalant aristocratic swagger and began to talk in his Viennese aristocratic accent, his father would turn scornfully away, or would be unable to suppress allusions to the fact that he could make an end this very day of all that aristocracy by stopping or lowering his so-called allowance, which as a matter of fact was neither more nor less than pocket-money. If, on his side, his father began to talk Yiddish, as he was most fond of doing in front of company, and with obvious malice, Oskar would bite his lips and make a point of leaving the room. So it was only very rarely during the last few months that father and son stayed in Vienna or in Neuhaus at the same time. They both found each other's presence almost intolerable. When George came in to Ehrenbergs' the room was almost in darkness. The marble Isis gleamed from behind the pianoforte, and the twilight of the late afternoon was falling in the alcove where mother and daughter sat opposite each other. For the first time the appearance of these two women struck George as somewhat strangely pathetic. A vague feeling floated up in his mind that perhaps this was the last time he would see this picture, and Else's smile shone towards him with such sweet melancholy, that he thought for a whole minute: might I not have found my happiness here, after all? He now sat next to Frau Ehrenberg (who was going on quietly knitting) opposite Else, smoked a cigarette and felt quite at home. He explained that, fascinated by the tempting spring weather, he was starting on his projected journey earlier than he had intended, and that he would probably prolong it until the summer. "And we are going to Auhof as early as the middle of May this time," said Frau Ehrenberg, "and we certainly count upon seeing you down there this year." "If you are not elsewhere engaged," added Else with a perfectly straight face. George promised to come in August, at any rate for some days. The conversation then turned on Felician and Willy, who had started with their party a few days ago from Biskra on their hunting expedition in the desert; on Demeter Stanzides, who announced his immediate intention of resigning from the army and retiring to an estate in Hungary; and finally on Heinrich Bermann of whom no one had had any news for some weeks. "Who knows if he will ever come back to Vienna at all?" said Else. "Why shouldn't he? What makes you think that, Fräulein Else?" "Upon my word, perhaps he'll marry that actress and trot about the world with her." George shrugged his shoulders ... he didn't know personally of any actress with whom Heinrich was mixed up, and he ventured to express a doubt whether Heinrich would ever marry any one, whether she was a Princess or a circus rider. "It would be rather a pity if Bermann were to," said Frau Ehrenberg, without taking any notice of George's discretion. "I certainly think that young people take these matters either too lightly or too seriously." Else followed up the idea: "Yes, it is strange, all you men are either cleverer or much sillier in these matters than in any other, although really it is just in such crucial moments of one's life, that one ought as far as possible to be one's ordinary self." "My dear Else," said George casually, "once one's passions are set going----" "Yes, when they are set going," emphasised Frau Ehrenberg. "Passions!" exclaimed Else. "I believe that like all other great things in the world, they are really something quite rare." "What do you know, my child?" said Frau Ehrenberg. "At any rate I've never so far seen anything of that kind in my immediate environment," explained Else. "Who knows if you would discover it," remarked George, "even though it did come once in a way quite near you? Viewed from outside a flirtation and a life's tragedy may sometimes look quite the same." "That is certainly not true," said Else. "Passion is something that is bound to betray itself." "How do you manage to know that, Else?" objected Frau Ehrenberg. "Passions can often conceal themselves deeper than any ordinary trumpery little emotion, for the very reason that there is usually more at stake." "I think," replied George, "that it is a very personal matter. There are, of course, people who have everything written on their forehead, and others who are impenetrable; being impenetrable is quite as much a talent as anything else." "It can be trained too, like anything else," said Else. The conversation stuck for a moment, as is apt to occur when the personal application that lies behind some general observation flashes out only too palpably. Frau Ehrenberg started a new topic. "Have you been composing anything nice, George?" she asked. "A few trifles for the piano. My quintette will soon be ready too." "The quintette is beginning to grow mythical," said Else discontentedly. "Else!" said her mother. "Well, it really would be a good thing, if he were to be more industrious." "You are perhaps right about that," replied George. "I think artists used to work much more in former days than they do now." "The great ones," qualified George. "No, all," persisted Else. "Perhaps it is a good thing that you are going to travel," said Frau Ehrenberg, "for apparently you've too many distractions here." "He'll let himself be distracted anywhere," asserted Else sternly. "Even in Iglau, or wherever else he happens to be next year." "That's why I've never yet thought of your going away," said Frau Ehrenberg and shook her head; "and your brother will be in Sophia or Athens next year and Stanzides in Hungary ... it's really a great pity to think of all the nicest men being scattered like this to the four corners of the world." "If I were a man," said Else, "I would scatter too." George smiled. "You're dreaming of a journey round the world in a white yacht, Madeira, Ceylon, San Francisco." "Oh no, I shouldn't like to be without a profession, but I should probably have been an officer in the merchant service." "Won't you be kind enough"--Frau Ehrenberg turned to George--"to play us one or two of your new things?" "Delighted, I'm sure." He got up from the recess and walked towards the window into the darkness of the room. Else got up and turned on the light on top. George opened the piano, sat down and played his ballads. Else had sat down in an arm-chair and as she sat there, with her arm resting on the side of the chair and her head resting on her arm in the pose of a _grande dame_ and with the melancholy expression of a precocious child, George felt again strangely thrilled by her look. He was not feeling very satisfied with his ballad to-day, and was fully conscious that he was endeavouring to help out its effect by putting too much expression into his playing. Hofrat Wilt stepped softly into the room and made a sign that they were not to disturb themselves. He then remained standing by the door leaning against the wall, tall, superior, good-natured, with his closely-cropped grey hair, until George ended his performance with some emphatic harmonies. They greeted each other. Wilt congratulated George on being a free man and being now able to travel South. "I'm sorry to say I can't do it," he added, "and all the same one has at times a vague notion that even though one were not to visit one's office for a year on end, not the slightest change would take place in Austria." He talked with his usual irony about his profession and his Fatherland. Frau Ehrenberg retorted that there was not a man who was more patriotic, and took his calling more seriously than he himself. He agreed. But he regarded Austria as an infinitely complicated instrument, which only a master could handle properly, and said that the only reason for its sounding badly so often was that every muddler tried his art upon it. "They'll go on knocking it about," he said dismally, "until all the strings break and the frame too." When George went Else accompanied him into the empty room. She still had a few words to say to him about his ballads. She had particularly liked the middle movement. It had had such an inner glow. Anyway, she hoped he would have a good time on his journey. He thanked her. "So," she said suddenly, when he already had his hat in his hand, "it's really a case now of saying a final farewell to certain dreams." "What dreams?" he asked in surprise. "Mine of course, which you are bound to have known about by this time." George was very astonished. She had never been so specific. He smiled awkwardly and sought for an answer. "Who knows what the future will bring forth?" he said at last lightly. She puckered her forehead. "Why aren't you at any rate as straight with me as I am with you? I know quite well that you are not travelling alone ... I also know who is going with you ... what is more I know the whole thing. Good gracious, what haven't I known since we have known each other?" And George heard grief and rage quivering below the surface of her words. And he knew that if he ever did make her his wife, she would make him feel that she had had to wait for him too long. He looked in front of him and maintained a silence that seemed at once guilty and defiant. Then Else smiled brightly, held out her hand and said once again: "_Bon voyage_." He pressed her hand as though he were bound to make some apology. She took it away from him, turned round and went back into the room. He still waited for a few seconds standing by the door and then hurried into the street. On the same evening George saw Leo Golowski again in the café, for the first time for many weeks. He knew from Anna that Leo had recently had to put up with a great deal of unpleasantness as a volunteer and that that "fiend in human form" in particular had persecuted him with malice, with real hatred in fact. It occurred to George to-day that Leo had greatly altered during the short time in which he had not seen him. He looked distinctly older. "I'm very glad to get a chance of seeing you again before I leave," said George and sat down opposite him at the café table. "You are glad," replied Leo, "that you happened to run across me again, while I positively needed to see you once again, that is the difference." His voice had even a tenderer note than usual. He looked George in the face with a kind, almost fatherly expression. At this moment George no longer had any doubt that Leo knew everything. He felt as embarrassed for a few seconds as though he were responsible to him, was irritated at his own embarrassment and was grateful to Leo for not appearing to notice it. This evening they talked about practically nothing except music. Leo inquired after the progress of George's work, and it came about during the course of the conversation that George declared himself quite willing to play one of his newest compositions to Leo on the following Sunday afternoon. But when they took leave of each other, George suddenly had the unpleasant feeling of having passed with comparative success a theoretical examination, and of being faced to-morrow with a practical examination. What did this young man, who was so mature for his years, really want of him? Was George to prove to him that his talent entitled him to be Anna's lover or her child's father? He waited for Leo's visit with genuine repugnance. He thought for a minute of refusing to see him. But when Leo appeared with all that innocent sincerity which he so frequently liked to affect, George's mood soon became less harsh. They drank tea and smoked cigarettes and George showed him his library, the pictures which were hanging in the house, the antiquities and the weapons, and the examination feeling vanished. George sat down at the pianoforte, played a few of his earlier pieces and also his latest ones as well as the ballads, which he rendered much better than he had done yesterday at Ehrenbergs', and then some songs, while Leo followed the melody with his fingers, but with sure musical feeling. Eventually he started to play the quintette from the score. He did not succeed and Leo stationed himself at the window with the music and read it attentively. "One can't really tell at all so far," he said. "A great deal of it indicates a dilettante with a lot of taste, other parts an artist without proper discipline. It's rather in the songs that one feels ... but feels what?... talent ... I don't know. One feels at any rate that you have distinction, real musical distinction." "Well, that's not so much." "As a matter of fact it's pretty little, but it doesn't prove anything against you either, since you have worked so little--worked very little and felt little." "You think ..." George forced a sarcastic laugh. "Oh, you've probably lived a great deal but felt ... you know what I mean, George?" "Yes, I can imagine well enough, but you're really making a mistake; why I rather think that I have a certain tendency to sentimentalism, which I ought to combat." "Yes, that's just it. Sentimentalism, you know, is something which is the direct antithesis to feeling, something by means of which one reassures oneself about one's lack of feeling, one's essential coldness. Sentimentalism is feeling which one has obtained, so to speak, below cost price. I hate sentimentalism." "Hm, and yet I think that you yourself are not quite free from it." "I am a Jew, it's a national disease with us. Our respectable members are working to change it into rage or fury. It's a bad habit with the Germans, a kind of emotional slovenliness so to speak." "So there is an excuse for you, not for us." "There is no excuse for diseases either if, fully realising what one is doing, one has missed one's opportunity of protecting oneself against them. But we are beginning to babble in aphorism and are consequently only on the way to half or quarter truths. Let's go back to your quintette. I like the theme of the adagio best." George nodded. "I heard it once in Palermo." "What," said Leo, "is it supposed to be a Sicilian melody?" "No, it rippled to me out of the waves of the sea when I went for a walk one morning along the shore. Being alone is particularly good for my work, so is change of scene. That's why I promise myself all kinds of things from my trip." He told him about Heinrich Bermann's opera plot, which he found very stimulating. When Heinrich came back again, Leo was to make him seriously start on the libretto. "Don't you know yet," said Leo, "his father is dead?" "Really? When? How do you know?" "It was in the paper this morning." They spoke about Heinrich's relationship to the dead man and Leo declared that the world would perhaps get on better if parents would more frequently learn by the experiences of their children instead of asking their children to adapt themselves to their own hoary wisdom. The conversation then turned on the relations between fathers and sons, on true and false kinds of gratefulness, on the dying of people one held dear, on the difference between mourning and grief, on the dangers of memory and the duty of forgetting. George felt that Leo was a very serious thinker, was very solitary and knew how to be so. He felt almost fond of him when the door closed behind him in the late twilight hour and the thought that this man had been Anna's first infatuation did him good. The remaining days passed more quickly than he anticipated, what with purchases, arrangements and all kinds of preparations. And one evening George and Anna drove after each other to the station in two separate vehicles and jestingly greeted each other in the vestibule with great politeness, as though they had been distant acquaintances who had met by accident. "My dear Fräulein Rosner, what a fortunate coincidence! are you also going to Munich by any chance?" "Yes, Herr Baron." "Hullo, that's excellent! and have you a sleeping-car, my dear Fräulein?" "Oh yes, Herr Baron, berth number five." "How strange now, I have number six." They then walked up and down on the platform. George was in a very good temper, and he was glad that in her English dress, narrow-brimmed travelling hat and blue veil Anna looked like an interesting foreigner. They went the length of the entire train until they came to the engine, which stood outside the station and was sending violent puffs of light-grey steam up to the dark sky. Outside green and red lamps glowed on the track with a faint light. Nervous whistles came from somewhere out of the distance and a train slowly struggled out of the darkness into the station. A red light waved magically to and fro over the ground, seemed to be miles away, stopped and was suddenly quite near. And outside, shining and losing themselves in the invisible, the lines went their way to near and far, into night and morning, into the morrow, into the inscrutable. Anna climbed into the compartment. George remained standing outside for a while and derived amusement from watching the other travellers, those who were in an excited rush, those who preserved a dignified calm, and those who posed as being calm--and all the various types of people who were seeing their friends off: the depressed, the jolly, the indifferent. Anna was leaning out of the window. George chatted with her, behaved as though he had not the slightest idea of leaving and then jumped in at the last minute. The train went away. People were standing on the platform, incomprehensible people who were remaining behind in Vienna, and who on their side seemed to find all the others who were now really leaving Vienna equally incomprehensible. A few pocket-handkerchiefs fluttered. The station-master stood there impressively and gazed sternly after the train. A porter in a blue-and-white striped linen blouse held a yellow bag high up and looked inquisitively into every window. Strange, thought George casually, there are people who are going away and yet leave their yellow bags behind in Vienna. Everything vanished, handkerchiefs, bags, station-master, station. The brightly-lighted signal-box, the Gloriette, the twinkling lights of the town, the little bare gardens along the embankment; and the train whizzed on through the night. George turned away from the window. Anna sat in the corner. She had taken off her hat and veil. Gentle little tears were running down her cheeks. "Come," said George, as he embraced her and kissed her on the eyes and mouth. "Come, Anna," he repeated even more tenderly, and kissed her again. "What are you crying for, dear? It will be so nice." "It's easy enough for you," she said, and the tears streamed on down her smiling face. They had a beautiful time. They first stopped in Munich. They walked about in the lofty halls of the Pinakothek, stood fascinated in front of the old darkening pictures, wandered into the Glyptothek between marble gods, kings and heroes; and when Anna with a sudden feeling of exhaustion sat down on a settee she felt George's tender glance lingering over her head. They drove through the English garden, over broad avenues beneath the still leafless trees, nestling close to each other, young and happy, and were glad to think that people took them for a honeymoon couple. And they had their seats next to each other at the opera, _Figaro_, _The Meistersingers_, and _Tristan_, and they felt as though a resonant transparent veil were woven around them alone out of the notes they loved so well, which separated them from all the rest of the audience. And they sat, unrecognised by any one at prettily-laid little restaurant tables, ate, drank and talked in the best of spirits. And through streets that had the wondrous atmosphere of a foreign land, they wandered home to where the gentle night waited for them in the room they shared, slept peacefully cheek by cheek, and when they awoke there smiled to them from the window a friendly day with which they could do whatever they liked. They found peace in each other as they had never done before, and at last belonged to each other absolutely. Then they travelled further to meet the call of the spring; through long valleys on which the snow shone and melted, then, as though traversing one last white winter dream, over the Brenner to Bozen, where they basked in the sunbeams at noon in the dazzling market-place. On the weather-worn steps of the vast amphitheatre of Verona, beneath the cool sky of an Easter evening, George found himself at last in sight of that world of his heart's desire into which a real true love was now vouchsafed to accompany him. His own vanished boyhood greeted him out of the pale reddish distance together with all the eternal memories, in which other men and women had their share as well. Why, even a breath of those bygone days when his mother had still lived seemed to thrill already through this air with its familiar and yet foreign atmosphere. He was glad to see Venice, but it had lost its magic and was as well known as though he had only left it yesterday. He was greeted in the Piazza St. Marco by some casual Viennese acquaintances, and the veiled lady by his side in the white dress earned many an inquisitive glance. Once only, late at evening, on a gondola journey through the narrow canals did the looming palaces, which in the daylight had gradually degenerated into artificial scenery, appear to him in all the massive splendour of the dark golden glories of their past. Then came a few days in towns, which he scarcely knew or did not know at all, in which he had only spent a few hours as a boy, or had never been in at all. They walked into a dim church out of a sultry Padua afternoon, and going slowly from altar to altar contemplated the simple glorious pictures in which saints accomplished their miracles and fulfilled their martyrdoms. On a dismal rainy day a jolty gloomy carriage took them past a brick-red fort, round which lay greenish-grey water in a broad moat, through a market-square where negligently dressed citizens sat in front of the café; among silent mournful streets, where grass grew between the cobble-stones, and they had perforce to believe that this pitifully-dying petty town bore the resounding name of Ferrara. But they breathed again in Bologna, where the lively flourishing town does not simply content itself with a mere pride in its bygone glories. But it was only when George gazed at the hills of Fiesole that he felt himself greeted as it were by a second home. This was the town in which he had ceased to be a boy, the town in which the stream of life had begun to course through his veins. At many places memories floated up in his mind which he kept to himself; and when in the cathedral, where the Florentine girl had given him her final look from beneath her bridal veil, he only spoke to Anna about that hour in the Altlerchenfelder Church in that autumn evening, when they had both begun to talk with some dim presentiment about this journey, which had now become realised with such inconceivable rapidity. He showed Anna the house in which he had lived nine years ago. The same shops in which coral-dealers, watch-makers and lace-dealers hawked their wares were still underneath. As the second story was to let George would have had no difficulty in seeing immediately the room in which his mother had died. But he hesitated for a long time to set foot in the house again. It was only on the day before their departure, as though feeling that he should not put it off any more, that alone and without any previous word to Anna, he went into the house, up the stairs and into the room. The aged porter showed him round and did not recognise him. The same furniture was still all there. His mother's bedroom looked exactly the same as it had done ten years ago, and the same brown wooden bed with its dark-green silver embroidered velvet coverlet still stood in the same corner. But none of the emotions which George had expected stirred within him. A tired memory which seemed flatter and duller than it had ever been before, ran through his soul. He stayed a long time in front of the bed with the deliberate intention of conjuring up those emotions which he felt it was his duty to feel. He murmured the word "mother," he tried to imagine the way in which she had lain here in this bed for many days and nights. He remembered the hours in which she had felt better, and he had been able to read aloud to her or to play to her on the piano in the adjoining room. He looked at the little round table standing in the corner over which his father and Felician had spoken in a soft whisper because his mother had just gone to sleep; and finally there arose up in his mind with all the sharp vividness of a theatrical scene the picture of that dreadful evening, when his father and brother had gone out, and he himself had sat at his mother's bedside quite alone with her hand in his ... he saw and heard it all over again. He remembered how she had suddenly felt ill after an extremely quiet day, how he had hurriedly opened the windows and the laughter and speeches of strange people had penetrated into the room with the warm March air, how she lay there at last with open eyes that were already blank, while her hair that only a few seconds ago had streamed in waves over her forehead and temple lay dry and dishevelled on the pillow, and her left arm hung down naked over the edge of the bed with still fingers stretched far apart. This image arose in his mind with such terrible vividness that he saw again mentally his own boyish face and heard once again his own long sobbing ... but he felt no pain. It was far too long ago--nearly ten years. "_E bellissima la vista di questa finestra_," suddenly said the porter behind him as he opened the window--and human voices at once rang into the room from down below just as they had done on that long-past evening. And at the same moment he heard his mother's voice in his ear, just as he had heard it then entreating, dying ... "George ... George" ... and out of the dark corner in the place where the pillows had used to lie he saw something pale shine out towards him. He went to the window and agreed: "_Bellissima vista_," but in front of the beautiful view there lay as it were a dark veil. "Mother," he murmured, and once again "Mother" ... but to his own amazement he did not mean the woman who had borne him and had been buried long ago; the word was for that other woman, who was not yet a mother but who was to be in a few months ... the mother of a child of which he was the father. And the word suddenly rang out, as though some melody that had never been heard or understood before, were now sounding, as though bells with mystic chiming were swinging in the distant future. And George felt ashamed that he had come here alone, had, as it were, almost stolen here. It was now quite out of the question to tell Anna that he had been here. The next day they took the train to Rome. And while George felt fresher, more at home, more in the vein for enjoyment, with each succeeding day, Anna began to suffer seriously from a feeling of exhaustion with increasing frequency. She would often remain behind alone in the hotel, while he strolled about the streets, wandered through the Vatican, went to the Forum and the Palatine. She never kept him back, but he nevertheless felt himself bound to cheer her up before he went out, and got into the habit of saying: "Well, you'll keep that for another time, I hope we shall soon be coming here again." Then she would smile in her arch way, as though she did not doubt now that she would one day be his wife; and he himself could not help owning that he no longer regarded that development as impossible. For it had gradually become almost impossible for him to realise that they were to say goodbye for ever and to go their several ways this autumn. Yet during this period the words with which they spoke about a remote future were always vague. He had fear of it, and she felt that she would be doing well not to arouse that fear, and it was just during these Roman days, when he would often walk about alone in the foreign town for hours on end, that he felt as though he were at times slipping away from Anna in a manner that was not altogether unpleasant. One evening he had wandered about amid the ruins of the Imperial Palace until the approach of dusk and from the height of the Palatine Hill he had seen the sun set in the Campagna with all the proud delight of the man who is alone. He had then gone driving for a while along the ancient wall of the city to Monte Pincio, and when as he leant back in the corner of his carriage he swept the roofs with his look till he saw the cupola of St. Peter's, he felt with deep emotion that he was now experiencing the most sublime hour of the whole journey. He did not get back to the hotel till late, and found Anna standing by the window pale and in tears, with red spots on her swollen cheeks. She had been dying of nervousness for the last two hours, had imagined that he had had an accident, had been attacked, had been killed. He reassured her, but did not find the words of affection which she wanted, for he felt in some unworthy way a sense of being tied and not free. She felt his coldness and gave him to understand that he did not love her enough; he answered with an irritation that verged on despair. She called him callous and selfish. He bit his lip, made no further answer, and walked up and down the room. Still unreconciled they went into the dining-room, where they took their meal in silence, and went to bed without saying good-night. The following days were under the shadow of this scene. It was only on the journey to Naples, when they were alone in the compartment, that in their joy over the new scenery to which they were flying they found each other again. From henceforward he scarcely left her a single minute, she seemed to him helpless and somewhat pathetic. He gave up visiting museums since she could not accompany him. They drove together to Posilippo and walked in the Villa Nationale. In the excursion through Pompeii he walked next to her sedan-chair like a patient affectionate husband, and while the guide was giving his descriptive account in bad French, George took Anna's hand, kissed it and endeavoured in enthusiastic words to make her share in the delight that he himself felt once more in this mysterious roofless town, which after a burial of two thousand years had gradually returned street by street, house by house, to meet the unchanging light of that azure sky. And when they stopped at a place where some labourers were just engaged in extricating with careful movements of their shovels a broken pillar out of the ashes he pointed it out to Anna with eyes which shone as brightly as though he had been storing up this sight for her for a long time, and as though everything which had happened before had simply been leading up to the fulfilment of his purpose of taking her to this particular place at this particular minute and showing her this particular wonder. On a dark blue May night they lay in two chairs covered with tarpaulins on the deck of the ship that was taking them to Genoa. An old Frenchman with clear eyes, who had sat opposite them at dinner, stood near them for a while and drew their attention to the stars that hung in the infinitude like heavy silver drops. He named some of them by name, politely and courteously, as though he felt it incumbent upon him to introduce to each other the shining wanderers of heaven and the young married couple. He then said good-night and went down into his cabin. But George thought of his lonely journey over the same route and under the same sky in the previous spring after his farewell from Grace. He had told Anna about her, not so much from any emotional necessity, as in order to free his past from that atmosphere of sinister mystery in which it often seemed to Anna to disappear, by the conjuring up into life of a specific shape and the designation of a specific name. Anna knew of Labinski's death, of George's conversation with Grace at Labinski's grave, of George's stay with her in Sicily. He had even shown her a picture of Grace; and yet he thought to himself with a slight shudder how little Anna herself knew of this very epoch of his life, which he had described to her with an almost reckless lack of reserve; and he felt how impossible it was to give any other person any idea of a period which that person had not actually lived through, and of the contents of so many days and nights every minute of which had been full of vivid life. He realised the comparative insignificance of the little lapses from truth of which he frequently allowed himself to be guilty in his narrative, compared with that ineradicable taint of falseness to which every memory gives birth on its short journey from the lips of one person to the ear of another. And if Anna herself at some later time wanted to describe to some friend, some new lover, as honestly as she possibly could, the time which she spent with George, what after all could that friend really learn? Not much more than a story such as he had read hundreds of times over in books: a story of a young creature who had loved a young man, had travelled about with him, had felt ecstasy and at times tedium, had felt herself at one with him, and yet had frequently felt lonely. And even if she should make an attempt to give a specific account of every minute ... there still remained an irrevocable past, and for him who has not lived through it himself the past can never be the truth. The stars glistened above him. Anna's head had sunk slowly upon his breast and he supported it gently with his hands. Only the slight ripple in the depths betrayed that the ship was sailing onward. But it still went on towards the morning, towards home, towards the future. The _hour_ which had loomed over them so long in silence seemed now about to strike and to begin. George suddenly felt that he no longer had his fate in his own hand. Everything was going its course. And he now felt in his whole body, even to the hairs of his head, that the ship beneath his feet was relentlessly hurrying forward. They only remained a day in Genoa. Both longed for rest, and George for his work as well. They meant to stay only a few weeks at an Italian lake and to travel home in the middle of June. The house in which Anna was going to live would be bound to be ready by then. Frau Golowski had found out half-a-dozen suitable ones, sent specific details to Anna and was waiting for her decision, though she still continued looking for others in case of emergency. They travelled from Milan to Genoa, but they could not stand the noisy life of a town any longer and left for Lugano the very next day. They had been staying here for a period of four weeks and every morning George went along the road which took him, as it did to-day, along the cheerful shore of the lake, past _Paradiso_ to the bend, where there was a view which every time he longed to see again. Only a few days of their stay were still before them. In spite of the excellent state of Anna's health since the beginning of their stay the time had arrived to return to the vicinity of Vienna, so as to be able to be ready confidently for all emergencies. The days in Lugano struck George as the best he had experienced since his departure from Vienna. And he asked himself during many a beautiful moment, if the time he was spending here was not perhaps the best time of his whole life. He had never felt himself so free from desire, so serene both in anticipation and memory, and he saw with joy that Anna also was completely happy. Expectant gentleness shone in her forehead, her eyes gleamed with arch merriment, as at the time when George had wooed for their possession. Without anxiety, without impatience and lifted by the consciousness of her budding motherhood far above the memory of home prejudices or any question of future complications, she anticipated with ecstasy the great hour when she was to give back to the waiting world as an animate creature, that which her body had drunk in during a half-conscious moment of ecstasy. George saw with joy the maturing in her of the comrade that he had hoped to find in her from the beginning, but who had so frequently escaped him in the course of the last few months. In their conversations about his works (all of which she had carefully gone through), about the theory of the song, about the more general musical questions, she revealed to him more knowledge and feeling than he had ever suspected she had in her. And he himself, though he did not actually compose much, felt as though he were making real strides forward. Melodies resounded within him, harmonies heralded their approach, and he remembered with deep understanding a remark of Felician's, who had once said after he had not had a sword in his hand for months on end, that his arm had had some good ideas during this period. The future, too, occasioned him no anxiety. He knew that serious work would begin as soon as he got back to Vienna, and then his way would lie before him, clear and unencumbered. George stood for a long time by the bend in the road which had been the object of his walk. A short broad tongue of land, thickly overgrown with low shrubs, stretched from here straight into the lake, while a narrow gently sloping path led in a few steps to a wooden seat which was invisible from the street and on which George was always accustomed to sit down a little before returning to the hotel. "How many more times," he could not help thinking to-day. "Five or six times perhaps and then back to Vienna again." And he asked himself what would happen if they did not go back, if they settled down in some house somewhere in Italy or Switzerland, and began to build up with their child a new life in the double peacefulness of Nature and distance. What would happen?... Nothing. Scarcely any one would be particularly surprised. And no one would miss either him or her, miss them with real grief. These reflections made his mood flippant rather than melancholy; the only thought that made him depressed was that he was frequently overcome by a kind of homesickness, a kind of desire in fact to see certain specific persons. And even now, while he was drinking in the lake air, surrendering himself to the blue of this half foreign, half familiar sky above him and enjoying all the pleasure of solitude and retirement, his heart would beat when he thought of the woods and hills around Vienna, of the Ringstrasse, the club and his big room with the view of the Stadtpark. And he would have felt anxious if his child had not been going to be born in Vienna. It suddenly occurred to him that another letter from Frau Golowski must have arrived to-day together with many other communications from Vienna, and he therefore decided to take the road round by the post-office before going back to the hotel. For following his habit during the whole trip he had his letters addressed there and not to the hotel, since he felt that this would give him a freer hand in dealing with any outside emergency. He did not, as a matter of fact, get many letters from Vienna. There was usually in spite of their brevity a certain element in Heinrich's letters which, as George quite appreciated, was less due to any particular need of sympathy on the part of the author than to the circumstance that it was an integral part of his literary calling to breathe the breath of life into all the sentences which he wrote. Felician's letters were as cool as though he had completely forgotten that last heartfelt talk in George's room and that brotherly kiss with which they had taken leave of each other.... He presumes, no doubt, thought George, that his letters will be read by Anna too, and does not feel himself bound to give this stranger an insight into his private affairs and his private feelings. Nürnberger had sent a few short answers to George's picture-postcards, while in answer to a letter from Rome, in which George had referred to his sincere appreciation of the walks they had had together in the early spring, Nürnberger expressed his regret in ironically apologetic phrases that he had told George on those excursions such a lot about his own family affairs which could not interest him in the slightest. A letter from old Eissler had reached him at Naples, informing him that there was no prospect of a vacancy for the following year at the Detmold Court Theatre, but that George had been invited through Count Malnitz to be present at the rehearsals and performances as a "visitor by special request," and that this was an opportunity which might perhaps pave the way to something more definite in the future. George had given the proposition his polite consideration, but had little inclination for the time being to stay in the foreign town for any length of time with such vague prospects, and had decided to look out for a permanent appointment as soon as he arrived at Vienna. Apart from this there was no personal note in any of the letters from home. The remembrances to him which Frau Rosner felt in duty bound to append to her letters to her daughter made no particular appeal, although recently they had been addressed not to the Herr Baron but to George. He felt certain that Anna's parents were simply resigned to what they could not alter, but that they felt it grievously all the same, and had not shown themselves as broad-minded as would have been desirable. In accordance with his habit George did not go back along the bank. Passing through narrow streets between garden walls, then under arcades and finally over a wide space from which there was another clear view of the lake, he arrived in front of the post-office, whose bright yellow paint reflected the dazzling rays of the sun. A young lady whom George had already seen in the distance walking up and down the pavement, remained standing as he approached. She was dressed in white and carried a white sunshade spread out over a broad straw hat with a red ribbon. When George was quite near she smiled, and he now suddenly saw a well-known face beneath the white spotted tulle veil. "Is it really you, Fräulein Therese?" he exclaimed as he took the hand which she held out to him. "How do you do, Baron?" she replied innocently, as though this meeting were the most ordinary event imaginable. "How is Anna?" "Very well, thanks. Of course you will come and see her?" "If I may." "But tell me now, what are you doing here? Can it be that you"--and his glance swept her in amazement from top to toe--"are making a political tour?" "I can't exactly say that," she replied, pushing out her chin, without that movement having its usual effect of making her face appear ugly, "it's more of a holiday jaunt." And her face shone with a genuine smile as she saw George's glance turn towards the door, from which Demeter Stanzides had just come out in a striped black-and-white flannel suit. He lifted his grey felt hat in salutation and shook hands with George. "Good-morning, Baron. Glad to see you again." "I am very glad, too, Herr Stanzides." "No letter for me?" Therese turned to Demeter. "No, Therese. Only a few cards for me," and he put them in his pocket. "How long have you been here?" inquired George, endeavouring to exhibit as little surprise as possible. "We arrived yesterday," replied Demeter. "Straight from Vienna?" asked George. "No, from Milan. We have been travelling for eight days. We were first in Venice, that is the orthodox thing to do," added Therese, pulled down her veil and took Demeter's arm. "You been away much longer?" said Demeter. "I saw a card from you some weeks back at Ehrenbergs', the house of the Vettii, Pompeii." "Yes, I've had a wonderful trip." "Well, we'll have a look round the place a bit," said Therese, "and besides, we don't want to detain the Baron any more. I am sure he wants to go and fetch his letters." "Oh, there is no hurry about that. Anyway, we'll see each other again." "Will you give us the pleasure, Baron," said Demeter, "of lunching with us to-day at the Europe? That's where we put up." "Thanks very much, but I'm afraid it's impossible. But ... but perhaps you could manage to dine with ... with ... us at the Park Hotel, yes? At half-past seven if that's all right for you. I'll have it served in the garden, under an awfully fine plane-tree, where we usually take our meals." "Yes," said Therese, "we accept with thanks. Perhaps I'll come in an hour earlier and have a quiet chat with Anna." "Good," replied George, "she will be very glad." "Well, till the evening, Baron," said Demeter, shook hands with him heartily and added: "Please give my kind regards at home." Therese flashed George an appreciative look, and then went on her way with Demeter towards the bank of the lake. George looked after them. If I hadn't known her, he thought, Demeter could have introduced her to me straight away as his wife, née Princess X. How strange, those two.... He then went into the hall, had his correspondence given to him at the counter and ran cursorily through it. The first thing which caught his eye was a card from Leo Golowski. There was nothing on it except "Dear George, mind you have a good time." Then there was a card from the Waldsteingarten in the Prater, "We have just emptied our glasses to the health of our runaway friend. Guido Schönstein, Ralph Skelton, the Rattenmamsell." George wanted to read the letters from Felician, Frau Rosner and Heinrich quietly at home with Anna. He was also in a hurry to inform Anna of the news of the strange couple's arrival. He was not quite free from anxiety, for Anna's conventional instincts had a knack of waking up occasionally in a quite unexpected manner. Anyway, George decided to tell her of his invitation to Demeter and Therese as though it were an absolute matter of course and was quite ready, in case she should feel hurt or irritated or even have doubts about the matter, to oppose such an attitude firmly and resolutely. He himself was very glad of the evening which was before him after the many weeks that he had spent exclusively in Anna's society. He almost felt a little envious of Demeter, who was on an irresponsible pleasure-trip like he himself when he had gone travelling with Grace in the previous year. Then it occurred to him that he liked Therese better than ever. In spite of the numerous pretty women whom he had met in the course of the last month he had never felt seriously tempted, even though Anna was losing more and more of her womanly grace. To-day for the first time he felt a desire for new embraces. He soon saw Anna's light-blue morning dress shining through the railings of the balcony. George whistled the first notes of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, which was his usual method of announcing himself, and the pale gentle face of his beloved immediately appeared over the railings and her big eyes greeted him with a smile. He held up the packet of letters, she nodded with pleasure and he hurried quickly up to her room and on to the balcony. She was reclining in a cane chair in front of the little table with the green coverlet, on which some needlework was lying, as was nearly always the case when George came home from his morning walk. He kissed her on the forehead and on the mouth. "Well, whom do you think I met?" he asked hurriedly. "Else Ehrenberg," answered Anna, without considering. "What an idea? How could she get here?" "Well," said Anna slyly, "she might have travelled off to find you." "She might, but she didn't. So guess again. I give you three guesses." "Heinrich Bermann." "Nowhere near it. Besides there is a letter from him. So guess again." She reflected. "Demeter Stanzides," she then said. "What, do you really know something?" "What should I know? Is he really here?" "By Jove, you are positively blushing. Ho ho!" He knew of her weakness for Demeter's melancholy cavalier beauty but did not feel the slightest trace of jealousy. "So it is Stanzides?" she asked. "Yes, it is Stanzides right enough. But with all the will in the world I can't find anything remarkable about that. It's not remarkable, either. But if you guess whom he is with...." "With Sissy Wyner." "But...." "Well, I was thinking of marriage.... That happens too sometimes." "No, not with Sissy, and not married, but with your friend Therese, and as unmarried as possible." "Get along...." "I tell you, with Therese. They've been travelling for eight days. What have you got to say to that? They have been in Venice and Milan. Had you any idea of it?" "No." "Really not?" "Really not. You know of course that Therese only once wrote me a line, and you read her letter with your well-known interest." "You're not astonished enough." "Good gracious, I always knew that she had good taste." "So has Demeter," exclaimed George with conviction. "Elective affinities," remarked Anna, elevating her eyebrows, and went on crocheting. "And so this is the mother of my child," said George, with a merry shake of his head. She looked at him with a smile. "When is she coming to see me, then?" "In the afternoon about six, I think. And ... and Stanzides is coming too ... a bit later. They are going to dine with us. You don't mind?" "Mind? I'm very glad," replied Anna simply. George was agreeably surprised. If Anna in her present condition had met Stanzides in Vienna!... he thought. How being away from one's usual environment frees and purifies! "What news did they tell you?" asked Anna. "We stood chatting together at the post-office for scarcely three minutes. He sends his regards to you, by the way." Anna made no answer and it seemed to George as though her thoughts were travelling again on extremely conventional lines. "Have you been up long?" he asked quickly. "Yes, I have been sitting here on the balcony for quite a long time. I even went to sleep a bit, the air is so enervating to-day somehow. And I dreamed, too." "What did you dream about?" "Of the child," she said. "Again?" She nodded. "Just the same as the other day. I was sitting here on the balcony in my dream, and had it in my arms at the breast...." "But what was it, a boy or a girl?" "I don't know. Just a child. So tiny and so sweet. And the joy was so.... No I won't give it up," she said softly with closed eyes. He stood leaning on the railing and felt the light noon wind stroke his hair. "If you don't want to give it out to nurse," he said, "well you mustn't." And the thought ran through his mind, "Wouldn't it be the most convenient thing to marry her?..." But something or other kept him back from saying so. They were both silent. He had laid the letters in front of him on the table. He now took them up and opened one. "Let's see, first, what your mother writes?" he said. Frau Rosner's letter contained the news that all was well at home, that they would all be very glad to see Anna again, and that Josef had got a post on the staff of the _Volksbote_ with a salary of fifty gulden a month. Further, an inquiry had come from Frau Bittner as to when Anna was coming back from Dresden, and if it was really certain that she would be back again next autumn, because otherwise they would of course have to look about for a new teacher.... Anna stood motionless and expressed no opinion. Then George read out Heinrich's letter. It ran as follows: "Dear George, "I am very glad that you will be back so soon, and prefer to tell you so to-day, because once you are there I shall never tell you how very glad I shall be to see you. A few days ago, when I went for a lonely cycle ride along the Danube, I genuinely missed you. What an overwhelming atmosphere of loneliness these banks have! I remember having once felt like that five or six years ago on a Sunday, when I was in what is technically known as 'jolly company,' and was sitting in the Kloster-neuburger beer-house in the large garden with its view of the mountains and the fields. How it ascends from the depths of the waters, loneliness I mean, which certainly is quite a different thing to what one usually thinks it is. It is very far from being the opposite of society. Yet it is only perhaps when one is with other people that one has a right to feel lonely. Just take this as an aphoristical humorously untrue special supplement, or treat it as such and lay it aside. To come back to my ride along the banks of the Danube--it was on that same rather sultry evening that I had all kinds of good ideas, and I hope soon to be able to tell you a lot of startling news about Ägidius, for that's the name that the murderous melancholy youth has got at last, about the deep-thinking impenetrable prince, about the humorous Duke Heliodorus, the name by which I have the honour of introducing to you the Princess's betrothed, and especially about the princess herself, who seems to be a far more remarkable person than I originally supposed." "That's to do with the opera plot?" asked Anna, dropping her work. "Of course," replied George, and went on reading. "You must also know, my dear friend, that I have finished during the last week some verses for the first act, which so far are not particularly immortal, verses which until some further development, so long I mean, as they are without your music, will hop about the world like wingless angels. The subject-matter appeals to me extraordinarily, and I myself am curious to know what I am really going to make of it. I've begun all kinds of other things as well ... sketched things out ... thought things over. And to put it shortly and with a certain amount of cheek I feel as though a new phase were heralding itself within me. This sounds of course greater cheek than it really is. For chimney-sweeps, ice-cream vendors and colour-sergeants have their phases as well. People of our temperament always recognise it at once. What I regard as very probable is that I shall soon leave the fantastic element in which I now feel so much at home, and will either move up or move down into something extremely real. What would you say, for example, if I were to go in for a political comedy? I feel already that the word 'real' is not quite the right one. For in my view politics is the most fantastic element in which persons can possibly move, the only thing is they don't notice it.... This is the point I ought to drive home. This occurred to me the other day when I was present at a political meeting (untrue, I always get these thoughts). Yes--a meeting of working men and women in the Brigittenau in which I found myself next to Mademoiselle Therese Golowski, and at which I was compelled to hear seven speeches about universal suffrage. Each of the speakers--Therese was one of them, too--spoke just as though the solution of that question was the most important thing in the world to him or her personally, and I don't think that any of them had an idea that the whole question was a matter of colossal indifference to them at the real bottom of their hearts. Therese was very indignant of course when I enlightened her on the point, and declared that I had been infected by the poisonous scepticism of Nürnberger, of whom as a matter of fact I'm seeing far too much. She always makes a point of running him down, since he asked her some time ago in the café whether she was going to have her hair done high or in plaits at her next trial for high treason. Anyway, I find it very nice seeing a lot of Nürnberger. When I'm having my bad days, there is no one who receives me with more kindness. Only there are many days whose badness he doesn't suspect or doesn't want to know of. There are various troubles which I feel that he fails to appreciate and which I've given up talking to him about." "What does he mean?" interrupted Anna. "The affair with the actress, clearly," replied George, and went on reading. "On the other hand he is inclined to make up for that by taking other troubles of mine too seriously. That is probably my fault and not his. He manifested a sympathy towards me for the loss I sustained by my father's death, which I confess made me positively ashamed; for though it hit me dreadfully hard we had grown so aloof from one another quite a long time before his madness burst upon him, that his death simply signified a further and more ghastly barrier rather than a new experience." "Well?" asked Anna, as George stopped. "I've just got an idea." "What is it?" "Nürnberger's sister lies buried in the Cadenabbia cemetery. I told you about her. I'll run over one of these days." Anna nodded. "Perhaps I'll go too, if I feel all right. From all I hear of him I find Nürnberger much more sympathetic than that horrible egoist your friend Heinrich." "You think so?" "But really, the way he writes about his father. It is almost intolerable." "Hang it all! if people who have grown so estranged as those two----" "All the same, I haven't really very much in common with my own parents temperamentally either, and yet.... If I.... No, no, I prefer not to talk about such things. Won't you go on reading?" George read: "There are more serious things than death, things which are certainly sadder, because these other things lack the finality which takes away the sadness of death, if viewed from the higher standpoint. For instance, there are living ghosts who walk about the streets in the clear daylight with eyes that have died long ago and yet see, ghosts who sit down next to one and talk with a human voice that has a far more distant ring than if it came from a grave. And one might go so far as to say that the essential awfulness of death is revealed to a far greater extent in moments when one has experiences like this, than at those times when one stands near and watches somebody being lowered into the earth ... however near that somebody was." George involuntarily dropped the letter and Anna said with emphasis: "Well, you can certainly keep him to yourself--your friend Heinrich." "Yes," replied George slowly. "He is often a bit affected, and yet ... hallo, there goes the first bell for lunch. Let's read quickly through to the end." "But I must now tell you what happened yesterday: the most painful and yet ridiculous affair which I have come across for a long time, and I am sorry to say the persons concerned are our good friends the Ehrenbergs, father and son." "Oh," cried Anna involuntarily. George had quickly run through the lines which followed and shook his head. "What is it?" inquired Anna. "It is.... Just listen," and he went on reading. "You are no doubt aware of the growing acuteness of the relations between Oskar and the old man in the course of the last year. You also know the real reasons for it, so that I can just inform you of what has taken place without going into the motives for it any further. Well, it's just like this. Yesterday Oskar passes by the Church of St. Michael about twelve o'clock midday and takes off his hat. You know that at the present time piety is about the smartest craze going, and so perhaps it is unnecessary to go into any further explanation, as, for example, that a few young aristocrats happened just to be coming out of church and that Oskar wanted to behave as a Catholic for their special benefit. God knows how often he has previously been guilty of this imposture without being found out, but as luck would have it, it happens yesterday that old Ehrenberg comes along the road at the same moment. He sees Oskar taking off his hat in front of the church door ... and attacked by a fit of uncontrollable rage he gives his offspring a box on the ears then and there. A box on the ears! Oskar the lieutenant in the reserve! Midday in the centre of the town! So it is not particularly remarkable that the story was known all over the town the very same evening. It is already in some of the papers to-day. The Jewish ones leave it severely alone, except for a few scandal-mongering rags, the Anti-Semitic ones of course go for it hot and strong. The _Christliche Volksbote_ is the best, and insists on both the Ehrenbergs being brought before a jury for sacrilege or blasphemy. Oskar is said to have travelled off, no one knows where, for the time being." "A nice family!" said Anna with conviction. George could not help laughing against his will. "My dear girl, Else is really absolutely innocent of the whole business." The bell rang for the second time. They went into the dining-room and took their places at a little table by the window which was always laid for them alone. Scarcely more than a dozen visitors were sitting at the long table in the middle of the room, mostly Englishmen and Frenchmen, and also a man no longer in the first flush of youth, who had been there for two days and whom George took for an Austrian officer in _mufti_. Anyway he bothered about him as little as he did about the others. George had put Heinrich's letter in his pocket. It occurred to him that he had not yet read it through to the end, and he took it out again over the coffee and perused the remainder. "What more does he write?" asked Anna. "Nothing special," answered George. "About people who probably wouldn't interest you particularly. He seems to have got in again with his café set; more in fact than he likes and clearly more than he owns up to." "He'll fit in all right," said Anna flippantly. George smiled reflectively. "It is a funny set anyway." "And what is the news with them?" asked Anna. George had put the letter down by the cup and now looked at it. "Little Winternitz ... you know ... the fellow who once recited his poems to me and Heinrich last winter ... is going to Berlin as reader to a newly-founded theatre. And Gleissner, the man who stared at us once so in the museum...." "Oh yes, that abominable fellow with the eyeglass." "Well, he declares that he is going to give up writing to devote himself exclusively to sport...." "To sport?" "Yes, quite a sport of his own. He plays with human souls." "What?" "Just listen." He read: "This buffoon is now asserting that he is simultaneously engaged in the solution of the two following psychological problems, which supplement each other in quite an ingenious way. The first is to bring a young and innocent creature to the lowest depth of depravity, while the second is to make a prostitute into a saint, as he puts it. He promises that he will not rest until the first one finishes up in a brothel, and the second one in a cloister." "A nice lot," remarked Anna and got up from the table. "How the sound carries over here," said George and followed her into the grounds. A dark-blue day, heavy with the sun, was resting on the tops of the trees. They stood for a while by the low balustrade which separated the garden from the street and looked over the lake to the mountains looming behind silver-grey veils that fluttered in the sunlight. They then walked deeper into the grounds, where the shade was cooler and darker, and as they walked arm-in-arm over the softly-crunching gravel along the high brown ivy-grown walls, and looked in at the old houses with their narrow windows, they chatted about the news that had arrived that day, and for the first time a slight anxiety rose up in their minds at the thought that they would so soon have to leave the friendly secrecy of foreign lands for home, where even the ordinary stereotyped day seemed full of hidden dangers. They sat down beneath the plane-tree at the white lacquered table. This place had always been kept free for them, as though it had been reserved. The newly-arrived Austrian gentleman, however, had sat there yesterday afternoon, but driven away by a disapproving glance of Anna's had gone away after a polite salutation. George hurried up to his room and fetched a few books for Anna and a volume of Goethe's poems and the manuscript of his quintette for himself. They both sat there, read, worked, looked up at times, smiled at each other, exchanged a few words, peered again into their books, looked over the balustrade into the open, and felt peace in their souls and summer in the air. They heard the fountain plashing quite near them behind the bushes, while a few drops fell upon the surface of the water. Frequently the wheels of a carriage would crunch along on the other side of the high wall, at times faint distant whistles would sound from the lake, and less frequently human voices would ring into the garden from the road along the bank. The day, drunken to the full with sunlight, lay heavy on the tree-tops. Later on the noise and the voices increased in volume and number with the gentle wind which was wafted from the lake every afternoon. The beat of the waves on the shore was more audible. The cries of the boatman resounded: on the other side of the wall there rang out the singing of young people. Tiny drops from the fountain were sprinkled around. The breath of approaching evening woke once more human beings, land and water. Steps were heard on the gravel. Therese, still in white, came quickly through the avenue. George got up, went a few steps to meet her and shook hands. Anna wanted to get up, too, but Therese would not allow it, embraced her, gave her a kiss on the cheek and sat down by her side. "How beautiful it is here!" she exclaimed; "but haven't I come too early?" "What an idea! I'm really awfully glad," replied Anna. Therese considered her with a scrutinising smile and took hold of both her hands. "Well, your appearance is reassuring," she said. "I am very well, as a matter of fact," replied Anna, "and you look as if you were too," she joked good-humouredly. George's eyes rested on Therese, who was again dressed in white, as she had been in the morning, though now more smartly in English embroidered linen, with a string of light pink corals round her bare throat. While the two women were discussing the strange coincidence of their meeting George got up to give the orders for dinner. When he returned to the garden the two others were no longer there. He saw Therese on the balcony with her back leaning against the railing, talking with Anna, who was invisible and was presumably in the depths of the room. He felt in good form and walked up and down the avenue, allowed melodies to sing themselves within him, was conscious of his youth and happiness, threw an occasional glance up to the balcony or towards the street, beyond the balustrade, and at last saw Demeter Stanzides arriving. He went to meet him. "Glad to see you," he cried out in welcome from the garden gate. "The ladies are upstairs in the room but will be turning up soon. Would you like to have a look at the grounds in the meanwhile?" "Delighted." They went on walking together. "Do you intend to stay much longer in Lugano?" asked George. "No, we go to-morrow to Bellaggio, from there to Lake Maggiore, Isola Bella. A really good time never lasts. We have got to be home again in a fortnight." "Such short leave?" "Oh, it is not on my account, but Therese has got to go back. I am quite a free man. I have already sent in my papers." "So you seriously mean to retire to your estate?" "My estate?" "Yes, I heard something to that effect at Ehrenbergs'." "But I haven't got the estate yet, you see. It is simply in the stage of negotiations." "And where are you going to buy one? if it is not a rude question." "Where the foxes say good-night to each other. The last place you would think of. On the Hungarian-Croatian frontier, very lonely and remote but very remarkable. I have a certain sympathy for the district. Youthful memories. I spent three years there as a lieutenant. Of course I think I shall grow young again there. Well, who knows?" "A fine property?" "Not bad. I saw it again two months ago. I knew it of course in the old days, it then belonged to Count Jaczewicz, finally to a manufacturer. Then his wife died. He now feels lonely down there and wants to get rid of it." "I don't know," said George, "but I imagine the neighbourhood a little melancholy." "Melancholy! Well, it seems to me that at a certain period of one's life every neighbourhood acquires a melancholy appearance." And he looked round the balcony, as though to evolve from his surroundings a new proof of the truth of his words. "At what period?" "Well, when one begins to get old." George smiled. Demeter struck him as so handsome and as still young in spite of the grey hairs on his temple. "How old are you then, Herr Stanzides? if it isn't a rude question." "Thirty-seven. I don't say I am old, but I am getting old. Men usually begin to talk about getting old when they have been old for a long time." They sat down on the seat at the end of the garden, just where it runs into the wall. They had a view of the hotel and of the great terrace on the garden. The upper storeys with their verandahs were hidden from them by the foliage of the trees. George offered Demeter a cigarette and took one himself. And both were silent for a while. "I heard that you, too, are leaving Vienna," said Demeter. "Yes, that's very probable ... if of course I get a job in some opera. Well, even if it isn't this year it is bound to be next." Demeter sat with legs crossed over each other, gripped one of them tightly by the knee, and nodded. "Yes, yes," he said, and blew the smoke slowly through his lips in driblets. "It is really a fine thing to have a talent. In that case one is bound to feel a bit different sometimes, even about beginning to grow old. That is really the one thing I could envy a man for." "You have no reason to at all. Anyway, people with talent are not really to be envied. At any rate, only people with genius. And I envy them probably even more than you do. But I think that talents like yours are something much more definite, something much sounder so to speak. Of course one doesn't always happen to be in form.... But at any rate, one always achieves something quite respectable if one can do anything at all, while people in my line, if they are not in form are no better than old age pensioners." Demeter laughed. "Yes, but an artistic talent like yours lasts longer and develops more and more as the years go on. Take Beethoven, for instance. The Ninth Symphony is really the finest thing he did. Don't you think so. And what about the second part of _Faust_?... While we are bound to go back as the years go on--we can't help it--even the Beethovens amongst us. And how early it begins, apart from quite rare exceptions! I was at my prime for instance at twenty-five. I've never done again what I had in me at twenty-five. Yes, my dear Baron, those were times." "Come, I remember seeing you win a race two years ago against Buzgo, who was the favourite then.... Why, I even betted on him...." "My dear Baron," interrupted Stanzides, "you take it from me, I know the reason why I left off improving. One can feel a thing like that oneself. And that's why no one knows so well as the sportsman when he's beginning to grow old. And then no further training is any good. The whole thing then becomes purely artificial. And if any one tells you that that's not the case, then he's simply ... but here come the ladies." They both got up. Therese and Anna were approaching arm-in-arm, one all in white, the other in a black dress, which falling to the ground in wide folds completely hid her figure. The couples met by the fountain. Demeter kissed Anna's hand. "What a beautiful spot I have the good fortune to see you again in, my dear lady." "It is a pleasant surprise to me, too," replied Anna, "quite apart from the scenery." "Do you know," said George to Anna, "that these good people are travelling off again to-morrow?" "Yes, Therese has told me." "We want to see as much as possible," explained Demeter, "and so far as my recollection goes the other lakes in upper Italy are even more magnificent than the one here." "I don't know anything about the others," said Anna. "We haven't done them yet." "Well, perhaps you will take the opportunity," said Demeter, "and make up a party with us for a little tour: Bellaggio, Pallanza, Isola Bella." Anna shook her head. "It would be very nice but unfortunately I can't get about enough. Yes, I am incredibly lazy. There are whole days when I never go out of the grounds. But if George fancies running away from me for a day or two, I don't mind at all." "I have no intention at all of running away from you," said George. He threw a quick glance at Therese, whose eyes were sparkling and laughing. They all strolled slowly through the garden while it gradually became dusk, and chatted about the places they had recently seen. When they came back to the table under the plane-tree it was laid for dinner and the fairy-lights were burning in the glass holders. The waiter was just bringing the Asti in a bucket. Anna sat down on the seat, which had the trunk of the plane-tree for its back. Therese sat opposite her and George and Demeter on either side. The meal was served and the wine poured out. George inquired after their Viennese acquaintances. Demeter told them that Willy Eissler had brought back from his trip some brilliant caricatures both of hunters and of beasts. Old Ehrenberg had bought the pictures. "Do you know about the Oskar affair yet?" said George. "What affair?" "Oh, the affair with his father in front of St. Michael's Church." He remembered that he had thought of telling Demeter the story some time back before the ladies had appeared, but that he had thought it right to suppress it. It was the wine, no doubt, which now loosened his tongue against his will. He told them briefly what Heinrich had written him. "But this is an extremely sad business," said Demeter, very much moved, and all the others immediately felt more serious. "Why is it a sad business?" asked Therese. "I think it is enough to make one laugh till one cried." "My dear Therese, you don't consider the consequences it may have for the young man." "Good gracious, I know well enough. It will make him impossible in a certain set, but that won't do more than make him realise what a silly ass he has been up to the present." "Well," said George, "if Oskar really is one of those people who can be made to realise anything.... But I really don't think so." "Apart from the fact, my dear Therese," added Demeter, "that what you call realising doesn't necessarily mean seeing things in their proper light. All sets of people have their prejudices. Even you are not free from them." "And what prejudices have we got, I should like to know?" cried Therese, and emptied her glass of wine angrily. "We only want to clear away certain prejudices, particularly the prejudice that there is this privileged caste who regard it as a special honour...." "Excuse, me, Therese dear, but you are not at a meeting now, and I am afraid that the applause at the conclusion of your speech will turn out much fainter than you are accustomed to." "Look here," Therese turned to Anna, "this is how a cavalry officer argues." "I beg your pardon," said George, "the whole business has scarcely anything at all to do with prejudices. A box on the ears in the public street, even though it is from one's own father.... I don't think one has got to be an officer in the reserve or a student." "That box on the ears," cried Therese, "gives me a real sense of relief. It represents the well-merited conclusion of a ridiculous and superfluous existence." "Conclusion! We hope it's not that," said Demeter. "My letter says," replied George, "that Oskar has travelled off, no one knows where." "If I am sorry for any one in the business," said Therese, "it is certainly for the old man, who, good-hearted fellow that he is, is probably regretting this very day the unpleasant position in which he has placed his beastly snob of a son." "Good-hearted!" exclaimed Demeter. "A millionaire! A factory owner!... My dear Therese...!" "Yes, it does happen sometimes. He happens to be one of those people who are at one with us at the bottom of their soul. You remember the evening, Demeter, when you had the pleasure of seeing me for the first time. Do you know why I was at Ehrenbergs' then?... And do you know the object for which he gave me straight away a thousand gulden...? To...." She bit her lips. "I mustn't say, that was the condition." Suddenly Demeter got up and bowed to somebody who had just passed. It was the Austrian gentleman who had arrived yesterday. He lifted his hat and vanished in the darkness of the garden. "Do you know that man?" asked George, after a few seconds. "I also seem to know him, but who is it?" "The Prince of Guastalla," said Demeter. "Really!" exclaimed Therese involuntarily, and her eyes pierced into the darkness. "What are you looking at him for?" said Demeter. "He is just a man like any one else." "He is supposed to be banished from Court," said George, "isn't he?" "I know nothing about that," replied Demeter, "but he is certainly not a favourite there. He recently published a pamphlet about certain conditions in our army, particularly the life of the officers in the provinces. It went very much against him, although as a matter of fact there is nothing really bad in it." "He should have applied to me about that," said Therese. "I could have given him a tip or two." "My dear child," said Demeter deprecatingly, "what you are probably referring to again is simply an exceptional case. You shouldn't jump at once into generalities." "I am not generalising, but a case like that is sufficient to damn the whole...." "Don't make a speech, Therese...." "I am speaking about Leo." Therese turned to George. "It is really awful what he has been going through this year." George suddenly remembered that Therese was Leo's sister, as though it were a most remarkable thing which he had completely forgotten. Did he know that she was here and whom she was with? Demeter bit his lips somewhat nervously. "There is an Anti-Semitic First-Lieutenant, you know," said Therese, "who rags him in a particularly mean way because he knows how Leo despises him." George nodded. He knew all about it. "My dear child," said Demeter, "I can't make it out, as I have already told you several times. I happen to know First-Lieutenant Sefranek, and I assure you it is possible to get on with him. He is not particularly clever, and it may be quite right to say that he has got no particular liking for the Israelites, but after all one must admit that there are a lot of so-called opprobrious Anti-Semitic expressions which really have no significance at all, and which, so far as my experience goes, are used by Jews quite as much as by Christians. And your worthy brother certainly suffers from a morbid sensitiveness." "Sensitiveness is never morbid," retorted Therese. "It is only lack of sensitiveness which is a disease, and the most loathsome one I know as a matter of fact. It is notorious that I am as far apart as possible from my brother in my political views. You know that best of all, George. I hate Jewish bankers quite as much as feudal landed proprietors, and orthodox Rabbis quite as much as Catholic priests; but if a man feels himself superior to me because he belongs to another creed or another race than I do, and being conscious of his greater power makes me feel that superiority, I would.... Well, I don't know what I would do to a man like that. But anyway I should quite understand Leo if he were to take the next opportunity of going tooth-and-nail for Herr Sefranek." "My dear child," said Demeter, "if you have the slightest influence with your brother you should try and stop this tooth-and-nail business at any price. In my view by far the best thing to do in a case like that is to go about things in the respectable, I mean the regulation way. It is really not at all true that that never does any good. The superior officers are mostly quiet people, at any rate they are correct and...." "But Leo did that long ago ... as far back as February. He went to the Major, the Major was very nice to him, and as appears from many indications gave the First-Lieutenant a good talking to; the only thing is it unfortunately wasn't the slightest use. On the contrary, the next chance he had the First-Lieutenant made a special point of starting his beastly tricks again, and he is continuing them with the most refined malice. I assure you, Baron, I am afraid every single day that some misfortune will happen." Demeter shook his head. "We live in a mad age. I assure you"--he turned to George--"First-Lieutenant Sefranek is no more of an Anti-Semite than you or I. He visits at Jewish houses. I even know that he was extremely intimate for years with a Jewish regimental doctor. It really seems as though everybody were going mad." "You may be right in that," said Therese. "Oh, well, Leo is so reasonable," said George. "He is so sensible in spite of all his temperament that I am convinced that he won't let himself be swept away by any foolish impulse. After all he must know that it will all be over in a few months; one can manage to put up with it for that time." "Do you know, by-the-by, Baron," said Therese, while following the example of the men she took a cigarette out of a box which the waiter had brought, "do you know that Leo was quite charmed with your compositions?" "What, charmed?" said George, while he gave Therese a light. "I really hadn't noticed it at all." "Well, he liked some things," qualified Therese, "and that's practically the same as somebody else being delighted with them." "Have you composed anything on your trip?" asked Demeter courteously. "Only a few songs." "I suppose we shall hear them in the autumn?" said Demeter. "Good gracious, don't let's talk about the autumn," said Therese. "We may be dead or in prison before then." "Well, if one really wants to one can manage to avoid the latter alternative," exclaimed Demeter. Therese shrugged her shoulders. George was sitting near her and believed he could feel the warmth of her body. Lights were shining from the hotel windows and a long reddish strip reached the table at which the two couples were sitting. "I suggest," said George, "that we make the best of the fine evening and go for another walk along the shore." "Or take a boat," exclaimed Therese. They all agreed. George ran up to the room to fetch wraps. When he came down again he found the others standing by the door of the grounds ready to start. He helped Anna into her light-grey cloak, hung his own long overcoat over Therese's shoulders and kept a dark-green rug over his arm. They went slowly through the avenue to the place where the boats were moored. Two boatmen took the party with quick strokes of their oars out of the darkness of the shore into the black shining water. The mountains towered up to the sky, monstrous and gigantic. The stars were not very numerous. Tiny bluish-grey clouds hung in the air. The rowers sat on two cross benches; in the middle of the boat on narrow seats the two couples sat opposite each other: George and Anna, Demeter and Therese. All were quite silent at first, it was only after some minutes that George broke the silence. He told them the name of the mountain which separated the lake from the South, drew their attention to a village, which though it seemed infinitely far away as it nestled up to the slope of a cliff could nevertheless be reached in a quarter of an hour; he recognised the white shining house on the height above Lugano as the hotel in which Demeter and Therese were staying and told them about a walk far into the country between sunny vineyards which he had taken the other day. While he spoke Anna kept hold of his hand underneath the rug. Demeter and Therese sat next to each other staidly and correctly, and not at all like lovers who had only found each other a short time ago. It was only now that George gradually recovered his fancy for Therese, which had almost vanished during her loud violent speechifying. How long will this Demeter affair last? he thought. Will it be over when the autumn comes or will it after all last as long or longer than my affair with Anna? Will this row on the dark lake be some time in the future just a memory of something that has completely vanished, just like my row on the Veldeser Lake with that peasant girl, which now comes into my mind again for the first time for years?... Or like my voyage with Grace across the sea? How strange! Anna is holding my hand, I am pressing it, and who knows if she isn't feeling at this very minute something similar with regard to Demeter to what I am feeling about Therese? No, I am sure not.... She carries a child under her heart which has already quickened.... That's why.... Hang it all!... Why, it's my child as well.... Our child is now going for a row on the lake of Lugano.... Shall I tell it one day that it went for a row round the lake of Lugano before it was born? How will it all turn out? We shall be back in Vienna again in a few days. Does Vienna really exist? It will only slowly begin to come into existence again as we train back.... Yes, that's how it is.... As soon as I'm home work will start seriously. I shall remain quietly at my home in Vienna and just visit Anna from time to time; I won't live with her in the country.... Or at all events only just before ... and the autumn.... Shall I be in Detmold? And where will Anna be? And the child?... With strangers somewhere in the country. How improbable the whole thing seems!... But it was also very improbable a year ago to-day that I and Stanzides should go for a row on the lake of Lugano with Fräulein Anna Rosner and Fräulein Therese Golowski respectively. And now the whole thing couldn't be more of a matter of course.... He suddenly heard with abnormal clearness, as though he had just woken up, Demeter's voice quite near him. "When does our boat leave to-morrow?" "Nine o'clock in the morning," replied Therese. "She maps out the plan of campaign you know," said Demeter. "I don't need to bother about anything." The moon suddenly shone out over the lake. It seemed as though it had waited behind the mountains and were now coming out to say goodbye. That infinitely distant village by the mountain-slope suddenly lay quite close in all its whiteness. The boat beached. Therese got up. She was shrouded in the night and looked strikingly tall. George sprang out of the boat and helped her to disembark. He felt her cool fingers, which did not tremble, in his hand, but moved softly as though on purpose, and caught the breath from her lips quite close. Demeter got out after her, then came Anna, tired and awkward. The boatman thanked them for their generous tip and both couples started to walk homewards. The Prince was sitting on a seat in a long dark cloak in the avenue along the bank. He was smoking a cigar, seemed to be looking out on to the nocturnal lake and turned away his head with the obvious intention of avoiding being saluted. "A man like that could tell a tale," said Therese to George, with whom she had fallen further and further behind, while Demeter and Anna went on in front of them. "So you are going back to Vienna as soon as all that?" asked George. "A fortnight. Do you think that so soon? At any rate you will be home before us, won't you?" "Yes, we shall leave in a few days. We can't put it off any longer. Besides, we shall have to break the journey a few times. Anna doesn't stand travelling well." "Do you know yet that I found the villa for Anna just before I left?" said Therese. "Really, you? Did you go looking, too?" "Yes, I went into the country a few times with my mother. It is a small fairly old house in Salmansdorf with a beautiful garden, which leads straight out to the fields and forest, and the bit of ground in front of the house is quite overgrown.... Anna will tell you more about it. I believe it is the last house in the place. Then there comes an inn, but a fair distance away from it." "I must have overlooked that house on my house-hunting expeditions in the spring." "Clearly, or you would have taken it. There is a little clay figure standing on a lawn near the garden hedge." "Can't remember. But do you know, Therese, it is really nice of you to have taken all this trouble for us, as well as your mother. More than nice." He thought of adding "when one takes your strenuous life into consideration," but suppressed it. "Why are you surprised?" asked Therese. "I am very fond of Anna." "Do you know what I once heard some one say about you?" replied George after a short pause. "Well, what?" "That you would either finish up on the scaffold or as a princess." "That's a phrase of Doctor Berthold Stauber. He once told it me himself, you know. He is very proud of it, but it is sheer nonsense." "The betting at present is certainly more on the princess." "Who says so? The princess dream will soon be over!" "Dream?" "Yes, I am just beginning to wake up. It is rather like the morning air streaming into a bedroom." "And then I suppose the other dream will begin?" "What do you mean, the other dream?" "This is what I take to be the case with you. When you are in the public eye again, making speeches, sacrificing yourself for some cause or other, then at some moment or other the whole thing strikes you like a dream, doesn't it? And you think real life is somewhere else." "There is really something in what you say." At this moment Demeter and Anna, who were standing by the garden gate, turned round towards them both and immediately took the broad avenue towards the entrance of the hotel. George and Therese also went on further, unseen outside the railing, into the darkest depths of the shade. George suddenly seized hold of his companion's hand. As though astonished she turned towards him and both now stood opposite each other, enveloped by the darkness and closer than they could understand. They did not know how ... they scarcely meant to, but their lips rested on each other for a short moment that was more charged with the doleful joy of deception than with any other emotion. They then went on, silent, unsatisfied, desirous, and stepped through the garden door. The two others, who were in front of the hotel, now turned round and came to meet them. Therese quickly said to George: "Of course you don't come with us?" George nodded slightly. They were now all standing in the broad quiet light of the arc-lamps. "It was really a beautiful evening," said Demeter, kissing Anna's hand. "Goodbye then till Vienna," said Therese and embraced Anna. Demeter turned to George. "I hope we shall see each other to-morrow morning on the boat." "Possibly, but I won't promise." "Goodbye," said Therese and shook hands with George. She and Demeter then turned round to go away. "Are you going with them?" asked Anna, as they went through the door into the lounge, where men and women were sitting, smoking, drinking, talking. "What an idea?" replied George. "I never thought of it." "Herr Baron," suddenly called some one behind him. It was the porter, who held a telegram in his hand. "What is this?" asked George, somewhat alarmed, opening it quickly. "Oh, how awful!" he exclaimed. "What is it?" asked Anna. He read it out while she looked at the piece of paper. "Oskar Ehrenberg tried to commit suicide early this morning in the forest at Neuhaus. Shot himself in the temples, little hope of saving his life, Heinrich." Anna shook her head. They went up the stairs in silence and into Anna's room. The balcony door was wide open. George stepped into the open air. A heavy perfume of magnolias and roses streamed in out of the darkness. Not a trace of the lake was visible. The mountains towered up as though they had grown out of the abyss. Anna came up to George. He laid his arm on her shoulder and loved her very much. It was as though the serious event of which he had just had tidings, had compelled him to realise the true significance of his own experiences. He knew once more that there was nothing more important for him in the whole world than the well-being of this beloved woman who was standing with him on the balcony and who was to bear him a child. VI When George stepped on to the summer heat of the pavement out of the cool central restaurant where he had been accustomed to take his meals for some weeks, and started on his way to Heinrich's apartment, his mind was made up to start his trip into the mountains within the next few days. Anna was quite prepared for it, and appreciating that the monotonous life of the last few weeks was beginning to make him feel bored and mentally restless had even herself advised him to go away for a few days. They had returned to Vienna six weeks ago on a rainy evening and George had taken Anna straight from the station to the villa, where Anna's mother and Frau Golowski had been waiting for the overdue travellers for the last two hours in a large but fairly empty room, with a dilapidated yellowish carpet under the dismal light of a hanging lamp. The door on to the garden verandah stood open. Outside the pattering rain fell on to the wooden floor and the warm odour of moist leaves and grass swept in. George inspected the resources of the house by the light of a candle which Frau Golowski carried in front of him, while Anna reclined exhausted in the corner of the large sofa covered with fancy calico and was only able to give tired answers to her mother's questions. George had soon taken leave of Anna with mingled emotion and relief, stepped with her mother into the carriage which was waiting outside, and while they rode over the dripping streets into the town he had given the embarrassed woman a faithful if forced account of the unimportant events of the last days of their trip. He was at home an hour after midnight, refrained from waking up Felician, who was already asleep, and with an undreamt-of joy stretched himself out in his long-lost bed for his first sleep at home after so many nights. Since then he had gone out into the country to see Anna nearly every day. If he did not feel tempted to make little trips round the summer resorts in the neighbourhood he could easily get to her in an hour on his cycle. But he more frequently took the horse tram and would then walk through the little villages till he came to the low green painted railings behind which stood the modest country house with its three-cornered wooden gable in the small slightly sloping garden. Frequently he would choose a way which ran above the village between garden and fields and would enjoy climbing up the green slope till he came to a seat on the border of the forest, from which he could get a clear view of the straggling little place lying in the tiny valley. He saw from here straight on to the roof beneath which Anna lived, deliberately allowed his gentle longing for the love who was so near him to grow gradually more and more vivid till he hurried down, opened the tiny door and stepped over the gravel straight through the garden towards the house. Frequently, in the more sultry hours of the afternoon, when Anna was still asleep, he would sit in the covered wooden verandah which ran along the back of the house in a comfortable easy-chair covered with embroidered calico, take out of his pocket a book he had brought with him and read. Then Frau Golowski in her neat simple dark dress would step out of the dark inner room and in her gentle somewhat melancholy voice, with a touch of motherly kindness playing around her mouth, would report to him about Anna's health, particularly whether she had had a good appetite and if she had had a proper walk up and down the garden. When she had finished she always had something to see to in the kitchen or about the house and disappeared. Then while George was going on with his reading a fine St. Bernard dog which belonged to people in the neighbourhood would come out, greet George with serious tearful eyes, allow him to stroke her short-haired skin and lie down gratefully at his feet. Later, when a certain stern whistle which the animal knew well rang out, it would get up with all the clumsiness of its condition, seem to apologise by means of a melancholy look for not being able to stay longer and slink away. Children laughed and shouted in the garden next door. Now and again an indiarubber ball came over the wall. A pale nursemaid would then appear at the bottom gate and shyly request to have the ball thrown back again. Finally, when it had grown cooler, Anna's face would show itself at the window that opened on to the verandah, her quiet blue eyes would greet George, and soon she would come out herself in a light house-dress. They would then walk up and down the garden along the faded lilac-bushes and the blooming currant-bushes, usually on the left side, which was bounded by the open meadow, and they would take their rest on the white seat close to the top end of the garden, underneath the pear-tree. It was only when supper was served that Frau Golowski would appear again, shyly take her place at the table and tell them if asked all the news about her family; about Therese, who had now gone on to the staff of a Socialist journal; about Leo, who being less occupied by his military duties than before was enthusiastically pursuing his mathematical studies; and about her husband, who while he looked on with resignation from the corner of a smoky café at the chess battles of the indefatigable players, always saw new vistas of regular employment display themselves only to close again immediately. Frau Rosner only paid an occasional visit and usually went away soon after George's appearance. On one occasion, on a Sunday afternoon, the father had come as well and had a conversation with George about the weather and scenery, just as though they had met by chance at the house of a mutual acquaintance who happened to be ill. It was only to humour her parents that Anna kept herself in complete retirement in the villa. For she herself had grown to lose all consciousness of any false position, feeling just as though she had been George's wedded wife, and when the latter, tired of the monotonous evenings, asked her for permission to bring Heinrich along sometimes she had agreeably surprised him by immediately expressing her agreement. Heinrich was the only one of George's more intimate friends who still remained in town in these oppressive July days. Felician, who had been as affectionate with his brother since his return home as though the comradeship of their boyhood had been kindled afresh, had just taken his diplomatic examination and was staying with Ralph Skelton on the North Sea. Else Ehrenberg, who had spoken to George once soon after his return by her brother's sick-bed in the sanatorium, had been for a long time at Auhof am See with her mother. Oskar too, whom his unfortunate attempt at suicide had cost his right eye, though it was said to have saved him his lieutenant's commission, had left Vienna with a black shade over his blinded eye. Demeter Stanzides, Willy Eissler, Guido Schönstein, Breitner, all were away, and even Nürnberger, who had declared so solemnly that he did not mean to leave the town this year, had suddenly vanished. George had visited him before any one else after he came back, to bring him some flowers from his sister's grave in Cadenabbia. He had read Nürnberger's novel on his journey. The scene was laid in a period which was now almost past; the same period, so it seemed to George, as that of which old Doctor Stauber had once spoken to him. Nürnberger had thrown a grim light over that sickly world of lies in which adult men passed for mature, old men for experienced, and people who did not offend against any written law for righteous; in which love of freedom, patriotism and humanitarianism passed _ipso facto_ for virtue, even though they had grown out of the rotten soil of thoughtlessness or cowardice. He had chosen for the hero of his book a sterling and energetic man who, carried away by the hollow phrases of the period, saw things as they were from the height which he had reached and seized with horror at the realization of his own dizzy ascent, precipitated himself into the void out of which he had come. George was considerably astonished that a man who had created this strong and resounding piece of work should subsequently confine himself to casual cynical comments on the progress of the age, and it was only a phrase of Heinrich's to the effect that wrath but not loathing was fated to be fertile that made him understand why Nürnberger's work had been stopped for ever. The lonely hour in the Cadenabbia cemetery on that dark blue late afternoon had made as strange and deep an impression upon George as though he had actually known and appreciated the being by whose grave he stood. It had hurt him that the gold lettering on the grey stone should have grown faint and that the beds of turf should have been overgrown with weeds, and after he had plucked a few yellow-blue pansies for his friend he had gone away with genuine emotion. He had cast a glance from the other side of the cemetery door through the open window of the death-chamber, and saw a female body on a bier between high burning candles, covered with a black pall as far as her lips, while the daylight and candlelight ran into one another over its small waxen face. Nürnberger had not been unmoved by this sympathetic attention on the part of George and on that day they spoke to each other more intimately than they had ever done before. The house in which Nürnberger lived was in a narrow gloomy street which led out of the centre of the town and mounted in terraces towards the Danube. It was ancient, narrow and high. Nürnberger's apartment was on the fifth and top storey, which was reached by a staircase with numerous turns. In the low though spacious room into which George stepped out of a dark hall stood old but well-preserved furniture, while an odour of camphor and lavender came insistently out of the alcove in the recess in front of which a pale green curtain had been let down. Portraits of Nürnberger's parents in their youth hung on the wall together with brown engravings of landscapes after the Dutch masters. Numerous old photographs in wooden frames stood on the sideboard. Nürnberger fetched a portrait of his dead sister out of a secretary-drawer where it lay beneath some letters that had been yellowed by time. It showed her as a girl of eighteen in a child's costume which seemed to have a kind of historical atmosphere, holding a ball in her hand, and standing in front of a hedge, behind which there towered a background of cliffs. Nürnberger introduced all these unknown faraway and dead persons to his friend to-day by means of their portraits, and spoke of them in a tone which seemed to make the gulf of time between the then and the now both wider and deeper. George's glance often swept out over the narrow street towards the grey masonry of ancient houses. He saw small cobwebbed panes with all kinds of household utensils behind them. Flower-pots with miserable plants stood on a window-ledge, while fragments of bottles, broken-up barrels, scraps of paper, mouldy vegetables lay in a gutter between two houses, a battered pipe ran down between all this rubbish and disappeared behind a chimney. Other chimneys were visible to right and left, the back of a yellowish stone gable could be seen, towers reared up towards the pale blue heaven and a light grey spire with a broken stone cupola which George knew very well, appeared unexpectedly near. Automatically his eyes tried to find the quarter where he might be able to fix the position of the house in whose entrance the two stone giants bore on their powerful shoulders the armorial bearings of a vanished stock, and in which his child, which was to come into the world in a few weeks, had been begotten. George gave an account of his trip. He felt the spirit of this hour so deeply that he would have thought himself petty if he had let the matter rest at half-truths. But Nürnberger had known the story, and in its entirety too, long ago, and when George showed a little astonishment at this he smiled mockingly. "Don't you still remember," he asked, "that morning when we looked over a summer residence in Grinzing?" "Of course." "And don't you remember too that a woman with a little child in her arms took us round the house and garden?" "Yes." "Before we went away the child held out its arms towards you, and you looked at it with a certain amount of emotion in your expression." "And that's what made you conclude that I...." "Oh well, you know, you're not the man to go in for thrills over the sight of small children, a bit unwashed, too, into the bargain, if they are not linked on to associations of a personal character." "One must beware of you," said George jestingly, but not without some sense of uneasiness. The slight irritation, which he always felt again and again at Nürnberger's superior manner, was far from preventing him from cultivating his society more and more. He frequently fetched him from home to go for walks in the streets and parks, and he felt a sense of satisfaction, a sense in fact of personal triumph, when he managed to draw him from the rarefied regions of bitter wisdom into the gentler fields of affectionate intercourse. George's walks with him had become such a pleasant habit that he felt as though his daily life had been impoverished when he found one morning that Nürnberger's apartment was closed. Some days afterwards came a card of apology from Salzburg, which was also signed by a married couple, a manufacturer and his wife, good-natured cheery people, whom George had once got to know slightly through Nürnberger in Graben. According to Heinrich's malicious description the common friend of this married couple had been dragged down the stairs, of course after a desperate resistance, made to sit down in a carriage and been transported to the station more or less like a prisoner. According to Heinrich, too, Nürnberger had several friends of this innocent kind who felt the need of getting the celebrated cynic to let a few drops of his malice trickle into their palatable cup of life, while Nürnberger on his side liked to recuperate in their free-and-easy society from the strain of his acquaintances in literary and psychological circles. The meeting with Heinrich had meant a disillusionment to George. After the first words of greeting the author had as usual only spoken about himself, and that, too, in tones of the deepest contempt. He had come at last to the conclusion that he did not really possess any talent but only intelligence, though that of course to an enormous degree. The thing about himself that he cursed the most violently was the lack of harmony in the various phases of his character, which as he well knew not only occasioned suffering to himself but to all who came near him. He was heartless and sentimental, flippant and melancholic, sensitive and callous, an impossible companion and yet drawn towards his fellow-beings ... at any rate at times. A person with such characteristics could only justify his existence by producing something immense, and if the masterpiece which he felt obliged to create did not appear on the scene very soon he would feel that as a decent man he would be obliged to shoot himself. But he was not a decent man.... There lay the rub. "Of course you won't shoot yourself," thought George, "principally because you haven't got the pluck to do so." Of course he did not give expression to this thought but on the contrary was very sympathetic. He talked of the moods to which after all every artist is liable, and inquired kindly about the material conditions of Heinrich's life. It soon transpired that he wasn't in such a bad way by any means. He was even leading a life which as it appeared to George was freer from anxiety than it had ever been before. The maintenance of his mother and sisters for the ensuing years had been assured by a small legacy. In spite of all the hostile influences which were at work against him the fame of his name was increasing from day to day. The miserable affair with the actress seemed to be finished once and for all, and a quite new relationship with a young lady which was as free and easy as could possibly be desired, was actually bringing a certain amount of gaiety into his life. Even his work was making good progress. The first act of the opera libretto was as good as ready, and he had made numerous notes for his political comedy. He intended next year to visit the sittings of Parliament and attend meetings, and coquetted with the admittedly childish fantastic plan of posing as a member of the social democratic party, trying to tack himself on to the leaders and getting himself taken on, if he could get the chance, as an active member of some organisation or other, simply so as to get a complete insight into the party machinery. Still, you know, when he had been talking to any one for five minutes on end, why he had got him absolutely. He would find in some casual word, whose significance would completely escape any one else, a kind of whirlwind which tore the veil from off the souls of men. His dream was to prove himself a master of imagination in his opera poem and a master of realism in his comedy, and thus show the world that he was equally at home both in heaven and on earth. At a subsequent meeting George got him to read as much of the first act of the opera as he had finished. He found the verses very singable and asked Heinrich to allow him to take the manuscript to Anna. Anna could not bring herself to fancy much what George read out to her; but he asserted, though without any real conviction, that what she felt was just the very longing for these verses to be set to music, and that that must necessarily strike her as a weakness. When George came into Heinrich's room to-day the latter was sitting at the big table in the middle of the room, which was covered over with papers and letters. Written papers of all kinds lay about on the piano and on the ottoman. Heinrich still had a sheet of faded yellow paper in his hand when he got up and hailed George with the words, "Well, how goes the country?" This was the way in which he was accustomed to inquire after Anna's health, a way which George felt afresh every single time to be unduly familiar. "Quite well, thanks," he replied. "I have just come to ask you if perhaps you would care to come out there with me to-day." "Oh yes, I should like to very much. The thing is, though, that I am just in the middle of putting various papers in order. I can't come before the evening about seven or so. Will that suit you?" "Quite," said George. "But I see I am disturbing you," he added as he pointed to the littered table. "Not at all," replied Heinrich. "I am only tidying up, as I just told you. They're my father's posthumous papers. Those there are letters to him and here are rough notes more or less like a diary, written for the most part during his parliamentary period. Tragic, I tell you! How that man loved his country! And how did they thank him? You've no idea of the refinement with which they drove him out of his party. A complicated network of intrigue, bigotry, brutality.... Thoroughly German, to put the matter in a nutshell." George felt a sense of antagonism. "And he dares," he thought, "to hold forth about Anti-Semitism. Is he any better? any juster? Does he forget that I am a German myself...?" Heinrich went on speaking. "But I will give this man a memorial.... He and no other shall be the hero of my political drama. He is the truly tragi-comic central figure which I have always been wanting." George's antagonism became intensified. He felt a great desire to protect old Bermann against his son. "A tragi-comic figure," he repeated, almost aggressively. "Yes," retorted Heinrich unhesitatingly, "a Jew who loves his country.... I mean in the way my father did, with a real feeling of solidarity, with real enthusiasm for the dynasty, is without the slightest question a tragi-comic figure. I mean ... he belonged to that Liberalising epoch of the seventies and eighties when even shrewd men were overcome by the catch-words of the age. A man like that to-day would certainly appear merely comic. Yes, even if he had finished up by hanging himself on the first nail he came across I could not regard his fate as anything else." "It is a mania of yours," replied George. "You really very often give one the impression that you have quite lost the capacity of seeing anything else in the world except the Jewish question, you always see it everywhere. If I were as discourteous as you happen to be at times, I would ... you'll forgive me of course, say that you were suffering from persecution-mania." "Persecution-mania ..." replied Heinrich dully, as he looked at the wall. "I see, so you call it persecution-mania, that.... Oh well." And then he continued suddenly with clenched teeth: "I say, George, I want to ask you something on your conscience." "I'm listening." He placed himself straight in front of George, and with his eyes pierced his forehead. "Do you think there's a single Christian in the world, even taking the noblest, straightest and truest one you like, one single Christian who has not in some moment or other of spite, temper or rage, made at any rate mentally some contemptuous allusion to the Jewishness of even his best friend, his mistress or his wife, if they were Jews or of Jewish descent?" And without waiting for George's answer: "There isn't one, I assure you. You can try another test also if you like. Read for instance the letters of any celebrated and otherwise perfectly shrewd and excellent man and observe the passages which contain hostile and ironic expressions about his contemporaries. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred it simply deals with an individual without taking any account of his descent or creed. In the hundredth case, where the miserable victim has the misfortune to be a Jew, the writer will certainly not forget to mention that fact. That's just how the thing is, I can't help it. What you choose to call persecution-mania, my dear George, is in reality simply an extremely intense consciousness that has been kept continuously awake of a condition in which we Jews happen to find ourselves. And as for talking about persecution-mania, why it would be much more logical to talk about a mania for being hidden, a mania for being left alone, a mania for being safe; which though perhaps a less sensational form of disease is certainly a much more dangerous one for its victims. My father suffered from it, like many others of his generation. He at any rate made such a radical cure that he went mad in the process." Deep furrows appeared on Heinrich's forehead and he looked again towards the wall, straight past George, who had sat down on the hard black leather ottoman. "If that's your way of looking at things," replied George, "why, you have no other logical alternative but to join Leo Golowski...." "And migrate to Palestine with him. Is that what you think? As a matter of symbolical politics or actually--what?" He laughed. "Have I ever said that I want to get away from here? That I would prefer to live anywhere else except here? Above all, have I ever said that I liked living among Jews? So far as I at any rate am concerned that would be a purely objective solution of an essentially subjective problem." "I really think so also. And that's why, to tell the truth, I understand less than ever what you want, Heinrich. I had the impression last autumn, when you had your tussle with Golowski on the Sophienalp, that you looked at the matter far more hopefully." "More hopefully?" repeated Heinrich in an injured tone. "Yes. One felt bound to think then that you believed in the possibility of a gradual assimilation." Heinrich contemptuously contracted the corners of his mouth. "Assimilation.... A phrase.... Yes, that'll come all right some time or other ... in a very very long time. It won't come at all in the way many want it to--it won't come either in the way many are afraid it will.... Further, it won't be exactly assimilation ... but perhaps something that beats in the heart of that particular word so to speak. Do you know what it will probably look like in the end? That we, we Jews I mean, have been a kind of ferment in the brewing of humanity--yes, perhaps that'll come out in anything from one to two thousand years from now. It is a consolation too. Don't you think so?" He laughed again. "Who knows," said George reflectively, "if you won't be regarded as right--in a thousand years? But till then?" "Why, my dear George, there won't be anything in the way of a solution of the question before then. In our time there won't be any solution, that's absolutely positive. No universal solution at any rate. It will rather be a case of a million different solutions. For it's just a question which for the time being every one has got to settle for himself as best he can. Every one must manage to find an escape for himself out of his vexation or out of his despair or out of his loathing, to some place or other where he can breathe again in freedom. Perhaps there are really people who would like to go as far as Jerusalem to find it ... I only fear that many of them, once they arrive at their official goal, would then begin to realise that they had made an utter mistake. I don't think for a minute that migrations like that into the open should be gone in for in parties.... For the roads there do not run through the country outside but through our own selves. Every one's life simply depends on whether or not he finds his mental way out. To do that of course it is necessary to see as clearly as possible into oneself, to throw the searchlight into one's most hidden crannies, to have the courage to be what one naturally is--not to be led into a mistake. Yes, that should be the daily prayer of every decent man: to make no mistake." Where is he getting to again now? thought George. He is quite as morbid in his way as his father was. And at the same time one can't say that he has been personally through bad times. And he has asserted on one occasion that he felt there was no one with whom he had anything in common. It is not a bit true. He feels he has something in common with all Jews and he stands nearer to the meanest of them than he does to me. While these thoughts were running through his mind his glance fell on a big envelope lying on the table, and he read the following words written on it in large Roman capitals: "Don't forget. Never forget." Heinrich noticed George's look and took the envelope up in his hand. Three strong grey seals could be seen on its back. He then threw it down again on the table, drooped his underlip contemptuously and said: "I've tidied up that business as well, you know, to-day. There are days like this when one goes in for a great cleaning-up. Other people would have burnt the stuff. What's the point? I shall perhaps read it again with pleasure. The anonymous letters I once told you about are in this envelope, you know." George was silent. Up to the present Heinrich had vouchsafed no information as to the circumstances under which his relations with the actress had come to an end. Only one passage in his letter to Lugano had hinted at the fact that it had not been without a certain deep-felt horror that he had seen his former mistress again. Almost against his own will the following words came out of George's mouth: "You know, of course, the story of Nürnberger's sister who lies buried in Cadenabbia?" Heinrich answered in the affirmative. "What makes you think of that?" "I visited her grave a few days before I came back." He hesitated. Heinrich was looking fixedly at him with a violently interrogative expression which compelled George to go on speaking. "Just think now, isn't it strange? since that time those two persons are always associated together in my memory, though I have never seen one of them and have only caught a glimpse of the other one at the theatre--as you know. I mean Nürnberger's dead sister and ... this actress." Heinrich grew pale to his very lips. "Are you superstitious?" he asked scornfully, but it sounded as though he were asking himself. "Not at all," cried George. "Besides, what has superstition to do with this matter?" "I'll only tell you that everything that has any connection at all with mysticism goes radically against the grain with me. Lots of twaddle is passed off in the world for science, but talking about things which one can't know anything about, things whose very essence is that one can never know anything about them, is in my view the most intolerable twaddle of the whole lot." "Can she have died, this actress?" thought George. Suddenly Heinrich took up the envelope again in his hand, and said in that dry tone which he liked to assume at those very moments when he was most deeply harrowed: "Writing out these words here is childish tomfoolery or affectation if you like. I could also have added the words Daudet put before his Sappho: 'To you, my son, when you are twenty years of age....' Too silly, anyway. As though the experiences of one man could be the slightest use to another man. The experiences of one man can often be amusing for another, more often bewildering, but never instructive.... And do you know why it is that both those figures are associated in your brain? I'll tell you why. Simply because in one of my letters I employed the expression 'Ghost' with reference to my former mistress. So that clears up this mysterious embroglio." "That's not impossible," replied George. From somewhere or other came the indistinct sound of bad piano-playing. George looked out. The sun lay on the yellow wall opposite. Many windows were open. A boy sat at one of them, his arms resting on the window-ledge, and read. From another two young girls looked down into the garden courtyard. The clattering of utensils was audible. George longed for the open air, for his seat on the border of the forest. Before he turned to go it occurred to him to say: "I wanted to tell you, Heinrich, that Anna too liked your verses very much. Have you written any more?" "Not many." "It would be nice if you brought along to-day all you have done of the libretto and read it to us." He stood by the piano and struck a couple of chords. "What's that?" asked Heinrich. "A theme," replied George "that's just occurred to me for the second act. It is meant to accompany the moment in which the remarkable stranger appears on the ship." Heinrich shut the window, George sat down and started to go on playing. There was a knock at the door, and Heinrich automatically cried: "Come in." A young lady came in in a light cloth skirt with a red silk blouse and a white velvet ribbon with a little gold cross round her neck. A Florentine hat trimmed with roses shaded with its broad brim the pale little face from which two big black eyes peered out. "Good afternoon," said the strange lady in a low voice, which sounded at the same time both defiant and embarrassed. "Excuse me, Herr Bermann, I didn't know that you had visitors," and she looked inquisitively at George, who had at once recognised her. Heinrich grew paler and puckered his forehead. "I certainly had no idea," he began. He then introduced them and said to the lady: "Won't you sit down?" "Thanks," she answered curtly and remained standing. "Perhaps I'll come again later." "Please don't," cut in George. "I am just on the point of running off." He watched the look of the actress roving round the room and felt a strange pity for her, such as one frequently feels in dreams for dead people who do not know that they have died. He then saw Heinrich's glance rest on this pale little face with inconceivable hardness. He now remembered very clearly seeing her on the stage, with the reddish-blonde hair that fell over her forehead and her roving eyes. "That's not how persons look," he thought, "who are fated to belong only to _one_ man. And to think of Heinrich, who plumes himself so much on his knowledge of character, never having felt that! What did he really want of her? It was vanity which burnt in his soul, nothing more than vanity." George walked along the street, which was like a dry oven. The walls of the houses threw back into the air the summer heat which they had absorbed. George took the horse-tram to the hills and woods, and breathed more freely when he was in the country. He walked slowly on between the gardens and villas, then passing the churchyard he took a white road with a gradual incline called Sommerhaidenweg, which he regarded as a good omen, and which was used by practically nobody during this late hour of a sunny afternoon. No shade came from the wooded line of heights on his left, only a gentle purring of breezes which had gone to sleep in the leaves. On the right a green incline sloped downwards towards the long stretch of valley where roofs were gleaming between the boughs and tree-tops. Further down vineyards and tilled fields struggled up behind garden fences towards meadows and quarries, over which shrubbery and bushes hung in the glittering sun. The path along which George was accustomed to wander was just a thin straight line often lost among the fields, and his eye sought the place on the border of the forest where his favourite seat was situated: meadows and wooded heights at the end of the valley with fresh vales and hills. George felt himself strangely wedded to this landscape and the thought that his own career and his own will called him abroad often wove farewell moods around his lonely walks even now. But at the same time a presentiment of a richer life stirred within him. It was as though many things were coming to birth in his soul which he had no right to disturb by anxious reflection; and there was a murmur of the melodies of days to come in the lower depths of his soul, though it was not yet vouchsafed to him to hear them clearly. He had not been idle, either, in drafting out clearly the rough plan of his future. He had written a letter of polite thanks to Detmold, in which he placed himself with reservation at the disposition of the manager for the coming autumn. He had also looked up old Professor Viebiger, explained his plans to him and requested him if the opportunity presented itself to remember his former pupil. But even though contrary to his expectations he failed to find a position in the autumn he was determined to leave Vienna, to retire for the time being to a small town or into the country, and to go on working by himself amid the quietness. He had not clearly worked out how his relations to Anna would shape under these circumstances. He only knew that they must never end. He thought vaguely that he and Anna would visit each other and go on journeys together at some convenient time; subsequently no doubt she would move to the place where he lived and worked. But it struck him as useless to go deeply into these matters before the actual hour arrived, since his own life had been definitely decided at any rate for the coming year. The Sommerhaidenweg ran into the forest, and George took the broad Villenweg, which crossed the valley at this point and curved downwards. In a few minutes he found himself in the street, at the end of which stood the little villa in which Anna lived. It was close to the forest, near unpretentious yellow bungalows and only raised above their level by its attic and balcony with its triangular wooden gable. He crossed the plot of ground in front of the house where the little blue clay angel welcomed him on its square pedestal in the middle of the lawn between the flower-beds, and went through the narrow passage near which the kitchen lay, and the cool middle room on whose floor the rays of the sun were playing through the dilapidated green Venetian blinds and stepped on to the verandah. He turned towards the left and cast a glance through the open window into Anna's room, which he found empty. He then went into the garden and walking along the lilac and currant-bushes towards the bottom, soon saw Anna some way off, sitting on the white seat under the pear-tree in her loose blue dress. She did not see him coming, but seemed quite plunged in thought. He slowly approached. She still did not look up. He loved her very much at moments like this when she thought she was unobserved and the goodness and peacefulness of her character floated serenely around her clear forehead. The grasshoppers chirruped on the gravel at their feet. Opposite them on the grass the strange St. Bernard dog lay sleeping. It was the animal which first noticed George's arrival as it woke up. It got up and jogged clumsily towards George. Anna now looked up and a happy smile swept over her features. Why am I so seldom here? was the thought which ran through George's mind. Why don't I live out here and work on top on the balcony under the gable, which has a beautiful view on to the Sommerhaidenweg? His forehead had grown damp, for the late afternoon sun was still blazing. He stood in front of Anna, kissed her on the eyes and mouth and sat down at her side. The animal had slunk after him and stretched itself out at his feet. "How are you, my darling?" he asked, while he put his arm around her neck. She was very well, as usual, and to-day was a particularly fine day. She had been left quite to herself since the morning, for Frau Golowski had to go to town again to look after her family. It was really not so bad to be so completely alone with oneself. One could sink then into one's dreams undisturbed. They were of course always the same, but they were so sweet that one did not get tired of them. She had let herself dream about her child. How much she loved it to-day, even before it was born! She would never have considered it possible. Did George understand it too?... And as he nodded absent-mindedly she shook her head. No, no ... a man could not understand that, even the very best and kindest man. Why, she could feel the little being already moving, could detect the beating of its tender heart, could feel this new incomprehensible soul breathe within her, just in the same way as she felt the flowering and awakening within her of its fresh young body. And George looked in front of him as though ashamed that she was facing the near future. It was true of course that a being would exist, begotten by himself, like himself and itself destined again to give life to new beings; it was true that within the blessed body of that woman, for which he had ceased for a long time now to feel any desire, there was swelling, according to the eternal laws, a life that only a year ago had been undreamt-of, unwished-for, lost in infinity, but which now was forcing its way up to the light like something predestined from time immemorial; it was true that he knew that he was irresistibly drawn into that forged chain that stretched from primal ancestor to future descendant and which he grasped as it were with both hands ... but he did not feel that this miracle made so potent an appeal to him as it really ought. And they spoke to-day more seriously than usual about what was to happen after the child's birth. Anna, of course, would keep it with her during the first week, but then they would have to give it to strangers; but at any rate it should live quite near, so that Anna could see it at any time without any difficulty. "I say, dear," she said quite lightly and suddenly, "will you often come and visit us?" He looked into her arch smiling face, took both her hands and kissed her. "Dearest, what am I to do? Tell me yourself. You can imagine how hard it will be for me. But what else is there for me to do? I've got to make a beginning. I've already told you we've given notice to leave the apartment," he added hastily, as though that cut off all retreat. "Felician is probably going to Athens. Yes, it would of course be fine if I could take you with me. But I am afraid that isn't possible. There ought above all to be something more or less certain, I mean one ought--ought at least to be certain that I shall remain in the same place for a longish time." She had listened with quiet seriousness. She then started to speak about her latest idea. He must not believe, she said, that she was thinking of putting the whole burden of responsibility upon him. She was determined as soon as it was feasible to found a music-school. If he left her alone for a long time the school would be here in Vienna. If he soon came to fetch her it would be wherever she and he had their home. And when she was once in an independent position she meant to take and keep her child whether she was his wife or not. She was very far from being ashamed of it, he knew that quite well. She was rather proud ... yes, proud of being a mother. He took her hands in his and stroked them. It would all come right enough, he said, feeling somewhat depressed. He suddenly saw himself sitting at supper between wife and child, beneath the modest light of a hanging lamp in an extremely simple home. And this family scene of his imagination wafted towards him, as it were, an atmosphere of troubled boredom. Come, it was still too early for that, he was still too young. Was it possible, then, that she was to be the last woman whom he was to embrace? Of course it might come in years, even in months, but not to-day. As for bringing lies and deceit into a well-ordered home, he had a horror of the idea. Yet the thought of rushing away from her to others whom he desired, with the consciousness that he would find Anna again just as he had left her, was at once tempting and reassuring. The well-known whistle was heard from outside. The dog got up, made George stroke her yellow-spotted back once again and sadly slunk away. "By Jove," said George, "I had almost forgotten all about it. Heinrich will be here any minute." He told Anna about his visit and did not suppress the fact that he had made the acquaintance of the faithless actress. "Did she succeed then?" exclaimed Anna, who did not fancy ladies with roving eyes. "I don't think that she succeeded at all," replied George. "Heinrich was rather annoyed at her turning up, so far as I could see." "Well, perhaps he'll bring her along too," said Anna jestingly, "then you will have some one to flirt with again, as you did with the regicide at Lugano." "Upon my word," said George innocently, and then added casually: "But what's the matter with Therese? why doesn't she come to see you any more? Demeter is no longer in Vienna. She would have plenty of time." "She was here only a few days ago. Why, I told you so. Don't pretend." "I'd really forgotten it," he answered honestly. "What did she tell you then?" "All there was to tell. The Demeter affair is over. Her heart is throbbing once more only for the poor and the miserable--until it is called back." And Anna confided Therese's winter plans to him under the seal of a most rigid silence. Disguised as a poor woman she meant to undertake expeditions through shelters, soup- and tea-kitchens, refuges for the homeless and workmen's dwellings, with a view to shedding a light into the most hidden corners for the benefit of the so-called golden heart of Vienna. She seemed quite ready for it and was perhaps a little sanguine of discovering some horrors. George looked in front of him. He remembered the stylish lady in the white dress who had stood in the sunshine in Lugano in front of the post-office, far from all the cares of the world. "Strange creature," he thought. "Of course she'll make a book out of it," said Anna. "But mind you don't tell any one, not even your friend Bermann." "Shouldn't think of it! But I say, Anna, hadn't you better get something ready for this evening?" She nodded. "Come, take me downstairs. I'll see what there is and consult Marie too ... so far as is possible to do so." They got up. The shadows had lengthened. The children were making a noise in the next garden. Anna took her lover's arm and walked slowly with him. She told him the newest instances of the fantastic stupidity of the maid. The idea of my being a husband, thought George, and listened reflectively. When they got to the house he announced his intention of going to meet Heinrich, left Anna and went into the street. At this precise moment a one-horse carriage jogged up. Heinrich got out and paid the driver. "Hallo!" he said to George, "have you really waited for me after all? It's not so late then?" "Not at all. You're very punctual. We'll go for a short walk if it suits you." "Delighted." They walked on into the forest past the yellow inn with the red terraces. "It is wonderful here," said Heinrich, "and your villa too looks awfully nice. Why don't you live out here?" "Yes, it's absurd not to," agreed George without further explanation. Then they were silent for a while. Heinrich was in a light grey summer suit and carried his cloak over his arm, letting it trail a little behind him. "Did you recognise her again?" he asked suddenly, without looking up. "Yes," replied George. "She only came up for one day from her summer engagement. She goes back by train to-night. A surprise attack, so to speak. But it didn't come off." He laughed. "Why are you so hard?" asked George, and thought of the big envelope with the grey seals and the silly inscription. "There is really no occasion for you to be so. It is only a fluke that she did not get anonymous letters just like you did, Heinrich. And who knows, if you hadn't left her alone for God knows what reasons...." Heinrich shook his head and looked at George almost as though he pitied him. "Do you mean by any chance that it is my intention to punish her or avenge myself? Or do you think I'm one of those mugs who don't know what to make of the world because something has happened to them which they know has already happened to thousands before them and will happen to thousands after them? Do you think I despise the 'faithless woman' or that I hate her? Not a bit of it. Of course I don't mean to say that I don't at times assume the pose of hatred and contempt, only of course to produce better results upon her. But as a matter of fact I understand all that has happened far too well for me to...." He shrugged his shoulders. "Well, if you do understand it?..." "But, my dear friend, understanding a thing is no earthly good at all. Understanding is a game like anything else. A very 'classy' game and a very expensive one. One can spend one's whole soul over it and finish up a poor devil. But understanding hasn't got the least thing in the world to do with our feelings, almost as little as it has to do with our actions. It doesn't protect us from suffering, from revulsion, from ruin. It leads absolutely nowhere. It's a kind of _cul-de-sac_. Understanding always signifies the end." As they walked slowly and silently up a side path with a moderate incline, each one engrossed in his own thoughts, they emerged out of the woods into open meadowland, which gave a clear view of the valley. They looked out over the town and then further on towards the haze-breathing plain through which the river ran shining; they looked towards the far line of the mountains, over which a thin haze was spreading. Then in the peace of the evening sun they walked on further towards George's favourite seat on the border of the forest. The sun was not visible. George watched the track of the Sommerhaidenweg on the other side of the valley run along the wooded hills; it looked pale and cooled. He then looked down and knew that in the garden at his feet there was a pear-tree, beneath which he had sat a few hours before with some one who was very dear to him, and who carried his child under her bosom, and he felt moved. He felt a slight contempt for the women who were perhaps waiting for him somewhere, but that did not extinguish his desire for them. Summer visitors were walking about down below on the path between the garden and the meadows. A young girl looked up and whispered something to another. "You are certainly a popular personality in the place here," remarked Heinrich, contracting the corners of his mouth ironically. "Not that I know of." "Those pretty girls looked at you with great interest. People always find an inexhaustible source of excitement in other people not being married. Those holiday-makers down there are bound to look upon you as a kind of Don Juan and ... your friend as a seduced maiden who has gone wrong, don't you think so?" "I don't know," said George, anxious to cut short the conversation. "And I wonder what I represented," continued Heinrich unperturbed, "to the theatrical people in the little town. Clearly the deceived lover. Consequently an absolutely ridiculous character. And she? Well, one can imagine. Things are awfully simple for lookers-on. But when one gets to close quarters everything looks utterly different. But the question is whether the complexion it has in the distance isn't the right one? Whether one does not persuade oneself into believing a lot of rot, if one's got a part to play in the comedy oneself?" He might quite as well have stayed at home, thought George. But as he could not send him home, and with the object at any rate of changing the conversation, he asked him quickly: "Do you hear anything from the Ehrenbergs?" "I had a rather sad letter from Fräulein Else a few days ago," replied Heinrich. "You correspond with her?" "No, I don't correspond with her. At any rate I have not yet answered her." "She is taking the Oskar business much more to heart than she will own," said George. "I spoke to her once in the nursing-home. We remained standing quite a time outside in the passage in front of the white varnished door behind which poor Oskar was lying. At that time they were afraid of the other eye as well. It's really a tragic affair." "Tragi-comic," corrected Heinrich with hardness. "You see the tragi-comic in everything. I'll tell you why, too. Because you're more or less callous. But in this case the comic element takes a back seat." "You make a mistake," replied Heinrich. "Old Ehrenberg's box on the ear was a piece of crudeness, Oskar's suicide a piece of stupidity, his making such a bad shot at himself a piece of bungling. These elements certainly can't produce anything really tragic. It is a rather disgusting business, that's all." George shook his head angrily. He had felt genuine sympathy for Oskar since his misfortune. He was also sorry for old Ehrenberg, who had been staying in Neuhaus since then, was only living for his work and refused to see any one. They had both paid their penalty, which was heavier than they had deserved. Couldn't Heinrich see that and feel it just as he did? They really got on one's nerves at times, these people, with their exaggerated Jewish smartness and their relentless psychology--these Bermanns and Nürnbergers. Their principal object in life was to be surprised by nothing whatsoever. What they lacked was kindness. It was only when they grew older that a certain gentleness came over them. George thought of old Doctor Stauber, of Frau Golowski, of old Eissler, but so long as they were young ... they always kept on the _qui vive_. Their one ideal was not to be scored off! A disagreeable lot. He felt more and more that he missed Felician and Skelton, who as a matter of fact were really quite clever enough. He even missed Guido Schönstein. "But in spite of all her melancholy," said Heinrich after a time, "Fräulein Else seems to be having a pretty good time of it. They are having people down again at Auhof. The Wyners were there the other day, Sissy and James. James got his doctor's degree the other day at Cambridge. Classy, eh?" The word Sissy darted through George's heart like a flashing dagger. He realised it all of a sudden. He would be with her in a few days. His desire surged up so strongly that he himself scarcely understood it. The dusk came down. George and Heinrich got up, went down the fields and entered the garden. They saw Anna come down the centre path accompanied by a gentleman. "Old Doctor Stauber," said George. "You know him, I suppose?" They exchanged greetings. "I am very glad," said Anna to Heinrich, "that you should come and see us at last." "Us!" repeated George to himself, with a sense of surprise which he immediately repudiated. He went in front with Doctor Stauber. Heinrich and Anna slowly followed. "Are you satisfied with Anna?" George asked the doctor. "Things couldn't be going on better," replied Stauber, "only she must continue to take exercise regularly and properly." It struck George, who had not seen the doctor before since his return, that he had not yet given him back the books which he had borrowed and he made his apologies. "There's time enough for that," replied Stauber. "I am only too glad if they came in handy." And he asked what impressions he had brought home from Rome. George told him of his wanderings through the old imperial palaces, of his drives through the Campagna in the evening light, of a sultry hour in Hadrian's garden just before a storm. Doctor Stauber begged him to stop, otherwise he might be induced to leave all his patients here in the lurch so as to run away at once to the city he loved so much. Then George made polite inquiries after Doctor Berthold. Was there any foundation for the rumour that he would be engaged again in active political life in the approaching winter? Doctor Stauber shrugged his shoulders. "He comes back in September, that's the only thing certain so far. He has been very industrious at Pasteur's and he wants to elaborate at the pathological institute here a great piece of serum research work which he began in Paris. If he takes my advice he'll stick to it, for in my humble opinion what he is now doing is much more important for humanity than the most glorious revolution. Of course talents vary, and I've certainly nothing to say against revolutions now and again. But speaking between ourselves, my son's talent is far more on the scientific side. It's rather his temperament which drives him in the other direction ... perhaps only his temper. Well, we shall see. But how about your plans for the autumn?" he added suddenly, as he looked at George with his good-natured fatherly expression. "Where are you going to swing your bâton?" "I only wish I knew myself," replied George. Doctor Stauber was walking by his side, his lids half closed and his cigar in his mouth, and while George told him about his efforts and his prospects with self-important emphasis he thought he felt that Doctor Stauber simply regarded everything he said as nothing more than an attempted justification of his putting off his marriage with Anna. A slight irritation against her arose within him; she seemed to be standing behind them and perhaps was enjoying quietly that he was, as it were, being cross-examined by Doctor Stauber. He deliberately assumed a lighter and lighter tone, as though his own personal plans for the future had nothing at all to do with Anna, and finished up by saying merrily: "Why, who knows where I shall be this time next year? I may finish up in America." "You might do worse," replied Doctor Stauber quietly. "I have a cousin who is a violinist in Boston, a man named Schwarz, who earns there at least six times as much as he gets here at the opera." George did not like being compared with violinists of the name of Schwarz and asserted with an emphasis which he himself thought rather exaggerated that it was not at all a question of money-making, at any rate at the beginning. Suddenly, he did not know where the thought came from, the idea ran through his mind: "Supposing Anna dies.... Supposing the child were her death...." He felt deeply shocked, as though he had committed a crime by the very thought, and he saw in his imagination Anna lying there with the shroud drawn over her chin and he saw the candlelight and daylight streaming over her wax-pale face. He turned round almost anxiously, as though to assure himself that she was there and alive. The features of her face were blurred in the darkness and this frightened him. He remained standing with the doctor till Anna arrived with Heinrich. He was happy to have her so near him. "You must be quite tired now, dear," he said to her in his tenderest tone. "I've certainly honestly performed my day's work," she replied. "Besides," and she pointed to the verandah, where the lamp with the green paper shade was standing on the laid table, "supper will soon be ready. It would be so nice, Doctor, if you could stay; won't you?" "I'm afraid it's impossible, my dear child. I ought to have been back in town ages ago. Remember me kindly to Frau Golowski. See you again soon. Good-bye, Herr Bermann. Come," he added, "is one going to get another chance soon of seeing or reading one of your fine pieces of work?" Heinrich shrugged his shoulders, vouchsafed a social smile and was silent. Why, he thought, are even the best-bred men usually tactless when they meet people like myself? Do I ask him about his affairs? The doctor went on to express in a few words his sympathy with Heinrich over old Bermann's death. He remembered the dead man's celebrated speech in opposition to the introduction of Tschech as the judicial language in certain Bohemian districts. At that time the Jewish provincial advocate had come within an ace of being Minister of Justice. Yes, times had changed. Heinrich started to listen. After all this could be made use of in the political comedy. Doctor Stauber took his leave. George accompanied him to the carriage which was waiting outside, and availed himself of the opportunity to ask the doctor some medical questions. The latter was able to reassure him in every respect. "It's only a pity," he continued, "that circumstances do not allow Anna to nurse the child herself." George stood still meditatively. It could not hurt her, could it?... At any rate, only the child? Or her as well?... He asked the doctor. "Why talk about it, my dear Baron, if it's not practicable? That's all right, don't you worry," he added, with one foot already in the carriage. "One needn't be nervous about the child of people like you two." George looked him straight in the eye and said: "I will at any rate take care that he lives the first years of his life in healthy air." "That's very nice," said Doctor Stauber gently. "But speaking generally there is no healthier air in the world for children than their parents' home." He shook hands with George and the carriage rolled away. George remained standing for a moment and felt a lively irritation against the doctor. He vowed mentally that he would never allow the conversation with him to take a turn that would as it were entitle him to give unsolicited advice or make veiled reproaches. What did the old man know? What did he really understand about the whole thing? George's antagonism became more and more violent. When I choose to, he said to himself, I will marry her. Can't she have the child with her anyway? Hasn't she said herself that she will be proud of having a child? I am not going to repudiate it either, and I will do everything in my power. And later on sometime.... But I should be doing an injustice to myself, to her, to the child if I were to make up my mind to-day to do something which at any rate is still premature. He had slowly walked past the short side of the house into the garden. He saw Anna and Heinrich sitting on the verandah. Marie was just coming out of the house, very red in the face, and putting a warm dish on the table, from which the steam mounted up. How quiet Anna sits there, thought George, and remained standing in the darkness. How serene, how free from care, as though she could trust me implicitly, as though there were no such things as death, poverty, treacherous desertion, as though I loved her as much as she deserves. And again he felt alarmed. Do I love her less? Is she not right in trusting me? When I sit over there on my seat on the edge of the forest so much tenderness often wells up in me that I can scarcely stand it. Why do I feel so little of that now? He was standing only a few paces away and watched her first carve and then stare into the darkness out of which he was to come, while her eyes began to shine as he stepped suddenly into the light. My one true love, he thought. When he sat down by the others Anna said to him: "You've had a very long consultation with the doctor." "It wasn't a consultation. We were chatting. He also told me about his son who is coming back soon." Heinrich inquired after Berthold. The young man interested him and he hoped very much to make his acquaintance next winter. His speech last year on the Therese Golowski case, together with his open letter to his constituents, in which he had explained the reasons for his resignation, yes, they had been really first-class performances.... Yes, and more than that--documents of the period. A light almost proud smile flew over Anna's face. She looked down to her place and then quickly up to George. George also was smiling. Not a trace of jealousy stirred within him. Did Berthold have any idea...? Of course. Did he suffer?... Probably. Could he forgive Anna? To think of having to forgive at all! What nonsense. A dish of mushrooms was served. On its appearance Heinrich could not refrain from asking if it were at all poisonous. George laughed. "You needn't make fun of me," said Heinrich. "If I wanted to kill myself I wouldn't choose either poisoned mushrooms or decayed sausage, but a nobler and swifter poison. At times one is sick of life, but one is never sick of health, even in one's last quarter of an hour. And besides, nervousness is a perfectly legitimate, though usually shamefully repudiated, daughter of reason. What does nervousness really mean? considering all the possibilities that may result from an action, the bad and good ones equally. And what is courage? I mean, of course, real courage, which is manifested far more rarely than one thinks. For the courage which is affected or the result of obedience or simply a matter of suggestion doesn't count. True courage is often really nothing else than the expression of an as it were metaphysical conviction of one's own superfluity." "Oh, you Jew!" thought George, though without malice, and then said to himself, "Perhaps he isn't so far out after all." They found the beer so good, although Anna did not drink any, that they sent Marie to the inn for a second jugful. Their mood became genial. George described his trip again. The days at Lugano in the broiling sun, the journey over the snowy Brenner, the wandering through the roofless city, which after a night of two thousand years had surged up again to the light; he conjured up again the minute in which they had been present, he and Anna, when workmen were carefully and laboriously excavating a pillar out of the ashes. Heinrich had not yet seen Italy. He meant to go there next spring. He explained that he was frequently torn by a desire for, if not exactly Italy, at any rate foreign lands, distance, the world. When he heard people talking about travels he often got heart palpitation like a child the evening before its birthday. He doubted whether he was destined to end his life in his home. It might be, perhaps, that after wandering about for years on end he would come back and find in a little house in the country the peace of his later manhood. Who knew--life was so full of coincidences--if he were not destined to finish his life in this very house in which he was now a guest and felt better than he had for a long time? Anna thanked him with an air which indicated that she was not merely the hostess of the country house but of the whole world itself with its evening calm. A soft light began to shine out of the darkness of the garden. A warm moist odour came from the grass and flowers. The long fields which ran down to the railing swept into view in the moonlight and the white seat under the pear-tree shimmered as though very far away. Anna complimented Heinrich on the verses in the opera libretto which George had read to her the other day. "Quite right," remarked George, smoking a cigar with his legs comfortably crossed, "have you brought us anything fresh?" Heinrich shook his head. "No, nothing." "What a pity!" said Anna, and suggested that Heinrich should tell them the plot consecutively and in detail. She had been wanting to know about it for a long time. She was unable to get any clear idea of it from George's account. They looked at each other. There came up in their minds that sweet dark hour when they had lain in peace with breast close to breast in a dark room in front of whose windows, behind its floating curtain of snow, a grey church had loomed, and into which the notes of an organ had boomed heavily. Yes, they now knew where the house stood in which the child was to come into the world. Perhaps another house, too, thought George, stands somewhere or other in which the child that has not yet been born will end its life. Death! As a man--or as an old man, or.... Oh, what an idea, away with it ... away with it! Heinrich declared his readiness to fulfil Anna's wish, and stood up. "I shall perhaps find it useful myself," he said apologetically. "But mind you don't suddenly switch off into your political tragi-comedy," remarked George. And then, turning to Anna: "He's writing a piece, you know, with a National German corps student for its hero who poisons himself with mushrooms through despair of emancipation of the Jews." Heinrich nodded dissent. "One glass of beer less and you'd never have made that epigram." "Jealousy!" replied George. He felt extraordinarily pleased with life, particularly now that he had firmly made up his mind to leave the day after to-morrow. He sat quite close to Anna, held her hand in his and seemed to hear the melody of future days singing in the deepest recesses of his soul. Heinrich had suddenly gone into the garden outside the verandah, reached over the railing, took his cloak from the chair and threw it romantically around him. "I'm going to begin," he said. "Act I." "First, an overture in D. minor," interrupted George. He whistled an impressive melody, then a few notes and finished with an "and so on." "The curtain rises," said Heinrich. "Feast in the King's garden. Night. The princess is to be married to the Duke Heliodorus next day. I call him Heliodorus for the time being, he will probably have another name though. The king adores his daughter and can't stand Heliodorus, who is a kind of popinjay with the tastes of a mad Cæsar. The king has really given the feast to annoy Heliodorus, and not only are all the nobles in the land invited but the youth of all classes, in so far as they have won a right to be invited by their beauty. And on this evening the princess is to dance with any one who pleases her. And there is some one in particular, his name is Ägidius, with whom she seems quite infatuated. And no one is more pleased about it than the king. Jealousy on the part of Heliodorus. Increased pleasure on the part of the king. Scene between Heliodorus and the king. Scorn. Enmity. Then something highly unexpected takes place. Ägidius draws his dagger against the king. He wants to murder him. The motives for this attempted murder of course would have to be very carefully worked in if you had not been kind enough, my dear George, to set the thing to music! So it will be enough to hint that the youth hates tyrants, is a member of a secret society, is perhaps a fool or a hero off his own bat. I don't know yet, you see. The attempted murder fails. Ägidius is arrested. The king wishes to be left alone with him. Duet. The youth is proud, self-possessed, great. The king superior, cruel, inscrutable. That's about my idea of him. He had already sent many men to their death and already seen many die, but his own inner consciousness is so awfully vivid and intense that all other men seem to him to be living in a state of mere semi-consciousness, so that their death has practically no other significance except the step from twilight into gloom. A death like that strikes him as too gentle or too banal for a case like this. He wishes to plunge this youth from a daylight such as no mortal has yet enjoyed into the most dreadful darkness. Yes, that's how his mind works. How much he says or sings about this I don't yet know of course. Ägidius is taken away just like a prisoner condemned, so everybody thinks, to immediate death, and on the very same ship, too, as that on which Heliodorus was to have started on his journey with the princess in the evening. The curtain falls. The second act takes place on the deck. The ship under weigh. Chorus. Isolated figures come up. Their significance is only revealed later. Dawn. Ägidius is led up from the hold below. To his death, as he is bound, of course, to think. But it turns out otherwise. His fetters are loosed. All bow down to him. He is hailed as a prince. The sun rises. Ägidius has an opportunity of noticing that he is in the very best society--beautiful women, nobles. A sage, a singer, a fool, are intended for important parts. But who should come out of the chorus of women but the princess herself; she belongs absolutely to Ägidius, like everything else on the ship." "What a splendid father and king!" said George. "No price is too dear for him to pay!" explained Heinrich, "for a really ingenious idea. That's his line. There follows a splendid duet between Ägidius and the princess. Then they sit down to the meal. After the meal dancing. High spirits. Ägidius naturally thinks he has been saved. He is not inordinately surprised, because his hatred for the king was always to a great extent inspired by admiration. The twilight begins to loom. Suddenly a stranger is at Ägidius' side. Perhaps he has been there for a long time, one among the many, unnoticed, mute. He has a word to say to Ägidius. The feasting and dancing proceed meanwhile. Ägidius and the stranger. 'All this is yours,' says the stranger. 'You can rule according to your humour. You can take possession and kill just as you wish. But to-morrow ... or in two or seven years or in one year or in ten, or still later, this ship will approach an island on whose shore a marble hall towers aloft upon a cliff. And there death waits for you--death. Your murderer is with you on the ship. But only the one whose mission it is to be your murderer knows it. Nobody else knows who he is. Nay, nobody else on this ship has any inkling that you are consecrated to death. Remember that. For when you let any one notice that you yourself know your fate you are doomed to death that very hour.'" Heinrich spoke these words with exaggerated pathos, as though to conceal his embarrassment. He went on more simply. "The stranger vanishes. Perhaps I shall have him disembarked on the mainland by two silent attendants who have accompanied him. Ägidius remains among the hundreds of men and women of which one or the other is his murderer. Which one? The sage or the fool? The star-gazer yonder? One of those yonder, ruminating in the darkness? Those men stealing up the steps yonder? One of the dancers? The princess herself? She comes up to him again, is very tender, nay, passionate. Hypocrite? Murderess? His love? Does she know? At any rate she is his. All this is to be his to-day. Night on the sea. Terror. Delight. The ship goes slowly on towards that shore that lies hours or years away in the distance of the far-off mist. The princess is nestling at his feet. Ägidius stares into the night and watches." Heinrich stopped as though personally affected. Melodies rang in George's ear. He heard the music for the scene when the stranger disappears escorted by the mutes, and then gradually the noise of the feast comes to the front of the stage. He did not feel it within him as a mere melody, but he already felt it with all its fulness of instruments. Were there not flutes sounding and oboes and clarionets? Was not the 'cello singing and the violin? Was not a faint beat of a drum droning out of a corner of the orchestra? Involuntarily he held up his right arm, as though he had his conductor's bâton in his hand. "And the third act?" asked Anna, as Heinrich remained silent. "The third act," repeated Heinrich, and there was a touch of depression in his voice. "The scene of the third act, of course, will be laid in that hall on the cliff--don't you think so? It must, I think, begin with a dialogue between the king and the stranger. Or with a chorus? There are no choruses on uninhabited islands. Anyway, the king is there and the ship is in sight. But look here, why should the island be uninhabited?" He stopped. "Well?" asked George impatiently. Heinrich laid both his arms on the railing of the verandah. "I'll tell you something. This isn't an opera at all...." "What do you mean?" "There are very good reasons for my not getting as far as this part of it. It is a tragedy clearly. I just haven't got the courage to write it. Do you know what would have to be described? The inner change in Ägidius would have to be described. That is clearly both the difficulty and the beauty of the subject-matter. In other words it is a thing which I daren't do. The opera idea is simply a way of getting out of it, and I don't know if I ought to take on anything like that." He was silent. "But at any rate," said Anna, "you must tell us the end of the opera as you have got it in your mind. I must really admit that I'm quite excited." Heinrich shrugged his shoulders and answered in a tired voice: "Well, the ship hoves to. Ägidius lands. He is to be hurled into the sea." "By whom?" asked Anna. "I've no idea at all," replied Heinrich unhappily. "From this point my mind is an absolute blank." "I thought it would be the princess," said Anna, and waving her hand through the air executed a death signal. Heinrich smiled gently. "I thought of that, of course, also, but...." He broke off and suddenly looked up to the night sky in a state of nervous tension. "It was to finish with a kind of pardon, so far as your original draft went," remarked George irritably. "But that, of course, is only good enough for an opera. But now, as your Ägidius is the hero of a tragedy, of course he will have to be really hurled into the sea." Heinrich raised his forefinger mysteriously and his features became animated again. "I think something is just dawning upon me. But don't let's talk about it for the time being, if you don't mind. It's perhaps really been a sound thing that I told you the beginning." "But if you think that I am going to do _entr'acte_ music for you," said George, without particular emphasis, "you are under a delusion." Heinrich smiled, guiltily, indifferently and yet quite good-humouredly. Anna felt with concern that the whole business had fizzled out. George was uncertain whether he ought to be irritated at his hopes being disappointed or be glad at being relieved of a kind of obligation. But Heinrich felt as though the creations of his own mind were deserting him in shadowy confusion, mockingly, without farewell and without promising to come again. He found himself alone and deserted in a melancholy garden, in the society of quite a nice man whom he knew very well, and a young lady who meant nothing at all to him. He could not help thinking all of a sudden of a person who was travelling at this very hour in a badly-lighted compartment in despair and with eyes red with crying, towards dark mountains, worrying whether she would get there in time to-morrow for her rehearsal. He now felt again that since that had come to an end he was going downhill, for he had nothing left, he had no one left. The suffering of that wretched person, the victim of his own agonizing hatred, was the only thing in the world. And who knew? She might be smiling at another the very next day, with those tearful eyes of hers, with her grief and longing still in her soul and a new _joie de vivre_ already in her blood. Frau Golowski appeared on the verandah. She was flurried and somewhat late, and still carried her umbrella and had her hat on. Therese sent her remembrances from town and wanted to arrange to come and see Anna again the next day or so. George, who was leaning up against a wooden pillar of the verandah, turned to Frau Golowski with that studious politeness which he always ostentatiously assumed when talking to her. "Won't you ask Fräulein Therese in both our names if she wouldn't care to stay out here for a day or two? The top room is quite at her service. I'm on the point of going into the mountains for a short time, you know," he added, as though he regularly slept in the little room at all other times. Frau Golowski expressed her thanks. She would tell Therese. George looked at his watch and saw that it was time to start for home. He and Heinrich then said good-bye. Anna accompanied both of them as far as the garden door, remained standing a little while and watched them till they got on to the height where the Sommerhaidenweg began. The little village at the bottom of the valley flowed past them in the moonlight. The hills loomed pale like thin walls. The forest breathed darkness. In the distance thousands of lights glittered out of the night mist of the summer town. Heinrich and George walked by each other in silence and a sense of estrangement arose between them. George remembered that walk in the Prater in the previous autumn, when their first almost confidential talk had brought them near to each other. How many talks had they not had since? But had they not all, as it were, gone into thin air? And to-day, too, George was unable to walk through the night with Heinrich without exchanging a word, as he used to do many a time with Guido or with Labinski without feeling any loss of real sympathy. The silence became a strain. He began to talk of old Stauber, as that was the first subject to occur to him, and praised his reliability and versatility. Heinrich was not very taken with him and thought him somewhat intoxicated with the sense of his own kindness, wisdom and excellence. That was another kind of Jew which he could not stand--the self-complacent kind. The conversation then turned on young Stauber, whose vacillation between politics and science had something extremely attractive about it for Heinrich. From that they turned into a conversation about the composition of parliament, about the squabbles between the Germans and the Tschechs and the attacks of the Clericals on the Minister of Education. They talked with that strained assiduousness with which one is accustomed to talk about things which are absolutely indifferent to one in one's heart of hearts. Finally they discussed the question whether the Minister ought to remain in office or not after the dubious figure he had cut over the civil marriage question, and had the vaguest ideas after they had finished as to which of them had been in favour of his resignation and which of them against it. They walked along the churchyard. Crosses and gravestones towered over the walls and floated in the moonlight. The path inclined downwards to the main road. They both hurried so as to catch the last tram, and standing on the platform in the sultry scented night air drove towards the town. George explained that he thought of doing the first part of his tour on his cycle. Obeying a sudden impulse, he asked Heinrich if he wouldn't like to join him. Heinrich agreed and after a few minutes manifested great keenness. They got out at the Schottentor, found out a neighbouring café and after an exhaustive consultation managed, with the help of special maps which they found in encyclopædias, to decide on every possible route. When they left each other their plan was not indeed quite definite, but they already knew that they would leave Vienna early, the day after the next, and would mount their cycles at Lambach. George stood quite a long time by the open window of his bedroom. He felt intensely awake. He thought of Anna, from whom he was to part to-morrow for a few days, and visualised her as sleeping at this hour out there in the country in the pale twilight between the moonlight and the morning. But he felt dully as though this image had nothing at all to do with his own fate, but with the fate of some unknown man, who himself knew nothing about it. And he was absolutely unable to realise that within that slumbering being there slept another being in still deeper mystery, and that this other being was to be his own child. Now that the sober mood of the early dawn stole almost painfully through his senses the whole episode seemed more remote and improbable than it had ever been before. A clearer and clearer light showed above the roofs of the town, but it would be a long time before the town woke up. The air was perfectly motionless. No breeze came from the trees in the park opposite, no perfume from the withered flower-beds. And George stood by the window; unhappy and without comprehension. VII George slowly climbed up from the hold on narrow carpeted steps between long oblique mirrors and wrapped in a long dark green rug which trailed behind him, wandered up and down on the empty deck beneath the starry sky. Motionless as ever, Labinski stood in the stern and turned the wheel, while his gaze was directed towards the open sea. "What a career!" thought George. "First a dead man, then a minister, then a little boy with a muff and now a steersman. If he knew that I were on this ship he would certainly hail me." "Look out!" cried behind George the two blue girls, whom he had met on the sea-shore, but he rushed on, wrapped himself in his rug and listened to the flapping of white gulls over his head. Immediately afterwards he was in the saloon, down below, sitting at the table, which was so long that the people at the end were quite small. A gentleman near him, who looked like the elder Grillparzer, remarked irritably: "This boat's always late. We ought to have been in Boston a long time ago." George then felt very nervous; for if he could not show the three music scores in the green cover when he disembarked, he would certainly be arrested for high treason. That was why the prince who had been rushing all over the deck with the wheel all day long often cast such strange side-glances at him. And to intensify his suspicions still more he was compelled to sit at table in his shirtsleeves while all the other gentlemen wore generals' uniforms, as they always did on boats, and all the ladies wore red velvet dresses. "We shall soon be in America," said a raucous steward who was serving asparagus. "Only one more station." "The others can sit there quietly," thought George. "They have nothing to do, but I must swim to the theatre straight away." The coast appeared opposite him in the great mirror; nothing but houses without roofs, whose tiers of terraces towered higher and higher, and the orchestra was waiting impatiently up above in a quiet kiosk with a broken stone cupola. The bell on the deck pealed and George tumbled down the steps into the park with his green rug and two pocket handkerchiefs. But they had shipped the wrong one across; it was the Stadtpark, as a matter of fact; Felician was sitting on a seat, an old lady in a cloak close to him put her fingers on her lips, whistled very loudly and Felician said, with an unusually deep voice: "Kemmelbach--Ybs." "No," thought George, "Felician never uses a word like that ..." rubbed his eyes and woke up. The train was just starting again. Two red lamps were shining in front of the closed window of the compartment. The night ran past, silent and black. George drew his travelling rug closer round him and stared at the green shaded lamp in the ceiling. "What a good thing that I'm alone in the compartment," he thought. "I have been sound asleep for at least four or five hours. What a strange confused dream that was!" The white gulls first came back into his memory. Did they have any significance? Then he thought of the old woman in the cloak, who of course was no other than Frau Oberberger. The lady would not feel particularly flattered. But really, hadn't she looked quite like an old lady, when he had seen her a few days ago by the side of her beaming husband in the box of the little red-and-white theatre of the watering-place? And Labinski, too, had appeared to him in his dream as a steersman, strangely enough. And the girls in blue dresses, also, who had looked out of the hotel garden into the piano room through the window as soon as they heard him playing. But what was the really ghostly element in that dream? Not the girls in blue, not even Labinski, and not the Prince of Guastalla, who had rushed like mad to the wheel over the deck. No, it was his own figure which had appeared to him so ghostly as it had slunk along by his side multiplied a hundred times over in the long oblique mirrors on both sides. He began to feel cold. The cool night air penetrated into the compartment through the ventilator in the ceiling. The deep black darkness outside gradually changed into a heavy grey and there suddenly rang in George's ears in a sad whisper the words he had heard only a few hours ago in a woman's low voice: How soon will it take you to forget me?... He did not wish to hear those words. He wished they had already become true, and in desperation he plunged back into the memory of his dream. It was quite clear that the steamer on which he had gone to America on his concert tour really meant the ship on which Ägidius had sailed towards his sinister fate. And the kiosk with the orchestra was the hall where Ägidius had waited for death. The starry sky which spread over the sea had been really wonderful. The air had been bluer and the stars more silvery than he had ever seen them in waking life, even on the night when he had sailed with Grace from Palermo to Naples. Suddenly the voice of the woman he loved rang through the darkness again, whispering and mournful: "How long will it take you to forget me?"... And he now visualised her as he had seen her a few hours ago, pale and naked, with her dark hair streaming over the pillows. He did not want to think of it, conjured up other images from the depths of his memory and deliberately chased them past him. He saw himself going round a cemetery in the thawing February snow with Grace; he saw himself riding with Marianne over a white country road towards the wintry forest. He saw himself walking with his father over the Ringstrasse in the late evening; and finally a merry-go-round whirled past him. Sissy with her laughing lips and eyes was rocking about on a brown wooden horse. Else, graceful and ladylike, was sitting in a little red carriage, and Anna rode an Arab with the reins nonchalantly in her hand. Anna! How young and graceful she looked! Was that really the same being whom he was to see again in a few hours? and had he really only been away from her for ten days? And was he ever to see again all that he had left ten days ago? The little angel in blue clay between the flower-beds, the verandah with the wooden gable, the silent garden with the currant- and the lilac-bushes? It all seemed absolutely inconceivable. She will wait for me on the white seat under the pear-tree, he thought, and I will kiss her hands as though nothing had happened. "How are you, George dear?" she will ask me. "Have you been true to me?" No.... That's not her way of asking, but she will feel without asking at all or my answering that I have not come back the same as I went away. If she only does feel it! If I am only saved from having to lie! But haven't I done so already? And he thought of the letters which he had written from the lake, letters full of tenderness and yearning, which had really been nothing but lies. And he thought of how he had waited at night with a beating heart, his ear glued to the door, till all was quiet in the inn; of how he had then stolen over the passage to that other woman who lay there pale and naked, with her dark eyes wide open, enveloped in the perfume and bluish shimmer of her hair. And he thought of how he and she one night, half drunken with desire and audacity, had stepped out on to the verandah, beneath which the water plashed so seductively. If any one had been out on the lake in the deep darkness of this hour he would have seen their white bodies shining through the night. George thrilled at the memory. We were out of our senses, he thought; how easily it might have happened that I should be lying to-day with a bullet through my heart six feet under the ground. Of course there's still a chance of it. They all know. Else knew first, though she scarcely ever came down from Auhof into the village. James Wyner, who saw me with the other woman one evening standing on the landing-stage is bound to have told her. Will Else marry him? I can understand her liking him so much. He is handsome, that chiselled face, those cold grey eyes which look shrewd and straight into the world, a young Englishman. Who knows if he wouldn't have turned into a kind of Oskar Ehrenberg in Vienna? And George remembered what Else had told him about her brother. He had struck George as so self-possessed, almost mature in fact, on his sick-bed in the nursing-home. And now he was said to be leading a wild life in Ostend, to be gambling and gadding about with the most evil associates, as though he wanted to go thoroughly to the dogs. Did Heinrich still find the matter so tragi-comic? Frau Ehrenberg had grown quite white with grief. And Else had cried her eyes out in front of George one morning in the grounds; but had she only been crying about Oskar? The grey in front of the compartment window slowly cleared. George watched the telegraph wires outside sweeping and shifting across each other with swift movements and he thought of how, yesterday afternoon, his own lying words to Anna had travelled across one of these wires: "Shall be with you early to-morrow morning. Fondest love, your own George."... He had hurried back straight from the post-office to an ardent and desperate final hour with the other woman, and he could not realise that even at this very minute, when he had already been away from her for a whole eternity, she should still be lying asleep and dreaming in that same room with the fast-closed windows. And she will be home this evening with her husband and children. Home--just as he would be. He knew that it was so and he could not understand it. For the first time in his life he had been near doing something which people would probably have had to call madness. Only one word from her ... and he would have gone out with her into the world, have left everything behind, friends, mistress and his unborn child. And was he not still ready to do so? If she called him would he not go? And if he did do so would he not be right? Was he not far more cut out for adventures of that kind than for the quiet life full of responsibilities which he had chosen for himself? Was it not rather his real line to career boldly and unhesitatingly about the world than to be stuck somewhere or other with his wife and child, with all the bothers about bread-and-butter, his career and at the best a little fame? In the days from which he had just come he had felt that he was living, perhaps for the first time. Each moment had been so rich and so full, and not only those spent in her arms. He had suddenly grown young again. The country had flowered with a greater splendour, the arc of the sky had grown wider, the air which he drank had exhaled a finer spice and strength, and melodies had rippled within him as never before. Had he ever composed anything better than that wordless song to be sung on the water with its sprightly rocking melody? And that fantasy had risen strangely by the shore of the lake one hour out of depths of his which he had never dreamt of, after he had seen the wondrous woman for the first time. Well, Herr Hofrat Wilt would no longer have occasion to regard him as a dilettante. But why did he think of him of all people? Did the others know what kind of a man he was any better? Didn't it often seem to him as though even Heinrich, who had once wanted to write an opera libretto for him, had failed to judge him any more accurately? And he heard again the words which the author had spoken to him that morning when they had cycled from Lambach to Gmunden through the dew-wet forest. "You need not do creative work in order to realise yourself ... you do not need work ... only the atmosphere of your art...." He suddenly remembered an evening in the keeper's lodge on the Alamsee when a huntsman of seventy-three had sung some jolly songs and Heinrich had wondered at any one of that age being still so jolly, since one would be bound to feel oneself so near one's death. Then they had gone to bed in an enormous room which echoed all their words, philosophised about life and death for a long time, and suddenly fallen asleep. George was still motionless as he lay stretched out in his rug and considered whether he should tell Heinrich anything about his meeting with his actress. How pale she had grown when she had suddenly seen him. She had listened, with roving eyes, to his account of the cycle tour with Heinrich and then begun to tell him straight away about her mother and her little brother who could draw so wonderfully finely. And the other members of the company had kept staring all the time from the stage door, particularly a man with a green tyrol hat, in which a chamois' beard was stuck. And George had seen her play the same evening in a French farce, and asked himself if the pretty young person who acted and pranced about so wildly down on the stage of the little holiday theatre could really be so desperate as Heinrich imagined. Not only he but James and Sissy as well had liked her very much. What a jolly evening it had been! And the supper after the theatre with James, Sissy, old mother Wyner and Willy Eissler! And next day the ride in the four-in-hand of old Baron Löwenstein, who drove himself. In less than an hour they had reached the lake. A boat was rowing near the bank in the early sunshine. And the woman he loved sat on the rowing-seat with a green silk shawl over her shoulders. But how was it that Sissy also had divined the relationship between him and her? And then the merry dinner at the Ehrenbergs' up at Auhof! George sat between Else and Sissy, and Willy told one funny story after the other. And then on the afternoon, George and Sissy had found each other without any rendezvous in the dark green sultriness of the park amid the warm scent of the moss and the pines, while all the others were resting. It had been a wonderful hour, which had floated through this day as lightly as a dream, without vows of troth and without fear of fulfilment. How I like thinking every single minute of it all over again, savouring it to the full, that golden day! I see both of us, Sissy and myself, going down over the fields to the tennis-court, hand in hand. I think I played better than I ever did in my life.... And I see Sissy again lounging in a cane chair, with a cigarette between her lips and old Baron Löwenstein at her side, while her looks flamed towards Willy. What had become of me at that moment, so far as she was concerned? And the evening! How we swam out in the twilight into the lake, while the warm water caressed me so deliciously. What a delight that was! And then the night ... the night.... The train stopped again. It was already quite light outside. George lay still, as before. He heard the name of the station called out; the voices of waiters, conductors and travellers; heard steps on the platform, station-signals of all kinds, and he knew that in an hour he would be in Vienna.... Supposing Anna had received information about him, just as Heinrich had about his mistress the previous winter? He could not imagine that a thing like that could make Anna lose control of herself, even if she believed in it. Perhaps she would cry, but certainly only to herself, quite quietly. He resolved firmly not to let her notice anything. Was not that his plain duty? What was the important thing now? Only this, that Anna should spend the last weeks quietly and without excitement, and that a healthy child should come into the world. That was all that mattered. How long had it been since he had heard Doctor Stauber say those words? The child...! How near the hour was, the child.... He thought again; but he could think of nothing except the mere word. He then endeavoured to imagine a tiny living being. But as though to mock him figures of small children kept appearing, who looked as though they had stepped out of a picture-book, drawn grotesquely and in crude colours. Where will it spend its first years? he thought. With peasants in the country, in a house with a little garden. But one day we will fetch it and take it home with us. It might, too, turn out differently. One gets a letter like this: Your Excellency, I have the honour to inform you that the child is seriously ill.... Or.... What is the point of thinking about things like that? Even though we kept it with us it might fall ill and die. Anyway, it must be given to people who are highly responsible. I'll see about it myself.... He felt as though he were confronted with new duties which he had never properly considered and which he had not yet grown able to cope with. The whole business was beginning, as it were, over again. He came out of a world in which he had not bothered about all these things, where other laws had prevailed than those to which he must now submit. And had it not been as though the other people, too, had felt that he was not really one of them, as though they had been steeped in a kind of respect, as though they had been seized by a feeling of veneration for the power and holiness of a great passion, whose sway they witnessed in their own neighbourhood? He remembered an evening on which the hotel visitors had disappeared from the piano-room one after another, as though they had been conscious of their duty to leave him alone with her. He had sat down at the piano and begun to improvise. She had remained in her dark corner in a big arm-chair. First of all he had seen her smile, then the dark shining of her eyes, then only the lines of her figure, then nothing more at all. But he had been conscious the whole time "She is there!" Lights flashed out on the other bank opposite. The two girls in the blue dresses had peered in through the window and had quickly disappeared again. Then he stopped playing and remained sitting by the pianoforte in silence. Then she had come slowly out of the corner like a shadow and had put her hand upon his head. How ineffably beautiful that had been! And it all came into his mind again. How they had rested in the boat in the middle of the lake, with shipped oars, while his head was in her lap! And they had walked through the forest paths on the opposite bank until they came to the seat under the oak. It had been there that he had told her everything--everything as though to a friend. And she had understood him, as never another woman had understood him before. Was it not she whom he had always been seeking? she who was at once mistress and comrade, with a serious outlook upon everything in the world, and yet made for every madness and for every bliss? And the farewell yesterday.... The dark brilliance of her eyes, the blue-black stream of her loosened hair, the perfume of her white naked body.... Was it really possible that this was over for ever? that all this was never, never to come again? George crumpled the rug between his fingers in his helpless longing and shut his eyes. He no longer saw the softly moving lines of the wooded hills, which swept by in the morning light, and as though for one last happiness he dreamed himself back again into the dark ecstasies of that farewell hour. Yet against his will he was overcome by fatigue after the jar and racket of the night in the train, and he was swept away out of the images which he had himself called up, in a route of wild dreams which it was not vouchsafed him to control. He walked over the Sommerhaidenweg in a strange twilight that filled him with a deep sadness. Was it morning? Was it evening? Or just a dull day? Or was it the mysterious light of some star over the world that had not yet shone for any one except him? He suddenly stood upon a great open meadow where Heinrich Bermann ran up and down and asked him: Are you also looking for the lady's castle? I have been expecting you for a long time. They went up a spiral staircase, Heinrich in front, so that George could only see a tail of the overcoat which trailed behind. Above, on an enormous terrace which gave a view of the town and the lake, the whole party was assembled. Leo had started his dissertation on minor harmonies, stopped when George appeared, came down from his desk and himself escorted him to a vacant chair which was in the first row and next to Anna. Anna smiled ecstatically when George appeared. She looked young and brilliant in a splendid _décolletée_ evening dress. Just behind her sat a little boy with fair hair, in a sailor suit with a broad white collar, and Anna said "That's he." George made her a sign to be silent, for it was supposed to be a secret. In the meanwhile Leo played the _C sharp minor_ Nocturne by Chopin in order to prove his theory, and behind him old Bösendorfer leaned against the wall in his yellow overcoat, tall, gaunt and good-natured. They all left the concert-room in a great crush. Then George put Anna's opera cloak round her shoulders and looked sternly at the people round him. He then sat in the carriage with her, kissed her, experienced a great delight in doing so and thought: "If it could only be like this always." Suddenly they stopped in front of the house in Mariahilf. There were already many pupils waiting upstairs by the window and beckoning. Anna got out, said good-bye to George with an arch expression and vanished behind the door, which slammed behind her. "Excuse me, sir. Ten minutes more," some one said. George turned round. The conductor stood in the doorway and repeated: "We shall be in Vienna in ten minutes." "Thank you," said George and got up, with a more or less confused head. He opened the window and was glad it was fine weather outside in the world. The fresh morning air quite cheered him up. Yellow walls, signal-boxes, little gardens, telegraph poles, streets, flew past him, and finally the train stood in the station. A few minutes later George was driving in an open fiacre to his apartment, saw workmen, shop girls and clerks going to their daily callings; heard the rattle of rolling shutters and in spite of all the anxiety which awaited him, in spite of all the desire which drew him elsewhere, he experienced the deep joy of once more being at home. When he went into his room he felt quite hidden. The old secretary, covered with green baize, the malachite letter-weight, the glass ash-tray with its burnt-in cavalier, the slim lamp with the broad green thick glass shade, the portrait of his father and mother in the narrow mahogany frames, the round little marble table in the corner with its silver case for cigars, the Prince of the Electorate, after Vandyck on the wall, the high bookcase with its olive-coloured curtains; they all gave him a hearty greeting. And how it did one good to have that good home look over the tree tops in the park, towards the spires and roofs. An almost undreamt-of happiness streamed towards him from everything which he found again here, and he felt sore at heart that he would have to leave it all in a few weeks. And how long would it last until one had a home, a real home? He would have liked to have stopped for a few hours in his beloved room but he had no time. He had to be in the country before noon. He had thrown off his clothes and let the warm water swirl round him deliciously in his white bath. To avoid going to sleep in his bath he chose a means he had often employed before. He rehearsed in his mind note by note a fugue of Bach's. He thought of a pianoforte that would have to be diligently practised and music scores which would have to be read. Wouldn't it really be more sensible to devote another year to study? Not to enter into negotiations straight away or to take a post, which he would turn out to be unable to fill? Rather to stay here and work. Stay here? But where? Notice had been given. It occurred to him for a moment to take the apartment in the old house opposite the grey church, where he had spent such beautiful hours with Anna, and it was as though he were remembering a long-past episode, an adventure of his youth, gay and yet a little mysterious, that had been over long ago.... He went back into his room, refreshed and wearing a brand-new suit, the first light one which he had put on since his father's death. A letter lay on the secretary which had just arrived by the first post, from Anna. He read it. It was only a few words: "You are here again, my love--I welcome you. I do long to see you. Don't keep me waiting too long. Your Anna...." George got up. He did not himself know what it was in the short letter that touched him so strangely. Anna's letters had always retained, in spite of all their tenderness, a certain precise, almost conventional element, and he had frequently jokingly called them "proclamations." This was couched in a tone that reminded him of the passionate girl of by-gone days, of that love of his whom he had almost forgotten, and a strangely unexpected anxiety seized on his heart. He rushed downstairs, took the nearest fiacre and drove to the country. He soon felt agreeably distracted by the sight of the people in the streets who meant nothing to him at all; and later, when he was near the wood, he felt soothed by the charm of the blue summer day. Suddenly, sooner than George had anticipated, the vehicle stopped in front of the country house. Involuntarily George first looked up to the balcony under the gable. A little table was standing there with a white cover and a little basket on it. Oh yes, Therese had been staying here for a few days. He now remembered for the first time. Therese...! Where was it now? He got out, paid the carriage and went into the front garden where the blue angel stood on its unpretentious pedestal amid the faded flower-beds. He stepped into the house. Marie was just laying the table in the large centre room. "Madam's over there in the garden," she said. The verandah door was open. The planks of its floor creaked underneath George's feet. The garden with its perfume and its sultriness received him. It was the old garden. During all the days in which George had been far away it had lain there silently, just as it was lying at this minute; in the dawn, in the sunshine, in the twilight, in the darkness of night; always the same.... The gravel path cut straight through the field to the heights. There were children's voices on the other side of the bushes from which red berries were hanging. And over there on the white seat, with her elbow on its arm, very pale, in her flowing blue morning dress, yes, that was Anna. Yes, really she. She had seen him now. She tried to get up. He saw it, and saw at the same time that she found it difficult. But why? Was she spell-bound by excitement? Or was the hour of trial so near? He signed to her with his hand that she was to remain seated, and she really did sit down again, and only just stretched out her arms lightly towards him. Her eyes were shining with bliss. George walked very quickly, with his grey felt hat in his hand, and now he was at her side. "At last," she said, and it was a voice which came from as far back as those words in her letter of this morning. He took her hands, shook them in a strange clumsy way, felt a lump in his throat, but was still unable to articulate anything and just nodded and smiled. And suddenly he knelt before her on the grass, with her hands in his and his head in her lap. He felt her lightly taking her hands away, and putting them on his head; and then he heard himself crying quite softly. And he felt as though he were in a sweet vague dream, a little boy again and lying at his mother's feet, and this moment were already a mere memory, painful and far away, even while he was living it. VIII Frau Golowski came out of the house. George could see her from the top end of the garden as she stepped on to the verandah. He hurried excitedly towards her, but as soon as she saw him in the distance she shook her head. "Not yet?" asked George. "The Professor thinks," replied Frau Golowski, "some time before dark." "Some time before dark," said George and looked at his watch. And now it was only three. She held out her hand sympathetically and George looked into her kind eyes, which were somewhat tired by her nocturnal vigils. The white transparent curtain in front of Anna's window had just been slightly drawn back. Old Doctor Stauber appeared by the window, threw George a friendly reassuring glance, disappeared again and the curtains were drawn. Frau Rosner was sitting in the large centre room by the round table. George could only see from the verandah the outlines of her figure; her face was quite in the shade. Then a whimpering and then a loud groan forced their way from the room in which Anna lay. George stared up at the window, stood still for a while, then turned round and walked for the hundredth time to-day up the path to the top of the garden. It is clear that she is already too weak to shriek, he thought; and his heart pained him. She had lain in labour for two whole days and two whole nights. The third day was now approaching its end,--and now it was still to last until evening came. On the evening of the first day Doctor Stauber had called in the Professor, who had been there twice yesterday and had remained in the house since noon to-day. While Anna had gone to sleep for a few minutes, and the nurse was watching by her bed, he had walked up and down in the garden with George and had endeavoured to explain to him all the peculiar features of the case. For the time being there was no ground for anxiety. They could hear the child's heart beating quite clearly. The Professor was a still fairly young man with a long blonde beard, and his words trickled gently and kindly like drops of some anodyne drug. He spoke to the sick woman like a child, stroked her over the hair and forehead, caressed her hands and gave her pet names. George had learned from the nurse that this young doctor exhibited the same devotion and same patience at every sick-bed. What a profession! thought George, who had once, during these three bad days, fled to Vienna for a few hours, which enabled a man to have a sound dreamless sleep for six good hours up there in the attic this very night while Anna was writhing in pain. He walked along by the faded lilac-bushes, tore off leaves, crunched them in his hand and threw them on the ground. A lady in a black-and-white striped morning dress was walking in the next garden on the other side of the low bushes. She looked at George seriously and almost sympathetically. Quite so! thought George. Of course she heard Anna's screams the day before yesterday, yesterday and to-day. The whole place in fact knew of what was happening there; even the young girls in the _outré_ Gothic villa, who had once taken him for the interesting seducer; and there was real humour in the fact that a strange gentleman with a reddish pointed beard, who lived two houses away, should have suddenly greeted him yesterday in the village with respectful understanding. Remarkable, thought George, how one can make oneself popular with people. But Frau Rosner let it be seen that even though she did not regard George as mainly responsible for the seriousness of the position she certainly regarded him as somewhat callous. He did not bear any grudge for this against the poor good woman. She could not of course have any idea how much he loved Anna. It was not long since he had known it himself. She had not addressed any question to him on that morning of his arrival when George had lifted his head off her lap after a long silent fit of weeping, but he had read in the painful surprise of her eyes that she guessed the truth, and he thought he understood why she did not question him. She must realise how completely she possessed him again, how henceforth he belonged to her more than he had ever done before, and when he told her in the subsequent hours and days of the time which he had spent far away from her, and that now fateful name resounded casually but yet insistently out of the catalogue of the women whom he had met, she smiled, no doubt, in her slightly mocking way, but scarcely differently than when he spoke of Else or Sissy, or the little girls in their blue dresses who had peeped into the music-room when he was playing. He had been living in the villa for two weeks, had been feeling well and in good form for serious work. He spread out every morning on the little table, where Therese's needlework had lain a short time ago, scores, works on musical theory, musical writing-paper, and occupied himself with solving problems in harmony and counterpoint. He often lay down in the meadow by the edge of the forest and read some favourite book or other, let melodies ring within him, indulged in day-dreams and was quite happy, with the rustling of the trees and the brilliance of the sun. In the afternoon, when Anna was resting, he would read aloud or talk to her. They often talked with affectionate anticipation about the little creature that was soon to come into the world, but never about their own future, whether distant or immediate. But when he sat by her bed, or walked up and down the garden with her arm-in-arm, or sat by her side on the white seat under the pear-tree, where the shining stillness of the late summer day rested above them, he knew they were tied fast to each other for all time, and that even the temporary separation with which they were faced could have no power to affect them in view of the certain feeling that they were all in all to each other. It was only since the pains had come upon her that she seemed removed from him to a sphere where he could not follow her. Yesterday he had sat by her bed for hours and had held her hand in his. She had been patient, as always, had anxiously inquired if he were quite comfortable in the house, had begged him to work and go for walks as he had done before, since after all he could not help her, and had assured him that since she was suffering she loved him even more. And yet she was not the same, George felt, as she had been during these days. Particularly when she screamed out--as she had this morning in her worst pains--her soul was so far away from him that he felt frightened. He was near the house again. No noise came from Anna's room, in front of the window of which the curtains moved slightly. Old Doctor Stauber was standing on the verandah. George hastened towards him with a dry throat. "What is it?" he asked hastily. Doctor Stauber put his hand on his shoulder. "Going on nicely." A groan came from within, grew louder, grew into a wild frenzied scream. George passed his hand over his damp forehead and said to the doctor with a bitter smile: "Is that what you mean by going on nicely?" Stauber shrugged his shoulders. "It is written, 'With pain shalt thou....'" George felt a certain sense of resentment. He had never believed in the God of the childishly pious, who was supposed to reveal himself as the fulfiller of the wishes of wretched men and women, as the avenger and forgiver of miserable human sins. The Nameless One which he felt in the infinite beyond his senses, and transcending all understanding, could only regard prayer and blasphemy as poor words out of a human mouth. Not even when his mother had died, after the senseless martyrdom of her suffering, not even when his father had died, passing away painlessly so far as he could understand, had he presumed to indulge in the belief that his own personal misfortunes in the world's progress signified more than the falling of a leaf. He had not bowed down in cowardly humility to any inscrutable solution of the riddle, nor had he foolishly murmured against an ungracious power of whose decrees he was the personal victim. To-day he felt for the first time as though somewhere or other in the clouds an incomprehensible game was being played in which his own fortunes were the stakes. The scream within had died away and only groans were audible. "And the beating of the heart?" asked George. Doctor Stauber looked at him. "It could still be heard clearly ten minutes ago." George fought against a dreadful thought which had been hounded up out of the depths of his soul. He was healthy, she was healthy, two strong young people.... Could anything like that be really possible? Doctor Stauber put his hand on his shoulder again. "Go for a walk," he said. "We'll call you as soon as it's time." And he turned away. George remained standing on the verandah for another minute. He saw Frau Rosner sitting huddled up in solitary brooding on the sofa near the wall in the large room that was beginning to grow dim in the shade of the late afternoon. He went away, walked round the house and went up the wooden stairs into his attic. He threw himself on the bed and shut his eyes. After a few minutes he got up, walked up and down in the room, but gave up doing so as the floor creaked. He went on to the balcony. The score of _Tristan_ lay open on the table. George looked at the music. It was the prelude to the third act. The music rang in his ears. The sea waves were beating heavily on a cliff shore, and out of the mournful distance rang the sad melody of an English horn. He looked over the pages far away into the silver-white brilliance of the daylight. There was sunshine everywhere--on the roofs, paths, gardens, hills and forests. The sky was spread out in its azure vastness and the smell of the harvest floated up from the depths. How were things with me a year ago? thought George. I was in Vienna, quite alone. I had not an idea. I had sent her a song ... '_Deinem Blick mich zu bequemen_' ... but I scarcely gave her a thought ... and now she lies down there dying.... He gave a violent start. He had meant to say mentally ... "She is lying in labour," and the words "lies dying" had as it were stolen their way on to his lips. But why was he so frightened? How childish! As though there existed presentiments like that! And if there really were danger, and the doctors had to decide, then of course they would have to save the mother. Why, Doctor Stauber had only explained that to him a few days ago. What, after all, is a child that hasn't yet lived? Nothing. He had begotten it at some moment or other without having wished it, without having even thought of the possibility that he might have become a father. How did he know either that in that dark hour of ecstasy, behind closed blinds a few weeks ago he had not ... also become a father without having wished it, without having even thought of the possibility; and perhaps it might have happened without his ever knowing! He heard voices and looked down; the Professor's coachman had caught hold of the arm of the housemaid, who was only slightly resisting. Perhaps the foundations are being laid here too of a new human life, thought George, and turned away in disgust. Then he went back into his room, carefully filled his cigarette-case out of the box that stood on the table, and it suddenly seemed to him that his excitement was baseless and even childish, and it occurred to him: "My mother, too, once lay like that before I came into the world, just as Anna is doing now. I wonder if my father walked about as nervously as I am doing? I wonder if he would be here now if he were still alive? I wonder if I would have told him at all? I wonder if all this would have happened if he had lived?" He thought of the beautiful serene summer days by the Veldeser Lake. His comfortable room in his father's villa swept up in his memory and in some vague way, almost dreamwise, the bare attic with the creaking floor in which he now found himself seemed to typify his whole present existence in contrast to that former life which had been so free from care and responsibility. He remembered a serious talk about the future which he had had a few days ago with Felician. Immediately after this thought there came into his mind the conversation which he had had with a woman in the country, who had introduced herself with the offer to take charge of the child. She and her husband possessed a small property near the railway, only an hour away from Vienna, and her only daughter had died in the previous year. She had promised that the little one should be well looked after, as well, in fact, as though it were not a stranger's at all, and as George thought of this he suddenly felt as though his heart were standing still. It will be there before dark.... The child.... His child, but a strange woman was waiting somewhere to take it away with her. He was so tired after the excitement of the last few days that his knees hurt him. He remembered having previously felt similar physical sensations, the evening after his "leaving-examination" and the time when he had learnt of Labinski's suicide. How different, how joyful, how full of hope had been his mood three days ago, just before the pains began! He now felt nothing except an unparalleled dejection, while he found the musty smell of the attic more and more unpleasant. He lit a cigarette and stepped on to the balcony again. The warm silent air did him good. The sunshine still lay on the Sommerhaidenweg and a gilded cross shone over the walls from the direction of the churchyard. He heard a noise beneath him. Steps? Yes, steps and voices too. He left the balcony and the room and rushed down over the creaking wooden staircase. A door opened, steps were hurrying over the floor. The next moment he was on the bottom step opposite Frau Golowski. His heart stood still. He opened his mouth without asking. "Yes," she nodded, "a boy." He gripped both her hands and felt, while he was beaming all over, a stream of happiness was running through his soul with a potency and intense warmth that he had never anticipated. He suddenly noticed that Frau Golowski's eyes were not shining as brightly as they certainly ought to have. The stream of happiness within him ebbed back. Something choked his throat. "Well?" he said. Then he added, almost menacingly: "Does it live?" "It just breathed once.... The Professor hopes...." George pushed the woman on one side, reached the great centre room in three strides and stood still as though spell-bound. The Professor, in a long white linen apron, held a small creature in his arms and rocked it hurriedly to and fro. George stood still. The Professor nodded to him and went on undisturbed with what he was doing. He was examining the little creature in his arms with scrutinising eyes, he put it on the table, over which a white linen cloth had been spread, made the child's limbs execute violent exercises, rubbed its breast and face, then lifted it high up several times in succession, and George always saw how the child's head drooped heavily on to its breast. Then the doctor put it on to the linen cloth, listened with his ear on its bosom, got up, put one hand on its little body and motioned gently with the other to George to approach. Involuntarily holding his breath George came quite near him. He looked first at the doctor and then at the little creature which lay on the white linen. It had its eyes quite open, strangely big blue eyes, like those of Anna. The face looked quite different from what George had expected, not wrinkled and ugly like that of an old dwarf, no; it was really a human face, a silent beautiful child-face, and George knew that these features were the image of his own. The Professor said gently: "I've not heard its heart beat for the last hour." George nodded. Then he asked hoarsely: "How is she?" "Quite well, but you mustn't go in yet, Herr Baron." "No," replied George and shook his head. He stared at the immobile little body with its bluish shimmer and knew that he was standing in front of the corpse of his own child. Nevertheless he looked at the doctor again and asked: "Can nothing more be done?" He shrugged his shoulders. George breathed deeply and pointed to the closed bedroom door. "Does she know yet----" He asked the doctor. "Not yet. Let's be thankful for the time being that it is over. She has gone through a lot, poor girl. I only regret that it should turn out to have been for nothing." "You expected it, Herr Professor?" "I feared it since this morning." "And why ... why?" The doctor answered softly and gently: "A very exceptional case, as I told you before." "You told me...?" "Yes, I tried to explain to you that this possibility ... it was strangled, you see, by the umbilical cord. Scarcely one or two per cent. of births end like that." He was silent. George gazed at the child. Quite right, the Professor had prepared him in advance only he had not taken it seriously. Frau Rosner was standing by him with helpless eyes. George held out his hand to her and they looked at each other like persons whom the sore stress of circumstances has made companions in misfortune. Then Frau Rosner sank down on a chair by the wall. The Professor said to George: "I will now go and just have a look at the mother." "Mother!" repeated George, and gazed at him. The doctor looked away. "You will tell her?" asked George. "No, not at once. Anyway, she will be ready for it. She asked several times in the course of the day if it was still alive. It will not have so dreadful an effect upon her as you fear, Herr Baron ... at any rate during the first hours, the first days. You mustn't forget what she has gone through." He pressed George's limply-hanging hand and went. George stood there motionless. He was gazing continually at the little creature, and it seemed to him a picture of undreamt-of beauty. He touched its cheeks, shoulders, arms, hands, fingers. How mysteriously complete it all was! And there it lay, having died without having lived, destined to go from one darkness into another, through a senseless nothingness. There it lay, the sweet tiny body which was ready for life and yet was unable to move. There they shone, those big blue eyes, as though with desire to drink in the light of heaven, and completely blind before they had seen a ray. And there was the small round mouth which was open as though with thirst, but yet could never drink at a mother's breast. There it gazed, that white child-face with its perfect human features, which was never to receive or feel the kiss of a mother, the kiss of a father. How he loved this child! How he loved it, now that it was too late! A choking despair rose within his throat. He could not cry. He looked around him. No one was in the room and it was quite still next door. He had no desire to go into that other room, nor had he any fear. He only felt that it would have been rather senseless. His eye returned to the dead child, and suddenly the poignant question thrilled through him whether it was really bound to be true. Could not every one make a mistake, a physician as much as a layman? He held his open palm before the child's open lips and it was as though something cool was breathed towards him. And then he held both hands over the child's breast and again it seemed as though a light puff were playing over the tiny body. But it felt just the same as in the other place: no breath of life had blown towards him. He now bent down again and his lips touched the child's cool forehead. Something strange, something he scarcely felt tingled through his body to the very tips of his toes. He knew it now; he had lost the game up there in the clouds, his child was dead. Then he slowly lifted his head and turned away. The sight of the garden tempted him into the open. He stepped on to the verandah and saw Doctor Stauber and Frau Rosner sitting on the seat that was propped against the wall--both silent. They looked at him. He turned away as though he did not know them and went into the garden. The shadow of the house fell obliquely over the lawn, there was still sunlight higher up but it was dull and as though without the strength to illumine the air. Why did he want to think of that light which was sun and yet did not shine, that blue in the heights which was heaven and yet did not bless him? What was the point of the silence of this garden, which should console and comfort him, and yet received him to-day as though it were some strange inhospitable place? It gradually occurred to him that just such a twilight had enveloped him in a dream a short time ago with a dreariness of which he had previously had no idea, and had filled his soul with incomprehensible melancholy. What now? he said to himself aloud. He did not seek for any answer, and only knew that something unforeseen and unalterable had happened that must change the face of the world for him for all time. He thought of the day when his father had died. A wild grief had overwhelmed him then; yet he had been able to cry and the world had not suddenly become dark and void. His father had really lived, had once been young, had worked, loved, had children, experienced joys and sorrows. And the mother who had borne him had not suffered in vain. And even if he himself should have to die to-day, however early it might be, he had nevertheless a life behind him, a life full of light and music, happiness and suffering, hope and anxiety, steeped in all the fulness of the world. And even if Anna had passed away to-day, in the hour when she gave life to a new being, she would as it were have fulfilled her lot and her end would have had its terrible but none the less deep significance. But what had happened to his child was senseless, was revolting--a piece of irony from somewhere or other, whither one could send no question and no answer. What was the point of it all? What had been the significance of these past months with all their dreams, their troubles and their hopes? For he knew, all in a flash, that the expectation of the wonderful hour in which his child was to be born had always lain in the depths of his soul every single day, even those which were most matter-of-fact, those which were most vacant, or those which were most wanton. And he felt ashamed, impoverished, miserable. He stood by the garden fence at the top end and looked towards the edge of the forest, towards his seat on which he had rested so often, and he felt as though forest and field and seat had previously been his possessions, and that he must now surrender them too, like so much else. In a corner of the garden stood a dark grey neglected summer-house with three little window-apertures and a narrow opening for a door. He had always disliked it, and had only gone in once for a few moments. To-day he felt drawn inside. He sat down on the cracked seat and suddenly felt hidden and soothed, as though all that had happened were less true or could in some inconceivable way be undone. Yet this hallucination soon vanished, he left the inhospitable room and stepped into the open. I must now go back into the house again, he thought with a sense of exhaustion, and could not quite realise that the dead body of his child must be resting in the dark room, which he could see from here stretching behind the verandah like an unfathomable darkness. He walked slowly down the garden. Anna's mother was standing with a gentleman on the verandah. George recognised old Rosner. He stood there in his overcoat, he had laid his hat in front of him on the table. He passed a pocket handkerchief over his forehead and his red-lidded eyes twitched. He went towards George and pressed his hand. "What a pity that it turned out differently," he said, "than we had all hoped and expected!" George nodded. He then remembered that the old gentleman's heart had not been quite right during the past week and inquired after his health. "It is kind of you to ask, Herr Baron. I am a little better, only I find going uphill rather troublesome." George noticed that the glass door that led to the centre room was closed. "Excuse me," he said to old Rosner, strode straight to the door, opened it and quickly closed it behind him. Frau Golowski and Doctor Stauber were standing near the table and speaking to each other. He walked up to them and they suddenly stopped talking. "Well?" he inquired. Doctor Stauber said: "We have been speaking about the ... formalities. Frau Golowski will be kind enough to see to all that." "Thank you," replied George and held out his hand to Frau Golowski. "All that," he thought. A coffin, a funeral, a notification to the local registry; a son born of Anna Rosner, spinster, died on the same day. Nothing about the father of course. Yes, his part was finished. Only to-day? Had it not been finished the very second when quite by chance he became a father? He looked at the table. The cloth was spread over the tiny corpse. Oh, how quick! he thought bitterly. Am I never to see it again? I suppose I may be allowed to, once. He drew the cloth a little away from the body and held it high up. He saw a pale child-face which was quite familiar to him, only since then some one had closed the eyes. The old grandfather's clock in the corner ticked. Six o'clock. Scarcely an hour had passed since his child had been born and died: the fact was already as indisputably certain as though it could never have been otherwise. He felt a light touch on the shoulder. "She took it quietly," said Doctor Stauber, standing behind him. George dropped the cloth over the child's face and turned his head towards the side. "She already knows, then...?" Doctor Stauber nodded. Frau Golowski had turned away. "Who told her?" asked George. "It wasn't necessary to tell her," replied Doctor Stauber, "was it?" He turned to Frau Golowski. The latter explained: "When I went in to her she just looked at me, and then I saw at once that she already knew." "And what did she say?" "Nothing--nothing at all. She turned her eyes towards the window and was quite still. She asked where you had gone, Herr Baron, and what you were doing." George breathed deeply. The door of Anna's room opened. The Professor came out in a black coat. "She is quite quiet," he said to George. "You can go in to her." "Did she speak to you about it?" asked George. The Professor shook his head. Then he said: "I am afraid I must go into town now; you'll excuse me, won't you? I hope things will go on all right. I shall be here early to-morrow any way. Good-bye, dear Herr Baron." He pressed his hand sympathetically. "You'll drive in with me, Doctor Stauber, won't you?" "Yes," said Doctor Stauber, "I only want to say good-bye to Anna." He went. George turned to the Professor. "May I ask you something?" "Please do." "I should very much like to know, Herr Professor, whether this is simply imagination. It seems to me, you know"--and he again lifted up the cloth from the tiny corpse--"as though this child did not look like a new-born one, more beautiful, so to speak. I feel as though the faces of new-born children were bound to be more wrinkled, more like old men. I can't tell you whether I have ever seen one or whether I've only read about it." "You are quite right," replied the Professor. "It is just in cases of this kind, and also of course when things turn out more fortunately, that the features of the children are not distorted, are frequently, in fact, quite beautiful." He contemplated the little face with professional sympathy, nodded a few times: "Pity, pity" ... let the cloth fall down again, and George knew that he had seen his child's face for the last time. What name would it have had? Felician.... Good-bye, little Felician! Doctor Stauber came out of the next room and gently closed the door. "Anna is expecting you," he said to George. The latter gave him his hand, shook hands with the Professor again, nodded to Frau Golowski and went into the next room. The nurse got up from Anna's side and disappeared out of the room. Opposite the door hung a mirror in which George saw an elegant young gentleman who was pale and was smiling. Anna lay in her bed, which stood clear in the middle of the room, with big clear eyes, which looked straight at George. "What kind of a figure do I cut?" he thought. He pushed the chair close to her bed with some ceremoniousness, sat down, grasped her hand, put it to his forehead and then kissed her fingers long and almost ardently. Anna was the first to speak. "You were in the garden?" she asked. "Yes, I was in the garden." "I saw you come down from the top some time ago." "You had better not talk, Anna. Don't you feel it a strain?" "These few words! Oh no. But you can tell me something...." He was holding her hand in his all the time and looking at her fingers. Then he said: "Do you know that there is a little summer-house at the top end of the garden? Yes, of course you know.... I only mean, we'd never properly realised it." "I was in there a few times during the first week," said Anna. "I don't like it." "No, indeed!" "Have you done any work this morning?" she then asked. "What an idea, Anna!" She shook her head quite gently. "And recently you have been getting on so well with it." He smiled. She remained serious. "You were in town yesterday?" she asked. "You know I was." "Did you find any letters? I mean important ones." "You should really not talk so much, Anna. I'll tell you everything right enough. Well then, I found no letters of any importance. There was nothing from Detmold either. Anyway, I'll go and see Professor Viebiger one of these days. But we can talk about these things another time, don't you think? And so far as work goes ... I've been having another look at _Tristan_ this morning. I even know it down to the smallest detail. I could trust myself to conduct it to-day, if it came to the point." She was silent and looked at him. He remembered the evening when he had sat by her side at the Munich opera, as though enveloped in a transparent veil of the notes he loved so well. But he said nothing about it. It grew dark. Anna's features began to grow dim. "Are you going to town to-day?" she asked. He had not thought of doing so. But he now felt as though a kind of relief were beckoning to him. Yes, he would go in. What, after all, could he do out here? But he did not answer at once. Anna began again: "I think you would perhaps like to speak to your brother." "Yes, I should like to very much. I suppose you are going to sleep soon?" "I hope so." "How tired you must be," he said as he stroked her arm. "No, it is rather different. I feel so awake ... I can't tell you how awake I feel.... It seems as though I had never been so awake in my whole life. And I know at the same time that I'm going to sleep more deeply than I ever have ... as soon as I've once closed my eyes." "Yes, of course you will. But may I stay a bit longer with you? I'd really like to go on sitting here till you've fallen asleep." "No, George, if you are here I can't go to sleep. But just stay a bit longer. It's so nice." He held her hand all the time and looked out on to the garden, which was now lying in the twilight. "You weren't very much up at Auhof this year?" said Anna indifferently, as though simply making conversation. "Oh yes, nearly every day. Didn't I tell you?--I think Else will marry James Wyner and go with him to England." He knew that she was not thinking of Else but of some one quite different. And he asked himself: Does she perhaps mean ... that that is the reason? A warm puff blew in from outside. Children's voices rang in. George looked out. He saw the white seat gleaming under the pear-tree and thought of how Anna had waited for him there in her flowing dress, beneath the fruit-laden branches, girdled by the gentle miracle of her motherhood. And he asked himself: "Was it fated then that it must end like this? Or was it after all so fated at the moment when we embraced each other for the first time?" The Professor's remark that one to two per cent. of all births ended like that came into his mind. So it was a fact that since people had started being born one or two in every hundred must perish in this senseless fashion at the very moment when they were brought into the light! And so many must die in their first years, and so many in the flower of their youth, and so many as men. And again a fated number put an end to their own lives, like Labinski. And so many were doomed to fail in their attempt, as in Oskar Ehrenberg's case. Why search for reasons? Some law is at work, incomprehensible and inexorable, which we men cannot struggle against. Who is entitled to complain? why should I be the victim? If it doesn't happen to one, it will happen to another ... whether innocent or guilty like he was. One to two per cent. get hit, that is heavenly justice. The children who were laughing in the garden opposite, they were allowed to live. Allowed? No, they _must_ live, even as his own child had had to die, after the first breath it drew, doomed to travel from one darkness into another, through a senseless nothingness. It was twilight outside and it was almost night in the room. Anna lay still and motionless. Her hand did not move in George's, but when George got up he saw that her eyes were open. He bent down, hesitated a moment, then put his arm round her neck and kissed her on her lips, which were hot and dry and did not answer his touch. Then he went. In the next room the hanging lamp was alight over the table on which the dead child had lain some while back. The green tablecloth was now spread out as though nothing had happened. The door of Frau Golowski's room was open. The light of a candle shone in, and George knew that his child was sleeping in there, its first and last sleep. Frau Golowski and Frau Rosner sat next to each other on the sofa by the wall, dumb, and as though huddled together. George went up to them. "Has Herr Rosner gone already?" He turned to Frau Rosner. "Yes, he rode into the town with the doctors," she answered, and looked at him questioningly. "She is quiet." George answered her look. "I think she will sleep soundly." "Won't you take something?" asked Frau Golowski. "You haven't since one o'clock had...." "No thanks, I'm going into town now. I want to speak to my brother. I am also expecting important letters. I'll be here again early to-morrow." He took his leave, went up to his attic, fetched the _Tristan_ score from the balcony into the room, took his stick and overcoat, lit a cigarette and left the house. As soon as he was in the street he felt freer. An awful upheaval lay behind him. It had ended unhappily, but at any rate it had ended. And Anna was bound to be all right. Of course with mothers as well there was the fated percentage. But it was clear that the possibility of an unfortunate issue was according to the law of probabilities necessarily much less than if the child had remained alive. He walked through the straggling village with swift strides, tried not to think of anything and looked with forced attention at every single house by which he passed. They were all mean, most of them positively dreary and squalid. Behind them little gardens sloped up to vineyards, cultivated fields and meadows in the evening mist. In an almost empty inn garden a few musicians were sitting by a long table, playing a melancholy waltz on violins, guitars and a concertina. Later on he passed more presentable houses, and he looked in through open windows into decently lighted rooms in which there were tables laid for dinner. He eventually took his seat in a cheerful inn garden, as far away as possible from the other not very numerous customers. He took his meal and soon felt a salutary fatigue come over him. On the tram he almost dozed off in his corner. It was only when the conveyance was driving through more lively streets that he thoroughly woke up and remembered what had happened, with an agonising but arid precision. He got out and walked home through the moist sultriness of the Stadtpark. Felician was not at home. He found a telegram lying on his secretary. It was from Detmold and ran as follows: "We request you kindly to inform us if you can possibly come to us within the next three days. This offer is to be considered for the time being as binding on neither party; travelling expenses paid in any event.--Faithfully, Manager of the Hoftheater." Next to it lay the red form for the answer. George was in a state of nervous tension. What should he answer now? The telegram clearly indicated that there was a vacancy for the post of conductor. Should he ask for a postponement? After eight days it would be quite easy to go there for an interview and then come back at once. He found thinking about it a strain. At any rate the matter could wait till to-morrow, and if that was too late then there would be no essential change in the position after all. He would always be welcomed as a special visitor, he knew that already. It was perhaps better not to bind himself ... to go on working at his training somewhere, without yet taking obligations or responsibilities upon himself, and then to be ready and equipped for the following year. But what paltry considerations these were, when compared with the terrible event of his life which had occurred to-day! He took up the malachite paper-weight and put it on the telegram. What now...? he asked himself. Go to the club and rout out Felician? Yet that was not quite the place to tell him about the matter. It would really be best to stay at home and wait for him. It was in fact a little tempting to undress at once and lie down. But he certainly would not be able to sleep. So he came to think of tidying up his papers a little once again. He opened the drawer in his secretary, sorted bills and letters and made notes in his note-book. The noise of the street came in through the open windows as though from a distance. He thought of how he had read the letters of his dead parents in the same place in the previous summer after his father's death, and how the same noise of the town and the same perfume from the park had streamed in to him just like to-day. The year that had elapsed since then seemed in his tired mind to extend into eternities, then contracted again into a short span of time, and something kept whispering in his soul: What for ... what for? His child was dead. It would be buried in the churchyard by the Sommerhaidenweg. It would rest there in consecrated ground, from the toilsome journey which it was fated to take from one darkness into another through a senseless nothingness. It would lie under a little cross, as though it had lived and suffered a whole human life.... As though it had lived! It had really lived from the moment when its heart had already begun to beat in its mother's body. No, even earlier.... It had belonged to the realm of the living from the very moment when its mother's body had received it. And George thought of how many children of men and women were fated to perish even earlier than his own child, how many, wished and unwished, were fated to die in the first days of their life without their own mothers even having an idea. And while he dozed with shut eyes, half asleep and half awake, in front of his secretary, he saw nothing but shining crosses standing up on tiny mounds, as though it were a toy cemetery and a reddish yellow toy sun were shining over it. But suddenly the image represented the Cadenabbia cemetery. George was sitting like a little boy on the stone wall which surrounded it, and suddenly turned his gaze down towards the lake. And then there rode in a very long narrow boat, beneath dull yellow sails, with a green shawl on her shoulders, a woman, sitting motionless on the rowing bench, a woman whose face he tried to recognise with vague and almost painful efforts. The bell rang. George got up. What was it? Oh, of course, there was no one there to open. The servant had been discharged since the first day of the month, and the porter's wife, who now looked after the brothers, was not in the apartment at this hour. George went into the hall and opened the door. Heinrich Bermann was standing in the hall. "I saw a light in your room from down below," he said. "It was a good idea my first going past your house. I was going, as a matter of fact, to drive out to your place in the country." Is his manner really so excited? thought George, or do I only think it is? He asked him to come in and sit down. "Thanks, thanks, I prefer to walk up and down. No, don't light the high lamp. The table lamp's quite enough.... Anyway--how are you getting on out there?" "A child was born this morning," replied George quietly. "But unfortunately it was dead." "Still-born?" "I don't know if one can say that," replied George with a bitter smile; "for it is supposed to have drawn one breath according to the doctor. The pains lasted for three days on end. It was ghastly. Now it's all over." "Dead! I'm very sorry--I really am." He held out his hand to George. "It was a boy," said George, "and strangely enough, very beautiful. Quite different from what new-born children usually look like." He then told him, too, how he had stayed quite a time in an inhospitable summer-house which he had never gone into before, and the strange way in which the lighting of the country had suddenly altered. "It was a light," said George, "that places in one's dreams sometimes have. Quite indefinite ... like twilight ... but rather mournful." While he said this, he knew that he would have described the whole matter quite differently to Felician. Heinrich sat in the corner of the ottoman and let the other speak. He then began: "It is strange. All this affects me very much, of course, and yet ... it calms me at the same time." "Calms you?" "Yes. As though certain things which I unhappily had to fear had suddenly grown less probable." "What kind of things?" Without listening to him Heinrich went on speaking with set teeth. "Or is it only because I am in the presence of another man's grief? Or is it because I am somewhere else, in a strange flat? That would be quite possible. Haven't you noticed that even one's own death strikes one as something highly improbable, when one is travelling for instance; frequently in fact when one is out for a walk. Man is subject to incomprehensible illusions like that." Heinrich turned round after a few seconds, as though he had regained his self-control, but remained standing by the window with both hands resting on the sill behind him, and said laconically in a hard voice: "There's the possibility, you see, of the girl whose acquaintance you casually made the other day at my place having committed suicide. Please don't look so startled. As you know, many of her letters hinted that she would do it." "Well?" said George. Heinrich lifted his hand deprecatingly. "I never took it seriously at all. But I got a letter this morning which, I don't quite know how to express it, had an uncanny ring of truth about it. As a matter of fact there is nothing in it which she hasn't already written to me ten or twenty times over; but the tone ... the tone.... To come to the point, I am as good as convinced that it has happened this time. Perhaps at this very minute!" He stopped and stared in front of him. "No, Heinrich." George stepped up to him and put his hand on his shoulder. "No!" he added, more firmly, "I don't believe it at all. I spoke to her a few weeks ago. You know about that. And then she certainly did not give me the impression ... I also saw her playing comedy.... If you had seen her acting in that impudent farce, you wouldn't believe it either, Heinrich. She only wants to revenge herself on you for your cruelty. Unconsciously, perhaps. Probably she has convinced herself on many occasions that she cannot go on living, but the fact that she has stuck it out till to-day.... Of course, if she had done it at once...." Heinrich shook his head impatiently. "Just listen, George. I telegraphed to the Summer Theatre. I inquired if she were still there, suggesting that it was a question of a new part for her, rehearsal of a new piece of mine, or something like that. I have been waiting at home ... till now ... but there is no answer. If I don't get one, or not a satisfactory one, I'll certainly go there." "Yes, but why didn't you simply ask if she...." "If she has killed herself? One doesn't want to make oneself ridiculous, George. I might have asked for news on that point every other day or so, of course.... It would certainly have had a kind of grotesque humour right enough." "Look here now--you don't believe it yourself?" "I'll go home now to see if there's a telegram there. Good-bye, George. Forgive me. I couldn't stand it any more at home, you see.... I am really sorry to have bothered you with my own affairs at a time like this. Once more, I ask you to forgive me." "You had no idea.... And even if you had known.... In my case, it's quite--a finished chapter, so to speak. In my case, there is unfortunately nothing more to do." He looked excitedly out of the window, over the tops of the trees, towards the red spires and roofs which towered up out of the faint red light of the evening town. Then he said: "I'll come with you, Heinrich. I can't start anything at home. I mean.... If you don't mind my society." "Mind!... My dear George!..." He pressed his hand. They went. At first they walked along the park in silence. George remembered his walk with Heinrich through the Prater Allee last autumn, and immediately after that he remembered the May evening when Anna Rosner had appeared in the Waldsteingarten later than the others, and Frau Ehrenberg had whispered to him, "I have asked her specially for you." Yes, for him. If it had not been for that evening Anna would never have become his mistress, and none of all the events which lay heavy on him to-day would ever have happened. Was there some law at work in this? Of course! So many children had to come into the world every year, and a certain number of those out of wedlock, and good Frau Ehrenberg had imagined that inviting Fräulein Anna Rosner for Baron von Wergenthin had been a matter of her own personal fancy. "Is Anna quite out of danger?" asked Heinrich. "I hope so," replied George. Then he spoke about the pain which she had suffered, her patience, and her goodness. He felt the need of describing her as a perfect angel, as though he could thereby atone a little for the wrong he had done her. Heinrich nodded. "She really seems to be one of the few women who are made to be mothers. It isn't true, you know, that there are many of that kind. Having children--that's what they're all there for; but being mothers! And to think of her, of all people, having to suffer like that! I really never had an idea that anything like that could happen." George shrugged his shoulders. Then he said: "I had been expecting to see you out there again. I think you even made some promise to that effect when you dined with us and Therese a week ago." "Oh yes. Didn't we squabble dreadfully, Therese and I? It got even more violent on the way home. Really quite funny. We walked, you know, right into the town. The people who met us are absolutely bound to have taken us for a couple of lovers, we quarrelled so dreadfully." "And who won in the end?" "Won? Does it ever happen that any one wins? One only argues to convince oneself, never to convince the other person. Just imagine Therese eventually realising that a rational person can never become a member of any party! Or if I had been driven to confess that my independence of party betokened a lack of philosophy of life, as she contended! Why, we could both have shut up shop straight away. But what do you think of all this talk about a philosophy of life? As though a philosophy of life were anything else than the will and the capacity to see life as it really is. I mean, to envisage it without being led astray by any preconceived idea, without having the impulse to deduce a new law straight away from our particular experience, or to fit our experience into some existing law. But people mean nothing more by the expression 'philosophy of life' than a higher kind of devotion to a pet theory, devotion to a pet theory within the sphere of the infinite, so to speak. Or they go on talking about a gloomy or cheerful philosophy according to the colours in which their individual temperament and the accidents of their personal life happen to paint the world for them. People in the full possession of their senses have a philosophy of life and narrow-minded people haven't. That's how the matter stands. As a matter of fact, one doesn't need to be a metaphysician to have a philosophy of life.... Perhaps in fact one shouldn't be one at all. At any rate, metaphysics have nothing at all to do with the philosophy of life. Each of the philosophers really knew in his heart of hearts that he simply represented a kind of poet. Kant believed in the Thing In Itself, and Schopenhauer in the World as Will and Representation, just like Shakespeare believed in Hamlet, and Beethoven in the Ninth Symphony. They knew that another work of art had come into the world, but they never imagined for a single minute that they had discovered a final 'truth.' Every philosophical system, if it has any rhythm or depth, represents another possession for the world. But why should it alter a man's relationship to the world if he himself has all his wits and senses about him?" He went on speaking with increasing excitement and fell, as it seemed to George, into a feverish maze. George then remembered that Heinrich had once invented a merry-go-round that turned in spirals higher and higher above the earth, to end finally in the top of a tower. They chose a way through suburban streets, with few people and only moderate lighting. George felt as though he were walking about in a strange town. Suddenly a house appeared that was strangely familiar to him, and he now noticed for the first time that they were passing the house of the Rosner family. There were lights in the dining-room. Probably the old man was sitting there alone, or in the company of his son. Is it possible, thought George, that in a few weeks Anna will be sitting there again at the same table as her mother and father and brother as though nothing had happened? That she will sleep again night after night behind that window with its closed blinds and leave that house day after day to give her wretched lessons.... That she will take up that miserable life again as though nothing at all had changed? No. She should not go back to her family. It would be quite senseless. She must come to him, live with him, the man she belonged to. The Detmold telegram! He had almost forgotten it, but he must talk it over with her. It showed hope and prospects. Living was cheap in a little town like that. Besides, George's own fortune was a long way from being eaten up. One would be justified in chancing it. Besides, this post simply represented the beginning. Perhaps he would get another one soon in a larger town. In a single night one might be a success without expecting it--that was always the way--and one would have a name, not only as a conductor, but also as a composer, and it need only be two or three years before they could have the child with them.... The child ... how the thought raged through his brain!... To think of one being able to forget a thing like that even for a minute. Heinrich went on speaking all the time. It was quite obvious that he wanted to stupefy himself. He continued to annihilate philosophers. He had just degraded them from poets to jugglers. Every system, yes, every philosophic system and every moral system was nothing but a juggle of words, a flight from the animated fulness of phenomena into the marionette fixity of categories. But that was the very thing which mankind desired. Hence all the philosophies, all the religions, all the moral laws. They were all taking part in that identical flight. A few, a very few, were given the awful inner faculty of being ready to feel every experience as new and individual--were given the strength to endure standing in a new world as it were, every single minute. And the truth was this: only the man who conquered the cowardly impulse of imprisoning all experiences in words was shown life--that manifold unity, that wondrous thing, in its own true shape. George had the feeling that Heinrich, with all his talk, was simply trying to succeed in shaking off any sense of responsibility towards a higher law by refusing to recognise any. And with a kind of growing antagonism to Heinrich's silly and extraordinary behaviour he felt that the scheme of the world that had threatened some hours ago to fall to pieces was gradually beginning to put itself together again within his own soul. He had only recently rebelled against the senselessness of the fate which had struck him, and yet he already began to feel vaguely that even what had appeared to him as a grievous misfortune had not been precipitated upon his head out of the void, but that it had come to him along a way which, though darker, was quite as preordained as that which approached him along a far more visible road and which he was accustomed to call necessity. They were in front of the house in which Heinrich lived. The concierge stood at the door and informed them that he had put a telegram in Heinrich's room a short time ago. "Oh," said Heinrich indifferently, and slowly went up the stairs. George followed. Heinrich lit a candle in the hall. The telegram lay on the little table. Heinrich opened it, held it near to the flickering light, read it himself and then turned to George. "She's expected for the rehearsal to-morrow, and has not yet turned up." He took the light in his hand and followed by George went into the next room, put the light on the secretary, and walked up and down. George heard through the open window the strumming of a piano resounding over the dark courtyard. "Is there nothing else in the telegram?" he asked. "No. But it's obvious that not only has she been absent from the rehearsal, but that she wasn't to be found in her lodgings either. Otherwise, they would certainly have telegraphed that she was ill, or given some explanation or other. Yes, my dear George," he breathed deeply, "it has happened this time." "Why? There is no proof of it. Scarcely anything to go on." Heinrich cut short the other's remarks with a curt gesture. He then looked at his watch and said: "There are no more trains to-day.... Yes.... What should one do first?" He stopped, remained standing, and suddenly said: "I'll go to her mother's. Yes. That's the best.... Perhaps--perhaps...." They left the apartment. They took a conveyance at the next corner. "Did the mother know anything?" asked George. "Damn it all," said Heinrich, "about as much as mothers usually know. It is incredible the small amount of thought people give to what is taking place under their very noses, if they are not compelled to do so by some actual occasion. And most people have no idea how much they really know at the bottom of their hearts without owning up to it. The good woman is bound of course to be somewhat surprised at my springing up so suddenly.... I haven't seen her for a long time." "What will you say to her?" "Yes, what will I say to her?" repeated Heinrich, and bit at his cigar. "I say, I've got a splendid idea. You'll come with me, George. I'll introduce you as a manager, eh? You are travelling through, have got to catch a special train for St. Petersburg at eleven o'clock this very day. You've heard somewhere or other that the young lady is staying in Vienna, and I as an old friend of the family have been kind enough to introduce you." "Do you feel in the mood for comedies like that?" asked George. "Please forgive me, George, it's really not at all necessary. I'll just ask the old woman if she has any news.... What do you say?... How sultry it is to-night!" They drove over the Ring, through the echoing Burghof, through the streets of the town. George felt in a strange state of tension. Supposing the actress were now really sitting quietly at home with her mother? He felt that it would mean a kind of disillusionment for him. And then he felt ashamed of that emotion. Do I look upon the whole thing as simply a distraction? he thought. What happens to other people ... is rarely more than that, Nürnberger would say.... A strange way of distracting oneself in order to forget the death of one's child.... But what is one to do?... I can't alter things. I shall be going away in a few days, thank heaven. The vehicle stopped in front of a house in the neighbourhood of the Praterstern. A train was growling over the viaduct opposite; underneath the avenues of the Prater ran into the darkness. Heinrich dismissed the conveyance. "Thank you very much," he said to George. "Good-bye." "I'll wait for you here." "Will you really? Well, I should be awfully grateful if you would." He disappeared through the door. George walked up and down. In spite of the lateness of the hour it was still fairly lively in the street. The strains of a military band in the Prater carried to the place where he was. A man and a woman went past him; the man carried in his arms a sleeping child, which had slung its hands round its father's neck. George thought of the garden in Grinzinger, of the unwashed little thing which had stretched out its tiny hands to him from its mother's arms. Had he been really touched then, as Nürnberger had asserted? No, it was certainly not emotion. Something else perhaps. The vague consciousness of standing with both hands linked in that riveted chain which stretches from ancestors to descendants, of participating in the universal human destiny. Now, he stood suddenly released again, alone ... as though spurned by a miracle whose call he had heard without sufficient veneration. It struck ten o'clock from a neighbouring church tower. Only five hours, thought George, and how far away it all seemed! Now he was at liberty to knock about the world as he had done before.... Was he really at liberty? Heinrich came out of the doorway. The door closed behind him. "Nothing," he said. "The mother has no idea. I asked her for the address, as though I had something important to communicate to her. I had just come from the Prater, and it had occurred to me ... and so on. A nice old woman. The brother sits at a table and copies on a drawing-board out of an illustrated paper a mediæval castle with innumerable turrets." "Be candid, for once in a way," said George. "If you could save her by doing so, wouldn't you forgive her now?" "My dear George, don't you see yet that it is not a question of whether I want to forgive her or not? Just remember this, I could just have stopped loving her, which can frequently happen without one's being deceived at all. Imagine this--a woman who loves you pursuing you, a woman whose contact for some reason or other makes you shudder swearing to you that she'll kill herself if you reject her. Would it be your duty to give in? Could you reproach yourself the slightest bit if she really went to her death, through the so-called pangs of despised love? Would you regard yourself as her murderer? It is sheer nonsense, isn't it? But if you think that it's what other people call conscience which is now torturing me, you are making a mistake. It is simply anxiety about what has happened to a person who was once very dear to me, and is I suppose still very dear to me. The uncertainty...." He suddenly stared fixedly in one direction. "What is the matter with you?" asked George. "Don't you see? A telegraph messenger is coming towards the door of the house." Before the man had time to ring Heinrich was at his side, and said a few words which George could not understand. The messenger seemed to be making objections. Heinrich was answering and George, who had come nearer, could hear him. "I have been waiting for you here in front of the door because the doctor gave me stringent orders to do so. This telegram contains ... perhaps ... bad news ... and it might be the death of my mother. If you don't believe me, you just ring and I'll go into the house with you." But he already had the telegram in his hands, opened it hurriedly and started to read it by the light of the street lamp. His face remained absolutely immobile. Then he folded the telegram together again, handed it to the messenger, pressed a few silver coins into his hand. "You must now take it in yourself." The messenger was surprised, but the tip put him in a better temper. Heinrich rang and turned away. "Come!" he said to George. They went silently down the street. After a few minutes Heinrich said: "It has happened." George felt more violently shocked than he had anticipated. "Is it possible...?" he exclaimed. "Yes," said Heinrich. "She drowned herself in the lake--where you spent a few days this summer," he added in a tone which seemed to imply that George too was somehow partly responsible for what had happened. "What's in the telegram?" inquired George. "It's from the manager. It contains the news that she has had a fatal accident while out boating. Requests her mother to give further directions." He spoke in a cool hard voice, as though he were reading an announcement out of a paper. "That poor woman! I say, Heinrich, oughtn't you to...." "What!... Go to her? What should I be doing there?" "Who is there, except you, who can at a time like this stand by her ... ought to, in fact?" "Who except me?" He remained standing. "You think that because it happened more or less on my account? I tell you positively that I feel absolutely innocent. The boat out of which she let herself drop, and the waves which received her could not feel more innocent than I do. I just want to settle that point.... But that I should go in and see the mother.... Yes, you are quite right about it." And he turned again in the direction of the house. "I will remain with you if you like," said George. "What an idea, George! Just go quietly home. What more am I to ask you to do? And remember me to Anna, and tell her how sorry I am.... Well, you know that.... Ah, here we are. You don't mind my keeping you a few seconds more before I...." He stood silently there. He then began again, and his features became distorted. "I'll tell you something, George. It's like this. It's a great happiness that at certain times one doesn't know what has really happened to one. If one immediately realised the awfulness of moments like this, you know, to the extent one realises them afterwards in one's memory, or realises them before in anticipation--one would go mad. Even you, George--yes, even you. And many do really go mad. Those are probably the people who are granted the gift of realising straight away.... My mistress has drowned herself, do you see? That's all one can say. Has the same kind of thing really happened to any one else before? Oh no. Of course you think that you have read or heard of something similar. It is not true. To-day is the first time--the first time since the world's been in existence--that anything like this has ever happened." The door opened and closed again. George was alone in the street. His head was dazed, his heart oppressed. He went a few steps, then took a fly and drove home. He saw the dead woman in front of him, just as she had stood in front of the stage door on that bright summer day in her red blouse and short white skirt, with the roving eyes beneath the reddish hair. He would have sworn at the time that she had a _liaison_ with the comedy actor who looked like Guido. Perhaps that really was the case. That might be _one_ kind of love and what she felt for Heinrich another. Really there were far too few words. You go to your death for one man, you go to bed with another--perhaps the very night before you drown yourself for the first. And what, after all, does a suicide really mean? Only perhaps that at some moment or other one has failed to appreciate death. How many tried again if they had failed once? The conversation with Grace came into his mind, that hot-and-cold conversation by Labinski's grave on the sunny February day in the thawing snow. She had confessed to him then that she had not felt any fear or horror when she had found Labinski shot in front of the door of her flat. And when her little sister had died many years ago she had watched the whole night by the death-bed without feeling even a trace of what other people called horror. But, so she told George, she had learned to feel in men's embraces something that might be rather like that feeling. At first the thing had puzzled her acutely, subsequently she thought she could understand it, but according to what the doctors said she was doomed to barrenness, and that must be the reason why it came about that the moment of supreme delight, which was rendered as it were pointless by this fate, plunged her in terror and apprehension. This had struck George at the time as a piece of affectation. To-day he felt a breath of truth in it for the first time. She had been a strange creature. Would he ever meet again a person of a similar type? Why not? Quite soon, as a matter of fact. A new epoch in his life was now beginning and the next adventure was perhaps waiting for him somewhere or other. Adventure...? Had he a right still to think about such things?... Were not, from to-day onwards, his responsibilities more serious than they had ever been? Did he not love Anna more than he had ever done before? The child was dead, but the next one would live.... Heinrich had spoken the truth: Anna was simply cut out to be a mother. A mother.... But he thought with a shiver: Was she cut out at the same time to be the mother of _my_ children? The fly stopped. George got out and went up the two storeys to his apartment. Felician was not yet home. Who knows when he will come? thought George. I can't wait for him, I'm too tired. He undressed quickly, sank into bed, and a deep sleep enveloped him. When he woke up his eyes tried to find through the window a white line between field and forest, the Sommerhaidenweg which he had been accustomed to look at for some days. But he only saw the bluish empty sky which a tower was piercing, and suddenly realised that he was at home, and all that he had lived through yesterday came into his mind. Yet he felt fresh and alert in mind and body, and it seemed to him as though apart from the calamity which had befallen him there was a piece of good fortune which he had to remember. Oh yes, the Detmold telegram.... Was it really so lucky? He had not thought so yesterday evening. There was a knock at his door. Felician came into the room with his hat and stick in his hand. "I didn't know that you slept at home last night," he said. "Glad to see you. Well, what's the news out there?" George rested his arm on the pillow and looked up towards his brother. "It's over," he said; "a boy, but dead," and he looked straight in front of him. "Not really," said Felician with emotion, came up to him and instinctively put his hand upon his brother's head. He then put hat and stick on one side and sat down on the bed by him, and George could not help thinking of the morning hours of the years of his childhood, when he had often seen his father sitting like that on the edge of the bed when he woke up. He explained to Felician how it had all happened, laying especial stress on Anna's patience and gentleness; but he felt with a certain sense of misgiving that he had to force himself a bit to keep the tone of seriousness and depression which was appropriate to his news. Felician listened sympathetically, then got up and walked up and down the room. Then George got up, began to dress and told his brother of the remarkable developments of the rest of the evening. He spoke about his walks and drives with Heinrich Bermann and of the strange way in which they had learned at last of the actress's suicide. "Oh, that's the one," said Felician. "It's already in the papers, you know." "Well, what happened?" asked George curiously. "She rowed out into the lake and slipped into the water out of the boat.... Well, you can read it.... I suppose you're now going straight out into the country again?" he added. "Of course," replied George, "but I have still got something to tell you, Felician, something which may interest you." And he told his brother about the Detmold telegram. Felician seemed surprised. "This is getting serious," he exclaimed. "Yes, it's getting serious," replied George. "You have not yet answered?" "No, how could I?" "And what do you mean to do?" "Frankly, I don't know. You understand I can't go straight away, particularly under circumstances like this." Felician looked reflective. "A little delay probably wouldn't hurt," he said then. "I agree. I must first find out how they're getting on out there. Of course I should also like to talk it over with Anna." "Where have you put the telegram? Can I read it?" "It's lying on the secretary," said George, who was at the moment engaged in tying up his shoes. Felician went into the next room, took the telegram in his hand and read it. "It is much more urgent," he observed, "than I thought." "It seems to me, Felician, that it still strikes you as strange that I am shortly going to have a real profession." Felician stood at his brother's side again and stroked his hair. "It is perhaps rather providential that the telegram should have come yesterday." "Providential! How so?" "I mean that after such a sad business the prospect of practical occupation ought to do you twice as much good.... But I am afraid I must leave you now. I've still got quite a lot to do. Farewell visits among other things." "When are you going then, Felician?" "A week to-day. I say, George, I suppose you are probably coming back from the country to-day?" "Certainly, if everything is all right out there." "Perhaps we might see each other again in the evening." "I should like to very much, Felician." "Well then, if it suits you I'll be at home at seven. We might go and have supper together--but alone, not at the club." "Yes, with pleasure." "And you might do me a favour," began Felician again after a short silence. "Remember me out there very very kindly ... tell her that I sympathise most sincerely." "Thank you, Felician. I will tell her." "Really, George, I can't tell you how much it touched me," continued Felician with warmth. "I only hope that she'll soon get over it.... And you, too." George nodded. "Do you know," he said gently, "what it was going to be called?" Felician looked at his brother's eyes very seriously, then he pressed his hand. "Next time," he said with a kindly smile. He shook hands with his brother again and went. George looked after him, torn by varying emotions. Yet he's not altogether sorry, he thought, that it should have turned out like that. He got ready quickly and decided to cycle into the country again to-day. It was only when he had got past most of the traffic that he really became conscious of himself. The sky had grown a little dull and a cool wind blew from the hills towards George, like an autumn greeting. He did not want to meet any one in the little village where yesterday's events were bound to be already known, and took the upper road between the meadows and the garden to the approach from the back. The nearer the moment came when he was to see Anna again, the heavier his heart grew. At the railing he dismounted from his cycle and hesitated a little. The garden was empty. At the bottom lay the house sunk in silence. George breathed deeply and painfully. How different it might have been! he thought, walked down and heard the gravel crunch beneath his feet. He went on to the verandah, leaned his cycle against the railing and looked into the room through the open window. Anna lay there with open eyes. "Good morning," he cried, as cheerfully as he could. Frau Golowski, who was sitting by Anna's bed, got up and said at once: "We've had a good sleep, a good sound sleep." "That's right," said George, and vaulted over the railing into the room. "You're very enterprising to-day," said Anna with her arch smile, which reminded George of long-past times. Frau Golowski informed him that the Professor had been early in the morning, had expressed himself completely satisfied and taken Frau Rosner with him in his carriage into the town. She then went away with a kindly glance. George bent down over Anna, kissed her with real feeling on the eyes and mouth, pushed the chair nearer, sat down and said: "My brother--sends you his sincere wishes." Her lips quivered imperceptibly. "Thank you," she replied gently, and then remarked: "So you came out on your cycle?" "Yes," he replied. "One has to keep a look-out you know on the way, and there are times when it's rather a sound thing one has to do so." He then told her how last evening had finished up. He related the whole thing as an exciting story, and it was only in the orthodox way at the end that Anna was allowed to find out how Heinrich's mistress had ended her life. He expected to see her moved, but she kept a strangely hard expression about her mouth. "It's really dreadful," said George. "Don't you think so?" "Yes," replied Anna shortly, and George felt that her kindness completely failed her here. He saw the loathing flowing out of her soul, not tepidly, as though from one person to another, but strong and deep like a stream of hate from world to world. He dropped the subject and began again. "Now for something important, my child." He was smiling but his heart beat a little. "Well?" she asked tensely. He took the Detmold telegram out of his breast pocket and read it to her. "What do you think of that?" he asked with affected pride. "And what did you answer?" "Nothing so far," he replied casually, as though he had never thought of taking the matter seriously. "Of course I wanted first to talk it over with you." "Well, what do you think?" she asked imperturbably. "I ... shall refuse of course. I'll wire that I ... at any rate, can't come yet awhile." And he seriously explained to her that nothing would be lost by a postponement, that he would at any rate be welcomed as a special visitor, and that this pressing request was only due to an accident that one had no right to expect. She let him go on speaking for a while, then she said: "There you go being casual again. I think you should have made a special point of answering at once and...." "Well, and...." "Perhaps have even taken the train there straight away this morning." "Instead of coming out to see you--eh?" he jested. She remained serious. "Why not?" she said, and noticing him jerk his head up in surprise, "I'm getting on very well, thank heaven, George. And even if I were a bit worse you couldn't do any good, so...." "Yes, my child," he interrupted, "it seems to me you don't appreciate what it really means! Going there, of course, is a fairly simple matter--but--staying there! Staying there at least till Easter! The season lasts till then." "Well, George, I think it quite right that you haven't gone away without first saying goodbye to me. But look here, you've got to go anyway, haven't you? Even though we didn't actually speak about it during the last weeks we were both quite well aware of it. For whether you go away in a month's time or the day after to-morrow--or to-day...." George now began to argue seriously. It was not at all the same thing whether he went away in a month's time or to-day. One could manage to get used to certain thoughts in the course of a month, and besides, talk over everything properly--with regard to the future. "What is there so much to talk over?" she replied in a tired voice. "Why, in a month's time you'll be.... You'll have as little chance of taking me with you as you have to-day. I even think that there won't be any point in our talking seriously about anything until after your return. A great deal will be bound to be cleared up by then.... At any rate, with regard to your prospects...." She looked out of the window into the garden. George showed mild indignation at her matter-of-fact coolness, which never deserted her, even at a moment like that. "Yes, indeed," he said, "when one considers--what it means for you to stay here, and me...." She looked at him. "I know what it means," she said. Instinctively he avoided her look, took her hands and kissed them. He felt inwardly harrowed. When he looked up again he saw her eyes resting on him quite maternally, and she spoke to him like a mother. She explained to him that it was _just_ because of the future--and there swept around that word a gentle suggestion of actual hope--that he should not miss an opportunity like that. In two or three weeks he could come back from Detmold to Vienna for a few days, for the people there would certainly appreciate that he must put his affairs over here in order. But above all it was necessary to give them a proof of his seriousness. And if he set any store by her advice there was only one thing to do: take the train that very evening. He need have no anxiety about her. She felt that she was quite out of danger. She felt that quite unmistakably. Of course he would hear from her every day, twice a day if he liked, morning and evening. He did not yield at once, coming back again to the point that the unexpectedness of this separation would occasion a relapse. She answered that she would much prefer a quick separation like this to the prospect of another four weeks spent in anxiety, emotion and the fear of losing him. And the essential point remained that it was not a question of more than half the year, so they had half the year for themselves, and if everything went all right there would not be many periods of separation for the--the future. He now began again: "And what will you do in this half-year, while I'm away? It is really...." She interrupted him. "For the time being it will go on just as it has been going on for years; but I have been thinking this morning about a lot of things." "The school for singing?" "That, too. Although of course that is neither so easy nor so simple. And besides," she added, with her arch expression, "it would be a pity if one had to shut it up again too soon. But we'll talk about all that later on. You go now and telegraph." "Yes, but what!" he exclaimed in such desperation that she could not help laughing. Then she said: "Quite simple, 'Shall have the honour to present myself at your office to-morrow noon. Yours very obediently or faithfully ... or very proudly....'" He looked at her. Then he kissed her hand and said: "You're certainly the cleverer of us two." His tone seemed to hint "the cooler too." But a gentle, tender and somewhat mocking look from her turned away the _innuendo_. "Well, I'll be back again in ten minutes." He left her with a cheerful face, went into the next room and shut the door. Opposite, in that other room, it now occurred to him again forcibly--his dead child lay in its coffin.... For the necessary steps, to use Doctor Stauber's expression of yesterday, were bound to have been already taken. He felt a paroxysm of grievous yearning. Frau Golowski came out of the hall. She came up to him and spoke with admiration of Anna's resignation and calmness. George listened somewhat absent-mindedly. His looks kept always glancing through the doorway and at last he said gently: "I should like to see it once more." She looked at him, at first slightly shocked and then sympathetically. "Nailed down already?" he asked anxiously. "Sent away already," replied Frau Golowski slowly. "Sent away!" His face became convulsed with such agony that the old woman laid her hands on his arm as though to calm him. "I went to notify it quite early," she said, "and then the other matter took place very quickly. They took it away an hour ago to the mortuary." "To the mortuary ..." George shuddered. He was silent for a long time as though unnerved from having just learned a terrible and completely unexpected piece of news. When he recovered himself again he still felt Frau Golowski's friendly hand upon his arm and saw her kind eyes with their tired lines resting on his face. "So it's all finished," he said, with an indignant look upwards, as though his last hope had been maliciously stolen from him. He then shook hands with Frau Golowski. "And you've undertaken all this, dear lady.... I really don't know ... how I can ever...." A gesture from the old woman deprecated any further thanks. George left the house, threw a contemptuous glance at the little blue angel, which seemed to look anxiously down at the faded flower-beds, and went into the street. On his way to the post-office he worried over the wording of the telegram that was to announce his arrival at the place of his new profession and his new prospects. IX Old Doctor Stauber and his son sat over their coffee. The old man held a paper in his hand and seemed to be trying to find something. "The hearing of the case," he said, "is not yet fixed." "Really!" replied Berthold, "Leo Golowski thinks that it will take place in the middle of November, that is to say in about three weeks. Therese, you know, visited her brother a few days ago in prison. They say he is perfectly calm and in quite good spirits." "Well, who knows? perhaps he will be acquitted," said the old man. "That's highly improbable, father. He ought to be glad, on the other hand, that he isn't being prosecuted for ordinary murder. An attempt was certainly made to get him prosecuted for it." "You certainly can't call it a serious attempt, Berthold. You see the Treasury didn't bother about the silly libel to which you are referring." "But if they had regarded it as a libel," retorted Berthold sharply, "they would have been under an obligation to prosecute the libellers. Beside, it is common knowledge that we are living in a state where no Jew is safe from being convicted to death for ritual murder; so why should the authorities shrink from taking official cognisance of the theory that Jews when they fight duels with pistols with Christians manage--perhaps for religious reasons--to ensure for themselves a criminal advantage? That the Court didn't lack the good-will to take another opportunity of doing a service to the party in power is best seen by the fact that he still remains under arrest pending the trial, in spite of the fact that the high bail was tendered." "I don't believe the story about the bail," said the old doctor. "Where's Leo Golowski to get fifty thousand gulden from?" "It wasn't fifty thousand, father, but a hundred thousand, and so far Leo Golowski knows nothing about it. I can tell you in confidence, father, that Salomon Ehrenberg put up the money." "Indeed! Well, I'll tell you something in confidence too, Berthold." "Well?" "It's possible that it won't go to trial at all. Golowski's advocate has presented a petition to quash the proceedings." Berthold burst out laughing. "On those grounds! And do you think, father, that that can have the slightest prospect of success? Yes, if Leo had fallen and the First-Lieutenant had survived ... then perhaps." The old man shook his head impatiently. "You must always make opposition speeches, my boy, at any price." "Forgive me, father," said Berthold, twitching his brows. "Every one hasn't got the enviable gift of being able to ignore certain tendencies in public life when they don't concern him personally." "Is that what I am in the habit of doing, then?" retorted the old man vehemently, and the half-shut eyes beneath the high forehead opened almost bitterly. "But it is you, Berthold, much more than I, who refuse to look where you don't want to see. I think you're beginning to brood over your ideas. You're getting morbid. I had hoped that a stay in another city, in another country, would cure you of certain petty narrow ideas, but they have grown worse instead. I notice it. I can neither understand nor approve any one starting fighting like Leo Golowski did. But to go on standing with your clenched fist in your pocket, so to speak--what's the point of it? Pull yourself together, man. Character and industry always pull through in the end. What's the worst that can happen to you? That you get your professorship a few years later than any one else. I don't think it is so great a misfortune. They won't be able to ignore your work if it is worth anything...." "It is not only a question of myself," objected Berthold. "But it is mostly a matter of second-class interests of that kind. And to come back to our previous topic, it is really very questionable whether if it had been the First-Lieutenant who had shot down Leo Golowski and Ehrenberg, or Ehrenmann[1] for that matter, would have turned up with a hundred thousand gulden for him. Yes, to be sure, and now you are quite at liberty to take me for an Anti-Semite too, if it amuses you, although I am driving straight into the Rembrandtstrasse to see old Golowski. Well, good-bye, try and come to reason at last." He held out his hand to his son. The latter took it without changing countenance. The old man turned to go. At the door he said: "I suppose we shall see each other this evening at the Medical Society?" Berthold shook his head. "No, father, I am spending this evening in a less edifying place--the 'Silberne Weintraube,' where there is a meeting of the Social Political Union." "Which you can't miss?" "Impossible." "Well, I wish you would tell me straight out. Are you going to stand for the Landtag?" "I ... am going to stand." "Indeed! You think you're capable now of being able to face the ... unpleasantness which you ran away from last year?" Berthold looked through the window at the autumn rain. "You know, father," he replied, twitching his brows, "that I wasn't in the right frame of mind then. I now feel strong and armed, in spite of your previous remarks, which have really touched the actual point. And above all I know precisely what I want." The old man shrugged his shoulders. "I can't understand how any one can give up a definite work ... and you will certainly have to give it up, for a man can't serve two masters ... to think of dropping something definite to ... to make speeches to people whose profession, so to speak, it is to have preconceived opinions--to fight for opinions which are usually not even believed in by the man who puts you forward to represent them." Berthold shook his head. "I assure you, father, I'm not tempted this time by any oratorical or dialectical ambition. This time I have discovered the sphere in which I hope it will be possible for me to do quite as definite work as in the laboratory. I intend, you know, if I do any good at all, to bother about nothing else except questions of public health. Perhaps I can count on your blessing, father, for this kind of political activity." "On mine ... yes. But how about your own?" "What do you mean?" "The blessing to which one might give the name of the inner call." "You doubt even that," replied Berthold, really hurt. The servant came in and gave the old doctor a visiting card. He read it. "Tell him I'll be glad to see him in a minute." The servant went away. Berthold went on speaking in a state of some excitement. "I feel justified in saying that my training, my knowledge...." His father interrupted him as he played with the card. "I don't doubt your knowledge or your energy or your industry, but it seems to me that to be able to do any particular good in the sphere of public health you need as well as those excellent qualities another one too, which in my view you only have to a very small extent: kindness, my dear Berthold, love of mankind." Berthold shook his head vehemently. "I regard the love of humanity which you mean, father, as absolutely superfluous and rather injurious. Pity--and what else can loving people whom one doesn't personally know really be?--necessarily leads to sentimentalism, to weakness. And when one wants to help whole groups of men then, above all, you must be able to be hard at times, hard to individuals--yes, be ready in fact to sacrifice them if the common good demands it. You only need to consider, father, that the most honest and consistent social hygiene would have the direct result of annihilating diseased people, or at any rate excluding them from all enjoyment of life, and I don't deny that I have all kinds of ideas tending in that way which may seem cruel at the first glance. But the future, I think, belongs to ideas. You needn't be afraid, father, that I shall begin straight away to preach the murder of the unhealthy and the superfluous. But theoretically that's certainly what my programme leads to. Do you know, by the way, whom I had a very interesting conversation with the other day on this very subject?" "What subject do you mean?" "To put it precisely, a conversation on the right to kill. With Heinrich Bermann the author, the son of the late Deputy." "But where did you get the opportunity of seeing him then?" "The other day at a meeting. Therese Golowski brought him along. You know him, too, don't you, father?" "Yes," replied the old man, "I've known him for quite a long time." And he added: "I met him again this year in the summer at Anna Rosner's." Berthold's eyebrows again twitched violently. Then he said sarcastically: "I thought it was something like that. Bermann mentioned, you know, that he had seen you some time ago, but he wouldn't remember exactly where. I concluded that it must have been a case of--discretion. I see. So the Herr Baron thought he would introduce his friends into her house." "My dear Berthold, your tone seems to suggest that you have not got over a certain matter as completely as you previously hinted." Berthold shrugged his shoulders. "I have never denied that I have an antipathy for Baron Wergenthin. That is why the whole business was so painful to me from the very beginning." "Is that why?" "Yes." "And yet I think, Berthold, that you would regard the matter differently if you were to meet Anna Rosner again some time or other as a widow--even assuming that her late husband was even more antipathetic to you than Baron von Wergenthin." "That's possible. One can certainly presume that she has been loved--or at any rate respected, not just taken and--chucked away as soon as the spree was over. I'd have found that rather.... Well, I won't put it any more definitely." The old man shook his head as he looked at his son. "It really seems as though all the advanced views of you young people break down as soon as your passions and vanities come into question." "So far as certain questions of cleanness or cleanliness are concerned I do not know that I am guilty of any so-called advanced views, father, and I don't think that you would be particularly delighted either if I felt any desire to be the successor of a more or less dead Baron Wergenthin." "Certainly not, Berthold. For her sake, especially, for you would torture her to death." "Don't be uneasy," replied Berthold, "Anna's in no peril from my quarter. It's all over." "That's a good reason. But, happily, there's an even better one. Baron Wergenthin's neither dead nor has he cleared out...." "It doesn't matter, you know, about the actual word." "He has, as you know, a position as a conductor in Germany...." "What a piece of luck! He has really been very fortunate over the whole thing. Not even having to provide for a child." "You have two faults, Berthold. In the first place you are really an unkind man, and in the second place you never let one finish. I was just on the point of saying that it doesn't seem to be anything like all over between Anna and Baron Wergenthin. Only the day before yesterday she gave me his kind regards." Berthold shrugged his shoulders as though the matter were finished so far as he was concerned. "How's old Rosner?" he asked. "He'll pull through all right this time," replied the old man. "Anyway, I hope that you've retained a sufficient sense of detachment to realise that his attacks are not due to his grief about the prodigal daughter, but to a sclerosis of the arteries that is unfortunately fairly far advanced." "Is Anna giving lessons again?" asked Berthold after some hesitation. "Yes," replied the old man, "but perhaps not much longer." And he showed his son the visiting card which he was still holding in his hand. Berthold contracted the corners of his mouth. "Do you think," he asked ironically, "he has come here to celebrate his wedding, father?" "I shall soon find that out," replied the old man. "At any rate I'm very glad to see him again--for I assure you he's one of the most charming young men I've ever met." "Extraordinary!" said Berthold. "A quite unique winner of hearts. Even Therese raves about him. And Heinrich Bermann the other day, it was almost funny.... Oh well, a slim handsome blonde young man, a baron, a German, a Christian--what Jew could withstand the magic?... Goodbye, father." "Berthold!" "Well, what?" He bit his lips. "Pull yourself together! Remember what you are." "I ... remember." "No, you don't. Otherwise you couldn't forget so often who the others are." Berthold lifted his head interrogatively. "You should really go to Rosner's some time. It is not worthy of you to let Anna see your disapproval in so--childish a fashion. Goodbye ... hope you'll have a good time in the 'Silberne Weintraube." He shook hands with his son and then went into his consulting-room. He opened the door of the waiting-room and with a friendly nod of the head invited George von Wergenthin, who was turning over the leaves of an album, to come in. "I must first apologise to you, Herr Doctor," said George, after he had sat down. "My departure was so sudden.... Unfortunately I had no opportunity of saying goodbye to you, of thanking you personally for your great...." Doctor Stauber deprecated his thanks. "I am very glad to see you again," he said, "I suppose you are here in Vienna on leave?" "Of course," replied George. "I've only got three days' leave; they need me there so urgently, you see," he added with a modest smile. Doctor Stauber sat opposite him in the chair behind his secretary and contemplated him kindly. "You feel very satisfied with your new position, so Anna says." "Oh yes; of course there are all kinds of difficulties when one plunges into a new kind of life like I did. But taking it all round everything has turned out much easier than I expected." "So I hear. And that you have already had a very good introduction at Court." George smiled. "Anna of course imagines that episode to be more magnificent than it really was. I played once at the Hereditary Prince's and a lady member of the theatre sang two songs of mine there; that's all. But what is much more important is that I have a chance of being appointed conductor this very season." "I thought you were already." "No, Herr Doctor, not yet officially. I have already conducted a few times as deputy, _Freischütz_ and _Undine_, but for the time being I am only accompanist." In response to further questions from the doctor he told him some more about his activities at the Detmold Opera. He then got up and said goodbye. "Perhaps I can give you a lift part of the way in my carriage," said the doctor. "I am driving to the Rembrandtstrasse to the Golowskis'." "Thanks very much, Herr Doctor, but that's not on my way. Anyway, I intend to visit Frau Golowski in the course of to-morrow. She's not ill, is she?" "No. Of course the excitement of the last weeks is bound to have had some effect upon her." George mentioned that he had written a few words to her and also to Leo immediately after the duel. "When one thinks that it might have turned out differently ..." he added. Doctor Stauber looked in front of him. "Having children," he said, "is a happiness which one pays for by instalments." At the door George began somewhat hesitatingly: "I also wanted ... to inquire of you, Herr Doctor, about the real state of Herr Rosner's health.... I must say I found him looking better than I had expected from Anna's letters." "I hope that he will get all right again," replied Stauber. "But of course one must remember that he's an old man. He's even old for his years." "But it's not a case of anything serious?" "Old age is a serious business in itself," replied Doctor Stauber, "especially as his whole antecedent life, his youth and manhood, were not particularly cheerful." George, whose eyes had been roving round the room, suddenly exclaimed: "I've just thought of it, Herr Doctor. I've never sent you back the books you were good enough to lend me in the spring. And now I'm afraid all our things are at the depository, silver, furniture, pictures and the books as well. So I must ask you, Herr Doctor, to have patience till the spring." "If you have no worse troubles than that, my dear Baron...." They went slowly down the stairs and Doctor Stauber inquired after Felician. "He's in Athens," replied George, "I've heard from him twice, not yet in any great detail.... How strange it is, Herr Doctor, coming back as a stranger to a town where one was at home a short time ago, and staying at an hotel as a gentleman from Detmold!..." Doctor Stauber got into his carriage. George asked him to give his very best regards to Frau Golowski. "I'll tell her. And I wish you all further success, my dear Baron. Goodbye." It was five by the Stephanskirche clock. George was faced with an empty hour. He decided to stroll slowly into the suburb in the thin tepid autumn rain. He had scarcely slept at all in the train and he had been at the Rosners' two hours after his arrival. Anna herself had opened the door to him, greeted him with an affectionate kiss, and quickly taken him into the room, where her parents welcomed him with more politeness than sincerity. The mother, who preserved her usual embarrassed and slightly injured tone, did not say much. The father, sitting in the corner of the ottoman, with a blue-coloured rug over his knees, felt it incumbent on him to inquire about the social and musical conditions of the little capital from which George had come. Then he had remained alone awhile with Anna. They first exchanged question and answer with undue quickness, and subsequently endearments, which were both flat and awkward, and they both seemed disappointed that they did not feel the happiness of seeing each other again with anything like the intensity which their love had given them to expect. Very soon a pupil of Anna's put in an appearance. George took his leave and hurriedly arranged an appointment for the evening with his mistress. He would fetch her from Bittner's and then take her to the opera to see the performance of _Tristan_. He had then taken his midday meal by the big window of a restaurant in the Ringstrasse, made purchases and given orders at his tradesmen's, looked up Heinrich, whom he did not find at home, and finally, obeying a sudden idea, decided to pay his "return-thanks" visit to Doctor Stauber. He now walked on slowly through the streets which he knew so well and which already seemed to have an atmosphere of strangeness; and he thought of the town from which he came and in which he was feeling at home far more quickly than he had expected. Count Malnitz had received him with great kindness from the very first moment. He had the plan of reforming the opera in accordance with modern ideas and wanted to win George to him, so the latter thought, as a collaborator and friend in his far-reaching projects. For the first conductor, excellent musician no doubt though he might be, was nowadays more of a court official than an artist. He had been appointed when he was five-and-twenty and had now been stationed in the little town for thirty years, a paterfamilias with six children, respected, contented and without ambition. Soon after his arrival George heard songs sung at a concert which a long time ago had spread the fame of the young conductor throughout almost the whole world. George was unable to understand the impression produced by these quite out-of-date pieces, but none the less warmly complimented the composer with a kindly sympathy for the ageing man in whose eyes there seemed to shine the distant glamour of a richer and more promising past. George frequently asked himself if the old conductor still thought of the fact that he had once been taken for a man who was destined to go far, and whether he, like so many other of the inhabitants, regarded the little town as a hub from which the rays of influence and of fame fell far around. George had only found in a few any desire for a larger and more complex sphere of activity; it often seemed to him as though they rather treated him with a kind of good-natured pity because he came from a great town, and in particular from Vienna. Whenever the name of that town was mentioned in front of people George noticed in their smug and somewhat sarcastic manner that almost as regularly as harmonies accompany the bass, certain other words would be immediately switched into the conversation, even though they were not specifically mentioned: waltzes ... café ... _süsses Mädel_[2] ... grilled chicken ... fiacre ... parliamentary scandal. George was often irritated by this and made up his mind to do all he could to improve his countrymen's reputation in Detmold. He had been asked to come because the third conductor, a quite young man, had suddenly died, and so George, on the very first day, had to sit at the piano in the little rehearsal-room and perform singing accompaniments. It went off excellently. He rejoiced in his gifts, which were stronger and surer than he had himself hoped, and it seemed to him, so far as he could recollect, that Anna had slightly underestimated his talent. Apart from this he threw himself more seriously into his compositions than he had ever done before. He worked at an overture which had originated out of the _motifs_ of Bermann's opera. He had begun a violin sonata, and the mythical quintette, as Else had called it once, was nearly finished. It was going to be performed this very winter in one of the Court _soirées_, which were under the direction of the deputy-conductor of the Detmold orchestra, a talented young man, the only person in fact in his new home with whom George had so far become at all intimate, and with whom he was accustomed to take his meals at the "Elephant." George still inhabited a fine room in this inn, with a view on to the big square planted with lindens, and from day to day put off taking an apartment. He was quite uncertain whether he would be still in Detmold next year and he also had the feeling that it would be bound to wound Anna, if he were to do anything which looked like settling down as a bachelor for any length of time. Yet he had said no word in his letters to her about any of the prospects of the future, just as she, on her side, left off addressing to him doubting or impatient questions. They practically only communicated to each other actual facts. She wrote of her gradual return into her old groove of life, and he of all the new surroundings among which he must first settle down. Although there was practically nothing which he had to keep from her, he made a special point of slurring over many things that might easily lead to a misunderstanding. How was one to express in words the strange atmosphere which permeated in the morning the rehearsals in the half-dark body of the theatre, when the odour of cosmetics, perfumes, dresses, gas, old wood and fresh paint came down from the stage to the stalls, when figures which one did not at first recognise hopped to and fro between the rows of seats in ordinary or stage dress, when some breath which was heavy and scented blew gently against one's neck? And how was one to describe a glance which flashed down from the eyes of a young singer while one looked up to her from the keys...? Or when one saw this young singer home through the Theaterplatz and the Königsstrasse in the broad light of noon and used the opportunity not merely to talk about the part of Micaela, which one had just been studying with her, but also about all kinds of other, though no doubt fairly innocent, things? Could one recount this to one's mistress in Vienna without her reading something suspicious between the lines? And even if one had laid stress on the fact that Micaela was engaged to a young doctor in Berlin who adored her as much as she did him it would scarcely have improved matters, for that would really have looked as though one felt obliged to answer and reassure. How strange, thought George, that it is just this very evening that she is singing the Micaela which I practised with her, and that I am going here along this same road out to Mariahilf which I used to take a year ago so frequently and so gladly. He thought of a specific evening when he had fetched Anna from out there, walked about with her in the quiet streets, looked at funny photographs in a doorway and finally walked with her on the cool stone flags of an ancient church, in a soft but how ominous conversation about an unknown future.... And now all had turned out quite differently to what he had hoped--quite differently.... Why did it strike him like that?... What had he anticipated then at that time?... Had not the year that had just passed been wonderfully rich and beautiful with its happiness and its grief? And did he not love Anna to-day better and more deeply than ever? And had he not frequently yearned for her in that fresh town as hotly as though for a woman who had never yet belonged to him? To-day's early meeting with its flat and awkward endearments in the sinister atmosphere of a grey hour really ought not to lead him astray.... He was at the appointed place. When he looked up to the lighted windows, behind which Anna was giving her lesson, a slight emotion came over him, and when she came out of the door the next minute, in a simple English dress and a grey felt hat on her rich dark blonde hair, holding a book in her hand, just as she had appeared a year ago, an unexpected feeling of happiness suddenly streamed over him. She did not see him at once, for he was standing in the shadow of a house. She opened her umbrella and went as far as the corner where she had been in the habit of waiting for him the previous year. He gazed at her for a while and was glad that she looked so fine and distinguished. Then he followed her quickly, and caught her up in a few strides. She informed him at once that she could not go to the opera with him. Her father had been taken ill this afternoon. George was very disappointed. "Won't you at any rate come with me for the first act?" She shook her head. "No, I am not very keen on that sort of thing. It is much better for you to give the seat to some friend. Go and fetch Nürnberger or Bermann." "No," he replied, "if you can't come with me I'd rather go alone. I should have enjoyed it so much. I am not very keen on the performance personally. I'd prefer to stay with you ... so far as I am concerned, even at your people's; but I must go. I have--to make a report." Anna backed him up. "Of course you must go," and she added: "I wouldn't advise you, too, to spend an evening with us. It's really not particularly jolly." He had taken the umbrella out of her hand and held it over her, while she held his arm. "I say, Anna," he said, "I should like to make a suggestion!" He was surprised that he should be looking for a way of leading up to it, and began hesitatingly: "My few days in Vienna are, of course, more or less unsettled and cut up--and now there's this depressed atmosphere at your people's as well.... We are not really managing to see anything of each other: don't you agree?" She nodded without looking at him. "So wouldn't you like to come part of the way with me, Anna, when I go back again?" She looked at him sideways in her arch way and did not answer. He went on speaking. "I can, you see, quite well manage to get an extra day's leave if I wire to the theatre. It would really be awfully nice if we had a few hours all to ourselves." She consented with sincerity but not enthusiasm and made her decision depend on the state of her father's health. She then asked him how he had spent the day. He told her in detail, and also added his programme for to-morrow. "So we two will see each other in the evening," he said. "I'll come to your place if that's convenient, and then we'll arrange further details." "Yes," said Anna, and looked in front of her down the damp brown-grey street. He tried again to persuade her to come to the opera with him, but it was futile. He then inquired about her singing lessons and followed that up by speaking about his own activity, as though he had to convince her that after all he was not having a much better time than she was. And he referred to his letters, in which he had written about everything in full detail. "So far as that's concerned ..." she said suddenly in quite a hard voice.... And when, hurt by her tone, he could not help throwing back his head, she proceeded: "What is there really in letters, however detailed they are?" He knew what she was thinking about--he felt a certain heaviness at heart. Was there not in the very inexorableness of this silence all that she refused to voice aloud?--question, reproach and rage. He had already felt this morning and now felt again that a certain sense of positive enmity to himself was rising within her, against which she herself seemed to be struggling in vain. Was this morning the first time...? Had it not dated far longer back? Perhaps it had been always there, from the very first moment when they had belonged to each other, and even in the moments of their supreme happiness? Had not this hostile feeling been present when she pressed her bosom against his behind dark curtains to the music of the organ, when she waited for him in the room at the hotel in Rome, with eyes red with tears, while he had been watching with delight from Monte Pincio the sun setting in the Campagna, and had realised that he was finding this hour of solitary enjoyment the most wonderful in the whole journey? Had it not been present when he ran down the gravel path on a hot morning, dropped down at her feet and cried in her lap as though it had been the lap of a mother? And when he had sat by her bedside and looked out into the garden at eventime, while the dead child she had borne an hour ago lay silent on the white linen cloth, had it not been there again, drearier than ever, so that it would have been almost unbearable, if they had not long ago managed to put up with it, in the way one manages to endure so much of the unsatisfactoriness and so much of the sorrow that comes up out of the depths of human intercourse? And now how painfully did he feel this sense of hostility as he walked arm-in-arm with her, holding the umbrella carefully over her, down the damp streets? It was there again--menacing and familiar. The words which she had spoken were still ringing in his ears: "What is there really in letters, however detailed they are?"... But even more solemnly there rang in his ears the unspoken words: What does the most ardent kiss in which body and soul seem to fuse really come to? What does the fact that we travelled together for months through strange lands really come to? What does the fact that I had a child by you come to? What does the fact that you cried out in my lap your remorse for your deception? What does it all come to, when you still go and leave me quite alone?... Why, I was alone at the very moment when my body drank in the germ of life which I carried within me for nine months, which was intended to live amongst strangers, though our own child, and which did not wish to remain on earth! But while all this sank heavily into his soul he agreed in a light tone that she was really quite right and that letters--even though they were actually twenty pages long--could not contain much in particular; and while a harrowing pity for her sprang up in him he gently expressed the hope that there would be a time in which they would neither of them any longer be thrown back upon mere letters. And then he found words of greater tenderness, told her of those lonely walks of his in the outskirts of the strange town when he thought of her; told her of the hours in that meaningless hotel room, with its view of the linden-planted square, and of his yearning for her, which was always present whether he sat alone at his work or accompanied singers at the pianoforte or chatted with new acquaintances. But when he stood with her in front of the house door, with her hand in his, and looked up into her eyes as he murmured a bright goodbye, he was shocked to see in them the flickering out of a jaded sense of disillusionment that had almost ceased to be painful. And he knew that all the words which he had spoken to her had meant nothing to her, had meant less than nothing, since the one word, the word she scarcely hoped for any more, and yet longed for all the time, had not come. A quarter of an hour later George was sitting in his stall at the opera. He was first a little depressed and limp, but the pleasure of enjoyment soon began to course through his veins. And when Brangäne threw the king's cloak over her mistress's shoulders, Kurwenal announced the king's approach and the ship's crew on the deck hailed the land amid all the glory of the resplendent heavens, George had long ago forgotten a bad night in the train, some boring commissions, an extremely forced conversation with an old Jewish doctor and a walk on the wet pavement which mirrored the light of the lamps by the side of a young lady who looked decent, distinguished and somewhat depressed. And when the curtain fell for the first time and the light streamed through the enormous room, upholstered in red and gold, he did not feel any unpleasant sense of being brought back to sober life, but he rather felt as though he were plunging his head out of one dream into another; while a reality which was full of all kinds of wretched complications flew impotently past somewhere outside. The atmosphere of this house, so it seemed to him, had never made him so intensely happy as it did to-day. He had never felt so palpably that all the audience, so long as they were here, were protected in some mystic way against all the pain and all the dirt of life. He stood up in his corner seat, which was in front by the middle gangway, saw many a pleased glance turn towards him and felt conscious of looking handsome, elegant and even somewhat unusual. And besides that he was--and this filled him with satisfaction--a man who had a profession, a position, a man who sat in this very theatre with a responsible commission to perform, as a kind of envoy from a German court theatre. He looked round with his opera-glass. From the back of the stalls Gleissner greeted him with a somewhat too familiar nod of his head and seemed immediately afterwards to be expatiating on George's personal characteristics to the young lady who sat next to him. Who could she be? Was it the harlot which the author, with his hobby for experimenting on souls, wanted to make into a saint, or was it the saint whom he wanted to make into a harlot? Hard to say, thought George. They'd both look about the same, halfway. George felt the lens of an opera-glass burning on the top of his head. He looked up. It was Else, who was looking down to him from a box in the first tier. Frau Ehrenberg sat near her and between them there bowed over the front of the box a tall young man who was no other than James Wyner. George bowed and two minutes later stepped into the box, to find himself greeted with friendliness but not a trace of surprise. Else, in a low-cut black velvet dress, with a small pearl necklet round her throat and a somewhat strange though interesting coiffure, held out her hand to him. "And how did you manage to get here? On leave? Sacked? Run away?" George explained, briefly and good-humouredly. "It was very nice of you," said Frau Ehrenberg, "to have sent us a line from Detmold." "He really shouldn't have done that, either," remarked Else. "It was quite calculated to make one think that he had gone off to America with some one or other." James was standing in the middle of the box, tall and gaunt, with his chiselled face and his dark smooth hair parted at the side. "Well, George, how do you like Detmold?" Else was looking at him with dropped eyelashes. She seemed delighted with his way of still always speaking German as though he had to translate it to himself out of English. Anyway, she employed the occasion to make a joke and said: "How George likes it in Detmold! I am afraid your question is indiscreet, James." Then she turned to George. "We are engaged, you know." "We haven't yet sent out any cards, you know," added Frau Ehrenberg. George offered his congratulations. "Lunch with us to-morrow," said Frau Ehrenberg. "You will only meet a few people. I'm sure they'll all be very glad to see you again--Sissy, Frau Oberberger, Willy Eissler." George excused himself. He could not bind himself to any specific time, but if he possibly could he would very much like to look in during the course of the afternoon. "Quite so," said Else in a low voice, without looking at him, while her arm, in its long white glove, lay carelessly on the ledge of the box. "You are probably spending the middle of the day in the family circle." George pretended not to hear and praised to-night's performance. James declared that he liked _Tristan_ better than all the other operas by Wagner, including the _Meistersingers_. Else simply remarked: "It's awfully fine, but as a matter of fact I'm all against love-philtres and things in that line." George explained that the love-philtre was to be regarded as a symbol, whereupon Else declared that she had a distaste for symbols as well. The first signal for the second act was given. George took his leave and rushed downstairs with only just enough time to take his place before the curtain rose. He remembered again the semi-official capacity in which he was sitting in the theatre to-night, and determined not to surrender himself unreservedly to his impressions. He soon managed to discover that it was possible to produce the love-scene quite differently from the way in which it was being done to-night. Nor did he think it right that Melot, by whose hand Tristan was doomed to die, should be represented by a second-rate singer, as was nearly always the case. After the fall of the curtain on the second act he got up with a kind of increased self-consciousness, stood up in his seat and looked frequently up to the box in the first tier, from which Frau Ehrenberg nodded to him benevolently, while Else spoke to James, who was standing still behind her with crossed arms. It struck George that he would see James's sister again to-morrow. Did she still often think of that wonderful hour in the park in the afternoon, amid the dark green sultriness of the park, in the warm perfume of the moss and the pines? How far away that was! He then remembered a fleeting kiss in the nocturnal shadow of the garden wall at Lugano. How far away that was too! He thought of the evening under the plane-tree, and the conversation about Leo came again into his mind. A remarkable fellow that Leo, really. How consistently he had stuck to his plan! For he must have formed it a long time ago. And obviously Leo had only waited for the day when he could doff his uniform to put it into execution. George had received no answer to the letter which he had immediately written him after hearing about the duel. He resolved to visit Leo in prison if it were possible. A man in the first row greeted him. It was Ralph Skelton. George arranged by pantomimic signs to meet him at the end of the performance. The lights were extinguished, the prelude to the third act began. George heard the tired sea-waves surging against the desolate beach and the grievous sighs of a mortally wounded hero were wafted through the blue thin air. Where had he heard this last? Hadn't it been in Munich...? No, it couldn't be so far back. And he suddenly remembered the hour when the sheets of the _Tristan_ music had been spread open before him on a balcony beneath a wooden gable. A sunny path opposite ran to the churchyard between field and forest, while a cross had flashed with its golden light; down in the house a woman he loved had groaned in agony and he had felt sick at heart. And yet this memory, too, had its own melancholy sweetness, like all else that had completely passed. The balcony, the little blue angel between the flowers, the white seat under the pear-tree, where was it all now? He would see the house again once more, once more before he left Vienna. The curtain rose. The shawm rang out yearningly beneath the pale expanse of an unsympathetic heaven. The wounded hero slumbered in the shade of the linden branches, and by his head watched Kurwenal the faithful. The shawm was silent, the herdsman bent questioningly over the wall and Kurwenal made answer. By Jove, that was a voice of unusual timbre! If we only had a baritone like that, thought George. And many other things, too, which we need! If he were only given the requisite power he felt himself able, in the course of time, to turn the modest theatre at which he worked into a first-class stage. He dreamed of model performances to which people would stream from far and wide. He no longer sat there as an envoy, but as a man to whom it was perhaps vouchsafed to be himself a leader in not too distant days. Further and higher coursed his hopes. Perhaps just a few years--and his own original harmonies would be ringing through a spacious hall of a musical festival, and the audience would be listening as thrilled as the one to-day, while somewhere outside a hollow reality would be flowing impotently past. Impotently? That was the question. Did he know whether it was given him to compel human beings by his art as it had been given to the master to whom they were listening to-day--to triumph over the difficulty, wretchedness and awfulness of everyday life? Impatience and doubt tried to rise out of his soul; but his will and common-sense quickly banished them and he now felt again the pure happiness he always experienced when he heard beautiful music, without thinking of the fact that he often wished himself to do creative work and obtain recognition for doing it. In moments like this the only relation to his beloved art of which he was conscious was that he was able to understand it with deeper appreciation than any other human being. And he felt that Heinrich had spoken the truth when they had ridden together through a forest damp with the morning dew: it was not creative work--it was simply the atmosphere of his art which was necessary to his existence. He was not one of the damned, like Heinrich, who always felt driven to catch hold of things, to mould them, to preserve them, and who found his world fall to pieces whenever it tried to escape from his creative hand. Isolde in Brangäne's arms had dropped dead over Tristan's body, the last notes were dying away, the curtain fell. George cast a glance up to the box in the first tier. Else stood by the ledge with her look turned towards him, while James put her dark-red cloak over her shoulders, and it was only now, that after a nod of the head as quick as though she had meant no one to notice it, she turned towards the exit. Remarkable, thought George from a distance: there is a certain ... melancholy romantic something about the way she carries herself, about many of her movements. It is then that she reminds me most of the gipsy girl of Nice, or the strange young person with whom I stood in front of the Titian Venus in Florence.... Did she ever love me? No. And she doesn't love her James either. Who is it then?... Perhaps ... it was really that mad drawing-master in Florence. Or no one at all. Or Heinrich, of all people?... He met Skelton in the _foyer_. "Back again?" queried the latter. "Only for a few days," replied George. It transpired that Skelton had not really known what George was doing and had thought that he was on a kind of musical tour through the German towns for the purposes of study. He was now more or less surprised to hear that George was here on leave and had been practically commissioned by the manager to inspect the new production of _Tristan_. "Will this suit you?" said Skelton. "I've got an appointment with Breitner; at the '_Imperial_,' the white room." "Excellent," replied George. "I'm staying there." Doctor von Breitner was already smoking one of his celebrated big cigars when the two men appeared at his table. "What a surprise!" he exclaimed, when George greeted him. He had heard that George was engaged as conductor in Düsseldorf. "Detmold," said George, and he thought: "The people here don't bother about me particularly.... But what does it matter?" Skelton described the _Tristan_ performance and George mentioned that he had spoken to the Ehrenbergs. "Do you know that Oskar Ehrenberg is on his way to India or Ceylon?" asked Doctor von Breitner. "Really!" "And whom do you think with?" "Some woman, I suppose?" "Oh, of course. I've even heard they've got five or seven women with them." "Who?--'they.'" "Oskar Ehrenberg ... and ... have a guess.... Well, the Prince of Guastalla!" "Impossible!" "Funny, eh? They became very thick this year at Ostend or at Spa.... _Cherchez_ ... et cetera. It seems that just as there are women, you know, for whom people fight duels there's also another class across whom, as it were, you shake hands. Now they've left Europe together. Perhaps they'll found a kingdom on some island or other and Oskar Ehrenberg will be prime minister." Willy Eissler appeared. His complexion was sallow, his voice hoarse and he looked as if he had been keeping late hours. "Hullo, Baron! Forgive me not being thunderstruck but I have already heard that you are here. Some one or other saw you in the Kärtnerstrasse." George requested Willy to remember Count Malnitz to his father. He himself, he was sorry to say, had no time on this occasion to look up the old gentleman, to whom, as he observed with a pretty mock-modesty, he owed his position in Detmold. "So far as your future is concerned, Baron," said Willy, "I never had any anxiety about it, particularly since I heard Bellini sing your songs last year--or was it further back? But it is quite a good idea of yours, deciding to leave Vienna. You'd have been bound to have been taken for a dilettante here for a cool twenty or thirty years. That's always the way in Vienna. I know it. When people know that a man comes of a good family, has a taste too for pretty ties, good cigarettes and various other amenities of life, they don't believe that he has real artistic capacity. You wouldn't be taken seriously here without proof from outside.... So hurry up and furnish us with a brilliant one, Baron." "I'll make an effort to," said George. "By the way, have you heard the latest, gentlemen?" began Willy again. "Leo Golowski, the one-year-volunteer who shot First-Lieutenant Sefranek, is free." "Let out on bail?" asked George. "No, he's quite free. His advocate addressed a petition to the Emperor to quash the proceedings, and it turned out successful to-day." "Incredible!" exclaimed Breitner. "Why are you so surprised, Breitner?" said Willy. "It is possible, you know, for something sensible to happen in Austria once in a blue moon." "A duel is never sensible," said Skelton, "and therefore a pardon for a duel can't be sensible either." "A duel, my dear Skelton, is either something very much worse or something very much better than sensible," replied Willy. "It is either a ghastly folly or a relentless necessity, either a crime or an act of deliverance. It is not sensible and doesn't need to be so. In exceptional cases, one can't make any headway at all with common-sense, and I am sure you too will concede, Skelton, that in a case like the one of which we have just been speaking a duel was inevitable." "Absolutely," said Breitner. "I can imagine a polity," observed Skelton, "in which differences of that kind were settled by a court." "Differences of that kind settled by a court! Oh, I say!... Do you really think, Skelton, that in a case where there is no question of right or of possession at issue, but where men confront each other with a stupendous hate, do you really think that a proper settlement could be arrived at by means of a fine or imprisonment? The fact, gentlemen, that refusal to fight a duel in such cases is regarded as a piece of cowardice by all people who possess temperament, honour and honesty has a fairly deep significance. In the case of Jews at any rate," he added. "So far as the Catholics are concerned it is well known that it is only their orthodoxy which keeps them from fighting." "That's certainly the case," said Breitner simply. George wanted to know details of the affair between Leo Golowski and the First-Lieutenant. "Quite so," said Willy. "Of course you've only just arrived. Well, the First-Lieutenant gave him a fine ragging for the whole year, and as a matter of fact----" "I know the prelude," interrupted George. "Part of it from first-hand information." "Really! Well, the prelude, to stick to that expression, was over on the first of October. I mean Leo Golowski had finished his year of service. And on the second he placed himself in front of the barracks early in the morning and quietly waited till the First-Lieutenant came out of the door. As soon as he did he stepped up to him; the First-Lieutenant reached for his sword, but Leo Golowski grabs hold of his hand, doesn't let it go, puts his other fist in front of his forehead. There is a story, too, that Leo is supposed to have flung the following words at the First-Lieutenant.... I don't know if it's true." "What words?" asked George curiously. "'You were worth more than I was yesterday, Herr First-Lieutenant; now we are on an equality for the time being--but one of us will be worth more than the other again by this time to-morrow.'" "Somewhat Talmudic," remarked Breitner. "You, of course, must be the best judge of that, Breitner," replied Willy, and went on with his story. "Well, the duel took place next morning in the fields by the Danube--three exchanges of ball at twenty paces without advancing. If that proved abortive the sword till one or other was _hors de combat_.... The first shots missed on both sides, and after the second ... after the second, I say, Golowski was really worth more than the First-Lieutenant, for the latter was worth nothing, less than nothing--a dead man." "Poor devil," said Breitner. Willy shrugged his shoulders. "He just happened to have caught a tartar. I'm sorry, too, but one must admit that Austria would be a different place in many respects if all Jews would behave like Leo Golowski in similar cases. Unfortunately...." Skelton smiled. "You know, Willy, I don't like any one to say anything against the Jews when I am there. I like them, and I should be sorry if people wanted to solve the Jewish question by a series of duels, for when it was all over there wouldn't be a single male specimen left of that excellent race." At the end of the conversation Skelton had to admit that the duel could not be abolished in Austria for the present. But he reserved the right of putting the question whether that fact was really an argument in favour of the duel, and not rather an argument against Austria, since many other countries--he refrained from mentioning any out of a sense of modesty--had discarded the duel for centuries. And did he go too far if he ventured to designate Austria--the country, too, in which he had felt really at home for the last six years--as the country of social shams? In that country more than anywhere else there existed wild disputes without a touch of hate and a kind of tender love without the need of fidelity. Quite humorous personal likings existed or came into existence between political opponents; party colleagues, on the other hand, reviled, libelled and betrayed each other. You would only find a few people who would vouchsafe specific views on men and things, and anyway even these few would be only too ready to make reservations and admit exceptions. The political conflict there gave one quite the impression as though the apparently most bitter enemies, while exchanging their most virulent abuse, winked to each other: "It's not meant so seriously." "What do you think, Skelton?" asked Willy. "Would you wink, too, if the bullets were flying on both sides?" "You certainly would, Willy, unless death were staring you in the face. But that circumstance, I think, doesn't affect one's mood but only one's demeanour." They went on sitting together for a long time and continued gossiping. George heard all kinds of news. He learned among other things that Demeter Stanzides had concluded the purchase of the estate on the Hungarian-Croatian frontier, and that the Rattenmamsell was looking forward to a happy event. Willy Eissler was much excited at the result of this crossing of the races, and amused himself in the meanwhile by inventing names for the expected child, such as Israel Pius or Rebecca Portiuncula. Subsequently the whole party betook itself to the neighbouring café. George played a game of billiards with Breitner and then went up to his room. He made out in bed a time-table for the next day and finally sank into a deliciously deep sleep. The paper he had ordered the day before was brought in with the tea in the morning, together with a telegram. The manager requested him to report on a singer. To George's delight it was the one he had heard yesterday in Kurwenal. He was also allowed to stay three days beyond his specified leave, "in order to put his affairs in order at his convenience," since an alteration of the programme happened to allow it. Excellent, really, thought George. It struck him that he had completely forgotten his original intention of wiring for a prolongation of his leave. I have got even more time for Anna now than I thought, he reflected. We might perhaps go into the mountains. The autumn days are fine and mild, and at this time one would be pretty well alone and undisturbed anywhere. But supposing there is an accident again--an--accident--again!... Those were the very words in which the thought had flown through his mind. He bit his lips. Was that how he had suddenly come to regard the matter? An accident.... Where was the time when he had thought of himself almost with pride as a link in an endless chain which went from the first ancestors to the last descendants? And for a few moments he seemed to himself like a failure in the sphere of love, somewhat dubious and pitiable. He ran his eye over the paper. The proceedings against Leo Golowski had been quashed by an Imperial pardon. He had been discharged from prison last evening. George was very glad and decided to visit Leo this very day. He then sent a telegram to the Count, and made out a report with due formality and detail on yesterday's performance. When he got out into the street it was nearly eleven. The air had the cool clearness of autumn. George felt thoroughly rested, refreshed and in a good temper. The day lay before him rich with hopes and promised all kinds of excitement. Only something troubled him without his immediately knowing what it was.... Oh yes, the visit in the Paulanergasse, the depressing rooms, the ailing father, the aggrieved mother. I'll simply fetch Anna, he thought, take her for a walk and then go and have supper somewhere with her. He passed a flower shop, bought some wonderful dark-red roses and had them sent to Anna with a card on which he wrote: "A thousand wishes. Goodbye till the evening." When he had done this he felt easier in his mind. He then went through the streets in the centre of the town to the old house in which Nürnberger lived. He climbed up the five storeys. A slatternly old servant with a dark cloth over her head opened the door and ushered him into her master's room. Nürnberger was standing by the window with his head slightly bent, in the brown high-cut lounge-suit which he liked to wear at home. He was not alone. Heinrich, of all people, got up from the old arm-chair in front of the secretary with a manuscript in his hand. George was heartily welcomed. "Has your being in Vienna anything to do with the crisis in the management of the opera?" asked Nürnberger. He refused to allow this observation to be simply passed over as a joke. "Look here," he said, "if little boys who a short time ago were only in a position to give formal proof of their connection with German literature on the strength of the regularity of their visits to a literary café, are invited to take appointments as readers on the Berlin stage, well, in an age like this I see no occasion for astonishment if Baron Wergenthin is fetched in triumph to the Vienna opera after his no doubt strenuous six weeks' career as the conductor of a German Court theatre." George paid a tribute to truth by explaining that he had only obtained a short leave to put his Vienna affairs in order, and did not forget to mention that he had seen the new production of _Tristan_ yesterday as a kind of agent for his manager, but he smiled ironically at himself all the time. Then he gave a short and fairly humorous description of his experiences up to the present in the little capital. He even touched jestingly on the Court concerts as though he were far from taking his position, his present successes, the theatre, or indeed life in general with any particular seriousness. Conversation then turned on Leo Golowski's release from prison. Nürnberger rejoiced at this unhoped-for issue, but yet firmly refused to be surprised at it, for the most highly improbable things always happened in life, and particularly in Austria, as they all knew very well. But when George mentioned the rumour of Oskar Ehrenberg's yachting trip with the Prince as a new proof of the soundness of Nürnberger's theory, he was at first inclined nevertheless to be slightly sceptical. Yet he finished by admitting its possibility, since his imagination, as he had known for a long time, was invariably surpassed by reality. Heinrich looked at the time. It was time for him to say goodbye. "Haven't I disturbed you, gentlemen?" asked George. "I think you were reading something, Heinrich, when I came in?" "I had already finished," replied Heinrich. "You'll read me the last act to-morrow, Heinrich?" said Nürnberger. "I have no intention of doing so," replied Heinrich with a laugh. "If the first two acts are as great a frost in the theatre as they were with you, my dear Nürnberger, it will be positively impossible to play the thing through to the end. We'll assume, Nürnberger, that you rush indignantly out of the stalls into the open air. I'll let you off the cat-calls and the rotten eggs." "Hang it all!" exclaimed George. "You're exaggerating again, Heinrich," said Nürnberger. "I only ventured to make a few objections," he said, turning to George, "that's all. But he's an author, you know." "It all depends on what you mean by 'objection,'" said Heinrich. "After all, it is only an objection to the life of a fellow human being if you cut his head open with a hatchet; only it's a fairly effective one." He pointed to his manuscript and turned to George. "You know what that is? My political tragi-comedy. No wreaths, by request." Nürnberger laughed. "I assure you, Heinrich, you could still make something really splendid out of your subject. You can even keep the whole scenario and a number of the characters. All you need to do is to make up your mind to be less fair when you revise your draft." "But surely his fairness is a fine thing," said George. Nürnberger shook his head. "One may be anywhere else, only not in the drama," and turning to Heinrich again, "In a piece like that, which deals with a question of the day, or indeed several questions, as you really intended, you'll never do any good with a purely objective treatment. The theatre public demands that the subjects tackled by the author should be definitely settled, or that at any rate some illusion of that kind should be created. For of course there never is any real solution, and an apparent solution can only be made by a man who has the courage or the simplicity or the temperament to take sides. You'll soon appreciate the fact, my dear Heinrich, that fairness is no good in the drama." "Do you know, Nürnberger," said Heinrich, "one perhaps might do some good even with fairness. I think I simply haven't got the right kind. As a matter of fact, you know, I've no desire at all to be fair. I imagine it must be so wonderfully nice to be unfair. I think it would be the most healthy gymnastic exercise for one's soul that one could possibly practise. It must do one such a lot of good to be able really to hate the man whose views you are combating. It saves one, I'm sure, a great deal of inner strength which you can expend far better yourself in the actual fight. Yes, if one still preserves fairness of heart.... But my fairness is here," and he pointed to his forehead. "I do not stand above parties either, but I belong to them all in a kind of way, or am against them all. I have not got the divine but the dialectical fairness. And that's why"--he held his manuscript high up--"it has resulted in such a boring and fruitless lot of twaddle." "Woe to the man," said Nürnberger, "who is rash enough to write anything like that about you." "Well, you see," replied Heinrich with a smile, "if some one else were to say it, one couldn't suppress the slight suspicion that he might be right. But now I must really go. Good-bye, George. I'm very sorry that you missed me yesterday. When are you leaving again?" "To-morrow." "Anyway, I shall see you before you leave. I'm home to-day the whole afternoon and evening. You will find a man who has resolutely turned away from the questions of the day and devoted himself again to the eternal problems, death and love.... Do you believe in death, by-the-bye, Nürnberger? I am not asking you about love." "That somewhat cheap joke from a man in your position," said Nürnberger, "makes me suspect that in spite of your very dignified demeanour my criticism has...." "No, Nürnberger, I swear to you that I am not wounded. I have rather a comfortable sensation of the whole thing being finished with." "Finished with, why so? It is still quite possible that I've made a mistake, and that this very piece, which I didn't think quite a success, will have a success on the stage which will make you into a millionaire. I should be deeply grieved if on account of my criticism, which may be very far from being authoritative...." "Quite so, quite so, Nürnberger. We must all of us always admit the possibility that we may be mistaken. And the next time I'll write another piece, and one with the following title too: '_Nobody's going to take me in_,' and you shall be the hero of it, Nürnberger." Nürnberger smiled. "... I? That means you'll take a man whom you imagine you know, that you'll try to describe those sides of his character which suit your game--that you'll suppress others which are no use to you, and the result...." "The result," interrupted Heinrich, "will be a portrait taken by a mad photographer with a spoilt camera during an earthquake and an eclipse of the sun. Is that right, or is there anything missing?" "The psychology ought to be exhaustive," said Nürnberger. Heinrich took his leave in boisterous spirits and went away with his rolled-up manuscript. When he had gone George remarked: "His good temper strikes me as a bit of a pose, you know." "Do you think so? I have always found him in remarkably good form lately." "In really good form? Do you seriously think so? After what he has gone through?" "Why not? Men who are so almost exclusively self-centred as he is get over emotional troubles with surprising quickness. Characters of that type, and as a matter of fact other kinds of men as well, feel the slightest physical discomfort far more acutely than any kind of sentimental pain, even the faithlessness and death of the persons they happen to love. It comes no doubt from the fact that every emotional pain flatters our vanity somehow or other, and that you can't say the same thing about an attack of typhoid or a catarrh in the stomach. Then there is this additional point about artistic people, for while catarrh of the stomach provides positively no copy at all (at any rate that used to be reasonably certain a short time ago) you can get anything you jolly well like out of your emotional pains, from lyric poems down to works on philosophy." "Emotional pains are of very different kinds, of course," replied George. "And being deceived or deserted by a mistress ... or even her dying a natural death ... is still rather a different thing to her killing herself on our account." "Do you know for a certainty," replied Nürnberger, "that Heinrich's mistress really killed herself on his account?" "Didn't Heinrich tell you, then?..." "Of course, but that doesn't prove much. Even the shrewdest amongst us are always fools about the things which concern ourselves." Such remarks as these on the part of Nürnberger produced a strangely disconcerting effect on George. They belonged to the class of which Nürnberger was rather fond, and which, as Heinrich had once observed, quite destroyed all the point of all human intercourse, and in fact of all human relations. Nürnberger went on speaking. "We only know two facts. One is that our friend once had a _liaison_ with a girl and the other that the girl in question threw herself into the water. We both of us know practically nothing about all the intervening facts, and Heinrich probably doesn't know anything more about them either. None of us can know why she killed herself, and perhaps the poor girl herself didn't know either." George looked through the window and saw roofs, chimneys and weather-beaten pipes, while fairly near was the light-grey tower with the broken stone cupola. The sky opposite was pale and empty. It suddenly occurred to George that Nürnberger had not yet made any inquiry about Anna. What was he probably thinking? Thinking no doubt that George had deserted her, and that she had already consoled herself with another lover. Why did I come to Vienna? he thought desultorily, as though his journey had had no other purpose than to listen to Nürnberger giving him what had now turned out to be a sufficiently pessimistic analysis of life. It struck twelve. George took his leave. Nürnberger accompanied him as far as the door and thanked him for his visit. He inquired earnestly about what George was doing in his new home, about his work and his new acquaintances, as though their previous conversation on the subject had not really counted, and now learned for the first time of the accident which was responsible for George's sudden appointment in the little town. "Yes, that's just what I always say," he then remarked. "It is not we who make our fate, but some circumstance outside us usually sees to that--some circumstance which we were not in a position to influence in any way, which we never have a chance of bringing into the sphere of our calculations. After all, do you deserve any credit...? I feel justified in putting this question, much as I respect your talent. Nor does old Eissler, whose interest in your affairs you once told me about, deserve any credit either for your being wired to from Detmold and finding your true sphere of work there so quickly. No. An innocent man, some one you don't know, had to die a sudden death to enable you to find that particular place vacant. And what a lot of other things which you were equally unable to influence, and which you were quite unable to foresee, had to come on the scene to enable you to leave Vienna with a light heart--to enable you, in fact, to leave it at all." George felt hurt. "What do you mean by a light heart?" he asked. "I mean a lighter heart than you would have had under other circumstances. If the little creature had remained alive who knows whether you...." "You can take it from me that I would have gone away, even then. And Anna would have taken it quite as much as a matter of course as she does now. Don't you believe me? Why, perhaps I'd have gone with an even lighter heart if that matter had turned out otherwise. Why, it was Anna who persuaded me to accept. I was quite undecided. You have no idea what a good sensible creature Anna is." "Oh, I don't doubt it at all. According to all you have told me about her from time to time, she certainly seems to have behaved with more dignity in her position than young ladies of her social status are usually accustomed to exhibit on such occasions." "My dear Herr Nürnberger, the position really wasn't as dreadful as all that." "Come, don't say that. For however much things may have been made easier by your courtesy and consideration, take it from me that the young lady is bound to have felt frequently during the last months the irregularity of her position. I am sure there isn't a single member of the feminine sex, however daring and advanced may be her views, who doesn't prefer in a case like that to have a ring on her finger. And it's all in favour, too, of your friend's sensible and dignified behaviour that she never allowed you to notice it, and that she took the bitter disillusionment at the end of these nine months, which were certainly not entirely a bed of roses, with calmness and self-possession." "Disillusionment is rather a mild word. Pain would perhaps be more correct." "I dare say it was both. But in this case, as in most others, the burning wound of pain heals more quickly than the throbbing piercing wound of disillusionment." "I don't quite understand." "Well, my dear George, you don't doubt, do you, that if the little creature had remained alive you two would have married very quickly; why, you'd even be married this very day." "And you think that now, just because we have no child.... Yes, you seem to be of the opinion that ... that ... it's all over between us. But you are quite wrong, quite wrong, my dear friend." "My dear George," replied Nürnberger, "both of us would prefer not to speak about the future. Neither you nor I know the place where a strand of our fate is being spun at this very moment. You didn't have the slightest inkling, either, when that conductor was attacked by a stroke, and if I now wish you luck in your future career I don't know whose death I have not conjured down by that very wish." They took leave of each other on the landing. Nürnberger cried after George from the stairs: "Let me hear from you now and then." George turned round once more. "And mind you do the same." He only saw Nürnberger's gesture of resigned remonstrance, smiled involuntarily, hurried down the stairs and took a conveyance at the nearest corner. He pondered over Nürnberger and Bermann on his way to the Golowskis'. What a strange relationship it was between them. A scene which he thought he had seen some time or other in a dream came into George's mind. The two sat opposite each other, each held a mirror in front of the other. The other saw himself in it with the mirror in his hand, and in that mirror the other again with his mirror in his hand, and so on to infinity; but did either of them really know the other, did either of them really know himself? George's mind became dizzy. He then thought of Anna. Was Nürnberger right again? Was it really all over? Could it really ever end? Ever?... Life is long! But were even the ensuing months dangerous? No. That was not to be taken seriously, however it might turn out. Perhaps Micaela.... And in Easter he would be in Vienna again. Then there came the summer, they would be together, and then? Yes, what then? Engagement? Herr Rosner and Frau Rosner's son-in-law, Joseph's brother-in-law! Oh well, what did he care about the family? It was Anna after all who was going to be his wife, that good gentle sensible creature. The fly stopped in front of an ugly fairly new house, painted yellow, in a wide monotonous street. George told the driver to wait and went into the doorway. The house looked quite dilapidated from inside. Mortar had crumbled away from the walls in many places and the steps were dirty. There was a smell of bad fat coming out of some of the kitchen windows. Two fat Jewesses were talking on the landing of the first storey in a jargon which George found positively intolerable. One of them said to a boy whom she held by the hand: "Moritz, let the gentleman pass." Why does she say that? thought George, there's plenty of room; she obviously wants to get into conversation with me. As though I could do her any harm or any good! An expression of Heinrich's in a long-past conversation came into his mind: "An enemy's country." A servant-girl showed him into a room which he immediately recognised as Leo's. Books and papers on the writing-table, the piano open, a Gladstone bag, which was still not completely unpacked, open on the sofa. The door opened the next minute. Leo came in, embraced his visitor and kissed him so quickly on both cheeks that the man who was welcomed with such heartiness had no time to be embarrassed. "This is nice of you," said Leo, and shook both his hands. "You can't imagine how glad I was ..." began George. "I believe you.... But please come in with me. We are having dinner, you know, but it's nearly over." He took him into the next room. The family was gathered round the table. "I don't think you know my father yet," observed Leo, and introduced them to each other. Old Golowski got up, put away the serviette which he had tied round his neck and held out his hand to George. The latter was surprised that the old man should look so completely different from what he had expected. He was not patriarchal, grey-bearded and venerable, but with his clean-shaven face and broad cunning features looked more like an ageing provincial comedian than anything else. "I am very glad to make your acquaintance, Herr Baron," he said, while one could read in his crafty eyes ... "I know everything." Therese hastily asked George the conventional questions: when he had come, how long he was staying, how he was; he answered patiently and courteously, and she looked him in the face with animation and curiosity. Then he asked Leo about his plans for the near future. "I must first practise the piano industriously, so as not to make a fool of myself before my pupils. People were very nice to me, of course. I had books, as many as I wanted, but they certainly didn't put a piano at my disposition." He turned to Therese. "You should certainly flog that point to death in one of your next speeches. This bad treatment of prisoners awaiting trial must be abolished." "It was no laughing matter for him this time yesterday," said old Golowski. "If you think by any chance," said Therese, "that the good luck which happened to come your way will alter my views you are making a violent mistake. On the contrary." And turning to George she continued: "Theoretically, you know, I am absolutely against their having let him out. If you'd simply knocked the fellow down dead, as you would have been quite entitled to do, without this abominable farce of a duel you'd never have been let out, but would have served your five to ten years for a certainty. But since you went in for this ghastly life-and-death gamble which is favoured by the State, because you cringed down to the military point of view you've been pardoned. Am I not right?" She turned again to George. The latter only nodded and thought of the poor young man whom Leo had shot, who as a matter of fact had had nothing else against the Jews except that he disliked them just as much as most people did after all--and whose real fault had only been that he had tried it on the wrong man. Leo stroked his sister's hair and said to her: "Look here, if you say publicly in your next speech what you've just said to-day within these four walls you'll really impress me." "Yes, and you'll impress me," replied Therese, "if you take a ticket to Jerusalem to-morrow with old Ehrenberg." They got up from the table. Leo invited George to come into his room with him. "Shall I be disturbing you?" asked Therese. "I too would like to see something of him, you know." They all three sat in Leo's room and chatted. Leo seemed to be enjoying his regained freedom without either scruples or remorse. George felt strangely affected by this. Therese sat on the sofa in a dark well-fitting dress. To-day was the first occasion on which she resembled the young lady who had drunk Asti under a plane-tree in Lugano, when she was the mistress of a cavalry officer, and who had subsequently kissed some one else. She asked George to play the piano. She had never yet heard him. He sat down, played something from _Tristan_ and then improvised with happy inspiration. Leo expressed his appreciation. "What a pity that he is not staying," said Therese, as she leaned against the wall and crossed her hands over her high coiffure. "I am coming back at Easter," replied George, and looked at her. "But only to disappear again," said Therese. "That may be," replied George, and the thought that his home was no longer here, that he had no home at all anywhere, and would not have for a long time, suddenly overwhelmed him. "How would it be," said Leo, "if we went on a tour together in the summer?--you, Bermann and I? I promise you that you won't be bored by theoretical conversation like you were once last autumn ... do you still remember?" "Oh well," said Therese, stretching herself, "nothing will come of it anyway. Deeds, gentlemen!" "And what comes of deeds?" asked Leo. "Putting them at the highest, they simply save individual situations for the time being." "Yes, deeds which you do for yourself," said Therese. "But I only call a real deed what one is capable of doing for others, without any feeling of revenge, without any personal vanity, and if possible anonymously." At last George had to go. What a lot of things he still had to see to. "I'll come part of the way with you," said Therese to him. Leo embraced him again, and said: "It really was nice of you." Therese disappeared to fetch her hat and jacket. George went into the next room. Old Frau Golowski seemed to have been waiting for him; with a strangely anxious face she came up to him and put an envelope in his hand. "What is that?" "The account, Herr Baron. I didn't want to give it to Anna.... It might perhaps have upset her too much." "Oh yes...." He put the envelope in his pocket and thought that it felt strangely different to any other.... Therese appeared with a little Spanish hat, ready to go out. "Here I am. Goodbye, mamma. Shan't be home for dinner." She went down the stairs with George and threw him sideways a glance of pleasure. "Where can I take you?" asked George. "Just take me along with you. I'll get out somewhere." They got in, the vehicle went on. She put to him all kinds of questions which he had already answered in the apartment, as though she took it for granted that he was now bound to be more candid with her than before the others. She did not learn anything except that he felt comfortable in his new surroundings and that his work gave him satisfaction. Had his appearance been a great surprise for Anna? No, not at all. He had of course given her notice of it. And was it really true that he meant to come back again at Easter? It was his definite intention.... She seemed surprised. "Do you know that I had almost imagined...." "What?" "That we would never see you again!" He was somewhat moved and made no answer. The thought then ran through his mind: Would it not have been more sensible...? He was sitting quite close to Therese and felt the warmth of her body, as he had done before in Lugano. In what dream of hers might she now be living--in the dark jumbled dream of making humanity happy, or the light gay dream of a new romantic adventure? She kept looking insistently out of the window. He took her hand, without resistance, and put it to his lips. She suddenly turned round to him and said innocently: "Yes, stop now. I'd better get out here." He let go her hand and looked at Therese. "Yes, my dear George. What wouldn't one fall into," she said, "if one didn't"--she gave an ironic smile--"have to sacrifice oneself for humanity? Do you know what I often think?... Perhaps all this is only a flight from myself." "Why.... Why do you take to flight?" "Goodbye, George." The vehicle stopped. Therese got out, a young man stood still and stared at her, she disappeared in the crowd. I don't think she'll finish up on the scaffold, thought George. He drove to his hotel, had his midday meal, lit a cigarette, changed his clothes and went to Ehrenbergs'. James, Sissy, Willy Eissler and Frau Oberberger were with the ladies of the house in the dining-room taking black coffee. George sat down between Else and Sissy, drank a glass of Benedictine and answered with patience and good humour all the questions which his new activities had provoked. They soon went into the drawing-room, and he now sat for a time in the raised alcove with Frau Oberberger, who looked young again to-day and was particularly anxious to hear more intimate details about George's personal experiences in Detmold. She refused to believe him when he denied having started intrigues with all the singers in the place. Of course she simply regarded theatrical life as nothing but a pretext and opportunity for romantic adventures. Anyway, she always made a point of thinking she detected the most monstrous goings-on in the _coulisses_ behind the curtain, in the dressing-rooms and in the manager's office. When George had no option but to disillusion her, by his report of the simple, respectable, almost philistine life of the members of the opera, and by the description of his own hardworking life, she visibly began to go to pieces, and soon he found himself sitting opposite an aged woman, in whom he recognised the same person as had appeared to him last summer, first in the box of a little white-and-red theatre and later in a now almost forgotten dream. He then went and stood with Sissy near the marble Isis, and each sought to find in the eyes of the other during their harmless chatter a memory of an ardent hour beneath the deep shade of a dark green park in the afternoon. But to-day that memory seemed to them both to be plunged in unfathomable depths. Then he went and sat next to Else at the little table on which books and photographs were lying. She first addressed to him some conventional questions like all the rest. But suddenly she asked quite unexpectedly and somewhat gently: "How is your child?" "My child...." He hesitated. "Tell me, Else, why do you ask me...? Is it simply curiosity?" "You are making a mistake, George," she replied calmly and seriously. "You usually make mistakes about me, as a matter of fact. You take me for quite superficial, or God knows what. Well, there's no point in talking about it any more. Anyway, my asking after the child is not quite so incomprehensible. I should very much like to see it sometime." "You would like to see it?" He was moved. "Yes, I even had another idea.... But one which you will probably think quite mad." "Let's hear it, Else." "I was thinking, you know, we might take it with us." "Who, we?" "James and I." "To England?" "Who's told you we're going to England? We are staying here. We've already taken a place in 'Cottage'[3] outside. No one need know that it is your child." "What a romantic thought!" "Good gracious, why romantic? Anna can't keep it with her, and you certainly can't. Where could you put it during the rehearsals? In the prompter's box, I suppose?" George smiled. "You are very kind, Else." "I'm not kind at all. I only think why should an innocent little creature pay the penalty or suffer for.... Oh well, I mean it can't help it.... After all ... is it a boy?" "It was a boy." He paused, then he said gently: "It's dead, you know." And he looked in front of him. "What! Oh, I see ... you want to protect yourself against my officiousness." "No, Else, how can you?... No, Else, in matters like that one doesn't lie." "It's true, then? But how did it...?" "It was still-born." She looked at the ground. "No? How awful!" She shook her head. "How awful!... And now she's lost everything quite suddenly." George gave a slight start and was unable to answer. How every one seemed to take it for granted that the Anna affair was finished. And Else did not pity him at all. She had no idea of how the death of the child had shocked him. How could she have an idea either? What did she know of the hour when the garden had lost its colour for him and the heavens their light, because his own beautiful child lay dead within the house? Frau Ehrenberg joined them. She declared that she was particularly satisfied with George. Anyway, she had never doubted that he would show what he was made of as soon as he once got started in a profession. She was firmly convinced, too, that they would have him here in Vienna as a conductor in three to five years. George pooh-poohed the idea. For the time being he had not thought of coming back to Vienna. He felt that people worked more and with greater seriousness outside in Germany. Here one always ran the danger of losing oneself. Frau Ehrenberg agreed, and took the opportunity to complain about Heinrich Bermann, who had lapsed into silence as an author and now never showed himself anywhere. George defended him and felt himself obliged to state positively that Heinrich was more industrious than he had ever been. But Frau Ehrenberg had other examples of the corrupting influence of the Vienna air, particularly Nürnberger, who now seemed to have cut himself completely off from the world. As for what had happened to Oskar ... could that have happened in any other town except Vienna? Did George know, by-the-by, that Oskar was travelling with the Prince of Guastalla? Her tone did not indicate that she regarded that as anything special, but George noticed that she was a little proud of it, and entertained the opinion somewhere at the back of her mind that Oskar had turned out all right after all. While George was speaking to Frau Ehrenberg he noticed that Else, who had retired with James into the recess, was directing glances towards him--glances full of melancholy and of knowledge, which almost frightened him. He soon took his leave, had a feeling that Else's handshake was inconceivably cold, while those of the others were amiably indifferent, and went. "How funny it all is," he thought in the vehicle which drove him to Heinrich's. People knew everything before he did. They had known of his _liaison_ with Anna before it had begun, and now they knew that it was over before he did himself. He had half a mind to show them all that they were making a mistake. Of course, in so vital an affair as that one should be very careful not to decide on one's course of action out of considerations of pique. It was a good thing that a few months were now before him in which he could pull himself together and have time for mature reflection. It would be good for Anna, too, particularly good for her, perhaps. Yesterday's walk with her in the rain over the brown wet streets came into his mind again, and struck him as ineffably sad. Alas, for the hours in the arched room into which the strains of the organ opposite had vibrated through the floating curtain of snow--where were they? Yes, where had these hours gone to? And so many other wonderful hours as well! He saw himself and Anna again in his mind's eye, as a young couple on their honeymoon, walking through streets which had the wonderful atmosphere of a strange land; commonplace hotel rooms, where he had only stayed with her for a few days, suddenly presented themselves before him, consecrated as it were by the perfume of memory.... Then his love appeared to him, sitting on a white seat, beneath the heavy branches, with her high forehead girdled with the deceptive presentiment of gentle motherhood. And finally she stood there with a sheet of music in her hand while the white curtain fluttered gently in the wind. And when he realised that it was the same room in which she was now waiting for him, and that not more than a year had gone by since that evening hour in the late summer when she had sung his own songs for the first time to his own accompaniment, he breathed heavily and almost anxiously in his corner. When he was in Heinrich's room a few minutes afterwards he asked him not to look upon this as a visit. He only wanted to shake hands with him. He would fetch him for a walk to-morrow morning if that suited him.... Yes--the idea occurred to him while he was speaking--for a kind of farewell walk in the Salmansdorf Forest. Heinrich agreed, but asked him to stay just a few minutes. George asked him jestingly if he had already recovered from his failure of this morning. Heinrich pointed to the secretary, on which were lying loose sheets covered with large nervous writing. "Do you know what that is? I have taken up _Ägidius_ again, and just before you came I thought of an ending which was more or less feasible. I'll tell you more about it to-morrow if it will interest you." "By all means. I am quite excited about it. It's a good thing, too, that you have settled down to a definite piece of work again." "Yes, my dear George, I don't like being quite alone, and must create some society for myself as quickly as possible, people I choose myself ... otherwise, any one who wants to come along, and one is not keen on being at home to every chance ghost." George told him that he had called on Leo and found him in far better spirits than he had ever expected. Heinrich leaned against the secretary with both his hands buried in his trouser pockets and his head slightly bent; the shaded lamp made uncertain shadows on his face. "Why didn't you expect to find him in good spirits? If it had been us ... if it had been me, at any rate, I should probably have felt exactly the same." George was sitting on the arm of a black leather arm-chair with crossed legs and his hat and stick in his hand. "Perhaps you are right," he said, "but I must confess all the same that when I saw his cheerful face I found it very strange to realise that he had a human life on his conscience." "You mean," said Heinrich, beginning to walk up and down the room, "that it is one of those cases where the relationship of cause and effect is so illuminating that you are justified in saying quietly 'he has killed' without its looking like a mere juggle of words.... But speaking generally, George, don't you think that we regard these matters a little superficially? We must see the flash of a dagger or hear the whistle of a bullet in order to realise that a murder has been committed. As though any man who let any one else die would be in most cases different from a murderer in anything else except having managed the business more comfortably and being more of a coward...." "Are you really reproaching yourself, Heinrich? If you had really believed that it was bound to turn out like that ... I am sure you would not have ... let her die." "Perhaps ... I don't know. But I can tell you one thing, George: if she were still alive--I mean if I had forgiven her, to use the expression you are so fond of using now and then--I should regard myself as guiltier than I do to-day. Yes, yes, that's how it is. I will confess to you, George, there was a night ... there were a few nights, when I was practically crushed by grief, by despair, by.... Other people would have taken it for remorse, but it was nothing of the kind. For amid all my grief, all my despair, I knew quite well that this death meant a kind of redemption, a kind of reconciliation, a kind of cleanness. If I had been weak or less vain ... as you no doubt regard it ... if she had been my mistress again, something far worse than that death would have happened for her as well ... loathing and anguish, rage and hate, would have crawled around our bed ... our memories would have rotted bit by bit--why, our love would have decomposed whilst its body was still alive. It had no right to be. It would have been a crime to have protracted the life of this love affair which was sick unto death, just as it is a crime--and what is more, will be regarded so in the future--to protract the life of a man who is doomed to a painful death. Any sensible doctor will tell you as much. And that is why I'm very far from reproaching myself. I don't want to justify myself before you or before any one else in the world, but that is just how it is. I _can't_ feel guilty. I often feel very bad, but that hasn't the least thing in the world to do with any consciousness of guilt." "You went there just afterwards?" asked George. "Yes, I went there. I even stood by when they lowered the coffin into the ground. Yes, I trained there with the mother." He stood by the window, quite in the darkness, and shook himself. "No, I shall never forget it. Besides, it is only a lie to say that people come together in a common sorrow. People never come together if they're not natural affinities. They feel even further away from each other in times of trouble. That journey! When I remember it! I read nearly the whole time, too. I found it positively intolerable to talk to the silly old creature. There is no one one hates more than some one who is quite indifferent to you and requires your sympathy. We stood together by her grave, too, the mother and I--I, the mother, and a few actors from the little theatre.... And afterwards I sat in the inn with her alone, after the funeral--a _tête-à-tête_ wake. A desperate business, I can tell you. Do you know, by-the-by, where she lies buried? By your lake, George. Yes. I have often found myself driven to think of you. You know of course where the churchyard is? Scarcely a hundred yards from Auhof. There's a delightful view on to our lake, George; of course, only if one happens to be alive." George felt a slight horror. He got up. "I am afraid I must leave you, Heinrich. I am expected. You'll excuse me?" Heinrich came up to him out of the darkness of the window. "Thank you very much for your visit. Well, to-morrow, isn't it? I suppose you are going to Anna now? Please give her my best wishes. I hear she is very well. Therese told me." "Yes, she looks splendid. She has completely recovered." "I'm very glad. Well, till to-morrow then. I'm extremely glad that I shall be able to see you again before you leave. You must still have all kinds of things to tell me. I've done nothing again but talk about myself." George smiled. As though he hadn't grown used to this with Heinrich. "Good-bye," he said, and went. Much of what Heinrich had said echoed in George's mind when he sat again in his fiacre. "We must see the flash of a dagger in order to realise that a murder has been committed." George felt that there was a kind of subterranean connection, but yet one which he had guessed for a long time, between the meaning of these words and a certain dull sense of discomfort which he had frequently felt in his own soul. He thought of a past hour when he had felt as though a gamble over his unborn child was going on in the clouds, and it suddenly struck him as strange that Anna had not yet spoken a word to him about the child's death, that she had even avoided in her letters any reference, not only to the final misfortune, but also to the whole period when she had carried the child under her bosom. The conveyance approached its destination. Why is my heart beating? thought George. Joy?... Bad conscience?... Why to-day all of a sudden? She can't have any grievance against me.... What nonsense! I am run down and excited at the same time, that's what it is. I shouldn't have come here at all. Why have I seen all these people again? Wasn't I a thousand times better off in the little town where I had started a new life, in spite of all my longings?... I ought to have met Anna somewhere else. Perhaps she will come away with me.... Then everything will still come right in the end. But is anything wrong?... Are our relations really in a bad way? And is it a crime to prolong them?... That may be a convenient excuse on certain occasions. When he went into Rosners' the mother, who was sitting alone at the table, looked up from her book and shut it with a snap. The light of a lamp that was swinging gently to and fro flowed from overhead on to the table, distributing itself equally in all directions. Josef got up from a corner of the sofa. Anna, who had just come out of her room, stroked her high wavy hair with both hands, welcomed George with a light nod of the head and gave him at this moment the impression of being rather an apparition than real flesh and blood. George shook hands with every one and inquired after Herr Rosner's health. "He is not exactly bad," said Frau Rosner, "but he finds it difficult to stand up." Josef apologised at being found sleeping on the sofa. He had to use the Sunday in order to rest himself. He was occupying a position on his paper which often kept him there till three o'clock in the morning. "He is working very hard now," said his mother corroboratively. "Yes," said Josef modestly, "when a fellow gets real scope, so to speak...." He went on to observe that the _Christliche Volksbote_ was enjoying a larger and larger circulation, particularly in Germany. He then addressed some questions to George about his new home, and showed a keen interest in the population, the condition of the roads, the popularity of cycling and the surrounding neighbourhood. Frau Rosner, on her side, made polite inquiries about the composition of the repertoire. George supplied the information and a conversation was soon in progress, in which Anna also played a substantial part, and George found himself suddenly paying a visit to a middle-class and conventional family where the daughter of the house happened to be musical. The conversation finally finished up in George feeling himself bound to express a wish to hear the young lady sing once more--and he had as it were to pull himself together to realise that the woman whose voice he had asked to hear was really his own Anna. Josef made his excuses; he was called away by an appointment with club friends in the café. "Do you still remember, Herr Baron ... the classy party on the Sophienalp?" "Of course," replied George, smiling, and he quoted: "Der Gott, der Eisen wachsen liess...." "Der wollte keine Knechte," added Josef. "But we have left off singing that now for a long time. It is too like the 'Watch on the Rhine,' and we don't want to have it cast in our teeth any more that we have a sneaking fancy for the other side of the frontier. We had great fights about it on the committee. One gentleman even sent in his resignation. He's a solicitor, you know, in the office of Doctor Fuchs, the National German Deputy. Yes, it's all politics, you know." He winked. They must not think, of course, that now that he himself had an insight into the machinery of public life he still took the swindle seriously. With the scarcely surprising remark that he could tell a tale or two if he wanted, he took his leave. Frau Rosner thought it time to go and look after her husband. George sat alone with Anna, opposite her by the round table, over which the hanging lamp shed its light. "Thank you for the beautiful roses," said Anna. "I have them inside in my room." She got up, and George followed her. He had quite forgotten that he had sent her any flowers. They were standing in a high glass in front of the mirror. They were dark red and their reflection was opaque and colourless. The piano was open, some music stood ready and two candles were burning at the side. Apart from that all the light in the room was what came from the adjoining apartment through the wide opening left by the door. "You've been playing, Anna?" He came nearer. "The Countess's Aria? Been singing, too?" "Yes--tried to." "All right?" "It is beginning to ... I think so. Well, we'll see. But first tell me what you have been doing all to-day." "In a minute. We haven't welcomed each other at all so far." He embraced and kissed her. "It is a long time since----" she said, smiling past him. "Well?" he asked keenly, "are you coming with me?" Anna hesitated. "But what do you really think of doing, George?" "Quite simple. We can go away to-morrow afternoon. You can choose the place. Reichenau, Semmering, Brühl, anywhere you like.... And I'll bring you back in the morning the day after to-morrow." Something or other kept him back from mentioning the telegram which gave him three whole days to do what he liked with. Anna looked in front of her. "It would be very nice," she said tonelessly, "but it really won't be possible, George." "On account of your father?" She nodded. "But he is surely better, isn't he?" "No, he is not at all well. He is so weak. They wouldn't of course reproach me directly in any way. But I ... I can't leave mother alone now, for that kind of excursion." He shrugged his shoulders, feeling slightly wounded at the designation which she had chosen. "Come, be frank," she added in a jesting manner. "Are you really so keen on it?" He shook his head, almost as if in pain, but he felt that this gesture also was lacking in sincerity. "I don't understand you, Anna," he said, more weakly than he really meant. "To think that a few weeks of being away from each other, to think of ... well, I don't know what to call it.... It is as though we had got absolutely out of touch. It's really me, Anna, it's really me...." he repeated in a vehement but tired voice. He got up from the chair in front of the piano. He took her hands and put them to his lips, feeling nervous and somewhat moved. "What was _Tristan_ like?" she inquired. He gave her a conscientious account of the performance and did not leave out his visit to the Ehrenbergs' box. He spoke of all the people whom he had seen and conveyed to her Heinrich Bermann's wishes. He then drew her on to his knee and kissed her. When he removed his face from hers he saw tears running over her cheeks. He pretended to be surprised, "What's the matter, child?... But why, why...?" She got up and went to the window with her face turned away from him. He stood up too, feeling somewhat impatient, walked up and down the room once or twice, then went up to her, pressed her close to him, and then immediately began again in great haste: "Anna, just think it over and see if you really can't come with me! It would all be so different from what it is here. We could really talk things over thoroughly. We have got such important matters to discuss. I need your advice as well, about the plans I am to make for next year. I've written to you about it, haven't I? It is very probable, you see, that I shall be asked to sign a three years' contract in the next few days." "What am I to advise you?" she said. "After all, you know best whether it suits you there or not." He began to tell her about the kind and talented manager who clearly wished to have him for a collaborator; about the old and sympathetic conductor who had once been so famous; about a very diminutive stage-hand who was called Alexander the Great; about a young lady with whom he had studied the Micaela, and who was engaged to a Berlin doctor; and about a tenor, who had already been working at the theatre for twenty-seven years and hated Wagner violently. He then began to talk about his own personal prospects, artistic and financial. There was no doubt that he could soon attain an excellent and assured position at the little Court Theatre. On the other hand one had to bear in mind that it was dangerous to bind oneself for too long; a career like that of the old conductor would not be to his taste. Of course ... temperaments varied. He for his part believed himself safe from a fate like that. Anna looked at him all the time, and finally said in a half jesting, half meditative tone, as though she were speaking to a child: "Yes, isn't he trying hard?" The thrust went home. "In what way am I trying hard?" "Look here, George, you don't owe me explanations of any kind." "Explanations? But you are really.... Really, I'm not giving you any explanations, Anna. I'm simply describing to you how I live and what kind of people I have to deal with ... because I flatter myself that these things interest you, in the same way that I told you where I had been yesterday and to-day." She was silent, and George felt again that she did not believe him, that she was justified in not believing him--even though now and again the truth happened to come from his lips. All kinds of words were on the tip of his tongue, words of wounded pride, of rage, of gentle persuasion--each seemed to him equally worthless and empty. He made no reply, sat down at the piano and gently struck some notes and chords. He now felt again as though he loved her very much and was simply unable to tell it her, and as though this hour of meeting would have been quite different if they had celebrated it elsewhere. Not in this room, not in this town; in a place, for preference, which they neither of them knew, in a new strange environment, yes, then perhaps everything would have been again just as it had been once before. Then they would have been able to have rushed into each other's arms--as once before, with real yearning, and found delight--and peace. The idea occurred to him: "If I were to say to her now 'Anna! Three days and three nights belong to us!' If I were to beg her ... with the right words.... Entreat her at her feet.... 'Come with me, come!'... She would not hold out long! She would certainly follow me...." He knew it. Why did he not speak the right words? Why did he not entreat her? Why was he silent, as he sat at the piano and gently struck notes and chords...? Why?... Then he felt her soft hand upon his head. His fingers lay heavy on the notes, some chord or other vibrated. He did not dare to turn round. She knows it, too, he felt. What does she know?... Is it true, then...? Yes ... it is true. And he thought of the hour after the birth of his dead child--when he had sat by her bed and she had lain there in silence, with her looks turned towards the gloomy garden.... She had known it even then--earlier than he--that all was over. And he lifted his hands from the piano, took hers, which were still lying on his head, guided them to his cheeks, drew her to him till she was again quite close, and she slowly dropped down on to his knees. And he began again, shyly: "Anna ... perhaps ... you could manage to.... Perhaps I too could manage for a few days' more leave if I were to telegraph. Anna dear ... just listen.... It would be really so beautiful...." A plan came to him from the very depths of his consciousness. If he really were to go travelling with her for some days, and were to take the opportunity honestly to say to her, "It must end, Anna, but the end of our love must be beautiful like the beginning was. Not dim and gloomy like these hours in your people's house...." If I were honestly to say that to her--somewhere in the country--would it not be more worthy of her and mine--and our past happiness...? And with this plan in his mind he grew more insistent, bolder, almost passionate.... And his words had the same ring again as they had had a long, long time ago. Sitting on his knees, with her arms around his neck, she answered gently: "George, I am not--going to go through it another time...." He already had a word upon his lips with which he could have dissipated her alarm. But he kept it back, for if put in so many words it would have simply meant that while he was thinking of course of living again a few hours of delight with her, he did not feel inclined to take any responsibility upon himself. He felt it. All he need say to avoid wounding her was this one thing: "You belong to me for ever!--You really must have a child by me--I'll fetch you at Christmas or Easter at the outside. And we will never be parted from each other any more." He felt the way in which she waited for these words with one last hope, with a hope in whose realisation she had herself ceased to believe. But he was silent. If he had said aloud the words she was yearning for he would have bound himself anew, and ... he now realised more deeply than he had ever realised before that he wanted to be free. She was still resting on his knees, with her cheek leaning on his. They were silent for a long time and knew that this was the farewell. Finally George said resolutely: "Well, if you don't want to come with me, Anna, then I'll go straight back--to-morrow, and we'll see each other again in the spring. Until then there are only letters. Only in the event of my coming at Christmas if I can...." She had got up and was leaning against the piano. "The boy's mad again," she said. "Isn't it really better if we don't see each other till after Easter?" "Why better?" "By then--everything will be so much clearer." He tried to misunderstand her. "You mean about the contract?" "Yes...." "I must make up my mind in the next few weeks. The people want of course to know where they are. On the other hand, even if I did sign for three years, and other chances came along, they wouldn't keep me against my will. But up to the present it really seems to me that staying in that small town has been an extremely sound thing for me. I have never been able to work with such concentration as there. Haven't I written to you how I have often sat at my secretary after the theatre till three o'clock in the morning, and woken up fresh at eight o'clock after a sound sleep?" She gazed at him all the time with a look at once pained and reflective, which affected him like a look of doubt. Had she not once believed in him! Had she not spoken those words of trust and tenderness to him in a twilight church: "I will pray to Heaven that you become a great artist"? He felt again as though she did not think anything like as much of him as in days gone by. He felt troubled and asked her uncertainly: "You'll allow me, of course, to send you my violin sonata as soon as it is finished? You know I don't value anybody else's criticism as much as I do yours." And he thought: If I could only just keep her as a friend ... or win her over again ... as a friend ... is it possible? She said: "You have also spoken to me about a few new fantasies you have written just for the pianoforte." "Quite right; but they are not yet quite ready. But there's another one which I ... which I ..." he himself found his hesitations foolish--"composed last summer by the lake where that poor girl was drowned, Heinrich's mistress you know, which you don't know yet either. Couldn't I ... I'll play it to you quite gently; would you like me to?" She nodded and shut the door. There, just behind him, she stood motionless as he began. And he played. He played the little piece with all its passionate melancholy which he had composed by that lake of his, when Anna and the child had been completely forgotten. It was a great relief to him that he could play it to her. She must be bound to understand the message of these notes. It was impossible for her not to understand. He heard himself as it were speaking in the notes; he felt as though it was only now that he understood himself. Farewell, my love, farewell. It was very beautiful. And now it is over ... farewell, my love.... We have lived through what was fated for both of us. And whatever the future may hold for me and for you we shall always mean something to each other which we can neither of us ever forget. And now my life goes another way.... And yours too. It must be over ... I have loved you. I kiss your eyes.... I thank you, you kind, gentle, silent one. Farewell, my love ... farewell.... The notes died away. He had not looked up from the keys while he was playing: he now turned slowly round. She stood behind him solemn and with lips which quivered slightly. He caught her hands and kissed them. "Anna, Anna ..." he exclaimed. He felt as if his heart would break. "Don't quite forget me," she said softly. "I'll write to you as soon as I'm there again." She nodded. "And you'll write to me, too, Anna ... everything ... everything ... you understand?" She nodded again. "And ... and ... I'll see you again early to-morrow." She shook her head. He wanted to make some reply as though he were astonished--as if it were really a matter of course that he should see her again before his departure. She lightly lifted her hand as though requesting him to be silent. He stood up, pressed her to him, kissed her mouth, which was cool and did not answer his kiss, and left the room. She stayed behind standing with limp arms and shut eyes. He hurried down the stairs. He felt down below in the street as though he must go up again--and say to her: "But it's all untrue! That was not our goodbye. I really do love you. I belong to you. It can't be over...." But he felt that he ought not to. Not yet. Perhaps to-morrow. She would not escape him between this evening and to-morrow morning ... and he rushed aimlessly about the empty streets as though in a slight delirium of grief and freedom. He was glad he had made no appointments with any one and could remain alone. He dined somewhere far off in an old low smoky inn in a silent corner while people from another world sat at the neighbouring tables, and it seemed to him that he was in a foreign town: lonely, a little proud of his loneliness and a little frightened of his pride. The following day George was walking with Heinrich about noon through the avenues of the Dornbacher Park. An air which was heavy with thin clouds enveloped them, the sodden leaves crackled and slid underneath their feet, and through the shrubbery there glistened that very road on which they had gone the year before towards the reddish-yellow hill. The branches spread themselves out without stirring, as though oppressed by the distant sultriness of the greyish sun. Heinrich was just describing the end of his drama, which had occurred to him yesterday. Ägidius had been landed on the island ready after his death-journey to undergo within seven days his foretold doom. The prince gives him his life. Ägidius does not take it and throws himself from the cliffs into the sea. George was not satisfied: "Why must Ägidius die?" He did not believe in it. Heinrich could not understand the necessity for any explanation at all. "Why, how can he go on living?" he exclaimed. "He was doomed to death. It was with his hand before his eyes that he lived the most splendid, the most glorious days that have ever been vouchsafed to man as the uncontrolled lord upon the ship, the lover of the Princess, the friend of the sages, singers and star-gazers, but always with the end before his eyes. All this richness would, so to speak, lose its point: why, his sublime and majestic expectation of his last minute would be bound to become transformed in Ägidius's memory into a ridiculous dupe's fear of death, if all this death-journey were to turn out in the end to be an empty joke. That's why he must die." "Then you think it's true?" asked George, with even greater doubt than before. "I can't help it--I don't." "That doesn't matter," replied Heinrich. "If you thought it true now, things would be too easy for me. But it would have become true as soon as the last syllable of my piece is written. Or...." He did not go on speaking. They walked up a meadow, and soon the expanse of the familiar valley spread out at their feet. The Sommerhaidenweg gleamed on the hill-slope on their right, on the other side hard by the forest the yellow-painted inn was visible with its red wooden terraces, and not far off was the little house with the dark grey gable. The town could be descried in an uncertain haze, the plain floated still further towards the heights and far in the distance loomed the pale low drawn outlines of the mountains. They now had to cross a broad highway and at last a footpath took them down over the fields and meadows. Remote on either side slumbered the forest. George felt a presentiment of the yearning with which in the years to come, perhaps on the very next day, he would miss this landscape which had now ceased being his home. At last they stood in front of the little house with the gable which George had wanted to see one last time. The door and windows were boarded up; battered by the weather, as though grown old before its time, it stood there and had no truck with the world. "Well, so this is what is called saying goodbye," said George lightly. His look fell upon the clay figure in the middle of the faded flower-beds. "Funny," he said to Heinrich, "that I've always taken the blue boy for an angel. I mean I called him that, for I knew, of course, all the time what he looked like and that he was really a curly-headed boy with bare feet, tunic and girdle." "You will swear a year from to-day," said Heinrich, "that the blue boy had wings." George threw a glance up to the attic. He felt as though there existed a possibility of some one suddenly coming out on the balcony: perhaps Labinski who had paid him no visits since that dream; or he himself, the George von Wergenthin of days gone by; the George of that summer who had lived up there. Silly fancies. The balcony remained empty, the house was silent and the garden was deep asleep. George turned away disappointed. "Come," he said to Heinrich. They went and took the road to the Sommerhaidenweg. "How warm it's grown!" said Heinrich, took off his overcoat and threw it over his shoulder, as was his habit. George felt a desolate and somewhat arid sense of remembrance. He turned to Heinrich: "I'd prefer to tell you straight away. The affair is over." Heinrich threw him a quick side-glance and then nodded, not particularly surprised. "But," added George, with a weak attempt at humour, "you are earnestly requested not to think of the angel boy." Heinrich shook his head seriously. "Thank you. You can dedicate the fable of the blue boy to Nürnberger." "He's turned out right, once again," said George. "He always turns out right, my dear George. One can positively never be deceived if one mistrusts everything in the world, even one's own scepticism. Even if you had married Anna he would have turned out right ... or at any rate you would have thought so. But at any rate I think ... you don't mind my saying so, I suppose ... it's sound that it's turned out like this." "Sound? I've no doubt it is for me," replied George with intentional sharpness, as though he were very far from having any idea of sparing his conduct. "It was perhaps even a duty, in your sense of the term, Heinrich, which I owed to myself to bring it to an end." "Then it was certainly equally your duty to Anna," said Heinrich. "That remains to be seen. Who knows if I have not spoilt her life?" "Her life? Do you still remember Leo Golowski saying about her that she was fated to finish up in respectable life? Do you think, George, that a marriage with you would have been particularly respectable? Anna was perhaps cut out to be your mistress--not your wife. Who knows if the fellow she is going to marry one day or other wouldn't really have every reason to be grateful to you if only men weren't so confoundedly silly? People only have pure memories when they have lived through something--this applies to women quite as much as men." They walked further along the Sommerhaidenweg in the direction of the town, which towered out of the grey haze, and approached the cemetery. "Is there really any point," asked George hesitatingly, "in visiting the grave of a creature that has never lived?" "Does your child lie there?" George nodded. His child! How strange it always sounded! They walked along the brown wooden palings above which rose the gravestones and crosses, and then followed a low brick wall to the entrance. An attendant of whom they inquired showed them the way over the wide centre path which was planted with willows. There were rows of little oval plates, each one with two short prongs stuck into the ground, on little mounds like sand-castles, close to the planks in a fairly large plot of ground. The mound for which George was looking lay in the middle of the field. Dark red roses lay on it. George recognised them. His heart stood still. What a good thing, he thought, that we didn't meet each other! Did she hope to, I wonder? "There where the roses are?" asked Heinrich. George nodded. They remained silent for a while. "Isn't it a fact," asked Heinrich, "that during the whole time you never once thought of the possibility of its ending like this?" "Never? I don't quite know. All kinds of possibilities run through one's mind. But of course I never seriously thought of it. Besides, how could one?" He told Heinrich, and not for the first time, of how the Professor had explained the child's death. It had been an unfortunate accident through which one to two per cent. of unborn children were bound to perish. As to why this accident should have taken place in this particular case, that, of course, the Professor had not been able to explain. But was accident anything more than a word? Was not even that accident bound to have its cause? Heinrich shrugged his shoulders. "Of course.... One cause after the other and its final cause in the beginning of all things. We could of course prevent the happening of many so-called accidents if we had more perception, more knowledge and more power. Who knows if your child's death could not have been prevented at some moment or other?" "And perhaps it may have been in my own power," said George slowly. "I don't understand. Was there any premonitory symptom or...." George stood there staring fixedly at the little mound. "I'll ask you something, Heinrich, but don't laugh at me. Do you think it possible that an unborn child can die from one not longing for it to come, in the way one ought to--dying, as it were, of too little love?" Heinrich put his hand on his shoulder. "George, how does a sensible man like you manage to get hold of such metaphysical ideas?" "You can call it whatever you like, metaphysical or silly; for some time past I haven't been able to shake off the thought that to some extent I bear the blame for it having ended like that." "You?" "If I said a minute ago that I did not long for it enough I didn't express myself properly. The truth is this: that I had quite forgotten that little creature that was to have come into the world. In the last few weeks immediately before its birth, especially, I had absolutely forgotten it. I can't put it any differently. Of course I knew all the time what was going to happen, but it didn't concern me, as it were. I went on with my life without thinking of it. Not the whole time, but frequently, and particularly in the summer by the lake, my lake as you call it ... then I was.... Yes, when I was there I simply knew nothing about my going to have a child." "I've heard all about it," said Heinrich, looking past him. George looked at him. "You know what I mean then? I was not only far away from the child, the unborn child, but from the mother too, and in so strange a way that with the best will in the world I can't describe it to you, can't even understand it myself to-day. And there are moments when I can't resist the thought that there must have been some connection between that forgetting and my child's death. Do you think anything like that so absolutely out of the question?" Heinrich's forehead was furrowed deeply. "Quite out of the question? one can't go as far as that. The roots of things are often so deeply intertwined that we find it impossible to look right down to the bottom. Yes, perhaps there even are connections like that. But even if there are ... they are not for you, George! Even if such connections did exist they wouldn't count so far as you were concerned." "Wouldn't count for me?" "The whole idea which you just tell me, well, it doesn't fit in with my conception of you. It doesn't come out of your soul. Not a bit of it. An idea of that kind would never have occurred to you your whole life long if you hadn't been intimate with a person of my type, and if it hadn't been your way sometimes not to think your own thoughts but those of men who were stronger--or even weaker than you are. And I assure you, whatever turn your life may have taken even down by that lake, your lake ... our lake ... you haven't incurred any so-called guilt. It might have been guilt in the case of some one else. But with a man like you whose character--you don't mind my saying this--is somewhat frivolous and a little unconscientious there would certainly be no sense of guilt. Shall I tell you something? As a matter of fact you don't feel guilty about the child at all, but the discomfort which you feel only comes from your thinking yourself under an obligation to feel guilty. Look here, if I had gone through anything like your adventure I might perhaps have been guilty because I might possibly have felt myself guilty." "Would you have been guilty in a case like mine, Heinrich?" "No, perhaps I wouldn't. How can I know? You're probably now thinking of the fact that I recently drove a creature straight to her death and in spite of that felt, so to speak, quite guiltless." "Yes, that's what I'm thinking of. And that's why I don't understand...." Heinrich shrugged his shoulders. "Yes. I felt quite guiltless. Somewhere or other in my soul and somewhere else, perhaps deeper down, I felt guilty.... And deeper down still, guiltless again. The only question is how deep we look down into ourselves. And when we have lit the lights in all the storeys, why, we are everything at the same time: guilty and guiltless, cowards and heroes, fools and wise men. 'We'--perhaps that's putting it rather too generally. In your case, for example, George, there are far less of these complications, at any rate when you're outside the influence of the atmosphere which I sometimes spread around you. That's why, too, you are better off than I am--much better off. My look-out is ghastly, you know. You surely must have noticed it before. What's the good to me of the lights burning in all my storeys? What's the good to me of my knowledge of human nature and my splendid intelligence? Nothing.... Less than nothing. As a matter of fact there's nothing I should like better, George, than that all the ghastly events of the last months had not happened, just like a bad dream. I swear to you, George, I would give my whole future and God knows what if I could make it undone. But if it were undone ... then I should probably be quite as miserable as I am now." His face became distorted as though he wanted to scream. But immediately afterwards he stood there again, stiff, motionless, pale, as though all his fire had gone out. And he said: "Believe me, George, there are moments when I envy the people with a so-called philosophy of life. As for me, whenever I want to have a decently ordered world I have always first got to create one for myself. That's rather a strain for any one who doesn't happen to be the Deity." He sighed heavily. George left off answering him. He walked with him under the willows to the exit. He knew that there was no help for this man. It was fated that some time or other he should precipitate himself into the void from the top of a tower which he had circled up in spirals; and that would be the end of him. But George felt in good form and free. He made the resolve to use the three days which still belonged to him as sensibly as possible. The best thing to do was to be alone in some quiet beautiful country-side, to rest himself fully and recuperate for new work. He had taken the manuscript of the violin sonata with him to Vienna. He was thinking of finishing that before all others. They crossed the doorway and stood in the street. George turned round, but the cemetery wall arrested his gaze. It was only after a few steps that he had a clear view of the valley. All he could do now was to guess where the little house with the grey gables was lying; it was no longer visible from here. Beyond the reddish-yellow hills which shut off the view of the landscape the sky sank down in the faint autumn light. A gentle farewell was taking place within George's soul of much happiness and much sorrow, the echoes of which he heard as it were in the valley which he was now leaving for a long time; and at the same time there was within his soul the greeting of days as yet unknown, which rang to his youth from out the wideness of the world. [1] A pun on the word _Ehre_ which means honour. [2] Literally "sweet girl." The phrase was invented by Schnitzler himself. [3] A fashionable district in Vienna. 
44746	----	HOUSEHOLD STORIES FROM THE LAND OF HOFER OR, POPULAR MYTHS OF TIROL, INCLUDING THE ROSE-GARDEN OF KING LAREYN. BY THE AUTHOR OF "PATRAÑAS; OR, SPANISH STORIES," &c. WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY T. GREEN. LONDON: GRIFFITH AND FARRAN, SUCCESSORS TO NEWBERY AND HARRIS, CORNER OF ST. PAUL'S CHURCHYARD. MDCCCLXXI. LONDON: GILBERT AND RIVINGTON, PRINTERS, ST. JOHN'S SQUARE. CONTENTS. PAGE Introduction 1 Norg Myths 13 1. The Eggshells 14 2. The Reckoning Day 15 3. Fritzl and the Tarnkappe 22 4. The Rose-garden of King Lareyn 26 Myths of North and South Tirol. The Nickel of the Röhrerbüchel 73 The Wilder Jäger and the Baroness 110 The Grave Prince and the Beneficent Cat 131 Klein-Else 158 Prince Radpot 188 The Three Black Dogs 207 Ottilia and the Death's Head 217 The Two Caskets 229 The Prudent Counsellor 235 The Geeseherds 253 St. Peter's Three Loaves 265 Myths of Wälsch-Tirol. The two Cousins of St. Peter 273 Luxehale's Wives (including the Legends of the Marmolata) 278 Zovanin Senza Paura; or, the Boy who went out to discover Fear 335 The Dove-Maiden 356 Myths of Vorarlberg. Kriselda 386 The Golden Pears 394 How the Poorest became the Richest 403 HOUSEHOLD STORIES FROM THE LAND OF HOFER. INTRODUCTION. "Blessed are the people of whom history is silent; for history occupies itself more with the doings of fools than of the wise; with storms than with tranquil days: it immortalizes the butcher and the tyrant, and consigns to oblivion the innocent and peaceful."--Cibrario. Something of the deep, strong attachment to their native mountains which is innate in the children of the Alps steals over me when I think of my pleasant journeyings in Tirol [1]. Though it is a little, out-of-the-way country whose cry is seldom heard in the newspapers, though it exercises little influence in political complications, the character of its people is one which, next after that of our own, has a claim to our esteem and admiration. Hardy, patient, and persevering; patriotic and loyal to a fault; honest and hospitable to a proverb--they carry the observance of their religion into the minutest practice of every-day life; and there underlies all these more solid qualities a tender, poetical, romantic spirit which throws a soft halo round their ceaseless toil, and invests their heroic struggles for independence with a bright glow of chivalry. Surrounded from their earliest years with living pictures of Nature's choicest forms and colouring, they need no popular fiction to cultivate their imagination, no schools of design to educate their taste. Shut out from the world's ambitions by their pathless Alps, they have learned to see before them two aims alone,--to maintain the integrity and the sanctity of their humble homes on earth, and to obtain one day a place in that better Home above, to which the uplifted fingers of their sun-bathed mountain-peaks ever gloriously point. The paramount claims on their hearts' allegiance of the hearth and the altar are inseparably interwoven in their social code, and their creed scarcely knows of a distinction between Nature and Nature's God. At their mother's knee they have learnt, every one, to prattle of their Father in heaven with as complete a realization of His existence as of that of their father on earth. Just as they receive their toil-won food and raiment as an earnest of the paternal care of the one, the change of the seasons, the sunshine and the rain, betoken to them as certainly that of the Other. They scarcely trace any line of demarcation between the natural and the supernatural; and earth and sky are not for them the veil which hides Divinity, but the very temple and shrine of the Godhead dwelling among His creatures. Going forth in this simple faith through the pure, unfogged atmosphere which surrounds them, it is scarce to be wondered at if they can trace the guiding footprints and the unerring hand of Providence where for others are only chances and coincidences. Or that--like the faint outline of wished-for land revealing itself to the trained eye of the sailor, where the landsman sees but a hopeless expanse of sky and ocean--they should recognize a personal will and individuality in the powers which are the messengers to them of the good pleasure of Heaven, in the germination of fruit and grain, in the multiplication of their flocks and herds; or of the envious malice of the Evil One, in the wind and the lightning, the torrent and the avalanche, destroying the work of their hands. It is necessary to bear this well in mind, or we shall not appreciate the delights which their fantastic tales have in store for us. We must learn to realize that this way of viewing things has created a nomenclature, almost a language, of its own. When the boisterous blast sweeps through their valleys, scattering the scent of the wild game, and driving them far out of their reach, they say it is the Wilder Jäger [2], the Beatrìk [3], or the Nachtvolk [4], on his chase. Their restless energies, pent up within the shelter of their rattling walls and casements, invest him with a retinue of pitiless followers and fiery-eyed hounds--while the fate of some who have ventured out while he is said to be abroad, blown over precipices or lost in crevasses, is expressed by the fancy that his train is closed by a number of empty pairs of shoes, which run away with those who come within his influence. When the bright beams of sun and moon enliven their landscape, or fructify their seed, or guide their midnight way, they fable of them as beautiful maidens with all sorts of fanciful names derived from associations as old as the world: Perahta, brightness, daughter of Dagha, the daylight--hence, also, Perchtl and Berchtl. In other localities, Holda or Hulda; in others again, they are known as Angane, and Enguane, the Saligen Fraüelein, Nornen, Zarger Fraüelein, and Weissen Fraüelein. They say they smile on the overburdened peasant, beguile his labour by singing to him, show him visions of beautiful landscapes, bestow wonderful gifts--loaves which never diminish, bowls and skittles, charcoal and corn of pure gold; to the husbandman they give counsels in his farming; to the good housewife an unfailing store--bobbins of linen thread which all her weaving never exhausts; they help the youth or the maiden to obtain the return of the love they have longed for, and have some succour in store for every weary soul. Such helpers the people recognize of the masculine gender, also, in the so-called Nörgl, Pechmannl, Pützl, Wiehtmännlein, Käsermännlein, and Salvanel; for possibly, they say, not all the angels who rebelled with Lucifer may have been cast into the outer darkness. There may have been some not so evilly disposed themselves, but talked over and led astray by others; and such, arrested in their descent by a merciful reprieve, may have been only banished to the desolate and stony places of the earth, to tops of barren mountains and fruitless trees. Such as these might be expected to entertain a friendly feeling for the human beings who inhabit the regions which gave them shelter, and to be ready to do them a good turn when it lay in their way--lift weights, and carry burdens for them up the steep heights, and protect their wild game. And, also, it is not inconsistent with their nature to love to play them a mischievous trick full oft--make off with the provision of loaves prepared for the mowers; sit, while remaining invisible, on their sledges and increase their difficulty and confusion in crossing the mountain-paths lost in snow; entice them into the woods with beseeching voices, and then leave them to wander in perplexity; overturn the farm-maids' creaming-pans; roll the Senner's cheeses down the mountain sides. Worse tricks than these are those of the Wilder Mann. When the soil is sterile and ungrateful; when any of the wonted promises of nature are unfulfilled; when the axe of the lonely woodman rebounds from the stubborn trunk and wounds him; when the foot of the practised mountain-climber fails him on the crisp snow, or the treacherously sun-parched heather; when a wild and lawless wight (for such there are even in Tirol, though fewer, perhaps, than elsewhere) illtreats the girl who has gone forth to tend her father's flock upon the mountains, trusting in her own innocence and Heaven's help for her protection--it is always the Wilder Mann--in some places called the Wilder Jörgel, in others, the Lorg, the Salvang or Gannes, the Klaubaut or Rastalmann, in Vorarlberg, Fengg, Schrättlig, Doggi, and Habergâss--to whose account the misfortune or the misdeed is laid. His female counterpart is called Trude and Stampa, and the Langtüttin. The mineral riches of the country, and the miners occupied in searching for them, are told of as of hidden treasure sought after or revealed, as the case may be, by the Bergweib and the Bergmannlein, or Erdmannlein, the Venedigermannlein and the Hahnenkekerle, the stories of whose strength and generosity, cupidity and spite, are endless; while the mountain echoes are the voices of sprites playfully imitating the sounds of human life. If the mountains and the forests are thus treated, neither are the lakes and torrents without their share of personification, and many are the legends in which the uses and beauties of the beneficent element are interpreted to be the smiles and the helpful acts of the Wasserfraülein, while the mischances which occur at the water's edge are ascribed to the Stromkarl and the Brückengeist. The sudden convulsions of nature to which their soil has been subject from age to age are all charged with retribution for the sins of the people, like the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities of the plain. Castles and forest possessions of wicked rich men are sunk beneath the waters of lakes so that their foundations may never again be set up, and their place be no more found; while a curse pursues those who attempt to dig out the ill-gotten treasure. Villages are recorded to have been swallowed by the earth or buried by the snow-storms when their people have neglected the commandments of God. This literal adaptation of the admonitions of Holy Writ receives among this people another development in traditions of instances where good deeds done to the poor have been believed to have been actually done to visions of our Lord and of His Saints. Then again, their devout belief in both the irresistible justice and the ineffable love of God convinces them that there must be a place on earth where souls too soiled for heaven, yet not given over to utter reprobation, may wander till the final day of rest. And thus every shepherd, as he keeps his lonely watch upon the Alpine pastures, expects that he may meet the feurige Sennin who broke the Sunday rest; or the Tscheier Friedl who was cruel to the cattle in his charge; or the büssender Hirt who stole the widow's kine; or the Markegger who removed his neighbour's landmark; or the Pungga-Mannl who swore a false oath; or the feuriger Verräther who betrayed the mountain pass to the Roman legions. On the other hand, the heroes and types of the Christian faith are thought of as taking a perpetual interest in the welfare of their struggling brethren: St. Nothburga and St. Isidore watch over the husbandman, and St. Urban over the vinedresser; St. Martin over the mower; St. Martha, St. Sebastian, and St. Rocchus, the drei Pestschutzheiligen [5], are expected to be as potent in their intercession now as when at their prayers, when on earth, plagues were stayed. St. Anthony and St. Florian similarly protect against fire. St. Vigilius, the evangelizer of the country and martyr to his zeal, is still believed to guard its jealously-preserved unity of faith. In return, they receive special veneration: the ordinary dealings of life are regulated by the recurrence of their festivals, and the memory of sacred mysteries is kept in perpetual honour by setting up their tokens in every homestead and every house, in every vineyard and in every field, on every bridge and by every wayside. It is not surprising that a people so minded have tales to tell of wonderful events which seem to have befallen them, and which take the record of their lives out of the prosaic monotony which rules our own,--tales always bearing a wholesome moral lesson, always showing trust in Providence and faith in the World Unseen, and always told with the charming simplicity which only a logically grounded expectation that events should turn out even so--and no invention or imagination--can give. A selection of these tales I have put into English dress in the following pages. Though some few of them may be found to bear analogy with similar tales of other German nations, the distinctive qualities of the Tirolese, and the peculiar nature of the scenery amid which they have been conceived, will be found to have stamped them with a character entirely their own. I think that what I have said is sufficient to give, to such of my readers as did not possess it already, the key to their application, and I need not now append to each a tedious interpretation of the fantastic personages and scenes I shall have to introduce. It remains only to say a word as to their distribution. The present principality of Tirol is composed of four provinces. North Tirol, South Tirol, Wälsch or Italian Tirol, and Vorarlberg. North and South Tirol have been for long so closely united that, like their language and customs, their mythology has become so intimately intermingled that it scarcely comes within the scope of a work like the present to point out their few divergences or local peculiarities. But those of Wälsch Tirol and Vorarlberg each maintain a much more distinctive character, and I have accordingly marked with a separate heading those which I have gathered thence. "The Rose-garden of King Lareyn," however, is not the peculiar property of any one province. Though the three places which claim to occupy its site are all placed in South Tirol, this pretty myth is the common property of the whole country--its chief popular epic--and has even passed into the folklore of other parts of Germany also. It is beside the purpose of the present little work to enter into the controversy which has been raised concerning the authorship. There can be little doubt, however, that it was originally the utterance of some unknown minstrel putting into rough-and-ready rhyme one of the floating myths which symbolized the conflict of the heroes with the powers of evil, so popular in the middle ages. Then poets of more pretensions wrote out, and, as they wrote out, improved the song. Thus there are several different manuscripts of it extant, of between two and three thousand lines each, but not of equal value, for later scribes, in trying to improve, overlaid the simple energy of its diction with a feeble attempt at ornament which only served to damage its force. The name of the Norg-king who is the subject of it, is in these spelt variously, as Lareyn, Luarin, Luarine, &c.; the modern orthography is Laurin. The spelling I have adopted is that of the Chronicon of Aventinus. I have thought it well to precede the story by some account of the Norg folk and some samples of their legends, that the reader may not come wholly unacquainted with their traditional character to the tale of the discomfiture of the last Norg-king. NORG MYTHS. The Norgen were a mighty folk in olden time in Tirol. In their span-high bodies resided a power which no child of man, were he ever so stalwart and well-limbed, could resist. But they were also for the most part a peaceable race, and more inclined to assist than to obstruct the industrious inhabitants of the country in their labours; so long as they were treated with respect and deference they seldom interfered with any one. Then they were generally scrupulously honourable, and strict keepers of their word. A service rendered one of them was sure to be repaid a hundredfold. An injury brought a corresponding retribution, and scorn, contempt, or ridicule roused their utmost vengeance; while some there were who entertained a true spirit of mischief, and indulged in wanton tricks which showed their character was not altogether free from malice. They were most often to be met in lonely paths and unfrequented fastnesses of nature, but a solitary Nörglein could also occasionally stray within the haunts of men, at times asking hospitality at their hands, and at others getting into the bedrooms at night, and teasing the children in their sleep, hence the common proverb-- "Shut the door closely to, Or the Norg will come through [6]." And at other times, again, they would take part in the field and household labours, as if they found it sport. The name of Norg was chiefly appropriated to them in South Tirol; in Vorarlberg the analogous cobbold went by the name of Rutschifenggen. Every locality, every valley, every hamlet, and almost every farm, had its own familiar dwarf whose doings were handed down as household words. Thus it is told that there was once a countrywoman, who lived in a lonely Meierhof [7] of the Passeierthal, standing over her stove, preparing a pancake for her husband's dinner, and as he was a great eater she used an immense number of eggs--three dozen and more--in his pancake: as fast as she broke the eggs into the pan, she threw the shells behind her. Three Norgs came by as she was so occupied and amused themselves with playing with them and arranging them into all kinds of patterns. The Meierin [8] was a grumpy sort of woman, and instead of finding pleasure in the glee of the little people, grew cross with them, and scattered the dirty black ashes among the egg-shells they had arranged so prettily. Offended at this ill-natured treatment, the Norgs took their departure, but first laid the thread of the good wife's spinning-bobbin as a snare across the floor, and then stationed themselves outside the window to see what happened. Presently the husband called to know if the pancake was not ready, and the Meierin, running to satisfy him, with both hands engaged in holding the dish of the enormous pancake, caught her feet in the thread, and fell flat on the ground with her face in the dish, while the three Norgs completed her vexation by setting up a loud laugh in chorus. Here is another story of their doings, in which they play a different part. There was a storm in the valley of Matsch, and a storm in the valley of Matsch is often a terrible matter. This was one of the worst: the pitiless flood streamed down the heights, and threatened to overflow the banks of the Hochseen [9]; the wind from the glacier howled dismally over the mountain-sides; the people closed their doors and shutters against the blast, and listened to the roar of the elements, trembling with the thought that every moment might come the signal of the inundation which should carry them and their habitations away in its torrent. In the solidest and most important house of the straggling village, which bears the same name as the valley, was gathered the family of the richest man of the place, who had no reason to share these fears, but with singing and lively conversation chased away the dismal influence of the lugubrious sounds without. Suddenly, between the angry gusts of wind, a doleful voice was heard piteously praying for help. One of the party opened the casement, and looked out, but with more of curiosity than interest, and then quickly closing it again, came back into the room with a laugh to describe the ludicrous figure he had seen. It was a little mannikin with a beard big enough for a full-grown man, his clothes drenched with the rain, and slung over his shoulder a tiny bundle tied in a handkerchief, which yet seemed to bow him down with its weight. The description provoked a chorus of laughter, and the wretched little Norg--for it was a Norg--would have been no more thought of but that his wail became more irritating than that of the wind, and at last the master of the house got up and shouted to him to go on, for it was useless to stand droning there, he was not going to open his house at that time of night, or to such a ridiculous object. But though he banged the window to as closely as possible after delivering himself of this speech, the little man's menacing couplet yet reached his ear-- "The reckoning day Is not far away [10]." Nevertheless the Norg begged no more, but endeavoured to pass on his way. He could not get far: the torrents of rain had obliterated the path which led from the rising ground on which this house was built, to the next, and it was scarcely safe to descend in the dark with the loose stones rattling away under the feet. Fortunately a glimmering light betrayed a low hut built into the slope. It looked so poor and humble, that the Norg felt ashamed to ask aught of its inhabitants, who could scarcely have had enough for their own needs; but when he saw how utterly forlorn was his position, he sat down on a stone, and wept. Notwithstanding that the poor little Norg had such a hoarse voice that it was more like that of a wild animal than a man, there was a compassionate little maid within who perceived it was a voice of distress, and put her head out to ask who was there. "Poor old man!" she cried; "come inside and dry yourself, and let me give you something warm." But before he could answer he heard a weak voice within, "Beware, Theresl, of the wolves--remember we are in 'Matsch der Wölfe Heimath [11].'" "Never fear, mother dear," replied the maiden, "this is no wolf, but a very distressed little old man, who does not look as if he could harm any one; and besides we are now in June--the wolves don't threaten us in the summer," and she opened the door, and let in the little man. By the time she had dried his clothes and fed him with some warm soup, the worst of the storm had abated, and he was able to go on his way. The maiden offered him shelter for the night, but he declared he must reach home before midnight, and prepared to depart. Before he left he asked her what there was she most desired. "Oh, that my mother be restored to health!" answered Theresa; "I desire nothing more than that!" The Norg walked to the bedside, and informed himself of the nature of the sick mother's illness. "Your mother shall be cured," said the little man; "but you must come to me to-morrow at midnight to the Nörgelspitz;" and as the girl started at the impossibility of the feat, he continued, "You have only to make your way as far as the Wetterkreuz, and there call three times 'Kruzinegele! Kruzinegele! Kruzinegele!' and I will be at your side, and take you up the rest of the way." And he took his departure, singing,-- "Morgen oder Heut Kommt die Zahlzeit." The next night Theresa courageously set out on her way, and climbed as far as the Wetterkreuz--and it was lucky she had to go no farther, for here she sank down quite exhausted. She had not lain there many seconds when she saw a procession of little men just like Kruzinegele, with a litter and torches, who carried her up till they came to a door in the rock, which opened at their approach. This led to a magnificent crystal hall glittering with gold and gems, and on a gold throne sat Kruzinegele himself, with his fair daughter by his side. When the litter was brought to the steps of the throne, he came down courteously, and renewed his thanks for her hospitality, but she could not find a word to say, in her astonishment at seeing him so changed. Meantime he sent his daughter to fetch the herbs which were to cure the poor mother, and gave them to her, telling her how to administer them. "You see," he added,-- "Morgen oder Heut Kommt die Zahlzeit; and your rich neighbour will find it so too." Then he told the little men to carry her home, and they laid her in the litter, and bore her away; and she remembered nothing more till she found herself comfortably in bed, with the rising sun kissing her cheeks. But the appearance of every thing was as much changed as Kruzinegele himself had been! The walls that used to bulge, and reek with mildew and damp, were straight and smooth; glass casements replaced the ricketty shutters; nice white curtains tempered the sunshine; the scanty and broken furniture was replaced by new. But what she valued above all, in her hand were the herbs which were to make her mother's healing drink! Their decoction was her first occupation; and by the next day they had restored her mother to health, and joy once more reigned in the cottage, thanks to the Norg! It had been the rich churl's custom, equally with the other villagers, to take his cattle on to the mountain pastures to graze for the beginning of the summer season am Johanni [12]. His grazing ground was just the highest pasture of the Nörgelspitz. The festival now soon arrived, and the picturesque processions of cattle with their herds went lowing forth as usual, to enjoy their summer feed. When the Norg's enemy, however, arrived at his destination, instead of the emerald slopes he was wont to find, with their rich yield of marbel and maim [13], all ready prepared by St. Martin's care [14] for the delight of his cows and sheep, all was stony and desolate! Three days they spent wandering about in search of a few blades to browse, but even this was denied them--nor ever again did the Nörgelspitz bring forth any thing but ice and snow! Of the sleek droves which had started, the envy of all beholders, few beasts lived to return; the prosperity of the once flourishing Hof had fled, and before many years were out its proprietor was obliged to leave it, a ruined man. Theresa had in the meantime married a thrifty peasant, whose industry enabled him to be the purchaser of the abandoned Hof, which he soon stocked to the full extent of former days. Ofttimes a curious grey-bearded little stranger would drop in at night to share their comfortable meal, and before he went away he would always sing his couplet-- "Morgen oder Heut Kommt die Zahlzeit." Such occasional apparitions of the strange visitants excited the curiosity of the inhabitants of the earth to the utmost, and many a weird story was told of frightful injury happening to those who had striven to penetrate their retreat, and for a long period none had any success in the enterprise. It happened one day, however, that a daring hunter who had been led far from his usual track, and far from the country with which he was familiar, by the pursuit of a gemsbock, found himself at the entrance of a low-arched cavern. As night was about to fall and the sky wore a threatening aspect, he was glad to creep within this shelter till the light of morning should enable him to find his way home once more. He had not proceeded far within the dim corridor, when he perceived that in proportion as he got farther from the light of day the cave became brighter instead of darker! Eagerly seeking the cause of this phenomenon, he perceived that the walls were all encrusted with gold and precious stones, which emitted constant sparkles of light. He thereby recognized at once that he had reached an approach to one of the resorts of the Mountain-folk, as the Norgs were also called from having their habitation in the hearts of the mountains. To avoid the fate of those who had ventured within the mysterious precincts, he was about to make good his escape, when he felt something soft under his feet. It proved to be a red hood or cap, dropped there by one of the Mountain-folk, a veritable Tarnkappe which had the property of making the wearer invisible to men, and also enabled him to command admission to any part of the subterranean settlement. He had scarcely placed it on his head when one of the little men of the mountain came running up to look for his lost cap. Fritzl the hunter was much too cunning to give up the advantage of its possession, but with great good humour he told the dwarf he reckoned it too great an advantage to have the opportunity of visiting his beautiful territory to give it up for nothing; but he assured him he should have no reason to regret having given him admission. The dwarf could not choose but obey, and the Jäger enjoyed the singular privilege of surveying all the hidden treasures of the underground world. Beautiful are the glories of the mountain world as seen by mortal eyes--gorgeous its colours when illumined by the southern sun, but all this is as barren darkness compared with the glories hidden within its stony recesses. Here, the sky overhead was all of diamonds and sapphires and carbuncles, and their light sparkled with tenfold glory and beauty to the light of the sun and moon and stars; the trees were of living gold and silver, and the flowers and fruit of precious stones; the grass all of crystal and emerald; there was no cold or heat, no perplexing change of season, but one perpetual spring spread its balmy air around; lakes there were all of opal and mother-o'-pearl, and gorgeously plumed swans perpetually crossing them served the inhabitants in lieu of boats. The Jäger's delight and admiration at all these sights won the sympathy and regard of his guide, and by degrees he grew more communicative, and explained to him the whole economy of their mode of life. He showed him how they were divided into three distinct classes: those wearing red caps, who were gay and good-natured, and filled with goodwill towards mankind also, notwithstanding many wild pranks; those with brown caps, whose mischief was mingled with malice rather than fun, but who yet would suffer themselves to be propitiated; and those with black caps, always gloomy and morose, who boded evil wherever they went. His guide advised him to have nothing to say to these, but with some of the red and brown he was admitted to converse: he found them pleasant and sociable, and ready enough to communicate their ideas. Some asked him questions, too, about various matters which seemed to have puzzled them in their peregrinations on earth, while others, who had never been outside their own habitations, had other inquiries to make--but some there were also who had no curiosity on the subject, but rather contempt; and one thing that amused the Jäger in them was their incapacity to conceive many of the things he had to tell them, and particularly to understand what he could mean when he talked about death. Chiefly to keep the spiteful freaks of the black-caps in check there was a guard of warrior dwarfs, whose array was shown to our Jäger. Formidable they must have been, for the armour of each was made out of one diamond, and they wore helmets and greaves and shields all of diamonds, and while they were thus impervious to every attack, their swords were of diamond too, and resistless therefore in their thrusts. The Jäger could not restrain his raptures at their gorgeous show, as the colours of the gems around were reflected in this shining armour. The dwarf had nothing left to show after this, but then stood and sighed over the glories of the past. "And what were the glories of the past?" inquired the Jäger, with intense interest. The dwarf watched his interlocutor closely, and satisfied himself that his interest was not feigned. Then he paused long, as hesitating whether to unburden himself to a stranger of the sad thoughts which crowded into and oppressed his mind. A few words of sympathy, however, decided him at last "Yes, we still have some power and some riches left, and some of our ancient strength, but we have lost our kings, the kernel of our strength. It is true, we are able to surprise you with isolated exhibitions of riches and power, but, on the whole, your people has got the better of ours; and since your heroes of old destroyed the last of our royal race, we have been a doomed, disorganized, dwindling race, fast disappearing from our ancient fastnesses." "And how happened it that our people got the better of yours? How did our heroes destroy your royal race? I pray you tell me." The dwarf led the Jäger into a delicious alcove of the opal rock, whose pure, pale lustre seemed more in accordance with his melancholy mood than the garish brilliancies that had hitherto surrounded them. They laid them down on the bank, and the dwarf thus recounted the story. THE ROSE-GARDEN OF LAREYN, THE LAST NORG-KING. The lineage of our kings had endured for countless generations, he said, and had always enjoyed the undeviating homage of our people. In our kings were bound up our life and our strength; they were the fountain of our light and the guardians of our power. The royal race was a race apart which had never mingled with the race of the governed, yet which had never failed or been found wanting. But Adelgar cast his eyes on Hörele, one of the Norginnen of the common herd, and raised her to share his throne. The union not only was unblessed--what was worse, all the rest of the royal stock died out, and all the noble princes of his first marriage died away one after the other [15]; and when Hörele at last came to die herself, there was only one left. This was Lareyn, the last of his race. Adelgar looked around him with tears, for there was none left to whom he could marry his son, and he had experienced in himself the ill effects of departing from the ancient tradition which forbade him from mingling his race with the race of the governed, and he bewailed his folly. But Lareyn bethought him of a remedy; he determined to go out into the outer world, and choose him a wife among the daughters of its inhabitants, and bring her to reign over the mountain people and continue the royal stock. In a supreme council of the elders of the kingdom it was decided to approve what he proposed. But Adelgar only consented with much reluctance, and accompanied his permission with many conditions and counsels, the chief of which were that Lareyn and his suite should every one go forth clothed in a Tarnhaut [16], and that he should exercise his choice in a far distant country where the ways of the dwarfs were not known, and where, whatever might befall, no friend of the bride could think of coming to his palace to seek her, for the old king rightly judged that the Christian folk would not willingly give a daughter of theirs to the Norgs. Lareyn promised his father to attend to his injunctions, and gave orders to prepare a thousand suits of diamond armour for his body-guard, and five hundred suits of silk attire for his pages, who were to bear the gifts with which he meant to captivate the maiden of his choice, and Tarnhauts to cover them all--and, above all, the presents themselves of jewels and priceless goldsmith's works, at which the Norgen were very expert. While all these things were being got ready Adelgar died, and Lareyn succeeded to the crown. However much he desired to adhere to his father's injunctions, he was forced to decide that under the altered circumstances it could not be well for him to journey to a distance from his kingdom, and to leave it long without a head. He determined, therefore, to search the neighbourhood for a maiden that should please him. In the meantime he made use of his newly acquired power to prepare a dwelling to receive her which should correspond with the magnificence of his presents, and by its dazzling lustre should make her forget all that she might be inclined to regret in her earlier home. The highest title of honour was now promised to whoso of his subjects could point out to him an unexplored mine of beauty and riches. This was found in a vault all of crystal, which no foot of dwarf had ever trod. Lareyn was beside himself with gladness when he saw this; he ordered a hundred thousand dwarfs immediately to set to work and form of it a residence for his bride; to divide it into chambers for her use, with walls and columns encrusted with gold; to engrave the crystal with pleasing devices; and to furnish it with all that was meet for her service. Thus arose the great Krystallburg [17] ever famous in the lays of the Norgs, and which the cleverest and richest of the children of men might have envied. That so glorious a palace might be provided with a garden worthy of it, hundreds of thousands of other dwarfs were employed to lay out the choicest beds and bowers that ever were seen, all planted with roses of surpassing beauty, whose scent filled the air for miles round, so that, wherever you might be, you should know by the fragrant exhalation where to find the Rosengarten of King Lareyn [18]. Engrossed with these congenial preparations, Lareyn forgot all his prudence and moderation: that they might be completed with all possible expedition the whole working community of the dwarfs was drawn off from their ordinary occupations; the cultivation of the land was neglected, and a famine threatened. Lareyn then would go out and make a raid on the crops of the children of earth, and take possession of whatever was required for the needs of his own people, without regard for the outcry raised against him, knowing that, strong in his supernatural strength, he had no retaliation to fear. While thus he pursued his ravages every where with indiscriminating fury, he one day came upon the arativo [19] of a poor widow whose only son was her one support. The golden grain had been gathered into her modest barn just as Lareyn and his marauders came by; swift, like a flock of locusts, they had seized the treasure. The widow sobbed, and her stalwart son fought against them in vain; Lareyn was inexorable. At another time the good-nature of his Norg blood would have prompted him at least to repay what he had appropriated in the gold and precious stones of which he had such abundant store, but now he thought of nothing but the prompt fulfilment of his darling design; and he passed on his way unheeding the widow's curse. At last the Krystallburg was complete, and the Rosengarten budding ready to burst into a bloom of beauty. To so fair a garden he would have no other fence but a girdle of silk, only he gave it for further defence a law whereby any who should violate that bound should forfeit his left foot and his right hand. Lareyn looked round, and his heart was content. He felt satisfied now that he had wherewithal to make any daughter of earth forget her own home and her father's people, how delightful soever might have been the place of her previous sojourn. Donning his Tarnhaut, he went forth with his followers marshalled behind him, all equally hidden from human sight. He wandered from castle to castle, from Edelsitz [20] to Edelsitz, from palace to palace, but nowhere found he the bride of his heart, till he came to the residence of the Duke of Styria. Here, in a garden almost as lovely as his own Rose-garden, he found a number of noble knights assembled, and their ladies, all of surpassing beauty, taking their pleasure on the greensward amid the flowers. Lareyn had never seen so much beauty and gallantry, and he lingered long with his attendant wights running from one to another, and scanning the attractions of each, as a bee hovers from flower to flower, gathering the honey from their lips. Each maiden was so perfect, that he would have been content with any one of them, but each was so guarded by her cavalier that he saw no way of approaching her; at last, driven to despair, he wandered away under the shade of a lonesome grove. Here, under a leafy lime [21], his eye met a form of loveliness which surpassed the loveliness of all the dames he had heretofore seen put together, and he felt thankful now that he had not been able to possess himself of any of them, for then he had never seen her who now lay before him in all the bloom of her virgin perfection. Lareyn, accustomed to associate his conceptions of beauty with a dazzling blaze of gold and jewels, found an entirely new source of admiration in the simple attire of the Styrian princess, for it was Simild, daughter of Biterolf, Duke of Styria, who lay before him, seeking rest amid the midday heat, draped only in virgin white, with wreathed lilies for her single ornament. Lareyn stood absorbed for some time in contemplation of her perfect image. Then, hearing the voices of her companions drawing near, quickly he flung a Tarnhaut over her, so that they trooped by, searching for her, and passed on--seeing her not--to seek her farther. Then he beckoned to the bearers of a litter he had prepared in readiness to approach, into which her sylph-like form was soon laid; and over hill and dale he carried her towards the Rosengarten. They had got some way before Simild woke. Lareyn rode by her side, watching for her eyes to open, and the moment she gave signs of consciousness he made a sign for the cortége to halt. Quick as thought a refection was laid out on the greensward, while a band of Norg musicians performed the most delicious melody. Simild, enraptured with the new sights and sounds, gazed around, wondering where she was and what all the little creatures could be who hopped around ministering to her with so much thoughtfulness. Lareyn hastened to soothe her, but fancying that some of the Norgs were wanting in some of their due services to her, he rated them in such a positive tone of command that Simild began to perceive that he was the master of this regiment of ministrants, and hence she inferred that by some mysterious means she had fallen into his power; but what those means could be she was at a loss to conceive. Lareyn now displayed his presents, and in presenting them poured forth the most enthusiastic praise of her beauty. Simild's vanity and curiosity were both won; yet the strangeness of the situation, the sudden separation from her friends, her ignorance of what might be going to befall her, roused all her fears, and she continued to repeat in answer to all his protestations of admiration that she could listen to nothing from him till he had restored her to her home. "This is the one thing, sweet princess, that I cannot do at your bidding," he replied. "Whatever else you desire me to do shall be instantly executed. And it is hardly possible for you to exhaust my capacity of serving you." Then he went on to describe the magnificence and riches of his kingdom, and all the glories over which, as his bride, she would be called to reign, till her curiosity was so deeply excited, and her opposition to his carrying her farther grew so faint, that he lost no time in taking advantage of her mood to pursue the journey. In the meantime the greatest consternation had fallen on all the friends of Simild. The maidens whose duty it was to wait on her sought her every where, and not finding her they were afraid to appear before her father. The knights and nobles who had been in her company were distracted, feeling the duty upon them to restore her, and not knowing which way to begin. The old Duke Biterolf shut himself up within the palace and wept, objecting to see any one, for his heart was oppressed with sorrow; and he refused to be comforted till his child should be restored to him. But Dietlieb, Simild's brother, a stout young sword [22], when he had exhausted every counsel that occurred to him for discovering his sister's retreat, determined to ride to Gardenna on the Garda-See, the castle where resided Hildebrand [23] the Sage, renowned for wisdom, and prudence, and useful counsel. When Hildebrand the Sage saw him come riding yet a long way off, he said to those who stood beside him on the battlements, "See Dietlieb the Styrian, how he rides! His heart is full of indignation. Up, my men, there is work for us; some one has done him a great wrong, and us it behoves to stand by him, and see him righted." Ute, Hildebrand's wife, and her daughters prepared a warm welcome for the prince, as was due; and the heroes gathered round Hildebrand held out their hands to him as to one whose integrity and valour claimed their respect. Hildebrand himself led him to his chamber, and left to no maiden the task of helping him off with his armour [24], but with his own hand lifted off his helmet and laid by his good shield. Then they placed refreshing wine from the cool cellar in the rock before him, and a banquet of many dishes, as became so worthy a guest. When the tables had been removed [25], Hildebrand invited his young guest to detail the cause which had brought him. Dietlieb, who was burning to tell the story of his mishap, poured out the details of his sister's misadventure, without omitting the smallest incident which could serve Hildebrand to form an opinion as to the remedy to be adopted. The event was so strange that Hildebrand himself could not venture all at once to divine the nature of the injury. But he forbore also to express his perplexity, lest the bold young Styrian should be discouraged. Without therefore expounding exactly what his views were, but determining to ponder the matter more deeply by the way, the advice he propounded in the first instance was, that they should all repair forthwith to seek the aid of Berndietrich [26]. The counsel was received with joyful acclamation; and loud was the clanging as every one ran to don his chain-armour, for all were glad to be called to deeds of high emprise, and such they deemed were in store for them if Dietrich von Bern was to be their leader. Ute and her daughters, to whom their courage and mettle was well known, greeted them as they went forth with no sinking hearts, but gave them augury of good success. As they journeyed along, they came to a broad heath, which they were about to pass over with their train, when up sprang a man of forlorn aspect, who cried after Hildebrand, and asked his aid. Hildebrand, seeing him in such sorry plight, turned aside out of compassion, to ask what had befallen him. It was no other than the peasant--the widow's son--whom Lareyn had so deeply wronged, and, seeing the heroes go forth in such brave array, he besought their aid against the oppressor of his mother. Some of them laughed at his wild mien and uncouth gestures, but Hildebrand the Sage took him apart, and lost not a word of his story of how the Norg-king lived in the heart of the mountains, of how he came out with his mighty little men, and ravaged all the face of the country, contrary to all the habits of his former life, and of how it was all because his own labourers were engaged in preparing the most magnificent palace for the reception of a daughter of earth, whom he meant to make his bride. Hildebrand now felt he knew all, and with the help of the poor countryman, the widow's son, would be able to conduct the heroes into his retreat, inflict condign punishment, and release the captive princess. How, with purely natural means, to overcome the resistless strength of the Norgs did not indeed make itself apparent; this was matter for further consideration, and sufficed to engross his thoughts for the rest of the journey. Of one thing he was satisfied--that he was right in claiming the intervention of Berndietrich, whose traffic with the supernatural powers [27] made him, of all the wigands [28], alone capable of conducting such an expedition. Hildebrand and his companions were received by Theodoric with hearty welcome and hospitable care and cheer. As they sat at table, all the heroes together vied with each other in lauding the prowess of Theodoric, till they had pronounced him the bravest sword of which the whole world could boast. This was the time for Hildebrand. "No!" he cried, as he upsprang, and by his determined manner arrested the attention of all the wigands. "No, I say! there is one mightier than he; there is one with whom he has never yet ventured to measure his strength----" "Who? Name him!" shouted Theodoric, rising to his feet, and glaring round him with defiant fury, only kept in check by his regard for Hildebrand. "I speak of Lareyn, the Dwarf-king, the dweller in the depths of the mountains of Tirol," replied Hildebrand, in a voice of firm assurance. "The Dwarf-king!" exclaimed Theodoric, with incredulity and contempt; and he sat down again. "As long as the Dwarf-king is suffered to live in his mountain stronghold, and to ravage the lands of the peaceful peasants, I call no man who knows of him a hero. But him who overcomes this little one--him I will call a hero indeed, above all others!" "If your Dwarf-king were so formidable, Meister Hildebrand," replied Theodoric, "you would have told me of him before now, I ween. How has he raised your wonderment just at this time?" "Because just at this time his insolence has increased. He has built a palace surpassing all palaces in magnificence, which he calls his Krystallburg, and has surrounded it with a garden of beauty, which he calls his Rosengarten, fenced round only with a silken girdle, but of whomsoever crosses that boundary he forfeits the left foot and the right hand." The report of this boast was enough to decide Theodoric, the impetuous sword. "If it is thus he vaunts him," he cried, "he shall know that there is one will dare brave his decree, and destroy the garden his ferocity guards after the manner you describe." With that up he rose, and called for his Velsungen [29], for his armour he never put off, and he called for his helmet and his horse; and before another had time to frame his purpose, he had started, without parley and without guide. Only Wittich the Wigand, his boon companion, who loved to share his rash ventures, and was familiar with his moods, could bestir himself to follow before he was too far gone to be overtaken. To Tirol they rode by day and by night, without slacking rein, for their anger brooked no reprieve. They slacked not their speed for dell or mountain, and they rode forty miles through the dense forest; but every where as they went along they tested the air, as it was wafted past them, to see if they could discern the perfumes of the Rosengarten. At last, as they toiled up the mountain side, a majestic sight was suddenly opened to their view. The white shining rock of the living mountain was cut and fashioned into every pleasing device of turret and tower, diamonds and rubies were the windows, and the dome was of pure gold set with precious stones. "We have far to ride yet," said Wittich the Wigand, as he scanned the lordly place. "And yet the perfume of the Rose-garden reaches even hither," said the Bernäre [30]. "Then we know we are on the right track," answered Wittich; so they put spurs to their horses, and rode forward with good heart. They had pushed on thus many a mile when the blooming Rosengarten itself came in sight, entrancing their senses with its beauty and its odours. "What was that?" asked Theodoric, who always rode ahead, as some light obstruction made his mount swerve for a moment. "Why, you have burst the silken girdle of King Lareyn's Rosengarten!" said Wittich the Wigand; "so now we have incurred the vengeance of the little man." "Ah!" said Theodoric, as he gazed around, "let us not harm this pleasant place; sweetly are the flowers disposed, and in the fragrant hours of evening and of morning it must be well to be here: let us destroy naught!" "Nay!" said honest Wittich, "came we not forth to destroy this devil's-work, and to reduce the pride of the boasting Norg-king who spares none? Shall we return, and leave our work undone? I have no such mind; nothing will I leave of what we see before us now." He dismounted to carry his threat into effect; and Theodoric, not to be behindhand, or to incur suspicion of fearing the Norg-king, dismounted too. Then with one consent they hewed down and rooted up the fair plants, till the whole garden was a wilderness, and they lay them down upon the grass to rest. As they lay, there appeared before them, coming at full speed, as on swift wings, a knightly form clad in shining armour, so that Wittich cried, "See, Lord Dietrich, who comes to visit us--surely it is St. Michael, leader of the heavenly hosts!" "I see no St. Michael," answered Theodoric, sullenly. "It is one of no heavenly build, albeit he bears him so bravely. We may rue that we have loosed our helmets and shields, for methinks he regards us with no loving eye." While they spoke the rider had advanced over a good space of the way, and they could discern the manner of his bearing. His horse was lithe as a roe-buck upon the wild mountain heights, and its housings of cloth-of-gold gave back the rays of the golden sun; the bridle was studded with precious stones, and embroidered with cunning workmanship of gold, moreover it was held in a commanding hand. The saddle was dazzling with rubies, and so were the stirrups no less; but the armour was most dazzling of all, and all hardened in dragon's blood [31]. His sword of adamant could cut through steel and gold; the handle was one carbuncle, which darted rays of light. Over his breast-armour he wore a tight tunic of cloth-of-gold, with his arms embroidered in glowing colours. His helmet was of burnished gold and topazes mingling their yellow light, and between them many a carbuncle which by night gave the light of day, and from within it there sang pleasant voices of birds--nightingales, bulfinches, and larks, with softened voices, as if they lived, and breathed their song upon the branches of their native trees. His shield was likewise of gold, and recorded many a deed of prowess of him who bore it; on it was painted a leopard, too, with head erect, as though preparing to spring upon his prey. In his right hand was a spear, and from its point floated a small red banner [32], on which appeared two swift greyhounds intent on following the wild game. But more imposing than all this display of gold and art was the rider's majestic mien, which was as of one used to know no law but his own will, and to be obeyed by all who approached him; and yet, with all this, he was only a span high! For it was King Lareyn, and he wore tightly buckled his girdle of twelve-men's-strength. Theodoric would gladly have laughed his little figure to scorn, but when he caught the fire of his eye he was fain to acknowledge he was no puny antagonist in fierce intention, whatever was his height. Nor did Lareyn spare angry words when he had come up with the knights, and saw what they had done; there was no epithet of scorn in his vocabulary that he did not pour out upon them. He told them their lives were forfeit for the mischief they had wreaked upon his roses, and they could only redeem them by the surrender of their left foot and right hand. Theodoric was not slow to pay back his vituperation in corresponding measure. He bid him remember what a little, wee mannikin he was; that his was not the right tone in which he ought to talk to princes. Had he ventured to ask a money-compensation, it would have been impertinent enough, but what he had asked was a ludicrous pretention. "Money!" shouted the Norg, in no way disconcerted; "I have more gold at command than any three of you together. You call yourselves princes, do you? You have done no princely deed to-day; you have incurred the common penalty which I have decreed for all alike who trespass on my Rose-garden--so no more words: hand over your horses, armour, and clothing [33], together with the left foot and right hand of each." "Herr Dietrich!" interposed Wittich, "is it possible you have patience to listen to the insolent railing which this little mite pours out in his folly? Say but the word, and I will punish him once and for all. It needs but to take him and his mount by the leg, with one grasp of my strong hand, and knock their heads against the stone wall, that they may lie as dead as the roses we have already strewn around!" "God is exhaustless in His wonders!" replied the Bernäre; "for aught we know, He has laid up within this mite's body all the strength of which he is so forward to boast: or by some magic craft he may have possessed himself of might commensurate with the riches which we can see plainly enough he has at command. If it comes to fighting, we will bear ourselves like men; but take my advice, and be not rash, for very much I doubt if we shall leave these mountains of Tirol alive this day." "Now, prince of lineage high! if I knew not your prowess before this day," cried Wittich, beside himself with indignation, "I had said you were afraid of his sword, which a mouse might wield! Shall a Christian knight shrink before any pagan hound? But a thousand such wights as this could be overmatched by you; and without arms you could smite them down, and hang them all on the trees!" "Your ideas of your powers are not weak," interposed King Lareyn; "you talk of one of you being a match for a thousand such as I: come on, and let us see how you will bear you against one 'tiny antagonist'!" Wittich's impatience knew no bounds at the challenge; without exchanging another word with Theodoric he sprang into the saddle, and Lareyn, who had chafed at being spoken of as an unworthy adversary, now drew himself up, proud to find Wittich did not scorn to meet him mounted. They rode out opposite each other on the greensward with their lances poised, and then dashed the one at the other like two falcons on the wing. Wittich, not at all wanting in the science of handling his lance, made sure to have hit Lareyn, but the spell that surrounded him protected him against the thrust, while his lance struck Wittich's throat where the helm was braced, and sent him backwards off the saddle on to the ground with great force. As he fell among the clover he vowed that no other lance had ever so offended him, for never before had victory appeared so easy. Hastily he sprang to his feet, to wipe away the shame by seeming indifference; but Lareyn stood before him in the long grass with his sword ready to take the forfeit he demanded, the left foot and the right hand,--and would have taken it, but Theodoric deemed it time to interfere; he said he should have reckoned it a shame on him could it have been said of him that he had stood by while a companion was made to pay so hard a penalty for so small a harm. "What is a shame to you is no affair of mine," cried Lareyn in return; "but instead of defending your companion, it behoves you to defend yourself, for, as you had your part in the destruction of the garden, I demand my forfeit equally of you, and your left foot and right hand I must have. Stand on guard then! for I am a match for twelve such as you." The words stung Theodoric to the quick. But with what celerity soever he vaulted into the saddle, the moment had sufficed for Lareyn to bind fast Wittich to a tree, and gain his stirrups in time to confront his foe. "I perceive you are the Bernäre," he said, "by your shield and helm; and never have I poised lance so gladly against any foe, and never have had such satisfaction in triumph as I shall when I have you bound by the side of your companion, and when the great Dietrich von Bern shall lie in the bonds of the little Norg!" "Dwarf! waste not words," cried Theodoric, in a terrible voice, his eyes flashing fire; his spear trembling in his hand with the fury that burnt within him. Before the foes could meet, however, and not a whit too soon, Hildebrand appeared upon the scene, having found his way, with the bold Wolfhart who never shrank from any fight, and Dietlieb the Steieräre [34], by the guidance of the injured widow's son. Hastily Hildebrand reached Theodoric's ear: "Fight him not in that way," he said; "he has ever the advantage with the lance, and if he hurled you from the saddle, where would be your princely honour? Never could you again reign in your Hall of Verona. Dismount, and meet him on foot upon the grass, and watch for what further may be suggested to us." Theodoric gladly accepted the counsel of the sage, and, standing once more on the ground, called to the Norg to meet him there. Lareyn refused not, but met him with many a valiant thrust, which the wigand parried, and returned too, as best he might, with Hildebrand's counsel, till the little man complained of the interference, without which, he swore, Dietrich had been bound even as Wittich. But Theodoric bid him not talk, but fight, and with that planted him a blow between the eyes which shut out the light of the sun. Hildebrand, meantime, released Wittich, as it behoved while one fought in his defence. But Lareyn, finding he could gain no signal advantage against the hero, drew his Tarnhaut from his pocket, and, slipping it over his head, became invisible to his antagonist. Now it was a weird running hither and thither, as the deft Norg paid out his cunning blows, and the bold wigand in vain sought him, that he might return them; now his blow fell on the stone wall, and now on a tree, while the Norg's mocking laughter echoed at each mistake. "One counsel only I see," cried good Hildebrand, distressed to see his prince so hard thrust; "call to him to drop his sword, and wrestle with you; so shall you reach him, and at least know where he stands." The hero followed the counsel of his master, nor did the Norg refuse. True, Theodoric now could at least feel his unseen foe, but he felt him to his cost, for it was impossible to stand against his strength, nor was it long before the dwarf forced the hero down upon his knees on the grass. Great was the wigand's distress, for never had antagonist so dealt with him before. "Dietrich! beloved lord," cried Hildebrand, "list to my word. One way of safety there is: wrench from him his girdle--his girdle which gives him twelve men's strength!" Gladly Theodoric heard the counsel, nor was he long in finding with his hand the girdle; by it he raised King Lareyn from the ground, and dashed him down again, till the girdle burst and fell beneath their feet. Hildebrand quickly caught it up, lest the dwarf should again possess himself of it; but Lareyn gave a cry of despair which might have been heard o'er mountain and forest three days' journey off! Then, with doleful voice, he said,-- "Dietrich von Bern! if you are the noble sword for which men hold you, you will be now content, and will give me my life; while I will be your tributary, and mighty are the gifts I have to offer you." "No!" replied Theodoric; "your haughtiness and pretensions have been too gross. I pardon not such as you so easily; we must have another trial, in which you must yield up your worthless life." "I have no power in fighting against such as he now, without my girdle," mused the Norg; "my only chance of safety lies in getting one of the heroes who is equal to him to fight for my cause in my place. So he made up to Dietlieb the Steieräre, and conjured him, as he was his brother-in-law, to help him in his need--even as he loved his sister's honour." "True!" replied Dietlieb; "since you confess honestly that you have my sister, it is meet that I should be your champion; and I will deliver you or die." With that he went to Theodoric, and prayed him earnestly four times, by his regard for knightly honour, for woman's worth, for friendship, and for virtue--four things which, at receiving his sword, every knight bound himself to honour, that he would spare Lareyn. But Theodoric was not to be moved, and each time only swore the harder that he would fight it out to the last; that Lareyn had offended him too deeply, and that he could not be suffered to live. When Dietlieb found the ambassage he had undertaken unsuccessful, and that he would have to own his failure, he grew impatient and wroth, and riding his horse up to Theodoric, he proclaimed in a loud voice,-- "Be it known, Prince Dietrich, highly praised, that I declare King Lareyn, great in power and riches, shall not be bound your prisoner, nor his life taken; that I appear here to answer for him with brotherly service, and that either he shall be let go scot free, or in my person only shall the death-blow be dealt out for him." Theodoric, unwilling to enter a feud of life and death with one of his own allies, and yet too proud to refuse the challenge, answered him nothing. But Dietlieb took the Norg and hid him away in safety in the long grass out of Theodoric's sight, and then returned ready to confront him. Theodoric, finding he was determined in his attack, called for his horse, and bound on his helmet, his shield he took in his hand, and hung his sword to his girdle. "Think not I spare you more than another, Lord Theodoric, when I have found the cause I ought to defend," cried Dietlieb, and his flashing eye told that he would fight his fight to the end. Theodoric still said no word, but his anger was the more desperate. Thus minded, they rode at each other, and the lance of each hurled the other from his horse upon the grass. Up each sprang again, and drew his trenchant sword; the one struck, and the other pierced, till the grass all around, as high as their spurs, was dyed as red as the roses they had destroyed anon. Then Theodoric dealt such a mighty stroke on Dietlieb's helmet that the fire flashed again, and he thought, "Now have I conquered him and Lareyn at one blow." But Dietlieb, recovering from the momentary shock, struck Theodoric's shield with such force that he dashed it from his grasp; you might have heard the clash a mile off! When the bold Theodoric found he had his shield no longer, he took his sword in both his hands, and gave the wigand such a mighty Schirmschlag [35] that he felled him to the ground. "Now then, foolish man!" he cried, in scorn, "do you still hold out for Lareyn?" Dietlieb sprang to his feet once more with a start which made his armour ring again, and, for an answer, ran at Theodoric, and tried to repeat his stroke; but Theodoric was more difficult to bring down, and answered his attack by striking him on the rim of his shield so forcibly that he loosed the band by which he held it. Meantime, Hildebrand had been occupied stirring up the other wigands to part the combatants, and at this moment Wittich and Wolfhart came up to Dietlieb and seized him, and with main force dragged him off the field; while Hildebrand reasoned with Theodoric about the merit and friendship of Dietlieb, and the advantage of compromise now that he had done enough to prove his superiority in the fight. Theodoric, who ever gave weight to Hildebrand's reasoning, agreed to be friends again with Dietlieb, and to leave Lareyn his life and liberty, only exacting homage and tribute of him. To these terms Dietlieb also agreed, and all entered the bonds of good friendship. Lareyn, who had watched the combat and listened to the treaty of peace from his hiding-place in the long grass, gave in his adhesion, promising to pay tribute of all his wealth. "And now, good brother-in-law," he said, addressing Dietlieb, "or brother-in-law that-is-to-be,--for Simild has not yet given her consent to be my wife--let us talk a little about your lovely sister. You are doubtless burning to know how I became possessed of her, and I no less to tell." Then he told him how he had found her under the linden-tree, and had enveloped her in the Tarnhaut and carried her away unseen by mortal eye; and of how all Norgdom was subject to her, of how he had laid an empire of boundless wealth at her feet, and how, if she preferred reigning on earth, he was able to buy a vast kingdom to endow her with. Then he noticed that the day was declining, and they far from shelter, and bade them all welcome to his underground home, promising them good cheer and merry pastime. Dietlieb, anxious to see his dear sister again, accepted the offer, and the other wigands agreed to follow him. Stern Hildebrand the Sage would have preferred camping in the open air, but Theodoric told him it would be a shame on his name before all heroes if, having been so near the Norg kingdom, of which all had heard, he should have feared to make acquaintance with its economy and government. All the others were of his mind, but Hildebrand reminded Theodoric, that as he whom all were ready to obey had counselled incurring the danger, he made himself responsible for all their lives. "He who gave us prudence will guard our lives and honour," said the prince; and without further parley they rode on, after Lareyn's guidance. On they rode, through thick forest and narrow mountain-path, till, as it grew dark, they came to a golden door in the rock. It opened at Lareyn's approach, and the moment they had passed within they found themselves surrounded by a light above the light of day from the shining stones that glittered around. Trumpets sounded to herald their entrance. As they advanced through the sparkling trees friendly birds warbled a sweet welcome; and as they neared the hall soft melodies of lutes and harps enchanted their ear. All around them the Norgs disported themselves, ready to render any service the wayfarers might require. Refreshment was all ready, as if they had been expected; and when the wigands had done justice to the spread, they were led each to his apartment to take their rest, which they well needed. In the morning Lareyn prayed them to stay and enjoy the wonders of his kingdom and taste his hospitality, whereupon new debate arose. Theodoric was disposed to trust him; and Dietlieb desirous to keep friends with him for the sake of his sister; while Wolfhart was ready for any sort of adventure; but Wittich, who had tasted the effects of Lareyn's guile and strength, used all his persuasion to induce the others to return, and prudent Hildebrand deemed it the wiser part. At last, however, Wolfhart said, scornfully to Wittich, that if he was afraid to stay he could go back; he had no need to spoil their pleasure. After that Wittich said no more, but by his sullen looks he showed he disapproved the venture. Lareyn, seeing them doubtful, came up, and with much concern bid them have no hesitation or fear, for all they saw was at their service--they had but to command. To which Theodoric made answer that such words were princely indeed, and if his deeds accorded therewith he never would have reason to rue the league he had made with them. Then with delight Lareyn led them through the riches of his possessions. So much heaped-up gold, so many precious stones, such elaborate handiwork none of Theodoric's band had ever seen before; and the place rang with their exclamations of wonder. But all this was nothing to the cunning feats of the Norgs, who, at a sign from Lareyn, displayed their various talents before the astonished eyes of the heroes. Some there were who lifted great stones bigger than themselves, and threw them as far as the eye could reach, then by swiftness attained the goal before the stone they threw! Others rooted up great pine-trees, and broke them across as sticks. Others did feats of tilting and horsemanship, and others danced and leapt till the knights were lost in wonder at their agility and strength. Lareyn now called his guests in to dine; and all manner of costly dishes were set before them, arranged with greater care and taste than Theodoric was used to in his own palace, while sweet-voiced minstrels sang, and nimble Norgs danced. In the midst of the repast, Simild, summoned by Lareyn, entered the hall, attended by a train of five hundred choicely-robed Norginnen; her own attire a very wonder of art. It was all of silk and down, and set off with ornaments of jewellery beyond compare with any on earth; stones there were of value enough to ransom three kingdoms; and in her coronet one which lighted up the hall with its radiance--meet crown of her own loveliness! At Lareyn's courteously worded request she gave all the guests a joyful welcome, with a word of praise from her rosy lips for each, for their fame of knightly deeds. But when she saw Dietlieb her joy knew no bounds; they embraced each other with the heartfelt joy of those who have been long and cruelly separated. "Tell me, sister mine," said Dietlieb, anxiously turning to account the brief opportunity her embrace gave him of whispering into her ear, "is it of your own will that you are here, in this strange mountain dwelling? is this Lareyn dear to you? and do you desire to dwell with him? Or has his artifice been hateful to you? Say, shall I rid you of his presence?" "Brother, it is your help I need to decide this thing," replied the maid. "Against Lareyn's mildness I have no word to say: gift upon gift has been heaped upon me; with honour after honour have I been endowed; and every wish of mine is fulfilled ere it is born. But when I think of Him of whom all our pleasures are the bounty, I feel no pleasure in pleasures so bestowed. This pagan folk holds Christ, our dear Lord, in hate--and when I think of Him, I long to be again in Christendom [36]." "Yes, Simild, sister dear, in Christendom is your place, not here; and since such is your mind, cost what it will, I will set you free from the Norg-king's power," was Dietlieb's answer; and there was no time for more, for Lareyn called them back to the fresh-dressed banquet. "Come, new allies but trusted friends!" cried the dwarf, "come, and let us be merry, and pledge our troth in the ruby bowl! Lay aside your heavy arms and armour, your sword and shield. Let us be light and free as brothers together." As he spoke a whole host of waiting-men appeared, who helped the knights off with their armour, and brought them robes of rich stuffs and costly work. The guests suffered them to do their will, for they were lost in admiration at the choice banquet; at the table, all of ivory inlaid with devices of birds and game so lifelike they seemed to skim across the board; at the vessels of silver and gold and crystal of untiring variety of design; and, above all, at the order and harmony with which all was directed. Cool wine from cellars under earth was now served round [37]; then various dishes in constant succession, each rarer than the last; and then again sounded soft, clear voices to the accompaniment of the harmonious strings. And again and again the tankards were filled up with Lautertrank, Moras [38], and wine. At last the tables were drawn away, and at the same time Simild and her maids withdrew; but many an hour more the guests sat while the music and the singing continued to charm them. But lest even this should weary, King Lareyn, as if determined there should be no end to the change of pastimes with which he had undertaken to amuse his guests, sent to fetch a certain conjuror who dwelt in the heart of a high mountain, and whose arts surpassed any thing that had been done before. The magician came at his bidding, and exhibited surprising evidences of his craft, till at last the king said,-- "You are a cunning man, no doubt, but there is one exhibition of your power you have never been able to give me, and I shall think nothing of your art till you can satisfy me. In this country within the mountains, these jewels fixed in vault, wall, and sky, weary one with their perpetual glare. Make them to move as the luminaries of earth, so that we may have calm, peaceful night for repose." "True, O king! I have never before been able to accomplish this desire," replied the magician; "but now I have acquired this art also, and waited for a fitting occasion to make the first display of the same." "No occasion can be more fitting than the present," answered Lareyn, "when by its inauguration you shall celebrate the visit of my honoured guests, and also by its achievement afford them that rest from the glare of day to which they are accustomed in their own nights." "I desire but to obey," replied the magician; and forthwith he threw on to the fire that burnt on a black stone before him, a powder which no sooner touched the flame than a pale blue smoke arose with pleasing scent, and, curling through the hall, presently extinguished the brilliant shining of every countless jewel with which the walls and roof were set. "Now, if you are master of your art," continued the king, "let us have light once more." The magician, wrapt in his incantation, spoke not, but dropped another powder on the flame, which at once sent up a wreathing fume of rainbow hues, carrying back to every precious stone its lustre. "Wondrous!" "Brave artist!" "Wondrous show indeed!" were the exclamations which broke spontaneously from every lip. "Now let it be dark again," said the king; and the magician quenched the sparkling light as before. "Now light," he cried; and so alternated until the sight was no longer new. Now, it was dark, and this time Lareyn called no more for light, nor spoke, and the silence was long; till the heroes grew anxious, and Wittich turned to where Wolfhart had sat, and said, "I like not this: who knows but that while we can see naught the Norgs may fall upon us and destroy us?" But Wolfhart answered not, for a stupor had fallen upon him that the fumes had been gifted to convey; and Wittich, too, felt their influence before he could utter another word; so it was with Hildebrand the Sage no less. Theodoric only had time to answer, "Such treachery were not princely; and if Lareyn means harm to us, he may be sure he will rue this day," and then sleep fell upon him as on the others. Dietlieb had already left the hall, thinking under cover of the darkness to find his sister, but being met by a page had been conducted to his apartment, and knew nothing of what had befallen the others. Lareyn, meanwhile, sought out Simild in anxious mood. "Ever lovely virgin!" he exclaimed, "support me with your prudent counsel in this strait. I have already told you how your people have avenged on me that I have loved you; how they have laid low my silken fence and golden gates, and wasted my choice garden of roses. Good reprisals I had thought to have taken, and had I been left man to man against them I had overcome them all; but Hildebrand the Sage interposed his advice: it was thus the Bernäre had the advantage over me, and had it not been for your brother Dietlieb's stout defence, he had even taken my life. But in all the other four beside him there is no good, and in one way or another I had found means to rid me of them, but for Dietlieb's sake, who would be as ready to oppose me in their defence as he opposed Dietrich in mine. So, fair lady mine, say how shall I end this affair?" "If you would follow my advice," replied Simild, "be not rash; and, above all, use no treachery; keep to the pact of peace that you have sworn; and be sure the Christian knights will not go back from their plighted word. But in place of the little girdle of twelve-men's-strength that they took from you, here is a ring of equal power which your seven magicians welded for me: with that you will feel all your old consciousness of strength and dignity. But, by all you hold dear, let the wigands go forth with honour!" Lareyn was not slow to own that the counsel was good, and spoke as if he would have followed it. But when he put on the ring, and found himself endowed once more with twelve men's strength, he could not forbear taking his sweet revenge for his yesterday's defeat and danger. First, he had sevenfold bolts put on Dietlieb's door, that he might not be able to come forth and aid his brethren; and then he sent and called for one of the giants, who were always true allies to the dwarfs, and entreated him to carry the heroes to a deep dungeon below the roots of the mountains, where they should be bound, and shut out from the light of day, and never again be able to do him harm. The feat pleased the giant well; and, having bound a cord round the waist of each of the sleeping heroes, slung the four over his shoulder as if they had been no heavier than sparrows, and carried them to the dungeon below the roots of the mountains, whither Lareyn led the way, now skipping, now dancing, now singing, now laughing in high glee, to think how well he had succeeded in ridding him of his foes--but forgetting all about Simild's advice, and his promise to her. It was not till next morning that the heroes woke; and then all was cold and dark around them, and they knew they were no longer in the hall of the banquet, for the iron chains and stanchions, the chill, and must, and damp, and slime, told them they were in a dungeon under earth. Loudly they all exclaimed against the deceit with which they had been caught, and loudly they all swore to find means to punish the treacherous captor. But Theodoric's anger was greater than the anger of them all; and the fiery breath [39] glowed so hot within him that it scorched away the bonds with which he was bound! Once more, then, his hands at least were free, and his companions gave him joy; but his feet were still held to the rock by chains of hard steel, the links as thick as a man's arm. Nevertheless, his indignation was so great that when he beat them with his fists they were obliged to yield, as they had been made of egg-shell; and when he had broken his own chains he set to work and released the others also. Great was their joy and thankfulness; but heaviness came down on them again when they saw themselves closed in by the cruel rock, and all their armour and weapons of defence locked up far away from them in the Norg's castle. Another day they lay there in despair, and another, for wise Hildebrand saw no way of passing through the rock [40]. Meantime Simild had grown uneasy at the silence that reigned in the palace; there was no more sound of revel and festivity, and of entertaining guests. She was no more sent for to entertain them, and Lareyn hid himself from her, and avoided her. In dire fear she hunted out the right key of her brother's apartment, and having covered the glowing carbuncle in her coronet, which lighted up every place, crept along silently till she had reached him. "Sister mine!" exclaimed Dietlieb, "what does this mean? why am I held fast by seven locks? and why do no tidings of my companions reach me? Oh! had I but my sword and shield, I would release them from the hands of Lareyn, and of how many Norgs soever he may have at his command! or at least I would not survive to bear the shame of living while they are in I know not what plight." "Dietlieb, be guided by me," replied the maiden: "we must deliver them out of the dire dungeon in which Lareyn has treacherously confined them, but also we must have your life and honour safe. Take this ring upon your hand, for against him who wears it none can prevail; and then go and deliver your companions." With that she took him along to where his armour lay concealed; and having girt him with it, she said many a fervent blessing [41] over him, to preserve him from harm. Endowed with the strength the ring gave him, Dietlieb was able to load himself with the arms and armour of all the four heroes; and at its command a way was made in the rock, through which he passed it in to them. As each piece fell upon the hard floor, the clang re-echoed through the far-off mountains. Lareyn heard the noise, and knew what had befallen, so he sounded on his horn the note that was known far and wide through all the lands of the Norgs; and at the call three hundred thousand dwarfs appeared swarming over the whole face of the country. "To me, my men! to me!" cried Lareyn, as they drew near. "Before you stands he who has essayed to release our enemies whom I and the giant had bound under the roots of the mountains. He has given them back their strong armour and their weapons of war, and if they get loose and come among us, great havoc will they make of us, therefore smite him down and destroy him!" The dwarfs rushed on Dietlieb at the bidding of the king; but Lareyn would not engage him himself, because he had fought for his release. Dietlieb, young and strong, stood planted against a vault of the rock, and as the mannikins approached him, he showered his blows upon them, and sent them sprawling, till the dead and mangled were piled up knee-deep around him. The heroes heard the sound of the battle in their prison, and they longed to take their part in the fray; but they saw no means of breaking through the rock to reach him, till Hildebrand bethought him that he had yet with him the girdle he had picked up when Theodoric tore it from the Norg-king's body. This he now handed to the hero. Theodoric took it, and spoke not for joy, but with its strength tore down the living rock round the opening Dietlieb's ring had made, and burst his way to stand beside the brave young Steieräre. This done, scorning the girdle's strength, he cast it back to Hildebrand, trusting in his good sword alone. "Now, treacherous dwarf, come on!" he cried. "No knightly troth has bound you, but against us, your guests and allies, you have acted as one who has no right to live! Come here, and let me give you the guerdon you have earned!" Lareyn refused not; and the two fought with fury terrible to behold. And yet Theodoric prevailed not. Then Hildebrand discerned the ring of twelve-men's-strength on Lareyn's hand, where it was not before, and knew it was a talisman, so he called to Theodoric, and said,-- "Dietrich, my prince, seize yonder ring upon the Norg-king's hand! so shall his strength be no more increased by the powers of his magic." Theodoric, ever prone to be guided by the advice of the Sage, directed a mighty blow upon the ring, so that the hoop must fain give way; and the dwarf's power went from him. "Now all your hosts, and all your arts, and all your gold shall profit you nothing more!" So cried the Bernäre; "but condign penalties you must suffer for your crime. My prisoner you are, nor is there any can deliver you more." The Norgs, grieving for their king's loss, trooped round Theodoric and attacked him on every side; but he swang his good sword Velsungen around, and at every sweep a hundred Norg's heads fell pattering at his feet. Suddenly a little dwarf came running out from the mountain rock, and seizing Lareyn's horn, blew on it notes which wandered wild through all the forest-trees. Five giants lived in the forest, and when they heard those notes they knew the Norgs were in dire distress. With swift strides they came; their helmets flashed like lightning over the tops of the pines; and each brought his sword and pike of trenchant steel. The little dwarf saw his brethren mown down like grass before the scythe, and again sent forth his far-sounding notes of distress. The giants heard it, and marched over hill and dale, till they came before the mountain-side. Again the little dwarf sent out his appeal, and the giants burst their way through the mountain; but albeit they came with such speed, twelve thousand Norgs were meantime lost to King Lareyn by Velsungen's strokes. Dietlieb and Hildebrand, Wittich and Wolfhart mowed down their harvest too. Now they had to prepare for another kind of attack, for in fearful array the five giants came down upon them, brandishing their clubs of steel. But neither could these stand before the swords of the heroes, and each several one laid low his adversary. When the Norgs saw that their king was bound, and their best fighting-men destroyed, and the giants themselves without breath, they knew they could stand no longer before the wigands, but each turned him and fled for refuge to the mountains. The heroes then, seeing no more left to slay, went into the banquet-hall, where only Simild stood, for all the Norgs had hidden themselves in fear. "Welcome, noble brother! and welcome, bold swords all!" cried the maid; "you have delivered us from this treacherous king. Now you will go home to your own land with glory and honour, and take me with you." The heroes returned her greeting, and rejoiced in her praise; then they piled up the treasure on to waggons, all they could carry, and in triumph they made their way to earth, and Lareyn with them, bound. First they directed their steps to Styria, till they came to the spreading linden-tree whence Simild had first been taken; for there sat Duke Biterolf, her father, bewailing his bereavement, and around him trooped her maidens lamenting their companion. All was restored to joy and gladness now that Simild was at home again. They passed seven days in high festival, the heroes all together; and many a time they had to tell the tale of their bold deeds, and the wonders of the mountain-world. And the minstrels sang to the merits of the conquerors, while the merry bowl passed round and round. At last Theodoric rose and thanked Biterolf for his hospitality, who thanked him in return right heartily for the help he had lent his son. With that Theodoric took his leave, and along with him went Hildebrand the Sage, and Wittich the Wigand, and the strong Wolfhart, and King Lareyn too, of whom Theodoric made his court-fool in his palace at Verona. THE NICKEL [42] OF THE RÖHRERBÜCHEL. From the fourteenth to the sixteenth, in some few places down to the seventeenth, centuries the mountains of Tirol were in many localities profitably worked in the search after the precious metals; many families were enriched; and the skill of the Tirolese miners passed into a proverb throughout Europe. When the veins lying near the surface had been worked out, the difficulty of bringing the machinery required for deeper workings into use, in a country whose soil has nowhere three square miles of plain, rendered the further pursuit so expensive that it was in great measure abandoned, though some iron and copper is still got out. There are many old shafts entirely deserted, and their long and intricate passages into the bowels of the earth not only afford curious places of excursion to the tourist, but are replete with fantastic memories of their earlier destination. One of the most remarkable of these is the so-called Röhrerbüchel, which is situated between Kitzbühl and St. Johann, and not far from the latter place. It was one of the most productive and one of the latest worked, and it boasted of having the deepest shaft that had ever been sunk in Europe; but for above a hundred and fifty years it has been taub [43], that is, deaf, to the sound of the pick and the hammer and the voices of the Knappen [44]. I have given you my way of accounting for the cessation of the mining-works. The people have another explanation. They say that the Bergmännlein, or little men of the mountains--the dwarfs who were the presiding guardians of these mineral treasures--were so disgusted with the avarice with which the people seized upon their stores, that they refused to lend them their help any more, and that without their guidance the miners were no longer able to carry on their search aright, and the gnomes took themselves off to other countries. One of these little men of the mountains, however, there was in the Röhrerbüchle who loved his ancient house too well to go forth to seek another; he still lingered about the mile-long clefts and passages which once had been rich with ore, and often the peasants heard him bewailing, and singing melancholy ditties, over his lonely fate. They even thought he came out sometimes to watch them sadly in their companionship of labour, and peeped through their windows at them in their cosy cottages, while it was cold and dark where he stood without: and many there were who took an interest in the Nickel of the Röhrerbüchel. The Goigner Jössl [45] had been mowing the grassy slope near the opening of the Röhrerbüchl; he was just putting up his implements to carry home after his day's toil, when he espied the orphan Aennerl [46] coming towards him. Her dark eyes had met his before that day, and he never met her glance without a thrill of joy. "I have been over to Oberndorf for a day's work," said orphan Aennerl, "and as I came back I thought I would turn aside this way, and see how you were getting on; and then we can go home together." "So we will," answered Jössl; "but we're both tired, and the sun isn't gone yet--let's sit down and have a bit of talk before we go." Orphan Aennerl was nothing loath; and they sat and talked of the events of the day, and their companions, and their work, and the weather, and the prospects of the morrow. But both seemed to feel there was something else to be said, and they sat on, as not knowing how to begin. At last Jössl removed his pointed hat from his head and laid it by his side, and took out and replaced the jaunty feathers which testified his prowess in the holiday sport [47], and finally cleared his throat to say, softly,-- "Is this not happiness, Aennerl?--what can we want more in this world? True, we work hard all day, but is not our toil repaid when we sit together thus, while the warm evening sun shines round us, and the blue heaven above and the green fields below smile on us, and we are together? Aennerl, shall we not be always happy together?" They were the very words that orphan Aennerl had so often longed to hear her Jössl say. Something like them she had repeated to herself again and again, and wondered if the happy day would ever come when she should hear them from his own lips. Had he said them to her any day of her whole life before, how warmly would she have responded to them! To-day, however, it was different. The rich peasant's wife for whom the poor orphan worked had been harsh to her that day, and for the first time envious thoughts had found entrance into her mind, and discontent at her lowly lot. So, instead of assenting warmly, she only said,-- "Of course it's very nice, Jössl, but then it's only for a little bit, you see. The hard toil lasts all day, nevertheless. Now to have a Hof [48] of one's own, like the one I work upon at Oberndorf, with plenty of cattle, and corn, and servants to work for you, that's what I should call being happy! Sitting together in the sunset is all very well, but we might have that besides." The good, hard-working, thrifty, God-fearing Jössl looked aghast to hear his Aennerl speak so. Beyond his day's wage honestly worked for, and the feather in his Trutzhut bravely contended for, and his beloved Aennerl wooed with tenderness and constancy--he had not a thought or a wish in the wide world. Hitherto her views had been the counterpart of his; now, for the first time, he perceived there was something had come between them, and he felt disappointed and estranged. "If that's your view, Aennerl girl, it isn't the Goigner Jössl that will be able to make you happy," replied the youth at length, coldly; "your best chance would be with the Nickel of the Röhrerbüchel," he added, almost bitterly, as one who would say, Your case is desperate; you have no chance at all. "What was that?" said Aennerl, suddenly starting. "Who can be working so late? Don't you hear a pick go 'click, clack'? Who can it be?" "No one is working at this hour," replied Jössl, in no mood to be pleased at the interruption. But as he spoke the bells of the villages around toned forth the Ave-Maria. Both folded their hands devoutly for the evening prayer; and in the still silence that ensued he could not deny that he heard the sound of the pick vigorously at work, and that, as it seemed, under the ground directly beneath their feet. "It is the Bergmännlein--it must be the Bergmännlein himself!" exclaimed Aennerl, with excitement. "Nonsense! what silly tales are you thinking of?" replied Jössl, inwardly reproaching himself for the light words he had just spoken suggesting the invocation of a superstition with which his honest, devout nature felt no sympathy; and, without letting the excited girl exert herself to catch the strange sounds further, he led her home. Aennerl's curiosity was roused, however, and was not to be so easily laid to rest. The next evening Jössl's work lay in a different direction, but no sooner had the hour of the evening rest arrived than he started on the road to Oberndorf, to see if he could meet his Aennerl coming home. But there was no Aennerl on the path; and he turned homewards with a heavy heart, fearing lest he had offended her, and that she was shunning him. But Aennerl, whom the desire of being rich had overcome with all the force of a new passion, had been more absorbed on that last memorable evening by the idea of having heard the Bergmännlein at work amid the riches of the mines than with--what would have been so terrible a grief at any other time--having offended her faithful Jössl. Accordingly, on the next evening, instead of being on the look-out for Jössl to walk home with her, her one thought had been to find out the same place on the bank where they had sat--not with loving affection to recall the happy words she had heard there, but to listen for the sound of the Bergmännl's axe, and perhaps follow it out; and then--and then--who could tell what might befall? Perhaps she might be able to obtain some chips of those vast wealth-stores unperceived; perhaps the Bergmännl's heart might be opened to her--who could say but, in some mode or other, it might be the way to fortune? She was not long in tracing out the spot, for she had marked the angle which the well-known outline of the mighty Sonnengebirg bore to the jagged "comb [49]" of the Kitzbichler-Horn, and for a nearer token, there lay, just before her, the crushed wild-flower which her Jössl had twisted and torn in his nervousness as he had brought himself to speak to her for the first time of their future. But she thought not of all that at that time; she was only concerned to find the spot, and to listen for the stroke of the Nickel's pickaxe. "Hush!" that was it again, sure enough! She lingers not on that happy bank; she stops not to pick up one of those wild-flower tokens: 'click, clack,' goes the axe, and that is the sound to guide her steps. The village bells sound the Ave-Maria, but the sacred notes arrest her not--the evening prayer is forgotten in the thirst for gold. But Jössl heard the holy sound as he was retracing his steps mournfully from his fruitless search after her, having missed her by but a minute's interval. He heard it as he was passing a little old, old wayside chapel, which you may yet see, with a lordly pine-tree overshadowing it, and which records the melancholy fate of some Knappen who perished in the underground workings. Jössl, who has no fear on the steep mountain-side, and loves to hang dangerously between earth and sky when he is out after the chamois, shudders when he thinks of those long, dark, mysterious passages where the miners worked underground, and, as he kneels on the stone step of that wayside memorial, obedient to the village-bell, involuntarily applies his prayer to all those who have to penetrate those strange recesses: "Be with them; help them now and in the hour of death. Amen." If you had told him his Aennerl was included in that prayer he would not have believed you then. Meantime Aennerl had found her way to the opening of the old mine. It has a lateral shaft through which you may walk some distance--a very long way it seemed to Aennerl, now breathless and trembling, but the nearing sounds of the Bergmännl's tool kept up her courage, and determined her not to give in till she had attained the goal. On she went, groping her way with fear and trembling, and expecting every moment to come upon some terrible sight. But, far from this, in proportion as she got deeper into the intricate passages of the Röhrerbüchel, the way, instead of getting darker, grew lighter and lighter. A pale, clear, rosy light played on the sides of the working, which, now that she looked at them close, she found to her astonishment were not made of rough, yellow clay, as she had thought hitherto, but of pure, sparkling gold, and encrusted with gems! It was no longer fear that palsied her, it was a fascination of delight at finding herself in the midst of those riches she coveted, but the near approach of which brought back misgivings of the danger of their possession of which she had so often heard, though without ever previously feeling an application to herself in the warning. Her curiosity far too strongly stimulated to yield to the counsel of her conscience to turn and flee the temptation, she walked stealthily on and on, till the faint, rosy light grew into a red, radiant glow, which, as she reached its focus, quite dazzled her senses. She now found herself in a broad and lofty clearing, into which the long narrow passage she had so long been timorously pursuing ran, and in the sides of which she saw the openings of many other similar ramifications. The walls, which arched it in overhead and closed it from the daylight, were of gold and silver curiously intermixed, burnished resplendently, and their brilliance so overcame her that it was some minutes before she could recover her sight to examine more particularly the details of this magnificent abode. Then she discovered that all this blaze of light came from one huge carbuncle [50], and that carbuncle was set in the breast-bib of the leathern apron worn by a dwarf, the clang of whose pickaxe had lured her to the uncanny spot. The dwarf was much too busily and too noisily engaged to notice Aennerl's footsteps, so she had plenty of leisure to examine him. He was a little awkward-shaped fellow, nearly as broad as he was long, with brawny muscular arms which enabled him to wield his pick with tremendous effect. He seemed, however, to be wielding it merely for exercise or sport, for there did not appear to be any particular advantage to be gained from his work, which only consisted in chipping up a huge block of gold, and there were heaps on heaps of such chips already lying about. Though his muscles displayed so much strength, however, his face gave you the idea of a miserable, worn-out old man; his cheeks were wrinkled and furrowed and bronzed; and the matted hair of his head and beard was snowy white. As he worked he sang, in dull, low, unmelodious chant, to which his pick beat time,-- "The weary Bergmännl, old and grey, Sits alone in a cleft of the earth for aye, With never a friend to say, 'Good day.' For a thousand years, and ten thousand more, He has guarded earth's precious silver store, Keeping count of her treasures of golden ore By the light of the bright Karfunkelstein [51], The only light of the Bergmännlein But never a friend to say, 'Good day,' As he sits in a cleft of the earth for aye, Has the lonely Bergmännl, old and grey!" He had poured out his ditty many times over while Aennerl stood gazing at the strange and gorgeous scene. The ugly, misshapen, miserable old man seemed altogether out of place amid the glories of the wonderful treasure-house; and the glittering treasures themselves in turn seemed misplaced in this remote subterranean retreat. Aennerl was quite puzzled how to make it all out. It was the Nickel of the Röhrerbüchel who was before her, she had no doubt of that, for he was exactly what the tradition of the people had always described him, and she had heard his ungainly form described before she could speak; so familiar he seemed, indeed, from those many descriptions, that it took away great part of the fear natural to finding herself in so novel a situation. At last the dwarf suddenly stopped his labour, and, as if in very weariness, flung the tool he had been using far from him, so that it fell upon a heap of gold chips near which Aennerl was standing, scattering them in all directions. One of the sharp bits of ore hit her rudely on the chin, and, anxious as she was to escape observation, she could not suppress a little cry of pain. Old and withered and haggard as he seemed, the Cobbold's eye glittered with a light only second to that of the Karfunkelstein itself at the sound of a maiden's voice, and quickly he turned to seize her. Aennerl turned and fled, but the Nickel, throwing his leathern apron over the shining stone on his breast, plunged the whole place in darkness, and Aennerl soon lost her footing among the unevennesses of the way and lay helpless on the ground. Her pursuer, to whom every winding had been as familiar as the way to his pocket these thousand years, was by her side in a trice, still singing, as he came along,-- "But never a friend to say, 'Good day,' As he sits in a cleft of the earth for aye, Has the lonely Bergmännl, old and grey!" The self-pitying words, and the melancholy tone in which they were uttered, changed most of Aennerl's alarm into compassion; and when the dwarf uncovered the carbuncle again, and the bright, warm red light played once more around them, and showed up the masses of gold after which she had so longed, she began to feel almost at home, so that when the dwarf asked her who she was and what had brought her there, she answered him quite naturally, and told him all her story. "To tell you the truth," said the Cobbold, when she had finished, "I am pretty well tired of having all this to myself. I was very angry at one time, it is true, with the way in which your fellows went to work destroying and carrying every thing away, and leaving nothing for those that are to come after, and I was determined to put a stop to it. I am not here to look after one generation, or two, or three, but for the whole lot of you in all the ages of the world, and I must keep things in some order. But now they have given this place up and left me alone, I confess I feel not a little sorry. I used to like to listen to their busy noises, and their songs, and the tramp of their feet. So, if you've a mind to make up for it, and come and sit with me for a bit now and then, and sing to me some of the lively songs you have in your world up there, I don't say I won't give you a lapful of gold now and then." A lapful of gold! what peasant girl would mind sitting for a bit now and then, and singing to a poor lonely old fellow, to be rewarded with a lapful of gold? Certainly not Aennerl! Too delighted to speak, she only beamed assent with her dark, flashing eyes, and clapped her hands and laughed for joy. "It's many a day since these walls have echoed a sound like that," said the dwarf, with deep feeling, and as Aennerl's smile rested on him, it seemed to wipe away some of the rough dark wrinkles that furrowed his cheeks and relax the tension of his knit brows. "And yet there's more worth in those echoes than in all the metallic riches which resound to them! Yes, my lass, only come and see the poor old Bergmännl sometimes, and cheer him a bit, and you shall have what you will of his." With that he led her gently back into the great vault where she had first seen him working, and, stirring up a heap with his foot, said,-- "There, lass, there's the Bergmännl's store; take what you will--it is not the Bergmännl that would say nay to a comely wench like you. Why, if I were younger, and a better-looking fellow, it would not be my lapfuls of gold I should offer you, it would be the whole lot of it--and myself to boot! No, no, I shouldn't let you go from me again: such a pretty bird does not come on to the snare to be let fly again, I promise you! But I'm old and grey, and my hoary beard is no match for your dainty cheeks. But take what you will, take what you will--only come and cheer up the poor old Bergmännl a bit sometimes." Aennerl had not wanted to be told twice. Already she had filled her large pouch and her apron and her kerchief with all the alacrity of greed. So much occupied was she with stowing away the greatest possible amount of the spoil, that she scarcely remembered to thank the Bergmännl, who, however, found pleasure enough in observing the rapturous gestures her good fortune elicited. "You'll come again?" said the Cobbold, as he saw her turn to go when she had settled her burden in such a way that its weight should least impede her walking. "Oh, yes, never fear, I'll come again! When shall I come?" "Oh, when you will! Let's see, to-day's Saturday, isn't it? Well, next Saturday, if you like." "Till next Saturday, then, good-bye!" said Aennerl, panting only to turn her gold to account; and so full was she of calculation of what she would do with it, that she never noticed the poor old dwarf was coming behind her to light her, and singing, as he went,-- "The weary Bergmännl, old and grey, Sits alone in a cleft of the earth for aye, With never a friend to say, 'Good day.' For a thousand years, and ten thousand more, He has guarded earth's precious silver store, Keeping count of her treasures of golden ore By the light of the bright Karfunkelstein, The only light of the Bergmännlein. But never a friend to say, 'Good day,' As he sits in a cleft of the earth for aye, Has the lonely Bergmännl, old and grey!" Aennerl had no time for pity; she was wholly absorbed in the calculation of the grand things she could now buy, the fine dresses she would be able to wear, and in rehearsing the harsh speeches of command with which she would let fling at the girls whom she would take into her service, and who yesterday were the companions-in-labour of orphan Aennerl. The village was all wrapt in silence and sleep as Aennerl got back with her treasure. "So late, and so laden! poor child!" said the parish priest, as he came out of a large old house into the lane, and met her. "I have been commending to God the soul of our worthy neighbour Bartl. He was open-handed in his charity, and the poor will miss a friend; he gave us a good example while he lived--Aennerl, my child, bet' für ihn [52]." Aennerl scarcely returned his greeting, nor found one word of sorrow to lament the loss of the good old Bartl; for one thought had taken possession of her mind at first hearing of his death. Old Bartl had a fine homestead, and one in which all was in good order; but Bartl was alone in the world, there was no heir to enter on his goods: it was well known that he had left all to the hospital, and the place would be sold. What a chance for Aennerl! There was no homestead in the whole Gebiet [53] in such good order, or so well worth having, as the Hof of old Bartl. Aennerl already reckoned it as hers, and in the meantime kept an eye open for any chances of good stock that might come into the market. Nor were chances wanting. The illness which had carried old Bartl to the grave had been caught at the bedside of the Wilder Jürgl [54]. A fine young man he had been indeed, but the villagers had not called him "Wild" without reason; and because he had loved all sorts of games, and a gossip in the tavern, and a dance with the village maids more than work, all he had was in confusion. He always said he was young, and he would set all straight by-and-by, there was plenty of time. But death cut him off, young as he was; and his widow found herself next morning alone in the world, with three sturdy boys to provide for, all too young to earn a crust, and all Jürgl's debts to meet into the bargain. There was no help for it: the three fine cows which were the envy of the village, and which had been her portion at her father's death, only six months before, must be sold. Aennerl was the purchaser. Once conscience reproached her with a memory of the days long gone by, when she and that young widow were playmates, when orphan Aennerl had been taken home from her mother's grave by that same widow's father, and the two children had grown up in confidence and affection with each other. "Suppose I left her the cows and the money too?" mused Aennerl--but only for a moment. No; had they been any other cows, it might have been different--but just those three which all the village praised! one which had carried off the prize and the garland of roses at the last cow-fight [55], and the others were only next in rank. That was a purchase not to be thrown away. Still she was dissatisfied with herself, and inclined to sift her own mind further, when she was distracted by the approach of loud tramping steps, as of one carrying a burden. It was the Langer Peterl; and a goodly burden he bore, indeed--a burden which was sure to gather round him all the people of Reith, or any other place through which he might pass. Aennerl laughed and clapped her hands. "Oh, Peterl, you come erwünscht [56]!" she exclaimed. "Show me what you have got to sell--show me all your pretty things! I want an entirely new rig-out. Make haste! show me the best--the very best--you have brought." "Show you the best, indeed!" said the Langer Peterl, scarcely slackening his pace, and not removing the pipe from his mouth; for hitherto he had only known the orphan Aennerl by her not being one of his customers. "Show you the best, indeed, that what you can't buy you may amuse yourself with a sight of! And when you've soiled it all with your greasy fingers, who'll buy it, d'you suppose? A likely matter, indeed! Show you the best! ha! ha! ha! you don't come over me like that, though you have got a pair of dark eyes which look through into a fellow's marrow!" "Nonsense, Peterl!" replied Aennerl, too delighted with the thought of the finery in prospect even to resent the taunt; "I don't want to look at it merely--not I, I can tell you! I want to buy it--buy it all up--and pay you your own price! Here, look here, does this please you?" and she showed him a store of gold such as in all his travels he had never seen before. "Oh, if that's your game," said the long Peter, with an entirely changed manner, "pick and choose, my lady, pick and choose! Here are silks and satins and laces, of which I've sold the dittos to real ladies and countesses; there are----" "Oh, show me the dittos of what real ladies and countesses have bought!" exclaimed Aennerl, with a scream of delight; and the pedlar, who was not much more scrupulous than others of his craft, made haste to display his gaudiest wares, taking care not to own that it was seldom enough his pack was lightened by the purchases of a "real lady." To have heard him you would have thought his dealings were only with the highest of the land. But it needed only to say, "This is what my lady the Countess of Langtaufers wears," "This is what my lady the Baronin Schroffenstein bought of me," for Aennerl to buy it at the highest price the Long Peter's easy conscience could let him extort; and, indeed, had he not felt a certain commercial necessity for reserving something to keep up his connexion with his ordinary customers on the rest of his line of route, orphan Aennerl would have bought up all that was offered her under these pretences, and without stopping to consider whether the materials or colours were well assorted, or whether such titles as those with which the pedlar dazzled her understanding existed at all! The next day was a village festival in Reith. And the quiet people of Reith thought the orphan Aennerl had gone fairly mad when they saw at church the extravagant figure she cut in her newly-acquired finery; for, in her hurry to display it, she had in one way and another piled her whole stock of purchases on her person at once. A showy skirt embroidered with large flowers of many colours, and trimmed with deep lace, was looped up with bright blue ribbons and rosettes over a petticoat of violet satin, beneath which another of a brilliant green was to be seen. Beneath this again, you might have descried a pair of scarlet stockings; and on her shining shoes a pair of many-coloured rosettes and shoe-buckles. The black tight-fitting bodice of the local costume was replaced by a kind of scarlet hussar's jacket trimmed with fur, fastened at the throat and waist with brooches which must have been originally designed for a stage-queen. From her ears dangled earrings of Brobdignagian dimensions; and on her head was a hat and feathers as unlike the little hat worn by all in Reith as one piece of head-gear could well be to another. Of course, it did not befit a lady so decked to take the lowly seat which had served the orphan Aennerl; before the Divine office began she had seated herself in the most conspicuous place in the church, so that no one lost the benefit of the exhibition; and it may well be believed that the congregation had no sooner poured out of the sacred building than the appearance of the orphan Aennerl was the one theme of a general and noisy conversation. For some it was a source of envy; for some, of ridicule; for some unsophisticated minds, of simple admiration. But the wiser heads kept silence, or said, in tones of sympathy, "The orphan Aennerl isn't the girl the Goigner Jössl took her for." Jössl had been to church in his own village of Goign, and had therefore been spared the sight, as well as the comments it had elicited. But as he came towards Reith to take his Aennerl for the holiday walk, he noticed many strange bits of hinting in the greetings he received, which puzzled him so, that, instead of going straight on to Aennerl, he sat down on the churchyard wall, pondering what it could all mean. "I wish you joy of your orphan Aennerl!" one had said. "Goigner Jössl, Goigner Jössl, take my advice, and shun the threshold of orphan Aennerl!" were the words of another, and he was an old man and a sage friend too. "Beware, Goigner Jössl, beware!" seemed written on every face he had met--what could it all mean? He wandered forward uncertain, and then back again, then on again, till he could bear it no longer, and he determined to go down to the Wirthshaus beim Stangl, and ask his mates to their face what they all meant. Before he came in sight of the door, however, he changed his resolution. Through the open window he heard noisy talk, and noisiest of all was the voice of the Langer Peterl. Honest Jössl had an invincible antipathy to the wheedling, the gossip, the bluster, and the evil tongue of the Langer Peterl, and he never trusted himself to join his company, for he knew a meeting with him always led to words. Determining to wait till he was gone, he walked about outside, and as there is always a train of waggons waiting at the Wirthshaus am Stangl while the wayworn carters refresh themselves, he could easily remain unperceived. Thus, however, he became unintentionally the hearer of all he desired to know--much more than he desired, I should say. "I tell you, she,--Aennerl would have bought my whole pack if I'd have let her!" vociferated the Langer Peterl; "and I might have saved myself all further tramping, but that I wouldn't disappoint my pretty Ursal, and Trausl, and Moidl, and Marie," he added, in a tone of righteousness. "Buy it, man! you don't mean buy it! She got it out of you one way or another, but you don't mean she bought it, in the sense of paying for it?" "Yes, I do. I say, she paid for it in pure gold!" "No, that won't do!" said other voices; "where could she get gold from?" "Oh, that's not my affair," replied the pedlar, "where she got it from! It wouldn't do for a poor pedlar to ask where his customers get their money from--ha! ha! ha! I'm not such a fool as that! I know the girl couldn't have it rightfully, as well as you do, but it wouldn't do for me to refuse all the money I suspect is not honestly come by--ha! ha! I should then drive a sorry trade indeed!" Jössl's first impulse had been to fly at the Langer Peterl, and, as he would have expressed it, thrust the lie down his throat; but then, he reflected; where had the girl got the money from? what could he say? To dispute it without having means of disproving it was only opening wider the sore; and while he stood dejected and uncertain the conversation went on more animated than before. "I agree with you!" cried, between two whiffs of smoke, an idle Bursch, on whom since the death of the Wilder Jürgl that nickname had descended by common consent. "What right have we to be prying into our neighbour's business? If the girl's got money, why should any one say she hasn't a right to it? She's an uncommon fine girl, I say, and looks a long way better than she did before in her beggarly rags; and a girl that can afford to dress like that is not to be despised, I say." That the speaker had only received the cognomen of Wild after the Wilder Jürgl was only in that he was younger; he had earned the right to it in a tenfold degree. None of the steady lads of either Goign or Reith or Elmau, or any other place in the neighbourhood, would make a friend of him, and that is why he now sat apart from the others smoking in a corner. To be praised and defended by the Wilder Karl was a worse compliment than to be suspected by the steadier ones. The words therefore threw the assembly into some embarrassment for a moment, till the Kleiner Friedl [57], a sworn friend of Jössl, thinking he ought to strike a blow in his defence somewhere, cried out, in a menacing tone,-- "Very well played, Wilder Karl! but I see your game. You think because the girl's got money she's a good chance for you. You think her flaunting way will estrange steady Goigner Jössl, and then you think you may step in between them--and a sorry figure she'd cut two days after you'd had the handling of her! She wouldn't have much finery left then, I'll warrant! The Langer Peterl there would have it all back at half-price, and that half-price would all be in the pocket of our honest Wirth am Stangl. But it's in vain; whatever she is, she'll be true to the Goigner Jössl, I'll warrant--and as for you, she wouldn't look at you!" Wilder Karl rose to his feet, and glared at the Kleiner Friedl with a glance of fury. "I wager you every thing you and I have in the world, that I'll make her dance every dance with me at the Jause [58] this very night!" and he shook his fist with a confident air, for he had a smooth tongue and a comely face, and Aennerl would not have been the first girl these had won over. "That you won't," said the Wirth, coming to Friedl's rescue, who was but a young boy, and had felt rather dismayed at the proposed wager, "for I'm not sure, till all this is cleared up, that I should admit her to the dance. But the difficulty will not arise, for Aennerl herself told my daughter Moidl that now she could wear a lady's clothes it would be impossible for her to come any more to the village dance." Strengthened by the support of the Wirth [59], the Kleiner Friedl felt quite strong again; and he could not forbear exclaiming, "There, I told you there was no chance for you, Wilder Karl!" But Wilder Karl, furious at the disappointing news of the Wirth, and maddened by the invective of the Kleiner Friedl, rushed at the boy head-over-heels, bent on mischief. But Wilder Karl, though a bully and a braggart, inspired no respect, because no feather adorned his hat, and that showed he was no champion of any manly pursuit. So the whole room was on the side of Kleiner Friedl; and the bully having been turned out, and the subject of conversation pretty well exhausted, the Goigner Jössl turned slowly home. Now I don't say that he was right here. He was an excellent young man, endowed in an especial degree with Tirolese virtues. His parents had never had a moment's uneasiness about him; no one in the whole village was more regular or devout at church; in the field none more hard-working or trustworthy; at the village games and dances none acquitted himself better; and had a note of danger to his country sounded in his time I am sure he would have been foremost to take his place among its living ramparts, and that none would have borne out the old tradition of steadfastness more manfully than he. But of course he had his faults too. And one of his faults was the fault of many good people,--the fault of expecting to find every one as good as themselves, of being harsh and unforgiving, of sulking and pining instead of having an open explanation. Now, mind you, I think it would have been much better if Jössl had, after hearing the conversation I have just narrated, gone straight on to Aennerl's, and had it all out with her, had heard from her own lips the truth of the matter about which all Reith and Goign were talking, and judged her out of her own mouth, giving her, if he could not approve her conduct, advice by which she might mend it in the future. But this was not his way. He had thought his Aennerl a model, almost a divinity. He had always treated her as such, talked to her as such, loved her as such. It was clear now, however, that in some way or other she had done wrong. Instead of getting to the bottom of it, and trying to set it straight, he gave himself up to his disappointment and went home and sulked, and refused to be comforted. Aennerl, meantime, knew nothing of all this. She had had a great desire to be a lady and no longer a servant; and having plenty of money, and plenty of fine clothes, she thought this made her a lady, and had no idea but that every one acknowledged the fact. I don't think she exactly wished that all the village should be envious of her, but at all events she wished that she should enjoy all the prerogatives of ladyhood, and this, she imagined, was one. Then she had no parents to teach her better, and Jössl, who might have been her teacher, had forsaken her. But it was all too new and too exciting for her to feel any misgivings yet. She amused herself with turning over all her fine things, and fancied herself very happy. In another day or two the Hof of good neighbour Bartl was put up for sale, and another visit to the Bergmännlein enabled her to become the purchaser. She thus became the most important proprietor in Reith; but she was so little used to importance that she did not at all perceive that the people treated her very differently from the former proprietor of the Hof. Before him every hat was doffed with alacritous esteem due to his age and worth. But poor Aennerl hardly received so much as the old greeting, which in the days of companionship in poverty had always been the token of good fellowship with her, as with every one. It was long before any suspicion that she was mistrusted reached the mind of Aennerl. In the meantime she enjoyed her new condition to the full. Weekly visits to the Röhrerbüchel enabled her to purchase every thing she desired; and when the villagers held back from her, she ascribed their diffidence to the awe they felt for her wealth. In time, however, the novelty began to wear off. She grew tired at last of giving orders to her farm-servants, and watching her sleek cattle, and counting her stores of grain. That Jössl had not been to see her, she never ascribed to any thing but his respect for her altered condition; and she felt that she could not demean herself by being united to a lad who worked for day-wages. Still grandeur began to tire, and her isolation made her proud, and angry, and cross; and then people shunned her still more, and upon that she grew more vexed and angry. But, worse than this, she got even so used to her riches that she quite forgot all about the Nickel to whom she owed them. Her farm was so well stocked that it produced more than her wildest fancies required; she had no need to go back to the Röhrerbüchel to ask for more gold, and she had grown too selfish to visit it out of compassion to the dwarf. The Bergmännlein upon this grew disappointed; but his disappointment was of a different kind from Jössl's. He was not content to sit apart and sulk; he was determined to have his revenge. One bleak October night, when the wind was rolling fiercely down from the mountains, there was a sudden and fearful cry of "Fire!" in the village of Reith. The alarm-bells repeated the cry aloud and afar. The good people rose in haste, and ran into the lane with that ready proffer of mutual help which distinguishes the mountain-folk. The whole sky was illumined, the fierce wind rolled the flames and the smoke hither and thither. It was Aennerl's Hof which was the scene of the devastation. The fire licked up the trees, and the farm, and the rooftree before their eyes. So swift and unnatural was the conflagration that the people were paralyzed in their endeavour to help. One ran for ladders, another for buckets; but before any help could be obtained the whole homestead was but one vast bonfire. Then, madly rushing to the top of the high pointed roof, might be seen the figure of Aennerl clothed only in her white night-dress, and shrieking fearfully, "Save me! save me!" Every moment the roof threatened to fall in, and the agonized beholders watched her and sent up loud prayers, but were powerless to save. Suddenly, on the road from Goign a figure was seen hasting along. It was the Goigner Jössl. Would he be in time? The crowd was silent now, even their prayers were said in silence, for every one gasped for breath, and the voice failed. A trunk of an old branchless tree yet bent over the burning ruins. Jössl had climbed that trunk and was making a ladder of his body by which to rescue Aennerl all frantic from the roof. Will he reach her? Will his arm be long enough? Will he fall into the flame? Will he be overpowered by the smoke? See! he holds on bravely. The smoke rolls above his head, the flames dart out their fierce fangs beneath him! He holds on bravely still. He calls to Aennerl. She is fascinated with terror, and hears him not. "Aennerl! Aennerl!" once more, and his voice reached her, and with it a sting of reproach for her scornful conduct drives her to hide her face from his in shame. "Aennerl! Aennerl!" yet once again; and he wakes her, as from a dream, to a life like that of the past the frenzy had obliterated. She forgets where she is; but the voice of Jössl sounded to her as it sounded in the years gone by, and she obeys it mechanically. She comes within reach--and he seizes her! But the flames are higher now, and the smoke denser and more blinding. "Jesus Maria! where are they? They have fallen into the flames at last! Jesus, erbarme Dich ihrer [60]!" "Hoch! Hoch! Hoch [61]!" shouts the crowd, a minute later. "They are saved, Gott sei dank, they are saved!" and a jubilant cry rings through the valley which the hills take up and echo far and wide. On the edge of the crowd, apart, stands a little misshapen old man with grey, matted hair and beard, whom no one knows, but who has watched every phase of the catastrophe with thrilling emotion. It was he who first raised the cry that they had fallen into the flames; and the people sickened as they heard it, for he spoke it in joy, and not in anguish. In the gladness of the deliverance they have forgotten the old man, but now he shouted once more, as he dashed his hood over his head in a tone of disappointed fury, "I did it! and I will have my revenge yet!" "No; let there be peace," said Jössl, who had deposited Aennerl in safe hands, and now came forth to deal one more stroke for her; "let there be peace, old man, and let bygones be bygones." "Never!" said the Cobbold; "I have said I will have my revenge, and I will have it!" "But," argued Jössl, "have you not had your revenge? All you gave her you have had taken away--she is as she was before: can you not leave her so?" "No!" thundered the dwarf; "I will have the life of her before I've done." "Never!" in his turn shouted Jössl; and he placed himself in front of the elf. "Oh, don't be afraid," replied the dwarf, with a cold sneer, "I'm not going after her. I've only to wait a bit, and she'll come after me." Jössl was inclined to let him go, but remembering the instability of woman, he thought it better to make an end of the tempter there and then. "Will you promise me, that if I let you return to your hole in peace, you will do her no harm should she visit you there again?" "I promise you that I will serve her to the most frightful of deaths--that's what I promise you!" retorted the enraged gnome. "Then your blood be on your own head!" said Jössl, and, with his large hunting-knife drawn in his hand, he placed himself in a menacing attitude before the now alarmed dwarf. Jössl was a determined, powerful youth, not to be trifled with. The gnome trusted to the strength of his muscles, and fled with all his speed; but Jössl, who was a cunning runner too, maintained his place close behind him. The dwarf, finding himself so hotly followed, began to lose his head, and no longer felt so clearly as at first the direction he had to take to reach the Röhrerbüchel. Jössl continued to drive him before him, puzzling him on the zigzags of the path till he had completely lost the instinct of his way of safety. Then, forcing him on as before to the edge of the precipice, he closed upon him where there was no escape. Yes, one escape there was--it was in the floods of the Brandenburger Ache, which roared and boiled away some hundred feet below! Rather than fall ignominiously by the hand of a child of man, the gnome dashed himself, with a fierce shout, down the abyss. And that was the last that was ever seen of the Nickel of the Röhrerbüchel. Aennerl was now poorer than ever in this world's goods, but she was rich in one deep and wholesome lesson--that it is not glittering wealth which brings true happiness. The smiles of honest friends, and the love of a true heart, and the testimony of an approving conscience are not to be bartered away for all the gold in all the mines of the earth. Wilder Karl laughed with his two or three boon companions, and said, with a burst of contempt, "I've no doubt that fool of a Goigner Jössl will marry the orphan Aennerl now that she hasn't a penny to bless herself with!" And the Wilder Karl judged right. Aennerl scarcely dared hope that he could love her still, and she went forth humbly to her work day by day, neither looking to the right hand nor the left, accepting all the hardships and humiliations of her lot as a worthy punishment of her folly and vanity. But one evening as she came home from her toil, the Goigner Jössl came behind her, and he said softly in her ear, "Do you love me still, Aennerl?" "Love you still, Jössl!" cried the girl; "you have thrice given me life--first when I was a poor, heartbroken orphan, and you made me feel there was still some one to live for in the world; and then a second time, in that dreadful fire, when hell seemed to have risen up out of the earth to punish me before the time; and now again this third time, when I began to think my folly had sickened you for good and all! Don't ask me that, Jössl, for you must know I love you more than my life! If I dared, there is one question I should ask you, Can you still love me? but I have no right to ask that." "I must answer you in your own words, Aennerl," replied Jössl: "you must know that I love you more than my life!" "You must, you must--you have shown it!" exclaimed Aennerl. They had reached the bank near the Röhrerbüchel where we first saw them; the rosy light of the sunset, and the scent of the wild flowers, was around them just as on that night. "Yes," said Aennerl, after a pause, as if it were just then that Jössl had said the words [62]--"yes, Jössl, this is happiness; we want nothing more in this world than the warm sun, and the blue sky--and to be together! Yes, Jössl, we shall always be happy together." They walked on together; as they reached the memorial of the dead miners the village bells rang the Ave. And as they knelt down, how heartfelt was Jössl's gratitude that the prayer he had uttered at that spot once before had been so mercifully answered, and his Aennerl restored to him for ever! THE WILDER JÄGER AND THE BARONESS. There was a rich and powerful baron who owned a broad patrimony in South Tirol, Baron di Valle. He was not only one of the richest and most powerful, he was also one of the happiest, for he had the prettiest and most sensible woman of Tirol for his bride. The brief days were all too short for the pleasure they found in each other's society, and they were scarcely ever apart the whole day through. Once, however, the Baron went on a hunting party through a part of the country which was too rough for the Baroness to follow him. The day was splendid, the scent good, and the Baron full of enthusiasm for his favourite sport; but what egged him on more than all these, was the sight of a strange bold hunter who bestrode a gigantic mount, and who dashed through brake and briar, and over hill and rock, as if no obstacle could arrest him. Baron di Valle, who thought he was the boldest hunter of the whole country-side, was quite mad to see himself outdone; nor could he suffer this to be. Determined to outstrip his rival, he spurred his horse on, so that he might but pass him somewhere; but the Wilder Jäger, for it was he, always kept on ahead, and though the brave Baron kept close to his heels, he was never able to pass him by. They had long outstripped all the rest. But all this time the Baron had taken no note of whither he went; now he found himself in the midst of a thick forest of tall fir-trees, with their lower branches cut off because they were planted so thick and close together that there was no room between them, and their tops were intergrown so that they formed one compact mass, excluding the very air and the light of day. The Wild Hunter stopped his mad career before this barrier, and then, turning, pretended for the first time to be aware of the Baron's presence. "What do you want here?" he exclaimed, fiercely, his rolling eyes glaring like fire. "How dare you invade my domain!" and with that he blew a mighty blast on his hunting-horn, at sound of which a whole troop of wild huntsmen, habited like himself, and with similar fiery eyes, appeared suddenly, surrounding the Baron. "Stand back!" cried the Baron, in a commanding tone, as the wild huntsmen dismounted and prepared to seize him. "No one commands here but I," said the Wilder Jäger. And then he added, addressing his men, "Seize him, and carry him off!" "Hold!" said the Count, but speaking more humbly than before, for he saw he must yield something to the necessity of the case; "I suppose there is some ransom upon which you will let me off? I have wronged you in nothing, and meant no offence. I admired your brave riding, and I thought what one brave man might do, another might." "Since you take that tone," said the Wilder Jäger, "I will do what I can for you. I will let you ransom yourself at one price. You must know, that it is not you that I want at all; I only lured you here as a means of getting hold of the Baroness, and had you been uppish and violent, I should have kept you in chains for the rest of your life, while I married her. But as you know how to keep a civil tongue in your head, I will show you that I can appreciate courtesy. So now I give you permission to return, to be yourself the bearer to your wife of my conditions. "Tell her, then, that I have won her for my own, and she belongs irrevocably to me; it is useless that she attempt to escape, for you see that my people are countless, and violence is of no avail against me. But I am a good sort of fellow, and as I love her, I don't want to do any thing to alarm her, so long as she shows no foolish resistance." "But the ransom? You spoke of a ransom just now," interposed the Baron, hastily; "what, about that?" "All in good time," replied the Wilder Jäger--"give a fellow time to speak. The only mode of ransom is this--let the Baroness guess my name. I give her three guesses of three words each, and an interval of a month. But if she doesn't succeed, remember, she is mine! this day month I appear and claim her. If, in the meantime, she thinks she has made the guess, and wants to satisfy herself as to its correctness"--and he laughed a ghastly laugh of scorn, as if to impress the Baron with the hopelessness of the idea--"she has only to come to the ilex grove on the border of this forest which marks the frontier between your territory and mine. If she stands there, beside the centre tree, and blows this horn--see what a pretty little gold horn it is, that I have had studded with diamonds and rubies--just fit for her pretty little fingers!" he added, with a grin of scorn--"at sound of her voice I shall be with her on the instant." The Baron was not one to have tolerated such talk from any human being soever, but he felt the necessity of vanquishing his temper this time--a more difficult matter ordinarily than vanquishing a foe--for a dearer life than his own was at stake; and if he could not altogether save the Baroness from the power of the Wilder Jäger, he could take counsel with her as to the means of finding out the hidden name, and at least spend with her the last days that he could call her his. Accordingly he took the horn, and stuck it in his belt without a word. And indeed no word would have availed him, for the whole troop of the wild huntsmen had vanished as it came, and he was left alone. There was no difficulty in finding his way back by the path by which he had come, for it was plainly marked by the havoc of the surrounding vegetation the wild chase had cost. And though he now put spurs to his steed that he might reach home without losing an hour more than he could help of the companionship of his beloved wife, he now for the first time apprehended how swiftly he had come, for, riding the utmost of mortal speed, it took him three days to get back to the ilex grove which marked the boundary of his own territory. Hence it was still half a day's journey to reach his castle. But while he was yet a great way off his loving wife came out to meet him, full of joy at his approach, for since the rest of the hunt had come home without him she had done nothing but watch from the highest turret of the castle, that she might catch the first sight of him returning; her thirsty eyes had not been slow to discern his figure as he hastened home. Great was her amazement, however, to find that, instead of returning her greeting with his wonted delight, he turned his head away, as if he dared not look at her, and wept. She rode beside him all the way home, but he still kept silence, for he could not bear to render her sorrowful with the message of which he was the bearer. But he could conceal nothing from her loving solicitude, and soon he had told her all. Being a woman of prudent counsel and strong trust in God, she was much less cast down, however, than he had expected. Though bewildered at first, and seeing no way out of the difficulty, she yet declared she was sure some way of escape would be opened to her, it only remained to consider where they should find it. And never a word of angry recrimination did she utter to remind him that it was his mad vanity had brought them to this plight. The Baron felt the full force of this forbearance, for he did nothing but reproach himself with his folly. But the fresh proof of her amiability only occasioned another pang at the thought of the approaching separation. Still no good counsel came to mind, and the Baroness herself began almost to lose heart. The Baron had abandoned the hunt and all his sports, and sat gloomily in the ancient seat of his ancestors. The Baroness sat among the flowers of her oriel window, her embroidery in her hand; but her mind was far away over the tops of the dark green trees, looking for some bright thought to bring deliverance to her from above. Every morning and evening they knelt together in the chapel of the castle, and prayed that a spirit of prudence and counsel might be given them. Ten days had passed, and no good thought had come. The Baron reclined gloomily in the ancient seat of his ancestors, and the lady sat among the flowers of the oriel window gazing over the tops of the high dark fir-trees, full of hope that some wise counsel would be given her. Suddenly she rose and clapped her hands, and her ringing laugh brought the Baron bounding to her side. "I have found it, Heinrich!" she exclaimed; "I am sure I have found the name! Doesn't the Wilder Jäger live among the tall fir-trees?" "Yes; among the tall fir-trees is his dwelling." "And didn't he speak of three names?" "Yes; he said your guess must include three names." "Then I have it, Heinrich! What more natural than that he should be called from the names of the trees which form his palace? As I was gazing over the tops of the high dark trees the words came into my mind, 'Tree, Fir, Pine'--those will be the three words. Come, and let us go out to the ilex grove, and be free to belong to each other as of old!" She was so lively that the Baron caught some spark of her hopefulness, but he was too far sunk in despondency to enter into her joy all at once. Nevertheless, it was not a moment when, if ever, he would have thwarted her, so he ordered the horses to be saddled, for it was still early morning. And they rode together to the ilex grove which was the boundary of the Wilder Jäger's domain; the Baroness striving every minute by some sprightly speech to distract the Baron, and the Baron utterly incapable of rousing himself from his gloomy fears. The Baroness was the first to reach the grove; in fact, she had ridden on a good way in advance, that she might have it out with the Wilder Jäger before her husband came, so that she might greet him on his arrival with the news that she was free. Merrily she sounded the jewelled horn, and before its sound had died away the Wilder Jäger was at her side. He no longer looked dusty, wild, and fierce, as during the Baron's mad chase. He seemed a man of noble presence, carefully dressed in a green hunting-suit, with a powerful bow in his hand, and a beautiful boy to hold his arrows. In his belt was a jewelled hunting-knife of exquisite workmanship, and to a cord across his shoulder hung a golden horn of similar pattern to that he had sent the Baroness, and, moreover, as a further act of gallantry, he wore a scarf of red and white, the favourite colours of the Baroness. A jewelled cap shaded the sun from his brow, which a red and white plume gracefully crested. The Baroness looked astonished to find she had nothing more formidable to meet, and felt that had she not already been the wife of the Baron di Valle, she would not have found it so great a calamity to be obliged to marry the Wilder Jäger. The Wilder Jäger was not slow to perceive that the impression he had produced was good, and bowing towards her with courtly mien, paid her a respectful salutation, and immediately added,-- "Your eyes are so clever, fair Baroness, that I very much fear you are going to pronounce my name, and rob me of the happiness I had so nearly bought! Spare me, therefore, lovely lady--say not the word! but come with me into the shady pine-forest, where you shall have every thing heart can desire--the noblest palace, the widest domain, and unlimited command; retainers without number, pleasures without alloy, and every wish gratified without condition!" He approached her as he spoke. His eyes sparkled no longer with the angry fury which had thrilled the Baron, but with a mild fire of tenderness and devotion. Nothing more attractive and winning than his whole appearance and manner could be conceived, and for a moment the Baroness had almost forgotten the less accomplished--but, oh! more sincere--passion of her Heinrich. It was only for a moment. The weakness passed, she instantly drew herself up with dignity, and stepped back against the friendly ilex. "It was not to hear such words I came," she said, "but to pronounce those which are to free me from ever having to listen to such protestations again----" "Oh, say them not! say them not!" said the Wilder Jäger, throwing himself at her feet. "Any thing but that! Name any wish by fulfilling which I can win your favour; name any difficult task by accomplishing which I can prove myself worthy of your love----" "My love," said the Baroness, striving to speak coldly, "is another's already; you see, there is none to be won from me. But interrupt me no more. I have guessed your name, to discover which was to be the price of my freedom. It is----" The Wilder Jäger clasped her feet in despair, entreating her not to pronounce it, but she went on, with a clear, confident voice, to utter the words,-- "Tree! Fir! Pine!" The Wilder Jäger looked up as if he did not quite understand what she meant. "Now, let go your hold, and let me pass, for I am free!" she said, resolutely. "'Free,' say you?" said the handsome Cobbold, with astonishment. "Free? did you mean you thought that was my unknown name?" "Yes," replied the lady, in a voice of conviction. "Oh, dear, it is nothing like it!" he answered, with glee, and yet not without a delicate regard for her disappointment. "No, that is not it; nor is it likely you should ever arrive at it. So days of happiness are before us yet." He had no need to kneel to her longer, but it was joy to him to be at her feet. "Dare not to speak so before me!" replied the Baroness, trying to tear herself away. "I know of no happiness, except with Heinrich; and I am persuaded that, though I have failed this time, it will yet be given to me to find the word which shall restore me to him completely." The Baron arrived as she finished speaking; and though he saw by the sorrowful look which now had possession of her bright face, and the triumphant mien of the Cobbold, that she had failed, and that she was still under the Wilder Jäger's spell, he was so incensed to find him in such an attitude that he drew his sword, and would have closed with him then and there, but the Wilder Jäger blew one note upon his horn, and in an instant he was surrounded, as before, by his myrmidons, who unarmed him and held him bound upon the ground, while the Cobbold himself approached to seize the hand of the Baroness. A fiery fury took possession of him, and sparks darted from his eyes which fell smouldering among the twigs of fir. Powerless to defend his wife by force, the Baron once more mastered his anger, and reminded his adversary courteously of his promise to leave them at peace for the interval of a month. "I am always ready to answer you in whatever tone you elect to adopt," said the Wilder Jäger, rising, and leaving the side of the Baroness. "You see, it is useless to attempt force against me; but when you behave with due consideration, so will I." At a sign from him the sprites loosed the Baron's bonds, gave him back his sword, and held his stirrup with the most respectful care, while he mounted his horse. "Depart, then, unharmed," said the Wilder Jäger, "since you set so much store on prolonging your suspense. I should say, it was wiser to make the best of a bad bargain and submit to your fate at once, with grace. However, I have given my word and won't go back from it. I restrain my power over you till the full end of the month; and, what is more, I not only give the lady three guesses, but as many as she likes. For," he added, with a cynical leer, "she is as little likely to guess it in thirty as in three; while every time that she chooses to essay the thing, it gives me the happiness of seeing her." And he turned away with a peal of wild laughter which made the lady shudder. The sprites vanished as they had come; and the Baron and his wife rode sadly home, without the courage to exchange a word. If the Baroness had for a moment been won by the comely presence and devoted admiration of the Wilder Jäger, she had now seen enough reason to fear his treacherous humour, and to dread her impending fate as much as at the first. They spent the rest of the evening in prayers and tears in the chapel of the castle, and the next evening, and the next; and the days flowed by as before, but more sadly, and with even less of hope. The Baroness scarcely now dared raise her eyes so high as the tops of the tall dark trees; they fell abroad over the beautiful landscape stretched out beneath them, and the good gifts of God cropping up out of the ground; and she thought how beautiful was that nature to which she must so soon say adieu! Thus ten days passed without a gleam of expectation. Suddenly she rose and clapped her hands; and her silvery laugh brought her husband bounding to her side. "I have it this time, Heinrich!" she said. And the Baron listened anxiously, but trusted himself never to speak. "Said you not that the Wilder Jäger's domain was entirely among the tall dark trees?" "So it seemed to me it was," responded her husband. "But I certainly discerned through the forest patches of ripe golden grain. Saw you them not too?" "The first time I rode too fast to notice them, but I do think on this last journey I saw such here and there by the wayside." "No doubt," continued the lady, "it is hence he takes his name; these small patches of golden grain are more worth than all the vast forests. Order the horses, for I have guessed his name! It came to my mind just now, as I looked over the harvest-fields stretched out yonder. "Wheat, Oats, Maize--that will be his name!" The Baron knew her counsel had often proved right when he least expected, and even disputed it, and though he was now too desponding to expect success, he was likewise least inclined to dispute her word. So he ordered the horses round, for it was yet early morning, and they rode to the ilex grove. The Baroness, whose hope seemed to rise as she got nearer the goal of the journey, was full of spirit and cheerfulness, and, finding it impossible to work up the Baron to the same expectation as herself, rode on to accomplish her work ere he arrived. One note of the jewelled horn brought the Wilder Jäger to her presence. As she had failed before, he had less fear of her success this time, and he was proportionately less subservient and submissive. "So you think you are come to give me my dismissal, beautiful Baroness? But you have no reason to repulse me so--be assured I mean it well with you; and though there is no limit to my power over you, I shall never treat you otherwise than with honour," he said, with a little scornful laugh which suited his fine features exactly, and made him look handsomer than before. And as he spoke so, his haughty tone, not unmixed with warmth and admiration, thrilled her with the notion that, after all, if it were not for her troth plighted to the Baron, it would not be so very dreadful to owe obedience to one who knew how to command so gracefully. But it was only for a moment. The weakness passed, she drew herself up with dignity, and, retreating against the support of the friendly ilex, said,-- "Silence! and remember your promise to leave me at peace till the fatal month is out. I cannot listen to you. And now for your name----" The Cobbold bowed, with a half-mocking, half-respectful inclination, as if forcing himself to listen out of courtesy, but secure that she would not guess right. "Wheat! Oats! Maize!" said the Baroness, with a positive air. The Cobbold stared comically, as if doubting whether she was in earnest; and at last, as if to relieve her out of politeness, he replied,-- "Oh, dear no, that's not at all like it!" The Baroness hung her head in despair; then, drawing herself up again, she said,-- "How do I know you are not deceiving me? You say this is not your name, and I have to believe you--but suppose I maintain that it is it?" "You are not fair, beautiful Baroness," replied the Wilder Jäger, with a charming dignity. "I have never deceived you, nor ever would I deceive so noble a lady! what I have promised, I have kept; but in this case I have no means of deceiving you--great as is my power, that is one thing beyond it. Could a mortal, indeed, discover and pronounce my name in my presence, I could not stand before him an instant. But this it is not given to mortals to know, and that is why I proposed this difficulty to you. Should I have paid you so bad a compliment," he added, with his cynical laugh, "as to render it possible that I should lose so great a prize?" The Baron rode up while he was saying this, and shrank dumb with despair at the cruel words and the positive tone in which they were uttered. Without condescending to exchange a word with the Cobbold this time, he lifted his wife on to her palfrey and rode away with her in silence. It was now all over. His despondency even gained the Baroness, and she ceased to rack her brain with the hope of finding the inconceivable name. Her eye not only dared not raise itself to the tall dark trees--it had not even power to range over the landscape. With her head sunk upon her breast, she sat silently among her flowers in her oriel window, nor cared even to look at them. Only in the morning and the evening they knelt together in the chapel of the castle, and prayed that the calamity might pass away yet. The days went by, and now the last but one had come; and the Baroness trembled, for her imagination pictured the Cobbold coming to carry her away. But her courage did not forsake her even now, and she proposed to go out into the forest to meet her fate, as more noble than waiting for it to overtake her. The Baron, too dispirited to discuss any matter, and indifferent to every thing, now that all he cared for was to be taken from him, gave a listless consent. The next morning, having prayed and wept together in the castle chapel, they set out on their mournful pilgrimage, the young wife led as a lamb to the sacrifice. The flowers bloomed beneath their feet, and the sun shone warm overhead, the birds sang blithe and gay--all nature was bright and fresh; but with heavy hearts they passed through the midst, nor found a thought but for their own great sorrow. As they came to the borders of the forest, however, the Baroness discerned the cry as of one in distress. Forgetting for the moment her own agony, her compassionate heart was at once moved, and she begged her husband to turn aside with her, and find out the poor wretch who pleaded so piteously. In a little time they had followed up the sound, and they found one of the Wilder Jäger's men tied in front of a lately lighted fire. In a few minutes more the heaped-up wood would have been all in flames, and then the luckless wight must have been slowly roasted! At a word from the Baroness, the Baron cut his bonds; and then they inquired what was the occasion of his punishment. "Oh, it don't want much to get a punishment out of the Wilder Jäger!" was the answer. "Is he so very severe, then?" asked the Baroness, her cheek blanching with fear. "At times, yes; it depends how the fancy takes him--if he is out of humour he spares no one. If he were not so violent and arbitrary, I would do you a good turn for that you have done me; but I dare not, his anger is too fearful." The more he descanted on the Wilder Jäger's barbarity, the more the Baroness prayed that he would tell her the word that would save her; but he dared not, and all her instance was in vain. "And yet there might be a means," he said, for he was desirous of doing a service to his deliverers. "Oh, speak! tell us what we can do--no matter what it is, we will do it!" answered both at once. "Well, if you happen to overhear it, I shan't have told you, and yet it will serve your turn just as well;" and with that he walked on close in front of them, singing carelessly as he went. "How are we to 'overhear' it, Heinrich?" said the Baroness, after a bit. "He seems to have forgotten us," replied the Baron, in despair. "I have been expecting him every minute to turn round and give us a hint of how he meant to help us; but it is just like every one you do a favour to--when they have got what they want, they forget all about you." They walked on in silence; and the fellow kept on close in front of them, singing as before, and always the same verse. At last the Baroness got wearied with hearing the same thing over and over again, and she began repeating the words over to herself, mechanically. She could not make them out at all at first, for he had a rough, abrupt articulation, but by dint of perseverance in an occupation which served as a distraction to her agony, she at last made it out, word by word:-- "The Wild Huntsman's betrothed (though he is not tamed) To a lady fair Driven to despair. If she only knew he's Burzinigala named!" "'Burzinigala named!' exclaimed the Baroness, with the ringing laugh of former days, and clapping her hands merrily. "I have it all right this time, you may depend, Heinrich!" and she laughed again. The Baron was too delighted for words--he embraced his wife in his joy; and they walked on with a very different mien from what they wore before. The first joy over, they turned to thank their helper; but he had already disappeared, climbing over the tops of the trees to get out of sight of the Wilder Jäger's eye for as long as might be. There was no more lingering now, they hasted on, anxious only to proclaim their triumph. The ilex grove was soon reached, and the jewelled horn quickly produced the Wilder Jäger. To-day he was habited with greater care even than on the former occasions, and there was also still more assurance in his manner, and still more forwardness to flatter. "Well, lady fair," he said, with a mocking air, "do you deem you have guessed my name this time?" "Really, it is so difficult," replied the lady, "that how can you think I can hope to succeed? Besides, why should I wish to do what would deprive me of so charming a companion?" The Wilder Jäger in his turn was perturbed. Nothing could have made him happier than to hear such words from her lips, could he have deemed them sincere; but there was an irony in her tone and a playfulness in her countenance which showed that her heart was not in her words. Yet he felt convinced she could not discover his name; and so he knew not what to think, and scarcely what to say. And the Baroness, delighting in his confusion, continued teasing him, like a cat with a mouse. After a good deal of this bantering, in which the Wilder Jäger got quite bewildered, the Baroness rose majestically. "Have we not had enough talking?" she said, with emphasis; "when are you going to take me home--Sir Burzinigala?" It would be impossible to describe the effect of this word. He rose from the earth with one bound. The beauty, the calmness, the commanding air, which had at one time charmed the Baroness, had all fled. Wild, savage, and furious as he had first appeared and tenfold more, he now showed; and the sparks flew from his eyes on all around. Through the thick tops of the trees he passed, they hardly knew how; and soon the only trace of him left was that of the sparks that smouldered on the dry heath. It only remained for the Baron and Baroness to return home, locked in each other's arms. And they continued loving each other more than ever before to the end of their days. THE GRAVE PRINCE AND THE BENEFICENT CAT. There once was a king in Tirol who had three sons. The eldest was grave and thoughtful beyond his years; but he seldom spoke to any one, took no pleasure in pastimes, and lived apart from those of his age. The other two were clever and merry, always forward at any game, or at any piece of fun, and passed all their time in merry-making and enjoyment. Now though the eldest son was, by his character, more adapted to make a wise and prudent sovereign, yet the two younger brothers, by their lively, engaging manner, had made themselves much more popular in the country; they were also the favourites of their father, but the eldest was the darling of his mother. The king was old and stricken in years, and would gladly have given up the cares of government, and passed his declining years in peace, but he could not make up his mind to which of the brothers he should delegate his authority. The queen was persuaded of the excellent capacity of her eldest son; but the two younger were always saying he was half mad, and not fit to govern, and as they had the people on their side, he greatly feared lest the kingdom should be involved in civil war, so he always put off making any arrangement. One day, however, an ancient counsellor observed to him, that if he really feared that there would be a dispute about the succession, it was much better to have it decided now while he was alive to act as umpire, than that it should befall when they would be left to wrangle with no one to make peace between them. The king found the counsel good, and decided to retire from the government, and to proclaim his eldest son king in his stead. When the two younger sons, however, heard what he intended to do, they came to him and urged their old charge, that their elder brother was not fit to govern, and entreated the king to halve the kingdom between them. But the king, anxious as he was to gratify them, yet feared to displease the queen by committing so great an injustice against her eldest son; and thus they were no further advanced than before. Then the old counsellor who had offered his advice before spoke again, and suggested that some task should be set for the three, and that whoever succeeded in that should be king beyond dispute. The three sons all swore to abide by this decision; and the king found the counsel good. But now the difficulty arose, what should he set them to do? for they had insisted so much on the weak intellect of the eldest, that the queen feared lest, after all, he should fail in the trial, and her care for him be defeated. She knew he had never practised himself in feats of strength, or in the pursuit of arms, so it was useless proposing such as these for the test, but she persuaded him to set them something much simpler. So, having called an assembly of all the people, he proclaimed aloud that the three brothers should travel for a year and a day, and whichever of them should bring him back the finest drinking-horn, he should be the king--the three sons swearing to abide by his award. The two younger brothers set out with a great retinue; and, as they did not apprehend much difficulty in surpassing their brother in whatever they might undertake, they spent the greater part of the year allowed them in amusing themselves, secure in bringing back the best, whatever they might bring. The eldest set out alone through the forest. In his lonely wanderings he had often observed a strangely beautiful castle on a far-off mountain, concerning which he could find no record in any of his books, nor could he learn that any one living knew any thing about it. He now resolved to make his way thither, persuaded that if he was to find something surpassing the work of human hands, it was like to be in this enchanted castle. Though it was so high-placed, the way was much easier than he thought, and he was not more than five months getting there; so that he had ample time for exploring its precincts, and yet get back within the appointed date. He had, indeed, to traverse dark forests and steep rocky paths, but when he got near the castle all these difficulties ceased. Here there were only easy slopes of greensward, diapered by sparkling flowers; broad-leaved trees throwing delicious shade; and rills that meandered with a pleasant music. Delicious bowers and arcades of foliage of sweet-scented plants invited to repose; and every where luscious fruits hung temptingly within reach. Birds sang on every branch with a soft, dreamy melody which soothed, and disturbed not the lightest slumber. The prince thought it would have been delightful to pass the remainder of his days there, but he remembered that it was an important mission with which he was entrusted, and he passed on. A broad flight of marble steps led from these amenities up to the palace, and every now and then a thousand little jets were turned on, to pour their tiny floods over them, and cool them for the tread of those who entered. And yet no one was near, no one to enjoy all this magnificence! The prince entered the hall, but no one came to meet him; he passed through the long corridors--all were deserted; he entered one apartment after another--still no one. At last he came to one charming boudoir all hung with pink satin, and lace, and beautiful flowers. On a pink satin sofa covered with lace sat a large Cat with soft grey fur, and soft grey eyes--the first living thing he had met! As he entered, the Cat rose to meet him, walking on her hind-paws, and, holding out her right front-paw in the most gracious manner, asked him, in a sweet, clear voice, if there was any thing she could do for him. Then, as if the effort was too great, she let herself down on all fours, and rubbed her soft grey head against his boots. Finding her so friendly, he was going to take her up in his arms: this she would not allow, however, but sprang with an agile bound on to a ledge above his head. "And now tell me," said she, "what is it you want me to do for you?" "Really, Lady Purrer, you are so kind, you confuse me! But, to tell you the truth, I fear--" "You fear that a poor puss can't be of any use," interposed the Cat, smartly, "and that your requirements are much above her feeble comprehension. But never mind, tell me all the same; there is little fear but that I can help you, and if I can't, the telling me will do you no harm." "Quite the contrary," replied the prince, "it will be a great pleasure to have only your sympathy, for I am in great distress." Her voice was so sweet and kind, that he quite forgot it was only a Cat he was talking to. "Poor prince!" said the Cat, soothingly; "tell me all about it, then. But stop, I'll tell you first what I think. I'm sure you are not appreciated at home. I saw it in your look when you first came in. You don't look bright and enterprising, as you ought to look. You look as if you lived too much alone. Oh, you would be twice as handsome if you only looked a little more lively and energetic--" and then she stopped short, and sneezed a great many times, as if she feared she had said what was not quite proper, and some other sound would efface that of her words. "There is a great deal of truth in what you say," replied the prince; "they don't care much about me at home--at least my mother does, but my father and brothers don't. And I do live too much alone--but it's not my fault: it's a bad way of mine, and I don't know how to get out of it." "You want some one to pet you, and spoil you, and make you very happy; and then you would be pleased to go into the society of others, because then you could say to yourself, I'll show them that there's some one understands me and makes a fuss about me--" and she stopped short, as before. "But who should care to spoil and pet me?" cried the prince, despondingly, and too much interested in her words to see any reason why she should be confused at what she had said. "Why, a nice little wife, to be sure!" replied the Cat. "A wife!" exclaimed the prince; "oh yes, my father's grey-bearded counsellors will find me some damsel whom it is necessary I should marry for the peace of the kingdom; and to her I shall be tied, and, be she an idiot or a shrew, I shall have no voice in the matter." "But do you mean to say," retorted the Cat, in a more excited voice, "that if you found a nice little princess--I don't say any one they could with justice object to, but a real princess--who cared very much for you, and made you very happy, very happy indeed, so that you determined to marry her, that you wouldn't be man enough to say to your father and all his counsellors, 'Here is the princess I mean to make my wife; I feel Heaven intended her for me. I am sure she will be the joy of my people, as she is mine, and no other shall share my throne'?" "Wouldn't I," exclaimed the prince, with energy, starting to his feet, and placing his hand instinctively on his sword, his eye flashing and the colour mounting in his cheek. "Ah! if you always looked like that! Now, you are handsome indeed!" exclaimed the Cat, enthusiastically, and purred away. "But," she added, immediately after, "all this time you haven't told me what it was you came for." "Ah!" said the prince, despondingly, at finding himself thus recalled to the prosaic realities of his melancholy life from that brief dream of happiness. "No; because you have been talking to me of more interesting things" (the Cat purred audibly); and then he told her what it was had really brought him there. "You see, your mother understands your character better than all the rest," said the Cat. "She knew you could be trusted to prove your superiority over your brothers, though the others hope you may fail. However, fail you won't this time, for I can give you a drinking-horn which neither your brothers nor any one else on earth can match!" With that she sprang lightly on to the soft carpet, and ran out of the room, beckoning to him to follow her. She led him through a long suite of rooms till they came to a large dining-hall all panelled with oak and filled with dark carved-oak furniture. In the centre of one end of this hall, high up in the panelling, was an inlaid safe or tabernacle curiously wrought. Puss gave one of her agile springs on to the top of this cabinet, and, having opened its folding-doors gently with her paw, disclosed to view a drinking-horn such as the prince had never seen. It was a white semi-transparent horn, but close-grained, like ivory, and all finely carved with designs of curious invention; the dresses of the figures were all made of precious stones cunningly let in, and they sparkled with a vivid lustre, like so many lamps. Then it had a rim, stand, and handle of massive gold exquisitely chased, and adorned with rows of pearls and diamonds. "Kind Lady Purrer," exclaimed the prince, "you are right, there is no doubt of my success! But how can I ever sufficiently thank you for what you have done for me? for I owe all to you." "And a little to your own discernment too," said the Cat, archly. "And now, always look as much alive and as bright as you do now, and you will see people will think better of you." "But when shall I see you again, most sweet counsellor? May I come back and see you again?" pleaded the prince, and he tried to stroke her sleek fur as she rubbed her soft grey head, purring, against his boots. The stroking, however, she would by no means allow, but springing again on to the top of the cabinet, she said,-- "Oh, yes; it will not be long before you will have to come back to me, I know. But go, now; you have spent more time here than you think, and you have only just enough left to get back within the year." The prince turned to obey her; and the Cat jumped down, and ran by his side, purring. When he got out into the grounds again, she followed him, climbing from tree to tree; and when he came to the boundary-wall she ran all along on the coping. But here at last they had to part, to her great regret, and for many a lonely mile he still heard her low and plaintive mew. It was true, he must have spent more time in her pleasant company than he had thought, for when he reached home he found the day of trial had arrived; the streets were deserted, and all the people gathered in the palace to see the drinking-horns his brothers had brought, and talking loudly of their magnificence. He passed through their midst without being recognized, for the people knew him so little; and thus he heard them speak of his younger brothers:-- "What bright faces they have! and what a merry laugh! it does the heart good to hear them," said one. "I wonder how the kingdom will be divided, and which half will be to which of them," said another. "For my part, I don't care to the lot of which I fall, for both are excellent good fellows," replied a third. And thus they had clearly settled in their own mind that his brothers had carried the day, and they didn't even trouble themselves to think what he would bring, or whether he would come back at all. It was the same thing all the way along. The words were varied, but the same idea prevailed every where, that the younger brothers had made good their claim; there was no question at all of the eldest. The prince's face was growing moody again; but just then one good woman, wiping the soap-suds from her hands as she turned from her washing at the river to join the throng, exclaimed, as she heard some neighbours talking thus, "Hoity toity! it's all very well with you and your laughing princes--a grave one for me, say I! Laughing may lead a man to throw away his money, but it won't teach him to feed the poor, or govern a kingdom. Wait till the Grave Prince comes back! I'll warrant he'll bring the bravest drinking-horn!" A chorus of mocking laughter greeted her defence of him. "He bring the bravest drinking-horn!" said one. "Don't believe he knows what a drinking-horn is for--or drink either!" said another. "No; his brothers understand that best, at all events. I like a man who can drink his glass." "And I like one who doesn't drink it, whether he can or not; but keeps his head clear for his business," said the good wife who had defended him before. And as there were a good many who were too fond of the bottle in the crowd, the laugh raised at him was turned against them. He had one defender, then, in all that mass of people, but all the rest judged him incapable, and without trial! He was too disheartened, to make his way into the great hall where the success of his brothers was being proclaimed, but instead trod sadly and secretly up to his mother's chamber. The queen was too distressed at the absence of her favourite son to take part in the jocular scene below, and was seated, full of anxiety, at her window, watching. "What do you here, my son?" she exclaimed, when he entered; "you have but one short half-hour more, and the time will be expired. The sun is already gone down, and the time once past, whatever you have brought, it will avail you not! Haste, my son, to the council-hall!" "It is useless, mother; all are against me!" cried the prince; and he laid the beautiful flagon on the table, and sank upon a chair. In the mean time it had grown dark, but the queen, impelled by her curiosity to know what success her son had had, pulled off the wrapper that enclosed the drinking-horn, and instantly the apartment was brilliantly lighted by the light of the precious stones with which it was studded! "My son, this is a priceless work! This is worth a kingdom! Nothing your brothers can have brought can compare with this--haste, then, my son!" and she led him along. It was dark in the council-hall too; but when the queen had dragged her son up to the throne where the king sat, she uncovered the flagon, and the sparkling stones sent their radiance into every part. Then there was one shout of praise. The drinking-horns of the younger brothers, which had anon been so highly extolled, were no more thought of, and every one owned that the Grave Prince had won the trial. The king declared it was too late for any more business that night, the proclamation of the new sovereign would be made the next morning; and in the meantime they all retired to rest, the Grave Prince with some new sensations of satisfaction and hope, and the queen assured of the triumph of her son. But in the silent night, when all were wrapt in slumber, and the king could not sleep for the anxiety and perplexity which beset him as to his successor, the two young brothers came to him and complained that they had been circumvented. The Grave Prince had always shown himself so gloomy and unenergetic, it was impossible they could conceive he was going to distinguish himself, so they had taken no trouble to beat him; but if their father would but allow another trial, they would undertake he should not have the advantage of them again. So the next day, instead of proclaiming the new sovereign, the king announced that he had determined there should be a fresh trial of skill; and whichever of the princes should bring him the best hunting-whip, that day year, should have the crown. The princes set off next day on their travels once more, the eldest son of course directing his towards the castle of the Beneficent Cat. This time he had not to traverse a file of deserted halls before meeting her; she sat looking out for him on the coping of the wall where he had left her mewing so piteously when he last parted from her. "I told you it would not be long before you would have to come back to me," she said, as he approached. "What can I do for you this time?" "My brothers are discontented at being beaten with your beautiful beaker," replied the prince, gallantly, "and they have demanded another trial: this time my father sends us in quest of a hunting-whip." "A hunting-whip?" echoed the Cat; "that is lucky, for I can suit you with one neither they nor any one else on this earth can surpass!" and she frisked merrily along the path before him till they came to the stables; then she took him into a room where all manner of saddles, and horse-gear, and hunting-horns were stored. But on a high ledge, at the very top of the room, was a dusty hunting-whip of the most unpretending appearance. With one of her bold springs she reached the ledge, and jumped down again with this whip in her mouth. "It is not much to look at, I own," she said, as she observed the perplexed look with which the prince surveyed the present; "but its excellent qualities are its recommendation. You have but to crack this whip, and your horse will take any thing you put him at, be it a river half a mile wide, or a tree fifty feet high. There are plenty of horses in the stable, saddle any of them you like, and make experience of it for yourself." The prince did as she bid him; and at sound of the enchanted whip his mount leapt with equal ease over hills and valleys. "This is a whip indeed!" exclaimed the prince, his face flushed with the unwonted exercise, and his heart beating high at the idea of being the bearer of such a prize. "Ah, that's how I like to see you!" said the friendly puss; "I like to see you like that. Now you are handsome indeed!" and she scampered away, as if coyly ashamed of what she had said. It was not long before she returned; and then she invited the prince into the next room, where an elegant dinner was laid out, of which the Cat did the honours very demurely. A high divan was arranged at the top of the table, on which she reclined, and ate and lapped alternately out of the plates ready before her, while invisible attendants served the viands and filled the glasses. When they had finished their meal, they went out to repose in the flowery bowers; and when the heat of the day was past, the Beneficent Cat reminded her guest that he must be thinking of going home, if he would not that his brothers should supplant him. "Must I go so soon, sweet Lady Purrer?" replied the prince. "I know not how to part from you; it seems I should be happy if I were always with you. I have never felt so happy any where before!" "You are very gallant, prince," responded the Cat, "and you have no idea how well it becomes you to look as you do now; but the affairs of your kingdom must be your first thought. You must first secure your succession--and then we must look out for the nice little wife we talked of last time." "Ah," sighed the Grave Prince, "don't talk of that--that is not for me! No one beautiful enough for me to care about will ever care for me!" "Not if you look desponding and gloomy, like that," replied the Cat. "Do you know, you look quite like another being when you look so gloomy; and yet you can be so handsome when you look bright and hopeful! But now," she proceeded, laying her soft paw on his arm to arrest the futile justification which rose to his lips, "before you go, I have something very important to tell you. You will now go back, and with the hunting-whip I have given you, you are safe to win the trial which is to establish your right to the kingdom. But there will be yet another trial exacted of you, and you will have to come back again to me. What you are to do then, I must tell you now, for it requires great prudence and courage, and one principal thing is, that you don't say a word to me all the time. Can you promise that?" "Well, that is hard indeed," said the prince; "but still, if you command it, I think I can promise to obey, for the sake of pleasing you." "Then the next thing is harder. Do you think you can do whatever I command?" "Oh yes, I am sure I can promise that!" replied the prince, warmly. "Mind, whatever I command, then--however hard, or however dreadful it may be?" "Yes, any thing--however hard, or however dreadful!" "But will you swear it?" "I see you doubt my courage," said the prince, half offended. "You take me for a fool, like the rest. But no wonder; I know I look like a fool!" "Now don't look gloomy again! you were so handsome just now when you said so firmly you would do 'any thing.' Will you gratify me by swearing?" "You doubt my courage." "No; I don't doubt your courage. But I know how terrible a thing I have to command you; and I know how many others have failed before you. Now will you not swear, but to please me?" "Yes; I swear," said the prince, energetically, "to do whatever it may be that you tell me to do." "Now, remember, you have undertaken it solemnly. This is what you must do. When you come in, you will find me sitting on the kitchen stove; you must then seize me by my two hind-paws, and dash me upon the hearthstone till there is nothing left of me in your hands, but the fur!" "Oh dear! I can never do that!" exclaimed the prince, in great embarrassment. "But you have sworn to do whatever I told you!" replied the Cat. "Well, but I thought you were going to order me to do something rational, something noble and manly, requiring courage and strength--not a horrible act like this." "If it is the thing that has to be done, it does not matter what it is. Besides, it does require courage, great courage; and that is why I would not tell you first what it was, because others have failed when they knew what it was." "And you expect me to have less feeling and affection for you than they?" "No; but I expect more sense and judgment of you. I expect you to understand and believe that if I say it has to be done, it is really for the best, and that you will trust to me that it is right. And I expect that you will respect your promise, which was made without limit or exception. But now, go; you have no time to lose, if you want to reach home with the hunting-whip in time for the trial." He rose to leave; and she followed him down the path, purring by his side. And after she had taken leave of him at the boundary-wall, he heard her mewing sad adieus as he went on for many a weary mile. When the prince reached the council-hall, he found, as before, that his brothers were there first, and that every one seemed to have decided that they had won the day--in fact no one showed any curiosity to know what he would bring. As he had beaten them by his lustrous jewels before, they had fancied he would bring something of the same sort again; so, to conquer him on his own ground, they had sought out and found two handles of hunting-whips mounted with jewels as sparkling as those of his drinking-horn. When they saw him come in with the shabby old whip the Beneficent Cat had given him, they laughed outright in his face; and the king, in a fit of indignation, ordered him to leave the hall for venturing to insult him by bringing such a present. Some laughed him to scorn, and some abused him; but no one would listen to a word he had to say. At last the tumult was so great that it reached the queen's ears; and when she had learnt what was the matter, she insisted that he should have a hearing allowed him. When silence had been proclaimed the Grave Prince said,-- "It is true, my whip is not so splendid as that of my brothers, but jewels are out of place on a hunting-whip, it seems to me; the handle is wanted to be smooth, so that the hand may take a firm grip of it, rather than to be covered with those points and unevennesses. The merit of my whip is not in the handle, it is in the lash, which has such excellent qualities, that you have but to crack it, and your horse will immediately take you over any obstruction there may be in your way--be it a house or a mountain, or what you will. If you will allow me, I will give you proof of its powers." Then they all adjourned to the terrace in front of the council-hall, where was a fine avenue of lofty cypresses; and the queen ordered a horse to be brought round from the stables. The people had never seen the prince on horseback before; and when they saw him looking so gallant, and noble, and determined, they could not forbear cheering him, till his younger brothers began to fear that his real worth would soon be found out, and their malice exposed. Then the prince cracked his whip--and away went the horse over the tops of the high trees, seeming to scrape the clouds as he passed. All the people were lost in admiration, no one had ever seen such a sight before; and while they were wondering whether it was possible he could have reached the ground in safety from such a height, there was a murmur in the air, and they saw him coming back again over the tree-tops. With no more apparent effort than if he had merely taken a hedge, he came softly to the ground; and then, kneeling gracefully before his father on one knee, without a word of boasting or reproach, he laid the clever whip at his feet. The king raised him up, and said, aloud to the people, none could deny that it was this whip that had won the trial, but that as it was now late, he must leave the ceremony of proclaiming his successor till the morrow. All went home for the night, and the old king also went to bed; but he could not sleep for anxiety, thinking of the anger and dissatisfaction of his younger sons. And presently, in the silent hour, they came to him, and said that he must allow them another trial; that it was impossible they could conceive he meant them to bring him a fantastical whip of that sort, or of course they would have brought one which could do much better things. They thought it was the beauty of the workmanship they had to look to, and so they had provided for nothing else. They urged their suit so persistently, that the king, who was now very old and weak, agreed to let them have their way. Accordingly, next morning he had it proclaimed that the three princes were to make one trial more; and that whichever brought back the most beautiful and virtuous princess for his wife should have the crown. The three princes set out again early the next morning; the two younger ones providing themselves with jewels and riches, and many precious things for presents; the eldest taking nothing, but walking off alone towards the enchanted castle with a heavy heart. "It is all up with me now," he said to himself, "after all! Why couldn't my father have been satisfied when I had beaten them twice? Now I have to kill the Beneficent Cat--the only being that ever assisted me; and then I shall have no one to help me at all! They will come back with two beautiful princesses, and I shall come back looking like a fool, because no princess will ever come with me--and they will take my kingdom, and laugh at me into the bargain! If it was not for my mother, I would never come back at all; but it would break her heart if I stayed away, and she is the only one of them who understands me and cares for me." As he got nearer the castle, he grew more and more sad. "Why did she make me swear? If it hadn't been for that, I could still have escaped doing it; but now I cannot break my oath;" and he trudged on. The gardens looked more lovely than ever. The scent of the flowers seemed sweeter, and the melody of the birds more soothing. All was full of harmony--and he who had never harmed a fly must cruelly use the soft and beautiful Cat who had so befriended him! He passed through the apartments where puss had purred round him so happily--the dining-room where they had had their pleasant repast together--the boudoir where she had given him such wise counsel. At last he came to the kitchen; and there, sure enough, was the Cat cosily curled round, her soft grey head buried in her long grey fur. An energy and daring he had never known before seemed suddenly to possess him. He took care not to speak, for she had particularly recommended silence; but, approaching her on tiptoe, seized her rapidly by her hind-paws before she had time to wake from her pleasant slumber, and dashed her several times upon the hearth, scarcely knowing what he did in his horror, till he perceived that he had nothing left in his hand but the soft, limp, grey fur. He sank upon the ground in tears, and commenced laying it out tenderly before him, when he was woken from his reverie by a mellow ringing laugh, which made him look up--and there before him stood the most beautiful, fairy-like princess that ever was seen on this earth! "Well done, kind prince! you have nobly kept your word. And see what I have gained thereby--instead of that grey fur, I now have a form which will perhaps make me meet to fulfil the condition your father has imposed on you for obtaining your throne!" Her voice, and the glance of her soft eyes, seemed quite familiar to him--it was the voice which had first inspired him with hope and enterprise, and the mild light which had beamed on him when he said he could be happy to be always near her in her bower. How much more now, when she appeared in such matchless guise! He remained kneeling at her feet, and asked her if it was indeed true that she could love him and be with him always as his wife. "Nay," she replied, raising him up; "it is I who ought to be astonished. I have nothing to refuse, for I owe you all; and as, but for you, I should still be nothing but a poor grey Cat, I belong to you, and am absolutely yours. It is I who have to be astonished, and to ask you if it is possible you who have known me as a Cat can really love me and regard me as worthy to be indeed your wife." "You are mocking me again, I see," he replied; "but you do not really think me so insensible as not to appreciate your beauty, and the prudence and generosity of which you have given me such abundant proof? No; if you will come with me, I have no fear but that I shall win the trial this time beyond all possibility of demanding another." He spoke warmly, and his face beamed with joy. The princess was leaning on his arm, and looked up in his face as he spoke. "Ah, now you do look!--No, I suppose I mustn't say it now I have no longer my cat-disguise to hide my blushes," she said, archly; and they passed on into the reception-hall. The attendants were no longer invisible. Together with their mistress they had received their forms and original life; and the corridors and apartments were filled with her people bustling to serve her. A banquet was prepared in the dining-hall; and when they had partaken of it, and had regaled themselves in the bower with happy talk, the princess reminded the prince--now no longer grave--that it was time for them to be going back to his father. A great train of carriages and horses were brought round, with mounted guards and running-footmen, and all the retinue which became a noble princess. The princess was carried in a litter by six men in embroidered liveries, and her ladies with her; and the prince rode on horseback, close by her side. This time, though it was near the close of the last day, his brothers had not appeared when he reached the council-hall. The king and the queen received the Beneficent Princess with smiles and admiration, and all the people praised her beauty; and the queen said,-- "There is no fear, my son, that your brothers can demand another trial this time." Before she had done speaking, a messenger was hastily ushered into the hall, covered with dust and stains of travel. He came from the two younger princes, and had a sorrowful tale to tell. They had striven to obtain the hands of the princesses of the neighbouring kingdom; but the king was a prudent sovereign, and discerned their envious, selfish character. When they found he repulsed their advances, they had endeavoured to carry off the princesses by force; but the king had surprised them in the midst of their design, and had had them shut up as midnight robbers. The old king was in great distress when he heard the news, for his sons had manifestly been taken in the midst of wrong-doing, and he could not defend their acts nor avenge their shame. But the eldest son took on himself the mission of pacifying the neighbouring sovereign and delivering his brothers. Having accomplished which, they were fain to acknowledge that he was not only victor in the trials, but their deliverer also; and they swore to maintain peace with him, and obey him as his faithful subjects. So the old king proclaimed the Grave Prince for his successor, and married him to the Beneficent Princess, amid great rejoicing of all the people; and the queen had the happiness of seeing her eldest son acknowledged as the most prudent prince, and the ruler of the people, and gifted with a beautiful and devoted wife. KLEIN-ELSE. The Passeier-Thal, which at the beginning of the present century sent Hofer and his famous band of peasant heroes to the defence of the fatherland, was in ancient times often involved in the wrangles between its rulers and those of Bavaria. The men of the Passeier-Thal were no less heroes then than now, but there were heroes in Bavaria too, so that the success was as often on one side as the other. Klein-Else [63] was the daughter of a bold baron whose castle was, so to speak, one of the outposts of the valley; and as he had thus more often than others to bear the brunt of the feud, his strength became gradually diminished, and it was only by leaguing himself with his neighbours that he was enabled to repel the frequent inroads of a turbulent knight who had established himself on the other side of the old frontier, but who cultivated a strong passion for annexation. The Passeier-Thal baron did his best to strengthen his defences and keep up a watchful look-out; and the moment his scouts perceived the enemy advancing, their orders were not only to bring word of the danger to their master, but to hasten at once to the other castles of the surrounding heights, and summon their owners to his support; and then the whole valley immediately bristled with valiant defenders of their country. But inasmuch as his adversary was reckless and determined, and much better provided with men and means, he succeeded in laying his plans so well at last, that he eluded all the vigilance of the baron's scattered handful of look-out men, and, bursting in upon his domain by surprise, carried all his defences, laid waste every thing before him, and marched upon the castle itself. The bold baron swore he would not remain to be killed like a reptile in its hole, but sallied out with the few retainers who remained to him, to sell his life and his possessions as dearly as he might. With desperate courage he dealt the deadliest blows around which had been paid out that day. But it was all in vain. Overcome by superior numbers, he was brought back but a few hours later in piteous plight, mortally wounded. Klein-Else bent over her father with despairing cries; and her tears fell as fast as the blood from the deep wounds she tried in vain to staunch. "Leave the bandage, Klein-Else, it boots not," said the baron, in tones so slow and faint that she could only catch his words by putting her ear to his lips; and, as she did so, his cold breath filled her with horror. "It boots not to staunch the blood, Klein-Else; my life is spent. But as you have ever obeyed me, listen now to my word. The enemy is at the door; you have but time to escape falling into his hands. Take this key--it opens a gate of which no one knows the secret. Count the tenth buttress in the wall, and where the ivy grows thickest, there, behind it, feel for the lock and open it. Then creep beneath; and, once on the other side, replace the branches, that no one may see they have been disturbed. You will see before you three paths: one leads down into the smiling plain, where you might think to find refuge in the houses of our people; but another destiny is for you. The second leads upwards to the thick pine forest, where you might think to lie concealed till our friends have time to come and rout out this vile usurper; but another destiny is for you. Take the path straight before you, that winds round the mountain; though it is open and exposed to view, fear not, for it leads to--to----" And here his voice failed, so that she could no more make out what he said; and though he continued to exert himself to complete his directions, it was vain that she attempted to distinguish them. His power of articulation was gone. Klein-Else threw herself on his cold body, and clung to it with all her might. But he who had been her guide and guardian, her will, till now, was powerless and stark; and for all her beseeching he could not answer. The chaplain came and raised her up, and they carried the body to the sanctuary; but Klein-Else, paralyzed with sadness and despair, stood and gazed after it as though she knew not where she was. Suddenly wild shouts broke on her ear, and the sound of many feet, and the tumult of the servants and men-at-arms bidding her fly, for the enemy had come. "Fly, for the enemy is here!" The words recalled her father's counsel, and mechanically she clasped the key, his last legacy. Scarcely taking time to change her embroidered garments for a peasant's attire, she crept along under the wall, counting ten buttresses, with a beating heart. After the tenth, she put her hand through the thick ivy, and felt, as her father had foretold, the iron bosses of the lock. It required all her strength to turn the key; but this accomplished, there was safety and rest behind the ivy's faithful veil. It was but just in time; the rough soldiers were close behind. "Ha! who went there?" she heard a hoarse voice say, as she noiselessly closed the door. "Saw you not the ivy move? Press through and see who passed." "It was but a frightened hare--I saw it run," said another, with a less terrible voice. "Nothing taller ever passed that branch," said another; and the speakers passed out of hearing. There lay the three paths: the one straight on before--but so open, so exposed, any one who happened to be passing for miles round might have seen and pursued her, while either of the others offered instant cover and security. Klein-Else was sorely tempted to try one of them. "If I had heard all his instructions," she reasoned, "it would have been different: I would then have done all he told me, whithersoever it might have led; but now I know not what he meant. I may go a little way along this path--and then what shall I do? Maybe, I shall fall into a greater danger than that from which he would have saved me!" And she turned to seek the shelter of the friendly cottages in the valley beneath. But the words seemed to live in the air around her,-- "Another destiny is for you!" Trembling and confused, she would have plunged into the hiding-place of the pine-forest above; but the wind that moaned through their lofty branches seemed charged with the words,-- "Another destiny is for you!" She was thus impelled forward into the open path; and, creeping close to the mountain-side, she now pursued her way along it. It was with no small relief that she noticed the sun was nearly sinking behind the opposite heights, so that soon she might hope to be safe from the gaze of men. And yet, as darkness fell around, it became but the source of other fears. And the sense of her loneliness and abandonment took away her courage to proceed any farther. She leant against the rock for support, and her tears fell fast and warm upon its stony side--piteously enough, you might have thought, to move and melt it. And so it was! for see! the hard rock yielded and made way before the noble form of a knight in armour, who said, with compassionate voice,-- "Maiden, wherefore these tears?" "Because my father is dead, and his enemies have taken his castle, and I have no shelter and nothing to eat!" sobbed Klein-Else. "If that is all," answered the noble knight, "it is easily made straight." And with that he turned to the rock, and said,-- "Open, hoary rock!" And the hoary rock opened, and disclosed a treasure of every imaginable kind of riches stored around--jewels and coin, and shining armour, and dazzling dresses. "All this is yours, Klein-Else," said the knight; "you have but to take what you will, when you will. It will never grow less. You have only to say, 'Open, hoary rock!' and these treasures will always appear at your bidding. Dispose of them as you like; only make a good use of them, for on that depends all your future happiness. I will come and see you again in seven years, and I shall see what use you have made of my gift; but you must remember my name, or woe will be to you." So he whispered his name in her ear, and disappeared. Klein-Else was so dazzled and startled that she hardly knew what to think, or whether what had happened was a dream or reality. To make sure, she said to the rock, "Open, hoary rock!" and the rock opened at her bidding as quickly as at the knight's, and disclosed its glittering treasure. But it was still hard to decide all at once what to take of it; and knowing that it was in a secure store-house, and that it was dangerous to burden herself with much riches when travelling alone in the dark night, she only took a few pieces of money--enough to pay for food and lodging--and passed on with a lightened heart. The rock closed up as she went farther--but she took a note of the spot, so that she might be sure to know it again; and then made for the lights which appeared with friendly radiance at no great distance through the trees which now fringed the road, repeating the name of the knight to herself, as she went along, that she might never forget it. Klein-Else hasted on, but was rather dismayed to find that the lights were the lights of a great castle where her money would be of no use. She could not ask for a lodging and supper for money there, and there was no other habitation near. So she put by her money again, and, with the humility befitting her wayworn aspect and lowly attire, begged the great man's servants to give her some poor employment by which she might earn a place among them. "What can a little, dirty, ragged girl like you do?" said the cook, who was just occupied in fixing the spit through a young chamois that looked so succulent and tender, one as hungry as Klein-Else might have eaten it as it was. "I can do whatever you please to tell me," answered Klein-Else, timidly. "A proper answer," replied the cook. "Let's see if you can watch the poultry-house, then. You must be up by daybreak and go late to bed, and lie in the straw over the poultry-loft, and keep half awake all night to scare away the foxes, if any come; and if one smallest chicken is lost, woe betide you! you will be whipped and sent away. Here is a piece of dry bread for your supper. Now go, and don't stand idling about." Klein-Else was so hungry that she gladly took the piece of dry black bread, and went to try to sleep on the straw in the poultry-loft. She had to get up at daybreak, when the cock crew; and she had to keep her eye on the brood all day; and late at night she had a piece of dry black bread for supper, and was sent to sleep in the straw of the poultry-loft. Her only pastime was to recall the memory of her treasure in the rock, and repeat over and over again the knight's name, that she might be sure never to forget it. "But of what use is all my fine treasure," she mused, "if I am never to be any thing but a wretched Hennenpfösl [64]? And what can I do? if I come out with handfuls of gold and fine clothes, they will take me for a thief or a witch, and I shall be worse off than now; and if I show them the treasure, who knows but they will take it from me? The knight said my happiness depended on the use I made of it, yet I can make no use of it!" So she sat and counted the hens and chickens, and repeated the knight's name, and ate her dry black bread, and slept in the straw in the poultry-loft. At last Sunday came, and the glad church bells rang merrily, flinging their joyous notes all abroad; and the servants of the castle put on their best clothes to go to church. But how could Klein-Else be seen among them, all in their snow-white linen and bright-coloured ribbons--Klein-Else, the Hennenpfösl, with her poor rags? "Now, at last, I can use my treasury," she said to herself; "I can at least get some of the pretty clothes that hang there, and go to church." So she washed herself in the mountain-torrent, and braided her dishevelled hair in massive golden braids, and crept round to the rock, and bid it open, saying,-- "Open, hoary rock!" Of all the treasures it instantly disclosed, she saw none but one beautiful garment all woven out of sunbeams and glittering with jewels of morning dew. Having put this on, and once more looking like a baron's daughter, she made haste to reach the church. The holy office had already begun, and the church was crowded right out into the porch. But when the people saw such a dazzling sight, they all made way for the lady in the shining apparel, none dreaming of Klein-Else. Now the only part of the church where there was any room was at the baron's bench. For he was a young lord, and had neither mother, sister, nor wife; and all the places reserved for his family were vacant. Klein-Else, moving on till she could find where to kneel, had thus to come and kneel by him. The young baron was as much dazzled at the sight as Klein-Else herself had been at the treasures in the rock, and at every pause in the service he could do nothing but fix his gaze on her. As soon as it was over, however, Klein-Else glided out softly, and hasting back to the rock, hung the sunbeam-dress up again; and once more assuming her rags, hid herself in the poultry-loft, almost frightened at what she had done. All the next week she had new subjects of thought. She felt sure the young baron had looked at her and admired her; and wasn't it more meet that she, a baron's daughter, should be kneeling by the side of the young baron than sleeping in the poultry-loft, a mere Hennenpfösl? Ah, if that came true--if the young baron married her; then she would have some one to tell her good fortune to--some one to defend her treasure. Then she could make the good use of it the knight had manifestly intended. She could wipe away the tears of all those who went without shelter, as she had once; every desolate orphan who had none to defend her; every poor Hennenpfösl, the drudge of the menials. "How strange," she said to herself, "there should be people blessed with friends, and riches, and enjoyments, who live full of their own happiness, and who have no thought for the forsaken and the outcast! She would never be like them, not she! her happiness should be in making others happy." But, in the meantime, was she sure the baron had looked at her otherwise than out of curiosity? Was he really interested in her? and if he was, would he continue to care for her when he found she was only a Hennenpfösl? She must put him to the test; and she sat and thought how to arrange this. This was subject enough for thought; and this week was at an end only too soon. The next Sunday came; and when the church bells rang, Klein-Else ran to her rock, took out of her store this time a garment woven out of moonbeams, and having arranged her luxuriant hair in massive tresses, once more proceeded to the church. But with all the haste she had made, she could not arrive before the holy office had begun, and the church was once more full. The people fell back again, in awe of her shining garments, and made way for her to kneel beside the baron, who could scarcely suppress a gesture of delight at beholding her once again. Nor did his joy escape Klein-Else's observation; and many a blushing glance they exchanged. "What a noble cavalier!" thought Klein-Else; "and just such a one as my father always told me my husband should be." "What a lovely maiden!" mused the young baron; "where can she have sprung from? Is she of earth or heaven?" All that last week, while Klein-Else was thinking of him, he had been thinking still more of her; and had ordered his waiting-men to surround her as she came out of church, and beg her to come to him at the castle. But Klein-Else had no idea of suffering herself to be so easy a prize; so she fled so fast the baron's men could hardly approach her. And when at last she found they were gaining upon her, and that her fleet step availed her not, she threw down the pieces of money which she took the first night from the rock; and while they stopped to pick them up, pursued her way unperceived, and let the rock close on her till they had lost the trace. Then, assuming her poor rags once more, she returned silently to her poultry-loft. Her thoughts had food enough now; but it was less with the poor orphans she was to console, than with the young baron, and how to test his love, that they were occupied. Next Sunday she chose a garment blue like the sky, and all sparkling, as with living stars. She presented herself at the church, and found herself again placed beside the young baron. At the end of the service she went out quickly, as before, only this time he contrived, as she rose to leave, to seize her hand, and slip a gold ring on her finger. Nevertheless, Klein-Else slipped out through the midst of the congregation, and though the serving-men had had stringent orders to follow her, she had prudently provided herself with gold pieces enough to disperse the whole lot of them while she escaped. The young baron sat alone in his castle, as he had sat this fortnight past, taking no notice of any one, but as if his whole soul was wrapt up in the fair apparition, and he was in despair, since her hiding-place could not be traced. He sat nursing his grief, and could neither be distracted from it, nor comforted. His friends sent for the most famous physicians of the country to attend him, but none of them could do any thing for his case; and daily he grew paler and gloomier, and none could help him. At last the Gräfin Jaufenstein, his aunt, came and insisted that some amusement must be found to divert him; but the young baron refused every proposal, till at last she begged him to give a great banquet, to which every one from far and near should be invited, every kind of game and every kind of costly diet should be afforded, and nothing spared to make it the most magnificent banquet ever given. To the great surprise and delight of all, he consented to this; but it was because it occurred to him that inviting the whole country, the chances were that the beautiful maiden of his choice, who yet hid herself so persistently from him, might once more mysteriously appear before him too: so he gave his aunt the Countess Jaufenstein free leave to give what orders she liked, and go to what expense she liked, only providing that she should have the invitations publicly published, so that there might be every chance of their reaching the ears of the mysterious maiden. At last the day of the banquet came, and there was a running hither and thither in the baron's castle, with the preparations, such as can be better imagined than described. The guests swarmed in the halls, and the servants in the kitchen; and Klein-Else, creeping up from her poultry-loft, could hardly make her way up to the fire where the cook was preparing all manner of deliciously scented dishes. "I don't know what ails the things!" cried the cook; "these pancakes are the only thing the baron will eat, and, as fate will have it, I cannot turn one of them to-night! Three and thirty years I have made pancakes in this castle, and never did I fail before to-night--to-night, when it is most important of all!" and she poured another into the pan. But as she did so, with a hand trembling with anxiety, the oil ran over the side of the pan, and the great heat of the stove set it on fire, so that a great flame curled over the pancake--and there was nothing left of it but a black, misshapen mass. "Oh, dear! oh, dear! what shall I do?" cried the cook; "there is not one of the whole lot fit to send up, and if this dish is not the best, I had just as lief I had prepared no dish at all!" "May I have a try, friend cook?" said Klein-Else, coaxingly. "You, indeed!" screamed the cook, indignation and envy added to her former despair; "and a little, dirty, ragged, misbegotten starveling--a vagabond--a Hennenpfösl like you, who never saw a kitchen, or a stove, or a frying-pan, or any thing else! to suppose that you can turn a pancake, when I, who have turned pancakes in this castle for three and thirty years, have failed! A likely matter indeed! What is the world coming to? Begone, with your impudence, and mind your hens! Ah! now I think of it, I believe it is you that have bewitched the eggs, and that's why the pancakes won't turn! Begone, I say, out of my kitchen, and out of the poultry-house too--I'll have no more of your tricks with my eggs!" and she turned, with a menacing gesture at Klein-Else, to try her luck once more. But at the sight of the black mass in the frying-pan, she grew fairly discouraged, and throwing herself down in a chair, wrapt her face in her apron, and wept like a child. Meantime Klein-Else advanced with light step to the stove, took up the frying-pan, and cleaned it out in a trice, then poured fresh oil into it, and held it over the stove till it boiled; then, while it spluttered cheerily, she deftly poured in the batter, gliding into it the ring which the baron had stealthily put on her hand at church, and along with it, one with a magnificent diamond, which she had taken from her treasury in the rock. The boiling oil danced and chirped merrily round the cake, the batter rose as batter never rose before; and when Klein-Else shifted it lightly on to the dish, it wore a bright, golden hue, matched only by her own radiant hair. The cook, waking from her stupor, was in a transport of delight at beholding the effect of her skill, and sent the dish at once to the baron's table, while Klein-Else took her place in an out-of-the-way corner to hear what should befall. Nor had she long to wait. The dish had not been gone ten minutes, when the baron's body-servant came solemnly into the kitchen, with the announcement that the baron demanded the immediate attendance of the cook. "It's because I kept him waiting for the pancakes, and because the one of that little hussey's making is not so good as those I have made for him all his life, and his father before him;" and, all trembling and afraid, she rose to follow his messenger. Espying Klein-Else watching anxiously behind a pillar as she passed along, she could not forbear calling out to her, "Ah, wretched child, it is you have got me into this scrape! But you shall pay for it! Why did I let you touch the frying-pan! Why did I let you enter the castle! You had better not come under my sight any more, or I'll soon show you where the builder made the hole in the wall [65]!" and she dragged herself along slowly, in great fear of the apprehended displeasure of the baron, but comforting herself with the determination to let him know the whole fault lay with the Hennenpfösl. Great was her surprise, however, to find that it was with no intention of chiding that the baron had summoned her. On the contrary, the gloomy cloud his brow had lately worn had disappeared; he not only looked gay and joyous as of old, but a special radiance of pleasurable expectation lit up his countenance. "Why, cook," he said, "you have made me good pancakes all my life, but never one like this! Now tell me honestly who made this one?" "Nay, but if it is so, I may as well have the credit of it," thought the cook; "and, after all, I did make the batter, and that's the chief part of the work." "Oh, I made it myself, baron, upon my soul! no one but myself makes any thing for the high table." The baron's countenance fell. He began to look gloomy and disappointed once more--was the clue to escape him after all? He roused himself again, as with one flash of hope. "Did no one help you to make it?" ("If I tell that she had any part in it, it is obvious, from the tone he takes, he will give the whole merit to her. No, I'll not mention her; and besides, she didn't help me to make it.") "Oh, baron, it don't want two people to make a pancake! I've always made pancakes for this castle these three and thirty years without help;" and she tried to talk as if she felt hurt, and thus bring the conversation to an end. The baron passed his hand roughly across his forehead, and stamped his foot in despair. Once more a hopeful thought flashed across his mind. "These rings! tell me, how did they get into the pancake, if you made it?" he exclaimed, in peremptory accents. "Those rings? I never saw those rings before," stammered the cook, beginning to get a little confused. "And what did you mutter as you passed the Hennenpfösl coming along, about it's being all her fault, and making her suffer for it?" interposed the body-servant. "Ha! said she so?" cried the baron. "Speak, woman, what meant you by those words? Beware, and speak the truth this time, for it is matter of terrible consequence!" "Who ever would have thought such a fuss would come of turning a pancake!" thought the cook to herself; but she said out aloud, "Well, it is true, the Hennenpfösl did hold the frying-pan while it was on the stove; I didn't know it was worth while to mention that. But what could she have to do with the beautiful rings?" "True," replied the servant, "that can have nothing to do with it, as you say." "Nay," replied the baron, "I'm not so clear of that. Let the Hennenpfösl, as you call her, be brought here, and let's see what account she has to give of it." "But it's impossible; she isn't even a servant of the house. She is a little whining beggar brat, that I took in scarce three weeks ago and put in the poultry-loft, to keep her from starving." "Three weeks!" exclaimed the baron; "said you three weeks? Let her be brought to me instantly." "But she isn't fit to come into your presence; she's grimed with dirt, and covered in rags." "Reason not, but send her hither," said the baron, his energy returning as his hopes kindled. "If she is the maiden to whom I gave the ring, she is of no low birth: there is some mystery which I must penetrate. If she were nothing but a 'Hennenpfösl,' whence could she have had this brilliant ring, which puts mine to shame?" he mused within himself, as he waited impatiently for the maiden of his dreams to appear. Klein-Else, meantime, had made no doubt that since the baron had sent for the cook, his wisdom would enable him to discover that she must be sent for next, and had accordingly repaired to her treasury in the rock, and had taken thence a resplendent attire. It was no longer now the simple gifts of nature which furnished her wardrobe; she was decked as became a baron's daughter, with all the resources of the milliner and the jeweller's art. Cavaliers and ladies-in-waiting walked beside her, and twenty pages dressed in pink and white satin, with plumed bonnets, carried her train behind, while men in rich liveries, bearing torches, ran by the side of the procession. Gräfin Jaufenstein was at the head of the hall welcoming the guests, and doing the honours of the castle, to supply what the moody humour of its lord left lacking in courtesy. But while she courtesied to noble lords and ladies with queenly grace, and, with imperceptible asides, at the same time gave directions that every one should have his due place, and that every thing should proceed with the due order of etiquette, it never for a moment escaped her practised eye that something unusual was going on in the neighbourhood of the young baron. That he should summon the cook to his presence, probably to chide her justly for some breach of the rules of her art, if such had befallen, was indeed no unreasonable distraction for the baron's melancholy, and she hailed it as a token of returning interest in the ordinary affairs of life, which had occupied him so little of late; but when she heard him order the Hennenpfösl to be brought there in the midst of his guests, she thought it time to interfere--it became a matter of eccentricity passing all bounds. Dexterously excusing her momentary absence from her guests, she accordingly made her way up to her nephew, preparing to wrap up her remonstrance in her most honeyed language, so as better to convince without provoking him. Before she could reach his chair, there was a movement of astonishment in the vast assembly, and a cry of admiration, while the heralds proclaimed,-- "Place for the most noble baron's daughter!" And then, surrounded by her shining crowd of attendants, and glittering in her jewelled robes, Klein-Else made her way with modest, but at the same time noble carriage towards the young baron. The young baron recognized her the moment the tapestry was raised for her to pass, and instantly went forth to meet her with courteous gestures, and led her up to the seat next his own at the banquet. The stately countess looked on a little perplexed, for the first time in her life, but with admirable serenity and self-possession inquired the name of the fair guest who did their poor banquet the honour of attending it in so great state. "I am the poor Hennenpfösl, madame, whom your noble nephew has done the honour to summon to his presence; and I hope you will not think I disgrace his command," replied Klein-Else, with a reverence at once lowly and full of accomplished dignity. "The Hennenpfösl!" repeated the countess, returning the salute mechanically. "But surely there is some mistake--some----" "Yes, dearest countess, some mystery there is," interposed her nephew; "but we will not seek to penetrate it till it shall please the lady herself to reveal it. Why she should have chosen to pass some time as the Hennenpfösl, I know not; but this is not the first time we have met, and I am sufficiently satisfied of her grace and discretion to know that for whatever reason she chose it, she chose aright. I have further determined this very night to lay myself and my fortune at her feet!" Klein-Else started, with a little cry of satisfied expectation, then coloured modestly and looked down. "But the lady will at least favour us with her name?" urged the countess, but half satisfied. Klein-Else turned to her chamberlain with dignity, and whispered an order; and then the chamberlain stood forward and proclaimed aloud the names and titles of the deceased baron of the Passeier-Thal, her father. "Oh!" said the lady, in a tone of disparagement, "methinks his was a fortune which could scarcely be united with that of my nephew!" "Countess!" exclaimed the young baron, furious at the suggestion; but before he could proceed the chamberlain once more intervened. "There need be no difficulty on that score," he said; and he made a sign to the attendants who were behind. They came up in brave order, two and two, each pair bearing a casket in which was a thousand crowns. "A thousand such caskets contain the dowry of the baron's daughter; and she has priceless jewels without number." "A million crowns!" echoed the whole assembly, in chorus; "was there ever such a fortune known?" The countess was absolutely speechless, and turned to participate in the astonishment of her guests. The young baron and Klein-Else, thus left to each other's conversation, were not slow in confessing their mutual love. "And now all our friends are gathered round us," he exclaimed, at last, "what better time to proclaim our happiness? My friends! I present you the fair lady who has consented to become my bride!" There was a general sound of jubilation and praise. All gathered round to felicitate the baron, and the minstrels sang the charms of the bride. The baron begged them all to stay with him ten days, to celebrate the nuptials. And for ten days there was revelry and rapture, singing and merry-making; and when at last the guests returned home, every one carried back to his own neighbourhood the tale of the surpassing beauty, riches, and grace of Klein-Else. Every body had been won by her, there was no dissentient opinion; and even Gräfin Jaufenstein acknowledged that her nephew could not have made a nobler or better choice. When they were left alone, the days seemed hardly long enough to tell their love. Never was there happiness equal to theirs. Before the guests left, the baron had invited them all to come back every year on the anniversary; and every year, as they gathered round, they found them more and more wrapt in each other's love. On the second anniversary they found that their happiness had been increased by the birth of an heir; and the next year there was a little daughter too, the delight of her parents. Year by year the children grew in beauty, and grace, and intelligence, and others were added to their numbers. And every one envied the unequalled happiness of the baron and baroness. Meantime the years were passing away, though Klein-Else had taken no account of them. To her it was one continual round of enjoyment, uncrossed by any care; each season had its own joys, and she revelled in the fresh variety of each, but counted them not as they passed. One day they sat together under a shady grove: the baron was weaving a chaplet of roses, Klein-Else was fondling her latest-born upon her knee; round them sported their little ones, bringing fresh baskets of roses for the chaplet the baron was weaving for Klein-Else; while Otto the heir, a noble boy who promised to reproduce his father's stately figure and handsome lineaments, rejoiced them by his prowess with his bow and arrow. "How the time has sped, Klein-Else!" whispered the baron; "it seems but yesterday that you first came and knelt beside me in your sunbeam garment. Then, just as now, it was happiness to feel you beside me. I knew not who was there, but as I heard the flutter of your drapery a glow of joy seemed to come from its shining folds, and I, who had never loved any one else, loved you from that moment as I love you now!" "How well you say it, love!" responded Klein-Else. "Yes; where is the difference between to-day and yesterday, and last year and the year before that? Ever since that first day it has been one long love, nothing else! Yes; well I remember that day. I was poor, and despised, and had no one to talk to, and never thought any one would ever look at me again--except to scold me. And then I went into the church and knelt by you; and I felt as the new ivy twig must feel when it has crept and tossed about in vain, and then at last finds, close under its grasp, the strong, immovable oak, and clasps it--clasps it never to loose its hold again, never! but grows up clasping it ever closer and closer, till it grows quite one with it, and no one can separate them any more for ever!" "Yes," replied the baron; "nothing can separate them any more--nothing can separate us now! We have grown together for years, and have only grown the closer. It is now--let me see--five, six, seven years, and we have only grown the closer to each other! To think it is seven years! no, it wants a few weeks; but it will soon be seven years. Seven--" he turned to look at her, for he perceived that as he spoke she had loosened her hold of him, and now he saw she was pale and trembling. "But what ails you, Elschen [66]? Elschen dear! speak to me, Elschen!" he added, with anxiety, for she sank back almost unconscious against the bank. "I shall be better presently," stammered the baroness. "I think the scent of the flowers is too powerful. I don't feel quite well--take me down by the side of the water; I shall be better presently." An attendant took the babe from her arms--and the baron remembered afterwards, that as she parted from it she embraced it with a passionate flood of tears; then he led her to the side of the stream, and bathed her burning forehead in the cooling flood. Suddenly voices in angry altercation were heard through the trees, and the servants summoned the baron with excited gesticulations, saying there was a strange knight, all in armour, who claimed to see the baroness. Klein-Else was near fainting again when she heard them say that. "Claims to see the baroness, say you?" replied their lord, with menacing gesture. "Where is he? Let him say that to me!" and he darted off to meet him, without listening to the faint words Klein-Else strove to utter. Now she was left alone by the side of the stream where, as the Hennenpfösl, she had first washed away the stains of servitude and dressed herself to meet him who was to teach her to love. It was beside that stream she had sat, and her tears had mingled with it, as she had vowed that if ever such joy was hers as now she owned, her treasure should be for those who were outcast and suffering as she had been, and her happiness should be in making others happy! How had she fulfilled her vow? From that time to this it had passed out of her mind. Filled with her own gratification, she had left the orphan in her bereavement, the suffering in their misery, nor stretched out a helping hand. The seven years were spent, and there was no doubt the knight was come to seek an account of the treasure he had entrusted to her. She had not only to meet him with shame for its misuse, but even his name she had forgotten! And he had said, "Woe be to you, if you have forgotten that name!" But she had forgotten it. She pressed her hands against her throbbing temples as if to force it from her brain, and swept away the mantling hair--if but the cool breeze might waft it back to her! But the forgotten name came not. Suddenly the knight stood before her, and terrible he was to look at in his shining armour! As she saw him she screamed and swooned away. But he touched her, and bade her rise, then beckoned her to follow him; and she could not choose but obey. He led her over the stream and along the path in the mountain-side where the trees fringed the way; and when they reached the rock she knew so well, with its treasury whence all her means of happiness had been derived, he said in solemn accents,-- "Open, hoary rock!" But to her he said,-- "Look!" Then she could not choose but look. But oh, horror! in place of the coin and jewels, armour and apparel, it was filled with wasted forms bowed with misery and distress! the tear-worn orphan, the neglected sick. Here she saw lying a youth, wan and emaciated, struck down in all the promise of boyhood, and his mother tore her hair in agony by his side. And there stood a father, gaunt and grey, vainly grappling with Hunger, who was stealing away his children one by one from before his face. Here---- But she could bear no more. She sank upon the ground, and hid her face for very shame. "The ransom of these, it is, you have spent upon yourself!" thundered the pitiless knight; and every word was a death-knell.... The baron and his servants continued their search for the unknown knight, but for long they found him not; one said he had seen him go this way, and another that. Till at last an artless peasant maiden told them she had seen him take the path of the mountain, across the stream, and the baroness following behind with weak and unsteady steps. The baron hasted his steps to pursue the way she pointed. But he only found the lifeless body of Klein-Else kneeling against the hoary rock! PRINCE RADPOT [67]. Radpot succeeded early to the throne of his fathers. When on his deathbed, his sire had called him to his side, and said to him, "In leaving you my kingdom, I leave you a counsel with it which is worth the kingdom itself. In all things be guided by the advice of my wise counsellor Rathgeb, and you shall do well." But Radpot had a stepmother who hated him, and was determined to destroy him if possible; so she devised a plot against him, the first step of which was to get him out of the kingdom. She therefore advised that he should take a year's journey to perfect himself in knowledge of the world, before assuming the reins of government. Radpot was not devoid of shrewdness, and readily suspecting some evil intention in his stepmother's advice, at first resisted following it; but afterwards, submitting the matter to Rathgeb, according to his father's desire, he received from him a different counsel from that which he had expected. "Though your stepmother may have evil intentions," he said, "you need not therefore be afraid; we shall be able to baffle them. In the meantime, it is well that you should travel to see the world, and learn experience. We will so establish a council of regency that the queen shall not be able to do great mischief during your absence." Radpot was nothing loath to follow this advice, as he was of an adventurous disposition; so, all things being ordered for the due conduct of the affairs of the kingdom, he set out with Rathgeb for his year's journey. During all the days of preparation for the journey, the queen, who had always heretofore shown herself harsh and hostile to Radpot, behaved with the utmost tenderness and devotion, which the young prince ascribed to her satisfaction at his having followed her advice, and returned her advances with an ingenuous cordiality. She, in turn, received his deference with an increase of solicitude, and nothing could be more affectionate than their leave-taking. Every thing the thoughtfulness of a fond mother could have suggested was provided by her for his safety and comfort on the journey; and as he had his foot in the stirrup she still had one more token of her care of him. "Take this vial," she said, "it is a precious cordial; and when you are worn and wearied with heat and travel, a few drops of its precious contents will suffice to restore you to strength and vigour. Farewell! and when you taste of it, think of me." Radpot, with all the openness of his generous nature, assured her that he should never forget her kindness for him, and stowing away the vial in his belt, waved his hand to her as he rode away. Two days and two nights Radpot and his trusty counsellor journeyed through the cool forest; and then for another day along its border, exposed to the heat of the sun upon the mountain-sides, till they came to a vast plain where there was no shelter of hill or tree, no hospitality of human dwelling. With unbroken courage, however, the young prince commenced crossing it. It was only when, after three days' more hard riding, they still seemed as far as ever from a place of rest, that, wearied and dispirited, he took out his stepmother's vial, to try the effect of her cordial. It was the moment Rathgeb had feared. He had observed how completely the queen had lulled Radpot's suspicions, and that every attempt at suggesting there was any hypocrisy in her conduct had appeared to vex him. To have now spoken of any danger in trying her cordial would probably have provoked his resentment--Rathgeb took another way of saving his charge. "Think you not our mounts deserve more than we to taste this precious restorative? whatever labour we have endured, theirs has been tenfold." "True," said the good-natured prince; and, dismounting, he opened the mouth of his steed, and poured some drops of the liquid on his tongue. He had scarcely done so, however, when the poor beast stretched out his long neck with an air of agony, then fell over on its side, and expired! Rathgeb left the incident to produce its own effect on the mind of his pupil, who stood gazing as one bewildered. "What can it be that killed my good horse?" he exclaimed, at length; "it could not be the cordial! no, never! the queen could not have been so base! It was, that he has been so long unused to exercise, this terrible journey has overcome him, and the cordial was too late to save him." "Try it on mine," answered Rathgeb; "he is a battle-charger, used to endurance, and delighting in labour. See," he said, jumping to the ground, and patting his neck, "he is as fresh now as when we started, not a hair turned!" "Be it so," replied Radpot, not without some asperity. "I would not suffer the trial, could I suspect it possible the queen could be capable of so horrible a plot as you evidently suppose; but I cannot believe it--so give the cordial to your horse." Rathgeb took the vial, and poured not more than three drops on the tongue of his thirsty beast. Both watched the effect with a tension akin to awe. In the first few moments no change was apparent, but Radpot was too generous to give utterance to the triumph he began to experience. Suddenly the faithful beast started as if it had been transfixed with the sharpest arrow, directed one piteous look towards the master it had served so well, and fell down lifeless by the side of its companion. "There is no doubt it is as you say," Radpot now confessed, at once. "Forgive me for the haste with which I spoke." "Nay, prince, there is no need of excuse. Though it behoved me to stand on guard and see no harm befell you, it became you to trust her whose duty it was to befriend, not to harm you." "And now try this cordial of mine, maybe it will fulfil what the other promised." The prince gladly accepted the proffered gift; and both, wonderfully restored by its effects, continued their journey on foot. They had not gone far when three ravens passed them on the wing. The prince and his companion turned back to watch their flight, and saw them alight on the carrion of their dead horses, immediately after tasting of which they all three fell to the earth dead, by the side of the dead horses. "There may be some profit to be gained from these," said Rathgeb; and going back to the spot, he picked up the dead ravens and took them with him. Their journey was without further incident, till they at last espied a welcome hut completely sheltered in the border of a vast stretch of forest land. The sight gave them courage for renewed exertion; and in a few minutes more they stood before the door. An old woman came out to ask them in, but observing the youth and noble mien of the prince, she seemed to be moved with compassion, and cried out, with great earnestness, entreating them not to come in, for the place was the resort of a band of twelve robbers, and that no one could deliver them out of their hands. They would not be home till the next day for dinner; in the meantime, by a path she indicated, the travellers could easily make good their escape. The prince would have rewarded her for her advice, and have set out again to find a safer shelter; but Rathgeb remarked to him, that a prince should rather find means to overcome a danger than fly from it, and promised to carry him through this one, if he would be guided by him. Radpot, mindful of his father's desire, promised to do all he proposed. "Then, when the robbers come in, do exactly as I do," said Rathgeb; "in the meantime keep up your courage." And so they supped on what the old woman set before them, and went to bed and slept peacefully. The next day, an hour before dinner-time, Rathgeb went into the kitchen and handed the three ravens to the old woman to cook, giving her very particular directions as to the sauces that were to accompany it, as if it were a dish for which they had a particular liking, and wished dressed entirely for themselves. He was still watching the confection of the dish when the twelve robbers came back. They gave the two strangers a friendly reception, and invited them to dinner. This, the old servant had told Rathgeb, was their custom, and that after dinner they fell upon their guests and slew them at the moment when they least expected any onslaught. Rathgeb accepted the invitation, with the proviso that he and his companion should be allowed to eat their own food, being some game they had brought down by the way. The robbers made no objection, and they sat down to table. While waiting for the repast to be brought, the robbers entertained their guests with lively conversation, in which Rathgeb joined with great show of cordiality, the young prince sustaining his part admirably. When the dishes were brought, the old woman was careful to set the three ravens before Rathgeb, as he had bidden her; but the chief robber interposed, and said they must really allow him to offer him and his young friend of their hospitality. Rathgeb made a little courteous difficulty; and the robber-chief, whose object was not to thwart his guests in any thing, but make a show of the greatest civility, said he must really consent to exchange dishes, and not deprive him of the pleasure of providing in one way or another for his guests. After holding out for some pressing, Rathgeb consented, and each set to work to help himself to what was before him, the dish which had been before the robber-chief having been exchanged with that which was before Rathgeb. Rathgeb helped the prince without appearing to take any notice of what befell the robbers; and Radpot, understanding how important it was to engender no suspicion, fell with a hunter's appetite upon the viands without taking his eyes from his plate, after the manner of a famished man. Before he had devoured many mouthfuls, however, the poison of the ravens had done its work; one after another, or rather all together, the robbers fell under the table as suddenly as the horses and the ravens themselves--all but one. For one of the robbers had felt suspicious of the unusual circumstance of guests bringing their own food with them; when he pointed this out to his companions, they said it was clear there could be no guile in the matter, seeing the guests had so manifestly prepared it for their own eating. But he had abstained from incurring the risk himself, and now alone stood erect amid the dead bodies of his companions. "Draw, prince," said Rathgeb, "and rid us of this scum of the earth! cross not your sword with the defiled one, but smite him down as a reptile." Radpot did not wait to be twice told; before Rathgeb had done speaking he had hewn down the swaggering bully, who had thought to make easy work of an unpractised foe. Radpot and his counsellor lost no time in continuing their journey. The store of the robbers they left to the old woman who had befriended them, and took only a provision of wine and bread with them for their necessities by the way. Skirting along the borders of the forest, they shortly came to a fine city, where they established themselves at the first inn. They sat down in the Herrenstübchen [68] while other guests came in. "What news is there?" asked Rathgeb of the new comers. "News?" asked the person addressed; "it's always the old story here--but that's as strange for those who don't know it as any news." "What may it be, then?" pursued Rathgeb. "Why, the princess to whom all this country belongs is going on with her old mad pranks. She is perpetually propounding some new stupid riddle, promising her hand and kingdom to whomsoever divines it. But no one can divine the meaning of her nonsense; and the penalty is, that whoever attempts and fails is dressed like a fool or jester, with long ears and bells, and is made to ride backwards all through the city, with all the people hooting and jeering him." Rathgeb then informed himself as to the appearance and character of the princess. "Oh, as to that, she is charming in appearance--radiant as the sun, dazzling all beholders; that is how so many heads are turned by her. And as for her mind, there is no fault there either, except that just because she is more gifted than all other women, she is thus proud and haughty and unbearable." Rathgeb had heard enough, and went out with the prince to make acquaintance with the city and people, and to talk to him of the plans which had suggested themselves to him for courting and taming the princess. Radpot, who had been much pleased with the account of the princess they heard repeated all around, entered fully into his projects. As the princess was much interested in conversing with foreigners, it was not difficult for Rathgeb and the prince to obtain admission to her. Rathgeb then proposed the prince to her as suitor; but on the condition that, instead of the princess proposing the riddle for him to guess, he should propose one for the princess to guess, and that if she failed, she must marry his prince. Two motives urged the princess to accede to this arrangement: first, she felt her credit was staked on not refusing the trial; and then, she was so struck by the appearance of the handsome young suitor, that she was very glad to be saved the chance of losing him by his not guessing her riddle. Rathgeb's riddle was: "What is that of which one killed two, two killed three, and three killed eleven?" The princess asked for three days to consider her answer; during which time she consulted all her clever books and all the wise men of the kingdom, but she was unable to arrive at any answer which had a chance of proving to be the right one. The third day came, and with it Rathgeb and the prince. The princess was obliged to acknowledge herself vanquished, but found an over-payment for her vexation in having to marry the handsome prince, who, however, had, by Rathgeb's advice, not told her that he was a prince, and they passed for two travelling pedlars. At first all went well enough. In the happiness of living with a husband she loved, the Princess forgot many of her haughty ways, and as the prince governed the kingdom wisely, under Rathgeb's advice, every body was content. This happy state of things was not destined to last. By degrees the princess's old habits of self-sufficiency, haughtiness, and bad temper came back, and Radpot found he had hard lines to keep peace with her. From day to day this grew worse; and at last he found it hardly possible to endure her continual reproaches and causeless vituperation. In the meantime Rathgeb received the intelligence from the council of regency that the queen, Radpot's stepmother, was dead, and that all the people were impatient that he should return and place himself at the head of the nation. In communicating this news to the prince, the old counsellor propounded a scheme for reducing his wife to a better frame of mind which pleased him well. In accordance with it, Radpot absented himself from the palace for several days. At the end of that time he returned; but instead of waiting to listen to the fierce invectives with which the princess met him on his return, he interrupted her at the beginning of the discourse by informing her that he had been engaged on important affairs which did not concern her. Before she had time to recover from her surprise at his audacity in treating her thus, he went on to say that this absence was only the prelude to a much longer one, as he was now called home by his mother, who was a very old woman, and who entreated him to remain with her during the rest of her days; that he was about to set out, therefore, to go to her, and he could not say if he should be able ever to come back again--so he must bid her adieu. The princess could not for a long time be induced to believe that he was serious; but when she really found him making preparations for his departure, without any allusion to the idea of her accompanying him, she was so softened and distressed that, but for a sign from Rathgeb, he would have forgiven her at once, and told her all. By Rathgeb's advice, he determined to put her change of demeanour to the test before giving in, and he told her it was impossible to take her with him. At this, her pleading to accompany him became still more earnest. "But if you came with me, you would not have a palace-full of servants to wait upon you; you would have to live in a poor hut with a cross old woman, to whom I could not bear that you should answer a cross word, however peevish she might be; you would have to live on the poorest fare, and to earn something towards the support of your life." The princess, who really loved Radpot devotedly, and was of a good and noble nature, having erred chiefly through thoughtlessness and want of self-control, accepted all these hard terms cheerfully, rather than be separated from her husband. So they set out the next day. And when they got near Radpot's capital, Rathgeb went on before to a poor cottage in the outskirts, where there lived a lone old woman whom he could trust to carry on his plan by acting as Radpot's mother, without her ever knowing who he really was. When Radpot and the princess arrived before this cottage, by Rathgeb's instruction, the old woman came out and welcomed him as her son, and Radpot introduced the princess to her as his wife. "Not much like the wife of an honest workman either!" grumbled the old woman, according to Rathgeb's instructions. "That's the kind of wife a man picks up when he goes to foreign parts--a pert, stuck-up minx! But she'll have to learn to dress like a sober woman, and make some use of her fingers, now she's come here, I can tell her!" The princess could have thrust these words back down the old woman's throat in an instant, but Radpot imposed silence by a severe look; and then he reminded her that she had promised submission and obedience to his mother, adding that, if she desired it, and shrank from sharing his poverty and hard fare, his friend Rathgeb would even now take her back to her own country. But the very idea of parting from him produced immediate submission; and the old lady happening to be leaning against the table, as if tired of the exertion of welcoming her son, she even fetched and placed a chair for her, and helped her gently into it. But still, bad habits cannot be changed all at once, and before the day was out Radpot had had to put on his severe look to arrest her angry answer many a time. The next morning, as soon as they had breakfasted, he said he was going out for his work as a mason's labourer, and she must choose what work she would do, as no one must be idle in his house. The princess timidly replied that she knew many kinds of fine embroidery, which she thought would sell for a great price, and as she had some such with her, she would set to work to finish a piece of it, so that Rathgeb might take it into the town and get it sold. Radpot came back in the evening, and flung down a few pence on the table, which he said was the amount of his daily wage, and told her to go out and get the supper with it. It was little she knew of how to buy a workman's supper; and what she brought Radpot was so dissatisfied with that (having dined himself in the palace) he threw it out of window, so that she had to go supperless to bed. Before she went up-stairs, however, Radpot told her to show him her day's work; and when she brought it, expecting him to admire its delicacy and finish, he at once threw it on one side, saying he was sure such coarse stuff would not sell there. The princess spent the night more in weeping than in sleeping. In the morning she had to get up and prepare the breakfast, in doing which she not only burnt her hands, but, by her general awkwardness at the unusual work, incurred a storm of vituperation from the old mother such as she had often been wont to bestow, while no rough word had ever been spoken to her before in her whole life. All through the day she had to attend to all the old woman's whims; and in the evening when Radpot came home it was nearly the same thing again with the supper, and he would scarcely suffer her to snatch more than a few mouthfuls, so angry he showed himself at her mistakes in the manner of preparing it. He told her, too, that so long as she did not know how to earn her food, she must not expect to have much of it. This made her the more desirous that Rathgeb should take her work to the town. When he had done so, however, he brought it back, saying no one would buy such coarse, common work there. Then she tried other kinds, each finer and more delicate than the last; but all were brought back to her with the same answer. At last they gave her a basket of common pottery, and told her to go and sell it to the poor people in the market-place. This answered rather better than the work. There were plenty of people who wanted to buy crockery, and the most of them came to her basket in preference to others', because of her beautiful face all bathed in tears. But just as she was reckoning up what a nice sum we should now have to take home, and that it would be acknowledged she had done something right at last, a smartly caparisoned cavalier came riding past, and, without heed to her cries, upset the whole of her stock upon the road, smashing every thing to atoms, and scattering her heap of halfpence into the gutter. She was so bewildered she hardly thought to look at him, and yet, from the single glance, he appeared so like Radpot that she almost called to him by name; he dashed away, however, so quickly, that he was out of hearing in a minute. In the evening, when she came to detail her mishap to him, he appeared to be very angry at her ill success in every thing she attempted, adding, "I'm afraid you'll never be any use to a poor man--we must get Rathgeb to take you back home again." But at this she threw herself at his feet in despair, begged him so piteously to do any thing but that, promised so earnestly to apply herself to any mode of life he prescribed for her, provided only he would keep her by him, that he could hold out no longer, and determined to put an end to her trial. "I will give you one chance more," he said, trying to assume a tone of indifference: "you shall bring me my dinner while I am at work to-morrow; that will save me the time of going to get it, and will be worth something--only mind, now, don't make any mistake this time! I am working at the palace; bring the dinner there, and ask for the mason's labourer." The next day she took good care to have the dinner ready in time; and though she was filled with confusion at having to go through the public streets carrying the humble provision of the labourer's dinner, and every one gazing after her beautiful, tearful face, she yet went her way bravely, and came at last to the palace. The moment she asked at the door for the mason's labourer, a page was sent with her, who conducted her through suites of apartments vaster and more magnificent than those of her own palace; and, while she was lost in bewilderment, the page suddenly stopped short and pointed to a drapery hanging, saying, "Pull that aside, and you will find within, him you seek," and then darted away. She scarcely dared do as she was bid; but then the clocks began to strike the midday hour, and, fearful of keeping her husband waiting, she lifted the drapery with a trembling hand. On a royal throne, and habited in royal state, there sat Radpot himself, Rathgeb standing respectfully by his side. The princess thought to have fainted at the sight, for she could in no way understand how they came to be there. "Come in, princess!" said Radpot, encouragingly; and Rathgeb went to the door, and conducted her up to him. He bid her welcome, and kissed her tenderly, told her frankly what had been his plans with her, then led her into an adjoining room, where there were ladies-in-waiting ready to attire her in a robe of cloth-of-gold and coronet of diamonds, which they held in readiness, with many choicest ornaments of gold and precious stones. When she was ready, pages in court suits went before her, and heralds proclaimed her aloud. As soon as the prince saw her arrive, he ordered his high council to be called in, and presented his consort to them, declaring her as virtuous as she was fair. After this they lived together many years in great happiness, for the princess had had a life-long lesson, and never relapsed into her foolish ways. THE THREE BLACK DOGS. The wind roared through the tall fir-trees, and swept the snow-flakes in masses against the window-panes; the rafters rattled and the casements clattered; but dismally, above the roaring and the clattering, sounded the howling of three black dogs at the cottage-door; for their good master lay on the pallet within, near his end, and never more should he urge them on to the joyous hunt. The old man was stark and grey; one bony hand held fast the bed-clothes with convulsive clutch, and one rested in benediction on the dark locks of his only son kneeling by his side. Long he lay as if at the last gasp. Then suddenly raising his weary head from the pillow, he exclaimed, "Jössl, my son, forget not to pray for your father when he is no more." And Jössl sobbed in reply. "Jössl," continued the old man, with painful effort, "you know fortune has never favoured me in this world: you are my noble boy, and I would have left you rich enough to be a great man, as your looks would have you--but it was not to be! Jössl, it was not to be!" and the old man sank back upon the bed, and hid his face and wept. "Father, you have taught me to labour, to be honest, to face danger, and to fear God!" said the brave youth, throwing himself upon him and caressing his hollow cheeks; "that was the best inheritance you could leave me." "Well said! my noble son," replied the father. "But you are young to rough the world by yourself; and I have nothing to leave you but the Three Black Dogs--my faithful dogs--they are howling my death-knell without. Let them in, Jössl--they are all you have now in the world!" Jössl went to let them in; and as he did so the old man's eyes glazed over and his spirit fled, and Jössl returned to find only a corpse. The Three Black Dogs ceased their howling when they saw his grief, and came and fawned upon him and licked his hands. For three days they remained mourning together; and then the men came and buried the father. Other people came to live in the cottage, and Jössl went out to wander over the wide world, the Three Black Dogs following behind. When there was a day's work to be done they fared well enough. Though he had so fair a face and so noble a bearing, Jössl was always ready to apply his stalwart limbs to labour, and what he earned he shared with the Three Black Dogs, who whined and fawned and seemed to say,-- "We are eating your bread in idleness now; but never mind, the day will come when we will earn you yours." But when there was no work to be had, when the storm beat and the winter wind raged, Jössl was fain to share a peasant's meal where he could find pity by the way, and many there were who said, "God be gracious unto thee, my son," when they saw his comely face; but the Black Dogs slunk away, as if ashamed that their master's son should have to beg, not only for himself, but for them also. Better times came with the spring; and then there was the hay-cutting, and the harvesting, and the vintage, and Jössl found plenty of work. But still he journeyed on, and the Three Black Dogs behind. At last he saw in the distance the towers of a great city, and he hasted on, for all his life he had lived in the mountains, and had never seen a town. But when he reached it, he found that though it was a vast city, it was empty and desolate. Broad well-paved roads crossed it, but they were more deserted than the mountain-tracks. There were workshops, and smithies, and foundries, and ovens, but all silent and empty, and no sound was heard! Then he looked up, and saw that every house was draped with black, and black banners hung from the towers and palaces. Still not a human being appeared, either in the public squares or at the house-windows; so he still wandered on, and the Three Black Dogs behind. At last he espied in the distance a waggoner with his team coming through the principal road which traversed the city, and lost no time in making his way up to him and asking what this unearthly stillness meant. The waggoner cracked his whip and went on, as if he were frightened and in a hurry; but Jössl kept up with him. So he told him, as they went along, that for many years past a great Dragon had devastated the country, eating up all the inhabitants he found in the way, so that every one shunned the streets; nor should he be going through now, but that need obliged him to pass that way, and he got through the place as quickly as he could. But, he added, there was less danger for him now, because lately they had found that if every morning some one was put in his way to devour, that served him for the day, and he left off teasing and worrying others as he had been used to do; so that now a lot was cast every day, and upon whomsoever of the inhabitants the lot fell, he had to go out upon the highway early the next morning that the dragon might devour him and spare the rest. Just then a crier came into the street, and proclaimed that the lot that day had fallen on the king's daughter, and that to-morrow morning she must be exposed to the dragon. The people, who had come to the windows to hear what the crier had to say, now no longer kept within doors. Every one was so shocked to think that the lot had fallen on their beautiful young princess, that they all came running out into the streets to bewail her fate aloud; and the old king himself came into their midst, tearing his clothes and plucking out his white hair, while the tears ran fast down his venerable beard. When Jössl saw that, it reminded him of his own father, and he could not bear to see his tears. Then the king sent the crier out again to proclaim that if any one would fight the dragon, and deliver his daughter, he should have her hand, together with all his kingdom. But the fear of the dragon was so great on all the people of the city that there was not one would venture to encounter it, even for the sake of such a prize. Every hour through the day the crier went out and renewed the proclamation. But every one was too much afraid of the dragon to make the venture, and Jössl, though he felt he would have courage to meet the dragon; could not find heart to come forward before all the people of the king's court, and profess to do what no one else could do. So the hours went by all through the day and all through the night, and no one had appeared to deliver the princess. Then daybreak came, and with it the mournful procession which was to conduct the victim to the outskirts of the city; and all the people came out to see it, weeping. The old king came down the steps of the palace to deliver up his daughter; and it was all the people could do to hold him back from giving himself up in her place. But when the moment of parting from her came, the thought was so dreadful that he could not bring himself to make the sacrifice; and when he should have given her up he only clasped her the tighter in his arms. Then the people began to murmur. They said, "The hour is advancing, and the dragon will be upon us, and make havoc among us all. When the lot fell upon one of us, we gave up our wives, and our fathers, and our children; and now the same misfortune has visited you, you must do no less;" and as the time wore on they grew more and more angry and discontented. This increased the distress and terror of the king, and he raved with despair. When Jössl found matters as bad as this, he forgot his bashfulness, and coming forward through the midst of the crowd, he asked permission to go out to meet the dragon; "and if I fail," he added, "at least I shall have prolonged the most precious life by one day;" and he bent down and kissed the hem of the princess's garment. When the princess heard his generous words she took heart, and looked up, and was right glad to see one of such noble bearing for her deliverer. But the old king, without stopping to look at him, threw himself on his neck and kissed him with delight, and called him his son, and promised him there was nothing of all the crier had proclaimed that should not be fulfilled. The discontent of the people was changed into admiration; and they accompanied Jössl to the city gates with shouts of encouragement as he went forth to meet the dragon, and the Three Black Dogs behind. If the king's daughter had been pleased with the appearance of her deliverer, Jössl had every reason to be no less delighted with that of the lady to whom he was about to devote his life. Full of hope and enthusiasm, he passed on through the midst of the people--regardless of their shouts, for he was thinking only of her--and the Three Black Dogs behind. It was past the time when the dragon usually received his victim, and he was advancing rapidly towards the city walls, roaring horribly, and "swinging the scaly horrors of his folded tail." The fury of the monster might have made a more practised arm tremble, but Jössl thought of his father's desire that he should be a great man, and do brave deeds, and his courage only seemed to grow as the danger approached. He walked so straight towards the dragon, with a step so firm and so unlike the trembling gait of his usual victims, that it almost disconcerted him. When they had approached each other within a hundred paces, Jössl called to his dog Lightning, "At him, good dog!" At the first sound of his voice Lightning sprang to the attack, and with such celerity that the dragon had no time to decide how to meet his antagonist. "Fetch him down, Springer!" cried Jössl next; and the second dog, following close on Lightning's track, sprang upon the dragon's neck, and held him to the ground. "Finish him, Gulper!" shouted Jössl; and the third dog, panting for the order, was even with the others in a trice, and fixing his great fangs in the dragon's flesh, snapped his spine like glass, and bounded back with delight to his master's feet. Jössl, only stopping to caress his dogs, drew his knife, and cut out the dragon's tongue; and then returned to the city with his trophy, and the Three Black Dogs behind. If the people had uttered jubilant shouts when he started, how much more now at his victorious return! The king and his daughter heard the shout in their palace, and came down to meet the conqueror. "Behold my daughter!" said the old king: "take her; she is yours, and my kingdom with her! I owe all to you, and in return I give you all I have." "Nay, sire," interposed Jössl; "that you give me permission to approach the princess is all I ask, and that she will deign to let me think that I may be one day found not unworthy of her hand. But as regards your kingdom, that is not for me. I am but a poor lad, and have never had any thing to command but my Three Black Dogs: how should I, then, order the affairs of a kingdom?" The king and all the people, and the princess above all, were pleased with his modesty and grace; and they sounded his praises, and those of his Three Black Dogs too, and conducted them with him to the palace, where Jössl received a suit of embroidered clothes and the title of duke, and was seated next the princess. The king, finding that he was resolute in refusing to accept the crown, determined to adopt him for his son; and had him instructed in every thing becoming a prince, so that he might be fit to succeed him at his death. To the Three Black Dogs were assigned three kennels and three collars of gold, with three pages to wait on them; and whenever Jössl went on a hunting-party, his Three Black Dogs had precedence of all the king's dogs. As time wore on Jössl had other opportunities of distinguishing himself; and by little and little he came to be acknowledged as the most accomplished courtier and the most valiant soldier in the kingdom. The princess had admired his good looks and his self-devotion from the first, but when she found him so admired and courted by all the world too, her esteem and her love for him grew every day, till at last she consented to fulfil the king's wish, and they were married with great pomp and rejoicing. Never was there a handsomer pair; and never was there a braver procession of lords and ladies and attendants, than that which followed them that day, with music and with bells, and the Three Black Dogs behind. * * * There are countless spots in Tirol in which tales are traditional of brave peasants, hunters, and woodmen delivering the place out of some need or danger, symbolized as "a dragon," similar in the main to the above, but with varieties of local colouring. I gave the preference to the above for the sake of the Three Black Dogs. OTTILIA AND THE DEATH'S HEAD; OR, "PUT YOUR TRUST IN PROVIDENCE." In the little town of Schwatz, on the Inn, the chief river of Tirol, there lived once a poor little peasant-girl named Ottilia. Ottilia had been very fond of her dear mother, and cried bitterly when she had the great misfortune to lose her. She tried hard to do all she had seen her mother do: she swept the house and milked the cow, and baked the bread, and stitched at her father's clothes; but she could not, with all her diligence, get through it all as her mother did. The place began to get into disorder, and the pigs and the fowls fought, and she could not keep them apart, and she could not manage the spinning; and what was worst of all, she could not carry in the loads of hay, by which her mother had earned the few pence that eked out her father's scanty wages. To keep the house straight, the good man found himself obliged to take another wife; and one day he brought home the tall Sennal, and told Ottilia she was to be her mother. When poor little Ottilia heard the tall, hard, bony woman called "her mother," she burst out into passionate tears, and declared she should never be her mother, and she would never pay her obedience! Now the tall Sennal was not a bad woman, but she was angry when the child set herself against her; and so there was continual anger between the two. When she told Ottilia to do any thing, Ottilia refused to do it, lest she should be thought to be thereby regarding her as her mother, which seemed to her a kind of sacrilege; and when she tried to do any of the work of the house, her childish inexperience made her do it in a way that did not suit the tall Sennal's thrift, so there was nothing but strife in the house. Yet the good father contrived, when he came home of an evening, to set things straight, and make peace; and though Ottilia had little pleasure, like other children of her years, yet she had a good woollen frock to keep out the cold, and bread and cheese and milk enough to drive away hunger, and, what she valued most, a father's knee to sit on of an evening in the well-warmed room, while he kissed her and told her weird stories of the days long gone by. But a day came--a day darkened by a terrible storm--on whose evening no father came home. The long Sennal went out with the neighbours with lanterns and horns, but the fierce winds extinguished their lights and drowned the sound of their horns; and Ottilia knelt by the side of her father's chair, praying and crying. She prayed and wept, and only slept a little now and then, all through the night; and in the morning some carters came in, and brought her father's dead body, which they had found on their mountain way, under the snow, where it lay buried. But Ottilia still knelt by her father's chair, and felt like one in a dream, while they put him in his coffin and carried him to the churchyard ground, and the sad bells mourned. "Go, child, and feed the pig!" exclaimed the harsh voice of the tall Sennal--and it sounded harsher than ever now, for there was none left to apply the curb. "Crying's all very well for a bit; but you're not going on like that all your life, I suppose?" Ottilia felt her helplessness, and therefore resented the admonition. Without stopping to consider its reasonableness, she retorted, fiercely,-- "'Child!' I am no child of yours! I've told you so before, a thousand times; and it's not because my father's dead that you're going to come over me. You think you'll make me forget him by forbidding me to cry for him; but never, never will I forget him! nor shall you forget how he made you behave properly to me!" The tall Sennal had more patience with her than might have been expected, and said no more for that time; but Ottilia was not won by her forbearance, and only reckoned it as a victory. It was strife again the next day, and the next, and there was no good father to make peace. And at last the tall Sennal's patience fairly gave way, and one day, in her provocation, she drove the child from the door, and bid her never come under her eyes again! Her anger cooled, she could have recalled the words, but Ottilia was already far away up the mountain-path, and out of sight, gone she knew not whither. Ottilia had no experience of want, and knew not what it was to be alone upon the mountains; all her full heart felt at the moment was, that it would be a boon to get away from the reproaches her conscience told her were not undeserved, and be alone with her parent's memory. Thus she wandered on, with no more consciousness of her way than just to follow it to the spot where her father died, and which had been marked by pious custom with a wayside cross, on which was painted in vivid strokes the manner of his end. Ottilia gazed at the cruel scene till fresh tears started to her eyes, and she threw herself on the ground beside it, and cried till she knew no more where she was. Then it seemed to her as if the ground were again covered with snow, and that from under it she heard her father's voice; and he talked to her as he used to talk of an evening by the fireside, when she was on his knee after work and he made her peace with the tall Sennal. And now he brought home to her all her naughty, senseless ways, not scolding without reason, but making all allowance for the filial love which had been at the bottom of the strife. Ottilia seemed to herself to be listening to him with great attention, but her heart misgave her. She was ready to own now that she had been very wrong, very unreasonable, and she felt really sorry for it all--so sorry that, had her home still been his, she felt that she could have brought herself to obey Sennal, so that she might not grieve him; but now--now that he was not there--suppose he should require of her that she should go back now and live with the tall Sennal, all alone! But he did not require it of her; or, at all events, in her excitement she woke with his last words sounding in her ear, which were nothing more severe than, "Put your trust in God, and all will yet be well." The sun had already sunk behind the mountains, the chill night air began to penetrate Ottilia's clothing, and hunger stared her in the face. She felt very humble now, but she had no mind to go back. She rose and walked on, for numbness, as of death, was creeping over her, and she knew the mountain-folk said that to yield to that lethargy of cold was death. On she walked, and on, and the darkness gathered thicker and thicker round her; but she thought of her guardian angel, and she was not afraid. Still the way was weary, and the air was keen, and her strength began to fail. Then suddenly, on a neighbouring peak, she descried the broken outline of a castellated building standing out against the now moonlit sky. Gathering fresh force from hope, she picked her way over steep and stone, guiding her steps by the friendly light which beamed from a turret window. She had had time to realize her whole desolation. If heaven vouchsafed her another chance of finding a home, she mentally resolved, she would behave so as to win its blessing, with all her might. When at last she reached the castle-gate her courage once more began to fail--what would the great people at the castle say to a poor little half-starved peasant-girl, who came without friend or warrant to disturb their rest? "Where is your trust in Providence?" said a voice within, which sounded like a memory of her father's, and rekindled her courage. A horn hung beside the broad portal; and when, after many timorous efforts, Ottilia had succeeded in making a note resound, she stood anxiously wondering what stern warder or fierce man-at-arms would answer the summons. None such appeared, however. But after some moments of anxious waiting, the window whence the friendly light beamed was opened, with noise enough to make her look up, and then--what do you think she saw? Nothing but a Death's Head looking out of the window! Almost before she had time to be frightened, it asked her, in a very kindly voice, what was her pleasure. "A night's lodging and a bit of bread, for the love of Christ!" said Ottilia, faintly; and then she looked up again at the Death's Head, and she could not resist a sense of horror and faintness that crept over her. "Put your trust in God," whispered her father's voice, and she made an effort to stay her teeth from chattering together. Meantime, the Death's Head had answered cheerily enough, "Will you promise to carry me up here again faithfully, if I come down and draw the bolt for you, and let you in?" and scarcely knowing what she said, Ottilia gave an assent. "But think what you are saying, and swear that I can rely on you," persisted the Death's Head, "for, you see, it is a serious matter for me. I can easily roll down the steps, but there are a good many of them, and I can't get up again by myself." "Of course you may rely on me," now answered Ottilia, for she saw it was but her bounden duty to perform this return of kindness--and conscience seemed to have a reproach for her courageous alacrity, saying, "The tall Sennal never required of you any thing so hard as this." "I know she didn't," answered Ottilia, humbly; "and this is my punishment." All this time the Death's Head was coming rumbling down the stone stairs--and a hard, dismal sound it was. Clop, clop, clop, first round the turret spiral; then r-r-r-r-r-roll along the long echoing corridor; and then, clop, clop, clop once more all down the broad main staircase; then another r-r-r-r-r-roll; and finally, klump! bump! it came against the massive door. Ottilia felt her heart go clop, clop, clop, clop, too, but she struggled hard; and the cold, and the faintness of hunger made her yet feel rejoiced to hear the Death's Head take the bolt between its grinning teeth and draw it sharply back. The great door flew open, and Ottilia trod timidly within the welcome shelter. The memory of her father's fate was fresh upon her, and the Death's Head was less terrible than the pitiless snow. Not without some difficult mental struggles Ottilia faithfully fulfilled her promise. A temptation, indeed, came to let the skull lie. It could not pursue her--it could not possibly climb up all those stairs, though it could roll down them; besides, it had declared its incapacity for the task. She could let it lie and enter into possession of the castle--it was clear there was no one else there, or the skull would not have put itself in danger by coming to the door. But honest little Ottilia repelled the thought with indignation, and, bending down, she picked up the skull, and carried it carefully up the stairs folded in her apron. "Lay me on the table," said the Death's Head, when they got into the turret-chamber where the light was; "and then go down into the kitchen and make a pancake. It won't be for want of eggs and flour and butter if it is not good, for they are there in plenty." "What! go all the way down to the kitchen alone, in this great strange place?" said poor little trembling Ottilia to herself. "This is worse than any thing the tall Sennal ever gave me to do indeed;" but she felt it was a punishment and a trial of her resolution, and she started to obey with brave determination. It was a harder task even than she had imagined, for if the Death's Head was safe up-stairs in the turret tower, the "cross-bones" were at large in the kitchen, and would get in her way whatever she turned to do. True, her impulse for a moment was to turn and scream, and run away, but there came her father's voice, bidding her trust in God, "And besides," she said to herself, "what is there so very dreadful about the sight of dead bones, after all? and what harm can they do me?" So she took no notice of what was going on around her, but beat her eggs and mixed her batter, and put it on to fry, till the appetizing odour and the warmth of the fire brought back life and renewed her courage. When Ottilia brought the pancake up into the turret-room, and laid the dish with it on the table, she observed that the side of the pancake which was turned towards the skull became black, while that nearest herself retained its own golden colour; so that her curiosity was piqued, and she was much inclined to ask about it, but she managed to keep quiet and eat her share in silence. When she had finished she took the dish and washed it up, and put all away carefully; and she was just feeling very tired when the Death's Head said to her, "If you go up that staircase on the left, you will come to a little bedroom where you may sleep. About midnight a skeleton will come to your bedside, and try to pull you out of bed; all you have to do is not to be afraid of it, and then it can do you no harm." So Ottilia thanked the skull, and went up to bed. She had not been in bed more than three hours when she heard a great noise and rattling in the room, much like the noise the cross-bones had made in the kitchen while she was cooking the pancake. Then she heard the skull call up to her, "It is just midnight--remember you have only to be brave!" And as it spoke she saw a great skeleton come and stand in the bright moonbeam by her bedside! It stretched one of its long bare arms out towards her, and pulled off the bed-clothes with one bony hand and seized her by the hair with the other. But Ottilia listened for her father's voice bidding her put her trust in Providence; and she remained quite quiet in her bed, giving no sign of fear. When the skeleton found that she was so brave, it could do nothing against her, but, after two or three ineffectual tugs, turned and went away; and she saw nothing more of it, but slept out the rest of the night in peace. When she woke the next morning the bright sun was pouring cheerfully into the room, and by the bedside, where the skeleton had stood the night before, was a beautiful form of a woman, all clothed in white and surrounded by golden rays, to whom Ottilia said, "What do you want me to do, bright lady?" And the vision answered, "I was the mistress of this castle, who, for my pride and vanity, was condemned to dwell in my bare bones on the same spot where I had sinned by my extravagance in dress, and other wanton habits, until one should come, for the sake of whose thrifty, humble ways, and steadfast trust in God, I should be set free. "This you have accomplished, and now I can go to my rest; while, in gratitude, I endow you with this castle and all its lands and revenues." With that the bright form disappeared; and a moment afterwards Ottilia saw, through the window, a milk-white dove winging its upward flight towards heaven. So Ottilia became a rich countess, and mistress of the lordly castle which she had entered as a suppliant. But no sooner was she installed than she sent for the long Sennal; and, having besought her pardon for all the trouble she had given her, begged her to come up to the castle and be with her. So they lived very happily together for the rest of their lives. THE TWO CASKETS. It was a summer holiday; the sun shone with burning rays on the newly-mown banks; the roads and paths seemed knee-deep with dust; the flowers by the wayside hung their heads, as if praying for the refreshing shower; the very waters of the streamlet were heated as they passed along, and Franzl, lying indolently on its bank, plunged his hands beneath its bright surface, but found no cooling. With a peevish exclamation, he rose and sauntered away, and wished there were no holidays. "Nay, don't wish that!" said a gentle fair-haired maiden by his side; "and just on this one, too, which I have been longing for, to fill the basket I made for mother with fresh strawberries from the wood." "Not a bad idea of yours, Walburga; they all call you the 'wise' Walburga," replied Franzl. "There's shade in the wood, and the strawberries will be cooler and more refreshing than this nasty stream." And with that he strolled away towards the wood. The cottage of Franzl and Walburga was nestled into the side of a steep hill, the summit of which was mantled with a forest of lofty pines; and up the precipitous path, which wound past the very chimneys of the cottage, Franzl now strolled alone, without troubling himself to offer his hand to the patient little maiden who toiled painfully behind him, with many a slip upon the loose stones and sunburnt moss. This was Franzl's character. He was always thus: his own amusement, his own enjoyment, and his own ease, were his sole care. Nor had the example of Walburga's loving thoughtfulness for others any effect upon him. If he took any notice of her at all, it was only to laugh and rail at her for it, till her silence shamed his reproaches. At the pinnacle of the path there was a venerable stone cross, shaded from the weather by a little pent-house covered with ivy. Walburga knelt before it as she passed, and prayed for help to be always a good, obedient child, and a blessing to her dear parents. Franzl raised his hand to his cap mechanically, because it was the custom, but no holy thought crossed his mind. "At last there is some coolness after all this horrid heat! and now we are close to those nice refreshing strawberries." These were his only ideas. To Walburga, as she knelt, there came sweet lessons she had been taught to associate with the cross--of abnegation of self, obedience to higher powers, and loving devotion to others. Franzl looked with all his eager eyes to discern the bright red berries where the shade lay diapered with the light darting between the thick clothing of the pine-trees, without so much as casting a glance at the sacred token. "Oh, what a splendid haul!" he cried, and plunged through the thick leafage to where the ripe, rich berries clustered closest, and, without troubling himself to learn whether Walburga was as well supplied, began helping himself to his heart's content. Walburga lined her basket with fresh green leaves, and laid the strawberries in tasteful order upon them, only now and then taking the smallest and most worthless for herself. Though possessed with different objects, both were equally eager in the pursuit, and they pushed deeper and deeper into the thick pine forest, Walburga always keeping near Franzl, by reason of her tender, confiding spirit, which loved to be near those dear to her, though he, intent on his own gratification, had no cheerful word to enliven her. At last they came to where the dark pines closed thick overhead--so thick that no golden rays pierced through; all was shade and silence. But here the strawberries were no longer ripe and red, for there was no sun to bring them to maturity, so Franzl peevishly turned to go, and Walburga followed gently behind. Suddenly their progress was arrested by a bright light--brighter than the burning summer sun shining beneath the gloom of the dark pines--and in the centre of that light stood a beautiful queen, and the light seemed to come from the diadem on her forehead and the garments that encompassed her! "What are you doing here?" she said, in soft sweet accents, addressing herself to Walburga. And Walburga, dropping her eyelids with maiden modesty, replied, hardly able to force her voice above a whisper, "Gathering strawberries for mother dear." The beautiful Lady smiled a smile of approval; and the bright light seemed brighter when she smiled, and a sweet and balmy breeze stirred the air when she spoke again. "Here, my child," she said, "take this casket;" and she handed her a casket made just like the strawberry-basket she had woven for her mother, only it was all of pure gold filigree, and, in place of the piled-up strawberries, it had a lid of sparkling carbuncles. "Take this, my child; and when you open it think of me." "And what are you doing?" she said, with something less of mildness, to Franzl, who, having his hat full of strawberries, was so busy devouring them that he had not even noticed the beautiful present his sister had received. Nor did he stop now even to reply to her; but between throwing away one chuck and picking out another fruit, he muttered, rudely,-- "I should think you might see that, without asking!" The beautiful Lady looked at him sadly, and tears like pearls fell fast down her fair cheeks, as she gave him a dark iron casket, with the same words she had used to Walburga. The light disappeared, and the fair Lady was seen no more. "Who can that bright Lady be? and what can these caskets be that she has given us?" said Walburga, timidly. "Let us come home quick, and show them to mother;" and she ran onwards gaily, calling out, "Mother, mother dear, see what I have got!" "Stuff!" replied Franzl; "I'm not going to wait for that: I want to see what's in them now." But Walburga had passed on out of hearing. He pulled the lid off his dark iron casket; and immediately there wriggled out two great black ugly snakes, which grew bigger and longer, dancing round him; nor could he escape from their meshes. Then, finally, they closed their coils tightly round him, and carried him away through the thick, sunless forest, and no one ever saw him again! Meantime Walburga was making her way home with all the speed she could down the dangerous mountain track, her strawberry-basket in one hand and the golden casket in the other. Her mother sat spinning in the luxuriant shade of the climbing plants over-shadowing the broad cottage-eaves. "Mother, dear mother!" cried the child; "see what I have got. Here is a basket of fresh cool strawberries I have gathered for you in the wood, and here is a golden casket which a beautiful Lady brought me, with a great shining light! But stop till Franzl comes home, for he is coming behind, and she gave him a dark iron casket too, and we will open them both together; so eat the strawberries, mother dear, till Franzl comes." The mother kissed her child fondly, and stroked her fair, soft, curling hair, but turned her head and wept, for she knew what had befallen. But Franzl came not; and when Walburga had sought him every where, she said, "He must be gone round by the woodman's track to meet father, so let us open the casket, mother dear." So she put the casket in her mother's lap, and lifted the beautiful carbuncle lid. And see! there flew thereout two tiny beings, all radiant with rainbow light, and they grew bigger and bigger, fluttering round her till they appeared two holy angels, who folded the child softly in their arms, then spread their wings and flew away with her, singing enchanting melodies, above the clouds! THE PRUDENT COUNSELLOR. Alois Zoschg was a peasant of the Sarnthal; his holding was inconsiderable, but it sufficed for all his needs; his cottage was small, but his family consisted of only himself and his daughter, and they found room for all their requirements. Katharina was bright enough, however, to make any home happy. Though she shared the cottage with her father alone, she never seemed to feel the want of younger companions; thoughtful and prudent beyond her years, and thrifty and notable with all the work of the place, she was at the same time always ready with her joke and her song. It was no wonder that her father doated on her, and looked forward all through the day's toil to the evening spent in cheerful conversation with her. There were thus the elements of a pleasant existence in Alois' lot, but there were two disturbing causes also. One was his own temper, which was violent and ungovernable at times, when he was seriously provoked. The other was the jealousy and animosity of a rich peasant neighbour, Andrä Margesin, the owner of a considerable Hof [69] situated at no great distance from Zoschg's cottage, auf der Putzen. Circumstances had constantly brought the two neighbours into collision; the fault generally lay, in the first instance, on the side of the rich Andrä Margesin, who was grasping and overbearing, but Alois Zoschg once roused, would never let a quarrel rest, and his irritability and revengeful spirit were oftentimes enough to disturb the peace of the whole neighbourhood. No one could say where such quarrels might have ended, what crimes might perhaps have been the result, but for the wise interposition of Katharina, who knew how to soothe her father's ruffled spirit without ever exceeding the limits of filial respect, as well as how to conciliate the rich neighbour, without condescending to the use of any servile arts. By her extraordinary good sense and good temper alone, she would, time after time, bring both the men back to sober reason from the highest reach of fury. Once, however, they had a dispute which was beyond her competence to decide for them, for it involved a question of law. Andrä Margesin accused Alois Zoschg of an encroachment, while Alois Zoschg maintained he was justified in what he had done, by prescriptive right. The dispute raged high, but all Katharina could do in this case to restore peace, was to exact a promise from both parties that they would cease from all mutual recrimination, and carry the matter to be decided for them by the judge in Botzen. When the day of hearing came on, the two disputants went up to Botzen to plead their cause; but each was so determined not to give way, and had so much to say in defence of his own position, and to the disparagement of his antagonist, that they carried their pleadings on for six days, and yet there seemed no chance of arriving at a decision which should be thoroughly justified by the evidence, so contradictory was it. At last, the judge, getting tired of the prolonged controversy, and finding it impossible to moderate the virulence of the combatants, told them that he could have no more wrangling, they had so confused the case with their statements and counter-statements, that it was impossible to say which of them was right, or, rather, which of them was least in the wrong; but he gave them one chance of obtaining a decision of the matter, and that was by accepting a test, which he would propound, of their ability and judgment, and whichever succeeded in that, he should pronounce was the one who was in the right in the original pleading. The rivals looked somewhat disconcerted at this mode of procedure, but, as they found they could not get the affair decided on any other terms, they at last agreed to accept the proposal. "You must tell me, then," said the judge, "by to-morrow morning at this hour, what is that which is the Strongest, the Richest, and the most Beautiful;" with these words he left the judgment-seat, and the two peasants were left standing opposite each other, looking very foolish, for they both thought that it would be impossible ever to answer such a question. After a few moments' consideration, however, Andrä Margesin, who was a very vain man, bethought himself of an answer which, to his mind, seemed indisputably the right one. "To be sure! Of course! I wonder I didn't see it at once! There can be no doubt about it!" he exclaimed, aloud; and clapping his hands, and making other triumphant gesticulations, he stalked off homewards, telling all his friends that he had no doubt of the result. But poor Alois Zoschg, the more he thought, the more puzzled he got, and the boasts of Andrä Margesin only made him more furious. There he stood, crying out against the judge, and against his ill-luck, against his poverty and the opulence of Margesin, till it became necessary to close the court, and his friends prevailed on him to go home. But all the way his passion grew more and more outrageous, and by the time he reached his cottage he was raging like a maniac; the other men could do nothing with him, and slunk away one by one, some in disgust, some in despair. It was now Katharina's turn; and Katharina came out to meet him with her brightest smile and her filial greeting, just as if he had been in the best humour in the world. But, for the first time, the sight of Katharina seemed rather to increase than allay his anger; for he found her dressed in all her festal attire--a proceeding which was quite out of character with his present disposition. There was he, worn out with the long dispute, the weariness of the delayed decision, the provocation of his enemy's insulting mien, and still more, perhaps, by his own ill-humour; and there she stood, all smiles and bright colours, as for a joyful occasion--the white Stotzhaube [70] coquettishly set on her braided hair, the scarlet bodice tightly embracing her comely shape, with "follow-my-lads [71]" streamers from her shoulder-knot, the bright red stockings showing under her short black skirt, and the blue apron over it, in place of the white apron of working days! Could any thing be more incongruous? was it not enough to increase his madness? Nevertheless, Katharina's judgment so uniformly approved itself to his better reason, that, the first impulse passed, he gulped down the rising exclamation of annoyance until he had heard what Katharina had to say. "Well, father, so you're all right! and I'm the first to congratulate you," she cried, and flung her arms round him with an embrace, of which, even in his present state of excitement, he could hardly resist the tenderness and effusion, and as if she did not perceive the traces of his ill-humour. "'Right,' wench! what mean you? all wrong you should say." "No, no, I mean it is all right; and it only remains for you to hear it pronounced by the judge to-morrow--and haven't I put on my gala suit to celebrate your success?" "Success! speak! what mean you?" cried Alois, eagerly, his stormy vexation melting away before the sunbeam of her encouragement. "Why, what has the judge told you to do, to decide the case?" asked Katharina, who had heard it all from a neighbour who came home hours before, while Alois was still standing perplexed in the court. "That I should tell him by to-morrow morning," replied Alois, softened already by her consoling manner, "what it is which is the strongest, the richest, and the most beautiful--and how am I ever to guess all that? And what's more," he continued, relapsing into his former state of vexation, "that fellow Andrä Margesin has guessed it--guessed it already! and is gone off proclaiming his triumph!" "No, father!" exclaimed Katharina, with a mocking laugh, all of fun, however, not of scorn; "you don't mean to say you believe that great bully Andrä Margesin could have guessed the right answer?" "But he said so! he went off telling every one so," rejoined Alois, positively. "Oh, you dear, good, simple father! do you really believe it is so because he boasts of it? Do rest easy; he's not got it." "Well, but if he hasn't, I haven't either. How am I to guess such captious absurdities? Why couldn't the man judge the thing on its merits, instead of tormenting one to this extent?" and Alois was getting cross again. "Why, it is the best chance in the world, you couldn't have been more favoured! As to Andrä, he'll never guess it. Now just think what answer you'll give." "Oh, I should never guess any, if I thought till doomsday! But you"--and he started with the clever thought--"you, of course, who always find a way out of every thing--what do you say?" "Why," answered Katharina, readily, "what is Stronger than the earth on which we stand, which bears up our houses and buildings, our rocks and mighty mountains, which all our united efforts could not suffice to move one inch from its place, and on which we all rest secure, confident that none is strong enough to displace it? What more Beauteous than spring, with its fresh, soft tints on sky and mountain, on alp [72] and mead, on blossom and flower--spring, with its promise and its hope? And what Richer than autumn, with its gifts which make us glad for all the year--its bursting ears of grain, its clustered grapes, its abundant olives and luscious fruits?" "Katharina, girl, I believe you've found it!" said her father, with enthusiasm. "My bonny girl has saved me this time also!" and he clasped her in his arms. Though misgivings would come back when he recalled Andrä's assurance, he yet went to bed happy in the consciousness of at least having a good chance of not being beaten. In the morning he was up betimes, and, having taken great pains to learn what he had to say from Katharina, who walked a good stretch of the way through the valley with him, he arrived at the court in tolerably good humour. Andrä was there before him, and in high good humour too; taking for granted that, as the richer and more important man, and, moreover, as the victor (so he felt assured), he had the right to speak first. As soon as the judge had taken his seat, and even before he had called on him for his answer, he began,-- "Sir judge, I have the answer to your enigma; and as soon as I have told it, you will please give judgment in my favour. It was indeed easy enough to find, so I claim no merit in the discovery," he added, with the pride that apes humility. "The most Beautiful thing on earth is my wife, of course; the Strongest, are my oxen; and the Richest, am I." The judge listened without moving a muscle of his countenance, as became a judge, and for those who were too obtuse to perceive the fine irony of the smile with which he bowed to the speaker at the conclusion of his harangue--and among these was certainly Andrä himself--it seemed as if he was quite satisfied with the answer. Nevertheless, he turned to Alois, and said,-- "Well, my man, and what is your answer?" "But the judgment, good sir judge! would your honour be pleased to pronounce the sentence in my favour, seeing I have given your worship the answer?" interposed Andrä Margesin, fussily. "Gently and fairly!" replied the judge; "wait only a little: we must hear what friend Alois has to say. He might have an answer, you know; and, anyhow, we must give him the opportunity." Andrä chafed, but could not resist; and, at an encouraging word from the judge, Alois stood forward and repeated word for word the answer Katharina had taught him. Though the judge had preserved his imperturbability through the expression of Andrä's silly bombast, this answer of Alois was too much for his composure. He had only proposed the enigma as the means of getting rid of a perplexing case. He had no idea but that both peasants would bring an answer of which he could easily expose the folly; and thus, neither having fulfilled the prescribed terms, the case would fall through of itself, and he be saved from further trouble. But he saw nothing to reply to Alois' solution of his question, nor any means of escaping from giving judgment in his favour. Every body acquiesced in the justice of the decision; and even Andrä himself had nothing to say, but, crestfallen, and in very different style from his confidence of the day before, he made his exit while people were yet engaged with the discussion of Alois' success, so as to avoid alike scorn and condolence. The session over, the judge called Alois aside, and inquired how he had come to find so accurate an answer; upon which Alois, who burnt to proclaim the merit of his child, at once referred the honour to Katharina. "That is it, is it?" replied the judge. "I have often seen the girl at church, and am not surprised that so comely a form is inhabited by so clever a mind. Now, go home, and tell your daughter that if she finds out the way to come to me without any clothes on, and yet not naked; not by day, and yet not by night; and by a way which shall be neither a high-road nor yet a by-path, I shall take the opportunity of her so coming to ask her to be my wife." Alois lost no time in returning home to tell the good news to his daughter. "I suppose you'll find one of your clever ways of doing it, though, for myself, I confess I don't understand a word of it." "But do you really mean that that good, noble, handsome judge really means to make his wife of a poor peasant girl like me?" "He might do worse," answered her father, with archness and pride. "But there is no doubt he was in earnest. You should have seen the fire in his eye when he spoke!" "In that case, you may depend I will find the way to fulfil his directions: trust me for that!" Nor was she long in finding a way which satisfied the judge completely. She took off all her clothes, and then covered herself with fishing-nets; this for the first condition. Then, for the second, she timed her journey in the dusk of evening, which is neither called day nor night; and, for the third, she had previously had the road covered with boards, and upon these she walked, so that she neither trod the high-road nor yet a by-path. Delighted at acquiring such a prize, and having so clever a maiden for his future companion through life, the judge married Katharina before the end of the month. There were great rejoicings at the wedding, to which all the country-side was invited; and then the poor peasant girl was installed in the judge's house. The judge, however, had exacted of her one condition, which was that she should never interfere with any of her clever suggestions in any case brought before him for decision, but let justice take its free and uninterrupted course. Years passed by happily enough. The judge rejoiced more and more every day over the wisdom of his choice, and Katharina sedulously observed the condition imposed upon her, and never interfered with her husband's dealings in the court. Nevertheless, it happened one day that a peasant whom she had known from her infancy had a case before the judge which was nearly as perplexed as that of her father had been, and, despairing of making his right apparent, the peasant came to Katharina, and begged her, by their lifelong friendship, to give him one of those good counsels for which she had been so famous at home in the days gone by. Katharina urged her promise to her husband, and for a long time refused to break it; but the wily peasant contrived to work on her vanity so effectually, that at last, in an evil moment, she consented this once to give her advice, exacting first a promise he would never tell any one she had done so. The case was this. Her friend's Senner [73] had been visited in the night by a Saligen Fraulein [74], who had promised to milk his cow for him, and every one knew that when a Saligen Fraulein milked a cow, it gave three times as much milk as the wont. But being a poor man, and having only one cow, he eked out his living by taking in cows to graze on his allotment; and he also only had one milking-pail. The Saligen Fraulein, therefore, when she had milked his pail full, had been obliged to take a pail belonging to the man to whom the other cows belonged, who was a rich man, and had a store of all sorts of utensils. But the milk being in one of his pails, his Senner swore that it had been milked from one of his cows, and refused to give it up, though he had no right to it whatever; and he had declined payment for the use of the pail. Though the case had been argued since the first thing that morning, they were no nearer arriving at a decision. Now the disputants had been ordered to stand back while another case was called, but it would come on again immediately; and in the meantime the poor peasant entreated Katharina's counsel as his only chance of rescuing his milk before it turned sour. "I see one means, I think, of bringing him to his senses," said Katharina, after she had yielded to her poor friend's importunity. "When your case is called on again, show as much indifference about the result as you have hitherto shown anxiety; then tell your adversary that during this interval, which you spent in the shade of the woods, a Saligen Fraulein had appeared to you and advised you not to use any of the milk the one who appeared to the Senner had milked for you, because she was a mischievous one, and the milk she milked was bewitched, so that all who drank of it, or of any milk mixed with it--were it only one drop of it--would be turned into asses. Then add, 'But of course, if your pailful is really the milk of your own cow, you have nothing to fear; so there's an end of the dispute.' Then he will probably be so frightened by the threat of this calamity that he will probably have nothing more to do with the pail; and that will suffice to prove that it is not the milk of his cow, and expose his deceit." The peasant was so delighted with the wise counsel that he hardly knew how to thank his benefactress, and readily gave her the promise she required of not letting any one know he had even seen her. He had scarcely got back to the court when the case was called on again. The peasant carried out the advice he had received with great shrewdness, and found it answer completely. Every body applauded the craft by which he had confounded his would-be oppressor, and the judge himself was very much pleased to see the end of such a troublesome case. A few minutes' thought, however, suggested to him that there was more than a peasant's shrewdness in the matter, and he was not slow to discern the guiding of his wife in it; so he called the peasant apart, and had little difficulty in wringing from the simple clown a confession of who had been his prompter. The discovery made the judge set off homeward in great anger. His wife had broken her promise--the fundamental condition of their union; and he would have nothing more to say to her! Out of his house she must go, whithersoever she would, but far away out of his sight. Katharina, who had so often calmed her father's anger by her prudent reasoning, exerted herself to the utmost to bring her husband back to a better mind; but in vain. And all the concessions he would yield were, to consent that they should eat their last dinner together, and that she should take away with her one thing out of the house, whatever she had most fancy for. It was not much to obtain when required to part for ever from her home, and her hopes, and all to which she had grown united and attached--but it was all she could obtain. Dinner-time came, and the judge, who was devotedly fond of his wife, seemed lost in sorrow at the calamity about to befall him; still he would not yield. Though she caressed him and entreated him to forgive her, he still said he could not depart from his word, and he would not allow her to speak of it. They sat down to their silent meal; and as the time of separation drew nearer he grew more sombre and sad, and at last determined to console himself with the red wine that sparkled by his side. Katharina encouraged him to drink, and as his bottle got exhausted deftly replaced it by a full one, so that he was quite unconscious of the depth of his potations. Presently the steward came into the room ready to drive Katharina to whatever destination she should select, and, as he had heard it stipulated that she was to take with her whatever she liked best, proffered his services to assist in the removal--for she had won the respect and affection of all her dependants, and they delighted to be occupied for her. Katharina rose to depart, thanked the man for his attention, and, in answer to his question as to the object she would take with her, pointed to her husband, who now lay helpless across his settle, his head drooping over the table. The steward could scarcely believe his eyes, but Katharina had a way of giving orders which did not admit of being questioned. The first surprise over, too, it struck him as a capital device, and he entered heartily into the spirit of the scheme. With the help of a couple of serving-men the judge was deposited safely in the lumbering old carriage, and Katharina having taken her place beside him, they drove away by her direction over one of the worst and most uneven roads in the neighbourhood. The shaking of the vehicle presently awakened the sleeper, who was, of course, quite at a loss to conceive where he was, but, perceiving that he cut a rather silly figure, was ashamed to ask his wife, who sat by his side as if there was nothing amiss, and said nothing. At last his curiosity got the better of his self-respect, and he begged her to tell him what all this trundling and shaking meant. Katharina in a few words recalled to him his cruel decree, at the same time reminding him of his promise that she might take with her what she liked best, and, throwing her arms round him, asked him if there could be any doubt as to what that could be. The judge perceived that his wife had once more shown her sense and judgment, and was not sorry to find she had contrived this opportunity of making up their difference. On renewing her petition for forgiveness, he frankly gave her his pardon; and they drove back home to live together in love and union to the end of their days. THE GEESEHERDS. There was once a peasant who had three sons, Karl, Stefan, and Josef; but, as he was very poor, they often had scarcely enough to eat, and were always complaining. So one day he told them that they should go out, one at a time, into the world, and see whether they could do better for themselves than he could do for them; and, having drawn lots which should go first, it fell upon the youngest. Josef was not altogether sorry to see a little of what the world was made of, and started with break of day next morning on his travels. He went begging about the country, but for a long time could find nothing to make a living by. At last he came to a splendid mansion on the borders of a large forest. When he asked his usual question, whether there was any place vacant for him, the servants took him into the big house; and, after conducting him through a number of apartments, each more beautiful than the other, he was ushered into a vast hall, all panelled round with carved wood, with windows of painted glass, and filled with handsome furniture. Reclining in an easy-chair, sat an aged nobleman, the owner of the mansion, who, when he heard Josef's request, took compassion on him, and told him he would take him into his service, beginning with giving him a very easy employment, and if he proved himself faithful in that, he would promote him to something higher. At first, then, he would only have to keep his geese; but there was one condition he would bid him observe. Josef was so delighted with the prospect that he hastily interposed a promise of obeying it, before it was even uttered. And that condition was, that if at any time he should hear any music or singing in the forest, he should never listen to it, however much he might be inclined, for that if he did, he would inevitably lose his place. Josef repeated his promise, and swore that he would never listen to the music. He was then led down to the place where the other servants were gathered for supper, and as there was a whole crowd of them, and plenty of good food and drink, Josef began to think that he had fallen on to his feet indeed! After supper, Josef was shown into a tidy little room as big as his father's whole cottage, where was a nice little white bed, and a suit of clothes ready to put on when he got up. Though Josef liked good food and a good bed, he was by no means an idle boy, but rose very early in the morning for his new employment; and, having received from the cook his breakfast, and his wallet of provisions for the midday meal, turned out the geese, and drove them before him to the meadow skirting the forest. Josef had never seen so many geese together before, and all the morning long he was never tired of looking at them, and counting them, observing their ways, fancying he discerned various peculiarities in each, by which to know one from another henceforth; and he began to give them all different names. When one showed an inclination to stray, what fun it was to drive her back, and see her flap her great, soft, white, awkward wings, and stretch out her great yellow bill, as with awkward gait she shambled back to the flock! So the morning went by; and it was long past the hour of dinner before Josef found any need of it, but when he did, he was astonished at the abundant supply which had been provided for him. "Truly, I did well to come out into the world," he thought, as he lounged upon the greensward, eating the good food. "What a contrast between having this splendid mansion to live in, and my father's poor cabin; between the dry crusts we had to eat there, and the princely food allowed to us here; between the toil and slavery there, and this easy kind of work, which might more properly be called a pastime! My father thought to punish me for grumbling, he would be astonished if he could see what a fine exchange I have made!" and he laughed aloud, though all alone. But presently the effects of the full meal, the heat of the afternoon, and the excitement of his new position brought on sensations of lassitude and somnolence--and soon you might have seen him stretched upon the grass at full length, and snoring to his heart's content. It is uncertain how long he had slept, but erewhile his slumber was disturbed by the sound of the most enchanting strains of music. Josef raised himself on his elbow, and listened; he had never imagined any thing so beautiful! and when he had listened a little while, he grew so rapt that he could not forbear going a little way into the forest to hear it better, and then a little farther, and farther, till, by the time it ceased, he was a long way from his charge. Then, as he perceived this, for the first time he remembered the condition his master had laid upon him, and his own positive promise to observe it! In shame and confusion he hasted back; but in place of his splendid flock of geese, there were but half a dozen, and those the worst favoured, to be seen! It was vain he called after them, and tore his hair, and ran hither and thither--no geese appeared! and as it began to get dark, he found his best plan was to hurry home with the few that remained. When he arrived a servant was waiting to conduct him to the master. He no longer wore the benevolent smile with which he had first instructed Josef in the terms of his service. He looked so black and angry that the boy was frightened to approach him--too frightened to find a word in his defence. "I had pity on you," said the master, "because you entreated me to try you: you have broken your word, and I can trust you no more. I told you the penalty; now you have chosen to incur it, you must go." Josef could do nothing at first but cry, as he contemplated this sudden extinction of his dreams of ease and plenty, but he took courage to throw himself on his knees, and entreat one more trial. The master was inexorable--only, as he was rich and generous, he would not let him go away empty-handed, and he took out of a casket before him a gold pin, as a memorial of his good intention, and dismissed the boy with a gesture which admitted of no further parleying. Josef was allowed to sleep in the mansion that night, but the next morning, instead of carrying on his agreeable occupation of geeseherd, he had to leave the place ignominiously, his rags being returned to him in place of the smart livery of the castle. Uncertain whither next to bend his steps, he determined to go home in the first instance and show his gold pin, and then take a fresh start in search of another chance. As he toiled up a steep Joch [75], feeling so thirsty that his eyes went searching every where for a cottage where he might beg a sup of milk, a hay-maker turned off the Hoch Alp [76] on to the road just in front of him, with a cartload of hay he was hastening to take home before rain fell. But, for all his urging, the oxen could not turn the cart, and there it stuck in the edge of the road. Seeing our stout youth coming along, the man called to him to help him lift the wheel, promising him a bowl of milk in return. Josef was a good-natured lad, and, as we have said, by no means indisposed for exertion, so he set to work with a will, and the team was very soon put in motion. He travelled on by the side of the cart, and when they reached the Hof for which it was destined, Josef received a bowl of milk, which refreshed him for the rest of the journey. As he got near his father's cottage he went to take out the gold pin with glee, to have it ready to display. Great was his vexation, therefore, at discovering he had it no longer--nor could his searching bring it back any more than the geese! Josef burst into tears, and joined the family meal at home, which was just prepared as he arrived, with his head low bowed, as if he sought to hide himself for very shame. When his father saw him in such melancholy plight, his compassion warmed to him, and he asked him kindly what had befallen. Josef told all his adventures, crying afresh as he came to the narration of how he had lost on the way the gold pin, to display which he had come home before starting in search of another chance of employment. "Such chances don't grow as thick as black-berries," said Stefan, the second son: "instead of your going in search of another, I'll go to the same grand house; and I won't lose such a fine situation for the sake of 'tweedle-dum,' I can tell you! And whatever I get for wages, you may depend, I won't stick it in my belt where it is sure to be brushed away, but on the brim of my hat, to be sure!" Josef, who had had enough of trying to provide for himself, and was not sorry to be at home again, even with its scanty means, made no objection, and their father, thinking it well Stefan should have his experience of life too, approved the plan. Stefan set out next morning, therefore; and by following Josef's directions soon discovered the stately palace for which he was bound. The noble owner received him as kindly as Josef, and sent him out to the same employment, first binding him to observe the same condition. Stefan readily promised to keep it, and was formally installed into his office of geeseherd. All went well enough at first, as with Josef; but it was at an even earlier period of the day than with him that his curiosity was roused by the fairy-like music. Then he, too, followed it through the forest; and when it ceased at sound of the church bells ringing the Ave, he found not more than three or four geese left of all his flock! On his return the master was full of anger at his breach of trust, and inexorably resolved to turn him away; but not to let him go empty-handed, he gave him a little lamb to take home. Stefan was pleased enough with his prize, but was somewhat embarrassed as to the manner of carrying it safely home. He had declared that whatever he got he would bring home on his hat, and though he had never thought of so embarrassing a present falling to him, at the time he spoke, he resolved to keep his word, and so used his best endeavours to fix the little creature round the brim. He carried it thus great part of the way in safety, but having to cross a somewhat rapid stream, a projecting bough of a tree lifted his hat from his head--and both hat and lamb fell in, and were carried fast away by the torrent! Stefan came back even more crestfallen than Josef; and, having told his story, Karl, the eldest, with great indignation at the carelessness of his brothers, declared that he would make the trial next. He would not stick his prize in his belt or his hat, not he! he would carry it by a string, and then it couldn't get loose; and as for the music, he had no fear of being led away by that. Josef, indeed, had had some excuse, as the strains took him by surprise, but to be so foolish as Stefan, after the warning example of another, was perfectly contemptible. He couldn't be so silly as that, not he! He started on his way betimes, and toiled along not without some misgivings lest he should find so good a post already occupied by another. But it was not so: the owner of the mansion gave him the same reception, the same charge, and the same warning as the other two; and, full of confidence in his superiority, he went forth to his work. The weather was cool, and he had no need to seek the shade of the forest trees; and for more than a week he brought the full tale of geese home day by day. "What idiots those were to throw away their place for the sake of a little music!" he thought to himself one day later. "I told them I should not be so foolish--not I! I told them I shouldn't be led away by it, and I haven't been." But it was hotter that day, and in the afternoon, when the sun's power was greatest--forgetting the warning of his brothers' example, or rather setting it at defiance, with the assurance that though he sought the shade he need not listen to the music--he crept within the border of the cool forest, and lay down. He had hardly done so when his senses were rapt by the delicious but deceitful strains. "The woods must be full of fairies!" he cried; "this can be no earthly music--I must follow it up and see what manner of instruments they are, for never on earth was heard the like!" But as he went on, the music always seemed farther off, and farther again, till at last the church bells rang the Ave, and the music ceased. Then Karl woke to a sense of his weakness and folly; and though he ran every step of the way back to his geese, only two were there! Though he had now found the same fate befall himself as his brothers, in all particulars, yet he could not forbear searching for the lost geese; but of course it was in vain, and he had to return to the castle with but two. Nothing could look more miserable, or more ludicrous, than this diminished procession--Karl at the head of his two geese, who had gone out in the morning with such a goodly flock. He would have gladly slunk away without exchanging a word with any one, but he could not escape being taken before the master, who scolded him in the same words in which he had chided his brothers, but gave him a fine rich cake to take home. The cake was round, and it was very inconvenient to attempt to secure it by means of a string, but Karl had declared he would bring home his reward that way, and so it was a point of honour with him to do it. But passing by a Hof, on his way home, where was a large and powerful watch-dog on guard, he set off running to escape its grip. This was the very way to attract the beast's notice, however; and off it set in pursuit, much faster than Karl's legs could carry him away--and then, having jumped upon him and knocked him down, seized his cake, and devoured it before his eyes! Karl had now to go home as empty-handed as his brothers, and as full of tears; but his father comforted him, and checked the rising gibe of his youngers by reminding them that all had failed equally; so they all joined in a good-humoured laugh in which there was nothing of bitterness. The father then asked them if any of them wished to go out into the world and seek fortune again; but they all agreed that there was nothing to be gained by the move, and that though there were positions which at first sight seemed more brilliant and more delectable than their own, yet that each had its compensatory trials, and that they were best where God had placed them. Henceforth, however, they were ashamed of renewing their grumblings, but, each making the best of his lot, they became noted as the most contented and, therefore, happiest family of the whole valley. ST. PETER'S THREE LOAVES [77]. In the days when our Lord and Saviour walked this earth with His apostles, it happened one day that He was passing, with St. Peter for His companion, through a secluded valley, and that discoursing, as was His wont, of the things of the Kingdom of God, and raising the mind of His disciple from the earthly to the heavenly, they noticed not how the hours went by. Nevertheless, they had been walking since daybreak over rough mountain tracks and across swollen torrents many a weary mile, and had eaten nothing all day, for their way had led them far from the haunts of men; but as noon came down upon them they approached the precincts of a scattered hamlet. The bells of all the large farm-houses were ringing to call in the labourers from the field to their midday meal, and announced a community of sensations in the world around akin to those with which St. Peter had for a long time past been tormented. The heat increased, and the way grew more weary, and St. Peter found it more and more difficult to keep his attention alive to his Master's teaching. The merciful Saviour was not slow to perceive what ailed His disciple, and kept on the look-out for any opportunity of satisfying him as anxiously as if the need had been His own; and thus, while St. Peter was still wondering how long he would have to go on fasting, He remarked to him the smell of fresh-baked loaves proceeding from a cottage at the bottom of the valley. St. Peter could as yet perceive neither the scent nor the cottage. Nevertheless, used as he was to trust his Lord's word implicitly, he started at His bidding, following the direction pointed out just as if both had been patent to himself. The way was so steep and rough that St. Peter, in his eagerness, had many falls, but at last, without much damage, reached nearly the foot of the mountain range along the side of which they had been journeying; and then suddenly the smell of a wood fire, mingled with the welcome odour of fresh-baked bread, greeted him. The roof of the cottage was just beneath his feet, and the smoke was curling up through the chimney, telling of a well-provided stove, burning to good purpose, close at hand. One or two more winds of the road, and only one more slip over the loose stones, brought him to the door. A comely peasant wife opened it at his knock with a cheerful greeting: "Gelobt sei Jesus Christus [78]!" The apostle, having given the customary response, "In Ewigkeit! Amen," the peasant wife asked him to come in and rest--an offer which St. Peter gladly accepted. The peasant woman wiped a chair, and presented it to him, and, with some pleasant words about his journey, returned to her occupation at the fire. The moment had just arrived when she should take her loaves from the oven, and nothing could smell more tempting to a man whose appetite was seasoned by a long walk in the fresh mountain air. "Good woman, I come from far, and the whole of this blessed morning," he exclaimed, speaking as one of the people, "I have tasted nothing! ... nor my companion," he added, with some embarrassment lest he should seem encroaching, yet full of anxiety to provide for his Master's needs as well as his own. "Tasted nothing all this morning!" exclaimed the compassionate peasant wife, scarcely leaving him time to speak; "poor soul! Why didn't you say so at first? Here, take one of these loaves; they are the best I have, and, if humble fare, are at all events quite fresh. And your companion too, did you say? Take one for him also;" and then, as if she found so much pleasure in the exercise of hospitality that she could not refrain from indulging it further, she added, "and take this one too, if you will; maybe you may want it before the journey is out." St. Peter thanked her heartily for her generosity, and hasted to take the loaves to the Master, that He might bless and break them. But as they were hot, being just out of the oven, he had to wrap them in the folds of his coarse grey mantle, to be able to hold them without burning his hands. As he toiled up the steep, the thought came to him, "It will most likely be long before we have a chance of meeting with provisions again, and I always seem to want food sooner than the Master; I might very well keep this third loaf under my cloak, and then in the night, while He is lost in heavenly contemplation, and I am perishing with hunger, I shall have something to satisfy it. I do Him no wrong, for He never feels these privations as I do--at all events," he added, with some misgivings, "He never seems to." With that he reached the place where he had left the Saviour. He was still kneeling beneath the shade of a knoll of pines. As St. Peter approached, however, though He was not turned so as to see him coming, He rose, as if He knew of his presence, and, coming to meet him, asked him cheerfully what success he had in his catering. "Excellent success, Lord," replied St. Peter. "I arrived just at the right moment. The woman was taking the loaves out of the oven, and, being a good-hearted soul, she gave me one; and when I told her I had a companion with me, she gave me another, without requiring any proof of the assertion; so come, and let us break our fast, for it is time." But he said no word about the third loaf, which he kept tight in a fold of his mantle under his arm. They sat down on a rock by the side of a sparkling rivulet, hasting along its way to swell the far-off river, and its cool crystal waters supplied the nectar of their meal. St. Peter, who had now long studied in the school of mortification of his Master, was quite satisfied with this frugal repast, and, no longer tortured by the cravings of nature, listened with all his wonted delight and enthusiasm to every word which fell from the Lord's lips, treasuring them up that not one might be lost. It was true that he could not suppress some little embarrassment when the thought of the third loaf occurred to him; "But," he said, to himself, "there could be no possible harm in it; the woman had clearly given it to him; his Lord didn't want it, and he was only keeping it for his needs. True, if He were to suspect it, He would not quite like that; but then, why should He? He never suspects any one." Never had the Saviour been more familiar, more confiding. St. Peter felt the full charm of His presence and forgot all his misgivings, and the cause of them, too, in the joy of listening to Him. Then came a friendly bird, and hopped round Him, feeding on the crumbs that had fallen. The Saviour, as He watched its eagerness, fed it with pieces from His own loaf. Another bird was attracted at the sight--another, and another, and another, till there was a whole flock gathered round. The Saviour fed them all, and yet He seemed to take His own meal too. "It is just as I thought," St. Peter reasoned with himself; "His needs are not as our needs. Decidedly I do Him no wrong in keeping the loaf for my own." And he felt quite at ease. The simple repast was at an end; the birds chirped their thanks and flew away; and the disciple and the Master rose from their rocky seat. St. Peter, leaning on his staff, set out to resume the journey, but the Lord called him back. "Our Father in heaven has fed us well, shall we not thank Him as is our wont?" St. Peter laid aside his staff, and cheerfully knelt down. "But as He has dealt with particular loving-kindness in the abundance with which He has provided us this day, let us address Him with arms outstretched, in token of the earnestness of our gratitude," continued the Saviour; and as He spoke He flung His arms wide abroad, as if embracing the whole universe and its Creator, with an expression of ineffable love. He knelt opposite St. Peter, who was not wont to be slow in following such an exhortation. "He only suggested it; He didn't command." reasoned St. Peter to himself. "I need not do it." But a furtive glance he could not repress, met the Master's eye fixed upon him with its whole wonted affection--there was no resisting the appeal. With the spontaneity of habitual compliance, he raised his arms after the pattern of his Lord; but the loaf, set free by the motion, fell heavily to the ground beneath the Master's eye. The Master continued praying, as though He had perceived nothing, but St. Peter's cheeks were suffused with a glow of shame; and before they proceeded farther he had told Him all. THE TWO COUSINS OF ST. PETER [79]. St. Peter had two young cousins whom he sought to bring up in the way of righteousness according to Christian doctrine. As they were very docile, and listened gladly to his word, he strove to lead them in the way of all perfection; and to this end counselled them to give themselves up entirely to serve God in a community of His handmaidens, where they should live for the Divine spouse of their souls, and for Him alone. The work of the Church called St. Peter away from the East, and he was already gone to establish the faith in Rome before the maidens had decided as to their vocation. It was not till many years after that St. Peter heard, to his surprise, on occasion of St. Timothy coming to visit St. Paul in Rome, that while the youngest indeed had fulfilled his expectations, and had given herself up to the religious life, the elder had married and established herself in the world, and become the mother of a large family. During his long confinement in the dark dungeon of the Mamertine prison, St. Peter's thoughts would often revert from the immense cares of his sublime office to the quiet hours he had passed in the lowly dwelling by the Lake of Tiberias, where his pious cousins had so often sat at his feet listening to his instructions. And he found a peaceful pleasure in recalling the way in which they had responded to them; the spontaneity with which they had apprehended the maxims of the new religion; their fervour in applying them to their own rule of life; their readiness to go beyond what was bidden them, that so they might testify their love for their Divine Master; their delight in all that reminded them of God and His law. "And to think that one of them should have gone back from all this! should have been content to give up these exalted aspirations! How sadly her ardour must have cooled! What could have worked this change?" the apostle would muse, in his distress, and pray silently for her forgiveness and guidance; but his thoughts would revert with greater affection and satisfaction to the more favoured state of the soul of the younger sister. It was not long before the terrible decree of Nero consigning St. Peter to the death of the cross was pronounced, and from the height of the Janiculum he was received into the celestial mansion to keep the gate of the Kingdom of Heaven. He had not exercised this office many years when our Lord called him to Him one day, and bid him open the gate of heaven to its widest stretch and deck its approaches as for a high festival, for that one of the holiest of earth and the dearest to Himself was to be received into the abode of the Blessed. "That must be my youngest cousin," said St. Peter, "there is no doubt; she who generously gave up a world in which she was so well adapted to shine, to live a life of perfection with God above only for its object;" and he strained his eyes to see far along the approach to Paradise, that he might catch the first glimpse of her glorified soul and greet it with the earliest welcome. How great was his surprise then, when roused by the melodious strains of the angelic host escorting her, to hear in the refrain of their chant the name of the Sorellona [80], not of the younger of the sisters! Meantime the celestial cortége was wafted by, and the beautiful spirit was welcomed by the Divine Master Himself, and placed on one of the highest seats in His kingdom. Not many days after our Lord called St. Peter to Him again, and told him to open the gate a little, very little way, and to make no preparations for rejoicing, for He had promised admission to a soul who, though of his family, yet had only escaped being excluded by a hair's breadth. St. Peter went away perplexed, for he knew there was no one of his family who could be coming to heaven just at that time except the younger of the two cousins, and how could the Lord's words apply to her? He durst do no more than open the gate a very little way, but stationed himself opposite that small cleft to obtain the earliest information as to who the new comer really was. Presently a solitary angel came soaring--the only escort of a trembling soul--and, as he approached, without chorus or melody, he begged admission for one whom, by the name, St. Peter discerned was actually the Sorellotta [81] he had deemed so meritorious! With great difficulty, and by the help of the angel who conducted her, and of St. Peter himself, she succeeded in passing the sacred portal; and after she had been led to the footstool of the Heavenly Throne in silence, He who sat on it pointed to a very little, low, distant seat, as the one assigned to her. When St. Peter afterwards came to discourse with the Lord about His dealings with the two souls, he learnt that she who performed her duty with great exactness and perfection in the world was more pleasing in His sight than she who, while straining after the fulfilment of a higher rule, yet fell short of correspondence with so great a grace. LUXEHALE'S WIVES. The Devil goes wandering over the earth in many disguises, and that not only to hunt souls; sometimes it is to choose for himself a wife, but when he goes on these expeditions he calls himself "Luxehale." There was once a very beautiful princess, very proud of her beauty, who had vowed she would never marry any but the handsomest prince. Numbers of princes, who heard the fame of her beauty, came to ask her hand, but directly she saw them she declared they were not handsome enough for her, and drove them out of the city. Her parents were in despair, for there was scarcely any young prince left in the world whom she had not thus rejected. One day the trumpeters sounded the call by which they were wont to announce the arrival of a visitor. The princess sat with her mother in an arbour. "Ah!" said the queen, "there is another come to ask your hand. How I wish he may be the really handsome one you desire, this time!" "It is all useless, mother; I don't mean to see any more of them--they are all uglier, one than the other." The queen was about to answer by instancing several noted paragons of manly beauty whom she had rejected like the rest, but the chamberlain came in with great importance just at that moment, to say that the prince who had just arrived appeared to be a very great prince indeed, and that he was in a great hurry, and demanded to see the princess instantly. The princess was very indignant at this abrupt proposal, and refused absolutely to see him; but at last the queen got her to consent to place herself in a hollow pillar in the great reception-hall, and through a little peephole, contrived in the decorations, take a view of him without his knowing that she did so. When the princess thus saw the stranger, she was dazzled with the perfection of his form and the surpassing beauty of his countenance, and she could hardly restrain herself from darting from her hiding-place and offering him her hand at once; in order to preserve herself from committing such a mistake, she immediately let herself down through a little trap-door into the room below, where it had been agreed that her mother should meet her. "Well, what did you think of him?" said the queen, who did not keep her long waiting. "Oh! I think he might do," said the princess, with an assumed air of indifference, for she was too proud to acknowledge how much she admired him. The queen was overjoyed that at length she consented to marry, and so put an end to the anxiety she was in to see her established before she died. That she might not take it into her head to go back from what she had said, her parents hastened on the wedding preparations, and the prince seemed very anxious, too, that no delay should occur. As soon as the festivities were over, he handed his bride into a magnificent gold coach, and drove off with her, followed by a retinue which showed he was a very great prince indeed. Away they rode many days' journey, till at last they reached a palace of greater magnificence than any thing the princess had ever conceived, filled with crowds of servants, who fulfilled her least wish almost before it was uttered, and where every pleasure and every gratification was provided for her in abundance. The prince took great pleasure in conducting her frequently over every part of the palace, and it was so vast that, after she had been over it many times, there was still much which seemed strange to her; but what was strangest of all was, there was one high door, all of adamant, which the prince never opened, and the only cross word he had spoken to her was once when she had asked him whither it led. After some time it happened that the prince had to go on a considerable journey, and before he left he confided to his wife the keys of all the apartments in the palace, but she observed the key of the adamant door was not among them, and ventured to ask why it was not. "Because no one passes through that door but myself; and I advise you not to think any thing more about that door, or you may be sure you will repent it," and he spoke very sternly and positively. This only whetted her curiosity still more; and she was no sooner sure he was at a safe distance, than she determined to go down and see if some of the keys would not open this door. The first she tried in it showed there was no need of any, for it was unlocked, and pushed open at her touch. It gave entrance to a long underground passage, which received a strange lurid light from the opening at the far end. The princess pursued the ominous corridor with beating heart; and, when she reached the other end, made the frightful discovery that it was--the entrance to hell! Without losing a moment, she rushed up-stairs, regained her own apartment, and sat down to contrive her escape, for she now perceived that it was the Devil, disguised as a beautiful prince, that she had married! As she sat, pursued by a thousand agonizing thoughts, the gentle cooing of two pigeons in a cage soothed her, and reminded her of home. Her father's fondness had suggested that she should take the birds with her that she might have the means of communicating to him how it fared with her in her married home. Quickly she now wrote a note to tell him of the discovery she had made, and begging him to deliver her. She tied the note to one of the pigeons, and let them fly. The Devil came back in the same disguise, and was profuse in his caresses; and he never thought of her having opened the door. But all the princess's affection and admiration for him were gone, and it was with the greatest difficulty she contrived to keep up an appearance of the fondness she had formerly so warmly and so sincerely lavished. Meantime the pigeons went on their way, and brought the note home. The king and queen were having dinner on the terrace, and with them sat a young stranger, named Berthold, conversing with them, but too sad to taste the food before him. He was one of those the princess had rejected without seeing, but as he had seen her, he was deeply distressed at the present separation. The pigeons flew tamely in narrowing circles round the king's head, and, at last, the one which carried the note came fluttering on to the table before him. He would have driven them away, the rather, that they were all distressed and bleeding, and with scarcely a feather left, but the young stranger's eye discovered the note, which was quickly opened and read. "Oh, help me! What can I do?" exclaimed the king; "give me some counsel. How can I ever reach the Devil's palace--and how could I fight him, if even I did get there?" "May I be permitted to undertake the deliverance?" asked the stranger. "Oh, in heaven's name, yes!" cried the king. "And shall I have your permission to pay my addresses to her when I bring her back?" "Why, she will be yours--yours of right, if you succeed in rescuing her; altogether yours!" "That must depend on herself. Nevertheless, if I have your consent to ask her in marriage, that is all I desire." "Go, and succeed!" devoutly exclaimed the king. "And whatever you stand in need of, be it men or money, or arms, you have but to command, and every thing shall be given you that you require." But the prince, who knew not what sort of enemy he had to encounter, or which way he had to go, knew not what assistance to ask for, but set out, trusting in God and his own good sense to guide him. As he passed out of the castle enclosure his eyes were rejoiced to see lying on the ground some of the white feathers of the carrier-pigeons, and then he perceived that, not having been duly matched, they had fought all the way, and that the whole track was marked with their feathers. But as they, of course, had come by the directest course, it led him over steep precipices and wild, unfrequented places; still Berthold pursued his way through all difficulties without losing courage, and ever as he went pondering in his own mind with what arts he should meet the Devil. He was passing through a desolate stony place, which seemed far from any habitations of men, when he saw a man crouching by the wayside, with his ear close against the rock. "What are you doing there?" said Berthold. "I am listening to what is going on in the Devil's house," answered the man, "for my sense of hearing is so fine, it carries as far as that." "Then come with me," said Berthold; "I will find work for you which shall be well repaid." So the man left off listening, and walked on behind him. A little farther on, he observed a man sitting on a ledge of the precipice, with his back to the road, and with all the world before him; and he gazed out into the far distance. "What are you staring at?" said Berthold. "I am gazing into the Devil's house," said the man, "for my sight is so sharp, it carries as far as that." "Then come along with me; I will give your eyes work that shall be well paid." said Berthold. So the man left off gazing, and turned and walked behind him. "But stop!" said the prince; "let me have some little proof that you are as clever as you say. If you can see and hear into the Devil's house, let me know what the Devil's wife is doing." Then the first man crouched down with his ear against the rock; and the second man sat himself astride on a jutting projection of the precipice, and gazed abroad over the open space--Berthold taking care that they should be far enough apart not to communicate with each other. "What do you see?" he said, when the second man had poised himself to his own satisfaction. "I see a vast apartment, all of shining crystal, and the Devil lying fast asleep on a ledge of the flaming spar, while the Devil's wife sits with averted face, and weeps." "And what do you hear?" he said, returning to the first man. "I hear the Devil snore like the roaring of a wild beast, and I hear great sighs of a soft woman's voice; and every now and then she says, 'Why was I so foolish and haughty, as to send away all those noble princes whom I might have learnt to love? and above all, Berthold, whom I would not see, and who my mother said was better than them all; and I would not see him! If I could but see him now, how I would love him!'" When Berthold heard that, he could not rest a minute longer, but told them he was satisfied; and hurried on so fast that they could scarce keep up with him. On they went thus; and presently they saw a man amusing himself with lifting great boulders of rock, which he did so deftly that no one could hear him move them. "You have a rare talent," said Berthold; "come along with me, and I will pay your service well." So the man put down a great mass of rock he had in his arms, and walked on behind the prince. Presently there were no more pigeons' feathers to be seen, and Berthold wrung his hands in despair at losing the track. "See!" said the man with the sharp sight, "there they lie, all down this steep, and along yonder valley, and over that high mountain! it will take three months to traverse that valley." "But it is impossible to follow along there at all!" cried all the men. But Berthold said they must find their way somehow. While they were looking about to find a path to descend by, they saw a great eagle soaring round and round, flapping her wings, and uttering plaintive cries. "I'll tell you what's the matter," said the man with the sharp hearing: "one of her eggs has fallen down this ledge, and it is too narrow for her to get it out; I can hear the heart of the eaglet beating through the shell." "Eagle," said the prince, "if I take out your egg, and give it to you, will you do something for me?" "Oh, yes, any thing!" said the eagle. "Well, that is a hot, sunny ledge," said the prince; "your egg won't hurt there till we come back--I have seen in my travels some birds which hatch their eggs entirely in the hot sand. Now you take us all on your back, and fly with us along the track wherever you see the pigeons' feathers, and wait a few minutes while we complete our business there, and then bring us back; and then I'll take your egg out of the fissure for you." "That's not much to do!" said the eagle; "jump up, all of you." So they all got on the eagle's back, the prince taking care so to arrange his men that the great neck and outstretched wings of the eagle should hide them from the Devil's sight, should he have happened to be outside his house. It took the eagle only two or three hours to reach the journey's end, and by this time it was night. "And now it is dark," said Berthold, to the sharp-visioned man, as they alighted from the eagle's back, "you cannot help us any more with your sight." "Oh, yes; the crystals of the Devil's apartment always glitter with the same red glare by night or day. I see the Devil rolled up in bed fast asleep, and his wife sits on a chair by his side, and weeps." "And what do you hear?" he said, addressing the first attendant. "I hear snoring and weeping, as before," said the man addressed. "Now you, who are so clever at lifting weights without being heard," said the prince, "lift the great door off its hinges." "That's done," replied the man, a minute later, for he had done it so quietly Berthold was not aware he had moved from the spot. "Since you have done this so well, I'm sure you'll do the next job. You have now to go up into the Devil's room, and bring the lady down without the least noise; if you show her this token, she will recognize it for her father's device, and will come with you." The sharp-visioned man told him how he would have to go, for he could see all the inside of the house, lighted up as it was with the glaring crystals. But just as he was about to start,-- "Stop!" cried the man with the sharp ears; "I hear the Devil turn in his bed; our talking must have disturbed him." So they all stood stock still in great fear. "He seems to be getting up," whispered the man with the sharp sight. "No; now he has turned round and rolled himself up once more." "And now he is snoring again," continued the other. "Then we may proceed," replied the prince; and the third attendant went his way so softly that no one heard him go. "Get up on the eagle's back," said Berthold to the other two, "that we may be ready to start immediately." So the men took their places. They had hardly done so when the man came back bearing the princess, and at a sign from Berthold sprang with her on to the eagle's neck. The prince got up behind, and away flew the eagle--so swiftly that had he been less collected he might have lost his balance before he had secured his seat. By daybreak they had reached the spot where the eagle's egg had fallen. Berthold willingly exerted himself to restore her treasure to her, and she was so grateful that she proposed to fly with them home the remainder of the journey--an offer which they gladly accepted. The Devil was still sleeping and snoring, they were assured by the clever attendants; and away they sped, reaching home just as the king and queen were sitting down to breakfast. Great was the rejoicing in all the palace. The princess gladly acknowledged Berthold's service by giving him her hand; and to all three attendants high offices were given at court. To the eagle was offered a gold cage and two attendants to wait on her, but she preferred liberty on her own high mountain, and flew away, accepting no reward but a lamb to carry home to her young ones. When Luxehale woke next morning great was his fury to find that the princess was gone. "Order out a troop of horse, and send and demolish her palace, and kill all belonging to her, and bring her home again," was the advice of his chamberlain. "No," replied Luxehale; "I hate violence: I have other ways at command which I find answer better. There are people enough in the world glad enough to follow me willingly. It is not worth while to give myself much trouble with those who resist." And he dressed himself, and walked out. This time his steps were not directed towards a grand palace. He didn't care particularly about birth or cultivation. There was a cottage situated just above one of the alleys of his pleasure-grounds where lived three beautiful peasant girls with an old father. Luxehale had often listened to their merry laugh and thought how he should like to have one of them for his wife; but he never could find any means of getting at them, as they were very quiet and modest, and never would enter into conversation with any stranger. As he now walked along he heard their voices in earnest talk. "It's great nonsense of father selling all the celery, and not letting us have a taste of it!" said one, in a discontented voice. "Yes, it is; I don't mean to submit to it either," said another. "Oh, but you wouldn't disobey father!" said the first. "Well, it's not such a great matter," replied the other; "only a foot of celery [82]!" Luxehale was very glad when he heard that, for he had never been able to catch them in an act of disobedience before. He placed himself under the celery-bed and watched all the roots. The moment one began to shake, showing that they were pulling it up, Luxehale took hold of the root, and held it hard, so that, instead of their pulling it up, he contrived to drag down the girl who was trying to gather it. It was the peasant's eldest daughter Lucia; and much surprised was she, after passing through the hole Luxehale had made in the earth, to find herself in the arms of a handsome cavalier, who lavished the greatest care on her! Lucia had never been spoken to by such a good-looking gallant before, and felt much pleased with his attention. She begged him, however, to let her go; but he told her that was impossible. She was his captive, and he never meant to let her go again; but if she would only be quiet and reasonable she would be happier than any queen; that he would take her to a magnificent palace where she would have every thing she desired, and be as happy as the day was long, for he would make her his wife. In fact, he succeeded in dazzling her so with his promises that she began to feel a pleasure in going with him. Nor did he break these promises. She was installed into all the enjoyments of which we have seen the former wife in possession; and as the Devil admired her beauty, and flattered and fondled her, she did not altogether regret her captivity. But when the time came that he had to go upon earth about his business, he brought her all the keys of the place, with the express recommendation that she was never to attempt to open the adamant door; then he plucked a red rose, and placed it in her bosom, as a memorial of him, which he promised should not fade till his return, and departed. Lucia amused herself very well at first with various occupations and amusements the palace afforded, and which were new to her; but as the days fled by she began to grow weary, and at last, from being tired and out of spirits with her loneliness, she became possessed with so intense a curiosity to see what lay hid behind the adamant door, that she could not resist it. Accordingly she went down at last, with the bunch of keys in her hand, and with trembling steps made her way up to it. But, without even trying one of the keys, she found her touch pushed it open, and made the terrible discovery, that it was the gate of hell! She turned to escape, and rushed back to her apartment, to weep bitterly over her forlorn condition. Two or three days later a train of waggons came laden with beautiful presents Luxehale had bought and sent home to amuse her, and she became so interested in turning them all over, that when he returned she was as bright and smiling as if nothing had happened. Luxehale ran to embrace her, but suddenly observed that the rose had withered on her bosom! When he saw that, he pushed her from him. He had given it to her as a test to ascertain whether she had gone through the adamant door, for the heat of the fire was sure to tarnish it--and now he knew she was in possession of his secret. "You have opened the adamant door!" he exclaimed, fiercely; and she, seeing him so fierce, thought it better to deny it. "It is useless to deny it," he replied; "for nothing else would have tarnished that rose." And saying that, he dragged her down to it and thrust her within its enclosure, saying, "You wanted to know what there was behind the adamant door; now you will know all about it." Luxehale now had to look out for another wife. He at once bethought him of Lucia's sisters, and went pacing up and down under their garden, as before. The two sisters were talking with some warmth. "I don't see why father should have forbidden us to look through the trellis!" said the voice which had spoken first on the former occasion. "Nor I," said the other. "And I don't mean to be kept in in that style either," said the other. Quick as thought the Devil transformed himself into a serpent and worked his way up through the earth to the other side of the trellis, where he waited till the maiden put her head through, as she had threatened. She had no sooner done so than he caught her in his coils and carried her down under the earth. Before she had time to recover from her surprise, he had transformed himself back into the handsome cavalier who had charmed Lucia. It was the second sister, Orsola; and her opposition to his advances was as easily overcome as Lucia's. She lived in the palace as Lucia had done, and learnt to feel great delight in its pleasures. At last the day came when the Devil had to go upon earth about his business, and he left her with the same charge about the adamant door, and placed a red rose on her breast, which he promised should not fade till his return. After a time her weariness induced Orsola to peep through the fatal door; and the hot blast which escaped as she opened it would have been sufficient to drive her away, but that it came charged with the sound of a familiar voice! "Lucia!" she screamed, in a voice thrilled with horror. "Orsola!" returned her unhappy sister, in a tone of agony. Orsola knew enough. She did not dare venture farther; and as she made her way back to her apartment she saw in the court below the retinue which had escorted her husband back. Assuming as composed a mien as possible, she went out to meet him, and he ran towards her with every appearance of affection--but his eye caught the withered rose. "You have opened the adamant door," he said, sternly. "There is no help for you; those who once pass it cannot live up above here any more. You must go back, and live there for ever!" And, regardless of her entreaties and cries, he dragged her down, and thrust her into the burning pit. Luxehale now had to search for another wife, and he determined it should be no other than the third of the sisters. "But," he reflected, as he walked towards her cottage, "now she has no one left to talk to, how shall I manage? Ah, well, I generally find a way to do most things I take in hand--and if I don't catch her I needn't break my heart; there are plenty of girls in the world whom I have arts to enthrall." But he did hear her voice. As he got near she was singing, very sadly and sweetly, a verse which told her regrets for her sisters, and called on them to return. "That's all right!" said Luxehale, "she is sure to come to the spot where she last saw her sister. I'll be there!" So, transforming himself once more into a serpent, he wriggled through the earth and took up his place of observation beside the trellis. He had not been there long, when she actually came up to it, singing the same melancholy strains; and then she stopped to call, "Lucia! Orsola! Lucia! Orsola!" till the woods rang again. Then she seemed to get weary with calling, and she leant against the trellis. "Ha! she'll soon put her head through now," chuckled Luxehale. And so she did, sure enough; and no sooner did her head appear on the other side than he twisted his coils round her and dragged her down under the earth. Before she recovered herself he once more appeared as a handsome cavalier. It was Regina, the youngest and best-conducted of the sisters. "Let me go! let me go!" she cried, refusing to look at him. "I thought I heard you calling for your sisters," he replied, soothingly; "don't you want to see them?" "Oh, yes! tell me where they are." "I can't tell you where they are," he answered; "and if I did, it would be of no use, because you would not know the way to where they are. But if you come with me, it is possible we may be able to hear something about them some day. One thing is certain, no one else is so likely to be able to hear of them as I." Regina was terribly perplexed, something within her said she ought not to speak to the stranger gallant. "And yet, on the other hand, if, by going with him, I can do any thing to recover my dear sisters," she thought, "I ought to risk something for that." When he saw her hesitate, he knew his affair was won; and, indeed, it required little persuasion to decide her now. As they went along he said so many soft and flattering things as to make her forget insensibly about her sisters. But when they got to the palace there were such a number of beautiful things to occupy her attention, so much to astonish her--a poor peasant maid who had never seen any of these fine things before--that she soon got habituated to her new life, and the fact of her having come for her sisters' sake went quite out of her remembrance. Luxehale was delighted to have brought things so far; and in proportion to the difficulty he had had in winning her, was the satisfaction he felt in being with her; thus he spent a longer time with her than he had with either of the other sisters. But the time came at last when he had to go upon earth about his business; and then he gave her the same charge as the others about the keys and the adamant door, and the rose which was not to fade till his return. It was not many days either before the desire to see what was hid behind it took possession of her; but as she approached it she already perceived that the air that came from it was dry and heated, and as she really regarded the rose as a token of affection, she was concerned to keep it fair and fresh, so she went back and placed it in a glass of water, and then pursued her investigation of the secret of the adamant door. She had learnt enough when she had but half opened it, and smelt the stifling fumes of sulphur which issued from the pit it guarded, and would have turned to go, but then her sisters' voices, wailing in piteous accents, met her ear. "Lucia! Orsola!" she cried. "Regina!" they replied; and then, courageously advancing farther by the light of the lurid flames, which burnt fitfully through the smoke, now red with a horrid glare, now ashy grey and ghastly, she descried the beloved forms of her sisters writhing and wailing, and calling on her to help them. She promised to use all her best endeavours to release them, and, in the meantime, bid them keep up their courage as best they might, and be on the look-out to take advantage of the first chance of escape she could throw in their way. With that she returned to her apartment, replaced the rose in her bosom, and looked out for the return of Luxehale. Nor did he keep her long waiting; and when he saw the rose blooming as freshly as at the first he was delighted, and embraced her with enthusiasm. In fact, he was so smiling and well inclined that she thought she could not do better than take advantage of his good humour to carry out the plan she had already conceived. "Do you know," she said, "I don't like the way in which your people wash my things; they dry them in a hot room. Now I've always been accustomed to dry them on the grass, where the thyme grows, and then they not only get beautifully aired, but they retain a sweet scent of the wild thyme which I have always loved since the days when I was a little, little girl, and my mother used to kiss me when she put on my clean things." "It shall be done as you like," said Luxehale. "I will order a field of thyme to be got ready immediately, and your things shall always be dried upon it. Is there nothing else, nothing more difficult, I can do for you?" "Well, do you know," she replied--for this would not have answered her purpose at all--"do you know, I don't fancy that would be quite the same thing either; there is something peculiar about the scent of our grass and our thyme at home which is very dear to me. Wouldn't it be possible to send the things home?" Luxehale looked undecided. "It's the only thing wanted to make this beautiful place perfectly delightful," she continued. He couldn't resist this, and promised she should do as she liked. Regina then ordered a large box to be made, and packed a quantity of her things into it. But in the night when all slept she went down to the adamant door, and called Lucia. Both sisters came running out. "One at a time!" she said. "Lucia has been in longest; it will be your turn next." So she took Lucia up with her, and hid her in the box under the clothes, and told her what she had to do. She was to send all the linen back clean at the end of the week, and well scent it with thyme, and to fill up the vacant space with more linen, so that it might not seem to return with less in it than when it went. She told her also, if the porter who carried the box should take into his head to peep in, "all you have to say is, 'I see you!' and you will find that will cure him." Then she went to bed, and slept quietly till morning. Early next day Luxehale called a porter to carry the box, to whom she overheard him giving secret instructions that, as soon as he had got to a good distance, he should search the box, and let him know what was in it before he sent him up to her for final orders. Regina told him all about the situation of her father's cottage. "But," she added, "I've had my eye on you a long time--you're not a bad sort of fellow, but you're too curious." "Why, I've never been where your worship could see me!" answered the porter; "I've always worked in the stables." "I can see every where!" replied Regina, solemnly. "I can see you in the stables as well as I can see you here, and as well as I shall be able to see you all the way you are journeying; and if an impertinent curiosity should take you to look at my clothes, I shall see you, you may be sure, and shall have you properly punished, so beware!" The porter planted the chest on his strong shoulders and walked away. He was a devil-may-care sort of fellow, and didn't altogether believe in Regina's power of seeing "every where," and, as his master's injunction to look into the box accorded much better with his own humour than Regina's order to abstain from opening it, before he had got halfway he set it down on the ground, and opened it. "I see you!" said Lucia, from within; and her voice was so like her sister's that the fellow made no doubt it was Regina herself who really saw him as she had threatened; and, clapping the box to again in a great fright, lifted it on to his shoulders with all expedition. "I've brought your daughter's linen to be washed!" cried the porter, when he arrived at the cottage, to the father of the Devil's wives, who was in his field "breaking" Indian corn. "I've got a message to carry about a hundred miles farther and shall be back by the end of the week, so please have it all ready for me to take back when I call for it." The good peasant gave him a glass of his best Küchelberger [83], and sent him on his way rejoicing. He had no sooner departed than Lucia started up out of the box of linen, and hastily told her father all the story. The peasant's hair stood on end as he listened, but they felt there was no time to be lost. All the linen Regina had sent, and all that remained in the cottage, was washed and well scented with thyme, and packed smoothly into the box for the porter to take back with him. They had hardly got it all ready when he came to the gate to ask for it. "Here you are!" said the peasant; and the porter lifted the box on to his strong shoulders, and made the best of his way home. "What did you find when you looked into the box?" asked the Devil, the first time he could catch the porter alone. "Oh! nothing whatever but dirty linen," replied he, too much of a braggadocio to confess that he had been scared by a woman's voice. After receiving this testimony the Devil made no sort of obstacle any more to his wife sending a box home whenever she would, and as soon as she collected sufficient to justify the use of the large chest she ordered the porter to be ready over night, and then went down and called Orsola. Orsola came quickly enough, and was packed into the linen chest as her sister had been, and with the same instructions. "Only, as I don't mean to stay here much longer behind, there is no reason why we should lose all our best linen, so don't send a great deal back this time, but fill up the box with celery, of which Luxehale is very fond." The porter, feeling somewhat ashamed of his pusillanimity on the last occasion, determined this time to have a good look into the box, for the effect of his fright had worn off, and he said to himself, "It was only a foolish fancy--I couldn't really have heard it." So he had hardly got half way when he set the box down, and lifted the lid. "I see you!" exclaimed Orsola, in a voice so like Regina's that the lid slipped out of his hand, and fell upon the box with a crash which startled Orsola herself. He loaded the box on his shoulders once more, nor stopped again till he reached his destination. Hearty was the greeting of the two sisters and their father as soon as he was gone; and then they set to work to get the washing done. "The weather has been so bad," said the father, when the porter returned, "that we could not dry all the linen, please to say to your mistress, but we hope to have it ready to go back with next week's; beg her acceptance, however, of the celery which I have packed into the box in its place." "Did you look into the box this time?" said Luxehale, as soon as he got the porter alone. The porter did not like to acknowledge that he had been scared by a woman, and so declared again that there was nothing in the box but linen. It was more difficult to arrange for her own escape, but Regina had a plan for all. The box had now gone backwards and forwards often enough for the porter to need no fresh directions, so she told him over-night where he would find it in the morning; and he, finding it seem all as usual, loaded it on his shoulders, and walked off with it by the usual path. He had not performed half the journey when he determined to have a serious look into the box this time, and be scared by no one. Accordingly he lifted the lid, but this time the words,-- "I see you!" came out of the box so unmistakably in Regina's voice, that there was no room for doubt of her power of seeing him, and with more haste than ever he closed it up again, and made the best of his way to the peasant's cottage. Both sisters and their father greeted Regina as their good angel and deliverer when she stepped out of the box; and they went on talking over all their adventures with no need to make haste, for Regina had brought away with her money and jewels enough to make them rich for the rest of their lives, so that they had no need to work any more at all. When the porter returned to ask for the linen-chest, the peasant came out with a humorous smile, and bid him tell his master that they had not time to do the washing that week. "But what shall I tell my mistress?" asked the man. As he said so, Regina and her sisters came into the room, striking him dumb with astonishment. "No, you had better not go back to him," she said, compassionating him for the treatment that would have awaited him, had he returned without her; "Luxehale would doubtless vent his fury on you for my absence. Better to stay here and serve us; and you need not fear his power as long as you keep out of his territory." After this, Luxehale determined to give up young and pretty wives, since they proved sharp enough to outwit him, as he had before given up rich and titled ones, who were like to have knights and princes to deliver them. This time he said he would look out for a bustling woman of good common sense, who had been knocked about in the world long enough to know the value of what he had to offer her. So he went out into the town of Trient, and fixed upon a buxom woman of the middle class, who was just in her first mourning for her husband, and mourned him not because she cared for him, for he had been a bad man, and constantly quarrelled with her, but because, now he was dead, she had no one to provide for her, and after a life of comparative comfort, she saw penury and starvation staring her in the face. He met her walking in the olive-yard upon the hill whence her husband's chief means had been derived. "And to think that all these fine trees, our fruitful arativo, and our bright green prativo [84], are to be sold to pay those rascally creditors of my brute of a husband!" she mused as she sat upon the rising ground, and cried. "If he had nothing to leave me, why did he go off in that cowardly way, and leave me here? what is the use of living, if one has nothing to live upon?" The Devil overheard her, and perceived she was just in the mood for his purpose, but took care to appear to have heard nothing. "And are you still charitably mourning because the Devil has taken your tyrant of a husband?" "Not because he has taken him, but because he didn't take me too, at the same time!" answered the woman, pettishly. "What! did you love the old churl as much as all that?" asked Luxehale. "Love him! what put that into your head? But I didn't want to be left here to starve, I suppose." "Come along with me then, and you shan't starve. You shall have a jollier time of it than with the old fool who is dead--plenty to eat and drink, and no lack, and no work!" "That's not a bad proposition, certainly; but, pray, who are you?" "I am he who you regretted just now had not taken you. I will take you, if you wish, and make you my wife." "You the Devil!" exclaimed the woman, eyeing the handsome person he had assumed from head to foot; "impossible, you can't be the Devil!" "You see the Devil's not so black as he's painted," replied Luxehale. "Believe me that is all stuff, invented by designing knaves to deceive silly people. You can see for yourself if I don't look, by a long way, handsomer and taller than your departed spouse, at all events." "There's no saying nay to that," responded the widow. "Nor to my other proposition either," urged Luxehale; and, as he found she ceased to make any resistance, he took her up in his arms, and, spreading his great bat's wings, carried her down to his palace, where he installed her as lady and mistress, much to her own satisfaction. As she was fond of luxury and ease, and had met with little of it before, the life in the Devil's palace suited her uncommonly well, and yet, though she had every thing her own way, her bad temper frequently found subject for quarrel and complaint. It was on one occasion when her temper had thus been ruffled, and she had had an angry dispute with Luxehale, who to avoid her wrangling had gone off in a sullen mood to bed, that some one knocked at the door. All the servants were gone to bed, so she got up, and asked who was there. "I, Pangrazio Clamer of Trient," said a somewhat tremulous voice. "Pangrazio Clamer of Trient!" returned the widow; "come in, and welcome. But how did you get here?" "It's a longish story; but, first, how did you get here, and installed here too, it seems? Ah, Giuseppa, you had better have married me!" "I've forbidden you to talk of that," answered Giuseppa. "Besides, I had not better have married you, for I have married a great prince, who is able to keep me in every kind of luxury, and give me every thing I can wish. You couldn't have done that." "No, indeed," he sighed. "Well, don't let's talk any more about that. Tell me how every one is going on in Trient." "By-and-by, if there is time. But, first, let me tell you about myself, and what brought me here. That's strange enough." "Well, what was it, then?" "You know that you refused to have me, because I was poor----" "I have already forbidden you to allude to that subject." "You must know, then, that though I worked so hard to try and make myself rich enough to please you, I only got poorer and poorer; while at the same time, there was Eligio Righi, who, though his father left him a good fortune to begin with, kept on getting richer and richer, till he had bought up all the mines and all the olive-grounds, and all the vineyards and mulberry-trees that were to be sold for miles round--yours among the rest." "That too?" "Yes; and I often felt tempted to envy him, but I never did. One day he came to me while I was hard at work, and said, 'You know, Pangrazio Clamer, that I am very rich;' and I thought he didn't need to have come and said that to me, who had all the labour in life to keep off envying him, as it was. 'Pangrazio,' says he, 'I am not only rich, but I have every thing I can wish, but one thing; and if I meet any one who will do that one thing, I will take him to share my riches while I live, and make him my heir at my death. I come first to ask you.' 'Tell me what it is,' says I; 'I can't work harder, or fare worse, than I do now, whatever it may be--so I'm your man.' 'Well, then, it's this,' he continued. 'My one great unfulfilled wish through life has been to give the Devil three good kicks, as some punishment for all the mischief he does in the world; but I have never had the courage to make the attempt, and now I have got old, and past the strength for adventures, so if you will do this in my stead, I will put you in my shoes as far as my money is concerned.' Of course, I answered I would set out directly; and, as he had made the road by which men get hither his study, for this very purpose, all through his life, he could give me very exact directions for finding the Devil's abode. "But, to get here, I had to traverse the lands of three different sovereigns; and, as I had to go to them to get my passport properly in order, they learned my destination, and each gave me a commission on his own account, which I accepted, because if I should fail with Eligio Righi's affair, I should have a chance of the rewards they promised me to fall back on." "And what were these three commissions?" "The first king wants to know why the fountain which supplied all his country with such beautiful bright water has suddenly ceased to flow. The second king wants a remedy for the malady of his only son, who lies at the point of death, and no physician knows what ails him. And the third king wants to know why all the trees in his dominions bear such splendid foliage, but bring forth no fruit." "And you expect me to help you in all this?" said the Devil's wife. "Well, for our old acquaintance' sake, and the bond of our common home," said Clamer, "you might do that; and for the sake of the nearer bond that might have united us." "I would have refused you all you ask, to punish you for going back to that story," said Giuseppa, "but I really desire to see old Luxehale get a good drubbing, just now, for he has been very tiresome to-day. I daren't give it him myself, but I'll help you to do it, if you have a mind." "Never mind the motive, provided you give me the help," replied Clamer. "And will you help me to trick him out of the answers for the three kings, as well as to give him a good drubbing?" "That will I; for it will be good fun to counter-act some of his mischief." "How shall we set about it then?" "I am just going to bed; he is asleep already. You must conceal yourself in the curtains, and bring a big stick with you; and when I make a sign, you must, without a moment's notice, set to and give it him. Will that do for you?" "Admirably! Only, remember, I have to do it three times, or I shan't get my guerdon." "And do you think you are certain of getting all Eligio Righi's fortune?" said Giuseppa, earnestly. "Oh, as sure as fate!" replied Clamer; "he's a man who never goes back from his word. But I must fulfil all he says with equal exactness." "And when I've helped you with half your labour, I don't see why I shouldn't have half your guerdon." "Nor I! You'll always find me faithful and true; and what I offered you when I was poor, I offer you with equal heartiness when I have the prospect of being the richest man in Trient." "When you have done all you have to do, then, will you take me back with you?" "Nothing would make me happier than your consent to come with me. And when I'm rich enough to be well fed and clothed, you'll find I'm not such a bad-looking fellow, after all." "Ah, you'll never be so handsome as Luxehale! But then I don't half trust him. One never knows what trick he may take into his head to play one. I think I should have more confidence of being able to manage you." "Then it's agreed; you come back with me?" "Yes; I believe it's the best thing, after all. And now we must make haste and set about our business." She crept up-stairs with soft steps, and Clamer still more softly after her. The Devil was sleeping soundly, and snoring like the roar of a wild beast. Giuseppa stowed Clamer away in the curtains, and went to bed too. When she heard what she reckoned one of the soundest snores, she lifted the bed-curtains, and whispered, "Now's your time!" Clamer did not wait to be told twice, but raised his stick, and, as Giuseppa lifted the bed-clothes, applied it in the right place, with a hearty good will. Luxehale woke with a roar of pain, and Clamer disappeared behind the curtains. "Forgive me, dear lord!" said Giuseppa; "I had such a strange dream, that it woke me all of a start, and I suppose made me knock you." "What did you dream about?" said Luxehale, thinking to catch her at fault; but Giuseppa had her answer ready. "I thought I was travelling through a country where all the people were panting for want of water, and as I passed along, they all gathered round me, and desired me to tell them, what had stopped their water from flowing, saying, 'You are the Devil's wife, so you must know!' and when I couldn't tell them, they threw stones at me, so that I seemed to have a hard matter to escape from them." The Devil burst out into a loud laugh, which absorbed all his ill-humour, as he heard this story, and Giuseppa made a sign to Clamer to pay attention to what was to follow. "You see, you never tell me any thing," she continued, pretending to cry; "I never know any thing about your business, and, you see, all those people expected I knew every thing my husband knew, as other wives do." "I didn't suppose you'd care to know any thing about it," replied Luxehale, trying to soothe her; "and really there was nothing to tell! It's an every-day matter. There was a pilgrimage chapel near the city, to which the people used to go in procession every year; and as long as they did that, I never could get past to get at the fountains. But now they have left off the procession, and so I got by, and had the fun of stopping the water." Clamer winked to Giuseppa, to show he understood what the remedy was, and Giuseppa said no more, so that the Devil very soon fell off to sleep again. When he began to snore again very soundly, she lifted the bed-clothes, and made the agreed sign to Clamer. Clamer came forward, and applied his stick with a hearty will in the right place, and the Devil woke with a shout of fury. "Oh, my dear husband!" cried Giuseppa, deprecating his wrath by her tone of alarm; "I have had another dreadful dream!" "What was it?" growled the Devil. "I thought I was going through a great city where all the people were in sorrow, and sat with ashes on their heads. And when they saw me pass, they said they sat so because the king's son was at the point of death, and no one could tell what ailed him, and all the doctors were of no use; but that as I was the Devil's wife, I must know all about it. When I couldn't tell them, they began pelting me; as they kept putting fresh ashes on their heads each had a pan of fire by his side, in which they were making, and they actually took the red-hot cinders out of the pan of fire to pelt me with, and my clothes were all on fire; so you may believe if I tried to run away fast--and it is no wonder if I knocked you a little." The Devil's fancy was more tickled than before with this story, and he laughed fit to split his sides, as she proceeded, so that he forgot all about the beating. "It is all very well for you to lie there and laugh, but you wouldn't have laughed if you had been treated as I was, I can tell you!" sobbed Giuseppa. "And it's all because you never tell me any thing, as other husbands do." "Bosh!" answered the Devil; "I should have enough to do, if I told you all the stories like that! Why, it's the commonest thing in the world. That king's son was a good young man, obedient to all the advice of his elders. But after a time he got with bad companions, who introduced him to some of my people. After they had played him a number of tricks, one day one of them took into his head to give him a stunning good illness, to punish him for some luck he had had against them at cards. And that's the history of that--there's nothing commoner in life." Giuseppa made a sign to know if Clamer had heard all he wanted to know, and, finding he was satisfied, let the Devil go to sleep again. As soon as he began to snore very soundly, Giuseppa lifted the bed-clothes, and Clamer once more applied his stick. Whether by getting used to the work and therefore less nervous, he really hit him harder, or whether the previous blows had made the Devil more sensitive, he certainly woke this time in a more furious passion than ever, and with so rapid a start that it was all Clamer could do to get out of his sight in time. "What have you been dreaming now?" he exclaimed, in his most fearful voice. "I declare, I can scarcely keep my hands off you!" "Don't be angry," answered Giuseppa; "it is I who have had the worst of it. I dreamt I was passing through a country where the trees had given up bearing fruit; and when the people saw me go by, they all came round me, and said, as I was the Devil's wife, I must know what ailed their trees; and when I couldn't tell them, they cut down great branches, and ran after me, poking the sharp, rough points into my sides! You may believe if I tried to run away fast." The Devil had never had such a laugh since he had been a devil, as at this story, and the whole palace echoed with his merriment. When Giuseppa found him once more in such good humour, she went on,-- "And why do you do such mischievous things, and make people so savage? It isn't fair that they don't dare to touch you and all their ill-will falls on me." "As it happens, it's not my doing at all this time; at least, I didn't go out of my way to do it for any sort of fun. It all came about in the regular way of business." "What do you mean?" pursued Giuseppa, who knew it was necessary to probe the matter to the bottom. "Why, the king of that country is a regular miser. He is so afraid that any body should get any thing out of their gardens without paying the due tribute to him first, that he has built such high walls round all the orchards, and vine-gardens, and olive-yards, that no sun can get at them. And he is so stingy, he won't pay people to dig round them and manure, and prune, and attend to the property; so how can the fruit grow? As long as he defrauds the poor people of their work, he can have no fruit. It's not my fault at all! "But, really, I've had enough of this. You'd better go and sleep somewhere else for the rest of the night, for I can't stand being woke up any more. If you do it again, I am sure I shall strangle you--and that would be a pity! Go along, and dream somewhere else--and I hope you may get properly punished before you wake next time!" Giuseppa desired no command so much; but pretending to cry and be much offended, she got up and went to lie down in another bed till the Devil began to snore soundly again. Then she rose up, and, taking all her fine clothes and jewels, went out softly, and beckoned to Clamer to follow her. "Suppose the Devil wakes before we get far away?" said Clamer, beginning to get frightened as the time of trial approached. "Never fear!" answered Giuseppa; "when he gets disturbed like that, he sleeps for a week after it." Then she clapped her hands, and a number of great birds came flapping round. She helped Clamer on to the back of one, and, loading her jewels on to another, sprang on to a third, and away they flew, while she beckoned to three more to follow behind. When they came to the first kingdom, Clamer left the strange cortege behind a mountain, and went alone up to the court, to tell the king he was a miser, and that if he gave up his sordid ways and set the people, who were starving for want of work, to pull down half the height of his walls, and to dig, manure, and prune his trees, he would have as good a crop of fruit as any in the world. Then the king acknowledged his fault, and praised Clamer for pointing it out, and gave him a great bag of gold as his reward. Clamer packed the sack of gold on to the back of one of the birds which were following them, and away they sped again. When they arrived at the second kingdom, Clamer hid his cortége in a pine forest, and went alone to the court, to tell the king that if his son would give up his bad companions, and live according to the advice of his elders, he would be all well again as before. The prince was very much astonished to find that Clamer knew about his bad behaviour, for he had concealed it from his parents and all about him, but this convinced him that he must be right in what he said, so he promised to alter his life and behave according to the wise counsel of his elders in future. From that moment he began to get better; and the king, in joy at his restoration, gave Clamer a great sack of gold, which he laded on to the back of the second bird; and away they flew again. When they arrived at the third kingdom, Clamer hid his retinue in the bed of a dried lake and went alone to the court, to tell the king that if he would order the procession to the pilgrimage chapel to be resumed, the Devil would not be able to get in to stop the fountains. The king at once ordered the grandest procession that had ever been known in the memory of the oldest inhabitant, and all the people went out devoutly praying. Immediately the springs and fountains began to flow again; and the king was so pleased that he gave Clamer a great sack of gold, which he packed on to the back of the third bird; and away they flew again, till they reached the gloomy shades of the Val d'Ombretta, under the cold, steep precipices of the Marmolata [85]. "Here will be a good place to hide all this treasure," said Giuseppa; "it will never do to take it into Trient all at once. We will bury it here where foot of man seldom falls, and my birds will keep good watch over it and defend it, and yet by their services we shall be able to fetch down any portion of it as we want it." Clamer saw there was some good in the proposal, but he hardly liked giving up the possession of the treasure to Giuseppa's birds, neither did he like to show any want of confidence. "Don't you think it an excellent plan?" asked Giuseppa, as she saw him hesitate. "I think I could stow it away as safely in an old well at home," said Clamer. "This is an uncanny place of evil renown, and I had just as lief have nothing to do with it." "What's the matter with the place?" asked Giuseppa. "Oh, you know, the Marmolata was as fertile as any pasture of Tirol once," answered Clamer; "and because the people had such fine returns for their labour from it, they grew careless and impious, and were not satisfied with all the week for working in it, but must needs be at it on Sundays and holidays as well. One Sunday an ancient man came by and chid them for their profanity. 'Go along with your old wives' stories!' said a rich proprietor who was directing the labourers; 'Sunday and working-day is all alike to us. We have sun and rain and a fine soil, what do we want with going to church to pray?' And they sang,-- 'Nos ongh el fengh en te tablà, E i autri sul prà [86]!' "The old man lifted up his finger in warning, and passed on his way; but as he went it came on to snow. And it snowed on till it had covered all the ground; covered all the hay up to the top; covered over the heads of the labourers and their masters; snowed so deep that the sun has never been able to melt it away again! A curse is on the place, and I had rather have nothing to do with it." "Oh, I've lived long enough where curses abound to care very little about them," answered Giuseppa, "or I could tell you the real story about that, for you've only got the wrong end of it. But it doesn't do to think of those things. The only way is to laugh at all that sort of thing, and make yourself jolly while you can." "My story's the right one," replied Clamer, "and you won't laugh me out of believing it." "Oh, dear no; the right story is much more serious than that! But I lose my patience with people who trouble themselves about those things." "I don't believe there's any more of the story," continued Clamer, who was dying to hear it, and knew that the best way to get at it was by provoking her. Had he merely begged her to tell it, she would have found a perverse pleasure in disappointing him. Giuseppa was very easily provoked. "The right story proves itself," she cried, pettishly; and Clamer chuckled aside to see his plan succeed. "Your way of telling it only accounts for the snow; how do you account for the ice?" "Oh, there's no way of accounting for that," replied Clamer, with a malicious laugh. "Yes, there is," rejoined Giuseppa, fairly caught. "It wasn't an old man at all who came to give the warning. It was a very young man, for it was no one else but St. John." "St. John!" cried Clamer; "how could that be?" "Don't you know any thing, then?" retorted Giuseppa. "Don't you know that there was a time when our Lord and His Apostles went walking over the earth, preaching the Gospel?" "Yes, of course I know that," replied Clamer, much offended. "Well, then, in process of travelling they came here just the same as every where else--why shouldn't they? The Apostles had been sent on to prepare a lodging for the night, and St. John, being the youngest and best walker, outstripped the rest, and came by first. But he was so soft and gentle in his warning that the labourers laughed at him, and he went on his way sighing, for he saw that their hearts were hardened. "Then St. Peter and St. Paul came by----" "But St. Paul--" interposed Clamer. "Don't interrupt, but listen," said Giuseppa. "St. Peter and St. Paul, though not younger than the others like St. John, were always in the front in all matters, because of their eagerness and zeal, and the important post which was assigned them in the Church. They came next, therefore; but they, seeing the men working on Sunday, were filled with indignation, and chid them so fiercely that they only made them angry, and they took up stones to throw at them, and drove them out of the ground. One by one the other Apostles all came by and warned them, but none of them seemed to have the right way of getting at their hearts. And they went on working, with a worse sin on them for having been warned. "Last of all, the Lord Himself came by, and His heart was moved with compassion by the perversity of the people. He saw that all the preaching of all His Apostles had been in vain, and He resolved to save them in another way, and prove them, to see if there was any charity or any good in them at all. "Instead of threatening and warning, He came leaning on His staff, weary and way-sore. "'You have a fine Berg-Segen [87], my friends,' He said, sweetly, as He sat on a great heap of fresh hay placed ready to load the returning wain. "'Oh, yes! first-rate crops,' replied the rich proprietor, with a look of contempt at the travel-stained garments of the wayfarer; 'but they're not meant to serve as beds for idle fellows who go prowling about the country and live by begging instead of by work, so you just get up and take yourself off!' "Our Lord looked at him with a piteous glance, but his heart was not softened. 'Move off quicker than that, or you'll taste my stick!' he cried, assuming a threatening attitude. "Our Lord passed on, without uttering a word of complaint, till He reached the holding of the next proprietor. "'Where there are such fine pastures there must be fine cattle and a fine store of produce,' He said. "'Oh, yes, I've plenty of stores!' said the man addressed; 'and that's just why I don't like to have loafing vagabonds about my place; so please to move on quicker than you came.' "'But I'm weary, my good man, and have come a long journey this day, and have nothing to eat: give me, now, but one sup of milk from your bountiful provision there.' "'Give!' answered the man; 'I've nothing to give away. I work hard for all I gain, and I don't encourage those who don't work.' "'But you won't miss the little I ask--and I have travelled very far and am very weary,' replied our Lord, condescending to speak very piteously, to see if He could not by any means move the man's heart. "'Hola! you there! Domenico, Virgilio, Giacomo, Rocco, Pero! come along here, and throw this fellow out!' shouted the proprietor. "The men turned with their pitchforks, and drove the wayfarer rudely away, without pity, notwithstanding that His legs trembled with weariness and the way was so steep. "Our Lord uttered not a word, and hasted on, that He might not increase their condemnation by resistance. "But the heavens grew black with anger at the sight; the storm-clouds gathered in vengeance; grey and leaden, mass above mass, they thickened over the devoted peak of the Marmolata; the sun ceased to smile, and a horrible darkness fell around. "Closer and closer lowered the clouds, till they fell, enveloping the mountain-top with white fields of snow. "'Nay!' cried the Saviour, compassionately; 'Father, stay Thine hand!' And for a moment the convulsion of the angry element was stilled. 'They knew not what they did,' He pleaded; and He passed down the path to the next holding. "'See,' He said to the proprietor, who was watching the strange storm with some alarm, 'see how terrible are the judgments of God! Give Him praise for the blessing He has poured out on you, and save yourself from His anger.' "'What have I to do with the misfortunes of others? Every thing goes right with me.' "'But it may not always. Be wise betimes, and render praise to God.' "'What do I know about God?' answered the man; 'I've enough to do with taking care of the earth; I don't want to puzzle my head about heaven!' "'All good gifts are from heaven.' replied the Lord, faintly; and He sank upon the ground exhausted. "'See!' cried a woman who had come out with her husband's dinner, 'see, He has fallen; will you do nothing to restore Him?' And she ran to raise Him up. "'Let Him lie.' said her master, pushing her roughly away; 'it were better the earth were rid of such idle fellows.' "He had filled up the measure of his iniquity. 'Hard and icy as his heart has been, so shall his pasture be!' proclaimed the Angel of Judgment. And as he spread his arms abroad, the clouds fell over the sides of the mountain; the cold blast turned them into ice, and it became a barren glacier for evermore. "But the angels carried the Lord to the place the Apostles had prepared for Him. And the woman who had pitied Him alone escaped and recorded the story." A shudder had fallen over Clamer, and he seemed hardly inclined to break the silence which reigned around. There was not a bird to chirp a note, nor a leaf to flutter, nor a blade of grass to gladden the eye. Meantime they had reached the Fassathal, which, though so fruitful farther along, is scarcely more smiling at its east end. "Were it not well, Pangrazio," urged Giuseppa, "to bury our treasure here, before we get nearer the habitations of men? Ah!" she added, "I see what it is, it is not of the weird neighbourhood that you are shy, it is that you trust not me! you think if my birds guard the treasure you will have less control over it than I!" "Oh, no!" answered Clamer, ashamed to have been found out; "it is not that; but there are as many weird warnings rife here as concerning the Marmolata. Does not the Feuriger Verräther [88] haunt this place? and does not the Purgametsch conceal a village which was buried for its sins? Is it not just here that lurk the Angane and the Bergostanö [89]?" "Really, I can undertake to defend you against all these chimerical fancies," replied Giuseppa, scornfully; "but if you don't feel any confidence in me, it is absurd our attempting to live together." "It is not that--I have told you it is not that!" cried Clamer. "Then shall we do it?" urged she. Thus driven, Clamer could not choose but give in; and Giuseppa sent her monster birds to conceal the treasure they bore, in the hole she pointed out high up in the rocks, and remain in guard over it. This done they sped over the pleasant Fleimserthal and Cembrathal to Trient. Eligio Righi received his returning envoy with a hearty welcome, and listened without wearying to his frequent repetition of the tale of his adventures. The part where he described the manner in which he had administered the chastisement on the Devil was what delighted him most, and the account of the roaring of the Devil with the pain. Moreover, he kept his word, and opened his house and his purse to Clamer, who shared every thing as if it had been his own, and even obtained his sanction to bring home his wife, though he durst not tell him how he obtained her. Giuseppa had now not only a fine house and broad lands, and plenty of servants and clothes, and every thing she wished for, but she had only to send one of her birds to the treasury in the Fassathal to supply all her caprices as well as wants--yet she was always complaining and quarrelling. Pangrazio often found her quite unbearable; but he remembered she was his wife, and he forgave her, though the more he gave in, the more unreasonable she got. In the meantime, it must not be supposed that Luxehale had never awaked. True, he slept on for a good week, as Giuseppa had predicted, but that over, he woke up in a pretty passion at finding she had escaped. With all her evil temper, Giuseppa had suited him very well; he rather enjoyed an occasional broil, it was much more to his taste than peace and amity--and besides, he was sure always to get the best of it. So he determined that this time, instead of going in search of a new wife, he would get the old one back. "Those who come to me in the way she did," he reflected, "don't escape so easily. The others I more or less deceived. They came with me thinking I was one of their own sort; but she followed me with her eyes open--she knew all about me before she came. Besides, they hated the place the moment they found out where they were, but she knew what it was, and yet liked it all along. No, I don't think she's of the sort that go back in thorough earnest." So he dressed himself up in his best, put a plume in his hat and a flower in his button-hole, and went off to Trient. He had not watched the house where Giuseppa lived many days before he heard her voice raised to that angry key he knew so well. "That'll do for me," he said, rubbing his hands. "It's all going on right." "What do you want more?" he heard Clamer plead. "If there is any thing I can do to please you, I will do it!" "You are a fool! and there's nothing in you can please me," screamed Giuseppa, too angry to be pacified; "you're not like Luxehale. Why did you ever take me away from him? He was something to look at!" "It's going on all right!" said Luxehale, chuckling. "Why did you come away?" said Pangrazio, quietly. "I didn't know what I was about! Would that I had never done it!" she added. "Oh, don't say that!" replied Pangrazio, imploringly. But instead of being won by his kindness she only grew the more noisy, till at last Pangrazio could stand it no longer, and he went out to avoid growing angry. "Now is my time!" said the Devil; and he slipped round to the window. Giuseppa was still fretting and fuming, and invoking Luxehale at the top of her voice. "Here I am!" said Luxehale. "Will you come back with me, and leave this stupid loafer?" "What you there!" cried Giuseppa, rushing to the window, and kissing him. "Of course I'll go with you. Take me away!" "All right; jump down!" said Luxehale, helping her over the window-sill. Giuseppa threw herself into his arms, and away they walked. Arrived outside the town, Luxehale lifted her up, spread his black bat's wings, and carried her off. "Go through the Fleimserthal and the Fassathal," said Giuseppa; "I've got something to show you there." "Any thing to please you!" answered Luxehale. "Oh, it's not to please me!" cried Giuseppa, taking offence. "Now don't begin again; it won't do with me!" replied Luxehale, with a sternness he had never before exercised. "Mind, I don't mean to allow any more of it." "Oh, if that's to be it," said Giuseppa, "I'll go back again to Pangrazio." "No, you won't!" replied Luxehale; "you don't go back any more, I'll take good care of that! And now, what did you want to come by the Fassathal for?" "Only because it's the way I passed with Pangrazio, and it renewed a sweet memory of him." "That won't do for me! What was the real reason?" "What will you give me if I tell you?" "Nothing. But if you don't tell me, I shall know how to make you." Giuseppa's courage failed her when she heard him talk like this. She knew she had given herself to him of her own will, and so she belonged to him, and she could not help herself; and now, the best course she could think of was to tell him of the treasure, and trust to the good humour it would put him in, for he was very avaricious, to get her forgiveness out of him. Clamer came back from a walk outside the town--where he had gone to get cool after his wife's scolding--just in time to see Luxehale spread his wings and fly away with Giuseppa in his arms. He called to her, but she did not hear him; and all he could do was to stand watching them till they were out of sight. He came back so gloomy and dejected that his friend Eligio Righi was quite distressed to see him. He was so sympathizing, indeed, that Pangrazio could not forbear telling him the whole story. "Then, if that is so, you need not regret being quit of her," moralized his sage friend: "she was no wife for an honest man. And as for the treasure, you have enough without that. It was but ill-gotten gain which came to you for knowledge obtained from such a source." ZOVANIN SENZA PAURA [90]; OR, THE BOY WHO WENT OUT TO DISCOVER WHAT FEAR MEANT. Zovanin was a bold boy, and never seemed to be afraid of any thing. When other children were afraid lest Orco [91] should play them some of his malicious tricks, when people cried out to him, "Take care, and don't walk in those footprints, they may be those of Orco!" he would only laugh, and say, "Let Orco come; I should like to see him!" When he was sent out upon the mountains with the herds, and had to be alone with them through the dark nights, and his mother bid him not be afraid, he used to stare at her with his great round eyes as if he wondered what she meant. If a lamb or a goat strayed over a difficult precipice, and the neighbours cried out to him, "Let be; it is not safe to go after it down that steep place," he would seem to think they were making game of him, and would swing himself over the steep as firmly and as steadily as if he were merely bestriding a hedge. He saw people shun passing through the churchyards by dark, and so he used to make it his habit to sleep every night on the graves; and as they said they were afraid of being struck blind if they slept in the moonlight, he would always choose to lie where the moonbeams fell. Nor thunder, nor avalanche, nor fire, nor flood, nor storm seemed to have any terror for him; so that at last people set him to do every kind of thing they were afraid to do themselves, and he got so much wondered at, that he said, "I will go abroad over the world, and see if I can find any where this same Fear that I hear people talk of." So he went out, and walked along by the most desolate paths and through frightful stony wildernesses, till he came to a village where there was a fair going on. Zovanin was too tired to care much for the dance, so instead of joining it he asked for a bed. "A bed!" said the host; "that's what I can give you least of all. My beds are for regular customers, and not for strollers who drop down from the skies;" for, being full of business at the moment, he was uppish and haughty, as if his day's prosperity was to last for ever. While Zovanin was urging that his money was as good as another's, and the host growing more and more insolent while repeating that he could not receive him, a terrific shouting of men, and screeching of women made itself heard, and pell-mell the whole tribe of peasants, pedlars, and showmen came rushing towards the inn, flying helter-skelter before a furious and gigantic maniac brandishing a formidable club. Every one ran for dear life, seeking what shelter they could find. The inn was filled to overflowing in a trice, and those who could not find entrance there hid themselves in the stables and pig-styes and cellars. But no one was in so great a hurry to hide himself as mine host, who had been so loud with his blustering to a defenceless stranger anon. Only, when he saw the baffled madman breaking in his doors and windows with his massive oaken staff, he put his head dolefully out of the topmost window, and piteously entreated some one to put a stop to the havoc. Zovanin was not quick-witted: all this noisy scene had been transacted and it had not yet occurred to him to move from the spot where he originally stood; in fact, he had hardly apprehended what it was that was taking place, only at last the host's vehement gesticulations suggested to him that he wanted the madman arrested. "Oh, that's it, is it?" said Zovanin. "All right, I'm your man!" and walking up coolly to the cause of all this disturbance, he said, in the tone of one who meant to be obeyed, "Give me your club." The poor imbecile was usually harmless enough; he lived in an out-of-the-way hut with his family, where he seldom saw a stranger. They had incautiously brought him up to the fête, where he had first become excited by the sight of the unwonted number of people; then some thoughtless youths had further provoked him by mocking and laughing at him; and when the people ran away in fear of his retaliation, he had only yielded to a natural impulse in running after them. But when Zovanin stood before him, fearless and collected, and said, in his blunt, quiet way, "Give me your club," his habitual obedience prevailed over the momentary ebullition, and he yielded himself up peaceably to the guidance of the young giant. Zovanin first secured the club, and then desired the madman to bestow himself in an empty shed, of which he closed and made fast the door. When the landlord and people saw the coast clear they all came out again, the latter losing no time in going back to their games, the former to resume his preparations for the entertainment of his guests. "Well," said Zovanin, "I suppose now you'll make no difficulty in providing me a bed? I think that's the least you can do for me, after my befriending you as I have. I have earned it, if any one has." "What! you think that such a great feat, do you?" said the landlord, who, deeming the madman well secured, felt no compunction in disowning Johnny's service. "Do you suppose any other couldn't have said, 'Give me your club,' just as well as you?" "Perhaps you would like to try," replied our hero; and he went to unbar the shed-door. "For heaven's sake, no!" screamed the cowardly landlord, preparing to run away. "Don't let him loose on any account; I'll do any thing for you sooner than that!" "Well, you know what I want; it's not much, and reasonable enough," replied Fearless Johnny, relaxing his hold of the door. "But that's just the one thing I can't do," lamented the host. "My beds are bespoken to customers who come every year to the fair, and if I disappoint any of them I'm a ruined man." "Very well then, here goes!" and Zovanin once more prepared to open the shed-door. "Oh, no; stop!" roared the landlord. "Perhaps there is a way, after all." "Ah!" ejaculated Johnny; "I thought as much." "There is a room, in fact a whole suite of rooms, and a magnificent suite of rooms, I daren't give to any one else, but I think they will do for you, as you are such a stout-hearted chap." "Where are they?" said Johnny. "Do you see that castle on the tip of the high rock yonder, that looks like an eagle perched for a moment and ready to take flight?" "I should rather think I did, seeing it's one of the most remarkable sights I have met with in all my travels." "Well, that castle was built by a bad giant who lived here in former times; and he balanced it like that on the tip of the rock, and only he had the secret of walking into it. If any one else steps into it, they are pretty sure of stepping on the wrong place, and down will go the whole castle overbalanced into the abyss. When he was once inside it, he had an iron chain by which he made it fast to the rock; and when he went out he used to set it swinging as you see, so that no one might dare to venture in and take back possession of the booty which he seized right and left from all the country round. If you don't mind trying your luck at taking possession of the castle, you can lodge there like a prince, for there are twelve ghosts, who come there every night, who will supply you with every thing you can ask for. So there is all you desire to have, and more, provided only the idea does not strike you with fear." "Fear, say you?" said Zovanin, opening his great round eyes; "do you say I shall find 'Fear' in yonder castle?" "Most assuredly. Every body finds it in merely listening to the story." "Then that's what I came out to seek; so show me the way, and there I will lodge." The host stared at his crack-brained guest, but, glad to be rid of his importunity for a night's lodging in the inn, made no delay in pointing out the path which led to the giant's castle. Zovanin trudged along it without hesitation, nor was he long in reaching the precariously balanced edifice. Once before the entrance, he had little difficulty in seeing what was required in order to take possession. Just in the centre of the building a large stone stood up prominently, and though at a great distance from the threshold, was probably not more than a stride for the giant of old--as a further token, it was worn away at the edge, evidently where he had stepped on to it. Zovanin saw it could be reached by a bold spring, and, having no fear of making a false step, he was able to calculate his distance without disturbance from nervousness. Having balanced himself successfully on the stone, he next set himself to fix the chain which attached his airy castle to the rock, and then made his way through its various apartments. Every thing was very clean and in good order, for the twelve ghosts came every night and put all to rights. Zovanin had hardly finished making his round when in they came, all dressed in white. "Bring me a bottle of wine, and some bread and meat, candles and cards," said Fearless Johnny, just as if he had been giving an order to the waiter of an inn; for he remembered that the landlord had said they would supply him, and he felt no fear which should make him shrink from them. "I wonder where this same Fear can be?" he said, as the ghosts were preparing his supper; "I have been pretty well all over the castle already, and can see nothing of him. Oh, yes! I will just go down and explore the cellars, perhaps I shall find him down there." "Yes; go down and choose your wine to your own taste, and you will find him there, sure enough," said the twelve ghosts. "Shall I, though?" said John, delighted; and down he went. The bottles were all in order, labelled with the names of various choice vintages in such tempting variety that he was puzzled which to choose. At last, however, he stretched his hand out to reach down a bottle from a high shelf, when lo and behold a grinning skull showed itself in the place where the bottle had stood, and asked him how he dared meddle with the wine! Without being in the least disconcerted at its horrid appearance, Fearless Johnny passed the bottle into his left hand, and with his right taking up the skull, flung it over his shoulder to the farthermost corner of the cellar. He had no sooner done so, however, than a long bony arm was stretched out from the same place, and made a grab at the bottle. But Fearless John caught the arm and flung it after the skull. Immediately another arm appeared, and was treated in the same way; then came a long, lanky leg, and tried to kick him on the nose, but Johnny dealt with it as with the others; then came another leg, which he sent flying into the corner too; and then the ribs and spine, till all the bones of a skeleton had severally appeared before him, and had all been cast by him on to the same shapeless heap. Now he turned to go, but as he did so a great rattling was heard in the corner where he had thrown the bones. It was all the bones joining themselves together and forming themselves into a perfect skeleton, which came clatter-patter after him up the stairs. Zovanin neither turned to look at it nor hurried his pace, but walked straight back, bottle in hand, into the room where the supper was laid ready, and the pack of cards by the side, as he had ordered. All the while that he was supping, the skeleton kept up a wild dance round him, trying to excite him by menacing gestures, but Fearless Johnny munched his bread and meat and drank his wine, and took no more notice than of the insects buzzing round the sconces. When he had done he called to the ghosts in the coolest way imaginable to clear away the things, and then dealt out the cards, with one hand for a "dummy" and one for himself. He had no sooner done this than the skeleton sat down, with a horrid grimace of triumph, and took up the "dummy's" hand! "You needn't grin like that," said Johnny; "you may depend on it I shouldn't have let you take the cards if it hadn't pleased me. If you know how to play, play on--it is much better fun than playing both hands oneself. Only, if you don't know how to play, you leave them alone--and you had better not give me reason to turn you out." The skeleton, however, understood the game very well, and with alternate fortune they played and passed away the hours till it was time to go to bed. Johnny then rose and called the twelve ghosts to light him up to bed, which they did in gravest order. He had no sooner laid himself to sleep than, with a great clatter, the skeleton came in and pulled the bedclothes off him. In a great passion Fearless Johnny jumped up, and brandishing a chair over his head, threatened to break every one of his bones if he didn't immediately lay the clothes straight again. The skeleton had no defence for his bones, and so could not choose but obey; and Johnny went quietly to bed again. "It was a pity I didn't ask the poor fellow what ailed him, though," said Johnny, when he was once more alone. "Perhaps he too is tormented by this 'Fear' that every one thinks so much of, and wanted me to help him. Ah, well, if he comes again I will ask him;" and with that he rolled himself up in the quilt, and went to sleep again. An hour had hardly passed before the skeleton came in again, and this time he shook the bedpost so violently that he woke Johnny with a start. "Ah! there he is again!" cried Johnny; "now I'll ask him what he wants;" so he jumped out of bed once more, and addressed the skeleton solemnly in these words:-- "Anima terrena, Stammi lontana tre passi, E raccontami la tua pena [92]!" Then the skeleton made a sign to him to follow it, and led him down to the foundations of the castle, where there was a big block of porphyry. "Heave up that block," said the skeleton. "Not I!" replied Johnny; "I didn't set it there, and so I'm not going to take it up." So the skeleton took up the block itself, and under it lay shining two immense jars full of gold. "Take them, and count them out," said the skeleton. "Not I!" said Johnny; "I didn't heap them up, and so I'm not going to count them out." So the skeleton counted them out itself, and they contained ten thousand gold pieces each. When it had done, it said, "I am the giant who built this castle. I have waited here these hundreds of years till one came fearless enough to do what you have done to-night, and now I am free, because to you I may give over the castle; so take it, for it is yours, and with it one of these jars of gold, which is enough to make you rich, but take the other jar of gold and build a church, and let them pray for me, and learn to be better men than I." With that he disappeared, and Fearless Johnny slept quietly for the rest of the night. In the morning, when the sun was up, and the birds began to sing cheerily on the branches, the landlord began to feel some compunction for having abandoned such a fine young Bursch to a night by himself among the unquiet spirits; so he summoned all his courage, and all his servants, and all his neighbours, and, thus prepared, he led the way up to the haunted castle. Finding that it was firmly fixed by the chain, they all entered in a body, for none durst be the first; and the entrance, having been made for the giant, was big enough for all. Zovanin having had such a disturbed night was still fast asleep, but their footsteps and anxious whisperings woke him. In answer to all their questionings he gave an account of what had happened to him, but still complained that, after all, he had not been able to find Fear! Zovanin was now a rich man, and had a mighty castle to live in where he might have ended his days in peace, but he was always possessed by the desire of finding out what Fear was, and this desire was too strong to let him rest. The neighbours, however, told him he might find Fear out hunting; and many were the hunting-parties he established, and wherever the wild game was shyest, there he sought it out. Once, as he sprang over a chasm his horse made a false start, and was plunged into the abyss, but Fearless Johnny caught at the bough of a birch-tree that waved over the mountain-side. The branch cracked, and it seemed as if nothing could save him, but Fearless Johnny only swung himself on to another on the ledge below, and climbed back by its means to the path. Another time, as he was pursuing a chamois up a precipitous track, a great mass of loose rock, detached from the height above, came thundering down upon him. An ordinary hunter, scared at the sight, would have given himself up for lost, but Fearless Johnny stood quite still and let it bound over his head, and he came to no harm. So he still was unable to find Fear. After some years, therefore, he once more went abroad to seek it. This time, however, he provided himself with a fine suit of armour and a prancing charger, and a noble figure he cut as he ambled forth. After a long journey, with many adventures, he came one hot day, as he was very thirsty, to a fountain of water in the outskirts of a town, and as he dismounted to drink he observed that the whole place looked sad and deserted; the road was grass-grown, and the houses seemed neglected and empty. As he went up to the fountain to drink, a faint voice called to him from the wayside, "Beware, and do it not! Think you that we all should be lying here dying of thirst if you could drink at that fountain?" Then he looked round, and saw that, as far as eye could reach, the banks of the wayside were covered with dying people heaped up one on the other, and all gazing towards the fountain! "Know you not," continued the weary voice, "that a terrible dragon has taken possession of all the fountains; and that the moment one goes to drink of them he appears, as though he would eat you up, so that you are bound to run away for very fear?" "'Fear!'" cried Zovanin; "is Fear here at last?" and he joyfully ran to the side of the well. All the weary, dying people raised themselves as well as they could, to see what should befall him who was not afraid of the terrible dragon. But Fearless Johnny went up to the fountain's brim to dip his hand into the cooling flood. Before he could do so, however, the terrible dragon put his head up through the midst, with a frightful howl, and spueing fire out of his nostrils. Zovanin, instead of drawing back, instantly took out his sword and, with one blow, severed the monster's head from the trunk! Then all the people rushed to the fountain, hailing him as their deliverer. But ere they had slaked their thirst, the dragon, which had sunk back into the depth of the water, reappeared with a new head, already full grown, and more terrible than the last, for it not only spued out fire from its nostrils, but darted living sparks from its eyes. When the people saw this they all ran away screaming, and Zovanin was left alone; but, as usual, he did not lose heart, and with another well-aimed blow sent the second head of the monster rolling by the side of the first! The people came back, and began to drink again when they saw the huge trunk disappear beneath the surface; but it was not many minutes before another head cropped up, more terrible than either of the preceding, for it not only spued fire from its nostrils and darted living sparks from its eyes, but it had hair and mane of flames, which waved and rolled abroad, threatening all within reach. All the people fled at the sight, and Zovanin was once more left alone with the monster. Once more he severed the terrible head; and after this the dragon was seen no more. "That must be very wonderful blood out of which three heads can spring," thought Fearless Johnny; and he filled a vial with the dragon's blood, and journeyed farther. After a time he came to the outskirts of another town. It was not deserted like the last. The streets were full of people making merry--in fact, every one was so very merry that they seemed a whole community of madmen. Another might have been afraid to encounter them at all; but not so Fearless Johnny, he spurred his horse and rode right through their midst. But for all his seeming so fearless and self-possessed, the people got round him, and seized his horse's bridle, and dragged him from the saddle. "What do you want with me, good people?" cried Zovanin; "let me hear, before you pull me to pieces." When they found him so cool, spite of the wild way in which they had handled him, they began to respect him, and loosed their hold. "If you want to know," answered one, "it is soon told. We are all in this town wholly given up to amusement. We have done with work and toil, and do nothing but dance, and drink, and sing, and divert ourselves from morning to night. But after enjoying all this a long time, we begin to find it rather wearisome, and we are almost as tired of our pastime as we used to be of our labour. So the king has decreed that every stranger who comes by this way shall be caught, and required to find us a quite new diversion, and if he cannot do that, we will make him dance on red-hot stones, and flog him round the town, and get some fun out of him that way, at all events; as you don't look very likely to find us a new pastime, we may as well begin with putting you on your death-dance." "Don't make too sure of that!" said Fearless Johnny, not at all disconcerted; "take me to your king, and I'll show you a diversion you never heard of before." When he came to the king, the king laughed, and would hardly listen to him, because he looked so broad and heavy, and not at all like one who could invent a merry game. But Johnny protested that if they would let him cut off any one's head, he would stick it on just as before, and the man should be never the worse. The king was greatly delighted with the idea, and most anxious to see the performance, promising that he would not only let him go free if he succeeded, but would load him with honours and presents into the bargain. Zovanin professed himself quite ready to prove his skill, but no one could be found who was willing to let the experiment be tried on him. This angered the king greatly; and at last he called forward his jester, and ordered Zovanin to make the trial on him. The jester, however, objected as much as any one else, only, as he belonged entirely to the king, he could not disobey him. "But think, your majesty," said the poor hunchback, "what will your majesty do without his jester, if this quack does not succeed in his promises?" "But I shall succeed!" thundered Fearless Johnny; and he spoke with such assurance, that the king and all the people were more desirous than ever to see the feat, and cried to him to commence. When the jester found that all hope of wriggling out of the cruel decree was vain, he threw himself on his knees, and begged so earnestly that the king would grant him two favours, that he could not resist. The two favours were, that he should have the satisfaction of repeating the trick on Johnny, if he allowed him to try his skill on him, and also that he should first give proof of what he could do on the ape, with whose pranks he was wont to amuse the king. The king and Zovanin both agreed to the two requests, and the poor ape was brought forward, and delivered over to make the first essay. Zovanin did not keep the breathless multitude long in suspense; with one blow he severed its head, threw it up high in the air, that all might see it was well cut off, and then placed it on again, smearing in some drops of the dragon's blood by way of cement. The head and trunk were scarcely placed together again, with the dragon's blood between, than the ape bounded up as well as before, and just as if nothing had been done to him; but, on the contrary, finding himself the object of great attention, and excited by the shouts of the people, he sprang and gambolled about from side to side with even greater alacrity than his wont. "Now, Sir Hunchback!" cried Zovanin, "it is your turn. You see it's not very bad; so come along, and no more excuses." "Go it, hunchback!" said the king; and all the people shouted, "The hunchback's head! the hunchback's head!" with such vehemence that it was evident there was no means of getting out of the trial. It was true, Zovanin had proved he could put a head on again; but the jester shrank from the cold steel nevertheless, and it was only with a look which concentrated all his venom that he yielded himself up. Fearless Johnny struck off his head in a trice, then threw it up high in the air, as he had done the ape's, and then cemented it on again with the dragon's blood as well as ever. "Now for you!" screamed the hunchback, when he found his head back in its right place once more. Zovanin had no fear, but sat down on the ground instantly, so that the hunchback might reach him more conveniently. "This is all you have to do," he said: "take my sword in your two hands, and swing it round across my throat. Then pour the contents of this vial over the stump of the throat, and clap the head down on it again." "Yes, yes! I think I ought to know how it's done, as well as you," answered the dwarf, hastily; and he swung the sword round with a will, sending Johnny's head rolling at the king's feet. The people caught it up and handed it round; and it might soon have got lost in the crowd, but that the king shouted to them to bring it back, because he wanted to see it stuck on again. So they gave it back to the jester, and he smeared the rest of the dragon's blood over the stump of the throat--but in putting the head on, took care to turn it the wrong way, which, as he managed to bend over Johnny's recumbent body, no one observed till he rose to his feet. Then all the people screeched, and yelled, and shouted, so that John could not make out what was the matter, but, getting angry, demanded his horse, that he might ride away from them all. The king ordered his horse to be brought, and Johnny sprang into the saddle, and the cries of the people made the beast start away faster even than Johnny himself wished; only Johnny could not make out why he seemed to him, for all his urging, always to go backwards. At last, he got quite away from the shouts of the people, into a calm, quiet place, where there was a lake shut in by high hills, which, with the mulberry-trees, and vines, and grassy slopes, were all pictured in the lake's smooth face. Zovanin was hot with his ride, and so was his mount; so he walked him into the shallow water, while he himself dismounted, and bent down to drink. At the sight that met his gaze in the water, a shout burst from his lips more terrible than the shouts of all the people. He gazed again, and couldn't think what had befallen him; but, so horrified was he at the sight of his own back where he was wont to see his breast, that he fell down and died of fear on the spot! And thus Fear visited him at last--in a way which would certainly never have occurred, if the jester had put his head on again in the way nature designed for it. THE DOVE-MAIDEN. In the days when heathenism still disputed the advance of Christianity in Tirol, there lived a nobleman in a castle, of which no trace now remains, overlooking the egg-shaped Lago di Molveno. The nobleman and his family had embraced the teaching of St. Vigilius, and were among his most pious and obedient disciples. Eligio, his eldest son, however, had two faults which led him into great trouble, as our story will show; but as he was of a good disposition, and was always desirous to make amends for his wrong-doing, he found help and favour, which kept him right in the main. His two faults were--an excess of fondness for card-playing and an inclination to think he knew better than his elders, which led him to go counter to good advice. It so happened that whenever he played at cards he always won; and this made it such a pleasure that he could not be persuaded to leave it off, though he knew he was wasting all the time he ought to have devoted to more manly pursuits. Nor was there for a long time any lack of people to play with him, for every one said his luck must turn at last, and each thought he should be the fortunate person in whose favour this would happen. But when at last they found he still won, and won on, they got shy of the risk, and refused to incur it any more. When Eligio found this to be the case, he determined to travel abroad, and play against strangers. His parents tried to make use of the opportunity to lead him to break with his bad habit, but it was of no avail, and, as experience is a good school, they agreed to let him go forth and see what the world was made of. It was a brave sight as he descended the terrace of the castle accoutred in the noble array befitting his rank, and with a retinue of followers handsomely attired too. But his lady mother watched him depart with a boding heart, and then went into the chapel to pray that he might be preserved amid all dangers. Nothing particular occurred to mar the pleasure of travel for several days, till he came to a large and fertile plain, studded with many towns, whose white stone-built houses sparkled in the sun. "Ha! now we come to life and human kind again!" cried Eligio; and putting spurs to his steed he rode joyously to the first of these smiling towns. It had no lofty towers, no heaven-pointing spires--nowhere was seen the sign of the saving cross, which from boyhood he had been taught to reverence and to see planted every where before him in consecration of every affair of life. But there were sounds of mirth and revelry, as of a perpetual feast, and all around the place was gay with dancers and mummers, musicians, dice-throwers, and card-players. Eligio wandered about till he saw a number of these making up a fresh party, and courteously asked to be allowed to join them. They accepted his company willingly, and fortune favoured him as usual. Again and again he tried, and it was always the same. It was as much as his train of followers, numerous as they were, could do to gather in and take charge of all his gains. The stranger's unvarying luck became the talk of the place, and all the people collected to see him play. Towards evening there came amid the crowd a tall man of serious mien, who, having watched his play with much attention, said to him, as he saw him complete a game which gave him once more the benefit of a considerable haul,-- "Truly, you are an expert player, young man; I had thought myself hitherto the best of our countryside, but I doubt me if I should be right to measure my skill with yours. However, you must be tired with your long travel and with the excitement of the day's play, and if you will honour my poor board with your presence at dinner I will ask you afterwards to let me try my power against yours with the cards." Eligio thanked him for his courteous speech, and assured him he should have the greatest pleasure in doing as he wished. The stranger then led him to his abode, which was appointed with a sumptuousness such as had never entered into Eligio's dreams in his mountain home. Marble courts and fountains, surrounded by bowers of exquisite flowers, formed the approach, and then they passed beneath endless-seeming arcades of polished marble into a vast alcove encrusted with alabaster of many colours, the dim light only reaching through its clear golden veins, no sound disturbing its still repose but the cool murmur of a fountain which fed a marble lake. Here noiseless attendants advanced, and, having helped Eligio and his host to undress, afforded him a delicious bath, complete with ministrations of unguents and scents--very different from the plunge into the icy waters of the Lago di Molveno, which was his greatest luxury at home. They now arrayed him in an entirely new suit of superb attire; and then, to the sound of hushed music, led him and his host through the arched corridors to a banqueting-hall, where every thing of the choicest was ready laid. Nothing could have been more delightful than the charming and accomplished conversation of his hospitable entertainer, who, when the long succession of various viands was at length exhausted, proposed that they should repair to an upper room and commence their game. Delighted as Eligio had been with his extraordinary entertainment, he was yet burning to try his luck with his obliging host, and accordingly followed him with alacrity to a divan spread on the roof, having for its only covering a leafy pergola [93], and lighted by lamps contrived with such art that they seemed to be the very bunches of grapes themselves which gave the rays. The cards were brought, and the friends set to work. The first game was a long one; the host seemed to be in great fear of not succeeding, and pondered every throw. Eligio played in his own rough-and-ready style, expecting luck to come as it always had--he never troubled himself how. But this time luck did not come to him, and his entertainer was the winner! The stakes were large, but his hospitable friend had been so urbane throughout, that he could not show any ill-will. His attendants were called in, and paid the debt. The winner put up the cards as though he did not wish to play again. "Come, you must give me my revenge," said Eligio. "Oh, certainly, if you wish it," he replied; and they played again. This time Eligio paid more attention to his style, and calculated every card he played; but it was of no use, he was beaten again. Caring more for the disappointment than the loss, he saw the money counted out without a sigh; but the unusual sense of having been overcome rankled in his mind. He had offered to play high because it seemed required by the princely character of the house where he had been so sumptuously received; and of all the treasure he had brought with him, and of all he had won through a day's undeviating luck, there only remained enough to repeat the stakes. Nevertheless he pledged the same sum once more, and they played again. This time fortune seemed to have come back to him. All went right up to the end; Eligio's heart felt lightened. So luck was coming back, was it? He played with an interest which he had almost ceased to find--but his adversary threw down his last card which reversed every thing, and once more he was the winner! Eligio called in his followers, and ordered them to pay out the last farthing of his treasure; but even this distressed him less than having nothing more to stake, whereby to have a chance of retrieving his luck. "Let be," said his new friend, soothingly; "perhaps to-morrow your luck will turn. Come down with me to supper, and have a quiet night's rest, and think no more about the play." "I can't rest, and I can't eat!" said Eligio; "I can do nothing till my luck turns. I must stake something. Ah! there's my horse--but that's not enough. Put along with it all my retainers. If I lose, they shall be yours, and serve you." "Since you insist, I have no objection," said his host. "My men know their service well, and will not shame you if you win and I have to render you an equal number of them; and for your horse, I can match him, how good soever he may be, with the swiftest Arab in the whole world." Eligio sat down, hardly heeding his words, intent only on re-establishing his success. But his pains were vain; the game went against him like the last, and, scarcely mastering his vexation, he called in his retainers and told them they had passed into the service of the new master. But this only left him in the same position as before. Still he wanted to retrieve his fortune, and again he had no stake. "Leave it for to-night," recommended his host; "better times will come with the morrow." But Eligio would not hear of it; the passion and excitement were too strong within him; he could not turn to other thoughts. "Myself! my life! that is all I have left to play. Will you accept the wager of my life?" "If you insist," replied his host, "I have no objection, but it is an odd sort of play. I really never heard of such a thing before; but any thing to oblige you--though I really advise you to leave it till the morning, when you are cooler." And all the time he was a magician of the heathen, who had invited Eligio for the express purpose of bringing him to this strait; but, as he saw how impetuous and excited he was, he knew that he would but fall into his snare the more surely for whetting his ardour with a little opposition. Eligio would, indeed, listen to no mention of delay, and they sat down and played--with the same result as before! His life was now at the magician's disposal, and he stood in a desponding attitude, waiting to hear what the magician decided to do with him. As he stood there, however, a great cry rose in the room beyond--a cry of a young maiden's voice in distress--and from under the usciale [94] came running, in terror for its life, a sleek white rat, and behind it, in close pursuit, a bouncing cat. "Save my rat! oh, save my white rat!" cried the maiden's voice; and her steps approached as if she would have run into the room after her pet. "Keep back, child! keep back! Enter not, for your life!" cried the magician, sternly; and nothing more was heard but the gentle maiden's sobs. Quick as thought, however, Eligio had started from his despondent attitude at the sound of her distressful voice, and with one blow had stamped the life out of the treacherous cat. The little white rat, freed from fear of its tormentor, returned softly to its mistress, and an exclamation of joy was Eligio's reward. "Who have you got there, father? Mayn't I come in and thank him?" said the maiden, prettily pleading. "On no account. Don't think of it!" was the magician's angry reply. "Then you must do something for him instead. Ask him what he wants, and do it for him, whatever it is." "Very well, that'll do; go back to your own apartment," replied the magician, impatiently. "No, it won't do, like that. You don't say it as if you meant it. Promise me you will give him something nice, and I will go. It's only fair, for he has done me a great pleasure, and you mustn't be ungrateful." "It is enough reward, fair maiden, to hear from your sweet voice that you are satisfied with me," Eligio ventured to say; but this made the magician more angry, and, to ensure his daughter's departure, he promised he would do as she wished, but forbade either of them to speak a single word more to the other. "I have promised my daughter to give you a good gift," he said, when he had satisfied himself that she was gone to a distance; "and under present circumstances I do not see that I can give you a better boon than to grant you a year of the life which you have lost to me. Go home and bid adieu to your friends, and be sure that you are back here by this day year, or woe be to your whole house!" Eligio now began to suspect that he had fallen into the power of one of those against whom he had been often warned. No ordinary mortal could have cared to win his life; no ordinary mortal could have threatened woe on his whole house. But the more convinced he felt of this, the more terrible he felt was the spell that bound him. Sad and crestfallen he looked as he toiled his way back to the castle on the Lago di Molveno, and very different from the brave order with which he had started. When his parents saw him all alone, and looking so forlorn, they knew that his bad habit had got him into trouble, but he looked so sad that they said nothing; but by little and little he told them all. It was a year of mourning that succeeded that day; a year so sad that it seemed no boon the maiden had procured him, but a prolonged torment, yet when that thought came he spurned it from him, as ungrateful to her who had meant him well. In fact his only solace was to recall that clear, ringing voice so full of sympathy, and to picture to himself the slender throat and rosy lips through which it must have passed, the softly-blushing cheeks between which those lips must have been set, and the bright, laughing, trusting eyes that must have beamed over them, till he seemed quite to know and love her. But then, again, of what use? was not his year nearly run out? Was not her father determined they should not meet? Was it not a greater torture to die knowing there was one left behind he might have loved, than to have died that night alone, as he had been then? Meantime the year was drawing to a close, and, not to give an appearance of shrinking from his plighted word, Eligio started betimes to render his life up to him who had won it of him. It was a sad parting with his parents, but he held up through it bravely; and when they advised him to take a large sum of money with him to buy himself off, though he felt it would be of no use, he would not say them nay, as he had so often done before. With a heavy heart he set out; and first he stopped at the chapel of St. Anthony, at the foot of the hill, where dwelt an old hermit, to make his peace with heaven before he was called to lay down his life. Then he rose and pursued his way. As he journeyed farther he met a hermit coming towards him who he thought was the same he had spoken with in the chapel. "Tell me, father," he said, "how comes it that you, whom I left behind me in the chapel, are now coming towards me on the road?" "I am not the hermit whom you left behind you in the chapel," replied the advancing figure, gravely. "But I have heard all you confided to him, for I am St. Anthony; and because I am satisfied with the good disposition I have observed in you, I am come to give you help." Eligio fell on his knees full of thankfulness, for never had he felt more in need of help than now. "Something I know, my son, of the ways of these men who hunt the lambs of our flock to destroy them, and I am minded to save you from the one into whose power you have fallen, and with you the fair maiden whose voice charmed you in his house." Eligio started with joyful surprise, and clasped the saint's feet in token of gratitude. "She is not his daughter, as you have supposed," continued the saint, "but a child of our people, whom he stole from us. And now you must attend to my bidding, and do it exactly, or you will fail, and lose her life as well as your own." Eligio felt the reproach, for he knew how often he had preferred his own way to the advice of his elders, but he was humble now in his distress, and listened very attentively to the directions prescribed to him. "Continue this public road towards the city," then said St. Anthony, "till you get to the last milestone; then count the tenth tree that you pass on the right hand and the eleventh on the left hand, and you will see a scarcely perceptible track through the brake to the right. Follow that track till you come to a knoll of ilex-trees, there lie down and rest; but to-morrow morning awake at daybreak and lie in wait, and you shall see a flock of white doves come before you. They will lay aside their feathers and hide them, but you must watch them very closely, for they are the magician's daughters; but among them will be she whom I commission you to deliver. You must observe where she puts her feathers, for the maidens will all then go away for the rest of the day in their own natural form. As soon as they are gone, take her feathers from their hiding-place and possess yourself of them. In the evening they will all come back and resume their dove form and fly away, but your maiden will continue seeking hers; then come forward and tell her that you want her help to overcome the sorceries of the magician. Remember this well, my son, and for the rest do as she bids you." So saying, the saint raised his hands in blessing, and passed on his way to the chapel, where he had to instruct the hermit in the conduct he had to pursue in the manifold dangers with which he was surrounded from the malice of the heathen. Eligio walked briskly along, once more filled with the hope and energy incident to his youth and character. "Why should I count the trees?" he said to himself; "surely, it will do if I look out for the track when I come to the brake!" But the terrible warning he had had was too recent that he should forget its lessons already. "Perhaps it's better to keep to the letter. The saint laid great stress on my doing exactly as he bid me; it is better to be on the safe side, for another worthier life than mine is concerned with me, this time." So he walked on steadily till he came to the last mile, and then counted the trees conscientiously, till he found the path through the brake, and made his way to the ilex grove, where he laid him down and slept peacefully. But long before daybreak he was awake with the anxiety not to be behindhand, and closely he watched for the arrival of the enchanted doves. With the first streaks of daylight they came flying, as the saint had predicted, and, having flung off their covering of white feathers, each sought out a snug place under the heather where to deposit them. It required close watching, indeed, to make out which was his maiden; but, as they all chatted together, after the manner of maidens, Eligio knew he could trust himself to recognize her voice, and, guided by that, he kept his eyes hard fixed on her whose tones he recognized, that he might be sure to distinguish where she laid by her disguise. It was not light enough to satisfy himself whether her features corresponded with the idea he had built up in his own mind; but the grace of her form, as she passed by in her simple white, loosely-flowing dress, with a chaplet of roses for her only ornament; only made him the more anxious to behold her face. The maidens walked away, and Eligio took possession of the feathery covering, which he laid up in his bosom as a precious token, and took it out again and gazed at it, and kissed it, and laid it by again a thousand times, for it was his only solace through the long day of waiting. At last evening came, and he resumed his post of observation. The maidens returned; each sought out and resumed her dove's feathers and flew away; only the one was left, seeking hers in vain. Then Eligio came forward, and said, respectfully, "Fair lady, I know what it is you seek, and I will help you to find it; but first promise to do me a great favour." The maiden started, for she too recognized his voice. Their eyes met, and both owned, in the depth of their own hearts, that the other bore the very image which for a year past their fancy had conjured up. "That will I, willingly, good sir!" she replied, in her sweetest tones; "for, an' I mistake not, I owe you a debt of gratitude before to-day. The treacherous cat that you killed so opportunely was no cat, but a cruel Angana [95]; and the white rat concerned me so nearly, because it was no rat, but my dear nurse, whom the magician turned into a rat when he stole me from my father's house. So believe if I was not anxious to save her, and if I ought not to be grateful to him who preserved her to me! so tell me, what can I do to help you, and, whatever it may be, I will do it to the utmost of my power." "St. Anthony appeared to me as I came along this way," rejoined Eligio, "and he told me that you had been stolen from Christian parents and brought up by this heathen mage, and that you would help me to get out of his power; but he also seemed to say that I should have the happiness of helping you to leave this dreadful abode, and restoring you to Christendom." "Said he so?" answered the maiden, with intense earnestness; "then my heart did not deceive me when I first heard your voice: you are indeed he with the thread of whose life mine is woven, and without whom I could not be set free." When Eligio heard that, he was full of gladness, and he said, "Let us escape, then! What should prevent us from leaving this country together? When I saw the magician before, the laws of hospitality made him sacred to my sword; but now--now that I have learnt I have a right to defend your life--I defy him, and all his arts!" "You are brave, I see; and it is well," she replied; "but it is not so you can discard his power. By your own error you gave him power over you, and now you are his; you can only be free by his will." "By his will!" cried Eligio, in despair; "then shall I never be free!" "Art must be met by art," she continued. "His art is all round you, though you see not its meshes; and by art we must bring him to renounce his claim on you. Trust me, and I will show you how it is to be done. He would force me to learn his arts when I begged him not, and now I know many things which will serve us. I can see the threads of his toils woven all around you; you cannot escape from them till he speaks you free." "Tell me, then, what I must do," said Eligio; and he mentally resolved as he spoke, that he would this time implicitly obey what she told him. She remained thinking for a time, as if reckoning out a problem. Then she said, "For this first time I must act. On the fatal day you must present yourself according to your oath. I will take care to be with him when they tell him you are come; and when I hear your name, I will plead, as I did before, that he should not sacrifice you at once, but give you some hard trial in which, if you succeed, he shall speak you free. To silence my importunity, he will agree to this, intending to give you so hard a trial that you should not succeed. But you come to me in my bower, cooing three times like a dove, for a signal, at this same evening hour, and tell me what it is, and I will find the means in my books to carry you through the trial. So that, whatever he proposes to you, be not disconcerted, but accept and undertake it with a good heart. And now, give me my dove's feathers quickly, for already they will be questioning why I am so long behind." And without waiting to let him take so much as another gaze at her, she assumed her dove shape, and flew away. The next day Eligio went, with a lighter heart than he had borne for a long time past, to give himself up to the magician. The magician, won over by the maiden's importunity, offered him his liberty on condition of his performing successfully the difficult feat that he should impose on him. "Any thing you please to impose on me, I am ready to perform," replied Eligio. The magician smiled, with a ghastly, sardonic smile, while he paused, and tried to think of the most terrible trial he could impose. "Since you were here last," he said, at length, "I have grown a little deaf, and I am told that the only cure there is for me is the singing of the phoenix-bird. The first thing you have to do is to find me the phoenix-bird, that its singing may heal me." "I will do my best; and hope I may be the means of curing your malady," said Eligio, courteously; but the magician, seeing him of such good courage, began to fear he really might succeed, and added, hastily, "But, mind, I only allow you three days for your search!" "Three days are but little to find the phoenix-bird," replied Eligio; "nevertheless, I will do my best;" and without waiting to listen to any further restrictions, he started on his way, saying, "If I have only three days, I have no time to lose." At the approach of the evening hour Eligio found his way to his maiden's bower, and having attracted her attention by cooing three times like a dove, told her what was the trial the magician had imposed. "The phoenix-bird!" she said, and she looked rather blank; "he has chosen a difficult task indeed. But wait a bit; I think I can find it out;" and she went back and took down scroll after scroll, and turned them over so long, that Eligio began to fear that she would not be able to help him after all. At last she came back to him, looking grave. "It is more difficult even than I thought," she said; "and three days is but short time to do it in. You must start this night, without losing a minute. Set out by the stony path outside the town, and ride ahead till you come to a forest, where a bear will come out upon you. The moment you see him, spring from your horse, and cut its throat with your hunting-knife; but if you hesitate a moment he will fall upon you, and devour you. If, however, you kill your horse dexterously, as you will, the bear will be satisfied with its flesh. You must wait standing by till he has eaten his fill, and watch for the moment when he is about to turn away again, then spring on his back, and he will take you to the castle where the phoenix-bird is kept; but if you lose that particular moment, he will return to his cave, and you will never have a chance of reaching the phoenix-bird!" "Rely on me; your directions shall be punctually obeyed," said Eligio, and he stooped to kiss her hand. But she would not allow this, and told him he had not an instant to spare. Eligio mounted his horse, and rode away over the stony path outside the city, and pursued it all night, till at daybreak he reached the thick forest, when a bear came out upon him; Eligio sprang deftly from his horse, and plunging his hunting-knife into his throat, flung the carcase across the path. The bear fell upon the dead horse, and Eligio watched for the moment when he should have finished his repast; but, as he was long about it, he thought to himself, "Why not jump upon him at once? and then I shall be ready to start with him when he has done, without so much anxiety about catching the right instant." So said, so done; but the bear was not at all the docile animal he had expected. "Don't disturb me when I'm feeding!" he growled, and shook our hero off into a bed of nettles. Eligio owned to himself he would have done better to follow the directions of those wiser than he, and waited, with as much patience as the stinging of the nettles would allow him, till the brute was ready to start, and then made a bold leap on to his back, which made him turn round. "Well sprung, this time!" growled the bear; "and as you have managed that part of the business so well I have no objection to do what you require. But you must attend to what I have to tell you. Keep your seat steadily, for I have to go swiftly; but speak not a word, and when I bring you to the palace where the phoenix-bird is kept, look not to the right hand or the left, but walk straight before you, through terrace, and galleries, and corridors, till you come to a dismal, deserted-looking aviary, where the phoenix-bird evermore sits on his perch. Put this hood over him, and bring him away with you; but listen not to the songs of the other birds all around, and, above all, touch not the golden owl which sits in the shade above!" Eligio promised to attend to all the bear told him, and took a firm seat on his back. The bear bounded away with an awkward gait, but Eligio was an accomplished cavalier, and was nothing daunted. After many hours' rough riding, they came to a vast palace, which he understood by the bear's halting was the abode of the phoenix-bird; so he dismounted, and walked straight along the terraces, and galleries, and corridors, till he came to a sorry aviary where a thousand birds of gay plumage fluttered and chirped around. Faithful to his promise, Eligio stopped to look at none of them; but walked straight up to the perch of the phoenix-bird. When, however, he saw him, he began to reason in place of obeying. "What can be the use of taking a shabby old bird like that? he looks like a fowl plucked ready for cooking! surely, some of these gay-plumaged birds are better worth taking!" and then his eye caught the golden owl snugly ensconced in the shady bower above. "Ah! that's a bird worth having, that is now! that's worth coming a perilous journey for; something to be proud of when you've got it! That's the bird for me!" and, springing upon a ledge of rock, he threw the hood the bear had given him over the head of the golden owl, and brought it down. He had scarcely touched the golden owl, however, when the whole assemblage of other birds, which had taken no notice of him before, suddenly began screeching forth their highest notes. Their cries brought a crowd of servants, who surrounded him and held him fast, while the lord of the palace came down, and severely asked an account of his conduct. Eligio told his story with a frankness which, in some measure, conciliated the old lord; but the offence was too great to be passed over. "The phoenix-bird," he said, "might have been taken by him who had courage to take it after the prescribed manner; but the other birds it was sacrilege to meddle with, and the golden owl he had been expressly forbidden, of all others, to touch; and though he granted him his life, he condemned him to perpetual durance." The servants dragged him off to a deep dungeon, where he had nothing to do but to bewail his folly. Night fell around, and nothing could be more hopeless than his position. His cell was hewn out of the earth; the iron door through which he had been thrust had been made fast with bolts and chains, and the only window which admitted the free air was strongly fitted with iron bars. Eligio was generous enough, in his utter desolation, to grieve more over his unfulfilled mission and wasted opportunities, than over his personal hardships. "Oh, my beautiful Dove-Maiden!" he exclaimed, "shall I, then, never see you again? Must you be left for aye to the power of the horrid pagan enchanter, because I, by my insensate folly, have failed in restoring you to the brightness of the Christian faith?" and when he thought of her fate, he wept again. "St Anthony! St. Anthony!" he cried, a little after, "you befriended me once; give me one chance again! This once but send me forth again with the mission of liberating her, and then let me come back and pass my life in penance; but let not her suffer through my fault!" By a mechanical instinct he had placed himself near the window, as the type of freedom to him, and now he thought he heard a low grunt on the other side of it, close to his ear. The sound was not melodious, but yet he fancied there was something friendly in its tone. He raised himself up, and saw two white boar's tusks between the bars. His solitude was so utter that even the visit of a wild boar was a solace of companionship; but much greater was his pleasure when he found that his uncouth visitor was grubbing up the earth round the iron bars and the stones which held them, and had already loosened one. "How now, good boar!" cried Eligio; "are you really come to release me?" "Yes," said the boar, as he paused for a moment to take breath; "St. Anthony has heard you, and has sent me to give the fresh chance you ask for; and if you this time but keep your promise, and do as you are bid, he will not exact the performance of the lifelong penance you offer to perform; but after you have released the Dove-Maiden, you shall live with her the rest of your life in holy union and companionship." In a transport of delight Eligio set to work to co-operate with the boar in unearthing the massive stanchions; and when they had loosened three he was able to force himself through the narrow opening. "Now return to the aviary," said the boar; "look neither to right nor left, but bring away the phoenix-bird; and speak not a word, but mount on my back, and I will carry you back to the city. But make all haste, or the three days will have expired, and then all will be lost!" This time Eligio followed his instructions implicitly, and got back to the town just in time to present the magician with the phoenix-bird before the expiring of his three days' grace. The magician was surprised indeed to find he had been successful, but could not recall his word, so he was forced to pronounce him free; and Eligio immediately repaired to the Dove-Maiden to thank her for her succour, and to ask what was next to be done to set her free too, that they might go away together to Christian lands, and live for each other in holy union. "As for me," replied the maiden, blushing, "I shall be free by virtue of your freedom when you have performed one trial well, and without altering according to your own ideas the directions prescribed for you. And now the first thing is, to obtain the release of my dear nurse from the horrid form in which the magician has disguised her. To keep her in that shape, she is forced to eat a live mouse every week; and as nothing else is given her that she can eat, and as she is very ravenous by the time the week comes round, she is forced to eat the mouse. But if the mouse be killed by a sword consecrated to Christian chivalry, and it is dead before she eats it, the spell will be broken, and she will resume her natural form." Eligio said this was an easy matter. She had only to tell him on what day the feeding took place, and where. "It has its difficulties, too," replied the Dove-Maiden; "for if any blood of the mouse be spilt, the magician will know that I have instructed you, and he will play us some bad turn. To prevent this, you must cut the mouse in two by drawing your sword towards you; then all the blood will be caught on the sword, and you must make the rat lick it off afterwards." Then she showed him where the mouse was brought, and told him to be on the watch at sunset that very night. Sunset accordingly found Eligio in close watch, his sword ready in his hand. But he thought, "As for how to use a sword, my pretty Dove-Maiden knows nothing about that. Who ever heard of drawing a sword towards one? Why, if any one saw me they would laugh, and say, 'Take care of your legs!' I know how to cut a mouse in two so quickly that no blood shall be spilt; and that's all that matters." So, you see, he would do it his own way; and the consequence was that three drops of blood were spilt on the ground However, the white rat got a dead mouse to eat instead of a live one, and immediately appeared in her proper woman's form. When Eligio went to visit the Dove-Maiden after this, she spoke no word of reproach, but she told him she knew some trouble would befall them in consequence of those three drops of blood. She could not tell what it would be: they must do their best to provide against it when the time came. The next thing he had to do was, to go by midnight to the magician's stables under the rock, and take out thence the swiftest horse in the whole world, and he was to know it by the token that it was the thinnest horse he ever saw; its eyeballs and its ribs were all that could be seen of it; and its tail was only one hair! This he was to saddle and bring under her window; and then all three would ride away on it together. Eligio went down into the magician's stable under the rock by midnight, and there he saw the lean horse, with his protruding ribs and eyeballs, and whose tail was only one hair. But he said to himself, "My pretty Dove-Maiden hasn't much experience in horseflesh; that can't be the swiftest horse in the world. Why, it would sink to the ground with our weight alone, let alone trying to move under us! That high-couraged chestnut there, with the powerful shoulders--that is the horse to hold out against fatigue, and put miles of distance behind you! I think I know a good horse to go when I see one!" So he saddled the high-couraged chestnut, and led it under the Dove-Maiden's window. When she saw the stout chestnut instead of the lean horse, she could not suppress a cry of disappointment. "What have you done?" she said. "You have left the swiftest horse in the world behind; and now the magician can overtake us, nor can we escape him!" Eligio hung his head, and stammered out a proposal to go and change the horse. But she told him it was too late; the stable-door was only open at midnight. He could not now get in till the next night; and if they left their escape till then, the magician would find out the disenchantment of the white rat, and from that suspect their scheme; and would then surround them with such a maze of difficulties, that it would take her years to learn how to solve them; whereas she had promised St. Anthony to have nothing more to do with the books of magic, but to burn them all, and go and live with a Christian husband, far from all these things. There was nothing to be done, therefore, but to start at once with their best speed, only keeping on the watch for the pursuer, who would inevitably come. Away went the high-couraged chestnut, with the speed of the wind, and as if his threefold burden had been light as air. But how swiftly soever he went, the lean horse was swifter; and before the end of the second day's journey they saw, at no distance, his fire-darting eyeballs and smoking ribs, and his tail of one hair stretched out far behind. When the Dove-Maiden saw the magician coming after them on this weird mount, she called to her companions to jump down; and she turned the horse into a wayside chapel of St. Anthony, and herself into a peasant girl weaving chaplets on the grass outside. "Have you seen a chestnut steed pass this way, with a young man and maiden, pretty child?" said the magician, bending low over his horse's neck to pat the peasant girl's cheek, but without recognizing her. The Dove-Maiden started aside from his touch; but she answered,-- "Yes, good sir; they are gone into the chapel; and if you will go in, there you will find them." "Oh! I've got into the land of the Christians, have I?" said the magician to himself. "I think I had better make the best of my way home, and not trust myself there." So he mounted his fiery steed, and rode away. Then the Dove-Maiden restored herself and her companions to their former shapes, and they soon reached home, where Eligio was received with joyful acclamations by all. But to his intense surprise and disappointment, his mother did not welcome his beautiful Dove-Maiden with any thing like satisfaction. "That is because of the three drops of the mouse's blood incautiously spilt," she whispered, when he deplored it to her; "but I have a spell against that also. Let me into your mother's room when she is asleep, to-night, and I will anoint her eyes with an ointment with shall make her look on me for ever after with a loving glance. It was done as she said, and next morning Eligio's mother received her lovingly to her arms as a daughter. After this, the Dove-Maiden burnt her magic books, and her nuptials with Eligio were celebrated with great rejoicings throughout the valley. They lived together for the rest of their days, in holy union, and the poor Christians of the whole countryside blessed their charity. KRISELDA. Long, long ago, in the days when the light of Christian teaching yet struggled with the gloom of heathendom, there lived in the Edelsitz of Ruggburg, by Bregenz, a most beautiful maiden--Kriselda by name. So fair she was that, from far and near, knights and nobles came to ask her hand; but though she was not proud or haughty, she would have none of them, because there was not one of them all that came up to her expectations. It was not that she said they were not good enough for her, but high or noble, or rich or renowned, as they might be, they all failed to satisfy her longings; and with gentle words and courteous demeanour, she dismissed them all. And yet she looked out with hope, too, that the next should supply the bright ideal of her heart; but when that other came he always still fell short of what she had imagined. One evening she went out to walk amid the dark pines, where the golden light of the setting sun gleamed between their bare stems. At the foot of one of them lay a poor wayworn beggar woman, fainting with hunger and fatigue. Kriselda was full of compassion for her sad state, and sent her maidens to fetch restoratives, and ministered them to her with her own hands. But the beggar woman, instead of cringing with gratitude and surprise at the interest the noble lady had shown in her, was no sooner able to speak than she reproached her bitterly. "It is well for you," she said, "who live daintily, and have your will every day, now and then to show a little charity for those who suffer! but what is it, think you, to suffer every day, and to have your own will never?" "It must be very sad!" said Kriselda, compassionately; "that is not your case, I hope?" "How can you know it is sad? How can you hope any thing about it?" retorted the beggar woman, sternly; "you who know not what it is to suffer. Believe me, it is not fine clothes and a grand palace, a beautiful face, or deeds of fame which make one great. Those to whom all these things appertain are, for the most part, little worth. To do well is so easy to them, that what merit have they to boast? The truly great is one who suffers, and yet does well; who goes through toil and travail, sorrow and grief, and bears it in silence, and in secret, and has no fame and no praise of men to sound sweetly in his ears." Kriselda listened to her words full of excitement, for it seemed as if a chord in her heart had been touched which none had ever reached before. And the picture the old beggar woman had drawn was nearer her mind's bright ideal than any image she had approached heretofore. "What, then, is this same travail and grief?" she asked, with simplicity. "If you really desire to know with good desire," answered the beggar woman, "take this end of a hank of yarn, and follow its leading, winding it up as you go along, till you come to the bobbin, where it is made fast; and when you arrive there you will know what travail and grief are. But you must go forth alone." Kriselda dismissed all her maidens, and taking the yarn, cheerfully followed the steep path through which it led. On it led her, and on and on. Her light garments were rent by the thorns and briars, and her hands and delicate cheeks too; her feet were cut by the stones of the way, and her knees began to tremble with fatigue. Darkness fell around, and loneliness crept over her, with fear, for she had never been in the forest by night alone before; but still the yarn led on, and on, and it was thick night before she reached the bobbin, where it was made fast. When she reached the place a dim light gleamed around, and in the midst of the dim light a Kreuzstöcklein [96]: and on the cross, One fairer than the sons of men, but wan and wayworn, even as the fainting beggar woman; His brow rent by thorns, even as her own; His knees bent with weariness; His body wasted by want. But in His face the majesty and sweetness she had sought so long; the perfect ideal of her heart, which none who had approached her had ever presented before. "This, then, is He for whom my soul longed!" she cried, and clasped her hands. "I have found Him, and will not leave Him more! But who is He? what does He here? and is it He who knows travail and grief?" "In truth, have I known travail and grief!" He sighed, and the silvery tones of His plaintive voice filled her with unutterable joy; "and, in truth, must all those who would abide with Me know travail and grief too!" She strained her ears that she might hear those sweet notes again, but she listened in vain; only its echoes seemed to live on in her heart, as though they would never die there. But without, there was no sound, save of the terrible Föhn [97] moaning through the tall black pines, and drifting round her masses of heaped-up snow, which had long lain by the wayside. Even the Kreuzstöcklein she saw no more, nor the dim light, nor knew how to find the way home. All alone, with terror only for her companion, she stood and wondered what that cross could mean, and who He could be who hung thereon. Soon she ceased to wonder, for numbness crept over her, and unconsciousness which was not sleep. When she opened her eyes again the grey light of morning had fallen around, and there was a sound as of men in deadly combat. A terrible sound, yet less terrible than the deathly stillness of the night. It was a hermit and a giant who strove, as men who give no quarter, and yet neither prevailed against the other. The giant was accoutred in burnished steel; and his polished weapons flashed with angry fire. The hermit bore no arms--or rather, those he bore were invisible, for when he wielded them you saw the giant shrink, though you saw not the blow; and, in like manner, many a stroke of the giant's sword was harmlessly warded off, though no shield was seen. "Wherefore fight you so furiously?" said Kriselda, at length. "Put up your arms, and be at peace." "We fight for you, fair maiden!" said both, speaking together. "For me!" cried Kriselda. "Yes, even for you," said the giant; "anon you were lying here asleep, and I would have carried you to rule over my castle, when up started this puny man in brown, and dared me to lay finger on you; and till you have pronounced which of us you approve, neither can prevail. Say only one word, and I will hurl him down the cliff, like this pebble, with one spurning of my foot; and you shall come and reign with me in my castle, where I will fulfil your every desire." A brave enthusiasm kindled his eye as he spoke; his well-knit frame, terrible in its strength, was bowed to hear her word; and his arms, anon so furiously raised, were now folded before her, seemingly awaiting his life to be rekindled at her lips. Kriselda looked at him, and met his rapt gaze, and asked herself was there not here the strength, the majesty, the nobility, her soul had desired. Almost she had spoken the word he craved. But first she addressed the hermit. "And you--why measured you your strength with him for my sake?" "Because," said the hermit, meekly, "I am the servant of Him who knows travail and grief; because you have lifted up your eyes to Him, and to all such He sends help, that they may be strengthened to follow Him." Then the dim light seemed once more present to Kriselda's mind, and she recalled the Kreuzstöcklein, and the majesty and beauty of Him who hung thereon; and the musical tones of His plaintive voice which said, "Truly I have known travail and grief; and all they who would abide with Me must know grief and travail too!" The giant's nobility paled before the thought; she looked at him again, and his strength and his power had lost their charm, for the image of One stronger than he was present to her mind. Then she turned and followed the hermit, and said, "Where is He whom I seek? Take me to Him." The hermit raised his hand and beckoned her to follow still higher up the steep path. But the giant was forced to sheathe his sword and to depart alone; Kriselda had spoken, and he knew he could not prevail against the hermit contrary to her will. He turned away sorrowful, casting in his mind who it could be whose attractions were more powerful on Kriselda than his own; and as he walked he determined he would not sleep or eat till he had found out Him who hung upon the Kreuzstöcklein, and knew travail and grief. Kriselda, meantime, followed the hermit to where the crystal brook flowed, and there he signed her with the token of Him who knew travail and grief. Then he took her to where other maidens dwelt who loved that same ideal; and there she lived many years, waiting for the time when the hermit promised her she should be united with Him for ever. That day came at last; and she called her sisters round her, and told them the joy of her soul. Already she saw a dim light, as on that first night under the black pines, and she knew it was the dawn of the bright unending day, and the soft voice that had spoken to her there was calling to her to come to Him. But when they carried her earthly form out to burial, they found one already lying in the grave. It was the giant, who had journeyed thus far, and had there laid him down and died in the place where Kriselda should be laid; and he held, clasped to his breast, the Kreuzstöcklein of the black pine-forest. THE GOLDEN PEARS. There was once a poor peasant of Bürs who had nothing in the world but three sons, and a pear-tree that grew before his cottage. But as his pears were very fine, and the Kaiser was very fond of them, he said to his sons one day, that he would send the Kaiser a basket of them for a present. So he plaited a nice Krattle [98] and lined it with fresh leaves, and laid the pears on them, and sent his eldest son with it to make a present to the Kaiser, giving him strict charge to take care and not let any one rob him of them by the way. "Leave me alone, father!" replied the boy; "I know how to take care of my own. It isn't much any one will get out of me by asking; I can find as good an answer as any one." So he closed up the mouth of the basket with fresh leaves and went out to take the pears to the Kaiser. It was autumn, and the sun struck hot all through the midday hours, and at last coming to a wayside fountain, he sat down to drink and rest. A little doubled-up old woman was washing some rags at the same fountain, and singing a ditty all out of tune. "A witch, I'll be bound!" said the boy to himself. "She'll be trying to get my pears, by hook or by crook, but I'll be even with her!" "A fair day, my lad!" said the little old wife; "but a heavy burden you have to carry. What may it be with which you are so heavily laden?" "A load of sweepings off the road, to see if I can turn a penny by it," replied the boy, in a moody tone, intended to arrest further questioning. "Road-sweepings?" repeated the hag, incredulously. "Belike you don't mean it?" "But I do mean it," retorted the boy. "Oh, well, if you mean it, no doubt it is so. You will see when you get to your journey's end!" and she went on washing and singing her ditty that was all out of tune. "There's mischief in her tone," said the boy to himself, "that's clear. But at all events I'm all right: I haven't even let her look at the fruit with her evil eye, so there's no harm done." But he felt perplexed and uneasy, so it was no good taking rest, and he went on to the end of his journey. Though he was only a country lad, the Kaiser was so fond of pears that he had only to say he had brought some to obtain immediate admittance to his presence. "You have brought me some pears, have you, my boy?" said the Kaiser, in a tone of satisfaction; and he licked his lips with pleasurable expectation. "Yes, your majesty; and some of the finest golden pears in your majesty's whole empire." The Kaiser was so delighted to hear this that he removed the covering of leaves himself. But proportionately great was his fury when he found that under the leaves was nothing but offensive sweepings off the road! The attendants who stood by were all equally indignant, and waited not for an order from the Kaiser to carry the boy off to close prison, in punishment for so great an insult as he appeared to have offered. "It is all that old hag by the fountain," he said to himself, the first day and the second; but when the penitential discipline of the prison led him to think more closely over his own conduct, he acknowledged that he had himself been in the wrong in telling a falsehood. Meantime, his father, finding he did not return, said to his other sons, "You see what it is to be as wide-awake as your elder brother; he has obviously taken care of his basket of golden pears, and so pleased the Kaiser that he has given him some great office near his person, and made him a rich man." "I am just as sharp as he," said the second brother: "give me a Krattle of the pears, and let me take them to the Kaiser, and become a rich man too; only I won't keep it all for myself. I will send for you, and make you a rich man too." "Well said, my son," replied the father; "for I have worked hard for you all my life, and it is meet that in my old age you should share your ease, which I helped you to attain, with me." And as the season for pears had just come round again, he plaited another Krattle, like the first, and lined it with fresh leaves, and laid in it a goodly show of the golden pears. The second son took the basket, and went his way even in better spirits than his elder brother, for he had the conviction of his success to encourage him. But the sun was as hot as it had been the previous year, and when, in the middle of the third day, he came to the fountain by the wayside he was glad to sit down to rest and refresh himself. The doubled-up old woman stood washing her rags at the fountain and singing her ditty all out of tune. She stopped her croaking, however, to ask him the same question as she had asked his brother; and, as he and his brother had agreed together on what they considered a clever answer, he now gave her the same, which she received by repeating the menace she had ejaculated the first time. And when he brought his basket to the Kaiser it also was found to be filled with street-sweepings instead of pears! With even more of indignation they hurried him off to prison, putting him in the next cell to his brother. Meantime the year was wearing away, and the promised tidings of good fortune not reaching the father, he got very uneasy. The third son had no pretension to the sharpness his brothers boasted. He was a very dull boy, and often had to endure being laughed at by the others for his slow parts. "What a pity it is you are so heavy and stupid!" his father now would often say. "If I only dared trust you, how glad I should be to send you to see what has befallen your brothers!" The lad was used to hear himself pronounced good-for-nothing, and so he did not take much notice of these observations at first, but seeing his father really in distress, his affectionate heart was moved, and he one day summoned courage to say he would go and see if he could not find his brothers. "Do you really think you can keep yourself out of harm's way?" exclaimed his father, glad to find him propose to undertake the adventure. "I will do whatever you tell me," replied the lad. "Well, you shan't go empty-handed, at all events," said the father. And, as the pears were just ripe again, he laid the choicest of the year's stock in another Krattle, and sent him on his way. The boy walked along, looking neither to right nor left, but with his heart beating, lest he should come across the "harm" out of the way of which he had promised to keep himself. All went smoothly, however, except that he got terribly scorched by the sun, and when he reached the fountain, he was glad to sit down to rest and refresh himself. The old wife was washing her rags in the water, and singing, as she patted the linen, a ditty all out of tune. "Here comes a third of those surly dogs, I declare!" she said to herself, as she saw him arrive with another lot of the magnificent pears. "I suppose he'll be making game of me too--as if I didn't know the scent of ripe golden pears from road-sweepings! a likely matter! But if they enjoy making game of me, I have a splendid revenge to enjoy upon them, so I oughtn't to complain." "Good-morrow, little mother!" said the boy, in his blunt way, ere he sat down, at the same time not omitting to doff his cap, as he had been taught, because she happened to be old and ugly--matters of which he had no very nice appreciation. "He's better mannered than the other louts, for all he doesn't look so bright-faced," said the hag to herself; and she stopped her discordant song to return his greeting. "May I sit down here a bit, please, good mother? asked the boy, thinking in his simplicity the fountain must belong to her. "That you may, and take a draught of the cool water too," replied the dame, wondrously propitiated by his civility. "And what may it be with which you are so laden, my pretty boy?" she continued. "It ought to be a precious burden to be worth carrying so far as you seem to have come. What have you in your Krattle?" "Precious are the contents, I believe you," replied the simple boy; "at least, so one would think from the store my father sets by them. They are true golden pears, and he says there are no finer grown in the whole kingdom; and I am taking them to the Kaiser because he is very fond of them." "Only ripe pears, and yet so heavy?" returned the old wife; "one would say it was something heavier than pears. But you'll see when you come to your journey's end." The boy assured her they were nothing but pears, and as one of his father's injunctions had been not to lose time by the way, he paid the old dame a courteous greeting and continued his journey. When the servants saw another peasant boy from Bürs come to the palace with the story that he had pears for the king, they said, "No, no! we have had enough of that! you may just turn round and go back." But the poor simple boy was so disappointed at the idea of going back to be laughed at for not fulfilling his message, that he sank down on the door-step and sobbed bitterly, and there he remained sobbing till the Kaiser came out. The Kaiser had his daughter with him, and when she saw the boy sobbing, she inquired what ailed him; and learnt it was another boy from Bürs come to insult the Kaiser with a basket of road-sweepings, and asked if they should take him off to prison too. "But I have got pears!" sobbed the boy; "and my father says there are no finer in the empire." "Yes, yes; we know that by heart. That's what the others said!" replied the servants, jeering; and they would have dragged him away. "But won't you look at my pears first, fair lady? the pears that I have brought all this long way for the Kaiser? My father will be so sorry!" for he was too ignorant to feel abashed at the presence of the princess, and he spoke to her with as much confidence as if she had been a village maiden. The princess was struck by the earnestness with which he spoke, and decided to see the contents of his basket. The moment he heard her consent, he walked straight up with his Krattle, quite regardless of the whole troop of lacqueys, strong in the justice of his cause. The princess removed the covering of leaves, and discovered that what he had brought were golden pears indeed, for each pear, large as it was, was of solid shining metal! "These are pears indeed worthy to set before the Kaiser!" she said, and presented them to her father. The Kaiser was pleased to see his favourite fruit so splendidly immortalized, and ordered the pears to be laid up in his cabinet of curiosities; but to the boy, for his reward, he ordered that whatever he asked should be given. "All I want is to find my two brothers, who hold some great office at court," said the boy. "Your brothers hold office in prison, if they are those I suspect," said the Kaiser, and commanded that they should be brought. The boys immediately ran to embrace each other; and the Kaiser made them each recount all their adventures. "You see how dangerous it is to depart from the truth!" he said, when they had done. "And never forget that, with all your cleverness, you might have remained in prison to the end of your days but for the straightforward simplicity of him you thought so inferior to yourselves." Then he ordered that the tree which brought forth such excellent pears should be transplanted to his palace; and to the father and his three sons he gave places among his gardeners, where they lived in plenty and were well content. HOW THE POOREST BECAME THE RICHEST [99]. There was once a poor peasant, named Taland, who lived in a poor cottage in the Walserthal, a valley of Vorarlberg. He was as poor in wits as in fortune, so that he was continually making himself the laughing-stock of his neighbours; yet, as he possessed a certain sort of cunning, which fortune was pleased to favour, he got on better in the long run than many a wiser man. Plodding along steadily, and living frugally, Taland, in process of time, laid by enough money to buy a cow; and a cow he bought without even stopping to consider that he had no means of pasturing it. The cow, however, provided for that by her own instinct; there were plenty of good pastures in the neighbourhood, and the cow was not slow to discover them. Wherever the grass was freshest and sweetest, thither she wandered, and by this token Taland had no difficulty in finding her out at milking time; and in the whole country round there was no sleeker or better-favoured animal. But the neighbours at whose expense she fed so well in course of time grew angry; and finding remonstrance vain, they met together and determined to kill the cow; and, that none might have to bear the blame of killing her more than another, every one of them stuck his knife into her. By this means, not only was poor Taland's cow destroyed, but even the hide was riddled with holes, and so rendered useless. Nevertheless, Taland skinned his cow, and plodded away with the hide to the nearest tanner, as if he had not the sense to be conscious that it was spoilt. The tanner was not at home, but his wife was able to decide without him, that there was no business to be done with such goods, and she sent him away with a mocking laugh, bidding him remember she dealt in hides, and not in sieves. Taland, however, had come a long way, and having no money to buy food, he begged so piteously for a morsel of refreshment, that the good wife could not refuse, and having spread a table before him with good cheer, went on about her business. Taland, delighted with the spread, determined to do justice to it; and as he sat and ate he saw the tanner's son, an urchin full of tricks, hide himself, while his mother's back was turned, in an old corn-bin which stood before the door. He went on eating and drinking, and watching the corn-bin, and still the boy never came out, till at last, he rightly judged, he had fallen asleep. Meantime, having finished his meal, he turned to take leave of the tanner's wife; and then, as he went away, he said, quite cursorily, "If you have no use for that old corn-bin yonder--it's just the thing I want--you may as well give it to me, and you won't have sent me away empty-handed." "What! you want that lumbering, rotten old corn-bin?" cried the tanner's wife; and she laughed more heartily than even at the riddled cow-hide. "And you would carry it all the way home on your shoulders?" The peasant nodded a stupid assent, without speaking. "Then take it, pray, and be welcome; for I just wanted to get rid of the unsightly old rubbish!" Taland thanked her, and loaded the chest on his shoulder, but carefully, lest he should wake the child too soon. And carefully he continued to walk along with it till the tan-yard was left far, far out of sight. Then he stopped short, and, setting the corn-bin down with a jerk calculated to wake its inmate, he holloaed out,-- "I be going to fling the old corn-bin down the precipice!" "Stop, stop! I'm inside!" cried the child, but with a tone of conviction that he had only to ask, to be let out. This was not Taland's game, who wanted to give him a thorough frightening; so he shouted again, taking no heed of the child's voice,-- "I be going to fling the old corn-bin down the precipice!" "Stop! stop! I tell you; I'm inside it!" repeated the boy, in a louder tone, thinking he had not made himself heard before. "Who be you? and what be you to me?" replied Taland, in a stupid tone of indifference. "I be going to chuck the old corn-bin down the precipice." "Oh, stop! for heaven's sake, stop!" screamed the now really affrighted child; "stop, and spare me! Only let me out, and mother will give you ever such a heap of gold!" "It's a long way back to 'mother,'" replied the peasant, churlishly. "I'd much rather chuck the old thing over, and have done with it. You're not worth enough to repay the trouble." "Oh, but I am though!" answered the boy, in a positive tone. "There's nothing mother wouldn't give to save my life, I know!" "What would she give, d'you think? Would she give five hundred thalers, now?" "Ay, that she would!" "Well, it's a longsome way; but if you promise I shall have five hundred thalers, I don't mind if I oblige you." "You shall have them, safe enough, never fear!" On this promise, Taland took the boy home, and made up a story of his surprise at finding him at the bottom of the old chest, and how hardly he had saved his life. The mother, overjoyed at the idea of her son being restored to her under such circumstances, readily counted out the five hundred thalers, and sent Taland home a richer man than when his fortune consisted of a cow. Elated with his good fortune, our hero determined to have a bit of fun with his spiteful neighbours, and accordingly sat himself down in an arbour, where there was a large round table, in front of the Wirthshaus, and spreading his heap of gold before him, amused himself with counting it out. Of course the sight attracted all the peasants of the place, who were just gathering for a gossip on their way home from work. "And where did you get such a heap of gold from?" asked a dozen excited voices at once. "From the sale of the cow-hide, to be sure," replied Taland, in an inanimate voice. "What! the cow-hide all riddled with holes?" vociferated his interlocutors, in a chorus of ridicule. "To be sure; that's just what made it so valuable," persisted Taland, confidently. "What! the tanner gives more for a hide all full of holes than for a sound one?" "What's the use of asking so many silly questions?" returned the imperturbable peasant "Do you see the money? and should I have got such a sum for an ordinary cow-hide? If you can answer these two questions of mine, you can answer your own for yourselves;" and gathering up his gold, he walked away with a stolid look which defied further interrogations. The village wiseacres were all struck with the same idea. If riddled cowhides fetched five hundred thalers apiece, the best way to make a fortune was to kill all the cows in the commune, pierce their skins all over with holes, and carry them to the tanner. Every one went home to calculate what he would make by the venture; and the morning was all too long coming, so eager were they to put their plan into execution. Taland, having now plenty of money, had nothing to do next day but to dress himself in his feast-day clothes and play at dominoes in the Bier-garten; but though this was a favourite enjoyment, far sweeter was that of observing the running hither and thither of his spiteful, mocking neighbours, slaughtering their sleek kine--the provision of their future lives--skinning them, and destroying the very skins out of which some small compensation might have been earned. Taland hardly knew how to contain his inclination to laugh, as he saw them caught in his trap so coarsely baited; and the good landlord, as he saw the irrepressible giggle again and again convulse his stupid features, thought that the gain of the five hundred thalers had fairly turned his weak head. The peasants had gone off to the tan-yard with their riddled cow-hides, merrily shouting and boasting; and Taland sat at home, drinking and laughing. But it was a different story by-and-by. There was a sound like the roar of a wild beast, which stopped even Taland's inclination to laugh, and made him shrink in his chair. It was the lament of the long file of peasants returning from the tan-yard from their bootless errand, filling the air as they went along with yells of fury at their ruin, and imprecations and threats of vengeance on him who had led them into the snare. Taland had meant to have had his laugh over their discomfiture, but finding them in this mood, he thought his wisest course was to keep out of their sight, lest they should take summary vengeance on him. So he found a corner to hide himself in; and he thus overheard their debate on the means of punishing their deceiver. "He's such shifts for getting out of every thing, that one doesn't know where to have him," said the noisiest speaker; and the rest re-echoed the sentiment. "Ay; it'll never do to let him get scent of what we're up to!" "But how to avoid it?" "Take him asleep." "Ay; take him when he's asleep; that's the way!" "Go up the stairs and rattle at his window, and when he comes out, knock him on the head!" "And every one have a go at him, as we did at his cow." "That's the plan!" "And the sooner the better." "This very night, before we go to bed!" "To be sure; we won't sleep tamely upon such an affront." "No; we'll make an end of it, that we will!" "And it's time we did." "Another day would be unbearable!" "Another hour is bad enough; but we must keep quiet till he's well asleep." "Yes; there's nothing to be done till midnight." "We'll meet again at midnight, then." "All right; we shall all be there!" "Good-bye, then, till midnight!" "Good-bye, till midnight; good-bye!" They all spoke at once, and the whole dark plan was concocted in a few minutes; then they dispersed to their homes with resolute steps. Taland listened to the sound with beating heart, and as soon as silence once more prevailed, he stole stealthily homewards. His wife was sitting over her spinning-wheel. "I've caught a cold wearing these holiday clothes out of their turn," said Taland; "will you do me the favour to sleep in the window-sill, and keep that flapping shutter close, good wife?" "With all my heart," responded the compliant spouse; and thus disposed, they went to rest. At midnight the villagers came, faithful to their appointment, in a strong body, and mounted the stairs [100] as quietly as might be. The foremost pushed open the shutter, and exclaimed, "Why, here's the old idiot lying ready for us, across the window-sill!" "Then we're spared the trouble of hunting for him," exclaimed the next. "So here goes!" cried all together; and they showered their blows on the devoted body of the old wife, while Taland, comfortably enveloped in his coverlet, once more laughed at the success of his deceit, and the discomfiture of his foes. Towards morning he rose, and taking up the dead body, placed it in a chair, and bore it along, together with the old spinning-wheel, a good distance down the high road; and there he left it, while he sat behind a bush to see what would happen. Presently a fine lord came along the road driving a noble chariot. "Holloa, good woman! get out of the way!" shouted the lord, while yet at a considerable distance; for he thought the old woman was silly, spinning in the roadway. But the corpse moved not for his shouting. "Holloa! holloa, I say! you'll be killed! move, can't you?" he cried, thinking she was deaf, and hadn't heard his first appeal. But still the corpse moved not. "Get out of the way! get out of the road! can't you?" at last fairly screamed the lord; for, never dreaming but that the woman would move in time, he had not reined in his fiery steeds--and now it was all too late! On one side went the old lady in the chair, and on the other side the fragments of the spinning-wheel, while the chariot dashed wildly on between them. "What have I done?" said the lord, alighting from his chariot as soon as he could stop, and looking round him in wild despair. "Why, you've run over and killed my old mother! that's what you've done!" said Taland, emerging from his hiding-place. "And now you must come with me before the judge." "Really, I meant no harm," pleaded the good lord; "I called to her to get out of the way, and I couldn't help it if she was deaf. But I'll make you what compensation you like. What do you say to accepting my chariot full of gold, and the horses and all, to drive home with?" "Why, if you say you couldn't help it, I suppose you couldn't," replied Taland. "I don't want to hurt you; and since you offer fair terms, I'm willing to accept your chariot full of gold, and the horses to drive it home. I'll square the account to your satisfaction." So the lord took him home to his castle and filled up the chariot with gold, and put the reins in his hands, and sent him home richer and merrier than if the neighbours had never attempted his life. When these same envious neighbours, however, saw him coming home in the chariot full of gold, driving the prancing horses quite gravitêtisch [101], they knew not what to make of it. And that, too, just as they were congratulating themselves that they had made an end of him! "It must be his ghost!" they cried. There was no other way of accounting for the reappearance. But as he drove nearer, there was no denying that it was his very self in flesh and blood! "Where do you come from? where did you get all that heap of money from? and what story are you going to palm off on us this time?" were questions which were showered down on him like hail. Taland knew how easily they let themselves be ensnared, and that the real story would do as well this time as any he could make up, so he told them exactly what had happened, and then whipped his horses into a canter which dispersed them right and left, while he drove home as gravitêtisch as before. Nor was he wrong in expecting his bait to take. With one accord the peasants all went home and killed their wives, and set them, with their spinningwheels before them, all along the road. Of course, however, no lucky chance occurred such as Taland's--no file of noblemen driving lordly chariots, and silly enough to mistake the dead for the living, came by; and while Taland was rich enough to marry the best woman in the place, they had all to bury their wives and live alone in their desolated homes. To have been so tricked was indeed enough to raise their ire; and the only consolation amid their gloom was to meet and concoct some plan for taking signal and final vengeance. This was at last found. They were to seize him by night, as before; but this time they were not to beat him to death in the dark, but keep him bound till daylight, and make sure of their man, then bind him in a sack and throw him over the precipice of the Hoch Gerach. As Taland was not by to overhear and provide against the arrangement, it was carried out to the letter this time; and all tied in a sack the struggling victim was borne along in triumph towards the Hoch Gerach. They had already passed the village of St. Gerold, and the fatal gorge forced through the wall of living rock by the incessant world-old wear of rushing torrents was nearly reached. Taland, paralyzed with fear and exhaustion, had desisted from his contortions for very weariness. The Häusergruppe [102] of Felsenau, standing like a sentinel on guard of the narrow hollow, had yet to be passed. It was near midday, and the toil of the ascent had been great. Not one of the party objected to take a snatch of rest and a sip of brandy to give them courage to complete the deed in hand. While they sat drinking in the shade of the cottage which stood Felsenau in lieu of a Wirthshaus, Taland was left lying on a grassy bank in the sun. About the same time a goatherd, driving his flock into Bludenz to be milked, came by that way, and seeing the strangely-shaped sack with something moving inside, arrested his steps to examine into the affair. Taland, finding some one meddling with the mouth of the sack, holloaed out,-- "List'ee! I'll have nothing to do with the princess!" "What princess?" inquired the goatherd. "Why, the princess I was to marry. B'aint you the king?" "What king?" again asked the goatherd, more and more puzzled. "I can't talk while I'm stifled in here," replied Taland. "Let me out, and I'll tell you all about it." The curious goatherd released the captive from the bag, and he told his tale as follows. "The king has got a beautiful daughter--so beautiful that such a number of suitors come after her she cannot decide between them all. At last the king got tired, and said he would decide for her; and this morning he proclaimed that whoever could bear being carried about for seven hours in this sack should have her, be he peasant or prince. So I thought I might try my luck at it as well as another; and those chaps you hear talking in the little house yonder have been carrying me about for three hours, but I can't stand more of it, and away I go;" and he looked up anxiously to see if the bait had taken; for he wanted the other to propose to get into the sack, as, if he had walked away and left it empty, he knew the villagers would pursue and overtake him. Nor was he mistaken in his calculation. "It doesn't seem so hard to bear," said the goatherd, after some moments' consideration. "Would you like to try?" inquired Taland, anxiously; "it won't be so bad for you, as, if you get in now, the men won't perceive we have changed places, and you'll get the benefit of three hours for nothing." "You're really very kind!" responded the goatherd, drawing the sack over him; "I don't know how to thank you enough. I'm sure I can stand four hours easily enough, for the sake of being reckoned a king's son at the end. I shan't want the goats, however, when I'm married to a princess, so pray take them at a gift--only make fast the cords of the sack so that the men may not perceive that it has been meddled with." Taland tied up the sack exactly as it had been before, and drove home the flock of goats. He was scarcely out of sight when the men, now well rested, came out, and having taken up the sack again, carried it up the Hoch Gerach; and just as the unhappy goatherd within fancied he was reaching the top of some high terrace leading to the royal palace, bang, bang from rock to rock he found himself dashed by the relentless villagers! Confident that the job was now effectually completed, they trooped home full of rejoicing over their feat. The first thing that met their eye, however, was Taland seated before his door, just as if nothing had happened, milking the goats which browsed around him, making a goodly show. Too much awed at the sight to rush at and seize him, they once more asked him to give explanation of his unlooked-for return, and of how he became possessed of such a fine herd of goats. "Nothing easier!" replied Taland, gravitêtisch. "Where shall I begin?" "From where you were thrown over the mountain-side." "All right!" pursued Taland. "Well, then, as you may suppose, I struggled hard to get out of the sack, but it was too tough, and I could do nothing with it at first; but, by-and-by, from knocking against the jutting rocks again and again, it got a rent, and this rent I was able to tear open wide, so that by the time I got to the bottom there was a big hole, big enough to get out by. And where do you think I found myself when I got out? In the enchanted regions of the underground world, where the sky is tenfold as blue as it is here, and the meadows tenfold as green! It was so beautiful to look at that I gladly wandered on a little space. Presently I found a way that led up home again; but I had no mind to come away from the beautiful country till I saw, climbing the rocks by the side of the path, numbers of goats, much finer than any goats we ever see in these parts." "So they are! so they are!" chimed in the gullible multitude. "Then I thought it would be fine to bring a flock of such fine goats home--and, after all, it was easy to go back again when I wanted to see that deep blue sky and those rich pastures again; so home I came. Here am I, and here are the goats; and if you don't believe I got them there, you can go and fetch some thence and compare them." "But shall we really find such goats if we go?" eagerly inquired the credulous villagers. "To be sure you will--and sheep, and oxen, and cows too, without number." "Cows too! Oh, let's come and supply ourselves, and make good our losses! But first show the way you came up by." "Oh, it's a long, steep, weary way, and would take you two days to get down! Much the nearest way is to jump down the side of the Hoch Gerach." "But are you sure we shan't hurt ourselves? Didn't you get hurt at all?" "Not a bit. Feel me; I'm quite sound." "To be sure, you couldn't hurt falling on to such soft, beautiful meadows!" they replied; and off they set, only eager which should reach the Hoch Gerach first, and which should be the first to make the bold spring, and which should have the first pick and choice of the fair flocks and herds in the enchanted world underground! Slap! bang! plump! they all went over the side of the Hoch Gerach, one after the other, never to return! And Taland thus alone remained to inherit the houses and goods of the whole village, all for himself--and, from being the poorest of all, became possessed of the riches of all. THE END. NOTES [1] It is common in England to speak of Tirol as "the Tyrol;" I have used the name according to the custom of the country itself. [2] The name for "the wild huntsman" in North and South Tirol. [3] The Beatrìk of the Italian Tirol is, however, a milder spirit than the Wilder Jäger of the northern provinces. He is also called il cacciatore della pia caccia, because he is supposed only to hunt evil spirits. [4] The name in Vorarlberg. [5] The three helpers against the plague. There are many churches so called in Tirol. [6] "Schliess die Kammer fein, Sonst kommt der Norg herein." [7] The Meierhof was the homestead of a small proprietor standing midway between the peasant and the noble. [8] Mistress of the Meierhof. [9] Literally, "high lakes;" i. e. lakes on a high mountain level. There are three such in the valley of Matsch, the inundations of which often work sad havoc. [10] "Morgen oder Heut Kommt die Zahlzeit." [11] The "home of the wolves;" a nickname given to Matsch, because still infested by wolves. [12] On Midsummer-day. [13] The local names of two favourite kinds of grass. [14] St. Martin is considered the patron of mountain pastures in Tirol. [15] That the Norgs should be at one time represented as incapable of comprehending what death was, and that at another their race should be spoken of as dying out, is but one of those inconsistencies which must constantly occur when it is attempted to describe a supernatural order of things by an imagery taken from the natural order. [16] From tarnen, to conceal, and Haut, skin; a tight-fitting garment which was supposed to have the property of rendering the wearer invisible. It was likewise sometimes supposed to convey great strength also. [17] Literally, "crystal palace." Burg means a palace no less than a citadel or fortress; the imperial palace in Vienna has no other name. [18] Ignaz von Zingerle, in discussing the sites which various local traditions claim for the Rosengarten of King Lareyn, or Laurin, says, "Whoever has once enjoyed the sight of the Dolomite peaks of the Schlern bathed in the rosy light of the evening glow cannot help fancying himself at once transported into the world of myths, and will be irresistibly inclined to place the fragrant Rose-garden on its strangely jagged heights, studded by nature with violet amethysts, and even now carpeted with the most exquisite mountain-flora of Tirol." [19] Cornfield. [20] Nobleman's residence. [21] In the mediæval poems the shade of the Lindenbaum is the favourite scene of gallant adventures. [22] The heroes of the old German poetry are frequently called by the epithet "sword"--ein Degen stark; ein Degen hehr; Wittich der Degen, &c., &c. [23] Hildebrand, son of Duke Herbrand and brother of the Monk Ilsau, one of the persons of the romance of "Kriemhild's Rose-garden," is the Nestor of German myths. He was the instructor of Dietrich von Bern (Theodoric of Verona). We find him sought as the wise counsellor in various undertakings celebrated in the mediæval epics; he is reputed to have lived to the age of 200 years. [24] This was commonly the office of the daughter of the house. [25] This would appear to have been the usual custom in the middle ages after a meal. [26] See note, p. 35. [27] The German legends are inclined to extol the heroism of Dietrich von Bern, better known to us as Theodoric, King of the Visigoths, who, after his conquests in Italy, built a palace at Verona, and made it his seat of government; but the traditions of Verona ascribe his great strength and success, both as a hunter and warrior, to a compact with the Evil One. His connexion with the Arians, his opposition towards the Popes, and his violent destruction of the churches of Verona, were sufficient to convince the popular mind at his date that his strength was not from above. Procopius relates that his remorse for the death of Symmachus haunted him so, that one day when the head of a great fish was served at table, it appeared to him as the head of his murdered relative, and he became so horrified that he was never able to eat any thing afterwards. The Veronese tradition is, that by his pact with the devil, evil spirits served him in the form of dogs, horses, and huntsmen, until the time came that they drove him forth into their own abode (Mattei Verona Illustrata). In the church of St. Zeno at Verona this legend may be seen sculptured in bas-relief over the door. In the mythology of some parts of Germany he is identified, or confounded, with the Wild Huntsman (Börner, Sagen aus dem Orlagau, pp. 213, 216, 236). In the Heldenbuch he is called the son of an evil spirit. He is there distinguished by a fiery breath, with which he overcomes dwarfs and giants; but he is said to be ultimately carried off into the wilds by a demon-horse, upon which he has every day to fight with two terrible dragons until the Judgment Day. Nork cites a passage from Luther's works, in which he speaks of him (cursorily) as the incarnation of evil, showing how he was regarded in Germany at his day ("It is as if I should undertake to make Christ out of Dietrich von Bern"--Als wenn ich aus Dietrich von Bern Christum machen wollte). [28] Wigand, man of valour. [29] We often find the heroes' trusty swords called by a particular name: thus Orlando's was called Durindarda, it is so inscribed in his statue in the porch of the Duomo at Verona; and the name of King Arthur's will occur to every one's memory. [30] Him of Verona. [31] This hardening power of dragons' blood was one of the mediæval fables. [32] Bearing a red banner thus was equivalent to a declaration of hostile intent. [33] These it was knightly custom for the vanquished to surrender to him who had overcome him. [34] The Styrian. [35] A Schirmschlag was a scientifically-manoeuvred stroke, by which he who dealt it concealed himself behind his shield while he aimed at any part of his adversary's body which presented an undefended mark. But Theodoric drew the stroke without even having a shield for his own defence. [36] The Norgs are not always spoken of as pagans; many stories of them seem to consider them as amenable to Christian precepts. The ancient church of the village of St. Peter, near the Castle of Tirol, is said by popular tradition to have been built by them, and under peculiar difficulties; for while they were at work, a giant who lived in Schloss Tirol used to come every night and destroy what they had done in the day, till at last they agreed to assemble in great force, and complete the whole church in one day, which they did; and then, being a complete work offered to the service of God, the giant had no more power over it. [37] It was an old German custom that no flagons or vessels of the drinks should be put on the table; but as soon as a glass was emptied it was refilled by watchful attendants. [38] Lautertrank, by the description of its composition, seems to have been nearly identical with our claret-cup. Moras was composed of the juice of mulberries mixed with good old wine. [39] Concerning Theodoric's fiery breath, see note, p. 39. All the myths about him mention it. The following description of it occurs in the legends of "Criemhild's Rosengarten:"-- "Wie ein Haus das dampfet, wenn man es zündet an, So musste Dietrich rauchen, der zornige Mann. Man sah eine rothe Flamme geh'n aus seinem Mund." ["As a house smokes when it is set on fire, so was the breath of Theodoric, the man of great anger; a red flame might be seen darting from his mouth."] [40] The power of the Norgs to pass in and out through the rock is one of the characteristics most prominently fabled of them. Sometimes we hear of doors which opened spontaneously at their approach, but more often the marvel of their passing in and out without any apparent opening is descanted on. [41] The value and efficacy ascribed in the old myths to a virgin's blessing is one form in which the regard for maiden honour was expressed. [42] The dwarfs who were considered the genii of the mineral wealth of the country were a sub-class of the genus dwarf. Their myths are found more abundantly in North Tirol, where the chief mines were worked. [43] A deserted mine is called in local dialect taub. [44] Miners. [45] i.e. Joseph of Goign, a village near St. Johann. Such modes of designation are found for every one, among the people in Tirol. [46] Ann. [47] Every body wears feathers according to their fancy in their "Alpine hats" here, but in Tirol every such adornment is a distinction won by merit, whether in target-shooting, wrestling, or any other manly sport; and, like the medals of the soldier, can only be worn by those who have made good their claim. [48] Hof, in Tirol, denotes the proprietorship of a comfortable homestead. [49] To Spaniards the outline of a mountain-ridge suggests the edge of a saw--sierra; to the Tirolese the more indented sky-line familiar to them recalls the teeth of a comb. [50] Garnets and carbuncles are found in Tirol in the Zillerthal, and the search after them has given rise to some fantastic tales--of which later. [51] Carbuncle. [52] Pray for him. [53] District. [54] Wild Georgey. [55] In some parts of Tirol where the pastures are on steep slopes, or reached by difficult paths--particularly the Zillerthal, on which the scene of the present story borders--it is the custom to decide which of the cattle is fit for the post of leader of the herd by trial of battle. The victor is afterwards marched through the commune to the sound of bells and music, and decked with garlands of flowers. [56] "Just as I wanted you." [57] Little Frederick. [58] A local expression for a village fête. [59] The old race of innkeepers in Tirol were a singularly trustworthy, honourable set, acting as a sort of elder or umpire each over his village. This is still the case in a great many valleys out of the beaten track. [60] "Have mercy on them!" [61] The cry which in South Germany is equivalent to our "hurrah!" [62] Page 76. [63] Little Elizabeth. [64] A local word in the Passeier-Thal for a poultry-maid. [65] "Ich zeige Sie wo der Zimmermann das Loch gemacht hat." A Tirolese saying for, "I'll soon show you the way to the door." [66] Another form of Klein-Else: Else, with the diminutive, chen. [67] This curious name was borne by a Margrave of Istria, and three other princes at least who ruled over part of Tirol, and who figure in the authentic history of the country. It does not appear that the present story, however, is referable to traditions of the life of any of these. [68] The best public room in a Tirolese inn is so called. [69] The homestead of a peasant proprietor. [70] The local name of the holiday cap of the Sarnthaler women. [71] Lieblingsbänder. [72] Alp is used in Tirol for the green mountain pastures. [73] Alpine herdsman. [74] See Preface. [75] Joch is used in Tirol when speaking of a moderately high mountain; in most other mountain districts of Germany it means only a pass or col. [76] A high-lying range of mountain pasture-land. [77] The stories of our Lord's life on earth, treated with perfect idealism, sketching His character as He was pleased to manifest it, or His miraculous acts, pervade the popular mythology of all Catholic peoples. I have given one from Spain, by the title of "Where One can Dine, Two can Dine," in "Patrañas," of the same character as this Tirolese one; and perhaps it is not amiss to repeat the observation I felt called to make upon it,--that it would be the greatest mistake to imagine that anything like irreverence was intended in such stories. They are the simple utterances of peoples who realized so utterly and so devoutly the facts recorded in the Gospels that the circumstances of time and place ceased to occupy them at all, and who were wont to make the study of our Lord's example their rule of conduct so habitually, that to imagine Him sharing the accidents of their own daily life came more natural to them than to think of Him in the far-off East. These stories were probably either adapted from the personal traditions which the first evangelists may well be thought to have brought with them unwritten, or invented by themselves, in all good faith, as allegories, by means of which to inculcate by them upon their children the application of His maxims to their own daily acts. They demand, therefore, to be read in this spirit for the sake of the pious intention in which they are conceived, rather than criticised for their rude simplicity or their anachronisms. [78] "Praised be Jesus Christ!" This was formerly the universal greeting all over Tirol in the house or on the road, for friend or stranger, who answered, "For ever and ever. Amen." It is still in common use in many parts. [79] I must beg my readers to apply the apology contained in the note to the last story, in its measure to this one also. [80] Sorella, sister; with the augmentative ona, the bigger or elder sister. [81] The little, or younger, sister. [82] We say, "a head of celery;" in Italy they say, "a foot of celery." [83] A favourite vintage of Tirol. [84] Arativo and prativo are dialectic in Wälsch Tirol for arable and pasture land. [85] "On our right soared the implacable ridges of the Marmolata," writes a modern traveller; "the sheer, hard smoothness of whose scarped rocks filled one with a kind of horror only to look at them." [86] "We have hay in the stables, and more also in the meadow." [87] Berg-Segen (literally "mountain-blessing") is the form in which Tirol in its piety expresses the ordinary word crop. [88] See Preface. [89] Two kinds of more or less mischievous strie, or wild fairies. [90] "Fearless Johnny." John is a favourite name in Wälsch Tirol, and bears some twenty or thirty variations, as Giovannazzi, Gianaselli, Gianot, Zanetto, Zanolini, Zuani, Degiampietro (John Peter), Zangiacomi (John James), &c. [91] The Latin name of the god of hell remains throughout Italy, and holds in its nurseries the place of "Old Bogie" with us. [92] "Earthly soul, stand off three paces, and tell me your grief." [93] Vine-trellis. [94] Tapestry hanging before a door. [95] Witch. [96] A wayside cross under a little penthouse, such as is to be met at every turn of the road in Tirol. [97] The south wind, which does much mischief at certain times of the year, and is most dreaded in Vorarlberg. [98] Dialectic for a basket in Vorarlberg. [99] It has been my aim generally, in making this collection, to give the preference to those stories which have a moral point to recommend them; my readers will not, perhaps, take it amiss, however, if I present them with this specimen of a class in which this is wanting, and which aims only at amusement. It is, moreover, interesting from the strong evidence it bears of extremely remote origin; for the light way in which putting people to death, deception, and selfishness are spoken of prove it has a pre-Christian source, while the unimportant accessories show how details get modified by transmission. [100] It must be understood that it is an outside staircase that is here alluded to, and the shutter of an unglazed window on its landing serving for a door also. [101] In a lordly manner. [102] A cluster of houses too small to be designated a village. 
40628	----	THE IRON RATION by GEORGE ABEL SCHREINER [Illustration: Photograph from Henry Ruschin AUSTRIAN SOLDIER IN CARPATHIANS GIVING HUNGRY YOUNGSTER SOMETHING TO EAT Moved by the misery of the civilian population the soldiers will often share their rations with them. An Austrian soldier in this case shares his food with a boy in a small town in the Carpathian Mountains, Hungary.] THE IRON RATION Three Years in Warring Central Europe by GEORGE ABEL SCHREINER Illustrated [Illustration] Harper & Brothers Publishers New York and London THE IRON RATION Copyright, 1918, by Harper & Brothers Printed in the United States of America Published February, 1918 TO MY FRIEND DR. JEROME STONBOROUGH MAN--SCHOLAR--PHILANTHROPIST TABLE OF CONTENTS I WAR HITS THE LARDER OF GERMANY 1 II WHEN LORD MARS HAD RULED THREE MONTHS 22 III THE MIGHTY WAR PURVEYOR 34 IV FAMINE COMES TO STAY 56 V THE FOOD SHARK AND HIS WAYS 70 VI THE HOARDERS 93 VII IN THE HUMAN SHAMBLES 115 VIII PATRIOTISM AND A CRAVING STOMACH 131 IX SUB-SUBSTITUTING THE SUBSTITUTE 144 X THE CRUMBS 161 XI MOBILIZING THE PENNIES 173 XII SHORTAGE SUPREME 195 XIII "GIVE US BREAD!" 213 XIV SUBSISTING AT THE PUBLIC CRIB 245 XV THE WEAR AND TEAR OF WAR 265 XVI THE ARMY TILLS 275 XVII WOMAN AND LABOR IN WAR 293 XVIII WAR AND MASS PSYCHOLOGY 305 XIX SEX MORALITY AND WAR 325 XX WAR LOANS AND ECONOMY 353 XXI THE AFTERMATH 368 ILLUSTRATIONS AUSTRIAN SOLDIER IN CARPATHIANS GIVING HUNGRY YOUNGSTER SOMETHING TO EAT _Frontispiece_ PROVING-GROUND OF THE KRUPP WORKS AT ESSEN _Facing p._ 30 A LEVY OF FARMER BOYS OFF FOR THE BARRACKS " 66 GERMAN CAVALRYMEN AT WORK PLOWING " 66 STREET SCENE AT EISENBACH, SOUTHERN GERMANY " 96 CASTLE HOHENZOLLERN " 188 TRAVELING-KITCHEN IN BERLIN " 260 STREET TRAM AS FREIGHT CARRIER " 260 WOMEN CARRYING BRICKS AT BUDAPEST " 296 VILLAGE SCENE IN HUNGARY " 296 SCENE IN GERMAN SHIP-BUILDING YARD " 378 PREFACE "The Iron Ration" is the name for the food the soldier carries in his "pack" when in the field. It may be eaten only when the commanding officer deems this necessary and wise. When the iron ration is released, no command that the soldier should eat is necessary. He is hungry then--famished. Usually by that time he has been on half, third, and quarter ration. The iron ration is the last food in sight. There may be more to-morrow. But that is not the motive of the commander for releasing the food. What he has to deal with is the fact that his men are on the verge of exhaustion. The population of the states known as the Central Powers group of belligerents being in a position similar to that of the soldiers consuming their iron ration, I have chosen the designation of this emergency meal as title for a book that deals with life in Central Europe as influenced by the war. That life has been paid little attention by writers. The military operations, on the one hand, and the scarcity of food, on the other, have been the cynosures. How and to what extent these were related, and in what manner they were borne by the public, is not understood. Seen from afar, war and hunger and all that relates to them, form so bewildering a mosaic in somber colors that only a very general impression is gained of them. I have pictured here the war time life of Central Europe's social and political aggregates. Of that life the struggle for bread was the major aspect. The words of the Lord's Prayer--"Give us our daily bread"--came soon to have a great meaning to the people of Central Europe. That cry was addressed to the government, however. Food regulation came as the result of it. What that regulation was is being shown here. It will be noticed that I have given food questions a great deal of close attention. The war-time life of Central Europe could not be portrayed in any other manner. All effort and thought was directed toward the winning of the scantiest fare. Men and women no longer strove for the pleasures of life, but for the absolute essentials of living. During the day all labored and scrambled for food, and at night men and women schemed and plotted how to make the fearful struggle easier. To win even a loaf of bread became difficult. It was not alone a question of meeting the simplest wants of living by the hardest of labor; the voracity of the tax collector and the rapacity of the war profiteer came to know no bounds. Morsels had to be snatched out of the mouth of the poor to get revenue for the war and the pound of flesh for the Shylocks. So intense was that struggle for bread that men and women began to look upon all else in life as wholly secondary. A laxness in sex matters ensued. The mobilizations and the loss of life incident to the war aggravated this laxity. But these are things set out in the book. Here I will say that war is highly detrimental to all classes of men and women. When human society is driven to realize that nothing in life counts when there is no food, intellectual progress ceases. When bread becomes indeed the irreducible minimum, the mask falls and we see the human being in all its nakedness. Were I presumptuous enough to say so, I might affirm that this book contains the truth, nothing but the truth, and the whole truth about Germany and Central Europe. I have the necessary background for so bold a statement. I know the German language almost perfectly. German literature, tradition and thought, and I are no strangers. Three years of contact as newspaper-man with all that is German and Central European provided all the opportunities for observation and study one could wish for. And the flare of the Great War was illumining my field, bringing into bold relief the bad, which had been made worse, and the good, which had been made better. But there is no human mind that can truthfully and unerringly encompass every feature and phase of so calamitous a thing as the part taken in the European War by the Central Powers group of belligerents. I at least cannot picture to myself such a mind. Much less could I claim that I possessed it. What I have written here is an attempt to mirror truthfully the conditions and circumstances which raised throughout Central Europe, a year after the war had begun, the cry in city, town, village, and hamlet, "Give us bread!" During the first two months of the European War I was stationed at The Hague for the Associated Press of America. I was then ordered to Berlin, and later was given _carte blanche_ in Austria-Hungary, Roumania, Bulgaria, and Turkey. When military operations, aside from the great fronts in Central Europe, had lost much of the public's interest, I returned to Germany and Austria-Hungary, giving thereafter the Balkans and Turkey such attention as occasional trips made possible. In the course of three years I saw _every_ front, and had the most generous opportunities to become familiar with the subject treated in this book--life in Central Europe as it was amidst war and famine. You will meet here most of the personages active in the guiding of Central Europe's destiny--monarchs, statesmen, army leaders, and those in humbler spheres. You will also meet the lowly. Beside the rapacious beasts of prey stand those upon whom they fed. Prussianism is encountered as I found it. I believe the Prussianism I picture is the real Prussianism. The ways of the autocrat stand in no favor with me, and, being somewhat addicted to consistency, I have borne this in mind while writing. The author can be as autocratic as the ruler. His despotism has the form of stuffing down others' throats his opinions. Usually he thinks himself quite as infallible as those whose acts he may have come to criticize. But since the doctrine of infallibility is the mainstay of all that is bad and despotic in thought as well as in government, we can well afford to give it a wide berth. If the German people had thought their governments--there are many governments in Germany--less infallible they would not have tolerated the absolutism of the Prussian Junker. To that extent responsibility for the European War must rest on the shoulders of the people--a good people, earnest, law-abiding, thrifty, unassuming, industrious, painstaking, temperate, and charitable. Some years ago there was a struggle between republicanism and monarchism on the South African veldt. I was a participant in that--on the republican side. I grant that our government was not as good as it might have been. I grant that our republic was in reality a paternal oligarchy. Yet there was the principle of the thing. The Boers preferred being _burghers_--citizens--to being subjects. The word _subject_ implies government ownership of the individual. The word _citizen_ means that, within the range of the prudently possible, the individual is co-ordinate instead of subordinated. That may seem a small cause to some for the loss of 11,000 men and 23,000 women and children, which the Boers sustained in defense of that principle. And yet that same cause led to the American Revolution. For that same cause stood Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln. For that same cause stands every good American to-day--my humble self included. S. NEW YORK, _January, 1918_. THE IRON RATION THE IRON RATION I WAR HITS THE LARDER OF GERMANY Press and government in the Entente countries were sure that Germany and Austria-Hungary could be reduced by hunger in some six months after the outbreak of the European War. The newspapers and authorities of the Central Powers made sport of this contention at first, but sobered up considerably when the flood of contraband "orders in privy council" began to spill in London. At first conditional contraband became contraband. Soon non-contraband became conditional contraband, and not long after that the British government set its face even against the import into Germany of American apples. That was the last straw, as some thought. The end of contraband measures was not yet, however. It was not long before the neutrals of Europe, having physical contact with the Central Powers, were to find out that they could not export food to Germany without having to account for it. Small wonder then that already in September of 1914 it was asserted that the elephants of the Berlin Zoo had been butchered for their meat. I was then stationed at The Hague, as correspondent for an American telegraphic news service, and had a great deal to do with the "reports" of the day. It was my business to keep the American public as reliably informed as conditions permitted. I did not publish anything about the alleged butchering of elephants and other denizens of the Berlin zoological establishments, knowing full well that these stories were absurd. And, then, I was not in the necessary frame of mind to look upon elephant steak as others did. Most people harbor a sort of prejudice against those who depart from what is considered a "regular" bill of fare. We sniff at those whom we suspect of being hippophagians, despite the fact that our hairier ancestors made sitting down to a fine horse roast an important feature of their religious ceremonies. I can't do that any longer since circumstances compelled me once to partake of mule. Nor was it good mule. Lest some be shocked at this seeming perversity, I will add that this happened during the late Anglo-Boer War. The statement, especially as amended, should serve as an assurance that I am really qualified to write on food in war-time, and no Shavianism is intended, either. Food conditions in Germany interested me intensely. Hunger was expected to do a great deal of fighting for the Allies. I was not so sure that this conclusion was correct. Germany had open-eyedly taken a chance with the British blockade. That left room for the belief that somebody in Germany had well considered this thing. But the first German food I saw had a peculiar fascination for me, for all that. Under the glass covers standing on the buffet of a little restaurant at Vaalsplatz I espied sandwiches. Were they real sandwiches, or "property" staged for my special benefit? It was generally believed in those days that the Germans had brought to their border towns all the food they had in the empire's interior, so that the Entente agents would be fooled into believing that there was plenty of food on hand. Vaalsplatz is the other half of Vaals. The two half towns make up one whole town, which really is not a whole town, because the Dutch-German border runs between the two half towns. But the twin communities are very neighborly. I suspected as much. For that reason the presence of the sandwiches in Vaalsplatz meant nothing. What assurance had I that, when they saw me coming, the sandwiches were not rushed across the border and into Germany, so that I might find the fleshpots of Egypt where the gaunt specter of famine was said to have its lair? This is the manner in which the press agents of starvation used to work in those days. And the dear, gullible public, never asking itself once whether it was possible to reduce almost overnight to starvation two states that were not far from being economically self-contained, swallowed it all--bait, hook, line, and sinker. My _modus operandi_ differed a little from this. I bought three of the sandwiches for ten pfennige--two and a quarter cents American--apiece, and found them toothsome morsels, indeed. The discovery was made, also, that German beer was still as good as it always had been. My business on that day took me no farther into Germany than the cemetery that lies halfway between Vaalsplatz and Aix-la-Chapelle. There I caught on the wing, as it were, the man I was looking for, and then smuggled him out of the country as my secretary. I had seen no other food but the sandwiches, and as I jumped from the speeding trolley-car I noticed that they were digging a grave in the cemetery. Ah! Haven of refuge for a famine victim! I said something of that sort to the man I was smuggling into Holland. Roger L. Lewis looked at me with contempt and pity in his eyes, as the novelist would say. "Are you crazy?" he asked. "Why, the Germans have more food than is good for them. They are a nation of gluttons, in fact." With Mr. Lewis going to London I could not very well write of the sandwiches and the grave in the cemetery. These things were undeniable facts. I had seen them. But the trouble was that they were not related to each other and had with life only those connections they normally have. The famine-booster does not look at things in that light, though. Four weeks later I was in Berlin. The service had sent me there to get at the bottom of the famine yarns. There seemed to be something wrong with starvation. It was not progressing rapidly enough, and I was to see to what extent the Entente economists were right. In a large restaurant on the Leipzigerstrasse in Berlin I found a very interesting bill of fare and a placard speaking of food. The menu was generous enough. It offered the usual assortment of _hors-d'oeuvre_, soup, fish, _entrée_, _relevée_, roasts, cold meats, salads, vegetables, and sweetmeats. On the table stood a basket filled with dinner rolls. The man was waiting for my order. But to give an order seemed not so simple. I was trying to reconcile the munificence of the dishes list with the legend on the placard. That legend said--heavy black letters on white cardboard, framed by broad lines of scarlet red: +--------------------------------------------+ | | | SAVE THE FOOD! | | | | The esteemed patrons of this establishment | | are requested not to eat unnecessarily. Do | | not eat two dishes if one is enough! | | | | THE MANAGEMENT. | | | +--------------------------------------------+ It was my first day in Berlin, and having that very morning, at Bentheim, on the Dutch-German border, run into a fine piece of German thoroughness and regard for the law, I was at a loss what to do under the circumstances. While I knew that the management of the restaurant could not have me arrested if I picked more than two dishes, I had also ascertained that the elephant steak was a fable. I was not so sure that ordering a "regular" dinner might not give offense. That is the sort of feeling you have on the first day in a country at war. I had seen so many war proclamations of the government, all in heavy black and red on white, that the restaurant placard really meant more to me than was necessary. I asked the waiter to come to my assistance. Being a native of the country, he would know, no doubt, how far I could go. "You needn't pay any attention to that sign, sir!" he said. "Nobody does any more. You can order anything you like--as many dishes as you please." I wanted to know whether the placard was due to a government regulation. "Not directly, sir. The government has advised hotels and restaurants to economize in food. The management here wanted to do its share, of course, and had these signs printed. At first our patrons minded them. But now everybody is falling back into the old eating habits, and the management wants to make all the money it can, of course." The war was then about two months old. What the waiter said was enough for me. I ordered accordingly and during dinner had much of the company of the serving-man. It seemed that to a great deal of natural shrewdness he had added, in the course of much traveling, a fair general education. When I left the restaurant I was richer by a good picture of food conditions in Berlin, as these had been influenced up to that moment by the intentions of the Prussian government. So far the authorities had done very little to "regulate" food questions, though problems were already in sight and had to be dealt with by the poor of the city. That economy had to be practised was certain even then. The government had counseled economy in consumption, and various patriotic societies and institutions of learning had given advice. But actual interference in public subsistence matters had so far not taken place. The German government had tried to meet the English "business-as-usual" with a policy of "eating-as-usual." It was felt that cutting down on food might put a damper on the war spirit. To be enthusiastic when hungry may be possible for the superman. It is hard work for the come-and-go kind of citizen. Nor had anybody found cause to abandon the notion that the European War would not last long. True enough, the western front had been congealed by Marshal Joffre, but there was then no reason to believe that it would not again be brought into flux, in which case it was hoped that the German general staff would give to the world a fine picture of swift and telling offensive in open-field operations. After that the war was to be over. Of the six months which the war was to last, according to plans that existed in the mouths of the gossips, two were past now, and still the end was not in sight. An uncomfortable feeling came upon many when seclusion undraped reality. That much I learned during my first week at the German capital. I must mention here that I speak German almost perfectly. Armed in this manner, I invaded markets and stores, ate to-day in the super-refined halls of the Adlon and shared to-morrow a table with some hackman, and succeeded also in gaining _entrée_ into some families, rich, not-so-rich, and poor. In the course of three weeks I had established to my own satisfaction, and that of the service, that while as yet there could be no question of food shortage in Germany, there would soon come a time when waists--which were not thin then by any means--would shrink. The tendency of food prices was upward, and, as they rose, more people increased the consumption of food staples, especially bread. Since these staples were the marrow of the country's economic organism, something would have to be done soon to limit their consumption to the absolutely necessary. The first step in that direction was soon to be taken. War-bread--_Kriegsbrot_--made its appearance. It was more of a staff of life than had been believed, despite its name. To roughly 55 per cent. of rye was added 25 per cent. of wheat and 20 per cent. of potato meal, sugar, and shortening. The bread was very palatable, and the potato elements in it prevented its getting stale rapidly. It tasted best on the third day, and on trips to the front I have kept the bread as long as a week without noticing deterioration. But the German had lived well in the past and it was not easy to break him of the habits he had cultivated under a superabundance of food. The thing had gone so far that when somebody wanted to clean an expensive wall-paper the baker would be required to deliver a dozen hot loaves of wheat bread, which, cut into halves lengthwise, would then be rubbed over the wall-paper--with excellent results as regards the appearance of the room and the swill-barrel from which the pigs were fed. On this subject I had a conversation with a woman of the upper class. She admitted that she herself had done it. The paper was of the best sort and so pleasing to her eyes that she could not bear having it removed when discolored from exposure to light and dust. "It was sinful, of course," she said. "I believe the Good Book says that bread should not be wasted, or something to that effect. Well, we had grown careless. I am ashamed when I think of it. My mother would have never permitted that. But everybody was doing it. It seems now that we are about to pay for our transgressions. All Germany was fallen upon the evil ways that come from too much prosperity. From a thrifty people we had grown to be a luxury-loving one. The war will do us good in that respect. It will show us that the simple life is to be preferred to the kind we have been leading for some twenty years now." Then the countess resumed her knitting, and spoke of the fact that she had at the front six sons, one son-in-law, and four automobiles. "But what troubles me most is that my estates have been deprived of so many of their laborers and horses that I may not be able to attend properly to the raising of crops," she continued. "My superintendents write me that they are from two to three weeks behind in plowing and seeding. The weather isn't favorable, either. What is going to happen to us in food matters, if this war _should_ last a year? Do you think it _will_ last a year?" I did not know, of course. "You ought to know the English very well," said the countess. "Do you think they really mean to starve us out?" "They will if the military situation demands this, madame," I replied. "Your people will make a mistake if they overlook the tenacity of that race. I am speaking from actual experience on the South African plains. You need expect no let-up from the English. They may blunder a great deal, but they always have the will and the resources to make good their mistakes and profit by them, even if they cannot learn rapidly." The countess had thought as much. I gained a good insight into German food production a few days later, while I was the guest of the countess on an estate not far from Berlin. The fields there were being put to the best possible use under intensive farming, though their soil had been deprived of its natural store of plant nutriment centuries ago. I suppose the estate was poor "farmland" already when the first crops were being raised in New England. But intelligent cultivation, and, above all, rational fertilizing methods, had always kept it in a fine state of production. The very maximum in crops was being obtained almost every year. Trained agriculturists superintended the work, and, while machinery was being employed, none of it was used in departments where it would have been the cause of a loss in production--something against which the ease-loving farmer is not always proof. The idea was to raise on the area all that could be raised, even if the net profit from a less thorough method of cultivation would have been just as big. Inquiry showed that the agrarian policy of the German government favored this course. The high protective tariff, under which the German food-producer operated, left a comfortable profit margin no matter how good the crops of the competitor might be. Since Germany imported a small quantity of food even in years when bumper crops came, large harvests did not cause a depression in prices; they merely kept foreign foodstuffs out of the country and thereby increased the trade balance in favor of Germany. Visiting some small farms and villages in the neighborhood of the estate, I found that the example set by the scientifically managed _Gut_ of the countess was being followed everywhere. The agrarian policy of the government had wiped out all competition between large and small producers, and so well did the village farmers and the estate-managers get along that the _Gut_ was in reality a sort of agricultural experiment station and school farm for those who had not studied agriculture at the seats of learning which the bespectacled superintendents of the countess had attended. I began to understand why Germany was able to virtually grow on an area less than that of the State of Texas the food for nearly seventy million people, and then leave to forestry and waste lands a quarter of that area. There was also the explanation why Germany was able to export small quantities of rye and barley, in exchange for the wheat she could not raise herself profitably. The climate of northern Germany is not well suited for the growing of wheat. If it were, Germany would not import any wheat, seeing that the area now given to the cultivation of sugar-beets and potatoes could be cut down much without affecting home consumption. As it is, the country exported before the war almost a third of her sugar production, and much of the alcohol won from potatoes entered the foreign market either in its raw state or in the form of manufactured products. But the war had put a crimp into this fine scheme. Not only was the estate short-handed and short of animal power, but in the villages it was no better. Some six million men had then been mobilized, and of this number 28 per cent. came directly from the farms, and another 14 per cent. had formerly been engaged in food production and distribution also. To fill the large orders of hay, oats, and straw for the army, the cattle had to be kept on the meadows--pastures in the American sense of the word are but rarely found in overcrowded Europe--and that would lead to a shortage in stable manure, the most important factor in soil-fertilizing. The outlook was gloomy enough and quite a contrast to the easy war spirit which still swayed the city population. Interviews with a goodly number of German government officials and men connected with the Prussian Ministry of Agriculture confirmed the impressions I had gained in the course of my food investigation. For the time being, there was enough of everything. But that was only for the time being. Public subsistence depends in a large measure on the products of animal industry. There is the dairy, for instance. While cows can live on grass, they will not give much or good milk if hay and grass are not supplemented by fat-making foods. Of such feed Germany does not produce enough, owing to climatic conditions. Indian corn will not ripen in northern Europe, and cotton is out of the question altogether. In the past, Indian corn had been imported from Hungary, Roumania, and the United States mostly, and cotton-seed products had been brought in from the United States also. Roumania still continued to sell Indian corn during the first months of the war, but Great Britain had put cotton-seed cake and the like under the ban of contraband. If the bread-basket was not as yet hung high, the crib certainly began to get very much out of reach. One day, then, I found that every advertisement "pillar" in the streets of Berlin called loudly for two things--the taking of an animal census throughout Prussia, and the advice that as many pigs as possible should be killed. Poor porkers! It was to be wide-open season for them soon. Gently, ever so gently, the Prussian and other German state governments were beginning to put the screws on the farming industry--the thing they had nursed so well. No doubt the thing hurt. But there was no help. Animal feed was discovered to be short. The authorities interfered with the current of supply and demand for the first time. Feed Commissions and Fodder Centrals were established, and after that the farmer had to show cause why he should get the amount of feed he asked for. The innovation recoiled on the lowliest first--among them the pigs. Into them and upon them had been heaped a great deal of fat by purposeful feeding with an ulterior motive. The porkers stood well in the glory for which they are intended. But the lack of fattening feed would soon cause them to live more or less on their own stores of fat. That had to be prevented, naturally. By many, a butchered two-hundred-pound porker is thought to be better than a live razorback. The knife began its deadly work--the slaughter of the porcine innocents was on. To the many strange cults and castes that exist we must add the German village butcher. He is busy only when the pork "crop" comes in, but somehow he seems to defy the law that only continued practice makes perfect. He works from November to February of each year, but when the next season comes he is as good as before, seemingly. But in 1914 the village butcher was busy at the front. Thus it came that men less expert were in charge of the conservation of pork products. The result could have been foreseen, but it was not. The farmers, eager not to lose an ounce of fat, and not especially keen to feed their home-raised grain to the animals, had their pigs butchered. That was well enough, in a way. But the tons of sausages that were made, and the thousands of tons of pickled and smoked hams, shoulders, sides-of-bacon, and what not, had been improperly cured in many cases, and vast quantities of them began to spoil. It was now a case of having no pigs and also no pork. The case deserves special attention for the reason that it is the first crevasse that appeared in the levee that was to hold back the high-flood of inflated prices and food shortage. The affair of the porkers did not leave the German farmers in the best frame of mind. They had needlessly sacrificed a goodly share of their annual income. The price of pork fell to a lower level than had been known in twenty years, and meanwhile the farmer was beginning to buy what he needed in a market that showed sharp upward curves. To this was being added the burden of war taxation. But even that was not all. Coming in close contact with the Berlin authorities, I had been able to judge the quality of their efforts for the saving of food. I had learned, for instance, that the Prussian and other state governments never intended to order the killing of the pigs. The most that was done by them was to advise the farmers and villagers to kill off all animals that had reached their maximum weight and whose keep under the reduced ration system would not pay. Zealous officials in the provinces gave that thing a different aspect. Eager to obey the slightest suggestion of those above, these men interpreted the advice given as an order and disseminated it as such. The farmer with sense enough to question this was generally told that what he would not do on advice he would later be ordered to do. I was able to ascertain in connection with this subject that all which is bad in German, and especially in Prussian, government has rarely its inception in the higher places. It is the _Amtsstube_--government bureau--that breeds the qualities for which government in the German Empire is deservedly odious. At any ministry I would get the very best treatment--far better, for instance, than I should hope to get at any seat of department at Washington--but it was different when I had to deal with some official underling. This class, as a rule, enters the government service after having been professional non-commissioned officers for many years. By that time the man has become so thoroughly a drill sergeant that his usefulness in other spheres of life should be considered as ended. Instead of that, the German government makes him an official. The effect produced is not a happy one. It was a member of this tribe who once told me that I was not to think. I confess that I did not know whether to laugh or cry when I heard that. The case has some bearing on the subject discussed here, and for that reason I will refer to it briefly. At the American embassy at Berlin they had put my passport into proper shape, as they thought. A Mr. Harvey was positive that such was the case. But at the border it was found that somebody was mistaken. The Tenth Army, in whose bailiwick I found myself, had changed the passport regulations, and the American embassy at Berlin seemed not to have heard of the change. A very snappy sergeant of the border survey service wanted to know how I had dared to travel with an imperfectly viséd passport. There was nothing else to say but that I thought the passport was in order. "_Sie haben kein Recht zu denken_" ("You have no right to think"), snarled the man. That remark stunned me. Here was a human being audacious enough to deny another human being the right to think. What next? The result of some suitable remarks of mine were that presently I was under arrest and off for an interview with the _Landrat_--the county president at Bentheim. The _Landrat_ was away, however--hunting, as I remember it. In his stead I found a so-called assessor. I can say for the man that he was the most offensive government official or employee I have ever met. He had not said ten words when that was plain to me. "Ah! You _thought_ the passport was in order," he mocked. "You _thought_ so! Don't you know that it is dangerous to _think_?" There and then my patience took leave of me. I made a few remarks that left no doubt in the mind of the official that I reserved for myself the right to think, whether that was in Germany or in Hades. Within a fortnight I was back in Berlin. I am not given to making a mountain out of every little molehill I come across, but I deemed it necessary to bring the incident at Bentheim to the attention of the proper authorities. What I wanted to know was this: Had the race which in the past produced some of the best of thinkers been coerced into having thinking prohibited by an erstwhile sergeant or a _mensur_-marked assessor? Of course, that was not the case, I was told. The two men had been overzealous. They would be disciplined. I was not to feel that I had been insulted. An eager official might use that sort of language. After all, what special harm was there in being told not to think? Both the sergeant and the assessor had probably meant that I was not to surmise, conclude, or take things for granted. But I had made up my mind to make myself clear. In the end I succeeded, though recourse to diagrams and the like seemed necessary before the great light dawned. That the German authorities had the right to watch their borders closely I was the last to gainsay. Nor could fault be found with officials who discharged this important duty with all the thoroughness at their command. If these officials felt inclined to warn travelers against surmise and conjecture, thanks were due them, but these officials were guilty of the grossest indecency in denying a rational adult the right to think. Those who for years have been hunting for a definition of militarism may consider that in the above they have the best explanation of it. The phrase, "You have no right to think," is the very backbone of militarism. In times of war men may not think, because militarism is absolute. For those that are anti-militarist enough to continue thinking there is the censorship and sedition laws, both of which worked smoothly enough in Germany and the countries of her allies. The question may be asked, What does this have to do with food and such? Very much, is my answer. The class of small officials was to become the machine by which the production, distribution, and consumption of food and necessities were to be modified according to the needs of the day. This class was to stimulate production, simplify distribution, and restrict consumption. No small task for any set of men, whether they believed in the God-given right of thinking or not. It was simple enough to restrict consumption--issue the necessary decrees with that in view, and later adopt measures of enforcement. The axiom, You have no right to think, fitted that case well enough. But it was different with distribution. To this sphere of economy belongs that ultra-modern class of Germans, the trust and _Syndikat_ member--the industrial and commercial kings. These men had outgrown the inhibitions of the barrack-yard. The _Feldwebel_ was a joke to them now, and, unfortunately, their newly won freedom sat so awkwardly upon their minds that often it would slip off. The class as a whole would then attend to the case, and generally win out. A similar state of affairs prevailed in production. To order the farmer what he was to raise was easy, but nature takes orders from nobody, a mighty official included. II WHEN LORD MARS HAD RULED THREE MONTHS Germany had reared a magnificent economic structure. Her prosperity was great--too great, in fact. The country had a _nouveau-riche_ aspect, as will happen when upon a people that has been content with little in the past is suddenly thrust more than it can assimilate gracefully. The Germany I was familiar with from travel and literature was a country in which men and women managed to get along comfortably by the application of thoroughness and industry--a country in which much time was given to the cultivation of the mind and the enjoyment of the fruits that come from this praiseworthy habit. Those were the things which I had grouped under the heading, _Kultur_. Those also were the things, as I was soon to learn from the earnest men and women of the country, for which the word still stood with most. But the spirit of the _parvenu_--_Protzentum_--was become rampant. The industrial classes reeked with it. From the villages and small towns, still the very embodiment of thrift and orderliness, I saw rise the large brick barracks of industry, topped off with huge chimneys belching forth black clouds of smoke. The outskirts of the larger towns and cities were veritable forests of smoke-stacks--palisades that surrounded the interests of the thousands of captains of industry that dwelt within the city when not frequenting the international summer and winter resorts and making themselves loathed by their extremely bad manners--the trade-mark of all _parvenus_. I soon found that there were two separate and distinct Germanys. It was not a question of classes, but one of having within the same borders two worlds. One of them reminded me of Goethe and Schiller, of Kant and Hegel, and the other of all that is ultra-modern, and cynical. The older of these worlds was still tilling the fields on the principle that where one takes one must give. It was still manufacturing with that honesty that is better than advertising, and selling for cost of raw material and labor, plus a reasonable profit. In the new world it was different. Greed was the key-note of all and everything. The kings of industry and commerce had forgotten that in order to live ourselves we must let others live. These men had been wise enough to compete as little as possible with one another. Every manufacturer belonged to some _Syndikat_--trust--whose craze was to capture by means fair or foul every foreign field that could be saturated. I have used the word "saturated" on purpose. Germany's industrials do not seem to have been content with merely entering a foreign market and then supplying it with that good tact which makes the article and its manufacturer respected. Instead of that they began to dump their wares into the new field in such masses that soon there was attached to really good merchandise the stigma of cheapness in price and quality. A proper sense of proportions would have prevented this. There is no doubt that German manufacturers and exporters had to undersell foreign competitors, nor can any reasonable human being find fault with this, but that, for the sake of "hogging" markets, they should turn to cheap peddling was nothing short of being criminally stupid--a national calamity. I have yet to be convinced that Germany would not have been equally prosperous--and that in a better sense--had its industry been less subservient to the desire to capture as many of the world's markets as possible. That policy would have led to getting better prices, so that the national income from this source would have been just as great, if not greater, when raw material and labor are given their proper socio-economic value. Some manufacturers had indeed clung to that policy--of which the old warehouses and their counting-rooms along the Weser in Bremen are truly and beautifully emblematic. But most of them were seized with a mania for volume in export and ever-growing personal wealth. Germany's population had failed to get its share of this wealth. Though the _Arbeiter-Verbände_--unions--had seen to it that the workers were not entirely ignored, it was a fact that a large class was living in that peculiar sort of misery which comes from being the chattel of the state, on the one hand, and the beast of burden of the captains of industry, on the other. The government has indeed provided sick benefits and old-age pensions, but these, in effect, were little more than a promise that when the man was worked to the bone he would still be able to drag on existence. The several institutions of governmental paternalism in Germany are what heaven is to the livelong invalid. And to me it seems that there is no necessity for being bedridden through life when the physician is able to cure. In this instance, we must doubt that the physician was willing to cure. The good idealists who may differ with me on that point have probably never had the chance to study at the closest range the sinister purpose that lies behind all governmental effort that occupies itself with the welfare of the individual. The sphere of a government should begin and end with the care for the aggregate. The government that must care for the individual has no _raison d'être_, and the same must be said of the individual who needs such care. One should be permitted to perish with the other. The deeper I got into this New Germany, the less I was favorably impressed by it. I soon found that the greed manifested had led to results highly detrimental to the race. The working classes of the large industrial centers were well housed and well fed, indeed. But it was a barrack life they led. At best the income was small, and usually it was all spent, especially if a man wanted to do his best by his children. It was indeed true that the deposits in the German savings-banks were unusually high, but investigation showed that the depositors were mostly small business people and farmers. These alone had both the incentive and the chance to save. For all others, be they the employees of the government or the workers of industry, the sick benefit and old-age pension had to provide if they were not to become public charges when usefulness should have come to an end. I found that Germany's magnificent socio-economic edifice was inhabited mostly by members of the _parvenu_ class, by men and women who dressed in bad taste, talked too much and too loud, and were forever painfully in evidence. For the purpose of illustrating the relative position of the two worlds I found in Germany, I may use the simile that the new world inhabited all the better floors, while the old was content with the cellar and the attic. In the cellar lived the actual producers, and in the garret the intellectuals, poor aristocracy, government officials, professional men, and army officers. Food being the thing everybody needs, and, which needing, he or she must have at any price, the men who in the past had "saturated" foreign markets turned of a sudden their attention to matters at home. The British blockade had made exports impossible. The overseas channel of income was closed. Exploitation had to be directed into other fields. The German government saw this coming, and, under the plea of military necessity, which really existed, of course, began to apply a policy of restriction in railroad traffic. More will be said of this elsewhere. Here I will state that from the very first military emergency was well merged with socio-economic exigency. The high priest of greed found that the government, by virtue of being the owner of the railroads, was putting a damper on the concentration of life's necessities and commodities. But that, after all, was not a serious matter. So long as the food shark and commodity-grabber owned an article he would always find the means to make the public pay for it. Whether he sold a thing in Cologne, Hanover, Berlin, or Stettin made little difference in the end, so long as prices were good. All that was necessary was to establish a _Filiale_--a branch house--at the point and all was well. But as yet there was no actual shortage. Things were only beginning to be scarce at times and intervals. The population had begun to save food. The counters and shelves of the retailers were still full, and the warehouses of the wholesalers had just received the harvest of the year. Hoarding had as yet not been thought of to any extent. Germany had not been at war for forty-three years, and normally the food-supply had been so generous that only a few pessimists, who saw a long war ahead, thought it necessary to store up food for the future. It was not until the fourth month of the war that prices of food showed a steady upward tendency. That this should be so was not difficult to understand, and the explanation of the authorities appeared very plausible indeed. Whenever the possibility of a shortage had at all to be intimated, the government took good care to balance its statement with the assertion that if everybody did what was fit and proper under the circumstances there would never be a shortage. If people ate war-bread, a lack of breadstuffs was said to be out of the question. That was very reassuring, of course. Not a little camouflage was used by the merchants. I never saw so much food heaped into store windows as in those days. On my way back and forth from my hotel to the office of the service, I had to pass through the Mauerstrasse. In that street four food-venders outdid one another in heaping their merchandise before the public gaze. One of them was a butcher. His window was large and afforded room for almost a ton of meat products. I do not wonder that those who passed the window--and they had to be counted in thousands--gained from it the impression that food would never be scarce in Germany. Farther on there was another meat-shop. Its owner did the same. Next door to him was a bakery. War-bread and rolls, cakes and pastry enough to feed a brigade, were constantly on exhibition. The fourth store sold groceries and what is known in Germany as _Dauerware_--food that has been preserved, such as smoked meat, sausages, and canned foods. The man was really doing his best. For a while he had as his "set piece" a huge German eagle formed of cervelat sausages each four feet long and as thick as the club of Hercules. I thought the things had been made of papier-mâché, but found that they were real enough. But camouflage of that sort has its good purposes. Men are never so hungry as when they know that food is scarce. The several state governments of Germany employ the ablest economic experts in the world. These men knew that in the end show would not do. The substance would then be demanded and would have to be produced if trouble was to be avoided. How to proceed was not a simple matter, however. From the food of the nation had to come the revenue of the government and the cost of the war. This had to be kept in mind. The assertions of the Entente press that Germany would be starved into submission within six months had been amply ridiculed in the German newspapers. That was all very well. Everybody knew that it could not be done in six months, and my first survey of the food situation proved that it could not be done in a year. But what if the war lasted longer? Nothing had come of the rush on Paris. Hindenburg had indeed given the Russians a thorough military lesson at Tannenberg. But this and certain successes on the West Front were not decisive, as everybody began to understand. The Russians, moreover, were making much headway in Galicia, and so far the Austro-Hungarian army had made but the poorest of showings--even against the Serbs. Thus it came that the replies in the German press to the Entente famine program caused the German public to take a greater interest in the food question. Propaganda and the application of ridicule have their value, but also their drawbacks. They are never shell-proof so far as the thinker is concerned, and ultimately will weaken rather than strengthen the very thing they are intended to defend. "_Qui s'excuse s'accuse_," say the French. The Prussian government inaugurated a campaign against the waste of food as associated with the garbage-pail. Hereafter all household offal had to be separated into food-remains and rubbish. Food-leavings, potato peels, fruit skins, the unused parts of vegetables, and the like, were to be used as animal feed. A week after the regulations had been promulgated and enforced, I took a census of the results obtained. These were generous enough and showed that as yet the Berliners at least were not stinting very much, despite the war-bread. [Illustration: Photograph by Underwood & Underwood, N. Y. PROVING-GROUND OF THE KRUPP WORKS AT ESSEN The guns shown represent types of artillery used in modern warfare on land and sea.] About the same time I was able to ascertain that in the rural districts of Germany little economy of any sort was being practised so far, though the establishing by the government of Fodder Centrals was warning enough. The farmers sat at the very fountainhead of all food and pleased themselves, wasting meanwhile much of their substance by sending to their relatives at the front a great deal of food which the men were in no need of. The German soldier was well fed and all food sent to him was generally so much waste. It was somewhat odd that the government should not only permit this practice, but actually encourage it. But the authorities knew as little yet of food conservation as did the populace. So far the traffic incident to supplying large population centers with food had moved within its regular channels, the interference due to the mobilization duly discounted, of course. The ability of the Germans as organizers had even overcome that to quite an extent. There were delays now and then, but the reserve stores in the cities counteracted them as yet. Normally, all men eat too much. The Germans were the rule rather than the exception in this respect. Most men weighed anything from twenty to sixty pounds more than they should, and the women also suffered much in appearance and health from obesity. The _parvenu_ class, especially, was noted for that. The German aristocrat is hardly ever stout--hallmark of the fact that he knows how to curb his appetites. Before the war most Germans ate in the following manner: Coffee and rolls early in the morning. A sort of breakfast about nine o'clock. Luncheon between twelve and one. Coffee or tea at about four in the afternoon. Dinner at from seven to eight, and supper at eleven or twelve was nothing unusual. That made in many cases six meals, and these meals were not light by any means. They included meat twice for even the poorer classes in the city. Six meals as against three do not necessarily mean that people addicted to the habit eat twice as much as those who are satisfied with sitting at table thrice each day. But they do mean that at least 35 per cent. of the food is wasted. Oversaturated, the alimentary system refuses to work properly. It will still assimilate those food elements that are the more easily absorbed, which then produce fat, while the really valuable constituents are generally eliminated without having produced the effect that is the purpose of proper diet. It was really remarkable to what extent in this case an indulgence became a reserve upon which the German government could draw. A good 35 per cent. of all food consumed need not be consumed and would to that measure increase the means of public subsistence available. I am inclined to believe that the enemies of Germany overlooked this fact in the computation of elements adduced to show that, within six months from the outbreak of the war, famine would stalk the land. The Entente economists and politicians counted on actual production and consumption in times of peace and failed to realize that a determined people, whose complete discipline lacked but this one thing--economy in eating--would soon acquire the mind of the ascetic. It was not easy to forego the pleasures of the full stomach, since in the past it had generally been overfilled. But, as the Germans say, "When in need, the devil will eat flies." Upon this subject the Prussian and other German state governments concentrated all their efforts in November of 1914. A thousand methods of propaganda were used. "Eat less," was the advice that resounded through the empire. I do not think that, unsustained by government action, the admonition would have helped much in the long run, though for the time being it was heeded by many. It was the fact that the end of the war seemed not so imminent any longer which furnished the _causa movens_ for the saving of food. The war spirit was still very strong and the Germans began to resent the assertion of their enemies that they would be defeated by their stomachs, as some learned university professors insisted at the time. Not the least value of the propaganda was that it prepared the German public for the sweeping changes in food distribution which were to come before long. III THE MIGHTY WAR PURVEYOR Three months had sufficed to enthrone the _Kriegslieferant_--war purveyor. He was ubiquitous and loud. His haying season was come. For a consumer he had a government that could not buy enough, and the things he sold he took from a public that was truly patriotic and willing to make sacrifices. It was a gay time. Gone were the days in which he had to worry over foreign markets, small profits, and large turnover. He dealt no longer with fractions of cents. Contracts for thousands did not interest him. At the Ministry of War he could pick up bits of business that figured with round millions. I attended once a funeral that was presided over by an undertaker who believed in doing things on a large scale. The man in the coffin had always earned a large salary and the family had lived up to it. There was nothing left when he died. But the undertaker and the widow decided that the funeral should be a large one. It was, and when it was over and paid for the woman was obliged to appeal to her relatives for financial aid. The activity of the war purveyor was of the same quality. The Berlin hotels were doing a land-office business. The Adlon, Bristol, Kaiserhof, and Esplanade hotels were crowded to the attic--with war purveyors. When his groups were not locked up in conference, he could be seen strutting about the halls and foyers with importance radiating from him like the light of an electric arc. In the dining-rooms his eating could be heard when his voice was not raised in vociferous ordering in the best drill-sergeant style. Managers and waiters alike danced attention upon him--the establishment, the city, the country were his. "_Wir machen's_" ("We'll do it"), was his parole. The army might do its share, but in the end the war purveyor would win the war. The express in which I was traveling from Osnabrück to Berlin had pulled up in the station of Hanover. The train was crowded and in my compartment sat three war purveyors, who seemed to be members of the same group, despite the fact that their conversation caused me to believe that they were holding anything from a million tons of hay to a thousand army transport-wagons. Business was good and the trio was in good humor, as was to be expected from men of such generous dimensions and with so many diamonds on the fleshy fingers of ill-kept hands. One of them was the conspicuous owner of a stick-pin crowned with a Kimberley that weighed five carats if not more. He was one of the happiest men I have ever laid eyes upon. I was sitting next to the window, a place that had been surrendered to me because there was a draught from the window. But I can stand such discomfort much better than perfume on a fat man, and I didn't mind. After a while my attention was attracted by a tall young woman in black on the platform. She was talking to somebody on my car, and surreptitious passes of her hand to her throat caused me to conclude that some great emotion had seized her. No doubt she was saying good-by to somebody. I had seen that a thousand times before, so that it could not be mere and superficial curiosity that induced me to leave my seat for the purpose of seeing the other actor in this little drama. The woman was unusually handsome, and the manner in which she controlled her great emotion showed that she was a blue-blood of the best brand. I was anxious to learn what sort of man it was upon whom this woman bestowed so much of her devotion. A tall officer was leaning against the half-open window in the next compartment. I could not see his face. But the cut of his back and shoulders and the silhouette of the head proclaimed his quality. The two seemed to have no words. The woman was looking into the face of the man, and he, to judge by the fixed poise of his head, was looking into hers. I had seen enough and returned to the compartment. Presently the conductor's cry of "_Bitte, einsteigen!_" ("Please! All aboard!") was heard. The woman stepped to the side of the car and raised her right hand, which the officer kissed. She said something which I could not hear. Then she set her lips again, while the muscles of her cheek and throat moved in agony. It was a parting dramatic--perhaps the last. The train began to move. The war purveyor opposite me now saw the woman. He nudged his colleague and drew his attention to the object that had attracted him. "A queen!" he said. "I wonder what she looks like in her boudoir. I am sorry that I did not see her before. Might have stayed over and seen her home." "Would have been worth while," said the other. "I wonder whom she saw off." "From the way she takes it I should say that it was somebody she cares for. Class, eh, what?" The man rose from the seat and pressed his face against the window, though he could see no more of the woman in that manner than he had seen before. I think that is the very extreme to which I ever saw hideously vulgar cynicism carried. In a way I regretted that the war purveyor had not been given the chance to stay over. I am sure that he would have had reason to regret his enterprise. A few days later I was on my way to Vienna, glad to get away from the loud-mouthed war purveyors at the German capital. The ilk was multiplying like flies in summer-time, and there was no place it had not invaded. Though it was really not one of my affairs, the war purveyor had come to irritate me. I was able to identify him a mile off, and good-natured friends of mine seemed to have made it their purpose in life to introduce me to men who invariably turned out to have contracts with the government. Fact is that, while the war was great, the _Kriegslieferant_ was greater. When I found it hard to see a high official, some kind friend would always suggest that I take the matter up with Herr Kommerzienrat So-and-so, whose influence was great with the authorities, seeing that he had just made a contract for ever so many millions. And the "commercial counselor" would be willing, I knew. If he could introduce a foreign correspondent of some standing here and there, that would be water for his mill. The official in question might be interested in propaganda, and the war purveyor was bound to be. The inference was that the cause of Germany could be promoted in that manner. In some cases it was. Now and then the war purveyor would spend money on a dinner to foreign and native correspondents. His name would not appear in the despatches, but the _Kriegslieferant_ saw to it that the authorities learned of his activities. After that the margin of profit on contract might go up. For a man who had conceived a violent prejudice against war purveyors, Berlin was not a comfortable place. I was either playing in bad luck or half the world had turned into war purveyors. At any rate, I had one of them as travel companion _en route_ to Vienna. The man dealt in leather. He had a contract for the material of 120,000 pairs of army boots and was now going to Austria and Hungary for the purpose of buying it. He was a most interesting person. Before the war he had dealt in skins for gloves, but now he had taken to a related branch in order that he might "do his bit." The Fatherland, in its hour of need, depended upon the efforts of its sons. So far as he was concerned no stone would be left unturned to secure victory. He could be home attending to his regular business, instead of racing hither and thither in search of leather. But duty was duty. I might have gotten the man to admit that he made a _small_ profit on his patriotic endeavor. But that could serve no purpose. I feared, moreover, that this would needlessly prolong the conversation. When the war purveyor finally tired of my inattention, he took up his papers and I surveyed the country we were passing through. For the finest rural pictures in Central Europe we must go to Austria. The houses of the peasants, in villages and on farms alike, had a very inviting appearance. I noticed that the walls had been newly whitewashed. There was fresh paint on the window shutters, and new tiles among the old showed that the people were keeping their roofs in good repair, which was more than the government was doing with the state edifice just then. Prosperity still laughed everywhere. The train raced through small towns and villages. At the railroad crossings chubby youngsters off for school were being detained by the gateman. A buxom lass was chasing geese around a yard. Elsewhere a man was sawing wood, while a woman looked on. From the chimneys curled skyward the smoke of the hearth. It was hard to believe that the country was at war. But the groups of men in uniform at the stations, and the recruits and reservists herded in by men-at-arms over the country roads, left no doubt as to that. If this had not been sufficient proof for me, there was the war purveyor. In Austria, as well as in Germany, the fields had had the closest attention. And that attention was kind. Exploitation had no room in it. Though it was late in the season, I could still discern that plowing and fertilizing were most carefully done. The hedges and fences were in good repair. In vain did I look for the herald of slovenly farming--the rusty plow in the field, left where the animals had been taken from under the yoke. Orderliness was in evidence everywhere, and, therefore, human happiness could not be absent. There was a great deal of crop traffic on the good roads, and the many water-mills seemed very busy. Potatoes and sugar-beets were being gathered to add their munificence to the great grain- and hay-stacks. I ran over in mind some population and farm-production statistics and concluded that Austria was indeed lucky in having so large a margin of food production over food consumption. What I had settled to my own satisfaction on the train was seemingly confirmed at Vienna. Not even a trace of food shortness could I find there. There had been a slight increase in food prices, but this was a negligible quantity in times such as these. The Vienna restaurants and cafés were serving wheat bread, butter, and cream as before. In a single place I identified as many as thirty-seven different varieties of cakes and pastry. Everybody was drinking coffee with whipped cream--_Kaffee mit Obers_--and nobody gave food conservation a thought. While the Berlin bills of fare had been generous, to say the least, those of Vienna were nothing short of wasteful. Even that of the well-known Hardman emporium on the Kärntner Ring, not an extravagant place by any means, enumerated no less than one hundred and forty-seven separate items _à la carte_. I thought of the elephant steak and marveled at the imagination of some people. It seemed that in Austria such titbits were a long way off. A _mêlée_ of Viennese cooking, Austrian wine, and Hungarian music would have left anybody under that impression. But all is not gold that glitters! At the hotel where I was staying, a small army of German food-buyers was lodged. From some of them I learned what food conditions in Germany might be a year hence. These men were familiar with the needs of their country, and thought it out of place to be optimistic. The drain on farm labor and the shortage of fertilizer were the things they feared most. They were buying right and left at almost any price, and others were doing the same thing in Hungary, I was informed. These men were not strictly war purveyors. Most of them bought supplies for the regular channels of trade, but they were buying in a manner that was bound to lead to high prices. It was a question of getting quantities, and if these could not be had at one price they had to be bought at a higher. Within two days I had established that the war purveyors at Vienna were more rapacious than those at Berlin. But I will say for them that they had better manners in public places. They were not so loud--a fact which helped them greatly in business, I think. Personally, I prefer the polished Shylock to the loutish glutton. It is a weakness that has cost me a little money now and then, but, like so many of our weaknesses, it goes to make up polite life. Vienna's hotels were full of _Kriegslieferanten_. The _portiers_ and waiters addressed them as "_Baron_" and "_Graf_" (count), and for this bestowal of letters-patent nobility were rewarded with truly regal tips. But there the matter ended. I was holding converse with the _portier_ of the Hotel Bristol when a war purveyor came up and wanted to know whether telegrams had arrived for him--the war purveyor never uses the mail. "_Nein, Herr Graf_," replied the _portier_. The war purveyor seemed inclined to blame the _portier_ for this. After some remarks, alleging slovenliness on the part of somebody and everybody in so impersonal a manner that even I felt guilty, he turned away. The _portier_--I had known him a day--seemed to place much confidence in me, despite the fact that so far he had not seen the color of my money. "That fellow ought to be hung!" he said, as he looked at the revolving door that was spinning madly under the impulse which the wrathful war purveyor had given it. "He is a pig!" "But how could a count be a pig?" I asked, playfully. "He isn't a count at all," was the _portier's_ remark. "You see, that is a habit we easy-going Viennese have. The fellow has engaged one of our best suites and the title of count goes with that. It may interest you to know that years ago the same suite was occupied by Prince Bismarck." There is no reason why in tradition-loving and nobility-adoring Austria the title of count should not thereafter attach to any person occupying a suite of rooms so honored. For all that, it is a peculiar mentality that makes an honorary count an animal of uncleanly habits within the space of a few seconds. The Grand Hotel was really the citadel of the Austro-Hungarian war purveyors. Every room was taken by them, and the splendid dining-room of the establishment was crammed with them during meal-hours. Dinner was a grandiose affair. The _Kriegslieferanten_ were in dinner coats and bulging shirt-fronts, and the ladies wore all their jewels. Two of the war-purveyor couples were naturalized Americans, and one of them picked me up before I knew what had happened. While I was in Vienna I was to be their guest. It seems that the man had made a contract with the Austrian Ministry of War for ever so many thousands of tons of canned meat. He thought that his friends "back home" might be interested in that, and that there was no better way of having the news broken to them than by means of a despatch to my service. There is no doubt whatever that being a war purveyor robs a man of his sense of proportions. To see the Vienna war purveyor at his best it was necessary to wait until midnight and visit the haunts he frequented, such as the Femina, Trocadero, Chapeau Rouge, Café Capua, and Carlton cabarets. Vienna's _demi-monde_ never knew such spenders. The memory of certain harebrained American tourists faded into nothingness. Champagne flowed in rivers, and the hothouses were unable to meet the demand for flowers--at last one shortage. The gipsy fiddlers took nothing less than five crowns, and the waiters called it a poor evening when the tips fell below what formerly they had been satisfied with in a month. All of this came from the pockets of the public, and when these pockets began to show the bottom the government obligingly increased the currency by the products of the press. More money was needed by everybody. The morrow was hardly given a thought, and the sanest moment most people had was when they concluded that these were times in which it was well to let the evils of the day be sufficient thereof. One never knew when the Russians might spill over the Tartra and the Carpathians, in which case it would be all over. The light-heartedness which is so characteristic of the Austrians reached degrees that made the serious observer wonder. _Après nous le déluge_, was the motto of the times. So long as there was food enough, champagne to be had, and women to share these, the Russians could have the rest. I speculated how long this could go on. The military situation could be handled by the Germans, and would be taken in hand by them sooner or later. That much I learned in Berlin. But the Germans were powerless in the Austro-Hungarian economic departments. Though the Dual Monarchy had been self-contained entirely in food matters before the war, it seemed certain that the squandering of resources that was going on could in the end have but one result--shortage in everything. Despite that, Austrian government officials were highly optimistic. Starve out Austria and Hungary! Why, that was out of the question entirely--_ausgeschlossen_! At some statistical bureau on the Schwarzenbergstrasse I was given figures that were to show the impossibility of the Entente's design to reduce the country by hunger. These figures were imposing, I will admit, and after I had studied them I had the impression that famine was indeed a long way off. It seemed that the Stürgkh régime knew what it was doing, after all, as I had been told at the government offices. Everything would be well, even if the war should be long. Two weeks later I was at the Galician front. Going there I passed through northern Hungary. The barns of that district were bursting. The crops had been good, I was told. Every siding was crowded with cars loaded with sugar-beets and potatoes, and out in the fields the sturdy women of the race, short-skirted and high-booted, were taking from the soil more beets and more potatoes. The harvesting of these crops had been delayed by the absence of the men, due to the mobilizations. By the time I reached Neu-Sandez in Galicia, then seat of the Austro-Hungarian general headquarters, I had fully convinced myself that the Entente's program of starvation was very much out of the question. I found that the soldiers were well fed. The wheeled field kitchens were spreading appetizing smells over the countryside, and that their output was good was shown by the fine physical condition of the men. Having established this much, and the Russians coming altogether too close, I had occasion a week later to visit Budapest. In that city everybody was eating without a thought of the future, and that eating was good, as will be attested by anybody who has ever sat down to a Budapestian lamb _pörkölt_, of which the American goulash is a sort of degenerate descendant. The only other thing worth mentioning is that the Astoria Hotel was the only place in town not entirely occupied by the war purveyors. A trip through central and southern Hungary served merely to complete and confirm what I have already said here, and when later I took a look at Croatia, and the parts of Serbia known to-day as the Machwa, I began to realize why the Romans had thought these parts so necessary to them. Soil and climate here are the best any farmer could wish for. The districts are famous for their output in pork and prunes. With the Russians firmly rooted in Galicia, and with the Austro-Hungarian troops driven out of Serbia, my usefulness as a war correspondent was temporarily at an end. I returned to Budapest and later visited Vienna and Berlin. The food situation was unchanged. Austria and Hungary were consuming as before, and Germany was buying right and left. The course of the German mark was still high, despite the first issuance of Loan-Treasury notes, supported as it was by the generous surrender of much gold by the German people. Purchasable stores were still plentiful throughout southeast Europe. Despite that, the subject of food intruded everywhere. More concerned than it was willing to admit, the German government was gathering every morsel. Several neutral governments, among them the Dutch, Danish, Swiss, and Norwegian, had already declared partial embargoes on food, and these the German government had made up its mind to meet. It had in its hands the means to do this most effectively. There was Holland, for instance. Her government had reduced the export of food to Germany to a veritable minimum even then, as I learned on a trip to The Hague in December. That was well enough, but not without consequences. Holland has in Limburg a single mine of lignite coal. The output is small and suited for little more than gas production. But the country had to get coal from somewhere, if her railroads were to run, the wheels of industry to turn; if the ships were to steam and the cities to be lighted and heated. Much of the coal consumed in Holland in the past had been imported from Belgium. But that country was in the hands of the Germans. The British government had made the taking of bunker coal contingent upon conditions which the Dutch government thought unreasonable. The Dutch were between the devil and the deep blue sea. Coal they had to get, and Germany was the only country willing to supply that coal--provided there was a _quid pro quo_ in kind. There was nothing to do but accept the terms of the Germans, which were coal for food. The bartering which had preceded the making of these arrangements had been very close and stubborn. The Dutch government did not want to offend the British government. It could not afford, on the other hand, to earn the ill-will of the Germans. I had occasion to occupy myself with the case, and when my inquiry had been completed I had gained the impression that the German government had left nothing undone to get from the Dutch all the food that could be had. The insistency displayed and applied was such that it was difficult to reconcile with it the easy manner in which the subject of food had been discussed in Berlin. It seemed that the food and live-stock enumerations that had been made throughout the German Empire had given cause for anxiety. In January of 1915 I was sent to the Balkans for the purpose of surveying the political situation there. While in transit to Roumania I had once more taken stock in Berlin. No great change in food-supply conditions could be noticed. The war-bread was there, of course. But those who did not care to eat it did not have to do so. In Vienna they lived as before, and in Budapest they boastfully pointed to their full boards. But in Bucharest I once more ran into food actualities. Thousands of German commission-men were buying everything they could lay hands on, and with them co-operated hundreds of Austro-Hungarians who had long been residents of Roumania, and many of whom stood high on the grain exchange of Braila. Accident caused me to put up at the Palace Hotel, which was the headquarters of the grain-buyers. In the lobby of the establishment thousands of tons of cereals changed hands every hour. I evinced some interest in the trading in speaking to the man behind the desk. "Yes, sir! All these men are German grain-dealers," explained the Balkanite _portier_ to me. "This hotel is their headquarters. If you don't happen to sympathize with them, no harm will be done if you move to another hotel. There are many in town." But I don't mind being spoken to frankly, and since I had no special interests in grain-dealers of any sort, there was no reason why I should move, especially since the _portier_ had invited me to do that. By that time, also, I had traveled enough in Europe at war to know that discretion is always the better part of valor, and that being unperturbed was the best insurance against trouble. The German grain-dealers were doing a good business. It was easy to buy, but not so easy to export. Premier Bratianu did not like the transactions that were going on, and had passed the word to the management of the Roumanian state railroads that the traffic was to move as slowly as possible. There are ways and means of overcoming that sort of instruction, and the German grain-dealers found them. Far be it from me to run here a full record of bribery in Bucharest. I may state, however, that money left deep scars on many a fairly good character in those days. The influence and persuasion of the _chanteuses et danseuses_ of the cabarets on the Calea Victoriei played often a great rôle in cereal exports. I gained personal knowledge of a case in which a four-karat diamond secured the immediate release of eight thousand tons of wheat, and in that wheat was buried a large quantity of crude rubber, the slabs of which carried the name of a large automobile-tire manufacturer in Petrograd. Such things will happen when the ladies take a hand in war subsistence. My special mission now was to study the political situation on the Balkan peninsula and finally end up somewhere in Turkey. I did both. In Sofia the government was painfully neutral in those days. There was as yet no reason why the Germans should buy grain there, but contracts were being made for the next crop. Wool was also being bought, and many hides moved north into Germany and Austria-Hungary. But the deals were of an eminently respectable sort. Bribery was out of the question. The trouble was that the shipments secured in Bulgaria never reached their destination unless bribes moved the trains. The Serbs held the central reaches of the Danube, which, in addition to this, was ice-bound just then, and all freight from Bulgaria, going north, had to be taken through Roumania. To get them into that country was simple enough, but to get them out took more cash, more diamonds, and considerable champagne. In a single month the price of that beverage in Bucharest jumped from eighteen to forty francs, and, as if to avenge themselves, the Germans began shortly to refill the shelves with "champus" made along the Rhine. With Bulgaria explored and described, I set out for Turkey, where, at Constantinople, in July of that year, I ran into the first bread-line formed by people "who had the price." The Ottoman capital gets its food-supplies normally over the waterways that give access to the city--the Bosphorus from the north and the Black Sea and the Dardanelles from the south and the Mediterranean. Both of these avenues of trade and traffic were now closed. The Russians kept the entrance to the Bosphorus well patrolled, and the French and British saw to it that nothing entered the Dardanelles, even if they themselves could not navigate the strait very far, as some eight months' stay with the Turkish armed forces at the Dardanelles and on Gallipoli made very plain to me. The Anatolian Railroad, together with a few unimportant tap lines, was now the only means of reaching the agricultural districts of Asia Minor--the Konia Vilayet and the Cilician Plain, for instance. But the line is single-tracked and was just then very much overloaded with military transports. The result of this was that Constantinople ate up what stores there were, and then waited for more. There was more, of course. The Ottoman Empire is an agricultural state, and would be more of one if the population could see its way clear to doing without the goat and the fat-tailed sheep. That its capital and only large city should be without breadstuff as early as July, 1915, was hard to believe, yet a fact. In May of that year I had made a trip through Anatolia, Syria, and Arabia. By that time the crops in Asia Minor are well advanced and wheat is almost ripe. These crops were good, but, like the crops of the preceding season, which had not yet been moved, owing to the war, they were of little value to the people of Constantinople. They could not be had. I hate estimates, and for that reason will not indulge in them here. But the fact is that from Eregli, in the Cappadocian Plain, to Eski-Shehir, on the Anatolian high plateau, I saw enough wheat rotting at the railroad stations to supply the Central Powers for two years. Not only was every shed filled with the grain, but the farmers who had come later were obliged to store theirs out in the open, where it lay without shelter of any sort. Rain and warmth had caused the grain on top to sprout lustily, while the inside of the heap was rotting. The railroad and the government promised relief day after day, but both were unable to bring it over the single track, which was given over, almost entirely, to military traffic. Thus it came that the shops of the _ekmekdjis_ in Constantinople were besieged by hungry thousands, the merest fraction of whom ever got the loaf which the ticket, issued by the police, promised. That was not all, however. Speculators and dealers soon discerned their chance of making money and were not slow in availing themselves of it. Prices rose until the poor could buy nothing but corn meal. A corner in olives added to the distress of the multitude, and the government, with that ineptness which is typical of government in Turkey, failed to do anything that had practical value. Though the Young Turks had for a while set their faces against corruption, many of the party leaders had relapsed, with the result that little was done to check the rapacity of the dealer who hoarded for purposes of speculation and price-boosting. Yet those in the Constantinople bread-lines were modest in their normal demands. Turk and Levantine manage to get along well on a diet of bread and olives, with a little _pilaff_--a rice dish--and a small piece of meat, generally mutton, once a day thrown in. With a little coffee for the Turk, and a glass of red wine for the Levantine, this is a very agreeable bill of fare, and a good one, as any expert in dietetics will affirm. I had occasion to discuss the food shortage in Turkey with Halideh Edib Hannym Effendi, Turkey's leading feminist and education promoter. She assigned two causes. One of them was the lack of transportation, to which I have already referred as coming under my own observation. The other was found in the ineptness of the Ottoman government. She was of the opinion that there was enough food in the Bosphorus region, but that the speculators were holding it for higher prices. This, too, was nothing new to me. But it was interesting to hear a Turkish woman's opinion on this nefarious practice. To the misfortune of war the greedy were adding their lust for possession, and the men in Stamboul lacked the courage to say them nay. That men like Enver Pasha and Talaat Bey, who had taken upon themselves the responsibility of having Turkey enter the lists of the European War, were now afraid to put an end to food speculation, showed what grip the economic pirate may lay upon a community. What the Allied fleet and military forces at the Dardanelles and on Gallipoli had not accomplished the food sharks had done. Before them the leaders of the Young Turks had taken to cover. IV FAMINE COMES TO STAY That the food question should have become acute first in a state as distinctly agricultural as the Ottoman Empire furnishes an apt illustration of the fact that in the production of food man-power is all-essential. The best soil and climate lose their value when farming must be neglected on account of a shortage of labor. The plants providing us with breadstuff are the product of evolution. At one time they were mere grasses, as their tendency to revert to that state, when left to themselves, demonstrates in such climates as make natural propagation possible. It is believed that the "oat grass" on the South African veldt is a case of that sort. But apart from all that, every cropping season shows that man, in order to have bread, must plow, sow, cultivate, and reap. When the soil is no longer able to supply the cereal plants with the nutriment they need, fertilizing becomes necessary. I have shown that bread-lines formed in Constantinople when out in the Anatolian vilayets the wheat was rotting at the side of the railroad track. This was due to defects and handicaps in distribution. But there was also another side to this. I made several trips through Thrace, that part of the Ottoman Empire which lies in Europe, and found that its rich valleys and plains could have supplied the Turkish capital with all the wheat it needed had the soil been cultivated. This had not been done, however. The mobilizations had taken so many men from the _tchiftliks_--farms--that a proper tilling of the fields was out of the question. A shortage in grain resulted, and the food sharks were thus enabled to exact a heavy tribute from the public. It is a case of hard times with the speculator when things are plentiful. He is then unable to gather in all of the supply. There is a leakage which he does not control and that leakage causes his defeat in the end. It is a well-known fact that a corner in wheat is impossible, and a dangerous undertaking, so long as from 15 to 30 per cent. of the grain remains uncontrolled. That quantity represents the excess profit which the speculator counts upon. Not to control it means that the supply available to the consumer is large enough to keep the price near its normal curves, to which the speculator must presently adhere if he is not to lose money on his corner. But a great deal depends upon how corrupt the government is. The Turk-Espaniole clique in Stamboul and Pera had cornered the Thracian wheat crop in 1915, and the Anatolian Railroad was unable to bring in enough breadstuff from Anatolia and Syria. The bread-lines were the result. It was not much better in Austria and Hungary. Here, too, production had fallen off about one-fifth, and the many war purveyors, who had been driven out of business by saner systems of army purchasing, had turned their attention to foods of any sort. In Germany the same thing happened in a slightly less degree. Since in the Central states the bread ticket had meanwhile been introduced, and the quality and price of bread fixed, one may ask the question: Why was bread short in those countries when formerly they produced fully 95 per cent. of their breadstuffs? The answer is that, firstly, production had fallen off, and, secondly, there was much cornering by the speculators. It must be borne in mind that bread regulation so far consisted of attempts by the government to provide for the multitude bread at a reasonable price, without distribution being placed under efficient control. The rapacity of the food shark had forced up the price of breadstuffs, and nothing but government interference could check the avarice of the dealers. But the population had to have cheap bread, and attention had to be given the paucity of the supply. Fixed prices were to make possible the former, and a limitation in consumption was to overcome the latter. It will be seen that this procedure left the food shark a free hand. He could buy as before and sell when and to whom he pleased. Thus it came that, while the masses of Germany and Austria-Hungary had to eat war-bread in prescribed quantities, those better off materially still had their wheat-flour products. The authorities were not ignorant of this, but had good reason not to interfere. The time was come when the financial resources of the country had to be "mobilized," and this was being done by extracting from the population all the spare coin and concentrating it in the hands of the food speculators so that these could be taxed and enabled to buy war loans. These men were easily dealt with. Very often they were bankers, and kings of industry and commerce. To provide the government with funds for the war was to them a question of profit. The bread ticket did not favor an equitable distribution, nor was it ever intended to do that. Its sole purpose at first was to tax food in such a manner that those who were willing to buy more food than the bread ticket prescribed had to pay heavily for this indulgence. That this was a socio-economic injustice was plain to those who reasoned far enough. But the patient rabble accepted the thing at its face value, as it will accept most things that bear the stamp of authority. I had no difficulty anywhere in getting all the wheat bread and farinaceous dishes I wanted. It was not even necessary to ask for them. It was taken for granted that I belonged to the class that did not have to eat war-bread and do without pudding and cake, and that was enough. While I was supposed to have a bread ticket, few ever asked for it. In the restaurants which I frequented I generally found a dinner roll hidden under the napkin, which for that purpose was as a rule folded in the manner known as the "bishop's miter." But gone for the many was the era of enough food. The bread ration in Berlin was three hundred grams (ten and a half ounces) per day, and in Vienna it was two hundred and ten grams (seven and two-fifths ounces). Together with a normal supply of other eatables, flour for cooking, for instance, these rations were not really short, and in my case they were generous. But with most it was now a question of paying abnormally high prices for meat and the like, so that enough bread was more of a necessity than ever. It was rather odd that in Austria the bread ration should be smaller than in Germany. That country had in the past produced more breadstuff per capita than her ally, and would have been able to import from Hungary had conditions been different. Hungary had in the past exported wheat flour to many parts, due largely to the fine quality of her grain. Now, of a sudden, it, too, faced a shortage. The fact is that Austria-Hungary had mobilized a large part of her male population and had for that reason been extremely short of farm labor during the season of 1915. The large reserve stores had been exhausted by improvidence, and, to make things worse, the crops of that year were not favored by the weather. Meanwhile, much of the wheat had passed into the hands of the speculators, who were releasing it only when their price was paid. In Austria the bread ticket was the convenient answer to all complaints, and in Hungary, where the bread ticket was not generally introduced as yet, the food shark had the support of the government to such an extent that criticism of his methods was futile. Now and then an enterprising editor would be heard from--as far as his press-room, where the censor caused such hardihoods to be routed from the plate. The food outlook in Austria-Hungary was no pleasant one. Drastic regulation would be needed to alleviate conditions. It was no better in Germany, as a trip to Berlin showed. Food had indeed become a problem in the Central states of Europe. The same area had been put under crops in 1915; the area had even been somewhat extended by advice of the governments that all fallow lands be sown. But the harvest had not been good. The shortage of trained farmers, lack of animal-power, and the paucity of fertilizers had done exactly what was to be expected. Then, the growing season had not been favorable. The year had been wet, and much of the grain had been ruined even after it was ripe. For the purpose of investigating conditions at close range I made a few trips into the country districts. The large landowners, the farmers, and the villagers had the same story to tell. Not enough hands, shortage of horses and other draft animals, little manure, and a poor season. One of the men with whom I discussed the aspects of farming under the handicaps which the war was imposing was Joachim Baron von Bredow-Wagenitz, a large landowner in the province of Brandenburg. As owner of an estate that had been most successful under scientific methods of farming, he was well qualified to discuss the situation. He had tried steam-plowing and found it wanting. The man was on the verge of believing that Mother Earth resented being treated in that manner. The best had been done to make steam-plowing as good as the other form. But something seemed to have gone wrong. There was no life in the crops. It was a question of fertilizing, my informant concluded. The theory, which had been held, that there was enough reserve plant nutriment in the soil to produce a good crop at least one season with indifferent fertilization, was evidently incorrect, or correct only in so far as certain crop plants were concerned. Baron Bredow had employed some threescore of Russian prisoners on his place. Some of the men had worked well, but most of them had shown ability only in shirking. The older men and the women had done their best to get something out of the soil, but they were unable, in the first place, to stand the physical strain, and, secondly, they lacked the necessary experience in the departments which the men at the front had looked after. Elsewhere in Germany it was the same story. It simply was impossible to discount the loss of almost four million men who had by that time been withdrawn from the soil and were now consuming more than ever before without producing a single thing, as yet. To show what that really meant let me cite a few factors that are easily grasped. The population of the German Empire was then, roundly, 70,000,000 persons. Of this number 35,000,000 were women. Of the 35,000,000 men all individuals from birth to the age of fifteen were virtually consumers only, while those from fifty years onward were more or less in the same class. Accepting that the average length of life in Central Europe is fifty-five years, we find that the male producers in 1915 numbered about 20,000,000, and of this number about one-half was then either at the fronts or under military training. Of these 10,000,000 roughly 4,200,000 had formerly occupied themselves with the production and distribution of food. I need not state that this army formed quite the best element in food production for the simple reason that it was composed of men in the prime of life. A survey in Austria showed not only the same conditions, but also indicated that the worst was yet to come. Austria and Hungary had then under the colors about 5,000,000 men, of whom, roundly, 2,225,000 came from the fields and food industries, so that agriculture was even worse off in the Dual Monarchy than it was in Germany. The large landowners in Austria and Hungary told the same story as Baron Bredow. Experiences tallied exactly. They, too, had found it impossible to get the necessary labor, for either love or money. It simply was not in the country, and with many of the Austrian and Hungarian land-operators the labor given by the Russian prisoner of war was next thing to being nothing at all. The Russians felt that they were being put to work against the interest of their country, and many of them seemed to like the idleness of the prison camp better than the work that was expected of them on the estates, though here they were almost free. I remember especially the experiences of Count Erdödy, a Hungarian nobleman and owner of several big estates. After trying every sort of available male labor, he finally decided to cultivate his lands with the help of women. The thing was not a success by any means, but when he came to compare notes with his neighbors he found that, after all, the women had done much better than the men on his neighbors' estates. As a sign of the times I should mention here that Count Erdödy, no longer a young man, would spend weeks at a stretch doing the heaviest of farm work, labor in which he was assisted by his American wife and two daughters, one of whom could work a plow as well as any man. The war had ceased to be an affair that would affect solely the masses, as is often the case. Men who never before had done manual labor could now be seen following the plow, cultivating crops, operating reapers, and threshing the grain. The farm superintendents, most of them young and able-bodied men of education, had long ago been called to the colors as reserve officers, so that generally the owner, who in the past had taken it very easy, was now confronted with a total absence of executives on his estates, in addition to being short of man-power and animals of labor. But the large farm-operators were not half so poorly off as the small farmer. I will cite a case in order to show the conditions on the small farms and in the villages. The land near Linz in Austria is particularly fertile and is mostly held by small owners who came into possession of it during the Farmer Revolution in the 'forties. I visited a number of these men and will give here what is a typical instance of what they had to contend with in the crop season of 1915. "It is all right for the government to expect that we are to raise the same, if not better, crops during the war," said one of them. "For the fine gentlemen who sit in the Ministerial offices that does not mean much. Out here it is different. Their circulars are very interesting, but the fact is that we cannot carry out the suggestions they make. "They have left me my youngest son. He is a mere boy--just eighteen. The other boys--three of them--who helped me run this place, I have lost. One of them was killed in Galicia, and the other two have been taken prisoners. I may never see them again. They say my two boys are prisoners. But I have heard nothing of them. "My crops would have been better if I hadn't tried to follow some of the advice in the government circulars. It was my duty to raise all I could on my land, they said. I doubted the wisdom of putting out too much, with nobody to help me. "It would have been better had I followed my own judgment and plowed half the land and let the other lie fallow, in which case it would have been better for the crops next year. Instead of that I planted all the fields, used a great deal of seed, wasted much of my labor, first in plowing, then in cultivating, and later in harvesting, and now I have actually less return than usually I had from half the land." The records of the man showed that from his thirty acres he had harvested what normally fifteen would have given him. Haste makes waste, and in his instance haste was the equivalent of trying to do with two pairs of weak hands what formerly three pairs of strong arms had done. The farmer explained that for several years before the war he had done little work, feeling that he was entitled to a rest. Nor had his heart been in the work. One of his sons had been killed. Two others were in captivity, and the fourth, Franz, might be called to the colors any day. It seemed to him futile to continue. What was the use of anything, now that his family had been torn apart in that manner? [Illustration: Photograph from Brown Brothers, N. Y. A LEVY OF FARMER BOYS OFF FOR THE BARRACKS The fact that millions of food-producers of this type were taken from the soil caused Central Europe to run short of life's necessities.] [Illustration: Photograph from Brown Brothers, N. Y. GERMAN CAVALRYMEN AT WORK PLOWING As food grew scarcer the German army began to cultivate the fields in the occupied territories to lessen the burden of the food-producer at home.] Taxes were higher, of course. On the other hand, he was getting a little more for his products, but not enough to make good the loss sustained through bad crops. While the production of his land had fallen to about one-half of normal, he was getting on an average 15 per cent. more for what he sold, which was now a bare third of what he had sold in other years, seeing that from the little he had raised he had to meet the wants of his family and the few animals that were left. Neighbors of the man told a similar story. Some of them had done a little better in production, but in no instance had the crop been within more than 80 per cent. of normal. They, too, were not satisfied with the prices they were getting. The buyers of the commission-men were guided by the minimum-price regulation which the government was enforcing, and often they would class a thing inferior in order to go below that price--as the regulations permitted. These people felt that they were being mulcted. But redress there was none. If they refused to sell, the authorities could compel them, and rather than face requisition they allowed the agents of the food sharks to have their way. The thought that the government was exploiting them was disheartening, and was reflected in their production of food. This was the state of affairs almost everywhere. The able-bodied men had been taken from the soil, just as they had been taken from other economic spheres. Labor was not only scarce, but so high-priced that the small farmer could not afford to buy it. And then, I found that in the rural districts the war looked much more real to people. There it had truly fostered the thought that all in life is vain. The city people were much better off in that respect. They also had their men at the front. But they had more diversion, even if that diversion was usually no more than meeting many people each day. They had, moreover, the exhilarating sensation that comes from playing a game for big stakes. When the outlook was dreary they always found some optimist who would cheer them up; and the report of some victory, however small and inconsequential, buoyed them up for days at a time. Out in the country it was different. The weekly paper did its best to be cheerful. But its sanguine guesses as to the military future were seen by eyes accustomed to dealing with the realities of nature. I visited many Austrian villages and found the same psychology everywhere. The Austrian farmer was tired of the war by December of 1914. When I occupied myself again with him a year later he was disgusted and had come to care not a rap who governed in Budapest. Of course, it was different should the Russians get to Vienna. In that case they would take their pitchforks and scythes and show them. The Hungarian farmer was in the same mood. If the war could have been ended with the Italians getting no farther than Vienna things would have been well enough, but to have the Russians in Budapest--not to be thought of; not for a minute. Meanwhile, the Austrian and Hungarian governments, taking now many a leaf from the book of the Germans, were urging a greater production of food next season. Highly technical books were being digested into the every-day language of the farmer. It was pointed out what sorts of plowing would be most useful, and what might be omitted in case it could not be done. How and when to fertilize under prevailing conditions was also explained. The leaflets meant well, but generally overlooked the fact that each farm has problems of its own. But this prodding of the farmer and his soil was not entirely without good results. It caused a rather thorough cultivation of the fields in the fall of 1915, and also led to the utilization of fertilizing materials which had been overlooked before. The dung-pits were scraped, and even the earth around them was carted into the fields. Though animal urine had already been highly valued as a fertilizer, it was now conserved with greater care. Every speck of wood ash was saved. The humus on the woodland floors and forests was drawn on. The muck of rivers and ponds was spread over the near-by fields, and in northern Germany the parent stratum of peat growth was ground up and added to the soil as plant food. V THE FOOD SHARK AND HIS WAYS There were two schools of war economists in Central Europe, and they had their following in each of the several governments that regulated food--its production, distribution, and consumption. The two elements opposed each other, naturally, and not a little confusion came of this now and then. The military formed one of these schools--the radical. These men wanted to spread over the entire population the discipline of the barrack-yard. For the time being they wanted the entire state to be run on military principles. All production was to be for the state; all distribution was to be done in the interest of the war, and all consumption, whether that of the rich or the poor, was to be measured by the military value of the individual. It was proposed that every person in the several states should get just his share of the available food and not a crumb more. The rich man was to eat exactly, to the fraction of an ounce, what the poor man got. He was to have no greater a share of clothing, fuel, and light. That seemed very equitable to most people. It appealed even to the other school, but it did not find the approval of those who were interested in the perpetuation of the old system of social economy. What the military proposed was more than the socialists had ever demanded. The enforcement of that measure would have been the triumph absolute of the Social-Democrats of Central Europe. But for that the Central European politician and capitalist was not ready. With the capitalist it was a question of: What good would it do to win the war if socialism was thus to become supreme? It would be far better to go down in military defeat and preserve the profit system. The struggle was most interesting. I had occasion to discuss it with a man whose name I cannot give, for the reason that it might go hard with him--and I am not making war on individuals. At any rate, the man is now a general in the German army. He was then a colonel and looked upon as the ablest combination of politician, diplomatist, and soldier Germany possessed, as he had indeed proved. "You are a socialist," I said to him. "But you don't seem to know it." "I am a socialist and do know it," said the colonel. "This war has made me a socialist. When this affair is over, and I am spared, I will become an active socialist." "And the reason?" I asked. That question the colonel did not answer. He could not. But I learned indirectly what his reasons were. Little by little he unfolded them to me. He was tired of the butchery, all the more tired since he could not see how bloody strife of that sort added anything to the well-being of man. "When war reaches the proportions it has to-day it ceases to be a military exercise," he said on one occasion. "The peoples of Europe are at one another's throat to-day because one set of capitalists is afraid that it is to lose a part of its dividends to another. The only way we have of getting even with them is to turn socialist and put the curb on our masters." There would seem to be no direct connection between this sentiment and the economic tendency of the military in food regulation. Yet there is. The men in the trenches knew very well what they were fighting for. They realized that, now the struggle was on, they had to continue with it, but they had also made up their mind to be heard from later on. The case I have quoted is not isolated. I found another in the general headquarters of General von Stein, then commanding a sector on the Somme. In the camp of the military economists was also that governing element which manages to drag out an existence of genteel shabbiness on the smallest pay given an official of that class anywhere. This faction also favored the most sweeping measures of war economy. But it was in the end a simple matter of holding these extremists down. Their opponents always had the very trenchant argument that it took money to carry on the war, and that this money could not be had if the old system was completely overthrown. There was little to be said after that. To do anything that would make war loans impossible would be treason, of course, and that was considered going too far. Regulation thereafter resolved itself into an endeavor by the anti-capitalists to trim their _bête noire_ as much as was possible and safe, and the effort of the economic standpatters to come to the rescue of their friends. Now the one, then the other, would carry off the honors, and each time capital and public would either gain or lose. It depended somewhat on the season. When war loans had to be made, the anti-capitalist school would ease off a little, and when the loan had been subscribed it would return to its old tactics, to meet, as before, the very effective passive resistance of the standpatters. I may mention here that much of what has been said of the efficient organization of the German governments is buncombe--rot pure and simple. In the case of the Austrian and Hungarian governments this claim has never been made, could never have been made, and no remark of mine is necessary. The thing that has been mistaken for efficient organization is the absolute obedience to authority which has been bred into the German for centuries. Nor is that obedience entirely barrack bred, as some have asserted. It is more the high regard for municipal law and love of orderliness than the fear of the drill-sergeant that finds expression in this obedience. How to make good use of this quality requires organizing ability, of course. But no matter how the efficient organization of the Germans is viewed, the fact remains that the German people, by virtue of its love of orderliness, is highly susceptible to the impulses of the governing class. To that all German efficiency is due. There had been some modification of distribution early in 1915. That, however, was entirely a military measure. The traffic on the German state railroads was unusually heavy, and trackage, rolling-stock, and motive power had to be husbanded if a breakdown of the long lines of communication between the French and Russian fronts was to be avoided. There was no thought of social economy. The thing aimed at was to keep the railroads fit for military service. But by August of 1915 the military economists had managed to get their hands into economic affairs. It cannot be said that their efforts were at first particularly fortunate. But the German general staff was and is composed of men quick to learn. These men had then acquired at least one sound notion, and this was that, with the railroads of the several states under military control, they could "get after" the industrial and commercial barons whom they hated so cordially. "In the interest of the military establishment" a number of socio-economic innovations were introduced. The first of them was the distribution zone. There is no doubt that it was a clever idea. It was so sound, at the same time, that the friends of the trade lords in the government had to accept it. The arrangement worked something like this. A wholesaler of flour in western Hanover might have a good customer in the city of Magdeburg. Up to now he had been permitted to ship to that customer as he desired. That was to cease. He could now ship only to that point when he could prove that the flour was not needed nearer to where it was stored. But to prove that was not easy--was impossible, in fact. Since the German state railroads had in the past provided much of the revenue of the several governments, this was no small step to take. But it was taken, and with most salutary effects. The trundling of freight back and forth ceased, and the food shark was the loser. Ostensibly, this had been done in order to conserve the railroads. Its actual purpose was to check the trade lords by depriving them of one of their arguments why the price of necessities should be high. What was accomplished in this instance should interest any community, and for that reason I will illustrate it with an example of "economic waste" found in the United States. You may have eaten a "Kansas City" steak in San Antonio, Texas, if not at Corpus Christi or Brownsville. (I am an adopted "native" of that region and inordinately proud of it.) If you had investigated the history of that steak I think you would have been somewhat surprised. The steer which produced that steak might have been raised in the valley of the Rio Grande. After that the animal had taken a trip to Oklahoma, where better pasture put more meat on its back. Still later a farmer in Missouri had fattened the steer on the very cream of his soil, and after that it had been taken to Kansas City or Chicago to be butchered and "storaged." It might then have dawned upon you that a great deal of wasted effort was hidden in the price of that steak, though no more than in the biscuit that was wheat in North Dakota, flour in Minneapolis, biscuit in San Francisco, and a toothsome morsel to follow the steak. You would be a dull person indeed if now some economic short cut had not occurred to you. The steak might have been produced by Texas grass and North Texas corn, and the like, and it need never have traveled farther than San Antonio. The biscuit might have been given its form in Minneapolis. It was so in Germany before the military social economists took a hand in the scheme, though the waste was by no means as great as in the cases I have cited, seeing that all of the empire is a little smaller than the Lone Star State. But the little trundling there was had to go. In the winter of 1915-16 this budding economic idea was still in chrysalis, however. The several governments still looked upon it entirely as a measure for the conservation of their railroads. What is more, they were afraid to give the principle too wide an application. In the first place, the extension of the scheme into the socio-economic structure seemed difficult technically. It was realized that the reduction of traffic on the rails was one thing, and that the simplifying of distribution was quite another. To effect the first the Minister of Railroads had merely to get in touch with the chiefs of the "direction," as the districts of railroading are called. The chiefs would forward instruction to their division heads, and after that everything was in order. But distribution was another thing. In that case the several governments did not deal with a machine attuned to obey the slightest impulse from above, and which as readily transmitted impulses from the other end. Far from it. Not to meddle with distribution, so long as this was not absolutely necessary, was deemed the better course, especially since all such meddling would have to be done along lines drawn a thousand times by the Central European socialist. But the food shark had to be checked somehow. The unrest due to his sharp practices was on the increase. The minimum-maximum price decrees which had been issued were all very well, but so long as there was a chance to speculate and hoard they were to the masses a detriment rather than a benefit. Let me show you how the food shark operated. The case I quote is Austrian, but I could name hundreds of similar instances in Germany. I have selected this case because I knew the man by sight and attended several sessions of his trial. First I will briefly outline what law he had violated. To lay low what was known as chain trade throughout Central Europe, _Kettenhandel_, the governments had decreed that foodstuffs could be distributed only in this manner: The producer could sell to a commission-man, but the commission-man could sell only to the wholesaler, and the wholesaler only to the retailer. That appears rational enough. But neither commission-man nor wholesaler liked to adhere to the scheme. Despite the law, they would pass the same thing from one to another, and every temporary owner of the article would add a profit, and no small one. To establish the needed control the retailer was to demand from the wholesaler the bill of sale by which the goods had passed into his hands, while the wholesaler could make the commission-man produce documentary evidence showing how much he had paid the producer. Under the scheme a mill, or other establishment where commodities were collected, was a producer. Mr. B. had bought of the Fiume Rice Mills Company a car-load of best rice, the car-load in Central Europe being generally ten tons. He had brought the rice to Vienna and there was an eager market for it, as may be imagined. But he wanted to make a large profit, and that was impossible if he went about the sale of the rice in the manner prescribed by the government. The wholesaler or retailer to whom he sold might wish to see the bill of sale, and then he was sure to report him to the authorities if the profit were greater than the maximum which the government had provided. To overcome all this he did what many others were doing, and in that manner made on the single car of rice which he sold to a hunger-ridden community the neat little profit of thirty-five hundred crowns. Something went wrong, however. Mr. B. was arrested and tried on the charge of price-boosting by means of chain trade. When the rice got to Vienna he had sold it to a dummy. The dummy sold it to another dummy, and Mr. B. bought it again from the second dummy. In this manner he secured the necessary figures on the bill of sale and imposed them on the wholesaler. The court was lenient in his case. He was fined five thousand crowns, was given six weeks in jail, and lost his license to trade. _Preistreiberei_--to wit--price-boosting did not pay in this instance. After all, that sort of work was extremely crude when compared with some other specimens, though the more refined varieties of piracy needed usually the connivance of some public official, generally a man connected with the railroad management. Many of these officials were poorly paid when the war began and the government could not see its way clear to paying them more. The keen desire of keeping up the shabby gentility that goes with Central European officialdom, and very often actual want, caused these men to fall by the roadside. There was a little case that affected three hundred cars of wheat flour. Though Hungary and Austria had then no wheat flour to spare for export, the flour was actually exported through Switzerland into Italy, though that country was then at war with the Dual Monarchy! Thirty-two men were arrested, and two of them committed suicide before the law laid hands on them. The odd part of it was that the flour had crossed the Austro-Hungarian border at Marchegg, where the shipment had been examined by the military border police. It had then gone across Austria as a shipment of "cement in bags," had passed as such into Switzerland, and there the agents of the food sharks in Budapest had turned it over to an Italian buyer. Nobody would have been the wiser had it not been that a shipment of some thirty cars was wrecked. Lo and behold, the cement was flour! They had some similar cases in Germany, though most of them involved chain trading in textiles. The unmerciful application of the law did not deter the profiteer at all, any more than capital punishment has ever succeeded in totally eradicating murder. There was always somebody who would take a chance, and it was the leakage rather than the general scheme of distribution that did all the damage. Whatever necessity and commodity had once passed out of the channel of legitimate business had to stay out of it if those responsible for the deflection were not to come in conflict with the law, and there were always those who were only too glad to buy such stores. The wholesaler received more than the maximum price he could have asked of the retailer, and the consumer was glad to get the merchandise at almost any price so that he could increase his hoard. But the governments were loth to put the brake on too much of the economic machinery. They depended on that machinery for money to carry on the war, and large numbers of men would be needed to supervise a system of distribution that thwarted the middleman's greed effectively. These men were not available. The minimum-maximum price scheme had shown itself defective, moreover. In theory this was all very well, but in food regulation it is often a question of: The government proposes and the individual disposes. The minimum price was the limit which any would-be buyer could offer the seller. In the case of the farmer it meant that for a kilogram (2.205 pounds) of potatoes he would get, let us say, five cents. Nobody could offer him less. The maximum price was to protect the consumer, who for the same potatoes was supposed to pay no more than six and one-half cents. The middlemen were to fit into this scheme as best they could. The one and one-half cents had to cover freight charges, operation cost, and profit. The margin was ample in a farm-warehouse-store-kitchen scheme of distribution. But it left nothing for the speculator, being intended to stimulate production and ease the burden which the consumer was bearing. Not the least purpose of the scheme was to keep the money out of the hands of food-dealers, who would hoard their ill-gotten gain. The government needed an active flow of currency. All of which was well enough so long as the supply of food was not really short. But when it grew short another factor entered the arena. Everybody began to hoard. The quantities which the authorities released for consumption were not intended to be stored, however. Storing food by incompetents is most wasteful, as the massacre of the pigs had shown, and hoarding, moreover, gave more food to the rich than to the poor; so for the time being it could not be encouraged too openly, despite the revenues that came from it. But the hoarder is hard to defeat. The consumer knew and trusted the retailer, the retailer was on the best of terms with the wholesaler, and the rapacious commission-man knew where to get the goods. He made the farmer a better offer than the minimum price he usually received. He paid six cents for the kilogram of potatoes, or even seven. Then he sold in a manner which brought the potatoes to the consumer for eleven cents through the "food speak-easy." The middleman and retailer had now cleared four cents on the kilogram, instead of one and one-half cents; their outlay deducted, they would make a net profit running from two and one-half cents to three and one-half cents per 2.205 American pounds of potatoes. This sort of traffic ran into the tens of thousands of tons. The food shark was making hay while the weather was good. The entire range of human alimentation was at his mercy, and often the government closed an eye because the food shark would subscribe handsomely to the next war loan. In the winter of 1915-16 I made several trips into the country to see how things were getting along. On one occasion I was in Moravia. I had heard rumors that here the food shark had found Paradise. It was a fact. Near a freight-yard in Brünn a potato-dealer was installed. He bought potatoes in any quantity, being in effect merely the agent of the Vienna Bank Ring that was doing a food-commission business as a side line. I don't know why the government permitted this, except that this "concession" was a _quid pro quo_ for war-loan subscriptions. A little old Czech farmer drove up. He had some thirty bags of potatoes on his sleigh, all well protected by straw and blankets. The food shark looked the load over and offered the minimum price for that grade, which on that day was eighteen hellers the kilogram, about one and three-fourths cents American per pound avoirdupois. The farmer protested. "My daughter in Vienna tells me that she has to pay thirty-six hellers a kilogram," he said. "Not according to the maximum price set by the government, which is twenty-one hellers just now," was the bland remark of the agent. "That is all very well, sir!" returned the farmer. "But you know as well as I do that when my daughter wants potatoes she must pay thirty-six hellers or whatever the retailer wants. She writes me that when she stands in the food-line she never gets anything. So she does business with a man who always has potatoes." The food shark had no time to lose. Other farmers came. "Eighteen hellers or nothing," he said. The farmer thought it over for a while and then sold. The reader uninitiated in war-food conditions may ask: Why didn't that farmer ship his daughter the potatoes she needed? He couldn't, of course. The economic-zone arrangement prevented him. That zone was the means which the government employed to regulate and restrict distribution and consumption without giving money an opportunity to tarnish in the hands of people who might not subscribe to war loans. The zone "mobilized" the pennies by concentrating them in the banks and making them available _en masse_ for the war. Yet the fact was that the daughter of the farmer, buying potatoes clandestinely, may have bought the very product of her father's land. Who in that case got the eighteen hellers difference? The middlemen, of course. That the poor woman, in order to feed her children, might have been able to use to good advantage two kilograms at thirty-six hellers, instead of one, is very likely, but this consideration did not bother the food sharks known as the Vienna Bank Ring. On one occasion the same group of food speculators permitted two million eggs to spoil in a railroad yard at Vienna because the price was not good enough. The Bank Ring was just then agitating for a better price for eggs and hoped that the maximum would be raised. But the government was a little slow on this occasion, and before the price went up, "according to regulation," the eggs were an unpleasant memory to the yard-hands. Naturally, nobody was prosecuted in this case. I understood at the time that the Bank Ring presented to the Austrian government a sort of ultimatum, which read: "No profits, no war loans." The government surrendered. The fact that many of these speculators were of the Jewish persuasion caused a revival of a rather mild sort of anti-Semitism. Several of the Christian newspapers made much of this, but the government censors soon put an end to that. This was no time for the pot to call the kettle black. The food shark came from all classes, and the Austrian nobility was not poorly represented. There was the case of the princely house of Schwarzenberg, for instance. The family is not of German blood to any extent, as the name would seem to imply. Nowadays it is distinctly Bohemian, and in Bohemia its vast estates and properties are located. The managers of the Schwarzenbergs had a corner on almost everything that was raised in the localities of the family's domains. In the winter of 1915-16 they forced up, to unheard-of heights, the price of prunes. The prune was a veritable titbit then, and with most people in Central Europe it had come to be the only fruit they could get in the winter. Its nutritive value is great, and since every pfennig and heller had to buy a maximum in food values the demand for prunes soon exceeded greatly the supply--so everybody thought. But the trouble was not a shortage. The crop had been good, in fact. Orchards, so far as they had not been harmed by the paucity of copper for the manufacture of vitriol and Bordeaux mixture for the extermination of tree parasites, had not suffered by the war. The trees bore as usual, and fruit crops were generally what they had been before. Nor had there been an increase in operation expenses, aside from what little extra pay there was given those who gathered the crop. But the Schwarzenbergs and a few others made up their minds that they, too, would get a little of the war profits. They also were heavy investors in war loans. So long as this corner was confined to prunes and other fruits the thing presented no great problem--as problems went then. But the activity of this particular ring did not stop there. Its members dealt in everything the soil produced. During the first months of the war there had been set aside by the several military authorities certain agricultural districts from which the armies were to be supplied with food, forage, and the like. The idea was not a bad one. The armies were voracious consumers, and a scheme which would concentrate over as small an area as possible the supplies needed meant a great saving of time and effort when shipments had to be made. That would have been very well had the several governments bought all supplies from the producer direct through the medium of a purchasing branch of the commissary department. Such was not the case, however. The government continued to buy through war purveyors, who had, indeed, been curbed a little, but only in exchange for other privileges. Standing in well with the military, these men were able to sell out of the commissary-supply zones what the armies did not need--poultry, butter, fats, and eggs, for instance. These little side lines paid very well. I remember discovering on one trip that near Prague could be bought a whole goose for what in Vienna two pounds would cost. Since the Bohemian geese are never small birds, and weigh from nine to twelve pounds, this was a case of five to one. When in the cities butter was almost a thing unknown, I was able to buy in Bohemia any quantity at the very reasonable price of twenty-seven cents American a pound. In Vienna it cost one dollar and thirty cents a pound after the food shark had been satisfied. The military-supply-zone arrangement made exports from districts affected to the large population centers impossible, except upon special permit, which was not easy to get by the man who had no "protection," as they put it in Austria. The food shark always interfered. In doing that he had a sort of double objective. Scarcity was forcing up the prices in the cities, and when the government had been persuaded that the prevailing maximum price was not "fair to the farmer" the shark had a reservoir to draw upon. I found a similar state of affairs in Galicia. On the very outskirts of Cracow I ran into a veritable land of plenty. The military zone had completely isolated this district, and while elsewhere people had not seen butter in weeks, it was used here for cooking, and lard served as axle-grease. Finally the zone was opened to the civilian consumer. But this concession benefitted only the food sharks. In the population centers prices remained what they had been. I found similar conditions in Germany, though the cause was not entirely the same. The Mecklenburg states still have a government and public administration scheme that has come down to our day from the Middle Ages without much modification. They have no constitution as yet, and they would have no railroads, I suppose, were it not that their neighbors had to get access to one another through these principalities. The two countries are hard-boiled eggs indeed. And the Mecklenburgers are like their government. I understand that some enlightened ruler once offered his people constitutional government, but had a refusal for his pains. Enough food had been hoarded in Mecklenburg to meet all Germany's shortage three months. But nobody could get it out. The Imperial German government had no say in the matter. The several German states are as jealous of their vested rights as any American State could possibly be. And the Mecklenburg government had little influence with its farmers. The case was rather interesting. Here was an absolute government that was more impotent in its dealings with its subjects than constitutional Austria was. But the Mecklenburg farmers were of one mind, and that quality is often stronger than a regularly established constitution--it is stronger for the reason that it may be an unwritten constitution. The cellars and granaries of Mecklenburg were full to overflowing. But there the thing ended, until one day the screws were put on by the Imperial German government. The Mecklenburgers had been good war-loan buyers, however. Hard-headed farmers often prefer direct methods. In Westphalia they had similar food islands, and from Osnabrück to the North Sea victuals had generally to be pried loose with a crowbar. There the farmer was the peasant of the good old type; he was generally a hard person to deal with. It was shown that while he did not mind being classed as low-caste--_Bauernstand_--he also had cultivated a castal independence. He would doff his cap to the government official, and all the time resolve the firmer not to let his crops get out of his hands in a manner not agreeable to him. Passive resistance is too much for any government, no matter how absolute and strong it may be. It can be overcome only by cajolery. The clandestine food-buyer had better luck, of course. He knew how to impress and persuade the thickhead, and then made the dear general public pay for this social accomplishment, which may be as it should be. He also frustrated the plan of the government. Pennies so mobilized did not always go into war loans. To the men in high places this was not unknown, of course. They realized that something would have to be done soon or late to put this department of war economics on a smooth track. Appeals not to hoard and not to speculate in the interest of the nation were all very well, but they led to nothing. Still, it would not do to undertake the major operation on the vitals of the socio-economic organism which alone could set matters right. More doctoring was done during the summer of 1916. Those who did it were being misled by the will-o'-the-wisp of a good crop prospect. In August of that year I had an interview with Dr. Karl Helfferich, the first German food-dictator. He was averse just then to more food regulation. He had done wonders as it was. Everybody knew that, though he was most modest about it. More regulation of the economic machine seemed undesirable to him. He did not want to wholly unmake and remodel the industrial and commercial organism of the state, and preliminary crop reports were such that further interference seemed unnecessary at that moment. As it was, the rye crop of Germany met expectations. Wheat fell short, however, Oats were good, but the potatoes made a poor showing, as did a number of other crops that year. Crop returns in Austria were disappointing on the whole. The spring had been very wet and the summer unusually dry. When the harvesting season came a long rainy spell ruined another 10 per cent. of the cereals. Potatoes failed to give a good yield. In Hungary the outlook was equally discouraging, and reports from the occupied territories in Poland, Serbia, and Macedonia showed that what the "economic troops" and occupation forces had raised would be needed by the armies. To fill the cup of anxiety to the brim, Roumania declared war. The several governments had made arrangements to give furlough to as many farm-workers as possible, that the crops might be brought in properly. The entry of Roumania into the war made that impossible. And the moment for entry had been chosen well indeed. By reason of its warmer climate, Roumania had been able to harvest a good three-quarters of her crops by August, and the Indian corn could be left to the older men, women, and children to gather. But in the Central states it was different. Much of the wheat had been harvested, and some rye had also been brought in, but the bulk of the field produce, upon which the populations depended for their nourishment, was still in the fields. I have never experienced so gloomy a time as this. There was a new enemy, and this enemy was spreading all over Transylvania. The shortage of labor was greater than ever before, with the weather more unfavorable. What the conditions in Austria and Hungary were at that time I was able to ascertain on several trips to the Roumanian front. Cereals that should have been under roof long ago were standing in the fields, spilling their kernels when rain was not rotting them. Those who were left to reap struggled heroically with the huge task on their hands, but were not equal to it. If ever the specter of famine had stalked through the Central states, those were the days. All this left the food shark undisturbed. He laid hands on all he could and was ready to squeeze hard when the time came. VI THE HOARDERS The fact that business relations in Central Europe are very often family and friendship affairs was to prove an almost insuperable obstacle in government food regulation. It led to the growth of what for the want of a better term I will call: The food "speak-easy." The word _Kundschaft_ may be translated into English as "circle of customers." The term "trade" will not fit, for the reason that relations between old customers and storekeeper are usually the most intimate. The dealer may have known the mother of the woman who buys in his shop. He may have also known her grandmother. At any rate, it is certain that the customer has dealt at the store ever since she moved into the district. Loyalty in Central Europe goes so far that a customer would think twice before changing stores, and if a change is made it becomes almost a matter of personal affront. The storekeeper will feel that he has done his best by the customer and has found no appreciation. Not versed in the ways of Europe, I had several experiences of this peculiarity. While in Vienna I used to buy my smoking materials of a little woman who kept a tobacco "_Traffic_" on the Alleestrasse. I did not show up when at the front, of course, and, making many such trips, my custom was a rather spasmodic affair. The woman seemed to be worried about it. "It is very odd, sir, that you stay away altogether at times," she said. "Is it possible that you are not satisfied with my goods? They are the same as those you get elsewhere, you know." That was true enough. In Austria trade in tobacco is a government monopoly, and one buys the same brands at all the stores. "I am not always in town," I explained. I was to get my bringing-up supplemented presently. Those who know the Viennese will best understand what happened. "You are a foreigner, sir," continued the woman, "and cannot be expected to know the ways of this country. May I give you a little advice?" I said that I had never been above taking advice from anybody. "You will get much better service from storekeepers in this country if you become a regular customer, and especially in these days. You see, that is the rule here. Smoking material, as you know, is already short, and I fear that in a little while there will not be enough to go around." The tip was not lost on me, especially since I found that the woman really meant well. She had counted on me as one of those whom she intended to supply with smokes when the shortage became chronic, which it soon would be. And that she proposed doing because I was such a "pleasant fellow." After that I took pains to announce my departure whenever I had occasion to leave the city, and I found that, long after the "tobacco-line" was one of the facts of the time, the woman would lay aside for me every day ten cigarettes. My small trade had come to be one of the things which the woman counted upon--and she wanted no fickleness from me in return for the thought she gave my welfare. What a food shortage would lead to under such conditions can be imagined. The storekeeper would look out for his regular customers, before any other person got from him so much as sight of the food. The government regulations were less partial, however. The several food cards, with which would-be purchasers were provided, were intended to be honored on sight so long as the quota they stipulated was there. The food "speak-easy" had its birth in this. The storekeeper would know that such and such customer needed sundry items and would reserve them. The customer might never get them if she stood in line, so she called afterward at the back door, or came late of nights when the sign "Everything Sold" hung in the window. Had this illicit traffic stopped there and then things would have been well enough. But it did not. Before very long it degenerated into a wild scramble for food for hoarding purposes. As yet the several governments were not greatly interested in distribution methods that really were of service. The avenue from wholesaler to retailer was still open. The food cards were issued to the public to limit consumption, and the law paragraph quoted on them called attention to the fact that infraction of the regulations would be punished no matter by whom committed. Most of the little coupons were half the size of a postage stamp, and so many of them were collected by a storekeeper in the course of a week that an army of men would have been needed if the things were to be counted. So the governments took a chance with the honesty of the retailers. That was a mistake, of course, but it was the only way. There was at first no control of any sort over the quantities bought by the retailer. In fact, he could buy as much as he liked so long as the wholesaler did not have another friend retailer to keep in mind. The other retailer was doing business along the same lines, and could not be overlooked; otherwise there would be the danger of losing him as soon as the war was over; in those days it was still "soon." The wholesaler maintained the best of relations with the retailer, despite the fact that he was of a superior class. The two would meet now and then in the cafés, and there the somewhat unequal business friendship would be fostered over the marble-topped table. The customer of the retailer was already hoarding food. The retailer tried to do all the business he could, of course, and in the pursuit of this policy bought from the wholesaler all he could possibly get for money or love. [Illustration: Copyright by Underwood & Underwood, N. Y. STREET SCENE AT EISENBACH, SOUTHERN GERMANY From the villages and small towns is recruited sixty per cent. of the German army.] Commission-men were licensed by the government, and when food regulation became a little more stringent they were obliged to make some sort of a slovenly report on the quantities they handled. But the government food commissions did not have the necessary personnel to keep close tally of these reports. This led to partial returns by the middlemen, a practice which entailed no particular risk so long as the government did not actually control and direct the buying of foodstuffs in the country and at the mills. Business moved smartly as the result of this combination of circumstances. The wholesaler bought twice as much from the commission-man, and the latter had to buy, accordingly, in the country. The maximum prices which the government set upon foods about to enter into possession of the consumer were invariably accompanied by minimum prices which the producer was to get. Reversely, the arrangement meant that the customer could not offer less for food than the government had decided he should pay, nor could the farmer or other producer demand more. That was well enough in a way. The farmer was to get for a kilogram (2.205 pounds) of wheat not less than four and one-half cents, and the middleman selling to the mill could not ask more than five and one-half cents. Labor and loss in milling taken into consideration, the mill was to be satisfied with seven cents, while the consumer, so said the regulations, was to get his flour for eight and one-quarter cents per kilogram. That was all very well, but it came to mean little in the end. The customer thought he would lay in two hundred pounds of wheat flour for the rainy day. The retailer could not see it in that way. That was just a little too much. There were other worthy customers who might have to go short of their regular quota if he sold in amounts of that size. But the customer wanted the flour and was willing to pay more than the regulation or maximum price for it. It took but little tempting to cause the fall of the retailer. The wholesaler would do the same thing. The commission-man was willing, since part of, let us say, a 20-per-cent. increase was being handed along the line. The mill got a few crowns more per hundred kilograms, and a little of the extra price would get as far as the farmer. That _l'appétit vient en mangeant_ is a notorious fact. A dangerous practice had been launched, nor was it always inaugurated by the consumer. No class of dealers was averse to doing business that might be illicit, but which brought large profits. A first result was that the farmer was spoiled, as the consumer and the government looked at it. While purchases from the farmer were bounded in price by a minimum, there was no prohibition of paying him as much more as he would take. The government's duty was to stimulate production, and that was the purpose of the minimum price. The government, learning that a certain farmer had been getting six cents for his wheat, might wonder how much the consumer paid and get after the middlemen, but it could not hold the farmer responsible. As a matter of fact, the government hardly ever heard of such transactions. They did not talk at the gate of the food "speak-easy." When questioned the farmer would always protest that he had all he could do to get the minimum price. Not only was the first excess in price passed along, but large profits attached themselves to the article as it progressed cityward. The commission-men got theirs, the miller did not overlook himself, the wholesaler was remembered, naturally, and the retailer, as factotum-general in the scheme, saw to it that he was not deprived of his share. As is always the case, the consumer paid the several pipers. And the special consumer to whom the food, thus illicitly diverted from the regular channels, meant the assurance that he would not starve although others might, paid cheerfully. What was the good of having money in the bank when soon it might not buy anything? The lines in front of the food-shops lengthened, and many retailers acquired the habit of keeping open but part of the day. But even that part was usually too long. When the card in the window said, "Open from 8 to 12," it usually meant that at nine o'clock there would not be a morsel of food on the counters and shelves. The members of the food-line who had not managed to gain access to the store by that time would get no food that day. At first the retailer would regret this very much. But he soon began to feel his oats. Women, who had stood in line for several hours, wanted to know why he had so small a quantity on hand. The man would often become abusive and refuse an explanation. Now and then some resolute woman would complain to the police. The retailer was arrested and fined. But the woman would never again get any food from him. That was his way of getting even and disciplining the good customers upon whom at other times he had waited hand and foot. The fine relations between customer and retailer of yore were gone by the board. The era of hoarding and greed was on. The good-natured Vienna and Berlin _Kleinkrämer_ grew more autocratic every time he opened his store. People had to come to him or go hungry, and it was ever hurtful to put the beggar on horse-back. Occasional visits to the lower courts proved very interesting and entertaining, though the story that was told was always the same. The retailer had lost his sense of proportions completely. No sergeant of an awkward squad ever developed so fine a flow of sarcastic billingsgate as did the butchers, bakers, and candlestick-makers of the Central states in those days. Almost every case had its low-comedy feature, and often I came away with the impression that the sense of humor in some people is hard to kill, especially when some serious judge pronounced the maximum sentence for an offense about whose quaint rascality he was still chuckling. But the dear public was not as stupid as the retailers and their ilk thought. Almost everybody had a relative, friend, or acquaintance in the country, and when this was not the case one had a city friend who had such a country connection. Sunday excursions into the country became very popular, and week-days could not be put to better use. The many holidays called for by religious observance, and now and then a victory over the enemy, came to be a severe strain upon the country's food reserve. The trains coming into the city often carried more weight in food than in passengers. After all, that was the best way of laying in supplies. Why go to the retailer and stand in line when the farmers were willing to sell to the consumer direct? A high tide in hoarding set in. Everybody filled garret and cellar with the things which the farm produces. Flour was stowed away in all possible and impossible places. Potatoes were accumulated. Butter and eggs were salted away, and so much fruit was preserved that sugar ceased to be obtainable in countries which had formerly exported much of it. The authorities knew full well what would happen if the private route from farm to kitchen direct was not made impossible. Existing regulations already permitted the searching of trains. When the inspectors descended upon the hoarding holidayers there was much surprise, gnashing of teeth, and grumbling. But that did not help. The food illicitly brought in was confiscated, and the slightest resistance on the part of those having it in their possession brought a liberal fine and often a day or two in jail. The parcel post was used next by the private food-hoarders. The government wanted to be easy on the population and had for this reason closed its eyes to the packages of butter and other concentrated foods that went through the mails. But the good consumers overreached themselves. The result was that the postal authorities turned over all food found in the mails to the Food Commissions and Centrals. Next thing was that the farmer who came to market had to be curbed. That worthy man would enter town or city with a good load of eatables. By the time he had gone a few blocks he had disposed of everything. It was like taking up a drop of ink with a blotter. The first measures against this resulted in smuggling. Every load of produce that came into a population center had in it packages of other good things, especially butter and lard, and later eggs, when these fell within the scope of regulation. But the hoarding that was going on would have to be stopped if the food-supply was to last. Those who hoarded lost no chance to buy for their current consumption in the legal market, drawing thus doubly on the scant food-supplies. The authorities began to exercise their right of search. The food-inspector became an unwelcome visitor of households. The practice of hoarding was well enough for the well-to-do. But it left the poor entirely unprovided. The average wage-earner did not have the means to buy food at the fancy prices that governed the illicit food market, and the food that went to the hoarder cut short the general supply upon which the poor depended for their daily allowance. It was quite the regular thing for the wife of a poor man to stand in line three hours and then be turned away. The retailer would still have food in the cellar, but that was to go out by private delivery. The food cards held by the women were no warrant on the quantities they prescribed, but merely the authorization to draw so and so much if the things were to be had. The woman had to take the retailer's word for it. When that august person said, "Sold out," there was nothing to do but go home and pacify the hungry children with whatever else the depleted larder contained. Meanwhile much food was spoiling in the cellars and attics of the hoarders. People who never before in their lives had attempted to preserve food were now trying their hand at it--with unfortunate and malodorous results. An acquaintance of mine in Vienna had hoarded diligently and amply. The man had on hand wheat flour, large quantities of potatoes, butter in salt, and eggs in lime-water, and conserved fruits and vegetables which represented an excess consumption in sugar. He had also laid in great quantities of honey, coffee, and other groceries. There was food enough to last his family two years, so long as a little could be had in the legal market each day. Though the store on hand was ample, the man continued to buy where and whenever he could. One day he shipped from Agram several mattresses--not for the sake of the comfort they would bring of nights, but for the macaroni he had stuffed them with. I think that of all the hoarders he was the king-pin. The man had three growing boys, however, and allowance has to be made for that. He did not want those boys to be stunted in their growth by insufficient nourishment. Obliged to choose between paternal and civic duty, he decided in favor of the former, for which we need not blame him too much, seeing that most of us would do precisely that thing in his position. But to understand that fully, one must have seen hungry children tormenting their parents for food. Description is wholly inadequate in such cases. That there were others who had growing children may have occurred to the man, but meant nothing to him. So he continued to buy and hoard. The storage methods employed were wrong, of course, and facilities were very limited. The potatoes froze in the cellar and sprouted in the warm rooms. Weevils took birth in the flour, because it was stored in a wardrobe only some four feet away from a stove. The canned goods stood on every shelf in the place, littered the floors and filled the corners. Faulty preserving methods or the constant changes of temperature caused most of them to ferment and spoil. Every now and then something about the apartment would explode. The man had bought up almost the last of olive-oil that could be had in Central Europe. That, too, turned rancid. As I remember it now, he told me that of all the food he had bought--that he had hoarded it he never admitted--he had been able to use about one-third, and the annoyance he had from the spoiled two-thirds killed all the joy there was in having saved one-third. Hoarding in this case was an utter failure. So it was in most cases. To preserve food is almost a science, and suitable storage facilities play an important rôle in this. The private hoarder had no proper facilities. That it was unlawful to hoard food caused him to go ahead storing without asking advice of people familiar with the requirements; and the possibility that agents of the food authorities might come to inspect the quarters of the hoarder made hiding imperative. Often the servants would become informers, so that the food had to be hidden from them in barrels, trunks, and locked chests. The result of this can be easily imagined. There was a time when more food was spoiled in Central Europe by hoarding than there was consumed. The thing was extremely short-sighted, but everybody was taking care of himself and his own. There was no reason why food should spoil on the hands of the retailer. He never had enough to go around. But it was different with the wholesaler. This class was eternally holding back supplies for the purpose of inducing the government to increase the maximum prices. As time went on, the authorities had to do that, and the quantities then held in the warehouses benefited. The agitation of the producers for better minimum prices was water on the mill of the wholesaler. The government was eternally solicitous for the welfare of the farmer, and lent a ready ear to what he had to say. The minimum price was raised, and with it the consumer's maximum price had to go up. All quantities then held by the wholesalers were affected only by the increase in food prices that was borne by the consumer, not the increase that had to be given the farmer. It was the finest of business, especially since an increase of 5 per cent. in legitimate business meant an increase of another 15 per cent. in illicit traffic. In the spring of 1916 I made a canvass of the situation, and found that while the farmers were getting for their products from 10 to 15 per cent. more than they had received in 1914, food in the cities and towns was from 80 to 150 per cent. higher than it had been normally during five years before the war. I found that the dealers and middlemen were reaping an extra profit of approximately 80 per cent. on the things they bought and sold, after the greater cost of operation had been deducted. Small wonder that jewelers in Berlin and Vienna told me that the Christmas trade of 1915 was the best they had ever done. These good people opined that their increase in business was due to the general war prosperity. They were right, but forgot to mention that this prosperity was based on the cents wrung from the starving population by the buyers of the diamonds and precious baubles. Naturally, the dear farmer was not being left just then. He sold when he pleased for a time--until the government took a hand in moving his crops. But this interference with the affairs of the farmer was not entirely a blessing by any means. The brave tiller of the soil began to hoard now. Little actual loss came from this. The farmer knew his business. No food spoiled so long as he took care of it. All would have been well had it not been that the farmer was the very fountainhead of the hoarding which in the cities resulted in the loss of foodstuffs. There were still many loose ends in the scheme of food regulation. While the farmer was obliged to sell to the middleman, under supervision of the government Food Centrals, all cereals and potatoes which he would not need for his own use and seeding, the estimates made by the Food Central agents were generally very conservative. This they had to be if the government was not to run the risk of finding itself short after fixing the ration that seemed permissible by the crop returns established in this manner. The farmer got the benefit of the doubt, of course, and that benefit he invariably salted away for illicit trading. But illicit trading in breadstuffs was becoming more and more difficult. The grain had to go into a mill before it was flour. The government began to check up closely on the millers, which was rather awkward for all concerned in the traffic of the food "speak-easy." A way out was found by the farmers. They were a rather inventive lot. I am sure that these men, as they followed the plow back and forth, cudgeled their brains how the latest government regulation could be met and frustrated. Butter and fat were very short and were almost worth their weight in silver. They sold in the regulated market at from one dollar and sixty to one dollar and eighty cents a pound, and in the food "speak-easy" they cost just double that. Why not produce more butter? thought the farmer. He had the cows. And why not more lard? He had the pigs. A bushel of grain sold at minimum price brought so much, while converted into butter and lard it was worth thrice that much. Grain was hard to sell surreptitiously, but it was easy to dispose of the fats. In this manner hoarding took on a new shape--one that was to lead to more waste. None of the Central European governments had reason to believe that its food measures were popular. Much passive resistance was met. The consumer thought of himself in a hundred different ways. To curb him, the secret service of the police was instructed to keep its eyes on the family larder. Under the "War" paragraphs of the constitutions the several governments of Central Europe had that power. In Austria it was the famous "§14," for instance, under which any and all war measures were possible. Government by inspection is not only oppressive; it is also very expensive. It is dangerous in times when authorities are face to face with unrest; at any time it is the least desirable thing there is. It was not long before both government and public discovered that. To inspect households systematically was impossible, of course. The informer had to be relied upon. Usually, discharged servants wrote anonymous letters to the police, and often it was found that this was no more than a bit of spite work. If a servant-girl wanted to give a former mistress a disagreeable surprise she would write such a letter. Some hoards were really uncovered in that manner, but the game was not worth the candle. To get at the men who were hoarding _en masse_ for speculation and price-boosting purposes, an efficient secret service was needed. But this the Central European governments do not possess. The police of Germany and Austria-Hungary plays an important part in the life of man. But it does this openly. The methods employed are bureaucratic routine. The helmet shows conspicuously. Wits have no place in the system. One cannot move from one house to another without being made the subject of an entry on the police records. To move from one town to another was quite an undertaking during the war. Several documents were required. A servant or employee may not change jobs without notifying the police authorities. All life is minutely regulated and recorded on the books of the minions of the law. In matters of that sort the Central European police is truly efficient, because the system employed has been perfected by the cumulative effort and experience of generations. Detective work, on the other hand, is out of the reach of these organizations. The German detective is as poor a performer and as awkward as certain German diplomatists. He is always found out. Why the German and Austro-Hungarian detective services did not succeed in finding the commercial hoards I can readily understand. One could recognize the members of the services a mile off, as it were. It seemed to me that they were forever afraid of being detected. In the detective that is a bad handicap. Now and then the German detective could be heard. As a foreigner I received considerable attention from the German, Austrian, and Hungarian police forces in the course of three years. My case was simple, however. I looked outlandish, no doubt, and since I spoke German with a foreign accent it really was not difficult to keep track of me. In the course of time, also, I became well known to thousands of people. That under these circumstances I should have known it at once when detectives were on my trail can be ascribed only to the clumsy work that was being done by the secret-service men. In Berlin I once invited a "shadow" of mine to get into my taxicab, lest I escape him. He refused and seemed offended. But there is a classic bit of German detective work that I must give in detail, in order to show why the food speculator and his ilk were immune in spite of all the regulations made by the government. I had been in Berlin several times when it happened. I knew many men in the Foreign Office, and in the bureaus of the German general staff, while to most of the Adlon Hotel employees I was as familiar a sight as I well could be without belonging to their families. I had come over the German-Dutch border that noon, and had been subjected to the usual frisking. There had also been a little trouble--also as usual. The clerk at the desk in the Adlon did not know me. He was a new man. He had, however, been witness to the very effusive welcome which the _chef de réception_ gave me. That did not interest me until I came down from my room and approached the desk for the purpose of leaving word for a friend of mine where I could be found later. The clerk was engaged in earnest conversation with a stockily built man of middle age. I had to wait until he would be through. After a second or so I heard my room number mentioned--237. Then the sound of my name fell. I noticed that the clerk was fingering one of the forms on which a traveler in Central Europe inscribes his name, profession, residence, nationality, age, and what not for the information of the police. "He is a newspaper correspondent?" asked the stocky one. "So he says," replied the clerk. "You are sure about that?" "Well, that is what it says on the form." "What sort of looking fellow is he?" inquired the stockily built man. "Rather tall, smooth shaven, dark complexion, wears eye-glasses," replied the clerk. I moved around the column that marks the end of one part of the desk and the beginning of another part that runs at right angles to the first. The clerk saw me and winked at the man to whom he had been talking. The detective was in the throes of embarrassment. He blushed. "Can't I be of some assistance to you?" I remarked in an impersonal manner, looking from clerk to detective. "You seem to be interested in my identity. What do you wish to know?" There was a short but highly awkward pause. "I am not," stammered the detective. "We were talking about somebody else." "I beg your pardon," said I and moved off. I have always taken it for granted that the detective was a new man in the secret service. Still, I have often wondered what sort of detective service it must be that will employ such helpless bunglers. It may be no more than an _idée fixe_ on my part, but ever since then I have taken _cum grano salis_ all that has been said for and against the efficiency of the German secret service, be it municipal or international. At Bucharest there was maintained for a time, allegedly by the German foreign service, a man who was known to everybody on the Calea Victoriei as the German _Oberspion_--chief spy. The poor devil cut a most pathetic figure. All contentions to the contrary notwithstanding, I would say that secret service is not one of the fortes of the Germans. They really ought to leave it alone. That takes keener wits and quicker thinking on one's feet than can be associated with the German mind. The Austrians were rather more efficient, and the same can be said of the Hungarian detective forces. In both cases the secret-service men were usually Poles, however, and that makes a difference. There is no mind quite so nimble, adaptive, or capable of simulation as that of the Pole. In this the race resembles strongly the French, hence its success in a field in which the French are justly the leaders. For the food sharks the German detective was no match. He might impress a provident _Hausfrau_ and move her to tears and the promise that she would never do it again. The commercial hoarder, who had a regular business besides and kept his books accordingly, was too much for these men. So long as no informer gave specific details that left no room for thinking on the part of the detective, the food shark was perfectly safe. The thousands of cases that came into the courts as time went on showed that the detectives, and inspectors of the Food Authorities, were thoroughly incorruptible. They also showed that they at least were doing no hoarding--in brains. VII IN THE HUMAN SHAMBLES Somber as this picture of life is, its background was nothing less than terrifyingly lurid. For some minutes I had stood before a barn in Galicia. I was expected to go into that barn, but I did not like the idea. Some fourscore of cholera patients lay on the straw-littered earthen floor. Every hour or so one of them would die. Disease in their case had progressed so far that all hope had been abandoned. If by any chance one of the sick possessed that unusual degree of bodily and nerve vigor that would defeat the ravages of the germ, he would recover as well in the barn as in a hospital. The brave man wishes to die alone. Those in the barn were brave men, and I did not wish to press my company upon them in the supreme hour. Still, there was the possibility that some might question my courage if I did not go into the barn. Cholera is highly contagious. But when with an army one is expected to do as the army does. If reckless exposure be a part of that, there is no help. I stepped into the gloom of the structure. There was snow on the ground outside. It took a minute or two before my eyes could discern things. Some light fell into the interior from the half-open door and a little square opening in the wall in the rear. Two lines of sick men lay on the ground--heads toward the wall, feet in the aisle that was thus formed. Some of the cholera-stricken writhed in agony as the germ destroyed their vitals. Others lay exhausted from a spasm of excruciating agony. Some were in the coma preceding death. Two were delirious. There was an army chaplain in the barn. He thought it his duty to be of as much comfort to the men as possible. His intentions were kind enough, and yet he would have done the patients a favor by leaving them to themselves. As I reached the corner where the chaplain stood, one of the sick soldiers struggled into an upright position. Then he knelt, while the chaplain began to say some prayer. The poor wretch had much difficulty keeping upright. When the chaplain had said "Amen" he fell across the body of the sick man next to him. The exertion and the mental excitement had done the man no good. Soon he was in a paroxysm of agony. The chaplain was meanwhile preparing another for the great journey. The dead had been laid under one of the eaves. A warm wind had sprung up and the sun was shining. The snow on the roof began to melt. The dripping water laved the faces of the dead. Out in the field several men were digging a company grave. So much has been written on the hardships endured by the wounded at the front that I will pass by this painful subject. What tortures these unfortunates suffered is aptly epitomized by an experience I had in the hospital of the American Red Cross in Budapest. The man in charge of the hospital, Dr. Charles MacDonald, of the United States Army, had invited me to see his institution. I had come to a small room in which operations were undertaken when urgency made this necessary. During the day a large convoy of very bad cases had reached Budapest. Many of them were a combination of wounds and frostbite. In the middle of the room stood an operation-table. On it lay a patient who was just recovering consciousness. I saw the merciful stupor of anesthesia leave the man's mind and wondered how he would take it. For on the floor, near the foot end of the operation-table, stood an enameled wash-basin, filled with blood and water. From the red fluid protruded two feet. They were black and swollen--frostbite. One of them had been cut off a little above the ankle, and the other immediately below the calf of the leg. The amputation itself was a success, said the nurse. But there was little hope for the patient. He had another wound in the back. That wound itself was not serious, but it had been the cause of the man's condition, by depriving him temporarily of the power of locomotion. When he was shot, the man had fallen into some reeds. He was unconscious for a time, and when he recovered his senses he found that he could no longer move his legs. He was lying in a No Man's Land between the Austro-Hungarian and Russian lines. For two days his feeble cries were unheard. Finally, some ambulance-men came across him. By that time his feet had been frozen. The wound in his back was given some attention at a first-aid station behind the line. The surgeons decided that the amputation of the feet could wait until Budapest was reached. Meanwhile the poison of gangrene was gaining admission to the blood. The man's face was yellow. His whole body was yellow and emaciated. The lips no longer served to cover the teeth. He was breathing pantingly--in short, quick gasps. Slowly his mind shook off the fetters of the ether. A long breath--a faint sigh. The eyes opened. They were Slav eyes of blue-gray. I saw in them the appeal of the helpless child, the protest of a being tortured, the prayer for relief of a despairing soul. The man's lips moved. He wanted to say something. I bent over to catch the sibilant tones. I had not caught them, and indicated that by a shake of the head. The man repeated. He spoke in Polish, a language I do not know. To assure the man that I would find means of understanding him, I patted his cheek, and then called an orderly. "He says that he would like you to fetch his wife and his children," said the orderly-interpreter, as he righted himself. "He says he is going to die soon, and wants to see them. He says that you will have to hurry up. He says that he will say a good word to the Lord for you if you will do him this favor." "Ask him where they live," I said to the orderly. If it were at all possible I would do the man this kindness. It was some village near Cracow. That was a long way off. If the man lived for two days his wish could be met. "Tell the man that I will telegraph his wife to come as quickly as possible, but that she can't be here for a day or so," I instructed the interpreter. A shadow of disappointment swept over the patient's face. "Ask him if he knows where he is," I said. The man did not know. I told the orderly to make it clear to him that he was in Budapest, and that his home in Galicia was far away. He was to be patient. I would bring his wife and children to him, if it could be done at all. Did the wife have the money to pay the railroad fare? The patient was not sure. I read in his eyes that he feared the woman would not have the money. I eased his mind by telling him that I would pay the fares. Deeper gratitude never spoke from any face. The poor fellow tried to lift his hands, but could not. To assure him that his wish would be granted I once more patted his cheeks and forehead and then left the room, followed by the orderly and the wash-basin. "There is no use telegraphing," said Doctor MacDonald. "He won't live longer than another hour, at the most." Ten minutes later the man was dead. The operation-table was being wheeled down the corridor by the orderly. I had just stepped out of a ward. The orderly stopped. "You won't have to bring the woman here," he said, as he lifted the end of the sheet that covered the face. As reward for my readiness to help the poor man, I have still in my mind the expression of relief that lay on the dead face. He had passed off in gladsome anticipation of the meeting there was to be. I covered up the face and the orderly trundled the body away. Some months later I sat in a room of the big military hospital in the Tatavla Quarter of Constantinople. On a bench against the wall opposite me were sitting a number of men in Turkish uniform. They were blind. Some of them had lost their eyes in hand-to-hand combat, more of them had been robbed of their sight in hand-grenade encounters. Doctor Eissen, the oculist-surgeon of the hospital, was about to fit these men with glass eyes. In the neat little case on the table were eyes of all colors, most of them brownish tints, a few of them were blue. One of the Turks was a blond--son of a Greek or Circassian, maybe. "These things don't help any, of course," said Doctor Eissen, as he laid a pair of blue eyes on a spoon and held them into the boiling water for sterilization. "But they lessen the shock to the family when the man comes home. "Poor devils! I have treated them all. They are like a bunch of children. They are going home to-day. They have been discharged. "Well, they are going home. Some have wives and children they will never see again--dependents they can no longer support. Some of them are luckier. They have nobody. The one who is to get these blue eyes used to be a silk-weaver in Brussa. He is optimistic enough to think that he can still weave. Maybe he can. That will depend on his fingers, I suppose. It takes often more courage to live after a battle than to live in it." The dear government did not provide glass eyes. Doctor Eissen furnished them himself, and yet the dear government insisted that a report be made on each eye he donated. The ways of red tape are queer the world over. "And when the blind come home the relatives weep a little and are glad that at least so much of the man has been returned to them." In the corridor there was waiting a Turkish woman. Her son was one of those whom Doctor Eissen was just fitting with eyes. When he was through with this, he called in the woman. The young blind _asker_ rose in the darkness that surrounded him. Out of that darkness came presently the embrace of two arms and the sob: "_Kusum!_" ("My lamb!"). For a moment the woman stared into the fabricated eyes. They were not those she had given her boy. They were glass, immobile. She closed her own eyes and then wept on the broad chest of the son. The son, glad that his _walideh_ was near him once more, found it easy to be the stronger of the two. He kissed his mother and then caressed the hair under the cap of the _yashmak_. When the doctor had been thanked, the mother led her boy off. Blind beggars are not unkindly treated in Constantinople. There is a rule that one must never refuse them alms. The least that may be given them are the words: "_Inayet ola!_" ("God will care for you!"). Not long after that I sat on the shambles at Suvla Bay, the particular spot in question being known as the Kiretch Tépé--Chalk Hill. Sir Ian Hamilton had just thrown into the vast amphitheater to the east of the bay some two hundred thousand men, many of them raw troops of the Kitchener armies. Some three thousand of these men had been left dead on the slopes of the hill. As usual, somebody on Gallipoli had bungled and bungled badly. A few days before I had seen how a British division ate itself up in futile attacks against a Turkish position west of Kütchük Anafarta. The thing was glorious to look at, but withal very foolish. Four times the British assailed the trenches of the Turks, and each time they were thrown back. When General Stopford finally decided that the thing was foolish, he called it off. The division he could not call back, because it was no more. It was so on Chalk Hill. A hot August night lay over the peninsula. The crescent of a waning moon gave the dense vapors that had welled in from the Mediterranean an opalescent quality. From that vapor came also, so it seemed, the stench of a hundred battle-fields. In reality this was not so. The Turkish advance position, which I had invaded that night for the purpose of seeing an attack which was to be made by the Turks shortly before dawn, ran close to the company graves in which the Turks had buried the dead foe. There is little soil on Gallipoli. It is hardly ever more than a foot deep on any slope, and under it lies lime that is too hard to get out of the way with pick and shovel. The company graves, therefore, were cairns rather than ditches. The bodies had been walled in well enough, but those walls were not airtight. The gases of decomposition escaped, therefore, and filled the landscape with obnoxious odor. I had been warned against this. The warning I had disregarded for the reason that such things are not unfamiliar to me. But I will confess that it took a good many cigarettes and considerable will-power to keep me in that position--so long as was absolutely necessary. When I returned to Constantinople everybody was speaking of the stench in the Suvla Bay terrain. There were many such spots, and returning soldiers were never slow in dwelling on the topic they suggested. The war did not appear less awesome for that. But the shambles that came closest to the general public was the casualty lists published by the German government as a sort of supplement to the Berlin _Norddeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung_, the semi-official organ of the German Imperial Government. At times this list would contain as many as eight thousand names, each with a letter or several after it--"t" for dead, "s v" for severely wounded, "l v" for lightly wounded, and so on. It was thought at first that the public would not be able to stand this for long. But soon it was shown that literally there was no end to the fortitude of the Germans. I was to spend some time on the Somme front. I really was not anxious to see that field of slaughter. But certain men in Berlin thought that I ought to complete my list of fronts with their "own" front. Hospitals and such no longer interested me. Wrecked churches I had seen by the score--and a ruined building is a ruined building. I said that I would visit the Somme front in case I was allowed to go wherever I wanted. That was agreed to, after I had signed a paper relieving the German government of all responsibility in case something should happen to me "for myself and my heirs forever." The front had been in eruption three weeks and murder had reached the climax when one fine afternoon I put up at a very unpretentious _auberge_ in Cambrai. The interior of the Moloch of Carthage never was so hot as this front, nor was Moloch ever so greedy for human life. Battalion after battalion, division after division, was hurled into this furnace of barrage and machine-gun fire. What was left of them trickled back in a thin stream of wounded. For nine days the "drum" fire never ceased. From Le Transloy to south of Pozières the earth rocked. From the walls and ceilings of the old citadel at Cambrai the plaster fell, though many miles lay between it and the front. Perhaps the best I could say of the Somme offensive is that none will ever describe it adequately--as it was. The poor devils really able to encompass its magnitude and terrors became insane. Those who later regained their reason did so only because they had forgotten. The others live in the Somme days yet, and there are thousands of them. I could tell tales of horror such as have never before been heard--of a British cavalry charge near Hebuterne that was "stifled" by the barbed wire before it and the German machine-guns in its rear and flanks; of wounded men that had crawled on all-fours for long distances, resting occasionally to push back their entrails; of men cut into little pieces by shells and perforated like sieves by the machine-guns; and again of steel-nerved Bavarians who, coming out of the first trenches, gathered for a beer-drinking in an apple orchard not far from Manancourt. But that seems _de trop_. I will leave that to some modern Verestchagin and his canvases. There is a "still-life" of death that comes to my mind. Not long after that I was in the Carpathians. General Brussilow was trying out his mass tactics. The slaughter of man reached there aspects and proportions never before heard of. It was not the machine murder of the West Front--that is to say, it was not so much a factory for the conversion of live men into dead as it was a crude, old-fashioned abattoir. On the slope of a massive mountain lies an old pine forest. In the clearings stand birches, whose white trunks pierce the gloom under the roof of dense, dark-green pine crowns. Where the clearings are, patches of late-summer sky may be seen. Through the pale blue travel leisurely the whitest of clouds, and into this background of soft blue and white juts the somber pine and the autumn-tinged foliage of the birch. The forest is more a temple of a thousand columns than a thing that has risen from the little seeds in the pine cones. The trunks are straight and seem more details of a monument than something which has just grown. There is a formal decorum about the trees and their aggregate. But the soft light under the crowns lessens that into something severely mournful. The forest is indeed a sepulcher. On its floor lie thousands of dead Russians--first as close together as they can be packed, and then in layers on top of one another. It would seem that these bodies had been brought here for burial. That is not the case, however. The wounds in the tree trunks, cut by the streams of machine-gun bullets from the red trenches at the edge of the forest, indicate what happened. The first wave of Russians entered the forest, was decimated, and retreated. The second one met a similar fate. The third fared no better. The fourth came. The fifth. The sixth--twice more the Russian artillery urged on the Russian infantry. Here they lie. Their bodies are distended by progressing dissolution. Narrow slits in the bloated faces show where once the merry and dreamy Slav eye laughed. Most mouths are open, still eager for another breath of air. Distended nostrils tell the same tale. From one mouth hangs a tongue almost bitten off. A face close by is but a mask--a shell splinter has cut off the back of the head, which now rests on the shoulder of the man. To-morrow will come the Austro-Hungarian burial parties, dig holes and bury these human relics. Meanwhile the pines sough sorrowfully, or maybe they soughed like this before. Still a little later I was standing at an ancient stone bridge in the Vörös Torony defile in the Transylvanian Alps. It was a late afternoon in the late fall. In the defile it was still, save for an occasional artillery detonation near the Roumanian border, where the fight was going on. The red of the beeches and oaks fitted well into the narrative I heard, and the song of the Alt River reminded that it, too, had played a part in the drama--the complete rout of the Second Roumanian army, a few days before. The breeze sweeping through the defile and along its wooded flanks brought with it the odor of the dead. The underbrush on each side of the road was still full of dead Roumanians. The gutter of the road was strewn with dead horses. Scores of them hung in the tree forks below the road. On a rock-ledge in the river dead men moved about under the impulse of the current. The narrative: "Do you see that little clearing up there?" "The one below the pines?" "No. The one to the left of that--right above the rocks." "Yes." "I was stationed there with my machine-guns," continued the Bavarian officer. "We had crept through the mountains almost on our bellies to get there. It was hard work. But we did it. "At that we came a day too soon. We were entirely out of reach of Hermannstadt, and didn't know what was going on. For all we knew the Roumanians might have turned a trick. They are not half-bad soldiers. We were surprised, to say the least, when, on arriving here, we found that the road was full of traffic that showed no excitement. "We heard cannonading at the head of the gorge, but had no means of learning what it was. We had been sent here to cut off the retreat of the Roumanians, while the Ninth Army was to drive them into the defile. "For twenty-four hours we waited, taking care that the Roumanians did not see us. It was very careless of them, not to patrol these forests in sufficient force, nor to scent that there was something wrong when their small patrols did not return. At any rate, they had no notion of what was in store for them. "At last the thing started. The German artillery came nearer. We could tell that by the fire. At noon the Roumanians began to crowd into the defile. A little later they were here. "We opened up on them with the machine-guns for all we were worth. The men had been told to sweep this bridge. Not a Roumanian was to get over that. We wanted to catch the whole lot of them. "But the Roumanians couldn't see it that way, it seems. On they came in a mad rush for safety. The artillery was shelling the road behind them, and we were holding the bridge almost airtight. Soon the bridge was full of dead and wounded. Others came and attempted to get over them. They fell. Still others pressed on, driven ahead by the maddened crowd in the rear. "The machine-guns continued to work. Very soon this bridge was full of dead and wounded as high as the parapet. And still those fools would not surrender. Nor did they have sense enough to charge us. There were heaps of dead in front of the bridge, as far as the house over there. "That should have been a lesson to them. But it wasn't. On they came. Some of them trampled over the dead and wounded. Those more considerate tried to walk on the parapet. The machine-guns took care that they did not get very far. "By that time those shot on top of the heap began to slide into the river. Those not under fire scrambled down to the river and swam it--those who could swim; the others are in it yet. You can see them down there and wherever there is sand-bank or rock-ledge. But those who swam were the only ones that escaped us. That crowd was so panicky that it didn't have sense enough even to surrender. That's my theory. "It was an awful sight. Do you think this war will end soon?" In private life the narrator is a school-teacher in a little village in the Bavarian highlands. VIII PATRIOTISM AND A CRAVING STOMACH Napoleon had a poor opinion of the hungry soldier. But it is not only the man-at-arms who travels on his belly--the nation at war does the same. I have found that patriotism at a groaning table in a warm room, and with some other pleasant prospects added, is indeed a fine thing. The amateur strategist and politician is never in finer mettle than when his belt presses more or less upon a grateful stomach and when the mind has been exhilarated by a good bottle of wine and is then being tickled by a respectable Havana. But I have also sat of nights--rainy nights at that--in the trenches and listened to what the men at the front had to say. They, too, were reasonably optimistic when the stomach was at peace. Of course, these men had their cares. Most of them were married and had in the past supported their families with the proceeds of their labor. Now the governments were feeding these families--after a fashion. What that fashion was the men came to hear in letters from home. It made them dissatisfied and often angry. I sat one night in the bombproof of an advanced position on the Sveta Maria, near Tolmein. My host was an Austrian captain whose ancestry had come from Scotland. A certain Banfield had thought it well to enter the Austro-Hungarian naval service many years ago, and the captain was one of his descendants. Captain Banfield was as "sore" as the proverbial wet hen. He hadn't been home in some fourteen months, and at home things were not well. His wife was having a hard time of it trying to keep the kiddies alive, while the good Scotchman was keeping vigil on the Isonzo. That Scotchman, by the way, had a reputation in the Austrian army for being a terrible _Draufgänger_, which means that when occasion came he was rather hard on the Italians. He would have been just as ruthless with the profiteers had he been able to get at them. Most uncomplimentary things were said by him of the food sharks and the government which did not lay them low. But what Captain Banfield had to complain of I had heard a thousand times. His was not the only officer's wife who had to do the best she could to get along. Nor was that class worse off than any other. After all, the governments did their best by it. The real hardships fell upon the dependents of the common soldier. I had made in Berlin the acquaintance of a woman who before the war had been in very comfortable circumstances. Though a mechanical engineer of standing, her husband had not been able to qualify for service as an officer. He was in charge of some motor trucks in an army supply column as a non-commissioned officer. The little allowance made by the government for the wife and her four children did not go very far. But the woman was a good manager. She moved from the expensive flat they had lived in before the mobilization. The quarters she found in the vicinity of the Stettiner railroad station were not highly desirable. But her genius made them so. The income question was more difficult to solve. A less resourceful woman would have never solved it. But this one did. She found work in a laundry, checking up the incoming and outgoing bundles. Somebody had to suffer, however. In this case the children. They were small and had to be left to themselves a great deal. I discussed the case with the woman. "My children may get some bad manners from the neighbors with whom I have to leave them," she said. "But those I can correct later on. Right now I must try to get them sufficient and good food, so that their bodies will not suffer." In that kind of a woman patriotism is hard to kill, as I had ample opportunity to observe. At Constantinople I had made the acquaintance of the Baroness Wangenheim, widow of the late Baron Wangenheim, then ambassador at the Sublime Porte. Hearing that I was in Berlin, the baroness invited me to have tea with her. Tea is a highly socialized function, anyway, but this one was to be the limit in that respect. The repast--I will call it that--was taken in one of the best appointed _salons_ I ever laid eyes on. Taste and wealth were blended into a splendid whole. The maid came in and placed upon the fine marquetry taboret a heavy old silver tray. On the tray stood, in glorious array, as fine a porcelain tea service as one would care to own. But we had neither milk nor lemon for the tea. We sweetened it with saccharine. There was no butter for the war-bread, so we ate it with a little prune jam. At the bottom of a cut-glass jar reposed a few crackers. I surmised that they were ancient, and feared, moreover, that the one I might be persuaded to take could not so easily be replaced. So I declined the biscuit, and, to make the baroness understand, offered her one of my bread coupons for the slice of bread I had eaten. This she declined, saying that the day was yet long and that I might need the bread voucher before it was over. "I am no better off than others here," the baroness explained to me in reply to a question. "I receive from the authorities the same number of food cards everybody gets, and my servants must stand in line like all others. The only things I can buy now in the open market are fish and vegetables. But that is as it should be. Why should I and my children get more food than others get?" I admitted that I could not see why she should be so favored. Still, there was something incongruous about it all. I had been the guest of the baroness in the great ambassadorial palace on the Boulevard Ayas Pasha in Pera, and found it hard to believe that the woman who had then dwelt in nothing less than regal state was now reduced to the necessity of taking war-bread with her tea--even when she had visitors. "If this keeps up much longer the race will suffer," she said, after a while. "I am beginning to fear for the children. We adults can stand this, of course. But the children...." The baroness has two small girls, and to change her thoughts I directed the conversation to Oriental carpets and lace. Her patriotism, too, is of the lasting sort. But the very same evening I saw something different. The name won't matter. I had accepted an invitation to dinner. It was a good dinner--war or peace. Its _pièce de résistance_ was a whole broiled ham, which, as my hostess admitted, had cost in the clandestine market some one hundred and forty marks, roughly twenty-five dollars at the rate of exchange then in force. There was bread enough and side dishes galore. It was also a meatless day. The ham was one of several which had found the household in question through the channels of illicit trade, which even the strenuous efforts of the Prussian government had not been able to close as yet. The family had the necessary cash, and in order to indulge in former habits as fully as possible, it was using that cash freely. After living for several days in plenty at the Palads in Copenhagen, and ascertaining that _paling_--eel--was still in favor with the Dutch of The Hague, I returned to Vienna. Gone once more were the days of wheat bread and butter. One rainy afternoon I was contemplating the leafless trees on the Ring through the windows of the Café Sacher when two bodies of mounted police hove into view on the bridle path, as if they were really in a great hurry. I smelled a food riot, rushed down-stairs, caught a taxi on the wing, and sped after the equestrian minions of the law. Police and observer pulled up in the Josephstadt in the very center of a food disturbance. The riot had already cooled down to the level of billingsgate. Several hundred women stood about listening to the epithets which a smaller group was flinging at a badly mussed-up storekeeper, who seemed greatly concerned about his windows, which had been broken by somebody. The police mingled with the crowd. What had happened? Nothing very much, said the storekeeper. That remark fanned the flame of indignation which was swaying the women. Nothing much, eh? They had stood since high noon in line for butter and fat. Up to an hour ago the door of the shop had been closed. When finally it was opened the shopkeeper had announced that he had supplies only for about fifty fat coupons. Those who were nearest his door would be served and the others could go home. But somehow the crowd had learned that the man had received that morning from the Food Central enough fat to serve them all with the amount prescribed by the food cards. They refused to go away. Then the storekeeper, in the manner which is typically Viennese, grew sarcastically abusive. Before he had gone very far the women were upon him. Others invaded the store, found the place empty, and then vented their wrath on the fixtures and windows. I was greatly interested in what the police would do with the rioters. But, instead of hauling the ringleaders to headquarters, they told them to go home and refrain in future from taking the law into their own hands. Within ten minutes the riot resolved itself into good-natured bantering between the agents of the law and the women, and the incident was closed, except for the shopkeeper, who in court failed to clear up what he had done with the supplies of butter and fat that had been assigned him for distribution. He lost his license to trade, and was fined besides. Talking with several women, I discovered that none of them held the government responsible. The "beast" of a dealer was to blame for it all. This view was held largely because the police had gone to work in a most considerate manner, according to the instructions issued by an anxious government. In a previous food riot, in the Nineteenth Municipal District, the gendarmes had been less prudent, with the result that the women turned on them and disfigured with their finger-nails many a masculine face--my visage included, because I had the misfortune of being mistaken for a detective. A muscular _Hausmeisterin_--janitress--set upon me with much vigor. Before I could explain, I was somewhat mussed up, though I could have ended the offensive by proper counter measures. It is best to attend such affairs in the Austrian equivalent for overalls. Some weeks before, the Austrian premier, Count Stürgkh, had been shot to death by a radical socialist named Adler. In his statements Adler said that he had done this because of his belief that so long as Stürgkh was at the helm of the Austrian ship of state nothing would be done to solve the food situation. There is no doubt that Adler had thoroughly surveyed the field of public subsistence. It is also a fact that he did the Austrian government a great service by killing the premier. The right and wrong of the case need not occupy us here. I am merely concerned with practical effects. Count Stürgkh was an easy-going politician of a reactionary type. He gave no attention of an intelligent sort to the food problem, and did nothing to check the avarice of the food sharks, even when that avarice went far beyond the mark put up by the war-loan scheme. His inertia led during the first months of the war to much waste and later to regulations that could not have been more advantageous to the private interests of the food speculators had they been made for them expressly. No statesman was ever carried to his grave with fewer regrets. In the Austrian government offices a sigh of relief was heard when it became known that Adler had shot the premier. A revolution could not have been averted in Austria had Stürgkh continued at his post much longer. At first he was attacked only by the _Wiener Arbeiter Zeitung_, a socialist daily controlled by the father of Adler, who, in addition to being the editor-in-chief of the publication, is a member of the Austrian Reichsrath and the leader of the Austrian Socialist party. But later other papers began to object to Stürgkh's _dolce far niente_ official life, among them the rather conservative _Neue Freie Presse_. Others joined. Ultimately the premier saw himself deserted even by the _Fremdenblatt_, the semi-official organ of the government. Though charged with incompetency by some and with worse by others, Count Stürgkh refused to resign. Emperor Francis Joseph was staying his hands and this made futile all endeavor to remove the count from his high office. The old emperor thought he was doing the best by his people, and had it not been that the Austrians respected this opinion more than they should have done, trouble would have swept the country. A new era dawned after Count Stürgkh's death. But his successors found little they could put in order. The larder was empty. Premier Körber tried hard to give the people more food. But the food was no longer to be had. The loyalty of the Austrian people to their government was given the fire test in those days. Now and then it seemed that the crisis had come. It never came, however. Other trips to the fronts presented a new aspect of the food situation. It was an odd one at that. The men who had formerly complained that their wives and children were not getting enough to eat had in the course of time grown indifferent to this. It was nothing unusual to have men return to the front before their furloughs had expired. At the front there were no food problems. The commissary solved them all. At home the man heard nothing but complaints and usually ate up what his children needed. Little by little the Central Power troops were infected with the spirit of the mercenary of old. Life at the front had its risks, but it also removed one from the sphere of daily cares. The great war-tiredness was making room for indifference and many of the men had truly become adventurers. So long as the _Goulaschkanone_ shot the regular meals every day all was well. The military commissaries had succeeded by means of the stomach in making the man at the front content with his lot. Food conditions in the rear always offered a good argument, inarticulate but eloquent, nevertheless, why the man in the trenches should think he was well off. In the case of the many husbands and fathers no mean degree of indifference and callousness was required before this frame of mind was possible. But the war had taken care of that. War hardly ever improves the individual. Out of sight, out of mind! It was the craving stomach of the civil population that caused the several Central European governments most concern. In the past, newspapers had been very careful when discussing the food question. They might hint at governmental inefficiency and double-dealing, but they could not afford to be specific. The censors saw to that. When the food situation was nearing its worst the several governments, to the surprise of many, relaxed political censorship sufficiently so that newspapers could say whatever they pleased on food questions. First came sane criticism and then a veritable flood of abuse. But that was what the authorities wanted. Hard words break no bones, and their use is the only known antidote for revolution. Abuse was in the first place a fine safety valve, and then it gave the authorities a chance to defend themselves. To-day some paper would print an article in which, to the satisfaction of the reader, it was shown that this or that had been badly managed, and to-morrow the food authorities came back with a refutation that usually left a balance in favor of the government. The thing was adroitly done and served well to pull the wool over the eyes of the public. Free discussion of the food problem was the order of the day. The light was let in on many things, and for the first time since the outbreak of the war the food shark had to take to cover. The governments let it be known that, while it was all very convenient to blame the authorities for everything, it would be just as well if the public began to understand that it had a share of responsibility. Informers grew like toadstools after a warm rain in June. The courts worked overtime and the jails were soon filled. The food situation was such that the lesser fry of the speculators had to be sacrificed to the wrath of the population. The big men continued, however, and pennies were now to be mobilized through the medium of commodities. It was no longer safe to squeeze the public by means of its stomach if patriotism was to remain an asset of the warring governments. The masses had been mulcted of their last by this method. Others were to supply the money needed for the war. I feel justified in saying that the craving stomach of the Central states would have served the Allied governments in good stead in the fall of 1916 had their militaro-political objectives been less extensive and far-reaching. The degree of hunger, however, was always counteracted by the statements of the Allied politicians that nothing but a complete reduction of Germany and Austria-Hungary would satisfy them. I noticed that such announcements generally had as a result a further tightening of the belts. Nor could anybody remain blind to the fact that the lean man is a more dangerous adversary than the sleek citizen. Discipline of the stomach is the first step in discipline of the mind. There is a certain joy in asceticism and the consciousness that eating to live has many advantages over living to eat. The Central Power governments did not lose sight of this truth. IX SUB-SUBSTITUTING THE SUBSTITUTE Much nonsense has been disseminated on the success of the Germans, Austrians, and Hungarians in inventing substitutes for the things that were hard to get during the war. A goodly share of that nonsense came from the Germans and their allies themselves. But more of it was given to the four winds of heaven by admiring friends, who were as enthusiastic in such matters as they were ignorant of actual achievements. That much was done in that field is true enough. But a great deal of scientific effort resulted in no more than what, for instance, synthetic rubber has been. The first thing the German scientists did at the outbreak of the war was to perfect the system of a Norwegian chemist who had succeeded two years before in condensing the nitrogen of the air into the highly tangible form of crystals. Many are under the impression that the process was something entirely new and distinctly a German invention. I have shown that this is not so. Even the Norwegian cannot claim credit for the invention as in itself new. His merit is that he made the process commercially possible. The thing was a huge success. The British blockade had made the importation of niter from overseas impossible. There is no telling what would have happened except for the fact that the practically inexhaustible store of nitrogen in the air could be drawn upon. It kept the Central Powers group of belligerents in powder, so long as there was vegetable fiber and coal-tar enough to be nitrated. Incidentally, some of the by-products of the nitrogen process served in good stead as fertilizer. The quantity won was not great, however. I am not dealing with war as such, and for that reason I will pass by the many minor inventions of a purely military character that were made, nor would it be possible to do more than a cataloguing job if I were to attempt to refer here to all the innovations and substitutions that were undertaken as time went on. Science multiplied by three the store of textiles held in the Central states at the outbreak of the war. This was done in many ways and by various means. Take cotton, for instance. That almost anything could be converted into explosives by nitration has been known ever since Noble made nitroglycerine a commercial product. Any fat or fiber, even sugar, may be nitrated. That generally we use glycerine and cotton for the purpose is due to the fact that these materials are best suited for the process. But the fats that go into glycerine, and the cotton that becomes trinitrocellulose, could be put to better use by the Central states. In a general way coal-tar took the place of the former, and wood pulp that of cotton. That meant a tremendous saving in food and clothing. I remember well the shiver that went through Germany when Great Britain declared cotton to be contraband. The Entente press was jubilant for weeks. But any chemist familiar with the manufacture of explosives could have told Sir Kendall that he was too optimistic. It was known even then that birch pulp and willow pulp made most excellent substitutes for cotton, if the process, or "operation," as the thing is known technically, is suitably modified. Coal-tar explosives were already _un fait accompli_. Having attended to that little affair, the German scientists turned their attention to the winning of new textiles. There was the nettle in the hedges. Anciently, it had been to Europe what cotton was to the Mexico of the Aztecs. Times being hard, the nettle, now looked upon as a noxious weed fit only for goose fodder, was brought into its place. Very soon it was in the market as a textile, which often aspired to as imposing a name as "natural silk," a name the plant and its fiber well deserve. The chemist had very little to do with that. The process was known and, being in the main similar to the production of flax fiber, presented no difficulties. The plant is cut, packed tightly under water so that the vegetable pulp may decay, and is then dried in the sun and prepared for spinning. Though the Central states were now importing annually from Turkey in Asia some eighteen thousand bales of cotton, considerable silk and wool, and were getting wool also in the Balkan countries, there continued to be felt a shortage in textiles and their raw materials. The situation was never serious. The fiber of worn materials was being used again, and so long as enough new material was added the shoddy produced gave ample satisfaction. The paucity of textiles, however, gave rise to the paper-cloth industry. It was realized that for many purposes for which textiles were being used the paper cloth was well suited. That applied especially to all the uses manila and jute had been given in the past. Even here it was not a question of inventing something. Paper twine had been in use in Central Europe for many years; it had, in fact, been laid under ban by the Austrian government--I don't know for what reason. From paper twine to paper cloth was quite a step, however. Anybody can twist a piece of tissue-paper into a rope, but to make a reasonably strong thread or yarn of it is another matter. The pulp for paper cloth must be tough and not pack too tightly while the stuff is being made. In this first form the product much resembles an unbleached tissue-paper. Since the paper has to be in rolls, its manufacture was undertaken by the mills which in the past had turned out "news print." The rolls are then set into a machine, the principal feature of which is an arrangement of sharp rotary blades that will cut the sheet into strips or ribbons a quarter-inch wide--or wider, if that be desired. The ribbons are gathered on spools that revolve not only about their axes, but also about themselves, at a speed that will give the paper ribbon the necessary twist or spinning. Raw paper yarn has now been produced. For many purposes the yarn can be used in the condition it is now in. For others it must be chemically treated. The process is not dissimilar to "parchmenting" paper. During the treatment the yarn hardens quite a little. When intended to make bagging and other textiles of that sort, this will not matter. The yarn must be softened again if intended for the paper cloth that is to take the place of serge, possibly. This is done mechanically, by means of beating. The yarn does not have the necessary strength to form a fabric when not reinforced by a tougher fiber. As a rule, it becomes the warp of the cloth, flax, cotton, and even silk being employed as the weft. When intended for military overcoats a wool yarn is used. In this case the cloth is given a water-proofing treatment. A warm garment that is thoroughly water-proof without being airtight results. Paper cloth does not have the tensile qualities of good shoddy even, and for that reason it is mostly used for purposes to which severe usage is not incident. For instance, it will make splendid sweater coats for ladies and children. It will also take the place of felt for hats. The endeavor to find a substitute for sole leather was not so successful, even when finally it was decided that leather soles could be made only of animal tissue. There was leather enough for uppers always, and I am inclined to think that the supply of hides was large enough also to fill all reasonable demands for soles. The trouble lay in the nature of the hides, not in their scarcity. Horned cattle in Central Europe are stabled almost throughout the year and in this manner protected against the inclemency of the weather. A tender hide has been the result of this--a hide so tender that, while it will make the finest uppers, is next to useless as a sole. A very interesting solution was found in the use of wooden soles. A thousand capable brains had been occupied with the sole-leather substitutes, and finally they ruled that wood in its natural state was the next best thing. So far as the rural population was concerned, that was well enough. But wooden soles and city pavements are irreconcilable. How to make that wooden sole bend a little at the instep was the question. A sole was tried whose two halves were held together under the instep by a sort of specially designed hinge. That seemed an improvement over the single piece of wood, but soon it was found that it had the dangerous tendency to break down arches, which the hinged sole left unsupported at the very point where the support should have been. The experiments were continued. Inventors and cranks worked at them for nearly two years. The best they ever did was to displace the hinge for a flexible bit of steel plate. Common sense finally came to the rescue. The best shoe with a wooden sole was the one that gave the foot lots of room about the ankle, held the instep snug, and made up for the flexibility of the leather sole by a rounding-off of the wooden sole under the toes. A good and very serviceable wooden-sole shoe with leather uppers had been evolved. The scientists had nothing to do with it. It was the department of food substitution that was really the most interesting. For decades food in tabloid form has interested the men in the chemical laboratories. Some of them have asserted that man could be fed chemically. Theoretically that may be done; in practice it is impossible. If the intestinal tracts could be lined with platinum men might be able to live on acids of almost any sort. Such is not the case at present, however. The very wise pure-food laws of the Central states were thrown on the rubbish-heap by the governments when stretching the food-supply became necessary. They were first knocked into the proverbial cocked hat by the food sharks. What these men were doing was known to the governments, but these were not times to be particular. If it were possible to adulterate flour with ground clover there was no reason why this should not be done, even if the profit went into the pockets of the shark, so long as the same individual would later subscribe to the war loans. It was merely another way of mobilizing the pennies and their fractions. But to much of this an end had to be put. Too much exploitation of the populace might cause internal trouble. It might also lead to ruining the health of the entire nation, and that was a dangerous course. How to substitute flour was indeed a great and urgent problem. There were those enthusiasts who thought that it could be done chemically. Why leave to the slow and uncertain process of plant conversion that which chemistry could do quickly and surely? If certain elements passing through plant life made flour in the end, why not have them do that without the assistance of the crop season? I read some very learned articles on that subject. But there was always an _if_. If this and that could be overcome, or if this and that could be done, the thing would be successful. It never was, of course. Organic life rests on Mother Earth in layers, and the more developed this life is the farther it lies above the mere soil--the inorganic. The baby needing milk is above the cow, the cow needing vegetable food is above the plants, and even the plants do not depend on inorganic elements alone, as can be learned by any farmer who tries to raise alfalfa on soil that does not contain the cultures the plant must have. These cultures again feed on organic life. This was the rock on which the efforts of the chemical-food experts were wrecked. Soon they began to see that substitution would have to take the place of invention and innovation. They used to sell in the cafés of Vienna, and other large cities, a cake made mostly of ground clover meal, to which was added the flour of horse-chestnuts, a little rice, some glucose, a little sugar and honey, and chopped prunes when raisins could not be had. The thing was very palatable, and nutritious, as an analysis would show. There were enough food units in it to make the vehicle, which here was clover meal, really worth while. I mention this case to show what are the principal requirements of food for human consumption. There must be a vehicle if alimentation is to be normal. This vehicle is generally known as ashes. It is to the human alimentary system what bread is to butter and meat in the sandwich. Through it are distributed the actual food elements, and in their preparation for absorption it occupies the place of the sand and grit we find in the crop of the fowl. In the toothsome cake I have described, these factors had been duly honored, and for that reason the cake was a success even at the price it sold for--an ounce for three cents. The first war-bread baked was a superior sort of rye bread, containing in proportions 55, 25, 20, rye flour, wheat flour, and potato meal or flakes, sugar, and fat. That was no great trick, of course. Any baker could have thought of that. But rye and wheat flour were not always plentiful, even when government decree insisted that they be milled to 85 per cent. flour, leaving 15 per cent, as bran--the very outer hull. Oats, Indian corn, barley, beans, peas, and buckwheat meal had to be added as time went on. That was a more difficult undertaking and afforded the scientist the chance to do yeoman service. He was not found wanting. Imports of coffee had become impossible in 1916. The scant stores on hand had been stretched and extenuated by the use of chicory and similar supplements. I used to wonder how it was possible to make so little go so far, despite the fact that the _demi-tasse_ was coffee mostly in color by this time. A period of transition from coffee to coffee substitutes came. The first substitute was not a bad one. It was made mostly of roasted barley and oats and its flavor had been well touched off by chemicals won from coal-tar. The brew had the advantage of containing a good percentage of nutritive elements. Taken with a little milk and sugar it had all the advantages of coffee, minus the effect of caffeine and plus the value of the food particles. It was palatable even when taken with sugar only. Without this complement it was impossible, however. But the grain so used could be put to better purpose. This led to the introduction of the substitute of a substitute. The next sort of artificial coffee--_Kaffee-ersatz_--was made of roasted acorns and beechnuts, with just enough roasted barley to build up a coffee flavor. This product, too, was healthful. It may even be said that it was a little better than the first substitute. It certainly was more nourishing, but also more expensive. There were not acorns and beechnuts enough, however. Much of the store had been fed to the porkers, and before long the excellent acorn-beechnut coffee disappeared. A third substitute came in the market. Its principal ingredients were carrots and yellow turnips. To find substitutes for tea was not difficult. The bloom of the linden-tree, mixed with beech buds, makes an excellent beverage, and those who dote on "oolong" can meet their taste somewhat by adding to this a few tips of pine. If too much of the pine bud is used a very efficacious emetic will result, however. The mysteries of cocoa substitutions are a little above me. I can say, however, that roasted peas and oats have much to do with it. Some of the materials employed were supplied by coal-tar and synthetic chemistry. It was really remarkable what this coal-tar would do for the Germans and their allies. It provided them with the base for their explosives, made their dyes, and from it were made at one period of the war, by actual enumeration, four hundred and forty-six distinct and separate chemical products used in medicine, sanitation, and food substitution. If there be such a thing as an elixir of life, coal-tar may be expected to furnish it. But the net gain in this casting about for substitutes was slight indeed. The grains, nuts, and vegetables that were used as substitutes for coffee would have had the same food value if consumed in some other form. The advantage was that their conversion served to placate the old eating habits of the public. To what extent these had to be placated was made plain on every meatless, fatless, or wheatless or some other "less" day or period. There was the rice "lamb" chop, for instance. The rice was boiled and then formed into lumps resembling a chop. Into the lump a skewer of wood was stuck to serve as a bone, and to make the illusion more complete a little paper rosette was used to top off the "bone." All of it was very _comme il faut_. Then the things were fried in real mutton tallow, and when they came on the table its looks and aroma, now reinforced by green peas and a sprig of watercress, would satisfy the most exacting. Nor could fault be found with the taste. The vegetable beefsteak was another thing that gave great satisfaction, once you had become used to the color of the thing's interior, which was pale green--a signal in a real steak that it should not be eaten. The steak in question was a synthetic affair, composed of cornmeal, spinach, potatoes, and ground nuts. An egg was used to bind the mass together, and some of the culinary lights of Berlin and Vienna succeeded in making it cohesive enough to require the knife in real earnest. What I have outlined here so far may be called the private effort at substitution. But substitution also had a governmental application. Its purpose was to break the populace of its habit of eating highly concentrated foods, especially fats. The slaughter of the porkers in 1914 had accidentally led the way to this policy. The shortage in fats caused by this economic error was soon to illustrate that the masses could get along very well on about a quarter of the fat they had consumed in the past. Soon it was plain, also, that the health of the public could be improved in this manner by the gradual building up of a stronger physique. It would have been easy to again crowd the pigsties. The animal is very prolific, and a little encouragement of the pig-raisers would have had that result inside of a year had it been desired. But it was not done. It was difficult to get the necessary feed for these animals, and the small quantities that could be imported from Roumania were never a guarantee that the farmers would not feed their pigs with home-raised cereals and other foods that were of greater value to the state in the form of cereal and vegetable food for the population. The prices of fats and meats were well up. A hundred pounds of wheat converted into animal products would bring nearly three times what the farmer could get for the grain. Illicit trading in these articles, moreover, was easier carried on than in breadstuffs. Since no animal fats, be they butter, lard, or suet, could be produced without sacrificing a goodly share of the country's cereal supply, it was necessary to keep the animal-product industry down to its lowest possible level. It was easier to distribute equitably the larger masses of cereals and vegetables than the concentrated foods into which animal industry would convert them. To permit that would also have led to more hardship for the lower classes at a time when money was cheap and prices correspondingly high. The crux of the situation was to fill the public stomach as well as conditions permitted, and the consumption of fats could have no place in that scheme under the circumstances. It was decided, therefore, to have the human stomach do what heretofore had largely been attended to by the animal industries. An entire series of frictional waste could in that manner be eliminated, as indeed it was. The same policy led to a reduction in the supply of eggs. To keep the human stomach occupied had become as much a necessity as furnishing nutriment to the body. I doubt whether without this happy idea the Central states would have been able to carry on the war. The saving due to the policy was immense--so stupendous, in fact, that at the same time it discounted the impossibility of importing foodstuffs and took ample care of the losses in food production due to the shortage of labor and fertilizers. It was the one and only thing that stood between the Central Powers and swift defeat. It is needless to say that the effect upon certain classes of population was not so propitious. The lack of sufficient good milk caused an increase in infant mortality. The feeble of all ages were carried off quickly when concentrated foods could no longer be had to keep them alive, and persons of middle age and old age suffered so much that death was in many cases a welcome relief. While the healthy adult men and women did not suffer by this sort of rationing--grew stronger, in fact--those past the prime of life could not readjust themselves to the iron food discipline that was enforced. The alimentary system in that case had entered upon its downward curve of assimilation over elimination, and, constitutionally modified by the ease afforded by concentrated foods, it declined rapidly when these foods were withdrawn. Driven by necessity, the several states practised wholesale manslaughter of the less fit. I was greatly interested in these "home" casualties, and discussed them with many, among them life-insurance men, educators, and government officials. The first class took a strictly business view of the thing. The life-insurance companies were heavy losers. But there was no way out. Nothing at all could be done. It was hoped that the better physical trim of the young adults, and the resulting longevity, would reimburse the life-insurers. If the war did not last too long this would indeed happen. Premiums would have to be increased, however, if it became necessary for the government to apply further food restrictions. Some of the educators took a sentimental view of the thing. Others were cynically rational. It all depended upon their viewpoint and age. Those who believed in the theories of one Osler could see nothing wrong in this method of killing off the unfit aged. Their opposites thought it shameful that better provisions were not made for them. The attitude of the government was more interesting. It took cognizance of the individual and social aspects involved--of sentiment and reality. That manslaughter of the aged and unfit was the result of the food policy was not denied. But could the state be expected to invite dissolution because of that? "I understand you perfectly," said a certain food-dictator to me once. "My own parents are in that position, or would be, were it not that they have the means to buy the more expensive foods. That thousands of the poor aged are going to a premature death is only too evident. But what are we to do? We cannot for their sake lay down our arms and permit our enemies to impose upon us whatever conditions they please. Quite apart from the interests of the state as a political unit, there is here to be considered the welfare of the fit individuals. Being fit, they have the greatest claim to the benefits that come from the social and economic institutions which political independence alone can give. That the less fit must make sacrifices for that is to be expected, for the very good reason that it is the fit class which is carrying on the war and shedding its blood for the maintenance of the state. By the time we have provided for the infants and babies there is nothing left for the aged over and above what the adult individual gets. Of the babies we must take care because they are the carriers of our future. Of the aged we should take care because they have given us our past. But when it comes to choose which class to preserve, I would say the young every time." For live-stock-owning governments that is indeed the proper view to take; and since all governments belong to that class, more or less, it seems futile to find fault with this food-dictator. The man forced to decide whether he would give the last morsel to his old father or his young son might select to divide that morsel evenly between them. But if the old man was worth his salt at all he would insist that the boy be given all the food. A social aggregate that cannot act in accordance with this principle is shortening its own day. X THE CRUMBS October, 1916, marked the high water of the Central European public-subsistence problems. Misery had reached the limits of human endurance. For the next seven months the strain caused by it tore at the vitals of the Central states. The measures then conceived and applied would prove whether or no the collapse of Germany and her allies could be averted. So serious was the situation that the several governments felt compelled to send out peace-feelers, one or two of them being definite propositions of a general nature. The crumbs and scraps had been saved for a long time even then. As far back as November, 1914, all garbage had been carefully sorted into rubbish and food remnants which might serve as animal feed. But that was no longer necessary now. Food remnants no longer went into the garbage-cans. Nor was it necessary to advise the public not to waste old clothing and other textiles. The ragman was paying too good a price for them. Much of the copper and brass complement of households had been turned over to the government, and most copper roofs were being replaced by tin. The church bells were being smelted. Old iron fetched a fancy price. In the currency iron was taking the place of nickel. Old paper was in keen demand. The sweepings of the street were being used as fertilizer. During the summer and fall the hedges had been searched for berries, and in the woodlands thousands of women and children had been busy gathering mushrooms and nuts. To meet the ever-growing scarcity of fuel the German government permitted the villagers to lop the dead wood in the state forests. To ease the needs of the small live-stock-owner he was allowed to cut grass on the fiscal woodlands and gather the dead leaves for stable bedding. It was a season of saving scraps. The entire economic machinery seemed ready for the scrap-heap. Much of the saving that was being practised was leading to economic waste. The city streets were no longer as clean as they used to be. During the summer much light-fuel had been saved by the introduction of "summer time." The clocks were set ahead an hour, so that people rose shortly after dawn, worked their customary ten hours in the shops and factories, and then still had enough daylight to work in their gardens. When dusk came they went to bed. Street traction had been limited also. The early closing of shops, cafés, and restaurants effected further savings in light, and, above all, eatables. The countryside presented a dreary picture. Nobody had time to whitewash the buildings, and few cared about the appearance of their homes. What is the use? they said. They could wait until better times came. The dilapidated shutter kept fit company with the rain-streaked wall. The untidy yard harmonized with the neglected garden in a veritable diapason of indifference. The implements and tools of the farm were left where they had been used last. The remaining stock had an unkempt look about it. I remember how during a trip in Steiermark I once compared the commonwealth with a lonely hen I saw scratching for food in a yard. The rusty plumage of the bird showed that nobody had fed it in months. There was no doubt, though, that somebody expected that hen to lay eggs. It was now a question, however, of saving the scraps of the state--of the socio-economic fabric. The flood of regulation which had spilled over Central Europe had pulled so many threads out of the socio-economic life that, like a thin-worn shawl, it had no longer the qualities of keeping warm those under it. The threads had been used by those in the trenches, and the civilian population had been unable to replace them. It would be quite impossible to give within the confines of a single volume a list of these regulations, together with a discussion of their many purposes, tendencies, and effects. I would have to start with the economic embryo of all social economy--the exchange of food between the tiller of the soil and the fisherman--to make a good job of that. A little intensive reasoning will show what the processes applied in Central Europe had been up to the fall of 1916. Regulated was then almost everything man needs in order to live: bread, fats, meat, butter, milk, eggs, peas, beans, potatoes, sugar, beer, fuel, clothing, shoes, and coal-oil. These were the articles directly under control. Under the indirect influence of regulation, however, lay everything, water and air alone excepted. Now, the purpose of this regulation had been to save and to provide the government with the funds needed for the war. That was well enough so long as there was something to save. But the time was come in which the governmental effort at saving was futile endeavor. There was nothing that could be saved any more. Surpluses had ceased to be. Production no longer equaled consumption, and when that state of things comes crumbs and scraps disappear of themselves. Once I had to have a pair of heels straightened. I had no trouble finding a cobbler. But the cobbler had no leather. "Surely," I said, "you can find scraps enough to fix these heels!" "But, I can't, sir!" replied the man. "I cannot buy scraps, even. There is no more leather. I am allowed a small quantity each month. But what I had has been used up long ago. If you have another old pair of shoes, bring them around. I can use part of the soles of them to repair the heels, and for the remainder I will pay with my labor. I won't charge you anything for mending your shoes." I accepted the proposal and learned later that the cobbler had not made so bad a bargain, after all. A similar policy had to be adopted to keep the Central populations in clothes. Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, and Turkey produce considerable quantities of wool, flax, silk, and cotton. But what they produce was not enough to go around, and the men at the front were wearing out their uniforms at an alarming rate. The military authorities felt that nothing would be gained by making the uniforms of poor cloth. The wear and tear on the fabric was severe. Labor in the making and distribution of the uniforms could be saved only by using the best materials available. For the civilians it became necessary to wear shoddy. And to obtain shoddy every scrap must be saved. The time came when an old all-wool suit brought second-hand as good a price as a new suit fresh from the mill and the tailor shop. With the addition of a little new fiber that old suit might make two new ones. The old material was "combed" into wool again, and to this was added some new wool, cotton, or silk, and "new" goods appeared again on the counter. The "I-cash" never had done such business before. The attics and cellars were ransacked, and since those who had most old clothing to sell bought hardly any at all now, the pinch of the war in clothing was really never felt very much by the poor. To prevent the spread of contagious diseases the several governments saw to it that the shoddy was thoroughly sterilized. But economies of that sort are more or less automatic and lie within the realm of supply and demand. Unchecked, they may also become the cause of economic waste. The time comes when shoddy is an absolute loss. When fibers are used over and over, together with new elements, the oldest of them finally cease to have value. That means that the fabric does not have the wearing qualities which will give economic compensation for the labor spent on it and the price asked from the consumer. The stuff may be good to look upon, but in times of war that is not essential. The profiteer found a fine field in the manufacture of shoddy. All first-hand shoddy he would sell as new material, and before he admitted that a certain piece of cloth was "indifferent" in quality, it had to be poor indeed. He would ask a good price for a suit that might fall to pieces in the first rain, and the consumer was left to do the best he could with the thing. When the consumer complained he would be told that the "war" was responsible, and the consumer, knowing in a general and superficial manner that things were indeed scarce, would decide to be reasonable. But the government could not take that easy view. Labor which might have been put to better use had been expended in the making of that shoddy, and now the fabric served no good purpose. That had to be avoided. It was far better to abandon fiber of this sort than to have it become the cause of waste in labor and the reason for further discontent. Labor that results in nothing more than this is non-productive, and the governments of Central Europe knew only too well that they had no hands to spare for that kind of unavailing effort. I ran into a case of this sort in Bohemia. A large mill had turned out a great deal of very poor shoddy. The cloth looked well, and, since wool fiber newly dyed makes a good appearance even long after its wearing qualities have departed forever, the firm was doing a land-office business. All went well until some of the fine cloth got on the backs of people. Then trouble came. Some of the suits shrank when wet, while others did the very opposite. The matter came to the attention of the authorities. Experts in textiles examined the cloth. Some of the output was found to contain as much as 60 per cent. old fiber, and there was no telling how many times this old fiber had been made over. It was finally shown that, had the manufacturer been content with a little less profit, he could have converted the new fiber--which, by the way, he had obtained from the government Fiber Central--into some thirty thousand yards of first-class shoddy under a formula that called for 65 per cent. new fiber and 35 per cent. old. As it was, he had turned the good raw material into nearly fifty-two thousand yards of fabrics that were not worth anything and he had wasted the labor of hundreds of men and women besides. The man had been trying to make use of crumbs and scraps for his own benefit. Personal interests had led, in this instance, to an attempt to convert an economic negative into a positive. The useless fiber was a minus which no effort in plus could cause to have any other value than that which this profit-hunter saw in it. By the rational economist the shoddy had been abandoned, and all effort to overcome the statics of true economy, as here represented by the unserviceableness of the fiber for the use to which it had been assigned, was bound to be an economic waste. Cases such as these--and there were thousands of them--showed the authorities that there was danger even in economy. The crumbs and scraps themselves were useless in the end. Beyond a certain point all use of them resulted in losses, and that point was the minimum of utility that could be obtained with a maximum of effort. The economic structure could not stand on so poor a sand foundation. But the several governments were largely responsible for this. They had regulated so much in behalf of economy that they had virtually given the economic shark _carte blanche_. There was a season when I attended a good many trials of men who had run afoul of the law in this manner. They all had the same excuse. Nothing had been further from their minds than to make in times such as these excessive profits. They would not think of such a thing. If they had used poor materials in the things they manufactured, it was due entirely to their desire to stretch the country's resources. In doing that they had hoped to lighten the burden of the government. Conservation had become necessary and everybody would have to help in that. They had been willing to do their bit, and now the authorities were unreasonable enough to find fault with this policy. At first many a judge had the wool pulled over his eyes in that manner. But in the end the scheme worked no longer. Usually the limit of punishment fell on the offender. Abuses of this sort had much to do with an improvement in conservation methods. So far as the textile industry was concerned it led to the control by the government Raw-Material Centrals, which were established rather loosely at the beginning of the war, of all fibers. The ragman thereafter turned over his wares to these centrals, and when a spinner wanted material he had to state what he wanted it for and was then given the necessary quantities in proportions. That helped, and when the government took a better interest in the goods manufactured this avenue of economic waste was closed effectively. With these measures came the clothing cards for the public. After that all seemed well. The poorer qualities of cloth disappeared from the market overnight, and a suit of clothing was now sure to give fair value for the price. I have made use of this example to illustrate what the factors in regulation and conservation were at times, and how difficult it was to unscramble the economic omelet which the first conservation policies had dished up. There were other crumbs and scraps, however. Not the least of them was the socio-economic organism itself. That sensitive thing had been doctored so much that only a major operation could again put it on its feet. Economy faddists and military horse-doctors alike had tried their hands on the patient, and all of them had overlooked that the only thing there was wrong with the case was malnutrition. Everybody was trying to get the usual quantities and qualities of milk from a cow that was starving. Poor Bossy! Man lives not by food alone; nor does society. It takes a whole lot of things to run a state. While the government had already in its grasp all the distribution and consumption of food, there were many things it did not care to interfere with, even if they were almost as important as food. These things were the products of industry, rather than the fruits of the fields, though usually, as is natural, it was difficult to draw a strong line of demarcation in the division of spheres. In social economy that has always been so. To get the true perspective, take a dozen pebbles, label them food, fuel, clothing, and whatever else occurs to you, and then throw the pebbles in the pond. You will find that the circular wavelets caused by the pebbles will soon run into and across one another, and if by chance you have followed the waves of food you will notice that while they have been broken by the impact of the others they still remain discernible. Into the rippling pond the several governments had each thrown the cobblestones of regulation. The food, fuel, and clothing ripples were still there, of course, but they had been so obliterated that it was now difficult to trace them on the regulation waves. But the waves, too, subsided, and on the backwash of them the authorities read lessons which suggested saner methods--methods whose conception and application were attended by a better regard for the nature of the operation, be this production, distribution, or consumption. The saving of crumbs and scraps had not been without its value. It tended to make men short-sighted, however. The governments of Central Europe wanted to limit consumption to the absolutely necessary, but overlooked that their _modus operandi_ gave cause to serious losses. The various authorities did not wish to interfere too much with normal currents of economic life. That was well enough in a way, but had disastrous consequences. A shortage in the necessities of life was the great fact of the day. It could be met only by restricting consumption. But the machinery of this restriction was a haphazard thing. It promoted hoarding. There have been those who have condemned the hoarder in the roundest of terms. I am not so sure that he deserves all of the anathemas that have been hurled at him. When a government shouts day in and day out that the worst will come to pass if everybody does not save the crumbs, the more easily alarmed are bound to think only of themselves and of their own. High prices will cease to be a deterrent, for the reason that war brings only too many examples of the fact that only food and not money will sustain life. To act in accordance with this may be a weakness, but it is also along the lines of a natural condition, if self-preservation be indeed the first law of nature. Soon there are found those who promote and pamper this weakness for a profit. Food is then stored away by the majority. Some will waste much of it in over-consumption, while more will permit the food to spoil by improper storage methods, especially when the food has to be secreted in cellars and attics, wardrobes and drawers, as happens when government by inspection becomes necessary. But of this I have spoken already in its proper place. XI MOBILIZING THE PENNIES Food-regulators will be wroth, I suppose, if I should state that the consumption of life's necessities can be regulated and diminished for its own sake, and that high prices are not necessarily the only way of doing this. At the same time I must admit that prices are bound to rise when demand exceeds supply. In our system of economy that is a natural order of affairs. But this tendency, when not interfered with, would also result in a quick and adequate betterment in wages. In Central Europe, however, the cost of living was always about 50 per cent. ahead of the slow increase in earnings. That 50 per cent. was the increment which the government and its economic minions needed to keep the war going. What regulation of prices there was kept this in mind always. In order that every penny in the realm might be mobilized and then kept producing, no change in these tactics could be permitted. The food shark and price-boosting middleman were essential in this scheme, and when these were dropped by the government, one by one, it was nothing but a case of: The Moor has done his duty, the Moor can go. Elimination of the middleman worked upward, much as does a disease that has its bed in the slums. When the consumer had been subjected to the limit of pressure, the retailer felt the heavy hand of the government. It got to be the turn of the wholesaler and commission-man, and in October of 1916, the period of which I speak here, only the industrial and commercial kings and the banking monarchs were still in favor with the government. The speculators then operating were either the agents of these powers or closely affiliated with them. In the fall of 1916 the war system of national economy had taken the shape it has to-day. Food had become the irreducible minimum. Not alone was the quantity on hand barely sufficient to feed the population, but its price could no longer be increased if the masses were not to starve for lack of money instead of lack of food. The daily bread was now a luxury. Men and women had to rise betimes and work late into the night if they wanted to eat at all. Let me now speak of the sort of revision of economic regulations that was in vogue before the adoption of the new system. That revision started with the farmer--the producer of food. Some requisitioning had been done on the farms for strictly military purposes. Horses and meat animals had been taken from the farmer for cash at the minimum prices established by the authorities. Forage and grain for the army had been commandeered in a like manner, and in a few cases wagons, plows, and other implements. Further than that (taking into account the minimum prices, which were in favor of the farmer and intended to stimulate production), the government had not actually interfered with the tiller of the soil. He had gone on as before, so far as a shortage of labor, draft animals, and fertilizers permitted. He had not prospered, of course, but on the whole he was better off than the urbanite and industrial worker, for the reason that he could still consume of his food as much as he liked. The government had, indeed, prescribed what percentage of his produce he was to turn over to the public, but often that interference went no further. But in the growing and crop season of 1916 the several governments went on a new tack. Trained agriculturists, employees of the Food Commissions and Centrals, looked over the crops and estimated what the yield would be. From the total was then subtracted what the establishment of the farmer would need, and the rest had to be turned over to the Food Centrals at fixed dates. The farmers did not take kindly to this. But there was no help. Failure to comply with orders meant a heavy fine, and hiding of food brought similar punishment and imprisonment besides. With this done, the food authorities began to clear up a little more in the channels of distribution. The cereals were checked into the mills more carefully, and the smaller water-mills, which had in the past charged for their labor by retaining the bran and a little flour, were put on a cash basis. For every hundred pounds of grain they had to produce so many pounds of flour, together with by-products when these latter were allowed. The flour was then shipped to a Food Central, and this would later issue it to the bakers, who had to turn out a fixed number of loaves. To each bakery had been assigned so many consumers, and the baker was now responsible that these got the bread which the law prescribed. Potatoes and other foods were handled in much the same manner. The farmer had to deliver them to the Food Central in given quantities at fixed dates, and the Central turned them over to the retailers for sale to the public in prescribed allotments. Now and then small quantities of "unrestricted" potatoes would get to the consumer through the municipal markets. But people had to rise at three o'clock in the morning to get them. This meant, of course, that only those willing to lose hours of needed sleep for the sake of a little extra food got any of these potatoes. The ways of the efficient food-regulator are dark and devious but positive in their aim. The meat-supply was not further modified. The meatless days and exorbitant prices had made further regulation in that department unnecessary. Milk and fat, however, as well as eggs, were made the subject of further attention by the Food Commissions. All three of them were as essential to the masses as was bread, and for that reason they passed within the domain of the food zone--_Rayon_. In their case, however, the authorities left the supply uncontrolled. The farmer sold to the Food Central what milk, butter, lard, suet, tallow, vegetable-oil, and eggs he produced, and the Central passed them on to the retailers, who had to distribute them to a given number of consumers. The same was done in the case of sugar. Such a scheme left many middlemen high and dry. Those who could not be of some service in the new system, or found it not worth while to be connected with it, took to other lines of industry. The government had left a few such lines open. That, however, was not done in the interest of the middlemen. The better-paid working classes still had pennies that had to be garnered, and these pennies, now that food was surrounded by cast-iron regulations and laws, went into the many other channels of trade. I made the acquaintance of a man who in the past had bought and sold on commission almost anything under the heading of food. Now it would be a car-load of flour, then several car-loads of potatoes, and when business in these lines was poor he would do a legal or illicit business in butter and eggs. Petroleum was a side line of his, and once he made a contract with the government for remounts. I don't think there was anything the man had not dealt in. But the same can be said of every one of the thousands that used to do business in the quiet corners of the Berlin and Vienna cafés. I should mention here that the Central European commission-man does not generally hold forth in an office. The café is his place of business--not a bad idea, since those with whom he trades do the same. There are certain cafés in Vienna, Berlin, and Budapest, and the other cities, that exist almost for that purpose. In any three of them one can buy and sell anything from a paper of pins to a stack of hay. My acquaintance found that the new order of things in the food department left him nothing but the pleasant memory of the "wad" he had made under the old régime. He took to matches. Matches were uncontrolled and rather scarce. Soon he had a corner in matches. He made contracts with the factories at a price he could not have paid without a large increase in the selling price of the article. But he knew how to bring that condition about. Before long the price of matches went up. They had been selling at about one-quarter cent American for a box of two hundred. The fancier article sold for a little more. When the price was one cent a box, my acquaintance began to unload judiciously. Merchants did not want to be without matches again, and bought with a will. The speculator cleared one hundred and twenty thousand crowns on his first release, I was told. His average monthly profit after that was something like forty thousand crowns. Somehow he managed to escape prosecution under the anti-high-profit decree then in force. No doubt that was due to his connections with the Vienna Bank Food Ring. At any rate, his name appeared as one of the large subscribers to the fifth Austrian war loan, and, needless to say, he paid his share of the war-profit tax. In this case fractions of pennies were mobilized. I suppose almost anybody who can afford fuel can afford to light a fire with a match that costs the two-hundredth part of a cent. No doubt the government thought so. Why not relieve the population of that little accumulation of economic "fat"? Another genius of that sort managed to get a corner in candles. How he managed to get his stock has never been clear to me, since the food authorities had long ago put a ban on the manufacture of candles. I understand that some animal fats, suet and tallow, are needed to make the paraffin "stand" up. Those animal fats were needed by the population in the form of food. But the corner in candles was _un fait accompli_. The man was far-sighted. He held his wares until the government ordered lights out in the houses at eleven o'clock, and these candles were then welcome at any price, especially in such houses where the janitor would at the stroke of the hour throw off the trunk switch in the cellar. Here was another chance to get pennies from the many who could afford to buy a candle once or twice a week. The government had no reason to interfere. Those pennies, left in the pockets of the populace, would have never formed part of a war loan or war-profit taxes. Sewing-thread was the subject of another corner. In fact, all the little things people must have passed one by one into the control of some speculator. Gentle criticism of that method of mulcting the public was made in the press that depended more than ever on advertising. But that fell on deaf ears. And usually a man had not to be a deep thinker to realize that the government must permit that sort of thing in order to find money for the prosecution of the war and the administration of the state. To serious complaint, the government would reply that it had done enough by regulating the food, and that further regulation would break down the economic machine. That was true, of course. To take another step was to fall into the arms of the Social Democrats, and that responsibility nobody expected the government to take. The attitude of the public toward the governmentally decreed system of social economy is not the least interesting feature of it. The authorities took good care to accompany every new regulation with the explanation that it had to be taken in the interest of the state and the armies in the field. If too much food was consumed in the interior, the men in the trenches would go hungry. That was a good argument, of course. Almost every family had some member of it in the army; that food was indeed scarce was known, and not to be content with what was issued was folly in the individual--at one time it was treason. As an antidote against resentment at high prices, the government had provided the minimum-maximum price schedules, and occasionally some retailer or wholesaler was promptly dealt with by the court, whose president was then more interested in fining the man than in putting him in jail. The government needed the money and was not anxious to feed prisoners. If some favorite was hit by this, the authorities had the convenient excuse that it was "war." It is difficult to see how the attitude of the several governments could have been different. The authorities of a state have no other power, strength, and resources than what the community places at their disposal wittingly or unwittingly. The war was here and had to be prosecuted in the best manner possible, and the operations incident to the struggle were so gigantic that every penny and fraction thereof had to be mobilized. There was no way out of this so long as the enemy was to be met and opposed. Even the more conservative faction of the Social Democrats realized that, and for the time being the "internationalist" socialists had no argument they could advance against this, since elsewhere the "internationalists" had also taken to cover. The Liberals everywhere could demand fair treatment of the masses, but that they had been given by the government to the fullest extent possible under the circumstances. The exploitation of the public was general and no longer confined to any class, though it did not operate in all cases with the same rigor. To have the laws hit all alike would have meant embracing the very theories of Karl Marx and his followers. Apart from the fact that the middle and upper classes were violently opposed to this, there was the question whether it would have been possible in that case to continue the war. The German, German-Austrian, and Hungarian public, however, wanted the war continued, even when the belt had been tightened to the last hole. What, under these circumstances, could be done by the several governments but extract from their respective people the very last cent? Discussion of the policy was similar to a cat chasing its tail. We may say the same of the motive actuating the authorities when in the fall of 1916 they established municipal meat markets where meat could be obtained by the poor at cost price and often below that. Whether that was done to alleviate hunger or keep the producer in good trim is a question which each must answer for himself. It all depends on the attitude one takes. The meat was sold by the municipality or the Food Commission direct, at prices from 15 to 25 per cent. below the day's quotation, and was a veritable godsend to the poor. Whether the difference in price represented humaneness on the part of the authorities or design would be hard to prove. Those I questioned invariably claimed that it was a kind interest in the masses which caused the government to help them in that manner. Had I been willing to do so I could have shown, of course, that the money spent in this sort of charity had originally been in the pockets of those who bought the cheaper meat. But that is a chronic ailment of social economy, and I am not idealist enough to say how this ailment could be cured. In fact, I cannot see how it can be cured if society is not to sink into inertia, seeing that the scramble for a living is to most the only leaven that will count. That does not mean, however, that I believe in the maxim, "The devil take the hindmost"--a maxim which governed the distribution of life's necessities in Central Europe during the first two years of the war. The zonification of the bread, milk, fats, and sugar supply, and the municipal meat markets began to show that either the government had come to fear the public or was now willing to co-operate with it more closely than it had done in the past. At any rate, this new and better policy had a distinctly humane aspect. Some of the food-lines disappeared, and with them departed much of that brutality which food control by the government had been associated with in the past. The food allowance was scant enough, but a good part of it was now assured. It could be claimed at any time of the day, and that very fact revived in many the self-respect which had suffered greatly by the eternal begging for food in the lines. Having made a study of the psychology of the food-liner, I can realize what that meant. Of a sudden food riots ceased, and with them passed all danger of a revolution. I am convinced that in the winter of 1915-16 it was easier to start internal trouble in the Central states than it was a year later. A more or less impartial and fairly efficient system of food distribution had induced the majority to look at the shortage in eatables as something for which the government was not to blame. That, after all, was what the government wanted. Whether or no it worked consciously toward that end I am not prepared to say. By that time, also, the insufferable small official had been curbed to quite an extent. As times grew harder, and the small increases in pay failed more and more to keep pace with the increase in the cost of living, that class became more and more impossible. Toward its superiors it showed more obsequiousness than before, because removal from office meant a stay at the front, and since things in life have the habit of balancing one another, the class became more rude and oppressive toward the public. Finally the government caused the small official to understand that this could not go on. He also learned in a small degree that bureaucratism is not necessarily the only purpose of the officeholder, though much progress in that direction was yet necessary. It has often been my impression that government in Central Europe would be good if it were possible to put out of their misery the small officials--the element which snarls at the civilian when there is no occasion for it. It seems to me that the worst which the extremists in the Entente group have planned for the Central Powers is still too good for the martinet who holds forth in the Central European _Amtsstube_--_i. e._, government office. Law and order has no greater admirer than myself, but I resent having some former corporal take it for granted that I had never heard of such things until he happened along. Yet that is precisely what this class does. It has alienated hundreds of thousands of friends of the German people. It has stifled the social enlightenment and political liberty which was so strong in Central Europe in the first four decades of the nineteenth century. It is not difficult to imagine what that class did to a population which had been reduced to subsisting at the public crib. The bread ticket was handed the applicant with a sort of by-the-grace-of-God mien, when rude words did not accompany it. The slightest contravention brought a flood of verbal abuse. Pilate never was so sure that he alone was right. Between this official insolence, food shortage, and exploitation by the government and its economic minions, the Central European civilian had a merry time of it. But, after all, no people has a better government than it deserves, just as it has no more food than it produces or is able to secure. The martinets did not mend their ways until women in the food-lines had clawed their faces and an overwhelming avalanche of complaints began to impress the higher officials. Conditions improved rapidly after that and stayed improved so long as the public was heard from. It may not be entirely coincidence that acceptable official manners and better distribution of food came at the same time. In that lies the promise that the days of the autocratic small official in Central Europe are numbered. It was futile, however, to look for a general or deep-seated resentment against the government itself. Certain officials were hated. Before the war that would have made little difference to the bureaucratic clans, and even now they were often reluctant to sacrifice one of their ilk, but there was no longer any help for it. There was never a time when a change in the principle of government was considered as the means to effect a bettering of conditions. The Central European prefers monarchical to republican government. He is not inclined to do homage to a ruler who is a commoner--a tribute he still pays his government and its head. In the monarchy the ruler occupies a position which the average republican cannot easily understand. In the constitutional monarchy, having a responsible ministry, the king is generally little better than what is known as a figurehead. He is hardly ever heard from, and when he is the cause of his appearance in the spotlight may be some act that has little or nothing to do with government itself. He may open some hospital or attend a maneuver or review of the fleet, or convene parliament with a speech prepared by the premier, and there his usefulness ends--seemingly. But that is not quite so. In such a realm the monarch stands entirely for that continuation of policy and principle which is necessary for the guidance of the state. He becomes the living embodiment of the constitution, as it were. He is the non-political guardian thereof. Political parties may come and go, but the king stays, seeing to it, theoretically at least, that the parliamentary majority which has put its men into the ministry does not violate the ground laws of the country. In his capacities of King of Prussia and German Emperor, William II. has been more absolute than any of the other European monarchs, the Czar of Russia alone excepted. The two constitutions under which he rules, the Prussian and the German federative, give him a great deal of room in which to elbow around. When a Reichstag proved intractable he had but to dissolve it, and in the Prussian chambers of Lords and Deputies he was as nearly absolute as any man could be--provided always he did what was agreeable to the Junkers. They are a strong-minded crew in Prussia, and less inclined to be at the beck and call of their king than Germans generally are in the case of their Emperor. In Prussia the King is far more the servant of the state than the Kaiser is in Germany. But this is one of those little idiosyncrasies in government that can be found anywhere. Three years of contact with all classes of Germans have yet to show me the single individual, not a most radical socialist, who had anything but kind words for the King-Emperor and his family. What the Kaiser had to say went through the multitude like an electric impulse. No matter how uninteresting I might find a statement, because I could not see it from the angle of the German, the public always received it very much as it might the word of a prophet. It was conceded that the Emperor could make mistakes, that, indeed, he had made not a few of them; but this did not by any means lessen the degree of receptiveness of his subjects. Against the word of Kaiser Wilhelm all argument is futile, and will always remain futile. It was this sentiment which caused the German people to accept with wonderful patience whatever burden the war brought. Had it ever been necessary to cast into the government's war treasury the last pfennig, the mere word from the Kaiser would have accomplished this. What Napoleon was to his soldiers Emperor William II. is to his people. And then it must not be overlooked that the Emperor possesses marked ability as a press agent. He was always the first to conform to a regulation in food. Long before the rich classes had so much as a thought of eating war-bread, Emperor William would tolerate nothing else on his table. The Empress, too, adhered to this. All wheat bread was banished from the several palaces of the imperial _ménage_. Every court function was abandoned, save coffee visits in the afternoon for the friends of the Empress. [Illustration: Copyright by Underwood & Underwood, N. Y. CASTLE HOHENZOLLERN Ancestral seat of the Hohenzollern dynasty. The men and women in the foreground are good types of Germany's peasantry.] I saw the Emperor a good many times. At the beginning of the war he was rushed past me in the Unter den Linden in Berlin. The crowds were cheering him. He seemed supremely happy, as he bowed to right and left in acknowledgment of the fealty voiced. Since I am not so extraordinarily gifted as some claim to be, I could not say that I saw anything in his face but the expression of a man happy to see that his people stood behind him. Later I saw him in Vienna. He had come to the capital of his ally to view for the last time the face of his dead comrade-in-arms, the late Emperor Francis Joseph. He stepped out of the railroad carriage with a grave face and hastened toward the young Emperor of Austria to express his condolences. The two men embraced each other. I was struck by the apparent sincerity of the greeting. What impressed me more, perhaps, was the alacrity of the older man. For several minutes the two monarchs paced up and down on the station platform and conversed on some serious subject. I noticed especially the quick movements of the German Emperor's head, and the smart manner in which he faced about when the two had come to the end of the platform. The streak of white hair, visible between ear and helmet, accentuated in his face that expression which is not rare in old army officers, when the inroads of years have put a damper on youthful martial enthusiasm. The man was still every inch a soldier, and yet his face reminded me of that of Sir Henry Irving, despite the fact that there is little similarity to be seen when pictures of the two men are compared, as I had shortly afterward opportunity of doing. I should say that in civilian clothing I would take the Emperor for a retired merchant-marine captain, in whose house I would expect to find a fairly good library indiscriminately assembled and balanced by much bric-à-brac collected in all parts of the world without much plan or design. Such a retired sea-dog would be a very human being, I take it. His crews might have ever stood in fear of him, but his familiars would look upon him with the respect that is brought any man who knows that friendship's best promoter is usually a judicious degree of reserve. That was the picture I gained of the Emperor as he marched up and down the station platform in a Vienna suburb. The same afternoon he was taken over the Ring in an automobile. There was no cheering by the vast throng which had assembled to see the mighty War Lord from the north. The old emperor was dead. The houses were draped in black. Many of the civilians had donned mourning. To the hats that were lifted, Kaiser William bowed with a face that was serious. He was all monarch--King and Emperor. I can understand why a man of the type of Czar Nicholas should lose his throne in a revolution brought on by the shortage of food and the exploitation incident to war. How a similar fate could overtake a man of the type of William II. is not clear to me. For that he is too ready to act. His adaptiveness is almost proverbial in Germany. I have no doubt that should the impossible really occur in Germany becoming a republic William II. would most likely show up as its first president. In Germany nothing is really ever popular--the works of poets excluded. For that reason the Emperor is not popular in the sense in which Edward VII. could be popular. But Emperor William II. is a fact to the German, just as life itself is that. For the time being the Emperor is the state to the vast majority, and, incongruous as it may seem at a time when conditions in Germany are making for equipollence between the reactionary and the progressive, there is no doubt that no throne in Europe is more secure than that of the Hohenzollerns. To understand that one must have measured in Germany the patience and determination of those who bore the burden of the war as imposed by scant rations on the one hand and ever-increasing expenditures in warfare on the other. Since King Alfonso of Spain is better known than the German crown-prince, I will refer to him as the ruler whom the latter resembles most. The two men are of about the same build, with the difference in favor of the crown-prince, who is possibly a little taller and slightly better looking in a Teutonic fashion. Both are alike in their unmilitariness. One looks as little the soldier as the other, despite the fact that the interested publics have but rarely the opportunity to see these men in mufti. After all, that is scant reason for the comparison I have made. The better reason is that both are alike in their attitude toward the public. Alfonso is no more democratic than Frederick, nor would he be more interested in good government. To my friend Karl H. von Wiegand, most prominent of American correspondents in Berlin, the German crown-prince said on one occasion: "I regret that not more people will talk to me in the manner you have done. I appreciate frankness, but cannot always get it. The people from whom I expect advice and information make it their business to first find out what I might expect to hear and then talk accordingly. It is very disheartening, but what can I do?" Those who remember the last act of "_Alt-Heidelberg_" will best understand what the factors are that lead to this. We may pity the mind that looks upon another human being as something infinitely superior because accident suddenly places him in a position of great power. I am not so sure that he who becomes the object of that sort of reverence is not to be pitied more. Our commiseration is especially due the prince whom the frailties of human flesh cause to thus lose all contact with the real life by accepting _ipso facto_ that he is a superior being because others are foolish enough to embrace such a doctrine. A very interesting story is told in that connection of Emperor Charles of Austria. As heir-apparent he had always been very democratic. In those days he was little more to his brother officers than a comrade, and all of them, acting agreeably to a tradition in the Austro-Hungarian army, addressed him by the familiar _Du_--thou. After he had become Emperor-King, Charles had occasion to visit the east front, spending some time with the Arz army, at whose headquarters he had stayed often and long while still crown-prince. The young Emperor detected a chilling reserve among the men with whom he had formerly lived. Some of his comrades addressed him as "Your Majesty." Charles stood this for a while, and then turned on a young officer with whom he had been on very friendly terms. "I suppose you must say majesty now, but do me the favor of saying '_Du Majestät_.' I am still in the army; or are you trying to rule me out of it?" This may be considered a fair sample of the cement that has been keeping the Central states from falling apart under the stress of the war. To us republicans that may seem absurd. And still, who would deny that the memory of Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln is not a thing that binds together much of what is Americanism? In the republic the great men of the past are done homage, in the monarchy the important man of the hour is the thing. Were it otherwise the monarchy would not be possible. It is this difference which very often makes the republic seem ungrateful as compared with the monarchy. But in the aggregate in which all men are supposedly equal nothing else can be looked for. We must look to that condition for an answer to the question which the subject treated here has suggested. And, after all, this is half a dozen of one and six of the other. In the end we expect any aggregate to defend its institutions, whether they be republican or monarchical. In the republic the devotion necessary may have its foundation in the desire to preserve liberal institutions, while in the monarchy attunement to the great lodestar, tradition, may be the direct cause of patriotism. In England, the ideal monarchy, we have a mixture of both tendencies, and who would say that the mixture, from the British national point of view, has been a bad one? XII SHORTAGE SUPREME A hundred and twelve million people in Central Europe were thinking in terms of shortage as they approached the winter of 1916-17. Government and press said daily that relief would come. The public was advised to be patient another day, another week, another month. All would be well if patience was exercised. That patience was exercised, but in the mind of the populace the shortage assumed proportions that were at times hard to understand. The ancestors of Emperor Francis Joseph had been buried in a rather peculiar manner. From the body were taken the brain, heart, and viscera in order to make embalming possible. The heart was then put away in a silver vessel, while the other parts were placed in a copper urn. In the funeral processions these containers were carried in a vehicle following the imperial hearse. The funeral cortège of Francis Joseph was without that vehicle. The old man had requested that he be buried without the dissection that had been necessary in other instances. That being the case, the vehicle was not needed. But its absence was misinterpreted by the populace. It gave rise to the belief that the copper for the urn could not be spared, seeing that the army needed all of that metal. That little copper would have been required to fashion the urn does not seem to have occurred to them. It was enough to know that the church bells had been melted down and that in the entire country there was not a copper roof left. The phantom of shortage waxed when it became known that the lack of the necessary chemicals had led to the embalming of the Emperor's body with a fluid which had so discolored the body and face that the coffin had to be closed during the lying-in-state of the dead ruler. It grew again when it became known that, owing to a lack of horses, many changes had to be made in the funeral arrangements, and that most of the pomp of the Spanish court etiquette of funerals would have to be abandoned. What had anciently been a most imposing ceremony became in the end a very quiet affair. With one half of the world at war with the other half, there was a dearth even in monarchs, nobility, and diplomatists to attend the funeral. Somehow I gained the impression that the word "Want" was written even on the plain coffin which they lifted upon the catafalque in St. Stefan's Cathedral in Vienna, twenty feet away from me. To get into the church I had passed through a throng that showed want and deprivation in clothing and mien. It was a chilly day. Through the narrow streets leading to the small square in which the cathedral stands a raw wind was blowing, and I remember well how the one bright spot in that dreary picture was the tall spire of the cathedral upon which fell the light of the setting winter sun. The narrow streets and little square lay in the gloom that fitted the occasion. The shadow of death seemed to have fallen on everything--upon all except the large white cross which presently moved up the central aisle. Under the pall which the cross divided into four black fields lay the remains of the unhappiest of men. His last days had been made bitter by his people's cry for bread. Since coal was scarce, the church had not been heated. But that night, as if in honor of the funeral guests, a few more lights burned on the principal thoroughfares of Vienna. Even that was reckless extravagance under the circumstances. Hundreds of thousands of women and children were sitting in cold rooms at that time. The coal-lines brought usually disappointment, but no fuel. Even the hospitals to which many of these unfortunates had to be taken found it difficult to get what coal they needed. The street-car service had been curtailed to such an extent that many were unable to reach their place of work. In Austria that was especially the fault of the Stürgkh régime, whose mad career in burning the candle at both ends the dead emperor had failed to check. To keep certain neighbors good-natured and get from them such foods as they could spare, the Central states of Europe had in 1916 exported roughly three million two hundred thousands tons of coal. Another million tons had been shipped into the territories occupied by the Centralist troops. This was no great coal business, of course, especially when we come to consider that some of this fuel came from Belgium. But the four million tons could have been used at home without a lump going begging. When Christmas came coal was as scarce in Germany, Austria, and Hungary as was food. And that is saying a great deal. Much economy had been already practised during the summer. "Summer time" meant the saving each day of one hour's consumption of fuel in city traction and lighting street, house, and shop. The saving was not great, when compared with the fuel a population of roundly one hundred and twelve millions will consume when given a free hand. But it was something, anyway. That something was an easement of conditions in the coal market during the summer months. It did not make available for the cold season so much as a shovelful of coal. Whatever the mines put out was carted off there and then. When winter came the bunkers were empty. The prospect of having to bear with an ever-craving stomach the discomforts of the cold and poorly lighted rooms was not pleasant. The government saw this and tried a little belated regulation. I say belated regulation because the measures came too late to have much value. That there would be a shortage in coal had been foreseen. Nothing could be done, however, to ward off the _Knappheit_. Among my many acquaintances is the owner of several coal-mines in Austrian Silesia. His handicaps were typical of what every mine-operator had to contend with. "The coal is there, of course," he would say. "But how am I to get it out? My best miners are at the front. Coal-mining may be done only by men who are physically the fittest. That is the very class of man the government needs at the front. I am trying to come somewhere near my normal output with men that are long past the age when they can produce what is expected of the average miner. "It can't be done, of course. "Women are no good underground. So I have tried Russian prisoners-of-war. I went to a prison camp and picked out seventy-five of the most likely chaps. I made willingness to work in a mine one of the conditions of their furlough. They all were willing--so long as they did not know what the work was. Right there the willingness of half the crew ended. I sent them back and tried my luck with the rest. "To get some work out of the men, I made arrangements with the government that I was to pay them four-fifths of the regular scale. It isn't a question of money. It's a question of getting at the coal. To make a long story short: Out of the seventy-five Russians seventeen have qualified. I can't afford to repeat the experiment, for the reason that apprentices litter up the works and interfere with the few miners I have left." The man was short then nearly two hundred workers at the mine shafts. He had underground most of his surface hands. With overtime and some other makeshifts he was able to produce about four-fifths of his normal output. The demand for fuel was such that he would have been able to sell twice as much coal as formerly. Natural resources mean nothing to a state so long as they cannot be made available. This was the case with Central Europe. More economy, more restrictions. Industries not contributing directly to the military strength of the Central Powers were ordered to discontinue all night work and overtime. Shops, cafés, hotels, restaurants, and other public places had to limit the consumption of fuel for heating and lighting purposes to one-third their usual quota. The lighting of shop-windows was cut down to almost nothing. Stores had to close at seven o'clock, eating- and drinking-places first at twelve and later at eleven. No light was to be used in the hotels after twelve. All unnecessary heating was prohibited, and the warm-water period in hotels shrank from four to two hours per day. On each stretch of corridor and at each stair-landing or elevator door one small light was allowed. In Vienna all places of amusement "not contributing to the cultivation of art for art's sake" were closed. This hit the cheaper theaters and every moving-picture house. A city of such restrictions would need no street lights at any time. But up to eleven o'clock two lights for each block were allowed. After that Stygian black reigned. Street traction ceased on some lines at eight o'clock; on all lines at nine, though arrangements were made for a few cars to run when the playing theaters closed. But the regulations came near spilling the baby with the bath. They were well meant, but poorly considered. Economic waste came from them. The several governments did their very best to get coal to the consumers. In Vienna, for instance, Emperor Charles took a personal interest in the matter. He issued an order that as many miners as possible be returned immediately from the front. For the workers at the mines, who had been living none too well so far as food went, he prescribed the subsistence given the men in the trenches and placed military commissaries in charge of the kitchens. Men from the military railroad organizations were given the running of coal-trains. For certain hours each day the passenger service of the city street traction systems was suspended in favor of the coal traffic, which often gave rise to the unusual sight of seeing an electric street-car drag behind it, over the pavement, from three to five ordinary coal-wagons, which later were towed to their destination by army tractors. It was a herculean labor that would have to be done in a few days, if a part of the population were not to perish in the cold spell that had come over Central Europe. The work of a whole summer was now to be done in a few days. From the front came whole columns of army motor trucks. These took a hand at coal distribution. And finally Emperor Charles gave over to the work every horse in the imperial stables. I will never forget the sight of the imperial coachmen in their yellow-and-black uniforms hauling coal all over Vienna. Their cockaded top-hats looked out of place on the coal-wagons, though no more so than the fine black and silver-adorned harness of the full-blooded horses that drew the wagons. The press was freer now. Political censorship had been reduced to a minimum. Criticism changed with valuable tips, and one of them was that the government had done a very foolish thing in closing the _Kinos_--movies. It was pointed out that their closing resulted in so small a saving of fuel for heating and lighting that, compared with the wasteful result of the regulation, it stood as one to hundreds. Such was the case. The men, women, and families who had formerly spent their evenings in the movies were now obliged to frequent the more expensive cafés or sit home and use light and fuel. Some man with a statistical mind figured out that the closing of a movie seating five hundred people and giving two performances in the evening, meant an increase in fuel consumption for heating and lighting purposes sixty times greater than what the movie used. That was simple enough, and a few days later the movies and cheap theaters resumed business. More than that followed. The government decided that this was a fine method of co-operation. It gave the cafés permission to use more fuel and light in return for a more liberal treatment of patrons not able to spend much money. In harmony with this policy the passenger service of the car lines was extended first to nine and later to ten o'clock, so that people were not obliged to spend every evening in the same café or other public place. The case was a fine example of co-operation between government and public, with the press as the medium of thought exchange. A twelve-month before, the reaching of such an understanding would have been next to impossible. The editor who then mastered the courage of criticizing a government measure had the suspension of his paper before his eyes. He no longer had to fear this. The result was a clearing of the political atmosphere. Government and people were in touch with one another for the first time in two years. For over a year all effort of the upper classes had lain fallow. The women who had done their utmost at the beginning of the war had not met enough encouragement to keep their labor up. It had been found, moreover, that charity concerts and teas "an' sich" were of little value in times when everything had to be done on the largest of scales. What good could come from collecting a few thousand marks or crowns, when not money, but food, was the thing? The fuel conjunction offered new opportunities. Free musical recitals, concerts, theatrical performances, and lectures were arranged for in order that thousands might be attracted away from their homes and thus be prevented from using coal and light. One of the leaders in this movement in Vienna was Princess Alexandrine Windisch-Graetz. The lady is either the owner or the lessee of the Urania Theater. In the past she had financed at her house free performances and lectures for the people in order that they might not be without recreation. A washed face and clean collar were the admission fee. Under her auspices many such institutions sprang up within a few weeks. "We are saving coal and educating the masses at the same time," she would say to me. "There are times when making a virtue of necessity has its rewards." And rewards the scheme did have. Lectures on any conceivable subject could be heard, and I was glad to notice that not a single one dealt with the war. The public was tired of this subject and the promoters of the lectures were no less so. Those whom lectures did not attract could go to the free concerts, and, when the cheaper music palled, payment of twelve cents American brought within reach the best Vienna has to offer in symphony and chamber music. At the same time "warming"-rooms were established in many cities. These were for unattached women and the wives of men at the front. Care was taken to have these places as cozy as circumstances permitted. Entertainment was provided. Much of it took the form of timely lectures on food conservation, care of the children, and related topics. Many of the women heard for the first time in their lives that there were more than two ways of cooking potatoes, and other manners of putting baby to sleep than addling its brain by rocking it in a cradle or perambulator. I must say that this solution of the coal problem was an unqualified success. The well-to-do also felt the pinch. Money no longer bought much of anything. The word "wealth" had lost most of its meaning. In the open food market it might buy an overlooked can of genuine Russian caviar or some real _pâté de foie gras_, and if one could trust one's servants and was willing to descend to illicit trading with some hoarding dealer, some extra food could be had that way. In most other aspects of subsistence rich and poor, aristocrat and commoner, fared very much alike. But I cannot say that this "democracy of want" was relished by the upper classes. By this time every automobile had been requisitioned by the government. That was painful, but bearable so long as taxis could be had. Of a sudden it was found that most of the taxicabs were being hired by the day and week, often months, by those who could afford it. That was contrary to the purpose for which the government had left the machines in town. They were intended mainly to take officers and the public from the railroad stations to the hotels, and _vice versa_. As an aid to shopping they had not been considered, nor had it been borne in mind that some war purveyor's family would wish to take the air in the park by being wheeled through it. Regulation descended swiftly. Hereafter taxicab-drivers could wait for a passenger five minutes if the trip from starting-point to destination had to be interrupted. If the passenger thought it would take him longer he was obliged to pay his fare and dismiss the taxi. Policemen had orders to arrest any taxi-driver who violated this rule; and since the two do not seem to get along well together anywhere, there was much paying of fines. Regulation being still somewhat piecemeal, the hacks had been overlooked. Those who had to have wheel transportation at their beck and call hired these now by the day and week. Another order came. The hack-driver could wait in front of a store or any place ten minutes and then he had to take another "fare." The upper classes had retained their fine equipages, of course. The trouble was that the government had taken away every horse and had even deprived the wheels of their rubber tires. With taxis and hacks not to be had, especially when the government ruled later that they could be used between railroad stations only, and not to points, even in that case, that could be reached with the street-cars, social life of the higher order took a fearful slump. Though a season of very quiet dressing was at hand, one could not go calling in the evening in the habiliment impervious to rain. Simple luncheons and teas were the best that society could manage under the circumstances. The theater remained a little more accessible. Street-cars were provided to take the spectators home. With the show over, everybody made a wild scramble for the cars. Central Europe was having democracy forced down its throat. The holder of a box at the Royal Opera had indeed abandoned the evening dress and _chapeau claque_. His lady had followed his example in a half-hearted manner. But all this did not make the ride home easier. The gallery angel in Central Europe is well-behaved and not inclined to be conspicuous or forward. But he takes up room, and one was elbowed by him. When soap was scarce he also was not always washed all over, and that made a difference. But the theaters did a fine business, for all that. The better institutions were sold out three weeks ahead, and the cheaper shows were crowded by the overflow. Admission to the theater was the one thing that had not gone up in price very much. The artists had agreed to work for a little less, and those to whom royalties were due had acted in a like public spirit. Managers were content with being allowed to run on about a 5-per-cent.-profit basis. I suppose they thought that half a loaf was better than none. There would have been none had they gone up in their prices. The performances were up to standard. A great deal of Shakespeare was being given. Two of the Vienna theaters played Shakespeare twice a week, and at Berlin as many as three houses had a Shakespearian program. Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw plays were occasionally given and also some by the older French playwrights. Modern French authors seemed to be taboo. No changes were made in the play-lists of the operas, nor was prejudice manifested on the concert programs. All performances were in German, however--Hungarian in Budapest. In other parts of the Dual Monarchy they were given in the language of the district; Italian, for instance, in Trieste, where I heard a late Italian _opéra comique_ just imported _via_ Switzerland. The stage was not fallow by any means during the war. In Berlin, Vienna, and Budapest it was a poor week that did not have its two or three _premières_. It is rather odd that nobody wrote plays about the war. Of some twoscore new plays I saw in three years not a single one occupied itself with a theme related to the struggle that was going on. It seemed, too, that the playwrights had turned their attention to psychological study. One of these efforts was a phenomenal success. I refer to Franz Molnar's "_Fasching_." About twenty new "Viennese" operas made their _début_ during the war. Just two of them touched upon the thing that was uppermost in the mind of man. The others dealt with the good old days of long ago; the happy days of our great-grandfathers, when soldiers still wore green uniforms with broad lapels of scarlet and lapped-over swallowtails that showed the same color; when soldiers carried a most murderous-looking sidearm on "clayed" leather sashes hung rakishly over the shoulder. How happy those fellows looked as they blew imaginary foam from their empty steins in front of the inn! Ten operas were turned out in the three years. I give credit for much vitality to only one of them. It is known as "_Der Heiland_"--"The Saviour." It was voted the one addition to lasting music. With concert-composers also busy, there was no dearth of musical enjoyment. The art world did yeoman service to keep the population from going insane. As to that there can be no doubt. It was fortunate that the Central European public can find so much mental nourishment in the theater and concert-hall. Otherwise there would have been a lack of room in the asylums for the insane. Society, however, did not go to sleep entirely. The luncheons were simple repasts, but lasted all the longer. Usually one left in time to reach tea somewhere else. For dinner only the closest friends of the family were invited, and when others had to be entertained in that manner there was the hotel. Balls and similar frivolities were under the ban, of course. After listening all day long to what the people in the cafés and restaurants had to say of the war, it was really refreshing to hear what the aristocrats thought. Most of them were severely objective in their opinions, some verged on neutrality, and a small number took the tragedy of the war to heart. Among the latter was a princess related to Emperor Francis Joseph by marriage. She was a motherly old woman. The very thought of warfare was unwelcome to her. She had one expression for what she thought of the calamity: "Civilization has declared itself bankrupt in this war." What she meant was that a civilization that could lead to such a catastrophe had shown itself futile. She was plain-spoken for one of her station, and the American ambassador at Vienna was her _bête noire_. This will suffice to identify the lady to all whom her identity could interest. Much of the food shortage was laid at the door of the United States government. Why didn't the American government see to it that the Central states civilian populations received that to which international law and the recent The Hague and London conventions entitled them? I was asked that question a thousand times every week. With the male questioners I could argue the point, but with the ladies ... it was another matter. As many as ten at a time have nailed me down to that question. At first that used to ruin many a day for me, but finally one gets used to anything. The question was not so easily answered in Central Europe. The best reply was that I was not running anything aside from myself, in which I followed the ways of the diplomatist who is never responsible for the acts of his government so long as he wishes to remain _persona grata_. On the whole, Central European society was leading a rather colorless life when the war was three years old. Even their charity work had no longer much of a sphere. It was still possible to collect money by means of concerts, teas, and receptions--bazaars had to be abandoned because everybody had tired of them--but there was so little that money could buy. Government control had gradually spread over everything, and, with everybody working hard, nobody needed much assistance, as everybody thought. That was not the case by any means, but such was largely the popular impression. The truth was that everybody was tired of working at the same old charities. The shortage of fuel gave a new opportunity, but did not occupy many. It was one thing to pin a paper rosette to a lapel in return for an offering willingly made, and quite another to preside over a co-operative dining-room or a place where the women and children could warm themselves and pass the time with pleasure and profit to themselves. Not many were equal to that. Few had the necessary experience. The worst of it was that travel to the international summer and winter resorts was out of the question. And to move about in one's own country meant passes, visées, authorizations, health certificates, documents attesting good conduct and a clean slate with the police; and if by chance the trip should take one into an inner or outer war zone, the home authorities had to go on record as having established that he or she was not plagued by insects. It is remarkable what the Central governments would do in the interest of law and order, public security, and sanitation. But it was more remarkable that the highest nobility had to conform to the same rules. The only persons who had the right to sidestep any of these multifarious regulations were officers and soldiers whose military credentials answered every purpose. Since I traveled only on _Offene Order_--open order--the marching order of the officer, I was one of the few civilians exempt from this annoyance. That and the state of the railroads kept the upper classes at home. Many of them were thus afforded their first good chance to know where they lived. Shortage had even come to rule the day for the aristocrats. It was a bitter pill for them, but I will say that they swallowed it without batting an eye. XIII "GIVE US BREAD!" The food situation in Central Europe became really desperate in the third year of the war. The year's wheat crop had been short in quantity and quality. Its nutritive value was about 55 per cent. of normal. The rye crop was better, but not large enough to meet the shortage in breadstuffs caused by the poor wheat yield. Barley was fair under the circumstances. Oats were a success in many parts of Germany, but fell very low in Austria and Hungary. The potato crop was a failure. The supply of peas and beans had been augmented by garden culture, but most people held what they had raised and but little of the crop reached the large population centers. To make things worse, the Hungarian Indian corn crop was very indifferent. Great losses were sustained when the Roumanian army in September and October overran much of Transylvania, drove off some twenty thousand head of cattle, and slaughtered about fifty thousand pigs. Large quantities of cereals were also ruined by them, as I was able to ascertain on my trips to the Roumanian front. Up to this time the war-bread of the Central states had been rather palatable, though a steady loss in quality had been noticeable. Soon it came to pass that the ration of bread had to be reduced to about one-quarter of a pound per day. And the dough it was made of was no longer good. The 55-25-20 war-bread was good to eat and very nutritious. The stuff now passing for bread was anything but that, so far as Austria was concerned. Its quality fluctuated from one week to another. I was unable to keep track of it. Indian corn was already used in the loaf, and before long ground clover hay was to form one of its constituents. Worst of all, the bread was not always to be had. At the beginning of November the three slices of bread into which the ration was divided, as a rule, fell to two, so that the daily allowance of bread was not quite four ounces. On one occasion Vienna had hardly any bread for four days. In Hungary conditions were a little better, for the reason that the Hungarian government had closed the border against wheat and cereal exports. But the large population centers were also poorly provided with flour. Germany, on the other hand, was better off than either Austria or Hungary. The rye crop had been fairly good, and food regulation was further advanced there. It was, in fact, close to the point of being perfect. But the quantity allotted the individual was inadequate, of course. Throughout Central Europe the cry was heard: "Give us bread!" So far the several populations had borne all hardships in patience and stoical indifference. The limit of endurance was reached, however. Colder weather called for a greater number of calories to heat the body. The vegetable season was over. The hoardings of the poorer classes had been eaten up. The cattle were no longer on pasture, and, fed with hay only, gave now less milk than ever. It was a mournful season. All food was now regulated. While there had been no meat cards in Austria and Hungary as yet, there were two, and at times three, meatless days; though when on three days no beef, veal, or pork could be eaten, it was permitted to consume mutton and fowl on one of them. But the consumption of meat regulated itself, as it were. Meat has always been proportionately expensive in Central Europe, and but a small percentage of people ever ate it more than once a day. The majority, in fact, ate meat only three times a week, as was especially the case in the rural districts, where fresh meat was eaten only on Sundays. There was no inherent craving for this food, on this account, and beef at seventy cents American a pound was something that few could afford. Animal fat had in the past taken the place of meat. In the summer not much was needed of this, for the reason that the warm weather called for less body heat, to supply which is the special mission of fats. But with clothing worn thin, shoes leaking, and rooms poorly heated, the demand for heat-producing food grew apace. This was reflected by the longer potato-lines. On one occasion I occupied myself with a potato-line in the Second Municipal District of Vienna. It was ten o'clock in the morning. Distribution was going on. Those then served had been standing in that line since six o'clock. The first who had received their quota of the eight pounds of potatoes, which was to last for three days, had appeared in front of the shop at three o'clock in the morning. It had rained most of that time and a cold wind was blowing. I engaged one of the women in conversation. She had arrived at the store at about seven o'clock. There were three children she had to take care of. She had given them a breakfast of coffee and bread for the oldest, and milk for the two others. "I have nobody with whom I could leave the children," she said. "My neighbors also have to stand in the food-line. So I keep them from the stove by placing the table on its side in front of it. Against one end of the table I move the couch. The children can't move that, and against the other end I push my dresser." It appears that the woman had come home once from the food-line and had found her rooms on the verge of going up in a blaze. One of the children had opened the door of the stove and the live coals had fallen out. They had set fire to some kindlings and a chair. The children thought that great fun. I complimented the woman on her resourcefulness. Her husband, a Bohemian, was then at the front in Galicia. For the support of the family the woman received from the government monthly for herself 60 crowns ($12) and for each child 30 crowns, making a total of 150, of which amount she paid 48 crowns for rent every month. I could not see how, with prevailing prices, she managed to keep herself alive. Coal just then was from 3 to 5 crowns per hundredweight ($12 to $20 per ton), and with only one stove going the woman needed at least five hundred pounds of coal a month. After that, food and a little clothing had to be provided. How did she manage it? "During the summer I worked in an ammunition factory near here," she said. "I earned about twenty-six crowns a week, and some of the money I was able to save. I am using that now. I really don't know what I am going to do when it is gone. There is work enough to be had. But what is to become of the children? To get food for them I must stand in line here and waste half of my time every day." The line moved very slowly, I noticed. I concluded that the woman would get her potatoes in about an hour, if by that time there were any left. Since I used to meet the same people in the same lines, I was able to keep myself informed on what food conditions were from one week to another. They were gradually growing worse. Now and then no bread could be had, and the potatoes were often bad or frozen. The cry for food became louder, although it was not heard in the hotels and restaurants where I ate. My waiters undertook to supply me with all the bread I wanted, card or no card--but who would eat the concoction they were serving? I was able to buy all the meat I needed and generally ate no other flour products than those in the pastry and puddings. It was a peculiar experience, then, to eat in a well-appointed dining-room of supplies that were rather plentiful because the poor, who really needed those things, could not afford to buy them. The patrons of the place would come in, produce such cards as they had to have, and then order as before, with all the cares left to the management--which cares were comparatively slight, seeing that the establishment dealt with wholesalers and usually did much of its buying clandestinely. Somewhere the less fortunate were eating what the luck of the food-line had brought that day, which might be nothing for those who had come late and had no neighbors who would lend a little bread and a few potatoes. Suicides and crime, due to lack of food, increased alarmingly. There was a shocking gauntness about the food-lines. Every face showed want. The eyes under the threadbare shawls cried for bread. But how could that bread be had? It simply was not there. And such things as a few ounces of fats and a few eggs every week meant very little in the end. Perhaps it was just as well that those in the food-lines did not know that a large number of co-citizens were yet living in plenty. There were some who feared that such knowledge might lead to riots of a serious nature. But I had come to understand the food-lines and their psychology better. With the men home, trouble might have come--could not have been averted, in fact. But the women besieging the food-shops were timid and far from hysterical. Most of them were more concerned with the welfare of their children than with their own troubles, as I had many an occasion to learn. Not a few of them sold their bodies to get money enough to feed their offspring. Others pawned or sold the last thing of value they had. The necessity of obtaining food at any price was such that many a "business" hoard entered the channels of illicit trade and exacted from the unfortunate poor the very last thing they had to give. The price of a pound of flour or some fat would in some cases be 800 per cent. of what these things normally cost. The several governments were not ignorant of these things. But for a while they were powerless, though now they had abandoned largely their policy of "mobilizing" the pennies of the poor. To apply the law to every violator of the food regulations was quite impossible. There were not jails enough to hold a tenth of them, and a law that cannot be equitably enforced should not be enforced at all. The very fact that its enforcement is impossible shows that it is contrary to the interest of the social aggregate. In Germany a fine disregard for social station and wealth had marked almost every food-regulation decree of the government from the very first. The several state governments were concerned with keeping their civil population in as good a physical condition as the food situation permitted. The financial needs of the government had to be considered, but it was forever the object to make the ration of the poor as good as possible, and to do that meant that he or she who had in the past lived on the fat of the land would now have to be content with less. As the war dragged on, pauper and millionaire received the same quantity of food. If the latter was minded to eat that from expensive porcelain he could do so, nor did anybody mind if he drank champagne with it, for in doing so he did not diminish unnecessarily the natural resources of the nation. Food regulation in Austria had been less efficacious. In Hungary it was little short of being a farce. In both countries special privilege is still enthroned so high that even the exigencies of the war did not assail it until much damage had been done. It was not until toward the end of December that the two governments proceeded vigorously to attack the terrible mixture of food shortage and chaotic regulation that confronted them. The new ruler of the Dual Monarchy, Emperor-King Charles, was responsible for the change. While Emperor Francis Joseph lived, the heir-apparent had not occupied much of a place in government. The camarilla surrounding the old man saw to that. But by depriving the young archduke of his rightful place, which the incapacity of the Emperor should have assigned him, the court clique gave him the very opportunities he needed to understand the food situation he was to cope with presently--had to cope with if he wanted to see the government continued. The removal of Premier Stürgkh by the hand of the assassin had been timely; the death of Francis Joseph was timelier yet. The old monarch had ceased to live in the times that were. He came from an age which is as much related to our era as is the rule of the original patriarch, one Abraham of Chaldea. Food conditions might be brought to his attention, but the effort served no purpose. The old man was incapable of understanding why the interests of the privileged classes should be sacrificed for the sake of the many. At the several fronts, at points of troop concentration, and in the very food-lines, the young Emperor had heard and seen what the ailments and shortcomings of public subsistence were. One of the first things he did when he came into power was to take a keen and active interest in food questions. For one thing, he decided to regulate consumption downward. It was a great shock to the privileged class when it heard that the Emperor would cut down the supply of those on top in order that more be left for those beneath. To do that was not easy, however. The young man thought of the force of example. He prohibited the eating at court of any meals not in accord with the food regulations. Wheat bread and rolls were banished. Every servant not actually needed was dismissed so that he might do some useful work. Several of the imperial and royal establishments were closed altogether. The _ménage_ at Castle Schönbrunn was disbanded. The personnel of the Hofburg in Vienna was reduced to actual needs. It was ordered that only one suite in the palace be lighted and heated--a very simple apartment which the Emperor and his family occupied. Some very amusing stories are told in connection with the policy the Emperor had decided to apply. I will give here a few of them--those I have been able to verify or which for some other reason I may not doubt. They had been leading a rather easy life at the Austro-Hungarian general headquarters. The chief of staff, Field-Marshal Conrad von Hötzendorff, was rather indulgent with his subordinates, and had never discouraged certain extravagances the officers of the establishment were fond of. One of them was to have wheat dinner-rolls. A few days after the new Emperor's ascension of the Austrian throne he happened to be at Baden, near Vienna, which was then the seat of the general headquarters. After a conference he intimated that he would stay for dinner at the general mess of the staff. That was a great honor, of course, though formerly the influence of the archducal party had made the heir-apparent more tolerated than respected in that very group. After a round of introductions Emperor Charles sat down at the head of the table. On each napkin lay a roll and in a basket there were more. The Emperor laid his roll to one side and ate the soup without any bread. When the next dish was being served, and those at table had made good inroads upon their rolls, the Emperor called the orderly. "You may bring me a slice of war-bread, and mind you I do not want a whole loaf, but just the third of a daily ration, such as the law entitles me to. No more, no less!" Some of the officers almost choked on the morsel of wheat roll they were about to swallow. The Emperor said no more, however, and his conversation continued with all the _bonhomie_ for which he is known. But henceforth no more wheat bread in any form was to be seen in any officers' mess. A few days later came an order from the civil authorities that all patrons of hotels and restaurants were to bring their bread, issued to them in the morning, to their meals if they were not to go without it. The eating-house manager who gave bread to patrons would be fined heavily once or twice and after that would lose his license to do business. A few days after that I saw a rather interesting thing in the cloak-room of the Court Opera. A well-dressed couple came in. The lady was attired in quite the latest thing made by some able _couturier_, and the man was in evening dress, a rare sight nowadays. As he pushed his fur coat across the counter a small white parcel fell to the floor. The paper wrapping parted and two slices of very black war-bread rolled among the feet of the throng. "There goes our supper bread!" cried the woman. "So it seems," remarked the man. "But what is the use of picking it up now? It's been rolling about on the floor." "But somebody can still eat it," said the woman. Just then two men handed back the bread. Its owner wrapped it up again and put the parcel into a pocket. I suppose the servants of the household ate next day more bread than usual. Shortly after that I had tea at the residence of Mrs. Penfield, wife of the American ambassador at Vienna. Among other guests was a princess of the house of Parma. There are several such princesses and I have forgotten which one it was, nor could I say whether she was a sister or a cousin of Empress Zita. At any rate, the young woman had a son of an age when good milk is the best food. She said that the recent regulations of the government were such that not even she could transgress upon them, though that does not seem to have been her intention. How to get enough milk for her boy was a great problem, or had been. The problem had on that very day been solved by her, however. "I bought a good cow two weeks ago," said the princess. "That was certainly the best way of getting good milk," commented the American ambassadrice. "Yes, it was," remarked the Princess Parma. "But it did not end my troubles. I had the milk shipped here, and found that the food authorities would not allow it to be delivered to me, except that portion which the law prescribes for children and adults. That much I got. The remainder was turned over to the Food Central, and I got a letter saying that I would be paid for the milk at the end of the month." "But the allowance is too small, your Highness," suggested somebody, sympathetically. "That is the trouble, of course," returned the princess. "It is too small for a growing child. But what could I do? The authorities say that the law is the law. I spoke to the Emperor about it. He says that he is not the government and has nothing to do with it. Nor can he intercede for me, he says, because he does not want to set a bad example." "Then the buying of the cow did not solve the problem," I ventured to remark. "The solution is only a partial one, your Highness!" The princess smiled in the manner of those who are satisfied with something they have done. "The problem is solved, monsieur!" she said. "This morning I shipped my boy to where the cow is." There was no longer any doubt that food regulation was on in real earnest. When a woman allied to the imperial house was unable to get for her child more milk than some other mother could get, things were indeed on the plane of equity. That every person should thereafter get his or her share of the available store of bread is almost an unnecessary statement. The Austrian civil authorities had not made a good job of food administration. They were too fond of the normal socio-economic institutions to do what under the circumstances had to be done, and were forever afraid that they would adopt some measure that might bring down the entire economic structure. And that fear was not unwarranted, by any means. The drain of the war had sapped the vitality of the state. Though Austria was for the time being a dead tree, the civil administrators thought that a dead tree was still better upright than prostrate. Emperor Charles had surrounded himself with young men, who were enterprising, rather than attached to the interests of the privileged. Among them was a man known as the "Red Prince." It was not the color of hair that gave this name to Prince Alois Lichtenstein. Odd as it may sound, this scion of one of the most prominent families in Europe is an ardent socialist in theory and to some extent in practice, though not anxious to be known as one. He holds that the chief promoters of socialism the world over are professional politicians who have seized upon a very valuable socio-economic idea for the purpose of personal promotion, and that under these circumstances he cannot support them. His influence with the new Emperor was great, and led to a rather "unsocialist" result--the appointment of a military food-dictator, General Höfer, a member of the Austro-Hungarian general staff. It was argued that equity in food distribution could be effected only by placing it in charge of a man who would treat all classes of the population as the drill-sergeant does his men. The military food-dictator had no favors to grant and none to expect. General Höfer acted on this principle, and despite the fact that he was handicapped by a top-heavy regulation machine and a shortage in all food essentials, he was shortly able to do for Austria what Dr. Karl Helfferich had done for Germany. In speaking here particularly of Austrian regulations when the crisis came I have a special objective. I am able to give in this manner a better picture of what was done throughout Central Europe. The necessity for a certain step in food regulation and the _modus operandi_ move in a narrower sphere. In Germany the situation had been met more or less as its phases developed; in Austria and Hungary this had not been done. There had been much neglect, with the result that all problems were permitted to reach that concrete form which extremity was bound to give them. So many threads had been pulled from the socio-economic fabric that holes could be seen, while the Germans had always managed in time to prevent more than the thinness of the thing showing. The profit system of distribution manages to overlook the actual time-and-place values of commodities. Under it things are not sold where and when they are most needed, but where and when they will give the largest profit. That the two conditions referred to are closely related must be admitted, since supply and demand are involved. But the profit-maker is ever more interested in promoting demand than he is in easing supply. He must see to it that the consumer is as eager to buy as the farmer is anxious to sell, if business is to be good. This state of affairs has its shortcomings even in time of peace. What it was to be in war I have sufficiently shown already. The regulations to which the food crisis of the fall of 1916 gave justification laid the ax to the middleman system of distribution. The several governments empowered their Food Commissions and Centrals to establish shortcuts from farm to kitchen that were entirely in the hands of the authorities. Though the Purchasing Central was even then not unknown, it came now to supplant the middleman entirely. The grain was bought from the farmer and turned over to the mills, where it was converted into flour at a fixed price. The miller was no longer able to buy grain for the purpose of holding the flour afterward until some commission-man or wholesaler made him a good offer. He was given the grain and had to account for every pound of it to the Food Commissioners. Nor was the flour turned loose after that. The Food Centrals held it and gave it directly to the bakers, who meanwhile had been licensed to act as distributors of bread. From so many bags of flour they had to produce so many loaves of bread, and since control by means of the bread-card coupon would have been as impossible as it was before, the Food Commissions assigned to each bakeshop so many consumers. The bread cards were issued in colored and numbered series. The color indicated the week in which they were valid, while the number indicated the bakeshop at which the consumer had to get his bread--had to get it in the sense that the baker was responsible for the amount the card called for. The Food Central had given the baker the necessary flour, and he had no excuse before the law when a consumer had cause for complaint. If there were one thousand consumers assigned to a bakeshop the authorities saw to it that the baker got one thousand pounds of flour, and from this one thousand loaves of bread had to be made and distributed. The system worked like the proverbial charm. It was known as _Rayonierung_--zonification. Within a few days everybody managed to get the ration of bread allowed by the government. The bread-lines disappeared of a sudden. It made no difference now whether a woman called for her bread at eight in the morning or at four in the afternoon. Her bread card called for a certain quantity of bread and the baker was responsible for that amount. It was his duty to see that the consumer did not go hungry. Much of the socio-economic machine was running again--not on its old track, but on a new one which the government had laid for it. And the thing was so simple that everybody wondered why it had not been done before. But the greed of the profiteer was not yet entirely foiled. Bakers started to stretch the flour into more loaves than the law allowed, and some of them even went so far as to still turn consumers away. These were to feel the iron hand of the government, however. I remember the case of a baker who had been in business for thirty years. His conduct under the new regulations had led to the charge that he was diverting flour, turned over to him by the Food Centrals, into illicit trading channels. The man was found guilty. Despite the fact that he had always been a very good citizen and had been reasonable in prices even when he had the chance to mulct an unprotected public, he lost his license. The judge who tried the case admitted that there were many extenuating circumstances. "But the time has come when the law must be applied in all its severity," he said. "That you have led an honorable life in the past will not influence me in the least. You have obviously failed to grasp that these are times in which the individual must not do anything that will cause suffering. There is enough of that as it is. I sentence you to a fine of five thousand crowns and the loss of your license to operate a bakery. Were it not for your gray hairs I would add confinement in prison with hard labor for one year. I wish the press to announce that the next offender, regardless of age and reputation, will get this limit." The baker paid enough for the ten loaves he had embezzled. His fate had a most salutary effect upon others. What bread is for the adult milk is for the baby. It, too, was zonified. The milk-line disappeared. A card similar to that governing the distribution of bread was adopted, and dealers were responsible for the quantities assigned them. The time which mothers had formerly wasted standing in line could now be given to the care of the household, and baby was benefited not a little by that. Simple and effective as these measures were, they could not be extended to every branch of distribution. In the consumption of bread, milk, and fats known quantities could be dealt with. What the supply on hand was could be more or less accurately established, and the ration issued was the very minimum in all cases. Waste from needless consumption was out of the question. It was different in other lines. The governments wanted to save as much food as was possible, and this could best be done by means of the food-line. The line had boosted prices into the unreasonable for the profiteer, but was now used by the several governments to limit consumption to the strictly necessary. To issue potatoes and other foods in given quantities was well enough, but not all that could be done. In some cases half a pound of potatoes per capita each day was too little; in others it was too much, though taken by and large it was a safe average ration. The same was true of cooking-flour and other foods. Those able to buy meat and fish stood in no need of what the government had to allow those who could not include these things in their bill of fare. On the other hand, it was impossible to divide consumers into classes and allow one class a quarter of a pound and another half a pound of potatoes each day. That would have led to confusion and waste. A scheme of equalization that would leave unneeded food in the control of the government became necessary. The food-line provided that in a thorough manner. The woman not needing food supplies on a certain day was not likely to stand in a food-line, especially when the weather was bad. She would do with what she had, so long as she knew that when her supply was exhausted she could get more. The cards she had would not be good next week, so that she was unable to demand what otherwise would have been an arrear. The green card was good for nothing during a week of red cards. Nor was there anything to be gained by keeping the green card in the hope that some time green cards would again be issued and honored. By the time all the color shades were exhausted the government changed the shape of the card and later printed on its head the number of the week. Hoarding was out of the question now. In fact, the remaining private hoard began to return to the channels of the legitimate scheme of distribution. Those who had stores of food drew upon them, now that the future seemed reasonably assured, leaving to others what they would have called for had the food-line been abolished altogether and supplies guaranteed, as in the case of bread, milk, and fats. It must not be accepted, however, that the war-tax and war-loan policy was abandoned in favor of this new scheme. The state was still exacting its pound of flesh and the officials were too bureaucratic to always do the best that could be done. To illustrate the point with a story, I will give here another instance of how Emperor Charles interfered now and then. He is an early riser and fond of civilian clothing--two things which made much of his work possible. He was looking over the food-lines in the Nineteenth Municipal District of Vienna one fine morning in December of 1916. Finally he came to a shop where petroleum was being issued. The line was long and moved slowly. Charles and the "Red Prince" wondered what the trouble could be. They soon found out. At first the shopkeeper resented the interest the two men were showing in his business. He wanted to see their authority in black on white. "That is all right, my dear man!" said the "Red Prince." "This man happens to be the Emperor." The storekeeper grew very humble of a sudden. "It is this way, your Majesty," he explained. "The authorities have limited the allowance of coal-oil for each household to one and one-half liters [2.14 pints] per week. This measuring apparatus [a pump on the petroleum-tank whose descending piston drives the liquid into a measuring container] does not show half-liters, only one, two, three, four, and five whole liters. The customers want all they are entitled to, and usually think that I am not giving them the proper measure when I guess at the half-liter between the lines showing one and two liters. To overcome the grumbling and avoid being reported to the authorities I am measuring the petroleum in the old way by means of this half-liter measure. That takes time, of course. While I am serving one in this manner I could serve three if I could use the pump." "Do these people have the necessary containers for a larger quantity than a liter and a half?" asked the Emperor. "Yes, your Majesty," replied the storekeeper. "Nearly all of them have cans that hold five liters. Before the war petroleum was always bought in that quantity." An hour afterward the burgomaster of Vienna, Dr. Weisskirchner, to whose province the fuel and light supply belonged, was called up by the Emperor on the telephone. The conversation was somewhat emphatic. The mayor felt that he was elected by the people of Vienna and did not have to take very much from the young man whom accident had made Emperor. He offered to resign if he could not be left a free hand in his own sphere. "You can do that any time you are ready!" said the young man at the other end of the wire. "But meanwhile see to it that petroleum in the city of Vienna is issued in lots of three liters every two weeks. The food-line is necessary as a disciplinary measure to prevent waste, but I do not want people to stand in line when it is unnecessary. I understand that nearly every shop selling petroleum uses these pumps. Kindly see to it that they can be used. Three liters in two weeks will do that." Thereafter petroleum was so issued. The case led to a general clean-up in every department of food administration and regulation. In a single week more than eight hundred men connected with it were dismissed and replaced. And within a month food distribution in Austria and Hungary was on a par with that of Germany. The question has often been asked, To what extent is the scarcity of food in Central Europe the cause of the ruthless submarine warfare? Dr. Arthur Zimmermann, the former German Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, discussed that subject with me several times while I was interviewing him. On one occasion he was very insistent that Germany would have to shorten the war. Though there was no reason why in 1916 that statement should have seemed unusual to me, since the Central European public was thoroughly tired of the war and all it gave rise to, I was nevertheless struck by the insistence which the Secretary of State put into his remarks. I framed a question designed to give me the information I needed to throw light on this. "England has been trying to starve us," said Mr. Zimmermann. "She has not succeeded so far. In the submarine we have an arm which, as our naval experts maintain, is capable of letting England feel the war a little more in food matters. I am not so sure that it is a good idea to use this weapon for that purpose, seeing that the measures incident to its use would have to be sweeping. So far as I am concerned, I am not for a policy that would make us more enemies. We have enough of them, God knows." I may say that this was in a general way the policy of the Chancellor, von Bethmann-Hollweg. I have been reliably informed that even Emperor William was at first an opponent of the ruthless-submarine-warfare idea. Much of his gray hair is due to criticism heaped upon Germany for acts which were thought justified, but which others found nothing short of outlawry. He had always been very sensitive in matters of honor affecting his person and the nation, and, like so many of those around him, had come to believe that Germany and the Germans could do no wrong. Emperor Francis Joseph had been a consistent opponent of the ruthless submarine war. The _Ancona_ and _Persia_ cases, with which I occupied myself especially, convinced the old man and those near him that a recourse to the submarine, even if it were to end the war more rapidly, was a double-edged sword. The old monarch, moreover, did not like the inhuman aspects of that sort of war, whether they were avoidable or not. He came from an age in which armies still fought with chivalry--when a truce could be had for the asking. From his familiars I learned that nothing pained the old man more than when a civilian population had to be evacuated or was otherwise subjected to hardship due to the war. His successor, Emperor Charles, held the same view. One has to know him to feel that he would not give willingly his consent to such a measure as the ruthless submarine war. His sympathies are nothing short of boyish in their warmth and sincerity. When he ascended the throne, he was an easy-going, smart lieutenant of cavalry rather than a ruler, though the load he was to shoulder has ripened him in a few months into an earnest man. In January of 1917 Emperor Charles went for a long visit to the German general headquarters in France. He was gone three days, despite the fact that he had lots of work to do at home in connection with the public-subsistence problems. Connections informed me that the submarine warfare was the business which had taken him into the German general headquarters. Count Ottokar Czernin, I learned, had also quietly slipped out of town, as had a number of Austro-Hungarian naval staff men and experts. It was Count Czernin who, a few weeks later, gave me an all-sufficient insight into the relations between the ruthless submarine warfare and the food question. It would not have been proper, under the circumstances, to publish without some words of comment even so detailed a statement as that contained in the joint German-Austro-Hungarian note announcing the advent of the ruthless submarine war. Something had to be said to show the public why the risks involved were being taken. The German public was taken into the confidence of the government in a speech made by Chancellor von Bethmann-Hollweg in the Reichstag. That was a convenient method. In Austria-Hungary that way was not open. The Reichsrath was not in session. Count Czernin decided that I should be the medium of bringing before the world why the Austro-Hungarian government had decided to adhere to Germany's new submarine policy. Although knowing what was coming, the actual announcement that the crisis was here was somewhat of a shock to me. Count Czernin was seated at his big mahogany roll-top desk as I entered the room. He rose to meet me. I noticed that there was a very serious expression on his face. "We have notified the neutral governments, and through them our enemies, that the submarine war zone has been extended and shipping to Great Britain and her allies laid under new restrictions," said the Foreign Minister, after I had taken a seat. With that he handed me a copy of the _note diplomatique_ with the request that I read it. This done, he placed before me a statement which he wished me to publish. "I should like you to publish that," he said. "If you don't care for the text the way it is written change it, but be sure that you get into your own version what I say there. At any rate, you will have to translate the thing. Be kind enough to let me see it before you telegraph it." I found that the remarks of the Foreign Minister were a little too formal and academic, and said so. So long as he could afford to take the public of the world into his confidence through my efforts, I could venture to suggest to him how to best present his case. "I will use the entire statement," I said. "But there is every reason why it should be supplemented by a better picture of the food situation here in Austria." Count Czernin rose and walked toward a corner of the room, where on a large table were spread out several maps executed in red and blue. I followed him. "These are the charts the note refers to," he said. "This white lane has been left open for the Greeks and this for the Americans. What is your opinion?" My opinion does not matter here. "Well, if the worst comes to pass, we can't help it," said Count Czernin, returning to his desk. "We have to use the submarine to shorten the war. There is such a thing as being victorious at the front and defeated at home. The food situation here is most pressing. Our people are half starved all the time. Babies perish by the thousands because we cannot give them enough milk. Unless this war comes to an end soon, the effects of this chronic food shortage will impair the health of the entire nation. We must try to prevent that. It is our duty to prevent that by all means. "I grant that there are certain technicalities of international law involved here. But we can no longer regard them. It is all very well for some men to set themselves up as sole arbiters of international law, nor would we have any objection against that if these arbiters dealt as fairly with one side as they have dealt with the other. But they have not. The Central governments could not do anything right for some of their friends--the American government included, by the way--if they stood on their heads. "We have made peace offers. I have told you several times that we do not want any of our enemies' territory. We have never let it be understood that we wanted so much as a shovelful of earth that does not belong to us. At the same time, we do not want to lose territory, nor do we want to pay a war indemnity, since this war is not of our making. "We have been willing to make peace and our offer has been spurned. The food question, as you know, is acute. We simply cannot raise the food we need so long as we must keep in the field millions of our best farmers. That leaves but one avenue open. We must shorten the war. We believe that it will be shortened by the use of the submarine. For that reason we have decided to use the arm for that purpose. "I hope that our calculations are correct. I am no expert in that field. I also realize that a whole flood of declarations of war may follow our step. All that has been considered, however--even the possibility of the United States joining our enemies. At any rate, there was no way out. It is all very well for some to say what we are to do and are not to do, but we are fighting for our very existence. To that fight has been added the food shortage, whose aspects have never been graver than now. "I feel that I must address myself especially to the American public. The American government has condemned us out of court. I would like to have an American jury hear this case. The American government has denied us the right of self-defense by taking the stand that we must not use the submarine as a means against the enemy merchant fleet and such neutral shipping as supplies Great Britain and her allies with foodstuffs." Count Czernin grew more bitter as he progressed. He is an able speaker even in the English tongue. That afternoon I had on the wires one of the greatest newspaper stories, in point of importance, that have ever been despatched. I spoke to Count Stefan Tisza on the food question and its bearing upon the submarine warfare. We discussed the subject for almost two hours. When the interview ended I asked the Hungarian Premier how much of it I could use. "Just say this much for me," he remarked. "For the United States to enter the European War would be a crime against humanity." That is the shortest interview I ever made out of so long a session. As a matter of fact, Count Tisza said enough for a book. I may say, however, that Count Tisza found in the food question whatever justification there would be needed for anything the Central governments might do. In Constantinople I had made the acquaintance of Dr. Richard von Kühlmann, the present German Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. Doctor von Kühlmann was then the _conseiller_ of the German embassy at that point. He was somewhat of an admirer of the British and their ways, a fact which later caused his promotion to minister at The Hague. In all things he was delightfully objective--one of the few people I have met who did not mistake their wishes and desires for the fact. I met Doctor von Kühlmann again in Vienna, while he was ambassador at Constantinople. But ambassadors are not supposed to talk for publication. Be that as it may, Doctor von Kühlmann had not even then made up his mind that recourse to the submarine warfare was the proper thing under the circumstances, no matter how great the prospect of success might appear. I had found him in Constantinople, as well as in The Hague, a consistent opponent of the submarine as a means against merchantmen. He was wholly opposed to the ruthless submarine warfare, but had no say in the decision finally reached. The British _Aushungerungspolitik_--policy of starvation--was well in the limelight in those days. It had been discussed in the Central European press _ad nauseam_ before. Now, however, it was discussed from the angle of actual achievement. Shocking conditions were revealed--they were shocking to the better classes, not to me, for I had spent many an hour keeping in touch with public-subsistence matters. After all, this was but a new counter-irritant. The Austrian and Hungarian public, especially, did not fancy having the United States as an enemy. Though newspaper writers would belittle the military importance of the United States, many of the calmer heads in the population did not swallow that so easily. In the course of almost three years of warfare the public had come to understand that often the newspapers were woefully mistaken, and that some of them were in the habit of purposely misleading their readers, a natural result of a drastic censorship. There is no greater liar than the censor--nor a more dangerous one. By systematically suppressing one side of an issue or thing, the unpleasant one, he fosters a deception in the public mind that is as pitiful to behold as it is stupendous. Now the conjuncture was such, however, that a discussion in the newspapers of the hardship suffered and the damage done by Great Britain's starvation blockade could not but fan the Central states population into a veritable frenzy. The British were to experience themselves what it was to go hungry day after day. That thought overshadowed the possibility that the United States might soon be among the open enemies of the Central states. A secret enemy the United States had long been regarded. XIV SUBSISTING AT THE PUBLIC CRIB To eat under government supervision is not pleasant. It is almost like taking the medicine which a physician has prescribed. You go to the food authorities of your district, prove that you are really the person you pretend to be, and thereby establish your claim to food, and after that you do your best to get that food. Living at hotels, I was able to let others do the worrying. Each morning I would find at my door--provided nobody had stolen it--my daily ration of bread, of varying size--300 grams (10.5 ounces) in Germany, 240 grams (8.4 ounces) in Budapest, and 210 grams (7.3 ounces) in Vienna. At the front I fared better, for there my allowance was 400 grams (14 ounces) and often more if I cared to take it. For the other eatables I also let the manager worry. That worry was not great, though, so long as the food "speak-easy" was in operation. The hotel could afford to pay good prices, and the patrons did not mind if the dishes were from 150 to 300 per cent. dearer than the law allowed. The law, on the other hand, saw no reason why it should protect people who live in hotels--until it was seen that this policy was not wise on account of the heavy drafts it made on the scant stores. Whether a small steak costs 8 marks or 20 makes no difference to people who can afford to eat steak at 8 marks and lamb cutlets at 15. And to these people it also makes no difference whether they consume their legal ration or two such rations. [Illustration: ONE OF THE BREAD CARDS USED IN VIENNA AND LOWER AUSTRIA (transciption follows)] Niederösterreich. Tages-Ausweis über den Verbrauch von 210 _g_ Brot Gültig nur am ---- 1915 Verkauf nur nach Gewicht gegen Vorlegung der Ausweiskarte und Abtrennung eines entsprechenden Abschnittes zulässig. Nicht übertragbar! Sorgfältig aufbewahren! Nachdruck verboten! Strafbestimmungen. Zuwiderhandlungen werden an dem Verkäufer wie an dem Käufer mit Geldstrafen bis zu 5000 K oder mit Arrest bis zu 6 Monaten geahndet. Bei einer Verurteilung kann auf den Verlust einer Gewerbeberechtigung erkannt werden. Fälschung der Ausweiskarte wird nach dem Strafgesetze bestraft. K. k. n. ö. Statthalterei. Many months of war passed before that element began to feel the war at all. But it had to come to that in the end. Two people feeling the same degree of hunger are far better company than two who form opposite poles in that respect. Magnetic positive and negative never could be so repellent. Nor is this all one-sided. One would naturally expect that in such a case the underfed would harbor hard feelings toward the overfed. That is not always the case, however. One day a lady belonging to Central Europe's old nobility said to me: "Well, it is getting worse every day. First they took my automobiles. Now they have taken my last horses. Taxis and cabs are hard to get. I have to travel on the street-cars now. It is most annoying." [Illustration: THE BREAD CARD ISSUED BY THE FOOD AUTHORITIES OF BERLIN (transciption follows)] Nicht Nicht übertragbar übertragbar Berlin und Nachbarorte. Tages-Brotkarte Nur gültig für den ---- 1916 Ohne Ausfüllung des Datums ungültig. Rückseite beachten! I ventured the opinion that street-car travel was a tribulation. The cars were always overcrowded. "It is not that," explained the lady. "It is the smell." "Of the unwashed multitude?" "Yes! And--" "And, madame?" "Something else," said the woman, with some embarrassment. "I take it that you refer to the odor that comes from underfed bodies," I remarked. "Precisely," assented the noble lady. "Have you also noticed it?" "Have you observed it recently?" I asked. "A few days ago. The smell was new to me." "Reminded you, perhaps, of the faint odor of a cadaver far off?" The light of complete understanding came into the woman's eyes. "Exactly, that is it. Do you know, I have been trying ever since then to identify the odor. But that is too shocking to think of. And yet you are right. It is exactly that. How do you account for it?" "Malnutrition! The waste of tissue due to that is a process not wholly dissimilar to the dissolution which sets in at death," I explained. I complimented the woman on her fine powers of discernment. The smell was not generally identified. I was familiar with it for the reason that I had my attention drawn to it first in South Africa among some underfed Indian coolies, and later I had detected it again in Mexico among starving peons. "Good God!" exclaimed the lady, after a period of serious thought. "Have we come to that?" I assured her that the situation was not as alarming as it looked. In the end the healthy constitution would adjust itself to the shortage in alimentation. No fit adult would perish by it, though it would be hard on persons over fifty years of age. There could be no doubt that many of them would die of malnutrition before the war was over. Babies, also, would cease to live in large numbers if their diet had to be similarly restricted. The smell had a repellent effect upon the woman. I met her many times after that and learned that it was haunting her. Her desire to keep it out of her palatial residence caused her to pay particular attention to the food of her servants. The case was most interesting to me. I had sat for days and nights in the trenches on Gallipoli, among thousands of unburied dead, and there was little that could offend my olfactory nerves after that, if indeed it had been possible before, seeing that I had for many weary months followed the revolutions in Mexico. Thus immune to the effects of the condition in question, I was able to watch closely a very interesting psychological phenomenon. I found that it was torture for the woman to get near a crowd of underfed people. She began to shrink at their very sight. "I take it that you fear death very much, madame," I said, one day. "I dread the very thought of it," was the frank reply. "But why should you?" I asked. "It is a perfectly natural condition." "But an unjust one," came the indignant answer. "Nothing in nature is unjust," I said. "Nature knows neither right nor wrong. If she did, she would either cease to produce food altogether for your people and state, or she would produce all the more--if war can be laid at the door of nature in arguments of right and wrong." "But that has nothing to do with the smell--that awful smell," insisted the woman. "It has not, to be sure. Our conversation was side-tracked by your remark that death was an unjust natural condition. Your words show that you are living in illusions. You have an inherent loathing for the underfed, because your instincts associate the smell of their bodies with dissolution itself. But you are not the only one so affected. Thousands of others feel the same discomfiture." The long and short of the discussion was that I proved to my own satisfaction that the woman was one of those self-centered creatures to whom pity is merely known as a noun. I suggested discreetly that a little more sympathy for the afflicted, a little more love for her kind, would prove a first-class deodorant. Let us examine what the diet of the Central states population then was. In doing this, it must be borne in mind that the rural population, always at the fountainhead of food, fared much better. The conditions pictured are essentially those of the industrial classes in the towns and cities. The adult, after rising in the morning, would drink a cup or two of some substitute for coffee, or very bad tea, without milk, if there were children, and with very little sugar. With this would be eaten a third of the day's ration of bread, about two and one-half ounces. That meal had to suffice until noon, when a plate of soup, a slice of bread, two ounces of meat, and two ounces of vegetables were taken, to be supplemented by a small quantity of farinaceous food in the form of some pudding or cake. A cup of coffee substitute would go with this meal. At four in the afternoon another cup of substitute coffee or poor tea would be taken by those who could afford it, usually together with cake equal to a half-ounce of wheat flour and a quarter-ounce of sugar. The evening meal would be the same as dinner, without soup and pudding, a little cheese and the remaining seventy grams of bread taking their place. As a rule, a glass of beer was drunk with this. But the nutritive value of that was small now. It was more a chemical than a malt product, and contained at best but 4 per cent. of alcohol. That was the meal allowed by the government. Those who had the opportunity never allowed themselves to be satisfied with it. But the vast majority of people received that and nothing more, especially later when fish and fruit had soared skyward in price. A chemical analysis of this bill of fare would probably show that it was ample to sustain human life. Some American food crank might even discover that there was a little to spare. But the trouble is that often the scientific ration is compounded by persons who lead an inactive life and who at best make exercise the purpose of special study and effort. The bulk of any population, however, must work hard, and must eat more if elimination is not to exceed assimilation. The food scientist has his value. But he generally overestimates that value himself. Thus it happened that the Central states governments were soon obliged to allow a larger ration of bread, sugar, and fat to all persons engaged in heavy labor. At first this was overlooked here and there, and, bureaucratism being still strong then, strikes were necessary to persuade the governments to meet the reasonable demands of the hard-labor classes. [Illustration: THE BUTTER AND FAT CARD OF DRESDEN (transciption follows)] Der Rat zu Dresden. Bezugskarte für ¼ kg (½ Pfd.) Butter oder Margarine oder Speisefett oder Kunstspeisefett in der Zeit vom 30.11. bis 27.12.15. Scant as this daily fare was, it was not everybody who could add to it the allowance of meat. The unskilled laborer, for instance, did not earn enough to buy beef at from sixty to seventy-five cents American a pound, the cheapest cut being sold at that price. As a rule, he tried to get the small quantity of animal fat, lard, suet, or tallow which the authorities allowed him. But often he failed to get it. Potato soup and bread, and maybe a little pudding, would in that case make up the meal. If luck had been good there might also be a little jam or some dried fruit to go into the "pudding," which otherwise would be just plain wheat flour, of which each family was then given five ounces daily. If there were children to take care of, the wheat flour had to be left to them, for the reason that the quantity of milk allowed them was entirely too small, amounting in the case of children from three to four years to seven-eighths of a pint daily, with 1.76 pints the limit for any infant. [Illustration: MILK CARD ISSUED TO NURSING MOTHERS AND THE SICK AT NEUKOLLN, A SUBURB OF BERLIN (transciption follows)] Lfd. Nr. Vor-u. Zuname: Straße Nr. Milchkarte für stillende Mütter und Kranke Giltig für den Monat November 1915 Der Inhaber dieser Karte ist während der Gültigkeitsdauer berechtigt, aus einem der auf der Rückseite bezeichneten Geschäfte der Meierei J. Schmidt Söhne zum Preise von 28 Pf. täglich 1 Liter Vollmilch zu beziehen. Die Karte ist an jedem Tage beim Kauf der Milch vorzulegen und wird nach erfolgter Ausgabe der Milch durchlocht. Am letzten Gültigkeitstage ist die Karte gegen Umtausch einer neuen Karte in den Milchgeschäften zurückzugeben. Sind die Voraussetzungen für die Berechtigung der Milchentnahme fortgefallen, wird die Karte eingezogen. Neukölln, den ---- 1915 Der Magistrat Even this fare might have been bearable had it been supplemented by the usual amount of sugar. In the past this had been as much as six pounds per month and person; now the regulations permitted the consumption of only 2.205 pounds per month and capita for the urban and 1.65 pounds for the rural population, while persons engaged at hard labor were allowed 2.75 pounds. Parents who were willing to surrender all to their children went without sugar entirely. How these victuals were obtained by the woman of the household has already been indicated. Heretofore it had been necessary to stand in line for bread, fat, and milk, the latter two being usually obtained simultaneously at the Fat Central. The establishing of food zones--_Rayons_--had obviated that. The measure was a great relief, but since it governed no more than the distribution of these articles, much standing in line was still necessary. The disciplinary value of the food-line was still kept in mind in the distribution of potatoes, beets (_Wrucken_), wheat flour; now and then other cereal products, such as macaroni, biscuits, buckwheat flour, and oatmeal; meat when the city distributed it at or below cost price; fuel, coal-oil, sugar, and all groceries; soap and washing-powder; shoes, clothing, textiles of any sort, thread, and tobacco. Now and then dried fruits would be distributed, and occasionally jam, though with the ever-increasing shortage in sugar little fruit was being preserved in that manner. Once a week the solitary egg per capita would have to be waited for. One egg was not much to waste hours for, and usually people did not deem it worth while to claim it, if they had no children. The woman who had children was glad, however, to get the four, five, or six eggs to which her family was entitled. It might mean that the youngest would be able to get an egg every other day. Such, indeed, was the intention of the government, and such was the purpose of the food-line. It would happen now and then that there were so many who did not claim their weekly egg that the woman with children got a double ration! For many of these things certain days had been set aside. Potatoes could be drawn every other day, for instance, while wheat flour was issued every fourth day, meat on all "meat" days, fuel once a week, petroleum every two weeks, and sugar once a month. Shoes and clothing were issued only after the Clothing Central had been satisfied that they were needed. It was the same with thread, except silk thread, and with tobacco one took a chance. Other articles were distributed when they were available, a notice of the date being posted near some shop where the food-liners could see it. The arrival of "municipal" beef and pork was generally advertised in the newspapers. In this manner, then, was the government ration obtained. To it could be added fresh, salted, and dried fish, when available, and all the green vegetables and salads one wanted--peas and beans in season; in their dry form they were hard to get at any time. For a while, also, sausage could be bought without a ticket. The government put a stop to that when it was found that much illicit trading was done with that class of food. Many hours were wasted by the women of the household in the course of a month by standing in line. The newspapers conducted campaigns against this seemingly heartless policy of the food authorities, but without result. The food-line was looked upon as essential in food conservation, as indeed it was. In the course of time it had been shown that people would call for food allotted them by their tickets, whether they needed it or not, and would then sell it again with a profit. To assure everybody of a supply in that manner would also lead to waste in consumption. Those who did not absolutely need all of their ration did not go to the trouble of standing in a food-line for hours in all sorts of weather. Subsisting at the public crib was unpleasant business under such conditions, but there was no way out. The food "speak-easy" was almost as much a thing of the past as was the groaning board of ante-bellum times, though it was by no means entirely eradicated, as the trial of a small ring of food sharks in Berlin on October 10, 1917, demonstrated. How hard it was for the several governments to really eradicate the illicit trading in food, once this had been decided upon, was shown in this case, which involved one of the largest caches ever discovered. There were hidden in this cache 27,000 pounds of wheat flour, 300 pounds of chocolate, 15,000 pounds of honey, 40,000 cigars, and 52,000 pounds of copper, tin, and brass. The odd part of the case was that to this hoard belonged also 24 head of cattle and 9 pigs. On the same day there was tried in a Berlin jury court a baker who had "saved" 6,500 pounds of flour from the amounts which the food authorities had turned over to him. It was shown that the baker had sold the loaves of bread he was expected to bake from the flour. Of course he had adulterated the dough to make the loaves weigh what the law required and what the bread tickets called for. A fine profit had been made on the flour. The food authorities had assigned him the supply at $9 for each 200-pound bag. Some of it he sold illicitly at $55 per sack to a man who had again sold it for $68 to another chain-trader, who later disposed of it to a consumer for $80 a bag. There can be no doubt that this flour made expensive bread, but it seems that there were people willing to pay the price. But forty cents for a pound of wheat flour was something which only a millionaire war purveyor could afford. All others below that class, materially, ate the government ration and stood in line. Sad in the extreme was the spectacle which the food-lines in the workman quarters of Berlin, Vienna, and Budapest presented. Upon the women of the households the war was being visited hardest. To see a pair of good shoes on a woman came to be a rare sight. Skirts were worn as long as the fabric would keep together, and little could be said of the shawls that draped pinched faces, sloping shoulders, and flat breasts. There were children in those food-lines. Thin feet stuck in the torn shoes, and mother's shawl served to supplement the hard-worn dress or patched suit. Everything had to go for food, and prices of apparel were so high that buying it was out of the question. Once I set out for the purpose of finding in these food-lines a face that did not show the ravages of hunger. That was in Berlin. Four long lines were inspected with the closest scrutiny. But among the three hundred applicants for food there was not one who had had enough to eat in weeks. In the case of the younger women and the children the skin was drawn hard to the bones and bloodless. Eyes had fallen deeper into the sockets. From the lips all color was gone, and the tufts of hair that fell over parchmented foreheads seemed dull and famished--sign that the nervous vigor of the body was departing with the physical strength. I do not think sentimentalism of any sort can be laid at my door. But I must confess that these food-lines often came near getting the best of me. In the end they began to haunt me, and generally a great feeling of relief came over me when I saw that even the last of a line received what they had come for. The poorer working classes were not getting enough food under the system, nor were they always able to prepare the little they got in the most advantageous manner. While the effort had been made to instruct women how to get the maximum of nutriment from any article, and how to combine the allowances into a well-balanced ration, results in that direction were not satisfying. Many of the women would spend too much money on vegetable foods that filled the stomach but did not nourish. Others again, when a few extra cents came into their hands, would buy such costly things as geese and other fowl. Cast adrift upon an ocean of food scarcity and high prices, these poor souls were utterly unable to depart from their cooking methods, which had tastiness rather than greatest utility for their purpose. The consequence was that the ration, which according to food experts was ample, proved to be anything but that. In Berlin the so-called war kitchens were introduced. A wheeled boiler, such as used by the army, was the principal equipment of these kitchens. Very palatable stews were cooked in them and then distributed from house to house against the requisite number of food-card checks. The innovation would have been a success but for the fact that most people believed they were not getting enough for the coupons they had surrendered. The stew could not be weighed, and often there would be a little more meat in one dipperful than in another. There was grumbling, and finally the women who were giving their time and labor to the war kitchens were accused of partiality. The kitchens were continued a while longer. They finally disappeared because nobody cared to patronize them any more. It is possible, also, that people had grown tired of the stew eternal. The _Volksküchen_--people's kitchens--and those war kitchens which were established when the war began, operated with more success. The public was used to them. They were located in buildings, so that one could eat the food there and then, and their bill of fare was not limited to stews. Being managed by trained people, these kitchens rendered splendid service to both the public and the food-regulators. I have eaten in several of them and found that the food was invariably good. A class that had been hit hard by the war was that of the small office-holders and the less successful professionals, artists included. They were a proud lot--rather starve than eat at a war kitchen or accept favors from any one. The hardships they suffered are almost indescribable. While the several governments had made their small officials a war allowance, the addition to the income which that gave was almost negligible. At an average it represented an increase in salary of 20 per cent., while food, and the decencies of life, which this class found as indispensable as the necessities themselves, had gone up to an average of 180 per cent. The effect of this rise was catastrophic in these households. Before the war their life had been the shabby genteel; it was now polite misery. Yet the class was one of the most essential and deserved a better fate. In it could be found some of the best men and women in Central Europe. Devoted to the régime with heart and soul, this class had never joined in any numbers the co-operative consumption societies of Germany and Austria-Hungary, because of their socialistic tendencies. This delivered them now into the hands of the food shark. Finally, the several governments, realizing that the small official--_Beamte_--had to be given some thought, established purchasing centrals for them, where food could be had at cost and now and then below cost. Nothing of the sort was done for the small professionals, however. [Illustration: Photograph from Henry Ruschin TRAVELING-KITCHEN IN BERLIN A food-conservation measure that failed, because the people grew tired of the stew dispensed by the "Food Transport Wagon."] [Illustration: Photograph from Henry Ruschin STREET TRAM AS FREIGHT CARRIER As horses and motor fuel became scarce the street traction systems were given over part of each day to transporting merchandise.] Men and women of means came to the rescue of that class in the very nick of time. But a great deal of tact had to be used before these war sufferers could be induced to accept help. It was not even easy to succor them privately, as Mrs. Frederick C. Penfield, wife of the American ambassador at Vienna, had occasion enough to learn. To alleviate their condition en masse, as would have to be done if the means available were to be given their greatest value, was almost impossible. Shabby gentility is nine-tenths false pride, and nothing is so hard to get rid of as the things that are false. But there were those who understand the class. Among them I must name Frau Doctor Schwarzwald, of Vienna, whose co-operative dining-room was a great success, so long as she could get the necessary victuals, something that was not always easy. I had taken a mild interest in the charities and institutions of Frau Schwarzwald, and once came _near_ getting a barrel of flour and a hundred pounds of sugar for the co-operative dining-room and its frayed patrons. I announced the fact prematurely at a gathering of the patron angels of the dining-room, among whom was Frau Cary-Michaelis, the Danish novelist and poetess. Before I knew what was going on the enthusiastic patron angels had each kissed me--on the cheek, of course. Then they danced for joy, and next day I was forced to announce that, after all, there would be no flour and no sugar. The owner of the goods--not a food shark, but an American diplomatist--had disposed of them to another American diplomatist. I thought it best to do penance for this. So I visited a friend of mine and held him up for one thousand crowns for the co-operative dining-room. That saved me. I was very careful thereafter not to make rash promises. After all, I was sure of the flour and sugar, and so happy over my capture that I had a hard time keeping to myself the glad news as long as I did, which was one whole day. In that dining-room ate a good percentage of Vienna's true intellectuals--painters, sculptors, architects, poets, and writers all unable just then to earn a living. I was not always so unsuccessful, however. For another circle of down-at-the-heels I smuggled out of the food zone of the Ninth German Army in Roumania the smoked half of a pig, fifty pounds of real wheat flour, and thirty pounds of lard. Falkenhayn might command that army at the front, but for several days I was its only hero, nevertheless. But in food matters I had proved a good _buscalero_ before. The food craze was on. Women who never before in their lives had talked of food now spoke of that instead of fashions. The gossip of the _salon_ was abandoned in favor of the dining-room scandals. So-and-so had eaten meat on a meatless day, and this or that person was having wheat bread and rolls baked by the cook. The interesting part of it was that usually the very people who found fault with such trespass did the same thing, but were careful enough not to have guests on that day. In the same winter I was to see at Budapest an incident that fitted well into the times. I was one of the few non-Magyars who attended the coronation dinner of King Charles and Queen Zita. The lord chief steward brought in a huge fish on a golden platter and set it down before the royal couple. The King and Queen bowed to the gorgeously attired functionary, who thereupon withdrew, taking the fish with him. We all got the smell of it. I had eaten breakfast at four in the morning. Now it was two in the afternoon and a morsel of something would have been very much in order. Since seven I had been in the coronation church. It was none too well heated and I remember how the cold went through my dress shirt. But the fish disappeared--to be given to the poor, as King Stefan had ordained in the year A.D. 1001. In a few minutes the lord chief steward--I think that is the man's title--reappeared. This time he carried before him a huge roast. (Business as before.) For a third, fourth, fifth, and sixth time the high functionary paraded enticing victuals through the hall without coming down to business. It was a lonesome affair, that dinner, and everybody was glad when the King had taken a sip of wine and the cries of, "_Eljen a kiralyi_," put a period to that phase of the coronation. How well that ceremony fitted into the times! King Charles wanted to be impartial, and a few days later he inspected the dining-car attached to the train that was to take his brother Maximilian to Constantinople. In the kitchen of the car he found some rolls and some wheat flour. He had them removed. "I know, Max, that you didn't order these things," he said to his brother. "The dining-car management has not yet come to understand that no favors must be shown anybody. If the steward of the car should by any chance buy flour in Bulgaria or Turkey, do me the favor to pitch him out of the window when the car is running, so that he will fall real hard. That is the only way in which we can make a dent into special eating privileges." By the way, there was a time when the present Emperor-King of Austria-Hungary and his Empress-Queen had to live on a sort of sandwich income, and were glad when the monthly allowance from the archducal exchequer was increased a little when the present crown-prince was born. But that is another story. XV THE WEAR AND TEAR OF WAR It never rains but it pours. It was so in Central Europe. Not alone had the production of food by the soil been hamstrung by the never-ending mobilizations of labor for military purposes, but the means of communication began to fail from the same cause. If it takes a stitch in time to save nine in ordinary walks of life, it takes a stitch in time to save ninety, and often all, in railroading. The improperly ballasted tie means too great a strain in the fish-plate. It may also mean a fractured rail. Both may lead to costly train wrecks. But the makeshifts employed in Central Europe averted much of this. Where the regular track gangs had been depleted by the mobilizations, women and Russian prisoners-of-war took their places. But the labor of these was not as good as that given by the old hands. There is a knack even in pushing crushed rock under a railroad tie. Under one tie too much may be placed and not enough under another, so that the very work that is to keep the rail-bed evenly supported may result in an entirely different state of affairs. Two ties lifted up too much by the ballasting may cause the entire rail to be unevenly supported, so that it would have been better to leave the work undone altogether. Thus it came that all railroad traffic had to be reduced in speed. Expresses were discontinued on all lines except the trunk routes that were kept in fairly good condition for that very purpose. Passenger-trains ran 20 miles an hour instead of 40 and 45, and freight-trains had their schedules reduced to 12. That meant, of course, that with the same motive power and rolling stock about half the normal traffic could be maintained. But that was not all. The maintenance departments of rolling stock and motive power had also been obliged to furnish their quota of men for service in the field. At first the several governments did not draw heavily on the mechanicians in the railroad service, but ultimately they had to do this. The repair work was done by men less fitted, and cleaning had to be left to the women and prisoners-of-war. Soon the "flat" wheels were many on the air-braked passenger-cars. It came to be a blessing that the freight-trains were still being braked by hand, for otherwise freight traffic would have suffered more than it did. I took some interest in railroading, and a rather superficial course in it at the military academy had made me acquainted with a few of its essentials. Close attention to the question in the fall of 1916 gave me the impression that it would not be long before the only thing of value of most Central European railroads would be the right of way and its embankments, bridges, cuts, and tunnels--the things known collectively as _Bahnkörper_--line body. When I first made the acquaintance of Central Europe's railroads, I found them in a high state of efficiency. The rail-bed was good, the rolling stock showed the best of care--repairs were made in time, and paint was not stinted--and the motive power was of the very best. Efficiency had been aimed at and obtained. To be sure, there was nothing that could compare with the best railroading in the United States. The American train _de luxe_ was unknown. But if its comforts could not be had, the communities, on the other hand, did not have to bear the waste that comes from it. Passenger travel, moreover, on most lines, moved in so small a radius that the American "Limited" was not called for, though the speed of express-trains running between the principal cities was no mean performance at that. It was not long before all this was to vanish. The shortage in labor began to be seriously felt. There were times, in fact, when the railroad schedules showed the initiated exactly what labor-supply conditions were. When an hour was added to the time of transit from Berlin to Vienna I knew that the pinch in labor was beginning to be badly felt. When one of the expresses running between the two capitals was taken off altogether, I surmised that things were in bad shape, and when ultimately the number of passenger-trains running between Vienna and Budapest was reduced from twelve each day to four, it was plain enough that railroading in Austria-Hungary was down to one-third of what it had been heretofore--lower than that, even, since the government tried to keep up as good a front as possible. In Germany things were a little better, owing to the close husbanding of resources which had been done at the very outbreak of the war. But to Germany the railroads were also more essential than to Austria-Hungary, so that, by and large, there really was little difference. The neatly kept freight-cars degenerated into weather-beaten boxes on wheels. The oil that would have been needed to paint them was now an article of food and was required also in the manufacture of certain explosives. So long as the car body would stand on the chassis it was not repaired. Wood being plentiful, it was thought better economy to replace the old body by a new one when finally it became dangerous to pull it about any longer. It was the same with the passenger-cars. The immaculate cleanliness which I had learned to associate with them was replaced by the most slovenly sweeping. Dusting was hardly ever attempted. From the toilet-rooms disappeared soap and towel, and usually there was no water in the tank. The air-brakes acted with a jar, as the shoes gripped the flat surface of the wheels, and soon the little doll trains were an abomination, especially when, for the sake of economy, all draperies were removed from the doors and windows. The motive power was in no better condition. The engines leaked at every steam and water joint, and to get within 60 per cent. of the normal efficiency for the amount of coal consumed was a remarkable performance. It meant that the engineer, who was getting an allowance on all coal saved, had to spend his free time repairing the "nag" he ran. Constantly traveling from one capital to another, and from one front to the other, I was able to gauge the rapid deterioration of the railroads. To see in cold weather one of the locomotives hidden entirely in clouds of steam that was intended for the cylinders caused one to wonder how the thing moved at all. The closed-in passenger stations reminded me of laundries, so thick were the vapors of escaping steam. Despite the reduction in running-time, wrecks multiplied alarmingly. It seemed difficult to keep anything on the rails at more than a snail's pace. To the freight movement this was disastrous. Its volume had to be reduced to a quarter of what it had been. This caused great hardship, despite the fact that the distribution and consumption zones had put an end to all unnecessary trundling about of merchandise. In the winter the poor freight service led to the exposure of foodstuffs to the cold. It was nothing unusual to find that a whole train-load of potatoes had frozen in transit and become unfit for human consumption. Other shipments suffered similarly. In countries that were forced to count on every crumb that was a great loss. It could not be overcome under the circumstances. In the winter the lame railroads were unable to bring the needed quantities of coal into the population centers. This was especially true of the winter of 1916-17. Everybody having lived from hand to mouth throughout the summer, and the government having unwisely put a ban on the laying-in of fuel-supplies, there was little coal on hand when the cold weather came. Inside of three weeks the available stores were consumed. The insistent demand for fuel led to a rush upon the lines tapping the coal-fields. Congestion resulted, and when the tangle was worst heavy snows began to fall. The railroads failed utterly. Electric street traction shared the fate of the railroads. To save fuel the service was limited to the absolutely necessary. Heretofore most lines had not permitted passengers to stand in the cars. Now standing was the rule. When one half of the rolling stock had been run into the ground, the other half was put on the streets, and that, too, was shortly ruined. The traction-service corporations, private and municipal alike, had been shown scant mercy by the several governments when men were needed. Soon they were without the hands to keep their rolling stock in good repair. Most of the car manufacturers had meanwhile gone into the ammunition business, so that it was impossible to get new rolling stock. Further drafts on the employees of the systems led to the employment of women conductors, and, in some cases, drivers. While these women did their best, it could not be said that this was any too good on lines that were much frequented. Travel on the street cars became a trial. People who never before had walked did so now. As was to be expected, the country roads were neglected. Soon the fine macadamized surfaces were full of holes, and after that it was a question of days usually when the road changed places with a ditch of deep mire. The farmer, bringing food to the railroad station or town, moved now about half of what was formerly a load. He was short of draft animals. Levy after levy was made by the military authorities. By the end of 1916 the farms in Central Europe had been deprived of half their horses. It has been said that a man may be known by his clothing. That is not always true. There is no doubt, however, that a community may well be recognized by its means of transportation. Travel in every civilized country has proved that to my full satisfaction. I once met a man who insisted that if taken blindfolded from one country into another he would be able to tell among what people he found himself, or what sort of gentry they were, merely by traveling on their railroads. To which I would add that he could also very easily determine what sort of government they had, if he had an ear for all the "_Es ist Verboten_," "_C'est défendu_," and "It is not allowed" which usually grace the interiors of stations and car. Travel was the hardest sort of labor in the Central European states. I was obliged to do much of it. And most of it I did standing. I have made the following all-afoot trips: Berlin-Bentheim, Berlin-Dresden, Berlin-Cologne, Vienna-Budapest, and Vienna-Trieste, and this at a time when the regular running-time had become 80 to 150 per cent. longer. The means of communication of Central Europe had sunk to the level of the nag before the ragman's cart. The shay was not good-looking, either. But the wear and tear of war did not affect the means of communication alone. Every building in Central Europe suffered heavily from it. Materials and labor for upkeep were hard to get at any time and were costly. Real property, moreover, suffered under the moratorium, while the constantly increasing taxes left little in the pocket of the owner to pay for repairs. As already stated, paint was hard to get. Exposed to the weather, the naked wood decayed. Nor were varnishes to be had for the protection of interior woodwork. Many manufacturing plants had to be closed, first of all those which before the war had depended upon the foreign market. The entire doll industry, for instance, suspended work. In other branches of manufacture the closing-down was partial, as in the case of the textile-mills. Not alone had the buildings to be neglected in this instance, but a great deal of valuable machinery was abandoned to rust. As the stock of copper, tin, and brass declined the several governments requisitioned the metals of this sort that were found in idle plants and turned them over to the manufacturers of ammunition. While the owners were paid the price which these metals cost in the form of machinery parts and the like, the economic loss to the community was, nevertheless, heavy. Farm implements and equipment also suffered much from inattention. Tens of thousands of horses perished at the fronts and almost every one of them meant a loss to some farm. The money that had been paid for them had usually been given back to the government in the form of taxes, so that now the farmer had lost his horse or horses in much the same manner as if some epidemic had been at work. Valuable draft and milk animals were requisitioned to provide meat for the armies. In certain districts the lack of vitriol had resulted in the destruction of vineyards and orchards. To give a better picture of what this meant, I will cite the case of an acquaintance who is somewhat of a gentleman farmer near Coblentz, on the Rhine. When the war broke out this man had in live stock: Five horses, eight cows, forty sheep, and a large stock of poultry. He also had several small vineyards and a fine apple orchard. In the winter of 1916-17 his stock had shrunk to two horses, two cows, no sheep, very little poultry, and no vineyard. The apple orchard was also dying from lack of Bordeaux mixture. In January, 1917, I obtained some figures dealing with the wear and tear of war in the kingdom of Saxony. Applying them on a per-capita basis to all of the German Empire, I established that so far the war had caused deterioration amounting to $8,950,000,000, or $128 for each man, woman, and child. In Austria-Hungary the damage done was then estimated at $6,800,000,000. These losses were due to absence from their proper spheres in the economic scheme of some 14,000,000 able-bodied men who had been mobilized for service in connection with the war. This vast army consumed at a frightful rate and produced very little now. To non-productive consumption had to be added the rapid deterioration due to all abandonment of upkeep. The Central states were living from hand to mouth and had no opportunity of engaging in that thorough maintenance which had been given so much attention before. All material progress had been arrested, and this meant that decay and rust got the upper hand. XVI THE ARMY TILLS Men getting much physical exercise in the open air consume much more food than those confined. In cold weather such food must contain the heat which is usually supplied by fuel. All of which is true of the soldier in a greater degree. This, and the fact that in army subsistence, transportation and distribution are usually coupled with great difficulty, made it necessary for the Central Powers to provide their forces chiefly with food staples. Before the war about 35 per cent. of the men mobilized had lived largely on cereals and vegetables. Little meat is consumed by the rural population of Central Europe. For the reasons already given, that diet had to make room for one composed of more concentrated and more heat-producing elements. Bread, meat, fats, and potatoes were its principal constituents. Beans, peas, and lentils were added as the supply permitted. In the winter larger quantities of animal fats were required to keep the men warm, and in times of great physical exertion the allowance of sugar had to be increased. Since at first the army produced no food at all, the civil population had to produce what was needed. With, roughly, 42 per cent. of the soldiers coming from the food-producing classes, this was no small task, especially since the more fitted had been called to the colors. The governments of Central Europe realized as early as in the spring of 1915 that the army would have to produce at least a share of the food it needed. Steps were taken to bring that about. The war had shown that cavalry was, for the time being, useless. On the other hand, it was not good military policy to disband the cavalry organizations and turn them into artillery and infantry. These troops might be needed again sooner or later. That being the case, it was decided to employ mounted troops in the production of food. Fully 65 per cent. of the men in that branch of the military establishments of Central Europe came from the farm and were familiar with the handling of horses. That element was put to work behind the fronts producing food. No totals of this production have ever been published, to my knowledge, so that I can deal only with what I actually saw. I must state, however, that the result cannot have been negligible, though on the whole it was not what some enthusiasts have claimed for it. I saw the first farming of this sort in Galicia. There some Austro-Hungarian cavalry organizations had tilled, roughly, sixty thousand acres, putting the fields under wheat, rye, oats, and potatoes. When I saw the crops they were in a fair state of prosperity, though I understand that later a drought damaged them much. The colonel in charge of the work told me that he expected to raise food enough for a division, which should not have been difficult, seeing that three acres ought to produce food enough for any man, even if tilled in a slovenly way. Throughout Poland and the parts of Russia then occupied the Germans were doing the same thing. What the quality of their effort was I have no means of knowing, but if they are to be measured by what I saw in France, during the Somme offensive in 1916, the results obtained must have been very satisfying. One of the organizations then lying in the Bapaume sector was the German Second Guards Substitute-Reserve Division-- _Garde-Ersatz-Reserve-Division_. I think that the palm for war economy must be due that organization. In my many trips to various fronts (I have been on every front in Central Europe, the Balkan, Turkey, and Asia) and during my long stays there I have never seen a crowd that had made itself so much at home in the enemy country. The body in question had then under cultivation some sixteen hundred acres of very good soil, on which it was raising wheat, rye, barley, oats, beans, peas, lentils, sugar-beets, roots of various sorts, and potatoes. It had made hay enough for its own draft animals and had sold a large quantity to neighboring divisions. At Gommecourt the division operated a well-equipped modern dairy, able to convert into butter and cheese the milk of about six hundred cows. Its output was large enough to supply the men in the trenches with all the butter and cheese they could reasonably expect. A large herd of pigs was kept by the division, and as General von Stein, the commander of the sector, now Prussian Minister of War, informed me at a table that offered the products of the division at a luncheon, the organization was then operating, somewhere near the actual firing-line, two water-mills, a large sugar-plant, and even a brewery. Coffee, salt, and a few other trifles were all the division received from the rear. It was then the middle of August, so that I was able to see the results of what had been done by these soldier-farmers. I can state that soil was never put to better use. Cultivation had been efficiently carried out and the crops were exceedingly good. One of the most vivid pictures I retain from that week in "Hell" shows several German soldiers plowing a field east of Bucquoi into which British shells were dropping at the time. The shells tore large craters in the plowed field, but with an indifference that was baffling the men continued their work. I have not yet been able to explain what was the purpose of this plowing in August, except to lay the knife at the root of the weeds; nor can I quite believe that this end justified exposing men and valuable animals. At any rate, the thing was done. The case cited represents the maximum that was achieved in food production by any army organization, so far as I know. But that maximum was no mean thing. That division, at least, did not depend on the civil population for food. Several trips through Serbia and Macedonia in the same year showed me what the German "economic" and occupation troops had done in those parts. On the whole, the efforts at food production of the "economic" troops--organization of older men barely fit for service in the firing-line--had not been fortunate. The plan had been to put as much soil under crops as was possible. For this purpose traction plows had been brought along and whole country sites had been torn up. Though the soil of the valleys of Serbia is generally very rich, and the climate one of the best for farming, the crops raised in that year were far from good. Some held that it was due to the seed, which had been brought from Germany. Others were of the opinion that the plowing had been carelessly done, leaving too much leeway to the weeds. Be that as it may, the work of the economic companies was not a success. The occupation troops did much better, however. Together with the Serbian women they had cultivated the fields on the intensive principle. Yields had been good, I was told. In Macedonia the fields had also been put to use by the Germans, Austro-Hungarians, and Bulgars. The last named, familiar with the cultivation of the tobacco plant, were exchanging with the others tobacco for grain. Food production was also attempted by the Austro-Hungarians on the Isonzo front. But since they were fighting on their own territory in districts which still had their civil population, there was little opportunity, all the less since the soil of the Carso and Bainsizza plateaus, and the mountainous regions north of them, is not suited for agriculture on a large scale. Every _doline_--funnel-shaped depression--of the Carso had its garden, however, whence the army drew most of the vegetables it consumed. The food that was being raised for the army never reached the interior, of course. If an organization produced more than what it consumed, and such cases were extremely rare, it sold the surplus to the army commissaries. It took men and time to cultivate the fields, and these could not always be spared, especially when the losses in men were beginning to be severely felt and when the opponent engaged in offensives. It had meanwhile become necessary to throw, several times a year, divisions from one front to another, and that, too, began to interfere with the scheme, since the men no longer took the interest in the crops they had taken when they were established in a position. I spent considerable time with the Ninth German Army operating against the Roumanians late in the fall of 1916. Much booty in food fell into the hands of that organization, among it some eleven hundred thousand tons of wheat and other grains. Bread was bad and scarce in the Central states. When it became known that so large a quantity of breadstuff had fallen in the hands of the Centralist troops, people in Berlin and Vienna already saw some of it on their tables--but only in their minds. Falkenhayn and Mackensen issued orders that not a pound of breadstuff was to be taken from the war zone they had established, which comprised all of Roumania occupied, Transylvania, and the Dobrudja district. Nor could other food be exported to the Central civilian population. Whatever was found in the conquered territory was reserved for the use of the troops that had been employed, and the surplus was assigned to the German, Austro-Hungarian, and Bulgarian commissaries-general. The quantities taken, however, were large, and six months later, when all needs of the armed forces had been met, the civilian populations were remembered so far as it was prudent to do so. To give that population too much might have resulted in a lessening of production at home, and that was something which could not be invited. This policy was followed always. I know of no instance in which it was abandoned, even when the clamor for bread at home was loudest. The army came first in all things, much in the manner of the driver of a team of mules. But it was not selfishness alone that gave rise to this policy. It served no good purpose to ship into the interior food that would later be needed by the troops. That merely increased the burden of the railroads, first by the transport of the booty homeward, and later by shipping back food as the troops needed it. Keeping the food where it was found obviated this traffic entirely. On the whole, the Centralist troops never fared poorly in subsistence. It had become necessary to reduce the bread ration from 500 grams (18 ounces) to 400 grams (14 ounces) per day, but this was made good by increasing the meat and fat ration. Enough to eat was the surest way of keeping the war popular with the soldiers. Since it is very easy to exaggerate the value of food production due to the army, I will state here specifically that this production took care of little more than what the men consumed in excess over their former diet. Their normal consumption was still borne by the civilian population, and, as the losses on the battle-field increased, and the reserves had to be employed oftener, food production in the army fell rapidly, though at present this condition appears to be discounted by the food produced in Roumania, Serbia, and Poland. The area involved is large, of course, but the surplus actually available is not great. The population of these territories has dwindled to old men, boys, and women, and their production is barely able to meet actual needs. The little that can be extracted from these people does not go very far in the subsistence of Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Bulgaria. These countries have together a population of, roundly, one hundred and fifteen millions to-day, of which not less than ten million of the best producers are under the colors, thereby causing a consumption in food and _matériel_ that is at least one-third greater than normal--munitions and ammunition not included. But the army had much to do with food in other directions. It controlled inter-allied exports and imports and was a power even in trade with the neutrals of Europe. The relations between Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, and Turkey were essentially military. They were this to such an extent that they almost overshadowed even the diplomatic services of these countries. For the time being, the _Militärbevollmächtigte_--military plenipotentiary--as the chief communication officer was known, eclipsed often the diplomatic plenipotentiary. Militarism was absolute. The civil government and population had no right which the military authorities need respect. All commercial exchange passed into the hands of these military plenipotentiaries. The diplomatic service might reach an agreement for the exchange of food against manufactured articles, but finally the military saw to it that it was carried out. They bought and shipped, and received in turn the factory products that were the _quid pro quo_ for the food and raw material thus secured. In Roumania, so long as she was neutral, the _Einkaufstelle_--purchasing bureau--was indeed in the hands of civilians. As a neutral, Roumania could not permit German and Austro-Hungarian officers to be seen in the streets in their uniforms. They were, for all that, members of the army. For the time being, they wore mufti, nor did their transactions show that they were working directly for the army. The food that was bought was intended for the civilian population, naturally. But it has always been hard to keep from any army that which it may need. The same sack of wheat may not go to the military commissaries, but what difference will it make so long as it releases for consumption by the army a like quantity of home-grown cereals? The German and Austro-Hungarian purchasing bureaus in Switzerland, Holland, Denmark, Norway, and Sweden are similarly organized. Many members of their staffs are indeed civilians, but that does not change anything, since all shipments of food entering Central Europe fall immediately under the control of the government Food Commissions, if not under that of the military commissaries direct. To the military, then, the Central states civilian population had to look for such food as could be imported. There was the case of Bulgaria. That country is still essentially an agricultural state. Of the five and a half million inhabitants fully 90 per cent. engage in farming and animal industry. The products of the soil constitute the major portion of Bulgaria's exports. That meant that she could ease to some extent the food shortage in Germany and Austria-Hungary. An acquaintance of mine, a Captain Westerhagen, formerly a banker in Wall Street, was in charge of the German purchasing bureau in Sofia. He bought whatever was edible--wheat, rye, barley, peas, beans, potatoes, butter, eggs, lard, pork, and mutton. His side lines were hides, wool, flax, mohair, hay, and animal feed-stuffs. Indirectly, he was also an importer. Under his surveillance were brought into Bulgaria the manufactured goods Bulgaria needed, such as iron and steel products in the form of farm implements, farm machinery, building hardware, small hardware, and general machinery, glassware, paper products, instruments, surgical supplies, railroad equipment, medicines, and chemicals generally. When the German army needed none of the food Captain Westerhagen bought, the civilian population was the beneficiary of his efforts. The fact is that my acquaintance bought whatever he could lay hands on. Now and then he bought so much that the Bulgarians began to feel the pinch. In that event the Bulgarian general staff might close down on the purchasing central for a little while, with the result that the Germans would shut down on their exports. It was a case of no food, no factory products. This sort of reciprocity led often to hard feeling--situations which Colonel von Massow, the German military plenipotentiary at Sofia, found pretty hard to untangle. But, on the whole, the arrangement worked smoothly enough. It was so in Turkey. The Germans had in Constantinople one of their most remarkable men--and here I must throw a little light on German-Ottoman relations. The name of this remarkable man--remarkable in capacity, energy, industry, and far-sightedness--is Corvette-Captain Humann, son of the famous archeologist who excavated Pergamum and other ancient cities and settlements in Asia Minor. Captain Humann was born in Smyrna and had early in life made the acquaintance of Enver Pasha, now Ottoman Minister of War and vice-generalissimo of the Ottoman army. Raised in the Orient, Humann knew the people with whom he was to deal. The viewpoint of the Orient and the Turk was an open book to him. He had the advantage of being looked upon as half a Turk, for the reason that he was born in Turkey. To these qualifications Captain Humann added great natural ability and a perseverance without equal. Officially, Captain Humann was known as the commander of the German naval base in Constantinople and as naval attaché. Actually, he was the alpha and omega of German-Ottoman relations. There always was a great deal of friction between the Turks and the Germans. The Turk often could not see the need for speed, while the German was eternally in a hurry, from the Oriental point of view. The Turk was inclined to do things in a slovenly manner. The German insisted upon everything, in matters economic, military, and diplomatic, being in its place. German officers who had a great deal to do with these things had not always the tact and forbearance necessary. Bad blood would come of this. To make matters worse, the Turk was forever under the impression that he was being exploited. The Germans, also, refused to _bakshish_ the officials of their ally, and more trouble came from that. It is hard to say what the general result of this would have been had not Captain Humann been on the spot. He was on _du_--thou--terms with Enver Pasha, and when things refused to move at all he would call on his friend in the Harbiyeh Nasaret in Stamboul and set them into motion again. That Turk and German did not come to blows during the first year of the war is largely due to the genius of Captain Humann. So great was the man's influence in Constantinople that the successor of Ambassador Baron von Wangenheim, Prince Metternich, grew jealous of him and had him removed to Berlin, where in the Imperial Naval Office Captain Humann chewed pencils until conditions in Constantinople were so bad that the German Emperor had to send him back, despite the prejudices he held against him. Captain Humann is not a noble, and in those days the powers that be in Prussia and Germany were not yet ready to have a commoner, no matter how able, take away glamour from the aristocratic class. Though purchasing in Turkey was not one of the duties of Captain Humann, he was often obliged to take charge of it. I knew of one hundred and twenty thousand pounds of wool which the Germans had bought, but which the Turks were not willing to surrender because they were not satisfied with the price after the bargain had been closed. The case was ticklish in the extreme. Everybody had gone as far as safety permitted and the Turks had meanwhile grown more obdurate. In the end the matter had to be brought to the attention of the ambassador. He, too, decided that nothing could be done. Captain Humann was appealed to and succeeded in securing delivery of the wool. I have quoted this case to show that very often the exchange of commodities between the Central allies was attended with much friction and difficulty. More merchandise moved over and across the Danube as personal favors done than by virtue of the commercial treaties that had been made. Personal equation was everything in the scheme, especially at times when Germany's allies were in no pressing need for arms and ammunition. The very fact that Germany was the "king-pin" in the Central European scheme caused the lesser members of the combination to be sticklers in matters affecting their rights and sovereignty. On one occasion the predecessor of Captain Westerhagen in Sofia was said to have boastfully made the statement that what he could not get from the Bulgarians voluntarily he would find means to get, anyhow. General Jekoff, the chief of the Bulgarian general staff, heard of this, and promptly shut down on all exports. For two weeks not a thing moved out of Bulgaria, and when the two weeks were over there was a new man in charge of the German purchasing bureau in Sofia. The methods of the Prussian barrack-yard would not do south of the Danube. It took many a lesson to bring this home. Austria and Hungary were two separate economic units in the war. When food was scarce in Austria it did not necessarily follow that the Hungarians would make good the deficiency. It took a special permit to export and import from and into Hungary, and the same rules were enforced by Austria, Germany, Bulgaria, and Turkey in the case of all shipments made by civilians, so long as these had a hand in this inter-allied exchange of necessities and commodities. Little need be said of the German purchasing centrals in Austria and Hungary. The war was not very old before these countries had nothing to spare. Thereafter, exchange was limited entirely to materials needed in the manufacture of arms and ammunition. Austria and Hungary continued to exchange medical supplies, chemicals, and machinery for food and the like, respectively. They also managed now and then to get a little of the food in Bulgaria and Turkey, though the latter country could sell food only on rare occasions. Constantinople continued to live on Roumanian wheat, until the total cessation of activity by the Russian Black Sea fleet made navigation in those waters possible for the Turks and brought wheat and other food from northern Anatolia. The food secured by Germany in other markets was also under military control, as I have stated before. Exchange in this case depended even more upon reciprocity in kind than in the instances already cited. At one time the Swiss government was ready to close its borders against the export of food to Central Europe entirely. Nothing came of the intention. The German government informed the government at Bern that this would lead to an embargo on coal along the Swiss borders. France and Italy had no coal themselves, and Switzerland had to have fuel. It has been said that the incident in question was staged for the purpose of illustrating what the position of the Swiss actually was. At any rate, they would have no coal, not so much as a shovelful, if to-morrow they refused to export to the Germans and Austrians dairy products and animal fats. The same is true of iron products and chemicals. Holland is in the same position. Great Britain needs all the coal she can mine, and the Germans refuse to supply the little they can spare without getting something in exchange--dairy products, animal fats, vegetables, and fresh and preserved fish. Holland also gets her coal-oil and gasolene in that manner. Iron and steel and chemicals are other strong arguments in this scheme. Denmark is in exactly the same position, and when German gasolene and benzine are not available the Norwegian fishermen have to stay at home. For each gallon of these fuels, which Germany exports from the Galician and Roumanian oil-fields, the Norwegians are obliged to turn over so many pounds of fish. Sweden has no food to give for the coal and liquid fuel she gets from Germany, but exchanges them for wood pulp, certain specialty ores, and on rare occasions reindeer meat. That this commerce is strictly military those interested know, of course. But they have given up splitting hairs over it, because there is no way out. Coal and iron products, to say nothing of chemicals and medicines, are things which the European neutrals must have, and this need warring Central Europe has held over them as a whip. Incidentally, this traffic has done much toward keeping up the rate of the German mark. Central Europe would have been bankrupted long ago were it not that the neutrals must buy what these states have for sale and must buy it at prices fixed by monopoly. The need of coal and iron has been a far more efficacious discipline for the European neutrals than the German armies that have lain along their borders. That these countries have never combined for the purpose of throwing off this yoke is due to the influence of racial affinity--the sentiment upon which in the past has thriven Pan-Germanism. Switzerland, Holland, Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, rising simultaneously, could overnight cause the defeat of the Germans and their allies. But the ties of blood and kinship militate against that step, despite the dislike felt in these countries for certain aspects of German political life. XVII WOMAN AND LABOR IN WAR To the plow was yoked an ox and harnessed a horse. A tall and muscular woman was guiding it, while a small boy carried the whip. From the Isonzo front, not more than ten miles away, came the crash of heavy artillery. Neither the woman nor the boy seemed to mind that war was so near. I concluded that they were from the village which I had just come through, bound for the front named. The inhabitants of that place had listened to the noise of battle for eighteen months and it was possible that now the crash of guns meant less to them than the sound of the vesper bell. There was a tire blow-out. While the soldier-chauffeur was attending to that, I watched the woman draw furrows. Being somewhat of a farmer, I was interested in the quality of her work. It was good average plowing. The plow continued to cut down one side of the field and up the other. The automobile did not interest the woman. She had serious business to attend to. War must have seemed to her a sort of folly, and fools all those connected with it--myself included. She was tilling the land to get something to eat for her brood and to raise the money for taxes which those idiots at the front would waste in powder and the like. Her "hees" and "haws" punctuated the rumble of artillery like words of command for the oxen in the trenches. The woman behind the plow was a superb figure--the embodiment of nature herself. I went on. Toward evening I returned over the same road. The woman was still plowing, but now she had a little girl holding the whip. The sirocco had blown a heavy mist in from the Adriatic. Where the woman was plowing the vapors floated in layers of uneven density--the veils of evening. The plowers passed into them and out again, loomed now and then dwindled in the mist as the moods of light pleased. It struck me that it would be worth while to have a few words with this woman. She was so close to the war and yet, seemingly, so far from it that almost anything she could say promised to have an unusual color. "These people here are Slovenes, sir!" remarked my soldier-chauffeur when I had sought his advice. "They do not speak German, as a rule. But we can try." It was love's labor lost. The woman spoke some Slovene words in greeting and I replied in Bulgarian, of which language I know a few words. The chauffeur was no better off. I dug into a furrow with the tip of my shoe and said: "_Dobro!_" She nodded recognition of both my "remark" and appreciation of her work. To show the woman that I knew what I was talking about, I took the plow out of her hands and drew a furrow myself. It was her turn to say: "_Dobro!_" The fact that she limited her conversation to this word, as I was obliged to do, showed that she was a woman of understanding. When I was back at the road I shook hands with the woman and her child and hurried off to Adelsberg, where General Boreovic, commander of the Austro-Hungarian Fifth Army, expected me for dinner. "Ah, she is a worker," said the old veteran, as I mentioned the incident to him. "Her husband is dead, you know. Was killed in the war. She is a remarkable woman. I have talked to her several times. She is worth a dozen of anything in skirts you can find in Vienna, or anywhere else, for that matter." I thought so, too, and think so yet, and, _Deo volente_, I will picture the plow-woman better some other time. In the Manfred Weiss works at Budapest thousands of women are engaged in the manufacture of ammunition. The little girls and older women who watched the infantry-ammunition machines did not greatly interest me. They were all neatly dressed and did no more than watch the mechanical contrivances that made cartridge-cases out of sheets of brass and bullet-casings out of sheets of nickel-steel. In the shell department of the establishment I saw quite another class of women. They were large and brawny and strong enough to handle the huge white-hot steel nuggets with ease. By means of a crane two of them would seize one of the incandescent ingots, swing it under the trip-hammer, and then leave the fate of the shell in the making to two others, who would turn the thing from side to side, while a fifth operated the hammer itself. At the far end of the shed, in flame-raked gloom, other women of the same type were engaged in casting. The ladle was operated by them with a dexterity that showed that neither strength nor skill were lacking. These daughters of Vulcan were stripped to the waist. Their labor seemed to be the only dress they needed. In fact, it never struck me that there was anything unconventional about this costume--the whole and total of which was a large leather apron and skirt of something that resembled burlap. Nor did they seem to mind me. It is impossible to say to what extent man's place in labor was taken by woman in Central Europe during the war. On the farms the women had always done much of the hard work. They had been employed in large numbers in the factories, stores, and offices, so that it was generally a case of employing more women instead of surrendering to them departments which heretofore had been entirely in the hands of men. It is true that women were working on street-car lines as conductors, and in a few cases as drivers, and that more of them found employment in the railroad and postal service, but the work they did was well within the capacity of any healthy woman. Woman's work during the war was to have results quite foreign to those immediately in prospect. [Illustration: Photograph from Henry Ruschin WOMEN CARRYING BRICKS AT BUDAPEST A pathetic aspect of the policy "Business as Usual" inaugurated at the outbreak of the European War. Central European women worked hard before the war, however.] [Illustration: Photograph from Henry Ruschin VILLAGE SCENE IN HUNGARY These women and children struggled to keep food production close to normal, but failed.] The fact that women were employed in foundries and steel-works, in the manner stated above, is chiefly remarkable for the evidence furnished that woman is able to do much of the work for which in the past she has been thought unsuited, especially if her deficiency in bodily strength is discounted by the use of machinery. At the Weiss works I was told that the women doing heavy work with the aid of mechanical energy were in every respect the equal of the men who had done the same thing before the war. The war, then, has demonstrated in Central Europe that the woman is far less the inferior of man than was held formerly. To that extent the status of women has been bettered. When a man has seen members of the frail sex fashion steel into shells he is thereafter less inclined to look upon that sex as a plaything which an indulgent Scheme provided for him. Over his mind may then flash the thought that woman is, after all, the other half of humanity--not only the mother of men, but their equal, not a mere complement of the human race, but a full-fledged member of it. A little later I was the guest of Halideh Edib Hannym Effendi at her private school in the Awret Basar quarter of Stamboul, Constantinople. The Turkish feminist and promoter of education had asked me to take a look at the establishment in which she was training Turkish girls and boys along the lines adhered to in the Occident. She had arrived at the conclusion that the _medressi_--Koran school system--was all wrong, for the reason that it sacrificed the essential to the non-essential. Though her influence with the Young Turk government and the Sheik-ul-Islam was great, she had not asked that her experiments with Western education be undertaken at the expense of the public. Her father is wealthy. Several teachers had been invited to the tea. Like Halideh Hannym they were "Young Turk" women, despite the fact that most of them still preferred the non-transparent veil--_yashmak_--to the transparent silk _büründshük_. I commented upon this fact. "The _yashmak_ does indeed typify the Old Turkey," said Halideh Hannym. "But is it necessary to discard it because one takes an interest in the things identified as progress? To the _yashmak_ are attached some of the best traditions of our race; it comes from a period when the Turk was really great, when he was still the master of a goodly share of Europe--when he ruled, instead of being ruled." All of which was true enough. I pointed out that the _büründshük_, however, was the promise that the Turkish woman would soon be able to look into the world--that seclusion would before long be an unpleasant memory. To that my hostess and her other guests agreed. "The war has been a good thing for the Turkish woman," I ventured to remark. "It has been," admitted Halideh Hannym. "As an example, the university has been opened to women. Three years ago nobody would have thought that possible. To-day it is _un fait accompli_. The world does move--even here." Halideh Hannym did not mention that she was largely responsible for the opening of the Constantinople University to women. Modesty is one of her jewels. Nor would she admit that her novels and her trenchant articles in the _Tanin_ had much to do with the progress made in the emancipation of the Turkish woman. "If Turkey is to be regenerated, her women must do it," said Halideh Hannym, when we had come to speak of the necessity of better government in the Ottoman Empire. That one sentence comprises at once the field of endeavor and the motive of the woman. She believes that there is much good in her race, but that its old-time position of conqueror and ruler over subject races had been fraught with all the dangers of ease and idleness. "We must work--work--work," she said. "The race that lies fallow for too long a time gives the weeds too much chance. Our weaknesses and shortcomings are deep-rooted now. But I believe that the plowing which the race had during the present war will again make it a fertile field for the seeds of progress." Not long before that Sultan Mahmed Réchad Khan V. had told me the same thing. "We of the Orient are known to you Westerners as fatalists," remarked the old monarch in the course of the audience. "The fatalist is accepted to be a person who lets things drift along. This means that any fatalist may be no more than a lazy and shiftless individual. In our case that is not true. Our belief in the Fates--Kismet and Kadar--is to blame for what backwardness there is in the Ottoman Empire. But it will be different in the future. It is all very well to trust in God, but we must work." I told Halideh Hannym that probably his Majesty had read some of her writings. My reason for doing this was largely the fact that as yet this gospel of work was little known in Turkey. "That is not impossible," thought the woman. "At any rate, we must work, and it is the women of Turkey who must set the example. When the Turks have more generally embraced the idea that all there is worth while in life is labor, they will come to understand their non-Osmanli fellow-citizens better. I look upon that as the solution of the Ottoman race problems. Labor is the one platform upon which all men can meet. My objective is to have the races in the empire meet upon it. Turk, Greek, Armenian, and Arab will get along together only when they come to heed that old and beautiful saying of the Persians, 'How pleasantly dwell together those who do not want the ox at the same time.' That means that each of us must have his own ox--work ourselves, in other words." And Halideh Hannym applies this to herself. There is no reason why she should write novels and articles to make money--she does not need it, so far as I know, if town houses and a country seat on the island of Prinkipo mean anything at all. Halideh Hannym works for the satisfaction there is in knowing that duty is done and done to the limit of one's ability, and within that limit lies the seizing of one's opportunity. Hers came with the war, and while others stood by and lamented she set to work and wrung from ungenerous man that which under the pressure of the times he thought unimportant. Halideh Hannym and her friends and co-workers gathered these crumbs, one by one, and then made a loaf of them, and that loaf is not small. Some future historian may say that the emancipation of the Turkish woman was due to the Great War. I hope that he will not overlook Halideh Edib Hannym Effendi. The women of Central Europe have always worked hard, but at best they have been kept at drudgery. They have done what man would not do, as deeming it below his masculine dignity, or what he could not do. The result of this has not been a happy one for the women. The "lord of the household" has in the course of time come to look upon his wife as a sort of inferior creature, fit indeed to be the first servant in the house, but unfit to be elevated above that sphere. The rights of equality which he takes from his mate he generally bestows upon his daughters, and later he is inconsistent enough to have them enter the servitude of his wife. Thus it came that the majority of all women in Central Europe thought of nothing but the stomach of the lord and master, and when this was attended to they would put in their spare moments knitting socks. The picture of the German _Hausfrau_ may appeal to many. It does not to me. Nothing can be so disheartening as to spend an evening with a family whose women will talk to the accompaniment of the clicking of the knitting-needles. The making of socks should be left to machinery, even if they are intended to warm the "Trilbys" of the lord and master. I am glad to report that a large crevasse was torn into this _Hausfrau_ notion by the war. With millions of men at the front, the women had to stand on their feet, as it were. The clinging ivy became a tree. Though the ubiquitous knitting-needle was not entirely dispensed with, it came to be used for the sake of economy, not as the symbol of immolation on the altar of the _Herr im Hause_. The woman who has fought for bread in the food-line is not likely to ever again look upon the breadwinner of the family with that awe which once swayed her when she thought of "his" magnanimity in giving her good-naturedly what she had earned by unceasing effort and unswerving devotion. Thus has come in Central Europe a change that is no less great and sweeping than what has taken place in Turkey. All concerned should be truly thankful. The nation that does not give its women the opportunity to do their best in the socio-economic sphere which nature has assigned them handicaps itself badly. Not to do that results in woman being little more than the plaything of man, or at best his drudge, and, since man is the son of woman, no good can come of this. The cowed woman cannot but have servile offspring, and to this we must look for the explanation why the European in general is still ruled by classes that look upon their subjects as chattels. A social aggregate in which the families are ruled by autocratic husbands and fathers could have no other than an autocratic government. I believe that a pine forest is composed of pines, despite the fact that here and there some other trees may live in it. The war has upset that scheme in Central Europe. While the labor of woman was valuable to the state, through its contributions to the economic and military resources of the nation, it also fostered in the woman that self-reliance which is the first step toward independence. Of this the plow-woman and the women in the steel-works are the factors and Halideh Hannym the sum. While the plow-woman and steel-workers were unconsciously active for that purpose, the Turkish feminist had already made it the objective of a spreading social policy. What poor pets those women in the steel-mill would make! XVIII WAR AND MASS PSYCHOLOGY Harassed by the shortage in everything needed to sustain life, plagued by the length of the war and the great sacrifices in life and limb that had to be made, and stunned by the realization that Germany had not a friend, anywhere, aside from her allies and certain weak neutrals, the German people began to take stock of their household and its management. It seemed to many that, after all, something was wrong. I ran into this quite often in 1916. During the Somme offensive in August of that year I was talking to a German general--his name won't matter. The man could not understand why almost the entire world should be the enemy of Germany. I had just returned to Central Europe from a trip that took me through Holland, Denmark, and parts of Norway; I had read the English, French, and American newspapers, with those of Latin Europe and Latin America thrown in, and I was not in a position to paint for the soldier the picture he may have been looking for. I told him that the outlook was bad--the worst possible. He wanted to know why this should be so. I gave him my opinion. Not far from us was going on a drumfire which at times reached an unprecedented intensity. The general looked reflectively across the shell-raked, fume-ridden terrain. He seemed to be as blue as indigo. "Tell me, Mr. Schreiner, are we really as bad as they make us out to be?" he said, after a while. The question was frankly put. It deserved a frank reply. "No," I said, "you are not. Slander has been an incident to all wars. It is that now. The fact is that your government has made too many mistakes. War is the proof that might is right. Your government has been too brutally frank in admitting that and suiting its action accordingly. Belgium was a mistake and the sinking of the _Lusitania_ was a mistake. You are now reaping the harvest you sowed then." My questioner wished to know if _sans_ Belgium, _sans Lusitania_ the position of Germany would be better. That question was highly hypothetical. I replied that an opinion in that direction would not be worth much in view of the fact that it could not cover the actual causes of the war and its present aspects, of which the case of Belgium and the work of the submarine were but mere incidents. "Seen objectively, I should say that the invasion of Belgium and the use of the submarine against merchantmen has merely intensified the world's dislike of much that is German. I doubt that much would have been different without Belgium and without the _Lusitania_," was my reply. "This war started as a struggle between gluttons. One set of them wanted to keep what it had, and the other set wanted to take more than what it had already taken." Not very long afterward General Falkenhayn, the former German chief of staff, then commander of the Ninth German Army against the Roumanians, asked a similar question at dinner in Kronstadt, Transylvania. He, too, failed to understand why the entire world should have turned down its thumb against the Germans. My reply to him was more or less the same. A regular epidemic of introspective reasoning seemed to be on. At the Roumanian end of the Törzburger Pass I lunched a few days later with Gen. Elster von Elstermann. He also wanted to know why the Germans were so cordially hated. Gen. Krafft von Delmansingen, whose guest I was at Heltau, at the head of the Vörös Torony gorge, showed the same interest. "It seems that there is nothing we can do but make ourselves respected," he said, tersely. "I am one of those Germans who would like to be loved. But that seems to be impossible. Very well! We will see! We will see what the sword can do. When a race has come to be so thoroughly detested as we seem to be, there is nothing left it but to make itself respected. I fear that in the future that must be our policy." I made the remark that possibly it was not the race that was being detested. The general is a Bavarian--at least, he was commanding Bavarian troops. "So long as these shouters can make common cause with autocratic Russia, they have no reason to fasten upon the Prussians every sin they can think of. I am not one of those who think that everything in Germany is perfect. Far from it. We have more faults than a dog has fleas. Never mind, though! To lie down and beseech mercy on our knees is not one of these faults." I believe that Gen. Krafft von Delmansingen spoke for the army on that occasion without knowing it. What he said was the attitude of the vast majority of officers and men. Shortly before I had interviewed Baron Burian, then Austro-Hungarian Minister of Foreign Affairs, on that and related subjects. I will state here that he was the most professorly foreign minister I have met. His voice never rose above the conversational tone. Though a Magyar, he was evenness of temper personified. "I suppose there is nothing we can do in that direction," he said, slowly. "What the world wishes to believe it will believe. We cannot change that. Whether it is true or not has nothing to do with the cause and the outcome of this war. And what difference will it make in the end whether we are called barbarians or not? I know that a good many people resent what they say in the Entente newspapers, and I suppose the Entente public resents a great deal of what is being said in our newspapers. That is a small matter. There is nothing to be done, for what we could do would be a waste of effort. Let them talk. No! There is nothing I wish to say in connection with that. Our position is quite defensible. But to defend it would merely stir up more talk. By the time the hostile American newspapers have taken care of all that is being said against us, they must have used so much paper that it would be a shame to get them to use more on refutation." Dr. Arthur Zimmermann, at that time Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, was more aggressive when I suggested the subject for the substance of an interview. Backing his position with certain documents that were found in the Belgian state archives, according to which there was some understanding between the British, French, and Belgians for the contingency of a German invasion, he held that Germany was entirely right in demanding access to France through Belgian territory. He was not sure, however, that doing this had been a good move politically. The military necessity for the step was something he could not judge, he said. Doctor Zimmermann said that the sinking of the _Lusitania_ was a bad blunder. Responsibility for the act he would not fix, however. The thing was not within his province. So far as he knew, it had not been the intention to torpedo the ship in a manner that would cause her immediate sinking. If a ship was torpedoed in the fore or aft holds she would float for hours and might even be able to reach port under her own steam. "There is a great deal of mania in this Germanophobe sentiment that is sweeping the world," he said. "For the time being, we are everybody's _bête noire_. The world must have somebody on whom it can pick. Right now we are that somebody. Quite recently, during the Boer War, it was Great Britain. During the Japanese War the entire world, Germany excepted, made common cause with the Japs against the Russians, forgetting somehow that this was a war of the yellow race against the white. To-day we are it. To-morrow it will be somebody else. It is always fashionable to hate somebody." That was the cool, diplomatic view of it. But the Central European public was more inclined to take the view of the officer I had met on the Somme front. It was chagrined, disappointed, grieved, stunned. The question was asked whether the invasion of Belgium had been really necessary. Many held that the German general staff should have concentrated a large force on the Belgian border, with orders not to invade the country until the French had done so. There can be no doubt that this would have been the better policy. The contention of the German government that the French contemplated going through Belgium and had for the act the consent of the Belgian government and the acquiescence of the British government will not invalidate my assertion in the least. Granted that such an agreement had been really made for the purpose of giving the French army certain tactical advantages, it would be the policy of any wise and calm government to wait for the execution of the plan. There would be no Belgian question at all to-day if the Germans had given the French the chance they are said to have sought. That the French reached out for the German border _via_ Belgium would not have made the least difference in the sum of military operations, since it was first a question of keeping the French army out of Germany, and, secondly, of defeating the French forces wherever met. The few days gained, and the slight military advantages alleged to have been procured, were certainly not worth what Belgium was in the end to cost the Germans. This is all the more true when it is considered that the reduction of Liège and other Belgian fortifications might have never become a necessity, in view of the fact that the documents found in Brussels have never convinced me that the Belgian government was acting in bad faith. It seems that many have overlooked the fact that, between tentative arrangements made by the Belgian general staff and the allied governments and an authorization by the Belgian parliament that war should be declared against Germany, there is a great difference. The former existed; the latter had yet to be obtained. In case it had been obtained, in order to give the French troops marching through Belgium the status they needed, there was still time for the Germans to do what they did, under martial conditions that would have declared the French troops in Belgium mere raiders, on the one hand, and Belgium a violator of her neutral status, on the other. Belgium permitting the use of her territory by French troops about to fall upon Germany would have been obliged to also admit German troops, or declare war against Germany. That case is so simple that few can understand it, as a rule. That such might have been the initial events of the war began finally to dawn upon all thinking Germans. It occurred to many now that there was ample front in Alsace-Lorraine; so much, in fact, that the French succeeded in taking and holding quite a little of it. There was, also, Luxembourg. Though mobilizations are like the avalanche that starts at the mountain-top and thereafter obeys but one law, gravity, it was not impossible for the German general staff to divert south-ward the troops bound for the Belgian border. A day might have been lost. But even that seems uncertain, since troops were needed along the Belgian border, anyway, in view of what Berlin claims to have known. No matter how the thing is looked at, in the end it resolves itself into the question whether or not there was a difference in meeting French troops in Belgium or on their own soil. It was the objective of the Germans to defeat the French army. Whether that was done in the line of the French fortifications along the Franco-Belgian border, as came to pass, or whether that was done in the line of the fortifications along the German-Belgian border, could make little difference to a government and general staff able to think on its feet. Since governments at war must of necessity take it for granted that only the men at the head of affairs have the right to think, this aspect of the invasion of Belgium has been but rarely treated in public print in Germany. I will say, however, that several military writers have attempted to speak on the subject, and have usually been called to task for their hardihood. To-day the average German is not at all sure that "Belgium" was necessary. He has no interest in Belgium, differing in this from his industrial and commercial lords. Most men and women with whom I discussed the subject were of the opinion that "one Alsace-Lorraine is enough." The greatest shock the German public received was the news that the _Lusitania_ had been sunk. For a day or two a minority held that the action was eminently correct. But even that minority dwindled rapidly. For many weeks the German public was in doubt as to what it all meant. The thinking element was groping about in the dark. What was the purpose of picking out a ship with so many passengers aboard? Then the news came that the passengers had been warned not to travel on the steamer. That removed all doubt that the vessel had not been singled out for attack. The government remained silent. It had nothing to say. The press, standing in fear of the censor and his power to suspend publication, was mute. Little by little it became known that there had been an accident. The commander of the submarine sent out to torpedo the ship had been instructed to fire at the foreward hold so that the passengers could get off before the vessel sank. Somehow that plan had miscarried. Either a boiler of the ship or an ammunition cargo had given unlooked-for assistance to the torpedo. The ship had gone down. The defense made by the German government was based largely on points in international law that govern the conduct of raiding cruisers. But the submarine was not a cruiser. It could not save many lives under any circumstances. People shook their heads and said nothing. It was best to say nothing, since to speak was treasonable. Nothing weaned the German public so much away from the old order of government as did the _Lusitania_ affair. The act seemed useless, wanton, ill-considered. The doctrine of governmental infallibility came near being wrecked. The Germans began to lose confidence in the wisdom of the men who had been credited in the past with being the very quintessence of all knowledge, mundane and celestial. Admiral Tirpitz had to go. Germany's allies, too, were not pleased. In Austria and Hungary the act was severely criticized, and in Turkey I found much disapproval of the thing. While the greater part of the Central European public accepted that there had been some necessity for the sinking of the ship, seeing that she carried freight of a military character, there were many who thought that in such cases politics and not military necessity should govern conduct. These people were better politicians than those in the government. But the others were better militarists and militarism was in control, being seated more firmly as each day brought more enemies, open and potential. The case was much like that of a family that may have difficulties within, but which would set in concerted action upon any outsider who might think it well to intervene. This was to be the fundamental quality of German public sentiment throughout the course of the war. As the ring of enemies grew stronger and tightened more upon the military resources of the empire, the public grew harder and harder. The pressure exerted being concentric, it grouped the German public closer and harder to its center--the government. It was no longer the absolute devotion of other years which the Germans brought their government--hardly that. It was the determination to win the war despite the government and despite what others thought and held of that government. The fact that government there must be is too clear to the German to make him act toward his _Obrigkeit_ with the impetuousness that has characterized events in Russia, where this was possible only because for decades many there have held the view that the time of anarchical society was at hand. This state of mind made possible the acceptance of the heavy sacrifices which were demanded by the war. The very private in the trenches felt that he would have to risk all against a world of enemies. Self-pity in the individual leads usually to maudlinism. The trait is not foreign to German temperament. Self-pity in the aggregate is a totally different thing. It is the quality that makes martyrs of men, so long as there is an audience. It is sentiment minus all sickly self-indulgence, and that is fortitude--the thing that will cause men to adhere to an idea or principle even in the face of the stake at the _auto da fé_. It was this spirit, also, that caused the German multitude to bear with patience the many deprivations and burdens due to the war. In Austria things were slightly different. The Austrian-German is probably more of Celtic than of Germanic blood. He is more volatile. Great issues do not hold his attention long. He becomes easily a slave to habit. To the Austrian-German the war was never more than a nuisance. It interfered with his business; above all, his enjoyments; it drove him from his favorite café and his clandestine lady-love. It upset life for him thoroughly. What was the preservation of the Austrian Empire to a man who shared that empire with Czech, Pole, Ruthene, Slovene, Croat, Italian, Bosniak Mussulman, and in a sense with the Magyar and Roumanian? The feeling of race interest would have to remain foreign to such a man, just as it was a stranger to all the others who fought at his side. Of the ten races in the Dual Monarchy only the Slav group could understand one another without special study of the other's language. Czech, Pole, Ruthene, Slovene, Croat, and Bosniak could with little difficulty master one another's language. German, so far as it was not familiar in the form of military commands, was unknown to most of them. Magyar was a total stranger to Slav and German alike, and Italian and Roumanian meant nothing to any of these. I remember philosophizing a bit at the execution wall of the fortress of Peterwardein in Hungary. To the left of me stood a little gallows--one of those peculiar strangulation implements they use in Austria-Hungary--descendant of the Spanish _garrote_, I believe. On the ancient brick wall were the marks left there by chipping steel bullets. Many a Serb seditionist had seen the light of day for the last time in that old moat. More of them were behind the grilled peepholes of the casemate. That morning two or three had died where I stood. In that there was nothing unusual, perhaps. But on my right was a large poster, framed with the Hungarian national colors, red, white, and green. The poster drew attention to a certain paragraph of the treason laws. It defined treason poignantly, precisely. I read the paragraph in German, concluded that the Hungarian said the same, surmised that the Slav languages in the country did not differ greatly from one another, found that Roumanian I could almost read, and saw that the Italian version said the same thing as the German. I suppose French had been left off the poster for the reason that the Austro-Hungarian inter-monarchical classes, which now use that language instead of Latin, as in the days of Marie Therese, did not need to have their attention drawn to the danger of sedition. The gallows and execution wall seemed fit companions to that poster. One might not have missed the other when seeing the one, but still there was harmony between the two. People who do not understand one another, be that a question of language or temperament, have no business to live together. But the thing happens often in wedlock, and governments at peace and leisure say that it is perfectly feasible from the viewpoints of state interests. I found that _Das Reich_--the empire--had no meaning to any member of the Austro-Hungarian group. But what held that conglomerate together? The Emperor-King. Soon I found that nothing had changed in Austria-Hungary since the days when the Empress-Queen Marie Therese, with her infant son in her arms, and tears in her eyes and on her cheeks, had implored the Magyar nobles to come to her assistance against Frederick the Great. The Magyar nobles tore off their fur _kalpacks_, drew their swords, and cried: "_Moriamur pro rege nostro, Maria Theresa!_" That was still the mass psychology in the dual monarchy. The old Emperor-King called to battle, and that was enough. Later the new Emperor-King renewed the call, and it was still enough. What the soldiers did in the trenches the civilian population did at home--a little half-heartedly at times, a little slovenly occasionally, but reliably at all times. "We must help our Macedonian brothers. The Bulgars can no longer remain deaf to their prayers to be relieved of the oppression of the Serbs," said the Bulgarian Premier, Doctor Radoslavoff, to me in February, 1915. In October of the same year he said during an interview: "There is not enough room for two strong states on the Balkan peninsula. Yet there must be a strong state if the Balkan problem is to be eliminated. That strong state will be either Bulgaria or Serbia. _We_ desire that it be Bulgaria. It will be Bulgaria when the Macedonians are permitted to join her. The time has come when they can do that. For that reason we go to war on the side of the Central Powers." The two statements picture Bulgarian mass psychology exactly. The Bulgar wanted the Macedonian to be one with him nationally, as he is racially. He wanted the ancient Bulgar capital of Monastir to lie again within Bulgarland. With that in perspective he had driven the Turk from the peninsula; for that purpose he wanted to make the Serb small. I found the same iron determination throughout Bulgaria and in all walks of life. The _shope_ farmer, the shepherd in the _planina_, the monks at Rila Monastir, the fishermen at Varna, the city and towns people, were all for that idea. And in so stern a manner! To me the Bulgar will always be the Prussian of the Balkan. He is just as morose, just as blunt, and just as sincere. I had occasion to discuss Turkey's entry into the European War with his Majesty, Sultan Mahmed Réchad Khan V., Ghazi, Caliph of all the Faithful, etc., etc., etc. "They [the Allies] deny us the right to exist," said the old man. "We have the right to exist and we are willing to fight for that. I have led a very peaceful life always. I abhor bloodshed, and I am sincere when I say that I mourn for those who died with the ships [the crews of the battleships _Bouvet_ and _Irresistible_ whom I had seen go down with their ships on March 18th, an event which the Sultan had asked me to describe to him]. It must be hard to die when one is so young. But what can we do? The Russians want the Bosphorus, this city, and the Dardanelles. They have never belonged to the Russians. If there is anybody who has a better right to them than we have, it is the Greeks. We took these things from them. But we will not give them up to anybody without the best fight the race of Osmanli has yet put up." Like Scheherazade, I then continued my account of the bombardment. Said Halim Pasha, then Grand Vizier, expressed himself somewhat similarly. He was more diplomatically specific. "The hour of Turkey was come," he said. "That conflagration could not end without the Allied fleet appearing off the Dardanelles, and the Russian fleet off the Bosphorus. That would be the smash-up of the Ottoman Empire. The Entente governments offered us guarantees that for thirty years Ottoman territory would be held inviolate by them. Guarantees--guarantees! What do they amount to! We have had so many guarantees. When Turkey gets a guarantee it is merely a sign that there is one more pledge to be broken. We are through with guarantees. We joined the Germans because they offered none." All this in the most fluent Oxford English a man ever used. Said Halim is an Egyptian and somewhat directly related to the Great Prophet in the line of Ayesha. Enver Pasha, the Prussian of the Ottoman Empire, Minister of War, generalissimo, Young Turk leader, efficiency apostle, Pan-German, and what not, told me the same thing on several occasions. "Nonsense, nonsense!" he would say in sharp and rasping German. "We are not fighting for the Germans. We are fighting for ourselves. Mark that! They told us we'd be all right if we stayed neutral. Didn't believe it. Nonsense! Russians wanted Constantinople. We know them. They can have it when we are through with it. It was a case of lose all, win all. I am for win all. Fired five thousand of the old-school officers to win this war. Will win it. Country bled white, of course. Too many wars altogether. First, Balkan War, Italian War. Now this. Better to go to hell with Germans than take more favors from Entente. Those who don't like us don't have to. Nobody need love us. Let them keep out of our way. May go down in this. If we do we'll show world how Turk can go down with colors flying. This is Turkey's last chance." It took Talaat Bey, then Minister of the Interior, now Grand Vizier, to epitomize Turkey for me. He is a man of the plainest of people. When the Turkish revolution of 1908 came Talaat was earning 150 francs a month as a telegraph operator in Salonica. He saw his chance, and he and Dame Opportunity have been great friends ever since. At that, he is not a lean bundle of nerves like Enver Pasha, his great twin in Young Turkism. He is heavy, good-natured, thick-necked, stubborn, bullet-headed, shrewd. "_Très bien, cher frère_" ("We meet on the same pavement"), he said to me in the best of Levantine French. "I can't say that this war is any too popular with some of our people. They have had enough of wars, and revolutions, and trouble, and taxes, and exploitation by _concessionnaires_, and all that sort of thing. I suppose I would feel the same way about it were I a Greek or an Armenian. But I am Turk. We Turks felt that the European War would be the last of us. The Russians want Constantinople and its waterways. The Italians want Cilicia, forgetting entirely that the Greeks have priority in claim. I suppose Thrace would have gone to the Bulgars when lot was cast for the shreds of the mantle of the Osmanli, and Great Britain would have taken what was left, which would have been not so little. "When a man is up against that he does the best he can. That's what we are doing. It's a mighty effort, _cher frère_, but there is no way out. We Turks are not ready yet to bow to the audience. We would still remain in the play awhile. And we are willing to play accordingly. We have all confidence in the Germans. Some people don't like them. They are terrible competitors, I have been told. So far we have not done so poorly with them. We have abolished the capitulations. That is something for a start. When this war is over we hope to be more the masters of the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles than we have been since the days of Grand Vizier Köprülü. It'll be a hard row to hoe before the end is reached. But we will come out on top. After that we and the Germans will try to make something of our natural resources. We will build railroads and factories, irrigate wherever possible, and establish the finest agricultural schools to be found anywhere. But we will see to it that Turkey is developed for the benefit of the Ottoman. Tobacco monopolies and foreign public-debt administrations we hope to banish." Such is the aim of the Turk. To speak of mass psychology in the Ottoman Empire is not possible, for the reason that it has more races than Austria-Hungary and no central personage to hold them together. The old Sultan is a myth to fully two-thirds of the Ottoman population. To the Greeks and Armenians he is no more than any other high official of the government. XIX SEX MORALITY AND WAR I have seen much comment on the increase of sexual laxness in the Central European states, owing to the influence of the war. Those who have written and spoken on the subject have, as a rule, proclaimed themselves handicapped by either prejudice or ignorance--two things which are really one. Much breath and ink has been wasted on certain steps taken by the several German and Austro-Hungarian governments for the legitimization of natural offspring by giving the mother the right to set the prefix _Frau_--Mrs.--before her maiden name. I have also run across the perfectly silly statement that the Central European governments, in allowing such women the war subsistence and pension of the legitimate widow and children, were purposely fostering that sort of illicit relations between men and women for the purpose of repeopling their states. On that point not much breath need be wasted, for the very good reason that each child is indeed welcome just now in Central Europe, and that the government's least duty is to take care of the woman and child who might ultimately have been the wife and legitimate offspring of the man who lost his life in the trenches. Sex problems are the inevitable result of all wars in which many men lose life and health. I may also say that in other belligerent countries this problem has as yet not been dealt with half so intelligently and thoroughly. Monogamy and polygamy are usually economic results rather than purely social institutions. A stay of nine months in Turkey showed me that polygamy in that country is disappearing fast, because the Turk is no longer able to support more than one wife. In the entire Bosphorus district, in which Constantinople lies and of which it is the center, there were in 1915 but seventeen Moslem households in which could be found the limit of four legitimate wives. Of the entire population of the district only seven per thousand Turks had more than one wife, so that, on the whole, legalized polygamy made a better showing in sex morality than what we of the Occident can boast of, seeing that prostitution is unknown among the Turks. That the war increased illicit sexual intercourse in Central Europe is true, nor was that increase a small one. It did not take on the proportions, however, which have been given to it, or which under the circumstances might have been looked for. In the first place, many of the slender social threads that restrain sex impulse in the modern state snapped under the strain of the war. Their place was taken by something that was closely related to the Spartan system of marriage. Free selection was practised by women whose husbands were at the front. The men did the same thing. The water on the divorce-mill took on a mighty spurt--evidence that this looseness did not always find the consent of the other party, though often his or her conduct may not have been any better. This is a case in which generalization is not permissible. The good stood beside the bad and indifferent, and reference to the subject might be dispensed with entirely were it not that public subsistence is closely related to sex morality. War takes from his home and family the man. Though the governments made some provision for those left behind, the allowance given them was never large enough to keep them as well as they had been kept by the labor of the head of the family. So long as the cost of living did not greatly increase, the efforts of the wife and older children met the situation, but all endeavor of that sort became futile when the price of food and other necessities increased twofold and even more. When that moment came the tempter had an easy time of it. From the family had also been taken much of the restraint which makes for social orderliness. The man was away from home; the young wife had seen better times. Other men came into her path, and nature is not in all cases as loyal to the marriage vows as we would believe. In many cases the mother, now unassisted by the authority of the father, was unable to keep her daughters and sons in check. War has a most detrimental effect upon the mind of the juvenile. The romance of soldiering unleashes in the adolescent male every quality which social regulation has curbed in the past, while the young woman usually discards the common sense of her advisers for the sickly sentimentalism which brass buttons on clothing cut on military lines is apt to rouse in the female mind. Soon the social fabric is rent in many places and governmental efforts at mending are hardly ever successful. We have of this an indication in the remarkable increase in juvenile delinquency which marked the course of the European War. In thousands of cases the boys of good families became thieves and burglars. Even highway robbery was not beyond them, and, odd as it may seem, nearly every murder committed in the Central states in the last three years had a lone woman of wealth for a victim and some young degenerate, male or female, as perpetrator. In the cases that came to my notice the father or husband was at the front. But apart from these more or less spontaneous failings of young men and women, there was the category of offenses in which external influence was the _causa movens_. Desperate need caused many to steal and embezzle; it caused many women to divest themselves of that self-respect which is decency and the glory of the _fille honnête_. Nothing can be so cynical as the laws of social administration. That was shown on every hand by the war, but especially did it become apparent in the gratification of the sexual appetite by that class which has nothing but money. While the father and husband was at the front, fighting for the state, and heaping the wealth of the community into the coffers of a rapacious industrial and commercial class, his daughter and wife were often corrupted by that very wealth. Nor was it always bitter want that promoted the lust of the wealthy profligate. The war had shaken the social structure to its very foundations. So great was the pressure of anxiety that the human mind began to crave for relief in abandonment, and once this had been tasted the subject would often become a confirmed "good-time" fiend. There was a certain war purveyor of whom it was said that he seduced a virgin once a week. The class he drew upon was the lowest. Most of his victims were factory-girls, and, such being the case, nobody thought much of it at a time when calamity had roused in all the worst qualities that may be wakened in the struggle for self-preservation. It was a case of the devil take the hindmost, and his Satanic Majesty did not overlook his chance. For a few days these girls would be the paramours of their masters. When, finally, they saw themselves cast off in favor of a prettier face, they would for a while frequent cafés where they would meet the officers on leave and small fry of civilians, and not long after that they did business on the street with a government license and certificate showing that they were being inspected by the authorities in the interest of public health. That was the usual career of one of these war victims. But the thing did not end there. The thousands who had grown rich on war contracts and food speculation began to tire of the very uninteresting sport of ruining factory-girls and shop-women. They reached out into those social classes in which refinement made a raid so much more delectable. To physical debauch had to be added moral and mental orgy. Taste had been stimulated to a degree where it demanded that social destruction should accompany lustful extravagance. And that only the woman of the better class could give. The gourmand became an epicure. Times favored him. What proportions this state of affairs reached may be illustrated by the "personal" advertisements carried at one time by one of Vienna's foremost newspapers, the _Tagblatt_. Throughout the week that paper would carry from forty to ninety inches, single column, of personal ads., each of them requesting a woman, seen here or there, to enter into correspondence with the advertiser for "strictly honorable" purposes. On Sundays the same paper would carry as much as two whole pages of that sort of advertising. Soon the time came when often as much as a quarter of these ads. would be inserted by women who disguised a heartrending appeal to some wretch in whatever manner they could. Emperor Charles deserves the highest credit for finally putting his foot down on that practice. The "personals" in the _Tagblatt_ began to irritate him, and one day he let it become known to the management of the publication that further insertion of that sort of matter would lead to the heavy hand of the censors being felt. That helped. After that the _Tagblatt_ ran only matrimonial advertising. Yet even that was not wholly innocuous. The daughter of a colonel was corrupted by means of it. I am glad to say that the old soldier took the law in his own hand. He looked up the man who had seduced the young woman and shot him dead in his tracks. The government had good sense enough to dispose of the case by having the colonel make a report. To my own attention came, in Budapest, the case of a fourteen-year-old girl who had been sold by her own mother to a rich manufacturer. The woman had advertised in a Budapest newspaper that did business along the lines of the Vienna _Tagblatt_. The girl knew nothing of it, of course. There was a sequel in court, and during the testimony the woman said that she had sold her daughter to the manufacturer in order to get the money she needed to keep herself and her other children. Josephus mentions in his _Wars of the Jews_ how a woman of Jerusalem killed, then cooked and ate, her own child, because the robbers had taken everything from her, and, rather than see the child starve, she killed it. He also mentions that the robbers left the house horror-struck. The war purveyor and food shark did not always have that much feeling left in them. Poor little Margit! When my attention was drawn to her she was a waitress in a café in Budapest, and her patrons used to give her an extra _filler_ or two in order that she might not have to do on her own account what she had been obliged to suffer at the behest of her raven mother. As I heard the story, the manufacturer got off with a fine, and the mother of Margit was just then sorting rags in a cellar, with tuberculosis wasting her lungs. Society at war is a most peculiar animal--it is anarchy without the safeguards of that anarchy which fires the mind of the idealist; for that system and its free love would make the buying of woman impossible. But there were sorts of sexual looseness that were not quite so sordid, which at least had the excuse of having natural causes as their background. Rendered irresponsible by sexual desire and the monotony of a poverty-stricken existence, many of the younger women whose husbands were in the army started liaisons, _Verhältnisse_, as they are called in German, with such men as were available. It speaks well for the openness of mind of some husbands that they did not resent this. I happen to know of a case in which a man at the front charged a friend to visit his wife. After I learned of this I came to understand that progress, called civilization, is indeed a very odd thing. The Spartans when at war used to do the same thing, and it was the practice of commanders to send home young men of physical perfection in order that the women should beget well-developed children. The offspring was later known as _partheniæ_--of the virgin born. But the laws of the Spartans favored an intelligent application of this principle, while in Central Europe no regulation of that sort could be attempted. An effort was made by the several governments to check this tendency toward social dissolution. For the first time in many years the police raided hotels. Now and then offenders were heavily fined. But authorities which in the interest of public health had licensed certain women were prone to be open-minded to practices due to the war. It was realized that the times were such that latitude had to be given; in the end it was felt that just now it did not matter how children were born. The state began to assume what had formerly been the duty of the father and proceeded with more vigor than ever against the malpractice of physicians. One of them, convicted on the charge of abortion, was given a two-year sentence of penal servitude. It cannot be said, however, that the woman who had made up her mind to remain a loyal wife or innocent was not given ample protection. The state was interested in the production of children, but had little patience with illicit sexual intercourse that did not result in this. There is the theory that the child whose father does not take some loving interest in the mother is not of as much value as that which has been born in the "wedlock" of love. With that in view, the government took what precaution there was possible. The profligate and _roué_ were given a great deal of attention, though little good came of this, since the times favored them entirely too much. But there is no doubt that the eyes of the law saw where they could see. Food-lines were as a rule attended by policemen, whose duty it was to maintain order and keep off the human hyenas who were in the habit of loitering about these lines for the purpose of picking out women. That was well enough. But the policeman could not see these women home, nor prevent the man from surveying the crowd, making his selection, and later forcing his attentions upon the woman. With the need for food and clothing always pressing, the ground was generally well prepared, and the public was inclined to be lenient in such matters anyway--as "war" publics have a knack of doing. I had scraped up acquaintances with a number of policemen in the district in which I lived. Most of them I had met in connection with my investigation of food-line matters. They were all very fine fellows, and red blood rather than red tape was in their veins. The suffering of the women in the food-lines had made these men more human than is usual in their business. "Another one of them has gone to the bad," said one of the policemen to me one day, as he pointed out to me discreetly a rather pretty young woman who had come for her ration of potatoes. "A fellow, who seems rather well-to-do, has been trailing her to and from this store for almost two weeks. I had my eye on him, and would have nabbed him quick enough had he ever spoken to the woman while in the line. Well, three days ago I saw the two of them together in the Schwarzenberg Café. The damage is done now, I suppose. You will notice that she has on a new pair of shoes. She must have paid for them at least one hundred and ten crowns." I suggested that the shoes were not necessarily proof that the woman had done wrong. "Under the circumstances they are," said the policeman. "Yesterday I managed to talk to the woman. She is the wife of a reservist who is now on the Italian front. The government gives her a subsistence of one hundred and twenty crowns a month. She has no other means. With two little children to take care of, that allowance wouldn't pay for shoes of that sort. It's too bad. She is the second one in this food-line this month who has done that." Shortly afterward I learned of the case of a woman who had sold herself in order to provide food and fuel for her two children. She was the widow of a reserve officer who had fallen in Galicia. Her own pension amounted to one hundred and ten crowns a month, and for the support of the children she was allowed another one hundred crowns, I believe. The sum was entirely too small to keep the three, being the equivalent of, roughly, twenty-seven dollars, depreciation of the Austro-Hungarian currency considered. At that time life in Vienna was as costly as it is normally in the United States. While her husband had been alive the woman had led a very comfortable life. She had kept a servant and lived in a good apartment in the Third Municipal District. The thing that struck me in her case was that she had not taken the step before. It is extremely difficult to be virtuous on twenty-seven dollars a month when one has not known need before. The many cases of that sort which I could cite would merely repeat themselves. I will make mention, however, of one which is due to what may be termed the psychology of the mass in war. In this instance it was not want that was responsible. Aggregates involved in war seem to sense instinctively that the violence of arms may draw in its wake social dissolution. The pathology of society is affected by that in much the same manner as is evident in other organisms when a change is imminent or pending. A period of relaxation sets in, which in the case of the human aggregate manifests itself in sexual looseness. In various parts of Serbia I had had occasion to notice that the women gave themselves readily to the invading soldiers. In the Austrian capital I ran into the same thing, though there was at that time no danger of invasion. Time lying heavy on my hands when I was not at a front, or occupied with some political situation in one of the Central European seats of government, I decided to pass some of it by taking piano lessons. I made the necessary arrangements with a master of the instrument near the Kärntner Ring. On the three half-hours a week which I took from the _maestro_ I was preceded on two by a pretty young woman greatly gifted musically. Her parents were well off, so that it was not a question of getting a "good time" in the only manner possible. After a while the young woman failed to appear for her lessons. The _Tonmeister_ wanted to know the reason for this. Confused and conflicting answers being all he received, he made up his mind that something was wrong. The poor old man had dealt with nothing but music all his life, and was delightfully ignorant of the ways of the world. He asked my advice. Should he inform the parents of the student? After I had ascertained that his responsibility as teacher was not weighted by friendship or even acquaintance with the girl's family, I suggested that he confine himself to his proper province by notifying the student that failure in the future to put in appearance at her hour would result in a report of that and past delinquencies to the parents. A very emotional interview between teacher and student resulted. By this time the girl had realized the folly of her conduct and seemed truly repentant. Being much attached to the old teacher, she made a clean breast of it. Her excuse was most interesting. "You see, dear master," she said, "these are war times. I thought that it wouldn't matter much. If the Russians came to Vienna it might happen anyway." There is used in the German army a word that comprises every rule of sex conduct to which the soldier is subject, or ought to be--_Manneszucht_--the moral discipline of the man. Infraction of this rule is severely punished in all cases, though the ordinary soldier may under it cohabit with a woman by her consent. To the officer this privilege is not given, however, it being assumed that as the instrument of military discipline he must be proof against many demands of nature and be in full control of himself at all times. The German officer who would violate a woman in an occupied territory fares badly, and the code forbids that he enter into liaison with a woman of the enemy. Nor may he visit the army brothels which now and then are established by the authorities. I do not mean to infer that the German army officer always and invariably adheres to these rules. But he does this generally. The abstinence thus practised reflects itself in that unqualified devotion to duty for which the German officer is deservedly famous. It tends to make of him, for military purposes, a sort of superman. He comes to regard the curb he sets upon himself as entitling him to despise the weaklings who satisfy their desires. In the course of time he extended the fine contempt that comes from this to his allied brothers-in-arms in Austria and Hungary, who were deplorably lax in that respect, despite the regulations. Though I do not especially deal with the latter subject, I must mention it here as a preamble to a certain experience I had one night in Trieste. The experience, on the other hand, showed to what extent war may influence the conduct of men whose station and opportunities might cause one to believe that they were above surrendering to sexual laxness. In the "Hall" of the Hotel Excelsior of Trieste were sitting at café tables some sixty Austro-Hungarian officers from the Isonzo front who on that day had been furloughed from the trenches for a certain purpose. At the tables sat also a fourscore of women who for the time being were the sweethearts of the officers. High revelry was on. The windows of the room, with all others along the Trieste water-front, had been well blinded, so that no beam of light fell into the inky blackness without through which a fierce _borea_--northern wind--was just then driving a veritable deluge. The room was well heated and lighted. I had on that very day walked off a sector on the Carso plateau, and found a most pleasant contrast between the cold and muddy trenches and the "Hall." It was exceedingly snug in the place. And there was the inevitable gipsy music. Across the bay, from Montfalcone, came the sound of an Italian night drumfire, and in the room popped the bottle of Paluguay champagne--the French products being just then hard to get. There were three other war correspondents in the party. An Austrian general-staff man was in charge. The officer was of the strait-laced sort and did not sanction the conduct of his colleagues. But then he was at headquarters at Adelsberg and could go to Vienna almost as often as he liked. The others were poor devils who had been sitting in the Carso trenches for months and had now come to Trieste to have a good time, even if that meant that next morning the pay of several months would be in the pocket of the hotel manager and in the hands of some good-looking Italo-Croat woman. It was not long before we had at our table some of the "ladies." One of the war correspondents had taken it upon himself to provide us with company. From that company I learned what the frame of mind of the officers was. After all, that attitude was simple enough. Each day might be the last, and why not enjoy life to-day when to-morrow there might be a burial without coffin, without anything except the regrets of comrades? What was etiquette under such circumstances? The champagne helped them to forget, and the women, though their conversation might be discouragingly banal, were, after all, members of the other sex. One of the women was able to take a very intelligent survey of the situation. She was capable of sensing real sympathy for these men. I learned that she had lost her husband in the war. It was the same old story. She had found the small pension for herself and the allowance for her boy entirely insufficient, was not minded to do poorly paid hard work, and had concluded that it was easy for the well-to-do to be decent. The poor had to do the best they could in these days of high prices. Out on the Carso the bombardment progressed, satisfactorily, I presume, as the next official _communiqué_ of the Italian government would say. The champagne bottles continued to pop. Men and women drank to one another's good health, the former oblivious, for the time being, that this might be the last good time they would ever enjoy. It strikes me that not much fault can be found with this, so long as we are human enough to allow those whom we are about to execute for the commission of some crime to choose their last breakfast--or is it supper? To be detailed into the advanced trenches was generally no better than to be sentenced to death. Only those who have been constantly threatened by the dangers of war can realize what state of mind these men were in. Nothing mattered any more, and, nothing being really important, the pleasures of the flesh were everything. It was so with the little music student I have mentioned. I could not reach a harsh judgment in either case, despite the picture of Prussian _Manneszucht_ before my eyes. At the same time, I am not ignorant of the fact that sleek communities living in peace and plenty cannot be expected to understand the moral disintegration which the dangers of war had wrought in this instance. I made the acquaintance of similar conditions in Berlin and other cities of the Central states. Being a matter-of-fact individual, I cannot say that they shocked me. The relations of cause and effect cannot be explained away, much as we may wish to do it. With some fourteen million men taken away from their families, whose sole support they were in the vast majority of cases, nothing else was to be expected. It speaks well for mankind in general that the resulting conditions were not worse. The responsibility involved falls rather upon those who brought on the war than upon the men and women who transgressed. And that responsibility was not shirked in the Central states. Before the war broke out there had already been held very liberal views on illegitimacy. The children of Hagar were no longer ostracized by the public, as, for instance, they are in the United States and other countries where social "justice" is still visited upon those whose misfortune it is to have been born out of wedlock. In Germany and Austria-Hungary it was held that a man is a man for all that. Small wonder, then, that during the winter of 1916, when the crop of "war" babies was unusually large--formed, in fact, more than 10 per cent. of the increase in population--the several Central European governments should decide to give such children and their mothers the allowances provided for the wives and widows of soldiers and their children. The German state governments, that of Prussia excepted, also abolished the "illegitimate" birth certificate and gave the unwed soldier wife or widow the right to use the designation _Frau_--Mistress--instead of, as heretofore, _Fräulein_, or Miss. This measure was a fine example of humaneness, seeing that otherwise many thousands of mothers of "war" babies would have been obliged to go through life with the stigma of illegitimacy branding both woman and child. It is somewhat typical of Prussia that its government should be willing to support illegitimate "war" babies and their mothers and yet deny them the comforts of social recognition, when their number was no less than two hundred thousand. There came up, in connection with this legislation, the question of whether the offspring of unmarried women whose paramours were not in the military service should receive the same liberal treatment. A great deal of opposition was voiced by the clergy and other conservative elements. It was argued that extension of this benefit to all would encourage a general recourse to free love. But the legislators and governments were less short-sighted. The legitimizing acts were so framed that they included all children, no matter who their fathers were. It was held that it would be absurd to expect the millions of women whom the war had robbed of their husbands, or the chance of getting one, to lead a life of celibacy. Nature would assert itself, and if the subject was not now dealt with in a rational manner, it would have to be disposed of later when conditions might be less favorable. There were certain examples to be recalled. At the conclusion of the Thirty Years' War the South German states, being the hardest hit in losses of male population, adopted laws according to which any man with the necessary means could legitimately admit into his house as many women as he cared to support. Though well-intentioned, the law shared every defect which emergency legislation is apt to be afflicted with. The men able to support more than one wife were generally advanced in years, so that the very condition which the state had hoped to meet gave rise to chaos. It had not been the intention to afford the pleasures of the seraglio to the wealthy, but to take the best possible account of a social emergency. This was borne in mind when the Central states governments dealt with a similar condition in 1916, the factors of which were these: There had been killed in action, crippled for life, and incapacitated by disease nearly five million men who had gone to the fronts in the very prime of life. That meant a serious loss to a community--considering Germany and Austria-Hungary a single unit in this respect--which then had approximately twenty million women in the state of puberty. Reduced to statistics, the situation was that there were only four men of marriageable age for every five women. It was estimated at the time that before the war was over these odds would go to three to five. Recent casualty statistics show that this stage has been nearly reached. I must make reference here to the fact that the normal and healthy woman finds life with the physically impaired man a torture. A good many cases of that sort have come to my attention. One of them is so typical of all others that I will give its details. At a certain Berlin drawing-room I made the acquaintance of a charming young woman of the better class. I may say that she is a writer of considerable merit. A few months before the outbreak of the war she had married a professional man of quality. When the mobilization came he was drafted as an officer of the reserve. For months at a time the two did not see each other, and when finally the man returned home for good one leg had been amputated at the knee and the other a little above the ankle. The woman did what most women would do under the circumstances. She received the man with open arms and nursed him back to complete recovery. Soon it was evident that all was not well with the relations of the two. The woman tried to forget that her husband was a cripple for life. But the harder she tried the more grew a feeling of repulsion for the man. Finally, she decided to live alone. It would be very simple to label the woman a heartless creature. But it would be quite as unjust. The foes of even that small portion of realism which the most logical of us are able to identify may be inclined to take the stand that sex has little to do with what is called love. And yet in the healthy race it forms the social _force majeure_. It is not for me to decide whether the woman in question did well in leaving the man. After all, that is her own affair--so much more her own affair since the man, as yet not reconciled to his great misfortune, began to plague her with most vicious outbreaks of jealousy, when as yet he had no reason for it. The man is to be pitied by all, and unless he is able to calm his mind with the solace that comes from philosophical temperament, it would have been far better were he among the dead. He may in the end find another mate; but, seen from the angle of natural law, it must be doubted that the pity, which would have to be the great factor in such a love, would in any degree be as valuable as the sexual instinct which caused the other woman to go her own ways. Idealism and practice are always two different things. The former is the star that guides the craft, while practice is the storm-tossed sea. More than fifty thousand Russian prisoners-of-war petitioned the Austrian government to be admitted to citizenship in the country that held them captive. Many of these men had been sent into the rural districts to assist the farmers. Others were busy around the cities. They had come to be reconciled with their lot, had acquired a fair working knowledge of the language, and association with the women had led to the usual results. The crop of "war" babies increased. The Russians were willing to marry these women, but under the law could not do so. Hence the petition for admission to the usual civil rights. The Austrian government recognized the situation, but in the absence of the necessary legislative authority could do nothing to admit the Russian to Austrian _Staatsangehörigkeit_. Yet it was eager to do that. The new blood was needed. Travel about the country has often brought to my attention that in certain districts intermarriage for centuries had led to degeneration. Goiter, one of the first signals of warning that new blood must be infused in the race, was prevalent. Scientists had drawn attention to this long before the war. But there was nothing that could be done. The Russian prisoners-of-war came to serve as the solution of the problem. Their offspring were unusually robust, and some cranium measurements that were made showed that the children were of the best type mentally. A state which was losing men at a frightful rate every day could not be expected to view this increase in population with alarm. So long as the mothers were Austrian all was well from the political point of view, since it is the mother usually who rears the patriot. The Russians, moreover, soon grew fond of the institutions of Austria, and gave return to their own people hardly any thought. Conversation with many of them demonstrated that, on the contrary, they were not anxious to go home. Russia was then still the absolute autocracy, and these men were not minded to exchange the liberal government of Austria for the despotism they knew. I may state here that the Austrian government, serving in this instance as the example of all others in Central Europe, had done its level best to promote this very thing. On several trips to prison camps I visited the schools in which the Russian prisoners were being taught German. Thousands of the men were thus given their first chance to read and write, and to the more intelligent was apparent the irony of fate that caused them to read and write German instead of their own language. No more deliberate attempt to win friends could have been devised and executed. Small wonder that on one occasion a Russian working detachment employed in road-making on the Italian front rushed to the assistance of the Austrians who were being overwhelmed, and cut down the last of their allies with their spades and picks. To what extent Russian blood has been infused in the rural population of Austria and Hungary is at present entirely a matter of conjecture. The same applies to Germany, though I must state that in this case the number cannot be so great. Dreary as the picture is, it is not without its brighter spots. The mixture of blood which has occurred in many of these countries will improve the human stock. And who would care to gainsay that governments are not in the habit of looking at populations from that angle--the angle of stock? None will admit it, of course, they may not even be conscious of the fact that they hold this view. But so long as governments are interested more in quantity than in quality of propagation they cannot easily clear themselves of the suspicion. I am not at all sure that it is not better thus. I have so far treated the post-bellum aspect of sex morality entirely from the position of the man. Women will ask the question: What do the women think of it? That depends somewhat on conditions and circumstances. "When one is forty, one is satisfied with being _madame_," said a Hungarian lady to me once, when the subject had been discussed. She meant that the woman of forty was content with being the head of a household. Such an attitude takes a breadth of view altogether unknown in the Anglo-Saxon world. I found it often in Central Europe, especially in Austria, where one day were pointed out to me two couples who not so very long before had changed mates by mutual consent on the part of all four concerned. One of the husbands is a rich banker, and the other, his best friend by the way, is also well off. The double pair go to the same café, sit at the same table, and their friends think nothing of it. They are regularly divorced and married, of course. While elsewhere in Central Europe the same easy view is not taken, it is a fact, nevertheless, that nowhere much puritanical strait-lacedness is to be encountered. I happen to know a certain successful diplomat who closed both eyes to his wife's infatuation for a young naval officer. The wife was young and her husband was past middle age. Rather than lose the woman and have a scandal besides, the diplomatist applied to himself what he had so often applied to others--the deception there is in self-restraint. The three of them got along well together. Often I was the fourth at table. While the diplomatist and I would smoke our cigars and sip our coffee, the two would sit side by side on the ottoman and hold intimate converse. But in Europe it is considered tactless to speak of such matters. There will be heartache, of course. Many a good woman will find herself displaced by a younger one. But that will not be without some compensation. The husband who would desert his mate because the charms of youth have flown may not be worth keeping. It may even be an act of mercy that he has rekindled his affection at some other shrine. The forsaken wife may have grown very weary herself of the life conjugal. In Protestant Germany the readjustment will be easier than in Catholic Austria and Hungary. In the latter countries much double-living will result, and that means that more women will have to sacrifice more self-respect. That is the worst part of it. But, again, the _légère_ views of Central Europe come into play. So long as the man has sense enough to keep his "war" wife in the background, nobody will take offense, and the legal wife may not mind. Officially, the paramour will not exist. As soon as she has children she will be a "Mrs." in her own right, and I suppose that many will not wait that long before changing "_Fräulein_" into "_Frau_." There is no doubt that the condition is unjust to two women at the same time. But there seems to be no escape from it. Ministers of the gospel have already roundly condemned what seeming sanction the government has given to illicit intercourse. But these good men are theorists, while the government is practical--practical for the reason that a great social problem has to be met in the best manner possible. It is far better to give the thing such aspects of decency as is possible rather than to encourage the growth of the social evil into proportions that might for all time impair the health of the race. Students of the social evil generally agree, throughout Europe at least, that its prime causes are economic. Communities in which the man, by reason of small income, is not able to establish a household early in life have not only the greatest number of loose women, but also the greatest number of free-living bachelors. The problem, then, has an economic side. In the instance here under scrutiny, the economic side is that more women than ever before must earn their own living in Central Europe to-day. The women will readily do that, so long as society will not entirely deny them the company of the man or place upon such company the stigma that generally attaches to it. Without such privileges many of these women--nature decrees ironically that they should be physically the best of the race--would take to vice in such numbers that society would lose more by being ungenerous than by taking a common-sense view of the problem it has to face. But logic in such matters is no balm of Gilead. The young married woman will be able to compete with the "surplus"; the older ones, I fear, will not. To them the war will be the thing of the hour, long after the grass has grown over the trenches, long after the work of reconstruction shall have healed the economic wounds. There will be many who can truly say, "I lost my husband in the war." And the worst of it is that they will not be able to say this with the tenderness that was in the heart at the departure for the field of battle. XX WAR LOANS AND ECONOMY During the last three years and a half the political economy of Germany and her allies has strongly resembled that in vogue among certain South Sea Islanders, who are supposed to make a living by taking in one another's washing. The same money has been making the rounds on one of the oddest economic whirligigs mankind has so far seen. The war has been carried on by means of funds derived mostly from war loans. By means of them Germany has so far raised, roughly, $19,800,000,000, and Austria-Hungary $8,600,000,000, making a total of $28,400,000,000. In addition to that the two countries have spent on the war about $2,300,000,000 derived from other sources--taxation, indemnities levied in occupied territories, and property here and there confiscated. Within my scope, however, lie only the war loans. The interest on the German war loans so far made amounts to $762,000,000 per year. To the German public debts the loans have added $293 per capita, or $1,082 for each producer in a population which the war has reduced to about 67,500,000 fit individuals. Each wage-earner in Germany will in the future carry a tax burden which in addition to all other moneys needed by the government will be weighted every year by $43.28 interest on the present war loans. Austria-Hungary's load of interest on war loans will amount to $344,000,000 annually. The burden is $204 per capita, or $816 for each wage-earner, out of a population which war losses have cut down to about 42,200,000. The annual interest each Austro-Hungarian breadwinner will have to pay on the war loans is $32.64, and in addition he must provide the revenues which his governments will need to operate. This means, of course, that the cry for bread will be heard long after the guns thunder no more. It must be borne in mind that the average yearly income of the wage-earner was a scant $460 in Germany, and $390 in Austria-Hungary. The war loan interest so far in sight will constitute about 9.3 per cent. and 8.2 per cent. respectively--no small burden when it is considered that all other revenues needed by the government must be added to this. But the bitter cup of economic losses due to the war is by no means full with these figures. The Germans have so far lost, killed in action and dead of wounds, fully 1,500,000 able-bodied producers, and have at this time to care for about 900,000 men, of whom one half is totally incapacitated and the other half partly so. The Austro-Hungarian figures are 650,000 men dead, and 380,000 totally or partly crippled. In other words, Germany has lost 2,300,000 able-bodied men, and Austria-Hungary 1,030,000. It may well be said that those dead can no longer figure in the economic scheme, because they consume no longer. On the other hand, each of these men had another twenty years of useful life before him. This long period of production has now been lost, and two decades must elapse before the Central states will again have as many producers as they had in 1914. Their propagation has also been lost, though, with the women as strong numerically as before, this loss will probably have been made good within ten years. Before treating further of the effects of war loans and their influence upon the body politic, I will examine here how these loans were made, in what manner they were applied, and what the system of economy was to which the transaction gave birth. The figures I have cited may well suggest the question: How was it possible under such conditions to make war loans? The superficial reply to that would be: By raising the money in the country--inducing the people to subscribe to the loans. The reply has no value, since it does not disclose how the necessary money was made available. The funds invested in the war loans were a part of the national capital, not a portion of the national wealth, the term wealth standing for the natural resources of a community. But capital is the surplus of production, and production results only from applying labor to natural resources; for instance, by tilling the soil, mining coal and ore, and engaging in the conversion of the less useful into the more useful, as is done in industry. A surplus of production is possible only, however, when consumption falls below production, for that which is left over of the thing produced makes the surplus. This surplus is capital. Incomplete figures which I was able to gather in 1916 showed that before the war the average wage-earner of Central Europe had produced and consumed in a ratio of 55 against 48, so far as the scale of pay and cost-of-living showed. The difference of 7 points represented the amount of money he could save if he wanted to do that. The 7 points, then, were the actual increase in the national capital. In the winter of 1916-17 the figures had undergone a remarkable change. Wages had been increased to 70 points, while the cost of food had risen to 115 points as against 48 formerly. In other words, while the wage-earner was getting 15 points more for his labor, he was paying 67 points more for his food and the necessities of life. The place of the 7 positives in capital production had been taken by 45 negatives, which meant that the national capital of Central Europe had fallen below static, the point where neither increase nor reduction takes place, by 38 points. The national capital had been decreased 38 per cent., therefore. That much of all present and former surplus production of the two states had been used up in the pursuit of the war. Governments deem it a safe policy to issue in times of financial stress three times as much paper currency as they have bullion in the vaults. One million in gold makes three millions in paper with that formula. This had been done in Germany and Austria-Hungary to quite an extent by the end of 1916. For every million of gold in the vaults there was a million of _bona fide_ paper money. That was well enough. The currency system of the United States adheres to that principle in times of peace even. But upon the same million of metal there had been heaped other paper currency which carried the promise of the government that on the given date it would be redeemed for gold or its equivalent. This method of national finance is known as inflation. It was this inflation that caused the wage-earner to show in his own little budget a deficit of 38 points. Why the government should have inflated its currency in that manner is not so difficult to understand as it may seem. From its own point of view, the wage-earner had to be lashed into greater effort if the moneys needed for the war were to be available and if the food and material consumed by the army were to be produced. The more the consumer had to pay for what he required to sustain life the harder he had to work. His deficit of 38 points was the yoke under which he labored for the army in the field, which was consuming without producing anything. These 38 points were only 17 points less than the 55 which had represented his income before the war--in round terms every two wage-earners in Central Europe were supporting in food, clothing, munition, and ammunition a soldier at the front. It could not be otherwise since two political aggregates having then approximately, with the women included, twenty-five million wage-earners, were keeping under arms about ten million soldiers, and were meanwhile providing the heavy profits made by the war purveyors. Though the 38 points were a deficit, the producer-consumer was not allowed to look at them in that manner. It was his task to cover this deficit. This he did by paying more for his food and necessities, through a channel which the inflated currency had filled with water in the familiar stock-jobbing phrase. The middlemen who owned the barges in the channel were taxed by the government on their war profits, but enough was left them to preserve interest in the scheme of war economy, a friendly act which the middlemen reciprocated by generous subscriptions to the war loans. The first, second, and third war loans in Central Europe were subscribed to with much, though later dwindling, enthusiasm. Patriotism had a great deal to do with their success. Real money was required by the government, moreover. Bank accounts, government securities, sound commercial paper, and savings deposits were turned over. The loans made later were devoid of many of these features. Those who bought war-loan certificates did so because it was necessary for one reason or another, and many of the war bonds obtained in the first loans were converted. The war and all that pertained to it was now entirely a matter of business with those who could subscribe. The poor were tired of any aspect of war. The government could not prevent their being tired, but it could see to it that indirectly the masses supported the war policy, no matter what they thought. That was not difficult. The high cost of living took from the producer-consumer what the government needed, and there is no system of discipline that is quite so efficacious as keeping a man's nose to the grindstone. Sleek bankers used to inform me that there was much prosperity in the country. There was from their point of view. The margin between the wages paid the producer and the prices asked of the consumer was great enough to satisfy the interested parties, government and middleman alike. The war loans had hardly been closed when a good share of them was again in circulation. The whirligig of war economy was spinning lustily, and there was no danger of things going wrong so long as the producer-consumer was kept well in hand. How the war loans made the rounds is quite interesting. It is the closest approach to perpetual motion I have come across. Since the Central states could buy in foreign countries only by means of special trade agreements that called for an exchange in commodities rather than for the medium of exchange, the money raised by the war loans remained within the realm. Much of it went to makers of arms and ammunition, of course. In their case a million marks--I am using this small amount as a unit only--would lead to the following results: To the manufacturer would go 60 per cent. of the total and to labor 40. Subdivided these shares paid for raw material, plant investment, operation expenses, and profits so large that the government could impose a tax of 75 per cent. without making it impossible for the manufacturer to subscribe to the next loan. Labor, on the other hand, found itself barely able to sustain life, and if a few marks were saved by some, little or nothing could be bought for them. The man who was earning 70 marks a week, instead of 55, was paying for his food and necessities 115 instead of 48 marks--an economic incongruity at first glance, but perfectly feasible so long as those affected could be induced to live on about 85 per cent. of the ration needed to properly nourish the body, and had given up entirely the comforts of life. That scheme left him hope for better times as the only comfort. No matter how often the money of the war loans rushed through his hands, none of it ever stuck to them. Before long it was plain that in this fashion the Central Powers could keep up the war forever. Their financial standing in foreign countries need not worry them so long as they could not buy commodities in them. To be sure, the public debt was increasing rapidly, but the very people to whom the government owed money were responsible for that money. If bankruptcy came to the state they would be the losers, and that responsibility increased as their wealth increased. Capital and government became a co-operative organization, and both of them exploited the producer-consumer, by giving him as little for his labor as he would take and charging him as much for the necessities of life as he would stand for--and that was much. When now and then it seemed necessary to placate the producer-consumer, he would be told that in the interest of the Fatherland the government was compelled to do what it did. But the necessity for this came not often. The small man was generally overjoyed when the government was able to announce that the war loan had been a success or had been over-subscribed. That is all he wanted to know, so long as he was not required to go to the front. The success of the war loan meant that he would have work--and live to see the end of a war which everybody claimed had been forced upon the state. It is certain that the Central states governments would have been bankrupt long ago had they been able to buy in the foreign market _ad libitum_, though in that case the foreign trade connections would have also seen to it that war loans were made to the Germans and Austro-Hungarians. There is no doubt at all that a Germany permitted to buy abroad would have later been less able to organize herself as efficiently economically as she did when her financial strength was still unimpaired for internal purposes. To this extent the swift descent of the British blockade is one of the gravest errors booked on the debit side of the Entente's politico-military ledger. Absolutely nothing was gained in a military sense by shutting the import door of the Central states. Far-seeing statesmen would have allowed Germany to import all she wanted and would then have seen to it that her exports were kept to a minimum, so far as the shortage of man-power in the country did not automatically bring about that result. As it was, the Central states supplanted and substituted right and left, made new uses of their own natural resources, and fitted themselves for the long siege at a time when doing that was still easy. The British blockade, if applied in the winter of 1915-16, would have had effects it could not hope to attain in the winter of 1914-15, when almost any rational being knew that to starve out the Central states was not to be thought of. The Central states would have continued to live very much as before, and by the end of 1915 the governments would have been obliged to shut down on imports of food for the civilian population if the gold reserve was not to be exhausted completely, as would have been the case if exports could not balance imports to any extent. Production and consumption would then not have been as well organized as they were under the auspices of the premature blockade, and the downfall for which the Entente has until now vainly hoped, and which will remain the greatest _spes fallax_ of all time, would then have surely come. That bolt was shot too soon by Great Britain. Though the Central governments were fully aware of this, as some of their officials admitted to me, they had no reason to bring this to the attention of their publics or the world. The British _Aushungerungspolitik_--policy of starvation--was the most potent argument the Central governments had to present to their war-tired people. What the German air raids on London accomplished in promoting the British war spirit the blockade of the Central states effected in the German Empire and Austria-Hungary. In a war of such dimensions it was foolish to thus drive the governed into the arms of their governors. The financial condition of the Central European states to-day is as sound as that of the Entente states. That would not be true if any great share of the Central European war loans had been raised in foreign countries. But, as I have shown, this was not done. That the war debt is great is a fact. The government's creditors are all in the country, however, and if need be it can set against them the tax-tired multitude. For that there will be no necessity. The depreciation of the currency has automatically reduced by as much as 25 per cent. on an average all state indebtedness, in so far as capital is a lien against the community's natural resources and labor. But of this more will be said at the proper time. Early in the summer of 1917 the German and Austro-Hungarian governments were occupied with the question to what extent it would be possible to lighten the burden of the taxpayer. Nothing came of it for the reason that finally it was concluded that the time for financial reorganization was not yet come. Inflated money and high prices would still have to be used to keep the producer at maximum effort and prevent his consuming more than could be permitted. But the methods of financial reorganization, or we may call it reconstruction, that were discussed are none the less interesting. They involved a reduction of the interest which the government has to pay on war loans, as well as a lightening of the war-loan burden. It was tentatively proposed to either cut into half the rate of interest or to reduce by one-half the principal. One would think that the Central European bankers would oppose such a step. They did not, however. For the sake of pre-war loans and investments, these men must favor a rehabilitation of the currency, and nothing would do that as effectively as a reduction of the war debt. The mark and crown buy to-day from one-third to one-half what they bought in 1914. With the war debt cut down to one-half they would buy from 60 to 75 per cent. what they bought in that year. As a measure of socio-economic justice, if there be such a thing, the reconstruction proposed would appeal to all who invested money before the outbreak of the war. These people put up money at the rate of 100, while the interest they are getting to-day is worth from 33 to 50. The man who in 1914 invested 100,000 marks would indeed get back 100,000 marks. The trouble is that the mark has depreciated in purchasing power, so that his capital has shrunk to 33,000 or 50,000 marks, as the case may be. War does not only mortgage the future of a nation, but it also has the knack of tearing down the past. Tired of hotel life, I had made up my mind in Vienna to find private quarters. In the end I found what I wanted. I ought to have been satisfied with my lodging, seeing that it was the comfortable home of the widow of a former professor of the Vienna university. I never experienced such mixed feelings in my life as when I discussed terms with the woman. She was a person of breeding and tact and considerable false pride. How much did I want to pay? She did not know what she ought to ask. She had never rented rooms before. We arrived at an understanding. I moved into the well-furnished flat and the old lady into her kitchen, where she lived and cooked and slept, together with a parrot, until I turned over to her the bedroom and occupied the couch in the parlor. Before the war the woman had fared better. She was getting a small pension and had a little capital. The income had been large enough to give her a servant. When I moved in, the servant was gone long ago, and I suspect that since then there had been days when the old lady did not have enough to eat. Still, she was getting the same pension and her little capital was bringing the same interest. The difficulty was that the income bought but a third of what it had formerly secured. There were thousands of such cases, involving pensioners, widows, and orphans. In their case the world had not only stood still, but it had actually gone backward. The inflated currency left them stranded, and the worst of it was that taxes were growing with every day. The government was levying tribute on the basis of the inflated money. These people had to pay it with coin that was 100 so far as they were concerned. Real-estate owners were in no better position. The moratorium prevented them from increasing rents, which step had to be taken in the interest of the families of the men at the front. Taxes kept growing, however, and when the income from rent houses was all a person had there was nothing to do but stint. With the currency as low as it was, nobody cared to sell real property of course. It was nothing unusual to see the small rent-house owner act as his own janitor. While the war loans and government contracts were making some immensely rich, thousands of the middle class were being beggared. But there is nothing extraordinary in this. The socio-economic structure may be likened to a container that holds the national wealth. For purposes of its own the government had watered the contents of the bucket and now all had to take from it the thinned gruel. That thousands of aged men and women had to suffer from this could make little impression on governments that were sacrificing daily the lives and health of able-bodied producers on the battle-fields--one of whom was of greater economic value to the state than a dozen of those who were content to spend their life on small incomes without working. XXI THE AFTERMATH In Cæsar's time the pound of beef at Rome cost 1¼ American cents. At the end of the thirteenth century it was 2½ cents, due largely to the influence of the Crusades. In a Vienna library there is an old economic work which contains a decree of the Imperial German government at Vienna fixing the price of a pound of beef, in 1645, at 10 pfennige, or 2¼ American cents. When peace followed the Seven Years' War the pound of beef at Berlin was sold at 4 cents American. During the Napoleonic wars it went up to 6½ cents, and when the Franco-Prussian War was terminated beef in Germany was 9 cents the pound. The price of bread, meanwhile, had always been from one-tenth to one-quarter that of beef. In Central Europe to-day the price of beef is from 60 to 75 cents a pound, while bread costs about 5¼ cents a pound. The cost of other foods is in proportion to these prices, provided it is bought in the legitimate market. As I have shown, almost any price is paid in the illicit trade. I know of cases when as much as 40 cents was paid for a pound of wheat flour, $2.70 for a pound of butter, $2.20 for a pound of lard, and 50 cents for a pound of sugar. I have bought sugar for that price myself. These figures show that there has been a steady upward tendency in food prices ever since the days of imperial Rome, and we have no reason to believe that it was different in the days of Numa Pompilius. Looking at the thing from that angle, we must arrive at a period when food, in terms of currency, cost nothing at all. Such, indeed, is the fact. When man produced himself whatever he and his needed, money was not a factor in the cost of living. The tiller of the soil, wishing to vary his diet, exchanged some of his grain for the catch of the fisherman, the first industrial, who could not live by fish alone. The exchange was made in kind and neither of the traders found it necessary to make use of a medium of exchange--money. The necessity for such a medium came when exchange in kind was not possible--when food and the like began to have time, place, and tool value, when, in other words, they were no longer traded in by the producer-consumers, but were bought and sold in markets. But the question that occupies us here principally is, Why has food become dearer? Actually food is not dearer to-day than it was in Rome under Cæsar. The fact is that money is cheaper, and money is cheaper because it is more plentiful. Let me quote a case that is somewhat abstract, but very applicable here. Why should the farmer sell food when the money he gets for it will purchase little by virtue of having no longer its former purchasing power? He can be induced to sell such food if he is given enough dollars and cents to buy again for the proceeds of his soil and labor what he obtained through them before. That means that he must be given more money for his wares. But that he is given more money does not leave him better off. What difference does it make to him if for the bushel of wheat he gets one dollar or two dollars when the price of an article he must buy also jumps from one to two dollars? The result is a naught in both cases. To be sure, he could save more, apparently, from two than he could from one dollar. That, however, is fiction, for the reason that the twenty cents he may save of two dollars will in the new economic era buy no more than the ten cents he saved from the one dollar. It is clear now that the farmer has not profited by the increase in food prices. All others are in the same position. Money has ceased to buy as much as before. The worker who is getting twice the wages he received before the outbreak of a war is obliged to pay twice as much for food. Like the farmer, he is no better off than he was. He, too, sees nothing but zero when expenditures are subtracted from income. The body politic is a living organism for the reason that it is composed of living organisms--men and women. As a living organism this body has the inherent quality to repair or heal the wounds it has received. The men lost in war are replaced by the birth of others. In our time, at least, the women are no longer killed off, and since the remaining males are able to fertilize them a decade or two generally suffices to make good this loss which the body politic has sustained. It is a well-known fact that the average man is able to produce many times the number of children to which monogamy limits him. At the conclusion of the Thirty Years' War, when polygamy had to be legalized in southern Germany, Nuremberg boasted of a citizen who had thirty-seven children by six women. But even the economic wounds of the body politic heal rapidly. They begin to heal in war almost with the first day on which they are inflicted. Over them spreads the protecting scab of cheap money and high prices. The German mark buys to-day about one-third of what it bought in July, 1914; this means that it is worth no more in comparison with its former value as a lien against the wealth of the German nation. The several German governments, however, will continue to pay on their public debts the old rate of interest, and when the loans are called in the depreciated mark will take the place of a mark that had full value. The gain for the state is that it has reduced automatically its old public debt by 66 per cent. in interest and capital. The same applies to the first war loans. The German war loans up to the middle of 1915 were made with a mark that still bought 90 per cent. of what it had bought before. Interest on them will be paid and the loan redeemed with a mark which to-day has a purchasing power of only 33 pfennige. If nothing is done to interfere with this relation of currency values, the German governments will actually pay interest and return the loan with money cheaper by 62.97 per cent. than what it was when the loans were made. The fifth war loan was made at a time when the purchasing power of the mark was down to about 50 points, so that on this the "economic" saving, as established with the present purchasing power of the mark, would be only 33.34 per cent. On the seventh war loan, made with the mark down to roughly one-third of its former purchasing power, nothing could be saved by the government if redemption of the loan should be undertaken with a mark buying no more than what it buys to-day. We are dealing here with the mark as a thing that will procure in the market to-day the thing needed to live. In its time the mark that made up the public debt and the war loans served the same purpose, in a better manner, as it were. But that mark is no more. The several governments of Germany will pay interest and redeem loans in the mark of to-day, without paying the slightest heed to the value of the mark turned over to them when the loans were made. The result of this is that the older investments, be they in government securities or commercial paper, have lost in value. We must take a look at an investor in order to understand that fully. Let us say a man owns in government bonds and industrial stocks the sum of 200,000 marks. At 4 per cent. that would give him an annual income of 8,000 marks, a sum which in 1914 would have kept him in Germany very comfortably, if his demands were modest. To-day that income would go about a third as far. His 8,000 marks would buy no more than what four years ago 2,666 marks would have bought. His lien against the wealth of the community, in other words, is 2,666 marks to-day instead of 8,000 marks. Those who had to produce what the man consumed in 1914 have to produce to-day only a third of that. They would have to produce as before if the government returned to the old value of the mark, and since such a production is impossible to-day, with over two million able-bodied men dead and permanently incapacitated, with the same number of women and their offspring to be cared for, and with the losses from deterioration to be made good, the German government cannot take measures that would restore the pre-war value of the mark, especially since it would have to pay interest on war loans with a mark having more purchasing power than had the mark turned over to the government in these loans. In adopting the policy of cheaper money Central Europe is doing exactly what the Roman government did more than two thousand years ago and what every other government has since then done when wars had made the expenditure of much of the state's wealth necessary. Capital is the loser, of course. That cannot be avoided, however, for the reason that capital is nothing but the surplus of labor--that part of production which is not consumed. During the European War there was no such actual surplus. The increase in capital, as this increase appeared on the books of the state treasury and the investors, was nothing but an inflation--an inflation which now must be assimilated in figures, since its influence upon actual production is _nil_. I have already mentioned that the bankers of Central Europe are well disposed toward a partial cancelation of the public debts. They agree not because of patriotic motives, but for the reason that such a cancelation would better the purchasing value of the currency. A partial repudiation of the war loans would immediately force down prices of food and necessities, in which event the mark or crown would again buy more or less than it bought in 1915, let us assume. For the exigencies incident to foreign trade the step has merits of its own. It should not be necessary to point out that a Germany living on an American-dollar basis, as it is now doing with its depreciated mark, would find it hard to undersell the American competitor. German industrial and commercial interests must bear this in mind, and on that account will do their best to preserve the margin which has favored them in the past. Cheap money and high prices do not make for cheap labor, naturally. Even to-day labor in Central Europe has risen in price to within 70 per cent. of its cost in the United States, while food is about 15 per cent. dearer than in the American cities. Central Europe, all of Europe, for that matter, will live on what may be called the pre-war American basis when the war is over. The advantages enjoyed by the American dollar in Europe in the past are no more. Gone are the days when an American school-mistress could spend her vacation in Germany or Austria-Hungary and live so cheaply that the cost of the trip would be covered by the difference in the price of board and lodging. The cheap tour of Central Europe is a thing of the past--unless the public debt of the United States should increase so much that some slight advantage accrue therefrom. For what has taken place, or will take place in Europe, will happen in the United States when economic readjustment must be undertaken. Aside from some damage done to buildings in East Prussia, Alsace-Lorraine, Galicia, and along the Isonzo, the Central states have not suffered directly from the war. The losses sustained in the districts mentioned are relatively small, and much of them has already been repaired. Reconstruction of that sort will not be so great a task, therefore. Much labor and huge expenditures will be required, however, in the rehabilitation of the railroads and the highroads. It will be necessary to relay at least a quarter of the bed mileage with new ties and rails, and fully one-half of the rolling stock and motive power now in use will have to be discarded before rail transportation in Central Europe can be brought to its former high standard. Pressing as this work is, the people of the Central states must first of all increase the production of their soil and bring their animal industry into better condition. For the first of these labors two or three years will suffice; for the second a decade is the least that will be needed. It will be necessary for many years to come to restrict meat consumption. With the exception of South America nobody has meat to sell, and since all will draw on that market high prices are bound to limit the quantities any state in Europe can buy. On the whole, the damage done by the war to the Central Europeans is not so catastrophic as one would be inclined to believe. In fact, the damage is great only when seen in the light of pre-war standards. In Central Europe, and, for that matter, in all of Europe, nobody expects trains to run a hundred kilometers per hour any more. The masses have forgotten the fleshpots of Egypt, and will be glad to get pork and poultry when no beef is to be had. Enough bread, with a little butter or some cheese on it, will seem a godsend to them for many a year. The wooden shoe has not proved so bad a piece of footgear, and the patched suit is no longer the hallmark of low caste. Enough fuel will go far in making everybody forget that there was a war. Viewed from that angle, reconstruction in Central Europe is not the impossible undertaking some have painted it. The case reminds somewhat of the habitual drunkard who has reformed and feels well now despite the fact that he has irretrievably damaged his health. The assertion has been made that the mechanical improvements and innovations made during the war would in a large measure balance the material damage done. I have tried hard to discover on what such claims are founded. The instance that would support such a contention has yet to be discovered, so far as I know. The little improvements made in gasolene and other internal-combustion engines are hardly worth anything to the social aggregate. I hope that nobody will take as an improvement the great strides made in the making of guns and ammunition. The stuff that has been written on the development of the aeroplane in war as a means of communication in peace is interesting, but not convincing. From that angle the world has not been benefited by the great conflagration that has swept it. But great hopes may be placed in the mental reconstruction that has been going on since the war entered upon its downward curve. Men and women in the countries at war have become more tolerant--newspaper editors and writers excepted, perhaps. As the war developed into a struggle between populations rather than between armies, the psychology of the firing-line spread to those in the rear. I have met few soldiers and no officers who spoke slightingly of their enemies. They did not love their enemies, as some idealists demand, but they respected them. There is no hatred in the trenches. Passions will rise, of course, as they must rise if killing on the battle-field is not to be plain murder. But I have seen strong men sob because half an hour ago they had driven the bayonet into the body of some antagonist. I have also noticed often that there was no exultation in the troops that had defeated an enemy. It seemed to be all in the day's march. In the course of time that feeling reached the men and women home. The men from the front were to educate the population in that direction. It may have taken three years of reiteration to accomplish the banishment of the war spirit. When I left Central Europe it had totally vanished. The thing had settled down to mere business. There is also a socio-political aftermath. That socialism will rule Central Europe after the war is believed by many. I am not of that opinion. But there is no doubt that the several governments will steal much of the thunder of the Social-Democrats. Some of it they have purloined already. The later phases of food control showed usually a fine regard for the masses. That they did this was never more than the result of making virtue of necessity. Endless hair-splitting in political theories and tendency would result, however, if we were to examine the interest in the masses shown by the several governments. What the socialist wishes to do for the masses for their own good the government did for the good of the state. Since the masses are the state, and since I am not interested in political propaganda of any sort, mere quibbling would result from the attempt to draw distinctions. Politics have never been more than the struggle between the masses that wanted to control the government and the government that wanted to control the masses. [Illustration: Photograph by Underwood & Underwood, N. Y. SCENE IN GERMAN SHIP-BUILDING YARD The great ship in the background has just been launched. Though the war left Germany no man to spare, every effort has been made to materially increase the country's merchant marine. To-day Germany's mercantile fleet is stronger than ever.] For the first time in the history of Central Europe, the several governments had to publicly admit that the masses were indispensable in their scheme instead of merely necessary. That they were necessary had been realized in the manner in which the farmer looks upon the draft animal. The several governments had also done the best they could to have this policy be as humane as possible. There were sick benefits and pensions. Such things made the populace content with its lot. So long as old age had at least the promise that a pension would keep the wolf from the door, small wages, military service, heavy taxes, and class distinctions were bound to be overlooked by all except the wide-awake and enterprising. The few that were able to examine the scheme from without, as it were, might voice their doubts that this was the best manner in which the ship of state could be steered, but their words generally fell on the ears of a populace to which government was indeed a divine-right institution. I have met Germans and Austro-Hungarians who were able to grasp the idea that the government ought to be their servant instead of their master. Their number was small, however. Generally, such men were socialists rather than rationalists. It is nothing unusual to meet persons, afflicted with a disease, who claim that nothing is wrong with them. The "giftie" for which Burns prayed is not given to us. It was so with the Germans and the thing called militarism. I have elsewhere referred to the fact that militarism as an internal condition in the German Empire meant largely that thinking was an offense. But the Prussian had accepted that as something quite natural. We need not be surprised at that. Prussia is essentially a military state. The army made Prussia what it is. Not alone did it make the state a political force, but it also was the school in which men were trained into good subjects. In this school the inherent love of the German for law and order was supplemented by a discipline whose principal ingredient was that the state came first and last and that the individual existed for the state. The non-Prussians of the German Empire, then, knew that militarism, in its internal aspect, was a state of things that made independent thought impossible. To that extent they hated the system, without overlooking its good points, however. The fact is that much of what is really efficient in Germany had its birth in the Prussian army. Without this incubator of organization and serious effort, Germany would have never risen to the position that is hers. As a civilian I cannot but resent the presumption of another to deny me the right to think. Yet there was a time when I was a member of an organization that could not exist if everybody were permitted to think and act accordingly. I refer to the army of the late South African Republic. Though the Boer was as free a citizen as ever lived and was of nothing so intolerant as of restraint of any sort, it became necessary to put a curb upon his mind in the military service. That this had to be done, if discipline was to prevail, will be conceded by all. The same thing is practised by the business man, whose employees cannot be allowed to think for themselves in matters connected with the affairs of the firm. On that point we need not cavil. The mistake of the men in Berlin was that they carried this prohibition of thinking too far. It went far beyond the bounds of the barrack-yard--permeated, in fact, the entire socio-political fabric. That was the unlovely part of militarism in Prussia and Germany. The policy of the several governments, to give state employment only to men who had served in the army, carried the command of the drill sergeant into the smallest hamlet, where, unchecked by intelligent control, it grew into an eternal nightmare that strangled many of the better qualities of the race or at best gave these qualities no field in which they might exert themselves. The liberty-loving race which in the days of Napoleon had produced such men as Scharnhorst and Lüchow, Körner and others, and the legions they commanded, was on the verge of becoming a non-thinking machine, which men exercising power for the lust of power could employ, when industrial and commercial despots were not exploiting its constituents. The war showed some of the thinkers in the government that this could not go on. Bethmann-Hollweg, for instance, saw that the time was come when Prussia would have to adopt more liberal institutions. The Prussian election system would have to be made more equitable. Agitation for that had been the burning issue for many a year before the war, and I am inclined to believe that something would have been done by the government had it not feared the Social-Democrats. The fact is that the Prussian government had lost confidence in the people. And it had good reason for that. The men in responsible places knew only too well that the remarkable growth of socialism in the country was due to dissatisfaction with the rule of Prussian Junkerism. They did not have the political insight and sagacity to conclude that a people, which in the past had not even aspired to republicanism, would abandon the Social-Democratic ideals on the day that saw the birth of a responsible monarchical form of government. What they could see, though, was that the men coming home after the war would not permit a continuation of a government that looked upon itself as the holy of holies for which the race was to spill its blood whenever the high priest of the cult thought that necessary. "We are fighting for our country!" is the reply that has been given me by thousands of German soldiers. Not a one has ever told me that he was fighting for the Emperor, despite the fact that against their King and Emperor these men held no grudge. And here I should draw attention to the fact that the German Emperor means comparatively little to the South Germans, the Bavarian, for instance. He has his own monarch. While the Emperor is _de jure_ and _de facto_ the War Lord, he is never more than a sort of commander-in-chief to the non-Prussian part of the German army. Liberal government is bound to come for Germany from the war. There can be no question of a change in the form of government, however. Those who believe that the Germans would undertake a revolution in favor of the republican form of government know as little of Germany as they know of the population said to be on Mars. The German has a monarchical mind. His family is run on that principle. The husband and father is the lord of the household--_Der Herr im Hause_. Just as the lord of the family household will have less to say in the future, so will the lord of the state household have less to say in the years to come. There will be more co-operation between man and woman in the German household in the future and the same will take place in the state family. The government will have to learn that he is best qualified to rule who must apply the least effort in ruling--that he can best command who knows best how to obey. This is the handwriting on the wall in Germany to-day. A large class is still blind to the "_Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin_," but that class must either mend its way or go down in defeat. The German at the front has ceased to think himself the tool of the government. He is willing to be an instrument of authority so long as that authority represents not a wholly selfish and self-sufficient caste. The indications for their development lie in the fact that the German generally does not hold the Prussian element in the empire responsible for the war. The Bavarian does not hate the Prussian. The West German does not entertain dislike for the men east of the Elbe river. What Bismarck started in 1870 is being completed by the European War. All sectionalism has disappeared. Three years' contact with the German army, and study of the things that are German, has convinced me that to-day there is no Prussian, Bavarian, Saxon, Würtemberger, Badenser, Hanoverian, or Hessian. I have never met any but Germans, in contrast to conditions in the Austro-Hungarian army, where in a single army corps I could draw easily distinction between at least four of the races in the Dual Monarchy. It must be borne in mind that these people speak one language and have been driven into closer union by the defense of a common cause. What is true of racial affinity in the Anglo-Saxon race is true in the case of the German race; all the more true since the latter lives within the same federation. I must make reference here to the fact that even the German socialists are no great admirers of the republican form of government. Of the many of their leaders whom I have met, not a single one was in favor of the republic. Usually they maintained that France had not fared well under the republican form of government. When the great success of republicanism in Switzerland was brought to their attention, they would point out that what was possible in a small country was not necessarily possible in a large one. Upon the American republic and its government most of these men looked with disdain, asserting that nowhere was the individual so exploited as in the United States. It was that very exploitation that they were opposed to, said these men. Government was necessary, so long as an anarchic society was impossible and internationalism was as far off as ever, as the war itself had shown. Germany, they asserted, was in need of a truly representative government that would as quickly as possible discard militarism and labor earnestly for universal disarmament. A monarch could labor better in that vineyard than the head of a republic, so long as his ministers were responsible to the people. Upon that view we may look as the extreme measure of reform advocated by any political party in Germany to-day. It is that of the Scheidemann faction of Social-Democrats, a party which latterly has been dubbed "monarchical socialists." The extreme doctrinarians in the socialist camp, Haase and Liebknecht, go further than that, to be sure, but their demands will not be heeded, even after the pending election reforms have been made. The accession to articulate party politics in Germany, which these reforms will bring, will go principally to the Liberal group, among whom the conservative socialists must be numbered to-day. Not socialism, but rationalism will rule in Germany when the war is over. One of the results of this will be that the Prussian Junker will have passed into oblivion a few years hence. Even now his funeral oration is being said, and truly, to be fair to the Junker: The evil that men do lives after them, The good is oft' interred with their bones. * * * * * Transcriber's note: Obvious punctuation errors were corrected. A table of contents was added. Hyphen removed: air[-]tight (p. 148), bread[-]winner (p. 354), fountain[-]head (p. 31), hall[-]mark (p. 31). P. 51: "quantitity" changed to "quantity" (a large quantity of crude rubber). P. 115: "sharps" changed to "sharks" (For the food sharks). P. 154: "Kaffee-ersatz-ersatz" changed to "Kaffee-ersatz". P. 227: "General Höefer" changed to "General Höfer". P. 366: "fron" changed to "from" (prevented them from increasing). 
16070	----	available by the Making of America Collection of the University of Michigan Library (http://www.hti.umich.edu/m/moagrp/) Note: Images of the original pages are available through the Making of America Collection of the University of Michigan Library. See http://www.hti.umich.edu/m/moagrp/ The Monarchies of Continental Europe THE EMPIRE OF AUSTRIA; ITS RISE AND PRESENT POWER by JOHN S. C. ABBOTT New York; Published by Mason Brothers, Cincinnati: Rickey, Mallory & Co. Stereotyped by Thomas B. Smith, 82 & 84 Beekman St. Printed By C. A. Alvord. 15 Vandewater St. 1859 PREFACE The studies of the author of this work, for the last ten years, in writing the "History of Napoleon Bonaparte," and "The French Revolution of 1789," have necessarily made him quite familiar with the monarchies of Europe. He has met with so much that was strange and romantic in their career, that he has been interested to undertake, as it were, a _biography_ of the Monarchies of Continental Europe--their birth, education, exploits, progress and present condition. He has commenced with Austria. There are abundant materials for this work. The Life of Austria embraces all that is wild and wonderful in history; her early struggles for aggrandizement--the fierce strife with the Turks, as wave after wave of Moslem invasion rolled up the Danube--the long conflicts and bloody persecutions of the Reformation--the thirty years' religious war--the meteoric career of Gustavus Adolphus and Charles XII. shooting athwart the lurid storms of battle--the intrigues of Popes--the enormous pride, power and encroachments of Louis XIV.--the warfare of the Spanish succession and the Polish dismemberment--all these events combine in a sublime tragedy which fiction may in vain attempt to parallel. It is affecting to observe in the history of Germany, through what woes humanity has passed in attaining even its present position of civilization. It is to be hoped that the human family may never again suffer what it has already endured. We shall be indeed insane if we do not gain some wisdom from the struggles and the calamities of those who have gone before us. The narrative of the career of the Austrian Empire, must, by contrast, excite emotions of gratitude in every American bosom. Our lines have fallen to us in pleasant places; we have a goodly heritage. It is the author's intention soon to issue, as the second of this series, the History of the Empire of Russia. JOHN S. C. ABBOTT. Brunswick, Maine, 1859. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. RHODOLPH OF HAPSBURG. From 1232 to 1291. Hawk's Castle.--Albert, Count of Hapsburg.--Rhodolph of Hapsburg.--His Marriage and Estates.--Excommunication and its Results.--His Principles of Honor.--A Confederacy of Barons.--Their Route.--Rhodolph's Election as Emperor of Germany.--The Bishop's Warning.--Dissatisfaction at the Result of the Election.--Advantages accruing from the Possession of an interesting Family.--Conquest.--Ottocar acknowledges the Emperor; yet breaks his Oath of Allegiance.--Gathering Clouds.--Wonderful Escape.--Victory of Rhodolph.--His Reforms. Page 17 CHAPTER II. REIGNS OF ALBERT I., FREDERIC, ALBERT AND OTHO. From 1291 to 1347. Anecdotes of Rhodolph.--His Desire for the Election of his Son.--His Death.--Albert.--His Unpopularity.--Conspiracy of the Nobles.--Their Defeat.--Adolphus of Nassau chosen Emperor.--Albert's Conspiracy.-- Deposition of Adolphus and Election of Albert.--Death of Adolphus.--The Pope Defied.--Annexation of Bohemia.--Assassination of Albert.--Avenging Fury.--The Hermit's Direction.--Frederic the Handsome.--Election of Henry, Count of Luxemburg.--His Death.--Election of Louis of Bavaria.--Capture of Frederic.--Remarkable Confidence toward a Prisoner.--Death of Frederic.--An early Engagement.--Death of Louis.--Accession of Albert. Page 34 CHAPTER III. RHODOLPH II., ALBERT IV. AND ALBERT V. From 1389 to 1437. Rhodolph II.--Marriage of John to Margaret.--Intriguing for the Tyrol.--Death of Rhodolph.--Accession of Power to Austria.--Dividing the Empire.--Delight of the Emperor Charles.--Leopold.--His Ambition and successes.--Hedwige, Queen of Poland.--"The Course of true Love never did run smooth."--Unhappy Marriage of Hedwige.--Heroism of Arnold of Winkelreid.--Death of Leopold.--Death of Albert IV.--Accession Of Albert V.--Attempts of Sigismond to bequeath to Albert V. Hungary and Bohemia. Page 48 CHAPTER IV. ALBERT, LADISLAUS AND FREDERIC. From 1440 to 1489. Increasing Honors of Albert V.--Encroachments of the Turks.--The Christians Routed.--Terror of the Hungarians.--Death of Albert.-- Magnanimous Conduct of Albert of Bavaria.--Internal Troubles.--Precocity of Ladislaus.--Fortifications Raised by the Turks.--John Capistrun.-- Rescue of Belgrade.--The Turks Dispersed.--Exultation over the Victory.--Death of Hunniades.--Jealousy of Ladislaus.--His Death.--Brotherly Quarrels.--Devastations by the Turks.--Invasion of Austria.--Repeal of the Compromise.--The Emperor a Fugitive. Page 68 CHAPTER V. THE EMPERORS FREDERIC II. AND MAXIMILIAN I. From 1477 to 1500. Wanderings of the Emperor Frederic.--Proposed Alliance with the Duke of Burgundy.--Mutual Distrust.--Marriage of Mary.--The Age of Chivalry.--The Motive inducing the Lord of Praunstein to Declare War.--Death of Frederic II.--The Emperor's Secret.--Designs of the Turks.--Death of Mahomet II.--First Establishment of Standing Armies.--Use of Gunpowder.--Energy of Maximilian.--French Aggressions.--The League to Expel the French.--Disappointments of Maximilian.--Bribing the Pope.--Invasion of Italy.--Capture and Recapture.--The Chevalier de Bayard. Page 77 CHAPTER VI. MAXIMILIAN I. From 1500 to 1519. Base Treachery of the Swiss Soldiers.--Perfidy of Ferdinand of Arragon.--Appeals by Superstition.--Coalition with Spain.--The League of Cambray.--Infamy of the Pope.--The King's Apology.--Failure of the Plot.--Germany Aroused.--Confidence of Maximilian.--Longings for the Pontifical Chair.--Maximilian Bribed.--Leo X.--Dawning Prosperity.-- Matrimonial Projects.--Commencement of the War of Reformation.--Sickness of Maximilian.--His Last Directions.--His Death.--The Standard by which his Character is to be Judged. Page 91 CHAPTER VII. CHARLES V. AND THE REFORMATION. From 1519 to 1581. Charles V. of Spain.--His Election as Emperor of Germany.--His Coronation.--The First Constitution.--Progress of the Reformation.--The Pope's Bull against Luther.--His Contempt for his Holiness.--The Diet at Worms.--Frederic's Objection to the Condemnation of Luther by the Diet.--He obtains for Luther the Right of Defense.--Luther's triumphal March to the Tribunal.--Charles urged to Violate his Safe Conduct.-- Luther's Patmos.--Marriage of Sister Catharine Bora to Luther.--Terrible Insurrection.--The Holy League.--The Protest of Spires.--Confession of Augsburg.--The Two Confessions.--Compulsory Measures. Page 106 CHAPTER VIII. CHARLES V. AND THE REFORMATION. From 1531 to 1552. Determination to crush Protestantism.--Incursion of the Turks.--Valor of the Protestants.--Preparations for renewed Hostilities.--Augmentation of the Protestant Forces.--The Council of Trent.--Mutual Consternation.-- Defeat of the Protestant Army.--Unlooked-for Succor.--Revolt in the Emperor's Army.--The Fluctuations of Fortune.--Ignoble Revenge.--Capture of Wittemberg.--Protestantism apparently crushed.--Plot against Charles.--Maurice of Saxony.--A Change of Scene.--The Biter Bit--The Emperor humbled.--His Flight.--His determined Will. Page 121 CHAPTER IX. CHARLES V. AND THE TURKISH WARS. From 1552 to 1555. The Treaty of Passau.--The Emperor yields.--His continued Reverses.--The Toleration Compromise.--Mutual Dissatisfaction.--Remarkable Despondency of the Emperor Charles.--His Address to the Convention at Brussels.-- The Convent of St. Justus.--Charles returns to Spain.--His Convent Life.--The Mock Burial.--His Death.--His Traits of Character.--The King's Compliment to Titian.--The Condition of Austria.--Rapid Advance of the Turks.--Reasons for the Inaction of the Christians.--The Sultan's Method of Overcoming Difficulties.--The little Fortress of Guntz.--What it accomplished. Page 186 CHAPTER X. FERDINAND I.--HIS WARS AND INTRIGUES. From 1555 to 1562. John of Tapoli.--The Instability of Compacts.--The Sultan's Demands.--A Reign of War.--Powers and Duties of the Monarchs of Bohemia.--The Diet.--The King's Desire to crush Protestantism.--The Entrance to Prague.--Terror of the Inhabitants.--The King's Conditions.--The Bloody Diet.--Disciplinary Measures.--The establishment of the Order of Jesuits.--Abdication of Charles V. in Favor of Ferdinand.--Power of the Pope.--Paul IV.--A quiet but powerful Blow.--The Progress of the Reformers.--Attempts to reconcile the Protestants.--The unsuccessful Assembly. Page 151 CHAPTER XI. DEATH OF FERDINAND I.--ACCESSION OF MAXIMILIAN II. From 1562 to 1576. The Council of Trent.--Spread of the Reformation.--Ferdinand's Attempt to influence the Pope.--His Arguments against Celibacy.--Stubbornness of the Pope.--Maximilian II.--Displeasure of Ferdinand.--Motives for not abjuring the Catholic Faith.--Religious Strife in Europe.--Maximilian's Address to Charles IX.--Mutual Toleration.--Romantic Pastime of War.--Heroism of Nicholas, Count of Zeini.--Accession of Power to Austria.--Accession of Rhodolph III.--Death of Maximilian. Page 166 CHAPTER XII. CHARACTER OF MAXIMILIAN.--SUCCESSION OF RHODOLPH III. From 1576 to 1604. Character of Maximilian.--His Accomplishments.--His Wife.--Fate of his Children.--Rhodolph III.--The Liberty of Worship.--Means of Emancipation.--Rhodolph's Attempts against Protestantism.--Declaration of a higher Law.--Theological Differences.--The Confederacy at Heilbrun.--The Gregorian Calendar.--Intolerance in Bohemia.--The Trap of the Monks.--Invasion of the Turks.--Their Defeat.--Coalition with Sigismond.--Sale of Transylvania.--Rule of Basta.--The Empire captured and recaptured.--Devastation of the Country.--Treatment of Stephen Botskoi. Page 182 CHAPTER XIII. RHODOLPH III. AND MATTHIAS. From 1604 to 1609. Botskoi's Manifesto.--Horrible Suffering in Transylvania.--Character of Botskoi.--Confidence of the Protestants.--Superstition of Rholdoph.--His Mystic Studies.--Acquirements of Matthias.--Schemes of Matthias.--His increasing power.--Treaty with the Turks.--Demands on Rhodolph.--The Compromise.--Perfidy of Matthias.--The Margravite.--Fillisbustering.-- The People's Diet.--A Hint to Royalty.--The Bloodless Triumph.--Demands of the Germans.--Address of the Prince of Anhalt to the King. Page 198 CHAPTER XIV. RHODOLPH III. AND MATTHIAS. From 1609 to 1612. Difficulties as to the Succession.--Hostility of Henry IV. to the House of Austria.--Assassination of Henry IV.--Similarity in Sully's and Napoleon's Plans.--Exultation of the Catholics.--The Brother's Compact.--How Rhodolph kept it.--Seizure of Prague.--Rhodolph a Prisoner.--The King's Abdication.--Conditions Attached to the Crown.--Rage of Rhodolph.--Matthias Elected King.--The Emperor's Residence.--Rejoicings of The Protestants.--Reply of the Ambassadors.-- The Nuremberg Diet.--The Unkindest cut of all.--Rhodolph's Humiliation and Death. Page 213 CHAPTER XV. MATTHIAS. From 1612 to 1619. Matthias Elected Emperor of Germany.--His Despotic Character.--His Plans Thwarted.--Mulheim.--Gathering Clouds.--Family Intrigue.--Coronation of Ferdinand.--His Bigotry.--Henry, Count of Thurn.--Convention at Prague.--The King's Reply.--The Die Cast.--Amusing Defense of an Outrage.--Ferdinand's Manifesto.--Seizure of Cardinal Klesis.--The King's Rage.--Retreat of the King's Troops.--Humiliation of Ferdinand.--The Difficulties Deferred.--Death of Matthias. Page 229 CHAPTER XVI. FERDINAND II. From 1619 to 1621. Possessions of the Emperor.--Power of the Protestants of Bohemia.-- General Spirit of Insurrection.--Anxiety of Ferdinand.--Insurrection led by Count Thurn.--Unpopularity of the Emperor.--Affecting Declaration of the Emperor.--Insurrection in Vienna.--The Arrival of Succor.--Ferdinand Seeks the Imperial Throne.--Repudiated by Bohemia.--The Palatinate.-- Frederic Offered the Crown of Bohemia.--Frederic Crowned.--Revolt in Hungary.--Desperate Condition of the Emperor.--Catholic League.--The Calvinists and the Puritans.--Duplicity of the Emperor.--Foreign Combinations.--Truce between the Catholics and the Protestants.--The Attack upon Bohemia.--Battle of the White Mountain. Page 245 CHAPTER XVII. FERDINAND II. From 1621 to 1629. Pusillanimity of Frederic.--Intreaties of the Citizens of Prague.--Shameful Flight of Frederic.--Vengeance Inflicted upon Bohemia.--Protestantism and Civil Freedom.--Vast Power of the Emperor.--Alarm of Europe.--James I.--Treaty of Marriage for the Prince of Wales.--Cardinal Richelieu.--New League of the Protestants.-- Desolating War.--Defeat of the King of Denmark.--Energy of Wallenstein.--Triumph of Ferdinand.--New Acts of Intolerance.-- Severities in Bohemia.--Desolation of the Kingdom.--Dissatisfaction of the Duke of Bavaria.--Meeting of the Catholic Princes.--The Emperor Humbled. Page 261 CHAPTER XVIII. FERDINAND II. AND GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS. From 1629 to 1632. Vexation of Ferdinand.--Gustavus Adolphus.--Address to the Nobles of Sweden.--March of Gustavus.--Appeal to the Protestants.--Magdeburg joins Gustavus.--Destruction of the City.--Consternation of the Protestants.--Exultation of the Catholics.--The Elector of Saxony Driven from His Domains.--Battle of Leipsic.--The Swedes penetrate Bohemia.--Freedom of Conscience Established.--Death of Tilly.--The Retirement of Wallenstein.--The Command Resumed by Wallenstein.--Capture of Prague.--Encounter between Wallenstein and Gustavus.--Battle of Lutzen.--Death of Gustavus. Page 279 CHAPTER XIX. FERDINAND II., FERDINAND III. AND LEOPOLD I. From 1632 to 1662. Character of Gustavus Adolphus.--Exultation of the Imperialists.--Disgrace of Wallenstein.--He offers to Surrender to the Swedish General.--His Assassination.--Ferdinand's son Elected as his Successor.--Death of Ferdinand.--Close of the War.--Abdication of Christina.--Charles Gustavus.--Preparations for War.--Death of Ferdinand III.--Leopold Elected Emperor.--Hostilities Renewed.--Death of Charles Gustavus.--Diet Convened.--Invasion of the Turks. Page 295 CHAPTER XX. LEOPOLD I. From 1662 to 1697. Invasion of the Turks.--A Treaty Concluded.--Possessions of Leopold.--Invasion of the French.--League of Augsburg.--Devastation of the Palatinate.--Invasion of Hungary.--Emerio Tekeli.--Union of Emerio Tekeli with the Turks.--Leopold Applies to Sobieski.--He Immediately Marches to his Aid.--The Turks Conquered.--Sobieski's Triumphal Receptions.--Meanness of Leopold.--Revenge upon Hungary.--Peace Concluded.--Contest for Spain. Page 311 CHAPTER XXI. LEOPOLD I. AND THE SPANISH SUCCESSION From 1697 to 1710. The Spanish Succession.--The Impotence of Charles II.--Appeal to the Pope.--His Decision.--Death of Charles II.--Accession of Philip V.--Indignation of Austria.--The Outbreak of War.--Charles III. Crowned.--Insurrection in Hungary.--Defection of Bavaria.--The Battle of Blenheim.--Death of Leopold I.--Eleonora.--Accession of Joseph I.--Charles XII. of Sweden.--Charles III. of Spain.--Battle of Malplaquet.--Charles at Barcelona.--Charles at Madrid. 328 CHAPTER XXII. JOSEPH I. AND CHARLES VI. From 1710 to 1717. Perplexities in Madrid.--Flight of Charles.--Retreat of the Austrian Army.--Stanhope's Division cut off.--Capture of Stanhope.--Staremberg assailed.--Retreat to Barcelona.--Attempt to pacify Hungary.--The Hungarian Diet.--Baronial crowning of Ragotsky.--Renewal of the Hungarian War.--Enterprise of Herbeville.--The Hungarians crushed.--Lenity of Joseph.--Death of Joseph.--Accession of Charles VI.--His career in Spain.--Capture of Barcelona.--The Siege.--The Rescue.--Character of Charles.--Cloisters of Montserrat.--Increased Efforts for the Spanish Crown.--Charles Crowned Emperor of Austria and Hungary.--Bohemia.--Deplorable Condition of Louis XIV. Page 845 CHAPTER XXIII. CHARLES VI. From 1716 to 1727. Heroic Decision of Eugene.--Battle of Belgrade.--Utter Rout of the Turks.--Possessions of Charles VI.--The Elector of Hanover succeeds to the English Throne.--Preparations for War.--State of Italy.--Philip V. of Spain.--Diplomatic Agitations.--Palace of St. Ildefonso.--Order of the Golden Fleece.--Rejection of Maria Anne.--Contest for the Rock of Gibraltar.--Dismissal of Rippeeda.--Treaty of Vienna.--Peace Concluded. Page 362 CHAPTER XXIV. CHARLES VI. AND THE POLISH WAR. From 1727 to 1735. Cardinal Fleury.--The Emperor of Austria urges the Pragmatic Sanction.--He promises his two Daughters to the two Sons of the Queen of Spain.--France, England and Spain unite against Austria.--Charles VI. issues Orders to Prepare for War.--His Perplexities.--Secret Overtures to England.--The Crown of Poland.--Meeting of the Polish Congress.-- Stanislaus goes to Poland.--Augustus III. crowned.--War.--Charles sends an Army to Lombardy.--Difficulties of Prince Eugene.--Charles's Displeasure with England.--Letter to Count Kinsky.--Hostilities Renewed. Page 878 CHAPTER XXV. CHARLES VI. AND THE TURKISH WAR RENEWED. From 1735 to 1739. Anxiety of Austrian Office-holders.--Maria Theresa.--The Duke of Lorraine.--Distraction of the Emperor.--Tuscany assigned to the Duke of Lorraine.--Death of Eugene.--Rising Greatness of Russia.--New War with the Turks.--Condition of the Army.--Commencement of Hostilities--Capture of Nissa.--Inefficient Campaign.--Disgrace of Seckendorf.--The Duke of Lorraine placed in Command.--Siege of Orsova.--Belgrade besieged by the Turks.--The third Campaign.--Battle of Crotzka.--Defeat of the Austrians.--Consternation in Vienna.--Barbarism of the Turks.--The Surrender of Belgrade. CHAPTER XXVI. MARIA THERESA. From 1739 to 1741. Anguish of the King.--Letter to the Queen of Russia.--The Imperial Circular.--Deplorable Condition of Austria.--Death of Charles VI.--Accession of Maria Theresa.--Vigorous Measures of the Queen.--Claim of the Duke of Bavaria.--Responses from the Courts.--Coldness of the French Court.--Frederic of Prussia.--His Invasion of Silesia.--March of the Austrians.--Battle of Molnitz.--Firmness of Maria Theresa.--Proposed Division of Plunder.--Villainy of Frederic.--Interview with the King.--Character of Frederic.--Commencement of the General Invasion. Page 411 CHAPTER XXVII. MARIA THERESA. From 1741 to 1743. Character of Francis, Duke of Lorraine.--Policy of European Courts.--Plan of the Allies.--Siege of Prague.--Desperate Condition of the Queen--Her Coronation in Hungary.--Enthusiasm of the Barons.--Speech of Maria Theresa.--Peace with Frederic of Prussia.--His Duplicity.--Military Movement of the Duke of Lorraine.--Battle of Chazleau.--Second Treaty with Frederic.--Despondency of the Duke of Bavaria.--March of Mallebois.--Extraordinary Retreat of Belleisle.--Recovery of Prague by the Queen. Page 427 CHAPTER XXVIII. MARIA THERESA. From 1743 to 1748. Prosperous Aspect of Austrian Affairs.--Capture of Egea.--Vast Extent of Austria.--Dispute with Sardinia.--Marriage of Charles of Lorraine with the Queen's Sister.--Invasion of Alsace.--Frederic overruns Bohemia.--Bohemia recovered by Prince Charles.--Death of the Emperor Charles VII.--Venality of the old Monarchies.--Battle of Hohenfriedberg.--Sir Thomas Robinson's Interview with Maria Theresa.--Hungarian Enthusiasm.--The Duke of Lorraine Elected Emperor.--Continuation of the War.--Treaty of Peace.--Indignation of Maria Theresa. Page 444 CHAPTER XXIX. MARIA THERESA. From 1748 to 1759. Treaty of Peace.--Dissatisfaction of Maria Theresa.--Preparation for War.--Rupture between England and Austria.--Maria Theresa.--Alliance with France.--Influence of Marchioness of Pompadour.--Bitter Reproaches between Austria And England.--Commencement of the Seven Years' War.-- Energy of Frederic of Prussia.--Sanguinary Battles.--Vicissitudes of War.--Desperate Situation of Frederic.--Elation of Maria Theresa.--Her Ambitious Plans.--Awful Defeat of the Prussians at Berlin. Page 461 CHAPTER XXX. MARIA THERESA. From 1759 to 1780. Desolations of War.--Disasters of Prussia.--Despondency of Frederic.-- Death of the Empress Elizabeth.--Accession of Paul III.--Assassination of Paul III.--Accession Of Catharine.--Discomfiture of the Austrians.-- Treaty of Peace.--Election of Joseph to the Throne of the Empire.--Death of Francis.--Character of Francis.--Anecdotes.--Energy of Maria Theresa.--Poniatowski.--Partition of Poland.--Maria Theresa as a Mother.--War with Bavaria.--Peace.--Death of Maria Theresa.--Family of the Empress.--Accession of Joseph II.--His Character. Page 478 CHAPTER XXXI. JOSEPH II. AND LEOPOLD II. From 1780 to 1792. Accession of Joseph II.--His Plans of Reform.--Pius VI.--Emancipation of the Serfs.--Joseph's Visit to his Sister, Maria Antoinette.--Ambitious Designs.--The Imperial Sleigh Ride.--Barges on the Dneister.--Excursion to the Crimea.--War with Turkey.--Defeat of the Austrians.--Great Successes.--Death of Joseph.--His Character.--Accession of Leopold II.--His Efforts to confirm Despotism.--The French Revolution.--European Coalition.--Death of Leopold.--His Profligacy.--Accession of Francis II.--Present Extent and Power of Austria.--Its Army.--Policy of the Government. Page 493 CHAPTER I. RHODOLPH OF HAPSBURG. From 1232 to 1291. Hawk's Castle.--Albert, Count of Hapsburg.--Rhodolph of Hapsburg.--His Marriage and Estates.--Excommunication and its Results.--His Principles of Honor.--A Confederacy of Barons.--Their Route.--Rhodolph's Election as Emperor of Germany.--The Bishop's Warning.--Dissatisfaction at the Result of the Election.--Advantages Accruing from the Possession of an Interesting Family.--Conquest.--Ottocar Acknowledges the Emperor; yet breaks his Oath of Allegiance.--Gathering Clouds.--Wonderful Escape.--Victory of Rhodolph.--His Reforms. In the small canton of Aargau, in Switzerland, on a rocky bluff of the Wulpelsberg, there still remains an old baronial castle, called Hapsburg, or Hawk's Castle. It was reared in the eleventh century, and was occupied by a succession of warlike barons, who have left nothing to distinguish themselves from the feudal lords whose castles, at that period, frowned upon almost every eminence of Europe. In the year 1232 this castle was occupied by Albert, fourth Count of Hapsburg. He had acquired some little reputation for military prowess, the only reputation any one could acquire in that dark age, and became ambitious of winning new laurels in the war with the infidels in the holy land. Religious fanaticism and military ambition were then the two great powers which ruled the human soul. With the usual display of semi-barbaric pomp, Albert made arrangements to leave his castle to engage in the perilous holy war against the Saracens, from which few ever returned. A few years were employed in the necessary preparations. At the sound of the bugle the portcullis was raised, the drawbridge spanned the moat, and Albert, at the head of thirty steel-clad warriors, with nodding plumes, and banners unfurled, emerged from the castle, and proceeded to the neighboring convent of Mari. His wife, Hedwige, and their three sons, Rhodolph, Albert and Hartman, accompanied him to the chapel where the ecclesiastics awaited his arrival. A multitude of vassals crowded around to witness the imposing ceremonies of the church, as the banners were blessed, and the knights, after having received the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, were commended to the protection of God. Albert felt the solemnity of the hour, and in solemn tones gave his farewell address to his children. "My sons," said the steel-clad warrior, "cultivate truth and piety; give no ear to evil counselors, never engage in unnecessary war, but when you are involved in war be strong and brave. Love peace even better than your own personal interests. Remember that the counts of Hapsburg did not attain their heights of reputation and glory by fraud, insolence or selfishness, but by courage and devotion to the public weal. As long as you follow their footsteps, you will not only retain, but augment, the possessions and dignities of your illustrious ancestors." The tears and sobs of his wife and family interrupted him while he uttered these parting words. The bugles then sounded. The knights mounted their horses; the clatter of hoofs was heard, and the glittering cavalcade soon disappeared in the forest. Albert had left his ancestral castle, never to return. He had but just arrived in Palestine, when he was taken sick at Askalon, and died in the year 1240. Rhodolph, his eldest son, was twenty-two years of age at the time of his father's death. Frederic II., one of the most renowned monarchs of the middle ages, was then Emperor of that conglomeration of heterogeneous States called Germany. Each of these States had its own independent ruler and laws, but they were all held together by a common bond for mutual protection, and some one illustrious sovereign was chosen as Emperor of Germany, to preside over their common affairs. The Emperor of Germany, having influence over all these States, was consequently, in position, the great man of the age. Albert, Count of Hapsburg, had been one of the favorite captains of Frederic II. in the numerous wars which desolated Europe in that dark age. He was often at court, and the emperor even condescended to present his son Rhodolph at the font for baptism. As the child grew, he was trained to all athletic feats, riding ungovernable horses, throwing the javelin, wrestling, running, and fencing. He early gave indications of surprising mental and bodily vigor, and, at an age when most lads are considered merely children, he accompanied his father to the camp and to the court. Upon the death of his father, Rhodolph inherited the ancestral castle, and the moderate possessions of a Swiss baron. He was surrounded by barons of far greater wealth and power than himself, and his proud spirit was roused, in disregard of his father's counsels, to aggrandize his fortunes by force of arms, the only way then by which wealth and power could be attained. He exhausted his revenues by maintaining a princely establishment, organized a well-selected band of his vassals into a military corps, which he drilled to a state of perfect discipline, and then commenced a series of incursions upon his neighbors. From some feeble barons he won territory, thus extending his domains; from others he extorted money, thus enabling him to reward his troops, and to add to their number by engaging fearless spirits in his service wherever he could find them. In the year 1245, Rhodolph strengthened himself still more by an advantageous marriage with Gertrude, the beautiful daughter of the Count of Hohenberg. With his bride he received as her dowry the castle of Oeltingen, and very considerable territorial possessions. Thus in five years Rhodolph, by that species of robbery which was then called heroic adventure, and by a fortunate marriage, had more than doubled his hereditary inheritance. The charms of his bride, and the care of his estates seem for a few years to have arrested the progress of his ambition; for we can find no further notice of him among the ancient chronicles for eight years. But, with almost all men, love is an ephemeral passion, which is eventually vanquished by other powers of the soul. Ambition slumbered for a little time, but was soon roused anew, invigorated by repose. In 1253 we find Rhodolph heading a foray of steel-clad knights, with their banded followers, in a midnight attack upon the city of Basle. They break over all the defenses, sweep all opposition before them, and in the fury of the fight, either by accident or as a necessity of war, sacrilegiously set fire to a nunnery. For this crime Rhodolph was excommunicated by the pope. Excommunication was then no farce. There were few who dared to serve a prince upon whom the denunciations of the Church had fallen. It was a stunning blow, from which few men could recover. Rhodolph, instead of sinking in despair, endeavored, by new acts of obedience and devotion to the Church, to obtain the revocation of the sentence. In the region now called Prussia, there was then a barbaric pagan race, against whom the pope had published a crusade. Into this war the excommunicated Rhodolph plunged with all the impetuosity of his nature; he resolved to work out absolution, by converting, with all the potency of fire and sword, the barbarians to the Church. His penitence and zeal seem to have been accepted, for we soon find him on good terms again with the pope. He now sought to have a hand in every quarrel, far and near. Wherever the sounds of war are raised, the shout of Rhodolph is heard urging to the strife. In every hot and fiery foray, the steed of Rhodolph is rearing and plunging, and his saber strokes fall in ringing blows upon cuirass and helmet. He efficiently aided the city of Strasbourg in their war against their bishop, and received from them in gratitude extensive territories, while at the same time they reared a monument to his name, portions of which still exist. His younger brother died, leaving an only daughter, Anne, with a large inheritance. Rhodolph, as her guardian, came into possession of the counties of Kyburg, Lentzburg and Baden, and other scattered domains. This rapidly-increasing wealth and power, did but increase his energy and his spirit of encroachment. And yet he adopted principles of honor which were far from common in that age of barbaric violence. He would never stoop to ordinary robbery, or harass peasants and helpless travelers, as was constantly done by the turbulent barons around him. His warfare was against the castle, never against the cottage. He met in arms the panoplied knight, never the timid and crouching peasant. He swept the roads of the banditti by which they were infested, and often espoused the cause of citizens and freemen against the turbulent barons and haughty prelates. He thus gained a wide-spread reputation for justice, as well as for prowess, and the name of Rhodolph of Hapsburg was ascending fast into renown. Every post of authority then required the agency of a military arm. The feeble cantons would seek the protection of a powerful chief; the citizens of a wealthy town, ever liable to be robbed by bishop or baron, looked around for some warrior who had invincible troops at his command for their protection. Thus Rhodolph of Hapsburg was chosen chief of the mountaineers of Uri, Schweitz and Underwalden; and all their trained bands were ready, when his bugle note echoed through their defiles, to follow him unquestioning, and to do his bidding. The citizens of Zurich chose Rhodolph of Hapsburg as their prefect or mayor; and whenever his banner was unfurled in their streets, all the troops of the city were at his command. The neighboring barons, alarmed at this rapid aggrandizement of Rhodolph, formed an alliance to crush him. The mountaineers heard his bugle call, and rushed to his aid. Zurich opened her gates, and her marshaled troops hastened to his banner. From Hapsburg, and Rheinfelden, and Suabia, and Brisgau, and we know not how many other of the territorial possessions of the count, the vassals rushed to the aid of their lord. They met in one of the valleys of Zurich. The battle was short, and the confederated barons were put to utter flight. Some took refuge in the strong castle of Balder, upon a rocky cliff washed by the Albis. Rhodolph selected thirty horsemen and thirty footmen. "Will you follow me," said he, "in an enterprise where the honor will be equal to the peril?" A universal shout of assent was the response. Concealing the footmen in a thicket, he, at the head of thirty horsemen, rode boldly to the gates of the castle, bidding defiance, with all the utterances and gesticulations of contempt, to the whole garrison. Those on the ramparts, stung by the insult, rushed out to chastise so impudent a challenge. The footmen rose from their ambush, and assailants and assailed rushed pell mell in at the open gates of the castle. The garrison were cut down or taken captive, and the fortress demolished. Another party had fled to the castle of Uttleberg. By an ingenious stratagem, this castle was also taken. Success succeeded success with such rapidity, that the confederate barons, struck with consternation, exclaimed, "All opposition is fruitless. Rhodolph of Hapsburg is invincible." They consequently dissolved the alliance, and sought peace on terms which vastly augmented the power of the conqueror. Basle now incurred the displeasure of Rhodolph. He led his armies to the gates of the city, and extorted satisfaction. The Bishop of Basle, a haughty prelate of great military power, and who could summon many barons to his aid, ventured to make arrogant demands of this warrior flushed with victory. The palace and vast possessions of the bishop were upon the other side of the unbridged Rhine, and the bishop imagined that he could easily prevent the passage of the river. But Rhodolph speedily constructed a bridge of boats, put to flight the troops which opposed his passage, drove the peasants of the bishop everywhere before him, and burned their cottages and their fields of grain. The bishop, appalled, sued for a truce, that they might negotiate terms of peace. Rhodolph consented, and encamped his followers. He was asleep in his tent, when a messenger entered at midnight, awoke him, and informed him that he was elected Emperor of Germany. The previous emperor, Richard, had died two years before, and after an interregnum of two years of almost unparalleled anarchy, the electors had just met, and, almost to their own surprise, through the fluctuations and combinations of political intrigue, had chosen Rhodolph of Hapsburg as his successor. Rhodolph himself was so much astonished at the announcement, that for some time he could not be persuaded that the intelligence was correct. To wage war against the Emperor of Germany, who could lead almost countless thousands into the field, was a very different affair from measuring strength with the comparatively feeble Count of Hapsburg. The news of his election flew rapidly. Basle threw open her gates, and the citizens, with illuminations, shouts, and the ringing of bells, greeted the new emperor. The bishop was so chagrined at the elevation of his foe, that he smote his forehead, and, looking to heaven, profanely said, "Great God, take care of your throne, or Rhodolph of Hapsburg will take it from you!" Rhodolph was now fifty-five years of age. Alphonso, King of Castile, and Ottocar, King of Bohemia, had both been candidates for the imperial crown. Exasperated by the unexpected election of Rhodolph, they both refused to acknowledge his election, and sent ambassadors with rich presents to the pope to win him also to their side. Rhodolph, justly appreciating the power of the pope, sent him a letter couched in those terms which would be most palatable to the pontiff. "Turning all my thoughts to Him," he wrote, "under whose authority we live, and placing all my expectations on you alone, I fall down before the feet of your Holiness, beseeching you, with the most earnest supplication, to favor me with your accustomed kindness in my present undertaking; and that you will deign, by your mediation with the Most High, to support my cause. That I may be enabled to perform what is most acceptable to God and to His holy Church, may it graciously please your Holiness to crown me with the imperial diadem; for I trust I am both able and willing to undertake and accomplish whatever you and the holy Church shall think proper to impose upon me." Gregory X. was a humane and sagacious man, influenced by a profound zeal for the peace of Europe and the propagation of the Christian faith. Gregory received the ambassadors of Rhodolph graciously, extorted from them whatever concessions he desired on the part of the emperor, and pledged his support. Ottocar, King of Bohemia, still remained firm, and even malignant, in his hostility, utterly refusing to recognize the emperor, or to perform any of those acts of fealty which were his due. He declared the electoral diet to have been illegally convened, and the election to have been the result of fraud, and that a man who had been excommunicated for burning a convent, was totally unfit to wear the imperial crown. The diet met at Augsburg, and irritated by the contumacy of Ottocar, sent a command to him to recognize the authority of the emperor, pronouncing upon him the ban of the empire should he refuse. Ottocar dismissed the ambassadors with defiance and contempt from his palace at Prague, saying, "Tell Rhodolph that he may rule over the territories of the empire, but he shall have no dominion over mine. It is a disgrace to Germany, that a petty count of Hapsburg should have been preferred to so many powerful sovereigns." War, and a fearful one, was now inevitable. Ottocar was a veteran soldier, a man of great intrepidity and energy, and his pride was thoroughly roused. By a long series of aggressions he had become the most powerful prince in Europe, and he could lead the most powerful armies into the field. His dominions extended from the confines of Bavaria to Raab in Hungary, and from the Adriatic to the shores of the Baltic. The hereditary domains of the Count of Hapsburg were comparatively insignificant, and were remotely situated at the foot of the Alps, spreading through the defiles of Alsace and Suabia. As emperor, Rhodolph could call the armies of the Germanic princes into the field; but these princes moved reluctantly, unless roused by some question of great moment to them all. And when these heterogeneous troops of the empire were assembled, there was but a slender bond of union between them. But Rhodolph possessed mental resources equal to the emergence. As cautious as he was bold, as sagacious in council as he was impetuous in action, he calmly, and with great foresight and deliberation, prepared for the strife. To a monarch in such a time of need, a family of brave sons and beautiful daughters, is an inestimable blessing. Rhodolph secured the Duke of Sclavonia by making him the happy husband of one of his daughters. His son Albert married Elizabeth, daughter of the Count of Tyrol, and thus that powerful and noble family was secured. Henry of Bavaria he intimidated, and by force of arms compelled him to lead his troops to the standard of the emperor; and then, to secure his fidelity, gave his daughter Hedwige to Henry's son Otho, in marriage, promising to his daughter as a dowry a portion of Austria, which was then a feeble duchy upon the Danube, but little larger than the State of Massachusetts. Ottocar was but little aware of the tremendous energies of the foe he had aroused. Regarding Rhodolph almost with contempt, he had by no means made the arrangements which his peril demanded, and was in consternation when he heard that Rhodolph, in alliance with Henry of Bavaria, had already entered Austria, taken possession of several fortresses, and, at the head of a force of a thousand horsemen, was carrying all before him, and was triumphantly marching upon Vienna. Rhodolph had so admirably matured his plans, that his advance seemed rather a festive journey than a contested conquest. With the utmost haste Ottocar urged his troops down through the defiles of the Bohemian mountains, hoping to save the capital. But Rhodolph was at Vienna before him, where he was joined by others of his allies, who were to meet him at that rendezvous. Vienna, the capital, was a fortress of great strength. Upon this frontier post Charlemagne had established a strong body of troops under a commander who was called a margrave; and for some centuries this city, commanding the Danube, had been deemed one of the strongest defenses of the empire against Mohammedan invasion. Vienna, unable to resist, capitulated. The army of Ottocar had been so driven in their long and difficult march, that, exhausted and perishing for want of provisions, they began to mutiny. The pope had excommunicated Ottocar, and the terrors of the curse of the pope, were driving captains and nobles from his service. The proud spirit of Ottocar, after a terrible struggle, was utterly crushed, and he humbly sued for peace. The terms were hard for a haughty spirit to bear. The conquered king was compelled to renounce all claim to Austria and several other adjoining provinces, Styria, Carinthia, Carniola and Windischmark; to take the oath of allegiance to the emperor, and publicly to do him homage as his vassal lord. To cement this compulsory friendship, Rhodolph, who was rich in daughters, having six to proffer as bribes, gave one, with an abundant dowry in silver, to a son of Ottocar. The day was appointed for the king, in the presence of the whole army, to do homage to the emperor as his liege lord. It was the 25th of November, 1276. With a large escort of Bohemian nobles, Ottocar crossed the Danube, and was received by the emperor in the presence of many of the leading princes of the empire. The whole army was drawn up to witness the spectacle. With a dejected countenance, and with indications, which he could not conceal, of a crushed and broken spirit, Ottocar renounced these valuable provinces, and kneeling before the emperor, performed the humiliating ceremony of feudal homage. The pope in consequence withdrew his sentence of excommunication, and Ottocar returned to his mutilated kingdom, a humbler and a wiser man. Rhodolph now took possession of the adjacent provinces which had been ceded to him, and, uniting them, placed them under the government of Louis of Bavaria, son of his firm ally Henry, the King of Bavaria. Bavaria bounded Austria on the west, and thus the father and the son would be in easy coöperation. He then established his three Sons, Albert, Hartmann, and Rhodolph, in different parts of these provinces, and, with his queen, fixed his residence at Vienna. Such was the nucleus of the Austrian empire, and such the commencement of the powerful monarchy which for so many generations has exerted so important a control over the affairs of Europe. Ottocar, however, though he left Rhodolph with the strongest protestations of friendship, returned to Prague consumed by the most torturing fires of humiliation and chagrin. His wife, a haughty woman, who was incapable of listening to the voice of judgment when her passions were inflamed, could not conceive it possible that a petty count of Hapsburg could vanquish her renowned husband in the field. And when she heard that Ottocar had actually done fealty to Rhodolph, and had surrendered to him valuable provinces of the kingdom, no bridle could be put upon her woman's tongue. She almost stung her husband to madness with taunts and reproaches. Thus influenced by the pride of his queen, Cunegunda, Ottocar violated his oath, refused to execute the treaty, imprisoned in a convent the daughter whom Rhodolph had given to his son, and sent a defiant and insulting letter to the emperor. Rhodolph returned a dignified answer and prepared for war. Ottocar, now better understanding the power of his foe, made the most formidable preparations for the strife, and soon took the field with an army which he supposed would certainly triumph over any force which Rhodolph could raise. He even succeeded in drawing Henry of Bavaria into an alliance; and many of the German princes, whom he could not win to his standard, he bribed to neutrality. Numerous chieftains, lured to his camp by confidence of victory, crowded around him with their followers, from Poland, Bulgaria, Pomerania, Magdeburg, and from the barbaric shores of the Baltic. Many of the fierce nobles of Hungary had also joined the standard of Ottocar. Thus suddenly clouds gathered around Rhodolph, and many of his friends despaired of his cause. He appealed to the princes of the German empire, and but few responded to his call. His sons-in-law, the Electors of Palatine and of Saxony, ventured not to aid him in an emergence when defeat seemed almost certain, and where all who shared in the defeat would be utterly ruined. In June, 1275, Ottocar marched from Prague, met his allies at the appointed rendezvous, and threading the defiles of the Bohemian mountains, approached the frontiers of Austria. Rhodolph was seriously alarmed, for it was evident that the chances of war were against him. He could not conceal the restlessness and agitation of his spirit as he impatiently awaited the arrival of troops whom he summoned, but who disappointed his hopes. "I have not one," he sadly exclaimed, "in whom I can confide, or on whose advice I can depend." The citizens of Vienna perceiving that Rhodolph was abandoned by his German allies, and that they could present no effectual resistance to so powerful an army as was approaching, and terrified in view of a siege, and the capture of the city by storm, urged a capitulation, and even begged permission to choose a new sovereign, that they might not be involved in the ruin impending over Rhodolph. This address roused Rhodolph from his despondency, and inspired him with the energies of despair. He had succeeded in obtaining a few troops from his provinces in Switzerland. The Bishop of Basle, who had now become his confessor, came to his aid, at the head of a hundred horsemen, and a body of expert slingers. Rhodolph, though earnestly advised not to undertake a battle with such desperate odds, marched from Vienna to meet the foe. Rapidly traversing the southern banks of the Danube to Hamburg, he crossed the river and advanced to Marcheck, on the banks of the Morava. He was joined by some troops from Styria and Carinthia, and by a strong force led by the King of Hungary. Emboldened by these accessions, though still far inferior in strength to Ottocar, he pressed on till the two armies faced each other on the plains of Murchfield. It was the 26th of August, 1278. At this moment some traitors deserting the camp of Ottocar, repaired to the camp of Rhodolph and proposed to assassinate the Bohemian king. Rhodolph spurned the infamous offer, and embraced the opportunity of seeking terms of reconciliation by apprising Ottocar of his danger. But the king, confident in his own strength, and despising the weakness of Rhodolph, deemed the story a fabrication and refused to listen to any overtures. Without delay he drew up his army in the form of a crescent, so as almost to envelop the feeble band before him, and made a simultaneous attack upon the center and upon both flanks. A terrific battle ensued, in which one party fought, animated by undoubting confidence, and the other impelled by despair. The strife was long and bloody. The tide of victory repeatedly ebbed and flowed. Ottocar had offered a large reward to any of his followers who would bring to him Rhodolph, dead or alive. A number of knights of great strength and bravery, confederated to achieve this feat. It was a point of honor to be effected at every hazard. Disregarding all the other perils of the battle, they watched their opportunity, and then in a united swoop, on their steel-clad chargers, fell upon the emperor. His feeble guard was instantly cut down. Rhodolph was a man of herculean power, and he fought like a lion at bay. One after another of his assailants he struck from his horse, when a Thuringian knight, of almost fabulous stature and strength, thrust his spear through the horse of the emperor, and both steed and rider fell to the ground. Rhodolph, encumbered by his heavy coat of mail, and entangled in the housings of his saddle, was unable to rise. He crouched upon the ground, holding his helmet over him, while saber strokes and pike thrusts rang upon cuirass and buckler like blows upon an anvil. A corps of reserve spurred to his aid, and the emperor was rescued, and the bold assailants who had penetrated the very center of his army were slain. The tide of victory now set strongly in favor of Rhodolph, for "the race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong." The troops of Bohemia were soon everywhere put to rout. The ground was covered with the dead. Ottocar, astounded at his discomfiture, and perhaps fearing the tongue of his wife more than the sabers of his foes, turned his back upon his flying army, and spurred his horse into the thickest of his pursuers. He was soon dismounted and slain. Fourteen thousand of his troops perished on that disastrous day. The body of Ottocar, mutilated with seventeen wounds, was carried to Vienna, and, after being exposed to the people, was buried with regal honors. Rhodolph, vastly enriched by the plunder of the camp, and having no enemy to encounter, took possession of Moravia, and triumphantly marched into Bohemia. All was consternation there. The queen Cunegunda, who had brought these disasters upon the kingdom, had no influence. Her only son was but eight years of age. The turbulent nobles, jealous of each other, had no recognized leader. The queen, humiliated and despairing, implored the clemency of the conqueror, and offered to place her infant son and the kingdom of Bohemia under his protection. Rhodolph was generous in this hour of victory. As the result of arbitration, it was agreed that he should hold Moravia for five years, that its revenues might indemnify him for the expenses of the war. The young prince, Wenceslaus, was acknowledged king, and during his minority the regency was assigned to Otho, margrave or military commander of Brundenburg. Then ensued some politic matrimonial alliances. Wenceslaus, the boy king, was affianced to Judith, one of the daughters of Rhodolph. The princess Agnes, daughter of Cunegunda, was to become the bride of Rhodolph's second son. These matters being all satisfactorily settled, Rhodolph returned in triumph to Vienna. The emperor now devoted his energies to the consolidation of these Austrian provinces. They were four in number, Austria, Styria, Carinthia and Carniola. All united, they made but a feeble kingdom, for they did not equal, in extent of territory, several of the States of the American Union. Each of these provinces had its independent government, and its local laws and customs. They were held together by the simple bond of an arbitrary monarch, who claimed, and exercised as he could, supreme control over them all. Under his wise and energetic administration, the affairs of the wide-spread empire were prosperous, and his own Austria advanced rapidly in order, civilization and power. The numerous nobles, turbulent, unprincipled and essentially robbers, had been in the habit of issuing from their castles at the head of banditti bands, and ravaging the country with incessant incursions. It required great boldness in Rhodolph to brave the wrath of these united nobles. He did it fearlessly, issuing the decree that there should be no fortresses in his States which were not necessary for the public defense. The whole country was spotted with castles, apparently impregnable in all the strength of stone and iron, the secure refuge of high-born nobles. In one year seventy of these turreted bulwarks of oppression were torn down; and twenty-nine of the highest nobles, who had ventured upon insurrection, were put to death. An earnest petition was presented to him in behalf of the condemned insurgents. "Do not," said the king, "interfere in favor of robbers; they are not nobles, but accursed robbers, who oppress the poor, and break the public peace. True nobility is faithful and just, offends no one, and commits no injury." CHAPTER II. REIGNS OF ALBERT I, FREDERIC, ALBERT AND OTHO. From 1291 to 1347. Anecdotes Of Rhodolph.--His Desire For The Election Of His Son.--His Death.--Albert.--His Unpopularity.--Conspiracy Of The Nobles.--Their Defeat.--Adolphus Of Nassau Chosen Emperor.--Albert's Conspiracy.-- Deposition Of Adolphus And Election Of Albert.--Death Of Adolphus.--The Pope Defied.--Annexation Of Bohemia.--Assassination Of Albert.--Avenging Fury.--The Hermit's Direction.--Frederic The Handsome.--Election Of Henry, Count Of Luxemburg.--His Death.--Election Of Louis Of Bavaria.--Capture Of Frederic.--Remarkable Confidence Toward a Prisoner.--Death Of Frederic.--An Early Engagement.--Death Of Louis.--Accession Of Albert. Rhodolph of Hapsburg was one of the most remarkable men of his own or of any age, and many anecdotes illustrative of his character, and of the rude times in which he lived, have been transmitted to us. The Thuringian knight who speared the emperor's horse in the bloody fight of Murchfield, was rescued by Rhodolph from those who would cut him down. "I have witnessed," said the emperor, "his intrepidity, and never could forgive myself if so courageous a knight should be put to death." During the war with Ottocar, on one occasion the army were nearly perishing of thirst. A flagon of water was brought to him. He declined it, saying, "I can not drink alone, nor can I divide so small a quantity among all. I do not thirst for myself, but for the whole army." By earnest endeavor he obtained the perfect control of his passions, naturally very violent. "I have often," said he, "repented of being passionate, but never of being mild and humane." One of his captains expressed dissatisfaction at a rich gift the emperor made to a literary man who presented him a manuscript describing the wars of the Romans. "My good friend," Rhodolph replied, "be contented that men of learning praise our actions, and thereby inspire us with additional courage in war. I wish I could employ more time in reading, and could expend some of that money on learned men which I must throw away on so many illiterate knights." One cold morning at Metz, in the year 1288, he walked out dressed as usual in the plainest garb. He strolled into a baker's shop, as if to warm himself. The baker's termagant wife said to him, all unconscious who he was, "Soldiers have no business to come into poor women's houses." "True," the emperor replied, "but do not be angry, my good woman; I am an old soldier who have spent all my fortune in the service of that rascal Rhodolph, and he suffers me to want, notwithstanding all his fine promises." "Good enough for you," said the woman; "a man who will serve such a fellow, who is laying waste the whole earth, deserves nothing better." She then, in her spite, threw a pail of water on the fire, which, filling the room with smoke and ashes, drove the emperor into the street. Rhodolph, having returned to his lodgings, sent a rich present to the old woman, from the emperor who had warmed himself at her fire that morning, and at the dinner-table told the story with great glee to his companions. The woman, terrified, hastened to the emperor to implore mercy. He ordered her to be admitted to the dining-room, and promised to forgive her if she would repeat to the company all her abusive epithets, not omitting one. She did it faithfully, to the infinite merriment of the festive group. So far as we can now judge, and making due allowance for the darkness of the age in which he lived, Rhodolph appears to have been, in the latter part of his life, a sincere, if not an enlightened Christian. He was devout in prayer, and punctual in attending the services of the Church. The humble and faithful ministers of religion he esteemed and protected, while he was ever ready to chastise the insolence of those haughty prelates who disgraced their religious professions by arrogance and splendor. At last the infirmities of age pressed heavily upon him. When seventy-three years old, knowing that he could not have much longer to live, he assembled the congress of electors at Frankfort, and urged them to choose his then only surviving son Albert as his successor on the imperial throne. The diet, however, refused to choose a successor until after the death of the emperor. Rhodolph was bitterly disappointed, for he understood this postponement as a positive refusal to gratify him in this respect. Saddened in spirit, and feeble in body, he undertook a journey, by slow stages, to his hereditary dominions in Switzerland. He then returned to Austria, where he died on the 15th of July, 1291, in the seventy-third year of his age. Albert, who resided at Vienna, succeeded his father in authority over the Austrian and Swiss provinces. But he was a man stern, unconciliating and domineering. The nobles hated him, and hoped to drive him back to the Swiss cantons from which his father had come. One great occasion of discontent was, that he employed about his person, and in important posts, Swiss instead of Austrian nobles. They demanded the dismission of these foreign favorites, which so exasperated Albert that he clung to them still more tenaciously and exclusively. The nobles now organized a very formidable conspiracy, and offered to neighboring powers, as bribes for their aid, portions of Austria. Austria proper was divided by the river Ens into two parts called Upper and Lower Austria. Lower Austria was offered to Bohemia; Styria to the Duke of Bavaria; Upper Austria to the Archbishop of Saltzburg; Carniola to the Counts of Guntz; and thus all the provinces were portioned out to the conquerors. At the same time the citizens of Vienna, provoked by the haughtiness of Albert, rose in insurrection. With the energy which characterized his father, Albert met these emergencies. Summoning immediately an army from Switzerland, he shut up all the avenues to the city, which was not in the slightest degree prepared for a siege, and speedily starved the inhabitants into submission. Punishing severely the insurgents, he strengthened his post at Vienna, and confirmed his power. Then, marching rapidly upon the nobles, before they had time to receive that foreign aid which had been secretly promised them, and securing all the important fortresses, which were now not many in number, he so overawed them, and so vigilantly watched every movement, that there was no opportunity to rise and combine. The Styrian nobles, being remote, made an effort at insurrection. Albert, though it was in the depth of winter, plowed through the snows of the mountains, and plunging unexpectedly among them, routed them with great slaughter. While he was thus conquering discontent by the sword, and silencing murmurs beneath the tramp of iron hoofs, the diet was assembling at Frankfort to choose a new chief for the Germanic empire. Albert was confident of being raised to the vacant dignity. The splendor of his talents all admitted. Four of the electors were closely allied to him by marriage, and he arrogantly felt that he was almost entitled to the office as the son of his renowned father. But the electors feared his ambitious and despotic disposition, and chose Adolphus of Nassau to succeed to the imperial throne. Albert was mortified and enraged by this disappointment, and expressed his determination to oppose the election; but the troubles in his own domains prevented him from putting this threat into immediate execution. His better judgment soon taught him the policy of acquiescing in the election, and he sullenly received the investiture of his fiefs from the hands of the Emperor Adolphus. Still Albert, struggling against unpopularity and continued insurrection, kept his eye fixed eagerly upon the imperial crown. With great tact he conspired to form a confederacy for the deposition of Adolphus. Wenceslaus, the young King of Bohemia, was now of age, and preparations were made for his coronation with great splendor at Prague. Four of the electors were present on this occasion, which was in June, 1297. Albert conferred with them respecting his plans, and secured their coöperation. The electors more willingly lent their aid since they were exceedingly displeased with some of the measures of Adolphus for the aggrandizement of his own family. Albert with secrecy and vigor pushed his plans, and when the diet met the same year at Metz, a long list of grievances was drawn up against Adolphus. He was summoned to answer to these charges. The proud emperor refused to appear before the bar of the diet as a culprit. The diet then deposed Adolphus and elected Albert II. to the imperial throne, on the 23d of June, 1298. The two rival emperors made vigorous preparations to settle the dispute with the sword, and the German States arrayed themselves, some on one side and some on the other. The two armies met at Gelheim on the 2d of July, led by the rival sovereigns. In the thickest of the fight Adolphus spurred his horse through the opposing ranks, bearing down all opposition, till he faced Albert, who was issuing orders and animating his troops by voice and gesture. "Yield," shouted Adolphus, aiming a saber stroke at the head of his foe, "your life and your crown." "Let God decide," Albert replied, as he parried the blow, and thrust his lance into the unprotected face of Adolphus. At that moment the horse of Adolphus fell, and he himself was instantly slain. Albert remained the decisive victor on this bloody field. The diet of electors was again summoned, and he was now chosen unanimously emperor. He was soon crowned with great splendor at Aix-la-Chapelle. Still Albert sat on an uneasy throne. The pope, indignant that the electors should presume to depose one emperor and choose another without his consent, refused to confirm the election of Albert, and loudly inveighed him as the murderer of Adolphus. Albert, with characteristic impulsiveness, declared that he was emperor by choice of the electors and not by ratification of the pope, and defiantly spurned the opposition of the pontiff. Considering himself firmly seated on the throne, he refused to pay the bribes of tolls, privileges, territories, etc., which he had so freely offered to the electors. Thus exasperated, the electors, the pope, and the King of Bohemia, conspired to drive Albert from the throne. Their secret plans were so well laid, and they were so secure of success, that the Elector of Mentz tauntingly and boastingly said to Albert, "I need only sound my hunting-horn and a new emperor will appear." Albert, however, succeeded by sagacity and energy, in dispelling this storm which for a time threatened his entire destruction. By making concessions to the pope, he finally won him to cordial friendship, and by the sword vanquishing some and intimidating others, he broke up the league. His most formidable foe was his brother-in-law, Wenceslaus, King of Bohemia. Albert's sister, Judith, the wife of Wenceslaus, had for some years prevented a rupture between them, but she now being dead, both monarchs decided to refer their difficulties to the arbitration of the sword. While their armies were marching, Wenceslaus was suddenly taken sick and died, in June, 1305. His son, but seventeen years of age, weak in body and in mind, at once yielded to all the demands of his imperial uncle. Hardly a year, however, had elapsed ere this young prince, Wenceslaus III., was assassinated, leaving no issue. Albert immediately resolved to transfer the crown of Bohemia to his own family, and thus to annex the powerful kingdom of Bohemia to his own limited Austrian territories. Bohemia added to the Austrian provinces, would constitute quite a noble kingdom. The crown was considered elective, though in fact the eldest son was almost always chosen during the lifetime of his father. The death of Wenceslaus, childless, opened the throne to other claimants. No one could more imperiously demand the scepter than Albert. He did demand it for his son Rhodolph in tones which were heard and obeyed. The States assembled at Prague on the 1st of April, 1306. Albert, surrounded by a magnificent retinue, conducted his son to Prague, and to confirm his authority married him to the widow of Wenceslaus, a second wife. Rhodolph also, about a year before, had buried Blanche, his first wife. Albert was exceedingly elated, for the acquisition of Bohemia was an accession to the power of his family which doubled their territory, and more than doubled their wealth and resources. A mild government would have conciliated the Bohemians, but such a course was not consonant with the character of the imperious and despotic Albert. He urged his son to measures of arbitrary power which exasperated the nobles, and led to a speedy revolt against his authority. Rhodolph and the nobles were soon in the field with their contending armies, when Rhodolph suddenly died from the fatigues of the camp, aged but twenty-two years, having held the throne of Bohemia less than a year. Albert, grievously disappointed, now demanded that his second son, Frederic, should receive the crown. As soon as his name was mentioned to the States, the assembly with great unanimity exclaimed, "We will not again have an Austrian king." This led to a tumult. Swords were drawn, and two of the partisans of Albert were slain. Henry, Duke of Carinthia, was then almost unanimously chosen king. But the haughty Albert was not to be thus easily thwarted in his plans. He declared that his son Frederic was King of Bohemia, and raising an army, he exerted all the influence and military power which his position as emperor gave him, to enforce his claim. But affairs in Switzerland for a season arrested the attention of Albert, and diverted his armies from the invasion of Bohemia. Switzerland was then divided into small sovereignties, of various names, there being no less than fifty counts, one hundred and fifty barons, and one thousand noble families. Both Rhodolph and Albert had greatly increased, by annexation, the territory and the power of the house of Hapsburg. By purchase, intimidation, war, and diplomacy, Albert had for some time been making such rapid encroachments, that a general insurrection was secretly planned to resist his power. All Switzerland seemed to unite as with one accord. Albert was rejoiced at this insurrection, for, confident of superior power, he doubted not his ability speedily to quell it, and it would afford him the most favorable pretext for still greater aggrandizement. Albert hastened to his domain at Hapsburg, where he was assassinated by conspirators led by his own nephew, whom he was defrauding of his estates. Frederic and Leopold, the two oldest surviving sons of Albert, avenged their father's death by pursuing the conspirators until they all suffered the penalty of their crimes. With ferocity characteristic of the age, they punished mercilessly the families and adherents of the assassins. Their castles were demolished, their estates confiscated, their domestics and men at arms massacred, and their wives and children driven out into the world to beg or to starve. Sixty-three of the retainers of Lord Balne, one of the conspirators, though entirely innocent of the crime, and solemnly protesting their unconsciousness of any plot, were beheaded in one day. Though but four persons took part in the assassination, and it was not known that any others were implicated in the deed, it is estimated that more than a thousand persons suffered death through the fury of the avengers. Agnes, one of the daughters of Albert, endeavored with her own hands to strangle the infant child of the Lord of Eschenback, when the soldiers, moved by its piteous cries, with difficulty rescued it from her hands. Elizabeth, the widow of Albert, with her implacable fanatic daughter Agnes, erected a magnificent convent on the spot at Königsburg, where the emperor was assassinated, and there in cloistered gloom they passed the remainder of their lives. It was an age of superstition, and yet there were some who comprehended and appreciated the pure morality of the gospel of Christ. "Woman," said an aged hermit to Agnes, "God is not served by shedding innocent blood, and by rearing convents from the plunder of families. He is served by compassion only, and by the forgiveness of injuries." Frederic, Albert's oldest son, now assumed the government of the Austrian provinces. From his uncommon personal attractions he was called Frederic the Handsome. His character was in conformity with his person, for to the most chivalrous bravery he added the most feminine amiability and mildness. He was a candidate for the imperial throne, and would probably have been elected but for the unpopularity of his despotic father. The diet met, and on the 27th of November, 1308, the choice fell unanimously upon Henry, Count of Luxemburg. This election deprived Frederic of his hopes of uniting Bohemia to Austria, for the new emperor placed his son John upon the Bohemian throne, and was prepared to maintain him there by all the power of the empire. In accomplishing this, there was a short conflict with Henry of Carinthia, but he was speedily driven out of the kingdom. Frederic, however, found a little solace in his disappointment, by attaching to Austria the dominions he had wrested from the lords he had beheaded as assassins of his father. In the midst of these scenes of ambition, intrigue and violence, the Emperor Henry fell sick and died, in the fifty-second year of his age. This unexpected event opened again to Frederic the prospect of the imperial crown, and all his friends, in the now very numerous branches of the family, spared neither money nor the arts of diplomacy in the endeavor to secure the coveted dignity for him. A year elapsed after the death of Henry before the diet was assembled. During that time all the German States were in intense agitation canvassing the claims of the several candidates. The prize of an imperial crown was one which many grasped at, and every little court was agitated by the question. The day of election, October 9th, 1314, arrived. There were two hostile parties in the field, one in favor of Frederic of Austria, the other in favor of Louis of Bavaria. The two parties met in different cities, the Austrians at Saxenhausen, and the Bavarians at Frankfort. There were, however, but four electors at Saxenhausen, while there were five at Frankfort, the ancient place of election. Each party unanimously chose its candidate. Louis, of Bavaria, receiving five votes, while Frederic received but four, was unquestionably the legitimate emperor. Most of the imperial cities acknowledged him. Frankfort sung his triumph, and he was crowned with all the ancient ceremonials of pomp at Aix-la-Chapelle. But Frederic and his party were not ready to yield, and all over Germany there was the mustering of armies. For two years the hostile forces were marching and countermarching with the usual vicissitudes of war. The tide of devastation and blood swept now over one State, and now over another, until at length the two armies met, in all their concentrated strength, at Muhldorf, near Munich, for a decisive battle. Louis of Bavaria rode proudly at the head of thirty thousand foot, and fifteen hundred steel-clad horsemen. Frederic of Austria, the handsomest man of his age, towering above all his retinue, was ostentatiously arrayed in the most splendid armor art could furnish, emblazoned with the Austrian eagle, and his helmet was surmounted by a crown of gold. As he thus led the ranks of twenty-two thousand footmen, and seven thousand horse, all eyes followed him, and all hearts throbbed with confidence of victory. From early dawn, till night darkened the field, the horrid strife raged. In those days gunpowder was unknown, and the ringing of battle-axes on helmet and cuirass, the strokes of sabers and the clash of spears, shouts of onset, and the shrieks of the wounded, as sixty thousand men fought hand to hand on one small field, rose like the clamor from battling demons in the infernal world. Hour after hour of carnage passed, and still no one could tell on whose banners victory would alight. The gloom of night was darkening over the exhausted combatants, when the winding of the bugle was heard in the rear of the Austrians, and a band of four hundred Bavarian horsemen came plunging down an eminence into the disordered ranks of Frederic. The hour of dismay, which decides a battle, had come. A scene of awful carnage ensued as the routed Austrians, fleeing in every direction, were pursued and massacred. Frederic himself was struck from his horse, and as he fell, stunned by the blow, he was captured, disarmed and carried to the presence of his rival Louis. The spirit of Frederic was crushed by the awful, the irretrievable defeat, and he appeared before his conqueror speechless in the extremity of his woe. Louis had the pride of magnanimity and endeavored to console his captive. "The battle is not lost by your fault," said he. "The Bavarians have experienced to their cost that you are a valiant prince; but Providence has decided the battle. Though I am happy to see you as my guest, I sympathize with you in your sorrow, and will do what I can to alleviate it." For three years the unhappy Frederic remained a prisoner of Louis of Bavaria, held in close confinement in the castle at Trausnitz. At the end of that time the emperor, alarmed at the efforts which the friends of Frederic were making to combine several Powers to take up arms for his relief, visited his prisoner, and in a personal interview proposed terms of reconciliation. The terms, under the circumstances, were considered generous, but a proud spirit needed the discipline of three years' imprisonment before it could yield to such demands. It was the 13th of March, 1325, when this singular interview between Louis the emperor, and Frederic his captive, took place at Trausnitz. Frederic promised upon oath that in exchange for his freedom he would renounce all claim to the imperial throne; restore all the districts and castles he had wrested from the empire; give up all the documents relative to his election as emperor; join with all his family influence to support Louis against any and every adversary, and give his daughter in marriage to Stephen the son of Louis. He also promised that in case he should fail in the fulfillment of any one of these stipulations, he would return to his captivity. Frederic fully intended a faithful compliance with these requisitions. But no sooner was he liberated than his fiery brother Leopold, who presided over the Swiss estates, and who was a man of great capacity and military energy, refused peremptorily to fulfill the articles which related to him, and made vigorous preparations to urge the war which he had already, with many allies, commenced against the Emperor Louis. The pope also, who had become inimical to Louis, declared that Frederic was absolved from the agreement at Trausnitz, as it was extorted by force, and, with all the authority of the head of the Church, exhorted Frederic to reassert his claim to the imperial crown. Amidst such scenes of fraud and violence, it is refreshing to record an act of real honor. Frederic, notwithstanding the entreaties of the pope and the remonstrances of his friends, declared that, be the consequences what they might, he never would violate his pledge; and finding that he could not fulfill the articles of the agreement, he returned to Bavaria and surrendered himself a prisoner to the emperor. It is seldom that history has the privilege of recording so noble an act. Louis of Bavaria fortunately had a soul capable of appreciating the magnanimity of his captive. He received him with courtesy and with almost fraternal kindness. In the words of a contemporary historian, "They ate at the same table and slept in the same bed;" and, most extraordinary of all, when Louis was subsequently called to a distant part of his dominions to quell an insurrection, he intrusted the government of Bavaria, during his absence, to Frederic. Frederic's impetuous and ungovernable brother Leopold, was unwearied in his endeavors to combine armies against the emperor, and war raged without cessation. At length Louis, harassed by these endless insurrections and coalitions against him, and admiring the magnanimity of Frederic, entered into a new alliance, offering terms exceedingly honorable on his part. He agreed that he and Frederic should rule conjointly as emperors of Germany, in perfect equality of power and dignity, alternately taking the precedence. With this arrangement Leopold was satisfied, but unfortunately, just at that time, his impetuous spirit, exhausted by disappointment and chagrin, yielded to death. He died at Strasbourg on the 28th of February, 1326. The pope and several of the electors refused to accede to this arrangement, and thus the hopes of the unhappy Frederic were again blighted, for Louis, who had consented to this accommodation for the sake of peace, was not willing to enforce it through the tumult of war. Frederic was, however, liberated from captivity, and he returned to Austria a dejected, broken-hearted man. He pined away for a few months in languor, being rarely known to smile, and died at the castle of Gullenstein on the 13th of January, 1330. His widow, Isabella, the daughter of the King of Arragon, became blind from excessive grief, and soon followed her husband to the tomb. As Frederic left no son, the Austrian dominions fell to his two brothers, Albert III. and Otho. Albert, by marriage, added the valuable county of Ferret in Alsace to the dominions of the house of Austria. The two brothers reigned with such wonderful harmony, that no indications can be seen of separate administrations. They renounced all claim to the imperial throne, notwithstanding the efforts of the pope to the contrary, and thus secured friendship with the Emperor Louis. There were now three prominent families dominant in Germany. Around these great families, who had gradually, by marriage and military encroachments, attained their supremacy, the others of all degrees rallied as vassals, seeking protection and contributing strength. The house of Bavaria, reigning over that powerful kingdom and in possession of the imperial throne, ranked first. Then came the house of Luxembourg, possessing the wide-spread and opulent realms of Bohemia. The house of Austria had now vast possessions, but these were widely scattered; some provinces on the banks of the Danube and others in Switzerland, spreading through the defiles of the Alps. John of Bohemia was an overbearing man, and feeling quite impregnable in his northern realms beyond the mountains, assumed such a dictatorial air as to rouse the ire of the princes of Austria and Bavaria. These two houses consequently entered into an intimate alliance for mutual security. The Duke of Carinthia, who was uncle to Albert and Otho, died, leaving only a daughter, Margaret. This dukedom, about the size of the State of Massachusetts, a wild and mountainous region, was deemed very important as the key to Italy. John of Bohemia, anxious to obtain it, had engaged the hand of Margaret for his son, then but eight years of age. It was a question in dispute whether the dukedom could descend to a female, and Albert and Otho claimed it as the heirs of their uncle. Louis, the emperor, supported the claims of Austria, and thus Carinthia became attached to this growing power. John, enraged, formed a confederacy with the kings of Hungary and Poland, and some minor princes, and invaded Austria. For some time they swept all opposition before them. But the Austrian troops and those of the empire checked them at Landau. Here they entered into an agreement without a battle, by which Austria was permitted to retain Carinthia, she making important concessions to Bohemia. In February, 1339, Otho died, and Albert was invested with the sole administration of affairs. The old King of Bohemia possessed vehemence of character which neither age nor the total blindness with which he had become afflicted could repress. He traversed the empire, and even went to France, organizing a powerful confederacy against the emperor. The pope, Clement VI., who had always been inimical to Louis of Bavaria, influenced by John of Bohemia, deposed and excommunicated Louis, and ordered a new meeting of the diet of electors, which chose Charles, eldest son of the Bohemian monarch, and heir to that crown, emperor. The deposed Louis fought bravely for the crown thus torn from his brow. Albert of Austria aided him with all his energies. Their united armies, threading the defiles of the Bohemian mountains, penetrated the very heart of the kingdom, when, in the midst of success, the deposed Emperor Louis fell dead from a stroke of apoplexy, in the year 1347. This event left Charles of Bohemia in undisputed possession of the imperial crown. Albert immediately recognized his claim, effected reconciliation, and becoming the friend and the ally of the emperor, pressed on cautiously but securely, year after year, in his policy of annexation. But storms of war incessantly howled around his domains until he died, a crippled paralytic, on the 16th of August, 1358. CHAPTER III. RHODOLPH II., ALBERT IV. AND ALBERT V. From 1339 to 1437. Rhodolph II.--Marriage of John to Margaret.--Intriguing for the Tyrol.--Death of Rhodolph.--Accession of Power to Austria.--Dividing the Empire.--Delight of the Emperor Charles.--Leopold.--His Ambition and Successes.--Hedwige, Queen of Poland.--"The Course of true Love never did run smooth."--Unhappy Marriage of Hedwige.--Heroism of Arnold of Winkelreid.--Death of Leopold.--Death of Albert IV.--Accession of Albert V.--Attempts of Sigismond to bequeath to Albert V. Hungary and Bohemia. Rhodolph II., the eldest son of Albert III., when but nineteen years of age succeeded his father in the government of the Austrian States. He had been very thoroughly educated in all the civil and military knowledge of the times. He was closely allied with the Emperor Charles IV. of Bohemia, having married his daughter Catherine. His character and manhood had been very early developed. When he was in his seventeenth year his father had found it necessary to visit his Swiss estates, then embroiled in the fiercest war, and had left him in charge of the Austrian provinces. He soon after was intrusted with the whole care of the Hapsburg dominions in Switzerland. In this responsible post he developed wonderful administrative skill, encouraging industry, repressing disorder, and by constructing roads and bridges, opening facilities for intercourse and trade. Upon the death of his father, Rhodolph removed to Vienna, and being now the monarch of powerful realms on the Danube and among the Alps, he established a court rivaling the most magnificent establishments of the age. Just west of Austria and south of Bavaria was the magnificent dukedom of Tyrol, containing some sixteen thousand square miles, or about twice the size of the State of Massachusetts. It was a country almost unrivaled in the grandeur of its scenery, and contained nearly a million of inhabitants. This State, lying equally convenient to both Austria and Bavaria, by both of these kingdoms had for many years been regarded with a wistful eye. The manner in which Austria secured the prize is a story well worth telling, as illustrative of the intrigues of those times. It will be remembered that John, the arrogant King of Bohemia, engaged for his son the hand of Margaret, the only daughter of the Duke of Carinthia. Tyrol also was one of the possessions of this powerful duke. Henry, having no son, had obtained from the emperor a decree that these possessions should descend, in default of male issue, to his daughter. But for this decision the sovereignty of these States would descend to the male heirs, Albert and Otho of Austria, nephews of Henry. They of course disputed the legality of the decree, and, aided by the Emperor Louis of Bavaria, obtained Carinthia, relinquishing for a time their claim to Tyrol. The emperor hoped to secure that golden prize for his hereditary estates of Bavaria. When John, the son of the King of Bohemia, was but seventeen years of age, and a puny, weakly child, he was hurriedly married to Margaret, then twenty-two. Margaret, a sanguine, energetic woman, despised her baby husband, and he, very naturally, impotently hated her. She at length fled from him, and escaping from Bohemia, threw herself under the protection of Louis. The emperor joyfully welcomed her to his court, and promised to grant her a divorce, by virtue of his imperial power, if she would marry his son Louis. The compliant princess readily acceded to this plan, and the divorce was announced and the nuptials solemnized in February, 1342. The King of Bohemia was as much exasperated as the King of Bavaria was elated by this event, for the one felt that he had lost the Tyrol, and the other that he had gained it. It was this successful intrigue which cost Louis of Bavaria his imperial crown; for the blood of the King of Bohemia was roused. Burning with vengeance, he traversed Europe almost with the zeal and eloquence of Peter the Hermit, to organize a coalition against the emperor, and succeeded in inducing the pope, always hostile to Louis, to depose and excommunicate him. This marriage was also declared by the pope unlawful, and the son, Meinhard, eventually born to them, was branded as illegitimate. While matters were in this state, as years glided on, Rhodolph succeeded in winning the favor of the pontiff, and induced him to legitimate Meinhard, that this young heir of Tyrol might marry the Austrian princess Margaret, sister of Rhodolph. Meinhard and his wife Margaret ere long died, leaving Margaret of Tyrol, a widow in advancing years, with no direct heirs. By the marriage contract of her son Meinhard with Margaret of Austria, she promised that should there be failure of issue, Tyrol should revert to Austria. On the other hand, Bavaria claimed the territory in virtue of the marriage of Margaret with Louis of Bavaria. Rhodolph was so apprehensive that Bavaria might make an immediate move to obtain the coveted territory by force of arms, that he hastened across the mountains, though in the depth of winter, obtained from Margaret an immediate possession of Tyrol, and persuaded her to accompany him, an honored guest, to his capital, which he had embellished with unusual splendor for her entertainment. Rhodolph had married the daughter of Charles, King of Bohemia, the emperor, but unfortunately at this juncture, Rhodolph, united with the kings of Hungary and Poland, was at war with the Bavarian king. Catherine his wife, however, undertook to effect a reconciliation between her husband and her father. She secured an interview between them, and the emperor, the hereditary rival of his powerful neighbor the King of Bavaria, confirmed Margaret's gift, invested Rhodolph with the Tyrol, and pledged the arm of the empire to maintain this settlement. Thus Austria gained Tyrol, the country of romance and of song, interesting, perhaps, above all other portions of Europe in its natural scenery, and invaluable from its location as the gateway of Italy. Bavaria made a show of armed opposition to this magnificent accession to the power of Austria, but soon found it in vain to assail Rhodolph sustained by Margaret of Tyrol, and by the energies of the empire. Rhodolph was an antiquarian of eccentric character, ever poring over musty records and hunting up decayed titles. He was fond of attaching to his signature the names of all the innumerable offices he held over the conglomerated States of his realm. He was Rhodolph, Margrave of Baden, Vicar of Upper Bavaria, Lord of Hapsburg, Arch Huntsman of the Empire, Archduke Palatine, etc., etc. His ostentation provoked even the jealousy of his father, the emperor, and he was ordered to lay aside these numerous titles and the arrogant armorial bearings he was attaching to his seals. His desire to aggrandize his family burned with a quenchless flame. Hoping to extend his influence in Italy, he negotiated a matrimonial alliance for his brother with an Italian princess. As he crossed the Alps to attend the nuptials, he was seized with an inflammatory fever, and died the 27th of July, 1365, but twenty-six years of age, and leaving no issue. His brother Albert, a young man but seventeen years of age, succeeded Rhodolph. Just as he assumed the government, Margaret of Tyrol died, and the King of Bavaria, thinking this a favorable moment to renew his claims for the Tyrol, vigorously invaded the country with a strong army. Albert immediately applied to the emperor for assistance. Three years were employed in fightings and diplomacy, when Bavaria, in consideration of a large sum of money and sundry other concessions, renounced all pretensions to Tyrol, and left the rich prize henceforth undisputed in the hands of Austria. Thus the diminutive margrave of Austria, which was at first but a mere military post on the Danube, had grown by rapid accretions in one century to be almost equal in extent of territory to the kingdoms of Bavaria and of Bohemia. This grandeur, instead of satisfying the Austrian princes, did but increase their ambition. The Austrian territories, though widely scattered, were declared, both by family compact and by imperial decree, to be indivisible. Albert had a brother, Leopold, two years younger than himself, of exceedingly restless and ambitious spirit, while Albert was inactive, and a lover of ease and repose. Leopold was sent to Switzerland, and intrusted with the administration of those provinces. But his imperious spirit so dominated over his elder but pliant brother, that he extorted from him a compact, by which the realm was divided, Albert remaining in possession of the Austrian provinces of the Danube, and Leopold having exclusive dominion over those in Switzerland; while the magnificent new acquisition, the Tyrol, lying between the two countries, bounding Switzerland on the east, and Austria on the west, was shared between them. Nothing can more clearly show the moderate qualities of Albert than that he should have assented to such a plan. He did, however, with easy good nature, assent to it, and the two brothers applied to the Emperor Charles to ratify the division by his imperial sanction. Charles, who for some time had been very jealous of the rapid encroachments of Austria, rubbed his hands with delight. "We have long," said he, "labored in vain to humble the house of Austria, and now the dukes of Austria have humbled themselves." Leopold the First inherited all the ambition and energy of the house of Hapsburg, and was ever watching with an eagle eye to extend his dominions, and to magnify his power. By money, war, and diplomacy, in a few years he obtained Friburg and the little town of Basle; attached to his dominions the counties of Feldkirch, Pludenz, Surgans and the Rienthal, which he wrested from the feeble counts who held them, and obtained the baillages of Upper and Lower Suabia, and the towns of Augsburg and Gingen. But a bitter disappointment was now encountered by this ambitious prince. Louis, the renowned King of Hungary and Poland, had two daughters, Maria and Hedwige, but no sons. To Maria he promised the crown of Hungary as her portion, and among the many claimants for her hand, and the glittering crown she held in it, Sigismond, son of the Emperor Charles, King of Bohemia, received the prize. Leopold, whose heart throbbed in view of so splendid an alliance, was overjoyed when he secured the pledge of the hand of Hedwige, with the crown of Poland, for William, his eldest son. Hedwige was one of the most beautiful and accomplished princesses of the age. William was also a young man of great elegance of person, and of such rare fascination of character, that he had acquired the epithet of William the Delightful. His chivalrous bearing had been trained and polished amidst the splendors of his uncle's court of Vienna. Hedwige, as the affianced bride of William, was invited from the more barbaric pomp of the Hungarian court, to improve her education by the aid of the refinements of Vienna. William and Hedwige no sooner met than they loved one another, as young hearts, even in the palace, will sometimes love, as well as in the cottage. In brilliant festivities and moonlight excursions the young lovers passed a few happy months, when Hedwige was called home by the final sickness of her father. Louis died, and Hedwige was immediately crowned Queen of Poland, receiving the most enthusiastic greetings of her subjects. Bordering on Poland there was a grand duchy of immense extent, Lithuania, embracing sixty thousand square miles. The Grand Duke Jaghellon was a burly Northman, not more than half civilized, whose character was as jagged as his name. This pagan proposed to the Polish nobles that he should marry Hedwige, and thus unite the grand duchy of Lithuania with the kingdom of Poland; promising in that event to renounce paganism, and embrace Christianity. The beautiful and accomplished Hedwige was horror-struck at the proposal, and declared that never would she marry any one but William. But the Polish nobles, dazzled by the prospect of this magnificent accession to the kingdom of Poland, and the bishops, even more powerful than the nobles, elated with the vision of such an acquisition for the Church, resolved that the young and fatherless maiden, who had no one to defend her cause, should yield, and that she should become the bride of Jaghellon. They declared that it was ridiculous to think that the interests of a mighty kingdom, and the enlargement of the Church, were to yield to the caprices of a love-sick girl. In the meantime William, all unconscious of the disappointment which awaited him, was hastening to Cracow, with a splendid retinue, and the richest presents Austrian art could fabricate, to receive his bride. The nobles, however, a semi-barbaric set of men, surrounded him upon his arrival, refused to allow him any interview with Hedwige, threatened him with personal violence, and drove him out of the kingdom. Poor Hedwige was in anguish. She wept, vowed deathless fidelity to William, and expressed utter detestation of the pagan duke, until, at last, worn out and broken-hearted, she, in despair, surrendered herself into the arms of Jaghellon. Jaghellon was baptized by the name of Ladislaus, and Lithuania was annexed to Poland. The loss of the crown of Poland was to Leopold a grievous affliction; at the same time his armies, engaged in sundry measures of aggrandizement, encountered serious reverses. Leopold, the father of William, by these events was plunged into the deepest dejection. No effort of his friends could lift the weight of his gloom. In a retired apartment of one of his castles he sat silent and woful, apparently incapacitated for any exertion whatever, either bodily or mental. The affairs of his realm were neglected, and his bailiffs and feudal chiefs, left with irresponsible power, were guilty of such acts of extortion and tyranny, that, in the province of Suabia the barons combined, and a fierce insurrection broke out. Forty important towns united in the confederacy, and secured the co-operation of Strasburg, Mentz and other large cities on the Rhine. Other of the Swiss provinces were on the eve of joining this alarming confederacy against Leopold, their Austrian ruler. As Vienna for some generations had been the seat of the Hapsburg family, from whence governors were sent to these provinces of Helvetia, as Switzerland was then called, the Swiss began to regard their rulers as foreigners, and even Leopold found it necessary to strengthen himself with Austrian troops. This formidable league roused Leopold from his torpor, and he awoke like the waking of the lion. He was immediately on the march with four thousand horsemen, and fourteen hundred foot, while all through the defiles of the Alps bugle blasts echoed, summoning detachments from various cantons under their bold barons, to hasten to the aid of the insurgents. On the evening of the 9th of July, 1396, the glittering host of Leopold appeared on an eminence overlooking the city of Sempach and the beautiful lake on whose border it stands. The horses were fatigued by their long and hurried march, and the crags and ravines, covered with forest, were impracticable for the evolutions of cavalry. The impetuous Leopold, impatient of delay, resolved upon an immediate attack, notwithstanding the exhaustion of his troops, and though a few hours of delay would bring strong reinforcements to his camp. He dismounted his horsemen, and formed his whole force in solid phalanx. It was an imposing spectacle, as six thousand men, covered from head to foot with blazing armor, presenting a front of shields like a wall of burnished steel, bristling with innumerable pikes and spears, moved with slow, majestic tread down upon the city. The confederate Swiss, conscious that the hour of vengeance had come, in which they must conquer or be miserably slain, marched forth to meet the foe, emboldened only by despair. But few of the confederates were in armor. They were furnished with such weapons as men grasp when despotism rouses them to insurrection, rusty battle-axes, pikes and halberts, and two-handed swords, which their ancestors, in descending into the grave, had left behind them. They drew up in the form of a solid wedge, to pierce the thick concentric wall of steel, apparently as impenetrable as the cliffs of the mountains. Thus the two bodies silently and sternly approached each other. It was a terrific hour; for every man knew that one or the other of those hosts must perish utterly. For some time the battle raged, while the confederates could make no impression whatever upon their steel-clad foes, and sixty of them fell pierced by spears before one of their assailants had been even wounded. Despair was fast settling upon their hearts, when Arnold of Winkelreid, a knight of Underwalden, rushed from the ranks of the confederates, exclaiming-- "I will open a passage into the line; protect, dear countrymen, my wife and children." He threw himself upon the bristling spears. A score pierced his body; grasping them with the tenacity of death, he bore them to the earth as he fell. His comrades, emulating his spirit of self-sacrifice, rushed over his bleeding body, and forced their way through the gate thus opened into the line. The whole unwieldy mass was thrown into confusion. The steel-clad warriors, exhausted before the battle commenced, and encumbered with their heavy armor, could but feebly resist their nimble assailants, who outnumbering them and over-powering them, cut them down in fearful havoc. It soon became a general slaughter, and not less than two thousand of the followers of Leopold were stretched lifeless upon the ground. Many were taken prisoners, and a few, mounting their horses, effected an escape among the wild glens of the Alps. In this awful hour Leopold developed magnanimity and heroism worthy of his name. Before the battle commenced, his friends urged him to take care of his own person. "God forbid," said he, "that I should endeavor to save my own life and leave you to die! I will share your fate, and, with you, will either conquer or perish." When all was in confusion, and his followers were falling like autumn leaves around him, he was urged to put spurs to his horse, and, accompanied by his body-guard, to escape. "I would rather die honorably," said Leopold, "than live with dishonor." Just at this moment his standard-bearer was struck down by a rush of the confederates. As he fell he cried out, "Help, Austria, help!" Leopold frantically sprang to his aid, grasped the banner from his dying hand, and waving it, plunged into the midst of the foe, with saber strokes hewing a path before him. He was soon lost in the tumult and the carnage of the battle. His body was afterward found, covered with wounds, in the midst of heaps of the dead. Thus perished the ambitious and turbulent Leopold the 1st, after a stormy and unhappy life of thirty-six years, and a reign of constant encroachment and war of twenty years. Life to him was a dark and somber tempest. Ever dissatisfied with what he had attained, and grasping at more, he could never enjoy the present, and he finally died that death of violence to which his ambition had consigned so many thousands. Leopold, the second son of the duke, who was but fifteen years of age, succeeded his father, in the dominion of the Swiss estates; and after a desultory warfare of a few months, was successful in negotiating a peace, or rather an armed truce, with the successful insurgents. In the meantime, Albert, at Vienna, apparently happy in being relieved of all care of the Swiss provinces, was devoting himself to the arts of peace. He reared new buildings, encouraged learning, repressed all disorders, and cultivated friendly relations with the neighboring powers. His life was as a summer's day--serene and bright. He and his family were happy, and his realms in prosperity. He died at his rural residence at Laxendorf, two miles out from Vienna, on the 29th of August, 1395. All Austria mourned his death. Thousands gathered at his burial, exclaiming, "We have lost our friend, our father!" He was a studious, peace-loving, warm-hearted man, devoted to his family and his friends, fond of books and the society of the learned, and enjoying the cultivation of his garden with his own hands. He left, at his death, an only son, Albert, sixteen years of age. William, the eldest son of Leopold, had been brought up in the court of Vienna. He was a young man of fascinating character and easily won all hearts. After his bitter disappointment in Poland he returned to Vienna, and now, upon the death of his uncle Albert, he claimed the reins of government as the oldest member of the family. His cousin Albert, of course, resisted this claim, demanding that he himself should enter upon the post which his father had occupied. A violent dissension ensued which resulted in an agreement that they should administer the government of the Austrian States, jointly, during their lives, and that then the government should be vested in the eldest surviving member of the family. Having effected this arrangement, quite to the satisfaction of both parties, Albert, who inherited much of the studious thoughtful turn of mind of his father, set out on a pilgrimage to the holy land, leaving the government during his absence in the hands of William. After wanderings and adventures so full of romance as to entitle him to the appellation of the "Wonder of the World," he returned to Vienna. He married a daughter of the Duke of Holland, and settled down to a monkish life. He entered a monastery of Carthusian monks, and took an active part in all their discipline and devotions. No one was more punctual than he at matins and vespers, or more devout in confessions, prayers, genuflexions and the divine service in the choir. Regarding himself as one of the fraternity, he called himself brother Albert, and left William untrammeled in the cares of state. His life was short, for he died the 14th of September, 1404, in the twenty-seventh year of his age, leaving a son Albert, seven years old. William, who married a daughter of the King of Naples, survived him but two years, when he died childless. A boy nine years old now claimed the inheritance of the Austrian estates; but the haughty dukes of the Swiss branch of the house were not disposed to yield to his claims. Leopold II., who after the battle of Sempach succeeded his father in the Swiss estates, assumed the guardianship of Albert, and the administration of Austria, till the young duke should be of age. But Leopold had two brothers who also inherited their father's energy and ambition. Ernest ruled over Styria, Carinthia and Carniola. Frederic governed the Tyrol. Leopold II. repaired to Vienna to assume the administration; his two brothers claimed the right of sharing it with him. Confusion, strife and anarchy ensued. Ernest, a very determined and violent man, succeeded in compelling his brother to give him a share of the government, and in the midst of incessant quarrels, which often led to bloody conflicts, each of the two brothers strove to wrest as much as possible from Austria before young Albert should be of age. The nobles availed themselves of this anarchy to renew their expeditions of plunder. Unhappy Austria for several years was a scene of devastation and misery. In the year 1411, Leopold II. died without issue. The young Albert had now attained is fifteenth year. The emperor declared Albert of age, and he assumed the government as Albert V. His subjects, weary of disorder and of the strife of the nobles, welcomed him with enthusiasm. With sagacity and self-denial above his years, the young prince devoted himself to business, relinquishing all pursuits of pleasure. Fortunately, during his minority he had honorable and able teachers who stored his mind with useful knowledge, and fortified him with principles of integrity. The change from the most desolating anarchy to prosperity and peace was almost instantaneous. Albert had the judgment to surround himself with able advisers. Salutary laws were enacted; justice impartially administered; the country was swept of the banditti which infested it, and while all the States around were involved in the miseries of war, the song of the contented husbandman, and the music of the artisan's tools were heard through the fields and in the towns of happy Austria. Sigismond, second son of the Emperor Charles IV., King of Bohemia, was now emperor. It will be remembered that by marrying Mary, the eldest daughter of Louis, King of Hungary and Poland, he received Hungary as the dower of his bride. By intrigue he also succeeded in deposing his effeminate and dissolute brother, Wenceslaus, from the throne of Bohemia, and succeeded, by a new election, in placing the crown upon his own brow. Thus Sigismond wielded a three-fold scepter. He was Emperor of Germany, and King of Hungary and of Bohemia. Albert married the only daughter of Sigismond, and a very strong affection sprung up between the imperial father and his son-in-law. They often visited each other, and cooperated very cordially in measures of state. The wife of Sigismond was a worthless woman, described by an Austrian historian as "one who believed in neither God, angel nor devil; neither in heaven nor hell." Sigismond had set his heart upon bequeathing to Albert the crowns of both Hungary and Bohemia, which magnificent accessions to the Austrian domains would elevate that power to be one of the first in Europe. But Barbara, his queen, wished to convey these crowns to the son of the pagan Jaghellon, who had received the crown of Poland as the dowry of his reluctant bride, Hedwige. Sigismond, provoked by her intrigues for the accomplishment of this object, and detesting her for her licentiousness, put her under arrest. Sigismond was sixty-three years of age, in very feeble health, and daily expecting to die. He summoned a general convention of the nobles of Hungary and Bohemia to meet him at Znaim in Moravia, near the frontiers of Austria, and sent for Albert and his daughter to hasten to that place. The infirm emperor, traveling by slow stages, succeeded in reaching Znaim. He immediately summoned the nobles to his presence, and introducing to them Albert and Elizabeth, thus affectingly addressed them: "Loving friends, you know that since the commencement of my reign I have employed my utmost exertions to maintain public tranquillity. Now, as I am about to die, my last act must be consistent with my former actions. At this moment my only anxiety arises from a desire to prevent dissension and bloodshed after my decease. It is praiseworthy in a prince to govern well; but it is not less praiseworthy to provide a successor who shall govern better than himself. This fame I now seek, not from ambition, but from love to my subjects. You all know Albert, Duke of Austria, to whom in preference to all other princes I gave my daughter in marriage, and whom I adopted as my son. You know that he possesses experience and every virtue becoming a prince. He found Austria in a state of disorder, and he has restored it to tranquillity. He is now of an age in which judgment and experience attain their perfection, and he is sovereign of Austria, which, lying between Hungary and Bohemia, forms a connecting link between the two kingdoms. "I recommend him to you as my successor. I leave you a king, pious, honorable, wise and brave. I give him my kingdom, or rather I give him to my kingdoms, to whom I can give or wish nothing better. Truly you belong to him in consideration of his wife, the hereditary princess of Hungary and Bohemia. Again I repeat that I do not act thus solely from love to Albert and my daughter, but from a desire in my last moments to promote the true welfare of my people. Happy are those who are subject to Albert. I am confident he is no less beloved by you than by me, and that even without my exhortations you would unanimously give him your votes. But I beseech you by these tears, comfort my soul, which is departing to God, by confirming my choice and fulfilling my will." The emperor was so overcome with emotion that he could with difficulty pronounce these last words. All were deeply moved; some wept aloud; others, seizing the hand of the emperor and bathing it in tears, vowed allegiance to Albert, and declared that while he lived they would recognize no other sovereign. The very next day, November, 1437, Sigismond died. Albert and Elizabeth accompanied his remains to Hungary. The Hungarian diet of barons unanimously ratified the wishes of the late king in accepting Albert as his successor. He then hastened to Bohemia, and, notwithstanding a few outbursts of disaffection, was received with great demonstrations of joy by the citizens of Prague, and was crowned in the cathedral. CHAPTER IV. ALBERT, LADISLAUS AND FREDERIC. From 1440 to 1489. Increasing Honors of Albert V.--Encroachments of the Turks.--The Christians Routed.--Terror of the Hungarians.--Death of Albert.--Magnanimous Conduct of Albert of Bavaria.--Internal Troubles.--Precocity of Ladislaus.--Fortifications raised by the Turks.--John Capistrun.--Rescue of Belgrade.--The Turks dispersed.--Exultation over the Victory.--Death of Hunniades.--Jealousy of Ladislaus.--His Death.--Brotherly Quarrels.--Devastations by the Turks.--Invasion of Austria.--Repeal of the Compromise.--The Emperor a Fugitive. The kingdom of Bohemia thus attached to the duchies of Austria contained a population of some three millions, and embraced twenty thousand square miles of territory, being about three times as large as the State of Massachusetts. Hungary was a still more magnificent realm in extent of territory, being nearly five times as large as Bohemia, but inhabited by about the same number of people, widely dispersed. In addition to this sudden and vast accession of power, Albert was chosen Emperor of Germany. This distinguished sovereign displayed as much wisdom and address in administering the affairs of the empire, as in governing his own kingdoms. The Turks were at this time becoming the terror of Christendom. Originating in a small tribe between the Caspian Sea and the Euxine, they had with bloody cimeters overrun all Asia Minor, and, crossing the Hellespont, had intrenched themselves firmly on the shores of Europe. Crowding on in victorious hosts, armed with the most terrible fanaticism, they had already obtained possession of Bulgaria, Servia, and Bosnia, eastern dependencies of Hungary, and all Europe was trembling in view of their prowess, their ferocity and their apparently exhaustless legions. Sigismond, beholding the crescent of the Moslem floating over the castles of eastern Hungary, became alarmed for the kingdom, and sent ambassadors from court to court to form a crusade against the invaders. He was eminently successful, and an army of one hundred thousand men was soon collected, composed of the flower of the European nobility. The republics of Venice and Genoa united to supply a fleet. With this powerful armament Sigismond, in person, commenced his march to Constantinople, which city the Turks were besieging, to meet the fleet there. The Turkish sultan himself gathered his troops and advanced to meet Sigismond. The Christian troops were utterly routed, and nearly all put to the sword. The emperor with difficulty escaped. In the confusion of the awful scene of carnage he threw himself unperceived into a small boat, and paddling down the Danube, as its flood swept through an almost uninhabited wilderness, he reached the Black Sea, where he was so fortunate as to find a portion of the fleet, and thus, by a long circuit, he eventually reached his home. Bajazet, the sultan, returned exultant from this great victory, and resumed the siege of Constantinople, which ere long fell into the hands of the Turks. Amurath, who was sultan at the time of the death of Sigismond, thought the moment propitious for extending his conquests. He immediately, with his legions, overran Servia, a principality nearly the size of the State of Virginia, and containing a million of inhabitants. George, Prince of Servia, retreating before the merciless followers of the false prophet, threw himself with a strong garrison into the fortress of Semendria, and sent an imploring message to Albert for assistance. Servia was separated from Hungary only by the Danube, and it was a matter of infinite moment to Albert that the Turk should not get possession of that province, from which he could make constant forays into Hungary. Albert hastily collected an army and marched to the banks of the Danube just in time to witness the capture of Semendria and the massacre of its garrison. All Hungary was now in terror. The Turks in overwhelming numbers were firmly intrenched upon the banks of the Danube, and were preparing to cross the river and to supplant the cross with the crescent on all the plains of Hungary. The Hungarian nobles, in crowds, flocked to the standard of Albert, who made herculean exertions to meet and roll back the threatened tide of invasion. Exhausted by unremitting toil, he was taken sick and suddenly died, on a small island of the Danube, on the 17th of October, 1439, in the forty-third year of his age. The death of such a prince, heroic and magnanimous, loving the arts of peace, and yet capable of wielding the energies of war, was an apparent calamity to Europe. Albert left two daughters, but his queen Elizabeth was expecting, in a few months, to give birth to another child. Every thing was thus involved in confusion, and for a time intrigue and violence ran riot. There were many diverse parties, the rush of armed bands, skirmishes and battles, and all the great matters of state were involved in an inextricable labyrinth of confusion. The queen gave birth to a son, who was baptized by the name of Ladislaus. Elizabeth, anxious to secure the crown of Hungary for her infant, had him solemnly crowned at Alba Regia, by the Archbishop of Gran when the child was but four months old. But a powerful party arose, opposed to the claims of the infant, and strove by force of arms to place upon the throne Uladislaus, King of Poland and Lithuania, and son of the pagan Jaghellon and the unhappy Hedwige. For two years war between the rival parties desolated the kingdom, when Elizabeth died. Uladislaus now redoubled his endeavors, and finally succeeded in driving the unconscious infant from his hereditary domain, and established himself firmly on the throne of Hungary. The infant prince was taken to Bohemia. There also he encountered violent opposition. "A child," said his opponents, "can not govern. It will be long before Ladislaus will be capable of assuming the reins of government. Let us choose another sovereign, and when Ladislaus has attained the age of twenty-four we shall see whether he deserves the crown." This very sensible advice was adopted, and thirteen electors were appointed to choose a sovereign. Their choice fell upon Albert of Bavaria. But he, with a spirit of magnanimity very rare in that age, declared that the crown, of right, belonged to Ladislaus, and that he would not take it from him. They then chose Frederic, Duke of Styria, who, upon the death of Albert, had been chosen emperor. Frederic, incited by the example of Albert, also declined, saying, "I will not rob my relation of his right." But anxious for the peace of the empire, he recommended that they should choose some illustrious Bohemian, to whom they should intrust the regency until Ladislaus became of age, offering himself to assume the guardianship of the young prince. This judicious advice was accepted, and the Bohemian nobles chose the infant Ladislaus their king. They, however, appointed two regents instead of one. The regents quarreled and headed two hostile parties. Anarchy and civil war desolated the kingdom, with fluctuations of success and discomfiture attending the movements of either party. Thus several years of violence and blood passed on. One of the regents, George Podiebrad, drove his opponent from the realm and assumed regal authority. To legitimate its usurped power he summoned a diet at Pilgram, in 1447, and submitted the following question: "Is it advantageous to the kingdom that Ladislaus should retain the crown, or would it not be more beneficial to choose a monarch acquainted with our language and customs, and inspired with love of our country?" Warm opposition to this measure arose, and the nobles voted themselves loyal to Ladislaus. While these events were passing in Bohemia, scenes of similar violence were transpiring in Hungary. After a long series of convulsions, and Uladislaus, the Polish king, who had attained the crown of Hungary, having been slain in a battle with the Turks, a diet of Hungarian nobles was assembled and they also declared the young Ladislaus to be their king. They consequently wrote to the Emperor Frederic, Duke of Styria, who had assumed the guardianship of the prince, requesting that he might be sent to Hungary. Ladislaus Posthumous, so-called in consequence of his birth after the death of his father, was then but six years of age. The Austrian States were also in a condition of similar confusion, rival aspirants grasping at power, feuds agitating every province, and all moderate men anxious for that repose which could only be found by uniting in the claims of Ladislaus for the crown. Thus Austria, Bohemia and Hungary, so singularly and harmoniously united under Albert V., so suddenly dissevered and scattered by the death of Albert, were now, after years of turmoil, all reuniting under the child Ladislaus. Frederic, however, the faithful guardian of the young prince, was devoting the utmost care to his education, and refused to accede to the urgent and reiterated requests to send the young monarch to his realms. When Ladislaus was about ten years of age the Emperor Frederic visited the pope at Rome, and took Ladislaus in his glittering suite. The precocious child here astonished the learned men of the court, by delivering an oration in Latin before the consistory, and by giving many other indications of originality and vigor of mind far above his years. The pope became much attached to the youthful sovereign of three such important realms, and as Frederic was about to visit Naples, Ladislaus remained a guest in the imperial palace. Deputies from the three nations repaired to Rome to urge the pope to restore to them their young sovereign. Failing in this, they endeavored to induce Ladislaus to escape with them. This plan also was discovered and foiled. The nobles were much irritated by these disappointments, and they resolved to rescue him by force of arms. All over Hungary, Bohemia and Austria there was a general rising of the nobles, nationalities being merged in the common cause, and all hearts united and throbbing with a common desire. An army of sixteen thousand men was raised. Frederic, alarmed by these formidable preparations for war, surrendered Ladislaus and he was conveyed in triumph to Vienna. A numerous assemblage of the nobles of the three nations was convened, and it was settled that the young king, during his minority, should remain at Vienna, under the care of his maternal uncle, Count Cilli, who, in the meantime, was to administer the government of Austria. George Podiebrad was intrusted with the regency of Bohemia; and John Hunniades was appointed regent of Hungary. Ladislaus was now thirteen years of age. The most learned men of the age were appointed as his teachers, and he pursued his studies with great vigor. Count Cilli, however, an ambitious and able man, soon gained almost unlimited control over the mind of his young ward, and became so arrogant and dictatorial, filling every important office with his own especial friends, and removing those who displeased him, that general discontent was excited and conspiracy was formed against him. Cilli was driven from Vienna with insults and threats, and the conspirators placed the regency in the hands of a select number of their adherents. While affairs were in this condition, John Hunniades, as regent, was administering the government of Hungary with great vigor and sagacity. He was acquiring so much renown that Count Cilli regarded him with a very jealous eye, and excited the suspicions of the young king that Hunniades was seeking for himself the sovereignty of Hungary. Cilli endeavored to lure Hunniades to Vienna, that he might seize his person, but the sagacious warrior was too wily to be thus entrapped. The Turks were now in the full tide of victory. They had conquered Constantinople, fortified both sides of the Bosporus and the Hellespont, overrun Greece and planted themselves firmly and impregnably on the shores of Europe. Mahomet II. was sultan, succeeding his father Amurath. He raised an army of two hundred thousand men, who were all inspired with that intense fanatic ferocity with which the Moslem then regarded the Christian. Marching resistlessly through Bulgaria and Servia, he contemplated the immediate conquest of Hungary, the bulwark of Europe. He advanced to the banks of the Danube and laid siege to Belgrade, a very important and strongly fortified town at the point where the Save enters the great central river of eastern Europe. Such an army, flushed with victory and inspired with all the energies of fanaticism, appalled the European powers. Ladislaus was but a boy, studious and scholarly in his tastes, having developed but little physical energy and no executive vigor. He was very handsome, very refined in his tastes and courteous in his address, and he cultivated with great care the golden ringlets which clustered around his shoulders. At the time of this fearful invasion Ladislaus was on a visit to Buda, one of the capitals of Hungary, on the Danube, but about three hundred miles above Belgrade. The young monarch, with his favorite, Cilli, fled ingloriously to Vienna, leaving Hunniades to breast as he could the Turkish hosts. But Hunniades was, fortunately, equal to the emergence. A Franciscan monk, John Capistrun, endowed with the eloquence of Peter the Hermit, traversed Germany, displaying the cross and rousing Christians to defend Europe from the infidels. He soon collected a motley mass of forty thousand men, rustics, priests, students, soldiers, unarmed, undisciplined, a rabble rout, who followed him to the rendezvous where Hunniades had succeeded in collecting a large force of the bold barons and steel-clad warriors of Hungary. The experienced chief gladly received this heterogeneous mass, and soon armed them, brought them into the ranks and subjected them to the severe discipline of military drill. At the head of this band, which was inspired with zeal equal to that of the Turk, the brave Hunniades, in a fleet of boats, descended the Danube. The river in front of Belgrade was covered with the flotilla of the Turks. The wall in many places was broken down, and at other points in the wall they had obtained a foothold, and the crescent was proudly unfurled to the breeze. The feeble garrison, worn out with toil and perishing with famine, were in the last stages of despair. Hunniades came down upon the Turkish flotilla like an inundation; both parties fought with almost unprecedented ferocity, but the Christians drove every thing before them, sinking, dispersing, and capturing the boats, which were by no means prepared for so sudden and terrible an assault. The immense reinforcement, with arms and provisions, thus entered the city, and securing the navigation of the Danube and the Save, opened the way for continued supplies. The immense hosts of the Mohammedans now girdled the city in a semicircle on the land side. Their tents, gorgeously embellished and surmounted with the crescent, glittered in the rays of the sun as far as the eye could extend. Squadrons of steel-clad horsemen swept the field, while bands of the besiegers pressed the city without intermission, night and day. Mohammed, irritated by this unexpected accession of strength to the besieged, in his passion ordered an immediate and simultaneous attack upon the town by his whole force. The battle was long and bloody, both parties struggling with utter desperation. The Turks were repulsed. After one of the longest continuous conflicts recorded in history, lasting all one night, and all the following day until the going down of the sun, the Turks, leaving thirty thousand of their dead beneath the ramparts of the city, and taking with them the sultan desperately wounded, struck their tents in the darkness of the night and retreated. Great was the exultation in Hungary, in Germany and all over Europe. But this joy was speedily clouded by the intelligence that Hunniades, the deliverer of Europe from Moslem invasion, exhausted with toil, had been seized by a fever and had died. It is said that the young King Ladislaus rejoiced in his death, for he was greatly annoyed in having a subject attain such a degree of splendor as to cast his own name into insignificance. Hunniades left two sons, Ladislaus and Matthias. The king and Cilli manifested the meanest jealousy in reference to these young men, and fearful that the renown of their father, which had inspired pride and gratitude in every Hungarian heart, might give them power, they did every thing they could to humiliate and depress them. The king lured them both to Buda, where he perfidiously beheaded the eldest, Ladislaus, for wounding Cilli, in defending himself from an attack which the implacable count had made upon him, and he also threw the younger son, Matthias, into a prison. The widow of Hunniades, the heroic mother of these children, with a spirit worthy of the wife of her renowned husband, called the nobles to her aid. They rallied in great numbers, roused to indignation. The inglorious king, terrified by the storm he had raised, released Matthias, and fled from Buda to Vienna, pursued by the execrations and menaces of the Hungarians. He soon after repaired to Prague, in Bohemia, to solemnize his marriage with Magdalen, daughter of Charles VII., King of France. He had just reached the city, and was making preparations for his marriage in unusual splendor, when he was attacked by a malignant disease, supposed to be the plague, and died after a sickness of but thirty-six hours. The unhappy king, who, through the stormy scenes of his short life, had developed no grandeur of soul, was oppressed with the awfulness of passing to the final judgment. In the ordinances of the Church he sought to find solace for a sinful and a troubled spirit. Having received the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, with dying lips he commenced repeating the Lord's prayer. He had just uttered the words "deliver us from evil," when his spirit took its flight to the judgment seat of Christ. Frederic, the emperor, Duke of Styria, was now the oldest lineal descendant of Rhodolph of Hapsburg, founder of the house of Austria. The imperial dignity had now degenerated into almost an empty title. The Germanic empire consisted of a few large sovereignties and a conglomeration of petty dukedoms, principalities, and States of various names, very loosely held together, in their heterogeneous and independent rulers and governments, by one nominal sovereign upon whom the jealous States were willing to confer but little real power. A writer at that time, �neas Sylvius, addressing the Germans, says: "Although you acknowledge the emperor for your king and master, he possesses but a precarious sovereignty; he has no power; you only obey him when you choose; and you are seldom inclined to obey. You are all desirous to be free; neither the princes nor the States render to him what is due. He has no revenue, no treasure. Hence you are involved in endless contests and daily wars. Hence also rapine, murder, conflagrations, and a thousand evils which arise from divided authority." Upon the death of Ladislaus there was a great rush and grasping for the vacant thrones of Bohemia and Hungary, and for possession of the rich dukedoms of Austria. After a long conflict the Austrian estates were divided into three portions. Frederic, the emperor, took Upper Austria; his brother Albert, who had succeeded to the Swiss estates, took Lower Austria; Sigismond, Albert's nephew, a man of great energy of character, took Carinthia. The three occupied the palace in Vienna in joint residence. The energetic regent, George Podiebrad, by adroit diplomacy succeeded, after an arduous contest, in obtaining the election by the Bohemian nobles to the throne of Bohemia. The very day he was chosen he was inaugurated at Prague, and though rival candidates united with the pope to depose him, he maintained his position against them all. Frederic, the emperor, had been quite sanguine in the hopes of obtaining the crown of Bohemia. Bitterly disappointed there, he at first made a show of hostile resistance; but thinking better of the matter, he concluded to acquiesce in the elevation of Podiebrad, to secure amicable relations with him, and to seek his aid in promotion of his efforts to obtain the crown of Hungary. Here again the emperor failed. The nobles assembled in great strength at Buda, and elected unanimously Matthias, the only surviving son of the heroic Hunniades, whose memory was embalmed in the hearts of all the Hungarians. The boy then, for he was but a boy, and was styled contemptuously by the disappointed Frederic the boy king, entered into an alliance with Podiebrad for mutual protection, and engaged the hand of his daughter in marriage. Thus was the great kingdom of Austria, but recently so powerful in the union of all the Austrian States with Bohemia and Hungary, again divided and disintegrated. The emperor, in his vexation, foolishly sent an army of five thousand men into Hungary, insanely hoping to take the crown by force of arms, but he was soon compelled to relinquish the hopeless enterprise. And now Frederic and Albert began to quarrel at Vienna. The emperor was arrogant and domineering. Albert was irritable and jealous. First came angry words; then the enlisting of partisans, and then all the miseries of fierce and determined civil war. The capital was divided into hostile factions, and the whole country was ravaged by the sweep of armies. The populace of Vienna, espousing the cause of Albert, rose in insurrection, pillaged the houses of the adherents of Frederic, drove Frederic, with his wife and infant child, into the citadel, and invested the fortress. Albert placed himself at the head of the insurgents and conducted the siege. The emperor, though he had but two hundred men in the garrison, held out valiantly. But famine would soon have compelled him to capitulate, had not the King of Bohemia, with a force of thirteen thousand men, marched to his aid. Podiebrad relieved the emperor, and secured a verbal reconciliation between the two angry brothers, which lasted until the Bohemian forces had returned to their country, when the feud burst out anew and with increased violence. The emperor procured the ban of the empire against his brother, and the pope excommunicated him. Still Albert fought fiercely, and the strife raged without intermission until Albert suddenly died on the 4th of December, 1463. The Turks, who, during all these years, had been making predatory excursions along the frontiers of Hungary, now, in three strong bands of ten thousand each, overran Servia and Bosnia, and spread their devastations even into the heart of Illyria, as far as the metropolitan city of Laybach. The ravages of fire and sword marked their progress. They burnt every village, every solitary cottage, and the inhabitants were indiscriminately slain. Frederic, the emperor, a man of but little energy, was at his country residence at Lintz, apparently more anxious, writes a contemporary, "to shield his plants from frost, than to defend his domains against these barbarians." The bold barons of Carniola, however, rallied their vassals, raised an army of twenty thousand men, and drove the Turks back to the Bosphorus. But the invaders, during their unimpeded march, had slain six thousand Christians, and they carried back with them eight thousand captives. Again, a few years after, the Turks, with a still larger army, rushed through the defiles of the Illyrian mountains, upon the plains of Carinthia. Their march was like the flow of volcanic fire. They left behind them utter desolation, smouldering hearth-stones and fields crimsoned with blood. At length they retired of their own accord, dragging after them twenty thousand captives. During a period of twenty-seven years, under the imbecile reign of Frederic, the very heart of Europe was twelve times scourged by the inroads of these savages. No tongue can tell the woes which were inflicted upon humanity. Existence, to the masses of the people, in that day, must indeed have been a curse. Ground to the very lowest depths of poverty by the exactions of ecclesiastics and nobles, in rags, starving, with no social or intellectual joys, they might indeed have envied the beasts of the field. The conduct of Frederic seems to be marked with increasing treachery and perfidy. Jealous of the growing power of George Podiebrad, he instigated Matthias, King of Hungary, to make war upon Bohemia, promising Matthias the Bohemian crown. Infamously the King of Hungary accepted the bribe, and raising a powerful army, invaded Bohemia, to wrest the crown from his father-in-law. His armies were pressing on so victoriously, in conjunction with those of Frederic, that the emperor was now alarmed lest Matthias, uniting the crowns of Hungary and Bohemia, should become too powerful. He therefore not only abandoned him, but stirred up an insurrection among the Hungarian nobles, which compelled Matthias to abandon Bohemia and return home. Matthias, having quelled the insurrection, was so enraged with the emperor, that he declared war against him, and immediately invaded Austria. The emperor was now so distrusted that he could not find a single ally. Austria alone, was no match for Hungary. Matthias overran all Lower Austria, took all the fortresses upon the Danube, and invested Vienna. The emperor fled in dismay to Lintz, and was obliged to purchase an ignominious peace by an immense sum of money, all of which was of course to be extorted by taxes on the miserable and starving peasantry. Poland, Bohemia and the Turks, now all pounced upon Hungary, and Frederic, deeming this a providential indication that Hungary could not enforce the fulfillment of the treaty, refused to pay the money. Matthias, greatly exasperated, made the best terms he could with Poland, and again led his armies in Austria. For four years the warfare raged fiercely, when all Lower Austria, including the capital, was in the hands of Matthias, and the emperor was driven from his hereditary domains; and, accompanied by a few followers, he wandered a fugitive from city to city, from convent to convent, seeking aid from all, but finding none. CHAPTER V. THE EMPERORS FREDERIC II. AND MAXIMILIAN I. From 1477 to 1500. Wanderings of the Emperor Frederic.--Proposed Alliance with the Duke of Burgundy.--Mutual Distrust.--Marriage of Mary.--The Age of Chivalry.--The Motive inducing the Lord of Praunstein to declare War.--Death of Frederic II.--The Emperor's Secret.--Designs of the Turks.--Death of Mahomet II.--First Establishment of standing Armies.--Use of Gunpowder.--Energy of Maximilian.--French Aggressions.--The League to expel the French.--Disappointments of Maximilian.--Bribing the Pope.--Invasion of Italy.--Capture and Recapture.--The Chevalier De Bayard. Adversity only developed more fully the weak and ignoble character of Frederic. He wandered about, recognized Emperor of Germany, but a fugitive from his own Austrian estates, occasionally encountering pity, but never sympathy or respect. Matthias professed his readiness to surrender Austria back to Frederic so soon as he would fulfill the treaty by paying the stipulated money. Frederic was accompanied in his wanderings by his son Maximilian, a remarkably elegant lad, fourteen years of age. They came to the court of the powerful Duke of Burgundy. The dukedom extended over wide realms, populous and opulent, and the duke had the power of a sovereign but not the regal title. He was ambitious of elevating his dukedom into a kingdom and of being crowned king; and he agreed to give his only daughter and heiress, Mary, a beautiful and accomplished girl, to the emperor's son Maximilian, if Frederic would confer upon his estates the regal dignity and crown him king. The bargain was made, and Maximilian and Mary both were delighted, for they regarded each other with all the warmth of young lovers. Mary, heiress to the dukedom of Burgundy, was a prize which any monarch might covet; and half the princes of Europe were striving for her hand. But now came a new difficulty. Neither the emperor nor duke had the slightest confidence in each other. The King of France, who had hoped to obtain the hand of Mary for his son the dauphin, caused the suspicion to be whispered into the ear of Frederic that the Duke of Burgundy sought the kingly crown only as the first step to the imperial crown; and that so soon as the dukedom was elevated into a kingdom, Charles, the Duke of Burgundy, would avail himself of his increased power, to dethrone Frederic and grasp the crown of Germany. This was probably all true. Charles, fully understanding the perfidious nature of Frederic, did not dare to solemnize the marriage until he first should be crowned. Frederic, on the other hand, did not dare to crown the duke until the marriage was solemnized, for he had no confidence that the duke, after having attained the regal dignity, would fulfill his pledge. Charles was for hurrying the coronation, Frederic for pushing the marriage. A magnificent throne was erected in the cathedral at Treves, and preparations were making on the grandest scale for the coronation solemnities, when Frederic, who did not like to tell the duke plumply to his face that he was fearful of being cheated, extricated himself from his embarrassment by feigning important business which called him suddenly to Cologne. A scene of petty and disgraceful intrigues ensued between the exasperated duke and emperor, and there were the marching and the countermarching of hostile bands and the usual miseries of war, until the death of Duke Charles at the battle of Nancy on the 5th of January, 1477. The King of France now made a desperate endeavor to obtain the hand of Mary for his son. One of the novel acts of this imperial courtship, was to send an army into Burgundy, which wrested a large portion of Mary's dominions from her, which the king, Louis XI., refused to surrender unless Mary would marry his son. Many of her nobles urged the claims of France. But love in the heart of Mary was stronger than political expediency, and more persuasive than the entreaties of her nobles. To relieve herself from importunity, she was hurriedly married, three months after the death of her father, by proxy to Maximilian. In August the young prince, but eighteen years of age, with a splendid retinue, made his public entry into Ghent. His commanding person and the elegance of his manners, attracted universal admiration. His subjects rallied with enthusiasm around him, and, guided by his prowess, in a continued warfare of five years, drove the invading French from their territories. But death, the goal to which every one tends, was suddenly and unexpectedly reached by Mary. She died the 7th of August, 1479, leaving two infant children, Philip and Margaret. The Emperor Frederic also succeeded, by diplomatic cunning, in convening the diet of electors and choosing Maximilian as his successor to the imperial throne. Frederic and Maximilian now united in the endeavor to recover Austria from the King of Hungary. The German princes, however, notwithstanding the summons of the emperor, refused to take any part in the private quarrels of Austria, and thus the battle would have to be fought between the troops of Maximilian and of Matthias. Maximilian prudently decided that it would be better to purchase the redemption of the territory with money than with blood. The affair was in negotiation when Matthias was taken sick and died the 15th of July, 1490. He left no heir, and the Hungarian nobles chose Ladislaus, King of Bohemia, to succeed him. Maximilian had been confident of obtaining the crown of Hungary. Exasperated by the disappointment, he relinquished all idea of purchasing his patrimonial estates, but making a sudden rush with his troops upon the Hungarians, he drove them out of Austria, and pursued them far over the frontiers of Hungary. Ladislaus, the new King of Hungary, now listened to terms of peace. A singular treaty was made. The Bohemian king was to retain the crown of Hungary, officiating as reigning monarch, while Maximilian was to have the _title_ of King of Hungary. Ladislaus relinquished all claim to the Austrian territories, and paid a large sum of money as indemnity for the war. Thus Austria again comes into independent existence, to watch amidst the tumult and strife of Europe for opportunities to enlarge her territories and increase her power. Maximilian was a prince, energetic and brave, who would not allow any opportunity to escape him. In those dark days of violence and of blood, every petty quarrel was settled by the sword. All over Germany the clash of steel against steel was ever resounding. Not only kings and dukes engaged in wars, but the most insignificant baron would gather his few retainers around him and declare formal war against the occupant of the adjacent castle. The spirit of chivalry, so called, was so rampant that private individuals would send a challenge to the emperor. Contemporary writers record many curious specimens of these declarations of war. The Lord of Praunstein declared war against the city of Frankfort, because a young lady of that city refused to dance with his uncle at a ball. Frederic was now suffering from the infirmities of age. Surrendering the administration of affairs, both in Austria and over the estates of the empire, to Maximilian, he retired, with his wife and three young daughters, to Lintz, where he devoted himself, at the close of his long and turbulent reign, to the peaceful pursuits of rural life. A cancerous affection of the leg rendered it necessary for him to submit to the amputation of the limb. He submitted to the painful operation with the greatest fortitude, and taking up his severed limb, with his accustomed phlegm remarked to those standing by, "What difference is there between an emperor and a peasant? Or rather, is not a sound peasant better than a sick emperor? Yet I hope to enjoy the greatest good which can happen to man--a happy exit from this transitory life." The shock of a second amputation, which from the vitiated state of his blood seemed necessary, was too great for his enfeebled frame to bear. He died August 19th, 1493, seventy-eight years of age, and after a reign of fifty-three years. He was what would be called, in these days, an ultra temperance man, never drinking even wine, and expressing ever the strongest abhorrence of alcoholic drinks, calling them the parent of all vices. He seems to have anticipated the future greatness of Austria; for he had imprinted upon all his books, engraved upon his plate and carved into the walls of his palace a mysterious species of anagram composed of the five vowels, A, E, I, O, U. The significance of this great secret no one could obtain from him. It of course excited great curiosity, as it everywhere met the eye of the public. After his death the riddle was solved by finding among his papers the following interpretation-- _Austri Est Imperare Orbi Universo._ Austria Is To govern The world Universal. Maximilian, in the prime of manhood, energetic, ambitious, and invested with the imperial dignity, now assumed the government of the Austrian States. The prospect of greatness was brilliant before Maximilian. The crowns of Bohemia and Hungary were united in the person of Ladislaus, who was without children. As Maximilian already enjoyed the title of King of Hungary, no one enjoyed so good a chance as he of securing both of those crowns so soon as they should fall from the brow of Ladislaus. Europe was still trembling before the threatening cimeter of the Turk. Mahomet II., having annihilated the Greek empire, and consolidated his vast power, and checked in his career by the warlike barons of Hungary, now cast a lustful eye across the Adriatic to the shores of Italy. He crossed the sea, landed a powerful army and established twenty thousand men, strongly garrisoned, at Otranto, and supplied with provisions for a year. All Italy was in consternation, for a passage was now open directly from Turkey to Naples and Rome. Mahomet boasted that he would soon feed his horse on the altar of St. Peter's. The pope, Sextus IV., in dismay, was about abandoning Rome, and as there was no hope of uniting the discordant States of Italy in any effectual resistance, it seemed inevitable that Italy, like Greece, would soon become a Turkish province. And where then could it be hoped that the ravages of the Turks would be arrested? In this crisis, so alarming, Providence interposed, and the sudden death of Mahomet, in the vigor of his pride and ambition, averted the danger. Bajazet II. succeeded to the Moslem throne, an indolent and imbecile sultan. Insurrection in his own dominions exhausted all his feeble energies. The Neapolitans, encouraged, raised an army, recovered Otranto, and drove the Turks out of Italy. Troubles in the Turkish dominions now gave Christendom a short respite, as all the strength of the sultan was required to subjugate insurgent Circassia and Egypt. Though the Emperor of Germany was esteemed the first sovereign in Europe, and, on state occasions, was served by kings and electors, he had in reality but little power. The kings who formed his retinue on occasions of ceremonial pomp, were often vastly his superiors in wealth and power. Frequently he possessed no territory of his own, not even a castle, but depended upon the uncertain aids reluctantly granted by the diet. Gunpowder was now coming into use as one of the most efficient engines of destruction, and was working great changes in the science of war. It became necessary to have troops drilled to the use of cannon and muskets. The baron could no longer summon his vassals, at the moment, to abandon the plow, and seize pike and saber for battle, where the strong arm only was needed. Disciplined troops were needed, who could sweep the field with well-aimed bullets, and crumble walls with shot and shells. This led to the establishment of standing armies, and gave the great powers an immense advantage over their weaker neighbors. The invention of printing, also, which began to be operative about the middle of the fifteenth century, rapidly changed, by the diffusion of intelligence, the state of society, hitherto so barbarous. The learned men of Greece, driven from their country by the Turkish invasion, were scattered over Europe, and contributed not a little to the extension of the love of letters. The discovery of the mariner's compass and improvements in nautical astronomy, also opened new sources of knowledge and of wealth, and the human mind all over Europe commenced a new start in the career of civilization. Men of letters began to share in those honors which heretofore had belonged exclusively to men of war; and the arts of peace began to claim consideration with those who had been accustomed to respect only the science of destruction. Maximilian was at Innspruck when he received intelligence of the death of his father. He commenced his reign with an act of rigor which was characteristic of his whole career. A horde of Turks had penetrated Styria and Carniola, laying every thing waste before them as far as Carniola. Maximilian, sounding the alarm, inspired his countrymen with the same energy which animated his own breast. Fifteen thousand men rallied at the blast of his bugles. Instead of intrusting the command of them to his generals, he placed himself at their head, and made so fierce an onset upon the invaders, that they precipitately fled. Maximilian returned at the head of his troops triumphant to Vienna, where he was received with acclamations such as had seldom resounded in the metropolis. He was hailed as the deliverer of his country, and at once rose to the highest position in the esteem and affection of the Austrians. Maximilian had encountered innumerable difficulties in Burgundy, and was not unwilling to escape from the vexations and cares of that distant dukedom, by surrendering its government to his son Philip, who was now sixteen years of age, and whom the Burgundians claimed to be their ruler as the heir of Mary. The Swiss estates were also sundered from Austrian dominion, and, uniting with the Swiss confederacy, were no longer subject to the house of Hapsburg. Thus Maximilian had the Austrian estates upon the Danube only, as the nucleus of the empire he was ambitious of establishing. Conscious of his power, and rejoicing in the imperial title, he had no idea of playing an obscure part on the conspicuous stage of European affairs. With an eagle eye he watched the condition of the empire, and no less eagerly did he fix his eye upon the movements of those great southern powers, now becoming consolidated into kingdoms and empires, and marshaling armies which threatened again to bring all Europe under a dominion as wide and despotic as that of Rome. Charles VIII., King of France, crossed the Alps with an army of twenty-two thousand men, in the highest state of discipline, and armed with all the modern enginery of war. With ease he subjugated Tuscany, and in a triumphant march through Pisa and Siena, entered Rome as a conqueror. It was the 31st of December, 1394, when Charles, by torchlight, at the head of his exultant troops, entered the eternal city. The pope threw himself into the castle of St. Angelo, but was soon compelled to capitulate and to resign all his fortresses to the conqueror. Charles then continued his march to Naples, which he reached on the 22d of February. He overran and subjugated the whole kingdom, and, having consolidated his conquest, entered Naples on a white steed, beneath imperial banners, and arrogantly assumed the title of King of Naples, Sicily and Jerusalem. Alphonso, King of Naples, in despair, abdicated in favor of his son, Ferdinand; and Ferdinand, unable to oppose any effectual resistance, abandoned his kingdom to the conqueror, and fled to the island of Ischia. These alarming aggressions on the part of France, already very powerful, excited general consternation throughout Europe. Maximilian, as emperor, was highly incensed, and roused all his energies to check the progress of so dangerous a rival. The Austrian States alone could by no means cope with the kingdom of France. Maximilian sent agents to the pope, to the Dukes of Milan and Florence, and to the King of Arragon, and formed a secret league to expel the French from Italy, and restore Ferdinand to Naples. It was understood that the strength of France was such, that this enterprise could only be achieved through a long war, and that the allies must continue united to prevent France, when once expelled from Italy, from renewing her aggressions. The league was to continue twenty-two years. The pope was to furnish six thousand men, and the other Italian States twelve thousand. Maximilian promised to furnish nine thousand. Venice granted the troops of the emperor a free passage through her dominions. These important first steps being thus taken secretly and securely, the emperor summoned a diet of Germany to enlist the States of the empire in the enterprise. This was the most difficult task, and yet nothing could be accomplished without the coöperation of Germany. But the Germanic States, loosely held together, jealous of each other, each grasping solely at its own aggrandizement, reluctantly delegating any power to the emperor, were slow to promise coöperation in any general enterprise, and having promised, were still slower to perform. The emperor had no power to enforce the fulfillment of agreements, and could only supplicate. During the long reign of Frederic the imperial dignity had lapsed more and more into an empty title; and Maximilian had an arduous task before him in securing even respectful attention to his demands. He was fully aware of the difficulties, and made arrangements accordingly. The memorable diet was summoned at Worms, on the 26th of May, 1496. The emperor had succeeded, by great exertion, in assembling a more numerous concourse of the princes and nobles of the empire than had ever met on a similar occasion. He presided in person, and in a long and earnest address endeavored to rouse the empire to a sense of its own dignity and its own high mission as the regulator of the affairs of Europe. He spoke earnestly of their duty to combine and chastise the insolence of the Turks; but waiving that for the present moment, he unfolded to them the danger to which Europe was immediately and imminently exposed by the encroachments of France. To add to the force of his words, he introduced ambassadors from the King of Naples, who informed the assembly of the conquests of the French, of their haughty bearing, and implored the aid of the diet to repel the invaders. The Duke of Milan was then presented, and, as a member of the empire, he implored as a favor and claimed as a right, the armies of the empire for the salvation of his duchy. And then the legate of the pope, in the robes of the Church, and speaking in the name of the Holy Father to his children, pathetically described the indignities to which the pope had been exposed, driven from his palace, bombarded in the fortress to which he had retreated, compelled to capitulate and leave his kingdom in the hands of the enemy; he expatiated upon the impiety of the French troops, the sacrilegious horrors of which they had been guilty, and in tones of eloquence hardly surpassed by Peter the Hermit, strove to rouse them to a crusade for the rescue of the pope and his sacred possessions. Maximilian had now exhausted all his powers of persuasion. He had done apparently enough to rouse every heart to intensest action. But the diet listened coldly to all these appeals, and then in substance replied, "We admit the necessity of checking the incursions of the Turks; we admit that it is important to check the progress of the French. But our first duty is to secure peace in Germany. The States of the empire are embroiled in incessant wars with each other. All attempts to prevent these private wars between the States of the empire have hitherto failed. Before we can vote money and men for any foreign enterprise whatever, we must secure internal tranquillity. This can only be done by establishing a supreme tribunal, supported by a power which can enforce its decisions." These views were so manifestly judicious, that Maximilian assented to them, and, anxious to lose no time in raising troops to expel the French from Italy, he set immediately about the organization of an imperial tribunal to regulate the internal affairs of the empire. A court was created called the Imperial Chamber. It was composed of a president and sixteen judges, half of whom were taken from the army, and half from the class of scholars. To secure impartiality, the judges held their office for life. A majority of suffrages decided a question and in case of a tie, the president gave a casting vote. The emperor reserved the right of deciding certain questions himself. This court gradually became one of the most important and salutary institutions of the German empire. By the 7th of August these important measures were arranged. Maximilian had made great concessions of his imperial dignity in transferring so much of his nominal power to the Imperial Chamber, and he was now sanguine that the States would vote him the supplies which were needed to expel the French from Italy, or, in more honest words, to win for the empire in Italy that ascendency which France had attained. But bitter indeed was his disappointment. After long deliberation and vexatious delays, the diet voted a ridiculous sum, less than one hundred and fifty thousand dollars, to raise an army "sufficient to check the progress of the French." One third of this sum Maximilian was to raise from his Austrian States; the remaining two thirds he was permitted to obtain by a loan. Four years were to be allowed for raising the money, and the emperor, as a condition for the reception of even this miserable boon, was required to pledge his word of honor that at the expiration of the four years he would raise no more. And even these hundred and fifty thousand dollars were to be intrusted to seven treasurers, to be administered according to their discretion. One only of these treasurers was to be chosen by the emperor, and the other six by the diet. Deeply chagrined by this result, Maximilian was able to raise only three thousand men, instead of the nine thousand which he had promised the league. Charles VIII., informed of the formidable coalition combining against him, and not aware of the feeble resources of the emperor, apprehensive that the armies of Germany, marching down and uniting with the roused States of Italy, might cut off his retreat and overwhelm him, decided that the "better part of courage is discretion;" and he accordingly abandoned his conquests, recrossed the Apennines, fought his backward path through Italy, and returned to France. He, however, left behind him six thousand men strongly intrenched, to await his return with a new and more powerful armament. Maximilian now resolved chivalrously to throw himself into Italy, and endeavor to rouse the Italians themselves to resist the threatened invasion, trusting that the diet of Germany, when they should see him struggling against the hosts of France, would send troops to his aid. With five hundred horse, and about a thousand foot soldiers, he crossed the Alps. Here he learned that for some unknown reason Charles had postponed his expedition. Recoiling from the ridicule attending a quixotic and useless adventure, he hunted around for some time to find some heroic achievement which would redeem his name from reproach, when, thwarted in every thing, he returned to Austria, chagrined and humiliated. Thus frustrated in all his attempts to gain ascendency in Italy, Maximilian turned his eyes to the Swiss estates of the house of Hapsburg, now sundered from the Austrian territories. He made a vigorous effort, first by diplomacy, then by force of arms, to regain them. Here again he was frustrated, and was compelled to enter into a capitulation by which he acknowledged the independence of the Helvetic States, and their permanent severance from Austrian jurisdiction. In April, 1498, Charles VIII. died, and Louis XII. succeeded him on the throne of France. Louis immediately made preparations for a new invasion of Italy. In those miserable days of violence and blood, almost any prince was ready to embark in war under anybody's banner, where there was the least prospect of personal aggrandizement. The question of right or wrong, seemed seldom to enter any one's mind. Louis fixed his eyes upon the duchy of Milan as the richest and most available prize within his grasp. Conscious that he would meet with much opposition, he looked around for allies. "If you will aid me," he said to Pope Alexander VI., "I will assist you in your war against the Duke of Romagna. I will give your son, Caesar Borgia,[1] a pension of two thousand dollars a year, will confer upon him an important command in my army, and will procure for him a marriage with a princess of the royal house of Navarre." [Footnote 1: Cæsar Borgia, who has filled the world with the renown of his infamy, was the illegitimate son of Alexander VI., and of a Roman lady named Yanozza.] The holy father could not resist this bribe, and eagerly joined the robber king in his foray. To Venice Louis said-- "If you will unite with me, I will assist you in annexing to your domains the city of Cremona, and the Ghiaradadda." Lured by such hopes of plunder, Venice was as eager as the pope to take a share in the piratic expedition. Louis then sent to the court of Turin, and offered them large sums of money and increased territory, if they would allow him a free passage across the Alps. Turin bowed obsequiously, and grasped at the easy bargain. To Florence he said, "If you raise a hand to assist the Duke of Milan, I will crush you. If you remain quiet, I will leave you unharmed." Florence, overawed, remained as meek as a lamb. The diplomacy being thus successfully closed, an army of twenty-two thousand men was put in vigorous motion in July, 1499. They crossed the Alps, fought a few battles, in which, with overpowering numbers, they easily conquered their opposers, and in twenty days were in possession of Milan. The Duke Ludovico with difficulty escaped. With a few followers he threaded the defiles of the Tyrolese mountains, and hastened to Innspruck, the capital of Tyrol, where Maximilian then was, to whom he conveyed the first tidings of his disaster. Louis XII. followed after his triumphant army, and on the 6th of October made a triumphal entry into the captured city, and was inaugurated Duke of Milan. Maximilian promised assistance, but could raise neither money nor men. Ludovico, however, succeeded in hiring fifteen hundred Burgundian horsemen, and eight thousand Swiss mercenaries--for in those ages of ignorance and crime all men were ready, for pay, to fight in any cause--and emerging from the mountains upon the plains of Milan, found all his former subjects disgusted with the French, and eager to rally under his banners. His army increased at every step. He fell fiercely upon the invaders, routed them everywhere, drove them from the duchy, and recovered his country and his capital as rapidly as he had lost them. One fortress only the French maintained. The intrepid Chevalier De Bayard, _the knight without fear and without reproach_, threw himself into the citadel of Novarra, and held out against all the efforts of Ludovico, awaiting the succor which he was sure would come from his powerful sovereign the King of France. CHAPTER VI. MAXIMILIAN I. From 1500 to 1519. Base Treachery of the Swiss Soldiers.--Perfidy of Ferdinand of Arragon.--Appeals by Superstition.--Coalition with Spain.--The League of Cambray.--Infamy of the Pope.--The Kings's Apology.--Failure of the Plot.--Germany Aroused.--Confidence of Maximilian.--Longings for the Pontifical Chair.--Maximilian Bribed.--Leo X.--Dawning Prosperity.-- Matrimonial Projects.--Commencement of the War of Reformation.--Sickness of Maximilian.--His Last Directions.--His Death.--The Standard by which his Character is to be Judged. Louis XII., stung by the disgrace of his speedy expulsion from Milan, immediately raised another army of five thousand horse and fifteen thousand foot to recover his lost plunder. He also sent to Switzerland to hire troops, and without difficulty engaged ten thousand men to meet, on the plains of Milan, the six thousand of their brethren whom Ludovico had hired, to hew each other to pieces for the miserable pittance of a few pennies a day. But Louis XII. was as great in diplomacy as in war. He sent secret emissaries to the Swiss in the camp of Ludovico, offering them larger wages if they would abandon the service of Ludovico and return home. They promptly closed the bargain, unfurled the banner of mutiny, and informed the Duke of Milan that they could not, in conscience, fight against their own brethren. The duke was in despair. He plead even with tears that they would not abandon him. All was in vain. They not only commenced their march home, but basely betrayed the duke to the French. He was taken prisoner by Louis, carried to France and for five years was kept in rigorous confinement in the strong fortresses of the kingdom. Afterward, through the intercession of Maximilian, he was allowed a little more freedom. He was, however, kept in captivity until he died in the year 1510. Ludovico merits no commiseration. He was as perfidious and unprincipled as any of his assailants could be. The reconquest of Milan by Louis, and the capture of Ludovico, alarmed Maximilian and roused him to new efforts. He again summoned the States of the empire and implored their coöperation to resist the aggressions of France. But he was as unsuccessful as in his previous endeavors. Louis watched anxiously the movements of the German diet, and finding that he had nothing to fear from the troops of the empire, having secured the investiture of Milan, prepared for the invasion of Naples. The venal pope was easily bought over. Even Ferdinand, the King of Arragon, was induced to loan his connivance to a plan for robbing a near relative of his crown, by the promise of sharing in the spoil. A treaty of partition was entered into by the two robber kings, by which Ferdinand of Arragon was to receive Calabria and Apulia, and the King of France the remaining States of the Neapolitan kingdom. The pope was confidentially informed of this secret plot, which was arranged at Grenada, and promised the plunderers his benediction, in consideration of the abundant reward promised to him. The doom of the King of Naples was now sealed. All unconscious that his own relative, Ferdinand of Arragon, was conspiring against him, he appealed to Ferdinand for aid against the King of France. The perfidious king considered this as quite a providential interposition in his favor. He affected great zeal for the King of Naples, sent a powerful army into his kingdom, and stationed his troops in the important fortresses. The infamous fraud was now accomplished. Frederic of Naples, to his dismay, found that he had been placing his empire in the hands of his enemies instead of friends; at the same time the troops of Louis arrived at Rome, where they were cordially received; and the pope immediately, on the 25th of June, 1501, issued a bull deposing Frederic from his kingdom, and, by virtue of that spiritual authority which he derived from the Apostle Peter, invested Louis and Ferdinand with the dominions of Frederic. Few men are more to be commiserated than a crownless king. Frederic, in his despair, threw himself upon the clemency of Louis. He was taken to France and was there fed and clothed by the royal bounty. Maximilian impatiently watched the events from his home in Austria, and burned with the desire to take a more active part in these stirring scenes. Despairing, however, to rouse the German States to any effectual intervention in the affairs of southern Europe, he now endeavored to rouse the enthusiasm of the German nobles against the Turks. In this, by appealing to superstition, he was somewhat successful. He addressed the following circular letter to the German States: "A stone, weighing two hundred pounds, recently fell from heaven, near the army under my command in Upper Alsace, and I caused it, as a fatal warning from God to men, to be hung up in the neighboring church of Encisheim. In vain I myself explained to all Christian kings the signification of this mysterious stone. The Almighty punished the neglect of this warning with a dreadful scourge, from which thousands have suffered death, or pains worse than death. But since this punishment of the abominable sins of men has produced no effect, God has imprinted in a miraculous manner the sign of the cross, and the instruments of our Lord's passion in dark and bloody colors, on the bodies and garments of thousands. The appearance of these signs in Germany, in particular, does not indeed denote that the Germans have been peculiarly distinguished in guilt, but rather that they should set the example to the rest of the world, by being the first to undertake a crusade against the infidels." For a time Maximilian seemed quite encouraged, for quite a wave of religious enthusiasm seemed to roll over Europe. All the energies of the pope were apparently enlisted, and he raised, through all the domains of the Church, large sums of money for the holy enterprise of driving the invading infidels out of Europe. England and France both proffered their co-operation, and England, opening her inexhaustible purse, presented a subsidy of ten thousand pounds. The German nobles rallied in large numbers under the banner of the cross. But disappointment seemed to be the doom of the emperor. The King of France sent no aid. The pope, iniquitously squandered all the money he had raised upon his infamous, dissolute son, Cæsar Borgia. And the emperor himself was drawn into a war with Bavaria, to settle the right of succession between two rival claimants. The settlement of the question devolved upon Maximilian as emperor, and his dignity was involved in securing respect for his decision. Thus the whole gorgeous plan of a war against the Turks, such as Europe had never beheld, vanished into thin air, and Maximilian was found at the head of fourteen thousand infantry, and twelve thousand horse, engaged in a quarrel in the heart of Germany. In this war Maximilian was successful, and he rewarded himself by annexing to Austria several small provinces, the sum total of which quite enlarged his small domains. By this time the kings of France and Spain were fiercely fighting over their conquest of Naples and Sicily, each striving to grasp the lion's share. Maximilian thought his interests would be promoted by aiding the Spaniards, and he accordingly sent three thousand men to Trieste, where they embarked, and sailing down the Adriatic, united with the Spanish troops. The French were driven out of Italy. There then ensued, for several years, wars and intrigues in which France, Spain, Italy and Austria were involved; all alike selfish and grasping. Armies were ever moving to and fro, and the people of Europe, by the victories of kings and nobles, were kept in a condition of misery. No one seemed ever to think of their rights or their happiness. Various circumstances had exasperated Maximilian very much against the Venetians. All the powers of Europe were then ready to combine against any other power whatever, if there was a chance of obtaining any share in the division of the plunder. Maximilian found no difficulty in secretly forming one of the most formidable leagues history had then recorded, the celebrated league of Cambray. No sympathy need be wasted upon the Venetians, the victims of this coalition, for they had rendered themselves universally detestable by their arrogance, rapacity, perfidy and pride. France joined the coalition, and, in view of her power, was to receive a lion's share of the prey--the provinces of Brescia, Bergamo, Cremona, and the Ghiradadda. The King of Arragon was to send ships and troops, and receive his pay in the maritime towns on the shores of the Adriatic. The pope, Julius II., the most grasping, perfidious and selfish of them all, demanded Ravenna, Cervia, Faenza, Rimini, Immola and Cesena. His exorbitant claims were assented to, as it was infinitely important that the piratic expedition should be sanctioned by the blessing of the Church. Maximilian was to receive, in addition to some territories which Venice had wrested from him, Roveredo, Verona, Padua, Vicenza, Trevigi, and the Friuli. As Maximilian was bound by a truce with Venice, and as in those days of chivalry some little regard was to be paid to one's word of honor, Maximilian was only to march at the summons of the pope, which no true son of the Church, under any circumstances, was at liberty to disobey. Sundry other minor dukes and princes were engaged in the plot, who were also to receive a proportionate share of the spoil. After these arrangements were all completed, the holy father, with characteristic infamy, made private overtures to the Venetians, revealing to them the whole plot, and offering to withdraw from the confederacy and thwart all its plans, if Venice would pay more as the reward of perfidy than Rome could hope to acquire by force of arms. The haughty republic rejected the infamous proposal, and prepared for a desperate defense. All the powers of the confederacy were now collecting their troops. But Maximilian was dependent upon the German diet for his ability to fulfill his part of the contract. He assembled the diet at Worms on the 21st of April, 1509, presented to them the plan of the league, and solicited their support. The diet refused to cooperate, and hardly affecting even the forms of respect, couched its refusal in terms of stinging rebuke. "We are tired," they said, "of these innumerable calls for troops and money. We can not support the burden of these frequent diets, involving the expense of long journeys, and we are weary of expeditions and wars. If the emperor enters into treaties with France and the pope without consulting us, it is his concern and not ours, and we are not bound to aid him to fulfill his agreement. And even if we were to vote the succors which are now asked of us, we should only be involved in embarrassment and disgrace, as we have been by the previous enterprises of the emperor." Such, in brief, was the response of the diet. It drew from the emperor a long defense of his conduct, which he called an "Apology," and which is considered one of the most curious and characteristic documents of those days. He made no attempt to conceal his vexation, but assailed them in strong language of reproach. "I have concluded a treaty with my allies," he wrote, "in conformity to the dictates of conscience and duty, and for the honor, glory and happiness of the empire and of Christendom. The negotiation could not be postponed, and if I had convoked a diet to demand the advice of the States, the treaty would never have been concluded. I was under the necessity of concealing the project of the combined powers, that we might fall on the Venetians at once and unexpectedly, which could not have been effected in the midst of public deliberations and endless discussions; and I have, I trust, clearly proved, both in my public and my private communications, the advantage which is likely to result from this union. If the aids hitherto granted by diets have produced nothing but disgrace and dishonor, I am not to blame, but the States who acted so scandalously in granting their succors with so much reluctance and delay. As for myself, I have, on the contrary, exposed my treasure, my countries, my subjects and my life, while the generality of the German States have remained in dishonorable tranquillity at home. I have more reason to complain of you than you of me; for you have constantly refused me your approbation and assistance; and even when you have granted succors, you have rendered them fruitless by the scantiness and tardiness of your supplies, and compelled me to dissipate my own revenues, and injure my own subjects." Of course these bitter recriminations accomplished nothing in changing the action of the diet, and Maximilian was thrown upon the Austrian States alone for supplies. Louis of France, at the head of seventeen thousand troops, crossed the Alps. The pope fulminated a bull of excommunication against the Venetians, and sent an army of ten thousand men. The Duke of Ferrara and the Marquis of Mantua sent their contingents. Maximilian, by great exertions, sent a few battalions through the mountains of the Tyrol, and was preparing to follow with stronger forces. Province after province fell before the resistless invaders, and Venice would have fallen irretrievably had not the conquerors began to quarrel among themselves. The pope, in secret treaty, was endeavoring to secure his private interests, regardless of the interests of the allies. Louis, from some pique, withdrew his forces, and abandoned Maximilian in the hour of peril, and the emperor, shackled by want of money, and having but a feeble force, was quite unable to make progress alone against the Venetian troops. It does not seem to be the will of Providence that the plots of unprincipled men, even against men as bad as themselves, should be more than transiently prosperous. Maximilian, thus again utterly thwarted in one of his most magnificent plans, covered with disgrace, and irritated almost beyond endurance, after attempting in vain to negotiate a truce with the Venetians, was compelled to retreat across the Alps, inveighing bitterly against the perfidious refusal to fulfill a perfidious agreement. The holy father, Julius II., outwitted all his accomplices. He secured from Venice very valuable accessions of territory, and then, recalling his ecclesiastical denunciations, united with Venice to drive the _barbarians_, as he affectionately called his French and German allies, out of Italy. Maximilian returned to Austria as in a funeral march, ventured to summon another diet, told them how shamefully he had been treated by France, Venice and the pope, and again implored them to do something to help him. Perseverance is surely the most efficient of virtues. Incredible as it may seem, the emperor now obtained some little success. The diet, indignant at the conduct of the pope, and alarmed at so formidable a union as that between the papal States and Venice, voted a succor of six thousand infantry and eighteen hundred horse. This encouraged the emperor, and forgetting his quarrel with Louis XII. of France, in the stronger passion of personal aggrandizement which influenced him, he entered into another alliance with Louis against the pope and Venice, and then made a still stronger and a religious appeal to Germany for aid. A certain class of politicians in all countries and in all ages, have occasionally expressed great solicitude for the reputation of religion. "The power and government of the pope," the emperor proclaimed, "which ought to be an example to the faithful, present, on the contrary, nothing but trouble and disorder. The enormous sums daily extorted from Germany, are perverted to the purposes of luxury or worldly views, instead of being employed for the service of God, or against the infidels. As Emperor of Germany, as advocate and protector of the Christian Church, it is my duty to examine into such irregularities, and exert all my efforts for the glory of God and the advantage of the empire; and as there is an evident necessity to reëstablish due order and decency, both in the ecclesiastical and temporal state, I have resolved to call a general council, without which nothing permanent can be effected." It is said that Maximilian was now so confident of success, that he had decided to divide Italy between himself and France. He was to take Venice and the States of the Church, and France was to have the rest. Pope Julius was to be deposed, and to be succeeded by Pope Maximilian. The following letter from Maximilian to his daughter, reveals his ambitious views at the time. It is dated the 18th of September, 1511. "To-morrow I shall send the Bishop of Guzk to the pope at Rome, to conclude an agreement with him that I may be appointed his coadjutor, and on his death succeed to the papacy, and become a priest, and afterwards a saint, that you may be bound to worship me, of which I shall be very proud. I have written on this subject to the King of Arragon, intreating him to favor my undertaking, and he has promised me his assistance, provided I resign my imperial crown to my grandson Charles, which I am very ready to do. The people and nobles of Rome have offered to support me against the French and Spanish party. They can muster twenty thousand combatants, and have sent me word that they are inclined to favor my scheme of being pope, and will not consent to have either a Frenchman, a Spaniard or a Venetian. "I have already began to sound the cardinals, and, for that purpose, two or three hundred thousand ducats would be of great service to me, as their partiality to me is very great. The King of Arragon has ordered his ambassadors to assure me that he will command the Spanish cardinals to favor my pretensions to the papacy. I intreat you to keep this matter secret for the present, though I am afraid it will soon be known, for it is impossible to carry on a business secretly for which it is necessary to gain over so many persons, and to have so much money. Adieu. Written with the hand of your dear father Maximilian, future pope. The pope's fever has increased, and he can not live long." It is painful to follow out the windings of intrigue and the labyrinths of guile, where selfishness seemed to actuate every heart, and where all alike seem destitute of any principle of Christian integrity. Bad as the world is now, and selfish as political aspirants are now, humanity has made immense progress since that dark age of superstition, fraud and violence. After many victories and many defeats, after innumerable fluctuations of guile, Maximilian accepted a bribe, and withdrew his forces, and the King of France was summoned home by the invasion of his own territories by the King of Arragon and Henry VIII. of England, who, for a suitable consideration, had been induced to join Venice and the pope. At the end of this long campaign of diplomacy, perfidy and blood, in which misery had rioted through ten thousand cottages, whose inhabitants the warriors regarded no more than the occupants of the ant-hills they trampled beneath their feet, it was found that no one had gained any thing but toil and disappointment. On the 21st of February, 1513, Pope Julius II. died, and the cardinals, rejecting all the overtures of the emperor, elected John of Medici pope, who assumed the name of Leo X. The new pontiff was but thirty-six years of age, a man of brilliant talents, and devoted to the pursuit of letters. Inspired by boundless ambition, he wished to signalize his reign by the magnificence of his court and the grandeur of his achievements. Thus far nothing but disaster seemed to attend the enterprises of Maximilian; but now the tide suddenly turned and rolled in upon him billows of prosperity. It will be remembered that Maximilian married, for his first wife, Mary, the daughter of the Duke of Burgundy. Their son Philip married Joanna, daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella, whose marriage, uniting the kingdoms of Castile and Arragon, created the splendid kingdom of Spain. Philip died young, leaving a son, Charles, and Joanna, an insane wife, to watch his grave through weary years of woe. Upon the death of Ferdinand, in January, 1516, Charles, the grandson of Maximilian, became undisputed heir to the whole monarchy of Spain; then, perhaps, the grandest power in Europe, including Naples, Sicily and Navarre. This magnificent inheritance, coming so directly into the family, and into the line of succession, invested Maximilian and the house of Austria with new dignity. It was now an object of intense solicitude with Maximilian, to secure the reversion of the crowns of Hungary and Bohemia, which were both upon the brow of Ladislaus, to his own family. With this object in view, and to render assurance doubly sure, he succeeded in negotiating a marriage between two children of Ladislaus, a son and a daughter, and two of his own grand-children. This was a far pleasanter mode of acquiring territory and family aggrandizement than by the sword. In celebration of the betrothals, Ladislaus and his brother Sigismond, King of Poland, visited Vienna, where Ladislaus was so delighted with the magnificent hospitality of his reception, that he even urged upon the emperor, who was then a widower, fifty-eight years of age, that he should marry another of his daughters, though she had but attained her thirteenth year. The emperor declined the honor, jocularly remarking-- "There is no method more pleasant to kill an old man, than to marry him to a young bride." The German empire was then divided into ten districts, or circles, as they were then called, each of which was responsible for the maintenance of peace among its own members. These districts were, Austria, Burgundy, the Upper Rhine, the Lower Rhine, Franconia, Bavaria, Suabia, Westphalia, Upper Saxony and Lower Saxony. The affairs of each district were to be regulated by a court of a few nobles, called a diet. The emperor devoted especial attention to the improvement of his own estate of Austria, which he subdivided into two districts, and these into still smaller districts. Over all, for the settlement of all important points of dispute, he established a tribunal called the Aulic Council, which subsequently exerted a powerful influence over the affairs of Austria. One more final effort Maximilian made to rouse Germany to combine to drive the Turks out of Europe. Though the benighted masses looked up with much reverence to the pontiff, the princes and the nobles regarded him only as a _power_, wielding, in addition to the military arm, the potent energies of superstition. A diet was convened. The pope's legate appeared, and sustained the eloquent appeal of the emperor with the paternal commands of the holy father. But the press was now becoming a power in Europe, diffusing intelligence and giving freedom to thought and expression. The diet, after listening patiently to the arguments of the emperor and the requests of the pontiff, dryly replied-- "We think that Christianity has more to fear from the pope than from the Turks. Much as we may dread the ravages of the infidel, they can hardly drain Christendom more effectually than it is now drained by the exactions of the Church." It was at Augsburg in July, 1518, that the diet ventured thus boldly to speak. This was one year after Luther had nailed upon the church door in Wittemberg, his ninety-five propositions, which had roused all Germany to scrutinize the abominable corruptions of the papal church. This bold language of the diet, influenced by the still bolder language of the intrepid monk, alarmed Leo X., and on the 7th of August he issued his summons commanding Luther to repair to Rome to answer for heresy. Maximilian, who had been foiled in his own attempt to attain the chair of St. Peter, who had seen so much of the infamous career of Julius and Alexander, as to lose all his reverence for the sacred character of the popes, and who regarded Leo X. merely as a successful rival who had thwarted his own plans, espoused, with cautious development, but with true interest, the cause of the reformer. And now came the great war of the Reformation, agitating Germany in every quarter, and rousing the lethargic intellect of the nations as nothing else could rouse it. Maximilian, with characteristic fickleness, or rather, with characteristic pliancy before every breeze of self-interest, was now on the one side, now on the other, and now, nobody knew where, until his career was terminated by sudden and fatal sickness. The emperor was at Innspruck, all overwhelmed with his cares and his plans of ambition, when he was seized with a slight fever. Hoping to be benefited by a change of air, he set out to travel by slow stages to one of his castles among the mountains of Upper Austria. The disease, however, rapidly increased, and it was soon evident that death was approaching. The peculiarities of his character were never more strikingly developed than in these last solemn hours. Being told by his physicians that he had not long to live and that he must now prepare for the final judgment, he calmly replied, "I have long ago made that preparation. Had I not done so, it would be too late now." For four years he had been conscious of declining health, and had always carried with him, wherever he traveled, an oaken coffin, with his shroud and other requisites for his funeral. With very minute directions he settled all his worldly affairs, and gave the most particular instructions respecting his funeral. Changing his linen, he strictly enjoined that his shirt should not be removed after his death, for his fastidious modesty was shocked by the idea of the exposure of his body, even after the soul had taken its flight. He ordered his hair, after his death, to be cut off, all his teeth to be extracted, pounded to powder and publicly burned in the chapel of his palace. For one day his remains were to be exposed to the public, as a lesson of mortality. They were then to be placed in a sack filled with quicklime. The sack was to be enveloped in folds of silk and satin, and then placed in the oaken coffin which had been so long awaiting his remains. The coffin was then to be deposited under the altar of the chapel of his palace at Neustadt, in such a position that the officiating priest should ever trample over his head and heart. The king expressed the hope that this humiliation of his body would, in some degree, be accepted by the Deity in atonement for the sins of his soul. How universal the instinct that sin needs an atonement! Having finished these directions the emperor observed that some of his attendants were in tears. "Do you weep," said he, "because you see a mortal die? Such tears become women rather than men." The emperor was now dying. As the ecclesiastics repeated the prayers of the Church, the emperor gave the responses until his voice failed, and then continued to give tokens of recognition and of faith, by making the sign of the cross. At three o'clock in the morning of the 11th of January, 1519, the Emperor Maximilian breathed his last. He was then in the sixtieth year of his age. Maximilian is justly considered one of the most renowned of the descendants of Rhodolph of Hapsburg. It is saying but little for his moral integrity, to affirm that he was one of the best of the rulers of his age. According to his ideas of religion, he was a religious man. According to his ideas of honesty and of honor, he was both an honest and an honorable man. According to his idea of what is called _moral conduct_, he was irreproachable, being addicted to no _ungenteel_ vices, or any sins which would be condemned by his associates. His ambition was not to secure for himself ease or luxury, but to extend his imperial power, and to aggrandize his family. For these objects he passed his life, ever tossed upon the billows of toil and trouble. In industry and perseverance, he has rarely been surpassed. Notwithstanding the innumerable interruptions and cares attendant upon his station, he still found time, one can hardly imagine when, to become a proficient in all the learning of the day. He wrote and spoke four languages readily, Latin, French, German and Italian. Few men have possessed more persuasive powers of eloquence. All the arts and sciences he warmly patronized, and men of letters of every class found in him a protector. But history must truthfully declare that there was no perfidy of which he would not be guilty, and no meanness to which he would not stoop, if he could only extend his hereditary domains and add to his family renown. CHAPTER VII. CHARLES V. AND THE REFORMATION. From 1519 to 1531. Charles V. of Spain.--His Election as Emperor of Germany.--His Coronation.--The first Constitution.--Progress of the Reformation.--The Pope's Bull against Luther.--His Contempt for his Holiness.--The Diet at Worms.--Frederic's Objection to the Condemnation of Luther by the Diet.--He obtains for Luther the Right of Defense.--Luther's triumphal March to the Tribunal.--Charles urged to violate his Safe Conduct.-- Luther's Patmos.--Marriage of Sister Catharine Bora to Luther.--Terrible Insurrection.--The Holy League.--The Protest of Spires.--Confession of Augsburg.--The two Confessions.--Compulsory Measures. Charles V. of Spain, as the nearest male heir, inherited from Maximilian the Austrian States. He was the grandson of the late emperor, son of Philip and of Joanna, daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella, and was born on the 24th of February, 1500. He had been carefully educated in the learning and accomplishments of the age, and particularly in the arts of war. At the death of his grandfather, Ferdinand, Charles, though but sixteen years of age, assumed the title of King of Spain, and though strongly opposed for a time, he grasped firmly and held securely the reins of government. Joanna, his mother, was legally the sovereign, both by the laws of united Castile and Arragon, and by the testaments of Isabella and Ferdinand. But she was insane, and was sunk in such depths of melancholy as to be almost unconscious of the scenes which were transpiring around her. Two years had elapsed between the accession of Charles V. to the throne of Spain and the death of his grandfather, Maximilian. The young king, with wonderful energy of character, had, during that time, established himself very firmly on the throne. Upon the death of Maximilian many claimants rose for the imperial throne. Henry VIII. of England and Francis of France, were prominent among the competitors. For six months all the arts of diplomacy were exhausted by the various candidates, and Charles of Spain won the prize. On the 28th of June, 1519, he was unanimously elected Emperor of Germany. The youthful sovereign, who was but nineteen years of age, was at Barcelona when he received the first intelligence of his election. He had sufficient strength of character to avoid the slightest appearance of exultation, but received the announcement with dignity and gravity far above his years. The Spaniards were exceedingly excited and alarmed by the news. They feared that their young sovereign, of whom they had already begun to be proud, would leave Spain to establish his court in the German empire, and they should thus be left, as a distant province, to the government of a viceroy. The king was consequently flooded with petitions, from all parts of his dominions, not to accept the imperial crown. But Charles was as ambitious as his grandfather, Maximilian, whose foresight and maneuvering had set in train those influences which had elevated him to the imperial dignity. Soon a solemn embassy arrived, and, with the customary pomp, proffered to Charles the crown which so many had coveted. Charles accepted the office, and made immediate preparations, notwithstanding the increasing clamor of his subjects, to go to Germany for his coronation. Intrusting the government of Spain during his absence to officers in whom he reposed confidence, he embarked on shipboard, and landing first at Dover in England, made a visit of four days to Henry VIII. He then continued his voyage to the Netherlands; proceeding thence to Aix-la-Chapelle, he was crowned on the 20th of October, 1520, with magnificence far surpassing that of any of his predecessors. Thus Charles V., when but twenty years of age, was the King of Spain and the crowned Emperor of Germany. It is a great mistake to suppose that youthful precocity is one of the innovations of modern times. In the changes of the political kaleidoscope, Austria had now become a part of Spain, or rather a prince of Austrian descent, a lineal heir of the house of Hapsburg, had inherited the dominion of Spain, the most extensive monarchy, in its continental domains and its colonial possessions, then upon the globe. The Germanic confederation at this time made a decided step in advance. Hitherto the emperors, when crowned, had made a sort of verbal promise to administer the government in accordance with the laws and customs of the several states. They were, however, apprehensive that the new emperor, availing himself of the vast power which he possessed independently of the imperial crown, might, by gradual encroachments, defraud them of their rights. A sort of constitution was accordingly drawn up, consisting of thirty-six articles, defining quite minutely the laws, customs and privileges of the empire, which constitution Charles was required to sign before his coronation. Charles presided in person over his first diet which he had convened at Worms on the 6th of January, 1521. The theological and political war of the Reformation was now agitating all Germany, and raging with the utmost violence. Luther had torn the vail from the corruptions of papacy, and was exhibiting to astonished Europe the enormous aggression and the unbridled licentiousness of pontifical power. Letter succeeded letter, and pamphlet pamphlet, and they fell upon the decaying hierarchy like shot and shell upon the walls of a fortress already crumbling and tottering through age. On the 15th of July, 1520, three months before the coronation of Charles V., the pope issued his world-renowned bull against the intrepid monk. He condemned Luther as a heretic, forbade the reading of his writings, excommunicated him if he did not retract within sixty days, and all princes and states were commanded, under pain of incurring the same censure, to seize his person and punish him and his adherents. Many were overawed by these menaces of the holy father, who held the keys of heaven and of hell. The fate of Luther was considered sealed. His works were publicly burned in several cities. Luther, undaunted, replied with blow for blow. He declared the pope to be antichrist, renounced all obedience to him, detailed with scathing severity the conduct of corrupt pontiffs, and called upon the whole nation to renounce all allegiance to the scandalous court of Rome. To cap the climax of his contempt and defiance, he, on the 10th of December, 1520, not two months after the crowning of Charles V., led his admiring followers, the professors and students of the university of Wittemberg, in procession to the eastern gate of the city, where, in the presence of a vast concourse, he committed the papal bull to the flames, exclaiming, in the words of Ezekiel, "Because thou hast troubled the Holy One of God, let eternal fire consume thee." This dauntless spirit of the reformer inspired his disciples throughout Germany with new courage, and in many other cities the pope's bull of excommunication was burned with expressions of indignation and contempt. Such was the state of this great religious controversy when Charles V. held his first diet at Worms. The pope, wielding all the energies of religious fanaticism, and with immense temporal revenues at his disposal, with ecclesiastics, officers of his spiritual court, scattered all over Europe, who exercised almost a supernatural power over the minds of the benighted masses, was still perhaps the most formidable power in Europe. The new emperor, with immense schemes of ambition opening before his youthful and ardent mind, and with no principles of heartfelt piety to incline him to seek and love the truth, as a matter of course sought the favor of the imperial pontiff, and was not at all disposed to espouse the cause of the obscure monk. Charles, therefore, received courteously the legates of the pontiff at the diet, gave them a friendly hearing as they inveighed against the heresy of Luther, and proposed that the diet should also condemn the reformer. Fortunately for Luther he was a subject of the electorate of Saxony, and neither pope nor emperor could touch him but through the elector. Frederic, the Duke of Saxony, one of the electors of the empire, governed a territory of nearly fifteen thousand square miles, more than twice as large as the State of Massachusetts, and containing nearly three millions of inhabitants. The duchy has since passed through many changes and dismemberments, but in the early part of the sixteenth century the Elector of Saxony was one of the most powerful princes of the German empire. Frederic was not disposed to surrender his subject untried and uncondemned to the discipline of the Roman pontiff. He accordingly objected to this summary condemnation of Luther, and declared that before judgment was pronounced, the accused should be heard in his own defense. Charles, who was by no means aware how extensively the opinions of Luther had been circulated and received, was surprised to find many nobles, each emboldened by the rest, rise in the diet and denounce, in terms of ever-increasing severity, the exactions and the arrogance of the court of Rome. Notwithstanding the remonstrances of the pope's legates, the emperor found it necessary to yield to the demands of the diet, and to allow Luther the privilege of being heard, though he avowed to the friends of the pope that Luther should not be permitted to make any defense, but should only have an opportunity to confess his heresy and implore forgiveness. Worms, where the diet was in session, on the west banks of the Rhine, was not within the territories of the Elector of Saxony, and consequently the emperor, in sending a summons to Luther to present himself before the diet, sent, also, a safe conduct. With alacrity the bold reformer obeyed the summons. From Wittemberg, where Luther was both professor in the university and also pastor of a church, to Worms, was a distance of nearly three hundred miles. But the journey of the reformer, through all of this long road was almost like a triumphal procession. Crowds gathered everywhere to behold the man who had dared to bid defiance to the terrors of that spiritual power before which the haughtiest monarchs had trembled. The people had read the writings of Luther, and justly regarded him as the advocate of civil and religious liberty. The nobles, who had often been humiliated by the arrogance of the pontiff, admired a man who was bringing a new power into the field for their disenthrallment. When Luther had arrived within three miles of Worms, accompanied by a few friends and the imperial herald who had summoned him, he was met by a procession of two thousand persons, who had come from the city to form his escort. Some friends in the city sent him a warning that he could not rely upon the protection of his _safe conduct_, that he would probably be perfidiously arrested, and they intreated him to retire immediately again to Saxony. Luther made the memorable reply, "I will go to Worms, if as many devils meet me there as there are tiles upon the roofs of the houses." The emperor was astonished to find that greater crowds were assembled, and greater enthusiasm was displayed in witnessing the entrance of the monk of Wittemberg, than had greeted the imperial entrance to the city. It was indeed an august assemblage before which Luther was arrayed. The emperor himself presided, sustained by his brother, the Archduke Ferdinand. Six electors, twenty-four dukes, seven margraves, thirty bishops and prelates, and an uncounted number of princes, counts, lords and ambassadors filled the spacious hall. It was the 18th of April, 1521. His speech, fearless, dignified, eloquent, unanswerable, occupied two hours. He closed with the noble words, "Let me be refuted and convinced by the testimony of the Scriptures or by the clearest arguments; otherwise I can not and will not recant; for it is neither safe nor expedient to act against conscience. Here I take my stand. I can do no otherwise, so help me God, Amen." In this sublime moral conflict Luther came off the undisputed conqueror. The legates of the pope, exasperated at his triumph, intreated the emperor to arrest him, in defiance of his word of honor pledged for his safety. Charles rejected the infamous proposal with disdain. Still he was greatly annoyed at so serious a schism in the Church, which threatened to alienate from him the patronage of the pope. It was evident that Luther was too strongly intrenched in the hearts of the Germans, for the youthful emperor, whose crown was not yet warm upon his brow, and who was almost a stranger in Germany, to undertake to crush him. To appease the pope he drew up an apologetic declaration, in which he said, in terms which do not honor his memory, "Descended as I am from the Christian emperors of Germany, the Catholic kings of Spain, and from the archdukes of Austria and the Dukes of Burgundy, all of whom have preserved, to the last moment of their lives, their fidelity to the Church, and have always been the defenders and protectors of the Catholic faith, its decrees, ceremonies and usages, I have been, am still, and will ever be devoted to those Christian doctrines, and the constitution of the Church which they have left to me as a sacred inheritance. And as it is evident that a simple monk has advanced opinions contrary to the sentiments of all Christians, past and present, I am firmly determined to wipe away the reproach which a toleration of such errors would cast on Germany, and to employ all my powers and resources, my body, my blood, my life, and even my soul, in checking the progress of this sacrilegious doctrine. I will not, therefore, permit Luther to enter into any further explanation, and will instantly dismiss and afterward treat him as a heretic. But I can not violate my safe conduct, but will cause him to be conducted safely back to Wittemberg." The emperor now attempted to accomplish by intrigue that which he could not attain by authority of force. He held a private interview with the reformer, and endeavored, by all those arts at the disposal of an emperor, to influence Luther to a recantation. Failing utterly in this, he delayed further operations for a month, until many of the diet, including the Elector of Saxony and other powerful friends of Luther, had retired. He then, having carefully retained those who would be obsequious to his will, caused a decree to be enacted, as if it were the unanimous sentiment of the diet, that Luther was a heretic; confirmed the sentence of the pope, and pronounced the ban of the empire against all who should countenance or protect him. But Luther, on the 26th of May, had left Worms on his return to Wittemberg. When he had passed over about half the distance, his friend and admirer, Frederic of Saxony, conscious of the imminent peril which hung over the intrepid monk, sent a troop of masked horsemen who seized him and conveyed him to the castle of Wartburg, where Frederic kept him safely concealed for nine months, not allowing even his friends to know the place of his concealment. Luther, acquiescing in the prudence of this measure, called this retreat his Patmos, and devoted himself most assiduously to the study of the Scriptures, and commenced his most admirable translation of the Bible into the German language, a work which has contributed vastly more than all others to disseminate the principles of the Reformation throughout Germany. It will be remembered that Maximilian's son Ferdinand, who was brother to Charles V., had married Anne, daughter of Ladislaus, King of Hungary and Bohemia. Disturbances in Spain rendered it necessary for the emperor to leave Germany, and for eight years his attention was almost constantly occupied by wars and intrigues in southern Europe. Ferdinand was invested with the government of the Austrian States. In the year 1521, Leo X. died, and Adrian, who seems to have been truly a conscientious Christian man, assumed the tiara. He saw the deep corruptions of the Church, confessed them openly, mourned over them and declared that the Church needed a thorough reformation. This admission, of course, wonderfully strengthened the Lutheran party. The diet, meeting soon after, drew up a list of a hundred grievances, which they intreated the pope to reform, declaring that Germany could no longer endure them. They declared that Luther had opened the eyes of the people to these corruptions, and that they would not suffer the edicts of the diet of Worms to be enforced. Ferdinand of Austria, entering into the views of his brother, was anxious to arrest the progress of the new ideas, now spreading with great rapidity, and he entered--instructed by a legate, Campegio, from the pope--into an engagement with the Duke of Bavaria, and most of the German bishops, to carry the edict of Worms into effect. Frederic, the Elector of Saxony, died in 1525, but he was succeeded by his brother John the Constant, who cordially embraced and publicly avowed the doctrines of the Reformation; and Luther, in July of this year, gave the last signal proof of his entire emancipation from the superstitions of the papacy by marrying Catharine Bora, a noble lady who, having espoused his views, had left the nunnery where she had been an inmate. It is impossible for one now to conceive the impression which was produced in Catholic Europe by the marriage of a priest and a nun. Many of the German princes now followed the example of John of Saxony, and openly avowed their faith in the Lutheran doctrines. In the Austrian States, notwithstanding all Ferdinand's efforts to the contrary, the new faith steadily spread, commanding the assent of the most virtuous and the most intelligent. Many of the nobles avowed themselves Lutherans, as did even some of the professors in the university at Vienna. The vital questions at issue, taking hold, as they did, of the deepest emotions of the soul and the daily habits of life, roused the general mind to the most intense activity. The bitterest hostility sprung up between the two parties, and many persons, without piety and without judgment, threw off the superstitions of the papacy, only to adopt other superstitions equally revolting. The sect of Anabaptists rose, abjuring all civil as well as all religious authority, claiming to be the elect of God, advocating a community of goods and of wives, and discarding all restraint. They roused the ignorant peasantry, and easily showed them that they were suffering as much injustice from feudal lords as from papal bishops. It was the breaking out of the French Revolution on a small scale. Germany was desolated by infuriate bands, demolishing alike the castles of the nobles and the palaces of the bishops, and sparing neither age nor sex in their indiscriminate slaughter. The insurrection was so terrible, that both Lutherans and papists united to quell it; and so fierce were these fanatics, that a hundred thousand perished on fields of blood before the rebellion was quelled. These outrages were, of course, by the Catholics regarded as the legitimate results of the new doctrines, and it surely can not be denied that they sprung from them. The fire which glows on the hearth may consume the dwelling. But Luther and his friends assailed the Anabaptists with every weapon they could wield. The Catholics formed powerful combinations to arrest the spread of evangelical views. The reformers organized combinations equally powerful to diffuse those opinions, which they were sure involved the welfare of the world. Charles V., having somewhat allayed the troubles which harassed him in southern Europe, now turned his attention to Germany, and resolved, with a strong hand, to suppress the religious agitation. In a letter to the German States he very peremptorily announced his determination, declaring that he would exterminate the errors of Luther, exhorting them, to resist all attacks against the ancient usages of the Church, and expressing to each of the Catholic princes his earnest approval of their conduct. Germany was now threatened with civil war. The Catholics demanded the enforcement of the edict of Worms. The reformers demanded perfect toleration--that every man should enjoy freedom of opinion and of worship. A new war in Italy perhaps prevented this appeal to arms, as Charles V. found himself involved in new difficulties which engrossed all his energies. Ferdinand found the Austrian States so divided by this controversy, that it became necessary for him to assume some degree of impartiality, and to submit to something like toleration. A new pope, Clement VII., succeeded the short reign of Adrian, and all the ambition, intrigue and corruption which had hitherto marked the course of the court of Rome, resumed their sway. The pope formed the celebrated Holy League to arrest the progress of the new opinions; and this led all the princes of the empire, who had espoused the Lutheran doctrines, more openly and cordially to combine in self-defense. In every country in Europe the doctrines of the reformer spread rapidly, and the papal throne was shaken to its base. Charles V., whose arms were successful in southern Europe, and whose power was daily increasing, was still very desirous of restoring quiet to Europe by reëstablishing the supremacy of the papal Church, and crushing out dissent. He accordingly convened another diet at Spires, the capital of Rhenish Bavaria, on the 15th of March, 1529. As the emperor was detained in Italy, his brother Ferdinand presided. The diet was of course divided, but the majority passed very stringent resolutions against the Reformation. It was enacted that the edict of Worms should be enforced; that the mass should be reëstablished wherever it had been abolished; and that preachers should promulgate no new doctrines. The minority entered their protest. They urged that the mass had been clearly proved to be contrary to the Word of God; that the Scriptures were the only certain rule of life; and declared their resolution to maintain the truths of the Old and New Testaments, regardless of traditions. This _Protest_ was sustained by powerful names--John, Elector of Saxony; George, Margrave of Brandenburg; two Dukes of Brunswick; the Landgrave of Hesse Cassel; the Prince of Anhalt, and fourteen imperial cities, to which were soon added ten more. Nothing can more decisively show than this the wonderful progress which the Reformation in so short a time had made. From this Protest the reformers received the name of Protestants, which they have since retained. The emperor, flushed with success, now resolved, with new energy, to assail the principles of the Reformation. Leaving Spain he went to Italy, and met the pope, Clement VII., at Bologna, in February, 1530. The pope and the emperor held many long and private interviews. What they said no one knows. But Charles V., who was eminently a sagacious man, became convinced that the difficulty had become far too serious to be easily healed, that men of such power had embraced the Lutheran doctrines that it was expedient to change the tone of menace into one of respect and conciliation. He accordingly issued a call for another diet to meet in April, 1530, at the city of Augsburg in Bavaria. "I have convened," he wrote, "this assembly to consider the difference of opinion on the subject of religion. It is my intention to hear both parties with candor and charity, to examine their respective arguments, to correct and reform what requires to be corrected and reformed, that the truth being known, and harmony established, there may, in future, be only one pure and simple faith, and, as all are disciples of the same Jesus, all may form one and the same Church." These fair words, however, only excited the suspicions of the Protestants, which suspicions subsequent events proved to be well founded. The emperor entered Augsburg in great state, and immediately assumed a dictatorial air, requiring the diet to attend high mass with him, and to take part in the procession of the host. "I will rather," said the Marquis of Brandenburg to the emperor, "instantly offer my head to the executioner, than renounce the gospel and approve idolatry. Christ did not institute the sacrament of the Lord's Supper to be carried in pomp through the streets, nor to be adored by the people. He said, 'Take, eat;' but never said, 'Put this sacrament into a vase, carry it publicly in triumph, and let the people prostrate themselves before it.'" The Protestants, availing themselves of the emperor's declaration that it was his intention to hear the sentiments of all, drew up a confession of their faith, which they presented to the emperor in German and in Latin. This celebrated creed is known in history as the _Confession of Augsburg_. The emperor was quite embarrassed by this document, as he was well aware of the argumentative powers of the reformers, and feared that the document, attaining celebrity, and being read eagerly all over the empire, would only multiply converts to their views. At first he refused to allow it to be read. But finding that this only created commotion which would add celebrity to the confession, he adjourned the diet to a small chapel where but two hundred could be convened. When the Chancellor of Saxony rose to read the confession, the emperor commanded that he should read the Latin copy, a language which but few of the Germans understood. "Sire," said the chancellor, "we are now on German ground. I trust that your majesty will not order the apology of our faith, which ought to be made as public as possible, to be read in a language not understood by the Germans." The emperor was compelled to yield to so reasonable a request. The adjacent apartments, and the court-yard of the palace, were all filled with an eager crowd. The chancellor read the creed in a voice so clear and loud that the whole multitude could hear. The emperor was very uneasy, and at the close of the reading, which occupied two hours, took both the Latin and the German copies, and requested that the confession should not be published without his consent. Luther and Melancthon drew up this celebrated document. Melancthon was an exceedingly mild and amiable man, and such a lover of peace that he would perhaps do a little violence to his own conscience in the attempt to conciliate those from whom he was constrained to differ. Luther, on the contrary, was a man of great force, decision and fearlessness, who would speak the truth in the plainest terms, without softening a phrase to conciliate either friend or foe. The Confession of Augsburg being the joint production of both Melancthon and Luther, did not _exactly_ suit either. It was a little too uncompromising for Melancthon, a little too pliant and yielding for Luther. Melancthon soon after took the confession and changed it to bring it into more entire accordance with his spirit. Hence a division which, in oblivion of its origin, has continued to the present day. Those who adhered to the original document which was presented to the emperor, were called Lutherans; those who adopted the confession as softened by Melancthon, were called German Reformed. The emperor now threw off the mask, and carrying with him the majority of the diet, issued a decree of intolerance and menace, in which he declared that all the ceremonies, doctrines and usages of the papal church, without exception, were to be reëstablished, married priests deposed, suppressed convents restored, and every innovation, of whatever kind, to be revoked. All who opposed this decree were to be exposed to the ban of the empire, with all its pains and penalties. This was indeed an appalling measure. Recantation or war was the only alternative. Charles, being still much occupied by the affairs of his vast kingdom of Spain, with all its ambitions and wars, needed a coadjutor in the government of Germany, as serious trouble was evidently near at hand. He therefore proposed the election of his brother Ferdinand as coadjutor with him in administering the affairs of Germany. Ferdinand, who had recently united to the Austrian territories the crowns of Hungary and Bohemia, was consequently chosen, on the 5th of January, 1531, King of the Romans. Charles was determined to enforce his decrees, and both parties now prepared for war. CHAPTER VIII. CHARLES V. AND THE REFORMATION. From 1531 to 1552. Determination to crush Protestantism.--Incursion of the Turks.--Valor of the Protestants.--Preparations for renewed Hostilities.--Augmentation of the Protestant Forces.--The Council of Trent.--Mutual Consternation.-- Defeat of the Protestant Army.--Unlooked for Succor.--Revolt in the Emperor's Army.--The Fluctuations of Fortune.--Ignoble Revenge.--Capture of Wittemberg.--Protestantism Apparently Crushed.--Plot against Charles.--Maurice of Saxony.--A Change of Scene.--The Biter Bit.--The Emperor humbled.--His Flight.--His determined Will. The intolerant decrees of the diet of Augsburg, and the evident determination of the emperor unrelentingly to enforce them, spread the greatest alarm among the Protestants. They immediately assembled at Smalkalde in December, 1530, and entered into a league for mutual protection. The emperor was resolved to crush the Protestants. The Protestants were resolved not to be crushed. The sword of the Catholics was drawn for the assault--the sword of the reformers for defense. Civil war was just bursting forth in all its horrors, when the Turks, with an army three hundred thousand strong, like ravening wolves rushed into Hungary. This danger was appalling. The Turks in their bloody march had, as yet, encountered no effectual resistance; though they had experienced temporary checks, their progress had been on the whole resistless, and wherever they had planted their feet they had established themselves firmly. Originating as a small tribe on the shores of the Caspian, they had spread over all Asia Minor, had crossed the Bosphorus, captured Constantinople, and had brought all Greece under their sway. They were still pressing on, flushed with victory. Christian Europe was trembling before them. And now an army of three hundred thousand had crossed the Danube, sweeping all opposition before them, and were spreading terror and destruction through Hungary. The capture of that immense kingdom seemed to leave all Europe defenseless. The emperor and his Catholic friends were fearfully alarmed. Here was a danger more to be dreaded than even the doctrines of Luther. All the energies of Christendom were requisite to repel this invasion. The emperor was compelled to appeal to the Protestant princes to coöperate in this great emergence. But they had more to fear from the fiery persecution of the papal church than from the cimeter of the infidel, and they refused any coöperation with the emperor so long as the menaces of the Augsburg decrees were suspended over them. The emperor wished the Protestants to help him drive out the Turks, that then, relieved from that danger, he might turn all his energies against the Protestants. After various negotiations it was agreed, as a temporary arrangement, that there should be a truce of the Catholic persecution until another general council should be called, and that until then the Protestants should be allowed freedom of conscience and of worship. The German States now turned their whole force against the Turks. The Protestants contributed to the war with energy which amazed the Catholics. They even trebled the contingents which they had agreed to furnish, and marched to the assault with the greatest intrepidity. The Turks were driven from Hungary, and then the emperor, in violation of his pledge, recommenced proceeding against the Protestants. But it was the worst moment the infatuated emperor could have selected. The Protestants, already armed and marshaled, were not at all disposed to lie down to be trodden upon by their foes. They renewed their confederacy, drove the emperor's Austrian troops out of the territories of Wirtemberg, which they had seized, and restored the duchy to the Protestant duke, Ulric. Civil war had now commenced. But the Protestants were strong, determined, and had proved their valor in the recent war with the Turks. The more moderate of the papal party, foreseeing a strife which might be interminable, interposed, and succeeded in effecting a compromise which again secured transient peace. Charles, however, had not yet abandoned his design to compel the Protestants to return to the papal church. He was merely temporizing till he could bring such an array of the papal powers against the reformers that they could present no successful resistance. With this intention he entered into a secret treaty with the powerful King of France, in which Francis agreed to concentrate all the forces of his kingdom to crush the Lutheran doctrines. He then succeeded in concluding a truce with the Turks for five years. He was now prepared to act with decision against the reformed religion. But while Charles had been marshaling his party the Protestants had been rapidly increasing. Eloquent preachers, able writers, had everywhere proclaimed the corruptions of the papacy and urged a pure gospel. These corruptions were so palpable that they could not bear the light. The most intelligent and conscientious, all over Europe, were rapidly embracing the new doctrines. These new doctrines embraced and involved principles of civil as well as religious liberty. The Bible is the most formidable book which was ever penned against aristocratic usurpation. God is the universal Father. All men are brothers. The despots of that day regarded the controversy as one which, in the end, involved the stability of their thrones. "Give us light," the Protestants said. "Give us darkness," responded the papacy, "or the submissive masses will rise and overthrow despotic thrones as well as idolatrous altars." Several of the ablest and most powerful of the bishops who, in that day of darkness, had been groping in the dark, now that light had come into the world, rejoiced in that light, and enthusiastically espoused the truth. The emperor was quite appalled when he learned that the Archbishop of Cologne, who was also one of the electors of the empire, had joined the reformers; for, in addition to the vast influence of his name, this conversion gave the Protestants a majority in the electoral diet, so many of the German princes had already adopted the opinions of Luther. The Protestants, encouraged by the rapidity with which their doctrines were spreading, were not at all disposed to humble themselves before their opponents, but with their hands upon the hilts of their swords, declared that they would not bow their necks to intolerance. It was indeed a formidable power which the emperor was now about to marshal against the Protestants. He had France, Spain, all the roused energies of the pope and his extended dominions, and all the Catholic States of the empire. But Protestantism, which had overrun Germany, had pervaded Switzerland and France, and was daily on the increase. The pope and the more zealous papists were impatient and indignant that the emperor did not press his measures with more vigor. But the sagacious Charles more clearly saw the difficulties to be surmounted than they did, and while no less determined in his resolves, was more prudent and wary in his measures. With the consent of the pope he summoned a general council to meet at Trent on the confines of his own Austrian territories, where he could easily have every thing under his own control. He did every thing in his power, in the meantime to promote division among the Protestants, by trying to enter into private negotiations with the Protestant princes. He had the effrontery to urge the Protestants to send their divines to the council of Trent, and agreed to abide by its decisions, even when that council was summoned by the pope, and was to be so organized as to secure an overwhelming majority to the papists. The Protestants, of course, rejected so silly a proposition, and refused to recognize the decrees of such a council as of any binding authority. In preparation for enforcing the decrees which he intended to have enacted by the council of Trent, Charles obtained from the pope thirteen thousand troops, and five hundred thousand ducats (one million one hundred thousand dollars). He raised one army in the Low Countries to march upon Germany. He gathered another army in his hereditary States of Austria. His brother Ferdinand, as King of Hungary and Bohemia, raised a large army in each of those dominions. The King of France mustered his legions, and boasted of the condign punishment to which he would consign the heretics. The pope issued a decree offering the entire pardon of all sins to those who should engage in this holy war for the extirpation of the doctrines of the reformers. The Protestants were for a moment in consternation in view of the gatherings of so portentous a storm. The emperor, by false professions and affected clemency, had so deceived them that they were quite unprepared for so formidable an attack. They soon, however, saw that their only salvation depended upon a vigorous defense, and they marshaled their forces for war. With promptness and energy which even astonished themselves, they speedily raised an army which, on the junction of its several corps, amounted to eighty thousand men. In its intelligence, valor, discipline and equipments, it was probably the best army which had ever been assembled in the States of Germany. Resolutely they marched under Schartlin, one of the most experienced generals of the age, toward Ratisbon, where the emperor was holding a diet. Charles V. was as much alarmed by this unexpected apparition, as the Protestants had been alarmed by the preparations of the emperor. He had supposed that his force was so resistless that the Protestants would see at once the hopelessness of resistance, and would yield without a struggle. The emperor had a guard of but eight thousand troops at Ratisbon. The Duke of Bavaria, in whose dominions he was, was wavering, and the papal troops had not commenced their march. But there was not a moment to be lost. The emperor himself might be surrounded and taken captive. He retired precipitately about thirty miles south to the strong fortress of Landshut, where he could hold out until he received succor from his Austrian territories, which were very near, and also from the pope. Charles soon received powerful reinforcements from Austria, from the pope, and from his Spanish kingdom. With these he marched some forty miles west to Ingolstadt and intrenched himself beneath its massive walls. Here he waited for further reinforcements, and then commencing the offensive, marched up the Danube, taking possession of the cities on either bank. And now the marshaled forces of the emperor began to crowd the Protestants on all sides. The army became bewildered, and instead of keeping together, separated to repel the attack at different points. This caused the ruin of the Protestant army. The dissevered fragments were speedily dispersed. The emperor triumphantly entered the Protestant cities of Ulm and Augsburg, Strasbourg and Frankfort, compelled them to accept humiliating conditions, to surrender their artillery and military stores, and to pay enormous fines. The Archbishop of Cologne was deposed from his dignities. The emperor had thrown his foes upon the ground and bound them. All the Protestant princes but two were vanquished, the Elector of Saxony and the Landgrave of Hesse. It was evident that they must soon yield to the overwhelming force of the emperor. It was a day of disaster, in which no gleam of light seemed to dawn upon the Protestant cause. But in that gloomy hour we see again the illustration of that sentiment, that "the race is not always to the swift nor the battle to the strong." Unthinking infidelity says sarcastically, "Providence always helps the heavy battalions." But Providence often brings to the discomfited, in their despair, reinforcements all unlooked for. There were in the army of Ferdinand, gathered from the Austrian territories by the force of military conscription, many troops more or less influenced by the reformed religion. They were dissatisfied with this warfare against their brothers, and their dissatisfaction increased to murmurs and then to revolt. Thus encouraged, the Protestant nobles in Bohemia rose against Ferdinand their king, and the victorious Ferdinand suddenly found his strong battalions melting away, and his banners on the retreat. The other powers of Europe began to look with alarm upon the vast ascendency which Charles V. was attaining over Europe. His exacting and aggressive spirit assumed a more menacing aspect than the doctrines of Luther. The King of France, Francis I., with the characteristic perfidy of the times, meeting cunning with cunning, formed a secret league against his ally, combining, in that league, the English ministry who governed during the minority of Edward VI., and also the coöperation of the illustrious Gustavus Vasa, the powerful King of Sweden, who was then strongly inclined to that faith of the reformers which he afterwards openly avowed. Even the pope, who had always felt a little jealous of the power of the emperor, thought that as the Protestants were now put down it might be well to check the ambition of Charles V. a little, and he accordingly ordered all his troops to return to Italy. The holy father, Paul III., even sent money to the Protestant Elector of Saxony, to enable him to resist the emperor, and sent ambassadors to the Turks, to induce them to break the truce and make war upon Christendom, that the emperor might be thus embarrassed. Charles thus found himself, in the midst of his victories, suddenly at a stand. He could no longer carry on offensive operations, but was compelled to prepare for defense against the attacks with which he was threatened on every side. Again, the kaleidoscope of political combination received a jar, and all was changed. The King of France died. This so embarrassed the affairs of the confederation which Francis had organized with so much toil and care, that Charles availed himself of it to make a sudden and vigorous march against the Elector of Saxony. He entered his territories with an army of thirty-three thousand men, and swept all opposition before him. In a final and desperate battle the troops of the elector were cut to pieces, and the elector himself, surrounded on all sides, sorely wounded in the face and covered with blood, was taken prisoner. Charles disgraced his character by the exhibition of a very ignoble spirit of revenge. The captive elector, as he was led into the presence of his conqueror, said-- "Most powerful and gracious emperor, the fortune of war has now rendered me your prisoner, and I hope to be treated--" Here the emperor indignantly interrupted him, saying-- "I am _now_ your gracious emperor! Lately you could only vouchsafe me the title of Charles of Ghent!" Then turning abruptly upon his heel, he consigned his prisoner to the custody of one of the Spanish generals. The emperor marched immediately to Wittemberg, which was distant but a few miles. It was a well fortified town, and was resolutely defended by Isabella, the wife of the elector. The emperor, maddened by the resistance, summoned a court martial, and sentenced the elector to instant death unless he ordered the surrender of the fortress. He at first refused, and prepared to die. But the tears of his wife and his family conquered his resolution, and the city was surrendered. The emperor took from his captive the electoral dignity, and extorted from him the most cruel concessions as the ransom for his life. Without a murmur he surrendered wealth, power and rank, but neither entreaties nor menaces could induce him in a single point to abjure his Christian faith. Charles now entered Wittemberg in triumph. The great reformer had just died. The emperor visited the grave of Luther, and when urged to dishonor his remains, replied-- "I war not with the dead, but with the living. Let him repose in peace; he is already before his Judge." The Landgrave of Hesse Cassel, now the only member of the Protestant league remaining in arms, was in a condition utterly hopeless, and was compelled to make an unconditional submission. The landgrave, ruined in fortune, and crushed in spirit, was led a captive into the imperial camp at Halle, in Saxony, the 19th of June, 1547. He knelt before the throne, and made an humble confession of his crime in resisting the emperor; he resigned himself and all his dominions to the clemency of his sovereign. As he rose to kiss the hand of the emperor, Charles turned contemptuously from him and ordered him to be conveyed to one of the apartments of the palace as a prisoner. Most ignobly the emperor led his two illustrious captives, the Elector of Saxony and the Landgrave of Hesse Cassel, as captives from city to city, exhibiting them as proofs of his triumph, and as a warning to all others to avoid their fate. Very strong jealousies had now sprung up between the emperor and the pope, and they could not cooperate. The emperor, consequently, undertook to settle the religious differences himself. He caused twenty-six articles to be drawn up as the basis of pacification, which he wished both the Catholics and the Protestants to sign. The pope was indignant, and the Catholics were disgusted with this interference of the emperor in the faith of the Church, a matter which in their view belonged exclusively to the pope and the councils which he might convene. The emperor, however, resolutely persevered in the endeavor to compel the Protestants to subscribe to his articles, and punished severely those who refused to do so. In his Burgundian provinces he endeavored to establish the inquisition, that all heresy might be nipped in the bud. In his zeal he quite outstripped the pope. As Julius III. had now ascended the pontifical throne, Charles, fearful that he might be too liberal in his policy towards the reformers, and might make too many concessions, extorted from him the promise that he would not introduce any reformation in the Church without consulting him and obtaining his consent. Thus the pope himself became but one of the dependents of Charles V., and all the corruptions of the Church were sustained by the imperial arm. He then, through the submissive pope, summoned a council of Catholic divines to meet at Trent. He had arranged in his own mind the decrees which they were to issue, and had entered into a treaty with the new King of France, Henry II., by which the French monarch agreed, with all the military force of his kingdom, to maintain the decrees of the council of Trent, whatever they might be. The emperor had now apparently attained all his ends. He had crushed the Protestant league, vanquished the Protestant princes, subjected the pope to his will, arranged religious matters according to his views, and had now assembled a subservient council to ratify and confirm all he had done. But with this success he had become arrogant, implacable and cruel. His friends had become alienated and his enemies exasperated. Even the most rigorous Catholics were alarmed at his assumptions, and the pope was humiliated by his haughty bearing. Charles assembled a diet of the States of the empire at Augsburg, the 26th of July, 1550. He entered the city with the pomp and the pride of a conqueror, and with such an array of military force as to awe the States into compliance with his wishes. He then demanded of all the States of the empire an agreement that they would enforce, in all their dominions the decrees of the council of Trent, which council was soon to be convened. There is sublimity in the energy with which this monarch moved, step by step, toward the accomplishment of his plans. He seemed to leave no chance for failure. The members of the diet were as obsequious as spaniels to their imperious master, and watched his countenance to learn when they were to say yes, and when no. In one thing only he failed. He wished to have his son Philip elected as his successor on the imperial throne. His brother Ferdinand opposed him in this ambitious plan, and thus emboldened the diet to declare that while the emperor was living it was illegal to choose his successor, as it tended to render the imperial crown hereditary. The emperor, sagacious as he was domineering, waived the prosecution of his plan for the present, preparing to resume it when he had punished and paralyzed those who opposed. The emperor had deposed Frederic the Elector of Saxony, and placed over his dominions, Maurice, a nephew of the deposed elector. Maurice had married a daughter of the Landgrave of Hesse Cassel. He was a man of commanding abilities, and as shrewd, sagacious and ambitious as the emperor himself. He had been strongly inclined to the Lutheran doctrines, but had been bought over to espouse the cause of Charles V. by the brilliant offer of the territories of Saxony. Maurice, as he saw blow after blow falling upon his former friends; one prince after another ejected from his estates, Protestantism crushed, and finally his own uncle and his wife's father led about to grace the triumph of the conqueror; as he saw the vast power to which the emperor had attained, and that the liberties of the German empire were in entire subjection to his will, his pride was wounded, his patriotism aroused, and his Protestant sympathies revived. Maurice, meeting Charles V. on the field of intrigue, was Greek meeting Greek. Maurice now began with great guile and profound sagacity to plot against the despotic emperor. Two circumstances essentially aided him. Charles coveted the dukedoms of Parma and Placentia in Italy, and the Duke Ottavia had been deposed. He rallied his subjects and succeeded in uniting France on his side, for Henry II. was alarmed at the encroachments the emperor was making in Italy. A very fierce war instantly blazed forth, the Duke of Parma and Henry II. on one side, the pope and the emperor on the other. At the same time the Turks, under the leadership of the Sultan Solyman himself, were organizing a formidable force for the invasion of Hungary, which invasion would require all the energies of Ferdinand, with all the forces he could raise in Austria, Hungary and Bohemia to repel. Next to Hungary and Bohemia, Saxony was perhaps the most powerful State of the Germanic confederacy. The emperor placed full reliance upon Maurice, and the Protestants in their despair would have thought of him as the very last to come to their aid; for he had marched vigorously in the armies of the emperor to crush the Protestants, and was occupying the territories of their most able and steadfast friend. Secretly, Maurice made proposals to all the leading Protestant princes of the empire, and having made every thing ready for an outbreak, he entered into a treaty with the King of France, who promised large subsidies and an efficient military force. Maurice conducted these intrigues with such consummate skill that the emperor had not the slightest suspicion of the storm which was gathering. Every thing being matured, early in April, 1552, Maurice suddenly appeared before the gates of Augsburg with an army of twenty-five thousand men. At the same time he issued a declaration that he had taken up arms to prevent the destruction of the Protestant religion, to defend the liberties of Germany which the emperor had infringed, and to rescue his relatives from their long and unjust imprisonment. The King of France and other princes issued similar declarations. The smothered disaffection with the emperor instantly blazed forth all over the German empire. The cause of Maurice was extremely popular. The Protestants in a mass, and many others, flocked to his standard. As by magic and in a day, all was changed. The imperial towns Augsburg, Nuremberg and others, threw open their gates joyfully to Maurice. Whole provinces rushed to his standard. He was everywhere received as the guardian of civil and religious liberty. The ejected Protestant rulers and magistrates were reinstated, the Protestant churches opened, the Protestant preachers restored. In one month the Protestant party was predominant in the German empire, and the Catholic party either neutral or secretly favoring one who was humbling that haughty emperor whom even the Catholics had begun to fear. The prelates who were assembling at Trent, alarmed by so sudden and astounding a revolution, dissolved the assembly and hastened to their homes. The emperor was at Innspruck seated in his arm chair, with his limbs bandaged in flannel, enfeebled and suffering from a severe attack of the gout, when the intelligence of this sudden and overwhelming reverse reached him. He was astonished and utterly confounded. In weakness and pain, unable to leave his couch, with his treasury exhausted, his armies widely scattered, and so pressed by their foes that they could not be concentrated from their wide dispersion, there was nothing left for him but to endeavor to beguile Maurice into a truce. But Maurice was as much at home in all the arts of cunning as the emperor, and instead of being beguiled, contrived to entrap his antagonist. This was a new and a very salutary experience for Charles. It is a very novel sensation for a successful rogue to be the dupe of roguery. Maurice pressed on, his army gathering force at every step. He entered the Tyrol, swept through all its valleys, took possession of all its castles and its sublime fastnesses, and the blasts of his bugles reverberated among the cliffs of the Alps, ever sounding the charge and announcing victory, never signaling a defeat. The emperor was reduced to the terrible humiliation of saving himself from capture only by flight. The emperor could hardly credit his senses when told that his conquering foes were within two days' march of Innspruck, and that a squadron of horse might at any hour appear and cut off his retreat. It was in the night when these appalling tidings were brought to him. The tortures of the gout would not allow him to mount on horseback, neither could he bear the jolting in a carriage over the rough roads. It was a dark and stormy night, the 20th of May, 1552. The rain fell in torrents, and the wind howled through the fir-trees and around the crags of the Alps. Some attendants wrapped the monarch in blankets, took him out into the court-yard of the palace, and placed him in a litter. Attendants led the way with lanterns, and thus, through the inundated and storm-swept defiles of the mountains, they fled with their helpless sovereign through the long hours of the tempestuous night, not daring to stop one moment lest they should hear behind them the clatter of the iron hoofs of their pursuers. What a change for one short month to produce! What a comment upon earthly grandeur! It is well for man in the hour of most exultant prosperity to be humble. He knows not how soon he may fall. Instructive indeed is the apostrophe of Cardinal Wolsey, illustrated as the truth he utters is by almost every page of history: "This is the state of man; to-day he puts forth The tender leaves of hope, to-morrow blossoms, The third day comes a frost, a killing frost; And when he thinks, good easy man, full surely His greatness is a ripening--nips his root, And then he falls as I do." The fugitive emperor did not venture to stop for refreshment or repose until he had reached the strong town of Villach in Carinthia, nearly one hundred and fifty miles west of Innspruck. The troops of Maurice soon entered the city which the emperor had abandoned, and the imperial palace was surrendered to pillage. Heroic courage, indomitable perseverance always commands respect. These are great and noble qualities, though they may be exerted in a bad cause. The will of Charles was unconquerable. In these hours of disaster, tortured with pain, driven from his palace, deserted by his allies, impoverished, and borne upon his litter in humiliating flight before his foes, he was just as determined to enforce his plans as in the most brilliant hour of victory. He sent his brother Ferdinand and other ambassadors to Passau to meet Maurice, and mediate for a settlement of the difficulties. Maurice now had no need of diplomacy. His demands were simple and reasonable. They were, that the emperor should liberate his father-in-law from captivity, tolerate the Protestant religion, and grant to the German States their accustomed liberty. But the emperor would not yield a single point. Though his brother Ferdinand urged him to yield, though his Catholic ambassadors intreated him to yield, though they declared that if he did not they should be compelled to abandon his cause and make the best terms for themselves with the conqueror that they could, still nothing could bend his inflexible will, and the armies, after the lull of a few days, were again in motion. The despotism of the emperor we abhor; but his indomitable perseverance and unconquerable energy are worthy of all admiration and imitation. Had they but been exerted in a good cause! CHAPTER IX. CHARLES V. AND THE TURKISH WARS. From 1552 to 1555. The Treaty of Passau.--The Emperor yields.--His continued Reverses.--The Toleration Compromise.--Mutual Dissatisfation.--Remarkable Despondency of the Emperor Charles.--His Address to the Convention at Brussels.--The Convent of St. Justus.--Charles returns to Spain.--His Convent Life.--The mock Burial.--His Death.--His Traits of Character.--The King's Compliment to Titian.--The Condition of Austria.--Rapid Advance of the Turks.--Reasons for the Inaction of the Christians.--The Sultan's Method of overcoming Difficulties.--The little Fortress of Guntz.--What it accomplished. The Turks, animated by this civil war which was raging in Germany, were pressing their march upon Hungary with great vigor, and the troops of Ferdinand were retiring discomfited before the invader. Henry of France and the Duke of Parma were also achieving victories in Italy endangering the whole power of the emperor over those States. Ferdinand, appalled by the prospect of the loss of Hungary, imploringly besought the emperor to listen to terms of reconciliation. The Catholic princes, terrified in view of the progress of the infidel, foreseeing the entire subjection of Europe to the arms of the Moslem unless Christendom could combine in self-defense, joined their voices with that of Ferdinand so earnestly and in such impassioned tones, that the emperor finally, though very reluctantly, gave his assent to the celebrated treaty of Passau, on the 2d of August, 1552. By this pacification the captives were released, freedom of conscience and of worship was established, and the Protestant troops, being disbanded, were at liberty to enter into the service of Ferdinand to repel the Turks. Within six months a diet was to be assembled to attempt an amicable adjustment of all civil and religious difficulties. The intrepid Maurice immediately marched, accompanied by many of the Protestant princes, and at the head of a powerful army, to repel the Mohammedan armies. Charles, relieved from his German troubles, gathered his strength to wreak revenge upon the King of France. But fortune seemed to have deserted him. Defeat and disgrace accompanied his march. Having penetrated the French province of Lorraine, he laid siege to Metz. After losing thirty thousand men beneath its walls, he was compelled, in the depth of winter, to raise the siege and retreat. His armies were everywhere routed; the Turks menaced the shores of Italy; the pope became his inveterate enemy, and joined France against him. Maurice was struck by a bullet, and fell on the field of battle. The electorate of Saxony passed into the hands of Augustus, a brother of Maurice, while the former elector, Ferdinand, who shortly after died, received some slight indemnification. Such was the state of affairs when the promised diet was summoned at Passau. It met on the 5th of February, 1555. The emperor was confined with the gout at Brussels, and his brother Ferdinand presided. It was a propitious hour for the Protestants. Charles was sick, dejected and in adversity. The better portion of the Catholics were disgusted with the intolerance of the emperor, intolerance which even the more conscientious popes could not countenance. Ferdinand was fully aware that he could not defend his own kingdom of Hungary from the Turks without the intervention of Protestant arms. He was, therefore, warmly in favor of conciliation. The world was not yet sufficiently enlightened to comprehend the beauty of a true toleration, entire freedom of conscience and of worship. After long and very exciting debates--after being again and again at the point of grasping their arms anew--they finally agreed that the Protestants should enjoy the free exercise of their religion wherever Protestantism had been established and recognized by the Confession of Augsburg. That in all other places Protestant princes might prohibit the Catholic religion in their States, and Catholic princes prohibit the Protestant religion. But in each case the ejected party was at liberty to sell their property and move without molestation to some State where their religion was dominant. In the free cities of the empire, where both religions were established, both were to be tolerated. Thus far, and no further, had the spirit of toleration made progress in the middle of the sixteenth century. Such was the basis of the pacification. Neither party was satisfied. Each felt that it had surrendered far too much to the other; and there was subsequently much disagreement respecting the interpretation of some of the most important articles. The pope, Paul IV., was indignant that such toleration had been granted to the Protestants, and threatened the emperor and his brother Ferdinand of Austria with excommunication if they did not declare these decrees null and void throughout their dominions. At the same time he entered into correspondence with Henry II. of France to form a new holy league for the defense of the papal church against the inroads of heresy. And now occurred one of the most extraordinary events which history has recorded. Charles V., who had been the most enterprising and ambitious prince in Europe, and the most insatiable in his thirst for power, became the victim of the most extreme despondency. Harassed by the perplexities which pressed in upon him from his widely-extended realms, annoyed by the undutiful and haughty conduct of his son, who was endeavoring to wrest authority from his father by taking advantage of all his misfortunes, and perhaps inheriting a melancholy temperament from his mother, who died in the glooms of insanity, and, more than all, mortified and wounded by so sudden and so vast a reverse of fortune, in which all his plans seemed to have failed--thus oppressed, humbled, he retired in disgust to his room, indulged in the most fretful temper, admitted none but his sister and a few confidential servants to his presence, and so entirely neglected all business as to pass nine months without signing a single paper. While the emperor was in this melancholy state, his insane mother, who had lingered for years in delirious gloom, died on the 4th of April, 1555. It will be remembered that Charles had inherited valuable estates in the Low Countries from his marriage with the daughter of the Duke of Burgundy. Having resolved to abdicate all his power and titles in favor of his son, he convened the States of the Low Countries at Brussels on the 25th of October, 1555. Charles was then but fifty-five years of age, and should have been in the strength of vigorous manhood. But he was prematurely old, worn down with care, toil and disappointment. He attended the assembly accompanied by his son Philip. Tottering beneath infirmities, he leaned upon the shoulders of a friend for support, and addressed the assembly in a long and somewhat boastful speech, enumerating all the acts of his administration, his endeavors, his long and weary journeys, his sleepless care, his wars, and, above all, his victories. In conclusion he said: "While my health enabled me to perform my duty, I cheerfully bore the burden; but as my constitution is now broken by an incurable distemper, and my infirmities admonish me to retire, the happiness of my people affects me more than the ambition of reigning. Instead of a decrepid old man, tottering on the brink of the grave, I transfer your allegiance to a sovereign in the prime of life, vigilant, sagacious, active and enterprising. With respect to myself, if I have committed any error in the course of a long administration, forgive and impute it to my weakness, not to my intention. I shall ever retain a grateful sense of your fidelity and attachment, and your welfare shall be the great object of my prayers to Almighty God, to whom I now consecrate the remainder of my days." Then turning to his son Philip, he said: "And you, my son, let the grateful recollection of this day redouble your care and affection for your people. Other sovereigns may rejoice in having given birth to their sons and in leaving their States to them after their death. But I am anxious to enjoy, during my life, the double satisfaction of feeling that you are indebted to me both for your birth and power. Few monarchs will follow my example, and in the lapse of ages I have scarcely found one whom I myself would imitate. The resolution, therefore, which I have taken, and which I now carry into execution, will be justified only by your proving yourself worthy of it. And you will alone render yourself worthy of the extraordinary confidence which I now repose in you by a zealous protection of your religion, and by maintaining the purity of the Catholic faith, and by governing with justice and moderation. And may you, if ever you are desirous of retiring like myself to the tranquillity of private life, enjoy the inexpressible happiness of having such a son, that you may resign your crown to him with the same satisfaction as I now deliver mine to you." The emperor was here entirely overcome by emotion, and embracing Philip, sank exhausted into his chair. The affecting scene moved all the audience to tears. Soon after this, with the same formalities the emperor resigned the crown of Spain to his son, reserving to himself, of all his dignities and vast revenues, only a pension of about twenty thousand dollars a year. For some months he remained in the Low Countries, and then returned to Spain to seek an asylum in a convent there. When in the pride of his power he once, while journeying in Spain, came upon the convent of St. Justus in Estramadura, situated in a lovely vale, secluded from all the bustle of life. The massive pile was embosomed among the hills; forests spread widely around, and a beautiful rivulet murmured by its walls. As the emperor gazed upon the enchanting scene of solitude and silence he exclaimed, "Behold a lovely retreat for another Diocletian!" The picture of the convent of St. Justus had ever remained in his mind, and perhaps had influenced him, when overwhelmed with care, to seek its peaceful retirement. Embarking in a ship for Spain, he landed at Loredo on the 28th of September, 1556. As soon as his feet touched the soil of his native land he prostrated himself to the earth, kissed the ground, and said, "Naked came I into the world, and naked I return to thee, thou common mother of mankind. To thee I dedicate my body, as the only return I can make for all the benefits conferred on me." Then kneeling, and holding the crucifix before him, with tears streaming from his eyes, and all unmindful of the attendants who were around, he breathed a fervent prayer of gratitude for the past, and commended himself to God for the future. By slow and easy stages, as he was very infirm, he journeyed to the vale of Estramadura, near Placentia, and entered upon his silent, monastic life. His apartments consisted of six small cells. The stone walls were whitewashed, and the rooms furnished with the utmost frugality. Within the walls of the convent, and communicating with the chapel, there was a small garden, which the emperor had tastefully arranged with shrubbery and flowers. Here Charles passed the brief remainder of his days. He amused himself with laboring in the garden with his own hands. He regularly attended worship in the chapel twice every day, and took part in the service, manifestly with the greatest sincerity and devotion. The emperor had not a cultivated mind, and was not fond of either literary or scientific pursuits. To beguile the hours he amused himself with tools, carving toys for children, and ingenious puppets and automata to astonish the peasants. For a time he was very happy in his new employment. After so stormy a life, the perfect repose and freedom from care which he enjoyed in the convent, seemed to him the perfection of bliss. But soon the novelty wore away, and his constitutional despondency returned with accumulated power. His dejection now assumed the form of religious melancholy. He began to devote every moment of his time to devotional reading and prayer, esteeming all amusements and all employments sinful which interfered with his spiritual exercises. He expressed to the Bishop of Toledo his determination to devote, for the rest of his days, every moment to the service of God. With the utmost scrupulousness he carried out this plan. He practiced rigid fasts, and conformed to all the austerity of convent discipline. He renounced his pension, and sitting at the abstemious table with the monks, declined seeing any other company than that of the world-renouncing priests and friars around him. He scourged himself with the most cruel severity, till his back was lacerated with the whip. He whole soul seemed to crave suffering, in expiation for his sins. His ingenuity was tasked to devise new methods of mortification and humiliation. Ambition had ever been the ruling passion of his soul, and now he was ambitious to suffer more, and to abuse himself more than any other mortal had ever done. Goaded by this impulse, he at last devised the scheme of solemnising his own funeral. All the melancholy arrangements for his burial were made; the coffin provided; the emperor reclined upon his bed as dead; he was wrapped in his shroud, and placed in his coffin. The monks, and all the inmates of the convent attended in mourning; the bells tolled; requiems were chanted by the choir; the funeral service was read, and then the emperor, as if dead, was placed in the tomb of the chapel, and the congregation retired. The monarch, after remaining some time in his coffin to impress himself with the sense of what it is to die, and be buried, rose from his tomb, kneeled before the altar for some time in worship, and then returned to his cell to pass the night in deep meditation and prayer. The shock and the chill of this solemn scene were too much for the old monarch's feeble frame and weakened mind. He was seized with a fever, and in a few days breathed his last, in the 59th year of his age. He had spent a little over three years in the convent. The life of Charles V. was a sad one. Through all his days he was consumed by unsatisfied ambition, and he seldom enjoyed an hour of contentment. To his son he said-- "I leave you a heavy burden; for, since my shoulders have borne it, I have not passed one day exempt from disquietude." Indeed it would seem that there could have been but little happiness for anybody in those dark days of feudal oppression and of incessant wars. Ambition, intrigue, duplicity, reigned over the lives of princes and nobles, while the masses of the people were ever trampled down by oppressive lords and contending armies. Europe was a field of fire and blood. The cimeter of the Turk spared neither mother, maiden nor babe. Cities and villages were mercilessly burned, cottages set in flames, fields of grain destroyed, and whole populations carried into slavery, where they miserably died. And the ravages of Christian warfare, duke against duke, baron against baron, king against king, were hardly less cruel and desolating. Balls from opposing batteries regard not the helpless ones in their range. Charging squadrons must trample down with iron hoof all who are in their way. The wail of misery rose from every portion of Europe. The world has surely made some progress since that day. There was but very little that was loveable in the character of Charles, and he seems to have had but very few friends. So intense and earnest was he in the prosecution of the plans of grandeur which engrossed his soul, that he was seldom known to smile. He had many of the attributes of greatness, indomitable energy and perseverance, untiring industry, comprehensive grasp of thought and capability of superintending the minutest details. He had, also, a certain fanatic conscientiousness about him, like that which actuated Saul of Tarsus, when, holding the garments of those who stoned the martyr, he "verily thought that he was doing God service." Many anecdotes are told illustrative of certain estimable traits in his character. When a boy, like other boys, he was not fond of study, and being very self-willed, he would not yield to the entreaties of his tutors. He consequently had but an imperfect education, which may in part account for his excessive illiberality, and for many of his stupendous follies. The mind, enlarged by liberal culture, is ever tolerant. He afterwards regretted exceedingly this neglect of his early studies. At Genoa, on some public occasion, he was addressed in a Latin oration, not one word of which he understood. "I now feel," he said, "the justice of my preceptor Adrian's remonstrances, who frequently used to predict that I should be punished for the thoughtlessness of my youth." He was fond of the society of learned men, and treated them with great respect. Some of the nobles complained that the emperor treated the celebrated historian, Guicciardini, with much more respect than he did them. He replied-- "I can, by a word, create a hundred nobles; but God alone can create a Guicciardini." He greatly admired the genius of Titian, and considered him one of the most resplendent ornaments of his empire. He knew full well that Titian would be remembered long after thousands of the proudest grandees of his empire had sunk into oblivion. He loved to go into the studio of the illustrious painter, and watch the creations of beauty as they rose beneath his pencil. One day Titian accidentally dropped his brush. The emperor picked it up, and, presenting it to the artist, said gracefully-- "Titian is worthy of being served by an emperor." Charles V. never, apparently, inspired the glow of affection, or an emotion of enthusiasm in any bosom. He accomplished some reforms in the German empire, and the only interest his name now excites is the interest necessarily involved in the sublime drama of his long and eventful reign. It is now necessary to retrace our steps for a few years, that we may note the vicissitudes of Austria, while the empire was passing through the scenes we have narrated. Ferdinand I., the brother of Charles V., who was left alone in the government of Austria, was the second son of Philip the Handsome and Joanna of Spain. His birth was illustrious, the Emperor Maximilian being his paternal grandfather, and Ferdinand and Isabella being his grandparents on his mother's side. He was born in Spain, March 10, 1503, and received a respectable education. His manners were courteous and winning, and he was so much more popular than Charles as quite to excite the jealousy of his imperious and imperial spirit. Charles, upon attaining the throne, ceded to his brother the Austrian territories, which then consisted of four small provinces, Austria, Styria, Carinthia and Carniola, with the Tyrol. Ferdinand married Ann, princess of Hungary and Bohemia. The death of his wife's brother Louis made her the heiress of those two crowns, and thus secured to Ferdinand the magnificent dowry of the kingdoms of Hungary and Bohemia. But possession of the scepter of those realms was by no means a sinecure. The Turkish power, which had been for many years increasing with the most alarming rapidity and had now acquired appalling strength, kept Hungary, and even the Austrian States, in constant and terrible alarm. The Turks, sweeping over Persia, Arabia, Egypt, Syria, all Asia Minor, crossing the straits and inundating Greece, fierce and semi-savage, with just civilization enough to organize and guide with skill their wolf-like ferocity, were now pressing Europe in Spain, in Italy, and were crowding, in wave after wave of invasion, up the valley of the Danube. They had created a navy which was able to cope with the most powerful fleets of Europe, and island after island of the Mediterranean was yielding to their sway. In 1520, Solyman, called the Magnificent, overran Bosnia, and advancing to the Danube, besieged and captured Belgrade, which strong fortress was considered the only reliable barrier against his encroachments. At the same time his fleet took possession of the island of Rhodes. After some slight reverses, which the Turks considered merely embarrassments, they resumed their aggressions, and Solyman, in 1525, again crossing the Danube, entered Hungary with an army of two hundred thousand men. Louis, who was then King of Hungary, brother of the wife of Ferdinand, was able to raise an army of but thirty thousand to meet him. With more courage than discretion, leading this feeble band, he advanced to resist the foe. They met on the plains of Mohatz. The Turks made short work of it. In a few hours, with their cimeters they hewed down nearly the whole Christian army. The remnant escaped as lambs from wolves. The king, in his heavy armor, spurred his horse into a stream to cross in his flight. In attempting to ascend the bank, the noble charger, who had borne his master bravely through the flood, fell back upon his rider, and the dead body of the king was afterward picked up by the Turks, covered with the mud of the morass. All Hungary would now have fallen into the hands of the Turks had not Solyman been recalled by a rebellion in one of his own provinces. It was this event which placed the crowns of Bohemia and Hungary on the brow of Ferdinand, and by annexing those two kingdoms to the Austrian States, elevated Austria to be one of the first powers in Europe. Ferdinand, thus strengthened sent ambassadors to Constantinople to demand the restitution of Belgrade and other important towns which the Turks still held in Hungary. "Belgrade!" exclaimed the haughty sultan, when he heard the demand. "Go tell your master that I am collecting troops and preparing for my expedition. I will suspend at my neck the keys of my Hungarian fortresses, and will bring them to that plain of Mohatz where Louis, by the aid of Providence, found defeat and a grave. Let Ferdinand meet and conquer me, and take them, after severing my head from my body! But if I find him not there, I will seek him at Buda or follow him to Vienna." Soon after this Solyman crossed the Danube with three hundred thousand men, and advancing to Mohatz, encamped for several days upon the plain, with all possible display or Oriental pomp and magnificence. Thus proudly he threw down the gauntlet of defiance. But there was no champion there to take it up. Striking his tents, and spreading his banners to the breeze, in unimpeded march he ascended the Danube two hundred miles from Belgrade to the city of Pest. And here his martial bands made hill and vale reverberate the bugle blasts of victory. Pest, the ancient capital of Hungary, rich in all the wealth of those days, with a population of some sixty thousand, was situated on the left bank of the river. Upon the opposite shore, connected by a fine bridge three quarters of a mile in width, was the beautiful and opulent city of Buda. In possession of these two maritime towns, then perhaps the most important in Hungary, the Turks rioted for a few days in luxury and all abominable outrage and indulgence, and then, leaving a strong garrison to hold the fortresses, they continued their march. Pressing resistlessly onward some hundred miles further, taking all the towns by the way, on both sides of the Danube, they came to the city of Raab. It seems incredible that there could have been such an unobstructed march of the Turks, through the very heart of Hungary. But the Emperor Charles V. was at that time in Italy, all engrossed in the fiercest warfare there. Throughout the German empire the Catholics and the Protestants were engaged in a conflict which absorbed all other thoughts. And the Protestants resolutely refused to assist in repelling the Turks while the sword of Catholic vengeance was suspended over them. From Raab the invading army advanced some hundred miles further to the very walls of Vienna. Ferdinand, conscious of his inability to meet the foe in the open field, was concentrating all his available strength to defend his capital. At Cremnitz the Turks met with the first serious show of resistance. The fortress was strong, and the garrison, inspired by the indomitable energy and courage of their commandant, Nicholas, Count of Salm, for a month repelled every assault of the foe. Day after day and night after night the incessant bombardment continued; the walls were crumbed by the storm of shot; column after column of the Turks rushed to the assault, but all in vain. The sultan, disappointed and enraged, made one last desperate effort, but his strong columns, thined, mangled and bleeding, were compelled to retire in utter discomfiture. Winter was now approaching. Reinforcements were also hastening from Vienna, from Bohemia, and from other parts of the German empire. Solyman, having devastated the country around him, and being all unprepared for the storms of winter, was compelled to retire. He struck his tents, and slowly and sullenly descended the Danube, wreaking diabolical vengeance upon the helpless peasants, killing, burning and destroying. Leaving a strong garrison to hold what remained of Buda and Pest, he carried thousands with him into captivity, where, after years of woe, they passed into the grave. "'Tis terrible to rouse the lion, Dreadful to cross the tiger's path; But the most terrible of terrors, Is man himself in his wild wrath." Solyman spent two years in making preparation for another march to Vienna, resolved to wipe out the disgrace of his last defeat by capturing all the Austrian States, and of then spreading the terror of his arms far and wide through the empire of Germany. The energy with which he acted may be inferred from one well authenticated anecdote illustrative of his character. He had ordered a bridge to be constructed across the Drave. The engineer who had been sent to accomplish the task, after a careful survey, reported that a bridge could not be constructed at that point. Solyman sent him a linen cord with this message: "The sultan, thy master, commands thee, without consideration of the difficulties, to complete the bridge over the Drave. If thou doest it not, on his arrival he will have thee strangled with this cord." With a large army, thoroughly drilled, and equipped with all the enginery of war, the sultan commenced his campaign. His force was so stupendous and so incumbered with the necessary baggage and heavy artillery, that it required a march of sixty days to pass from Constantinople to Belgrade. Ferdinand, in inexpressible alarm, sent ambassadors to Solyman, hoping to avert the storm by conciliation and concessions. This indication of weakness but increased the arrogance of the Turk. He embarked his artillery on the Danube in a flotilla of three thousand vessels. Then crossing the Save, which at Belgrade flows into the Danube, he left the great central river of Europe on his right, and marching almost due west through Sclavonia, approached the frontiers of Styria, one of the most important provinces of the Austrian kingdom, by the shortest route. Still it was a long march of some two hundred miles. Among the defiles of the Illyrian mountains, through which he was compelled to pass in his advance to Vienna, he came upon the little fortress of Guntz, garrisoned only by eight hundred men. Solyman expected to sweep this slight annoyance away as he would brush a fly from his face. He sent his advance guard to demolish the impudent obstacle; then, surprised by the resistance, he pushed forward a few more battalions; then, enraged at the unexpected strength developed, he ordered to the attack what he deemed an overwhelming force; and then, in astonishment and fury, impelled against the fortress the combined strength of his whole army. But the little crag stood, like a rock opposing the flooding tide. The waves of war rolled on and dashed against impenetrable and immovable granite, and were scattered back in bloody spray. The fortress commanded the pass, and swept it clean with an unintermitted storm of shot and balls. For twenty-eight days the fortress resisted the whole force of the Turkish army, and prevented it from advancing a mile. This check gave the terrified inhabitants of Vienna, and of the surrounding region, time to unite for the defense of the capital. The Protestants and the Catholics having settled their difficulties by the pacification of Ratisbon, as we have before narrated, combined all their energies; the pope sent his choicest troops; all the ardent young men of the German empire, from the ocean to the Alps, rushed to the banners of the cross, and one hundred and thirty thousand men, including thirty thousand mounted horsemen, were speedily gathered within and around the walls of Vienna. Thus thwarted in his plans, Solyman found himself compelled to retreat ingloriously, by the same path through which he had advanced. Thus Christendom was relieved of this terrible menace. Though the Turks were still in possession of Hungary, the allied troops of the empire strangely dispersed without attempting to regain the kingdom from their domination. CHAPTER X. FERDINAND I.--HIS WARS AND INTRIGUES. From 1555 To 1562. John Of Tapoli.--The Instability Of Compacts.--The Sultans's Demands.--A Reign Of War.--Powers And Duties Of The Monarchs Of Bohemia.--The Diet.--The King's Desire To Crush Protestantism.--The Entrance To Prague.--Terror Of The Inhabitants.--The King's Conditions.--The Bloody Diet.--Disciplinary Measures.--The Establishment Of The Order Of Jesuits.--abdication Of Charles V. In Favor Of Ferdinand.--Power Of The Pope.--Paul IV.--A Quiet But Powerful Blow.--The Progress Of The Reformers.--Attempts To Reconcile The Protestants--The Unsuccessful Assembly. During all the wars with the Turks, a Transylvanian count, John of Tapoli, was disputing Ferdinand's right to the throne of Hungary and claiming it for himself. He even entered into negotiations with the Turks, and coöperated with Solyman in his invasion of Hungary, having the promise of the sultan that he should be appointed king of the realm as soon as it was brought in subjection to Turkey. The Turks had now possession of Hungary, and the sultan invested John of Tapoli with the sovereignty of the kingdom, in the presence of a brilliant assemblage of the officers of his army and of the Hungarian nobles. The last discomfiture and retreat of Solyman encouraged Ferdinand to redoubled exertions to reconquer Hungary from the combined forces of the Turks and his Transylvanian rival. Several years passed away in desultory, indecisive warfare, while John held his throne as tributary king to the sultan. At last Ferdinand, finding that he could not resist their united strength, and John becoming annoyed by the exactions of his Turkish master, they agreed to a compromise, by which John, who was aged, childless and infirm, was to remain king of all that part of Hungary which he held until he died; and the whole kingdom was then to revert to Ferdinand and his heirs--But it was agreed that should John marry and have a son, that son should be viceroy, or, as the title then was, _univode_, of his father's hereditary domain of _Transylvania_, having no control over any portion of Hungary proper. Somewhat to the disappointment of Ferdinand, the old monarch immediately married a young bride. A son was born to them, and in fourteen days after his birth the father died of a stroke of apoplexy. The child was entitled to the viceroyship of Transylvania, while all the rest of Hungary was to pass unincumbered to Ferdinand. But Isabella, the ambitious young mother, who had married the decrepit monarch that she might enjoy wealth and station, had no intention that her babe should be less of a king than his father was. She was the daughter of Sigismond, King of Poland, and relying upon the support of her regal father she claimed the crown of Hungary for her boy, in defiance of the solemn compact. In that age of chivalry a young and beautiful woman could easily find defenders whatever might be her claims. Isabella soon rallied around her banner many Hungarian nobles, and a large number of adventurous knights from Poland. Under her influence a large party of nobles met, chose the babe their king, and crowned him, under the name of Stephen, with a great display of military and religious pomp. They then conveyed him and his mother to the strong castle of Buda and dispatched an embassy to the sultan at Constantinople, avowing homage to him, as their feudal lord, and imploring his immediate and vigorous support. Ferdinand, thus defrauded, and conscious of his inability to rescue the crown from the united forces of the Hungarian partisans of Stephen, and from the Turks, condescended also to send a message to the sultan, offering to hold the crown as his fief and to pay to the Porte the same tribute which John had paid, if the sultan would support his claim. The imperious Turk, knowing that he could depose the baby king at his pleasure, insultingly rejected the proposals which Ferdinand had humiliated himself in advancing. He returned in answer, that he demanded, as the price of peace, not only that Ferdinand should renounce all claim whatever to the crown of Hungary, but that he should also acknowledge the Austrian territories as under vassalage to the Turkish empire, and pay tribute accordingly. Ferdinand, at the same time that he sent his embassy to Constantinople, without waiting for a reply dispatched an army into Hungary, which reached Buda and besieged Isabella and her son in the citadel. He pressed the siege with such vigor that Isabella must have surrendered had not an army of Turks come to her rescue. The Austrian troops were defeated and dispersed. The sultan himself soon followed with a still larger army, took possession of the city, secured the person of the queen and the infant prince, and placed a garrison of ten thousand janissaries in the citadel. The Turkish troops spread in all directions, establishing themselves in towns, castles, fortresses, and setting at defiance all Ferdinand's efforts to dislodge them. These events occurred during the reign of the Emperor Charles V. The resources of Ferdinand had become so exhausted that he was compelled, while affairs were in this state, in the year 1545, ten years before the abdication of the emperor, to implore of Solyman a suspension of arms. The haughty sultan reluctantly consented to a truce of five years upon condition that Ferdinand would pay him an annual tribute of about sixty thousand dollars, and become feudatory of the Porte. To these humiliating conditions Ferdinand felt compelled to assent. Solyman, thus relieved from any trouble on the part of Ferdinand, compelled the queen to renounce to himself all right which either she or her son had to the throne. And now for many years we have nothing but a weary record of intrigues, assassinations, wars and woes. Miserable Hungary was but a field of blood. There were three parties, Ferdinand, Stephen and Solyman, all alike ready to be guilty of any inhumanity or to perpetrate any perfidy in the accomplishment of their plans. Ferdinand with his armies held one portion of Hungary, Solyman another, and Stephen, with his strong partisans another. Bombardment succeeded bombardment; cities and provinces were now overrun by one set of troops and now by another; the billows of war surged to and fro incessantly, and the wail of the widow and the cry of the orphan ascended by day and by night to the ear of God. In 1556 the Turks again invested Stephen with the government of that large portion of Hungary which they held, including Transylvania. Ferdinand still was in possession of several important fortresses, and of several of the western districts of Hungary bordering on the Austrian States. Isabella, annoyed by her subjection to the Turks, made propositions to Ferdinand for a reconciliation, and a truce was agreed upon which gave the land rest for a few years. While these storms were sweeping over Hungary, events of scarcely less importance were transpiring in Bohemia. This kingdom was an elective monarchy, and usually upon the death of a king the fiercest strife ensued as to who should be his successor. The elected monarch, on receiving the crown, was obliged to recognize the sovereignty of the people as having chosen him for their ruler, and he promised to govern according to the ancient constitution of the kingdom. The monarch, however, generally found no difficulty in surrounding himself with such strong supporters as to secure the election of his son or heir, and frequently he had his successor chosen before his death. Thus the monarchy, though nominally elective, was in its practical operation essentially hereditary. The authority of the crown was quite limited. The monarch was only intrusted with so much power as the proud nobles were willing to surrender to one of their number whom they appointed chief, whose superiority they reluctantly acknowledged, and against whom they were very frequently involved in wars. In those days the _people_ had hardly a recognized existence. The nobles met in a congress called a diet, and authorized their elected chief, the king, to impose taxes, raise troops, declare war and institute laws according to their will. These diets were differently composed under different reigns, and privileged cities were sometimes authorized to send deputies whom they selected from the most illustrious of their citizens. The king usually convoked the diets; but in those stormy times of feuds, conspiracies and wars, there was hardly any general rule. The nobles, displeased at some act of the king, would themselves, through some one or more of their number, summon a diet and organize resistance. The numbers attending such an irregular body were of course very various. There appear to have been diets of the empire composed of not more than half a dozen individuals, and others where as many hundreds were assembled. Sometimes the meetings were peaceful, and again tumultuous with the clashing of arms. In Bohemia the conflict between the Catholics and the reformers had raged with peculiar acrimony, and the reformers in that kingdom had become a very numerous and influential body. Ferdinand was anxious to check the progress of the Reformation, and he exerted all the power he could command to defend and maintain Catholic supremacy. For ten years Ferdinand was absent from Bohemia, all his energies being absorbed by the Hungarian war. He was anxious to weaken the power of the nobles in Bohemia. There was ever, in those days, either an open or a smothered conflict between the king and the nobles, the monarch striving to grasp more power, the nobles striving to keep him in subjection to them. Ferdinand attempted to disarm the nobles by sending for all the artillery of the kingdom, professing that he needed it to carry on his war with the Turks. But the wary nobles held on to their artillery. He then was guilty of the folly of hunting up some old exploded compacts, in virtue of which he declared that Bohemia was not an elective but a hereditary monarchy, and that he, as hereditary sovereign, held the throne for himself and his heirs. This announcement spread a flame of indignation through all the castles of Bohemia. The nobles rallied, called a diet, passed strong resolutions, organized an army, and adopted measures for vigorous resistance. But Ferdinand was prepared for all these demonstrations. His Hungarian truce enabled him to march a strong army on Bohemia. The party in power has always numerous supporters from those who, being in office, will lose their dignities by revolution. The king summoned all the well affected to repair to his standards, threatening condign punishment to all who did not give this proof of loyalty. Nobles and knights in great numbers flocked to his encampment. With menacing steps his battalions strode on, and triumphantly entered Prague, the capital city, situated in the very heart of the kingdom. The indignation in the city was great, but the king was too strong to be resisted, and he speedily quelled all movements of tumult. Prague, situated upon the steep and craggy banks of the Moldau, spanning the stream, and with its antique dwellings rising tier above tier upon the heights, is one of the most grand and imposing capitals of Europe. About one hundred and twenty thousand inhabitants crowd its narrow streets and massive edifices. Castles, fortresses, somber convents and the Gothic palaces of the old Bohemian monarchs, occupying every picturesque locality, as gray with age as the eternal crags upon which they stand, and exhibiting every fantastic variety of architecture, present an almost unrivaled aspect of beauty and of grandeur. The Palace on the Hill alone is larger than the imperial palace at Vienna, containing over four hundred apartments, some of them being rooms of magnificent dimensions. The cathedral within the precincts of this palace occupied more than one hundred and fifty years in its erection. Ferdinand, with the iron energy and determined will of an enraged, successful despot, stationed his troops at the gates, the bridges and at every commanding position, and thus took military possession of the city. The inhabitants, overawed and helpless, were in a state of terror. The emperor summoned six hundred of the most influential of the citizens to his palace, including all who possessed rank or office or wealth. Tremblingly they came. As soon as they had entered, the gates were closed and guarded, and they were all made prisoners. The king then, seated upon his throne, in his royal robes, and with his armed officers around him, ordered the captives like culprits to be led before him. Sternly he charged them with treason, and demanded what excuse they had to offer. They were powerless, and their only hope was in self-abasement. One, speaking in the name of the rest, said: "We will not presume to enter into any defense of our conduct with our king and master. We cast ourselves upon his royal mercy." They then all simultaneously threw themselves upon their knees, imploring his pardon. The king allowed them to remain for some time in that posture, that he might enjoy their humiliation. He then ordered his officers to conduct them into the hall of justice, and detain them there until he had decided respecting their punishment. For some hours they were kept in this state of suspense. He then informed them, that out of his great clemency he had decided to pardon them on the following conditions. They were to surrender all their constitutional privileges, whatever they were, into the hands of the king, and be satisfied with whatever privileges he might condescend to confer upon them. They were to bring all their artillery, muskets and ammunition to the palace, and surrender them to his officers; all the revenues of the city, together with a tax upon malt and beer, were to be paid into his hands for his disposal, and all their vassals, and their property of every kind, they were to resign to the king and to his heirs, whom they were to acknowledge as the _hereditary_ successors to the throne of Bohemia. Upon these conditions the king promised to spare the rebellious city, and to pardon all the offenders, excepting a few of the most prominent, whom he was determined to punish with such severity as to prove an effectual warning to all others. The prisoners were terrified into the immediate ratification of these hard terms. They were then all released, excepting forty, who were reserved for more rigorous punishment. In the same manner the king sent a summons to all the towns of the kingdom; and by the same terrors the same terms were extorted. All the rural nobles, who had manifested a spirit of resistance, were also summoned before a court of justice for trial. Some fled the kingdom. Their estates were confiscated to Ferdinand, and they were sentenced to death should they ever return. Many others were deprived of their possessions. Twenty-six were thrown into prison, and two condemned to public execution. The king, having thus struck all the discontented with terror, summoned a diet to meet in his palace at Prague. They met the 22d of August, 1547. A vast assemblage was convened, as no one who was summoned dared to stay away. The king, wishing to give an intimation to the diet of what they were to expect should they oppose his wishes, commenced the session by publicly hanging four of the most illustrious of his captives. One of these, high judge of the kingdom, was in the seventieth year of his age. The Bloody Diet, as it has since been called, was opened, and Ferdinand found all as pliant as he could wish. The royal discipline had effected wonders. The slightest intimation of Ferdinand was accepted with eagerness. The execrable tyrant wished to impress the whole kingdom with a salutary dread of incurring his paternal displeasure. He brought out the forty prisoners who still remained in their dungeons. Eight of the most distinguished men of the kingdom were led to three of the principal cities, in each of which, in the public square, they were ignominiously and cruelly whipped on the bare back. Before each flagellation the executioner proclaimed-- "These men are punished because they are traitors, and because they excited the people against their _hereditary_ master." They then, with eight others, their property being confiscated, in utter beggary, were driven as vagabonds from the kingdom. The rest, after being impoverished by fines, were restored to liberty. Ferdinand adopted vigorous measures to establish his despotic power. Considering the Protestant religion as peculiarly hostile to despotism, in the encouragement it afforded to education, to the elevation of the masses, and to the diffusion of those principles of fraternal equality which Christ enjoined; and considering the Catholic religion as the great bulwark of kingly power, by the intolerance of the Church teaching the benighted multitudes subjection to civil intolerance, Ferdinand, with unceasing vigilance, and with melancholy success, endeavored to eradicate the Lutheran doctrines from the kingdom. He established the most rigorous censorship of the press, and would allow no foreign work, unexamined, to enter the realm. He established in Bohemia the fanatic order of the Jesuits, and intrusted to them the education of the young. It is often impossible to reconcile the inconsistencies of the human heart. Ferdinand, while guilty of such atrocities, affected, on some points, the most scrupulous punctilios of honor. The clearly-defined privileges which had been promised the Protestants, he would not infringe in the least. They were permitted to give their children Protestant teachers, and to conduct worship in their own way. He effected his object of changing Bohemia from an elective to a hereditary monarchy, and thus there was established in Bohemia the renowned doctrine of regal legitimacy; of the _divine right_ of kings to govern. With such a bloody hand was the doctrine of the sovereignty, not of the _people_, but of the _nobles_, overthrown in Bohemia. The nobles are not much to be commiserated, for they trampled upon the people as mercilessly as the king did upon them. It is merely another illustration of the old and melancholy story of the strong devouring the weak: the owl takes the wren; the eagle the owl. Bohemia, thus brought in subjection to a single mind, and shackled in its spirit of free enterprise, began rapidly to exhibit symptoms of decline and decay. It was a great revolution, accomplished by cunning and energy, and maintained by the terrors of confiscation, exile and death. The Emperor Charles V., it will be remembered, had attempted in vain to obtain the reversion of the imperial crown for his son Philip at his own death. The crown of Spain was his hereditary possession, and that he could transmit to his son. But the crown of the empire was elective. Charles V. was so anxious to secure the imperial dignity for his son, that he retained the crown of the empire for some months after abdicating that of Spain, still hoping to influence the electors in their choice. But there were so many obstacles in the way of the recognition of the young Philip as emperor, that Charles, anxious to retain the dignity in the family, reluctantly yielded to the intrigues of his brother Ferdinand, who had now become so powerful that he could perhaps triumph over any little irregularity in the succession and silence murmurs. Consequently, Charles, nine months after the abdication of the thrones of the Low Countries and of Spain, tried the experiment of abdicating the _elective_ crown of the empire in favor of Ferdinand. It was in many respects such an act as if the President of the United States should abdicate in favor of some one of his own choice. The emperor had, however, a semblance of right to place the scepter in the hands of whom he would during his lifetime. But, upon the death of the emperor, would his appointee still hold his power, or would the crown at that moment be considered as falling from his brow? It was the 7th of August, 1556, when the emperor abdicated the throne of the empire in behalf of his brother Ferdinand. It was a new event in history, without a precedent, and the matter was long and earnestly discussed throughout the German States. Notwithstanding all Ferdinand's energy, sagacity and despotic power, two years elapsed before he could secure the acknowledgment of his title, by the German States, and obtain a proclamation of his imperial state. The pope had thus far had such an amazing control over the conscience, or rather the superstition of Europe, that the choice of the electors was ever subject to the ratification of the holy father. It was necessary for the emperor elect to journey to Rome, and be personally crowned by the hands of the pope, before he could be considered in legal possession of the imperial title and of a right to the occupancy of the throne. Julius II., under peculiar circumstances, allowed Maximilian to assume the title of _emperor elect_ while he postponed his visit to Rome for coronation; but the want of the papal sanction, by the imposition of the crown upon his brow by those _sacred hands_, thwarted Maximilian in some of his most fondly-cherished measures. Paul IV. was now pontiff, an old man, jealous of his prerogatives, intolerant in the extreme, and cherishing the most exorbitant sense of his spiritual power. He execrated the Protestants, and was indignant with Ferdinand that he had shown them any mercy at all. But Ferdinand, conscious of the importance of a papal coronation, sent a very obsequious embassy to Rome, announcing his appointment as emperor, and imploring the benediction of the holy father and the reception of the crown from his hands. The haughty and disdainful reply of the pope was characteristic of the times and of the man. It was in brief, as follows: "The Emperor Charles has behaved like a madman; and his acts are no more to be respected than the ravings of insanity. Charles V. received the imperial crown from the head of the Church; in abdicating, that crown could only return to the sacred hands which conferred it. The nomination of Ferdinand as his successor we pronounce to be null and void. The alleged ratification of the electors is a mockery, dishonored and vitiated as it is by the votes of electors polluted with heresy. We therefore command Ferdinand to relinquish all claim to the imperial crown." The irascible old pontiff, buried beneath the senseless pomps of the Vatican, was not at all aware of the change which Protestant preaching and writing had effected in the public mind of Germany. Italy was still slumbering in the gloom of the dark ages; but light was beginning to dawn upon the hills of the empire. One half of the population of the German empire would rally only the more enthusiastically around Ferdinand, if he would repel all papal assumptions with defiance and contempt. Ferdinand was the wiser and the better informed man of the two. He conducted with dignity and firmness which make us almost forget his crimes. A diet was summoned, and it was quietly decreed that a _papal coronation was no longer necessary_. That one short line was the heaviest blow the papal throne had yet received. From it, it never recovered and never can recover. Paul IV. was astounded at such effrontery, and as soon as he had recovered a little from his astonishment, alarmed in view of such a declaration of independence, he took counsel of discretion, and humiliating as it was, made advances for a reconciliation. Ferdinand was also anxious to be on good terms with the pope. While negotiations were pending, Paul died, his death being perhaps hastened by chagrin. Pius IV. succeeded him, and pressed still more earnestly overtures for reconciliation Ferdinand, through his ambassador, expressed his willingness to pledge the accustomed _devotion_ and _reverence_ to the head of the Church, omitting the word _obedience_. But the pope was anxious, above all things, to have that emphatic word _obey_ introduced into the ritual of subjection, and after employing all the arts of diplomacy and cajolery, carried his point. Ferdinand, with duplicity which was not honorable, let the word remain, saying that it was not his act, but that of his ambassador. The pope affected satisfaction with the formal acknowledgment of his power, while Ferdinand ever after refused to recognize his authority. Thus terminated the long dependence, running through ages of darkness and delusion, of the German emperors upon the Roman see. Ferdinand did not trouble himself to receive the crown from the pope, and since his day the emperors of Germany have no longer been exposed to the expense and the trouble of a journey to Rome for their coronation. Though Ferdinand was strongly attached to the tenets of the papal church, and would gladly have eradicated Protestantism from his domains, he was compelled to treat the Protestants with some degree of consideration, as he needed the aid of their arms in the wars in which he was incessantly involved with the Turks. He even made great efforts to introduce some measure of conciliation which should reconcile the two parties, and thus reunite his realms under one system of doctrine and of worship. Still Protestantism was making rapid strides all over Europe. It had become the dominant religion in Denmark and Sweden, and, by the accession of Elizabeth to the throne of England, was firmly established in that important kingdom. In France also the reformed religion had made extensive inroads, gathering to its defense many of the noblest spirits, in rank and intellect, in the realm. The terrors of the inquisition had thus far prevented the truth from making much progress in Spain and Portugal. With the idea of promoting reconciliation, Ferdinand adopted a measure which contributed greatly to his popularity with the Protestants. He united with France and Spain in urging Pius IV., a mild and pliant pontiff, to convene a council in Germany to heal the religious feud. He drew up a memorial, which was published and widely scattered, declaring that the Protestants had become far too powerful to be treated with outrage or contempt; that there were undeniable wrongs in the Church which needed to be reformed; and that no harm could accrue from permitting the clergy to marry, and to administer both bread and wine to the communicants in the Lord's Supper. It was a doctrine of the Church of Rome, that the laity could receive the bread only; the wine was reserved for the officiating priest. This memorial of Ferdinand, drawn up with much distinctness and great force of argument, was very grateful to the Protestants, but very displeasing to the court of Rome. These conflicts raged for several years without any decisive results. The efforts of Ferdinand to please both parties, as usual, pleased neither. By the Protestants he was regarded as a persecutor and intolerant; while the Catholics accused him of lukewarmness, of conniving at heresy and of dishonoring the Church by demanding of her concessions derogatory to her authority and her dignity. Ferdinand, finding that the Church clung with deathly tenacity to its corruptions, assumed himself quite the attitude of a reformer. A memorable council had been assembled at Trent on the 15th of January, 1562. Ferdinand urged the council to exhort the pope to examine if there was not room for some reform in his own person, state or court. "Because," said he, "the only true method to obtain authority for the reformation of others, is to begin by amending oneself." He commented upon the manifest impropriety of scandalous indulgences: of selling the sacred offices of the Church to the highest bidder, regardless of character; of extorting fees for the administration of the sacrament of the Lord's Supper; of offering prayers and performing the services of public devotion in a language which the people could not understand; and other similar and most palpable abuses. Even the kings of France and Spain united with the emperor in these remonstrances. It is difficult now to conceive of the astonishment and indignation with which the pope and his adherents received these very reasonable suggestions, coming not from the Protestants but from the most staunch advocates of the papacy. The see of Rome, corrupt to its very core, would yield nothing. The more senseless and abominable any of its corruptions were, the more tenaciously did pope and cardinals cling to them. At last the emperor, in despair of seeing any thing accomplished, requested that the assembly might be dissolved, saying, "Nothing good can be expected, even if it continue its sittings for a hundred years." CHAPTER XI. DEATH OF FERDINAND I.--ACCESSION OF MAXIMILIAN II. From 1562 to 1576. The Council of Trent.--Spread of the Reformation.--Ferdinand's Attempt to Influence the Pope.--His Arguments against Celibacy.--Stubbornness of the Pope.--Maximilian II.--Displeasure of Ferdinand.--Motives for not Abjuring the Catholic Faith.--Religious Strife in Europe.--Maximilian's Address to Charles IX.--Mutual Toleration.--Romantic Pastime of War.--Heroism of Nicholas, Count Of Zrini.--Accession of Power to Austria.--Accession of Rhodolph III.--Death of Maximilian. This celebrated council of Trent, which was called with the hope that by a spirit of concession and reform the religious dissensions which agitated Europe might be adjusted, declared, in the very bravado of papal intolerance, the very worst abuses of the Church to be essential articles of faith, which could only be renounced at the peril of eternal condemnation, and thus presented an insuperable barrier to any reconciliation between the Catholics and the Protestants. Ferdinand was disappointed, and yet did not venture to break with the pope by withholding his assent from the decrees which were enacted. The Lutheran doctrines had spread widely through Ferdinand's hereditary States of Austria. Several of the professors in the university at Vienna had embraced those views; and quite a number of the most powerful and opulent of the territorial lords even maintained Protestant chaplains at their castles. The majority of the inhabitants of the Austrian States had, in the course of a few years, become Protestants. Though Ferdinand did every thing he dared to do to check their progress, forbidding the circulation of Luther's translation of the Bible, and throwing all the obstacles he could in the way of Protestant worship, he was compelled to grant them very considerable toleration, and to overlook the infraction of his decrees, that he might secure their aid to repel the Turks. Providence seemed to overrule the Moslem invasion for the protection of the Protestant faith. Notwithstanding all the efforts of Ferdinand, the reformers gained ground in Austria as in other parts of Germany. The two articles upon which the Protestants at this time placed most stress were the right of the clergy to marry and the administration of the communion under both kinds, as it was called; that is, that the communicants should partake of both the bread and the wine. Ferdinand, having failed entirely in inducing the council to submit to any reform, opened direct communication with the pope to obtain for his subjects indulgence in respect to these two articles. In advocacy of this measure he wrote: "In Bohemia no persuasion, no argument, no violence, not even arms and war, have succeeded in abolishing the use of the cup as well as the bread in the sacrament. In fact the Church itself permitted it, although the popes revoked it by a breach of the conditions on which it was granted. In the other States, Hungary, Austria, Silesia, Styria, Carinthia, Carniola, Bavaria and other parts of Germany, many desire with ardor the same indulgence. If this concession is granted they may be reunited to the Church, but if refused they will be driven into the party of the Protestants. So many of the priests have been degraded by their diocesans for administering the sacrament in both kinds, that the country is almost deprived of priests. Hence children die or grow up to maturity without baptism; and men and women, of all ages and of all ranks, live like the brutes, in the grossest ignorance of God and of religion." In reference to the marriage of the clergy he wrote: "If a permission to the clergy to marry can not be granted, may not married men of learning and probity be ordained, according to the custom of the eastern church; or married priests be tolerated for a time, provided they act according to the Catholic and Christian faith? And it may be justly asked whether such concessions would not be far preferable to tolerating, as has unfortunately been done, fornication and concubinage? I can not avoid adding, what is a common observation, that priests who live in concubinage are guilty of greater sin than those who are married; for the last only transgress a law which is capable of being changed, whereas the first sin against a divine law, which is capable of neither change nor dispensation." The pope, pressed with all the importunity which Ferdinand could urge, reluctantly consented to the administration of the cup to the laity, but resolutely refused to tolerate the marriage of the clergy. Ferdinand was excessively annoyed by the stubbornness of the court of Rome in its refusal to submit to the most reasonable reform, thus rendering it impossible for him to allay the religious dissensions which were still spreading and increasing in acrimony. His disappointment was so great that it is said to have thrown him into the fever of which he died on the 25th of July, 1564. For several ages the archdukes of Austria had been endeavoring to unite the Austrian States with Hungary and Bohemia under one monarchy. The union had been temporarily effected once or twice, but Ferdinand accomplished the permanent union, and may thus be considered as the founder of the Austrian monarchy essentially as it now exists. As Archduke of Austria, he inherited the Austrian duchies. By his marriage with Anne, daughter of Ladislaus, King of Hungary and Bohemia, he secured those crowns, which he made hereditary in his family. He left three sons. The eldest, Maximilian, inherited the archduchy of Austria and the crowns of Bohemia and Hungary, of course inheriting, with Hungary, prospective war with the Turks. The second son, Ferdinand, had, as his legacy, the government and the revenues of the Tyrol. The third son, Charles, received Styria. There were nine daughters left, three of whom took the vail and the rest formed illustrious marriages. Ferdinand appears to have been a sincere Catholic, though he saw the great corruptions of the Church and earnestly desired reform. As he advanced in years he became more tolerant and gentle, and had his wise counsels been pursued Europe would have escaped inexpressible woes. Still he clung to the Church, unwisely seeking unity of faith and discipline, which can hardly be attained in this world, rather than toleration with allowed diversity. Maximilian II. was thirty-seven years of age on his accession to the throne. Although he was educated in the court of Spain, which was the most bigoted and intolerant in Europe, yet he developed a character remarkable for mildness, affability and tolerance. He was indebted for these attractive traits to his tutor, a man of enlarged and cultivated mind, and who had, like most men of his character at that time, a strong leaning towards Protestantism. These principles took so firm a hold of his youthful mind that they could never be eradicated. As he advanced in life he became more and more interested in the Protestant faith. He received a clergyman of the reformed religion as his chaplain and private secretary, and partook of the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, from his hands, in both kinds. Even while remaining in the Spanish court he entered into a correspondence with several of the most influential advocates of the Protestant faith. Returning to Austria from Spain, he attended public worship in the chapels of the Protestants, and communed with them in the sacrament of the Lord's Supper. When some of his friends warned him that by pursuing such a course he could never hope to obtain the imperial crown of Germany, he replied: "I will sacrifice all worldly interests for the sake of my salvation." His father, the Emperor Ferdinand, was so much displeased with his son's advocacy of the Protestant faith, that after many angry remonstrances he threatened to disinherit him if he did not renounce all connection with the reformers. But Maximilian, true to his conscience, would not allow the apprehension of the loss of a crown to induce him to swerve from his faith. Fully expecting to be thus cast off and banished from the kingdom, he wrote to the Protestant elector Palatine: "I have so deeply offended my father by maintaining a Lutheran preacher in my service, that I am apprehensive of being expelled as a fugitive, and hope to find an asylum in your court." The Catholics of course looked with apprehension to the accession of Maximilian to the throne, while the Protestants anticipated the event with great hope. There were, however, many considerations of vast moment influencing Maximilian not to separate himself, in form, from the Catholic church. Philip, his cousin, King of Spain, was childless, and should he die without issue, Ferdinand would inherit that magnificent throne, which he could not hope to ascend, as an avowed Protestant, without a long and bloody war. It had been the most earnest dying injunction of his father that he should not abjure the Catholic faith. His wife was a very zealous Catholic, as was also each one of his brothers. There were very many who remained in the Catholic church whose sympathies were with the reformers--who hoped to promote reformation in the Church without leaving it. Influenced by such considerations, Maximilian made a public confession of the Catholic faith, received his father's confessor, and maintained, in his court, the usages of the papal church. He was, however, the kind friend of the Protestants, ever seeking to shield them from persecution, claiming for them a liberal toleration, and seeking, in all ways, to promote fraternal religious feeling throughout his domains. The prudence of Maximilian wonderfully allayed the bitterness of religious strife in Germany, while other portions of Europe were desolated with the fiercest warfare between the Catholics and Protestants. In France, in particular, the conflict raged with merciless fury. It was on August 24th, 1572, but a few years after Maximilian ascended the throne, when the Catholics of France perpetrated the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, perhaps the most atrocious crime recorded in history. The Catholics and Protestants in France were nearly equally divided in numbers, wealth and rank. The papal party, finding it impossible to crush their foes by force of arms, resolved to exterminate them by a simultaneous massacre. They feigned toleration and reconciliation. The court of Paris invited all the leading Protestants of the kingdom to the metropolis to celebrate the nuptials of Henry, the young King of Navarre, with Margaret, sister of Charles IX., the reigning monarch. Secret orders were dispatched all over the kingdom, for the conspirators, secretly armed, at a given signal, by midnight, to rise upon the Protestants, men, women and children, and utterly exterminate them. "Let not one remain alive," said the King of France, "to tell the story." The deed was nearly accomplished. The king himself, from a window of the Louvre, fired upon his Protestant subjects, as they fled in dismay through the streets. In a few hours eighty thousand of the Protestants were mangled corpses. Protestantism in France has never recovered from this blow. Maximilian openly expressed his execration of this deed, though the pope ordered Te Deums to be chanted at Rome in exultation over the crime. Not long after this horrible slaughter, Charles IX. died in mental torment. Henry of Valois, brother of the deceased king, succeeded to the throne. He was at that time King of Poland. Returning to France, through Vienna, he had an interview with Maximilian, who addressed him in those memorable words which have often been quoted to the honor of the Austrian sovereign: "There is no crime greater in princes," said Maximilian, "than to tyrannize over the consciences of their subjects. By shedding the blood of heretics, far from honoring the common Father of all, they incur the divine vengeance; and while they aspire, by such means, to crowns in heaven, they justly expose themselves to the loss of their earthly kingdoms." Under the peaceful and humane reign of Ferdinand, Germany was kept in a general state of tranquillity, while storms of war and woe were sweeping over almost all other parts of Europe. During all his reign, Maximilian II. was unwearied in his endeavors to promote harmony between the two great religious parties, by trying, on the one hand, to induce the pope to make reasonable concessions, and, on the other hand, to induce the Protestants to moderate their demands. His first great endeavor was to induce the pope to consent to the marriage of the clergy. In this he failed entirely. He then tried to form a basis of mutual agreement, upon which the two parties could unite. His father had attempted this plan, and found it utterly impracticable. Maximilian attempted it, with just as little success. It has been attempted a thousand times since, and has always failed. Good men are ever rising who mourn the divisions in the Christian Church, and strive to form some plan of union, where all true Christians can meet and fraternize, and forget their minor differences. Alas! for poor human nature, there is but little prospect that this plan can ever be accomplished. There will be always those who can not discriminate between essential and non-essential differences of opinion. Maximilian at last fell back simply upon the doctrine of a liberal toleration, and in maintaining this he was eminently successful. At one time the Turks were crowding him very hard in Hungary. A special effort was requisite to raise troops to repel them. Maximilian summoned a diet, and appealed to the assembled nobles for supplies of men and money. In Austria proper, Protestantism was now in the decided ascendency. The nobles took advantage of the emperor's wants to reply-- "We are ready to march to the assistance of our sovereign, to repel the Turks from Hungary, if the Jesuits are first expelled from our territories." The answer of the king was characteristic of his policy and of his career. "I have convened you," he said, "to give me contributions, not remonstrances. I wish you to help me expel the Turks, not the Jesuits." From many a prince this reply would have excited exasperation. But Maximilian had established such a character for impartiality and probity, that the rebuke was received with applause rather than with murmurs, and the Protestants, with affectionate zeal, rallied around his standard. So great was the influence of the king, that toleration, as one of the virtues of the court, became the fashion, and the Catholics and Protestants vied with each other in the manifestation of mutual forbearance and good will. They met on equal terms in the palace of the monarch, shared alike in his confidence and his favors, and cooperated cordially in the festivities of the banqueting room, and in the toils of the camp. We love to dwell upon the first beautiful specimen of toleration which the world has seen in any court. It is the more beautiful, and the more wonderful, as having occurred in a dark age of bigotry, intolerance and persecution. And let us be sufficiently candid to confess, that it was professedly a Roman Catholic monarch, a member of the papal church, to whom the world is indebted for this first recognition of true mental freedom. It can not be denied that Maximilian II. was in advance of the avowed Protestants of his day. Pope Pius V. was a bigot, inflexible, overbearing; and he determined, with a bloody hand, to crush all dissent. From his throne in the Vatican he cast an eagle eye to Germany, and was alarmed and indignant at the innovations which Maximilian was permitting. In all haste he dispatched a legate to remonstrate strongly against such liberality. Maximilian received the legate, Cardinal Commendon, with courtesy, but for a time firmly refused to change his policy in obedience to the exactions of the pope. The pope brought to bear upon him all the influence of the Spanish court. He was threatened with war by all the papal forces, sustained by the then immense power of the Spanish monarchy. For a time Maximilian was in great perplexity, and finally yielded to the pope so far as to promise not to permit any further innovations than those which he had already allowed, and not to extend his principles of toleration into any of his States where they had not as yet been introduced. Thus, while he did not retract any concessions he had made, he promised to stop where he was, and proceed no further. Maximilian was so deeply impressed with the calamities of war, that he even sent an embassy to the Turks, offering to continue to pay the tribute which they had exacted of his father, as the price of a continued armistice. But Solyman, having made large preparations for the renewed invasion of Hungary, and sanguine of success, haughtily rejected the offer, and renewed hostilities. Nearly all of the eastern and southern portions of Hungary were already in the hands of the Turks. Maximilian held a few important towns and strong fortresses on the western frontier. Not feeling strong enough to attempt to repel the Turks from the portion they already held, he strengthened his garrisons, and raising an army of eighty thousand men, of which he assumed the command, he entered Hungary and marched down the Danube about sixty miles to Raab, to await the foe and act on the defensive. Solyman rendezvoused an immense army at Belgrade, and commenced his march up the Danube. "Old as I am," said he to his troops, "I am determined to chastise the house of Austria, or to perish in the attempt beneath the walls of Vienna." It was beautiful spring weather, and the swelling buds and hourly increasing verdure, decorated the fields with loveliness. For several days the Turks marched along the right bank of the Danube, through green fields, and beneath a sunny sky, encountering no foe. War seemed but as the pastime of a festive day, as gay banners floated in the breeze, groups of horsemen, gorgeously caparisoned, pranced along, and the turbaned multitude, in brilliant uniform, with jokes, and laughter and songs, leisurely ascended the majestic stream. A fleet of boats filled the whole body of the river, impelled by sails when the wind favored, or, when the winds were adverse, driven by the strong arms of the rowers against the gentle tide. Each night the white tents were spread, and a city for a hundred thousand inhabitants rose as by magic, with its grassy streets, its squares, its busy population, its music, its splendor, blazing in all the regalia of war. As by magic the city rose in the rays of the declining sun. As by magic it disappeared in the early dawn of the morning, and the mighty hosts moved on. A few days thus passed, when Solyman approached the fortified town of Zigeth, near the confluence of the Drave and the Danube. Nicholas, Count of Zrini, was intrusted with the defense of this place, and he fulfilled his trust with heroism and valor which has immortalized both his name and the fortress which he defended. Zrini had a garrison of but three thousand men. An army of nearly a hundred thousand were marching upon him. Zrini collected his troops, and took a solemn oath, in the presence of all, that, true to God, to his Christian faith, and his country, he never would surrender the town to the Turks, but with his life. He then required each soldier individually to take the same oath to his captain. All the captains then, in the presence of the assembled troops, took the same oath to him. The Turks soon arrived and commenced an unceasing bombardment day and night. The little garrison vigorously responded. The besieged made frequent sallies, spiking the guns of the besiegers, and again retiring behind their works. But their overpowering foes advanced, inch by inch, till they got possession of what was called the "old city." The besieged retiring to the "new city," resumed the defense with unabated ardor. The storm of war raged incessantly for many days, and the new city was reduced to a smoldering heap of fire and ashes. The Turks, with incredible labor, raised immense mounds of earth and stone, on the summits of which they planted their batteries, where they could throw their shot, with unobstructed aim, into every part of the city. Roads were constructed across the marsh, and the swarming multitudes, in defiance of all the efforts of the heroic little garrison, filled up the ditch, and were just on the rush to take the place by a general assault, when Zrini abandoned the new city to flames, and threw himself into the citadel. His force was now reduced to about a thousand men. Day after day the storm of war blazed with demoniac fury around the citadel. Mines were dug, and, as by volcanic explosions, bastions, with men and guns, were blown high into the air. The indomitable Hungarians made many sallies, cutting down the gunners and spiking the guns, but they were always driven back with heavy loss. Repeated demands for capitulation were sent in and as repeatedly rejected. For a week seven assaults were made daily upon the citadel by the Turks, but they were always repulsed. At length the outer citadel was entirely demolished. Then the heroic band retired to the inner works. They were now without ammunition or provisions, and the Turks, exasperated by such a defense, were almost gnashing their teeth with rage. The old sultan, Solyman, actually died from the intensity of his vexation and wrath. The death of the sultan was concealed from the Turkish troops, and a general assault was arranged upon the inner works. The hour had now come when they must surrender or die, for the citadel was all battered into a pile of smoldering ruins, and there were no ramparts capable of checking the progress of the foe. Zrini assembled his little band, now counting but six hundred, and said, "Remember your oath. We must die in the flames, or perish with hunger, or go forth to meet the foe. Let us die like men. Follow me, and do as I do." They made a simultaneous rush from their defenses into the thickest of the enemy. For a few moments there was a scene of wildest uproar and confusion, and the brave defenders were all silent in death. The Turks with shouts of triumph now rushed into the citadel. But Zrini had fired trains leading to the subterranean vaults of powder, and when the ruins were covered with the conquerors, a sullen roar ran beneath the ground and the whole citadel, men, horses, rocks and artillery were thrown into the air, and fell a commingled mass of ruin, fire and blood. A more heroic defense history has not recorded. Twenty thousand Turks perished in this siege. The body of Zrini was found in the midst of the mangled dead. His head was cut off and, affixed to a pole, was raised as a trophy before the tent of the deceased sultan. The death of Solyman, and the delay which this desperate siege had caused, embarrassed all the plans of the invaders, and they resolved upon a retreat. The troops were consequently withdrawn from Hungary, and returned to Constantinople. Maximilian, behind his intrenchments at Raab, did not dare to march to the succor of the beleaguered garrison, for overpowering numbers would immediately have destroyed him had he appeared in the open field. But upon the withdrawal of the Turks he disbanded his army, after having replenished his garrisons, and returned to Vienna. Selim succeeded Solyman, and Maximilian sent an embassy to Constantinople to offer terms of peace. At the same time, to add weight to his negotiations, he collected a large army, and made the most vigorous preparations for the prosecution of the war. Selim, just commencing his reign, anxious to consolidate his power, and embarrassed by insurrection in his own realms, was glad to conclude an armistice on terms highly favorable to Maximilian. John Sigismond, who had been crowned by the Turks, as their tributary King of Hungary, was to retain Transylvania. The Turks were to hold the country generally between Transylvania and the river Teiss, while Ferdinand was to have the remainder, extending many hundred miles from the Teiss to Austria. The Prince of Transylvania was compelled, though very reluctantly, to assent to this treaty. He engaged not to assume the title of King of Hungary, except in correspondence with the Turks. The emperor promised him one of his nieces in marriage, and in return it was agreed that should John Sigismond die without male issue, Transylvania should revert to the crown of Hungary. Soon after this treaty, John Sigismond died, before his marriage with the emperor's niece, and Transylvania was again united to Hungary and came under the sway of Maximilian. This event formed quite an accession to the power of the Austrian monarch, as he now held all of Hungary save the southern and central portion where the Turks had garrisoned the fortresses. The pope, the King of Spain, and the Venetians, now sent united ambassadors to the emperor urging him to summon the armies of the empire and drive the Turks entirely out of Hungary. Cardinal Commendon assured the emperor, in the name of the holy father of the Church, that it was no sin to violate any compact with the infidel. Maximilian nobly replied, "The faith of treaties ought to be considered as inviolable, and a Christian can never be justified in breaking an oath." Maximilian never enjoyed vigorous health, and being anxious to secure the tranquillity of his extended realms after his death, he had his eldest son, Rhodolph, in a diet at Presburg, crowned King of Hungary. Rhodolph at once entered upon the government of his realm as viceroy during the life of his father. Thus he would have all the reins of government in his hands, and, at the death of the emperor, there would be no apparent change. It will be remembered that Ferdinand had, by violence and treachery, wrested from the Bohemians the privilege of electing their sovereign, and had thus converted Bohemia into an hereditary monarchy. Maximilian, with characteristic prudence, wished to maintain the hereditary right thus established, while at the same time he wished to avoid wounding the prejudices of those who had surrendered the right of suffrage only to fraud and the sword. He accordingly convoked a diet at Prague. The nobles were assembled in large numbers, and the occasion was invested with unusual solemnity. The emperor himself introduced to them his son, and recommended him to them as their future sovereign. The nobles were much gratified by so unexpected a concession, and with enthusiasm accepted their new king. The emperor had thus wisely secured for his son the crowns of Hungary and Bohemia. Having succeeded in these two important measures, Maximilian set about the more difficult enterprise of securing for his son his succession upon the imperial throne. This was a difficult matter in the strong rivalry which then existed between the Catholics and the Protestants. With caution and conciliation, encountering and overturning innumerable obstacles, Maximilian proceeded, until having, as he supposed, a fair chance of success, he summoned the diet of electors at Ratisbon. But here new difficulties arose. The Protestants were jealous of their constantly imperiled privileges, and wished to surround them with additional safeguards. The Catholics, on the contrary, stimulated by the court of Rome, wished to withdraw the toleration already granted, and to pursue the Protestant faith with new rigor. The meeting of the diet was long and stormy, and again they were upon the point of a violent dissolution. But the wisdom, moderation and perseverance of Maximilian finally prevailed, and his success was entire. Rhodolph III. was unanimously chosen to succeed him upon the imperial throne, and was crowned at Ratisbon on the 1st of November, 1575. Poland was strictly an elective monarchy. The tumultuous nobles had established a law prohibiting the election of a successor during the lifetime of the monarch. Their last king had been the reckless, chivalrous Henry, Duke of Anjou, brother of Charles IX. of France. Charles IX. having died without issue, Henry succeeded him upon the throne of France, and abdicated the crown of the semi-barbaric wilds of Poland. The nobles were about to assemble for the election. There were many influential candidates. Maximilian was anxious to obtain the crown for his son Ernest. Much to the surprise of Maximilian, he himself was chosen king. Protestantism had gained the ascendency in Poland, and a large majority of the nobles united upon Maximilian. The electors honored both themselves and the emperor in assigning, as the reason for their choice, that the emperor had conciliated the contending factions of the Christian world, and had acquired more glory by his pacific policy than other princes had acquired in the exploits of war. There were curious conditions at that time assigned to the occupancy of the throne of Poland. The elected monarch, before receiving the crown, was required to give his pledge that he would reside two years uninterruptedly in the kingdom, and that then he would not leave without the consent of the nobles. He was also required to construct four fortresses at his own expense, and to pay all the debts of the last monarch, however heavy they might be, including the arrears of the troops. He was also to maintain a sort of guard of honor, consisting of ten thousand Polish horsemen. In addition to the embarrassment which these conditions presented, there were many indications of jealousy on the part of other powers, in view of the wonderful aggrandizement of Austria. Encouraged by the emperor's delay and by the hostility of other powers, a minority of the nobles chose Stephen Bathori, a Transylvanian prince, King of Poland; and to strengthen his title, married him to Anne, sister to Sigismond Augustus, the King of Poland who preceded the Duke of Anjou. Maximilian thus aroused, signed the articles of agreement, and the two rival monarchs prepared for war. The kingdoms of Europe were arraying themselves, some on the one side and some on the other, and there was the prospect of a long, desperate and bloody strife, when death stilled the tumult. Maximilian had long been declining. On the 12th of October, 1576, he breathed his last at Ratisbon. He apparently died the death of the Christian, tranquilly surrendering his spirit to his Saviour. He died in the fiftieth year of his age and the twelfth of his reign. He had lived, for those dark days, eminently the life of the righteous, and his end was peace. "So fades the summer cloud away, So sinks the gale when storms are o'er So gently shuts the eye of day, So dies a wave along the shore." CHAPTER XII. CHARACTER OF MAXIMILIAN II.--SUCCESSION OF RHODOLPH III. From 1576 to 1604. Character of Maximilian.--His Accomplishments.--His Wife.--Fate of his Children.--Rhodolph III.--The Liberty of Worship.--Means of Emancipation.--Rhodolph's Attempts against Protestantism.--Declaration of a higher Law.--Theological Differences.--The Confederacy at Heilbrun.--The Gregorian Calendar.--Intolerance in Bohemia.--The Trap of the Monks.--Invasion of the Turks.--Their Defeat.--Coalition with Sigismond.--Sale of Transylvania.--Rule of Basta.--The Empire captured and recaptured.--Devastation of the Country.--Treatment of Stephen Botskoi. It is indeed refreshing, in the midst of the long list of selfish and ambitious sovereigns who have disgraced the thrones of Europe, to meet with such a prince as Maximilian, a gentleman, a philosopher, a philanthropist and a Christian. Henry of Valois, on his return from Poland to France, visited Maximilian at Vienna. Henry was considered one of the most polished men of his age. He remarked in his palace at Paris that in all his travels he had never met a more accomplished gentleman than the Emperor Maximilian. Similar is the testimony of all his contemporaries. With all alike, at all times, and under all circumstances, he was courteous and affable. His amiability shone as conspicuously at home as abroad, and he was invariably the kind husband, the tender father, the indulgent master and the faithful friend. In early life he had vigorously prosecuted his studies, and thus possessed the invaluable blessing of a highly cultivated mind. Fond of the languages, he not only wrote and conversed in the Latin tongue with fluency and elegance, but was quite at home in all the languages of his extensive domains. Notwithstanding the immense cares devolving upon the ruler of so extended an empire, he appropriated a portion of time every day to devotional reading and prayer; and his hours were methodically arranged for business, recreation and repose. The most humble subject found easy access to his person, and always obtained a patient hearing. When he was chosen King of Poland, some ambassadors from Bohemia voluntarily went to Poland to testify to the virtues of their king. It was a heartfelt tribute, such as few sovereigns have ever received. "We Bohemians," said they, "are as happy under his government as if he were our father. Our privileges, laws, rights, liberties and usages are protected and defended. Not less just than wise, he confers the offices and dignities of the kingdom only on natives of rank, and is not influenced by favor or artifice. He introduces no innovations contrary to our immunities; and when the great expenses which he incurs for the good of Christendom render contributions necessary, he levies them without violence, and with the approbation of the States. But what may be almost considered a miracle is, the prudence and impartiality of his conduct toward persons of a different faith, always recommending union, concord, peace, toleration and mutual regard. He listens even to the meanest of his subjects, readily receives their petitions and renders impartial justice to all." Not an act of injustice sullied his reign, and during his administration nearly all Germany, with the exception of Hungary, enjoyed almost uninterrupted tranquillity. Catholics and Protestants unite in his praises, and have conferred upon him the surname of the Delight of Mankind. His wife Mary was the daughter of Charles V. She was an accomplished, exemplary woman, entirely devoted to the Catholic faith. For this devotion, notwithstanding the tolerant spirit of her husband, she was warmly extolled by the Catholics. Gregory XIII. called her the firm column of the Catholic faith, and Pius V. pronounced her worthy of being worshiped. After the death of her husband she returned to Spain, to the bigoted court of her bigoted brother Philip. Upon reaching Madrid she developed the spirit which dishonored her, in expressing great joy that she was once more in a country where no heretic was tolerated. Soon after she entered a nunnery where she remained seven years until her death. It is interesting briefly to trace out the history of the children of this royal family. It certainly will not tend to make one any more discontented to move in a humbler sphere. Maximilian left three daughters and five sons. Anne, the eldest daughter, was engaged to her cousin, Don Carlos, only son of her uncle Philip, King of Spain. As he was consequently heir to the Spanish throne, this was a brilliant match. History thus records the person and character of Don Carlos. He was sickly and one of his legs was shorter than the other. His temper was not only violent, but furious, breaking over all restraints, and the malignant passions were those alone which governed him. He always slept with two naked swords under his pillow, two loaded pistols, and several loaded guns, with a chest of fire-arms at the side of his bed. He formed a conspiracy to murder his father. He was arrested and imprisoned. Choking with rage, he called for a fire, and threw himself into the flames, hoping to suffocate himself. Being rescued, he attempted to starve himself. Failing in this, he tried to choke himself by swallowing a diamond. He threw off his clothes, and went naked and barefoot on the stone floor, hoping to engender some fatal disease. For eleven days he took no food but ice. At length the wretched man died, and thus Anne lost her lover. But Philip, the father of Don Carlos, and own uncle of Anne, concluded to take her for himself. She lived a few years as Queen of Spain, and died four years after the death of her father, Maximilian. Elizabeth, the second daughter, was beautiful. At sixteen years of age she married Charles IX., King of France, who was then twenty years old. Charles IX. ascended the throne when but ten years of age, under the regency of his infamous mother, Catherine de Medici, perhaps the most demoniac female earth has known. Under her tutelage, her boy, equally impotent in body and in mind, became as pitiable a creature as ever disgraced a throne. The only energy he ever showed was in shooting the Protestants from a window of the Louvre in the horrible Massacre of St. Bartholomew, which he planned at the instigation of his fiend-like mother. A few wretched years the youthful queen lived with the monster, when his death released her from that bondage. She then returned to Vienna, a young and childless widow, but twenty years of age. She built and endowed the splendid monastery of St. Mary de Angelis, and having seen enough of the pomp of the world, shut herself up from the world in the imprisonment of its cloisters, where she recounted her beads for nineteen years, until she died in 1592. Margaret, the youngest daughter, after her father's death, accompanied her mother to Spain. Her sister Anne soon after died, and Philip II., her morose and debauched husband, having already buried four wives, and no one can tell how many guilty favorites, sought the hand of his young and fresh niece. But Margaret wisely preferred the gloom of the cloister to the Babylonish glare of the palace. She rejected the polluted and withered hand, and in solitude and silence, as a hooded nun, she remained immured in her cell for fifty-seven years. Then her pure spirit passed from a joyless life on earth, we trust, to a happy home in heaven. Rhodolph, the eldest son, succeeded his father, and in the subsequent pages we shall record his career. Ernest, the second son, was a mild, bashful young man, of a temperament so singularly melancholy that he was rarely known to smile. His brother Rhodolph gave him the appointment of Governor of Hungary. He passed quietly down the stream of time until he was forty-two years of age, when he died of the stone, a disease which had long tortured him with excruciating pangs. Matthias, the third son, became a restless, turbulent man, whose deeds we shall have occasion to record in connection with his brother Rhodolph, whom he sternly and successfully opposed. Maximilian, the fourth son, when thirty years of age was elected King of Poland. An opposition party chose John, son of the King of Sweden. The rival candidates appealed to the cruel arbitration of the sword. In a decisive battle Maximilian's troops were defeated, and he was taken prisoner. He was only released upon his giving the pledge that he renounced all his right to the throne. He rambled about, now governing a province, and now fighting the Turks, until he died unmarried, sixty years of age. Albert, the youngest son, was destined to the Church. He was sent to Spain, and under the patronage of his royal uncle he soon rose to exalted ecclesiastical dignities. He, however, eventually renounced these for more alluring temporal honors. Surrendering his cardinal's hat, and archiepiscopal robes, he espoused Isabella, daughter of Philip, and from the governorship of Portugal was promoted to the sovereignty of the Netherlands. Here he encountered only opposition and war. After a stormy and unsuccessful life, in which he was thwarted in all his plans, he died childless. From this digression let us return to Rhodolph III., the heir to the titles and the sovereignties of his father the emperor. It was indeed a splendid inheritance which fell to his lot. He was the sole possessor of the archduchy of Austria, King of Bohemia and of Hungary, and Emperor of Germany. He was but twenty-five years of age when he entered upon the undisputed possession of all these dignities. His natural disposition was mild and amiable, his education had been carefully attended to, his moral character was good, a rare virtue in those days, and he had already evinced much industry, energy and talents for business. His father had left the finances and the internal administration of all his realms in good condition; his moderation had greatly mitigated the religious animosities which disturbed other portions of Europe, and all obstacles to a peaceful and prosperous reign seemed to have been removed. But all these prospects were blighted by the religious bigotry which had gained a firm hold of the mind of the young emperor. When he was but twelve years of age he was sent to Madrid to be educated. Philip II., of Spain, Rhodolph's uncle, had an only daughter, and no son, and there seemed to be no prospect that his queen would give birth to another child. Philip consequently thought of adopting Rhodolph as his successor to the Spanish throne, and of marrying him to his daughter. In the court of Spain where the Jesuits held supreme sway, and where Rhodolph was intrusted to their guidance, the superstitious sentiments which he had imbibed from his mother were still more deeply rooted. The Jesuits found Rhodolph a docile pupil; and never on earth have there been found a set of men who, more thoroughly than the Jesuits, have understood the art of educating the mind to subjection. Rhodolph was instructed in all the petty arts of intrigue and dissimulation, and was brought into entire subserviency to the Spanish court. Thus educated, Rhodolph received the crown. He commenced his reign with the desperate resolve to crush out Protestantism, either by force or guile, and to bring back his realms to the papal church. Even the toleration of Maximilian, in those dark days, did not allow freedom of worship to any but the nobles. The wealthy and emancipated citizens of Vienna, and other royal cities, could not establish a church of their own; they could only, under protection of the nobles, attend the churches which the nobles sustained. In other words, the people were slaves, who were hardly thought of in any state arrangements. The nobles were merely the slaveholders. As there was not difference of color to mark the difference between the slaveholder and the slaves or vassals, many in the cities, who had in various ways achieved their emancipation, had become wealthy and instructed, and were slowly claiming some few rights. The country nobles could assemble their vassals in the churches where they had obtained toleration. In some few cases some of the citizens of the large towns, who had obtained emancipation from some feudal oppressions, had certain defined political privileges granted them. But, in general, the nobles or slaveholders, some having more, and some having less wealth and power, were all whom even Maximilian thought of including in his acts of toleration. A learned man in the universities, or a wealthy man in the walks of commerce, was compelled to find shelter under the protection of some powerful noble. There were nobles of all ranks, from the dukes, who could bring twenty thousand armed men into the field, down to the most petty, impoverished baron, who had perhaps not half a dozen vassals. Rhodolph's first measure was to prevent the _burghers_, as they were called, who were those who had in various ways obtained emancipation from vassal service, and in the large cities had acquired energy, wealth and an air of independence, from attending Protestant worship. The nobles were very jealous of their privileges, and were prompt to combine whenever they thought them infringed. Fearful of rousing the nobles, Rhodolph issued a decree, confirming the toleration which his father had granted the nobles, but forbidding the burghers from attending Protestant worship. This was very adroitly done, as it did not interfere with the vassals of the rural nobles on their estates; and these burghers were freed men, over whom the nobles could claim no authority. At the same time Rhodolph silenced three of the most eloquent and influential of the Protestant ministers, under the plea that they assailed the Catholic church with too much virulence; and he also forbade any one thenceforward to officiate as a Protestant clergyman without a license from him. These were very decisive acts, and yet very adroit ones, as they did not directly interfere with any of the immunities of the nobles. The Protestants were, however, much alarmed by these measures, as indicative of the intolerant policy of the new king. The preachers met together to consult. They corresponded with foreign universities respecting the proper course to pursue; and the Protestant nobles met to confer upon the posture of affairs. As the result of their conferences, they issued a remonstrance, declaring that they could not yield to such an infringement of the rights of conscience, and that "they were bound to obey God rather than man." Rhodolph was pleased with this resistance, as it afforded him some excuse for striking a still heavier blow. He declared the remonstrants guilty of rebellion. As a punishment, he banished several Protestant ministers, and utterly forbade the exercise of any Protestant worship whatever, in any of the royal towns, including Vienna itself. He communicated with the leading Catholics in the Church and in the State, urging them to act with energy, concert and unanimity. He removed the Protestants from office, and supplied their places with Catholics. He forbade any license to preach or academical degree, or professorship in the universities from being conferred upon any one who did not sign the formulary of the Catholic faith. He ordered a new catechism to be drawn up for universal use in the schools, that there should be no more Protestant education of children; he allowed no town to choose any officer without his approbation, and he refused to ratify any choice which did not fall upon a Catholic. No person was to be admitted to the rights of burghership, until he had taken an oath of submission to the Catholic priesthood. These high-handed measures led to the outbreak of a few insurrections, which the emperor crushed with iron rigor. In the course of a few years, by the vigorous and unrelenting prosecution of these measures, Rhodolph gave the Catholics the ascendency in all his realms. While the Catholics were all united, the Protestants were shamefully divided upon the most trivial points of discipline, or upon abstruse questions in philosophy above the reach of mortal minds. It was as true then, as in the days of our Saviour, that "the children of this world are wiser in their generation than the children of light." Henry IV., of France, who had not then embraced the Catholic faith, was anxious to unite the two great parties of Lutherans and Calvinists, who were as hostile to each other as they were to the Catholics. He sent an ambassador to Germany to urge their union. He entreated them to call a general synod, suggesting, that as they differed only on the single point of the Lord's Supper, it would be easy for them to form some basis of fraternal and harmonious action. The Catholic church received the doctrine, so called, of _transubstantiation_; that is, the bread and wine, used in the Lord's Supper, is converted into the actual body and blood of Jesus Christ, that it is no longer bread and wine, but real flesh and blood; and none the less so, because it does not appear such to our senses. Luther renounced the doctrine of transubstantiation, and adopted, in its stead, what he called _consubstantiation_; that is, that after the consecration of the elements, the body and blood of Christ are substantially _present with_ (cum et sub,) with and under, the substance of the bread and wine. Calvin taught that the bread and wine represented the real body and blood of Christ, and that the body and blood were _spiritually present_ in the sacrament. It is a deplorable exhibition of the weakness of good men, that the Lutherans and the Calvinists should have wasted their energies in contending together upon such a point. But we moderns have no right to boast. Precisely the same spirit is manifested now, and denominations differ and strive together upon questions which the human mind can never settle. The spirit which then animated the two parties may be inferred from the reply of the Lutherans. "The partisans of Calvin," they wrote, "have accumulated such numberless errors in regard to the person of Christ, the communication of His merits and the dignity of human nature; have given such forced explanations of the Scriptures, and adopted so many blasphemies, that the question of the Lord's Supper, far from being the principal, has become the least point of difference. An outward union, merely for worldly purposes, in which each party is suffered to maintain its peculiar tenets, can neither be agreeable to God nor useful to the Church. These considerations induced us to insert into the formulary of concord a condemnation of the Calvinistical errors; and to declare our public decision that false principles should not be covered with the semblance of exterior union, and tolerated under pretense of the right of private judgment, but that all should submit to the Word of God, as the only rule to which their faith and instructions should be conformable." They, in conclusion, very politely informed King Henry IV. himself, that if he wished to unite with them, he must sign their creed. This was sincerity, honesty, but it was the sincerity and honesty of minds but partially disinthralled from the bigotry of the dark ages. While the Protestants were thus unhappily disunited, the pope coöperated with the emperor, and wheeled all his mighty forces into the line to recover the ground which the papal church had lost. Several of the more enlightened of the Protestant princes, seeing all their efforts paralyzed by disunion, endeavored to heal the schism. But the Lutheran leaders would not listen to the Calvinists, nor the Calvinists to the Lutherans, and the masses, as usual, blindly followed their leaders. Several of the Calvinist princes and nobles, the Lutherans refusing to meet with them, united in a confederacy at Heilbrun, and drew up a long list of grievances, declaring that, until they were redressed, they should withhold the succors which the emperor had solicited to repel the Turks. Most of these grievances were very serious, sufficiently so to rouse men to almost any desperation of resistance. But it would be amusing, were it not humiliating, to find among them the complaint that the pope had changed the calendar from the Julian to the Gregorian. By the Julian calendar, or Old Style as it was called, the solar year was estimated at three hundred and sixty-five days and six hours; but it exceeds this by about eleven minutes. As no allowance was made for these minutes, which amount to a day in about one hundred and thirty years, the current year had, in process of ages, advanced ten days beyond the real time. Thus the vernal equinox, which really took place on the 10th of March, was assigned in the calendar to the 21st. To rectify this important error the New Style, or Gregorian calendar, was introduced, so called from Pope Gregory XII. Ten days were dropped after the 4th of October, 1582, and the 5th was called the 15th. This reform of the calendar, correct and necessary as it was, was for a long time adopted only by the Catholic princes, so hostile were the Protestants to any thing whatever which originated from the pope. In their list of grievances they mentioned this most salutary reform as one, stating that the pope and the Jesuits presumed even to change the order of times and years. This confederacy of the Calvinists, unaided by the Lutherans, accomplished nothing; but still, as year after year the disaffection increased, their numbers gradually increased also, until, on the 12th of February, 1603, at Heidelberg they entered into quite a formidable alliance, offensive and defensive. Rhodolph, encouraged by success, pressed his measure of intolerance with renovated vigor. Having quite effectually abolished the Protestant worship in the States of Austria, he turned his attention to Bohemia, where, under the mild government of his father, the Protestants had enjoyed a degree of liberty of conscience hardly known in any other part of Europe. The realm was startled by the promulgation of a decree forbidding both Calvinists and Lutherans from holding any meetings for divine worship, and declaring them incapacitated from holding any official employment whatever. At the same time he abolished all their schools, and either closed all their churches, or placed in them Catholic preachers. These same decrees were also promulgated and these same measures adopted in Hungary. And still the Protestants, insanely quarreling among themselves upon the most abstruse points of theological philosophy, chose rather to be devoured piecemeal by their great enemy than to combine in self-defense. The emperor now turned from his own dominions of Austria, Hungary and Bohemia, where he reigned in undisputed sway, to other States of the empire, which were governed by their own independent rulers and laws, and where the power of the emperor was shadowy and limited. He began with the city of Aix-la-Chapelle, in a Prussian province on the Lower Rhine; sent an army there, took possession of the town, expelled the Protestants from the magistracy, driving some of them into exile, inflicting heavy fines upon others, and abolishing entirely the exercise of the Protestant religion. He then turned to Donauworth, an important city of Bavaria, upon the Upper Danube. This was a Protestant city, having within its walls but few Catholics. There was in the city one Catholic religious establishment, a Benedictine abbey. The friars enjoyed unlimited freedom of conscience and worship within their own walls, but were not permitted to occupy the streets with their processions, performing the forms and ceremonies of the Catholic church. The Catholics, encouraged by the emperor, sent out a procession from the walls of the abbey, with torches, banners, relics and all the pageants of Catholic worship. The magistrates stopped the procession, took away their banners and sent them back to the abbey, and then suffered the procession to proceed. Soon after the friars got up another procession on a funeral occasion. The magistrates, apprehensive that this was a trap to excite them to some opposition which would render it plausible for the emperor to interfere, suffered the procession to proceed unmolested. In a few days the monks repeated the experiment. The populace had now become excited, and there were threats of violence. The magistrates, fearful of the consequences, did every thing in their power to soothe the people, and urged them, by earnest proclamation, to abstain from all tumult. For some time the procession, displaying all the hated pomp of papal worship, paraded the streets undisturbed. But at length the populace became ungovernable, attacked the monks, demolished their pageants and pelted them with mire back into the convent. This was enough. The emperor published the ban of the empire, and sent the Duke of Bavaria with an army to execute the decree. Resistance was hopeless. The troops took possession of the town, abolished the Protestant religion, and delivered the churches to the Catholics. The Protestants now saw that there was no hope for them but in union. Thus driven together by an outward pressure which was every day growing more menacing and severe, the chiefs of the Protestant party met at Aschhausen and established a confederacy to continue for ten years. Thus united, they drew up a list of grievances, and sent an embassy to present their demands to the emperor. And now came a very serious turn in the fortunes of Rhodolph. Notwithstanding the armistice which had been concluded with the Turks by Rhodolph, a predatory warfare continued to rage along the borders. Neither the emperor nor the sultan, had they wished it, could prevent fiery spirits, garrisoned in fortresses frowning at each other, from meeting occasionally in hostile encounter. And both parties were willing that their soldiers should have enough to do to keep up their courage and their warlike spirit. Aggression succeeding aggression, sometimes on one side and sometimes on the other, the sultan at last, in a moment of exasperation, resolved to break the truce. A large army of Turks invaded Croatia, took several fortresses, and marching up the valley of the Save, were opening before them a route into the heart of the Austrian States. The emperor hastily gathered an army to oppose them. They met before Siseck, at the confluence of the Kulpa and the Save. The Turks were totally defeated, with the loss of twelve thousand men. Exasperated by the defeat, the sultan roused his energies anew, and war again raged in all its horrors. The advantage was with the Turks, and they gradually forced their way up the valley of the Danube, taking fortress after fortress, till they were in possession of the important town of Raab, within a hundred miles of Vienna. Sigismond, the waivode or governor of Transylvania, an energetic, high-spirited man, had, by his arms, brought the provinces of Wallachia and Moldavia under subjection to him. Having attained such power, he was galled at the idea of holding his government under the protection of the Turks. He accordingly abandoned the sultan, and entered into a coalition with the emperor. The united armies fell furiously upon the Turks, and drove them back to Constantinople. The sultan, himself a man of exceedingly ferocious character, was thoroughly aroused by this disgrace. He raised an immense army, placed himself at its head, and in 1596 again invaded Hungary. He drove the Austrians everywhere before him, and but for the lateness of the season would have bombarded Vienna. Sigismond, in the hour of victory, sold Transylvania to Rhodolph for the governorship of some provinces in Silesia, and a large annual pension. There was some fighting before the question was fully settled in favor of the emperor, and then he placed the purchased and the conquered province under the government of the imperial general Basta. The rule of Basta was so despotic that the Transylvanians rose in revolt, and under an intrepid chief, Moses Tzekeli, appealed to the Turks for aid. The Turks were rejoiced again to find the Christians divided, and hastened to avail themselves of the coöperation of the disaffected. The Austrians were driven from Transylvania, and the Turks aided in crowning Tzekeli Prince of Transylvania, under the protection of the Porte. The Austrians, however, soon returned in greater force, killed Tzekeli in the confusion of battle, and reconquered the country. During all this time wretched Hungary was ravaged with incessant wars between the Turks and Austrians. Army after army swept to and fro over the smoldering cities and desolated plains. Neither party gained any decisive advantage, while Hungary was exposed to misery which no pen can describe. Cities were bombarded, now by the Austrians and now by the Turks, villages were burned, harvests trodden down, every thing eatable was consumed. Outrages were perpetrated upon the helpless population by the ferocious Turks which can not be told. The Hungarians lost all confidence in Rhodolph. The bigoted emperor was so much engaged in the attempt to extirpate what he called heresy from his realms, that he neglected to send armies sufficiently strong to protect Hungary from these ravages. He could have done this without much difficulty; but absorbed in his hostility to Protestantism, he merely sent sufficient troops to Hungary to keep the country in a constant state of warfare. He filled every important governmental post in Hungary with Catholics and foreigners. To all the complaints of the Hungarians he turned a deaf ear; and his own Austrian troops frequently rivaled the Turks in devastation and pillage. At the same time he issued the most intolerant edicts, depriving the Protestants of all their rights, and endeavoring to force the Roman Catholic religion upon the community. He allowed, and even encouraged, his rapacious generals to insult and defraud the Protestant Hungarian nobles, seizing their castles, confiscating their estates and driving them into exile. This oppression at last became unendurable. The people were driven to despair. One of the most illustrious nobles of Hungary, a magnate of great wealth and distinction, Stephen Botskoi, repaired to Prague to inform the emperor of the deplorable state of Hungary and to seek redress. He was treated with the utmost indignity; was detained for hours in the ante-chamber of the emperor, where he encountered the most cutting insults from the minions of the court. The indignation of the high-spirited noble was roused to the highest pitch. And when, on his return to Hungary, he found his estates plundered and devastated by order of the imperial governor, he was all ready to head an insurrection. CHAPTER XIII. RHODOLPH III. AND MATTHIAS. From 1604 to 1609. Botskoi's Manifesto.--Horrible Suffering in Transylvania.--Character of Botskoi.--Confidence of the Protestants.--Superstition of Rhodolph.--His Mystic Studies.--Acquirements of Matthias.--Schemes of Matthias.--His Increasing Power.--Treaty with the Turks.--Demands on Rhodolph.--The Compromise.--Perfidy of Matthias.--The Margravite.--Filibustering.--The People's Diet.--A Hint to Royalty.--The Bloodless Triumph.--Demands of the Germans.--Address of the Prince of Anhalt to the King. Stephen Botskoi issued a spirited manifesto to his countrymen, urging them to seek by force of arms that redress which they could obtain in no other way. The Hungarians flocked in crowds to his standard. Many soldiers deserted from the service of the emperor and joined the insurrection. Botskoi soon found himself in possession of a force sufficiently powerful to meet the Austrian troops in the field. The two hostile armies soon met in the vicinity of Cassau. The imperial troops were defeated with great slaughter, and the city of Cassau fell into the hands of Botskoi; soon his victorious troops took several other important fortresses. The inhabitants of Transylvania, encouraged by the success of Botskoi, and detesting the imperial rule, also in great numbers crowded his ranks and intreated him to march into Transylvania. He promptly obeyed their summons. The misery of the Transylvanians was, if possible, still greater than that of the Hungarians. Their country presented but a wide expanse of ruin and starvation. Every aspect of comfort and industry was obliterated. The famishing inhabitants were compelled to use the most disgusting animals for food; and when these were gone, in many cases they went to the grave-yard, in the frenzied torments of hunger, and devoured the decaying bodies of the dead. Pestilence followed in the train of these woes, and the land was filled with the dying and the dead. The Turks marched to the aid of Botskoi to expel the Austrians. Even the sway of the Mussulman was preferable to that of the bigoted Rhodolph. Hungary, Transylvania and Turkey united, and the detested Austrians were driven out of Transylvania, and Botskoi, at the head of his victorious army, and hailed by thousands as the deliverer of Transylvania, was inaugurated prince of the province. He then returned to Hungary, where an immense Turkish army received him, in the plains of Rahoz, with regal honors. Here a throne was erected. The banners of the majestic host fluttered in the breeze, and musical bands filled the air with their triumphal strains as the regal diadem was placed upon the brow of Botskoi, and he was proclaimed King of Hungary. The Sultan Achment sent, with his congratulations to the victorious noble, a saber of exquisite temper and finish, and a gorgeous standard. The grand vizier himself placed the royal diadem upon his brow. Botskoi was a nobleman in every sense of the word. He thought it best publicly to accept these honors in gratitude to the sultan for his friendship and aid, and also to encourage and embolden the Hungarians to retain what they had already acquired. He knew that there were bloody battles still before them, for the emperor would doubtless redouble his efforts to regain his Hungarian possessions. At the same time Botskoi, in the spirit of true patriotism, was not willing even to appear to have usurped the government through the energies of the sword. He therefore declared that he should not claim the crown unless he should be freely elected by the nobles; and that he accepted these honors simply as tokens of the confidence of the allied army, and as a means of strengthening their power to resist the emperor. The campaign was now urged with great vigor, and nearly all of Hungary was conquered. Such was the first great disaster which the intolerance and folly of Rhodolph brought upon him. The Turks and the Hungarians were now good friends, cordially coöperating. A few more battles would place them in possession of the whole of Hungary, and then, in their alliance they could defy all the power of the emperor, and penetrate even the very heart of his hereditary dominions of Austria. Rhodolph, in this sudden peril, knew not where to look for aid. The Protestants, who constituted one half of the physical force, not only of Bohemia and of the Austrian States, but of all Germany, had been insulted and oppressed beyond all hope of reconciliation. They dreaded the papal emperor more than the Mohammedan sultan. They were ready to hail Botskoi as their deliverer from intolerable despotism, and to swell the ranks of his army. Botskoi was a Protestant, and the sympathies of the Protestants all over Germany were with him. Elated by his advance, the Protestants withheld all contributions from the emperor, and began to form combinations in favor of the Protestant chief. Rhodolph was astonished at this sudden reverse, and quite in dismay. He had no resource but to implore the aid of the Spanish court. Rhodolph was as superstitious as he was bigoted and cruel. Through the mysteries of alchymy he had been taught to believe that his life would be endangered by one of his own blood. The idea haunted him by night and by day; he was to be assassinated, and by a near relative. He was afraid to marry lest his own child might prove his destined murderer. He was afraid to have his brothers marry lest it might be a nephew who was to perpetrate the deed. He did not dare to attend church, or to appear any where in public without taking the greatest precautions against any possibility of attack. The galleries of his palace were so arranged with windows in the roof, that he could pass from one apartment to another sheltered by impenetrable walls. This terror, which pursued him every hour, palsied his energies; and while the Turks were drawing nearer to his capital, and Hungary had broken from his sway, and insurrection was breaking out in all parts of his dominions, he secluded himself in the most retired apartments of his palace at Prague, haunted by visions of terror, as miserable himself as he had already made millions of his subjects. He devoted himself to the study of the mystic sciences of astrology and alchymy. He became irritable, morose, and melancholy even to madness. Foreign ambassadors could not get admission to his presence. His religion, consisting entirely in ecclesiastical rituals and papal dogmas, not in Christian morals, could not dissuade him from the most degrading sensual vice. Low-born mistresses, whom he was continually changing, became his only companions, and thus sunk in sin, shame and misery, he virtually abandoned his ruined realms to their fate. Rhodolph had received the empire from the hands of his noble father in a state of the very highest prosperity. In thirty years, by shameful misgovernment, he had carried it to the brink of ruin. Rhodolph's third brother, Matthias, was now forty-nine years of age. He had been educated by the illustrious Busbequias, whose mind had been liberalized by study in the most celebrated universities of Flanders, France and Italy. His teacher had passed many years as an ambassador in the court of the sultan, and thus had been able to give his pupil a very intimate acquaintance with the resources, the military tactics, the manners and customs of the Turks. He excelled in military exercises, and was passionately devoted to the art of war. In all respects he was the reverse of his brother--energetic, frank, impulsive. The two brothers, so dissimilar, had no ideas in common, and were always involved in bickerings. The Netherlands had risen in revolt against the infamous Philip II. of Spain. They chose the intrepid and warlike Matthias as their leader. With alacrity he assumed the perilous post. The rivalry of the chiefs thwarted his plans, and he resigned his post and returned to Austria, where his brother, the emperor, refused even to see him, probably fearing assassination. Matthias took up his residence at Lintz, where he lived for some time in obscurity and penury. His imperial brother would neither give him help nor employment. The restless prince fretted like a tiger in his cage. In 1595 Rhodolph's second brother, Ernest, died childless, and thus Matthias became heir presumptive to the crown of Austria. From that time Rhodolph made a change, and intrusted him with high offices. Still the brothers were no nearer to each other in affection. Rhodolph dreaded the ambition and was jealous of the rising power of his brother. He no longer dared to treat him ignominiously, lest his brother should be provoked to some desperate act of retaliation. On the other hand, Matthias despised the weakness and superstition of Rhodolph. The increasing troubles in the realm and the utter inefficiency of Rhodolph, convinced Matthias that the day was near when he must thrust Rhodolph from the throne he disgraced, and take his seat upon it, or the splendid hereditary domains which had descended to them from their ancestors would pass from their hands forever. With this object in view, he did all he could to conciliate the Catholics, while he attempted to secure the Protestants by promising to return to the principles of toleration established by his father, Maximilian. Matthias rapidly increased in popularity, and as rapidly Rhodolph was sinking into disgrace. Catholics and Protestants saw alike that the ruin of Austria was impending, and that apparently there was no hope but in the deposition of Rhodolph and the enthronement of Matthias. It was not difficult to accomplish this revolution, and yet it required energy, secrecy and an extended combination. Even the weakest reigning monarch has power in his hands which can only be wrested from him by both strength and skill. Matthias first gained over to his plan his younger brother, Maximilian, and two of his cousins, princes of the Styrian line. They entered into a secret agreement, by which they declared that in consequence of the incapacity of Rhodolph, he was to be considered as deposed by the will of Providence, and that Matthias was entitled to the sovereignty as head of the house of Austria. Matthias then gained, by the varied arts of diplomatic bargaining, the promised support of several other princes. He purchased the coöperation of Botskoi by surrendering to him the whole of Transylvania, and all of Hungary to the river Theiss, which, including Transylvania, constitutes one half of the majestic kingdom. Matthias agreed to grant general toleration to all Protestants, both Lutherans and Calvinists, and also to render them equally eligible with the Catholics to all offices of emolument and honor. Both parties then agreed to unite against the Turks if they refused to accede to honorable terms of peace. The sultan, conscious that such a union would be more than he could successfully oppose, listened to the conditions of peace when they afterwards made them, as he had never condescended to listen before. It is indicative of the power which the Turks had at that day attained, that a truce with the sultan for twenty years, allowing each party to retain possession of the territories which they then held, was purchased by paying a sum outright, amounting to two hundred thousand dollars. The annual tribute, however, was no longer to be paid, and thus Christendom was released from the degradation of vassalage to the Turk. Rhodolph, who had long looked with a suspicious eye upon Matthias, watching him very narrowly, began now to see indications of the plot. He therefore, aided by the counsel and the energy of the King of Spain, who was implacable in his hostility to Matthias, resolved to make his cousin Ferdinand, a Styrian prince, his heir to succeed him upon the throne. He conferred upon Ferdinand exalted dignities; appointed him to preside in his stead at a diet at Ratisbon, and issued a proclamation full of most bitter recriminations against Matthias. Matters had now come to such a pass that Matthias was compelled either to bow in humble submission to his brother, or by force of arms to execute his purposes. With such an alternative he was not a man long to delay his decision. Still he advanced in his plans, though firmly, with great circumspection. To gain the Protestants was to gain one half of the physical power of united Austria, and more than one half of its energy and intelligence. He appointed a rendezvous for his troops at Znaim in Moravia, and while Rhodolph was timidly secluding himself in his palace at Prague, Matthias left Vienna with ten thousand men, and marched to meet them. He was received by the troops assembled at Znaim with enthusiasm. Having thus collected an army of twenty-five thousand men, he entered Bohemia. On the 10th of May, 1608, he reached Craslau, within sixty miles of Prague. Great multitudes now crowded around him and openly espoused his cause. He now declared openly and to all, that it was his intention to depose his brother and claim for himself the government of Hungary, Austria and Bohemia. He then urged his battalions onward, and pressed with rapid march towards Prague. Rhodolph was now roused to some degree of energy. He summoned all his supporters to rally around him. It was a late hour for such a call, but the Catholic nobles generally, all over the kingdom, were instantly in motion. Many Protestant nobles also attended the assembly, hoping to extort from the emperor some measures of toleration. The emperor was so frightened that he was ready to promise almost any thing. He even crept from his secluded apartments and presided over the meeting in person. The Protestant nobles drew up a paper demanding the same toleration which Maximilian had granted, with the additional permission to build churches and to have their own burying-grounds. With this paper, to which five or six hundred signatures were attached, they went to the palace, demanded admission to the emperor, and required him immediately to give his assent to them. It was not necessary for them to add any threat, for the emperor knew that there was an Austrian and Hungarian army within a few hours' march. While matters were in this state, commissioners from Matthias arrived to inform the king that he must cede the crown to his brother and retire into the Tyrol. The emperor, in terror, inquired, "What shall I do?" The Protestants demanded an immediate declaration, either that he would or would not grant their request. His friends told him that resistance was unavailing, and that he must come to an accommodation. Still the emperor had now thirty-six thousand troops in and around Prague. They were, however, inspired with no enthusiasm for his person, and it was quite doubtful whether they would fight. A few skirmishes took place between the advance guards with such results as to increase Rhodolph's alarm. He consequently sent envoys to his brother. They met at Liebau, and after a negotiation of four days they made a partial compromise, by which Rhodolph ceded to Matthias, without reservation, Hungary, Austria and Moravia. Matthias was also declared to be the successor to the crown of Bohemia should Rhodolph die without issue male, and Matthias was immediately to assume the title of "appointed King of Bohemia." The crown and scepter of Hungary were surrendered to Matthias. He received them with great pomp at the head of his army, and then leading his triumphant battalions out of Bohemia, he returned to Vienna and entered the city with all the military parade of a returning conqueror. Matthias had now gained his great object, but he was not at all inclined to fulfill his promises. He assembled the nobles of Austria, to receive from them their oaths of allegiance. But the Protestants, taught caution by long experience, wished first to see the decree of toleration which he had promised. Many of the Protestants, at a distance from the capital, not waiting for the issuing of the decree, but relying upon his promise, reëstablished their worship, and the Lord of Inzendorf threw open his chapel to the citizens of the town. But Matthias was now disposed to play the despot. He arrested the Lord of Inzendorf, and closed his church. He demanded of all the lords, Protestant as well as Catholic, an unconditional oath of allegiance, giving vague promises, that perhaps at some future time he would promulgate a decree of toleration, but declaring that he was not bound to do so, on the miserable quibble that, as he had received from Rhodolph a hereditary title, he was not bound to grant any thing but what he had received. The Protestants were alarmed and exasperated. They grasped their arms; they retired in a body from Vienna to Hern; threw garrisons and provisions into several important fortresses; ordered a levy of every fifth man; sent to Hungary and Moravia to rally their friends there, and with amazing energy and celerity formed a league for the defense of their faith. Matthias was now alarmed. He had not anticipated such energetic action, and he hastened to Presburg, the capital of Hungary, to secure, if possible, a firm seat upon the throne. A large force of richly caparisoned troops followed him, and he entered the capital with splendor, which he hoped would dazzle the Hungarians. The regal crown and regalia, studded with priceless jewels, which belonged to Hungary, he took with him, with great parade. Hungary had been deprived of these treasures, which were the pride of the nation, for seventy years. But the Protestant nobles were not to be cajoled with such tinsel. They remained firm in their demands, and refused to accept him as their sovereign until the promised toleration was granted. Their claims were very distinct and intelligible, demanding full toleration for both Calvinists and Lutherans, and equal eligibility for Protestants with Catholics, to all governmental offices; none but native Hungarians were to be placed in office; the king was to reside in Hungary, and when necessarily absent, was to intrust the government to a regent, chosen jointly by the king and the nobles; Jesuits were not to be admitted into the kingdom; no foreign troops were to be admitted, unless there was war with the Turks, and the king was not to declare war without the consent of the nobles. Matthias was very reluctant to sign such conditions, for he was very jealous of his newly-acquired power as a sovereign. But a refusal would have exposed him to a civil war, with such forces arrayed against him as to render the result at least doubtful. The Austrian States were already in open insurrection. The emissaries of Rhodolph were busy, fanning the flames of discontent, and making great promises to those who would restore Rhodolph to the throne. Intolerant and odious as Rhodolph had been, his great reverses excited sympathy, and many were disposed to regard Matthias but as a usurper. Thus influenced, Matthias not only signed all the conditions, but was also constrained to carry them, into immediate execution. These conditions being fulfilled, the nobles met on the 19th of November, 1606, and elected Matthias king, and inaugurated him with the customary forms. Matthias now returned to Vienna, to quell the insurrection in the Austrian States. The two countries were so entirely independent of each other, though now under the same ruler, that he had no fear that his Hungarian subjects would interfere at all in the internal administration of Austria. Matthias was resolved to make up for the concessions he had granted the Hungarians, by ruling with more despotic sway in Austria. The pope proffered him his aid. The powerful bishops of Passau and Vienna assured him of efficient support, and encouraged the adoption of energetic measures. Thus strengthened Matthias, who was so pliant and humble in Hungary, assumed the most haughty airs of the sovereign in Austria. He peremptorily ordered the Protestants to be silent, and to cease their murmurings, or he would visit them with the most exemplary punishment. North-east of the duchy of Austria, and lying between the kingdoms of Hungary and Bohemia, was the province of Moravia. This territory was about the size of the State of Massachusetts, and its chief noble, or governor, held the title of margrave, or marquis. Hence the province, which belonged to the Austrian empire, was called the margraviate of Moravia. It contained a population of a little over a million. The nobles of Moravia immediately made common cause with those of Austria, for they knew that they must share the same fate. Matthias was again alarmed, and brought to terms. On the 16th of March, 1609, he signed a capitulation, which restored to all the Austrian provinces all the toleration which they had enjoyed under Maximilian II. The nobles then, of all the States of Austria, took the oath of allegiance to Matthias. The ambitious monarch, having thus for succeeded, looked with a covetous eye towards Transylvania. That majestic province, on the eastern borders of Hungary, being three times the size of Massachusetts, and containing a population of about two millions, would prove a splendid addition to the Hungarian kingdom. While Matthias was secretly encouraging what in modern times and republican parlance is called a filibustering expedition, for the sake of annexing Transylvania to the area of Hungary, a new object of ambition, and one still more alluring, opened before him. The Protestants in Bohemia were quite excited when they heard of the great privileges which their brethren in Hungary, and in the Austrian provinces had extorted from Matthias. This rendered them more restless under the intolerable burdens imposed upon them. Soon after the armies of Matthias had withdrawn from Bohemia, Rhodolph, according to his promise, summoned a diet to deliberate upon the state of affairs. The Protestants, who despised Rhodolph, attended the diet, resolved to demand reform, and, if necessary, to seek it by force of arms. They at once assumed a bold front, and refused to discuss any civil affairs whatever, until the freedom of religious worship, which they had enjoyed under Maximilian, was restored to them. But Rhodolph, infatuated, and under the baleful influence of the Jesuits, refused to listen to their appeal. Matthias, informed of this state of affairs, saw that there was a fine opportunity for him to place himself at the head of the Protestants, who constituted not only a majority in Bohemia, but were also a majority in the diet. He therefore sent his emissaries among them to encourage them with assurances of his sympathy and aid. The diet which Rhodolph had summoned, separated without coming to other result than rousing thoroughly the spirit of the Protestants. They boldly called another diet to meet in May, in the city of Prague itself, under the very shadow of the palace of Rhodolph, and sent deputies to Matthias, and to the Protestant princes generally of the German empire, soliciting their support. Rhodolph issued a proclamation forbidding them to meet. Regardless of this injunction they met, at the appointed time and place, opened the meeting with imposing ceremonies, and made quiet preparation to repel force with force. These preparations were so effectually made that upon an alarm being given that the troops of Rhodolph were approaching to disperse the assembly, in less than an hour twelve hundred mounted knights and more than ten thousand foot soldiers surrounded their hall as a guard. This was a very broad hint to the emperor, and it surprisingly enlightened him. He began to bow and to apologize, and to asserverate upon his word of honor that he meant to do what was right, and from denunciations, he passed by a single step to cajolery and fawning. It was, however, only his intention to gain time till he could secure the coöperation of the pope, and other Catholic princes. The Protestants, however, were not to be thus deluded. As unmindful of his protestations as they had been of his menaces, they proceeded resolutely in establishing an energetic organization for the defense of their civil and religious rights. They decreed the levying of an army, and appointed three of the most distinguished nobles as generals. The decree was hardly passed before it was carried into execution, and an army of three thousand foot soldiers, and two thousand horsemen was assembled as by magic, and their numbers were daily increasing. Rhodolph, still cloistered in his palace, looked with amazement upon this rising storm. He had no longer energy for any decisive action. With mulish obstinacy he would concede nothing, neither had he force of character to marshal any decisive resistance. But at last he saw that the hand of Matthias was also in the movement; that his ambitious, unrelenting brother was cooperating with his foes, and would inevitably hurl him from the throne of Bohemia, as he had already done from the kingdom of Hungary and from the dukedom of Austria. He was panic-stricken by this sudden revelation, and in the utmost haste issued a decree, dated July 5th, 1609, granting to the Protestants full toleration of religious worship, and every other right they had demanded. The despotic old king became all of a sudden as docile and pliant as a child. He assured his faithful and well-beloved Protestant subjects that they might worship God in their own chapels without any molestation; that they might build churches that they might establish schools for their children; that their clergy might meet in ecclesiastical councils; that they might choose chiefs, who should be confirmed by the sovereign, to watch over their religious privileges and to guard against any infringement of this edict; and finally, all ordinances contrary to this act of free and full toleration, which might hereafter be issued, either by the present sovereign or any of his successors, were declared null and void. The Protestants behaved nobly in this hour of bloodless triumph. Their demands were reasonable and honorable, and they sought no infringement whatever of the rights of others. Their brethren of Silesia had aided them in this great achievement. The duchy of Silesia was then dependent upon Bohemia, and was just north of Moldavia. It contained a population of about a million and a half, scattered over a territory of about fifteen thousand square miles. The Protestants demanded that the Silesians should share in the decree. "Most certainly," replied the amiable Rhodolph. An act of general amnesty for all political offenses was then passed, and peace was restored to Germany. Never was more forcibly seen, than on this occasion, the power of the higher classes over the masses of the people. In fact, popular tumults, disgraceful mobs, are almost invariably excited by the higher classes, who push the mob on while they themselves keep in the background. It was now for the interest of the leaders, both Catholic and Protestant, that there should be peace, and the populace immediately imbibed that spirit. The Protestant chapel stood by the side of the Romish cathedral, and the congregations mingled freely in courtesy and kindness, as they passed to and from their places of worship. Mutual forbearance and good will seemed at once to be restored. And now the several cities of the German empire, where religious freedom had been crushed by the emperor, began to throng his palace with remonstrants and demands. They, united, resolved at every hazard to attain the privileges which their brethren in Bohemia and Austria had secured. The Prince of Anhalt, an able and intrepid man, was dispatched to Prague with a list of grievances. In very plain language he inveighed against the government of the emperor, and demanded for Donauworth and other cities of the German empire, the civil and religious freedom of which Rhodolph had deprived them; declaring, without any softening of expression, that if the emperor did not peacefully grant their requests, they would seek redress by force of arms. The humiliated and dishonored emperor tried to pacify the prince by vague promises and honeyed words, to which the prince replied in language which at once informed the emperor that the time for dalliance had passed. "I fear," said the Prince of Anhalt, in words which sovereigns are not accustomed to hear, "that this answer will rather tend to prolong the dispute than to tranquillize the united princes. I am bound in duty to represent to your imperial majesty the dangerous flame which I now see bursting forth in Germany. Your counselors are ill adapted to extinguish this rising flame--those counselors who have brought you into such imminent danger, and who have nearly destroyed public confidence, credit and prosperity throughout your dominions. I must likewise exhort your imperial majesty to take all important affairs into consideration yourself, intreating you to recollect the example of Julius Cæsar, who, had he not neglected to read the note presented to him as he was going to the capitol, would not have received the twenty wounds which caused his death." This last remark threw the emperor into a paroxysm of terror. He had long been trembling from the apprehension of assassination. This allusion to Julius Cæsar he considered an intimation that his hour was at hand. His terror was so great that Prince Anhalt had to assure him, again and again, that he intended no such menace, and that he was not aware that any conspiracy was thought of any where, for his death. The emperor was, however, so alarmed that he promised any thing and every thing. He doubtless intended to fulfill his promise, but subsequent troubles arose which absorbed all his remaining feeble energies, and obliterated past engagements from his mind. Matthias was watching all the events with the intensest eagerness, as affording a brilliant prospect to him, to obtain the crown of Bohemia, and the scepter of the empire. This ambition consumed his days and his nights, verifying the adage, "uneasy lies the head which wears a crown." CHAPTER XIV. RHODOLPH III. AND MATTHIAS. From 1609 to 1612. Difficulties as to the Succession.--Hostility of Henry IV. to the House of Austria.--Assassination of Henry IV.--Similarity in Sully's and Napoleon's Plans.--Exultation of the Catholics.--The Brothers' Compact.--How Rhodolph Kept It.--Seizure of Prague.--Rhodolph a Prisoner.--The King's Abdication.--Conditions Attached to the Crown.--Rage of Rhodolph.--Matthias Elected King.--The Emperor's Residence.--Rejoicings of the Protestants.--Reply of the Ambassadors.--The Nuremburg Diet.--The Unkindest Cut of All.--Rhodolph's Humiliation And Death. And now suddenly arose another question which threatened to involve all Europe in war. The Duke of Cleves, Juliers, and Berg died without issue. This splendid duchy, or rather combination of duchies, spread over a territory of several thousand square miles, and was inhabited by over a million of inhabitants. There were many claimants to the succession, and the question was so singularly intricate and involved, that there were many who seemed to have an equal right to the possession. The emperor, by virtue of his imperial authority, issued an edict, putting the territory in sequestration, till the question should be decided by the proper tribunals, and, in the meantime, placing the territory in the hands of one of his own family as administrator. This act, together with the known wishes of Spain to prevent so important a region, lying near the Netherlands, from falling into the hands of the Protestants, immediately changed the character of the dispute into a religious contest, and, as by magic, all Europe wheeled into line on the one side or the other, Every other question was lost sight of, in the all-absorbing one, Shall the duchy fall into the hands of the Protestants or the Catholics? Henry IV. of France zealously espoused the cause of the Protestants. He was very hostile to the house of Austria for the assistance it had lent to that celebrated league which for so many years had deluged France in blood, and kept Henry IV. from the throne; and he was particularly anxious to humble that proud power. Though Henry IV., after fighting for many years the battles of Protestantism, had, from motives of policy, avowed the Romish faith, he could never forget his mother's instructions, his early predilections and his old friends and supporters, the Protestants; and his sympathies were always with them. Henry IV., as sagacious and energetic as he was ambitious, saw that he could never expect a more favorable moment to strike the house of Austria than the one then presented. The Emperor Rhodolph was weak, and universally unpopular, not only with his own subjects, but throughout Germany. The Protestants were all inimical to him, and he was involved in desperate antagonism with his energetic brother Matthias. Still he was a formidable foe, as, in a war involving religious questions, he could rally around him all the Catholic powers of Europe. Henry IV., preparatory to pouring his troops into the German empire, entered into secret negotiations with England, Denmark, Switzerland, Venice, whom he easily purchased with offers of plunder, and with the Protestant princes of minor power on the continent. There were not a few, indifferent upon religious matters, who were ready to engage in any enterprise which would humble Spain and Austria. Henry collected a large force on the frontiers of Germany, and, with ample materials of war, was prepared, at a given signal, to burst into the territory of the empire. The Catholics watched these movements with alarm, and began also to organize. Rhodolph, who, from his position as emperor, should have been their leader, was a wretched hypochondriac, trembling before imaginary terrors, a prey to the most gloomy superstitions, and still concealed in the secret chambers of his palace. He was a burden to his party, and was regarded by them with contempt. Matthias was watching him, as the tiger watches its prey. To human eyes it would appear that the destiny of the house of Austria was sealed. Just at that critical point, one of those unexpected events occurred, which so often rise to thwart the deepest laid schemes of man. On the 14th of May, 1610, Henry IV. left the Louvre in his carriage to visit his prime minister, the illustrious Sully, who was sick. The city was thronged with the multitudes assembled to witness the triumphant entry of the queen, who had just been crowned. It was a beautiful spring morning, and the king sat in his carriage with several of his nobles, the windows of his carriage being drawn up. Just as the carriage was turning up from the rue St. Honore into the rue Ferronnerie, the passage was found blocked up by two carts. The moment the carriage stopped, a man sprung from the crowd upon one of the spokes of the wheel, and grasping a part of the coach with his right hand, with his left plunged a dagger to the hilt into the heart of Henry IV. Instantly withdrawing it, he repeated the blow, and with nervous strength again penetrated the heart. The king dropped dead into the arms of his friends, the blood gushing from the wound and from his mouth. The wretched assassin, a fanatic monk, Francis Ravaillac, was immediately seized by the guard. With difficulty they protected him from being torn in pieces by the populace. He was reserved for a more terrible fate, and was subsequently put to death by the most frightful tortures human ingenuity could devise. The poniard of the assassin changed the fate of Europe. Henry IV. had formed one of the grandest plans which ever entered the human mind. Though it is not at all probable that he could have executed it, the attempt, with the immense means he had at his disposal, and with his energy as a warrior and diplomatist, would doubtless have entirely altered the aspect of human affairs. There was very much in his plan to secure the approval of all those enlightened men who were mourning over the incessant and cruel wars with which Europe was ever desolated. His intention was to reconstruct Europe into fifteen States, as nearly uniform in size and power as possible. These States were, according to their own choice, to be monarchical or republican, and were to be associated on a plan somewhat resembling that of the United States of North America. In each State the majority were to decide which religion, whether Protestant or Catholic, should be established. The Catholics were all to leave the Protestant States, and assemble in their own. In like manner the Protestants were to abandon the Catholic kingdoms. This was the very highest point to which the spirit of toleration had then attained. All Pagans and Mohammedans were to be driven out of Europe into Asia. A civil tribunal was to be organized to settle all national difficulties, so that there should be no more war. There was to be a standing army belonging to the confederacy, to preserve the peace, and enforce its decrees, consisting of two hundred and seventy thousand infantry, fifty thousand cavalry, two hundred cannon, and one hundred and twenty ships of war. This plan was by no means so chimerical as at first glance it might seem to be. The sagacious Sully examined it in all its details, and gave it his cordial support. The coöperation of two or three of the leading powers would have invested the plan with sufficient moral and physical support to render its success even probable. But the single poniard of the monk Ravaillac arrested it all. The Emperor Napoleon I. had formed essentially the same plan, with the same humane desire to put an end to interminable wars; but he had adopted far nobler principles of toleration. "One of my great plans," said he at St. Helena, "was the rejoining, the concentration of those same geographical nations which have been disunited and parcelled out by revolution and policy. There are dispersed in Europe upwards of thirty millions of French, fifteen millions of Spaniards, fifteen millions of Italians, and thirty millions of Germans. It was my intention to incorporate these several people each into one nation. It would have been a noble thing to have advanced into posterity with such a train, and attended by the blessings of future ages. I felt myself worthy of this glory. "After this summary simplification, it would have been possible to indulge the chimera of the _beau ideal_ of civilization. In this state of things there would have been some chance of establishing in every country a unity of codes, of principles, of opinions, of sentiments, views and interests. Then perhaps, by the help of the universal diffusion of knowledge, one might have thought of attempting in the great human family the application of the American Congress, or the Amphictyons of Greece. What a perspective of power, grandeur, happiness and prosperity would thus have appeared. "The concentration of thirty or forty millions of Frenchmen was completed and perfected. That of fifteen millions of Spaniards was nearly accomplished. Because I did not subdue the Spaniards, it will henceforth be argued that they were invincible, for nothing is more common than to convert accident into principle. But the fact is that they were actually conquered, and, at the very moment when they escaped me, the Cortes of Cadiz were secretly in treaty with me. They were not delivered either by their own resistance or by the efforts of the English, but by the reverses which I sustained at different points, and, above all, by the error I committed in transferring my whole forces to the distance of three thousand miles from them. Had it not been for this, the Spanish government would have been shortly consolidated, the public mind would have been tranquilized, and hostile parties would have been rallied together. Three or four years would have restored the Spaniards to profound peace and brilliant prosperity. They would have become a compact nation, and I should have well deserved their gratitude, for I should have saved them from the tyranny by which they are now oppressed, and the terrible agitations which await them. "With regard to the fifteen millions of Italians, their concentration was already far advanced; it only wanted maturity. The people were daily becoming more firmly established in the unity of principles and legislation, and also in the unity of thought and feeling--that certain and infallible cement of human thought and concentration. The union of Piedmont to France, and the junction of Parma, Tuscany and Rome, were, in my mind, only temporary measures, intended merely to guarantee and promote the national education of the Italians. The portions of Italy that were united to France, though that union might have been regarded as the result of invasion on our part, were, in spite of their Italian patriotism, the very places that continued most attached to us. "All the south of Europe, therefore, would soon have been rendered compact in point of locality, views, opinions, sentiments and interests. In this state of things, what would have been the weight of all the nations of the North? What human efforts could have broken through so strong a barrier? The concentration of the Germans must have been effected more gradually, and therefore I had done no more than simplify their monstrous complication. Not that they were unprepared for concentralization; on the contrary, they were too well prepared for it, and they might have blindly risen in reaction against us before they had comprehended our designs. How happens it that no German prince has yet formed a just notion of the spirit of his nation, and turned it to good account? Certainly if Heaven had made me a prince of Germany, amid the critical events of our times I should infallibly have governed the thirty millions of Germans combined; and, from what I know of them, I think I may venture to affirm that if they had once elected and proclaimed me they would not have forsaken me, and I should never have been at St. Helena. "At all events," the emperor continued, after a moment's pause, "this concentration will be brought about sooner or later by the very force of events. The impulse is given, and I think that since my fall and the destruction of my system, no grand equilibrium can possibly be established in Europe except by the concentration and confederation of the principal nations. The sovereign who in the first great conflict shall sincerely embrace the cause of the people, will find himself at the head of Europe, and may attempt whatever he pleases." Thus similar were the plans of these two most illustrious men. But from this digression let us return to the affairs of Austria. With the death of Henry IV., fell the stupendous plan which his genius conceived, and which his genius alone could execute. The Protestants, all over Europe, regarded his death as a terrible blow. Still they did not despair of securing the contested duchy for a Protestant prince. The fall of Henry IV. raised from the Catholics a shout of exultation, and they redoubled their zeal. The various princes of the house of Austria, brothers, uncles, cousins, holding important posts all over the empire, were much alarmed in view of the peril to which the family ascending was exposed by the feebleness of Rhodolph. They held a private family conference, and decided that the interests of all required that there should be reconciliation between Matthias and Rhodolph; or that, in their divided state, they would fall victims to their numerous foes. The brothers agreed to an outward reconciliation; but there was not the slightest mitigation of the rancor which filled their hearts. Matthias, however, consented to acknowledge the superiority of his brother, the emperor, to honor him as the head of the family, and to hold his possessions as fiefs of Rhodolph intrusted to him by favor. Rhodolph, while hating Matthias, and watching for an opportunity to crush him, promised to regard him hereafter as a brother and a friend. And now Rhodolph developed unexpected energy, mingled with treachery and disgraceful duplicity. He secretly and treacherously invited the Archduke Leopold, who was also Bishop of Passau and Strasbourg, and one of the most bigoted of the warrior ecclesiastics of the papal church, to invade, with an army of sixteen thousand men, Rhodolph's own kingdom of Bohemia, under the plea that the wages of the soldiers had not been paid. It was his object, by thus introducing an army of Roman Catholics into his kingdom, and betraying into their hands several strong fortresses, then to place himself at their head, rally the Catholics of Bohemia around him, annul all the edicts of toleration, crush the Protestants, and then to march to the punishment of Matthias. The troops, in accordance with their treacherous plan, burst into Upper Austria, where the emperor had provided that there should be no force to oppose them. They spread themselves over the country, robbing the Protestants and destroying their property with the most wanton cruelty. Crossing the Danube they continued their march and entered Bohemia. Still Rhodolph kept quiet in his palace, sending no force to oppose, but on the contrary contriving that towns and fortresses, left defenseless, should fall easily into their hands. Bohemia was in a terrible state of agitation. Wherever the invading army appeared, it wreaked dire vengeance upon the Protestants. The leaders of the Protestants hurriedly ran together, and, suspicious of treachery, sent an earnest appeal to the king. The infamous emperor, not yet ready to lay aside the vail, called Heaven to witness that the irruption was made without his knowledge, and advised vigorous measures to repel the foe, while he carefully thwarted the execution of any such measures. At the same time he issued a proclamation to Leopold, commanding him to retire. Leopold understood all this beforehand, and smiling, pressed on. Aided by the treason of the king, they reached Prague, seized one of the gates, massacred the guard, and took possession of the capital. The emperor now came forward and disclosed his plans. The foreign troops, holding Prague and many other of the most important towns and fortresses in the kingdom, took the oath of allegiance to Rhodolph as their sovereign, and he placed in their hands five pieces of heavy artillery, which were planted in battery on an eminence which commanded the town. A part of Bohemia rallied around the king in support of these atrocious measures. But all the Protestants, and all who had any sympathy with the Protestants, were exasperated to the highest pitch. They immediately dispatched messengers to Matthias and to their friends in Moravia, imploring aid. Matthias immediately started eight thousand Hungarians on the march. As they entered Bohemia with rapid steps and pushed their way toward Prague they were joined every hour by Protestant levies pouring in from all quarters. So rapidly did their ranks increase that Leopold's troops, not daring to await their arrival, in a panic, fled by night. They were pursued on their retreat, attacked, and put to flight with the loss of two thousand men. The ecclesiastical duke, in shame and confusion, slunk away to his episcopal castle of Passau. The contemptible Rhodolph now first proposed terms of reconciliation, and then implored the clemency of his indignant conquerors. They turned from the overtures of the perjured monarch with disdain, burst into the city of Prague, surrounded every avenue to the palace, and took Rhodolph a prisoner. Soon Matthias arrived, mounted in regal splendor, at the head of a gorgeous retinue. The army received him with thunders of acclaim. Rhodolph, a captive in his palace, heard the explosion of artillery, the ringing of bells and the shouts of the populace, welcoming his dreaded and detested rival to the capital. It was the 20th of March, 1611. The nobles commanded Rhodolph to summon a diet. The humiliated, degraded, helpless emperor knew full well what this signified, but dared not disobey. He summoned a diet. It was immediately convened. Rhodolph sent in a message, saying, "Since, on account of my advanced age, I am no longer capable of supporting the weight of government, I hereby abdicate the throne, and earnestly desire that my brother Matthias may be crowned without delay." The diet were disposed very promptly to gratify the king in his expressed wishes. But there arose some very formidable difficulties. The German princes, who were attached to the cause which Rhodolph had so cordially espoused, and who foresaw that his fall threatened the ascendency of Protestantism throughout the empire, sent their ambassadors to the Bohemian nobles with the menace of the vengeance of the empire, if they proceeded to the deposition of Rhodolph and to the inauguration of Matthias, whom they stigmatized as an usurper. This unexpected interposition reanimated the hopes of Rhodolph, and he instantly found such renovation of youth and strength as to feel quite able to bear the burden of the crown a little longer; and consequently, notwithstanding his abdication, through his friends, all the most accomplished mechanism of diplomacy, with its menaces, its bribes, and its artifice were employed to thwart the movements of Matthias and his friends. There was still another very great difficulty. Matthias was very ambitious, and wished to be a sovereign, with sovereign power. He was very reluctant to surrender the least portion of those prerogatives which his regal ancestors had grasped. But the nobles deemed this a favorable opportunity to regain their lost power. They were disposed to make a hard bargain with Matthias. They demanded--1st, that the throne should no longer be hereditary, but elective; 2d, that the nobles should be permitted to meet in a diet, or congress, to deliberate upon public affairs whenever and wherever they pleased; 3d, that all financial and military affairs should be left in their hands; 4th, that although the king might appoint all the great officers of state, they might remove any of them at pleasure; 5th, that it should be the privilege of the nobles to form all foreign alliances; 6th, that they were to be empowered to form an armed force by their own authority. Matthias hesitated in giving his assent to such demands, which seemed to reduce him to a cipher, conferring upon him only the shadow of a crown. Rhodolph, however, who was eager to make any concessions, had his agents busy through the diet, with assurances that the emperor would grant all these concessions. But Rhodolph had fallen too low to rise again. The diet spurned all his offers, and chose Matthias, though he postponed his decision upon these articles until he could convene a future and more general diet. Rhodolph had eagerly caught at the hope of regaining his crown. As his messengers returned to him in the palace with the tidings of their defeat, he was overwhelmed with indignation, shame and despair. In a paroxysm of agony he threw up his window, and looking out upon the city, exclaimed, "O Prague, unthankful Prague, who hast been so highly elevated by me; now thou spurnest at thy benefactor. May the curse and vengeance of God fall upon thee and all Bohemia." The 23d of May was appointed for the coronation. The nobles drew up a paper, which they required Rhodolph to sign, absolving his subjects from their oath of allegiance to him. The degraded king writhed in helpless indignation, for he was a captive. With the foolish petulance of a spoiled child, as he affixed his signature in almost an illegible scrawl, he dashed blots of ink upon the paper, and then, tearing the pen to pieces, threw it upon the floor, and trampled it beneath his feet. It was still apprehended that the adherents of Rhodolph might make some armed demonstration in his favor. As a precaution against this, the city was filled with troops, the gates closed, and carefully guarded. The nobles met in the great hall of the palace. It was called a meeting of the States, for it included the higher nobles, the higher clergy, and a few citizens, as representatives of certain privileged cities. The forced abdication of Rhodolph was first read. It was as follows:-- "In conformity with the humble request of the States of our kingdom, we graciously declare the three estates, as well as all the inhabitants of all ranks and conditions, free from all subjection, duty and obligation; and we release them from their oath of allegiance, which they have taken to us as their king, with a view to prevent all future dissensions and confusion. We do this for the greater security and advantage of the whole kingdom of Bohemia, over which we have ruled six-and-thirty years, where we have almost always resided, and which, during our administration, has been maintained in peace, and increased in riches and splendor. We accordingly, in virtue of this present voluntary resignation, and after due reflection, do, from this day, release our subjects from all duty and obligation." Matthias was then chosen king, in accordance with all the ancient customs of the hereditary monarchy of Bohemia. The States immediately proceeded to his coronation. Every effort was made to dazzle the multitude with the splendors of the coronation, and to throw a halo of glory around the event, not merely as the accession of a new monarch to the throne, but as the introduction of a great reform in reinstating the nation in its pristine rights. While the capital was resounding with these rejoicings, Rhodolph had retired to a villa at some distance from the city, in a secluded glen among the mountains, that he might close his ears against the hateful sounds. The next day Matthias, fraternally or maliciously, for it is not easy to judge which motive actuated him, sent a stinging message of assumed gratitude to his brother, thanking him for relinquishing in his brother's favor his throne and his palaces, and expressing the hope that they might still live together in fraternal confidence and affection. Matthias and the States consulted their own honor rather than Rhodolph's merits, in treating him with great magnanimity. Though Rhodolph had lost, one by one, all his own hereditary or acquired territories, Austria, Hungary, Bohemia, he still retained the imperial crown of Germany. This gave him rank and certain official honors, with but little real power. The emperor, who was also a powerful sovereign in his own right, could marshal his own forces to establish his decrees. But the emperor, who had no treasury or army of his own, was powerless indeed. The emperor was permitted to occupy one of the palaces at Prague. He received an annual pension of nearly a million of dollars; and the territories and revenues of four lordships were conferred upon him. Matthias having consolidated his government, and appointed the great officers of his kingdom, left Prague without having any interview with his brother, and returned to his central capital at Vienna, where he married Anne, daughter of his uncle Ferdinand of Tyrol. The Protestants all over the German empire hailed these events with public rejoicing. Rhodolph had been their implacable foe. He was now disarmed and incapable of doing them any serious injury. Matthias was professedly their friend, had been placed in power mainly as their sovereign, and was now invested with such power, as sovereign of the collected realms of Austria, that he could effectually protect them from persecution. This success emboldened them to unite in a strong, wide-spread confederacy for the protection of their rights. The Protestant nobles and princes, with the most distinguished of their clergy from all parts of the German empire, held a congress at Rothenburg. This great assembly, in the number, splendor and dignity of its attendants, vied with regal diets. Many of the most illustrious princes of the empire were there in person, with imposing retinues. The emperor and Matthias both deemed it expedient to send ambassadors to the meeting. The congress at Rothenburg was one of the most memorable movements of the Protestant party. They drew up minute regulations for the government of their confederacy, established a system of taxation among themselves, made efficient arrangements for the levying of troops, established arsenals and magazines, and strongly garrisoned a fortress, to be the nucleus of their gathering should they at any time be compelled to appeal to arms. Rhodolph, through his ambassadors, appeared before this resplendent assembly the mean and miserable sycophant he ever was in days of disaster. He was so silly as to try to win them again to his cause. He coaxed and made the most liberal promises, but all in vain. Their reply was indignant and decisive, yet dignified. "We have too long," they replied, "been duped by specious and deceitful promises. We now demand actions, not words. Let the emperor show us by the acts of his administration that his spirit is changed, and then, and then only, can we confide in him." Matthias was still apprehensive that the emperor might rally the Catholic forces of Germany, and in union with the pope and the formidable power of the Spanish court, make an attempt to recover his Bohemian throne. It was manifest that with any energy of character, Rhodolph might combine Catholic Europe, and inundate the plains of Germany with blood. While it was very important, therefore, that Matthias should do every thing he could to avoid exasperating the Catholics, it was essential to his cause that he should rally around him the sympathies of the Protestants. The ambassadors of Matthias respectfully announced to the congress the events which had transpired in Bohemia in the transference of the crown, and solicited the support of the congress. The Protestant princes received this communication with satisfaction, promised their support in case it should be needed, and, conscious of the danger of provoking Rhodolph to any desperate efforts to rouse the Catholics, recommended that he should be treated with brotherly kindness, and, at the same time, watched with a vigilant eye. Rhodolph, disappointed here, summoned an electoral meeting of the empire, to be held at Nuremburg on the 14th of December, 1711. He hoped that a majority of the electors would be his friends. Before this body he presented a very pathetic account of his grievances, delineating in most melancholy colors the sorrows which attend fallen grandeur. He detailed his privations and necessities, the straits to which he was reduced by poverty, his utter inability to maintain a state befitting the imperial dignity, and implored them, with the eloquence of a Neapolitan mendicant, to grant him a suitable establishment, and not to abandon him, in his old age, to penury and dishonor. The reply of the electors to the dispirited, degraded, downtrodden old monarch was the unkindest cut of all. Much as Rhodolph is to be execrated and despised, one can hardly refrain from an emotion of sympathy in view of this new blow which fell upon him. A deputation sent from the electoral college met him in his palace at Prague. Mercilessly they recapitulated most of the complaints which the Protestants had brought against him, declined rendering him any pecuniary relief, and requested him to nominate some one to be chosen as his successor on the imperial throne. "The emperor," said the delegation in conclusion, "is himself the principal author of his own distresses and misfortunes. The contempt into which he has fallen and the disgrace which, through him, is reflected upon the empire, is derived from his own indolence and his obstinacy in following perverse counsels. He might have escaped all these calamities if, instead of resigning himself to corrupt and interested ministers, he had followed the salutary counsels of the electors." They closed this overwhelming announcement by demanding the immediate assembling of a diet to elect an emperor to succeed him on the throne of Germany. Rhodolph, not yet quite sufficiently humiliated to officiate as his own executioner, though he promised to summon a diet, evaded the fulfillment of his promise. The electors, not disposed to dally with him at all, called the assembly by their own authority to meet on the 31st of May. This seemed to be the finishing blow. Rhodolph, now sixty years of age, enfeebled and emaciated by disease and melancholy, threw himself upon his bed to die. Death, so often invoked in vain by the miserable, came to his aid. He welcomed its approach. To those around his bed he remarked, "When a youth, I experienced the most exquisite pleasure in returning from Spain to my native country. How much more joyful ought I to be when I am about to be delivered from the calamities of human nature, and transferred to a heavenly country where there is no change of time, and where no sorrow can enter!" In the tomb let him be forgotten. CHAPTER XV. MATTHIAS. From 1612 to 1619. Matthias Elected Emperor of Germany.--His despotic Character.--His Plans thwarted.--Mulheim.--Gathering Clouds.--Family Intrigue.--Coronation of Ferdinand.--His Bigotry.--Henry, Count of Thurn.--Convention at Prague.--The King's Reply.--The Die cast.--Amusing Defense of an Outrage.--Ferdinand's Manifesto.--Seizure of Cardinal Kleses.--The King's Rage.--Retreat of the King's Troops.--Humiliation of Ferdinand.--The Difficulties referred.--Death of Matthias. Upon the death of Rhodolph, Matthias promptly offered himself as a candidate for the imperial crown. But the Catholics, suspicious of Matthias, in consequence of his connection with the Protestants, centered upon the Archduke Albert, sovereign of the Netherlands, as their candidate. Many of the Protestants, also, jealous of the vast power Matthias was attaining, and not having full confidence in his integrity, offered their suffrages to Maximilian, the younger brother of Matthias. But notwithstanding this want of unanimity, political intrigue removed all difficulties and Matthias was unanimously elected Emperor of Germany. The new emperor was a man of renown. His wonderful achievements had arrested the attention of Europe, and it was expected that in his hands the administration of the empire would be conducted with almost unprecedented skill and vigor. But clouds and storms immediately began to lower around the throne. Matthias had no spirit of toleration in his heart, and every tolerant act he had assented to, had been extorted from him. He was, by nature, a despot, and most reluctantly, for the sake of grasping the reins of power, he had relinquished a few of the royal prerogatives. He had thus far evaded many of the claims which had been made upon him, and which he had partially promised to grant, and now, being both king and emperor, he was disposed to grasp all power, both secular and religious, which he could attain. Matthias's first endeavor was to recover Transylvania. This province had fallen into the hands of Gabriel Bethlehem, who was under the protection of the Turks. Matthias, thinking that a war with the infidel would be popular, summoned a diet and solicited succors to drive the Turks from Moldavia and Wallachia, where they had recently established themselves. The Protestants, however, presented a list of grievances which they wished to have redressed before they listened to his request. The Catholics, on the other hand, presented a list of their grievances, which consisted, mainly, in privileges granted the Protestants, which they also demanded to have redressed before they could vote any supplies to the emperor. These demands were so diametrically hostile to each other, that there could be no reconciliation. After an angry debate the diet broke up in confusion, having accomplished nothing. Matthias, disappointed in this endeavor, now applied to the several States of his widely extended Austrian domains--to his own subjects. A general assembly was convened at Lintz. Matthias proposed his plans, urging the impolicy of allowing the Turks to retain the conquered provinces, and to remain in the ascendency in Transylvania. But here again Matthias was disappointed. The Bohemian Protestants were indignant in view of some restrictions upon their worship, imposed by the emperor to please the Catholics. The Hungarians, weary of the miseries of war, were disposed on any terms to seek peace with the Turks. The Austrians had already expended an immense amount of blood and money on the battle-fields of Hungary, and urged the emperor to send an ambassador to treat for peace. Matthias was excessively annoyed in being thus thwarted in all his plans. Just at this time a Turkish envoy arrived at Vienna, proposing a truce for twenty years. The Turks had never before condescended to send an embassage to a Christian power. This afforded Matthias an honorable pretext for abandoning his warlike plan, and the truce was agreed to. The incessant conflict between the Catholics and Protestants allowed Germany no repose. A sincere toleration, such as existed during the reign of Maximilian I., established fraternal feelings between the contending parties. But it required ages of suffering and peculiar combination of circumstances, to lead the king and the nobles to a cordial consent to that toleration. But the bigotry of Rhodolph and the trickery of Matthias, had so exasperated the parties, and rendered them so suspicious of each other, that the emperor, even had he been so disposed, could not, but by very slow and gradual steps, have secured reconciliation. Rhodolph had put what was called the ban of the empire upon the Protestant city of Aix-la-Chapelle, removing the Protestants from the magistracy, and banishing their chiefs from the city. When Rhodolph was sinking into disgrace and had lost his power, the Protestants, being in the majority, took up arms, reflected their magistracy, and expelled the Jesuits from the city. The Catholics now appealed to Matthias, and he insanely revived the ban against the Protestants, and commissioned Albert, Archduke of Cologne, a bigoted Catholic, to march with an army to Aix-la-Chapelle and enforce its execution. Opposite Cologne, on the Rhine, the Protestants, in the days of bitter persecution, had established the town of Mulheim. Several of the neighboring Protestant princes defended with their arms the refugees who settled there from all parts of Germany. The town was strongly fortified, and here the Protestants, with arms in their hands, maintained perfect freedom of religious worship. The city grew rapidly and became one of the most important fortresses upon the river. The Catholics, jealous of its growing power, appealed to the emperor. He issued a decree ordering the Protestants to demolish every fortification of the place within thirty days; and to put up no more buildings whatever. These decrees were both enforced by the aid of a Spanish army of thirty thousand men, which, having executed the ban, descended the river and captured several others of the most important of the Protestant towns. Of course all Germany was in a ferment. Everywhere was heard the clashing of arms, and every thing indicated the immediate outburst of civil war. Matthias was in great perplexity, and his health rapidly failed beneath the burden of care and sorrow. All the thoughts of Matthias were now turned to the retaining of the triple crown of Bohemia, Hungary and the empire, in the family. Matthias was old, sick and childless. Maximilian, his next brother, was fifty-nine years of age and unmarried. The next brother, Albert, was fifty-eight, and without children. Neither of the brothers could consequently receive the crowns with any hope of retaining them in the family. Matthias turned to his cousin Ferdinand, head of the Styrian branch of the family, as the nearest relative who was likely to continue the succession. In accordance with the custom which had grown up, Matthias wished to nominate his successor, and have him recognized and crowned before his death, so that immediately upon his death the new sovereign, already crowned, could enter upon the government without any interregnum. The brothers, appreciating the importance of retaining the crown in the family, and conscious that all the united influence they then possessed was essential to securing that result, assented to the plan, and coöperated in the nomination of Ferdinand. All the arts of diplomatic intrigue were called into requisition to attain these important ends. The Bohemian crown was now electoral; and it was necessary to persuade the electors to choose Ferdinand, one of the most intolerant Catholics who ever swayed a scepter. The crown of Hungary was nominally hereditary. But the turbulent nobles, ever armed, and strong in their fortresses, would accept no monarch whom they did not approve. To secure also the electoral vote for Emperor of Germany, while parties were so divided and so bitterly hostile to each other, required the most adroit application of bribes and menaces. Matthias made his first movement in Bohemia. Having adopted previous measures to gain the support of the principal nobles, he summoned a diet at Prague, which he attended in person, accompanied by Ferdinand. In a brief speech he thus addressed them. "As I and my brothers," said the king, "are without children, I deem it necessary, for the advantage of Bohemia, and to prevent future contests, that my cousin Ferdinand should be proclaimed and crowned king. I therefore request you to fix a day for the confirmation of this appointment." Some of the leading Protestants opposed this, on the ground of the known intolerance of Ferdinand. But the majority, either won over by the arts of Matthias, or dreading civil war, accepted Ferdinand. He was crowned on the 10th of June, 1616, he promising not to interfere with the government during the lifetime of Matthias. The emperor now turned to Hungary, and, by the adoption of the same measures, secured the same results. The nobles accepted Ferdinand, and he was solemnly crowned at Presburg. Ferdinand was Archduke of Styria, a province of Austria embracing a little more than eight thousand square miles, being about the size of the State of Massachusetts, and containing about a million of inhabitants. He was educated by the Jesuits after the strictest manner of their religion. He became so thoroughly imbued with the spirit of his monastic education, that he was anxious to assume the cowl of the monk, and enter the order of the Jesuits. His devotion to the papal church assumed the aspect of the most inflexible intolerance towards all dissent. In the administration of the government of his own duchy, he had given free swing to his bigotry. Marshaling his troops, he had driven all the Protestant preachers from his domains. He had made a pilgrimage to Rome, to receive the benediction of the pope, and another to Loretto, where, prostrating himself before the miraculous image, he vowed never to cease his exertions until he had extirpated all heresy from his territories. He often declared that he would beg his bread from door to door, submit to every insult, to every calamity, sacrifice even life itself, rather than suffer the true Church to be injured. Ferdinand was no time-server--no hypocrite. He was a genuine bigot, sincere and conscientious. Animated by this spirit, although two thirds of the inhabitants of Styria were Protestants, he banished all their preachers, professors and schoolmasters; closed their churches, seminaries and schools; even tore down the churches and school-houses; multiplied papal institutions, and called in teachers and preachers from other States. Matthias and Ferdinand now seemed jointly to reign, and the Protestants were soon alarmed by indications that a new spirit was animating the councils of the sovereign. The most inflexible Catholics were received as the friends and advisers of the king. The Jesuits loudly exulted, declaring that heresy was no longer to be tolerated. Banishments and confiscations were talked of, and the alarm of the Protestants became intense and universal: they looked forward to the commencement of the reign of Ferdinand with terror. As was to be expected, such wrongs and perils called out an avenger. Matthew Henry, Count of Thurn, was one of the most illustrious and wealthy of the Bohemian nobles. He had long been a warm advocate of the doctrines of the Reformation; and having, in the wars with the Turks, acquired a great reputation for military capacity and courage, and being also a man of great powers of eloquence, and of exceedingly popular manners, he had become quite the idol of the Protestant party. He had zealously opposed the election of Ferdinand to the throne of Bohemia, and had thus increased that jealousy and dislike with which both Matthias and Ferdinand had previously regarded so formidable an opponent. He was, in consequence, very summarily deprived of some very important dignities. This roused his impetuous spirit, and caused the Protestants more confidingly to rally around him as a martyr to their cause. The Count of Thurn, as prudent as he was bold, as deliberate as he was energetic, aware of the fearful hazard of entering into hostilities with the sovereign who was at the same time king of all the Austrian realms, and Emperor of Germany, conferred with the leading Protestant princes, and organized a confederacy so strong that all the energies of the empire could with difficulty crush it. They were not disposed to make any aggressive movements, but to defend their rights if assailed. The inhabitants of a town in the vicinity of Prague began to erect a church for Protestant worship. The Roman Catholic bishop, who presided over that diocese, forbade them to proceed. They plead a royal edict, which authorized them to erect the church, and continued their work, regardless of the prohibition. Count Thurn encouraged them to persevere, promising them ample support. The bishop appealed to the Emperor Matthias. He also issued his prohibition; but aware of the strength of the Protestants, did not venture to attempt to enforce it by arms. Ferdinand, however, was not disposed to yield to this spirit, and by his influence obtained an order, demanding the immediate surrender of the church to the Catholics, or its entire demolition. The bishop attempted its destruction by an armed force, but the Protestants defended their property, and sent a committee to Matthias, petitioning for a revocation of the mandate. These deputies were seized and imprisoned by the king, and an imperial force was sent to the town, Brunau, to take possession of the church. From so small a beginning rose the Thirty Years' War. Count Thurn immediately summoned a convention of six delegates from each of the districts, called circles in Bohemia. The delegates met at Prague on the 16th of March, 1618. An immense concourse of Protestants from all parts of the surrounding country accompanied the delegates to the capital. Count Thurn was a man of surpassing eloquence, and seemed to control at will all the passions of the human heart. In the boldest strains of eloquence he addressed the assembly, and roused them to the most enthusiastic resolve to defend at all hazards their civil and religious rights. They unanimously passed a resolve that the demolition of the church and the suspension of the Protestant worship were violations of the royal edict, and they drew up a petition to the emperor demanding the redress of this grievance, and the liberation of the imprisoned deputies from Brunau. The meeting then adjourned, to be reassembled soon to hear the reply of the emperor. As the delegates and the multitudes who accompanied them returned to their homes, they spread everywhere the impression produced upon their minds by the glowing eloquence of Count Thurn. The Protestant mind was roused to the highest pitch by the truthful representation, that the court had adopted a deliberate plan for the utter extirpation of Protestant worship throughout Bohemia, and that foreign troops were to be brought in to execute this decree. These convictions were strengthened and the alarm increased by the defiant reply which Matthias sent back from his palace in Vienna to his Bohemian subjects. He accused the delegates of treason and of circulating false and slanderous reports, and declared that they should be punished according to their deserts. He forbade them to meet again, or to interfere in any way with the affairs of Brunau, stating that at his leisure he would repair to Prague and attend to the business himself. The king could not have framed an answer better calculated to exasperate the people, and rouse them to the most determined resistance. Count Thurn, regardless of the prohibition, called the delegates together and read to them the answer, which the king had not addressed to them but to the council of regency. He then addressed them again in those impassioned strains which he had ever at command, and roused them almost to fury against those Catholic lords who had dictated this answer to the king and obtained his signature. The next day the nobles met again. They came to the place of meeting thoroughly armed and surrounded by their retainers, prepared to repel force by force. Count Thurn now wished to lead them to some act of hostility so decisive that they would be irrecoverably committed. The king's council of regency was then assembled in the palace of Prague. The regency consisted of seven Catholics and three Protestants. For some unknown reason the Protestant lords were not present on this occasion. Three of the members of the regency, Slavata and Martinetz and the burgrave of Prague, were peculiarly obnoxious on account of the implacable spirit with which they had ever persecuted the reformers. These lords were the especial friends of Ferdinand and had great influence with Matthias, and it was not doubted that they had framed the answer which the emperor had returned. Incited by Count Thurn, several of the most resolute of the delegates, led by the count, proceeded to the palace, and burst into the room where the regency was in session. Their leader, addressing Slavata, Martinetz, and Diepold, the burgrave, said, "Our business is with you. We wish to know if you are responsible for the answer returned to us by the king." "That," one of them replied, "is a secret of state which we are not bound to reveal." "Let us follow," exclaimed the Protestant chief, "the ancient custom of Bohemia, and hurl them from the window." They were in a room in the tower of the castle, and it was eighty feet to the water of the moat. The Catholic lords were instantly seized, dragged to the window and thrust out. Almost incredible as it may seem, the water and the mud of the moat so broke their fall, that neither of them was killed. They all recovered from the effects of their fall. Having performed this deed, Count Thurn and his companions returned to the delegates, informed them of what they had done, and urged them that the only hope of safety now, for any Protestant, was for all to unite in open and desperate resistance. Then mounting his horse, and protected by a strong body-guard, he rode through the streets of Prague, stopping at every corner to harangue the Protestant populace. The city was thronged on the occasion by Protestants from all parts of the kingdom. "I do not," he exclaimed, "propose myself as your chief, but as your companion, in that peril which will lead us to happy freedom or to glorious death. The die is thrown. It is too late to recall what is past. Your safety depends alone on unanimity and courage, and if you hesitate to burst asunder your chains, you have no alternative but to perish by the hands of the executioner." He was everywhere greeted with shouts of enthusiasm, and the whole Protestant population were united as one man in the cause. Even many of the moderate Catholics, disgusted with the despotism of the newly elected king, which embraced civil as well as religious affairs, joined the Protestants, for they feared the loss of their civil rights more than they dreaded the inroads of heresy. With amazing celerity they now organized to repel the force which they knew that the emperor would immediately send to crush them. Within three days their plans were all matured and an organization effected which made the king tremble in his palace. Count Thurn was appointed their commander, an executive committee of thirty very efficient men was chosen, which committee immediately issued orders for the levy of troops all over the kingdom. Envoys were sent to Moravia, Silesia, Lusatia, and Hungary, and to the Protestants all over the German empire. The Archbishop of Prague was expelled from the city, and the Jesuits were also banished. They then issued a proclamation in defense of their conduct, which they sent to the king with a firm but respectful letter. One can not but be amused in reading their defense of the outrage against the council of regency. "We have thrown from the windows," they said, "the two ministers who have been the enemies of the State, together with their creature and flatterer, in conformity with an ancient custom prevalent throughout all Bohemia, as well as in the capital. This custom is justified by the example of Jezebel in holy Writ, who was thrown from a window for persecuting the people of God; and it was common among the Romans, and all other nations of antiquity, who hurled the disturbers of the public peace from rocks and precipices." Matthias had very reluctantly sent his insulting and defiant answer to the reasonable complaints of the Protestants, and he was thunderstruck in contemplating the storm which had thus been raised--a storm which apparently no human wisdom could now allay. There are no energies so potent as those which are aroused by religious convictions. Matthias well knew the ascendency of the Protestants all over Bohemia, and that their spirit, once thoroughly aroused, could not be easily quelled by any opposing force he could array. He was also aware that Ferdinand was thoroughly detested by the Protestant leaders, and that it was by no means improbable that this revolt would thwart all his plans in securing his succession. As the Protestants had not renounced their allegiance, Matthias was strongly disposed to measures of conciliation, and several of the most influential, yet fair-minded Catholics supported him in these views. The Protestants were too numerous to be annihilated, and too strong in their desperation to be crushed. But Ferdinand, guided by the Jesuits, was implacable. He issued a manifesto, which was but a transcript of his own soul, and which is really sublime in the sincerity and fervor of its intolerance. "All attempts," said he, "to bring to reason a people whom God has struck with judicial blindness will be in vain. Since the introduction of heresy into Bohemia, we have seen nothing but tumults, disobedience and rebellion. While the Catholics and the sovereign have displayed only lenity and moderation, these sects have become stronger, more violent and more insolent; having gained all their objects in religious affairs, they turn their arms against the civil government, and attack the supreme authority under the pretense of conscience; not content with confederating themselves against their sovereign, they have usurped the power of taxation, and have made alliances with foreign States, particularly with the Protestant princes of Germany, in order to deprive him of the very means of reducing them to obedience. They have left nothing to the sovereign but his palaces and the convents; and after their recent outrages against his ministers, and the usurpation of the regal revenues, no object remains for their vengeance and rapacity but the persons of the sovereign and his successor, and the whole house of Austria. "If sovereign power emanates from God, these atrocious deeds must proceed from the devil, and therefore must draw down divine punishment. Neither can God be pleased with the conduct of the sovereign, in conniving at or acquiescing in all the demands of the disobedient. Nothing now remains for him, but to submit to be lorded by his subjects, or to free himself from this disgraceful slavery before his territories are formed into a republic. The rebels have at length deprived themselves of the only plausible argument which their preachers have incessantly thundered from the pulpit, that they were contending for religious freedom; and the emperor and the house of Austria have now the fairest opportunity to convince the world that their sole object is only to deliver themselves from slavery and restore their legal authority. They are secure of divine support, and they have only the alternative of a war by which they may regain their power, or a peace which is far more dishonorable and dangerous than war. If successful, the forfeited property of the rebels will defray the expense of their armaments; if the event of hostilities be unfortunate, they can only lose, with honor, and with arms in their hands, the rights and prerogatives which are and will be wrested from them with shame and dishonor. It is better not to reign than to be the slave of subjects. It is far more desirable and glorious to shed our blood at the foot of the throne than to be driven from it like criminals and malefactors." Matthias endeavored to unite his own peace policy with the energetic warlike measures urged by Ferdinand. He attempted to overawe by a great demonstration of physical force, while at the same time he made very pacific proposals. Applying to Spain for aid, the Spanish court sent him eight thousand troops from the Netherlands; he also raised, in his own dominions, ten thousand men. Having assembled this force he sent word to the Protestants, that if they would disband their force he would do the same, and that he would confirm the royal edict and give full security for the maintenance of their civil and religious privileges. The Protestants refused to disband, knowing that they could place no reliance upon the word of the unstable monarch who was crowded by the rising power of the energetic Ferdinand. The ambitious naturally deserted the court of the sovereign whose days were declining, to enlist in the service of one who was just entering upon the kingly power. Ferdinand was enraged at what he considered the pusillanimity of the king. Maximilian, the younger brother of Matthias, cordially espoused the cause of Ferdinand. Cardinal Kleses, a Catholic of commanding influence and of enlightened, liberal views, was the counselor of the king. Ferdinand and Maximilian resolved that he should no longer have access to the ear of the pliant monarch, but he could be removed from the court only by violence. With an armed band they entered the palace at Vienna, seized the cardinal in the midst of the court, stripped him of his robes, hurried him into a carriage, and conveyed him to a strong castle in the midst of the mountains of the Tyrol, where they held him a close prisoner. The emperor was at the time confined to his bed with the gout. As soon as they had sent off the cardinal, Ferdinand and Maximilian repaired to the royal chamber, informed the emperor of what they had done, and attempted to justify the deed on the plea that the cardinal was a weak and wicked minister whose policy would certainly divide and ruin the house of Austria. The emperor was in his bed as he received this insulting announcement of a still more insulting outrage. For a moment he was speechless with rage. But he was old, sick and powerless. This act revealed to him that the scepter had fallen from his hands. In a paroxysm of excitement, to prevent himself from speaking he thrust the bed-clothes into his mouth, nearly suffocating himself. Resistance was in vain. He feared that should he manifest any, he also might be torn from his palace, a captive, to share the prison of the cardinal. In sullen indignation he submitted to the outrage. Ferdinand and Maximilian now pursued their energetic measures of hostility unopposed. They immediately put the army in motion to invade Bohemia, and boasted that the Protestants should soon be punished with severity which would teach them a lesson they would never forget. But the Protestants were on the alert. Every town in the kingdom had joined in the confederacy, and in a few weeks Count Thurn found himself at the head of ten thousand men inspired with the most determined spirit. The Silesians and Lusatians marched to help them, and the Protestant league of Germany sent them timely supplies. The troops of Ferdinand found opponents in every pass and in every defile, and in their endeavor to force their way through the fastnesses of the mountains, were frequently driven back with great loss. At length the troops of Ferdinand, defeated at every point, were compelled to retreat in shame back to Austria, leaving all Bohemia in the hands of the Protestants. Ferdinand was now in trouble and disgrace. His plans had signally failed. The Protestants all over Germany were in arms, and their spirits roused to the highest pitch; many of the moderate Catholics refused to march against them, declaring that the Protestants were right in resisting such oppression. They feared Ferdinand, and were apprehensive that his despotic temper, commencing with religious intolerance, would terminate in civil tyranny. It was evident to all that the Protestants could not be put down by force of arms, and even Ferdinand was so intensely humiliated that he was constrained to assent to the proposal which Matthias made to refer their difficulty to arbitration. Four princes were selected as the referees--the Electors of Mentz, Bavaria, Saxony and Palatine. They were to meet at Egra the 14th of April, 1619. But Matthias, the victim of disappointment and grief, was now rapidly approaching his end. The palace at Vienna was shrouded in gloom, and no smiles were seen there, and no sounds of joy were heard in those regal saloons. The wife of Matthias, whom he tenderly loved, oppressed by the humiliation and anguish which she saw her husband enduring, died of a broken heart. Matthias was inconsolable under this irretrievable loss. Lying upon his bed tortured with the pain of the gout, sinking under incurable disease, with no pleasant memories of the past to cheer him, with disgrace and disaster accumulating, and with no bright hopes beyond the grave, he loathed life and dreaded death. The emperor in his palace was perhaps the most pitiable object which could be found in all his realms. He tossed upon his pillow, the victim of remorse and despair, now condemning himself for his cruel treatment of his brother Rhodolph, now inveighing bitterly against the inhumanity and arrogance of Ferdinand and Maximilian. On the 20th of March, 1619, the despairing spirit of the emperor passed away to the tribunal of the "King of kings and the Lord of lords." CHAPTER XVI. FERDINAND II. From 1619 to 1621. Possessions of the Emperor.--Power of the Protestants of Bohemia.--General Spirit of Insurrection.--Anxiety of Ferdinand.-- Insurrection led by Count Thurn.--Unpopularity of the Emperor.-- Affecting Declaration of the Emperor.--Insurrection in Vienna.--The Arrival of Succor.--Ferdinand seeks the imperial Throne.--Repudiated by Bohemia.--The Palatinate.--Frederic offered the Crown of Bohemia.-- Frederic crowned.--Revolt in Hungary.--Desperate Condition of the Emperor.--Catholic League.--The Calvinists and the Puritans.--Duplicity of the Emperor.--Foreign Combinations.--Truce between the Catholics and the Protestants.--The Attack upon Bohemia.--Battle of the White Mountain. Ferdinand, who now ascended the throne by right of the coronation he had already received, was in the prime of life, being but forty-one years of age, and was in possession of a rare accumulation of dignities. He was Archduke of Austria, King of Hungary and of Bohemia, Duke of Styria, Carinthia and Carniola, and held joint possession, with his two brothers, of the spacious territory of the Tyrol. Thus all these wide-spread and powerful territories, with different languages, different laws, and diverse manners and customs, were united under the Austrian monarchy, which was now undeniably one of the leading powers of Europe. In addition to all these titles and possessions, he was a prominent candidate for the imperial crown of Germany. To secure this additional dignity he could rely upon his own family influence, which was very powerful, and also upon the aid of the Spanish monarchy. When we contemplate his accession in this light, he appears as one of the most powerful monarchs who ever ascended a throne. But there is another side to the picture. The spirit of rebellion against his authority had spread through nearly all his territories, and he had neither State nor kingdom where his power seemed stable. In whatever direction he turned his eyes, he saw either the gleam of hostile arms or the people in a tumult just ready to combine against him. The Protestants of Bohemia had much to encourage them. All the kingdom, excepting one fortress, was in their possession. All the Protestants of the German empire had espoused their cause. The Silesians, Lusatians and Moravians were in open revolt. The Hungarian Protestants, animated by the success of the Bohemians, were eager to follow their example and throw off the yoke of Ferdinand. With iron tyranny he had silenced every Protestant voice in the Styrian provinces, and had crushed every semblance of religious liberty. But the successful example of the Bohemians had roused the Styrians, and they also were on the eve of making a bold move in defense of their rights. Even in Austria itself, and beneath the very shadow of the palaces of Vienna, conspiracies were rife, and insurrection was only checked by the presence of the army which had been driven out of Bohemia. Even Ferdinand could not be blind to the difficulties which were accumulating upon him, and to the precarious tenure of his power. He saw the necessity of persevering in the attempt at conciliation which he had so reluctantly commenced. And yet, with strange infatuation, he proposed an accommodation in a manner which was deemed insulting, and which tended only to exasperate. The very day of his accession to the throne, he sent a commission to Prague, to propose a truce; but, instead of conferring with the Protestant leaders, he seemed to treat them with intentional contempt, by addressing his proposal to that very council of regency which had become so obnoxious. The Protestants, justly regarding this as an indication of the implacable state of his mind, and conscious that the proposed truce would only enable him more effectually to rally his forces, made no reply whatever to his proposals. Ferdinand, perceiving that he had made a great mistake, and that he had not rightly appreciated the spirit of his foes, humbled himself a little more, and made still another attempt at conciliation. But the Protestants had now resolved that Ferdinand should never be King of Bohemia. It had become an established tenet of the Catholic church that it is not necessary to keep faith with heretics. Whatever solemn promises Ferdinand might make, the pope would absolve him from all sin in violating them. Count Thurn, with sixteen thousand men, marched into Moravia. The people rose simultaneously to greet him. He entered Brunn, the capital, in triumph. The revolution was immediate and entire. They abolished the Austrian government, established the Protestant worship, and organized a new government similar to that which they had instituted in Bohemia. Crossing the frontier, Count Thurn boldly entered Austria and, meeting no foe capable of retarding his steps, he pushed vigorously on even to the very gates of Vienna. As he had no heavy artillery capable of battering down the walls, and as he knew that he had many partisans within the walls of the city, he took possession of the suburbs, blockaded the town, and waited for the slow operation of a siege, hoping thus to be able to take the capital and the person of the sovereign without bloodshed. Ferdinand had brought such trouble upon the country, that he was now almost as unpopular with the Catholics as with the Protestants, and all his appeals to them for aid were of but little avail. The sudden approach of Count Thurn had amazed and discomfited him, and he knew not in what direction to look for aid. Cooped up in his capital, he could hold no communication with foreign powers, and his own subjects manifested no disposition to come to his rescue. The evidences of popular discontent, even in the city, were every hour becoming more manifest, and the unhappy sovereign was in hourly expectation of an insurrection in the streets. The surrender of Vienna involved the loss of Austria. With the loss of Austria vanished all hopes of the imperial crown. Bohemia, Austria, and the German scepter gone, Hungary would soon follow; and then, his own Styrian territories, sustained and aided by their successful neighbors, would speedily discard his sway. Ferdinand saw it all clearly, and was in an agony of despair. He has confided to his confessor the emotions which, in those terrible hours, agitated his soul. It is affecting to read the declaration, indicative as it is that the most cruel and perfidious man may be sincere and even conscientious in his cruelty and crime. To his Jesuitical confessor, Bartholomew Valerius, he said, "I have reflected on the dangers which threaten me and my family, both at home and abroad. With an enemy in the suburbs, sensible that the Protestants are plotting my ruin, I implore that help from God which I can not expect from man. I had recourse to my Saviour, and said, 'Lord Jesus Christ, Thou Redeemer of mankind, Thou to whom all hearts are opened, Thou knowest that I seek Thy honor, not my own. If it be Thy will, that, in this extremity, I should be overcome by thy enemies, and be made the sport and contempt of the world, I will drink of the bitter cup. Thy will be done.' I had hardly spoken these words before I was inspired with new hope, and felt a full conviction that God would frustrate the designs of my enemies." Nerved by such a spirit, Ferdinand was prepared to endure all things rather than yield the slightest point. Hour after hour his situation became more desperate, and still he remained inflexible. Balls from the batteries of Count Thurn struck even the walls of his palace; murmurs filled the streets, and menaces rose to his ears from beneath his windows. "Let us put his evil counselors to the sword," the disaffected exclaimed; "shut him up in a convent; and educate his children in the Protestant religion." At length the crisis had apparently arrived. Insurrection was organized. Clamorous bands surged through the streets, and there was a state of tumult which no police force could quell. A band of armed men burst into the palace, forced their way into the presence of Ferdinand, and demanded the surrender of the city. At that moment, when Ferdinand might well have been in despair, the unexpected sound of trumpets was heard in the streets, and the tramp of a squadron of cavalry. The king was as much amazed as were the insurgents. The deputies, not knowing what it meant, in great alarm retreated from the palace. The squadron swept the streets, and surrounded the palace. They had been sent to the city by the general who had command of the Austrian forces, and, arriving at full speed, had entered unexpectedly at the only gate which the besiegers had not guarded. Their arrival, as if by heavenly commission, and the tidings they brought of other succor near at hand, reanimated the king and his partisans, and instantly the whole aspect of things within the city was changed. Six hundred students in the Roman Catholic institutions of the city flew to arms, and organized themselves as a body-guard of the king. All the zealous Catholics formed themselves into military bands, and this encouraged that numerous neutral party, always existing in such seasons of uncertainty, ready to join those who shall prove to be the strongest. The Protestants fled from the city, and sought protection under the banners of Count Thurn. In the meantime the Catholics in Bohemia, taking advantage of the absence of Count Thurn with his troops, had surrounded Prague, and were demanding its capitulation. This rendered it necessary for the Bohemian army immediately to strike their tents and return to Bohemia. Never was there a more sudden and perfect deliverance. It was, however, deliverance only from the momentary peril. The great elements of discontent and conflict remained unchanged. It was very evident that the difficulties which Ferdinand had to encounter in his Austrian dominions, were so immense that he could not hope to surmount them without foreign aid. He consequently deemed it a matter important above all others to secure the imperial throne. Without this strength the loss of all his Austrian possessions was inevitable. With the influence and the power which the crown of Germany would confer upon him he could hope to gain all. Ferdinand immediately left Vienna and visited the most influential of the German princes to secure their support for his election. The Catholics all over Germany, alarmed by the vigor and energy which had been displayed by the Protestants, laid aside their several preferences, and gradually all united upon Ferdinand. The Protestants, foolishly allowing their Lutheran and Calvinistic differences to disunite them, could not agree in their candidate. Consequently Ferdinand was elected, and immediately crowned emperor, the 9th of September, 1619. The Bohemians, however, remained firm in their resolve to repudiate him utterly as their king. They summoned a diet of the States of Bohemia, Moravia, Silesia and Lusatia to meet at Prague. Delegates also attended the diet from Upper and Lower Austria, as also many nobles from distant Hungary. The diet drew up a very formidable list of grievances, and declared, in view of them, that Ferdinand had forfeited all right to the crown of Bohemia, and that consequently it was their duty, in accordance with the ancient usages, to proceed to the election of a sovereign. The Catholics were now so entirely in the minority in Bohemia that the Protestants held the undisputed control. They first chose the Elector of Saxony. He, conscious that he could maintain his post only by a long and uncertain war, declined the perilous dignity. They then with great unanimity elected Frederic, the Elector of Palatine. The Palatinate was a territory bordering on Bohemia, of over four thousand square miles, and contained nearly seven hundred thousand inhabitants. The elector, Frederic V., was thus a prince of no small power in his own right. He had married a daughter of James I. of England, and had many powerful relatives. Frederic was an affable, accomplished, kind-hearted man, quite ambitious, and with but little force of character. He was much pleased at the idea of being elevated to the dignity of a king, and was yet not a little appalled in contemplating the dangers which it was manifest he must encounter. His mother, with maternal solicitude, trembling for her son, intreated him not to accept the perilous crown. His father-in-law, James, remonstrated against it, sternly declaring that he would never patronize subjects in rebellion against their sovereign, that he would never acknowledge Frederic's title as king, or render him, under any circumstances, either sympathy or support. On the other hand the members of the Protestant league urged his acceptance; his uncles united strongly with them in recommending it, and above all, his fascinating wife, whom he dotingly loved, and who, delighted at the idea of being a queen, threw herself into his arms, and plead in those persuasive tones which the pliant heart of Frederic could not resist. The Protestant clergy, also, in a strong delegation waited upon him, and intreated him in the name of that Providence which had apparently proffered to him the crown, to accept it in fidelity to himself, to his country and to the true religion. The trembling hand and the tearful eye with which Frederic accepted the crown, proved his incapacity to bear the burden in those stormy days. Placing the government of the Palatinate in the hands of the Duke of Deux Ponts, he repaired, with his family, to Prague. A rejoicing multitude met him at several leagues from the capital, and escorted him to the city with an unwonted display of popular enthusiasm. He was crowned with splendor such as Bohemia had never witnessed before. For a time the Bohemians surrendered themselves to the most extravagant joy. Frederic was exceedingly amiable, and just the prince to win, in calm and sunny days, the enthusiastic admiration of his subjects. They were highly gratified in having the King of Bohemia dwell in his own capital at Prague, a privilege and honor which they had seldom enjoyed. Many of the German princes acknowledged Frederic's title, as did also Sweden, Denmark, Holland and Vienna. The revolution in Bohemia was apparently consummated, and to the ordinary observer no cloud could be seen darkening the horizon. The Bohemians were strengthened in their sense of security by a similar revolution which was taking place in Hungary. As soon as Ferdinand left Vienna, to seek the crown of Germany, the Protestants of Hungary threw off their allegiance to Austria, and rallied around the banners of their bold, indomitable leader, Gabriel Bethlehem. They fell upon the imperial forces with resistless fury and speedily dispersed them. Having captured several of the most important fortresses, and having many troops to spare, Gabriel Bethlehem sent eighteen thousand men into Moravia to aid Count Thurn to disperse the imperial forces there. He then marched triumphantly to Presburg, the renowned capital of Hungary, within thirty miles of Vienna, where he was received by the majority of the inhabitants with open arms. He took possession of the sacred crown and of the crown jewels, called an assembly of the nobles from the various States of Hungary and Transylvania, and united them in a firm band against Ferdinand. He now marched up the banks of the Danube into Austria. Count Thurn advanced from Moravia to meet him. The junction of their forces placed the two leaders in command of sixty thousand men. They followed along the left bank of the majestic Danube until they arrived opposite Vienna. Here they found eighteen thousand troops posted to oppose. After a short conflict, the imperial troops retreated from behind their intrenchments across the river, and blew up the bridge. In such a deplorable condition did the Emperor Ferdinand find his affairs, as he returned from Germany to Austria. He was apparently in a desperate position, and no human sagacity could foresee how he could retrieve his fallen fortunes. Apparently, could his despotic arm then have been broken, Europe might have been spared many years of war and woe. But the designs of Providence are inscrutable. Again there was apparently almost miraculous interposition. The imperial troops were rapidly concentrated in the vicinity of Vienna, to prevent the passage of the broad, deep and rapid river by the allied army. A strong force was dispatched down the right bank of the Danube, which attacked and dispersed a force left to protect the communication with Hungary. The season was far advanced, and it was intensely cold in those northern latitudes. The allied army had been collected so suddenly, that no suitable provision had been made for feeding so vast a host. Famine added its terrors to the cold blasts which menacingly swept the plains, and as there was imminent danger that the imperial army might cut off entirely the communication of the allies with Hungary, Gabriel Bethlehem decided to relinquish the enterprise of taking Vienna, and retired unimpeded to Presburg. Almost every fortress in Hungary was now in the possession of the Hungarians, and Ferdinand, though his capital was released, saw that Hungary as well as Bohemia had escaped from his hands. At Presburg Gabriel was, with imposing ceremonies, proclaimed King of Hungary, and a decree of proscription and banishment was issued against all the adherents of Ferdinand. Germany was now divided into two great leagues, the Catholic and the Protestant. Though nominally religious parties, they were political as well as religious, and subject to all the fluctuations and corruptions attending such combinations. The Protestant league, composed of princes of every degree of dignity, who came from all parts of Germany, proudly mounted and armed, and attended by armed retainers, from a few score to many hundreds or even thousands, met at Nuremburg. It was one of the most influential and imposing assemblages which had ever gathered in Europe. The Catholics, with no less display of pomp and power, for their league embraced many of the haughtiest sovereigns in Europe, met at Wurtzburg. There were, of course, not a few who were entirely indifferent as to the religious questions involved, and who were Catholics or Protestants, in subserviency to the dictates of interest or ambition. Both parties contended with the arts of diplomacy as well as with those of war. The Spanish court was preparing a powerful armament to send from the Netherlands to the help of Ferdinand. The Protestants sent an army to Ulm to watch their movements, and to cut them off. Ferdinand was as energetic as he had previously proved himself inflexible and persevering. In person he visited Munich, the capital of Bavaria, that he might more warmly interest in his favor Maximilian, the illustrious and warlike duke. The emperor made him brilliant promises, and secured his cordial coöperation. The Duke of Bavaria, and the Elector of the Palatinate, were neighbors and rivals; and the emperor offered Maximilian the spoils of the Palatinate, if they should be successful in their warfare against the newly elected Bohemian king. Maximilian, thus persuaded, placed all his force at the disposal of the emperor. The Elector of Saxony was a Lutheran; the Elector Palatine a Calvinist. The Lutherans believed, that after the consecration of the bread and wine at the sacramental table, the body and blood of Christ were spiritually present with that bread and wine. This doctrine, which they called _consubstantiation_, they adopted in antagonism to the papal doctrine of _transubstantiation_, which was that the bread and wine were actually transformed into, and became the real body and blood of Christ. The difference between the Calvinists and the Lutherans, as we have before mentioned, was that, while the former considered the bread and wine in the sacraments as _representing_ the body and the blood of Christ, the latter considered the body and the blood as spiritually present in the consecrated elements. This trivial difference divided brethren who were agreed upon all the great points of Christian faith, duty and obligation. It is melancholy, and yet instructive to observe, through the course of history, how large a proportion of the energies of Christians have been absorbed in contentions against each other upon shadowy points of doctrine, while a world has been perishing in wickedness. The most efficient men in the Church on earth, have had about one half of their energies paralyzed by contentions with their own Christian brethren. It is so now. The most energetic men, in pleading the cause of Christ, are often assailed even more unrelentingly by brethren who differ with them upon some small point of doctrine, than by a hostile world. Human nature, even when partially sanctified, is frail indeed. The Elector of Saxony was perhaps a good man, but he was a weak one. He was a zealous Lutheran, and was shocked that a Calvinist, a man who held the destructive error that the bread and wine only _represented_ the body and the blood of Christ, should be raised to the throne of Bohemia, and thus become the leader of the Protestant party. The Elector of Saxony and the Elector of the Palatine had also been naturally rivals, as neighbors, and possessors of about equal rank and power. Though the Calvinists, to conciliate the Lutherans, had offered the throne to the Elector of Saxony, and he had declined it, as too perilous a post for him to occupy, still he was weakly jealous of his rival who had assumed that post, and was thus elevated above him to the kingly dignity. Ferdinand understood all this, and shrewdly availed himself of it. He plied the elector with arguments and promises, assuring him that the points in dispute were political merely and not religious; that he had no intention of opposing the Protestant religion, and that if the elector would abandon the Protestant league, he would reward him with a large accession of territory. It seems incredible that the Elector of Saxony could have been influenced by such representations. But so it was. Averring that he could not in conscience uphold a man who did not embrace the vital doctrine of the spiritual presence, he abandoned his Protestant brethren, and drew with him the Landgrave of Hesse, and several other Lutheran princes. This was a very serious defection, which disheartened the Protestants as much as it encouraged Ferdinand. The wily emperor having succeeded so admirably with the Protestant elector, now turned to the Roman Catholic court of France--that infamous court, still crimsoned with the blood of the St. Bartholomew massacre. Then, with diplomatic tergiversation, he represented that the conflict was not a political one, but purely religious, involving the interests of the Church. He urged that the peace of France and of Europe required that the Protestant heresy should be utterly effaced; and he provoked the resentment of the court by showing how much aid the Protestants in Europe had ever received from the Palatinate family. Here again he was completely successful, and the young king, Louis XIII., who was controlled by his bigoted yet powerful minister, the Duke of Luines, cordially espoused his cause. Spain, intolerant, despotic, hating Protestantism with perfect hatred, was eager with its aid. A well furnished army of twenty-four thousand men was sent from the Netherlands, and also a large sum of money was placed in the treasury of Ferdinand. Even the British monarch, notwithstanding the clamors of the nation, was maneuvered into neutrality. And most surprising of all, Ferdinand was successful in securing a truce with Gabriel Bethlehem, which, though it conferred peace upon Hungary, deprived the Bohemians of their powerful support. The Protestants were strong in their combination; but still it was a power of fearful strength now arrayed against them. It was evident that Europe was on the eve of a long and terrible struggle. The two forces began to assemble. The Protestants rendezvoused at Ulm, under the command of the Margrave of Anspach. The Catholic troops, from their wide dispersion, were concentrating at Guntzburg, to be led by the Duke of Bavaria. The attention of all Europe was arrested by these immense gatherings. All hearts were oppressed with solicitude, for the parties were very equally matched, and results of most momentous importance were dependent upon the issue. In this state of affairs the Protestant league, which extended through Europe, entered into a truce with the Catholic league, which also extended through Europe, that they should both withdraw from the contest, leaving Ferdinand and the Bohemians to settle the dispute as they best could. This seemed very much to narrow the field of strife, but the measure, in its practical results, was far more favorable to Ferdinand than to the Bohemians. The emperor thus disembarrassed, by important concessions, and by menaces, brought the Protestants of Lower Austria into submission. The masses, overawed by a show of power which they could not resist, yielded; the few who refused to bow in homage to the emperor were punished as guilty of treason. Ferdinand, by these cautious steps, was now prepared to concentrate his energies upon Bohemia. He first attacked the dependent provinces of Bohemia, one by one, sending an army of twenty-five thousand men to take them unprepared. Having subjected all of Upper Austria to his sway, with fifty thousand men he entered Bohemia. Their march was energetic and sanguinary. With such an overpowering force they took fortress after fortress, scaling ramparts, mercilessly cutting down garrisons, plundering and burning towns, and massacreing the inhabitants. Neither sex nor age was spared, and a brutal soldiery gratified their passions in the perpetration of indescribable horrors. Even the Duke of Bavaria was shocked at such barbarities, and entered his remonstrances against them. Many large towns, terrified by the atrocities perpetrated upon those who resisted the imperial arms, threw open their gates, hoping thus, by submission, to appease the vengeance of the conqueror. Frederic was a weak man, not at all capable of encountering such a storm, and the Bohemians had consequently no one to rally and to guide them with efficiency. His situation was now alarming in the extreme. He was abandoned by the Protestant league, hemmed in on every side by the imperial troops, and his hereditary domains of the Palatinate were overrun by twenty thousand Spaniards. His subjects, alarmed at his utter inefficiency, and terrified by the calamities which were falling, like avalanche after avalanche upon them, became dissatisfied with him, and despairing respecting their own fate. He was a Calvinist, and the Lutherans had never warmly received him. The impotent monarch, instead of establishing himself in the affections of his subjects, by vigorously driving the invaders from his realms, with almost inconceivable silliness endeavored to win their popularity by balls and smiles, pleasant words and masquerades. In fact, Frederic, by his utter inefficiency, was a foe more to be dreaded by Bohemia than Ferdinand. The armies of the emperor pressed on, throwing the whole kingdom into a state of consternation and dismay. The army of Frederic, which dared not emerge from its intrenchments at Pritznitz, about fifty miles south of Prague, consisted of but twenty-two thousand men, poorly armed, badly clothed, wretchedly supplied with military stores, and almost in a state of mutiny from arrears of pay. The generals were in perplexity and disagreement. Some, in the recklessness of despair, were for marching to meet the foe and to risk a battle; others were for avoiding a conflict, and thus protracting the war till the severity of winter should drive their enemies from the field, when they would have some time to prepare for another year's campaign. These difficulties led Frederic to apply for a truce. But Ferdinand was too wise to lose by wasting time in negotiations, vantage ground he had already gained. He refused to listen to any word except the unequivocal declaration that Frederic relinquished all right to the crown. Pressing his forces onward, he drove the Bohemians from behind their ramparts at Pritznitz, and pursued them down the Moldau even to the walls of Prague. Upon a magnificent eminence called the White Mountain, which commanded the city and its most important approaches, the disheartened army of Frederic stopped in its flight, and made its last stand. The enemy were in hot pursuit. The Bohemians in breathless haste began to throw up intrenchments along the ravines, and to plant their batteries on the hills, when the banners of Ferdinand were seen approaching. The emperor was too energetic a warrior to allow his panic-stricken foes time to regain their courage. Without an hour's delay he urged his victorious columns to the charge. The Bohemians fought desperately, with far more spirit than could have been expected. But they were overpowered by numbers, and in one short hour the army of Frederic was annihilated. Four thousand were left dead upon the field, one thousand were drowned in the frantic attempt to swim the Moldau, and the rest were either dispersed as fugitives over hill and valley or taken captive. The victory of the emperor was complete, the hopes of Frederic crushed, and the fate of Bohemia sealed. The contemptible Frederic, while this fierce battle was raging beneath the very walls of his capital, instead of placing himself at the head of his troops, was in the heart of the city, in the banqueting-hall of his palace, bowing and smiling and feasting his friends. The Prince of Anhalt, who was in command of the Bohemian army, had sent a most urgent message to the king, intreating him to dispatch immediately to his aid all the troops in the city, and especially to repair himself to the camp to encourage the troops by his presence. Frederic was at the table when he received this message, and sent word back that he could not come until after dinner. As soon as the combat commenced, another still more urgent message was sent, to which he returned the same reply. _After dinner_ he mounted his horse and rode to the gate which led to the White Mountain. The thunders of the terrible battle filled the air; the whole city was in the wildest state of terror and confusion; the gates barred and barricaded. Even the king could not get out. He climbed one of the towers of the wall and looked out upon the gory field, strewn with corpses, where his army _had been_, but was no more. He returned hastily to his palace, and met there the Prince of Anhalt, who, with a few fugitives, had succeeded in entering the city by one of the gates. The city now could not defend itself for an hour. The batteries of Ferdinand were beginning to play upon the walls, when Frederic sent out a flag of truce soliciting a cessation of hostilities for twenty-four hours, that they might negotiate respecting peace. The peremptory reply returned was, that there should not be truce for a single moment, unless Frederic would renounce all pretension to the crown of Bohemia. With such a renunciation truce would be granted for eight hours. Frederic acceded to the demand, and the noise of war was hushed. CHAPTER XVII. FERDINAND II. From 1621 to 1629. Pusillanimity of Frederic.--Intreaties of the Citizens of Prague.--Shameful Flight of Frederic.--Vengeance Inflicted Upon Bohemia.--Protestantism and Civil Freedom.--Vast Power of the Emperor.--Alarm of Europe.--James I.--Treaty of Marriage for the Prince of Wales.--Cardinal Richelieu.--New League of the Protestants.-- Desolating War.--Defeat of the King of Denmark.--Energy of Wallenstein.--Triumph of Ferdinand.--New Acts of Intolerance.-- Severities in Bohemia.--Desolation of the Kingdom.--Dissatisfaction of the Duke of Bavaria.--Meeting of the Catholic Princes.--The Emperor Humbled. The citizens of Prague were indignant at the pusillanimity of Frederic. In a body they repaired to the palace and tried to rouse his feeble spirits. They urged him to adopt a manly resistance, and offered to mount the ramparts and beat off the foe until succor could arrive. But Frederic told them that he had resolved to leave Prague, that he should escape during the darkness of the night, and advised them to capitulate on the most favorable terms they could obtain. The inhabitants of the city were in despair. They knew that they had nothing to hope from the clemency of the conqueror, and that there was no salvation for them from irretrievable ruin but in the most desperate warfare. Even now, though the enemy was at their gates, their situation was by no means hopeless with a leader of any energy. "We have still," they urged, "sufficient strength to withstand a siege. The city is not invested on every side, and reinforcements can enter by some of the gates. We have ample means in the city to support all the troops which can be assembled within its walls. The soldiers who have escaped from the disastrous battle need but to see the Bohemian banners again unfurled and to hear the blast of the bugle, to return to their ranks. Eight thousand troops are within a few hours' march of us. There is another strong band in the rear of the enemy, prepared to cut off their communications. Several strong fortresses, filled with arms and ammunition, are still in our possession, and the Bohemians, animated by the remembrance of the heroic deeds of their ancestors, are eager to retrieve their fortunes." Had Frederic possessed a tithe of the perseverance and energy of Ferdinand, with these resources he might soon have arrested the steps of the conqueror. Never was the characteristic remark of Napoleon to Ney better verified, that "an army of deer led by a lion is better than an army of lions led by a deer." Frederic was panic-stricken for fear he might fall into the hands of Ferdinand, from whom he well knew that he was to expect no mercy. With ignominious haste, abandoning every thing, even the coronation regalia, at midnight, surrounded by a few friends, he stole out at one of the gates of the city, and putting spurs to his horse, allowed himself no rest until he was safe within the walls of Berlin, two hundred miles from Prague. The despairing citizens, thus deserted by their sovereign, and with a victorious foe at their very walls, had no alternative but to throw open their gates and submit to the mercy of the conqueror. The next day the whole imperial army, under the Duke of Bavaria, with floating banners and exultant music, entered the streets of the capital, and took possession of the palaces. The tyrant Ferdinand was as vengeful and venomous as he was vigorous and unyielding. The city was immediately disarmed, and the government intrusted to a vigorous Roman Catholic prince, Charles of Lichtenstein. A strong garrison was left in the city to crush, with a bloody hand, any indications of insurrection, and then the Duke of Bavaria returned with most of his army to Munich, his capital, tottering beneath the burden of plunder. There was a moment's lull before the tempest of imperial wrath burst upon doomed Bohemia. Ferdinand seemed to deliberate, and gather his strength, that he might strike a blow which would be felt forever. He did strike such a blow--one which has been remembered for two hundred years, and which will not be forgotten for ages to come--one which doomed parents and children to weary years of vagabondage, penury and woe which must have made life a burden. On the night of the 21st of January, three months after the capitulation, and when the inhabitants of Prague had begun to hope that there might, after all, be some mercy in the bosom of Ferdinand, forty of the leading citizens of the place were simultaneously arrested. They were torn from their families and thrown into dungeons where they were kept in terrific suspense for four months. They were then brought before an imperial commission and condemned as guilty of high treason. All their property was confiscated, nothing whatever being left for their helpless families. Twenty-three were immediately executed upon the scaffold, and all the rest were either consigned to life-long imprisonment, or driven into banishment. Twenty-seven other nobles, who had escaped from the kingdom, were declared traitors. Their castles were seized, their property confiscated and presented as rewards to Roman Catholic nobles who were the friends of Ferdinand. An order was then issued for all the nobles and landholders throughout the kingdom to send in a confession of whatever aid they had rendered, or encouragement they had given to the insurrection. And the most terrible vengeance was threatened against any one who should afterward be proved guilty of any act whatever of which he had not made confession. The consternation which this decree excited was so great, that not only was every one anxious to confess the slightest act which could be construed as unfriendly to the emperor, but many, in their terror, were driven to accuse themselves of guilt, who had taken no share in the movement. Seven hundred nobles, and the whole body of Protestant landholders, placed their names on the list of those who confessed guilt and implored pardon. The fiend-like emperor, then, in the mockery of mercy, declared that in view of his great clemency and their humble confession, he would spare their forfeited lives, and would only punish them by depriving them of their estates. He took their mansions, their estates, their property, and turned them adrift upon the world, with their wives and their children, fugitives and penniless. Thus between one and two thousand of the most ancient and noble families of the kingdom were rendered houseless and utterly beggared. Their friends, involved with them in the same woe, could render no assistance. They were denounced as traitors; no one dared befriend them, and their possessions were given to those who had rallied beneath the banners of the emperor. "To the victors belong the spoils." No pen can describe the ruin of these ancient families. No imagination can follow them in their steps of starvation and despair, until death came to their relief. Ferdinand considered Protestantism and rebellion as synonymous terms. And well he might, for Protestantism has ever been arrayed as firmly against civil as against religious despotism. The doctrines of the reformers, from the days of Luther and Calvin, have always been associated with political liberty. Ferdinand was determined to crush Protestantism. The punishment of the Elector Palatine was to be a signal and an appalling warning to all who in future should think of disputing the imperial sway. The elector himself, having renounced the throne, had escaped beyond the emperor's reach. But Ferdinand took possession of his ancestral territories and divided them among his Roman Catholic allies. The electoral vote which he held in the diet of the empire, Ferdinand transferred to the Duke of Bavaria, thus reducing the Protestant vote to two, and securing an additional Catholic suffrage. The ban of the empire was also published against the Prince of Anhalt, the Count of Hohenloe, and the Duke Jaegendorf, who had been supporters of Frederic. This ban of the empire deprived them of their territories, of their rank, and of their possessions. The Protestants throughout the empire were terrified by these fierce acts of vengeance, and were fearful of sharing the same fate. They now regretted bitterly that they had disbanded their organization. They dared not make any move against the emperor, who was flushed with pride and power, lest he should pounce at once upon them. The emperor consequently marched unimpeded in his stern chastisements. Frederic was thus deserted entirely by the Protestant union; and his father-in-law, James of England, in accordance with his threat, refused to lend him any aid. Various most heroic efforts were made by a few intrepid nobles but one after another they were crushed by the iron hand of the emperor. Ferdinand, having thus triumphed over all his foes, and having divided their domains among his own followers, called a meeting of the electors who were devoted to his cause, at Ratisbon, on the 25th of February, 1623, to confirm what he had done. In every portion of the empire, where the arm of the emperor could reach them, the Protestants were receiving heavy blows. They were now thoroughly alarmed and aroused. The Catholics all over Europe were renewing their league; all the Catholic powers were banded together, and Protestantism seemed on the eve of being destroyed by the sword of persecution. Other parts of Europe also began to look with alarm upon the vast power acquired by Austria. There was but little of conciliation in the character of Ferdinand, and his unbounded success, while it rendered him more haughty, excited also the jealousy of the neighboring powers. In Lower Saxony, nearly all the nobles and men of influence were Protestants. The principal portion of the ecclesiastical property was in their hands. It was very evident that unless the despotism of Ferdinand was checked, he would soon wrest from them their titles and possessions, and none the less readily because he had succeeded in bribing the Elector of Saxony to remain neutral while he tore the crown of Bohemia from the Elector of the Palatine, and despoiled him of his wide-spread ancestral territories. James I. of England had been negotiating a marriage of his son, the Prince of Wales, subsequently Charles I., with the daughter of the King of Spain. This would have been, in that day, a brilliant match for his son; and as the Spanish monarch was a member of the house of Austria, and a coöperator with his cousin, the Emperor Ferdinand, in all his measures in Germany, it was an additional reason why James should not interfere in defense of his son-in-law, Frederic of the Palatine. But now this match was broken off by the influence of the haughty English minister Buckingham, who had the complete control of the feeble mind of the British monarch. A treaty of marriage was soon concluded between the Prince of Wales and Henrietta, a princess of France. There was hereditary hostility between France and Spain, and both England and France were now quite willing to humble the house of Austria. The nobles of Lower Saxony availed themselves of this new turn in the posture of affairs, and obtained promises of aid from them both, and, through their intercession, aid also from Denmark and Sweden. Richelieu, the imperious French minister, was embarrassed by two antagonistic passions. He was eager to humble the house of Austria; and this he could only do by lending aid to the Protestants. On the other hand, it was the great object of his ambition to restore the royal authority to unlimited power, and this he could only accomplish by aiding the house of Austria to crush the Protestants, whose love of freedom all despots have abhorred. Impelled by these conflicting passions, he did all in his power to extirpate Protestantism from France, while he omitted neither lures nor intrigues to urge the Protestants in Germany to rise against the despotism of Austria. Gustavus Adolphus, of Sweden, was personally inimical to Ferdinand, in consequence of injuries he had received at his hands. Christian IV. of Denmark was cousin to Elizabeth, the mother of Frederic, and, in addition to this interest in the conflict which relationship gave him, he was also trembling lest some of his own possessions should soon be wrested from him by the all-grasping emperor. A year was employed, the year 1624, in innumerable secret intrigues, and plans of combination, for a general rising of the Protestant powers. It was necessary that the utmost secrecy should be observed in forming the coalition, and that all should be ready, at the same moment, to cooperate against a foe so able, so determined and so powerful. Matters being thus essentially arranged, the States of Lower Saxony, who were to take the lead, held a meeting at Segeberg on the 25th of March, 1625. They formed a league for the preservation of their religion and liberties, settled the amount of money and men which each of the contracting parties was to furnish, and chose Christian IV., King of Denmark, their leader. The emperor had for some time suspected that a confederacy was in the process of formation, and had kept a watchful eye upon every movement. The vail was now laid aside, and Christian IV. issued a proclamation, stating the reasons why they had taken up arms against the emperor. This was the signal for a blaze of war, which wrapped all northern Europe in a wide conflagration. Victory ebbed and flowed. Bohemia, Hungary, Denmark, Austria--all the States of the empire, were swept and devastated by pursuing and retreating armies. But gradually the emperor gained. First he overwhelmed all opposition in Lower Saxony, and riveting anew the shackles of despotism, rewarded his followers with the spoils of the vanquished. Then he silenced every murmur in Austria, so that no foe dared lift up the voice or peep. Then he poured his legions into Hungary, swept back the tide of victory which had been following the Hungarian banners, and struck blow after blow, until Gabriel Bethlehem was compelled to cry for peace and mercy. Bohemia, previously disarmed and impoverished, was speedily struck down. And now the emperor turned his energies against the panic-stricken King of Denmark. He pursued him from fortress to fortress; attacked him in the open field, and beat him; attacked him behind his intrenchments, and drove him from them through the valleys, and over the hills, across rivers, and into forests; bombarded his cities, plundered his provinces, shot down his subjects, till the king, reduced almost to the last extremity, implored peace. The emperor repelled his advances with scorn, demanding conditions of debasement more to be dreaded than death. The King of Denmark fled to the isles of the Baltic. Ferdinand took possession of the shores of this northern sea, and immediately commenced with vigor creating a fleet, that he might have sea as well as land forces, that he might pursue the Danish monarch over the water, and that he might more effectually punish Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden. He had determined to dethrone this monarch, and to transfer the crown of Sweden to Sigismond, his brother-in-law, King of Poland, who was almost as zealous a Roman Catholic as was the emperor himself. He drove the two Dukes of Mecklenburg from their territory, and gave the rich and beautiful duchy, extending along the south-eastern shore of the Baltic, to his renowned general, Wallenstein. This fierce, ambitious warrior was made generalissimo of all the imperial troops by land, and admiral of the Baltic sea. Ferdinand took possession of all the ports, from the mouth of the Keil, to Kolberg, at the mouth of the Persante. Wismar, on the magnificent bay bearing the same name, was made the great naval depot; and, by building, buying, hiring and robbing, the emperor soon collected quite a formidable fleet. The immense duchy of Pomerania was just north-east of Mecklenburg, extending along the eastern shore of the Baltic sea some hundred and eighty miles, and about sixty miles in breadth. Though the duke had in no way displeased Ferdinand, the emperor grasped the magnificent duchy, and held it by the power of his resistless armies. Crossing a narrow arm of the sea, he took the rich and populous islands of Rugen and Usedom, and laid siege to the city of Stralsund, which almost commanded the Baltic sea. The kings of Sweden and Denmark, appalled by the rapid strides of the imperial general, united all their strength to resist him. They threw a strong garrison into Stralsund, and sent the fleets of both kingdoms to aid in repelling the attack, and succeeded in baffling all the attempts of Wallenstein, and finally in driving him off, though he had boasted that "he would reduce Stralsund, even if it were bound to heaven with chains of adamant." Though frustrated in this attempt, the armies of Ferdinand had swept along so resistlessly, that the King of Denmark was ready to make almost any sacrifice for peace. A congress was accordingly held at Lubec in May, 1629, when peace was made; Ferdinand retaining a large portion of his conquests, and the King of Denmark engaging no longer to interfere in the affairs of the empire. Ferdinand was now triumphant over all his foes. The Protestants throughout the empire were crushed, and all their allies vanquished. He now deemed himself omnipotent, and with wild ambition contemplated the utter extirpation of Protestantism, and the subjugation of nearly all of Europe to his sway. He formed the most intimate alliance with the branch of his house ruling over Spain, hoping that thus the house of Austria might be the arbiter of the fate of Europe. The condition of Europe at that time was peculiarly favorable for the designs of the emperor. Charles I. of England was struggling against that Parliament which soon deprived him both of his crown and his head. France was agitated, from the Rhine to the Pyrenees, by civil war, the Catholics striving to exterminate the Protestants. Insurrections in Turkey absorbed all the energies of the Ottoman court, leaving them no time to think of interfering with the affairs of Europe. The King of Denmark was humiliated and prostrate. Sweden was too far distant and too feeble to excite alarm. Sigismond of Poland was in intimate alliance with the emperor. Gabriel Bethlehem of Hungary was languishing on a bed of disease and pain, and only asked permission to die in peace. The first step which the emperor now took was to revoke all the concessions which had been granted to the Protestants. In Upper Austria, where he felt especially strong, he abolished the Protestant worship utterly. In Lower Austria he was slightly embarrassed by engagements which he had so solemnly made, and dared not trample upon them without some little show of moderation. First he prohibited the circulation of all Protestant books; he then annulled all baptisms and marriages performed by Protestants; then all Protestants were excluded from holding any civil or military office; then he issued a decree that all the children, without exception, should be educated by Catholic priests, and that every individual should attend Catholic worship. Thus coil by coil he wound around his subjects the chain of unrelenting intolerance. In Bohemia he was especially severe, apparently delighting to punish those who had made a struggle for civil and religious liberty. Every school teacher, university professor and Christian minister, was ejected from office, and their places in schools, universities and churches were supplied by Catholic monks. No person was allowed to exercise any mechanical trade whatever, unless he professed the Roman Catholic faith. A very severe fine was inflicted upon any one who should be detected worshiping at any time, even in family prayer, according to the doctrines and customs of the Protestant church. Protestant marriages were pronounced illegal, their children illegitimate, their wills invalid. The Protestant poor were driven from the hospitals and the alms-houses. No Protestant was allowed to reside in the capital city of Prague, but, whatever his wealth or rank, he was driven ignominiously from the metropolis. In the smaller towns and remote provinces of the kingdom, a military force, accompanied by Jesuits and Capuchin friars, sought out the Protestants, and they were exposed to every conceivable insult and indignity. Their houses were pillaged, their wives and children surrendered to all the outrages of a cruel soldiery; many were massacred; many, hunted like wild beasts, were driven into the forest; many were put to the torture, and as their bones were crushed and quivering nerves were torn, they were required to give in their adhesion to the Catholic faith. The persecution to which the Bohemians were subjected has perhaps never been exceeded in severity. While Bohemia was writhing beneath these woes, the emperor, to secure the succession, repaired in regal pomp to Prague, and crowned his son King of Bohemia. He then issued a decree abolishing the right which the Bohemians had claimed, to elect their king, forbade the use of the Bohemian language in the court and in all public transactions, and annulled all past edicts of toleration. He proclaimed that no religion but the Roman Catholic should henceforth be tolerated in Bohemia, and that all who did not immediately return to the bosom of the Church should be banished from the kingdom. This cruel edict drove into banishment thirty thousand families. These Protestant families composed the best portion of the community, including the most illustrious in rank, the most intelligent, the most industrious and the most virtuous, No State could meet with such a loss without feeling it deeply, and Bohemia has never yet recovered from the blow. One of the Bohemian historians, himself a Roman Catholic, thus describes the change which persecution wrought in Bohemia: "The records of history scarcely furnish a similar example of such a change as Bohemia underwent during the reign of Ferdinand II. In 1620, the monks and a few of the nobility only excepted, the whole country was entirely Protestant. At the death of Ferdinand it was, in appearance at least, Catholic. Till the battle of the White Mountain the States enjoyed more exclusive privileges than the Parliament of England. They enacted laws, imposed taxes, contracted alliances, declared war and peace, and chose or confirmed their kings. But all these they now lost. "Till this fatal period the Bohemians were daring, undaunted, enterprising, emulous of fame; now they have lost all their courage, their national pride, their enterprising spirit. Their courage lay buried in the White Mountain. Individuals still possessed personal valor, military ardor and a thirst of glory, but, blended with other nations, they resembled the waters of the Moldau which join those of the Elbe. These united streams bear ships, overflow lands and overturn rocks; yet the Elbe is only mentioned, and the Moldau forgotten. "The Bohemian language, which had been used in all the courts of justice, and which was in high estimation among the nobles, fell into contempt. The German was introduced, became the general language among the nobles and citizens, and was used by the monks in their sermons. The inhabitants of the towns began to be ashamed of their native tongue, which was confined to the villages and called the language of peasants. The arts and sciences, so highly cultivated and esteemed under Rhodolph, sunk beyond recovery. During the period which immediately followed the banishment of the Protestants, Bohemia scarcely produced one man who became eminent in any branch of learning. The greater part of the schools were conducted by Jesuits and other monkish orders, and nothing taught therein but bad Latin. "It can not be denied that several of the Jesuits were men of great learning and science; but their system was to keep the people in ignorance. Agreeably to this principle they gave their scholars only the rind, and kept to themselves the pulp of literature. With this view they traveled from town to town as missionaries, and went from house to house, examining all books, which the landlord was compelled under pain of eternal damnation to produce. The greater part they confiscated and burnt. They thus endeavored to extinguish the ancient literature of the country, labored to persuade the students that before the introduction of their order into Bohemia nothing but ignorance prevailed, and carefully concealed the learned labors and even the names of our ancestors." Ferdinand, having thus bound Bohemia hand and foot, and having accomplished all his purpose in that kingdom, now endeavored, by cautious but very decisive steps, to expel Protestant doctrines from all parts of the German empire. Decree succeeded decree, depriving Protestants of their rights and conferring upon the Roman Catholics wealth and station. He had a powerful and triumphant standing army at his control, under the energetic and bigoted Wallenstein, ready and able to enforce his ordinances. No Protestant prince dared to make any show of resistance. All the church property was torn from the Protestants, and this vast sum, together with the confiscated territories of those Protestant princes or nobles who had ventured to resist the emperor, placed at his disposal a large fund from which to reward his followers. The emperor kept, however, a large portion of the spoils in his own hands for the enriching of his own family. This state of things soon alarmed even the Catholics. The emperor was growing too powerful, and his power was bearing profusely its natural fruit of pride and arrogance. The army was insolent, trampling alike upon friend and foe. As there was no longer any war, the army had become merely the sword of the emperor to maintain his despotism. Wallenstein had become so essential to the emperor, and possessed such power at the head of the army, that he assumed all the air and state of a sovereign, and insulted the highest nobles and the most powerful bishops by his assumptions of superiority. The electors of the empire perceiving that the emperor was centralizing power in his own hands, and that they would soon become merely provincial governors, compelled to obey his laws and subject to his appointment and removal, began to whisper to each other their alarm. The Duke of Bavaria was one of the most powerful princes of the German empire. He had been the rival of Count Wallenstein, and was now exceedingly annoyed by the arrogance of this haughty military chief. Wallenstein was the emperor's right arm of strength. Inflamed by as intense an ambition as ever burned in a human bosom, every thought and energy was devoted to self-aggrandizement. He had been educated a Protestant, but abandoned those views for the Catholic faith which opened a more alluring field to ambition. Sacrificing the passions of youth he married a widow, infirm and of advanced age, but of great wealth. The death of his wrinkled bride soon left him the vast property without incumbrance. He then entered into a matrimonial alliance which favored his political prospects, marrying Isabella, the daughter of Count Harruch, who was one of the emperor's greatest favorites. When Ferdinand's fortunes were at a low ebb, and he knew not in which way to find either money or an army, Wallenstein offered to raise fifty thousand men at his own expense, to pay their wages, supply them with arms and all the munitions of war, and to call upon the emperor for no pecuniary assistance whatever, if the emperor would allow him to retain the plunder he could extort from the conquered. Upon this majestic scale Wallenstein planned to act the part of a highwayman. Ferdinand's necessities were so great that he gladly availed himself of this infamous offer. Wallenstein made money by the bargain. Wherever he marched he compelled the people to support his army, and to support it luxuriously. The emperor had now constituted him admiral of the Baltic fleet, and had conferred upon him the title of duke, with the splendid duchy of Mecklenburg, and the principality of Sagan in Silesia. His overbearing conduct and his enormous extortions--he having, in seven years, wrested from the German princes more than four hundred million of dollars--excited a general feeling of discontent, in which the powerful Duke of Bavaria took the lead. Envy is a stronger passion than political religion. Zealous as the Duke of Bavaria had been in the cause of the papal church, he now forgot that church in his zeal to abase an arrogant and insulting rival. Richelieu, the prime minister of France, was eagerly watching for opportunities to humiliate the house of Austria, and he, with alacrity, met the advances of the Duke of Bavaria, and conspired with him to form a Catholic league, to check the ambition of Wallenstein, and to arrest the enormous strides of the emperor. With this object in view, a large number of the most powerful Catholic princes met at Heidelberg, in March, 1629, and passed resolutions soliciting Ferdinand to summon a diet of the German empire to take into consideration the evils occasioned by the army of Wallenstein, and to propose a remedy. The emperor had, in his arrogance, commanded the princes of the various States in the departments of Suabia and Franconia, to disband their troops. To this demand they returned the bold and spirited reply, "Till we have received an indemnification, or a pledge for the payment of our expenses, we will neither disband a single soldier, nor relinquish a foot of territory, ecclesiastical or secular, _demand it who will_." The emperor did not venture to disregard the request for him to summon a diet. Indeed he was anxious, on his own account, to convene the electors, for he wished to secure the election of his son to the throne of the empire, and he needed succors to aid him in the ambitious wars which he was waging in various and distant parts of Europe. The diet was assembled at Ratisbon: the emperor presided in person. As he had important favors to solicit, he assumed a very conciliatory tone. He expressed his regret that the troops had been guilty of such disorders, and promised immediate redress. He then, supposing that his promise would be an ample satisfaction, very graciously solicited of them the succession of the imperial throne for his son, and supplies for his army. But the electors were not at all in a pliant mood. Some were resolved that, at all hazards, the imperial army, which threatened Germany, should be reduced, and that Wallenstein should be dismissed from the command. Others were equally determined that the crown of the empire should not descend to the son of Ferdinand. The Duke of Bavaria headed the party who would debase Wallenstein; and Cardinal Richelieu, with all the potent influences of intrigue and bribery at the command of the French court, was the soul of the party resolved to wrest the crown of the empire from the house of Austria. Richelieu sent two of the most accomplished diplomatists France could furnish, as ambassadors to the diet, who, while maintaining, as far as possible, the guise of friendship, were to do every thing in their power to thwart the election of Ferdinand's son. These were supplied with inexhaustible means for the purchase of votes, and were authorized to make any promises, however extravagant, which should be deemed essential for the attainment of their object. Ferdinand, long accustomed to have his own way, was not anticipating any serious resistance. He was therefore amazed and confounded, when the diet returned to him, instead of their humble submission and congratulations, a long, detailed, emphatic remonstrance against the enormities perpetrated by the imperial army, and demanding the immediate reduction of the army, now one hundred and fifty thousand strong, and the dismission of Wallenstein, before they could proceed to any other business whatever. This bold stand animated the Protestant princes of the empire, and they began to be clamorous for their rights. Some of the Catholics even espoused their cause, warning Ferdinand that, unless he granted the Protestants some degree of toleration, they would seek redress by joining the enemies of the empire. It would have been impossible to frame three demands more obnoxious to the emperor. To crush the Protestants had absorbed the energies of his life; and now that they were utterly prostrate, to lift them up and place them on their feet again, was an idea he could not endure. The imperial army had been his supple tool. By its instrumentality he had gained all his power, and by its energies alone he retained that power. To disband the army was to leave himself defenseless. Wallenstein had been every thing to the emperor, and Ferdinand still needed the support of his inflexible and unscrupulous energies. Wallenstein was in the cabinet of the emperor advising him in this hour of perplexity. His counsel was characteristic of his impetuous, headlong spirit. He advised the emperor to pour his army into the territory of the Duke of Bavaria; chastise him and all his associates for their insolence, and thus overawe the rest. But the Duke of Bavaria was in favor of electing the emperor's son as his successor on the throne of the empire; and Ferdinand's heart was fixed upon this object. "Dismiss Wallenstein, and reduce the army," said the Duke of Bavaria, "and the Catholic electors will vote for your son; grant the required toleration to the Protestants, and they will vote for him likewise." The emperor yielded, deciding in his own mind, aided by the Jesuitical suggestions of a monk, that he could afterwards recall Wallenstein, and assemble anew his dispersed battalions. He dismissed sixteen thousand of his best cavalry; suspended some of the most obnoxious edicts against the Protestants, and _implored_ Wallenstein to resign his post. The emperor was terribly afraid that this proud general would refuse, and would lead the army to mutiny. The emperor accordingly accompanied his request with every expression of gratitude and regret, and assured the general of his continued favor. Wallenstein, well aware that the disgrace would be but temporary, quietly yielded. He dismissed the envoys of the emperor with presents, wrote a very submissive letter, and, with much ostentation of obedience, retired to private life. CHAPTER XVIII. FERDINAND II. AND GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS. From 1629 to 1632. Vexation of Ferdinand.--Gustavus Adolphus.--Address to the nobles of Sweden.--March of Gustavus.--Appeal to the Protestants.--Magdeburg joins Gustavus.--Destruction of the city.--Consternation of the Protestants.-- Exultation of the Catholics.--The Elector of Saxony driven from his domains.--Battle of Leipsig.--The Swedes penetrate Bohemia.--Freedom of conscience established.--Death of Tilly.--The Retirement of Wallenstein.--The command resumed by Wallenstein.--Capture of Prague.--Encounter between Wallenstein and Gustavus.--Battle of Lutzen.--Death of Gustavus. The hand of France was conspicuous in wresting all these sacrifices from the emperor, and was then still more conspicuous in thwarting his plans for the election of his son. The ambassadors of Richelieu, with diplomatic adroitness, urged upon the diet the Duke of Bavaria as candidate for the imperial crown. This tempting offer silenced the duke, and he could make no more efforts for the emperor. The Protestants greatly preferred the duke to any one of the race of the bigoted Ferdinand. The emperor was excessively chagrined by this aspect of affairs, and abruptly dissolved the diet. He felt that he had been duped by France; that a cunning monk, Richelieu's ambassador, had outwitted him. In his vexation he exclaimed, "A Capuchin friar has disarmed me with his rosary, and covered six electoral caps with his cowl." The emperor was meditating vengeance--the recall of Wallenstein, the reconstruction of the army, the annulling of the edict of toleration, the march of an invading force into the territories of the Duke of Bavaria, and the chastisement of all, Catholics as well as Protestants, who had aided in thwarting his plans--when suddenly a new enemy appeared. Gustavus Adolphus, King of Sweden, reigning over his remote realms on the western shores of the Baltic, though a zealous Protestant, was regarded by Ferdinand as a foe too distant and too feeble to be either respected or feared. But Gustavus, a man of exalted abilities, and of vast energy, was watching with intense interest the despotic strides of the emperor. In his endeavors to mediate in behalf of the Protestants of Germany, he had encountered repeated insults on the part of Ferdinand. The imperial troops were now approaching his own kingdom. They had driven Christian IV., King of Denmark, from his continental territories on the eastern shore of the Baltic, had already taken possession of several of the islands, and were constructing a fleet which threatened the command of that important sea. Gustavus was alarmed, and roused himself to assume the championship of the civil and religious liberties of Europe. He conferred with all the leading Protestant princes, formed alliances, secured funds, stationed troops to protect his own frontiers, and then, assembling the States of his kingdom, entailed the succession of the crown on his only child Christiana, explained to them his plans of war against the emperor, and concluded a dignified and truly pathetic harangue with the following words. "The enterprise in which I am about to engage is not one dictated by the love of conquest or by personal ambition. Our honor, our religion and our independence are imperiled. I am to encounter great dangers, and may fall upon the field of battle. If it be God's will that I should die in the defense of liberty, of my country and of mankind, I cheerfully surrender myself to the sacrifice. It is my duty as a sovereign to obey the King of kings without murmuring, and to resign the power I have received from His hands whenever it shall suit His all-wise purposes. I shall yield up my last breath with the firm persuasion that Providence will support my subjects because they are faithful and virtuous, and that my ministers, generals and senators will punctually discharge their duty to my child because they love justice, respect me, and feel for their country." The king himself was affected as he uttered these words, and tears moistened the eyes of many of the stern warriors who surrounded him. With general acclaim they approved of his plan, voted him all the succors he required, and enthusiastically offered their own fortunes and lives to his service. Gustavus assembled a fleet at Elfsnaben, crossed the Baltic sea, and in June, 1630, landed thirty thousand troops in Pomerania, which Wallenstein had overrun. The imperial army, unprepared for such an assault, fled before the Swedish king. Marching rapidly, Gustavus took Stettin, the capital of the duchy, situated at the mouth of the Oder, and commanding that stream. Driving the imperial troops everywhere before him from Pomerania, and pursuing them into the adjoining Mark of Brandenburg, he took possession of a large part of that territory. He issued a proclamation to the inhabitants of Germany, recapitulating the arbitrary and despotic acts of the emperor, and calling upon all Protestants to aid in an enterprise, in the success of which the very existence of Protestantism in Germany seemed to be involved. But so utterly had the emperor crushed the spirits of the Protestants by his fiend-like severity, that but few ventured to respond to his appeal. The rulers, however, of many of the Protestant States met at Leipsic, and without venturing to espouse the cause of Gustavus, and without even alluding to his invasion, they addressed a letter to the emperor demanding a redress of grievances, and informing him that they had decided to establish a permanent council for the direction of their own affairs, and to raise an army of forty thousand men for their own protection. Most of these events had occurred while the emperor, with Wallenstein, was at Ratisbon, intriguing to secure the succession of the imperial crown for his son. They both looked upon the march of the King of Sweden into the heart of Germany as the fool-hardy act of a mad adventurer. The courtiers ridiculed his transient conquests, saying, "Gustavus Adolphus is a king of snow. Like a snowball he will melt in a southern clime." Wallenstein was particularly contemptuous. "I will whip him back to his country," said he, "like a truant school-boy, with rods." Ferdinand was for a time deceived by these representations, and was by no means aware of the real peril which threatened him. The diet which the emperor had assembled made a proclamation of war against Gustavus, but adopted no measures of energy adequate to the occasion. The emperor sent a silly message to Gustavus that if he did not retire immediately from Germany he would attack him with his whole force. To this folly Gustavus returned a contemptuous reply. A few of the minor Protestant princes now ventured to take arms and join the standard of Gustavus. The important city of Magdeburg, in Saxony, on the Elbe, espoused his cause. This city, with its bastions and outworks completely commanding the Elbe, formed one of the strongest fortresses of Europe. It contained, exclusive of its strong garrison, thirty thousand inhabitants. It was now evident to Ferdinand that vigorous action was called for. He could not, consistently with his dignity, recall Wallenstein in the same breath with which he had dismissed him. He accordingly concentrated his troops and placed them under the command of Count Tilly. The imperial troops were dispatched to Magdeburg. They surrounded the doomed city, assailed it furiously, and proclaimed their intention of making it a signal mark of imperial vengeance. Notwithstanding the utmost efforts of Gustavus to hasten to their relief, he was foiled in his endeavors, and the town was carried by assault on the 10th of May. Never, perhaps, did earth witness a more cruel exhibition of the horrors of war. The soul sickens in the contemplation of outrages so fiend-like. We prefer to give the narrative of these deeds, which it is the duty of history to record, in the language of another. "All the horrors ever exercised against a captured place were repeated and almost surpassed, on this dreadful event, which, notwithstanding all the subsequent disorders and the lapse of time, is still fresh in the recollection of its inhabitants and of Germany. Neither age, beauty nor innocence, neither infancy nor decrepitude, found refuge or compassion from the fury of the licentious soldiery. No retreat was sufficiently secure to escape their rapacity and vengeance; no sanctuary sufficiently sacred to repress their lust and cruelty. Infants were murdered before the eyes of their parents, daughters and wives violated in the arms of their fathers and husbands. Some of the imperial officers, recoiling from this terrible scene, flew to Count Tilly and supplicated him to put a stop to the carnage. 'Stay yet an hour,' was his barbarous reply; 'let the soldier have some compensation for his dangers and fatigues.' "The troops, left to themselves, after sating their passions, and almost exhausting their cruelty in three hours of pillage and massacre, set fire to the town, and the flames were in an instant spread by the wind to every quarter of the place. Then opened a scene which surpassed all the former horrors. Those who had hitherto escaped, or who were forced by the flames from their hiding-places, experienced a more dreadful fate. Numbers were driven into the Elbe, others massacred with every species of savage barbarity--the wombs of pregnant women ripped up, and infants thrown into the fire or impaled on pikes and suspended over the flames. History has no terms, poetry no language, painting no colors to depict all the horrors of the scene. In less than ten hours the most rich, the most flourishing and the most populous town in Germany was reduced to ashes. The cathedral, a single convent and a few miserable huts, were all that were left of its numerous buildings, and scarcely more than a thousand souls all that remained of more than thirty thousand inhabitants. "After an interval of two days, when the soldiers were fatigued, if not sated, with devastation and slaughter, and when the flames had begun to subside, Tilly entered the town in triumph. To make room for his passage the streets were cleared and six thousand carcasses thrown into the Elbe. He ordered the pillage to cease, pardoned the scanty remnant of the inhabitants, who had taken refuge in the cathedral, and, surrounded by flames and carnage, had remained three days without food or refreshment, under all the terrors of impending fate. After hearing a _Te Deum_ in the midst of military pomp, he paraded the streets; and even though his unfeeling heart seemed touched with the horrors of the scene, he could not refrain from the savage exultation of boasting to the emperor, and comparing the assault of Magdeburg to the sack of Troy and of Jerusalem." This terrible display of vengeance struck the Protestants with consternation. The extreme Catholic party were exultant, and their chiefs met in a general assembly and passed resolutions approving the course of the emperor and pledging him their support. Ferdinand was much encouraged by this change in his favor, and declared his intention of silencing all Protestant voices. He recalled an army of twenty-four thousand men from Italy. They crossed the Alps, and, as they marched through the frontier States of the empire, they spread devastation and ruin through all the Protestant territories, exacting enormous contributions, compelling the Protestant princes, on oath, to renounce the Protestant league, and to unite with the Catholic confederacy against the King of Sweden. In the meantime, Gustavus pressed forward into the duchy of Mecklenburg, driving the imperial troops before him. Tilly retired into the territory of the Elector of Saxony, robbing, burning and destroying everywhere. Uniting his force with the army from Italy he ravaged the country, resistlessly advancing even to Leipsic, and capturing the city. The elector, quite unable to cope with so powerful a foe, retired with his troops to the Swedish camp, where he entered into an offensive and defensive alliance with Gustavus. The Swedish army, thus reinforced, hastened to the relief of Leipsic, and arrived before its walls the very day on which the city surrendered. Tilly, with the pride of a conqueror, advanced to meet them. The two armies, about equal in numbers, and commanded by their renowned captains, met but a few miles from the city. Neither of the commanders had ever before suffered a defeat. It was a duel, in which one or the other must fall. Every soldier in the ranks felt the sublimity of the hour. For some time there was marching and countermarching--the planting of batteries, and the gathering of squadrons and solid columns, each one hesitating to strike the first blow. At last the signal was given by the discharge of three pieces of cannon from one of the batteries of Tilly. Instantly a thunder peal rolled along the extended lines from wing to wing. The awful work of death was begun. Hour after hour the fierce and bloody fight continued, as the surges of victory and defeat swept to and fro upon the plain. But the ever uncertain fortune of battle decided in favor of the Swedes. As the darkness of evening came prematurely on, deepened by the clouds of smoke which canopied the field, the imperialists were everywhere flying in dismay. Tilly, having been struck by three balls, was conveyed from the field in excruciating pain to a retreat in Halle. Seven thousand of his troops lay dead upon the field. Five thousand were taken prisoners. All the imperial artillery and baggage fell into the hands of the conqueror. The rest of the army was so dispersed that but two thousand could be rallied under the imperial banners. Gustavus, thus triumphant, dispatched a portion of his army, under the Elector of Saxony, to rescue Bohemia from the tyrant grasp of the emperor. Gustavus himself, with another portion, marched in various directions to cut off the resources of the enemy and to combine the scattered parts of the Protestant confederacy. His progress was like the tranquil march of a sovereign in his own dominions, greeted by the enthusiasm of his subjects. He descended the Maine to the Rhine, and then ascending the Rhine, took every fortress from Maine to Strasbourg. While Gustavus was thus extending his conquests through the very heart of Germany, the Elector of Saxony reclaimed all of Bohemia from the imperial arms. Prague itself capitulated to the Saxon troops. Count Thurn led the Saxon troops in triumph over the same bridge which he, but a few months before, had traversed a fugitive. He found, impaled upon the bridge, the shriveled heads of twelve of his companions, which he enveloped in black satin and buried with funeral honors. The Protestants of Bohemia rose enthusiastically to greet their deliverers. Their churches, schools and universities were reëstablished. Their preachers resumed their functions. Many returned from exile and rejoiced in the restoration of their confiscated property. The Elector of Saxony retaliated upon the Catholics the cruel wrongs which they had inflicted upon the Protestants. Their castles were plundered, their nobles driven into exile, and the conquerors loaded themselves with the spoils of the vanquished. But Ferdinand, as firm and inexorable in adversity as in prosperity, bowed not before disaster. He roused the Catholics to a sense of their danger, organized new coalitions, raised new armies. Tilly, with recruited forces, was urged on to arrest the march of the conqueror. Burning under the sense of shame for his defeat at Leipsic, he placed himself at the head of his veterans, fell, struck by a musket-ball, and died, after a few days of intense suffering, at the age of seventy-three. The vast Austrian empire, composed of so many heterogeneous States, bound together only by the iron energy of Ferdinand, seemed now upon the eve of its dissolution. The Protestants, who composed in most of the States a majority, were cordially rallying beneath the banners of Gustavus. They had been in a state of despair. They now rose in exalted hope. Many of the minor princes who had been nominally Catholics, but whose Christian creeds were merely political dogmas, threw themselves into the arms of Gustavus. Even the Elector of Bavaria was so helpless in his isolation, that, champion as he had been of the Catholic party, there seemed to be no salvation for him but in abandoning the cause of Ferdinand. Gustavus was now, with a victorious army, in the heart of Germany. He was in possession of the whole western country from the Baltic to the frontiers of France, and apparently a majority of the population were in sympathy with him. Ferdinand at first resolved, in this dire extremity, to assume himself the command of his armies, and in person to enter the field. This was heroic madness, and his friends soon convinced him of the folly of one so inexperienced in the arts of war undertaking to cope with Gustavus Adolphus, now the most experienced and renowned captain in Europe. He then thought of appointing his son, the Archduke Ferdinand, commander-in-chief. But Ferdinand was but twenty-three years of age, and though a young man of decided abilities, was by no means able to encounter on the field the skill and heroism of the Swedish warrior. In this extremity, Ferdinand was compelled to turn his eyes to his discarded general Wallenstein. This extraordinary man, in renouncing, at the command of his sovereign, his military supremacy, retired with boundless wealth, and assumed a style of living surpassing even regal splendor. His gorgeous palace at Prague was patrolled by sentinels. A body-guard of fifty halberdiers, in sumptuous uniform, ever waited in his ante-chamber. Twelve nobles attended his person, and four gentlemen ushers introduced to his presence those whom he condescended to favor with an audience. Sixty pages, taken from the most illustrious families, embellished his courts. His steward was a baron of the highest rank; and even the chamberlain of the emperor had left Ferdinand's court, that he might serve in the more princely palace of this haughty subject. A hundred guests dined daily at his table. His gardens and parks were embellished with more than oriental magnificence. Even his stables were furnished with marble mangers, and supplied with water from an ever-living fountain. Upon his journeys he was accompanied by a suite of twelve coaches of state and fifty carriages. A large retinue of wagons conveyed his plate and equipage. Fifty mounted grooms followed with fifty led horses richly caparisoned. (Coxe's "House of Austria," ii., 254.) Wallenstein watched the difficulties gathering around the emperor with satisfaction which he could not easily disguise. Though intensely eager to be restored to the command of the armies, he affected an air of great indifference, and when the emperor suggested his restoration, he very adroitly played the coquette. The emperor at first proposed that his son, the Archduke Ferdinand, should nominally have the command, while Wallenstein should be his executive and advisory general. "I would not serve," said the impious captain, "as second in command under God Himself." After long negotiation, Wallenstein, with well-feigned reluctance, consented to relinquish for a few weeks the sweets of private life, and to recruit an army, and bring it under suitable discipline. He, however, limited the time of his command to three months. With his boundless wealth and amazing energy, he immediately set all springs in motion. Adventurers from all parts of Europe, lured by the splendor of his past achievements, crowded his ranks. In addition to his own vast opulence, the pope and the court of Spain opened freely to him their purses. As by magic he was in a few weeks at the head of forty thousand men. In companies, regiments and battalions they were incessantly drilled, and by the close of three months this splendid army, thoroughly furnished, and in the highest state of discipline, was presented to the emperor. Every step he had taken had convinced, and was intended to convince Ferdinand that his salvation depended upon the energies of Wallenstein. Gustavus was now, in the full tide of victory, marching from the Rhine to the Danube, threatening to press his conquests even to Vienna. Ferdinand was compelled to assume the attitude of a suppliant, and to implore his proud general to accept the command of which he had so recently been deprived. Wallenstein exacted terms so humiliating as in reality to divest the emperor of his imperial power. He was to be declared generalissimo of all the forces of the empire, and to be invested with unlimited authority. The emperor pledged himself that neither he nor his son would ever enter the camp. Wallenstein was to appoint all his officers, distribute all rewards, and the emperor was not allowed to grant either a pardon or a safe-conduct without the confirmation of Wallenstein. The general was to levy what contribution he pleased upon the vanquished enemy, confiscate property, and no peace or truce was to be made with the enemy without his consent. Finally, he was to receive, either from the spoils of the enemy, or from the hereditary States of the empire, princely remuneration for his services. Armed with such enormous power, Wallenstein consented to place himself at the head of the army. He marched to Prague, and without difficulty took the city. Gradually he drove the Saxon troops from all their fortresses in Bohemia. Then advancing to Bavaria, he effected a junction with Bavarian troops, and found himself sufficiently strong to attempt to arrest the march of Gustavus. The imperial force now amounted to sixty thousand men. Wallenstein was so sanguine of success, that he boasted that in a few days he would decide the question, whether Gustavus Adolphus or Wallenstein was to be master of the world. The Swedish king was at Nuremberg with but twenty thousand men, when he heard of the approach of the imperial army, three times outnumbering his own. Disdaining to retreat, he threw up redoubts, and prepared for a desperate defense. As Wallenstein brought up his heavy battalions, he was so much overawed by the military genius which Gustavus had displayed in his strong intrenchments, and by the bold front which the Swedes presented, that notwithstanding his boast, he did not dare to hazard an attack. He accordingly threw up intrenchments opposite the works of the Swedes, and there the two armies remained, looking each other in the face for eight weeks, neither daring to withdraw from behind their intrenchments, and each hoping to starve the other party out. Gustavus did every thing in his power to provoke Wallenstein to the attack, but the wary general, notwithstanding the importunities of his officers, and the clamors of his soldiers, refused to risk an engagement. Both parties were all the time strengthening their intrenchments and gathering reinforcements. At last Gustavus resolved upon an attack. He led his troops against the intrenchments of Wallenstein, which resembled a fortress rather than a camp. The Swedes clambered over the intrenchments, and assailed the imperialists with as much valor and energy as mortals ever exhibited. They were, however, with equal fury repelled, and after a long conflict were compelled to retire again behind their fortifications with the loss of three thousand of their best troops. For another fortnight the two armies remained watching each other, and then Gustavus, leaving a strong garrison in Nuremberg, slowly and defiantly retired. Wallenstein stood so much in fear of the tactics of Gustavus that he did not even venture to molest his retreat. During this singular struggle of patient endurance, both armies suffered fearfully from sickness and famine. In the city of Nuremberg ten thousand perished. Gustavus buried twenty thousand of his men beneath his intrenchments. And in the imperial army, after the retreat of Gustavus, but thirty thousand troops were left to answer the roll-call. Wallenstein claimed, and with justice, the merit of having arrested the steps of Gustavus, though he could not boast of any very chivalrous exploits. After various maneuvering, and desolating marches, the two armies, with large reinforcements, met at Lutzen, about thirty miles from Leipsic. It was in the edge of the evening when they arrived within sight of each other's banners. Both parties passed an anxious night, preparing for the decisive battle which the dawn of the morning would usher in. Wallenstein was fearfully alarmed. He had not willingly met his dreaded antagonist, and would now gladly escape the issues of battle. He called a council of war, and even suggested a retreat. But it was decided that such an attempt in the night, and while watched by so able and vigilant a foe, would probably involve the army in irretrievable ruin, besides exposing his own name to deep disgrace. The imperial troops, thirty thousand strong, quite outnumbered the army of Gustavus, and the officers of Wallenstein unanimously advised to give battle. Wallenstein was a superstitious man and deeply devoted to astrological science. He consulted his astrologers, and they declared the stars to be unpropitious to Gustavus. This at once decided him. He resolved, however, to act on the defensive, and through the night employed the energies of his army in throwing up intrenchments. In the earliest dawn of the morning mass was celebrated throughout the whole camp, and Wallenstein on horseback rode along behind the redoubts, urging his troops, by every consideration, to fight valiantly for their emperor and their religion. The morning was dark and lowering, and such an impenetrable fog enveloped the armies that they were not visible to each other. It was near noon ere the fog arose, and the two armies, in the full blaze of an unclouded sun, gazed, awe-stricken, upon each other. The imperial troops and the Swedish troops were alike renowned; and Gustavus Adolphus and Wallenstein were, by universal admission, the two ablest captains in Europe. Neither force could even affect to despise the other. The scene unfolded, as the vapor swept away, was one which even war has seldom presented. The vast plain of Lutzen extended many miles, almost as smooth, level and treeless as a western prairie. Through the center of this plain ran a nearly straight and wide road. On one side of this road, in long line, extending one or two miles, was the army of Wallenstein. His whole front was protected by a ditch and redoubts bristling with bayonets. Behind these intrenchments his army was extended; the numerous and well-mounted cavalry at the wings, the artillery, in ponderous batteries, at the center, with here and there solid squares of infantry to meet the rush of the assailing columns. On the other side of the road, and within musket-shot, were drawn up in a parallel line the troops of Gustavus. He had interspersed along his double line bands of cavalry, with artillery and platoons of musketeers, that he might be prepared from any point to make or repel assault. The whole host stood reverently, with uncovered heads, as a public prayer was offered. The Psalm which Watts has so majestically versified was read-- "God is the refuge of his saints, When storms of dark distress invade; Ere we can offer our complaints, Behold him present with his aid. "Let mountains from their seats be hurled Down to the deep, and buried there, Convulsions shake the solid world; Our faith shall never yield to fear." From twenty thousand voices the solemn hymn arose and floated over the field--celestial songs, to be succeeded by demoniac clangor. Both parties appealed to the God of battle; both parties seemed to feel that their cause was just. Alas for man! Gustavus now ordered the attack. A solid column emerged from his ranks, crossed the road, in breathless silence approached the trenches, while both armies looked on. They were received with a volcanic sheet of flame which prostrated half of them bleeding upon the sod. Gustavus ordered column after column to follow on to support the assailants, and to pierce the enemy's center. In his zeal he threw himself from his horse, seized a pike, and rushed to head the attack. Wallenstein energetically ordered up cavalry and artillery to strengthen the point so fiercely assailed. And now the storm of war blazed along the whole lines. A sulphureous canopy settled down over the contending hosts, and thunderings, shrieks, clangor as of Pandemonium, filled the air. The king, as reckless of life as if he had been the meanest soldier, rushed to every spot where the battle raged the fiercest. Learning that his troops upon the left were yielding to the imperial fire, he mounted his horse and was galloping across the field swept by the storm of war, when a bullet struck his arm and shattered the bone. Almost at the same moment another bullet struck his breast, and he fell mortally wounded from his horse, exclaiming, "My God! my God!" The command now devolved upon the Duke of Saxe Weimar. The horse of Gustavus, galloping along the lines, conveyed to the whole army the dispiriting intelligence that their beloved chieftain had fallen. The duke spread the report that he was not killed, but taken prisoner, and summoned all to the rescue. This roused the Swedes to superhuman exertions. They rushed over the ramparts, driving the infantry back upon the cavalry, and the whole imperial line was thrown into confusion. Just at that moment, when both parties were in the extreme of exhaustion, when the Swedes were shouting victory and the imperialists were flying in dismay, General Pappenheim, with eight fresh regiments of imperial cavalry, came galloping upon the field. This seemed at once to restore the battle to the imperialists, and the Swedes were apparently undone. But just then a chance bullet struck Pappenheim and he fell, mortally wounded, from his horse. The cry ran through the imperial ranks, "Pappenheim is killed and the battle is lost." No further efforts of Wallenstein were of any avail to arrest the confusion. His whole host turned and fled. Fortunately for them, the darkness of the approaching night, and a dense fog settling upon the plain, concealed them from their pursuers. During the night the imperialists retired, and in the morning the Swedes found themselves in possession of the field with no foe in sight. But the Swedes had no heart to exult over their victory. The loss of their beloved king was a greater calamity than any defeat could have been. His mangled body was found, covered with blood, in the midst of heaps of the slain, and so much mutilated with the tramplings of cavalry as to be with difficulty recognized. CHAPTER XIX. FERDINAND II., FERDINAND III. AND LEOPOLD I From 1632 to 1662. Character of Gustavus Adolphus.--Exultation of the Imperialists.-- Disgrace of Wallenstein.--He Offers to Surrender to the Swedish General.--His Assassination.--Ferdinand's Son Elected as his Successor.--Death of Ferdinand.--Close of the War.--Abdication of Christina.--Charles Gustavus.--Preparations for War.--Death Of Ferdinand III.--Leopold Elected Emperor.--Hostilities Renewed.--Death of Charles Gustavus.--Diet Convened.--Invasion of the Turks. The battle of Lutzen was fought on the 16th of November, 1632. It is generally estimated that the imperial troops were forty thousand, while there were but twenty-seven thousand in the Swedish army. Gustavus was then thirty-eight years of age. A plain stone still marks the spot where he fell. A few poplars surround it, and it has become a shrine visited by strangers from all parts of the world. Traces of his blood are still shown in the town-house of Lutzen, where his body was transported from the fatal field. The buff waistcoat he wore in the engagement, pierced by the bullet which took his life, is preserved as a trophy in the arsenal at Vienna. Both as a monarch and a man, this illustrious sovereign stands in the highest ranks. He possessed the peculiar power of winning the ardent attachment of all who approached him. Every soldier in the army was devoted to him, for he shared all their toils and perils. "Cities," he said, "are not taken by keeping in tents; as scholars, in the absence of the master, shut their books, so my troops, without my presence, would slacken their blows." In very many traits of character he resembled Napoleon, combining in his genius the highest attributes of the statesman and the soldier. Like Napoleon he was a predestinarian, believing himself the child of Providence, raised for the accomplishment of great purposes, and that the decrees of his destiny no foresight could thwart. When urged to spare his person in the peril of battle, he replied, "My hour is written in heaven, and can not be reversed." Frederic, the unhappy Elector of the Palatine, and King of Bohemia, who had been driven from his realms by Ferdinand, and who, for some years, had been wandering from court to court in Europe, seeking an asylum, was waiting at Mentz, trusting that the success of the armies of Gustavus would soon restore him to his throne. The death of the king shattered all his hopes. Disappointment and chagrin threw him into a fever of which he died, in the thirty-ninth year of his age. The death of Gustavus was considered by the Catholics such a singular interposition of Providence in their behalf, that, regardless of the disaster of Lutzen, they surrendered themselves to the most enthusiastic joy. Even in Spain bells were rung, and the streets of Madrid blazed with bonfires and illuminations. At Vienna it was regarded as a victory, and _Te Deums_ were chanted in the cathedral. Ferdinand, however, conducted with a decorum which should be recorded to his honor. He expressed the fullest appreciation of the grand qualities of his opponent, and in graceful words regretted his untimely death. When the bloody waistcoat, perforated by the bullet, was shown him, he turned from it with utterances of sadness and regret. Even if this were all feigned, it shows a sense of external propriety worthy of record. It was the genius of Gustavus alone which had held together the Protestant confederacy. No more aid of any efficiency could be anticipated from Sweden. Christina, the daughter and heiress of Gustavus, was in her seventh year. The crown was claimed by her cousin Ladislaus, the King of Poland, and this disputed succession threatened the kingdom with the calamities of civil war. The Senate of Sweden in this emergence conducted with great prudence. That they might secure an honorable peace they presented a bold front of war. A council of regency was appointed, abundant succors in men and money voted, and the Chancellor Oxenstiern, a man of commanding civil and military talents, was intrusted with the sole conduct of the war. The Senate declared the young queen the legitimate successor to the throne, and forbade all allusion to the claims of Ladislaus, under the penalty of high treason. Oxenstiern proved himself worthy to be the successor of Gustavus. He vigorously renewed alliances with the German princes, and endeavored to follow out the able plans sketched by the departed monarch. Wallenstein, humiliated by his defeat, had fallen back into Bohemia, and now, with moderation strangely inconsistent with his previous career, urged the emperor to conciliate the Protestants by publishing a decree of general amnesty, and by proposing peace on favorable terms. But the iron will of Ferdinand was inflexible. In heart, exulting that his most formidable foe was removed, he resolved with unrelenting vigor to prosecute the war. The storm of battle raged anew; and to the surprise of Ferdinand, Oxenstiern moved forward with strides of victory as signal as those of his illustrious predecessor. Wallenstein meanly attempted to throw the blame of the disaster at Lutzen upon the alleged cowardice of his officers. Seventeen of them he hanged, and consigned fifty others to infamy by inscribing their names upon the gallows. So haughty a man could not but have many enemies at court. They combined, and easily persuaded Ferdinand, who had also been insulted by his arrogance, again to degrade him. Wallenstein, informed of their machinations, endeavored to rally the army to a mutiny in his favor. Ferdinand, alarmed by this intelligence, which even threatened his own dethronement, immediately dismissed Wallenstein from the command, and dispatched officers from Vienna to seize his person, dead or alive. This roused Wallenstein to desperation. Having secured the coöperation of his leading officers, he dispatched envoys to the Swedish camp, offering to surrender important fortresses to Oxenstiern, and to join him against the emperor. It was an atrocious act of treason, and so marvellous in its aspect, that Oxenstiern regarded it as mere duplicity on the part of Wallenstein, intended to lead him into a trap. He therefore dismissed the envoy, rejecting the offer. His officers now abandoned him, and Gallas, who was appointed as his successor, took command of the army. With a few devoted adherents, and one regiment of troops, he took refuge in the strong fortress of Egra, hoping to maintain himself there until he could enter into some arrangement with the Swedes. The officers around him, whom he had elevated and enriched by his iniquitous bounty, entered into a conspiracy to purchase the favor of the emperor by the assassination of their doomed general. It was a very difficult enterprise, and one which exposed the conspirators to the most imminent peril. On the 25th of February, 1634, the conspirators gave a magnificent entertainment in the castle. They sat long at the table, wine flowed freely, and as the darkness of night enveloped the castle, fourteen men, armed to the teeth, rushed into the banqueting hall from two opposite doors, and fell upon the friends of Wallenstein. Though thus taken by surprise, they fought fiercely, and killed several of their assailants before they were cut down. They all, however, were soon dispatched. The conspirators, fifty in number, then ascended the stairs of the castle to the chamber of Wallenstein. They cut down the sentinel at his door, and broke into the room. Wallenstein had retired to his bed, but alarmed by the clamor, he arose, and was standing at the window in his shirt, shouting from it to the soldiers for assistance. "Are you," exclaimed one of the conspirators, "the traitor who is going to deliver the imperial troops to the enemy, and tear the crown from the head of the emperor?" Wallenstein was perfectly helpless. He looked around, and deigned no reply. "You must die," continued the conspirator, advancing with his halberd. Wallenstein, in silence, opened his arms to receive the blow. The sharp blade pierced his body, and he fell dead upon the floor. The alarm now spread through the town. The soldiers seized their arms, and flocked to avenge their general. But the leading friends of Wallenstein were slain; and the other officers easily satisfied the fickle soldiery that their general was a traitor, and with rather a languid cry of "Long live Ferdinand," they returned to duty. Two of the leading assassins hastened to Vienna to inform the emperor of the deed they had perpetrated. It was welcome intelligence to Ferdinand, and he finished the work they had thus commenced by hanging and beheading the adherents of Wallenstein without mercy. The assassins were abundantly rewarded. The emperor still prosecuted the war with perseverance, which no disasters could check. Gradually the imperial arms gained the ascendency. The Protestant princes became divided and jealous of each other. The emperor succeeded in detaching from the alliance, and negotiating a separate peace with the powerful Electors of Saxony and Brandenburg. He then assembled a diet at Ratisbon on the 15th of September, 1639, and without much difficulty secured the election of his son Ferdinand to succeed him on the imperial throne. The emperor presided at this diet in person. He was overjoyed in the attainment of this great object of his ambition. He was now fifty-nine years of age, in very feeble health, and quite worn out by a life of incessant anxiety and toil. He returned to Vienna, and in four months, on the 15th of February, 1637, breathed his last. For eighteen years Germany had now been distracted by war. The contending parties were so exasperated against each other, that no human wisdom could, at once, allay the strife. The new king and emperor, Ferdinand III., wished for peace, but he could not obtain it on terms which he thought honorable to the memory of his father. The Swedish army was still in Germany, aided by the Protestant princes of the empire, and especially by the armies and the treasury of France. The thunders of battle were daily heard, and the paths of these hostile bands were ever marked by smoldering ruins and blood. Vials of woe were emptied, unsurpassed in apocalyptic vision. In the siege of Brisac, the wretched inhabitants were reduced to such a condition of starvation, that a guard was stationed at the burying ground to prevent them from devouring the putrid carcasses of the dead. For eleven years history gives us nothing but a dismal record of weary marches, sieges, battles, bombardments, conflagrations, and all the unimaginable brutalities and miseries of war. The war had now raged for thirty years. Hundreds of thousands of lives had been lost. Millions of property had been destroyed, and other millions squandered in the arts of destruction. Nearly all Europe had been drawn into this vortex of fury and misery. All parties were now weary. And yet seven years of negotiation had been employed before they could consent to meet to consult upon a general peace. At length congresses of the belligerent powers were assembled in two important towns of Westphalia, Osnabruck and Munster. Ridiculous disputes upon etiquette rendered this division of the congress necessary. The ministers of _electors_ enjoyed the title of _excellency_. The ministers of _princes_ claimed the same title. Months were employed in settling that question. Then a difficulty arose as to the seats at table, who were entitled to the positions of honor. After long debate, this point was settled by having a large round table made, to which there could be no head and no foot. For four years the great questions of European policy were discussed by this assembly. The all-important treaty, known in history as the peace of Westphalia, and which established the general condition of Europe for one hundred and fifty years, was signed on the 24th of October, 1648. The contracting parties included all the great and nearly all the minor powers of Europe. The articles of this renowned treaty are vastly too voluminous to be recorded here. The family of Frederic received back the Palatinate of which he had been deprived. The Protestants were restored to nearly all the rights which they had enjoyed under the beneficent reign of Maximilian II. The princes of the German empire, kings, dukes, electors, marquises, princes, of whatever name, pledged themselves not to oppress those of their subjects who differed from them in religious faith. The pope protested against this toleration, but his protest was disregarded. The German empire lost its unity, and became a conglomeration of three hundred independent sovereignties. Each petty prince or duke, though possessing but a few square miles of territory, was recognized as a sovereign power, entitled to its court, its army, and its foreign alliances. The emperor thus lost much of that power which he had inherited from his ancestors; as those princes, whom he had previously regarded as vassals, now shared with him sovereign dignity. Ferdinand III., however, weary of the war which for so many years had allowed him not an hour of repose, gladly acceded to these terms of peace, and in good faith employed himself in carrying out the terms of the treaty. After the exchange of ratifications another congress was assembled at Nuremburg to settle some of the minute details, which continued in session two years, when at length, in 1651, the armies were disbanded, and Germany was released from the presence of a foreign foe. Internal peace being thus secured, Ferdinand was anxious, before his death, to secure the succession of the imperial crown to his son who bore his own name. He accordingly assembled a meeting of the electors at Prague, and by the free use of bribes and diplomatic intrigue, obtained their engagement to support his son. He accomplished his purpose, and Ferdinand, quite to the astonishment of Germany, was chosen unanimously, King of the Romans--the title assumed by the emperor elect. In June, 1653, the young prince was crowned at Ratisbon. The joy of his father, however, was of short duration. In one year from that time the small-pox, in its most loathsome form, seized the prince, and after a few days of anguish he died. His father was almost inconsolable with grief. As soon as he had partially recovered from the blow, he brought forward his second son, Leopold, and with but little difficulty secured for him the crowns of Hungary and Bohemia, but was disappointed in his attempts to secure the suffrages of the German electors. With energy, moderation and sagacity, the peacefully disposed Ferdinand so administered the government as to allay for seven years all the menaces of war which were continually arising. For so long a period had Germany been devastated by this most direful of earthly calamities, which is indeed the accumulation of all conceivable woes, ever leading in its train pestilence and famine, that peace seemed to the people a heavenly boon. The fields were again cultivated, the cities and villages repaired, and comfort began again gradually to make its appearance in homes long desolate. It is one of the deepest mysteries of the divine government that the destinies of millions should be so entirely placed in the hands of a single man. Had Ferdinand II. been an enlightened, good man, millions would have been saved from life-long ruin and misery. One pert young king, in the search of glory, kindled again the lurid flames of war. Christina, Queen of Sweden, daughter of Gustavus Adolphus, influenced by romantic dreams, abdicated the throne and retired to the seclusion of the cloister. Her cousin, Charles Gustavus, succeeded her. He thought it a fine thing to play the soldier, and to win renown by consigning the homes of thousands to blood and misery. He was a king, and the power was in his hands. Merely to gratify this fiend-like ambition, he laid claim to the crown of Poland, and raised an army for the invasion of that kingdom. A portion of Poland was then in a state of insurrection, the Ukraine Cossacks having risen against John Cassimar, the king. Charles Gustavus thought that this presented him an opportunity to obtain celebrity as a warrior, with but little danger of failure. He marched into the doomed country, leaving behind him a wake of fire and blood. Cities and villages were burned; the soil was drenched with the blood of fathers and sons, his bugle blasts were echoed by the agonizing groans of widows and orphans, until at last, in an awful battle of three days, under the walls of Warsaw, the Polish army, struggling in self-defense, was cut to pieces, and Charles Gustavus was crowned a conqueror. Elated by this infernal deed, the most infernal which mortal man can commit, he began to look around to decide in what direction to extend his conquests. Ferdinand III., anxious as he was to preserve peace, could not but look with alarm upon the movements which now threatened the States of the empire. It was necessary to present a barrier to the inroads of such a ruffian. He accordingly assembled a diet at Frankfort and demanded succors to oppose the threatened invasion on the north. He raised an army, entered into an alliance with the defeated and prostrate, yet still struggling Poles, and was just commencing his march, when he was seized with sudden illness and died, on the 3d of March, 1657. Ferdinand was a good man. He was not responsible for the wars which desolated the empire during the first years of his reign, for he was doing every thing in his power to bring those wars to a close. His administration was a blessing to millions. Just before his death he said, and with truth which no one will controvert, "During my whole reign no one can reproach me with a single act which I knew to be unjust." Happy is the monarch who can go into the presence of the King of kings with such a conscience. The death of the emperor was caused by a singular accident. He was not very well, and was lying upon a couch in one of the chambers of his palace. He had an infant son, but a few weeks old, lying in a cradle in the nursery. A fire broke out in the apartment of the young prince. The whole palace was instantly in clamor and confusion. Some attendants seized the cradle of the young prince, and rushed with it to the chamber of the emperor. In their haste and terror they struck the cradle with such violence against the wall that it was broken to pieces and the child fell, screaming, upon the floor. The cry of fire, the tumult, the bursting into the room, the dashing of the cradle and the shrieks of the child, so shocked the debilitated king that he died within an hour. Leopold was but eighteen years of age when he succeeded to the sovereignty of all the Austrian dominions, including the crowns of Hungary and Bohemia. It was the first great object of his ambition to secure the imperial throne also, which his father had failed to obtain for him. Louis XIV. was now the youthful sovereign of France. He, through his ambitious and able minister, Mazarin, did every thing in his power to thwart the endeavors of Ferdinand, and to obtain the brilliant prize for himself. The King of Sweden united with the French court in the endeavor to abase the pride of the house of Austria. But notwithstanding all their efforts, Leopold carried his point, and was unanimously elected emperor, and crowned on the 31st of July, 1657. The princes of the empire, however, greatly strengthened in their independence by the articles of the peace of Westphalia, increasingly jealous of their rights, attached forty-five conditions to their acceptance of Leopold as emperor. Thus, notwithstanding the imperial title, Leopold had as little power over the States of the empire as the President of the United States has over the internal concerns of Maine or Louisiana. In all such cases there is ever a conflict between two parties, the one seeking the centralization of power, and the other advocating its dispersion into various distant central points. The flames of war which Charles Gustavus had kindled were still blazing. Leopold continued the alliance which his father had formed with the Poles, and sent an army of sixteen thousand men into Poland, hoping to cut off the retreat of Charles Gustavus, and take him and all his army prisoners. But the Swedish monarch was as sagacious and energetic as he was unscrupulous and ambitious. Both parties formed alliances. State after State was drawn into the conflict. The flame spread like a conflagration. Fleets met in deadly conflict on the Baltic, and crimsoned its waves with blood. The thunders of war were soon again echoing over all the plains of northern and western Germany--and all this because a proud, unprincipled young man, who chanced to be a king, wished to be called a _hero_. He accomplished his object. Through burning homes and bleeding hearts and crushed hopes he marched to his renown. The forces of the empire were allied with Denmark and Poland against him. With skill and energy which can hardly find a parallel in the tales of romance, he baffled all the combinations of his foes. Energy is a noble quality, and we may admire its exhibition even though we detest the cause which has called it forth. The Swedish fleet had been sunk by the Danes, and Charles Gustavus was driven from the waters of the Baltic. With a few transports he secretly conveyed an army across the Cattegat to the northern coast of Jutland, marched rapidly down those inhospitable shores until he came to the narrow strait, called the Little Belt, which separates Jutland from the large island of Fyen. He crossed this strait on the ice, dispersed a corps of Danes posted to arrest him, traversed the island, exposed to all the storms of mid-winter, some sixty miles to its eastern shore. A series of islands, with intervening straits clogged with ice, bridged by a long and circuitous way his passage across the Great Belt. A march of ten miles across the hummocks, rising and falling with the tides, landed him upon the almost pathless snows of Langeland. Crossing that dreary waste diagonally some dozen miles to another arm of the sea ten miles wide, which the ices of a winter of almost unprecedented severity had also bridged, pushing boldly on, with a recklessness which nothing but success redeems from stupendous infatuation, he crossed this fragile surface, which any storm might crumble beneath his feet, and landed upon the western coast of Laaland. A march of thirty-five miles over a treeless, shelterless and almost uninhabited expanse, brought him to the eastern shore. Easily crossing a narrow strait about a mile in width, he plunged into the forests of the island of Falster. A dreary march of twenty-seven miles conducted him to the last remaining arm of the sea which separated him from Zealand. This strait, from twelve to fifteen miles in breadth, was also closed by ice. Charles Gustavus led his hardy soldiers across it, and then, with accelerated steps, pressed on some sixty miles to Copenhagen, the capital of Denmark. In sixteen days after landing in Jutland, his troops were encamped in Zealand before the gates of the capital. The King of Denmark was appalled at such a sudden apparition. His allies were too remote to render him any assistance. Never dreaming of such an attack, his capital was quite defenseless in that quarter. Overwhelmed with terror and despondency, he was compelled to submit to such terms as the conqueror might dictate. The conqueror was inexorable in his demands. Sweden was aggrandized, and Denmark humiliated. Leopold was greatly chagrined by this sudden prostration of his faithful ally. In the midst of these scenes of ambition and of conquest, the "king of terrors" came with his summons to Charles Gustavus. The passage of this blood-stained warrior to the world of spirits reminds us of the sublime vision of Isaiah when the King of Babylon sank into the grave: "Hell from beneath is moved for thee, to meet thee at thy coming; it stirreth up the dead for thee, even all the chief ones of the earth; it hath raised up from their thrones all the kings of the nations. All they shall speak and say unto thee, "'Art thou also become weak as we? Art thou become like unto us? Thy pomp is brought down to the grave, and the noise of thy viols; the worm is spread under thee, and the worms cover thee. How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! How art thou cut down to the ground which didst weaken the nations!' "They that see thee shall narrowly look upon thee and consider thee, saying, 'Is this the man that made the earth to tremble, and didst shake kingdoms; that made the world as a wilderness and destroyed the cities thereof, that opened not the house of his prisoners?'" The death of Charles Gustavus was the signal for the strife of war to cease, and the belligerent nations soon came to terms of accommodation. But scarcely was peace proclaimed ere new troubles arose in Hungary. The barbarian Turks, with their head-quarters at Constantinople, lived in a state of continual anarchy. The cimeter was their only law. The palace of the sultan was the scene of incessant assassinations. Nothing ever prevented them from assailing their neighbors but incessant quarrels among themselves. The life of the Turkish empire was composed of bloody insurrections at home, and still more bloody wars abroad. Mahomet IV. was now sultan. He was but twenty years of age. A quarrel for ascendency among the beauties of his harem had involved the empire in a civil war. The sultan, after a long conflict, crushed the insurrection with a blood-red hand. Having restored internal tranquillity, he prepared as usual for foreign war. By intrigue and the force of arms they took possession of most of the fortresses of Transylvania, and crossing the frontier, entered Hungary, and laid siege to Great Wardein. Leopold immediately dispatched ten thousand men to succor the besieged town and to garrison other important fortresses. His succors arrived too late. Great Wardein fell into the hands of the Turks, and they commenced their merciless ravages. Hungary was in a wretched condition. The king, residing in Vienna, was merely a nominal sovereign. Chosen by nobles proud of their independence, and jealous of each other and of their feudal rights, they were unwilling to delegate to the sovereign any efficient power. They would crown him with great splendor of gold and jewelry, and crowd his court in their magnificent display, but they would not grant him the prerogative to make war or peace, to levy taxes, or to exercise any other of the peculiar attributes of sovereignty. The king, with all his sounding titles and gorgeous parade, was in reality but the chairman of a committee of nobles. The real power was with the Hungarian diet. This diet, or congress, was a peculiar body. Originally it consisted of the whole body of nobles, who assembled annually on horseback on the vast plain of Rakoz, near Buda. Eighty thousand nobles, many of them with powerful revenues, were frequently convened at these tumultuous gatherings. The people were thought to have no rights which a noble was bound to respect. They lived in hovels, hardly superior to those which a humane farmer now prepares for his swine. The only function they fulfilled was, by a life of exhausting toil and suffering, to raise the funds which the nobles expended in their wars and their pleasure; and to march to the field of blood when summoned by the bugle. In fact history has hardly condescended to allude to the people. We have minutely detailed the intrigues and the conflicts of kings and nobles, when generation after generation of the masses of the people have passed away, as little thought of as billows upon the beach. These immense gatherings of the nobles were found to be so unwieldy, and so inconvenient for the transaction of any efficient business, that Sigismond, at the commencement of the fifteenth century, introduced a limited kind of representation. The bishops, who stood first in wealth, power and rank, and the highest dukes, attended in person. The nobles of less exalted rank sent their delegates, and the assembly, much diminished in number, was transferred from the open plain to the city of Presburg. The diet, at the time of which we write, was assembled once in three years, and at such other times as the sovereign thought it necessary to convene it. The diet controlled the king, unless he chanced to be a man of such commanding character, that by moral power he could bring the diet to his feet. A clause had been inserted in the coronation oath, that the nobles, without guilt, could oppose the authority of the king, whenever he transgressed their privileges; it was also declared that no foreign troops could be introduced into the kingdom without the consent of the diet. Under such a government, it was inevitable that the king should be involved in a continued conflict with the nobles. The nobles wished for aid to repel the Turks; and yet they were unwilling that an Austrian army should be introduced into Hungary, lest it should enable the king to enlarge those prerogatives which he was ever seeking to extend, and which they were ever endeavoring to curtail. Leopold convened the diet at Presburg. They had a stormy session. Leopold had commenced some persecution of the Protestants in the States of Austria. This excited the alarm of the Protestant nobles of Hungary; and they had reason to dread the intolerance of the Roman Catholics, more than the cimeter of the Turk. They openly accused Leopold of commencing persecution, and declared that it was his intention to reduce Hungary to the state to which Ferdinand II. had reduced Bohemia. They met all the suggestions of Leopold, for decisive action, with so many provisos and precautions, that nothing could be done. It is dangerous to surrender one's arms to a highway robber, or one whom we fear may prove such, even if he does promise with them to aid in repelling a foe. The Catholics and the Protestants became involved in altercation, and the diet was abruptly dissolved. The Turks eagerly watched their movements, and, encouraged by these dissensions, soon burst into Hungary with an army of one hundred thousand men. They crossed the Drave at Esseg, and, ascending the valley of the Danube, directly north one hundred and fifty miles, crossed that stream unopposed at Buda. Still ascending the stream, which here flows from the west, they spread devastation everywhere around them, until they arrived nearly within sight of the steeples of Vienna. The capital was in consternation. To add to their terror and their peril, the emperor was dangerously sick of the small-pox, a disease which had so often proved fatal to members of the royal family. One of the imperial generals, near Presburg, in a strong position, held the invading army in check a few days. The ministry, in their consternation, appealed to all the powers of Christendom to hasten to the rescue of the cross, now so seriously imperiled by the crescent. Forces flowed in, which for a time arrested the further advance of the Moslem banners, and afforded time to prepare for more efficient action. CHAPTER XX. LEOPOLD I. From 1662 to 1697. Invasion of the Turks.--A Treaty concluded.--Possessions of Leopold.-- Invasion of the French.--League of Augsburg.--Devastation of the Palatinate.--Invasion of Hungary.--Emeric Tekeli.--Union of Emeric Tekeli with the Turks.--Leopold applies to Sobieski.--He immediately marches to his Aid.--The Turks conquered.--Sobieski's triumphal Receptions.--Meanness of Leopold.--Revenge upon Hungary.--Peace concluded.--Contest for Spain. While Europe was rousing itself to repel this invasion of the Turks, the grand vizier, leaving garrisons in the strong fortresses of the Danube, withdrew the remainder of his army to prepare for a still more formidable invasion the ensuing year. Most of the European powers seemed disposed to render the emperor some aid. The pope transmitted to him about two hundred thousand dollars. France sent a detachment of six thousand men. Spain, Venice, Genoa, Tuscany and Mantua, forwarded important contributions of money and military stores. Early in the summer the Turks, in a powerful and well provided army, commenced their march anew. Ascending the valley of the Save, where they encountered no opposition, they traversed Styria, that they might penetrate to the seat of war through a defenseless frontier. The troops assembled by Leopold, sixty thousand in number, under the renowned Prince Montecuculi, stationed themselves in a very strong position at St. Gothard, behind the river Raab, which flows into the Danube about one hundred miles below Vienna. Here they threw up their intrenchments and prepared to resist the progress of the invader. The Turks soon arrived and spread themselves out in military array upon the opposite side of the narrow but rapid stream. As the hostile armies were preparing for an engagement, a young Turk, magnificently mounted, and in gorgeous uniform, having crossed the stream with a party of cavalry, rode in advance of the troop, upon the plain, and in the spirit of ancient chivalry challenged any Christian knight to meet him in single combat. The Chevalier of Lorraine accepted the challenge, and rode forth to the encounter. Both armies looked silently on to witness the issue of the duel. It was of but a few moments' duration. Lorraine, warding off every blow of his antagonist, soon passed his sword through the body of the Turk, and he fell dead from his horse. The victor returned to the Christian camp, leading in triumph the splendid steed of his antagonist. And now the signal was given for the general battle. The Turks impetuously crossing the narrow stream, assailed the Christian camp in all directions, with their characteristic physical bravery, the most common, cheap and vulgar of all earthly virtues. A few months of military discipline will make fearless soldiers of the most ignominious wretches who can be raked from the gutters of Christian or heathen lands. The battle was waged with intense fierceness on both sides, and was long continued with varying success. At last the Turks were routed on every portion of the field, and leaving nearly twenty thousand of their number either dead upon the plain or drowned in the Raab, they commenced a precipitate flight. Leopold was, for many reasons, very anxious for peace, and immediately proposed terms very favorable to the Turks. The sultan was so disheartened by this signal reverse that he readily listened to the propositions of the emperor, and within nine days after the battle of St. Gothard, to the astonishment of all Europe, a truce was concluded for twenty years. The Hungarians were much displeased with the terms of this treaty; for in the first place, it was contrary to the laws of the kingdom for the king to make peace without the consent of the diet, and in the second place, the conditions he offered the Turks were humiliating to the Hungarians. Leopold confirmed to the Turks their ascendency in Transylvania, and allowed them to retain Great Wardein, and two other important fortresses in Hungary. It was with no little difficulty that the emperor persuaded the diet to ratify these terms. Leopold is to be considered under the twofold light of sovereign of Austria and Emperor of Germany. We have seen that his power as emperor was quite limited. His power as sovereign of Austria, also varied greatly in the different States of his widely extended realms. In the Austrian duchies proper, upon the Danube, of which he was, by long hereditary descent, archduke, his sway was almost omnipotent. In Bohemia he was powerful, though much less so than in Austria, and it was necessary for him to move with caution there, and not to disturb the ancient usages of the realm lest he should excite insurrection. In Hungary, where the laws and customs were entirely different, Leopold held merely a nominal, hardly a recognized sway. The bold Hungarian barons, always steel-clad and mounted for war, in their tumultuous diets, governed the kingdom. There were other remote duchies and principalities, too feeble to stand by themselves, and ever changing masters, as they were conquered or sought the protection of other powers, which, under the reign of Leopold, were portions of wide extended Austria. Another large and vastly important accession was now made to his realms. The Tyrol, which, in its natural features, may be considered but an extension of Switzerland, is a territory of about one hundred miles square, traversed through its whole extent by the Alps. Lying just south of Austria it is the key to Italy, opening through its defiles a passage to the sunny plains of the Peninsula; and through those fastnesses, guarded by frowning castles, no foe could force his way, into the valleys of the Tyrol. The most sublime road in Europe is that over Mount Brenner, along the banks of the Adige. This province had long been in the hands of members of the Austrian family. On the 15th of June, 1665, Sigismond Francis, Duke of Tyrol, and cousin of Leopold, died, leaving no issue, and the province escheated with its million of inhabitants to Leopold, as the next heir. This brought a large accession of revenue and of military force, to the kingdom. Austria was now the leading power in Europe, and Leopold, in rank and position, the most illustrious sovereign. Louis XIV. had recently married Maria Theresa, eldest daughter of Philip IV., King of Spain. Philip, who was anxious to retain the crown of Spain in his own family, extorted from Maria Theresa, and from her husband, Louis XIV., the renunciation of all right of succession, in favor of his second daughter, Margaret, whom he betrothed to Leopold. Philip died in September, 1665, leaving these two daughters, one of whom was married to the King of France, and leaving also an infant son, who succeeded to the throne under the regency of his mother, Ann, daughter of Ferdinand III., of Austria. Margaret was then too young to be married, but in a year from this time, in September, 1666, her nuptials were celebrated with great splendor at Madrid. The ambitious French monarch, taking advantage of the minority of the King of Spain, and of the feeble regency, and in defiance of the solemn renunciation made at his marriage, resolved to annex the Spanish provinces of the Low Countries to France, and invaded the kingdom, leading himself an army of thirty thousand men. The Spanish court immediately appealed to Leopold for assistance. But Leopold was so embarrassed by troubles in Hungary, and by discontents in the empire that he could render no efficient aid. England, however, and other powers of Europe, jealous of the aggrandizement of Louis XIV. combined, and compelled him to abandon a large portion of the Netherlands, though he still retained several fortresses. The ambition of Louis XIV. was inflamed, not checked by this reverse, and all Europe was involved again in bloody wars. The aggressions of France, and the devastations of Tarenne in the Palatinate, roused Germany to listen to the appeals of Leopold, and the empire declared war against France. Months of desolating war rolled on, decisive of no results, except universal misery. The fierce conflict continued with unintermitted fury until 1679, when the haughty monarch of France, who was as sagacious in diplomacy as he was able in war, by bribes and threats succeeded in detaching one after another from the coalition against him, until Leopold, deserted by nearly all his allies, was also compelled to accede to peace. France, under Louis XIV., was now the dominant power in Europe. Every court seemed to be agitated by the intrigues of this haughty sovereign, and one becomes weary of describing the incessant fluctuations of the warfare. The arrogance of Louis, his unblushing perfidy and his insulting assumptions of superiority over all other powers, exasperated the emperor to the highest pitch. But the French monarch, by secret missions and abounding bribes, kept Hungary in continued commotion, and excited such jealousy in the different States of the empire, that Leopold was compelled to submit in silent indignation to wrongs almost too grievous for human nature to bear. At length Leopold succeeded in organizing another coalition to resist the aggressions of Louis XIV. The Prince of Orange, the King of Sweden and the Elector of Brandenburg were the principal parties united with the emperor in this confederacy, which was concluded, under the name of the "League of Augsburg," on the 21st of June, 1686. An army of sixty thousand men was immediately raised. From all parts of Germany troops were now hurrying towards the Rhine. Louis, alarmed, retired from the Palatinate, which he had overrun, and, to place a barrier between himself and his foes, ordered the utter devastation of the unhappy country. The diabolical order was executed by Turenne. The whole of the Palatinate was surrendered to pillage and conflagration. The elector, from the towers of his castle at Mannheim, saw at one time two cities and twenty-five villages in flames. He had no force sufficient to warrant him to leave the walls of his fortress to oppose the foe. He was, however, so moved to despair by the sight, that he sent a challenge to Turenne to meet him in single combat. Turenne, by command of the king, declined accepting the challenge. More than forty large towns, besides innumerable villages, were given up to the flames. It was mid-winter. The fields were covered with snow, and swept by freezing blasts. The wretched inhabitants, parents and children, driven into the bleak plains without food or clothing or shelter, perished miserably by thousands. The devastation of the Palatinate is one of the most cruel deeds which war has ever perpetrated. For these woes, which no imagination can gauge, Louis XIV. is responsible. He has escaped any adequate earthly penalty for the crime, but the instinctive sense of justice implanted in every breast, demands that he should not escape the retributions of a righteous God. "After death cometh the judgment." This horrible deed roused Germany. All Europe now combined against France, except Portugal, Russia and a few of the Italian States. The tide now turned in favor of the house of Austria. Germany was so alarmed by the arrogance of France, that, to strengthen the power of the emperor, the diet with almost perfect unanimity elected his son Joseph, though a lad but eleven years of age, to succeed to the imperial throne. Indeed, Leopold presented his son in a manner which seemed to claim the crown for him as his hereditary right, and the diet did not resist that claim. France, rich and powerful, with marvelous energy breasted her host of foes. All Europe was in a blaze. The war raged on the ocean, over the marshes of Holland, along the banks of the Rhine, upon the plains of Italy, through the defiles of the Alps and far away on the steppes of Hungary and the shores of the Euxine. To all these points the emperor was compelled to send his troops. Year after year of carnage and woe rolled on, during which hardly a happy family could be found in all Europe. "Man's inhumanity to man Made countless millions mourn." At last all parties became weary of the war, and none of the powers having gained any thing of any importance by these long years of crime and misery, for which Louis XIV., as the aggressor, is mainly responsible, peace was signed on the 30th of October, 1697. One important thing, indeed, had been accomplished. The rapacious Louis XIV. had been checked in his career of spoliation. But his insatiate ambition was by no means subdued. He desired peace only that he might more successfully prosecute his plans of aggrandizement. He soon, by his system of robbery, involved Europe again in war. Perhaps no man has ever lived who has caused more bloody deaths and more wide-spread destruction of human happiness than Louis XIV. We wonder not that in the French Revolution an exasperated people should have rifled his sepulcher and spurned his skull over the pavements as a foot-ball. Leopold, during the progress of these wars, by the aid of the armies which the empire furnished him, recovered all of Hungary and Transylvania, driving the Turks beyond the Danube. But the proud Hungarian nobles were about as much opposed to the rule of the Austrian king as to that of the Turkish sultan. The Protestants gained but little by the change, for the Mohammedan was about as tolerant as the papist. They all suspected Leopold of the design of establishing over them despotic power, and they formed a secret confederacy for their own protection. Leopold, released from his warfare against France and the Turks, was now anxious to consolidate his power in Hungary, and justly regarding the Roman Catholic religion as the great bulwark against liberty, encouraged the Catholics to persecute the Protestants. Leopold took advantage of this conspiracy to march an army into Hungary, and attacking the discontented nobles, who had raised an army, he crushed them with terrible severity. No mercy was shown. He exhausted the energies of confiscation, exile and the scaffold upon his foes; and then, having intimidated all so that no one dared to murmur, declared the monarchy of Hungary no longer elective but hereditary, like that of Bohemia. He even had the assurance to summon a diet of the nobles to confirm this decree which defrauded them of their time-honored rights. The nobles who were summoned, terrified, instead of obeying, fled into Transylvania. The despot then issued an insulting and menacing proclamation, declaring that the power he exercised he received from God, and calling upon all to manifest implicit submission under peril of his vengeance. He then extorted a large contribution of money from the kingdom, and quartered upon the inhabitants thirty thousand troops to awe them into subjection. This proclamation was immediately followed by another, changing the whole form of government of the kingdom, and establishing an unlimited despotism. He then moved vigorously for the extirpation of the Protestant religion. The Protestant pastors were silenced; courts were instituted for the suppression of heresy; two hundred and fifty Protestant ministers were sentenced to be burned at the stake, and then, as an act of extraordinary clemency, on the part of the despot, their punishment was commuted to hard labor in the galleys for life. All the nameless horrors of inquisitorial cruelty desolated the land. Catholics and Protestants were alike driven to despair by these civil and religious outrages. They combined, and were aided both by France and Turkey; not that France and Turkey loved justice and humanity, but they hated the house of Austria, and wished to weaken its power, that they might enrich themselves by the spoils. A noble chief, Emeric Tekeli, who had fled from Hungary to Poland, and who hated Austria as Hannibal hated Rome, was invested with the command of the Hungarian patriots. Victory followed his standard, until the emperor, threatened with entire expulsion from the kingdom, offered to reëstablish the ancient laws which he had abrogated, and to restore to the Hungarians all those civil and religious privileges of which he had so ruthlessly defrauded them. But the Hungarians were no longer to be deceived by his perfidious promises. They continued the war; and the sultan sent an army of two hundred thousand men to cooperate with Tekeli. The emperor, unable to meet so formidable an army, abandoned his garrisons, and, retiring from the distant parts of the kingdom, concentrated his troops at Presburg. But with all his efforts, he was able to raise an army of only forty thousand men. The Duke of Lorraine, who was intrusted with the command of the imperial troops, was compelled to retreat precipitately before outnumbering foes, and he fled upon the Danube, pursued by the combined Hungarians and Turks, until he found refuge within the walls of Vienna. The city was quite unprepared for resistance, its fortifications being dilapidated, and its garrison feeble. Universal consternation seized the inhabitants. All along the valley of the Danube the population fled in terror before the advance of the Turks. Leopold, with his family, at midnight, departed ingloriously from the city, to seek a distant refuge. The citizens followed the example of their sovereign, and all the roads leading westward and northward from the city were crowded with fugitives, in carriages, on horseback and on foot, and with all kinds of vehicles laden with the treasures of the metropolis. The churches were filled with the sick and the aged, pathetically imploring the protection of Heaven. The Duke of Lorraine conducted with great energy, repairing the dilapidated fortifications, stationing in posts of peril the veteran troops, and marshaling the citizens and the students to coöperate with the garrison. On the 14th of July, 1682, the banners of the advance guard of the Turkish army were seen from the walls of Vienna. Soon the whole mighty host, like an inundation, came surging on, and, surrounding the city, invested it on all sides. The terrific assault from innumerable batteries immediately commenced. The besieged were soon reduced to the last extremity for want of provisions, and famine and pestilence rioting within the walls, destroyed more than the shot of the enemy. The suburbs were destroyed, the principal outworks taken, several breaches were battered in the walls, and the terrified inhabitants were hourly in expectation that the city would be taken by storm. There can not be, this side of the world of woe, any thing more terrible than such an event. The emperor, in his terror, had dispatched envoys all over Germany to rally troops for the defense of Vienna and the empire. He himself had hastened to Poland, where, with frantic intreaties, he pressed the king, the renowned John Sobieski, whose very name was a terror, to rush to his relief. Sobieski left orders for a powerful army immediately to commence their march. But, without waiting for their comparatively slow movements, he placed himself at the head of three thousand Polish horsemen, and, without incumbering himself with luggage, like the sweep of the whirlwind traversed Silesia and Moravia, and reached Tulen, on the banks of the Danube, about twenty miles above Vienna. He had been told by the emperor that here he would find an army awaiting him, and a bridge constructed, by which he could cross the stream. But, to his bitter disappointment, he found no army, and the bridge unfinished. Indignantly he exclaimed, "What does the emperor mean? Does he think me a mere adventurer? I left my own army that I might take command of his. It is not for myself that I fight, but for him." Notwithstanding this disappointment, he called into requisition all his energies to meet the crisis. The bridge was pushed forward to its completion. The loitering German troops were hurried on to the rendezvous. After a few days the Polish troops, by forced marches, arrived, and Sobieski found himself at the head of sixty thousand men, experienced soldiers, and well supplied with all the munitions of war. On the 11th of September the inhabitants of the city were overjoyed, in descrying from the towers of the city, in the distance, the approaching banners of the Polish and German army. Sobieski ascended an elevation, and long and carefully scrutinized the position of the besieging host. He then calmly remarked, "The grand vizier has selected a bad position. I understand him. He is ignorant of the arts of war, and yet thinks that he has military genius. It will be so easy to conquer him, that we shall obtain no honor from the victory." Early the next morning, the 12th of September, the Polish and German troops rushed to the assault, with such amazing impetuosity, and guided by such military skill, that the Turks were swept before them as by a torrent. The army of the grand vizier, seized by a panic, fled so precipitately, that they left baggage, tents, ammunition and provisions behind. The garrison emerged from the city, and coöperated with the victors, and booty of indescribable value fell into their hands. As Sobieski took possession of the abandoned camp, stored with all the wealth and luxuries of the East, he wrote, in a tone of pleasantry to his wife, "The grand vizier has left me his heir, and I inherit millions of ducats. When I return home I shall not be met with the reproach of the Tartar wives, 'You are not a man, because you have come back without booty.'" The inhabitants of Vienna flocked out from the city to greet the king as an angel deliverer sent from heaven. The next morning the gates of the city were thrown open, the streets were garlanded with flowers, and the King of Poland had a triumphal reception in the streets of the metropolis. The enthusiasm and gratitude of the people passed all ordinary bounds. The bells rang their merriest peals; files of maidens lined his path, and acclamations, bursting from the heart, greeted him every step of his way. They called him their father and deliverer. They struggled to kiss his feet and even to touch his garments. With difficulty he pressed through the grateful crowd to the cathedral, where he prostrated himself before the altar, and returned thanks to God for the signal victory. As he returned, after a public dinner, to his camp, he said, "This is the happiest day of my life." Two days after this, Leopold returned, trembling and humiliated to his capital. He was received in silence, and with undisguised contempt. His mortification was intense, and he could not endure to hear the praises which were everywhere lavished upon Sobieski. Jealousy rankled in his heart, and he vented his spite upon all around him. It was necessary that he should have an interview with the heroic king who had so nobly come to his rescue. But instead of meeting him with a warm and grateful heart, he began to study the punctilios of etiquette, that the dreaded interview might be rendered as cold and formal as possible. Sobieski was merely an elective monarch. Leopold was a hereditary king and an emperor. Leopold even expressed some doubt whether it were consistent with his exalted dignity to grant the Polish king the honor of an audience. He inquired whether an _elected monarch_ had ever been admitted to the presence of an _emperor_; and if so, with what forms, in the present case, the king should be received. The Duke of Lorraine, of whom he made the inquiry, disgusted with the mean spirit of the emperor, nobly replied, "With open arms." But the soulless Leopold had every movement punctiliously arranged according to the dictates of his ignoble spirit. The Polish and Austrian armies were drawn up in opposite lines upon the plain before the city. At a concerted signal the emperor and the king emerged from their respective ranks, and rode out upon the open plain to meet each other. Sobieski, a man of splendid bearing, magnificently mounted, and dressed in the brilliant uniform of a Polish warrior, attracted all eyes and the admiration of all hearts. His war steed pranced proudly as if conscious of the royal burden he bore, and of the victories he had achieved. Leopold was an ungainly man at the best. Conscious of his inability to vie with the hero, in his personal presence, he affected the utmost simplicity of dress and equipage. Humiliated also by the cold reception he had met and by the consciousness of extreme unpopularity in both armies, he was embarrassed and deject. The contrast was very striking, adding to the renown of Sobieski, and sinking Leopold still deeper in contempt. The two sovereigns advanced, formally saluted each other with bows, dismounted and embraced. A few cold words were exchanged, when they again embraced and remounted to review the troops. But Sobieski, frank, cordial, impulsive, was so disgusted with this reception, so different from what he had a right to expect, that he excused himself, and rode to his tent, leaving his chancellor Zaluski to accompany the emperor on the review. As Leopold rode along the lines he was received in contemptuous silence, and he returned to his palace in Vienna, tortured by wounded pride and chagrin. The treasure abandoned by the Turks was so abundant that five days were spent in gathering it up. The victorious army then commenced the pursuit of the retreating foe. About one hundred and fifty miles below Vienna, where the majestic Danube turns suddenly from its eastern course and flows toward the south, is situated the imperial city of Gran. Upon a high precipitous rock, overlooking both the town and the river, there had stood for centuries one of the most imposing fortresses which mortal hands have ever reared. For seventy years this post had been in the hands of the Turks, and strongly garrisoned by four thousand troops, had bid defiance to every assault. Here the thinned and bleeding battalions of the grand vizier sought refuge. Sobieski and the Duke of Lorraine, flushed with victory, hurled their masses upon the disheartened foe, and the Turks were routed with enormous slaughter. Seven thousand gory corpses of the dead strewed the plain. Many thousands were driven into the river and drowned. The fortress was taken, sword in hand; and the remnant of the Moslem army, in utter discomfiture, fled down the Danube, hardly resting, by night or by day, till they were safe behind the ramparts of Belgrade. Both the German and the Polish troops were disgusted with Leopold. Having reconquered Hungary for the emperor, they were not disposed to remain longer in his service. Most of the German auxiliaries, disbanding, returned to their own countries. Sobieski, declaring that he was willing to fight against the Turks, but not against Tekeli and his Christian confederates, led back his troops to Poland. The Duke of Lorraine was now left with the Austrian troops to struggle against Tekeli with the Hungarian patriots. The Turks, exasperated by the defeat, accused Tekeli of being the cause. By stratagem he was seized and sent in chains to Constantinople. The chief who succeeded him turned traitor and joined the imperialists. The cause of the patriots was ruined. Victory now kept pace with the march of the Duke of Lorraine. The Turks were driven from all their fortresses, and Leopold again had Hungary at his feet. His vengeance was such as might have been expected from such a man. Far away, in the wilds of northern Hungary, at the base of the Carpathian, mountains, on the river Tarcza, one of the tributaries of the Theiss, is the strongly fortified town of Eperies. At this remote spot the diabolical emperor established his revolutionary tribunal, as if he thought that the shrieks of his victims, there echoing through the savage defiles of the mountains, could not awaken the horror of civilized Europe. His armed bands scoured the country and transported to Eperies every individual, man, woman and child, who was even suspected of sympathizing with the insurgents. There was hardly a man of wealth or influence in the kingdom who was not dragged before this horrible tribunal, composed of ignorant, brutal, sanguinary officers of the king. Their summary trial, without any forms of justice, was an awful tragedy. They were thrown into dungeons; their property confiscated; they were exposed to the most direful tortures which human ingenuity could devise, to extort confession and to compel them to criminate friends. By scores they were daily consigned to the scaffold. Thirty executioners, with their assistants, found constant employment in beheading the condemned. In the middle of the town, the scaffold was raised for this butchery. The spot is still called "The Bloody Theater of Eperies." Leopold, having thus glutted his vengeance, defiantly convoked a diet and crowned his son Joseph, a boy twelve years of age, as King of Hungary, practically saying to the nobles, "Dispute his hereditary right now, if you dare." The emperor had been too often instructed in the vicissitudes of war to feel that even in this hour of triumph he was perfectly safe. He knew that other days might come; that other foes might rise; and that Hungary could never forget the rights of which she had been defrauded. He therefore exhausted all the arts of threats and bribes to induce the diet to pass a decree that the crown was no longer elective but hereditary. It is marvelous that in such an hour there could have been any energy left to resist his will. But with all his terrors he could only extort from the diet their consent that the succession to the crown should be confirmed in the males, but that upon the extinction of the _male_ line the crown, instead of being hereditary in the female line, should revert to the nation, who should again confer it by the right of election. Leopold reluctantly yielded to this, as the most he could then hope to accomplish. The emperor, elated by success, assumed such imperious airs as to repel from him all his former allies. For several years Hungary was but a battle field where Austrians and Turks met in incessant and bloody conflicts. But Leopold, in possession of all the fortresses, succeeded in repelling each successive invasion. Both parties became weary of war. In November, 1697, negotiations were opened at Carlovitz, and a truce was concluded for twenty-five years. The Turks abandoned both Hungary and Transylvania, and these two important provinces became more firmly than ever before, integral portions of the Austrian empire. By the peace of Carlovitz the sultan lost one half of his possessions in Europe. Austria, in the grandeur of her territory, was never more powerful than at this hour: extending across the whole breadth of Europe, from the valley of the Rhine to the Euxine sea, and from the Carpathian mountains to the plains of Italy. A more heterogeneous conglomeration of States never existed, consisting of kingdoms, archduchies, duchies, principalities, counties, margraves, landgraves and imperial cities, nearly all with their hereditary rulers subordinate to the emperor, and with their local customs and laws. Leopold, though a weak and bad man, in addition to all this power, swayed also the imperial scepter over all the States of Germany. Though his empire over all was frail, and his vast dominions were liable at any moment to crumble to pieces, he still was not content with consolidating the realms he held, but was anxiously grasping for more. Spain was the prize now to be won. Louis XIV., with the concentrated energies of the French kingdom, was claiming it by virtue of his marriage with the eldest daughter of the deceased monarch, notwithstanding his solemn renunciation of all right at his marriage in favor of the second daughter. Leopold, as the husband of the second daughter, claimed the crown, in the event, then impending, of the death of the imbecile and childless king. This quarrel agitated Europe to its center, and deluged her fields with blood. If the _elective_ franchise is at times the source of agitation, the law of _hereditary_ succession most certainly does not always confer tranquillity and peace. CHAPTER XXI. LEOPOLD I. AND THE SPANISH SUCCESSION. From 1697 to 1710. The Spanish Succession.--The Impotence of Charles II.--Appeal to the Pope.--His Decision.--Death of Charles II.--Accession of Philip V.--Indignation of Austria.--The outbreak of War.--Charles III. crowned.--Insurrection in Hungary.--Defection of Bavaria.--The Battle of Blenheim.--Death of Leopold I.--Eleonora.--Accession of Joseph I.--Charles XII. of Sweden.--Charles III. in Spain.--Battle of Malplaquet.--Charles at Barcelona.--Charles at Madrid. Charles II., King of Spain, was one of the most impotent of men, in both body and mind. The law of hereditary descent had placed this semi-idiot upon the throne of Spain to control the destinies of twenty millions of people. The same law, in the event of his death without heirs, would carry the crown across the Pyrenees to a little boy in the palace of Versailles, or two thousand miles, to the banks of the Danube, to another little boy in the gardens of Vienna. Louis XIV. claimed the Spanish scepter in behalf of his wife, the Spanish princess Maria Theresa, and her son. Leopold claimed it in behalf of his deceased wife, Margaret, and her child. For many years before the death of Philip II. the envoys of France and Austria crowded the court of Spain, employing all the arts of intrigue and bribery to forward the interests of their several sovereigns. The different courts of Europe espoused the claims of the one party or the other, accordingly as their interests would be promoted by the aggrandizement of the house of Bourbon or the house of Hapsburg. Louis XIV. prepared to strike a sudden blow by gathering an army of one hundred thousand men in his fortresses near the Spanish frontier, in establishing immense magazines of military stores, and in filling the adjacent harbors with ships of war. The sagacious French monarch had secured the coöperation of the pope, and of some of the most influential Jesuits who surrounded the sick and dying monarch. Charles II. had long been harassed by the importunities of both parties that he should give the influence of his voice in the decision. Tortured by the incessant vacillations of his own mind, he was at last influenced, by the suggestions of his spiritual advisers, to refer the question to the pope. He accordingly sent an embassage to the pontiff with a letter soliciting counsel. "Having no children," he observed, "and being obliged to appoint an heir to the Spanish crown from a foreign family, we find such great obscurity in the law of succession, that we are unable to form a settled determination. Strict justice is our aim; and, to be able to decide with that justice, we have offered up constant prayers to God. We are anxious to act rightly, and we have recourse to your holiness, as to an infallible guide, intreating you to consult with the cardinals and divines, and, after having attentively examined the testaments of our ancestors, to decide according to the rules of right and equity." Pope Innocent XII. was already prepared for this appeal, and was engaged to act as the agent of the French court. The hoary-headed pontiff, with one foot in the grave, affected the character of great honesty and impartiality. He required forty days to examine the important case, and to seek divine assistance. He then returned the following answer, admirably adapted to influence a weak and superstitious prince: "Being myself," he wrote, "in a situation similar to that of his Catholic majesty, the King of Spain, on the point of appearing at the judgment-seat of Christ, and rendering an account to the sovereign pastor of the flock which has been intrusted to my care, I am bound to give such advice as will not reproach my conscience on the day of judgment. Your majesty ought not to put the interests of the house of Austria in competition with those of eternity. Neither should you be ignorant that the French claimants are the rightful heirs of the crown, and no member of the Austrian family has the smallest legitimate pretension. It is therefore your duty to omit no precaution, which your wisdom can suggest, to render justice where justice is due, and to secure, by every means in your power, the undivided succession of the Spanish monarchy to the French claimants." Charles, as fickle as the wind, still remained undecided, and his anxieties preying upon his feeble frame, already exhausted by disease, caused him rapidly to decline. He was now confined to his chamber and his bed, and his death was hourly expected. He hated the French, and all his sympathies were with Austria. Some priests entered his chamber, professedly to perform the pompous and sepulchral service of the church of Rome for the dying. In this hour of languor, and in the prospect of immediate death, they assailed the imbecile monarch with all the terrors of superstition. They depicted the responsibility which he would incur should he entail on the kingdom the woes of a disputed succession; they assured him that he could not, without unpardonable guilt, reject the decision of the holy father of the Church; and growing more eager and excited, they denounced upon him the vengeance of Almighty God, if he did not bequeath the crown, now falling from his brow, to the Bourbons of France. The dying, half-delirious king, appalled by the terrors of eternal damnation, yielded helplessly to their demands. A will was already prepared awaiting his signature. With a hand trembling in death, the king attached to it his name; but as he did so, he burst into tears, exclaiming, "I am already nothing." It was supposed that he could then survive but a few hours. Contrary to all expectation he revived, and expressed the keenest indignation and anguish that he had been thus beguiled to decide against Austria, and in favor of France. He even sent a courier to the emperor, announcing his determination to decide in favor of the Austrian claimant. The flickering flame of life, thus revived for a moment, glimmered again in the socket and expired. The wretched king died the 1st of November, 1699, in the fortieth year of his age, and the thirty-sixth of his reign. On the day of his death a council of State was convened, and the will, the very existence of which was generally unknown, was read. It declared the Dauphin of France, son of the Spanish princess Maria Theresa, to be the successor to all the Spanish dominions; and required all subjects and vassals of Spain to acknowledge him. The Austrian party were astounded at this revelation. The French party were prepared to receive it without any surprise. The son of Maria Theresa was dead, and the crown consequently passed to her grandson Philip. Louis XIV. immediately acknowledged his title, when he was proclaimed king, and took quiet possession of the throne of Spain on the 24th of November, 1700, as Philip V. It was by such fraud that the Bourbons of France attained the succession to the Spanish crown; a fraud as palpable as was ever committed; for Maria Theresa had renounced all her rights to the throne; this renunciation had been confirmed by the will of her father Philip IV., sanctioned by the Cortes of Spain, and solemnly ratified by her husband, Louis XIV. Such is "legitimacy--the divine right of kings." All the great powers of Europe, excepting the emperor, promptly acknowledged the title of Philip V. Leopold, enraged beyond measure, dispatched envoys to rouse the empire, and made the most formidable preparations for war. A force of eighty thousand men was soon assembled. The war commenced in Italy. Leopold sent down his German troops through the defiles of the Tyrol, and, in the valley of the Adige, they encountered the combined armies of France, Spain and Italy. Prince Eugene, who had already acquired great renown in the wars against the Turks, though by birth a French noble, had long been in the Austrian service, and led the Austrian troops. William, of England, jealous of the encroachments of Louis XIV., and leading with him the States of Holland, formed an alliance with Austria. This was pretty equally dividing the military power of Europe, and a war of course ensued, almost unparalleled in its sanguinary ferocity. The English nation supported the monarch; the House of Lords, in an address to the king, declared that "his majesty, his subjects and his allies, could never be secure till the house of Austria should be restored to its rights, and the invader of the Spanish monarchy brought to reason." Forty thousand sailors and forty thousand land troops were promptly voted for the war. William died on the 16th of March, in consequence of a fall from his horse, and was succeeded by Anne, daughter of James II. She was, however, but nominally the sovereign. The infamously renowned Duke of Marlborough became the real monarch, and with great skill and energy prosecuted the eleven years' war which ensued, which is known in history as the War of the Spanish Succession. For many months the conflict raged with the usual fluctuations, the Austrian forces being commanded on the Rhine by the Duke of Marlborough, and in Italy by Prince Eugene. Portugal soon joined the Austrian alliance, and Philip V. and the French becoming unpopular in Spain, a small party rose there, advocating the claims of the house of Austria. Thus supported, Leopold, at Vienna, declared his son Charles King of Spain, and crowned him as such in Vienna. By the aid of the English fleet he passed from Holland to England, and thence to Lisbon, where a powerful army was assembled to invade Spain, wrest the crown from Philip, and place it upon the brow of Charles III. And now Leopold began to reap the bitter consequences of his atrocious conduct in Hungary. The Hungarian nobles embraced this opportunity, when the imperial armies were fully engaged, to rise in a new and formidable invasion. Francis Ragotsky, a Transylvanian prince, led in the heroic enterprise. He was of one of the noblest and wealthiest families of the realm, and was goaded to action by the bitterest wrongs. His grandfather and uncle had been beheaded; his father robbed of his property and his rank; his cousin doomed to perpetual imprisonment; his father-in-law proscribed, and his mother driven into exile. The French court immediately opened a secret correspondence with Ragotsky, promising him large supplies of men and money, and encouraging him with hopes of the coöperation of the Turks. Ragotsky secretly assembled a band of determined followers, in the savage solitudes of the Carpathian mountains, and suddenly descended into the plains of Hungary, at the head of his wild followers, calling upon his countrymen to rise and shake off the yoke of the detested Austrian. Adherents rapidly gathered around his standard; several fortresses fell into his hands, and he soon found himself at the head of twenty thousand well armed troops. The flame of insurrection spread, with electric rapidity, through all Hungary and Transylvania. The tyrant Leopold, as he heard these unexpected tidings, was struck with consternation. He sent all the troops he could collect to oppose the patriots, but they could make no impression upon an indignant nation in arms. He then, in his panic, attempted negotiation. But the Hungarians demanded terms both reasonable and honorable, and to neither of these could the emperor possibly submit. They required that the monarchy should no longer be hereditary, but elective, according to immemorial usage; that the Hungarians should have the right to resist _illegal_ power without the charge of treason; that foreign officers and garrisons should be removed from the kingdom; that the Protestants should be reëstablished in the free exercise of their religion, and that their confiscated estates should be restored. The despot could not listen for one moment to requirements so just; and appalled by the advance of the patriots toward Vienna, he recalled the troops from Italy. About the same time the Duke of Bavaria, disgusted with the arrogance and the despotism of Leopold, renounced allegiance to the emperor, entered into an alliance with the French, and at the head of forty thousand troops, French and Bavarians, commenced the invasion of Austria from the west. Both Eugene and Marlborough hastened to the rescue of the emperor. Combining their forces, with awful slaughter they mowed down the French and Bavarians at Blenheim, and then overran all Bavaria. The elector fled with the mutilated remnants of his army to France. The conquerors seized all the fortresses, all the guns and ammunition; disbanded the Bavarian troops, took possession of the revenues of the kingdom, and assigned to the heart-broken wife of the duke a humble residence in the dismantled capital of the duchy. The signal victory of Blenheim enabled Leopold to concentrate his energies upon Hungary. It was now winter, and the belligerents, during these stormy months, were active in making preparations for the campaign of the spring. But Leopold's hour was now tolled. That summons came which prince and peasant must alike obey, and the emperor, after a few months of languor and pain, on the 5th of May, 1705, passed away to that tribunal where each must answer for every deed done in the body. He was sixty-five years of age, and had occupied the throne forty-six years. This is the longest reign recorded in the Austrian annals, excepting that of Frederic III. The reign of Leopold was eventful and woeful. It was almost one continued scene of carnage. In his character there was a singular blending of the good and the bad. In what is usually called moral character he was irreproachable. He was a faithful husband, a kind father, and had no taste for any sensual pleasures. In his natural disposition he was melancholy, and so exceedingly reserved, that he lived in his palace almost the life of a recluse. Though he was called the most learned prince of his age, a Jesuitical education had so poisoned and debauched his mind, that while perpetrating the most grievous crimes of perfidy and cruelty, he seemed sincerely to feel that he was doing God service. His persecution of the Protestants was persistent, relentless and horrible; while at the same time he was scrupulous in his devotions, never allowing the cares of business to interfere with the prescribed duties of the Church. _The Church_, the human church of popes, cardinals, bishops and priests, was his guide, not the _divine Bible_. Hence his darkness of mind and his crimes. Pope Innocent XI. deemed him worthy of canonization. But an indignant world must in justice inscribe upon his tomb, "Tyrant and Persecutor." He was three times married; first, to Margaret, daughter of Philip IV. of Spain; again, to Claudia, daughter of Ferdinand of Tyrol; and a third time, to Eleonora, daughter of Philip, Elector Palatine. The character and history of his third wife are peculiarly illustrative of the kind of religion inculcated in that day, and of the beautiful spirit of piety often exemplified in the midst of melancholy errors. In the castle of her father, Eleonora was taught, by priests and nuns, that God was only acceptably worshiped by self-sacrifice and mortification. The devout child longed for the love of God more than for any thing else. Guided by the teachings of those who, however sincere, certainly misunderstood the spirit of the gospel, she deprived herself of every innocent gratification, and practiced upon her fragile frame all the severities of an anchorite. She had been taught that celibacy was a virtue peculiarly acceptable to God, and resolutely declined all solicitations for her hand. The emperor, after the death of his first wife, sought Eleonora as his bride. It was the most brilliant match Europe could offer. Eleonora, from religious scruples, rejected the offer, notwithstanding all the importunities of her parents, who could not feel reconciled to the loss of so splendid an alliance. The devout maiden, in the conflict, exposed herself, bonnet-less, to sun and wind, that she might render herself unattractive, tanned, sun burnt, and freckled, so that the emperor might not desire her. She succeeded in repelling the suit, and the emperor married Claudia of the Tyrol. The court of the Elector Palatine was brilliant in opulence and gayety. Eleonora was compelled to mingle with the festive throng in the scenes of pomp and splendor; but her thoughts, her affections, were elsewhere, and all the vanities of princely life had no influence in leading her heart from God. She passed several hours, every day, in devotional reading and prayer. She kept a very careful register of her thoughts and actions, scrutinizing and condemning with unsparing severity every questionable emotion. Every sick bed of the poor peasants around, she visited with sympathy and as a tender nurse. She groped her way into the glooms of prison dungeons to convey solace to the prisoner. She wrought ornaments for the Church, and toiled, even to weariness and exhaustion, in making garments for the poor. Claudia in three years died, and the emperor again was left a widower. Again he applied for the hand of Eleonora. Her spiritual advisers now urged that it was clearly the will of God that she should fill the first throne of the universe, as the patroness and protectress of the Catholic church. For such an object she would have been willing to sweep the streets or to die in a dungeon. Yielding to these persuasions she married the emperor, and was conveyed, as in a triumphal march, to the gorgeous palaces of Vienna. But her character and her mode of life were not changed. Though she sat at the imperial table, which was loaded with every conceivable luxury, she condemned herself to fare as humble and abstemious as could be found in the hut of the most impoverished peasant. It was needful for her at times to appear in the rich garb of an empress, but to prevent any possible indulgence of pride, she had her bracelets and jewelry so arranged with sharp brads as to keep her in continued suffering by the laceration of the flesh. She was, notwithstanding these austerities, which she practiced with the utmost secrecy, indefatigable in the discharge of her duties as a wife and an empress. She often attended the opera with the emperor, but always took with her the Psalms of David, bound to resemble the books of the performance, and while the tragic or the comic scenes of the stage were transpiring before her, she was studying the devout lyrics of the Psalmist of Israel. She translated all the Psalms into German verse; and also translated from the French, and had printed for the benefit of her subjects, a devotional work entitled, "Pious Reflections for every Day of the Month." During the last sickness of her husband she watched with unwearied assiduity at his bed-side, shrinking from no amount of exhaustion or toil, She survived her husband fifteen years, devoting all this time to austerities, self-mortification and deeds of charity. She died in 1720; and at her express request was buried without any parade, and with no other inscription upon her tomb than-- ELEONORA, A POOR SINNER, Died, January 17, 1720. Joseph, the eldest son of Leopold, was twenty-five years of age when, by the death of his father, he was called to the throne as both king and emperor. He immediately and cordially coöperated with the alliance his father had formed, and pressed the war against France, Spain and Italy. Louis XIV. was not a man, however, to be disheartened by disaster. Though thousands of his choicest troops had found a grave at Blenheim, he immediately collected another army of one hundred and sixty thousand men, and pushed them forward to the seat of war on the Rhine and the Danube. Marlborough and Eugene led Austrian forces to the field still more powerful. The whole summer was spent in marches, countermarches and bloody battles on both sides of the Rhine. Winter came, and its storms and snows drove the exhausted, bleeding combatants from the bleak plains to shelter and the fireside. All Europe, through the winter months, resounded with preparations for another campaign. There was hardly a petty prince on the continent who was not drawn into the strife--to decide whether Philip of Bourbon or Charles of Hapsburg, was entitled by hereditary descent to the throne of Spain. And now suddenly Charles XII. of Sweden burst in upon the scene, like a meteor amidst the stars of midnight. A more bloody apparition never emerged from the sulphureous canopy of war. Having perfect contempt for all enervating pleasures, with an iron frame and the abstemious habits of a Spartan, he rushed through a career which has excited the wonder of the world. He joined the Austrian party; struck down Denmark at a blow; penetrated Russia in mid-winter, driving the Russian troops before him as dogs scatter wolves; pressed on triumphantly to Poland, through an interminable series of battles; drove the king from the country, and placed a new sovereign of his own selection upon the throne; and then, proudly assuming to hold the balance between the rival powers of France and Austria, made demands of Joseph I., as if the emperor were but the vassal of the King of Sweden. France and Austria were alike anxious to gain the coöperation of this energetic arm. Early in May, 1706, the armies of Austria and France, each about seventy thousand strong, met in the Netherlands. Marlborough led the allied Austrian troops; the Duke of Bavaria was in command of the French. The French were again routed, almost as disastrously as at Blenheim, losing thirteen thousand men and fifty pieces of artillery. On the Rhine and in Italy the French arms were also in disgrace. Throughout the summer battle succeeded battle, and siege followed siege. When the snows of another winter whitened the plains of Europe, the armies again retired to winter quarters, the Austrian party having made very decided progress as the result of the campaign. Marlborough was in possession of most of the Netherlands, and was threatening France with invasion. Eugene had driven the French out of Italy, and had brought many of the Italian provinces under the dominion of Austria. In Spain, also, the warfare was fiercely raging. Charles III., who had been crowned in Vienna King of Spain, and who, as we have mentioned, had been conveyed to Lisbon by a British fleet, joined by the King of Portugal, and at the head of an allied army, marched towards the frontiers of Spain. The Spaniards, though they disliked the French, hated virulently the English and the Dutch, both of whom they considered heretics. Their national pride was roused in seeing England, Holland and Portugal marching upon them to place over Spain an Austrian king. The populace rose, and after a few sanguinary conflicts drove the invaders from their borders. December's storms separated the two armies, compelling them to seek winter quarters, with only the frontier line between them. It was in one of the campaigns of this war, in 1704, that the English took the rock of Gibraltar, which they have held from that day till this. The British people began to remonstrate bitterly against this boundless expenditure of blood and treasure merely to remove a Bourbon prince, and place a Hapsburg prince upon the throne of Spain. Both were alike despotic in character, and Europe had as much to fear from the aggressions of the house of Austria as from the ambition of the King of France. The Emperor Joseph was very apprehensive that the English court might be induced to withdraw from the alliance, and fearing that they might sacrifice, as the price of accommodation, his conquests in Italy, he privately concluded with France a treaty of neutrality for Italy. This secured to him what he had already acquired there, and saved France and Spain from the danger of losing any more Italian States. Though the allies were indignant, and remonstrated against this transaction, they did not see fit to abandon the war. Immense preparations were made to invade France from the Netherlands and from Piedmont, in the opening of the spring of 1707. Both efforts were only successful in spreading far and wide conflagration and blood. The invaders were driven from the kingdom with heavy loss. The campaign in Spain, this year, was also exceedingly disastrous to the Austrian arms. The heterogeneous army of Charles III., composed of Germans, English, Dutch, Portuguese, and a few Spanish refugees, were routed, and with the loss of thirteen thousand men were driven from the kingdom. Joseph, however, who stood in great dread of so terrible an enemy as Charles XII., succeeded in purchasing his neutrality, and this fiery warrior marched off with his battalions, forty-three thousand strong, to drive Peter I. from the throne of Russia. Joseph I., with exhausted resources, and embarrassed by the claims of so wide-spread a war, was able to do but little for the subjugation of Hungary. As the campaign of 1708 opened, two immense armies, each about eighty thousand strong, were maneuvering near Brussels. After a long series of marches and combinations a general engagement ensued, in which the Austrian party, under Marlborough and Eugene, were decisively triumphant. The French were routed with the loss of fifteen thousand in killed, wounded and prisoners. During the whole summer the war raged throughout the Low Countries with unabated violence. In Spain, Austria was not able to make any progress against Philip and his forces. Another winter came, and again the wearied combatants, all of whom had received about as many blows as they had given, sought repose. The winter was passed in fruitless negotiations, and as soon as the buds of another spring began to swell, the thunders of war were again pealing over nearly all the hills and valleys of Europe. The Austrian party had resolved, by a gigantic effort, to send an army of one hundred thousand men to the gates of Paris, there to dictate terms to the French monarch. On the 11th of September, 1709, the Austrian force, eighty thousand strong, with eighty pieces of cannon, encountered the French, seventy thousand in number, with eighty pieces of cannon, on the field of Malplaquet. The bloodiest battle of the Spanish succession was then fought. The Austrian party, guided by Marlborough and Eugene, justly claimed the victory, as they held the field. But they lost twenty thousand in killed and wounded, and took neither prisoners nor guns. The loss of the French was but ten thousand. All this slaughter seemed to be accomplishing nothing. Philip still stood firm upon the Spanish throne, and Charles could scarcely gain the slightest foothold in the kingdom which he claimed. On the side of the Rhine and of Italy, though blood flowed like water, nothing was accomplished; the plan of invading France had totally failed, and again the combatants were compelled to retire to winter quarters. For nine years this bloody war had now desolated Europe. It is not easy to defend the cause of Austria and her allies in this cruel conflict. The Spaniards undeniably preferred Philip as their king. Louis XIV. had repeatedly expressed his readiness to withdraw entirely from the conflict. But the Austrian allies demanded that he should either by force or persuasion remove Philip from Spain, and place the kingdom in the hands of the Austrian prince. But Philip was now an independent sovereign who for ten years had occupied the throne. He was resolved not to abdicate, and his subjects were resolved to support him. Louis XIV. said that he could not wage warfare against his own grandson. The wretched old monarch, now feeble, childless, and woe crushed, whose soul was already crimsoned with the blood of countless thousands, was so dispirited by defeat, and so weary of the war, that though he still refused to send his armies against his grandson, he even offered to pay a monthly subsidy of two hundred thousand dollars (one million livres) to the allied Austrian party, to be employed in the expulsion of Philip, if they would cease to make war upon him. Even to these terms, after blood had been flowing in torrents for ten years, Austria, England and Holland would not accede. "If I must fight either Austria and her allies," said Louis XIV., "or the Spaniards, led by their king, my own grandson, I prefer to fight the Austrians." The returning sun of the summer of 1710, found the hostile armies again in the field. The allies of Austria, early in April, hoping to surprise the French, assembled, ninety thousand in number, on the Flemish frontiers of France, trusting that by an unexpected attack they might break down the fortresses which had hitherto impeded their way. But the French were on the alert to resist them, and the whole summer was again expended in fruitless battles. These fierce conflicts so concentrated the energies of war in the Netherlands, that but little was attempted in the way of invading Spain. The Spanish nobles rallied around Philip, melted their plate to replenish his treasury, and led their vassals to fight his battles. The ecclesiastics, as a body, supported his cause. Philip was a zealous Catholic, and the priests considered him as the defender of the Church, while they had no confidence in Charles of Austria, whose cause was advocated by heretical England and Holland. Charles III. was now in Catalonia, on the Mediterranean coast of Spain. He had landed at Barcelona, with a strong force of English and Germans. He was a man of but little character, and his military operations were conducted entirely by the English general Stanhope and the German general Staremberg. The English general was haughty and domineering; the German proud and stubborn. They were in a continued quarrel contesting the preeminence. The two rival monarchs, with forces about equal, met in Catalonia a few miles from Saragossa, on the 24th of July, 1710. Though the inefficient Charles was very reluctant to hazard a battle, the generals insisted upon it. The Spaniards were speedily and totally routed. Philip fled with a small body-guard to Lerida. His array was thoroughly dispersed. The conquerors pressed on toward Madrid, crossed the Ebro at Saragossa, where they again encountered, but a short distance from the city, an army strongly posted upon some heights. Philip was already there. The conflict was short but bloody, and the generals of Charles were again victorious. Philip, with a disheartened remnant of his troops, retreated to Madrid. The generals dragged the timid and reluctant Charles on to Madrid, where they arrived on the 28th of September. There was no force at the capital to oppose them. They were received, however, by the citizens of the metropolis as foreign conquerors. Charles rode through the deserted streets, meeting only with sullen silence. A few who were hired to shout, were pelted, by the populace, with mud, as traitors to their lawful king. None flocked to his standard. Nobles, clergy, populace, all alike stood aloof from him. Charles and his generals were embarrassed and perplexed. They could not compel the nation to receive the Austrian king. Philip, in the meantime, who had much energy and popularity of character, was rapidly retrieving his losses, and troops were flocking to his camp from all parts of Spain. He established his court at Yalladolid, about one hundred and fifty miles north-east from Madrid. His troops, dispersed by the two disastrous battles, were reassembled at Lerida. The peasants rose in large numbers and joined them, and cut off all communication between Charles at Madrid and his ships at Barcelona. The Spanish grandees sent urgent messages to France for succors. General Yendome, at the head of three thousand horse, swept through the defiles of the Pyrenees, and, with exultant music and waving banners, joined Philip at Valladolid. Universal enthusiasm was excited. Soon thirty thousand infantry entered the camp, and then took positions on the Tagus, where they could cut off any reinforcements which might attempt to march from Portugal to aid the invaders. Charles was apparently in a desperate situation. Famine and consequent sickness were in his camp. His army was daily dwindling away. He was emphatically in an enemy's country. Not a soldier could stray from the ranks without danger of assassination. He had taken Madrid, and Madrid was his prison. CHAPTER XXII. JOSEPH I. AND CHARLES VI. From 1710 to 1717. Perplexities in Madrid.--Flight of Charles.--Retreat of the Austrian Army.--Stanhope's Division Cut Off.--Capture of Stanhope.--Staremberg Assailed.--Retreat to Barcelona.--Attempt to Pacify Hungary.--The Hungarian Diet.--Baronial Crowning of Kagotsky.--Renewal of the Hungarian War.--Enterprise of Herbeville.--The Hungarians Crushed.--Lenity of Joseph.--Death of Joseph.--Accession of Charles VI.--His Career in Spain.--Capture of Barcelona.--The Siege.--The Rescue.--Character of Charles.--Cloisters of Montserrat.--Increased Efforts for the Spanish Crown.--Charles Crowned Emperor of Austria and Hungary.--Bohemia.--Deplorable Condition of Louis XIV. Generals Stanhope and Staremberg, who managed the affairs of Charles, with but little respect for his judgment, and none for his administrative qualities, were in great perplexity respecting the course to be pursued. Some recommended the transference of the court from Madrid to Saragossa, where they would be nearer to their supplies. Others urged removal to Barcelona, where they would be under the protection of the British fleet. It was necessary to watch over Charles with the utmost care, as he was in constant danger of assassination. While in this state of uncertainty, tidings reached Madrid that the Duke of Noailles was on the march, with fifteen thousand men, to cut off the retreat of the Austrians, and at the same time Philip was advancing with a powerful army from Valladolid. This intelligence rendered instant action necessary. The Austrian party precipitately evacuated Madrid, followed by the execrations of the people. As soon as the last battalions had left the city, the ringing of bells, the firing of artillery, and the shouts of the people, announced the popular exultation in view of the departure of Charles, and the cordial greeting they were giving to his rival Philip. The complications of politics are very curious. The British government was here, through years of war and blood, endeavoring to drive from his throne the acknowledged King of Spain. In less than a hundred years we find this same government again deluging Europe in blood, to reseat upon the throne the miserable Ferdinand, the lineal descendant of this Bourbon prince. Charles put spurs to his horse, and accompanied by a glittering cavalcade of two thousand cavaliers, galloped over the mountains to Barcelona. His army, under the leadership of his efficient English general, followed rapidly but cautiously on, hoping to press through the defiles of the mountains which separated them from Arragon before their passage could be obstructed by the foe. The troops were chagrined and dispirited; the generals in that state of ill humor which want of success generally engenders. The roads were bad, provisions scarce, the inhabitants of the country bitterly hostile. It was the middle of November, and cold blasts swept through the mountains. Staremberg led the van, and Stanhope, with four thousand English troops, occupied the post of peril in a retreat, the rear. As the people of the country would furnish them with no supplies, the pillage of towns and villages became a necessity; but it none the less added to the exasperation of the Spaniards. A hurried march of about eighty miles brought the troops to the banks of the Tagus. As General Staremberg, at the head of the advance guard, pressed eagerly on, he left Stanhope at quite a distance behind. They encamped for a night, the advance at Cifuentes, the rear at Brihuega. The hostility of the natives was such that almost all communication was cut off between the two sections of the army. In the confusion of the hasty retreat, and as no enemy was apprehended in that portion of the way, the importance of hourly communication was forgotten. In the morning, as Stanhope put his troops again in motion, he was surprised and alarmed in seeing upon the hills before him the banners of an opposing host, far outnumbering his own, and strongly intrenched. The Earl of Stanhope at once appreciated the nearly utter hopelessness of his position. He was cut off from the rest of the army, had no artillery, but little ammunition, and was almost entirely destitute of provision. Still he scorned to surrender. He threw his troops behind a stone wall, and vigorously commenced fortifying his position, hoping to be able to hold out until Staremberg, hearing of his situation, should come to his release. During the whole day he beat back the assaults of the Spanish army. In the meantime Staremberg was pressing on to Barcelona. In the evening of that day he heard of the peril of his rear guard. His troops were exhausted; the night of pitchy blackness, and the miry roads, cut to pieces by the heavy artillery and baggage wagons, were horrible. Through the night he made preparations to turn back to aid his beleaguered friends. It was, however, midday before he could collect his scattered troops, from their straggling march, and commence retracing his steps. In a few hours the low sun of a November day sunk below the hills. The troops, overtaken by darkness, stumbling through the gloom, and apprehensive of a midnight attack, rested upon their arms, waiting, through the weary hours, for the dawn of the morning. The second day came, and the weary troops toiled through the mire, while Stanhope, from behind his slight parapet, baffled all the efforts of his foes. The third morning dawned. Staremberg was within some fifteen miles of Briehuga. Stanhope had now exhausted all his ammunition. The inhabitants of the town rose against him and attacked him in the rear, while the foe pressed him in front. A large number of his troops had already fallen, and no longer resistance was possible. Stanhope and the remnant of his band were taken captive and conducted into the town of Briehuga. Staremberg, unaware of the surrender, pushed on until he came within a league of Briehuga. Anxiously he threw up signals, but could obtain no response. His fears of the worst were soon confirmed by seeing the Spanish army, in brilliant battle array, approaching to assail him. Philip himself was there to animate them by his presence; and the heroic French general, the Duke of Vendome, a descendant of Henry IV., led the charging columns. Though the troops of Staremberg were inferior in number to those of the Spanish monarch, and greatly fatigued by their forced marches, a retreat at that moment, in the face of so active an enemy, was not to be thought of. The battle immediately commenced, with its rushing squadrons and its thunder peals. The Spaniards, sanguine of success, and inspired with the intensest hatred of their _heretical_ foes, charged with irresistible fury. The left wing of Staremberg was speedily cut to pieces, and the baggage taken. The center and the right maintained their ground until night came to their protection. Staremberg's army was now reduced to nine thousand. His horses were either slain or worn out by fatigue. He was consequently compelled to abandon all his artillery and most of his baggage, as he again commenced a rapid retreat towards Barcelona. The enemy pressed him every step of the way. But with great heroism and military skill he baffled their endeavors to destroy him, and after one of the most arduous marches on record, reached Barcelona with a feeble remnant of but seven thousand men, ragged, emaciated and bleeding. Behind the walls of this fortified city, and protected by the fleet of England, they found repose. We must now turn back a few years, to trace the progress of events in Hungary and Austria. Joseph, the emperor, had sufficient intelligence to understand that the rebellious and anarchical state of Hungary was owing to the cruelty and intolerance of his father. He saw, also, that there could be no hope of permanent tranquillity but in paying some respect to the aspirations for civil and religious liberty. The troubles in Hungary distracted his attention, exhausted the energies of his troops, and deprived him of a large portion of his political and military power. He now resolved to try the effect of concessions. The opportunity was propitious, as he could throw upon his father the blame of all past decrees. He accordingly sent a messenger to the Hungarian nobles with the declaration that during his father's lifetime he had never interfered in the government, and that consequently he was in no respect responsible for the persecution of which they complained. And he promised, on the honor of a king, that instead of attempting the enforcement of those rigorous decrees, he would faithfully fulfill all the articles he had sworn to observe at his coronation; and that he accordingly summoned a diet for the redress of their grievances and the confirmation of all their ancient privileges. As proof of his sincerity, he dismissed those ministers who had advised the intolerant decrees enacted by Leopold, and appointed in their place men of more mild and lenient character. But the Hungarians, deeming themselves now in a position to enforce their claims by the energies of their army, feared to trust to the promises of a court so often perjured. Without openly renouncing allegiance to Austria, and declaring independence, they, through Ragotsky, summoned a diet to meet at Stetzim, where their session would be protected by the Hungarian army. There was a large gathering of all the first nobility of the realm. A spacious tent was spread for the imposing assembly, and the army encircled it as with a sheltering embrace. The session was opened with prayer and the administration of the sacrament of the Lord's Supper. Will the time ever come when the members of the United States Congress will meet as Christian brethren, at the table of our Saviour, as they commence their annual deliberations for the welfare of this republic? The nobles formed a confederacy for the government of the country. The legislative power was committed to a senate of twenty-four nobles. Ragotsky was chosen military chief, with the title of Dux, or leader. Four of the most illustrious nobles raised Ragotsky upon a buckler on their shoulders, when he took the oath of fidelity to the government thus provisionally established, and then administered the oath to his confederates. They all bound themselves solemnly not to conclude any peace with the emperor, until their ancient rights, both civil and religious, were fully restored. In reply to the advances made by the emperor, they returned the very reasonable and moderate demands that their chief, Ragotsky, should be reinstated in his ancestral realms of Transylvania, that the claim of _hereditary_ sovereignty should be relinquished, and that there should be the restoration of those ancient civil and religious immunities of which Leopold had defrauded them. Upon these conditions they promised to recognize Joseph as their sovereign during his lifetime; claiming at his death their time-honored right of choosing his successor. Joseph would not listen for one moment to these terms, and the war was renewed with fury. The Hungarian patriots had seventy-five thousand men under arms. The spirit of the whole nation was with them, and the Austrian troops were driven from almost every fortress in the kingdom. The affairs of Joseph seemed to be almost desperate, his armies struggling against overpowering foes all over Europe, from the remotest borders of Transylvania to the frontiers of Portugal. The vicissitudes of war are proverbial. An energetic, sagacious general, Herbeville, with great military sagacity, and aided by a peculiar series of fortunate events, marched down the valley of the Danube to Buda; crossed the stream to Pesth; pushed boldly on through the heart of Hungary to Great Waradin, forced the defiles of the mountains, and entered Transylvania. Through a series of brilliant victories he took fortress after fortress, until he subjugated the whole of Transylvania, and brought it again into subjection to the Austrian crown. This was in November, 1705. But the Hungarians, instead of being intimidated by the success of the imperial arms, summoned another diet. It was held in the open field in accordance with ancient custom, and was thronged by thousands from all parts of the kingdom. With great enthusiasm and public acclaim the resolution was passed that Joseph was a tyrant and a usurper, animated by the hereditary despotism of the Austrian family. This truthful utterance roused anew the ire of the emperor. He resolved upon a desperate effort to bring Hungary into subjection. Leaving his English and Dutch allies to meet the brunt of the battle on the Rhine and in the Netherlands, he recalled his best troops, and made forced levies in Austria until he had created an army sufficiently strong, as he thought, to sweep down all opposition. These troops he placed under the most experienced generals, and sent them into Hungary in the summer of 1708. France, weakened by repeated defeats, could send the Hungarians no aid, and the imperial troops, through bloody battles, victoriously traversed the kingdom. Everywhere the Hungarians were routed and dispersed, until no semblance of an army was left to oppose the victors. It seems that life in those days, to the masses of the people, swept incessantly by these fiery surges of war, could only have been a scene, from the cradle to the grave, of blood and agony. For two years this dismal storm of battle howled over all the Hungarian plains, and then the kingdom, like a victim exhausted, prostrate and bleeding, was taken captive and firmly bound. Ragotsky, denounced with the penalty of high treason, escaped to Poland. The emperor, anxious no longer to exasperate, proposed measures of unusual moderation. He assembled a convention; promised a general amnesty for all political offenses, the restitution of confiscated property, the liberation of prisoners, and the confirmation of all the rights which he had promised at his coronation. Some important points were not touched upon; others were passed over in vague and general terms. The Hungarians, helpless as a babe, had nothing to do but to submit, whatever the terms might be. They were surprised at the unprecedented lenity of the conqueror, and the treaty of peace and subjection was signed in January, 1711. In three months after the signing of this treaty, Joseph I. died of the small-pox, in his palace of Vienna. He was but thirty-three years of age. For a sovereign educated from the cradle to despotic rule, and instructed by one of the most bigoted of fathers, he was an unusually good man, and must be regarded as one of the best sovereigns who have swayed the scepter of Austrian despotism. The law of hereditary descent is frequently involved in great embarrassment. Leopold, to obviate disputes which he foresaw were likely to arise, had assigned Hungary, Bohemia, and his other hereditary estates, to Joseph. To Charles he had assigned the vast Spanish inheritance. In case Joseph should die without male issue he had decreed that the crown of the Austrian dominions should also pass to Charles. In case Charles should also die without issue male, the crown should then revert to the daughters of Joseph in preference to those of Charles. Joseph left no son. He had two daughters, the eldest of whom was but twelve years of age. Charles, who was now in Barcelona, claiming the crown of Spain as Charles III., had no Spanish blood in his veins. He was the son of Leopold, and of his third wife, the devout and lovely Eleonora, daughter of the Elector Palatine. He was now but twenty-eight years of age. For ten years he had been struggling for the crown which his father Leopold had claimed, as succeeding to the rights of his first wife Margaret, daughter of Philip IV. Charles was a genteel, accomplished young man of eighteen when he left his father's palace at Vienna, for England, where a British fleet was to convey him to Portugal, and, by the energy of its fleet and army, place him upon the throne of Spain. He was received at Portsmouth in England, when he landed from Holland, with much parade, and was conducted by the Dukes of Maryborough and Somerset to Windsor castle, where he had an interview with Queen Anne. His appearance at that time is thus described by his partial chroniclers: "The court was very splendid and much thronged. The queen's behavior toward him was very noble and obliging. The young king charmed all who were present. He had a gravity beyond his age, tempered with much modesty. His behavior in all points was so exact, that there was not a circumstance in his whole deportment which was liable to censure. He paid an extraordinary respect to the queen, and yet maintained a due greatness in it. He had the art of seeming well pleased with every thing, without so much as smiling once all the while he was at court, which was only three days. He spoke but little, and all he said was judicious and obliging." Young Charles was engaged to the daughter of the King of Portugal; but the young lady died just before his arrival at Lisbon. As he had never seen the infanta, his grief could not have been very deep, however great his disappointment might have been. He made several attempts to penetrate Spain by the Portuguese frontier, but being repelled in every effort, by the troops of Philip, he again embarked, and with twelve thousand troops in an English fleet, sailed around the Peninsula, entered the Mediterranean and landed on the shores of Catalonia, where he had been led to believe that the inhabitants in a body would rally around him. But he was bitterly disappointed. The Earl of Peterborough, who was intrusted with the command of this expedition, in a letter home gave free utterance to his disappointment and chagrin. "Instead of ten thousand men, and in arms," he wrote, "to cover our landing and strengthen our camp, we found only so many higglers and sutlers flocking into it. Instead of finding Barcelona in a weak condition, and ready to surrender upon the first appearance of our troops, we found a strong garrison to oppose us, and a hostile army almost equal to our own." In this dilemma a council of war was held, and though many were in favor of abandoning the enterprise and returning to Portugal, it was at last determined, through the urgency of Charles, to remain and lay siege to the city. Barcelona, the capital of Catalonia, was then the principal sea-port of the Spanish peninsula on the Mediterranean. It contained a population of about one hundred and forty thousand. It was strongly fortified. West of the city there was a mountain called Montjoy, upon which there was a strong fort which commanded the harbor and the town. After a short siege this fort was taken by storm, and the city was then forced to surrender. Philip soon advanced with an army of French and Spaniards to retake the city. The English fleet had retired. Twenty-eight French ships of war blockaded the harbor, which they could not enter, as it was commanded by the guns of Montjoy. The siege was very desperate both in the assault and the defense. The young king, Charles, was in the most imminent danger of falling into the bands of his foes. There was no possibility of escape, and it seemed inevitable that the city must either surrender, or be taken by storm. The French and Spanish army numbered twenty thousand men. They first attempted to storm Montjoy, but were repulsed with great slaughter. They then besieged it, and by regular approaches compelled its capitulation in three weeks. This noble resistance enabled the troops in the city greatly to multiply and increase their defenses. They thus succeeded in protracting the siege of the town five weeks longer. Every day the beleagured troops from the crumbling ramparts watched the blue expanse of the Mediterranean, hoping to see the sails of an English fleet coming to their rescue. Two breaches were already effected in the walls. The garrison, reduced to two thousand, and exhausted by superhuman exertions by day and by night, were almost in the last stages of despair, when, in the distant horizon, the long looked-for fleet appeared. The French ships, by no means able to cope with such a force, spread their sails, and sought safety in flight. The English fleet, amounting to fifty sail of the line, and transporting a large number of land troops, triumphantly entered the harbor on the 3rd of May, 1708. The fresh soldiers were speedily landed, and marched to the ramparts and the breaches. This strong reinforcement annihilated the hopes of the besiegers. Apprehensive of an immediate sally, they retreated with such precipitation that they left behind them in the hospitals their sick and wounded; they also abandoned their heavy artillery, and an immense quantity of military stores. Whatever energy Charles might have shown during the siege, all seemed now to evaporate. When the shot of the foe were crumbling the walls of Barcelona, he was in danger of the terrible doom of being taken a captive, which would have been the annihilation of all his hopes. Despair nerved him to effort. But now his person was no longer in danger; and his natural inefficiency and dilatoriness returned. Notwithstanding the urgent intreaties of the Earl of Peterborough to pursue the foe, he insisted upon first making a pilgrimage to the shrine of the holy Virgin at Montserrat, twenty-four miles from Barcelona. This curious monastery consists of but a succession of cloisters or hermitages hewn out of the solid rock. They are only accessible by steps as steep as a ladder, which are also hewn upon the face of the almost precipitous mountain. The highest of these cells, and which are occupied by the youngest monks, are at an elevation of three or four thousand feet above the level of the Mediterranean. Soon after Charles's pilgrimage to Montserrat, he made a triumphal march to Madrid, entered the city, and caused himself to be proclaimed king under the title of Charles III. But Philip soon came upon him with such force that he was compelled to retreat back to Barcelona. Again, in 1710, he succeeded in reaching Madrid, and, as we have described, he was driven back, with accumulated disaster, to Catalonia. Three months after this defeat, when his affairs in Spain were assuming the gloomiest aspect, a courier arrived at Barcelona, and informed him that his brother Joseph was dead; that he had already been proclaimed King of Hungary and Bohemia, and Archduke of Austria; and that it was a matter of the most urgent necessity that he should immediately return to Germany. Charles immediately embarked at Barcelona, and landed near Genoa on the 27th of September. Rapidly pressing on through the Italian States, he entered Milan on the 16th of October, where he was greeted with the joyful intelligence that a diet had been convened under the influence of Prince Eugene, and that by its unanimous vote he was invested with the imperial throne. He immediately proceeded through the Tyrol to Frankfort, where he was crowned on the 22d of December. He was now more than ever determined that the diadem of Spain should be added to the other crowns which had been placed upon his brow. In the incessant wars which for centuries had been waged between the princes and States of Germany and the emperor, the States had acquired virtually a constitution, which they called a capitulation. When Charles was crowned as Charles VI., he was obliged to promise that he would never assemble a diet or council without convening all the princes and States of the empire; that he would never wage war, or conclude peace, or enter into alliance with any nation without the consent of the States; that he would not, of his own authority, put any prince under the ban of the empire; that confiscated territory should never be conferred upon any members of his own family, and that no successor to the imperial crown should be chosen during his lifetime, unless absence from Germany or the infirmities of age rendered him incapable of administering the affairs of the empire. The emperor, invested with the imperial crown, hastened to Vienna, and, with unexpected energy, entered upon the administration of the complicated interests of his widespread realms. After passing a few weeks in Vienna, he repaired to Prague, where, in May, he was, with much pomp, crowned King of Hungary. He then returned to Vienna, and prepared to press with new vigor the war of the Spanish succession. Louis XIV. was now suffering the earthly retribution for his ill-spent life. The finances of the realm were in a state of hopeless embarrassment; famine was filling the kingdom with misery; his armies were everywhere defeated; the imprecations of a beggared people were rising around his throne; his palace was the scene of incessant feuds and intrigues. His children were dead; he was old, infirm, sick, the victim of insupportable melancholy--utterly weary of life, and yet awfully afraid to die. France, in the person of Louis XIV., who could justly say, "I am the State," was humbled. The accession of Charles to the throne of the empire, and to that of Austria, Hungary and Bohemia, while at the same time he claimed sovereignty over the vast realms of the Spanish kingdom, invested him with such enormous power, that England, which had combined Europe against the colossal growth of France, having humbled that power, was disposed to form a combination against Austria. There was in consequence an immediate relaxation of hostilities just at the time when the French batteries on the frontiers were battered down, and when the allied army had apparently an unobstructed way opened to the gates of Paris. In this state of affairs the British ministry pressed negotiations for peace. The preliminaries were settled in London on the 8th of October, 1711. By this treaty Louis XIV. agreed to make such a change in the law of hereditary descent, as to render it impossible for any king to wear at the same time the crowns of France and of Spain, and made various other important concessions. Charles, whose ambition was roused by his sudden and unexpected elevation, exerted all his energies to thwart the progress of negotiations, and bitterly complained that the allies were dishonorably deserting the cause which they had espoused. The emperor dispatched circular letters to all the courts of Europe, and sent Prince Eugene as a special ambassador to London, to influence Queen Anne, if possible, to persevere in the grand alliance. But he was entirely unsuccessful. The Duke of Marlborough was disgraced, and dismissed from office. The peace party rendered Eugene so unpopular that he was insulted in the streets of London. The Austrian party in England was utterly defeated, and a congress was appointed to meet at Utrecht to settle the terms of peace. But Charles was now so powerful that he resolved to prosecute the war even though abandoned by England. He accordingly sent an ambassador to Utrecht to embarrass the proceedings as much as possible, and, in case the grand alliance should be broken up, to secure as many powers as possible in fidelity to Austria. The States of the Netherlands were still warmly with Austria, as they dreaded so formidable a power as France directly upon their frontier. The other minor powers of the alliance were also rather inclined to remain with Austria. The war continued while the terms of peace were under discussion. England, however, entered into a private understanding with France, and the Duke of Ormond, who had succeeded Marlborough, received secret orders not to take part in any battle or siege. The developments, upon fields of battle, of this dishonorable arrangement, caused great indignation on the part of the allies. The British forces withdrew, and the French armies, taking advantage of the great embarrassments thus caused, were again gaining the ascendency. Portugal soon followed the example of England and abandoned the alliance. The Duke of Savoy was the next to leave. The alliance was evidently crumbling to pieces, and on the 11th of April, 1713, all the belligerents, excepting the emperor, signed the treaty of peace. Philip of Spain also acceded to the same articles. Charles was very indignant in being thus abandoned; and unduly estimating his strength, resolved alone, with the resources which the empire afforded him, to prosecute the war against France and Spain. Having nothing to fear from a Spanish invasion, he for a time relinquished his attempts upon Spain, and concentrating his armies upon the Rhine, prepared for a desperate onset upon France. For two years the war raged between Austria and France with war's usual vicissitudes of defeat and victory on either side. It was soon evident that the combatants were too equally matched for either party to hope to gain any decisive advantage over the other. On the 7th of September, 1714, France and Austria agreed to sheathe the sword. The war had raged for fourteen years, with an expenditure of blood and treasure, and an accumulation of misery which never can be gauged. Every party had lost fourfold more than it had gained. "A war," says Marshal Villers, "which had desolated the greater part of Europe, was concluded almost on the very terms which might have been procured at the commencement of hostilities." By this treaty of peace, which was signed at Baden, in Switzerland, the States of the Netherlands were left in the hands of Austria; and also the Italian States of Naples, Milan, Mantua and Sardinia. The thunders of artillery had hardly ceased to reverberate over the marshes of Holland and along the banks of the Rhine, ere the "blast of war's loud organ" and the tramp of charging squadrons were heard rising anew from the distant mountains of Sclavonia. The Turks, in violation of their treaty of peace, were again on the march, ascending the Danube along its southern banks, through the defiles of the Sclavonian mountains. In a motley mass of one hundred and fifty thousand men they had passed Belgrade, crossed the Save, and were approaching Peterwarden. Eugene was instantly dispatched with an efficient, compact army, disciplined by twelve years of warfare, to resist the Moslem invaders. The hostile battalions met at Karlowitz, but a few miles from Peterwarden, on the 5th of August, 1716. The tempest blazed with terrific fury for a few hours, when the Turkish host turned and fled. Thirty thousand of their number, including the grand vizier who led the host, were left dead upon the field. In their utter discomfiture they abandoned two hundred and fifty pieces of heavy artillery, and baggage, tents and military stores to an immense amount. Fifty Turkish banners embellished the camp of the victors. And now Eugene led his triumphant troops, sixty thousand in number, down the river to lay siege to Belgrade. This fortress, which the labor of ages had strengthened, was garrisoned by thirty thousand troops, and was deemed almost impregnable. Eugene invested the place and commenced the slow and tedious operations of a siege. The sultan immediately dispatched an army of two hundred thousand men to the relief of his beleaguered fortress. The Turks, arriving at the scene of action, did not venture an assault upon their intrenched foes, but intrenched themselves on heights, outside of the besieging camp, in a semicircle extending from the Danube to the Save. They thus shut up the besiegers in the miasmatic marshes which surrounded the city, cut off their supplies of provisions, and from their advancing batteries threw shot into the Austrian camp. "A man," said Napoleon, "is not a soldier." The Turks had two hundred thousand _men_ in their camp, raw recruits. Eugene had sixty thousand veteran _soldiers_. He decided to drive off the Turks who annoyed him. It was necessary for him to detach twenty thousand to hold in check the garrison of Belgrade, who might sally to the relief of their companions. This left him but forty thousand troops with whom to assail two hundred thousand strongly intrenched. He did not hesitate in the undertaking. CHAPTER XXIII. CHARLES VI. From 1716 to 1727. Heroic Decision of Eugene.--Battle of Belgrade.--Utter Rout of the Turks.--Possessions of Charles VI.--The Elector of Hanover Succeeds to the English Throne.--Preparations for War.--State of Italy.--Philip V. of Spain.--Diplomatic Agitations.--Palace of St. Ildefonso.--Order of the Golden Fleece.--Rejection of Maria Anne.--Contest for the Rock of Gibraltar.--Dismissal of Ripperda.--Treaty of Vienna.--Peace Concluded. The enterprise upon which Eugene had resolved was bold in the extreme. It could only be accomplished by consummate bravery aided by equal military skill. The foe they were to attack were five to one, and were protected by well-constructed redoubts, armed with the most formidable batteries. They were also abundantly supplied with cavalry, and the Turkish cavalry were esteemed the finest horsemen in the world. There was but one circumstance in favor of Eugene. The Turks did not dream that he would have the audacity to march from the protection of his intrenchments and assail them behind their own strong ramparts. There was consequently but little difficulty in effecting a surprise. All the arrangements were made with the utmost precision and secrecy for a midnight attack. The favorable hour came. The sun went down in clouds, and a night of Egyptian darkness enveloped the armies. The glimmer of innumerable camp-fires only pointed out the position of the foe, without throwing any illumination upon the field. Eugene visited all the posts of the army, ordered abundant refreshment to be distributed to the troops, addressed them in encouraging words, to impress upon them the importance of the enterprise, and minutely assigned to each battalion, regiment, brigade and division its duty, that there might be no confusion. The whole plan was carefully arranged in all its details and in all its grand combination. As the bells of Belgrade tolled the hour of twelve at midnight, three bombs, simultaneously discharged, put the whole Austrian army in rapid and noiseless motion. A dense fog had now descended, through which they could with difficulty discern the twinkling lights of the Turkish camp. Rapidly they traversed the intervening space, and in dense, solid columns, rushed over the ramparts of the foe. Bombs, cannon, musketry, bayonets, cavalry, all were employed, amidst the thunderings and the lightnings of that midnight storm of war, in the work of destruction. The Turks, roused from their slumber, amazed, bewildered, fought for a short time with maniacal fury, often pouring volleys of bullets into the bosoms of their friends, and with bloody cimeters smiting indiscriminately on the right hand and the left, till, in the midst of a scene of confusion and horror which no imagination can conceive, they broke and fled. Two hundred thousand men, lighted only by the flash of guns which mowed their ranks, with thousands of panic-stricken cavalry trampling over them, while the crash of musketry, the explosions of artillery, the shouts of the assailants and the fugitives, and the shrieks of the dying, blended in a roar more appalling than heaven's heaviest thunders, presented a scene which has few parallels even in the horrid annals of war. The morning dawned upon a field of blood and death. The victory of the Austrians was most decisive. The flower of the Turkish army was cut to pieces, and the remnant was utterly dispersed. The Turkish camp, with all its abundant booty of tents, provisions, ammunition and artillery, fell into the hands of the conqueror. So signal was the victory, that the disheartened Turks made no attempt to retrieve their loss. Belgrade was surrendered to the Austrians, and the sultan implored peace. The articles were signed in Passarovitz, a small town of Servia, in July, 1718. By this treaty the emperor added Belgrade to his dominions, and also a large part of Wallachia and Servia. Austria and Spain were still in heart at war, as the emperor claimed the crown of Spain, and was only delaying active hostilities until he could dispose of his more immediate foes. Charles, soon after the death of his cousin, the Portuguese princess, with whom he had formed a matrimonial engagement, married Elizabeth Christina, a princess of Brunswick. The imperial family now consisted of three daughters, Maria Theresa, Maria Anne and Maria Amelia. It will be remembered that by the family compact established by Leopold, the succession was entailed upon Charles in preference to the daughters of Joseph, in case Joseph should die without male issue. But should Charles die without male issue, the crown was to revert to the daughters of Joseph in preference to those of Charles. The emperor, having three daughters and no sons, with natural parental partiality, but unjustly, and with great want of magnanimity, was anxious to deprive the daughters of Joseph of their rights, that he might secure the crown for his own daughters. He accordingly issued a decree reversing this contract, and settling the right of succession first upon his daughters, should he die without sons, then upon the daughters of Joseph, one of whom had married the Elector of Saxony and the other the Elector of Bavaria. After them he declared his sister, who had married the King of Portugal, and then his other sisters, the daughters of Leopold, to be in the line of succession. This new law of succession Charles issued under the name of the Pragmatic Sanction. He compelled his nieces, the daughters of Joseph, to give their assent to this Sanction, and then, for the remainder of his reign, made the greatest efforts to induce all the powers of Europe to acknowledge its validity. Charles VI. was now, as to the extent of territory over which he reigned and the population subject to his sway, decidedly the most powerful monarch in Christendom. Three hundred princes of the German empire acknowledged him as their elected sovereign. By hereditary right he claimed dominion over Bohemia, Hungary, Transylvania, Wallachia, Servia, Styria, Carinthia, Carniola, the Tyrol, and all the rich and populous States of the Netherlands. Naples, Sicily, Mantua and Milan in Italy, also recognized his sovereignty. To enlightened reason nothing can seem more absurd than that one man, of very moderate capacities, luxuriating in his palace at Vienna, should pretend to hold dominion over so many millions so widely dispersed. But the progress of the world towards intelligent liberty has been very slow. When we contrast the constitution of the United States with such a political condition, all our evils and difficulties dwindle to utter insignificance. Still the power of the emperor was in many respects apparent rather than real. Each of these States had its own customs and laws. The nobles were tumultuary, and ever ready, if their privileges were infringed, to rise in insurrection. Military force alone could hold these turbulent realms in awe; and the old feudal servitude which crushed the millions, was but another name for anarchy. The peace establishment of the emperor amounted to one hundred thousand men, and every one of these was necessary simply to garrison his fortresses. The enormous expense of the support of such an army, with all the outlays for the materiel of war, the cavalry, and the structure of vast fortresses, exhausted the revenues of a kingdom in which the masses of the people were so miserably poor that they were scarcely elevated above the beasts of the field, and where the finances had long been in almost irreparable disorder. The years of peace, however, were very few. War, a maelstrom which ingulfs uncounted millions, seems to have been the normal state of Germany. But the treasury of Charles was so constantly drained that he could never, even in his greatest straits, raise more than one hundred and sixty thousand men; and he was often compelled to call upon the aid of a foreign purse to meet the expense which that number involved. Within a hundred years the nations have made vast strides in wealth, and in the consequent ability to throw away millions in war. Charles VI. commenced his reign with intense devotion to business. He resolved to be an illustrious emperor, vigorously superintending all the interests of the empire, legislative, judicial and executive. For a few weeks he was busy night and day, buried in a hopeless mass of diplomatic papers. But he soon became weary of this, and leaving all the ordinary affairs of the State in the hands of agents, amused himself with his violin and in chasing rabbits. As more serious employment, he gave pompous receptions, and enveloped himself in imperial ceremony and the most approved courtly etiquette. He still, however, insisted upon giving his approval to all measures adopted by his ministers, before they were carried into execution. But as he was too busy with his entertainments, his music and the chase, to devote much time to the dry details of government, papers were accumulating in a mountainous heap in his cabinet, and the most important business was neglected. Charles XII. was now King of Sweden; Peter the Great, Emperor of Russia; George I., King of England; and the shameful regency had succeeded, in France, the reign of Louis XIV. For eighteen years a bloody war had been sweeping the plains of Poland, Russia and Sweden. Thousands had been torn to pieces by the enginery of war, and trampled beneath iron hoofs. Millions of women and children had been impoverished, beggared, and turned out houseless into the fields to moan and starve and die. The claims of humanity must ever yield to the requisitions of war. This fierce battle of eighteen years was fought to decide which of three men, Peter of Russia, Charles of Sweden, or Augustus of Poland, should have the right to exact tribute from Livonia. This province was a vast pasture on the Baltic, containing about seventeen thousand square miles, and inhabited by about five hundred thousand poor herdsmen and tillers of the soil. Peter the Great was in the end victorious in this long conflict; and having attached large portions of Sweden to his territory, with a navy upon the Baltic, and a disciplined army, began to be regarded as a European power, and was quite disposed to make his voice heard in the diplomacy of Europe. Queen Anne having died, leaving no children, the law of hereditary descent carried the crown of England to Germany, and placed it upon the brow of the Elector of Hanover, who, as grandson of James I., was the nearest heir, but who could not speak a word of English, who knew nothing of constitutional law, and who was about as well qualified to govern England as a Patagonian or Esquimaux would have been. But obedience to this law of hereditary descent was a political necessity. There were thousands of able men in England who could have administered the government with honor to themselves and to the country. But it is said in reply that the people of England, as a body, were not then, and probably are not even now, sufficiently enlightened to be intrusted with the choice of their own rulers. Respect for the ballot-box is one of the last and highest attainments of civilization. Recent developments in our own land have led many to fear that barbarism is gaining upon the people. If the _ballot-box_ be overturned, the _cartridge-box_ must take its place. The great battle we have to fight is the battle against popular ignorance. The great army we are to support is the army of teachers in the schools and in the pulpit, elevating the mind to the highest possible intelligence, and guiding the heart by the pure spirit of the gospel. The emperor was so crowded with affairs of immediate urgency, and it was so evident that he could not drive Philip from the throne, now that he was recognized by all Europe, that he postponed the attempt for a season, while he still adopted the title of King of Spain. His troops had hardly returned from the brilliant campaign of Belgrade, ere the emperor saw a cloud gathering in the north, which excited his most serious apprehension. Russia and Sweden, irritated by some of the acts of the emperor, formed an alliance for the invasion of the German empire. The fierce warriors of the north, led by such captains as Charles XII. and Peter the Great, were foes not to be despised. This threatened invasion not only alarmed the emperor, but alarmed George I. of England, as his electorate of Hanover was imperiled; and also excited the fears of Augustus, the Elector of Saxony, who had regained the throne of Poland. England and Poland consequently united with the emperor, and formidable preparations were in progress for a terrible war, when one single chance bullet, upon the field of Pultowa, struck Charles XII., as he was looking over the parapet, and dispersed this cloud which threatened the desolation of all Europe. Austria was now the preponderating power in degenerate Italy. Even those States which were not in subjection to the emperor, were overawed by his imperious spirit. Genoa was nominally independent. The Genoese arrested one of the imperial officers for some violation of the laws of the republic. The emperor sent an army to the gates of the city, threatening it with bombardment and utter destruction. They were thus compelled immediately to liberate the officer, to pay a fine of three hundred thousand dollars, and to send a senator to Vienna with humble expressions of contrition, and to implore pardon. The kingdom of Sardinia was at this time the most powerful State in Italy, if we except those united Italian States which now composed an integral part of the Austrian empire. Victor Asmedeus, the energetic king, had a small but vigorous army, and held himself ready, with this army, for a suitable remuneration, to engage in the service of any sovereign, without asking any troublesome questions as to the righteousness of the expedition in which he was to serve. The Sardinian king was growing rich, and consequently ambitious. He wished to rise from the rank of a secondary to that of a primary power in Europe. There was but one direction in which he could hope to extend his territories, and that was by pressing into Lombardy. He had made the remark, which was repeated to the emperor, "I must acquire Lombardy piece by piece, as I eat an artichoke." Charles, consequently, watched Victor with a suspicious eye. The four great powers of middle and southern Europe were Austria, England, France, and Spain. All the other minor States, innumerable in name as well as number, were compelled to take refuge, openly or secretly, beneath one or another of these great monarchies. In France, the Duke of Orleans, the regent during the minority of Louis XV., whose court, in the enormous expenditures of vice, exhausted the yearly earnings of a population of twenty millions, was anxious to unite the Bourbon' branches of France and Spain in more intimate alliance. He accordingly affianced the young sovereign of France to Mary Anne, daughter of Philip V. of Spain. At the same time he married his own daughter to the king's oldest son, the Prince of Asturias, who was heir to the throne. Mary Anne, to whom the young king was affianced, was only four years of age. The personal history of the monarchs of Europe is, almost without exception, a melancholy history. By their ambition and their wars they whelmed the cottages in misery, and by a righteous retribution misery also inundated the palace. Philip V. became the victim of the most insupportable melancholy. Earth had no joy which could lift the cloud of gloom from his soul. For months he was never known to smile. Imprisoning himself in his palace he refused to see any company, and left all the cares of government in the hands of his wife, Elizabeth Farnese. Germany was still agitated by the great religious contest between the Catholics and the Protestants, which divided the empire into two nearly equal parties, bitterly hostile to each other. Various fruitless attempts had been made to bring the parties together, into _unity of faith_, by compromise. Neither party were reconciled to cordial _toleration_, free and full, in which alone harmony can be obtained. In all the States of the empire the Catholics and the Protestants were coming continually into collision. Charles, though a very decided Catholic, was not disposed to persecute the Protestants, as most of his predecessors had done, for he feared to rouse them to despair. England, France, Austria and Spain, were now involved in an inextricable maze of diplomacy. Congresses were assembled and dissolved; treaties made and violated; alliances formed and broken. Weary of the conflict of arms, they were engaged in the more harmless squabbles of intrigue, each seeking its own aggrandizement. Philip V., who had fought so many bloody battles to acquire the crown of Spain, now, disgusted with the cares which that crown involved, overwhelmed with melancholy, and trembling in view of the final judgment of God, suddenly abdicated the throne in favor of his son Louis, and took a solemn oath that he would never resume it again. This event, which surprised Europe, took place on the 10th of February, 1724. Philip retired to St. Ildefonso. The celebrated palace of St. Ildefonso, which became the retreat of the monarch, was about forty miles north of Madrid, in an elevated ravine among the mountains of Gaudarruma. It was an enormous pile, nearly four thousand feet above the level of the sea, and reared by the Spanish monarchs at an expense exceeding thirty millions of dollars. The palace, two stories high, and occupying three sides of a square, presents a front five hundred and thirty feet in length. In this front alone there are, upon each story, twelve gorgeous apartments in a suite. The interior is decorated in the richest style of art, with frescoed ceilings, and splendid mirrors, and tesselated floors of variegated marble. The furniture was embellishcd with gorgeous carvings, and enriched with marble, jasper and verd-antique. The galleries were filled with the most costly productions of the chisel and the pencil. The spacious garden, spread out before the palace, was cultivated with the utmost care, and ornamented with fountains surpassing even those of Versailles. To this magnificent retreat Philip V. retired with his imperious, ambitious wife. She was the step-mother of his son who had succeeded to the throne. For a long time, by the vigor of her mind, she had dominated over her husband, and had in reality been the sovereign of Spain. In the magnificent palace of St. Ildefonso, she was by no means inclined to relinquish her power. Gathering a brilliant court around her, she still issued her decrees, and exerted a powerful influence over the kingdom. The young Louis, who was but a boy, was not disposed to engage in a quarrel with his mother, and for a time submitted to this interference; but gradually he was roused by his adherents, to emancipate himself from these shackles, and to assume the authority of a sovereign. This led to very serious trouble. The abdicated king, in his moping melancholy, was entirely in subjection to his wife. There were now two rival courts. Parties were organizing. Some were for deposing the son; others for imprisoning the father. The kingdom was on the eve of a civil war, when death kindly came to settle the difficulty. The young King Louis, but eighteen years of age, after a nominal reign of but eight months, was seized with that awful scourge the small-pox, and, after a few days of suffering and delirium, was consigned to the tomb. Philip, notwithstanding his vow, was constrained by his wife to resume the crown, she probably promising to relieve him of all care. Such are the vicissitudes of a hereditary government. Elizabeth, with woman's spirit, now commanded the emperor to renounce the title of King of Spain, which he still claimed. Charles, with the spirit of an emperor, declared that he would do no such thing. There was another serious source of difficulty between the two monarchs, which has descended, generation after generation, to our own time, and to this day is only settled by each party quietly persisting in his own claim. In the year 1430 Philip III., Duke of Burgundy, instituted a new order of knighthood for the protection of the Catholic church, to be called the order of the Golden Fleece. But twenty-four members were to be admitted, and Philip himself was the grand master. Annual meetings were held to fill vacancies. Charles V., as grand master, increased the number of knights to fifty-one. After his death, as the Burgundian provinces and the Netherlands passed under the dominion of Spain, the Spanish monarchs exercised the office of grand master, and conferred the dignity, which was now regarded the highest order of knighthood in Europe, according to their pleasure. But Charles VI., now in admitted possession of the Netherlands, by virtue of that possession claimed the office of grand master of the Golden Fleece. Philip also claimed it as the inheritance of the kings of Spain. The dispute has never been settled. Both parties still claim it, and the order is still conferred both at Vienna and Madrid. Other powers interfered, in the endeavor to promote reconciliation between the hostile courts, but, as usual, only increased the acrimony of the two parties. The young Spanish princess Mary Anne, who was affianced to the Dauphin of France, was sent to Paris for her education, and that she might become familiar with the etiquette of a court over which she was to preside as queen. For a time she was treated with great attention, and child as she was, received all the homage which the courtiers were accustomed to pay to the Queen of France. But amidst the intrigues of the times a change arose, and it was deemed a matter of state policy to marry the boy-king to another princess. The French court consequently rejected Maria Anne and sent her back to Spain, and married Louis, then but fifteen years of age, to Maria Lebrinsky, daughter of the King of Poland. The rejected child was too young fully to appreciate the mortification. Her parents, however, felt the insult most keenly. The whole Spanish court was roused to resent it as a national outrage. The queen was so indignant that she tore from her arm a bracelet which she wore, containing a portrait of Louis XV., and dashing it upon the floor, trampled it beneath her feet. Even the king was roused from his gloom by the humiliation of his child, and declared that no amount of blood could atone for such an indignity. Under the influence of this exasperation, the queen resolved to seek reconciliation with Austria, that all friendly relations might be abandoned with France, and that Spain and Austria might be brought into intimate alliance to operate against their common foe. A renowned Spanish diplomatist, the Baron of Ripperda, had been for some time a secret agent of the queen at the court of Vienna, watching the progress of events there. He resided in the suburbs under a fictitious name, and eluding the vigilance of the ministry, had held by night several secret interviews with the emperor, proposing to him, in the name of the queen, plans of reconciliation. Letters were immediately dispatched to Ripperda urging him to come to an accommodation with the emperor upon almost any terms. A treaty was soon concluded, early in the spring of 1725. The emperor renounced all claim to the Spanish crown, entered into an alliance, both offensive and defensive, with Philip, and promised to aid, both with men and money, to help recover Gibraltar from the English, which fortress they had held since they seized upon it in the war of the Spanish succession. In consideration of these great concessions Philip agreed to recognize the right of the emperor to the Netherlands and to his acquisitions in Italy. He opened all the ports of Spain to the subjects of the emperor, and pledged himself to support the Pragmatic Sanction, which wrested the crown of Austria from the daughters of Joseph, and transmitted it to the daughters of Charles. It was this last clause which influenced the emperor, for his whole heart was set upon the accomplishment of this important result, and he was willing to make almost any sacrifice to attain it. There were also some secret articles attached which have never been divulged. The immediate demand of Spain for the surrender of the rock of Gibraltar was the signal for all Europe to marshal itself for war--a war which threatened the destruction of hundreds of thousands of lives, millions of property, and which was sure to spread far and wide over populous cities and extended provinces, carnage, conflagration, and unspeakable woe. The question was, whether England or Spain should have possession of a rock seven miles long and one mile broad, which was supposed, but very erroneously, to command the Mediterranean. To the rest of Europe it was hardly a matter of the slightest moment whether the flag of England or Spain waved over those granite cliffs. It seems incredible that beings endowed with reason could be guilty of such madness. England, with great vigor, immediately rallied on her side France, Hanover, Holland, Denmark and Sweden. On the other side were Spain, Austria, Russia, Prussia and a large number of the minor States of Germany. Many months were occupied in consolidating these coalitions, and in raising the armies and gathering the materials for the war. In the meantime Ripperda, having so successfully, as he supposed, concluded his negotiations at Vienna, in a high state of exultation commenced his journey back to Spain. Passing down through the Tyrol and traversing Italy he embarked at Genoa and landed at Barcelona. Here he boasted loudly of what he had accomplished. "Spain and the emperor now united," he said, "will give the law to Europe. The emperor has one hundred and fifty thousand troops under arms, and in six months can bring as many more into the field. France shall be pillaged. George I. shall be driven both from his German and his British territories." From Barcelona Ripperda traveled rapidly to Madrid, where he was received with almost regal honors by the queen, who was now in reality the sovereign. She immediately appointed him Secretary of State, and transferred to him the reins of government which she had taken from the unresisting hands of her moping husband. Thus Ripperda became, in all but title, the King of Spain. He was a weak man, of just those traits of character which would make him a haughty woman's favorite. He was so elated with this success, became so insufferably vain, and assumed such imperious airs as to disgust all parties. He made the most extravagant promises of the subsidies the emperor was to furnish, and of the powers which were to combine to trample England and France beneath their feet. It was soon seen that these promises were merely the vain-glorious boasts of his own heated brain. Even the imperial ambassador at Madrid was so repelled by his arrogance, that he avoided as far as possible all social and even diplomatic intercourse with him. There was a general combination of the courtiers to crush the favorite. The queen, who, with all her ambition, had a good share of sagacity, soon saw the mistake she had made, and in four months after Ripperda's return to Madrid, he was dismissed in disgrace. A general storm of contempt and indignation pursued the discarded minister. His rage was now inflamed as much as his vanity had been. Fearful of arrest and imprisonment, and burning with that spirit of revenge which is ever strongest in weakest minds, he took refuge in the house of the British ambassador, Mr. Stanhope. Hostilities had not yet commenced. Indeed there had been no declaration of war, and diplomatic relations still continued undisturbed. Each party was acting secretly, and watching the movements of the other with a jealous eye. Ripperda sought protection beneath the flag of England, and with the characteristic ignominy of deserters and traitors, endeavored to ingratiate himself with his new friends by disclosing all the secrets of his negotiations at Vienna. Under these circumstances full confidence can not be placed in his declarations, for he had already proved himself to be quite unscrupulous in regard to truth. The indignant queen sent an armed force, arrested the duke in the house of the British ambassador, and sent him, in close imprisonment, to the castle of Segovia. He, however, soon escaped from there and fled to England, where he reiterated his declarations respecting the secret articles of the treaty of Vienna. The most important of these declarations was, that Spain and the emperor had agreed to drive George I. from England and to place the Pretender, who had still many adherents, upon the British throne. It was also asserted that marriage contracts were entered into which, by uniting the daughters of the emperor with the sons of the Spanish monarch, would eventually place the crowns of Austria and Spain upon the same brow. The thought of such a vast accumulation of power in the hands of any one monarch, alarmed all the rest of Europe. Both Spain and the emperor denied many of the statements made by Ripperda. But as _truth_ has not been esteemed a diplomatic virtue, and as both Ripperda and the sovereigns he had served were equally tempted to falsehood, and were equally destitute of any character for truth, it is not easy to decide which party to believe. England and France took occasion, through these disclosures, to rouse the alarm of Europe. So much apprehension was excited in Prussia, Bavaria, and with other princes of the empire, who were appalled at the thought of having another Spanish prince upon the imperial throne, that the emperor sent ambassadors to these courts to appease their anxiety, and issued a public declaration denying that any such marriages were in contemplation; while at the same time he was promising the Queen of Spain these marriages, to secure her support. England and France accuse the emperor of deliberate, persistent, unblushing falsehood. The emperor seems now to have become involved in an inextricable maze of prevarication and duplicity, striving in one court to accomplish purposes which in other courts he was denying that he wished to accomplish. His embarrassment at length became so great, the greater part of Europe being roused and jealous, that he was compelled to abandon Spain, and reluctantly to sign a treaty of amity with France and England. A general armistice was agreed upon for seven years. The King of Spain, thus abandoned by the emperor, was also compelled to smother his indignation and to roll back his artillery into the arsenals. Thus this black cloud of war, which threatened all Europe with desolation, was apparently dispelled. This treaty, which seemed to restore peace to Europe, was signed in June, 1727. It was, however, a hollow peace. The spirit of ambition and aggression animated every court; and each one was ready, in defiance of treaties and in defiance of the misery of the world, again to unsheath the sword as soon as any opportunity should offer for the increase of territory or power. CHAPTER XXIV. CHARLES VI. AND THE POLISH WAR. From 1727 to 1735. Cardinal Fleury.--The Emperor of Austria Urges the Pragmatic Sanction.-- He Promises His Two Daughters to the Two Sons of the Queen of Spain.--France, England and Spain Unite Against Austria.--Charles VI. Issues Orders to Prepare for War.--His Perplexities.--Secret Overtures to England.--The Crown of Poland.--Meeting of the Polish Congress.-- Stanislaus Goes to Poland.--Augustus III. Crowned.--War.--Charles Sends an Army to Lombardy.--Difficulties of Prince Eugene.--Charles's Displeasure with England.--Letter to Count Kinsky.--Hostilities Renewed. The young King of France, Louis XV., from amidst the orgies of his court which rivaled Babylon in corruption, was now seventeen years of age, and was beginning to shake off the trammels of guardianship and to take some ambitious part in government. The infamous regent, the Duke of Orleans, died suddenly of apoplexy in 1723. Gradually the king's preceptor, Fleury, obtained the entire ascendency over the mind of his pupil, and became the chief director of affairs. He saw the policy of reuniting the Bourbons of France and Spain for the support of each other. The policy was consequently adopted of cultivating friendly relations between the two kingdoms. Cardinal Fleury was much disposed to thwart the plans of the emperor. A congress of the leading powers had been assembled at Soissons in June, 1728, to settle some diplomatic questions. The favorite object of the emperor now was, to obtain from the European powers the formal guarantee to support his decree of succession which conveyed the crown of Austria to his daughters, in preference to those of his brother Joseph. The emperor urged the Pragmatic Sanction strongly upon the congress, as the basis upon which he would enter into friendly relations with all the powers. Fleury opposed it, and with such influence over the other plenipotentiaries as to secure its rejection. The emperor was much irritated, and intimated war. France and England retorted defiance. Spain was becoming alienated from the emperor, who had abandoned her cause, and was again entering into alliance with France. The emperor had promised his eldest daughter, Maria Theresa, to Carlos, son of the Queen of Spain, and a second daughter to the next son, Philip. These were as brilliant matches as an ambitious mother could desire. But while the emperor was making secret and solemn promises to the Queen of Spain, that these marriages should be consummated, which would secure to the son of the queen the Austrian, as well as the Spanish crown, he was declaring to the courts of Europe that he had no such plans in contemplation. The Spanish queen, at length, annoyed, and goaded on by France and England, sent an ambassador to Vienna, and demanded of the emperor a written promise that Maria Theresa was to be the bride of Carlos. The emperor was now brought to the end of his intrigues. He had been careful heretofore to give only verbal promises, through his ministers. After his reiterated public denials that any such alliance was anticipated, he did not dare commit himself by giving the required document. An apologetic, equivocal answer was returned which so roused the ire of the queen, that, breaking off from Austria, she at once entered into a treaty of cordial union with England and France. It will readily be seen that all these wars and intrigues had but little reference to the welfare of the masses of the people. They were hardly more thought of than the cattle and the poultry. The only purpose they served was, by unintermitted toil, to raise the wealth which supported the castle and the palace, and to march to the field to fight battles, in which they had no earthly interest. The written history of Europe is only the history of kings and nobles--their ambitions, intrigues and war. The unwritten history of the dumb, toiling millions, defrauded of their rights, doomed to poverty and ignorance, is only recorded in the book of God's remembrance. When that page shall be read, every ear that hears it will tingle. The frail connection between Austria and Spain was now terminated. England, France and Spain entered into an alliance to make vigorous war against Charles VI. if he manifested any hostility to any of the articles of the treaty into which they had entered. The Queen of Spain, in her spite, forbade the subjects of the emperor from trading at all with Spain, and granted to her new allies the exclusive right to the Spanish trade. She went so far in her reconciliation with England as to assure the king that he was quite welcome to retain the rock of Gibraltar which he held with so tenacious a grasp. In this treaty, with studied neglect, even the name of the emperor was not mentioned; and yet the allies, as if to provoke a quarrel, sent Charles VI. a copy, peremptorily demanding assent to the treaty without his having taken any part whatever in the negotiation. This insulting demand fell like a bomb-shell in the palace at Vienna. Emperor, ministers, courtiers, all were aroused to a frenzy of indignation. "So insulting a message," said Count Zinzendorf, "is unparalleled, even in the annals of savages." The emperor condescended to make no reply, but very spiritedly issued orders to all parts of the empire, for his troops to hold themselves in readiness for war. And yet Charles was overwhelmed with anxiety, and was almost in despair. It was a terrible humiliation for the emperor to be compelled to submit, unavenged, to such an insult. But how could the emperor alone, venture to meet in battle England, France, Spain and all the other powers whom three such kingdoms could, either by persuasion or compulsion, bring into their alliance? He pleaded with his natural allies. Russia had not been insulted, and was unwilling to engage in so distant a war. Prussia had no hope of gaining any thing, and declined the contest. Sardinia sent a polite message to the emperor that it was more for her interest to enter into an alliance with her nearer neighbors, France, Spain and England, and that she had accordingly done so. The treasury of Charles was exhausted; his States were impoverished by constant and desolating wars. And his troops manifested but little zeal to enter the field against so fearful a superiority of force. The emperor, tortured almost beyond endurance by chagrin, was yet compelled to submit. The allies were quite willing to provoke a war with the emperor; but as he received their insults so meekly, and made no movement against them, they were rather disposed to march against him. Spain wanted Parma and Tuscany, but France was not willing to have Spain make so great an accession to her Italian power. France wished to extend her area north, through the States of the Netherlands. But England was unwilling to see the French power thus aggrandized. England had her aspirations, to which both France and Spain were opposed. Thus the allies operated as a check upon each other. The emperor found some little consolation in this growing disunion, and did all in his power to foment it. Wishing to humble the Bourbons of France and Spain, he made secret overtures to England. The offers of the emperor were of such a nature, that England eagerly accepted them, returned to friendly relations with the emperor, and, to his extreme joy, pledged herself to support the Pragmatic Sanction. It seems to have been the great object of the emperor's life to secure the crown of Austria for his daughters. It was an exceedingly disgraceful act. There was no single respectable reason to be brought forward why his daughters should crowd from the throne the daughters of his elder deceased brother, the Emperor Joseph. Charles was so aware of the gross injustice of the deed, and that the ordinary integrity of humanity would rise against him, that he felt the necessity of exhausting all the arts of diplomacy to secure for his daughters the pledged support of the surrounding thrones. He had now by intrigues of many years obtained the guarantee of the Pragmatic Sanction from Russia, Prussia, Holland, Spain and England. France still refused her pledge, as did also many of the minor States of the empire. The emperor, encouraged by the success he had thus far met with, pushed his efforts with renewed vigor, and in January, 1732, exulted that he had gained the guarantee of the Pragmatic Sanction from all the Germanic body, with the exception of Bavaria, Palatine and Saxony. And now a new difficulty arose to embroil Europe in trouble. When Charles XII., like a thunderbolt of war, burst upon Poland, he drove Augustus II. from the throne, and placed upon it Stanislaus Leczinski, a Polish noble, whom he had picked up by the way, and whose heroic character secured the admiration of this semi-insane monarch. Augustus, utterly crushed, was compelled by his eccentric victor to send the crown jewels and the archives, with a letter of congratulation, to Stanislaus. This was in the year 1706. Three years after this, in 1709, Charles XII. suffered a memorable defeat at Pultowa. Augustus II., then at the head of an army, regained his kingdom, and Stanislaus fled in disguise. After numerous adventures and fearful afflictions, the court of France offered him a retreat in Wissembourg in Alsace. Here the ex-king remained for six years, when his beautiful daughter Mary was selected to take the place of the rejected Mary of Spain, as the wife of the young dauphin, Louis XV. In the year 1733 Augustus II. died. In anticipation of this event Austria had been very busy, hoping to secure the elective crown of Poland for the son of Augustus who had inherited his father's name, and who had promised to support the Pragmatic Sanction. France was equally busy in the endeavor to place the scepter of Poland in the hand of Stanislaus, father of the queen. From the time of the marriage of his daughter with Louis XV., Stanislaus received a handsome pension from the French treasury, maintained a court of regal splendor, and received all the honors due to a sovereign. All the energies of the French court were now aroused to secure the crown for Stanislaus. Russia, Prussia and Austria were in natural sympathy. They wished to secure the alliance of Poland, and were also both anxious to destroy the republican principle of _electing_ rulers, and to introduce hereditary descent of the crown in all the kingdoms of Europe. But an election by the nobles was now indispensable, and the rival powers were, with all the arts known in courts, pushing the claims of their several candidates. It was an important question, for upon it depended whether warlike Poland was to be the ally of the Austrian or of the French party. Poland was also becoming quite republican in its tendencies, and had adopted a constitution which greatly limited the power of the crown. Augustus would be but a tool in the hands of Russia, Prussia and Austria, and would cooperate with them in crushing the spirit of liberty in Poland. These three great northern powers became so roused upon the subject, that they put their troops in motion, threatening to exclude Stanislaus by force. This language of menace and display of arms roused France. The king, while inundating Poland with agents, and lavishing the treasure of France in bribes to secure the election of Stanislaus, assumed an air of virtuous indignation in view of the interference of the Austrian party, and declared that no foreign power should interfere in any way with the freedom of the election. This led the emperor to issue a counter-memorial inveighing against the intermeddling of France. In the midst of these turmoils the congress of Polish nobles met to choose their king. It was immediately apparent that there was a very powerful party organized in favor of Stanislaus. The emperor was for marching directly into the kingdom with an army which he had already assembled in Silesia for this purpose, and with the bayonet make up for any deficiency which his party might want in votes. Though Prussia demurred, he put his troops in motion, and the imperial and Russian ambassadors at Warsaw informed the marshal of the diet that Catharine, who was now Empress of Russia, and Charles, had decided to exclude Stanislaus from Poland by force. These threats produced their natural effect upon the bold warrior barons of Poland. Exasperated rather than intimidated, they assembled, many thousands in number, on the great plain of Wola, but a few miles from Warsaw, and with great unanimity chose Stanislaus their king. This was the 12th of September, 1733. Stanislaus, anticipating the result, had left France in disguise, accompanied by a single attendant, to undertake the bold enterprise of traversing the heart of Germany, eluding all the vigilance of the emperor, and of entering Poland notwithstanding all the efforts of Austria, Russia and Prussia to keep him away. It was a very hazardous adventure, for his arrest would have proved his ruin. Though he encountered innumerable dangers, with marvelous sagacity and heroism he succeeded, and reached Warsaw on the 9th of September, just three days before the election. In regal splendor he rode, as soon as informed of his election, to the tented field where the nobles were convened. He was received with the clashing of weapons, the explosions of artillery, and the acclamations of thousands. But the Poles were not sufficiently enlightened fully to comprehend the virtue and the sacredness of the ballot-box. The Russian army was now hastening to the gates of Warsaw. The small minority of Polish nobles opposed to the election of Stanislaus seceded from the diet, mounted their horses, crossed the Vistula, and joined the invading array to make war upon the sovereign whom the majority had chosen. The retribution for such folly and wickedness has come. There is no longer any Poland. They who despise the authority of the ballot-box inevitably usher in the bayonets of despotism. Under the protection of this army the minority held another diet at Kamien (on the 5th of October), a village just outside the suburbs of Warsaw, and chose as the sovereign of Poland Augustus, son of the deceased king. The minority, aided by the Russian and imperial armies, were too strong for the majority. They took possession of Warsaw, and crowned their candidate king, with the title of Augustus III. Stanislaus, pressed by an overpowering force, retreated to Dantzic, at the mouth of the Vistula, about two hundred miles from Warsaw. Here he was surrounded by the Russian troops and held in close siege, while Augustus III. took possession of Poland. France could do nothing. A weary march of more than a thousand miles separated Paris from Warsaw, and the French troops would be compelled to fight their way through the very heart of the German empire, and at the end of the journey to meet the united armies of Russia, Prussia, Austria and Poland under her king, now in possession of all the fortresses. Though Louis XV. could make no effectual resistance, it was not in human nature but that he should seek revenge. When shepherds quarrel, they kill each other's flocks. When kings quarrel, they kill the poor peasants in each other's territories, and burn their homes. France succeeded in enlisting in her behalf Spain and Sardinia. Austria and Russia were upon the other side. Prussia, jealous of the emperor's greatness, declined any active participation. Most of the other powers of Europe also remained neutral. France had now no hope of placing Stanislaus upon the throne; she only sought revenge, determined to humble the house of Austria. The mercenary King of Sardinia, Charles Emanuel, was willing to serve the one who would pay the most. He first offered himself to the emperor, but upon terms too exorbitant to be accepted. France and Spain immediately offered him terms even more advantageous than those he had demanded of the emperor. The contract was settled, and the Sardinian army marched into the allied camp. The King of Sardinia, who was as ready to employ guile as force in warfare, so thoroughly deceived the emperor as to lead him to believe that he had accepted the emperor's terms, and that Sardinia was to be allied with Austria, even when the whole contract was settled with France and Spain, and the plan of the campaign was matured. So utterly was the emperor deluded by a fraud so contemptible, in the view of every honorable mind, that he sent great convoys of grain, and a large supply of shot, shells and artillery from the arsenals of Milan into the Sardinian camp. Charles Emanuel, dead to all sense of magnanimity, rubbed his hands with delight in the successful perpetration of such fraud, exclaiming, "_An virtus an dolos, quis ab hoste requirat_." So cunningly was this stratagem carried on, that the emperor was not undeceived until his own artillery, which he had sent to Charles Emanuel, were thundering at the gates of the city of Milan, and the shot and shells which he had so unsuspectingly furnished were mowing down the imperial troops. So sudden was the attack, so unprepared was Austrian Lombardy to meet it, that in twelve weeks the Sardinian troops overran the whole territory, seized every city and magazine, with all their treasures, leaving the fortress of Mantua alone in the possession of the imperial troops. It was the policy of Louis XV. to attack Austria in the remote portions of her widely-extended dominions, and to cut off province by province. He also made special and successful efforts to detach the interests of the German empire from those of Austria, so that the princes of the empire might claim neutrality. It was against the possessions of Charles VI., not against the independent States of the empire, that Louis XV. urged war. The storms of winter were now at hand, and both parties were compelled to abandon the field until spring. But during the winter every nerve was strained by the combatants in preparation for the strife which the returning sun would introduce. The emperor established strong defenses along the banks of the Rhine to prevent the passage of the French; he also sent agents to all the princes of the empire to enlist them in his cause, and succeeded, notwithstanding the remonstrances of many who claimed neutrality, in obtaining a vote from a diet which he assembled, for a large sum of money, and for an army of one hundred and twenty thousand men. The loss of Lombardy troubled Charles exceedingly, for it threatened the loss of all his Italian possessions. Notwithstanding the severity of the winter he sent to Mantua all the troops he could raise from his hereditary domains; and ordered every possible effort to be made to be prepared to undertake the offensive in the spring, and to drive the Sardinians from Lombardy. In the beginning of May the emperor had assembled within and around Mantua, sixty thousand men, under the command of Count Merci. The hostile forces soon met, and battle after battle thundered over the Italian plains. On the 29th of June the two armies encountered each other in the vicinity of Parma, in such numbers as to give promise of a decisive battle. For ten hours the demoniac storm raged unintermitted. Ten thousand of the dead covered the ground. Neither party had taken a single standard or a single prisoner, an event almost unparalleled in the history of battles. From the utter exhaustion of both parties the strife ceased. The Sardinians and French, mangled and bleeding, retired within the walls of Parma. The Austrians, equally bruised and bloody, having lost their leader, retired to Reggio. Three hundred and forty of the Austrian officers were either killed or wounded. The King of Sardinia was absent during this engagement, having gone to Turin to visit his wife, who was sick. The morning after the battle, however, he joined the army, and succeeded in cutting off an Austrian division of twelve hundred men, whom he took prisoners. Both parties now waited for a time to heal their wounds, repair their shattered weapons, get rested and receive reinforcements. Ten thousand poor peasants, who had not the slightest interest in the quarrel, had now met with a bloody death, and other thousands were now to be brought forward and offered as victims on this altar of kingly ambition. By the middle of July they were again prepared to take the field. Both parties struggled with almost superhuman energies in the work of mutual destruction; villages were burned, cities stormed, fields crimsoned with blood and strewn with the slain, while no decisive advantage was gained. In the desperation of the strife the hostile battalions were hurled against each other until the beginning of January. They waded morasses, slept in drenching storms, and were swept by freezing blasts. Sickness entered the camp, and was even more fatal than the bullet of the foe. Thousands moaned and died in their misery, upon pallets of straw, where no sister, wife or mother could soothe the dying anguish. Another winter only afforded the combatants opportunity to nurse their strength that they might deal still heavier blows in another campaign. While the imperial troops were struggling against Sardinia and France on the plains of Lombardy, a Spanish squadron landed a strong military force of French and Spaniards upon the peninsula of southern Italy, and meeting with no force sufficiently powerful to oppose them, speedily overran Naples and Sicily. The Spanish troops silenced the forts which defended the city of Naples, and taking the garrison prisoners, entered the metropolis in triumphal array, greeted by the acclamations of the populace, who hated the Austrians. After many battles, in which thousands were slain, the Austrians were driven out of all the Neapolitan States, and Carlos, the oldest son of Philip V. of Spain, was crowned King of Naples, with the title of Charles III. The island of Sicily was speedily subjugated and also attached to the Neapolitan crown. These losses the emperor felt most keenly. Upon the Rhine he had made great preparations, strengthening fortresses and collecting troops, which he placed under the command of his veteran general, Prince Eugene. He was quite sanguine that here he would be abundantly able to repel the assaults of his foes. But here again he was doomed to bitter disappointment. The emperor found a vast disproportion between promise and performance. The diet had voted him one hundred and twenty thousand troops; they furnished twelve thousand. They voted abundant supplies; they furnished almost none at all. The campaign opened the 9th of April, 1734, the French crossing the Rhine near Truerbuch, in three strong columns, notwithstanding all the efforts of the Austrians to resist them. Prince Eugene, by birth a Frenchman, reluctantly assumed the command. He had remonstrated with the emperor against any forcible interference in the Polish election, assuring him that he would thus expose himself, almost without allies, to all the power of France. Eugene did not hesitate openly to express his disapprobation of the war. "I can take no interest in this war," he said; "the question at issue is not important enough to authorize the death of a chicken." Eugene, upon his arrival from Vienna, at the Austrian camp, found but twenty-five thousand men. They were composed of a motley assemblage from different States, undisciplined, unaccustomed to act together and with no confidence in each other. The commanders of the various corps were quarreling for the precedence in rank, and there was no unity or subordination in the army. They were retreating before the French, who, in numbers, in discipline, and in the materiel of war, were vastly in the superiority. Eugene saw at once that it would be folly to risk a battle, and that all he could hope to accomplish was to throw such embarrassments as he might in the path of the victors. The young officers, ignorant, impetuous and reckless, were for giving battle, which would inevitably have resulted in the destruction of the army. They were so vexed by the wise caution of Eugene, which they regarded as pusillanimity, that they complained to the emperor that the veteran general was in his dotage, that he was broken both in body and mind, and quite unfit to command the army. These representations induced the emperor to send a spy to watch the conduct of Eugene. Though deeply wounded by these suspicions, the experienced general could not be provoked to hazard an engagement. He retreated from post to post, merely checking the progress of the enemy, till the campaign was over, and the ice and snow of a German winter drove all to winter quarters. While recruiting for the campaign of 1735, Prince Eugene wrote a series of most earnest letters to his confidential agent in London, which letters were laid before George II., urging England to come to the help of the emperor in his great extremity. Though George was eager to put the fleet and army of England in motion, the British cabinet wisely refused to plunge the nation into war for such a cause, and the emperor was left to reap the bitter fruit of his despotism and folly. The emperor endeavored to frighten England by saying that he was reduced to such an extremity that if the British cabinet did not give him aid, he should be compelled to seek peace by giving his daughter, with Austria in her hand as her dowry, to Carlos, now King of Naples and heir apparent to the crown of Spain. He well knew that to prevent such an acquisition of power on the part of the Spanish monarch, who was also in intimate alliance with France, England would be ready to expend any amount of blood and treasure. Charles VI. waited with great impatience to see the result of this menace, hardly doubting that it would bring England immediately to terms. Bitter was his disappointment and his despair when he received from the court of St. James the calm reply, that England could not possibly take a part in this war, and that in view of the great embarrassments in which the emperor was involved, England would take no offense in case of the marriage of the emperor's second daughter to Carlos. England then advised the emperor to make peace by surrendering the Netherlands. The emperor was now greatly enraged, and inveighed bitterly against England as guilty of the grossest perfidy. He declared that England had been as deeply interested as he was in excluding Stanislaus from the throne of Poland; that it was more important for England than for Austria to curb the exorbitant power of France; that in every step he had taken against Stanislaus, he had consulted England, and had acted in accordance with her counsel; that England was reaping the benefit of having the father-in-law of the French king expelled from the Polish throne; that England had solemnly promised to support him in these measures, and now having derived all the advantage, basely abandoned him. There were bitter charges, and it has never been denied that they were mainly true. The emperor, in his indignation, threatened to tell the whole story to the _people_ of England. It is strange that the emperor had found out that there were _people_ in England. In no other part of Europe was there any thing but _nobles_ and _peasants_. In this extraordinary letter, addressed to Count Kinsky, the imperial ambassador in London, the emperor wrote: "On the death of Augustus II., King of Poland, my first care was to communicate to the King of England the principles on which I acted. I followed, in every instance, his advice.... England has never failed to give me promises, both before and since the commencement of the war, but instead of fulfilling those promises, she has even favored my enemies.... Let the king know that I never will consent to the plan of pacification now in agitation; that I had rather suffer the worst of extremities than accede to such disadvantageous proposals, and that even if I should not be able to prevent them, I will justify my honor and my dignity, by publishing a circumstantial account of all the transaction, together with all the documents which I have now in possession.... If these representations fail, means must be taken to publish and circulate throughout England our answer to the proposal of good offices which was not made till after the expiration of nine months. Should the court of London proceed so far as to make such propositions of peace as are supposed to be in agitation, you will not delay a moment to circulate throughout England a memorial, containing a recapitulation of all negotiations which have taken place since 1710, together with the authentic documents, detailing my just complaints, and reclaiming, in the most solemn manner, the execution of the guaranties." One more effort the emperor made, and it was indeed a desperate one. He dispatched a secret agent, an English Roman Catholic, by the name of Strickland, to London, to endeavor to overthrow the ministry and bring in a cabinet in favor of him. In this, of course, he failed entirely. Nothing now remained for him but to submit, with the best grace he could, to the terms exacted by his foes. In the general pacification great interests were at stake, and all the leading powers of Europe demanded a voice in the proceedings. For many months the negotiations were protracted. England and France became involved in an angry dispute. Each power was endeavoring to grasp all it could, while at the same time it was striving to check the rapacity of every other power. There was a general armistice while these negotiations were pending. It was, however, found exceedingly difficult to reconcile all conflicting interests. New parties were formed; new combinations entered into, and all parties began to aim for a renewal of the strife. England, exasperated against France, in menace made an imposing display of her fleet and navy. The emperor was delighted, and, trusting to gain new allies, exerted his skill of diplomacy to involve the contracting parties in confusion and discord. Thus encouraged, the emperor refused to accede to the terms demanded. He was required to give up the Netherlands, and all his foreign possessions, and to retire to his hereditary dominions. "What a severe sentence," exclaimed Count Zinzendorf, the emperor's ambassador, "have you passed on the emperor. No malefactor was ever carried with so hard a doom to the gibbet." The armies again took the field. Eugene, again, though with great reluctance, assumed the command of the imperial forces. France had assembled one hundred thousand men upon the Rhine. Eugene had but thirty thousand men to meet them. He assured the emperor that with such a force he could not successfully carry on the war. Jealous of his reputation, he said, sadly, "to find myself in the same condition as last year, will be only exposing myself to the censure of the world, which judges by appearance, as if I were less capable, in my old age, to support the reputation of my former successes." With consummate generalship, this small force held the whole French army in check. CHAPTER XXV. CHARLES VI. AND THE TURKISH WAR RENEWED. From 1735 to 1730. Anxiety Of Austrian Office-Holders.--Maria Theresa.--The Duke Of Lorraine.--Distraction Of The Emperor.--Tuscany Assigned To The Duke Of Lorraine.--Death Of Eugene.--Rising Greatness Of Russia.--New War With The Turks.--Condition Of The Army.--Commencement Of Hostilities.-- Capture Of Nissa.--Inefficient Campaign.--Disgrace Of Seckendorf.--The Duke Of Lorraine Placed In Command.--Siege Of Orsova.--Belgrade Besieged By The Turks.--The Third Campaign.--Battle Of Crotzka.--Defeat Of The Austrians.--Consternation In Vienna.--Barbarism Of The Turks.--The Surrender Of Belgrade. The emperor being quite unable, either on the Rhine or in Italy, successfully to compete with his foes, received blow after blow, which exceedingly disheartened him. His affairs were in a desperate condition, and, to add to his grief, dissensions filled his cabinet; his counsellors mutually accusing each other of being the cause of the impending ruin. The Italian possessions of the emperor had been thronged with Austrian nobles, filling all the posts of office and of honor, and receiving rich salaries. A change of administration, in the transference of these States to the dominion of Spain and Sardinia, "reformed" all these Austrian office-holders out of their places, and conferred these posts upon Spaniards and Sardinians. The ejected Austrian nobles crowded the court of the emperor, with the most passionate importunities that he would enter into a separate accommodation with Spain, and secure the restoration of the Italian provinces by giving his eldest daughter, Maria Theresa, to the Spanish prince, Carlos. This would seem to be a very simple arrangement, especially since the Queen of Spain so earnestly desired this match, that she was willing to make almost any sacrifice for its accomplishment. But there was an inseparable obstacle in the way of any such arrangement. Maria Theresa had just attained her eighteenth year. She was a young lady of extraordinary force of character, and of an imperial spirit; and she had not the slightest idea of having her person disposed of as a mere make-weight in the diplomacy of Europe. She knew that the crown of Austria was soon to be hers; she understood the weakness of her father, and was well aware that she was far more capable of wearing that crown than he had ever been; and she was already far more disposed to take the reins of government from her father's hand, than she was to submit herself to his control. With such a character, and such anticipations, she had become passionately attached to the young Duke of Lorraine, who was eight years her senior, and who had for some years been one of the most brilliant ornaments of her father's court. The duchy of Lorraine was one of the most extensive and opulent of the minor States of the German empire. Admirably situated upon the Rhine and the Meuse, and extending to the sea, it embraced over ten thousand square miles, and contained a population of over a million and a half. The duke, Francis Stephen, was the heir of an illustrious line, whose lineage could be traced for many centuries. Germany, France and Spain, united, had not sufficient power to induce Maria Theresa to reject Francis Stephen, the grandson of her father's sister, the playmate of her childhood, and now her devoted lover, heroic and fascinating, for the Spanish Carlos, of whom she knew little, and for whom she cared less. Ambition also powerfully operated on the very peculiar mind of Maria Theresa. She had much of the exacting spirit of Elizabeth, England's maiden queen, and was emulous of supremacy which no one would share. She, in her own right, was to inherit the crown of Austria, and Francis Stephen, high-born and noble as he was, and her recognized husband, would still be her subject. She could confer upon him dignity and power, retaining a supremacy which even he could never reach. The emperor was fully aware of the attachment of his daughter to Francis, of her inflexible character; and even when pretending to negotiate for her marriage with Carlos, he was conscious that it was all a mere pretense, and that the union could never be effected. The British minister at Vienna saw very clearly the true state of affairs, and when the emperor was endeavoring to intimidate England by the menace that he would unite the crowns of Spain and Austria by uniting Maria and Carlos, the minister wrote to his home government as follows: "Maria Theresa is a princess of the highest spirit; her father's losses are her own. She reasons already; she enters into affairs; she admires his virtues, but condemns his mismanagement; and is of a temper so formed for rule and ambition, as to look upon him as little more than her administrator. Notwithstanding this lofty humor by day, she sighs and pines all night for her Duke of Lorraine. If she sleeps, it is only to dream of him; if she wakes, it is but to talk of him to the lady in waiting; so that there is no more probability of her forgetting the very individual government, and the very individual husband which she thinks herself born to, than of her forgiving the authors of her losing either." The empress was cordially coöperating with her daughter. The emperor was in a state of utter distraction. His affairs were fast going to ruin; he was harassed by counter intreaties; he knew not which way to turn, or what to do. Insupportable gloom oppressed his spirit. Pale and haggard, he wandered through the rooms of his palace, the image of woe. At night he tossed sleepless upon his bed, moaning in anguish which he then did not attempt to conceal, and giving free utterance to all the mental tortures which were goading him to madness. The queen became seriously alarmed lest his reason should break down beneath such a weight of woe. It was clear that neither reason nor life could long withstand such a struggle. Thus in despair, the emperor made proposals for a secret and separate accommodation with France. Louis XV. promptly listened, and offered terms, appallingly definite, and cruel enough to extort the last drop of blood from the emperor's sinking heart. "Give me," said the French king, "the duchy of Lorraine, and I will withdraw my armies, and leave Austria to make the best terms she can with Spain." How could the emperor wrest from his prospective son-in-law his magnificent ancestral inheritance? The duke could not hold his realms for an hour against the armies of France, should the emperor consent to their surrender; and conscious of the desperation to which the emperor was driven, and of his helplessness, he was himself plunged into the deepest dismay and anguish. He held an interview with the British minister to see if it were not possible that England might interpose her aid in his behalf. In frantic grief he lost his self control, and, throwing himself into a chair, pressed his brow convulsively, and exclaimed, "Great God! will not England help me? Has not his majesty with his own lips, over and over again, promised to stand by me?" The French armies were advancing; shot and shell were falling upon village and city; fortress after fortress was surrendering. "Give me Lorraine," repeated Louis XV., persistently, "or I will take all Austria." There was no alternative but for the emperor to drink to the dregs the bitter cup which his own hand had mingled. He surrendered Lorraine to France. He, however, succeeded in obtaining some slight compensation for the defrauded duke. The French court allowed him a pension of ninety thousand dollars a year, until the death of the aged Duke of Tuscany, who was the last of the Medici line, promising that then Tuscany, one of the most important duchies of central Italy, should pass into the hands of Francis. Should Sardinia offer any opposition, the King of France promised to unite with the emperor in maintaining Francis in his possession by force of arms. Peace was thus obtained with France. Peace was then made with Spain and Sardinia, by surrendering to Spain Naples and Sicily, and to Sardinia most of the other Austrian provinces in Italy. Thus scourged and despoiled, the emperor, a humbled, woe-stricken man, retreated to the seclusion of his palace. While these affairs were in progress, Francis Stephen derived very considerable solace by his marriage with Maria Theresa. Their nuptials took place at Vienna on the 12th of February, 1736. The emperor made the consent of the duke to the cession of Lorraine to France, a condition of the marriage. As the duke struggled against the surrender of his paternal domains, Cartenstein, the emperor's confidential minister, insultingly said to him, "Monseigneur, point de cession, point d'archiduchesse." _My lord, no cession, no archduchess._ Fortunately for Francis, in about a year after his marriage the Duke of Tuscany died, and Francis, with his bride, hastened to his new home in the palaces of Leghorn. Though the duke mourned bitterly over the loss of his ancestral domains, Tuscany was no mean inheritance. The duke was absolute monarch of the duchy, which contained about eight thousand square miles and a population of a million. The revenues of the archduchy were some four millions of dollars. The army consisted of six thousand troops. Two months after the marriage of Maria Theresa, Prince Eugene died quietly in his bed at the age of seventy-three. He had passed his whole lifetime riding over fields of battle swept by bullets and plowed by shot. He had always exposed his own person with utter recklessness, leading the charge, and being the first to enter the breach or climb the rampart. Though often wounded, he escaped all these perils, and breathed his last in peace upon his pillow in Vienna. His funeral was attended with regal honors. For three days the corpse lay in state, with the coat of mail, the helmet and the gauntlets which the warrior had worn in so many fierce battles, suspended over his lifeless remains. His heart was sent in an urn to be deposited in the royal tomb where his ancestors slumbered. His embalmed body was interred in the metropolitan church in Vienna. The emperor and all the court attended the funeral, and his remains were borne to the grave with honors rarely conferred upon any but crowned heads. The Ottoman power had now passed its culminating point, and was evidently on the wane. The Russian empire was beginning to arrest the attention of Europe, and was ambitious of making its voice heard in the diplomacy of the European monarchies. Being destitute of any sea coast, it was excluded from all commercial intercourse with foreign nations, and in its cold, northern realm, "leaning," as Napoleon once said, "against the North Pole," seemed to be shut up to barbarism. It had been a leading object of the ambition of Peter the Great to secure a maritime port for his kingdom. He at first attempted a naval depot on his extreme southern border, at the mouth of the Don, on the sea of Azof. This would open to him the commerce of the Mediterranean through the Azof, the Euxine and the Marmora. But the assailing Turks drove him from these shores, and he was compelled to surrender the fortresses he had commenced to their arms. He then turned to his western frontier, and, with an incredible expenditure of money and sacrifice of life, reared upon the marshes of the Baltic the imperial city of St. Petersburg. Peter I. died in 1725, leaving the crown to his wife Catharine. She, however, survived him but two years, when she died, in 1727, leaving two daughters. The crown then passed to the grandson of Peter I., a boy of thirteen. In three years he died of the small-pox. Anna, the daughter of the oldest brother of Peter I., now ascended the throne, and reigned, through her favorites, with relentless rigor. It was one of the first objects of Anna's ambition to secure a harbor for maritime commerce in the more sunny climes of southern Europe. St. Petersburg, far away upon the frozen shores of the Baltic, where the harbor was shut up with ice for five months in the year, presented but a cheerless prospect for the formation of a merchant marine. She accordingly revived the original project of Peter the Great, and waged war with the Turks to recover the lost province on the shores of the Euxine. Russia had been mainly instrumental in placing Augustus II. on the throne of Poland; Anna was consequently sure of his sympathy and coöperation. She also sent to Austria to secure the alliance of the emperor. Charles VI., though his army was in a state of decay and his treasury empty, eagerly embarked in the enterprise. He was in a continued state of apprehension from the threatened invasion of the Turks. He hoped also, aided by the powerful arm of Russia, to be able to gain territories in the east which would afford some compensation for his enormous losses in the south and in the west. While negotiations were pending, the Russian armies were already on the march. They took Azof after a siege of but a fortnight, and then overran and took possession of the whole Crimea, driving the Turks before them. Charles VI. was a very scrupulous Roman Catholic, and was animated to the strife by the declaration of his confessor that it was his duty, as a Christian prince, to aid in extirpating the enemies of the Church of Christ. The Turks were greatly alarmed by these successes of the Russians, and by the formidable preparations of the other powers allied against them. The emperor hoped that fortune, so long adverse, was now turning in his favor. He collected a large force on the frontiers of Turkey, and intrusted the command to General Seckendorf. The general hastened into Hungary to the rendezvous of the troops. He found the army in a deplorable condition. The treasury being exhausted, they were but poorly supplied with the necessaries of war, and the generals and contractors had contrived to appropriate to themselves most of the funds which had been furnished. The general wrote to the emperor, presenting a lamentable picture of the destitution of the army. "I can not," he said, "consistently with my duty to God and the emperor, conceal the miserable condition of the barracks and the hospitals. The troops, crowded together without sufficient bedding to cover them, are a prey to innumerable disorders, and are exposed to the rain, and other inclemencies of the weather, from the dilapidated state of the caserns, the roofs of which are in perpetual danger of being overthrown by the wind. All the frontier fortresses, and even Belgrade, are incapable of the smallest resistance, as well from the dilapidated state of the fortifications as from a total want of artillery, ammunition and other requisites. The naval armament is in a state of irreparable disorder. Some companies of my regiment of Belgrade are thrust into holes where a man would not put even his favorite hounds; and I can not see the situation of these miserable and half-starved wretches without tears. These melancholy circumstances portend the loss of these fine kingdoms with the same rapidity as that of the States of Italy." The bold Commander-in-chief also declared that many of the generals were so utterly incapable of discharging their duties, that nothing could be anticipated, under their guidance, but defeat and ruin. He complained that the governors of those distant provinces, quite neglecting the responsibilities of their offices, were spending their time in hunting and other trivial amusements. These remonstrances roused the emperor, and decisive reforms were undertaken. The main plan of the campaign was for the Russians, who were already on the shores of the Black sea, to press on to the mouth of the Danube, and then to march up the stream. The Austrians were to follow down the Danube to the Turkish province of Wallachia, and then, marching through the heart of that province, either effect a junction with the Russians, or inclose the Turks between the two armies. At the same time a large Austrian force, marching through Bosnia and Servia, and driving the Turks out, were to take military possession of those countries and join the main army in its union on the lower Danube. Matters being thus arranged, General Seckendorf took the command of the Austrian troops, with the assurance that he should be furnished with one hundred and twenty-six thousand men, provided with all the implements of war, and that he should receive a monthly remittance of one million two hundred thousand dollars for the pay of the troops. The emperor, however, found it much easier to make promises than to fulfill them. The month of August had already arrived and Seckendorf, notwithstanding his most strenuous exertions, had assembled at Belgrade but thirty thousand infantry and fifteen thousand cavalry. The Turks, with extraordinary energy, had raised a much more formidable and a better equipped army. Just as Seckendorf was commencing his march, having minutely arranged all the stages of the campaign, to his surprise and indignation he received orders to leave the valley of the Danube and march directly south about one hundred and fifty miles into the heart of Servia, and lay siege to the fortress of Nissa. The whole plan of the campaign was thus frustrated. Magazines, at great expense, had been established, and arrangements made for floating the heavy baggage down the stream. Now the troops were to march through morasses and over mountains, without suitable baggage wagons, and with no means of supplying themselves with provisions in so hostile and inhospitable a country. But the command of the emperor was not to be disobeyed. For twenty-eight days they toiled along, encountering innumerable impediments, many perishing by the way, until they arrived, in a state of extreme exhaustion and destitution, before the walls of Nissa. Fortunately the city was entirely unprepared for an attack, which had not been at all anticipated, and the garrison speedily surrendered. Here Seckendorf, having dispatched parties to seize the neighboring fortress, and the passes of the mountains, waited for further orders from Vienna. The army were so dissatisfied with their position and their hardships, that they at last almost rose in mutiny, and Seckendorf, having accomplished nothing of any moment, was compelled to retrace his steps to the banks of the Danube, where he arrived on the 16th of October. Thus the campaign was a total failure. Bitter complaints were uttered both by the army and the nation. The emperor, with the characteristic injustice of an ignoble mind, attributed the unfortunate campaign to the incapacity of Seckendorf, whose judicious plans he had so ruthlessly thwarted. The heroic general was immediately disgraced and recalled, and the command of the army given to General Philippi. The friends of General Seckendorf, aware of his peril, urged him to seek safety in flight. But he, emboldened by conscious innocence, obeyed the imperial commands and repaired to Vienna. Seckendorf was a Protestant. His appointment to the supreme command gave great offense to the Catholics, and the priests, from their pulpits, inveighed loudly against him as a heretic, whom God could not bless. They arraigned his appointment as impious, and declared that, in consequence, nothing was to be expected but divine indignation. Immediately upon his arrival in Vienna the emperor ordered his arrest. A strong guard was placed over him, in his own house, and articles of impeachment were drawn up against him. His doom was sealed. Every misadventure was attributed to negligence, cupidity or treachery. He could offer no defense which would be of any avail, for he was not permitted to exhibit the orders he had received from the emperor, lest the emperor himself should be proved guilty of those disasters which he was thus dishonorably endeavoring to throw upon another. The unhappy Seckendorf, thus made the victim of the faults of others, was condemned to the dungeon. He was sent to imprisonment in the castle of Glatz, where he lingered in captivity for many years until the death of the emperor. Charles now, in accordance with the clamor of the priests, removed all Protestants from command in the army and supplied their places with Catholics. The Duke of Lorraine, who had recently married Maria Theresa, was appointed generalissimo. But as the duke was young, inexperienced in war, and, as yet, had displayed none of that peculiar talent requisite for the guidance of armies, the emperor placed next to him, as the acting commander, Marshal Konigsegg. The emperor also gave orders that every important movement should be directed by a council of war, and that in case of a tie the casting vote should be given, not by the Duke of Lorraine, but by the veteran commander Konigsegg. The duke was an exceedingly amiable man, of very courtly manners and winning address. He was scholarly in his tastes, and not at all fond of the hardships of war, with its exposure, fatigue and butchery. Though a man of perhaps more than ordinary intellectual power, he was easily depressed by adversity, and not calculated to brave the fierce storms of disaster. Early in March the Turks opened the campaign by sending an army of twenty thousand men to besiege Orsova, an important fortress on an island of the Danube, about one hundred miles below Belgrade. They planted their batteries upon both the northern and the southern banks of the Danube, and opened a storm of shot and shell upon the fortress. The Duke of Lorraine hastened to the relief of the important post, which quite commanded that portion of the stream. The imperial troops pressed on until they arrived within a few miles of the fortress. The Turks marched to meet them, and plunged into their camp with great fierceness. After a short but desperate conflict, the Turks were repulsed, and retreating in a panic, they broke up their camp before the walls of Orsova and retired. This slight success, after so many disasters, caused immense exultation. The Duke of Lorraine was lauded as one of the greatest generals of the age. The pulpits rang with his praises, and it was announced that now, that the troops were placed under a true child of the Church, Providence might be expected to smile. Soon, however, the imperial army, while incautiously passing through a defile, was assailed by a strong force of the Turks, and compelled to retreat, having lost three thousand men. The Turks resumed the siege of Orsova; and the Duke of Lorraine, quite disheartened, returned to Vienna, leaving the command of the army to Konigsegg. The Turks soon captured the fortress, and then, ascending the river, drove the imperial troops before them to Belgrade. The Turks invested the city, and the beleaguered troops were rapidly swept away by famine and pestilence. The imperial cavalry, crossing the Save, rapidly continued their retreat. Konigsegg was now recalled in disgrace, as incapable of conducting the war, and the command was given to General Kevenhuller. He was equally unsuccessful in resisting the foe; and, after a series of indecisive battles, the storms of November drove both parties to winter quarters, and another campaign was finished. The Russians had also fought some fierce battles; but their campaign was as ineffective as that of the Austrians. The court of Vienna was now in a state of utter confusion. There was no leading mind to assume any authority, and there was irremediable discordance of counsel. The Duke of Lorraine was in hopeless disgrace; even the emperor assenting to the universal cry against him. In a state almost of distraction the emperor exclaimed, "Is the fortune of my empire departed with Eugene?" The disgraceful retreat to Belgrade seemed to haunt him day and night; and he repeated again and again to himself, as he paced the floor of his apartment, "that unfortunate, that fatal retreat." Disasters had been so rapidly accumulating upon him, that he feared for every thing. He expressed the greatest anxiety lest his daughter, Maria Theresa, who was to succeed him upon the throne, might be intercepted, in the case of his sudden death, from returning to Austria, and excluded from the throne. The emperor was in a state of mind nearly bordering upon insanity. At length the sun of another spring returned, the spring of 1739, and the recruited armies were prepared again to take the field. The emperor placed a new commander, Marshal Wallis, in command of the Austrian troops. He was a man of ability, but overbearing and morose, being described by a contemporary as one who hated everybody, and who was hated by everybody in return. Fifty miles north of Belgrade, on the south bank of the Danube, is the fortified town of Peterwardein, so called as the rendezvous where Peter the Hermit marshaled the soldiers of the first crusade. This fortress had long been esteemed one of the strongest of the Austrian empire. It was appointed as the rendezvous of the imperial troops, and all the energies of the now exhausted empire were expended in gathering there as large a force as possible. But, notwithstanding the utmost efforts, in May but thirty thousand men were assembled, and these but very poorly provided with the costly necessaries of war. Another auxiliary force of ten thousand men was collected at Temeswar, a strong fortress twenty-five miles north of Peterwardein. With these forces Wallis was making preparations to attempt to recover Orsova from the Turks, when he received positive orders to engage the enemy with his whole force on the first opportunity. The army marched down the banks of the river, conveying its baggage and heavy artillery in a flotilla to Belgrade, where it arrived on the 11th of June. Here they were informed that the Turkish army was about twenty miles below on the river at Crotzka. The imperial army was immediately pressed forward, in accordance with the emperor's orders, to attack the foe. The Turks were strongly posted, and far exceeded the Austrians in number. At five o'clock on the morning of the 21st of July the battle commenced, and blazed fiercely through all the hours of the day until the sun went down. Seven thousand Austrians were then dead upon the plain. The Turks were preparing to renew the conflict in the morning, when Wallis ordered a retreat, which was securely effected during the darkness of the night. On the ensuing day the Turks pursued them to the walls of Belgrade, and, driving them across the river, opened the fire of their batteries upon the city. The Turks commenced the siege in form, and were so powerful, that Wallis could do nothing to retard their operations. A breach was ere long made in one of the bastions; an assault was hourly expected which the garrison was in no condition to repel. Wallis sent word to the emperor that the surrender of Belgrade was inevitable; that it was necessary immediately to retreat to Peterwardein, and that the Turks, flushed with victory, might soon be at the gates of Vienna. Great was the consternation which pervaded the court and the capital upon the reception of these tidings. The ministers all began to criminate each other. The general voice clamored for peace upon almost any terms. The emperor alone remained firm. He dispatched another officer, General Schmettan, to hasten with all expedition to the imperial camp, and prevent, if possible, the impending disaster. He earnestly pressed the hand of the general as he took his leave, and said-- "Use the utmost diligence to arrive before the retreat of the army; assume the defense of Belgrade, and save it, if not too late, from falling into the hands of the enemy." The energy of Schmettan arrested the retreat of Wallis, and revived the desponding hopes of the garrison of Belgrade. Bastion after bastion was recovered. The Turks were driven back from the advance posts they had occupied. A new spirit animated the whole Austrian army, and from the depths of despair they were rising to sanguine hopes of victory, when the stunning news arrived that the emperor had sent an envoy to the Turkish camp, and had obtained peace by the surrender of Belgrade. Count Neuperg having received full powers from the emperor to treat, very imprudently entered the camp of the barbaric Turk, without requiring any hostages for his safety. The barbarians, regardless of the flag of truce, and of all the rules of civilized warfare, arrested Count Neuperg, and put him under guard. He was then conducted into the presence of the grand vizier, who was arrayed in state, surrounded by his bashaws. The grand vizier haughtily demanded the terms Neuperg was authorized to offer. "The emperor, my master," said Neuperg, "has intrusted me with full powers to negotiate a peace, and is willing, for the sake of peace, to cede the province of Wallachia to Turkey provided the fortress of Orsova be dismantled." The grand vizier rose, came forward, and deliberately spit in the face of the Count Neuperg, and exclaimed, "Infidel dog! thou provest thyself a spy, with all thy powers. Since thou hast brought no letter from the Vizier Wallis, and hast concealed his offer to surrender Belgrade, thou shalt be sent to Constantinople to receive the punishment thou deservest." Count Neuperg, after this insult, was conducted into close confinement. The French ambassador, Villeneuve, now arrived. He had adopted the precaution of obtaining hostages before intrusting himself in the hands of the Turks. The grand vizier would not listen to any terms of accommodation but upon the basis of the surrender of Belgrade. The Turks carried their point in every thing. The emperor surrendered Belgrade, relinquished to them Orsova, agreed to demolish all the fortresses of his own province of Media, and ceded to Turkey Servia and various other contiguous districts. It was a humiliating treaty for Austria. Already despoiled in Italy and on the Rhine, the emperor was now compelled to abandon to the Turks extensive territories and important fortresses upon the lower Danube. General Schmettan, totally unconscious of these proceedings, was conducting the defense of Belgrade with great vigor and with great success, when he was astounded by the arrival of a courier in his camp, presenting to him the following laconic note from Count Neuperg: "Peace was signed this morning between the emperor, our master, and the Porte. Let hostilities cease, therefore, on the receipt of this. In half an hour I shall follow, and announce the particulars myself." General Schmettan could hardly repress his indignation, and, when Count Neuperg arrived, intreated that the surrender of Belgrade might be postponed until the terms had been sent to the emperor for his ratification. But Neuperg would listen to no such suggestions, and, indignant that any obstacle should be thrown in the way of the fulfillment of the treaty, menacingly said, "If you choose to disobey the orders of the emperor, and to delay the execution of the article relative to Belgrade, I will instantly dispatch a courier to Vienna, and charge you with all the misfortunes which may result. I had great difficulty in diverting the grand vizier from the demand of Sirmia, Sclavonia and the bannat of Temeswar; and when I have dispatched a courier, I will return into the Turkish camp and protest against this violation of the treaty." General Schmettan was compelled to yield. Eight hundred janissaries took possession of one of the gates of the city; and the Turkish officers rode triumphantly into the streets, waving before them in defiance the banners they had taken at Crotzka. The new fortifications were blown up, and the imperial army, in grief and shame, retired up the river to Peterwardein. They had hardly evacuated the city ere Count Neuperg, to his inexpressible mortification, received a letter from the emperor stating that nothing could reconcile him to the idea of surrendering Belgrade but the conviction that its defense was utterly hopeless; but that learning that this was by no means the case, he intreated him on no account to think of the surrender of the city. To add to the chagrin of the count, he also ascertained, at the same time, that the Turks were in such a deplorable condition that they were just on the point of retreating, and would gladly have purchased peace at almost any sacrifice. A little more diplomatic skill might have wrested from the Turks even a larger extent of territory than the emperor had so foolishly surrendered to them. CHAPTER XXVI. MARIA THERESA. From 1739 to 1741. Anguish of the King.--Letter to the Queen of Russia.--The imperial Circular.--Deplorable Condition of Austria.--Death of Charles VI.--Accession of Maria Theresa.--Vigorous Measures of the Queen.--Claim of the Duke of Bavaria.--Responses from the Courts.--Coldness of the French Court.--Frederic of Russia.--His Invasion of Silesia.--March of the Austrians.--Battle of Molnitz.--Firmness of Maria Theresa.--Proposed Division of Plunder.--Villainy of Frederic.--Interview with the King.--Character of Frederic.--Commencement of the General Invasion. Every intelligent man in Austria felt degraded by the peace which had been made with the Turks. The tidings were received throughout the ranks of the army with a general outburst of grief and indignation. The troops intreated their officers to lead them against the foe, declaring that they would speedily drive the Turks from Belgrade, which had been so ignominiously surrendered. The populace of Vienna rose in insurrection, and would have torn down the houses of the ministers who had recommended the peace but for the interposition of the military. The emperor was almost beside himself with anguish. He could not appease the clamors of the nation. He was also in alliance with Russia, and knew not how to meet the reproaches of the court of St. Petersburg for having so needlessly surrendered the most important fortress on the Turkish frontier. In an interview which he held with the Russian ambassador his embarrassment was painful to witness. To the Queen of Russia he wrote in terms expressive of the extreme agony of his mind, and, with characteristic want of magnanimity cast the blame of the very measures he had ordered upon the agents who had merely executed his will. "While I am writing this letter," he said, "to your imperial majesty, my heart is filled with the most excessive grief. I was much less touched with the advantages gained by the enemy and the news of the siege of Belgrade, than with the advice I have received concerning the shameful preliminary articles concluded by Count Neuperg. "The history of past ages exhibits no vestiges of such an event. I was on the point of preventing the fatal and too hasty execution of these preliminaries, when I heard that they were already partly executed, even before the design had been communicated to me. Thus I see my hands tied by those who ought to glory in obeying me. All who have approached me since that fatal day, are so many witnesses of the excess of my grief. Although I have many times experienced adversity, I never was so much afflicted as by this event. Your majesty has a right to complain of some who ought to have obeyed my orders; but I had no part in what they have done. Though all the forces of the Ottoman empire were turned against me I was not disheartened, but still did all in my power for the common cause. I shall not, however, fail to perform in due time what avenging justice requires. In this dismal series of misfortunes I have still one comfort left, which is that the fault can not be thrown upon me. It lies entirely on such of my officers as ratified the disgraceful preliminaries without my knowledge, against my consent, and even contrary to my express orders." This apologetic letter was followed by a circular to all the imperial ambassadors in the various courts of Europe, which circular was filled with the bitterest denunciation of Count Neuperg and Marshal Wallis. It declared that the emperor was not in any way implicated in the shameful surrender of Belgrade. The marshal and the count, thus assailed and held up to the scorn and execration of Europe, ventured to reply that they had strictly conformed to their instructions. The common sense of the community taught them that, in so rigorous and punctilious a court as that of Vienna, no agent of the emperor would dare to act contrary to his received instructions. Thus the infamous attempts of Charles to brand his officers with ignominy did but rebound upon himself. The almost universal voice condemned the emperor and acquitted the plenipotentiaries. While the emperor was thus filling all the courts of Europe with his clamor against Count Neuperg, declaring that he had exceeded his powers and that he deserved to be hung, he at the same time, with almost idiotic fatuity, sent the same Count Neuperg back to the Turkish camp to settle some items which yet required adjustment. This proved, to every mind, the insincerity of Charles. The Russians, thus forsaken by Austria, also made peace with the Turks. They consented to demolish their fortress of Azof, to relinquish all pretensions to the right of navigating the Black sea, and to allow a vast extent of territory upon its northern shores to remain an uninhabited desert, as a barrier between Russia and Turkey. The treaty being definitively settled, both Marshal Wallis and Count Neuperg were arrested and sent to prison, where they were detained until the death of Charles VI. Care and sorrow were now hurrying the emperor to the grave. Wan and haggard he moved about his palace, mourning his doom, and complaining that it was his destiny to be disappointed in every cherished plan of his life. All his affairs were in inextricable confusion, and his empire seemed crumbling to decay. A cotemporary writer thus describes the situation of the court and the nation: "Every thing in this court is running into the last confusion and ruin; where there are as visible signs of folly and madness, as ever were inflicted upon a people whom Heaven is determined to destroy, no less by domestic divisions, than by the more public calamities of repeated defeats, defenselessness, poverty and plagues." Early in October, 1740, the emperor, restless, and feverish in body and mind, repaired to one of his country palaces a few miles distant from Vienna. The season was prematurely cold and gloomy, with frost and storms of sleet. In consequence of a chill the enfeebled monarch was seized with an attack of the gout, which was followed by a very severe fit of the colic. The night of the 10th of October he writhed in pain upon his bed, while repeated vomitings weakened his already exhausted frame. The next day he was conveyed to Vienna, but in such extreme debility that he fainted several times in his carriage by the way. Almost in a state of insensibility he was carried to the retired palace of La Favourite in the vicinity of Vienna, and placed in his bed. It was soon evident that his stormy life was now drawing near to its close. Patiently he bore his severe sufferings, and as his physicians were unable to agree respecting the nature of his disease, he said to them, calmly, "Cease your disputes. I shall soon be dead. You can then open my body and ascertain the cause of my death." Priests were admitted to his chamber who performed the last offices of the Church for the dying. With perfect composure, he made all the arrangements relative to the succession to the throne. One after another the members of his family were introduced, and he affectionately bade them adieu, giving to each appropriate words of counsel. To his daughter, Maria Theresa, who was not present, and who was to succeed him, he sent his earnest blessing. With the Duke of Lorraine, her husband, he had a private interview of two hours. On the 20th of October, 1740, at two o'clock in the morning, he died, in the fifty-sixth year of his age, and the thirtieth of his reign. Weary of the world, he willingly retired to the anticipated repose of the grave. "To die,--to sleep;-- To sleep! perchance to dream;--ay, there's the rub; For in that sleep of death what dreams may come, When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, Must give us pause." By the death of Charles VI. the male line of the house of Hapsburg became extinct, after having continued in uninterrupted succession for over four hundred years. His eldest daughter, Maria Theresa, who now succeeded to the crown of Austria, was twenty-four years of age. Her figure was tall, graceful and commanding. Her features were beautiful, and her smile sweet and winning. She was born to command, combining in her character woman's power of fascination with man's energy. Though so far advanced in pregnancy that she was not permitted to see her dying father, the very day after his death she so rallied her energies as to give an audience to the minister of state, and to assume the government with that marvelous vigor which characterized her whole reign. Seldom has a kingdom been in a more deplorable condition than was Austria on the morning when the scepter passed into the hands of Maria Theresa. There were not forty thousand dollars in the treasury; the state was enormously in debt; the whole army did not amount to more than thirty thousand men, widely dispersed, clamoring for want of pay, and almost entirely destitute of the materials for war. The vintage had been cut off by the frost, producing great distress in the country. There was a famine in Vienna, and many were starving for want of food. The peasants, in the neighborhood of the metropolis, were rising in insurrection, ravaging the fields in search of game; while rumors were industriously circulated that the government was dissolved, that the succession was disputed, and that the Duke of Bavaria was on the march, with an army, to claim the crown. The distant provinces were anxious to shake off the Austrian yoke. Bohemia was agitated; and the restless barons of Hungary were upon the point of grasping their arms, and, under the protection of Turkey, of claiming their ancestral hereditary rights. Notwithstanding the untiring endeavors of the emperor to obtain the assent of Europe to the Pragmatic Sanction, many influential courts refused to recognize the right of Maria Theresa to the crown. The ministers were desponding, irresolute and incapable. Maria Theresa was young, quite inexperienced and in delicate health, being upon the eve of her confinement. The English ambassador, describing the state of affairs in Vienna as they appeared to him at this time, wrote: "To the ministers, the Turks seem to be already in Hungary; the Hungarians in insurrection; the Bohemians in open revolt; the Duke of Bavaria, with his army, at the gates of Vienna; and France the soul of all these movements. The ministers were not only in despair, but that despair even was not capable of rousing them to any desperate exertions." Maria Theresa immediately dispatched couriers to inform the northern powers of her accession to the crown, and troops were forwarded to the frontiers to prevent any hostile invasion from Bavaria. The Duke of Bavaria claimed the Austrian crown in virtue of the will of Ferdinand I., which, he affirmed, devised the crown to his daughters and their descendants in case of the failure of the male line. As the male line was now extinct, by this decree the scepter would pass to the Duke of Bavaria. Charles VI. had foreseen this claim, and endeavored to set it aside by the declaration that the clause referred to in the will of Ferdinand I. had reference to _legitimate heirs_, not _male_ merely, and that, consequently, it did not set aside female descendants. In proof of this, Maria Theresa had the will exhibited to all the leading officers of state, and to the foreign ambassadors. It appeared that _legitimate heirs_ was the phrase. And now the question hinged upon the point, whether females were _legitimate heirs_. In some kingdoms of Europe they were; in others they were not. In Austria the custom had been variable. Here was a nicely-balanced question, sufficiently momentous to divide Europe, and which might put all the armies of the continent in motion. There were also other claimants for the crown, but none who could present so plausible a plea as that of the Duke of Bavaria. Maria Theresa now waited with great anxiety for the reply she should receive from the foreign powers whom she had notified of her accession. The Duke of Bavaria was equally active and solicitous, and it was quite uncertain whose claim would be supported by the surrounding courts. The first response came from Prussia. The king sent his congratulations, and acknowledged the title of Maria Theresa. This was followed by a letter from Augustus of Poland, containing the same friendly recognition. Russia then sent in assurances of cordial support. The King of England returned a friendly answer, promising coöperation. All this was cheering. But France was then the great power on the continent, and could carry with her one half of Europe in almost any cause. The response was looked for from France with great anxiety. Day after day, week after week passed, and no response came. At length the French Secretary of State gave a cautious and merely verbal declaration of the friendly disposition of the French court. Cardinal Fleury, the illustrious French Secretary of State, was cold, formal and excessively polite. Maria Theresa at once inferred that France withheld her acknowledgment, merely waiting for a favorable opportunity to recognize the claims of the Duke of Bavaria. While matters were in this state, to the surprise of all, Frederic, King of Prussia, drew his sword, and demanded large and indefinite portions of Austria to be annexed to his territories. Disdaining all appeal to any documentary evidence, and scorning to reply to any questionings as to his right, he demanded vast provinces, as a highwayman demands one's purse, with the pistol at his breast. This fiery young prince, inheriting the most magnificent army in Europe, considering its discipline and equipments, was determined to display his gallantry as a fighter, with Europe for the arena. As he was looking about to find some suitable foe against which he could hurl his seventy-five thousand men, the defenseless yet large and opulent duchy of Silesia presented itself as a glittering prize worth the claiming by a royal highwayman. The Austrian province of Silesia bordered a portion of Prussia. "While treacherously professing friendship with the court of Vienna, with great secrecy and sagacity Frederic assembled a large force of his best troops in the vicinity of Berlin, and in mid-winter, when the snow lay deep upon the plains, made a sudden rush into Silesia, and, crushing at a blow all opposition, took possession of the whole duchy. Having accomplished this feat, he still pretended great friendship for Maria Theresa, and sent an ambassador to inform her that he was afraid that some of the foreign powers, now conspiring against her, might seize the duchy, and thus wrest it from her; that he had accordingly taken it to hold it in safety; and that since it was so very important, for the tranquillity of his kingdom, that Silesia should not fall into the hands of an enemy, he hoped that Maria Theresa would allow him to retain the duchy as an indemnity for the expense he had been at in taking it." This most extraordinary and impertinent message was accompanied by a threat. The ambassador of the Prussian king, a man haughty and semi-barbaric in his demeanor, gave his message in a private interview with the queen's husband, Francis, the Duke of Lorraine. In conclusion, the ambassador added, "No one is more firm in his resolutions than the King of Prussia. He must and will take Silesia. If not secured by the immediate cession of that province, his troops and money will be offered to the Duke of Bavaria." "Go tell your master," the Duke of Lorraine replied with dignity, "that while he has a single soldier in Silesia, we will rather perish than enter into any discussion. If he will evacuate the duchy, we will treat with him at Berlin. For my part, not for the imperial crown, nor even for the whole world, will I sacrifice one inch of the queen's lawful possessions." While these negotiations were pending, the king himself made an ostentatious entry into Silesia. The majority of the Silesians were Protestants. The King of Prussia, who had discarded religion of all kinds, had of course discarded that of Rome, and was thus nominally a Protestant. The Protestants, who had suffered so much from the persecutions of the Catholic church, had less to fear from the infidelity of Berlin than from the fanaticism of Rome. Frederic was consequently generally received with rejoicings. The duchy of Silesia was indeed a desirable prize. Spreading over a region of more than fifteen thousand square miles, and containing a population of more than a million and a half, it presented to its feudal lord an ample revenue and the means of raising a large army. Breslau, the capital of the duchy, upon the Oder, contained a population of over eighty thousand. Built upon several islands of that beautiful stream, its situation was attractive, while in its palaces and its ornamental squares, it vied with the finest capitals of Europe. Frederic entered the city in triumph in January, 1741. The small Austrian garrison, consisting of but three thousand men, retired before him into Moravia. The Prussian monarch took possession of the revenues of the duchy, organized the government under his own officers, garrisoned the fortresses and returned to Berlin. Maria Theresa appealed to friendly courts for aid. Most of them were lavish in promises, but she waited in vain for any fulfillment. Neither money, arms nor men were sent to her. Maria Theresa, thus abandoned and thrown upon her own unaided energies, collected a small army in Moravia, on the confines of Silesia, and intrusted the command to Count Neuperg, whom she liberated from the prison to which her father had so unjustly consigned him. But it was mid-winter. The roads were almost impassable. The treasury of the Austrian court was so empty that but meager supplies could be provided for the troops. A ridge of mountains, whose defiles were blocked up with snow, spread between Silesia and Moravia. It was not until the close of March that Marshal Neuperg was able to force his way through these defiles and enter Silesia. The Prussians, not aware of their danger, were reposing in their cantonments. Neuperg hoped to take them by surprise and cut them off in detail. Indeed Frederic, who, by chance, was at Jagerndorf inspecting a fortress, was nearly surrounded by a party of Austrian hussars, and very narrowly escaped capture. The ground was still covered with snow as the Austrian troops toiled painfully through the mountains to penetrate the Silesian plains. Frederic rapidly concentrated his scattered troops to meet the foe. The warlike character of the Prussian king was as yet undeveloped, and Neuperg, unconscious of the tremendous energies he was to encounter, and supposing that the Prussian garrisons would fly in dismay before him, was giving his troops, after their exhausting march, a few days of repose in the Vicinity of Molnitz. On the 8th of April there was a thick fall of snow, filling the air and covering the fields. Frederic availed himself of the storm, which curtained him from all observation, to urge forward his troops, that he might overwhelm the Austrians by a fierce surprise. While Neuperg was thus resting, all unconscious of danger, twenty-seven battalions, consisting of sixteen thousand men, and twenty-nine squadrons of horse, amounting to six thousand, were, in the smothering snow, taking their positions for battle. On the morning of the 10th the snow ceased to fall, the clouds broke, and the sun came out clear and bright, when Neuperg saw that another and a far more fearful storm had gathered, and that its thunderbolts were about to be hurled into the midst of his camp. The Prussian batteries opened their fire, spreading death through the ranks of the Austrians, even while they were hastily forming in line of battle. Still the Austrian veterans, accustomed to all the vicissitudes of war, undismayed, rapidly threw themselves into columns and rushed upon the foe. Fiercely the battle raged hour after hour until the middle of the afternoon, when the field was covered with the dead and crimsoned with blood. The Austrians, having lost three thousand in slain and two thousand in prisoners, retired in confusion, surrendering the field, with several guns and banners, to the victors. This memorable battle gave Silesia to Prussia, and opened the war of the Austrian succession. The Duke of Lorraine was greatly alarmed by the threatening attitude which affairs now assumed. It was evident that France, Prussia, Bavaria and many other powers were combining against Austria, to rob her of her provinces, and perhaps to dismember the kingdom entirely. Not a single court as yet had manifested any disposition to assist Maria Theresa. England urged the Austrian court to buy the peace of Prussia at almost any price. Francis, Duke of Lorraine, was earnestly for yielding, and intreated his wife to surrender a part for the sake of retaining the rest. "We had better," he said, "surrender Silesia to Prussia, and thus purchase peace with Frederic, than meet the chances of so general a war as now threatens Austria." But Maria Theresa was as imperial in character and as indomitable in spirit as Frederic of Prussia. With indignation she rejected all such counsel, declaring that she would never cede one inch of her territories to any claimant, and that, even if her allies all abandoned her, she would throw herself upon her subjects and upon her armies, and perish, if need be, in defense of the integrity of Austria. Frederic now established his court and cabinet at the camp of Molnitz. Couriers were ever coming and going. Envoys from France and Bavaria were in constant secret conference with him. France, jealous of the power of Austria, was plotting its dismemberment, even while protesting friendship. Bavaria was willing to unite with Prussia in seizing the empire and in dividing the spoil. These courts seemed to lay no claim to any higher morality than that of ordinary highwaymen. The doom of Maria Theresa was apparently sealed. Austria was to be plundered. Other parties now began to rush in with their claims, that they might share in the booty. Philip V. of Spain put in his claim for the Austrian crown as the lineal descendant of the Emperor Charles V. Augustus, King of Poland, urged the right of his wife Maria, eldest daughter of Joseph. And even Charles Emanuel, King of Sardinia, hunted up an obsolete claim, through the line of the second daughter of Philip II. At the camp of Molnitz the plan was matured of giving Bohemia and Upper Austria to the Duke of Bavaria. Frederic of Prussia was to receive Upper Silesia and Glatz. Augustus of Poland was to annex to his kingdom Moravia and Upper Silesia. Lombardy was assigned to Spain. Sardinia was to receive some compensation not yet fully decided upon. The whole transaction was a piece of as unmitigated villainy as ever transpired. One can not but feel a little sympathy for Austria which had thus fallen among thieves, and was stripped and bleeding. Our sympathies are, however, somewhat alleviated by the reflection that Austria was just as eager as any of the other powers for any such piratic expedition, and that, soon after, she united with Russia and Prussia in plundering Poland. And when Poland was dismembered by a trio of regal robbers, she only incurred the same doom which she was now eager to inflict upon Austria. When pirates and robbers plunder each other, the victims are not entitled to much sympathy. To the masses of the people it made but little difference whether their life's blood was wrung from them by Russian, Prussian or Austrian despots. Under whatever rule they lived, they were alike doomed to toil as beasts of burden in the field, or to perish amidst the hardships and the carnage of the camp. These plans were all revealed to Maria Theresa, and with such a combination of foes so powerful, it seemed as if no earthly wisdom could avert her doom. But her lofty spirit remained unyielding, and she refused all offers of accommodation based upon the surrender of any portion of her territories. England endeavored to induce Frederic to consent to take the duchy of Glogau alone, suggesting that thus his Prussian majesty had it in his power to conclude an honorable peace, and to show his magnanimity by restoring tranquillity to Europe. "At the beginning of the war," Frederic replied, "I might perhaps have been contented with this proposal. At present I must have four duchies. But do not," he exclaimed, impatiently, "talk to me of _magnanimity_. A prince must consult his own interests. I am not averse to peace; but I want four duchies, and I will have them." Frederic of Prussia was no hypocrite. He was a highway robber and did not profess to be any thing else. His power was such that instead of demanding of the helpless traveler his watch, he could demand of powerful nations their revenues. If they did not yield to his demands he shot them down without compunction, and left them in their blood. The British minister ventured to ask what four duchies Frederic intended to take. No reply could be obtained to this question. By the four duchies he simply meant that he intended to extend the area of Prussia over every inch of territory he could possibly acquire, either by fair means or by foul. England, alarmed by these combinations, which it was evident that France was sagaciously forming and guiding, and from the successful prosecution of which plans it was certain that France would secure some immense accession of power, granted to Austria a subsidy of one million five hundred thousand dollars, to aid her in repelling her foes. Still the danger from the grand confederacy became so imminent, that the Duke of Lorraine and all the Austrian ministry united with the British ambassador, in entreating Maria Theresa to try to break up the confederacy and purchase peace with Prussia by offering Frederic the duchy of Glogau. With extreme reluctance the queen at length yielded to these importunities, and consented that an envoy should take the proposal to the Prussian camp at Molnitz. As the envoy was about to leave he expressed some apprehension that the Prussian king might reject the proffer. "I wish he may reject it," exclaimed the queen, passionately. "It would be a relief to my conscience. God only knows how I can answer to my subjects for the cession of the duchy, having sworn to them never to alienate any part of our country." Mr. Robinson, the British ambassador, as mediator, took these terms to the Prussian camp. In the endeavor to make as good a bargain as possible, he was first to offer Austrian Guelderland. If that failed he was then to offer Limburg, a province of the Netherlands, containing sixteen hundred square miles, and if this was not accepted, he was authorized, as the ultimatum, to consent to the cession of the duchy of Glogau. The Prussian king received the ambassadors, on the 5th of August, in a large tent, in his camp at Molanitz. The king was a blunt, uncourtly man, and the interview was attended with none of the amenities of polished life. After a few desultory remarks, the British ambassador opened the business by saying that he was authorized by the Queen of Austria to offer, as the basis of peace, the cession to Prussia of Austrian Guelderland. "What a beggarly offer," exclaimed the king. "This is extremely impertinent. What! nothing but a paltry town for all my just pretensions in Silesia!" In this tirade of passion, either affected or real, he continued for some time. Mr. Robinson waited patiently until this outburst was exhausted, and then hesitatingly remarked that the queen was so anxious to secure the peace of Europe, that if tranquillity could not be restored on other terms she was even willing to cede to Prussia, in addition, the province of Limburg. "Indeed!" said the ill-bred, clownish king, contemptuously. "And how can the queen think of violating her solemn oath which renders every inch of the Low Countries inalienable. I have no desire to obtain distant territory which will be useless to me; much less do I wish to expend money in new fortification. Neither the French nor the Dutch have offended me; and I do not wish to offend them, by acquiring territory in the vicinity of their realms. If I should accept Limburg, what security could I have that I should be permitted to retain it?" The ambassador replied, "England, Russia and Saxony, will give their guaranty." "Guaranties," rejoined the king, sneeringly. "Who, in these times, pays any regard to pledges? Have not both England and France pledged themselves to support the Pragmatic Sanction? Why do they not keep their promises? The conduct of these powers is ridiculous. They only do what is for their own interests. As for me, I am at the head of an invincible army. I want Silesia. I have taken it, and I intend to keep it. What kind of a reputation should I have if I should abandon the first enterprise of my reign? No! I will sooner be crushed with my whole army, than renounce my rights in Silesia. Let those who want peace grant me my demands. If they prefer to fight again, they can do so, and again be beaten." Mr. Robinson ventured to offer a few soothing words to calm the ferocious brute, and then proposed to give to him Glogau, a small but rich duchy of about six hundred square miles, near the frontiers of Prussia. Frederic rose in a rage, and with loud voice and threatening gestures, exclaimed, "If the queen does not, within six weeks, yield to my demands, I will double them. Return with this answer to Vienna. They who want peace with me, will not oppose my wishes. I am sick of ultimatums; I will hear no more of them. I demand Silesia. This is my final answer. I will give no other." Then turning upon his heel, with an air of towering indignation, he retired behind the inner curtain of his tent. Such was the man to whom Providence, in its inscrutable wisdom, had assigned a throne, and a highly disciplined army of seventy-five thousand men. To northern Europe he proved an awful scourge, inflicting woes, which no tongue can adequately tell. And now the storm of war seemed to commence in earnest. The Duke of Bavaria issued a manifesto, declaring his right to the whole Austrian inheritance, and pronouncing Maria Theresa a usurper. He immediately marched an army into one of the provinces of Austria. At the same time, two French armies were preparing to cross the Rhine to cooperate with the Bavarian troops. The King of Prussia was also on the march, extending his conquests. Still Maria Theresa remained inflexible, refusing to purchase peace with Prussia by the surrender of Silesia. "The resolution of the queen is taken," she said. "If the House of Austria must perish, it is indifferent whether it perishes by an Elector of Bavaria, or by an Elector of Brandenburg." While these all important matters were under discussion, the queen, on the 13th of March, gave birth to a son, the Archduke Joseph. This event strengthened the queen's resolution, to preserve, not only for herself, but for her son and heir, the Austrian empire in its integrity. From her infancy she had imbibed the most exalted ideas of the dignity and grandeur of the house of Hapsburg. She had also been taught that her inheritance was a solemn trust which she was religiously bound to preserve. Thus religious principle, family pride and maternal love all now combined to increase the inflexibility of a will which by nature was indomitable. CHAPTER XXVII. MARIA THERESA. From 1741 to 1743. Character of Francis, Duke of Lorraine.--Policy of European Courts.--Plan of the Allies.--Siege of Prague.--Desperate Condition of the Queen.--Her Coronation in Hungary.--Enthusiasm of the Barons.-- Speech of Maria Theresa.--Peace with Frederic of Prussia.--His Duplicity.--Military Movement of the Duke of Lorraine.--Battle of Chazleau.--Second Treaty with Frederic.--Despondency of the Duke of Bavaria.--March of Mallebois.--Extraordinary Retreat of Belleisle.--Recovery of Prague by the Queen. Maria Theresa, as imperial in spirit as in position, was unwilling to share the crown, even with her husband. Francis officiated as her chief minister, giving audience to foreign ambassadors, and attending to many of the details of government, yet he had but little influence in the direction of affairs. Though a very handsome man, of polished address, and well cultivated understanding, he was not a man of either brilliant or commanding intellect. Maria Theresa, as a woman, could not aspire to the imperial throne; but all the energies of her ambitious nature were roused to secure that dignity for her husband. Francis was very anxious to secure for himself the electoral vote of Prussia, and he, consequently, was accused of being willing to cede Austrian territory to Frederic to purchase his support. This deprived him of all influence whenever he avowed sentiments contrary to those of the queen. England, jealous of the vast continental power of France, was anxious to strengthen Austria, as a means of holding France in check. Seldom, in any of these courts, was the question of right or wrong considered, in any transaction. Each court sought only its own aggrandizement and the humiliation of its foes. The British cabinet, now, with very considerable zeal, espoused the cause of Maria Theresa. Pamphlets were circulated to rouse the enthusiasm of the nation, by depicting the wrongs of a young and beautiful queen, so unchivalrously assailed by bearded monarchs in overwhelming combination. The national ardor was thus easily kindled. On the 8th of August the King of England, in an animated speech from the throne, urged Parliament to support Maria Theresa, thus to maintain the _balance of power_ in Europe. One million five hundred thousand dollars were immediately voted, with strong resolutions in favor of the queen. The Austrian ambassador, in transmitting this money and these resolutions to the queen, urged that no sacrifice should be made to purchase peace with Prussia; affirming that the king, the Parliament, and the people of England were all roused to enthusiasm in behalf of Austria; and that England would spend its last penny, and shed its last drop of blood, in defense of the cause of Maria Theresa. This encouraged the queen exceedingly, for she was sanguine that Holland, the natural ally of England, would follow the example of that nation. She also cherished strong hopes that Russia might come to her aid. It was the plan of France to rob Maria Theresa of all her possessions excepting Hungary, to which distant kingdom she was to be driven, and where she was to be left undisturbed to defend herself as she best could against the Turks. Thus the confederates would have, to divide among themselves, the States of the Netherlands, the kingdom of Bohemia, the Tyrol, the duchies of Austria, Silesia, Moravia, Carinthia, Servia and various other duchies opulent and populous, over which the vast empire of Austria had extended its sway. The French armies crossed the Rhine and united with the Bavarian troops. The combined battalions marched, sweeping all opposition before them, to Lintz, the capital of upper Austria. This city, containing about thirty thousand inhabitants, is within a hundred miles of Vienna, and is one of the most beautiful in Germany. Here, with much military and civic pomp, the Duke of Bavaria was inaugurated Archduke of the Austrian duchies. A detachment of the army was then dispatched down the river to Polten, within twenty-four miles of Vienna; from whence a summons was sent to the capital to surrender. At the same time a powerful army turned its steps north, and pressing on a hundred and fifty miles, over the mountains and through the plains of Bohemia, laid siege to Prague, which was filled with magazines, and weakly garrisoned. Frederic, now in possession of all Silesia, was leading his troops to cooperate with those of France and Bavaria. The cause of Maria Theresa was now, to human vision, desperate. Immense armies were invading her realms. Prague was invested; Vienna threatened with immediate siege; her treasury was empty; her little army defeated and scattered; she was abandoned by her allies, and nothing seemed to remain for her but to submit to her conquerors. Hungary still clung firmly to the queen, and she had been crowned at Presburg with boundless enthusiasm. An eyewitness has thus described this scene:-- "The coronation was magnificent. The queen was all charm. She rode gallantly up the Royal Mount, a hillock in the vicinity of Presburg, which the new sovereign ascends on horseback, and waving a drawn sword, defied the four corners of the world, in a manner to show that she had no occasion for that weapon to conquer all who saw her. The antiquated crown received new graces from her head; and the old tattered robe of St. Stephen became her as well as her own rich habit, if diamonds, pearls and all sorts of precious stones can be called clothes," She had but recently risen from the bed of confinement and the delicacy of her appearance added to her attractions. A table was spread for a public entertainment, around which all the dignitaries of the realm were assembled--dukes who could lead thousands of troops into the field, bold barons, with their bronzed followers, whose iron sinews had been toughened in innumerable wars. It was a warm summer day, and the cheek of the youthful queen glowed with the warmth and with the excitement of the hour. Her beautiful hair fell in ringlets upon her shoulders and over her full bosom. She sat at the head of the table all queenly in loveliness, and imperial in character. The bold, high-spirited nobles, who surrounded her, could appreciate her position, assailed by half the monarchies of Europe, and left alone to combat them all. Their chivalrous enthusiasm was thus aroused. The statesmen of Vienna had endeavored to dissuade the queen from making any appeal to the Hungarians. When Charles VI. made an effort to secure their assent to the Pragmatic Sanction, the war-worn barons replied haughtily, "We are accustomed to be governed by men, not by women." The ministers at Vienna feared, therefore, that the very sight of the queen, youthful, frail and powerless, would stir these barons to immediate insurrection, and that they would scorn such a sovereign to guide them in the fierce wars which her crown involved. But Maria Theresa better understood human nature. She believed that the same barons, who would resist the demands of the Emperor Charles VI., would rally with enthusiasm around a defenseless woman, appealing to them for aid. The cordiality and ever-increasing glow of ardor with which she was greeted at the coronation and at the dinner encouraged her hopes. She summoned all the nobles to meet her in the great hall of the castle. The hall was crowded with as brilliant an assemblage of rank and power as Hungary could furnish. The queen entered, accompanied by her retinue. She was dressed in deep mourning, in the Hungarian costume, with the crown of St. Stephen upon her brow, and the regal cimiter at her side. With a majestic step she traversed the apartment, and ascended the platform or tribune from whence the Kings of Hungary were accustomed to address their congregated lords. All eyes were fixed upon her, and the most solemn silence pervaded the assemblage. The Latin language was then, in Hungary, the language of diplomacy and of the court. All the records of the kingdom were preserved in that language, and no one spoke, in the deliberations of the diet, but in the majestic tongue of ancient Rome. The queen, after a pause of a few moments, during which she carefully scanned the assemblage, addressing them in Latin, said:-- "The disastrous situation of our affairs has moved us to lay before our dear and faithful States of Hungary, the recent invasion of Austria, the danger now impending over this kingdom, and a proposal for the consideration of a remedy. The very existence of the kingdom of Hungary, of our own person, of our children and our crown, is now at stake. Forsaken by all, we place our sole resource in the fidelity, arms and long tried valor of the Hungarians; exhorting you, the states and orders, to deliberate without delay in this extreme danger, on the most effectual measures for the security of our person, of our children and of our crown, and to carry them into immediate execution. In regard to ourself, the faithful states and orders of Hungary shall experience our hearty coöperation in all things which may promote the pristine happiness of this ancient kingdom, and the honor of the people." (Some may feel interested in reading this speech in the original Latin, as it is now found recorded in the archives of Hungary. It is as follows: "Allocutio Reginæ Hungariæ Mariæ Theresiæ, anno 1741. Afflictus rerum nostrarum status nos movit, ut fidelibus perchari regni Hungariæ statibus de hostili provinciæ nostræ hereditariæ, Austriæ invasione, et imminente regno huic periculo, adeoque de considerando remedio propositionem scrïpto facíamus. Agitur de regno Hungarïa, de persona nostrâ, prolibus nostris, et coronâ, ab omnibus derelictï, unice ad inclytorum statuum fidelitatem, arma, et Hungarorum priscam virtutem confugimus, ímpense hortantes, velint status et ordines in hoc maximo periculo de securitate personæ nostræ, prolium, coronæ, et regni quanto ocius consulere, et ea in effectum etiam deducere. Quantum ex parte nostra est, quæcunque pro pristina regni hujus felicïtate, et gentis decore forent, in iis omnibus benignitatem et clementiam nostram regiam fideles status et ordines regni experturi sunt.") The response was instantaneous and emphatic. A thousand warriors drew their sabers half out of their scabbards, and then thrust them back to the hilt, with a clangor like the clash of swords on the field of battle. Then with one voice they shouted, "Moriamur pro nostra rege, Maria Theresa"--_We will die for our sovereign, Maria Theresa_. The queen, until now, had preserved a perfectly calm and composed demeanor. But this outburst of enthusiasm overpowered her, and forgetting the queen, she pressed her handkerchief to her eyes and burst into a flood of tears. No manly heart could stand this unmoved. Every eye was moistened, every heart throbbed with admiration and devotion, and a scene of indescribable enthusiasm ensued. Hungary was now effectually roused, and Maria Theresa was queen of all hearts. Every noble was ready to march his vassals and to open his purse at her bidding. All through the wide extended realm, the enthusiasm rolled like an inundation. The remote tribes on the banks of the Save, the Theiss, the Drave, and the lower Danube flocked to her standards. They came, semi-savage bands, in uncouth garb, and speaking unintelligible tongues--Croats, Pandours, Sclavonians, Warusdinians and Tolpaches. Germany was astounded at the spectacle of these wild, fierce men, apparently as tameless and as fearless as wolves. The enthusiasm spread rapidly all over the States of Austria. The young men, and especially the students in the universities, espoused the cause of the queen with deathless fervor. Vienna was strongly fortified, all hands engaging in the work. So wonderful was this movement, that the allies were alarmed. They had already become involved in quarrels about the division of the anticipated booty. Frederic of Prussia was the first to implore peace. The Elector of Bavaria was a rival sovereign, and Frederic preferred seeing Austria in the hands of the queen, rather than in the hands of the elector. He was, therefore, anxious to withdraw from the confederacy, and to oppose the allies. The queen, as anxious as Frederic to come to an accommodation, sent an ambassador to ascertain his terms. In laconic phrase, characteristic of this singular man, he returned the following answer:-- "All lower Silesia; the river Neiss for the boundary. The town of Neiss as well as Glatz. Beyond the Oder the ancient limits to continue between the duchies of Brieg and Oppelon. Breslau for us. The affairs of religion in _statu quo_. No dependence on Bohemia; a cession forever. In return we will proceed no further. We will besiege Neiss for form. The commandant shall surrender and depart. We will pass quietly into winter quarters, and the Austrian army may go where they will. Let the whole be concluded in twelve days." These terms were assented to. The king promised never to ask any further territory from the queen, and not to act offensively against the queen or any of her allies. Though the queen placed not the slightest confidence in the integrity of the Prussian monarch, she rejoiced in this treaty, which enabled her to turn all her attention to her other foes. The allies were now in possession of nearly all of Bohemia and were menacing Prague. The Duke of Lorraine hastened with sixty thousand men to the relief of the capital. He had arrived within nine miles of the city, when he learned, to his extreme chagrin, that the preceding night Prague had been taken by surprise. That very day the Elector of Bavaria made a triumphal entry into the town, and was soon crowned King of Bohemia. And now the electoral diet of Germany met, and, to the extreme disappointment of Maria Theresa, chose, as Emperor of Germany, instead of her husband, the Elector of Bavaria, whom they also acknowledged King of Bohemia. He received the imperial crown at Frankfort on the 12th of February, 1742, with the title of Charles VII. The Duke of Lorraine having been thus thwarted in his plan of relieving Prague, and not being prepared to assail the allied army in possession of the citadel, and behind the ramparts of the city, detached a part of his army to keep the enemy in check, and sent General Kevenhuller, with thirty thousand men, to invade and take possession of Bavaria, now nearly emptied of its troops. By very sagacious movements the general soon became master of all the defiles of the Bavarian mountains. He then pressed forward, overcoming all opposition, and in triumph entered Munich, the capital of Bavaria, the very day Charles was chosen emperor. Thus the elector, as he received the imperial crown, dropped his own hereditary estates from his hand. This triumph of the queen's arms alarmed Frederic of Prussia. He reposed as little confidence in the honesty of the Austrian court as they reposed in him. He was afraid that the queen, thus victorious, would march her triumphant battalions into Silesia and regain the lost duchy. He consequently, in total disregard of his treaty, and without troubling himself to make any declaration of war, resumed hostilities. He entered into a treaty with his old rival, the Elector of Bavaria, now King of Bohemia, and Emperor of Germany. Receiving from the emperor large accessions of territory, Frederic devoted his purse and array to the allies. His armies were immediately in motion. They overran Moravia, and were soon in possession of all of its most important fortresses. All the energies of Frederic were consecrated to any cause in which he enlisted. He was indefatigable in his activity. With no sense of dishonor in violating a solemn treaty, with no sense of shame in conspiring with banded despots against a youthful queen, of whose youth, and feebleness and feminine nature they wished to take advantage that they might rob her of her possessions, Frederic rode from camp to camp, from capital to capital, to infuse new vigor into the alliance. He visited the Elector of Saxony at Dresden, then galloped to Prague, then returned through Moravia, and placed himself at the head of his army. Marching vigorously onward, he entered upper Austria. His hussars spread terror in all directions, even to the gates of Vienna. The Hungarian troops pressed forward in defense of the queen. Wide leagues of country were desolated by war, as all over Germany the hostile battalions swept to and fro. The Duke of Lorraine hastened from Moravia for the defense of Vienna, while detached portions of the Austrian army were on the rapid march, in all directions, to join him. On the 16th of May, 1742, the Austrian army, under the Duke of Lorraine, and the Prussian army under Frederic, encountered each other, in about equal numbers, at Chazleau. Equal in numbers, equal in skill, equal in bravery, they fought with equal success. After several hours of awful carnage, fourteen thousand corpses strewed the ground. Seven thousand were Austrians, seven thousand Prussians. The Duke of Lorraine retired first, leaving a thousand prisoners, eighteen pieces of artillery and two standards, with the foe; but he took with him, captured from the Prussians, a thousand prisoners, fourteen cannon, and two standards. As the duke left Frederic in possession of the field, it was considered a Prussian victory. But it was a victory decisive of no results, as each party was alike crippled. Frederic was much disappointed. He had anticipated the annihilation of the Austrian army, and a triumphant march to Vienna, where, in the palaces of the Austrian kings, he intended to dictate terms to the prostrate monarchy. The queen had effectually checked his progress, new levies were crowding to her aid, and it was in vain for Frederic, with his diminished and exhausted regiments, to undertake an assault upon the ramparts of Vienna. Again he proposed terms of peace. He demanded all of upper as well as lower Silesia, and the county of Glatz, containing nearly seven hundred square miles, and a population of a little over sixty thousand. Maria Theresa, crowded by her other enemies, was exceedingly anxious to detach a foe so powerful and active, and she accordingly assented to the hard terms. This new treaty was signed at Breslau, on the 11th of June, and was soon ratified by both sovereigns. The Elector of Saxony was also included in this treaty and retired from the contest. The withdrawal of these forces seemed to turn the tide of battle in favor of the Austrians. The troops from Hungary fought with the most romantic devotion. A band of Croats in the night swam across a river, with their sabers in their mouths, and climbing on each other's shoulders, scaled the walls of the fortress of Piseck, and made the garrison prisoners of war. The Austrians, dispersing the allied French and Bavarians in many successful skirmishes, advanced to the walls of Prague. With seventy thousand men, the Duke of Lorraine commenced the siege of this capital, so renowned in the melancholy annals of war. The sympathies of Europe began to turn in favor of Maria Theresa. It became a general impression, that the preservation of the Austrian monarchy was essential to hold France in check, which colossal power seemed to threaten the liberties of Europe. The cabinet of England was especially animated by this sentiment, and a change in the ministry being effected, the court of St. James sent assurances to Vienna of their readiness to support the queen with the whole power of the British empire. Large supplies of men and money were immediately voted. Sixteen thousand men were landed in Flanders to cooperate with the Austrian troops. Holland, instigated by the example of England, granted Maria Theresa a subsidy of eight hundred and forty thousand florins. The new Queen of Russia, also, Elizabeth, daughter of Peter the Great, adopted measures highly favorable to Austria. In Italy affairs took a singular turn in favor of the Austrian queen. The King of Sardinia, ever ready to embark his troops in any enterprise which gave him promise of booty, alarmed by the grasping ambition of France and Spain, who were ever seizing the lion's share in all plunder, seeing that he could not hope for much advantage in his alliance with them, proposed to the queen that if she would cede to him certain of the Milanese provinces, he would march his troops into her camp. This was a great gain for Maria Theresa. The Sardinian troops guarding the passes of the Alps, shut out the French, during the whole campaign, from entering Italy. At the same time the Sardinian king, with another portion of his army, aided by the Austrian troops, overran the whole duchy of Modena, and drove out the Spaniards. The English fleet in the Mediterranean cooperated in this important measure. By the threat of a bombardment they compelled the King of Naples to withdraw from the French and Spanish alliance. Thus Austria again planted her foot in Italy. This extraordinary and unanticipated success created the utmost joy and exultation in Vienna. The despondency of the French court was correspondingly great. A few months had totally changed the aspect of affairs. The allied troops were rapidly melting away, with none to fill up the dwindling ranks. The proud army which had swept over Germany, defying all opposition, was now cooped up within the walls of Prague, beleaguered by a foe whom victory had rendered sanguine. The new emperor, claiming the crown of Austria, had lost his own territory of Bavaria; and the capital of Bohemia, where he had so recently been enthroned, was hourly in peril of falling into the hands of his foes. Under these circumstances the hopes of the Duke of Bavaria sank rapidly into despair. The hour of disaster revealed a meanness of spirit which prosperity had not developed. He sued for peace, writing a dishonorable and cringing letter, in which he protested that he was not to blame for the war, but that the whole guilt rested upon the French court, which had inveigled him to present his claim and commence hostilities. Maria Theresa made no other reply to this humiliating epistle than to publish it, and give it a wide circulation throughout Europe. Cardinal Fleury, the French minister of state, indignant at this breach of confidence, sent to the cabinet of Vienna a remonstrance and a counter statement. This paper also the queen gave to the public. Marshal Belleisle was in command of the French and Bavarian troops, which were besieged in Prague. The force rapidly gathering around him was such as to render retreat impossible. The city was unprepared for a siege, and famine soon began to stare the citizens and garrison in the face. The marshal, reduced to the last extremity, offered to evacuate the city and march out of Bohemia, if he could be permitted to retire unmolested, with arms, artillery and baggage. The Duke of Lorraine, to avoid a battle which would be rendered sanguinary through despair, was ready and even anxious to assent to these terms. His leading generals were of the same opinion, as they wished to avoid a needless effusion of blood. The offered terms of capitulation were sent to Maria Theresa. She rejected them with disdain. She displayed a revengeful spirit, natural, perhaps, under the circumstances, but which reflects but little honor upon her character. "I will not," she replied, in the presence of the whole court; "I will not grant any capitulation to the French army. I will listen to no terms, to no proposition from Cardinal Fleury. I am astonished that he should come to me now with proposals for peace; _he_ who endeavored to excite all the princes of Germany to crush me. I have acted with too much condescension to the court of France. Compelled by the necessities of my situation I debased my royal dignity by writing to the cardinal in terms which would have softened the most obdurate rock. He insolently rejected my entreaties; and the only answer I obtained was that his most Christian majesty had contracted engagements which he could not violate. I can prove, by documents now in my possession, that the French endeavored to excite sedition even in the heart of my dominions; that they attempted to overturn the fundamental laws of the empire, and to set all Germany in a flame. I will transmit these proofs to posterity as a warning to the empire." The ambition of Maria Theresa was now greatly roused. She resolved to retain the whole of Bavaria which she had taken from the elector. The duchy of Lorraine, which had been wrested from her husband, was immediately to be invaded and restored to the empire. The dominions which had been torn from her father in Italy were to be reannexed to the Austrian crown, and Alsace upon the Rhine was to be reclaimed. Thus, far from being now satisfied with the possessions she had inherited from her father, her whole soul was roused, in these hours of triumph, to conquer vast accessions for her domains. She dreamed only of conquest, and in her elation parceled out the dominions of France and Bavaria as liberally and as unscrupulously as they had divided among themselves the domain of the house of Austria. The French, alarmed, made a great effort to relieve Prague. An army, which on its march was increased to sixty thousand men, was sent six hundred miles to cross rivers, to penetrate defiles of mountains crowded with hostile troops, that they might rescue Prague and its garrison from the besiegers. With consummate skill and energy this critical movement was directed by General Mallebois. The garrison of the city were in a state of great distress. The trenches were open and the siege was pushed with great vigilance. All within the walls of the beleaguered city were reduced to extreme suffering. Horse flesh was considered a delicacy which was reserved for the sick. The French made sally after sally to spike the guns which were battering down the walls. As Mallebois, with his powerful reënforcement, drew near, their courage rose. The Duke of Lorraine became increasingly anxious to secure the capitulation before the arrival of the army of relief, and proposed a conference to decide upon terms, which should be transmitted for approval to the courts of Vienna and of Paris. But the imperious Austrian queen, as soon as she heard of this movement, quite regardless of the feelings of her husband, whom she censured as severely as she would any corporal in the army, issued orders prohibiting, peremptorily, any such conference. "I will not suffer," she said "any council to be held in the army. From Vienna alone are orders to be received. I disavow and forbid all such proceedings, _let the blame fall where it may_." She knew full well that it was her husband who had proposed this plan; and he knew, and all Austria knew, that it was the Duke of Lorraine who was thus severely and publicly reprimanded. But the husband of Maria Theresa was often reminded that he was but the subject of the queen. So peremptory a mandate admitted of no compromise. The Austrians plied their batteries with new vigor, the wan and skeleton soldiers fought perseveringly at their embrasures; and the battalions of Mallebois, by forced marches, pressed on through the mountains of Bohemia, to the eventful arena. A division of the Austrian army was dispatched to the passes of Satz and Caden, which it would be necessary for the French to thread, in approaching Prague. The troops of Mallebois, when they arrived at these defiles, were so exhausted by their long and forced marches, that they were incapable of forcing their way against the opposition they encountered in the passes of the mountains. After a severe struggle, Mallebois was compelled to relinquish the design of relieving Prague, and storms of snow beginning to incumber his path, he retired across the Danube, and throwing up an intrenched camp, established himself in winter quarters. The Austrian division, thus successful, returned to Prague, and the blockade was resumed. There seemed to be now no hope for the French, and their unconditional surrender was hourly expected. Affairs were in this state, when Europe was astounded by the report that the French general, Belleisle, with a force of eleven thousand foot and three thousand horse, had effected his escape from the battered walls of the city and was in successful retreat. It was the depth of winter. The ground was covered with snow, and freezing blasts swept the fields. The besiegers were compelled to retreat to the protection of their huts. Taking advantage of a cold and stormy night, Belleisle formed his whole force into a single column, and, leaving behind him his sick and wounded, and every unnecessary incumbrance, marched noiselessly but rapidly from one of the gates of the city. He took with him but thirty cannon and provisions for twelve days. It was a heroic but an awful retreat. The army, already exhausted and emaciate by famine, toiled on over morasses, through forests, over mountains, facing frost and wind and snow, and occasionally fighting their way against their foes, until on the twelfth day they reached Egra on the frontiers of Bavaria, about one hundred and twenty miles east from Prague. Their sufferings were fearful: They had nothing to eat but frozen bread, and at night they sought repose, tentless, and upon the drifted snow. The whole distance was strewed with the bodies of the dead. Each morning mounds of frozen corpses indicated the places of the night's bivouac. Twelve hundred perished during this dreadful march. Of those who survived, many, at Egra, were obliged to undergo the amputation of their frozen limbs. General Belleisle himself, during the whole retreat, was suffering from such a severe attack of rheumatism, that he was unable either to walk or ride. His mind, however, was full of vigor and his energies unabated. Carried in a sedan chair he reconnoitred the way, pointed out the roads, visited every part of the extended line of march, encouraged the fainting troops, and superintended all the minutest details of the retreat. "Notwithstanding the losses of his army," it is recorded, "he had the satisfaction of preserving the flower of the French forces, of saving every cannon which bore the arms of his master, and of not leaving the smallest trophy to grace the triumph of the enemy." In the citadel of Prague, Belleisle had left six thousand troops, to prevent the eager pursuit of the Austrians. The Prince Sobcuitz, now in command of the besieging force, mortified and irritated by the escape, sent a summons to the garrison demanding its immediate and unconditional surrender. Chevert, the gallant commander, replied to the officer who brought the summons,-- "Tell the prince that if he will not grant me the honors of war, I will set fire to the four corners of Prague, and bury myself under its ruins." The destruction of Prague, with all its treasures of architecture and art, was too serious a calamity to be hazarded. Chevert was permitted to retire with the honors of war, and with his division he soon rejoined the army at Egra. Maria Theresa was exceedingly chagrined by the escape of the French, and in the seclusion of her palace she gave vent to the bitterness of her anguish. In public, however, she assumed an attitude of triumph and great exultation in view of the recovery of Prague. She celebrated the event by magnificent entertainments. In imitation of the Olympic games, she established chariot races, in which ladies alone were the competitors, and even condescended herself, with her sister, to enter the lists. All Bohemia, excepting Egra, was now reclaimed. Early in the spring Maria Theresa visited Prague, where, on the 12th of May, 1743, with great splendor she was crowned Queen of Bohemia. General Belleisle, leaving a small garrison at Egra, with the remnant of his force crossed the Rhine and returned to France. He had entered Germany a few months before, a conqueror at the head of forty thousand men. He retired a fugitive with eight thousand men in his train, ragged, emaciate and mutilated. CHAPTER XXVIII. MARIA THERESA. From 1743 to 1748. Prosperous Aspect of Austrian Affairs.--Capture of Egra.--Vast Extent of Austria.--Dispute with Sardinia.--Marriage of Charles of Lorraine with The Queen's Sister.--Invasion of Alsace.--Frederic Overruns Bohemia.-- Bohemia Recovered by Prince Charles.--Death of the Emperor Charles VII.--Venality of the Old Monarchies.--Battle of Hohenfriedberg.--Sir Thomas Robinson's Interview with Maria Theresa.--Hungarian Enthusiasm.--The Duke of Lorraine Elected Emperor.--Continuation of the War.--Treaty of Peace.--Indignation of Maria Theresa. The cause of Maria Theresa, at the commencement of the year 1743, was triumphant all over her widely extended domains. Russia was cordial in friendship. Holland, in token of hostility to France, sent the queen an efficient loan of six thousand men, thoroughly equipped for the field. The King of Sardinia, grateful for his share in the plunder of the French and Spanish provinces in Italy, and conscious that he could retain those spoils only by the aid of Austria, sent to the queen, in addition to the coöperation of his armies, a gift of a million of dollars. England, also, still anxious to check the growth of France, continued her subsidy of a million and a half, and also with both fleet and army contributed very efficient military aid. The whole force of Austria was now turned against France. The French were speedily driven from Bavaria; and Munich, the capital, fell into the hands of the Austrians. The emperor, in extreme dejection, unable to present any front of resistance, sent to the queen entreating a treaty of neutrality, offering to withdraw all claims to the Austrian succession, and consenting to leave his Bavarian realm in the hands of Maria Theresa until a general peace. The emperor, thus humiliated and stripped of all his territories, retired to Frankfort. On the 7th of September Egra was captured, and the queen was placed in possession of all her hereditary domains. The wonderful firmness and energy which she had displayed, and the consummate wisdom with which she had conceived and executed her measures, excited the admiration of Europe. In Vienna, and throughout all the States of Austria, her popularity was unbounded. After the battle of Dettingen, in which her troops gained a decisive victory, as the queen was returning to Vienna from a water excursion, she found the banks of the Danube, for nine miles, crowded with her rejoicing subjects. In triumph she was escorted into the capital, greeted by every demonstration of the most enthusiastic joy. Austria and England were now prepared to mature their plans for the dismemberment of France. The commissioners met at Hanau, a small fortified town, a few miles east of Frankfort. They met, however, only to quarrel fiercely. Austrian and English pride clashed in instant collision. Lord Stair, imperious and irritable, regarded the Austrians as outside barbarians whom England was feeding, clothing and protecting. The Austrian officers regarded the English as remote islanders from whom they had hired money and men. The Austrians were amazed at the impudence of the English in assuming the direction of affairs. The British officers were equally astounded that the Austrians should presume to take the lead. No plan of coöperation could be agreed upon, and the conference broke up in confusion, The queen, whose heart was still fixed upon the elevation of her husband to the throne of the empire, was anxious to depose the emperor. But England was no more willing to see Austria dominant over Europe than to see France thus powerful. Maria Theresa was now in possession of all her vast ancestral domains, and England judged that it would endanger the balance of power to place upon the brow of her husband the imperial crown. The British cabinet consequently espoused the cause of the Elector of Bavaria, and entered into a private arrangement with him, agreeing to acknowledge him as emperor, and to give him an annual pension that he might suitably support the dignity of his station. The wealth of England seems to have been inexhaustible, for half the monarchs of Europe have, at one time or other, been fed and clothed from her treasury. George II. contracted to pay the emperor, within forty days, three hundred thousand dollars, and to do all in his power to constrain the queen of Austria to acknowledge his title. Maria Theresa had promised the King of Sardinia large accessions of territory in Italy, as the price for his coöperation. But now, having acquired those Italian territories, she was exceedingly reluctant to part with any one of them, and very dishonorably evaded, by every possible pretense, the fulfillment of her agreement. The queen considered herself now so strong that she was not anxious to preserve the alliance of Sardinia. She thought her Italian possessions secure, even in case of the defection of the Sardinian king. Sardinia appealed to England, as one of the allies, to interpose for the execution of the treaty. To the remonstrance of England the queen peevishly replied, "It is the policy of England to lead me from one sacrifice to another. I am expected to expose my troops for no other end than voluntarily to strip myself of my possessions. Should the cession of the Italian provinces, which the King of Sardinia claims, be extorted from me, what remains in Italy will not be worth defending, and the only alternative left is that of being stripped either by England or France." While the queen was not willing to give as much as she had agreed to bestow, the greedy King of Sardinia was grasping at more than she had promised. At last the king, in a rage threatened, that if she did not immediately comply with his demands, he would unite with France and Spain and the emperor against Austria. This angry menace brought the queen to terms, and articles of agreement satisfactory to Sardinia were signed. During the whole of this summer of 1743, though large armies were continually in motion, and there were many sanguinary battles, and all the arts of peace were destroyed, and conflagration, death and woe were sent to ten thousand homes, nothing effectual was accomplished by either party. The strife did not cease until winter drove the weary combatants to their retreats. For the protection of the Austrian possessions against the French and Spanish, the queen agreed to maintain in Italy an army of thirty thousand men, to be placed under the command of the King of Sardinia, who was to add to them an army of forty-five thousand. England, with characteristic prodigality, voted a million of dollars annually, to aid in the payment of these troops. It was the object of England, to prevent France from strengthening herself by Italian possessions. The cabinet of St. James took such an interest in this treaty that, to secure its enactment, one million five hundred thousand dollars were paid down, in addition to the annual subsidy. England also agreed to maintain a strong squadron in the Mediterranean to coöperate with Sardinia and Austria. Amidst these scenes of war, the usual dramas of domestic life moved on. Prince Charles of Lorraine, had long been ardently attached to Mary Anne, younger sister of Maria Theresa. The young prince had greatly signalized himself on the field of battle. Their nuptials were attended in Vienna with great splendor and rejoicings. It was a union of loving hearts. Charles was appointed to the government of the Austrian Netherlands. One short and happy year passed away, when Mary Anne, in the sorrows of child-birth, breathed her last. The winter was passed by all parties in making the most vigorous preparations for a new campaign. England and France were now thoroughly aroused, and bitterly irritated against each other. Hitherto they had acted as auxiliaries for other parties. Now they summoned all their energies, and became principals in the conflict. France issued a formal declaration of war against England and Austria, raised an army of one hundred thousand men, and the debauched king himself, Louis XV., left his _Pare Aux Cerfs_ and placed himself at the head of the army. Marshal Saxe was the active commander. He was provided with a train of artillery superior to any which had ever before appeared on any field. Entering the Netherlands he swept all opposition before him. The French department of Alsace, upon the Rhine, embraced over forty thousand square miles of territory, and contained a population of about a million. While Marshal Saxe was ravaging the Netherlands, an Austrian army, sixty thousand strong, crossed the Rhine, like a torrent burst into Alsace, and spread equal ravages through the cities and villages of France. Bombardment echoed to bombardment; conflagration blazed in response to conflagration; and the shrieks of the widow, and the moans of the orphan which rose from the marshes of Burgundy, were reechoed in an undying wail along the valleys of the Rhine. The King of France, alarmed by the progress which the Austrians were making in his own territories, ordered thirty thousand troops, from the army in the Netherlands, to be dispatched to the protection of Alsace. Again the tide was turning against Maria Theresa. She had become so arrogant and exacting, that she had excited the displeasure of nearly all the empire. She persistently refused to acknowledge the emperor, who, beyond all dispute, was legally elected; she treated the diet contemptuously; she did not disguise her determination to hold Bavaria by the right of conquest, and to annex it to Austria; she had compelled the Bavarians to take the oath of allegiance to her; she was avowedly meditating gigantic projects in the conquest of France and Italy; and it was very evident that she was maturing her plans for the reconquest of Silesia. Such inordinate ambition alarmed all the neighboring courts. Frederic of Prussia was particularly alarmed lest he should lose Silesia. With his accustomed energy he again drew his sword against the queen, and became the soul of a new confederacy which combined many of the princes of the empire whom the haughty queen had treated with so much indignity. In this new league, formed by Frederic, the Elector Palatine and the King of Sweden were brought into the field against Maria Theresa. All this was effected with the utmost secrecy, and the queen had no intimation of her danger until the troops were in motion. Frederic published a manifesto in which he declared that he took up arms "to restore to the German empire its liberty, to the emperor his dignity, and to Europe repose." With his strong army he burst into Bohemia, now drained of its troops to meet the war in the Netherlands and on the Rhine. With a lion's tread, brushing all opposition away, he advanced to Prague. The capital was compelled to surrender, and the garrison of fifteen thousand troops became prisoners of war. Nearly all the fortresses of the kingdom fell into his hands. Establishing garrisons at Tabor, Budweiss, Frauenberg, and other important posts, he then made an irruption into Bavaria, scattered the Austrian troops in all directions, entered Munich in triumph, and reinstated the emperor in the possession of his capital and his duchy. Such are the fortunes of war. The queen heard these tidings of accumulated disaster in dismay. In a few weeks of a summer's campaign, when she supposed that Europe was almost a suppliant at her feet, she found herself deprived of the Netherlands, of the whole kingdom of Bohemia, the brightest jewel in her crown, and of the electorate of Bavaria. But the resolution and energy of the queen remained indomitable. Maria Theresa and Frederic were fairly pitted against each other. It was Greek meeting Greek. The queen immediately recalled the army from Alsace, and in person repaired to Presburg, where she summoned a diet of the Hungarian nobles. In accordance with an ancient custom, a blood-red flag waved from all the castles in the kingdom, summoning the people to a levy _en masse_, or, as it was then called, to a general insurrection. An army of nearly eighty thousand men was almost instantly raised. A cotemporary historian, speaking of this event, says: "This amazing unanimity of a people so divided amongst themselves as the Hungarians, especially in point of religion, could only be effected by the address of Maria Theresa, who seemed to possess one part of the character of Elizabeth of England, that of making every man about her a hero." Prince Charles re-crossed the Rhine, and, by a vigorous march through Suabia, returned to Bohemia. By surprise, with a vastly superior force, he assailed the fortresses garrisoned by the Prussian troops, gradually took one after another, and ere long drove the Prussians, with vast slaughter, out of the whole kingdom. Though disaster, in this campaign, followed the banners of Maria Theresa in the Netherlands and in Italy, she forgot those reverses in exultation at the discomfiture of her great rival Frederic. She had recovered Bohemia, and was now sanguine that she soon would regain Silesia, the loss of which province ever weighed heavily upon her heart. But in her character woman's weakness was allied with woman's determination. She imagined that she could rouse the chivalry of her allies as easily as that of the Hungarian barons, and that foreign courts, forgetful of their own grasping ambition, would place themselves as pliant instruments in her hands. In this posture of affairs, the hand of Providence was again interposed, in an event which removed from the path of the queen a serious obstacle, and opened to her aspiring mind new visions of grandeur. The Emperor Charles VII., an amiable man, of moderate abilities, was quite crushed in spirit by the calamities accumulating upon him. Though he had regained his capital, he was in hourly peril of being driven from it again. Anguish so preyed upon his mind, that, pale and wan, he was thrown upon a sick bed. While in this state he was very injudiciously informed of a great defeat which his troops had encountered. It was a death-blow to the emperor. He moaned, turned over in his bed, and died, on the 20th of January, 1745. The imperial crown was thus thrown down among the combatants, and a scramble ensued for its possession such as Europe had never witnessed before. Every court was agitated, and the combinations of intrigue were as innumerable as were the aspirants for the crown. The spring of 1745 opened with clouds of war darkening every quarter of the horizon. England opened the campaign in Italy and the Netherlands, her whole object now being to humble France. Maria Theresa remained uncompromising in her disposition to relinquish nothing and to grasp every thing. The cabinet of England, with far higher views of policy, were anxious to detach some of the numerous foes combined against Austria; but it was almost impossible to induce the queen to make the slightest abatement of her desires. She had set her heart upon annexing all of Bavaria to her realms. That immense duchy, now a kingdom, was about the size of the State of South Carolina, containing over thirty thousand square miles. Its population amounted to about four millions. The death of the Emperor Charles VII., who was Elector of Bavaria, transmitted the sovereignty of this realm to his son, Maximilian Joseph. Maximilian was anxious to withdraw from the strife. He agreed to renounce all claim to the Austrian succession, to acknowledge the validity of the queen's title, to dismiss the auxiliary troops, and to give his electoral vote to the Duke of Lorraine for emperor. But so eager was the queen to grasp the Bavarian dominions, that it was with the utmost difficulty that England could induce her to accede even to these terms. It is humiliating to record the readiness of these old monarchies to sell themselves and their armies to any cause which would pay the price demanded. For seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars England purchased the alliance of Poland, and her army of thirty thousand men. Before the treaty was formally ratified, the Emperor Charles VII. died, and there were indications that Bavaria would withdraw from the French alliance. This alarmed the French ministry, and they immediately offered Poland a larger sum than England had proffered, to send her army to the French camp. The bargain was on the point of being settled, when England and Austria again rushed in, and whispered in the ear of Augustus that they intended to chastise the King of Prussia thoroughly, and that if Poland would help them, Poland should be rewarded with generous slices of the Prussian territory. This was a resistless bribe, and the Polish banners were borne in the train of the Austrian alliance. The Duke of Lorraine was much annoyed by the imperial assumption of his wife. She was anxious to secure for him the crown of Germany, as adding to her power and grandeur. But Francis was still more anxious to attain that dignity, as his position in the court, as merely the docile subject of his wife, the queen, was exceedingly humiliating. The spring of 1745 found all parties prepared for the renewal of the fight. The drama was opened by the terrible battle of Fontenoy in the Netherlands. On the 11th of May eighty thousand French met the Austrian allied army of fifty thousand. After a few hours of terrific slaughter the allies retreated, leaving the French in possession of the field. In Italy, also, the tide of war set against the queen. The French and Spaniards poured an army of seventy thousand men over the Alps into Italy. The queen, even with the aid of Sardinia, had no force capable of resisting them. The allies swept the country. The King of Sardinia was driven behind the walls of his capital. In this one short campaign Tortona, Placentia, Parma, Pavia, Cazale and Aste were wrested from the Austrians, and the citadels of Alexandria and Milan were blockaded. The queen had weakened her armies both in the Netherlands and Italy that she might accumulate a force sufficient to recover Silesia, and to crush, if possible, her great antagonist Frederic. Maria Theresa was greatly elated by her success in driving the Prussians from Bavaria, and Frederic was mortified and irritated by this first defeat of his arms. Thus animated, the one by hope, the other by vengeance, Maria and Frederic gathered all their resources for a trial of strength on the plains of Silesia. France, fully occupied in the Netherlands and in Italy, could render Frederic no assistance. His prospects began to look dark. War had made sad ravages in his army, and he found much difficulty in filling up his wasted battalions. His treasury was exhausted. Still the indomitable monarch indulged in no emotions of dejection. Each party was fully aware of the vigilance and energy of its antagonist. Their forces were early in the field. The month of April was passed in stratagems and skirmishes, each endeavoring in vain to obtain some advantage over the other in position or combinations. Early in May there was a pretty severe conflict, in which the Prussians gained the advantage. They feigned, however, dejection and alarm, and apparently commenced a retreat. The Austrians, emboldened by this subterfuge, pursued them with indiscreet haste. Prince Charles pressed the retiring hosts, and followed closely after them through the passes of the mountains to Landshut and Friedburg. Frederic fled as if in a panic, throwing no obstacle in the path of his pursuers, seeming only anxious to gain the ramparts of Breslau. Suddenly the Prussians turned--the whole army being concentrated in columns of enormous strength. They had chosen their ground and their hour. It was before the break of day on the 3d of June, among the hills of Hohenfriedberg. The Austrians were taken utterly by surprise. For seven hours they repelled the impetuous onset of their foes. But when four thousand of their number were mangled corpses, seven thousand captives in the hands of the enemy, seventy-six standards and sixty-six pieces of artillery wrested from them, the broken bands of the Austrians turned and fled, pursued and incessantly pelted by Frederic through the defiles of the mountains back to Bohemia. The Austrians found no rest till they had escaped beyond the Riesengeberg, and placed the waves of the Elbe between themselves and their pursuers. The Prussians followed to the opposite bank, and there the two armies remained for three months looking each other in the face. Frederic, having gained so signal a victory, again proposed peace. England, exceedingly desirous to detach from the allies so energetic a foe, urged the queen, in the strongest terms, to accede to the overtures. The queen, however, never dismayed by adversity, still adhered to her resolve to reconquer Silesia. The English cabinet, finding Maria Theresa deaf to all their remonstrances and entreaties, endeavored to intimidate her by the threat of withdrawing their subsidies. The English ambassador, Sir Thomas Robinson, with this object in view, demanded an audience with the queen. The interview, as he has recorded it, is worthy of preservation. "England," said the ambassador to the queen, "has this year furnished five million, three hundred and ninety-three thousand seven hundred and sixty-five dollars. The nation is not in a condition to maintain a superiority over the allies in the Netherlands, Italy and Silesia. It is, therefore, indispensable to diminish the force of the enemy. France can not be detached from the alliance. Prussia can be and must be. This concession England expects from Austria. What is to be done must be done immediately. The King of Prussia can not be driven from Bohemia this campaign. By making peace with him, and thus securing his voluntary withdrawal, your majesty can send troops to the Netherlands, and check the rapid progress of the French, who now threaten the very existence of England and Holland. If they fall, Austria must inevitably fall also. If peace can be, made with Prussia France can be checked, and the Duke of Lorraine can be chosen emperor." "I feel exceedingly grateful," the queen replied, "to the king and the English nation, and am ready to show it in every way in my power. Upon this matter I will consult my ministers and acquaint you with my answer. But whatever may be the decision, I can not spare a man from the neighborhood of the King of Prussia. In peace, as well as in war, I need them all for the defense of my person and family." "It is affirmed," Sir Thomas Robinson replied, "that seventy thousand men are employed against Prussia. From such a force enough might be spared to render efficient aid in Italy and in the Netherlands." "I can not spare a man," the queen abruptly replied. Sir Thomas was a little touched, and with some spirit rejoined, "If your majesty can not spare her troops for the general cause, England will soon find it necessary to withdraw her armies also, to be employed at home." This was a home thrust, and the queen felt it, and replied, "But why may we not as well detach France from the alliance, as Prussia?" "Because Prussia," was the reply, "can be more easily induced to accede to peace, by allowing her to retain what she now has, than France can be induced to yield, by surrendering, as she must, large portions of her present acquisitions." "I must have an opportunity," Maria Theresa continued, "to strike Prussia another blow. Prince Charles has still enough men to give battle." "But should he be the victor in the battle," Sir Thomas replied, "Silesia is not conquered. And if the battle be lost, your majesty is well nigh ruined." "If I had determined," said the queen, "to make peace with Frederic to-morrow, I would give him battle to-night. But why in such a hurry? Why this interruption of operations which are by no means to be despaired of? Give me only to October, and then you may do as you please." "October will close this campaign," was the answer. "Our affairs are going so disastrously, that unless we can detach Prussia, by that time France and Prussia will be able to dictate terms to which we shall be compelled to accede." "That might be true," the queen replied, tartly, "if I were to waste my time, as you are urging me to do, in marching my troops from Bohemia to the Rhine, and from the Rhine to the Netherlands. But as for my troops, I have not a single general who would condescend to command such merely _machinery_ armies. As for the Duke of Lorraine, and my brother, Prince Charles, they shall not thus degrade themselves. The great duke is not so ambitious of an empty honor, much less to enjoy it under the patronage of Prussia. You speak of the imperial dignity! Is it compatible with the loss of Silesia? Great God! give me only till October. I shall then at least be able to secure better conditions." The English ambassador now ventured, in guarded phrase, but very decisively, to inform the queen that unless she could accede to these views, England would be constrained to withdraw her assistance, and, making the best terms she could for herself with the enemy, leave Austria to fight her own battles; and that England requested an immediate and a specific answer. Even this serious menace did not move the inflexible will of the queen. She, with much calmness, replied, "It is that I might, with the utmost promptness, attend to this business, that I have given you so expeditious an audience, and that I have summoned my council to meet so early. I see, however, very clearly, that whatever may be my decisions, they will have but little influence upon measures which are to be adopted elsewhere." The queen convened her council, and then informed England, in most courteous phrase, that she could not accede to the proposition. The British cabinet immediately entered into a private arrangement with Prussia, guaranteeing to Frederic the possession of Silesia, in consideration of Prussia's agreement not to molest England's Hanoverian possessions. Maria Theresa was exceedingly indignant when she became acquainted with this treaty. She sent peremptory orders to Prince Charles to prosecute hostilities with the utmost vigor, and with great energy dispatched reënforcements to his camp. The Hungarians, with their accustomed enthusiasm, flocked to the aid of the queen; and Frederic, pressed by superior numbers, retreated from Bohemia back to Silesia, pursued and pelted in his turn by the artillery of Prince Charles. But Frederic soon turned upon his foes, who almost surrounded him with double his own number of men. His army was compact and in the highest state of discipline. A scene of terrible carnage ensued, in which the Austrians, having lost four thousand in killed and two thousand taken prisoners, were utterly routed and scattered. The proud victor, gathering up his weakened battalions, one fourth of whom had been either killed or wounded in this short, fierce storm of war, continued his retreat unmolested. While Maria Theresa, with such almost superhuman inflexibility, was pressing her own plans, the electoral diet of Germany was assembled at Frankfort, and Francis, Duke of Lorraine, was chosen emperor, with the title of Francis I. The queen was at Frankfort when the diet had assembled, and was plying all her energies in favor of her husband, while awaiting, with intense solicitude, the result of the election. When the choice was announced to her, she stepped out upon the balcony of the palace, and was the first to shout, "Long live the emperor, Francis I." The immense concourse assembled in the streets caught and reëchoed the cry. This result was exceedingly gratifying to the queen; she regarded it as a noble triumph, adding to the power and the luster of her house. The duke, now the emperor, was at Heidelberg, with an army of sixty thousand men. The queen hastened to him with her congratulations. The emperor, no longer a submissive subject, received his queenly spouse with great dignity at the head of his army. The whole host was drawn up in two lines, and the queen rode between, bowing to the regiments on the right hand and the left, with majesty and grace which all admired. Though the queen's treasury was so exhausted that she had been compelled to melt the church plate to pay her troops, she was now so elated that, regardless of the storms of winter, she resolved to send an army to Berlin, to chastise Frederic in his own capital, and there recover long lost Silesia. But Frederic was not thus to be caught napping. Informed of the plan, he succeeded in surprising the Austrian army, and dispersed them after the slaughter of five thousand men. The queen's troops, who had entered Silesia, were thus driven pell-mell back to Bohemia. The Prussian king then invaded Saxony, driving all before him. He took possession of the whole electorate, and entered Dresden, its capital, in triumph. This was a terrible defeat for the queen. Though she had often said that she would part with her last garment before she would consent to the surrender of Silesia, she felt now compelled to yield. Accepting the proffered mediation of England, on the 25th of December, 1745, she signed the treaty of Dresden, by which she left Silesia in the hands of Frederic. He agreed to withdraw his troops from Saxony, and to acknowledge the imperial title of Francis I. England, in consequence of rebellion at home, had been compelled to withdraw her troops from the Netherlands; and France, advancing with great vigor, took fortress after fortress, until nearly all of the Low Countries had fallen into her hands. In Italy, however, the Austrians were successful, and Maria Theresa, having dispatched thirty thousand troops to their aid, cherished sanguine hopes that she might recover Milan and Naples. All the belligerent powers, excepting Maria Theresa, weary of the long war, were anxious for peace. She, however, still clung, with deathless tenacity, to her determination to recover Silesia, and to win provinces in Italy. England and France were equally desirous to sheathe the sword. France could only attack England in the Netherlands; England could only assail France in her marine. They were both successful. France drove England from the continent; England drove France from the ocean. Notwithstanding the most earnest endeavors of the allies, Maria Theresa refused to listen to any terms of peace, and succeeded in preventing the other powers from coming to any accommodation. All parties, consequently, prepared for another campaign. Prussia entered into an alliance with Austria, by which she agreed to furnish her with thirty thousand troops. The queen made gigantic efforts to drive the French from the Netherlands. England and Holland voted an army of forty thousand each. The queen furnished sixty thousand; making an army of one hundred and forty thousand to operate in the Netherlands. At the same time the queen sent sixty thousand men to Italy, to be joined by forty-five thousand Sardinians. All the energies of the English fleet were also combined with these formidable preparations. Though never before during the war had such forces been brought into the field, the campaign was quite disastrous to Austria and her allies. Many bloody battles were fought, and many thousands perished in agony; but nothing of any importance was gained by either party. When winter separated the combatants, they retired exhausted and bleeding. Again France made overtures for a general pacification, on terms which were eminently honorable. England was disposed to listen to those terms. But the queen had not yet accomplished her purposes, and she succeeded in securing the rejection of the proposals. Again the belligerents gathered their resources, with still increasing vigor, for another campaign. The British cabinet seemed now to be out of all patience with Maria Theresa. They accused her of not supplying the contingents she had promised, they threatened to withhold their subsidies, many bitter recriminations passed, but still the queen, undismayed by the contentions, urged forward her preparations for the new campaign, till she was thunderstruck with the tidings that the preliminaries of peace were already signed by England, France and Holland. Maria Theresa received the first formal notification of the terms agreed to by the three contracting powers, from the English minister, Sir Thomas Robinson, who urged her concurrence in the treaty. The indignant queen could not refrain from giving free vent to her displeasure. Listening for a moment impatiently to his words, she overwhelmed him with a torrent of reproaches. "You, sir," she exclaimed, "who had such a share in the sacrifice of Silesia; you, who contributed more than any one in procuring the cessions to Sardinia, do you still think to persuade me? No! I am neither a child nor a fool! If you will have an instant peace, make it. I can negotiate for myself. Why am I always to be excluded from transacting my own business? My enemies will give me better conditions than my friends. Place me where I was in Italy before the war; but _your King of Sardinia_ must have all, without one thought for me. This treaty was not made for me, but for him, for him singly. Great God, how have I been used by that court! There is _your King of Prussia_! Indeed these circumstances tear open too many old wounds and create too many new ones. Agree to such a treaty as this!" she exclaimed indignantly. "No, no, I will rather lose my head." CHAPTER XXIX. MARIA THERESA. From 1748 to 1759. Treaty of Peace.--Dissatisfaction of Maria Theresa.--Preparation for War.--Rupture between England and Austria.--Maria Theresa.--Alliance with France.--Influence of Marchioness of Pompadour.--Bitter Reproaches Between Austria and England.--Commencement of the Seven Years' War.--Energy of Frederic of Prussia.--Sanguinary Battles.--Vicissitudes of War.--Desperate Situation of Frederic.--Elation of Maria Theresa.-- Her Ambitious Plans.--Awful Defeat of the Prussians at Berlin. Notwithstanding the bitter opposition of Maria Theresa to peace, the definitive treaty was signed at Aix-la-Chapelle on the 18th of October, 1748, by France, England and Holland. Spain and Sardinia soon also gave in their adhesion. The queen, finding it impossible to resist the determination of the other powers, at length reluctantly yielded, and accepted the terms, which they were ready unitedly to enforce should she refuse to accede to them. By this treaty all the contracting powers gave their assent to the Pragmatic Sanction. The queen was required to surrender her conquests in Italy, and to confirm her cessions of Silesia to Prussia. Thus terminated this long and cruel war. Though at the commencement the queen was threatened with utter destruction, and she had come out from the contests with signal honor, retaining all her vast possessions, excepting Silesia and the Italian provinces, still she could not repress her chagrin. Her complaints were loud and reiterated. When the British minister requested an audience to congratulate her upon the return of peace, she snappishly replied, "A visit of condolence would be more proper, under these circumstances, than one of congratulation. The British minister will oblige me by making no allusion whatever to so disagreeable a topic." The queen was not only well aware that this peace could not long continue, but was fully resolved that it should not be permanent. Her great rival, Frederic, had wrested from her Silesia, and she was determined that there should be no stable peace until she had regained it. With wonderful energy she availed herself of this short respite in replenishing her treasury and in recruiting her armies. Frederic himself has recorded the masculine vigor with which she prepared herself for the renewal of war. "Maria Theresa," he says, "in the secrecy of her cabinet, arranged those great projects which she afterwards carried into execution. She introduced an order and economy into the finances unknown to her ancestors; and her revenues far exceeded those of her father, even when he was master of Naples, Parma, Silesia and Servia. Having learned the necessity of introducing into her army a better discipline, she annually formed camps in the provinces, which she visited herself that she might animate the troops by her presence and bounty. She established a military academy at Vienna, and collected the most skillful professors of all the sciences and exercises which tend to elucidate or improve the art of war. By these institutions the army acquired, under Maria Theresa, such a degree of perfection as it had never attained under any of her predecessors; and a woman accomplished designs worthy of a great man." The queen immediately organized a standing army of one hundred and eight thousand men, who were brought under the highest state of discipline, and were encamped in such positions that they could, at any day, be concentrated ready for combined action. The one great object which now seemed to engross her mind was the recovery of Silesia. It was, of course, a subject not to be spoken of openly; but in secret conference with her ministers she unfolded her plans and sought counsel. Her intense devotion to political affairs, united to a mind of great activity and native strength, soon placed her above her ministers in intelligence and sagacity; and conscious of superior powers, she leaned less upon them, and relied upon her own resources. With a judgment thus matured she became convinced of the incapacity of her cabinet, and with great skill in the discernment of character, chose Count Kaunitz, who was then her ambassador at Paris, prime minister. Kaunitz, son of the governor of Moravia, had given signal proof of his diplomatic abilities, in Rome and in Paris. For nearly forty years he remained at the head of foreign affairs, and, in conjunction with the queen, administered the government of Austria. Policy had for some time allied Austria and England, but there had never been any real friendship between the two cabinets. The high tone of superiority ever assumed by the court of St. James, its offensive declaration that the arm of England alone had saved the house of Austria from utter ruin, and the imperious demand for corresponding gratitude, annoyed and exasperated the proud court of Vienna. The British cabinet were frequently remonstrated with against the assumption of such airs, and the employment of language so haughty in their diplomatic intercourse. But the British government has never been celebrated for courtesy in its intercourse with weaker powers. The chancellor Kaunitz entreated them, in their communications, to respect the sex and temper of the queen, and not to irritate her by demeanor so overbearing. The emperor himself entered a remonstrance against the discourtesy which characterized their intercourse. Even the queen, unwilling to break off friendly relations with her unpolished allies, complained to the British ambassador of the arrogant style of the English documents. "They do not," said the queen, "disturb me, but they give great offense to others, and endanger the amity existing between the two nations. I would wish that more courtesy might mark our intercourse." But the amenities of polished life, the rude islanders despised. The British ambassador at Vienna, Sir Robert Keith, a gentlemanly man, was often mortified at the messages he was compelled to communicate to the queen. Occasionally the messages were couched in terms so peremptory and offensive that he could not summon resolution to deliver them, and thus he more than once incurred the censure of the king and cabinet, for his sense of propriety and delicacy. These remonstrances were all unavailing, and at length the Austrian cabinet began to reply with equal rancor. This state of things led the Austrian cabinet to turn to France, and seek the establishment of friendly relations with that court. Louis XV., the most miserable of debauchees, was nominally king. His mistress, Jeanette Poisson, who was as thoroughly polluted as her regal paramour, governed the monarch, and through him France. The king had ennobled her with the title of Marchioness of Pompadour. Her power was so boundless and indisputable that the most illustrious ladies of the French court were happy to serve as her waiting women. Whenever she walked out, one of the highest nobles of the realm accompanied her as her attendant, obsequiously bearing her shawl upon his arm, to spread it over her shoulders in case it should be needed. Ambassadors and ministers she summoned before her, assuming that air of royalty which she had purchased with her merchantable charms. Voltaire, Diderot, Montesquieu, waited in her ante-chambers, and implored her patronage. The haughty mistress became even weary of their adulation. "Not only," said she one day, to the Abbé de Bernis, "have I all the nobility at my feet, but even my lap-dog is weary of their fawning." With many apologies for requiring of the high-minded Maria Theresa a sacrifice, Kaunitz suggested to her the expediency of cultivating the friendship of Pompadour. Silesia was engraved upon the heart of the queen, and she was prepared to do any thing which could aid her in the reconquest of that duchy. She stooped so low as to write a letter with her own hand to the marchioness, addressing her as "our dear friend and cousin." This was a new triumph for Pompadour, and it delighted her beyond measure. To have the most illustrious sovereign of Europe, combining in her person the titles of Queen of Austria and Empress of Germany, solicit her friendship and her good offices, so excited the vanity of the mistress, that she became immediately the warm friend of Maria Theresa, and her all powerful advocate in the court of Versailles. England was now becoming embroiled with France in reference to the possessions upon the St. Lawrence and Ohio in North America. In case of war, France would immediately make an attack upon Hanover. England was anxious to secure the Austrian alliance, that the armies of the queen might aid in the protection of Hanover. But Austria, being now in secret conference with France, was very reserved. England coaxed and threatened, but could get no definite or satisfactory answer. Quite enraged, the British cabinet sent a final declaration that, "should the empress decline fulfilling the conditions required, the king can not take any measures in coöperation with Austria, and the present system of European policy must be dissolved." The reply of the empress queen develops the feelings of irritation and bitterness which at that time existed between the two cabinets of Austria and England. "The queen," Maria Theresa replied, "has never had the satisfaction of seeing England do justice to her principles. If the army of Austria were merely the hired soldiers of England, the British cabinet could not more decisively assume the control of their movements than it now does, by requiring their removal from the center of Austria, for the defense of England and Hanover. We are reproached with the great efforts England has made in behalf of the house of Austria. But to these efforts England owes its present greatness. If Austria has derived useful succors from England, she has purchased those succors with the blood and ruin of her subjects; while England has been opening to herself new sources of wealth and power. We regret the necessity of uttering these truths in reply to unjust and unceasing reproaches. Could any consideration diminish our gratitude towards England, it would be thus diminished by her constant endeavor to represent the aid she has furnished us as entirely gratuitous, when this aid has always been and always will be dictated by her own interests." Such goading as this brought back a roar. The British envoy was ordered to demand an explicit and categorical reply to the following questions: 1. If the French attack Hanover, will the queen render England assistance? 2. What number of troops will she send; and how soon will they be in motion to join the British and Hanoverian troops? The Austrian minister, Kaunitz, evaded a reply, coldly answering, "Our ultimatum has been given. The queen deems those declarations as ample as can be expected in the present posture of affairs; nor can she give any further reply till England shall have more fully explained her intentions." Thus repulsed, England turned to Prussia, and sought alliance with the most inveterate enemy of Austria. Frederic, fearing an assault from united Russia and Austria, eagerly entered into friendly relations with England, and on the 16th of January, 1756, entered into a treaty with the cabinet of Great Britain for the defense of Hanover. Maria Theresa was quite delighted with this arrangement, for affairs were moving much to her satisfaction at Versailles. Her "dear friend and cousin" Jeanette Poisson, had dismissed all the ministers who were unfriendly to Austria, and had replaced them with her own creatures who were in favor of the Austrian alliance. A double motive influenced the Marchioness of Pompadour. Her vanity was gratified by the advances of Maria Theresa, and revenge roused her soul against Frederic of Prussia, who had indulged in a cutting witticism upon her position and character. The marchioness, with one of her favorites, Cardinal Bernis, met the Austrian ambassador in one of the private apartments of the palace of the Luxembourg, and arranged the plan of the alliance between France and Austria. Maria Theresa, without the knowledge of her ministers, or even of her husband the emperor, privately conducted these negotiations with the Marchioness du Pompadour. M. Kaunitz was the agent employed by the queen in this transaction. Louis XV., sunk in the lowest depths of debauchery, consented to any arrangements his mistress might propose. But when the treaty was all matured it became necessary to present it to the Council of State. The queen, knowing how astounded her husband would be to learn what she had been doing, and aware of the shock it would give the ministry to think of an alliance with France, pretended to entire ignorance of the measures she had been so energetically prosecuting. In very guarded and apologetic phrase, Kaunitz introduced the delicate subject. The announcement of the unexpected alliance with France struck all with astonishment and indignation. Francis, vehemently moved, rose, and smiting the table with his hand, exclaimed, "Such an alliance is unnatural and impracticable--it never shall take place." The empress, by nods and winks, encouraged her minister, and he went on detailing the great advantages to result from the French alliance. Maria Theresa listened with great attention to his arguments, and was apparently convinced by them. She then gave her approbation so decisively as to silence all debate. She said that such a treaty was so manifestly for the interest of Austria, that she was fearful that France would not accede to it. Since she knew that the matter was already arranged and settled with the French court, this was a downright lie, though the queen probably regarded it as a venial fib, or as diplomacy. Thus curiously England and Austria had changed their allies. George II. and Frederic II., from being rancorous foes became friends, and Maria Theresa and Louis XV. unfurled their flags together. England was indignant with Austria for the French alliance, Austria was indignant with England for the Prussian alliance. Each accused the other of being the first to abandon the ancient treaty. As the British ambassador reproached the queen with this abandonment, she replied, "I have not abandoned the old system, but Great Britain has abandoned me and that system, by concluding the Prussian treaty, the first intelligence of which struck me like a fit of apoplexy. I and the King of Prussia are incompatible. No consideration on earth shall induce me to enter into any engagement to which he is a party. Why should you be surprised if, following your example in concluding a treaty with Prussia, I should enter into an engagement with France?" "I have but two enemies," Maria Theresa said again, "whom I have to dread--the King of Prussia and the Turks. And while I and the Empress of Russia continue on the same good terms as now subsist between us, we shall, I trust, be able to convince Europe that we are in a condition to defend ourselves against those adversaries, however formidable." The queen still kept her eye anxiously fixed upon Silesia, and in secret combination with the Empress of Russia made preparation for a sudden invasion. With as much secrecy as was possible, large armies were congregated in the vicinity of Prague, while Russia was cautiously concentrating her troops upon the frontiers of Livonia. But Frederic was on the alert, and immediately demanded of the empress queen the significance of these military movements. "In the present crisis," the queen replied, "I deem it necessary to take measures for the security of myself and my allies, which tend to the prejudice of no one." So vague an answer was of course unsatisfactory, and the haughty Prussian king reiterated his demand in very imperious tones. "I wish," said he, "for an immediate and categorical answer, not delivered in an oracular style, ambiguous and inconclusive, respecting the armaments in Bohemia, and I demand a positive assurance that the queen will not attack me either during this or the following year." The answer returned by the queen to this demand was equally unsatisfactory with the first, and the energetic Prussian monarch, wasting no more words, instantly invaded Saxony with a powerful army, overran the duchy, and took possession of Dresden, its capital. Then wheeling his troops, with twenty-four thousand men he marched boldly into Bohemia. The queen dispatched an army of forty thousand to meet him. The fierce encounter took place at Lowositz, near the banks of the Elbe. The military genius of Frederic prevailed, and the Austrians were repulsed, though the slaughter was about equal on each side, six thousand men, three thousand upon each side, being left in their blood. Frederic took possession of Saxony as a conquered province. Seventeen thousand soldiers, whom he made prisoners, he forced into his own service. Eighty pieces of cannon were added to his artillery train, and the revenues of Saxony replenished his purse. The anger of Maria Theresa, at this humiliation of her ally, was roused to the highest pitch, and she spent the winter in the most vigorous preparations for the campaign of the spring. She took advantage of religious fanaticism, and represented, through all the Catholic courts of Europe, that there was a league of the two heretical powers, England and Prussia, against the faithful children of the Church. Jeanette Poisson, Marchioness of Pompadour, who now controlled the destinies of France, raised, for the service of Maria Theresa, an army of one hundred and five thousand men, paid all the expenses of ten thousand Bavarian troops, and promised the queen an annual subsidy of twelve millions of imperial florins. The emperor, regarding the invasion of Saxony as an insult to the empire, roused the States of Germany to coöperate with the queen. Europe was again ablaze with war. It was indeed a fearful combination now prepared to make a rush upon the King of Prussia. France had assembled eighty thousand men on the Rhine. The Swedes were rallying in great numbers on the frontiers of Pomerania. The Russians had concentrated an army sixty thousand strong on the borders of Livonia. And the Queen of Austria had one hundred and fifty thousand men on the march, through Hungary and Bohemia, to the frontiers of Silesia. Frederic, with an eagle eye, was watching all these movements, and was employing all his amazing energies to meet the crisis. He resolved to have the advantage of striking the first blow, and adopted the bold measure of marching directly into the heart of the Austrian States. To deceive the allies he pretended to be very much frightened, and by breaking down bridges and establishing fortresses seemed intent upon merely presenting a desperate defense behind his ramparts. Suddenly, in three strong, dense columns, Frederic burst into Bohemia and advanced, with rapid and resistless strides, towards Prague. The unprepared Austrian bands were driven before these impetuous assailants as chaff is dispersed by the whirlwind. With great precipitation the Austrian troops, from all quarters, fled to the city of Prague and rallied beneath its walls. Seventy thousand men were soon collected, strongly intrenched behind ramparts, thrown up outside of the city, from which ramparts, in case of disaster, they could retire behind the walls and into the citadel. The king, with his army, came rushing on like the sweep of the tornado, and plunged, as a thunderbolt of war, into the camp of the Austrians. For a few hours the battle blazed as if it were a strife of demons--hell in high carnival. Eighteen thousand Prussians were mowed down by the Austrian batteries, before the fierce assailants could scale the ramparts. Then, with cimeter and bayonet, they took a bloody revenge. Eight thousand Austrians were speedily weltering in blood. The shriek of the battle penetrated all the dwellings in Prague, appalling every ear, like a wail from the world of woe. The routed Austrians, leaving nine thousand prisoners, in the hands of Frederic, rushed through the gates into the city, while a storm of shot from the batteries on the walls drove back the pursuing Prussians. Prague, with the broken army thus driven within its walls, now contained one hundred thousand inhabitants. The city was totally unprepared for a siege. All supplies of food being cut off, the inhabitants were soon reduced to extreme suffering. The queen was exceedingly anxious that the city should hold out until she could hasten to its relief. She succeeded in sending a message to the besieged army, by a captain of grenadiers, who contrived to evade the vigilance of the besiegers and to gain entrance to the city. "I am concerned," said the empress, "that so many generals, with so considerable a force, must remain besieged in Prague, but I augur favorably for the event. I can not too strongly impress upon your minds that the troops will incur everlasting disgrace should they not effect what the French in the last war performed with far inferior numbers. The honor of the whole nation, as well as that of the imperial aims, is interested in their present behavior. The security of Bohemia, of my other hereditary dominions, and of the German empire itself, depends on a gallant defense and the preservation of Prague. "The army under the command of Marshal Daun is daily strengthening, and will soon be in a condition to raise the siege. The French are approaching with all diligence. The Swedes are marching to my assistance. In a short space of time affairs will, under divine Providence, wear a better aspect." The scene in Prague was awful. Famine strode through all the streets, covering the pavements with the emaciate corpses of the dead. An incessant bombardment was kept up from the Prussian batteries, and shot and shell were falling incessantly, by day and by night, in every portion of the city. Conflagrations were continually blazing; there was no possible place of safety; shells exploded in parlors, in chambers, in cellars, tearing limb from limb, and burying the mutilated dead beneath the ruins of their dwellings. The booming of the cannon, from the distant batteries, was answered by the thunder of the guns from the citadel and the walls, and blended with all this uproar rose the uninterrupted shrieks of the wounded and the dying. The cannonade from the Prussian batteries was so destructive, that in a few days one quarter of the entire city was demolished. Count Daun, with sixty thousand men, was soon advancing rapidly towards Prague. Frederic, leaving a small force to continue the blockade of the city, marched with the remainder of his troops to assail the Austrian general. They soon met, and fought for some hours as fiercely as mortals can fight. The slaughter on both sides was awful. At length the fortune of war turned in favor of the Austrians, though they laid down nine thousand husbands, fathers, sons, in bloody death, as the price of the victory. Frederic was almost frantic with grief and rage as he saw his proud battalions melting away before the batteries of the foe. Six times his cavalry charged with the utmost impetuosity, and six times they were as fiercely repulsed. Frederic was finally compelled to withdraw, leaving fourteen thousand of his troops either slain or prisoners. Twenty-two Prussian standards and forty-three pieces of artillery were taken by the Austrians. The tidings of this victory elated Maria Theresa almost to delirium. Feasts were given, medals struck, presents given, and the whole empire blazed with illuminations, and rang with all the voices of joy. The queen even condescended to call in person upon the Countess Daun to congratulate her upon the great victory attained by her husband. She instituted, on the occasion, a new military order of merit, called the order of Maria Theresa. Count Daun and his most illustrious officers were honored with the first positions in this new order of knighthood. The Prussians were compelled to raise the siege of Prague, and to retreat with precipitation. Bohemia was speedily evacuated by the Prussian troops. The queen was now determined to crush Frederic entirely, so that he might never rise again. His kingdom was to be taken from him, carved up, and apportioned out between Austria, Sweden, Poland and Russia. The Prussians retreated, in a broken band of but twenty-five thousand men, into the heart of Silesia, to Breslau, its beautiful and strongly fortified capital. This city, situated upon the Oder, at its junction with the Ohlau, contained a population of nearly eighty thousand. The fugitive troops sought refuge behind its walls, protected as they were by batteries of the heaviest artillery. The Austrians, strengthened by the French, with an army now amounting to ninety thousand, followed closely on, and with their siege artillery commenced the cannonade of the city. An awful scene of carnage ensued, in which the Austrians lost eight thousand men and the Prussians five thousand, when the remnant of the Prussian garrison, retreating by night through a remote gate, left the city in the hands of the Austrians. It was now mid-winter. But the iron-nerved Frederic, undismayed by these terrible reverses, collected the scattered fragments of his army, and, finding himself at the head of thirty thousand men, advanced to Breslau in the desperate attempt to regain his capital. His force was so inconsiderable as to excite the ridicule of the Austrians. Upon the approach of Frederic, Prince Charles, disdaining to hide behind the ramparts of the city on the defensive, against a foe thus insulting him with inferior numbers, marched to meet the Prussians. The interview between Prince Charles and Frederic was short but very decisive, lasting only from the hour of dinner to the going down of a December's sun. The twilight of the wintry day had not yet come when seven thousand Austrians were lying mangled in death on the blood-stained snow. Twenty thousand were made prisoners. All the baggage of the Austrian army, the military chest, one hundred and thirty-four pieces of cannon, and fifty-nine standards fell into the hands of the victors. For this victory Frederic paid the price of five thousand lives; but _life_ to the poor Prussian soldier must have been a joyless scene, and death must have been a relief. Frederic now, with triumphant banners, approached the city. It immediately capitulated, surrendering nearly eighteen thousand soldiers, six hundred and eighty-six officers and thirteen generals as prisoners of war. In this one storm of battle, protracted through but a few days, Maria Theresa lost fifty thousand men. Frederic then turned upon the Russians, and drove them out of Silesia. The same doom awaited the Swedes, and they fled precipitately to winter quarters behind the cannon of Stralsund. Thus terminated the memorable campaign of 1757, the most memorable of the Seven Years' War. The Austrian army was almost annihilated; but the spirit of the strife was not subdued in any breast. The returning sun of spring was but the harbinger of new woes for war-stricken Europe. England, being essentially a maritime power, could render Frederic but little assistance in troops; but the cabinet of St. James was lavish in voting money. Encouraged by the vigor Frederic had shown, the British cabinet, with enthusiasm, voted him an annual subsidy of three million two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Austria was so exhausted in means and in men, that notwithstanding the most herculean efforts of the queen, it was not until April of the year 1758 that she was able to concentrate fifty thousand men in the field, with the expensive equipments which war demands. Frederic, aided by the gold of England, was early on the move, and had already opened the campaign by the invasion of Moravia, and by besieging Olmutz. The summer was passed in a series of incessant battles, sweeping all over Germany, with the usual vicissitudes of war. In the great battle of Hockkirchen Frederic encountered a woful defeat. The battle took place on the 14th of October, and lasted five hours. Eight thousand Austrians and nine thousand Prussians were stretched lifeless upon the plain. Frederic was at last compelled to retreat, abandoning his tents, his baggage, one hundred and one cannon, and thirty standards. Nearly every Prussian general was wounded. The king himself was grazed by a ball; his horse was shot from under him, and two pages were killed at his side. Again Vienna blazed with illuminations and rang with rejoicing, and the queen liberally dispensed her gifts and her congratulations. Still nothing effectual was accomplished by all this enormous expenditure of treasure, this carnage and woe; and again the exhausted combatants retired to seek shelter from the storms of winter. Thus terminated the third year of this cruel and wasting war. The spring of 1759 opened brightly for Maria Theresa. Her army, flushed by the victory of the last autumn, was in high health and spirits. All the allies of Austria redoubled their exertions; and the Catholic States of Germany with religious zeal rallied against the two heretical kingdoms of Prussia and England. The armies of France, Austria, Sweden and Russia were now marching upon Prussia, and it seemed impossible that the king could withstand such adversaries. More fiercely than ever the storm of war raged. Frederic, at the head of forty thousand men, early in June met eighty thousand Russians and Austrians upon the banks of the Oder, near Frankfort. For seven hours the action lasted, and the allies were routed with enormous slaughter; but the king, pursuing his victory too far with his exhausted troops, was turned upon by the foe, and was routed himself in turn, with the slaughter of one half of his whole army. Twenty-four thousand of the allies and twenty thousand Prussians perished on that bloody day. Frederic exposed his person with the utmost recklessness. Two horses were shot beneath him; several musket balls pierced his clothes; he was slightly wounded, and was rescued from the foe only by the almost superhuman exertions of his hussars. In the darkness of the night the Prussians secured their retreat. We have mentioned that at first Frederic seemed to have gained the victory. So sanguine was he then of success that he dispatched a courier from the field, with the following billet to the queen at Berlin:-- "We have driven the enemy from their intrenchments; in two hours expect to hear of a glorious victory." Hardly two hours had elapsed ere another courier was sent to the queen with the following appalling message:-- "Remove from Berlin with the royal family. Let the archives be carried to Potsdam, and the capital make conditions with the enemy." In this terrible battle the enemy lost so fearfully that no effort was made to pursue Frederic. Disaster never disheartened the Prussian king. It seemed but to rouse anew his energies. With amazing vigor he rallied his scattered forces, and called in reënforcements. The gold of England was at his disposal; he dismantled distant fortresses and brought their cannon into the field, and in a few days was at the head of twenty-eight thousand men, beneath the walls of his capital, ready again to face the foe. The thunderings of battle continued week after week, in unintermitted roar throughout nearly all of Germany. Winter again came. Frederic had suffered awfully during the campaign, but was still unsubdued. The warfare was protracted even into the middle of the winter. The soldiers, in the fields, wading through snow a foot deep, suffered more from famine, frost and sickness than from the bullet of the foe. In the Austrian army four thousand died, in sixteen days of December, from the inclemency of the weather. Thus terminated the campaign of 1759. CHAPTER XXX. MARIA THERESA. From 1759 to 1780. Desolations of War.--Disasters of Prussia.--Despondency of Frederic.-- Death of the Empress Elizabeth.--Accession of Paul III.--Assassination of Paul III.--Accession of Catharine.--Discomfiture of the Austrians.-- Treaty of Peace.--Election of Joseph to the Throne of the Empire.--Death of Francis.--Character of Francis.--Anecdotes.--Energy of Maria Theresa.--Poniatowski.--Partition of Poland.--Maria Theresa as a Mother.--War With Bavaria.--Peace.--Death of Maria Theresa.--Family of the Empress.--Accession of Joseph II.--His Character. The spring of 1760 found all parties eager for the renewal of the strife, but none more so than Maria Theresa. The King of Prussia was, however, in a deplorable condition. The veteran army, in which he had taken so much pride, was now annihilated. With despotic power he had assembled a new army; but it was composed of peasants, raw recruits, but poorly prepared to encounter the horrors of war. The allies were marching against him with two hundred and fifty thousand men. Frederic, with his utmost efforts, could muster but seventy-five thousand, who, to use his own language, "were half peasants, half deserters from the enemy, soldiers no longer fit for service, but only for show." Month after month passed away, during which the whole of Prussia presented the aspect of one wide field of battle. Frederic fought with the energies of desperation. Villages were everywhere blazing, squadrons charging, and the thunders of an incessant cannonade deafened the ear by night and by day. On the whole the campaign terminated in favor of Frederic; the allies being thwarted in all their endeavors to crush him. In one battle Maria Theresa lost twenty thousand men. During the ensuing winter all the continental powers were again preparing for the resumption of hostilities in the spring, when the British people, weary of the enormous expenditures of the war, began to be clamorous for peace. The French treasury was also utterly exhausted. France made overtures to England for a cessation of hostilities; and these two powers, with peaceful overtures, addressed Maria Theresa. The queen, though fully resolved to prosecute the war until she should attain her object, thought it not prudent to reject outright such proposals, but consented to the assembling of a congress at Augsburg. Hostilities were not suspended during the meeting of the congress, and the Austrian queen was sanguine in the hope of being speedily able to crush her Prussian rival. Every general in the field had experienced such terrible disasters, and the fortune of war seemed so fickle, now lighting upon one banner and now upon another, that all parties were wary, practicing the extreme of caution, and disposed rather to act upon the defensive. Though not a single pitched battle was fought, the allies, outnumbering the Prussians, three to one, continually gained fortresses, intrenchments and positions, until the spirit even of Frederic was broken by calamities, and he yielded to despair. He no longer hoped to be able to preserve his empire, but proudly resolved to bury himself beneath its ruins. His despondency could not be concealed from his army, and his bravest troops declared that they could fight no longer. Maria Theresa was elated beyond measure. England was withdrawing from Prussia. Frederic was utterly exhausted both as to money and men; one campaign more would finish the work, and Prussia would lie helpless at the feet of Maria Theresa, and her most sanguine anticipations would be realized. But the deepest laid plans of man are often thwarted by apparently the most trivial events. One single individual chanced to be taken sick and die. That individual was Elizabeth, the Empress of Russia. On the 5th of January, 1762, she was lying upon her bed an emaciate suffering woman, gasping in death. The departure of her last breath changed the fate of Europe. Paul III., her nephew, who succeeded the empress, detested Maria Theresa, and often inveighed bitterly against her haughtiness and her ambition. On the contrary, he admired the King of Prussia. He had visited the court of Berlin, where he had been received with marked attention; and Frederic was his model of a hero. He had watched with enthusiastic admiration the fortitude and military prowess of the Prussian king, and had even sent to him many messages of sympathy, and had communicated to him secrets of the cabinet and their plans of operation. Now, enthroned as Emperor of Russia, without reserve he avowed his attachment to Frederic, and ordered his troops to abstain from hostilities, and to quit the Austrian army. At the same time he sent a minister to Berlin to conclude an alliance with the hero he so greatly admired. He even asked for himself a position in the Prussian army as lieutenant under Frederic. The Swedish court was so intimately allied with that of St. Petersburg, that the cabinet of Stockholm also withdrew from the Austrian alliance, and thus Maria Theresa, at a blow, lost two of her most efficient allies. The King of Prussia rose immediately from his despondency, and the whole kingdom shared in his exultation and his joy. The Prussian troops, in conjunction with the Russians, were now superior to the Austrians, and were prepared to assume the offensive. But again Providence interposed. A conspiracy was formed against the Russian emperor, headed by his wife whom he had treated with great brutality, and Paul III. lost both his crown and his life, in July 1762, after a reign of less than six months. Catharine II., wife of Paul III., with a bloody hand took the crown from the brow of her murdered husband and placed it upon her own head. She immediately dissolved the Prussian alliance, declared Frederic an enemy to the Prussian name, and ordered her troops, in coöperation with those of Austria, to resume hostilities against Frederic. It was an instantaneous change, confounding all the projects of man. The energetic Prussian king, before the Russian troops had time so to change their positions as to coöperate with the Austrians, assailed the troops of Maria Theresa with such impetuosity as to drive them out of Silesia. Pursuing his advantage Frederic overran Saxony, and then turning into Bohemia, drove the Austrians before him to the walls of Prague. Influenced by these disasters and other considerations, Catharine decided to retire from the contest. At the same time the Turks, excited by Frederic, commenced anew their invasion of Hungary. Maria Theresa was in dismay. Her money was gone. Her allies were dropping from her. The Turks were advancing triumphantly up the Danube, and Frederic was enriching himself with the spoils of Saxony and Bohemia. Influenced by these considerations she made overtures for peace, consenting to renounce Silesia, for the recovery of which province she had in vain caused Europe to be desolated with blood for so many years. A treaty of peace was soon signed, Frederic agreeing to evacuate Saxony; and thus terminated the bloody Seven Years' War. Maria Theresa's eldest son Joseph was now twenty-three years of age. Her influence and that of the Emperor Francis was such, that they secured his election to succeed to the throne of the empire upon the death of his father. The emperor elect received the title of King of the Romans. The important election took place at Frankfort, on the 27th of May, 1764. The health of the Emperor Francis I., had for some time been precarious, he being threatened with apoplexy. Three months after the election of his son to succeed him upon the imperial throne, Francis was at Inspruck in the Tyrol, to attend the nuptials of his second son Leopold, with Maria Louisa, infanta of Spain. He was feeble and dejected, and longed to return to his home in Vienna. He imagined that the bracing air of the Tyrol did not agree with his health, and looking out upon the summits which tower around Inspruck exclaimed, "Oh! if I could but once quit these mountains of the Tyrol." On the morning of the 18th of August, his symptoms assumed so threatening a form, that his friends urged him to be bled. The emperor declined, saying, "I am engaged this evening to sup with Joseph, and I will not disappoint him; but I will be blooded to-morrow." The evening came, and as he was preparing to go and sup with his son, he dropped instantly dead upon the floor. Fifty-eight years was his allotted pilgrimage--a pilgrimage of care and toil and sorrow. Even when elevated to the imperial throne, his position was humiliating, being ever overshadowed by the grandeur of his wife. At times he felt this most keenly, and could not refrain from giving imprudent utterance to his mortification. Being at one time present at a levee, which the empress was giving to her subjects, he retired, in chagrin, from the imperial circle into a corner of the saloon, and took his seat near two ladies of the court. They immediately, in accordance with regal etiquette, rose. "Do not regard me," said the emperor bitterly, and yet with an attempt at playfulness, "for I shall remain here until the _court_ has retired, and shall then amuse myself in contemplating the crowd." One of the ladies replied, "As long as your imperial majesty is present the court will be here." "You are mistaken," rejoined the emperor, with a forced smile; "the empress and my children are the court. I am here only as a private individual." Francis I., though an impotent emperor, would have made a very good exchange broker. He seemed to be fond of mercantile life, establishing manufactories, and letting out money on bond and mortgage. When the queen was greatly pressed for funds he would sometimes accept her paper, always taking care to obtain the most unexceptionable security. He engaged in a partnership with two very efficient men for farming the revenues of Saxony. He even entered into a contract to supply the _Prussian_ army with forage, when that army was expending all its energies, during the Seven Years' War, against the troops of Maria Theresa. He judged that his wife was capable of taking care of herself. And she was. Notwithstanding these traits of character, he was an exceedingly amiable and charitable man, distributing annually five hundred thousand dollars for the relief of distress. Many anecdotes are related illustrative of the emperor's utter fearlessness of danger, and of the kindness of his heart. There was a terrible conflagration in Vienna. A saltpeter magazine was in flames, and the operatives exposed to great danger. An explosion was momentarily expected, and the firemen, in dismay, ventured but little aid. The emperor, regardless of peril, approached near the fire to give directions. His attendants urged him not thus to expose his person. "Do not be alarmed for me," said the emperor, "think only of those poor creatures who are in such danger of perishing." At another time a fearful inundation swept the valley of the Danube. Many houses were submerged in isolated positions, all but their roofs. In several cases the families had taken refuge on the tops of the houses, and had remained three days and three nights without food. Immense blocks of ice, swept down by the flood, seemed to render it impossible to convey relief to the sufferers. The most intrepid boatmen of the Danube dared not venture into the boiling surge. The emperor threw himself into a boat, seized the oars, and saying, "My example may at least influence others," pushed out into the flood and successfully rowed to one of the houses. The boatmen were shamed into heroism, and the imperiled people were saved. Maria Theresa does not appear to have been very deeply afflicted by the death of her husband; or we should, perhaps, rather say that her grief assumed the character which one would anticipate from a person of her peculiar frame of mind. The emperor had not been faithful to his kingly spouse, and she was well acquainted with his numerous infidelities. Still she seems affectionately to have cherished the memory of his gentle virtues. With her own hands she prepared his shroud, and she never after laid aside her weeds of mourning. She often descended into the vault where his remains were deposited, and passed hours in prayer by the side of his coffin. Joseph, of course, having been preëlected, immediately assumed the imperial crown. Maria Theresa had but little time to devote to grief. She had lost Silesia, and that was a calamity apparently far heavier than the death of her husband. Millions of treasure, and countless thousands of lives had been expended, and all in vain, for the recovery of that province. She now began to look around for territory she could grasp in compensation for her loss. Poland was surrounded by Austria, Russia and Prussia. The population consisted of two classes--the nobles who possessed all the power, and the _people_ who were in a state of the most abject feudal vassalage. By the laws of Poland every person was a noble who was not engaged in any industrial occupation and who owned any land, or who had descended from those who ever had held any land. The government was what may perhaps be called an aristocratic republic. The masses were mere slaves. The nobles were in a state of political equality. They chose a chieftain whom they called _king_, but whose power was a mere shadow. At this time Poland was in a state of anarchy. Civil war desolated the kingdom, the nobles being divided into numerous factions, and fighting fiercely against each other. Catharine, the Empress of Russia, espoused the cause of her favorite, Count Poniatowski, who was one of the candidates for the crown of Poland, and by the influence of her money and her armies placed him upon the throne and maintained him there. Poland thus, under the influence of the Russian queen, became, as it were, a mere province of the Russian empire. Poniatowski, a proud man, soon felt galled by the chains which Catharine threw around him. Frederic of Prussia united with Catharine in the endeavor to make Poniatowski subservient to their wishes. Maria Theresa eagerly put in her claim for influence in Poland. Thus the whole realm became a confused scene of bloodshed and devastation. Frederic of Prussia, the great regal highwayman, now proposed to Austria and Russia that they should settle all the difficulty by just dividing Poland between them. To their united armies Poland could present no resistance. Maria Theresa sent her dutiful son Joseph, the emperor, to Silesia, to confer with Frederic upon this subject. The interview took place at Neiss, on the 25th of August, 1769. The two sovereigns vied with each other in the interchange of courtesies, and parted most excellent friends. Soon after, they held another interview at Neustadt, in Moravia, when the long rivalry between the houses of Hapsburg and Brandenburg seemed to melt down into most cordial union. The map of Poland was placed before the two sovereigns, and they marked out the portion of booty to be assigned to each of the three imperial highwaymen. The troops of Russia, Austria and Prussia were already in Poland. The matter being thus settled between Prussia and Austria, the Prussian king immediately conferred with Catharine at St. Petersburg. This ambitious and unprincipled woman snatched at the bait presented, and the infamous partition was agreed to. Maria Theresa was very greedy, and demanded nearly half of Poland as her share. This exorbitant claim, which she with much pertinacity adhered to, so offended the two other sovereigns that they came near fighting about the division of the spoil. The queen was at length compelled to lower her pretensions. The final treaty was signed between the three powers on the 5th of August, 1772. The three armies were immediately put in motion, and each took possession of that portion of the Polish territory which was assigned to its sovereign. In a few days the deed was done. By this act Austria received an accession of twenty-seven thousand square miles of the richest of the Polish territory, containing a population of two million five hundred thousand souls. Russia received a more inhospitable region, embracing forty-two thousand square miles, and a population of one million five hundred thousand. The share of Frederic amounted to thirteen thousand three hundred and seventy-five square miles, and eight hundred and sixty thousand souls. Notwithstanding this cruel dismemberment, there was still a feeble Poland left, upon which the three powers were continually gnawing, each watching the others, and snarling at them lest they should get more than their share. After twenty years of jealous watchings the three powers decided to finish their infamous work, and Poland was blotted from the map of Europe. In the two divisions Austria received forty-five thousand square miles and five million of inhabitants. Maria Theresa was now upon the highest pinnacle of her glory and her power. She had a highly disciplined army of two hundred thousand men; her treasury was replenished, and her wide-spread realms were in the enjoyment of peace. Life had been to her, thus far, but a stormy sea, and weary of toil and care, she now hoped to close her days in tranquillity. The queen was a stern and stately mother. While pressed by all these cares of state, sufficient to have crushed any ordinary mind, she had given birth to sixteen children. But as each child was born it was placed in the hands of careful nurses, and received but little of parental caressings. It was seldom that she saw her children more than once a week. Absorbed by high political interests, she contented herself with receiving a daily report from the nursery. Every morning her physician, Van Swieter, visited the young imperial family, and then presented a formal statement of their condition to the strong-minded mother. Yet the empress was very desirous of having it understood that she was the most faithful of parents. Whenever any foreign ambassador arrived at Vienna, the empress would contrive to have an interview, as it were by accident, when she had collected around her her interesting family. As the illustrious stranger retired the children also retired to their nursery. One of the daughters, Josepha, was betrothed to the King of Naples. A few days before she was to leave Vienna the queen required her, in obedience to long established etiquette, to descend into the tomb of her ancestors and offer up a prayer. The sister-in-law, the Emperor Joseph's wife, had just died of the small-pox, and her remains, disfigured by that awful disease, had but recently been deposited in the tomb. The timid maiden was horror-stricken at the requirement, and regarded it as her death doom. But an order from Maria Theresa no one was to disobey. With tears filling her eyes, she took her younger sister, Maria Antoinette, upon her knee, and said, "I am about to leave you, Maria, not for Naples, but to die. I must visit the tomb of our ancestors, and I am sure that I shall take the small-pox, and shall soon be buried there." Her fears were verified. The disease, in its most virulent form, seized her, and in a few days her remains were also consigned to the tomb. In May, 1770, Maria Antoinette, then but fifteen years of age, and marvelously beautiful, was married to the young dauphin of France, subsequently the unhappy Louis XVI. As she left Vienna, for that throne from which she was to descend to the guillotine, her mother sent by her hand the following letter to her husband: "Your bride, dear dauphin, is separated from me. As she has ever been my delight so will she be your happiness. For this purpose have I educated her; for I have long been aware that she was to be the companion of your life. I have enjoined upon her, as among her highest duties, the most tender attachment to your person, the greatest attention to every thing that can please or make you happy. Above all, I have recommended to her humility towards God, because I am convinced that it is impossible for us to contribute to the happiness of the subjects confided to us, without love to Him who breaks the scepters and crushes the thrones of kings according to His own will." In December, 1777, the Duke of Bavaria died without male issue. Many claimants instantly rose, ambitious of so princely an inheritance. Maria Theresa could not resist the temptation to put in her claim. With her accustomed promptness, she immediately ordered her troops in motion, and, descending from Bohemia, entered the electorate. Maria Theresa had no one to fear but Frederic of Prussia, who vehemently remonstrated against such an accession of power to the empire of Austria. After an earnest correspondence the queen proposed that Bavaria should be divided between them as they had partitioned Poland. Still they could not agree, and the question was submitted to the cruel arbitrament of battle. The young Emperor Joseph was much pleased with this issue, for he was thirsting for military fame, and was proud to contend with so renowned an antagonist. The death of hundreds of thousands of men in the game of war, was of little more moment to him than the loss of a few pieces in a game of chess. The Emperor Joseph was soon at the head of one hundred thousand men. The King of Prussia, with nearly an equal force, marched to meet him. Both commanders were exceedingly wary, and the whole campaign was passed in maneuvers and marchings, with a few unimportant battles. The queen was weary of war, and often spoke, with tears in her eyes, of the commencement of hostilities. Without the knowledge of her son, who rejoiced in the opening strife, she entered into a private correspondence with Frederic, in which she wrote, by her secret messenger, M. Thugut: "I regret exceedingly that the King of Prussia and myself, in our advanced years, are about to tear the gray hairs from each other's heads. My age, and my earnest desire to maintain peace are well known. My maternal heart is alarmed for the safety of my sons who are in the army. I take this step without the knowledge of my son the emperor, and I entreat that you will not divulge it. I conjure you to unite your efforts with mine to reëstablish harmony." The reply of Frederic was courteous and beautiful. "Baron Thugut," he wrote, "has delivered me your majesty's letter, and no one is, or shall be acquainted with his arrival. It was worthy of your majesty to give such proofs of moderation, after having so heroically maintained the inheritance of your ancestors. The tender attachment you display for your son the emperor, and the princes of your blood, deserves the applause of every heart, and augments, if possible, the high consideration I entertain for your majesty. I have added some articles to the propositions of M. Thugut, most of which have been allowed, and others which, I hope, will meet with little difficulty. He will immediately depart for Vienna, and will be able to return in five or six days, during which time I will act with such caution that your imperial majesty may have no cause of apprehension for the safety of any part of your family, and particularly of the emperor, whom I love and esteem, although our opinions differ in regard to the affairs of Germany." But the Emperor Joseph was bitterly opposed to peace, and thwarted his mother's benevolent intentions in every possible way. Still the empress succeeded, and the articles were signed at Teschen, the 13th day of May, 1779. The queen was overjoyed at the result, and was often heard to say that no act of her administration had given her such heartfelt joy. When she received the news she exclaimed, "My happiness is full. I am not partial to Frederic, but I must do him the justice to confess that he has acted nobly and honorably. He promised me to make peace on reasonable terms, and he has kept his word. I am inexpressibly happy to spare the effusion of so much blood." The hour was now approaching when Maria Theresa was to die. She had for some time been failing from a disease of the lungs, and she was now rapidly declining. Her sufferings, as she took her chamber and her bed, became very severe; but the stoicism of her character remained unshaken. In one of her seasons of acute agony she exclaimed, "God grant that these sufferings may soon terminate, for, otherwise, I know not if I can much longer endure them." Her son Maximilian stood by her bed-side. She raised her eyes to him and said, "I have been enabled thus far to bear these pangs with firmness and constancy. Pray to God, my son, that I may preserve my tranquillity to the last." The dying hour, long sighed for, came. She partook of the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, and then, assembling her family around her, addressed to them her last words. "I have received the sacraments," said she, "and feel that I am now to die." Then addressing the emperor, she continued, "My son, all my possessions after my death revert to you. To your care I commend my children. Be to them a father. I shall die contented, you giving me that promise." Then looking to the other children she added, "Regard the emperor as your sovereign. Obey him, respect him, confide in him, and follow his advice in all things, and you will secure his friendship and protection." Her mind continued active and intensely occupied with the affairs of her family and of her kingdom, until the very last moment. During the night succeeding her final interview with her children, though suffering from repeated fits of suffocation, she held a long interview with the emperor upon affairs of state. Her son, distressed by her evident exhaustion, entreated her to take some repose; but she replied, "In a few hours I shall appear before the judgment-seat of God; and would you have me lose my time in sleep?" Expressing solicitude in behalf of the numerous persons dependent upon her, who, after her death, might be left friendless, she remarked, "I could wish for immortality on earth, for no other reason than for the power of relieving the distressed." She died on the 29th of November, 1780, in the sixty-fourth year of her age and the forty-first of her reign. This illustrious woman had given birth to six sons and ten daughters. Nine of these children survived her. Joseph, already emperor, succeeded her upon the throne of Austria, and dying childless, surrendered the crown to his next brother Leopold. Ferdinand, the third son, became governor of Austrian Lombardy. Upon Maximilian was conferred the electorate of Cologne. Mary Anne became abbess of a nunnery. Christina married the Duke of Saxony. Elizabeth entered a convent and became abbess. Caroline married the King of Naples, and was an infamous woman. Her sister Joanna, was first betrothed to the king, but she died of small-pox; Josepha was then destined to supply her place; but she also fell a victim to that terrible disease. Thus the situation was vacant for Caroline. Maria Antoinette married Louis the dauphin, and the story of her woes has filled the world. The Emperor Joseph II., who now inherited the crown of Austria, was forty years of age, a man of strong mind, educated by observation and travel, rather than by books. He was anxious to elevate and educate his subjects, declaring that it was his great ambition to rule over freemen. He had many noble traits of character, and innumerable anecdotes are related illustrative of his energy and humanity. In war he was ambitious of taking his full share of hardship, sleeping on the bare ground and partaking of the soldiers' homely fare. He was exceedingly popular at the time of his accession to the throne, and great anticipations were cherished of a golden age about to dawn upon Austria. "His toilet," writes one of his eulogists, "is that of a common soldier, his wardrobe that of a sergeant, business his recreation, and his life perpetual motion." The Austrian monarchy now embraced one hundred and eighty thousand square miles, containing twenty-four millions of inhabitants. It was indeed a heterogeneous realm, composed of a vast number of distinct nations and provinces, differing in language, religion, government, laws, customs and civilization. In most of these countries the feudal system existed in all its direful oppression. Many of the provinces of the Austrian empire, like the Netherlands, Lombardy and Suabia, were separated by many leagues from the great central empire. The Roman Catholic religion was dominant in nearly all the States, and the clergy possessed enormous wealth and power. The masses of the people were sunk in the lowest depths of poverty and ignorance. The aristocratic few rejoiced in luxury and splendor. CHAPTER XXXI. JOSEPH II. AND LEOPOLD II. From 1780 to 1792. Accession of Joseph II.--His Plans of Reform.--Pius VI.--Emancipation of the Serfs.--Joseph's Visit to his Sister, Maria Antoinette.--Ambitions Designs.--The Imperial Sleigh Ride.--Barges on the Dneister.--Excursion to the Crimea.--War with Turkey.--Defeat of the Austrians.--Great Successes.--Death of Joseph.--His Character.--Accession of Leopold II.--His Efforts to confirm Despotism.--The French Revolution.--European Coalition.--Death of Leopold.--His Profligacy.--Accession of Francis II.--Present Extent and Power of Austria.--Its Army.--Policy of the Government. When Joseph ascended the throne there were ten languages, besides several dialects, spoken in Austria--the German, Hungarian, Sclavonian, Latin, Wallachian, Turkish, modern Greek, Italian, Flemish and French. The new king formed the desperate resolve to fuse the discordant kingdom into one homogeneous mass, obliterating all distinctions of laws, religion, language and manners. It was a benevolent design, but one which far surpassed the power of man to execute. He first attempted to obliterate all the old national landmarks, and divided the kingdom into thirteen States, in each of which he instituted the same code of laws. He ordered the German language alone to be used in public documents and offices; declared the Roman Catholic religion to be dominant. There were two thousand convents in Austria. He reduced them to seven hundred, and cut down the number of thirty-two thousand idle monks to twenty-seven hundred; and nobly issued an edict of toleration, granting to all members of Protestant churches the free exercise of their religion. All Christians, of every denomination, were declared to be equally eligible to any offices in the State. These enlightened innovations roused the terror and rage of bigoted Rome. Pope Pius VI. was so much alarmed that he took a journey to Vienna, that he might personally remonstrate with the emperor. But Joseph was inflexible, and the Pope returned to Rome chagrined and humiliated that he had acted the part of a suppliant in vain. The serfs were all emancipated from feudal vassalage, and thus, in an hour, the slavery under which the peasants had groaned for ages was abolished. He established universities, academies and public schools; encouraged literature and science in every way, and took from the priests their office of censorship of the press, an office which they had long held. To encourage domestic manufactures he imposed a very heavy duty upon all articles of foreign manufacture. New roads were constructed at what was called enormous expense, and yet at expense which was as nothing compared with the cost of a single battle. Joseph, soon after his coronation, made a visit to his sister Maria Antoinette in France, where he was received with the most profuse hospitality, and the bonds of friendship between the two courts were much strengthened. The ambition for territorial aggrandizement seems to have been an hereditary disease of the Austrian monarchs. Joseph was very anxious to attach Bavaria to his realms. Proceeding with great caution he first secured, by diplomatic skill, the non-intervention of France and Russia. England was too much engaged in the war of the American Revolution to interfere. He raised an army of eighty thousand men to crush any opposition, and then informed the Duke of Bavaria that he must exchange his dominions for the Austrian Netherlands. He requested the duke to give him an answer in eight days, but declared peremptorily that in case he manifested any reluctance, the emperor would be under the painful necessity of compelling him to make the exchange. The duke appealed to Russia, France and Prussia for aid. The emperor had bought over Russia and France. Frederic of Prussia, though seventy-four years of age, encouraged the duke to reject the proposal, and promised his support. The King of Prussia issued a remonstrance against this despotic act of Austria, which remonstrance was sent to all the courts of Europe. Joseph, on encountering this unexpected obstacle, and finding Europe combining against him, renounced his plan and published a declaration that he had never intended to effect the exchange by force. This disavowal, however, deceived no one. A confederacy was soon formed, under the auspices of Frederic of Prussia, to check the encroachments of the house of Austria. This Germanic League was almost the last act of Frederic. He died August 17, 1786, after a reign of forty-seven years, in the seventy-fifth year of his age. The ambitious Empress of Russia, having already obtained the Crimea, was intent upon the subversion of the Ottoman empire, that she might acquire Constantinople as her maritime metropolis in the sunny south. Joseph was willing to allow her to proceed unobstructed in the dismemberment of Turkey, if she would not interfere with his plans of reform and aggrandizement in Germany. In January, 1787, the Empress of Russia set out on a pleasure excursion of two thousand miles to the Crimea; perhaps the most magnificent pleasure excursion that was ever attempted. She was accompanied by all the court, by the French, English and Austrian ministers, and by a very gorgeous retinue. It was mid-winter, when the imperial party, wrapped in furs, and in large sledges richly decorated, and prepared expressly for the journey, commenced their sleigh ride of a thousand miles. Music greeted them all along the way; bonfires blazed on every hill; palaces, brilliant with illuminations and profusely supplied with every luxury, welcomed them at each stage where they stopped for refreshment or repose. The roads were put in perfect order; and relays of fresh horses every few miles being harnessed to the sledges, they swept like the wind over the hills and through the valleys. The drive of a few weeks, with many loiterings for pleasure in the cities on the way, took them to Kief on the Dnieper. This ancient city, the residence of the grand dukes of Russia, contained a population of about twenty-six thousand. Here the imperial court established itself in the ducal palaces, and with music, songs and dances beguiled the days until, with the returning spring, the river opened. In the meantime an immense flotilla of imperial barges had been prepared to drift down the stream, a thousand miles, to its mouth at Kherson, where the river flows into the Black sea. These barges were of magnificent dimensions, floating palaces, containing gorgeous saloons and spacious sleeping apartments. As they were constructed merely to float upon the rapid current of the stream, impelled by sails when the breeze should favor, they could easily be provided with all the appliances of luxury. It is difficult to conceive of a jaunt which would present more of the attractions of pleasure, than thus to glide in saloons of elegance, with imperial resources and surrounded by youth, beauty, genius and rank, for a thousand miles down the current of one of the wildest and most romantic streams of Europe. It was a beautiful sunny morning of May, when the regal party, accompanied by the music of military bands, and with floating banners, entered the barges. The river, broad and deep, rolls on with majestic flow, now through dense forests, black and gloomy, where the barking of the bear is heard and wolves hold their nightly carousals; now it winds through vast prairies hundreds of miles in extent; again it bursts through mountain barriers where cliffs and crags rise sublimely thousands of feet in the air; here with precipitous sides of granite, bleak and scathed by the storms of centuries, and there with gloomy firs and pines rising to the clouds, where eagles soar and scream and rear their young. Flocks and herds now graze upon the banks; here lies the scattered village, and its whole population, half civilized men, and matrons and maidens in antique, grotesque attire, crowd the shores. Now the pinnacles and the battlements of a great city rise to view. Armies were gathered at several points to entertain the imperial pleasure-party with all the pomp and pageantry of war. At Pultowa they witnessed the maneuverings of a battle, with its thunderings and uproar and apparent carnage--the exact representation of the celebrated battle of Pultowa, which Peter the Great gained on the spot over Charles XII. of Sweden. The Emperor Joseph had been invited to join this party, and, with his court and retinue, was to meet them at Kherson, near the mouth of the Dneister, and accompany the empress to the Crimea. But, perhaps attracted by the splendor of the water excursion, he struck across the country in a north-east direction, by the way of Lemberg, some six hundred miles, to intercept the flotilla and join the party on the river. But the water of the river suddenly fell, and some hundred miles above Kherson, the flotilla ran upon a sand bar and could not be forced over. The empress, who was apprised of the approach of the emperor, too proud to be found in such a situation, hastily abandoned the flotilla, and taking the carriages which they had with them, drove to meet Joseph. The two imperial suites were soon united, and they swept on, a glittering cavalcade, to Kherson. Joseph and Catharine rode in a carriage together, where they had ample opportunity of talking over all their plans of mutual aggrandizement. As no one was permitted to listen to their conversations, their decisions can only be guessed at. They entered the city of Kherson, then containing about sixty thousand inhabitants, surrounded by all the magnificence which Russian and Austrian opulence could exhibit. A triumphal arch spanned the gate, upon which was inscribed in letters of gold, "The road to Byzantium." Four days were passed here in revelry. The party then entered the Crimea, and continued their journey as far as Sevastopol, where the empress was delighted to find, within its capacious harbor, many Russian frigates at anchor. Immense sums were expended in furnishing entertainments by the way. At Batcheseria, where the two sovereigns occupied the ancient palace of the khans, they looked out upon a mountain in a blaze of illumination, and apparently pouring lava floods from its artificial volcanic crater. Joseph returned to Vienna, and immediately there was war--Austria and Russia against Turkey. Joseph was anxious to secure the provinces of Bosnia, Servia, Moldavia and Wallachia, and to extend his empire to the Dneister. With great vigor he made his preparations, and an army of two hundred thousand men, with two thousand pieces of artillery, were speedily on the march down the Danube. Catharine was equally energetic in her preparations, and all the north of Europe seemed to be on the march for the overthrow of the Ottoman empire. Proverbially fickle are the fortunes of war. Joseph commenced the siege of Belgrade with high hopes. He was ignominiously defeated, and his troops were driven, utterly routed, into Hungary, pursued by the Turks, who spread ruin and devastation widely around them. Disaster followed disaster. Disease entered the Austrian ranks, and the proud army melted away. The emperor himself, with about forty thousand men, was nearly surrounded by the enemy. He attempted a retreat by night. A false alarm threw the troops into confusion and terror. The soldiers, in their bewilderment fired upon each other, and an awful scene of tumult ensued. The emperor, on horseback, endeavored to rally the fugitives, but he was swept away by the crowd, and in the midnight darkness was separated from his suite. Four thousand men perished in this defeat, and much of the baggage and several guns were lost. The emperor reproached his aides-de-camp with having deserted him. One of them sarcastically replied, "We used our utmost endeavors to keep up with your imperial majesty, but our horses were not so fleet as yours." Seventy thousand Austrians perished in this one campaign. The next year, 1789, was, however, as prosperous as this had been adverse. The Turks at Rimnik were routed with enormous slaughter, and their whole camp, with all its treasures, fell into the hands of the victors. Belgrade was fiercely assailed and was soon compelled to capitulate. But Joseph was now upon his dying bed. The tidings of these successes revived him for a few hours, and leaving his sick chamber he was conveyed to the church of St. Stephen, where thanksgivings were offered to God. A festival of three days in Vienna gave expression to the public rejoicing. England was now alarmed in view of the rapid strides of Austria and Russia, and the cabinet of St. James formed a coalition with Holland and Prussia to assist the Turks. France, now in the midst of her revolutionary struggle, could take no part in these foreign questions. These successes were, however, but a momentary gleam of sunshine which penetrated the chamber of the dying monarch. Griefs innumerable clustered around him. The inhabitants of the Netherlands rose in successful rebellion and threw off the Austrian yoke. Prussia was making immense preparations for the invasion of Austria. The Hungarians were rising and demanding emancipation from the court of Vienna. These calamities crushed the emperor. He moaned, and wept and died. In his last hours he found much solace in religious observances, devoutly receiving the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, and passing much of his time in prayer. He died on the 20th of February, 1790, in the forty-ninth year of his age, and the tenth of his reign. Joseph had been sincerely desirous of promoting the best interests of his realms; but had been bitterly disappointed in the result of most of his efforts at reform. Just before he died, he said, "I would have engraven on my tomb, 'Here lies the sovereign who, with the best intentions, never carried a single project into execution.'" He was married twice, but both of his wives, in the prime of youth, fell victims to the small-pox, that awful disease which seems to have been a special scourge in the Austrian royal family. As Joseph II. died without children, the crown passed to his next brother, Leopold, who was then Grand Duke of Tuscany. Leopold II., at his accession to the throne, was forty-three years of age. He hastened to Vienna, and assumed the government. By prudent acts of conciliation he succeeded in appeasing discontents, and soon accomplished the great object of his desire in securing the election to the imperial throne. He was crowned at Frankfort, October 9, 1790. With frankness very unusual in the diplomacy of kings, he sought friendly relations with all the neighboring powers. To Frederic William, who was now King of Prussia, he wrote: "In future, I solemnly protest, no views of aggrandizement will ever enter into my political system. I shall doubtless employ all the means in my possession to defend my country, should I unfortunately be driven to such measures; but I will endeavor to give no umbrage. To your majesty in particular, I will act as you act towards me, and will spare no efforts to preserve perfect harmony." To these friendly overtures, Frederic William responded in a similar spirit; but still there were unsettled points of dispute between the two kingdoms which threatened war, and large armies were gathered on their respective frontiers in preparation for the commencement of hostilities. In 1790, after much correspondence, they came to terms, and articles of peace were signed. At the same time an armistice was concluded with the Turks. The spirit of liberty which had emancipated the colonies of North America from the aristocratic sway of England, shivering the scepter of feudal tyranny in France, had penetrated Hungary. Leopold was endeavoring to rivet anew the shackles of despotism, when he received a manly remonstrance from an assembly of Hungarians which had been convened as Pest. In the following noble terms they addressed the king. "The fame, august sovereign, which has preceded you, has declared you a just and gracious prince. It says that you forget not that you are a man; that you are sensible that the king was made for the people, not the people for the king. From the rights of nations and of man, and from that social compact whence states arose, it is incontestable that the sovereignty originates from the people. This axiom, our parent Nature has impressed on the hearts of all. It is one of those which a just prince (and such we trust your majesty ever will be) can not dispute. It is one of those inalienable imprescriptible rights which the people can not forfeit by neglect or disuse. Our constitution places the sovereignty jointly in the king and people, in such a manner that the remedies necessary to be applied according to the ends of social life, for the security of persons and property, are in the power of the people. "We are sure, therefore, that at the meeting of the ensuing diet, your majesty will not confine yourself to the objects mentioned in your rescript, but will also restore our freedom to us, in like manner as to the Belgians, who have conquered theirs with the sword. It would be an example big with danger, to teach the world that a people can only protect or regain their liberties by the sword and not by obedience." But Leopold, trembling at the progress which freedom was making in France, determined to crush this spirit with an iron heel. Their petition was rejected with scorn and menace. With great splendor Leopold entered Presburg, and was crowned King of Hungary on the 10th of November, 1790. Having thus silenced the murmurs in Hungary, and established his authority there, he next turned his attention to the recovery of the Netherlands. The people there, breathing the spirit of French liberty, had, by a simultaneous rising, thrown off the detestable Austrian yoke. Forty-five thousand men were sent to effect their subjugation. On the 20th of November, the army appeared before Brussels. In less than one year all the provinces were again brought under subjection to the Austrian power. Leopold, thus successful, now turned his attention to France. Maria Antoinette was his sister. He had another sister in the infamous Queen Caroline of Naples. The complaints which came incessantly from Versailles and the Tuilleries filled his ear, touched his affections, and roused his indignation. Twenty-five millions of people had ventured to assert their rights against the intolerable arrogance of the French court. Leopold now gathered his armies to trample those people down, and to replace the scepter of unlimited despotism in the hands of the Bourbons. With sleepless zeal Leopold coöperated with nearly all the monarchs in Europe, in combining a resistless force to crush out from the continent of Europe the spirit of popular liberty. An army of ninety thousand men was raised to coöperate with the French emigrants and all the royalists in France. The king was to escape from Paris, place himself at the head of the emigrants, amounting to more than twenty thousand, rally around his banners all the advocates of the old regime, and then, supported by all the powers of combined Europe, was to march upon Paris, and take a bloody vengeance upon a people who dared to wish to be free. The arrest of Louis XVI. at Varennes deranged this plan. Leopold, alarmed not only by the impending fate of his sister, but lest the principles of popular liberty, extending from France, should undermine his own throne, wrote as follows to the King of England: "I am persuaded that your majesty is not unacquainted with the unheard of outrage committed by the arrest of the King of France, the queen my sister and the royal family, and that your sentiments accord with mine on an event which, threatening more atrocious consequences, and fixing the seal of illegality on the preceding excesses, concerns the honor and safety of all governments. Resolved to fulfill what I owe to these considerations, and to my duty as chief of the German empire, and sovereign of the Austrian dominions, I propose to your majesty, in the same manner as I have proposed to the Kings of Spain, Prussia and Naples, as well as to the Empress of Russia, to unite with them, in a concert of measures for obtaining the liberty of the king and his family, and setting bounds to the dangerous excesses of the French Revolution." The British _people_ nobly sympathized with the French in their efforts at emancipation, and the British government dared not _then_ shock the public conscience by assailing the patriots in France. Leopold consequently turned to Frederic William of Prussia, and held a private conference with him at Pilnitz, near Dresden, in Saxony, on the 27th of August, 1791. The Count d'Artois, brother of Louis XVI., and who subsequently ascended the French throne as Charles X., joined them in this conference. In the midst of these agitations and schemes Leopold II. was seized with a malignant dysentery, which was aggravated by a life of shameless debauchery, and died on the 1st of March, 1792, in the forty-fifth year of his age, and after a reign of but two years. Leopold has the reputation of having been, on the whole, a kind-hearted man, but his court was a harem of unblushing profligacy. His broken-hearted wife was compelled to submit to the degradation of daily intimacy with the mistress of her husband. Upon one only of these mistresses the king lavished two hundred thousand dollars in drafts on the bank of Vienna. The sums thus infamously squandered were wrested from the laboring poor. His son, Francis II., who succeeded him upon the throne, was twenty-two years of age. In most affecting terms the widowed queen entreated her son to avoid those vices of his father which had disgraced the monarchy and embittered her whole life. The reign of Francis II. was so eventful, and was so intimately blended with the fortunes of the French Revolution, the Consulate and the Empire, that the reader must be referred to works upon those subjects for the continuation of the history. During the wars with Napoleon Austria lost forty-five thousand square miles, and about three and a half millions of inhabitants. But when at length the combined monarchs of Europe triumphed over Napoleon, the monarch of the people's choice, and, in the carnage of Waterloo, swept constitutional liberty from the continent, Austria received again nearly all she had lost. This powerful empire, as at present constituted, embraces: square miles inhabitants 1 The hereditary States of Austria, 76,199 9,843,490 2 The duchy of Styria, 8,454 780,100 3 Tyrol, 11,569 738,000 4 Bohemia, 20,172 3,380,000 5 Moravia 10,192 1,805,500 6 The duchy of Auschnitz in Galicia, 1,843 335,190 7 Illyria, 9,132 897,000 8 Hungary, 125,105 10,628,500 9 Dalmatia, 5,827 320,000 10 The Lombardo-Venetian Kingdom, 17,608 4,176,000 11 Galicia, 32,272 4,075,000 Thus the whole Austrian monarchy contains 256,399 square miles, and a population which now probably exceeds forty millions. The standing army of this immense monarchy, in time of peace, consists of 271,400 men, which includes 39,000 horse and 17,790 artillery. In time of war this force can be increased to almost any conceivable amount. Thus slumbers this vast despotism, in the heart of central Europe, the China of the Christian world. The utmost vigilance is practiced by the government to seclude its subjects, as far as possible, from all intercourse with more free and enlightened nations. The government is in continual dread lest the kingdom should be invaded by those liberal opinions which are circulating in other parts of Europe. The young men are prohibited, by an imperial decree, from leaving Austria to prosecute their studies in foreign universities. "Be careful," said Francis II. to the professors in the university at Labach, "not to teach too much. I do not want learned men in my kingdom; I want good subjects, who will do as I bid them." Some of the wealthy families, anxious to give their children an elevated education, and prohibited from sending them abroad, engaged private tutors from France and England. The government took the alarm, and forbade the employment of any but native teachers. The Bible, the great chart of human liberty, all despots fear and hate. In 1822 a decree was issued by the emperor prohibiting the distribution of the Bible in any part of the Austrian dominions. The censorship of the press is rigorous in the extreme. No printer in Austria would dare to issue the sheet we now write, and no traveler would be permitted to take this book across the frontier. Twelve public censors are established at Vienna, to whom every book published within the empire, whether original or reprinted, must be referred. No newspaper or magazine is tolerated which does not advocate despotism. Only those items of foreign intelligence are admitted into those papers which the emperor is willing his subjects should know. The _freedom_ of republican America is carefully excluded. The slavery which disgraces our land is ostentatiously exhibited in harrowing descriptions and appalling engravings, as a specimen of the degradation to which republican institutions doom the laboring class. A few years ago, an English gentleman dined with Prince Metternich, the illustrious prime minister of Austria, in his beautiful castle upon the Rhine. As they stood after dinner at one of the windows of the palace, looking out upon the peasants laboring in the vineyards, Metternich, in the following words, developed his theory of social order: "Our policy is to extend all possible _material_ happiness to the whole population; to administer the laws patriarchaly; to prevent their tranquility from being disturbed. Is it not delightful to see those people looking so contented, so much in the possession of what makes them comfortable, so well fed, so well clad, so quiet, and so religiously observant of order? If they are injured in persons or property, they have immediate and unexpensive redress before our tribunals, and in that respect, neither I, nor any nobleman in the land, has the smallest advantage over a peasant." But volcanic fires are heaving beneath the foundations of the Austrian empire, and dreadful will be the day when the eruption shall burst forth. INDEX. ADOLPHUS (of Nassau) election of over the Germanic empire, 36. summoned to answer charges against him, 37. deposed by the diet, 37. death of, 37. ADRIAN assumes the tiara, 114. �NEAS SYLVIUS, remarks of, 72. AGNES (daughter of Cunegunda) to marry Rhodolph's son, 31. engaged in the massacre, 40. enters a convent, 41. AIX-LA-CHAPELLE, coronation of Albert I. at, 88. coronation of Charles V. at, 107. taken possession of by Rhodolph, 193. peace of, 461. ALBERT (fourth Count of Hapsburg), 17. departure of for the holy war, 17. address of to his sons, 18. death of, 18. the favorite captain of Frederic II., 19. ALBERT I. succeeds his father, 35. his character, 35. elected Emperor of Germany, 37. victor at Gelheim, 37. assassination of, 40. ALBERT III. rules with Otho, 46. acquisitions of, 47. ALBERT IV., succession of, 51. improvements projected by, 58. ALBERT V. declared of age, 59. accepted King of Hungary, 62. death of, 65. ALBERT (of Bavaria) declines the throne of Hungary, 66. ALBERT (Archduke) the candidate of the Catholics, 229. ALLIANCE of barons to crush Rhodolph of Hapsburg, 21. same dissolved, 22. ALPHONSO (of Castile) candidate for crown of Germany, 23. ALPHONSO (King of Naples), abdication of, 84. AMURATH, conquests of, 64. ANABAPTISTS, rise of the sect of, 115. ANHALT (Prince of), dispatched with a list of grievances to the emperor, 211. address to the emperor, 212. ban of the empire declared against, 265. ANN (Princess of Hungary and Bohemia), marriage of to Ferdinand I., 145. ANNA (of Russia), desire of to secure a harbor for Russia, 400. ANECDOTES of Rhodolph, 33. of Charles V., 144. APOLOGY of Maximilian, 96. ASCHHAUSEN, confederacy at, 194. AUGSBURG, diet of, 24. bold speech of the diet at, 102. triumphal reception of Maurice at, 133. Confession of, 118. AUGUSTUS II. loses and regains his empire, 382. death of, 382. AULIC COUNCIL, establishment of the, 102. AUSTRIA, a portion of given as dowry to Hedwige, 25. nucleus of the empire of, 27. invasion of by John of Bohemia, 49. wonderful growth of, 52. division of, 72. accession of Ladislaus over, 81. the house of invested with new dignity, 101. becomes a part of Spain, 108. the empire of apparently on the eve of dissolution, 286. the leading power in Europe, 314. dispute as to the succession to the crown of, 352. treaty between Spain and, 373. Maria Theresa ascends the throne of, 415. deplorable state of at that time, 415. defeat of by Frederic, 420. the proposed division of, 422. prosperity of, 444. important territory wrested from, 453. alliance of with Prussia, 459. Joseph II. ascends the throne of, 491. situation and character of, 492. languages spoken in, 493. Leopold ascends the throne of, 500. acquisitions of by the battle of Waterloo, 504 present constitution of, 504. doctrines of the government of, 503. its future, 506. AUSTRIANS, triumph of the at Brussels, 340. triumph of the at Malplaquet, 341. evacuation of Madrid by the, 345. prohibited from trading-with Spain, 380. the, driven from the Neapolitan States, 388. the, defeated at Crotzka, 407. BADEN, peace of, 359. BAJAZET, victory achieved by, 64. BALDER, attack of Rhodolph upon, 22. BALLOT-BOX, its authority in Poland, 385. BALNE (Lord), followers of put to death, 40. BANDITTI, companies of put down by Rhodolph, 32. BARBARIA, wife of Sigismond, 60. BARCELONA, capture of by Charles, 354. BASLE, attack upon the city of, 20. demands of the Bishop of upon Rhodolph, 22. impious remark of the Bishop of, 23 aid of the Bishop of to Rhodolph, 29. BAVARIA (Henry, Duke of), intimidated by Rhodolph, 25. marriage of Hedwige to Otho of, 25. agrees to carry the edict of Worms into effect, 114. his hatred of Wallenstein, 275. urged as a candidate for the imperial crown, 279. dishonorable despair of, 438. death of, 488. BAVARIA (Charles of), death of, 451. BAVARIA, Maximilian Joseph ascends the throne of, 451. BAYARD (Chevalier De), the knight without fear or reproach, 90. BELGRADE, relief of, 69. siege of, 360. capture of by Eugene, 363. surrendered to the Turks, 408. BELLEISLE (General), heroic retreat of, 441. BLENHEIM, massacre at, 334. BLOODY diet, the, 158. theater of Eperies, 325. BOHEMIA, triumphal march of Rhodolph into, 30. the crown of demanded by Albert I., 39. revolt in, 89. rise of the nobles of against Ferdinand, 127. the monarchy of, 154. religious conflicts in, 155. resistance of to Ferdinand, 156. symptoms of the decay of, 160. Ferdinand's blow at, 263. severity of Ferdinand towards, 270. son of Ferdinand crowned king of, 271. change of prosperity of during reign of Ferdinand II., 272. rise of the Protestants in, 286. the Elector of Bavaria crowned king of, 434. the Prussians driven from, 450. (King of), chosen Emperor of Germany, 431. BRANDENBURG, reply of the Marquis of to Charles V., 118. BRITISH MINISTER, letter of the in regard to Maria Theresa, 295. letter of the in regard to the affairs in Hungary, 416. BRUNAU, the Protestant church of, 235. BRUNSWICK, marriage of Charles VI. to Elizabeth Christina of, 164. BRUSSELS, diet at, 139. BUDA taken by the Turks, 147. BULL (see Pope). BURGHERS prevented from attending Protestant worship, 188. BURGUNDY (Duke of), ambition of the, 77. BURGUNDY (Mary of), marriage of by proxy, 79. death of, 79. C�SAR BORGIA, plans for, 89. CALENDAR, the Julian and Gregorian, 192. CAMPEGIO, a legate from the Pope to, 114. CAPISTRUN, JOHN, rousing eloquence of, 69. CARDINAL KLESES, counselor to the king, 241. abduction of, 242. CARINTHIA, dukedom of, 48. CARLOS crowned as Charles III., 388. CARLOVITZ, treaty of, 326. CASSAU captured by Botskoi, 198. CASTLE (Hawk's), situation of, 17. (Oeltingen), the dowry of Gertrude of Hohenburg, 19. CATHARINE II. ascends the throne of Russia, 480. cooperates with Austria. 481. desire of to acquire Constantinople, 495. grand excursion of, 496. places Count Poniatowski on the throne of Poland, 484. CATHERINE BORA, marriage of to Luther, 114. CHANCELLOR OF SAXONY, reading of the Confession of Augsburg by, 118. reply of to the emperor, 118. CHARLES OF BOHEMIA, succession of to the kingdom of Austria, 47. death of, 47. CHARLES EMANUEL (King of Sardinia) character of, 386. CHARLES GUSTAVUS succeeds Christina, Queen of Sweden, 302. his invasion of Poland, 303. energy of, 305. CHARLES (Prince), defeat of by Frederic, 254. CHARLES (Prince of Lorraine) marriage of, 447. CHARLES II., the throne of Spain held by, 328. sends embassage to the pope, 329. induced to bequeath the crown to France, 330. death of, 331. CHARLES III. crowned King of Spain, 332. army of routed, 340. arrival of at Barcelona, 342. desperate condition of, 344. flight of, 346. description of his appearance, 353. dilatoriness of, 355. crowned king, 356. Carlos crowned as, 388. (See also Charles VI.) CHARLES V. (of Spain) inherits the Austrian States, 106. petitions to, 106. required to sign a constitution, 108. ambition of, 109. apologetic declaration of, 112. refusal of to violate his safe conduct, 112. attempts of to bribe Luther, 113. determination of to suppress religious agitation, 115. interview of with the pope at Bologna, 117. call of for the diet at Augsburg, 117. intolerance of, 119. appeal of to the Protestants for aid, 122. in violation of his pledge, turns against the Protestants, 122. secret treaty of with the King of France, 123. treaty of with the Turks, 123. forces secured by against the Protestants, 124. alarm of at the preparations of the Protestants, 125. preparations of to enforce the Council of Trent, 125. march of to Ingolstadt, 126. flight of to Landshut, 126. triumph of over the Protestants, 126. conquers the Elector of Saxony, 128. revenge of towards the Elector of Saxony, 128. march to Wittemberg, 128. visit to the grave of Luther, 129. attempts of to settle the religious differences, 129. attempt of to establish the inquisition in Burgundy, 129. power of over the pope, 130. calls a diet at Augsburg. 130. failure of to accomplish the election of Philip, 131. confounded at the success of the Protestants. 133. flight of from Maurice, 133. unconquerable will of, 135. urged to yield, 136. fortune deserting, 137. extraordinary despondency of, 138. abdication of in favor of Philip, his son, 139. enters the convent of St. Justus, 141. convent life of, 141. death of, 143. anecdotes of, 144. attempt of to abdicate the elective crown of Germany to Ferdinand, 160. CHARLES VI. (see also Charles III. for previous information), limitations imposed on the power of, 356. desertion of by his allies, 357. addition of Wallachia and Servia to the dominion of, 364. marriage of, 364. his alteration of the compact established by Leopold, 364. power of, 365. involved in duplicity, 377. insult to, 380. ambition of to secure the throne of Spain for his daughters, 382. the loss of Lombardy felt by, 387. attempt of to force assistance from France, 390. his first acknowledgment of the people, in his letter to Count Kinsky, 391. interference of in Poland, 393. sends Strickland to London to overthrow the cabinet, 391. troubles of in Italy, 394. distraction of, 396. proposal of for a settlement with France, 397. humbled by loss of empire. 398. a scrupulous Romanist, 400. removal of all the Protestants from the army, 404. fears of for the safety of Maria Theresa, 406. anguish of at the surrender of Belgrade, 411. letter of to the Queen of Russia, 412. death of, 414. CHARLES VII., death of, 451. CHARLES VIII. informed of the league against him, 88. death of, 89. CHARLES XII. joins the Austrian party, 335. death of, 368. conquests of, 382. CHAZLEAU, battle of, 435. CHRISTIANA, the succession of Sweden conferred upon, 280. abdicates in favor of Charles Gustavus, 302. CHRISTIAN IV. (of Denmark), leader of the Protestants, declares war, 267. conquered by Ferdinand, 268. CHURCH, exactions of the, 102. CILLI, influence of Count over Ladislaus, 68. driven from the empire, 68. CLEMENT VII. succeeds Adrian as pope, 116. CLEVES, duchy of put in sequestration, 213. COLOGNE, the Archbishop of joins the Protestants, 124. deposition of the Archbishop of, 126. CONDUCT, Luther presented with a safe, 110. CONFESSION OF AUGSBURG, 118. reading of, 119. CONGRESS at Rothenburg, 226. at Hanau, 445. at Prague, 1618, and letter of to Matthias, 236. of electors at Frankfort, 35. CONSPIRACY against Albert, 36. formed by Albert against Adolphus, 37. CONSTANTINOPLE, capture of by the Turks, 64. CONSTITUTION, Charles V. required to sign a, 108. COUNCIL of Trent, 124. of Trent in 1562, 164. of State convened in Spain, 331. CREMNITZ, resistance of, 148. CREMONIA to be disposed of as plunder, 89. CROATIA invaded by the Turks, 195. CROTZKA. battle of, 407. CRUSADE against the Turks, 64. CUNEGUNDA (wife of Ottocar), her taunts, 27. offer of to place Bohemia under the protection of Rhodolph, 31. DANUBE, position of Austria on the, 25. DAUN (Count), honors of at his victory, 473. DENMARK, the King of obliged to yield to Charles Gustavus, 306. DIEPOLD thrown from the palace by the mob, 328. DIET, command of the of Augsburg to Ottocar, 14. at Augsburg, 118. at Augsburg, 130. at Brussels. 139. at Lubec, 269. at Prague, in 1547, 158. at Prague, 179. the Protestant at Prague, 209. decrees of the, 210. at Passau, 137. its agreement as to the rights of the Protestants, 138. at Pilgram, 66. at Presburg, accusation of Leopold by the, 309. at Ratisbon, 179. at Spires, 116. at Stetzim, 349. demands of, 350. at Worms, 86. refusal of the at Worms to cooperate with Maximilian, 96. at Znaim, 61. power of the Hungarian, 308. DOCTRINE of the three parties, 190. ancient and modern, contention about shadowy points of, 255. DRESDEN, treaty of, 458. ERNEST, death of, 202. ELEONORA (wife of Leopold), her character, 335. marriage of, 336. her death, 337. ELFSNABEN, a fleet assembled at by Gustavus Adolphus, 281, ELIZABETH (wife of Philip V.), ambition of, 371. demands of on Charles VI., 372. ELIZABETH (of Russia), death of, 479. EMERIO TEKELI invested with the Hungarian forces, 319. ENGLAND, assistance of against the Turks, 94. supports the house of Austria against France, 332. curious contradictory conduct of, 346. pledge of to support the Pragmatic Sanction, 380. supports Austria to check France, 428. determines to support Maria Theresa, 436. prodigality of, 447. war declared against by France, 448. purchases the aid of Poland, 452. private arrangement of with Prussia, 457. remonstrated with for its treatment of the queen, 463. alliance of with Prussia, 466. a subsidy voted Prussia by, 475. alarmed at the strides of Austria and Russia, 499. EPERIES, tribunal at, 324. ERNEST, conquests of, 59. EUGENE (Prince) commands the Austrian army, 332. his heroic capture of Belgrade, 363. his disapproval of the war, 389. death of, 398. funeral honors of. 399. EUROPE, condition of the different powers of, 269. EXCOMMUNICATION of the Venetians, 97. FAMILY of Rhodolph, 25. the three daughters of the imperial, 364. FERDINAND (of Austria) invested with the government of the Austrian States, 113. determines to arrest Protestantism, 114. assumes some impartiality, 116. chosen King of the Romans, 120. Bohemia and Hungary added to his kingdom, 146. demands the restitution of Belgrade, 146. his siege of Buda, 153. tribute of to the Turks, 153. his attempts to weaken the power of the Hungarian nobles, 155. conditions of his pardon of the Hungarian nobles, 157. his punishment of the revolters, 158. his establishment of the Jesuits in Bohemia, 158. his inconsistencies, 158. obtains the crown of Germany, 161. opposed by the pope, 162. elected Emperor of Germany, 233. character of, 234. rich spoils of, 273. he assembles a diet at Eatisbon, 275. perplexity of in regard to the demands of the diet, 277. FERDINAND (King of Arragon) furnishes supplies for the war against the Venetians, 95. FERDINAND (of Naples), flight of to Ischia, 85. FERDINAND (King of the Romans) crowned at Ratisbon, 302. his death, 302. FERDINAND I. illustrious birth of, 145. marriage of, 145. efforts of to unite Protestants and Catholics, 164. attempts of to prevent the spread of Protestantism, 167. the founder of the Austrian empire, 168. death of, 168. FERDINAND II. manifesto of, 240. abduction of Cardinal Kleses by, 242. troops of defeated by the Protestants, 243. refers the complaints of the Protestants to arbitration, 343. unpopularity of with the Catholics, 247. unexpected rescue of, 249. elected King of Germany, 250. concludes an alliance with Maximilian, 254. secures the coöperation of the Elector of Saxony and Louis XIII., 256. subdues Austria, 257. barbarity of the troops of, 258. vengeance of, 263. meeting at Ratisbon to approve the acts of, 265. victories of, 268. capture of the duchies of Mecklenburg, 268. seizes Pomerania, 268. revokes all concessions to the Protestants, 270. son of crowned King of Bohemia, 271. manifesto of against Gustavus Adolphus, 283. decorous appreciation of to the memory of Gustavus Adolphus, 296. outwitted by a Capuchin friar, 279. succeeds in securing the election of his son Ferdinand, 299. his death, 299. FERDINAND III. ascends the throne, 245. his proposal for a truce with Prague, 246. desire of for peace, 300. succeeds in securing the election of his son as Ferdinand King of the Romans, 302. death of, 303. FLEURY (Cardinal), ascendancy of over Louis XV., 378. FLORENCE threatened by Louis XII., 90. FRANCE influence of in wresting sacrifices from the emperor, 279. the dominant power, 315. fraud by which obtained possession of Spain, 331. condition of under Louis XIV., 357. refusal of to engage in the Polish war, 390. design of to deprive Maria Theresa of her kingdom, 428. declares war against England, 448. alliance of effected with Austria. 467. FRANCIS (of France) claims Austria, 106. perfidy of, 127. death of, 128. FRANCIS I. (Duke of Lorraine) elected Emperor of Germany, 457. FRANCIS II. ascends the throne, 504. FRANCIS RAVAILLAC, the assassin of Henry IV., 215. FRANKFORT, congress at, 35. FREDERIC (King of Naples), doom of, 92. FREDERIC (of Saxony) friendly seizure of Luther by, 113. death of, 114. FREDERIC I. (the Handsome) capture of 43. surrender of, 44. death of, 45. FREDERIC II. (of Germany) renown of, 18. death of, 482. curious occupations of, 483. FREDERIC II. (of Austria) treachery of, 75. wanderings of, 77. death of, 81. FREDERIC V., character of, 251. accepts the crown of Bohemia, 251. inefficiency of, 258. his feast during the assault, 258. renounces all claim to Bohemia, 259. flight of, 262. his property sequestrated, 264. FREDERIC (King of Bohemia, Elector of Palatine), death of, 296. FREDERIC (of Prussia), demands of, 417. seizure of Silesia by, 418. triumphal entrance into Breslau, 419. his defeat of Neuperg, 420. opinions of on magnanimity, 423. his indignation at the small concessions of Austria, 424. implores peace, 433. violation of his pledge, 435. capture of Prague by, 419. surprises and defeats Prince Charles, 454. invasion of Saxony by, 458. explanation demanded from Austria by, 469. artifice of to entrap the allies, 470. defeat of at Prague, 473. recklessness of, 476. undaunted perseverance of, 477. despair of, 479. secures an alliance with Prussia, 480. letter of to Maria Theresa, 488. peaceful reply of, 500. FRENCH, the, driven out of Italy, 94. the, routed near Brussels, 340. rout of at Brussels, 340. defeat of the at Malplaquet, 341. GABRIEL BETHLEHEM chosen leader in the Hungarian revolution, 152. he retires to Presburg, 253. compelled to sue for peace, 268. GELHEIM, battle of, 37. GALLAS appointed commander in place of Wallenstein, 268. GENOA, aid furnished Leopold by, 311. GERMANY, its conglomeration of States, 18. independence of each State of, 18. position of the Emperor of, 19. decline of the imperial dignity of, 85. its division into ten districts, 101. growing independence in of the pope, 162. tranquillity of under Ferdinand, 172. rejoicing in at the downfall of Rhodolph, 225. divided into two leagues, 253. distracted state of, 299. religious agitation in, 370. the Elector of Bavaria chosen Emperor of, 434. GERTRUDE (of Hohenburg), marriage of to Rhodolph of Hapsburg, 19. her dowry, 19. GHIARADADDA to be bestowed on Venice, 89. GIBRALTAR taken by the English, 339. GOLDEN FLEECE, establishment of the order of the, 372. GRAN, capture of the fortress at, 324. GREAT WARDEIN, siege of, 307. the Turks retain, 313. GRENADER, the plot at, 92. GRIEVANCES complained of by the confederacy at Heilbrun, 192. GUICCIARDINI, remark of Charles V. about, 144. GUNPOWDER, its introduction, 82. GUNTZ, triumphant resistance of the fortress of, 150. GUSTAVUS YASA (King of Sweden), league with against Charles V., 127. GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS, rouses the country against Ferdinand II., 280. assembles a fleet at Elfsnaben, 281. Stettin captured by, 281. Mark of Brandenburg taken possession of by, 281. conquers at the battle of Leipsic, 285. his tranquil campaign, 286. his intrenchment at Nuremberg, 290. his attack on Wallenstein, 293. his death, 293. relics of, 295. HANAU, conference at, 445. HANOVER, title of the Elector of to the crown of England, 367. HAWK'S Castle. (See Castle.) HEDWIGE, wife of Albert of Hapsburg, 18. betrothal of, 53. HELVETIC STATES, independence of acknowledged, 89. HENRY (Duke of Anjou), abdication of the throne of Poland, 180. succeeds Charles IX., 180. HENRY (Duke of Carinthia) chosen king, 39. HENRY (Count of Luxemburg) elected Emperor of Austria, 41. his death, 41. HENRY (of Valois) succeeds Charles IX., 171. HENRY VIII. (of England) claims Austria, 107. HENRY IV. (of France), efforts of to unite Lutherans and Calvinists, 190. political course of, 214. assassination of, 215. his plans for remodeling Europe, 216. HOCKKIRCHEN, battle of, 475. HOLY LEAGUE, formation of, 116. HUNGARIANS, the, summons a diet, 349. the, remonstrate with Leopold, 501. (see also Hungary.) HUNGARY, despotism of Rhodolph III. in, 196. new revolt in, 307. attempt of Leopold to establish despotic power in, 317. rise of against Leopold, 333. troubles in observed by Joseph I., 349. enthusiastic support of Maria Theresa in, 432. (see also Hungarian.) HUNNLADES (John), regent of Hungary, 68, popularity of, 68. death of, 71. HYMN, singing of a by the army of Gustavus on the field of battle, 292. ISABELLA (wife of Frederic), death of, 45. ISABELLA (of Spain), determination of to obtain for her son the crown of Hungary, 152. propositions of to Ferdinand for peace, 154. IMPERIAL CHAMBER, creation of the, 87. INGOLSTADT, Charles V. marches to, 126. INNSPRUCK, arrival of the Duke of Ludovico at, 90. the emperor sick at, 103. the palace at surrendered to pillage, 134. INSURRECTION in Vienna, 36. of Suabia, 55. INZENDORF, the Lord of arrested by Matthias, 206. ISCHIA, flight of Ferdinand to the island of, 85. ITALY, invasion of by Mahomet II., 82. victories of Henry of France in, 136. invaded by the Spaniards, 388. invaded by the French and Spaniards, 452. JAGHELLON, the Grand Duke, 53. marriage of Hedwige to, 54. baptism of, 54. (for further reference see Ladislaus.) JAMES I., matrimonial negotiations of, 266. JEANETTE POISSON (see Marchioness of Pompadour). JESUITS, the, expelled from Prague, 239. JOANNA (of Spain), insanity of, 106. JOHN (of Bohemia), character of, 46. his invasion of Austria, 49. JOHN SIGISMOND, death of, 178. JOHN SOBIESKI goes to the relief of Vienna, 320. enthusiastic reception of, 322. refuses to fight Tekeli, 324. JOHN (the Constant) succeeds Frederic, Elector of Saxony, 114. JOHN (of Tapoli), negotiations of with the Turks for the throne of Hungary, 151. marriage and death of, 52. JOHN (of Medici) elected pope, 100. JOSEPH (of Germany) elected as successor of Leopold, 316. JOSEPH I. secures a treaty with France for neutrality for Italy, 339. continues the war against Spain, 338. political concessions of in Hungary, 349. refusal of to grant the demands of the diet, 350. Transylvania again subject to, 351. rout of the Hungarians by, 351. death of, 352. JOSEPH II. (of Austria) elected to succeed the Emperor Francis, 481. assumes the crown of Germany, 484. succeeds Maria Theresa, 491. character of, 492. death of, 500. attempt of to obliterate distinctions in Austria, 493. emancipates the serfs of, 494. joins the excursion of Catherine II., 497. defeat of at Belgrade, 498. successes of, 499. JULIUS III. ascends the pontifical throne, 130. KAUNITZ (Count) appointed prime minister, 462. KEVENHULLER (General) given the command of the Austrian army, 405. KING, nominal power of the, 308. KINSKY, letter of Charles VI. to, 391. KLESES. (See Cardinal.) KONIGSEGG (General), power of in a counsel of war, 404. recalled in disgrace, 405. LADISLAUS I., coronation of, 65. visit of to the pope, 67. inglorious flight of, 69. tyranny of towards the family of Hunniades, 71. flight of from Buda, 71. his projected marriage to Magdalen, 71. death of, 72. LADISLAUS II. elected King of Hungary, 79. assumes the government of Austria, 81. LANDAU, the Austrians checked at, 47. LANDSHUT, flight of Charles V. to, 126. LEAGUE against France, 85. of Augsburg, 315. LEIPSIC captured by Tilly, 285. LEO X., John of Medici assumes the name of, 100. LEOPOLD I. (of Austria) succeeds Ferdinand III., 304. convenes the diet at Presburg, 309. accused by the diet of persecution, 309. his desire for peace, 312. organizes a coalition against Louis XIV., 315. attempt of to establish despotic power in Hungary, 317. driven from Hungary, 317. flight of with his family, 319. humiliation of, 322. disgust of the people with, 324. vengeance of, 324. efforts of to obtain a decree that the crown was hereditary, 325. claims Spain, 326. declares war against France, 331. deserted by the Duke of Bavaria, 334. death of, 334. canonization of, 335. his various marriages, 336. LEOPOLD II. ascends the Austrian throne, 500. despotism of in Hungary meets with a remonstrance, 501. interposes against France, 502. letter of to the King of England, 502. death of, 502. LEOPOLD I. (of Germany), character and death of, 45. LEOPOLD I. (of Switzerland), character of, 52. death of, 57. LEOPOLD II., succession of, 57. assumes the guardianship of Albert V., 59. death of, 59. LEOPOLD (Archduke) invasion of Upper Austria by, 220. defeat of by Matthias, 221. LEWIS II., excommunication of, 50. LIBERTY, the spirit of acting in France, 501. LITHUANIA, duchy of, 53. annexation of to Poland, 54. LOREDO, arrival of Charles V. at, 141. LORRAINE (Chevalier De), duel between the and the young Turk, 312. LORRAINE, duchy of demanded by France, 397. LORRAINE (Francis Stephen, Duke of) compelled to flee from Hungary, 319. his engagement with Maria Theresa, 395. deprived of his kingdom, 397. his marriage, 398. appointed commander of the army, 404. reply of the to the demand of Frederic, 418. LOUIS XII., succession of to the throne of France, 89. inaugurated Duke of Milan, 90. diplomacy of, 91. LOUIS XIII. espouses the cause of Ferdinand I., 256. LOUIS XIV., attempt of to thwart Leopold, 304. marriage of, 314. resolve of to annex a part of Spain, 314. responsible for devastation of the Palatinate, 316. rapacious character of, 317. claims Spain, 326. preparations of to invade Spain, 329. desire of to retire from the conflict, 341. melancholy situation of, 357. LOUIS XV. begins to take part in the government, 378. LOUIS XVI., plans of, 502. LOUIS (of Bavaria) elected emperor, 42. excommunication of, 47. death of, 47. LOUIS (of Hungary), death of, 146. LOUIS (son of Philip V.), death of, 371. LUBEC, peace of, 269. LUDOVICO, escape of the Duke of, 90. LUDOVICO (Duke of Milan), recovery of Italy by the Duke of, 90. mutiny of the troops of, 91. death of, 92. LUTHER summoned to repair to Rome, 102. bull of the pope against, 108. works of burned, 109. support of at the diet of Worms, 110. summoned to appear before the diet, 110. triumphal march of, 111. memorable reply of, 111. triumph of, 112. attempts of Charles V. to bribe, 113. his Patmos, 113. his German Bible, 113. the party of encouraged by Adrian the pope, 114. marriage of, 114. the Confession of Augsburg too mild for, 119. visit of Charles V. to grave of, 128. LUTHERANS, reply of to Henry IV., 191. (see also Luther.) LUTZEN, meeting of the armies at, 291. battle of, 292. MADRID, evacuation of, by the Austrians, 345. MAGDEBURG, the city of, espouses Gustavus, 282. sacking of, by the imperial troops, 283. MAHOMET II., siege of Belgrade by, 69. MAHOMET IV., his foreign war, 307. MARLBOROUGH (Duke of), the guardian of Anne, 332. MALPLAQUET, battle at, 341. MANTUA, aid furnished Leopold by, 311. battle at, 387. MARCHIONESS OF POMPADOUR, arrogance of, 464. MARIA ANTOINETTE, history of, 487. letter of Maria Theresa to, 488. MARIA THERESA (of Spain), marriage of to Louis XIV., 314. MARIA THERESA (of Austria), character of, 395. her attachment for the Duke of Lorraine, 395. marriage of, 398. ascends the Austrian throne, 415. solicitations of to foreign powers, 417. her apparent doom, 421. consents to part with Glogau, 424. a son born to her, 426. desire of that her husband should obtain the imperial crown, 427. her coronation at Presburg, 429. address of to the diet, 431. reinforcements of, 436. ambitious dreams of, 439. forbids the conference for the relief of Prague, 440. attempt of to evade her promise to Sardinia, 446. arrogance of excites indignation of the other powers, 449. rouses the Hungarians, 450. recovers Bohemia, 450. interview of the English ambassador with, 454. signs the treaty of Dresden, 458. indignation of at peace being signed by England, 460. chagrin of, 461. her energetic discipline, 462. secures the friendship of the Marchioness of Pompadour, 465 reproaches towards England, 466. her diplomatic fib, 468. victories of, 475. loses Russia and Sweden, 480. recovers the coöperation of Russia, 481. children of, 486. letter of to Maria Antoinette, 488. letter to Frederic desiring peace, 489. charge to her son, 490. death of, 491. fate of her children, 491. MARY ANNE (of Spain) affianced to the dauphin of France, 372. insulting rejection of, 373. MARGARET (of Bohemia), engagement of, 46. marriage and flight of, 49. divorce of, 49. MARGARET, celebration of the nuptials of, 314. MARK OF BRANDENBURG, taken possession of by Gustavus Adolphus, 281. MARTINETS thrown from the palace by the mob, 328. MASSACRE, the, of St. Bartholomew, 171. MATHEW HENRY (Count of Thurn), leader of the Protestants, 234. convention called by, 236. MATTHIAS (of Hungary), invasion of Austria by, 75. death of, 79. MATTHIAS, character of, 201. chosen leader of the revolters in the Netherlands, 202. increasing popularity of, 203. announces his determination to depose Rhodolph III., 204. his demand that Rhodolph should abdicate, 205. distrust of by the Protestants, 205. arrest of the Lord of Inzendorf by, 206. reluctance of to sign the conditions, 207. elected king, 207. haughtiness of towards the Austrians, 208. political reconciliation between Rhodolph III. and, 219. march of against Leopold, 221. limitations affixed to the offer of the crown to, 222. coronation of, 224. marriage of, 225. suspicions of the Catholics against, 229. elected Emperor of Germany, 229. thwarted in his attempts to levy an army, 230. concludes a truce with Turkey, 231. his revival of the ban against the Protestants, 231. efforts of to secure the crown of Germany for Ferdinand, 232. opposed by the Protestants, 233. defiant reply of to the congress at Prague, 236. disposition of to favor toleration, 239. death of, 344. MAURICE (of Saxony), Protestant principles of, 131. treaty of with the King of France, 132 capture of the Tyrol by, 133. demands of from Charles V., 135 death of, 137. MAXIMILIAN I., ambition of, 84. efforts of to rouse the Italians, 88. efforts to secure the Swiss estates, 89. defeat of at the diet of Worms, 87. roused to new efforts, 92. superstitious fraud of, 93. drawn into a war with Bavaria, 94. league formed by against the Venetians, 95. abandoned by his allies, 97. perseverance of rewarded, 98. confident of success against Italy, 99. letter of to his daughter, 99. success beginning to attend, 100. plans of to secure the crowns of Hungary and Bohemia, 101. contempt of for the pope, 103. peculiarities of exhibited, 103. death of, 104. accomplishments of, 105. MAXIMILIAN II. allowed to assume the title of emperor elect, 161. character of, 169. his letter to the Elector Palatine, 170. profession of the Catholic faith, 170. address of to Henry of Valois, 172. liberal toleration maintained by, 172. answer of to the complaints of the diet, 173. offer of to pay tribute to the Turks, 174. elected King of Poland, 180. death of, 181. character and acquirements of, 182. tribute of honor by the ambassadors to, 183. wife of, 183. fate of his children, 184. MAXIMILIAN (brother of Matthias), the candidate of the Protestants, 229. MAXIMILIAN JOSEPH, ascends the throne of Bavaria, 451. MEINHARD, legitimate rights of, 50. death of, 50. MELANCTHON, character of, 119. MENTZ, taunts of the Elector of, 38. METTERNICH, his theory of social order, 506. METZ, siege of, 137. MILAN, captured by Louis XII., 90. Louis XII. created Duke of, 90. MINISTER (see the countries for which the minister acted). MOHATZ, battle of, 146. MOLNITZ, the court of Frederic established at, 421. MONTECUCULI (Prince), commander of the troops of Leopold, 311. MONTSERRAT, shrine of the holy Virgin at, 355. MORAVIA, to be held five years by Rhodolph, 81. the province of, 208. triumphal march of Count Thurn into, 247. MOSES TZEKELI crowned Prince of Transylvania, 196. MULHEIM, the fortifications of demolished, 232. MUNICH captured by Frederic, 449. MURCHFIELD, meeting of the armies on the field of, 29. NAPLES, subjugation of, 84. NAPOLEON BONAPARTE, similarity of the plans of Henry IV. and, 216. remark of verified, 262. remark of concerning Russia, 399. NETHERLANDS, revolt in the, 201. Marlborough in possession of the, 339. NEUPERG (General), imprudence and insult of, 408. arrested by Charles, 413. NEUSTADT, the emperor's remains to be deposited at, 104. NICHOLAS (Count of Zrini), heroic defense of Zigeth by, 175. NISSA, capture of, 402. NOBLES, the, of Bohemia banished, 271. NOVARRA, defense of the citadel of, 90. NUREMBURG, congress at, 227. request of, that Rhodolph should abdicate, 228. battle of, 290. famine in the city of, 290. OFFICERS, ignorance of the Austrian, 389. ORLEANS (Duke of), matrimonial arrangements of the, 369. death of the, 378. ORSOVA captured by the Turks, 405. surrendered to the Turks, 408. OTHO marries Hedwige, of Hapsburg, 25. harmonious rule of, 46. OTTOCAR (of Bohemia), candidate for crown of Germany, 23. opposition of Rhodolph, 24. command of the diet to, 24. message of, to Rhodolph, 24. power of, 25. his contempt for Rhodolph, 25. his excommunication by the pope, 26. his performance of feudal homage, 27. violates his oath, 28. the body of found after battle, 30. OXENSTIERN (Chancellor), appointed commander of the Swedish army, 297. PALATINATE, territory of the, 250. PAPPENHEIM (General), death of, 293. PASSAU, diet at, 187. PATMOS, Luther's, 113. PAUL III. (of Russia), alliance of with Prussia, 480. assassination of, 480. PAUL IV. (Pope), death of, 162. Peace of Passarovitz, 364 PEOPLE, contempt for the, 95. PEST taken by the Turks, 147. PETER THE GREAT, ambition of, 399. death of, 399. PETERWARDEIN, strength of, 406. PHILIP (of Burgundy), obtains the dukedom of Burgundy, 84. PHILIP III. institutes the order of the Golden Fleece, 372. PHILIP IV. (of Spain) obtains renunciation of succession in favor of Margaret, 314. resolve of, to maintain his throne, 341. supported by his subjects, 342. flight of, from Catalona, 343. PHILIP V. despondency of, 369. abdication of, 370. resumes his crown, 371. PILGRAM, diet at, 66. PIUS IV. elected pope, 162. PODIEBRAD (George), assumes regal authority, 66. intrusted with the regency of Bohemia, 68. elected King of Bohemia, 73. POLAND, conditions affixed to the throne of, 180. Stephen Barthori chosen king of, by the minority, 181. attempts of France to place Stanislaus on the throne of, 383. Count Poniatowski secures the crown of, 484. to be carved out, 485. annihilation of, 486. POMERANIA, seizure of, by Ferdinand, 269. POMPADOUR (Marchioness of), arrogance of the, 464. PONIATOWSZI (Count), elected King of Poland, 484. POPE, the, letter of Rhodolph to, 24. character of Pope Gregory N., 24. indignation of the, 38. capitulation of the, 84. (Alexander VI.) bribery of, 89. (Julius II.) the, bought over, 92. bull of the, deposing the King of Naples, 93. demands of the, as booty, 95. infamy of, 95. infamous acquisitions of, 98. proclamation against the, by Maximilian, 98. death of, 100. John of Medici elected as, 100. (Leo X.), command of the, to Luther to repair to Rome, 102. Maximilian's contempt for the, 103. bull of the, against Luther, 108. bull of the, burned by Luther, 109. death of Leo X., the, 113. (Adrian), accession of, as, 113. (Clement VII.) succeeds Adrian, 116. offer of pardon by the, for those who assist in enforcing the Council of Trent, 125. disgust of the, against Charles V., 129. (Julius III.) elected as, 130. indignation of the, at the toleration of the diet at Passau, 138. the, allows Maximilian to assume the title of emperor elect, 161. intolerant pride of, 161. (Pius IV.) elected as, 162. dependence on the, dispensed with, 163. refusal of the, to reform abuses, 165. attempts of the, to influence Maximilian II., 174. aid extended to Leopold by the, 311. embassage from Charles II. to the, 329. alarm of the, at the innovations of Joseph II., 494. PRAGMATIC SANCTION, the, 364. the, supported by various powers, 461. PRAGUE, Ferdinand crushes the revolt in. 156. diet at, 158. seizure of, by Leopold, 221. archbishop of, expelled from the city, 239. indignation of the inhabitants of, against Frederic, 262. surrender of, to Ferdinand, 262. surrender of, to the Austrians, 443. suffering in, on account of the siege, 472. PRAUNSTEIN (Lord of), reasons for the, declaring war, 80. PRECOCITY, not a modern innovation, 108. PRESBURG, diet at, 309. PRESS, success of the, in diffusing intelligence, 102. PRINTING, the influence of, beginning to be felt, 83. PRIVILEGES confined to the nobles, 187. PROTEST of the minority at the diet of Spires, 116. PROTESTANTISM, spread of, in Europe, 163. its working for liberty, 264. PROTESTANTS, assembly of, at Smalkalde, 121. refusal of the, to assist Charles V, 122. contributions of the, to expel the Turks, 122. increase of the, 123. the, reject the council of Trent, 124. ruin of the army of the, by Charles V., 126. party of the, predominant in Germany, 183. shameful quarreling among the, 190. union of, at Aschhausen, 194. opposition of the, to Matthias, 206. their demands on Matthias, 207. reasonable demands of, 211. forces of the, vanquished at Pritznitz, 259. secret combinations of the, for the rising of the, 267. concessions to, revoked by Ferdinand, 276. the, prefer the Duke of Bavaria to any of the family of Ferdinand, 279. loss of the, in the death of Gustavus, 296. pleasure of the, at the entry of Frederic into Silesia, 419. PRUSSIA, inhabited by a pagan race, 20. alliance of, with Austria, 459. alliance of, with England, 466. a subsidy voted to, by England, 475. formidable preparations against, 470. PRUSSIANS, the, driven from Bohemia, 450. RAAB taken by the Turks, 147. RAGOTSKY (Francis), leader of the rebellion, 333. assembles a diet, 349. chosen dux, or leader, 350. outlawed, and escape of, 351. RATISBON, diet at, in 1629, 275. refusal of, to accept Ferdinand's word, 276. REFORMATION, commencement of the, 103. RELIGION, remarkable solicitude for the reputation of, 98. REWARD offered for the head of Rhodolph, 30. RHODOLPH (of Hapsburg), at the time of his father's death, 18. presentation of, by the emperor for baptism, 19, his incursions, 19. marriage, 19. excommunication of, 20. engaged in Prussian crusade, 20. a monument reared to, by the city of Strasburg, 21. principles of honor, 21. chosen chief of Uri, Schweitz, and Underwalden, 21. chosen mayor of Zurich, 21. elected Emperor of Germany, 23. power of, as emperor, 25. family of, 25. gathering clouds around, 28. address of the citizens of Vienna to, 28. death of, 35. RHODOLPH II., character and court of, 48. ostentatious titles of, 51. death of, 51. RHODOLPH III, crowned King of Hungary, 178. obtains the imperial throne, 180. bigotry of, 187. his infringement of the rights of the burghers, 188. his blows against Protestantism, 189. intolerance of in Bohemia, 193. superstition of, 200. his favor to Ferdinand; 204. demands of the Protestants on, 205. his encouragement of filibustering expeditions, 208. remarkable pliancy of, 210. his terror at the chance of assassination, 212. political reconciliation between Matthias and, 219. his plot with Leopold, 220. Rhodolph taken prisoner, 221. his abdication, 222. required to absolve his subjects from their oath of allegiance, 223. retains the crown of Germany, 225. supplication of to the congress at Rothemberg, 226. a congress at Nuremberg summoned by, 227. death of, 228. RHODOLPH (of Bohemia), death of, 39. RHINE, separating Basle from Rhodolph, 23. RICHELIEU, motives influencing, 267. ambassadors of urge the Duke of Bavaria as candidate for the imperial crown, 279. RIPPERDA (Baron), the secret agent of the Queen of Spain at Vienna, 373. rise and fall of, 375. escape of to England, 376. ROBINSON (Sir Thomas), interview of with Maria Theresa, 454. ROTHENBURG, congress at, 226. RUSSIA, growing power of, 399. succession of the crown of, 399. instrumental in placing Augustus II on the throne, 400. SARAGOSSA, battle of, 343. SAXONY, defeat of the Elector of, 128. nobility of, 128. degradation of, 129. power of, 132. the electorate of, passes to Augustus, 137. SCHARTLIN (General), the Protestants march under, 125. SCHWEITZ, Rhodolph of Hapsburg chosen chief of, 21. SCLAVONIA, marriage of the Duke of to the daughter of Rhodolph, 25. SECKENDORF, (General), the Austrian army intrusted to, 400. his plans of campaign broken up by Charles, 402. capture of Nissa by, 402. condemned to the dungeon, 402. SECRET ARTICLES of the treaty with Austria, 376. SEGEBERG, league at, 267. SCHMETTAU (General), the retreat of Wallis arrested by, 407. compelled to yield Belgrade, 409. SELIM succeeds Solyman, 177. SEMENDRIA, defense of, 64. its capture, 65. SEMPACH, battle of, 55. SERFS emancipated by Joseph II., 494. his plan for seizing Bavaria frustrated, 495. SEVEN YEARS' WAR, termination of the, 481. SICILY, subjugated and attached to the Neapolitan crown, 388. SIGISMOND (Francis, Duke of Tyrol), his alliance with Rhodolph, 195. representation in the diet introduced by, 308. death of, 314. SIGISMOND (of Bohemia), power of, 60. address of to the diet at Znaim, 61. death of, 62. SILESIA sold to Rhodolph, 195. taken possession of by Frederic, 418. SISECK, Turks routed at, 195. SLAVATA thrown from the palace by the mob, 238. SMALKALDE, assembly of the Protestants at, 121. SOLYMAN (the Magnificent), victories of, 146. reply of to the demand made by Ferdinand, 147. his method of overcoming difficulties, 149. his attack upon Guntz, 150. his price of peace with Hungary, 153. death of from rage, 176. SPAIN decreed by the will of Charles II. to succeed to France, 331. espouses the cause of Ferdinand II., 256. assistance furnished Leopold by, 311. invasion of by the British and Charles III., 354. treaty between Austria and, 373. the Austrians forbidden to trade in, 380. invasion of Italy by, 388. SPANIARDS, the, routed at Catalonia, 343. ST. BARTHOLOMEW, massacre of, 171. ST. GOTHARD, troops stationed at, 311. battle of, 312. ST. ILDEFONSO, the palace of, 370. ST. JUSTUS, convent of, 140. ST. PETERSBURG, rearing of the city of, 399. STANHOPE (General), bearing of, 342. desperate position of, 347. STANISLAUS LECZINSKI, career of, 382. daughter of married to Louis XV., 382. receives a pension from France, 383. elected King of Poland, 383. his marvelous journey through Germany, 384. STAREMBERG (General), bearing of, 342. STATE, the independence of each German, 18. STEPHEN, crowning of the infant as king, 152. STEPHEN BOTSKOI, indignity offered to, 197. his manifesto, 198. proclaimed King of Hungary, 199. STETTIN captured by Gustavus Adolphus, 281. STETZIM, diet at, 349. STRALSUND, defense of, 269. STRICKLAND sent to London to overthrow the cabinet, 392. STYRIA traversed by the Turks, 311. SWEDEN roused by Gustavus Adolphus against Ferdinand II., 280. prudent conduct of on death of Gustavus, 297. SWEDES, sorrow of the at the death of Gustavus, 294. SWITZERLAND, divisions of, 40. THURN (Count) leads the mob to the king's council, 237. appointed commander of the Protestants, 338. invades Austria, 247. TILLY (Count), the imperial troops intrusted to, 282. TITIAN, graceful compliment of Charles V to, 144. TRAUSNITZ, Frederic I. a prisoner at the castle of, 43. TRANSYLVANIA, rebellion in, 333. TREASURE abandoned by the Turks, 323. TREATY of Passau, 136. TRENT, Council of, 124. the second council at, 130. council at in 1562, 164. declarations of, 166 TRIBUNAL at Eperies, 324. TRIESTE, arrival of troops at, 94. TURENNE, the Palatinate devastated by, 315. challenged by the Elector of Palatinate, 316. TURIN, the court of bribed, 89. TURKS, origin and increase of the, 63. defeat of at Belgrade, 70. spread of the, 121. invasion of Hungary by the, 122. the, driven from Hungary, 122. treaty of Charles V. with the, 123. victorious in Hungary, 136. invasion of Europe by the, 145. compelled to return home, 148. the, retire from Hungary, 177. peace made by Maximilian with the, 178. invasion of Croatia by the, 195. union of the with the forces of Botskoi, 199. truce of Hungary with the, 203. the, conclude a peace with Austria, 231. invasion of Hungary by the, 310. defeat of on the field of St. Gothard, 312. favorable treaty secured by the, 313. the invasion of Sclavonia by the, 360. destruction of the army of the, 363. the, implore peace, 364. Orsova besieged by the, 404. the, routed at Einmik, 499. TUSCANY, subjugation of by Charles VIII, 84. aid furnished Leopold by, 311. death of the Duke of, 398. TYROL, marriage of Albert to Elizabeth, daughter of the Count of, 25. possession of obtained by Rhodolph II., 50. its power as the key to Italy, 313. death of the Duke of, 314. ULADISLAUS obtains the throne of Hungary, 66. ULM, rendezvous of the Protestants at, 257. ULRIC, the Protestant Duke of restored to Wirtemberg, 122. UNDERWALDEN, Rhodolph of Hapsburg chosen chief of, 21. URI, Rhodolph of Hapsburg chosen chief of, 21. UTTLEBERG, capture of the castle of by Rhodolph, 22. VALERIUS BARTHOLOMEW, the king's confessor, 248. VALLADOLID, court of Philip established at, 343. VENDOME (General) joins Philip, 313. VENICE bribed, 89. Maximilian bound by truce with, 95. aid furnished Leopold by, 311. VICTOR ASMEDEUS, business of, 369. VIENNA one of the strongest defenses of the empire, 26. the king's residence at, 27. address of the citizens of to Rhodolph, 28. siege of, 74. the professors of the university at avow the doctrines of Luther, 114. assault of, 320. delivered by Sobieski, 322. WALLENSTEIN made generalissimo of all the forces, 268. arrogance of, 273. matrimonial alliances of, 274. his dismissal from the army demanded, 276. he retires from the army 278. his regal mode of living, 287. his humiliating exactions from the emperor, 289. superstition of, 291. urges Ferdinand to make peace, 297. traitorous offer to surrender to the Swedes, 298. his assassination, 299. WALLIS (Marshal) given the command of the army, 406. arrested by Charles, 413. WAR, its debit and credit account, 359. (see also the various campaigns.) WATERLOO, its advantage to Austria, 404. WENCESLAUS acknowledged king, 31. marriage to Judeth, 31. death of, 38. WESTPHALIA, signing of the peace of, 300. conditions of the treaty of, 301. WHITE MOUNTAIN, battle of, 259. WILLIAM (son of Leopold), demand of for the government, 58. marriage of, 59. WINKELREID (Arnold), heroism of, 56. WISMAR, the naval depot of Ferdinand, 268. WITTEMBERG, procession of the students of, 109. WORMS, diet at in 1521, 108. the diet of inveighs Luther, 110. ZEALAND, encampment of Charles Gustavus in, 306. ZIGETH, heroic defense of by Nicholas, 176. noble death of the garrison of, 177. ZINZENDORF, remark of, 393. ZNAIM, diet at, 61. ZURICH, Rhodolph of Hapsburg chosen chief of, 21. 
18160	----	* * * * * +--------------------------------------------------------------+ | Transcriber's Note: | | | | A number of obvious typographical errors have been corrected | | in this text. For a complete list, please see the bottom of | | this document. | | | +--------------------------------------------------------------+ * * * * * [Illustration: COUNT CZERNIN] * * * * * IN THE WORLD WAR BY COUNT OTTOKAR CZERNIN _WITH FOUR PLATES_ CASSELL AND COMPANY, LTD London, New York, Toronto and Melbourne Copyright in Great Britain. PREFACE It is impossible in a small volume to write the history of the World War in even a partially exhaustive manner. Nor is that the object of this book. Rather than to deal with generalities, its purpose is to describe separate events of which I had intimate knowledge, and individuals with whom I came into close contact and could, therefore, observe closely; in fact, to furnish a series of snapshots of the great drama. By this means the following pages may possibly present a conception of the war as a whole, which may, nevertheless, differ in many respects from the hitherto recorded, and possibly faulty, history of the war. Everyone regards people and events from his own point of view; it is inevitable. In my book, I speak of men with whom I was in close touch; of others who crossed my path without leaving any personal impression on me; and finally, of men with whom I was often in grave dispute. I endeavour to judge of them all in objective fashion, but I have to describe people and things as I saw them. Wherever the description appears to be at fault, the reason will not be due to a prematurely formed opinion, but rather, probably, to a prevailing lack of the capacity for judging. Not everything could be revealed. Much was not explained, although it could have been. Too short a period still separates us from those events to justify the lifting of the veil from all that happened. But what remains unspoken can in no way change the whole picture, which I describe exactly as imprinted on my mind. OTTOKAR CZERNIN. CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE 1. INTRODUCTORY REFLECTIONS 1 2. KONOPISCHT 34 3. WILLIAM II 52 4. ROUMANIA 77 5. THE U-BOAT WARFARE 114 6. ATTEMPTS AT PEACE 134 7. WILSON 188 8. IMPRESSIONS AND REFLECTIONS 195 9. POLAND 200 10. BREST-LITOVSK 211 11. THE PEACE OF BUCHAREST 258 12. FINAL REFLECTIONS 271 APPENDIX 275 LIST OF PLATES COUNT CZERNIN _Frontispiece_ FACING PAGE THE ARCHDUKE FRANZ FERDINAND 48 COUNT TISZA 128 GENERAL HOFFMANN 240 IN THE WORLD WAR CHAPTER I INTRODUCTORY REFLECTIONS 1 The bursting of a thunderstorm is preceded by certain definite phenomena in the atmosphere. The electric currents separate, and the storm is the result of atmospheric tension which can no longer be repressed. Whether or no we become aware of these happenings through outward signs, whether the clouds appear to us more or less threatening, nothing can alter the fact that the electric tension is bound to make itself felt before the storm bursts. For years the political barometer of the European Ministries of Foreign Affairs had stood at "storm." It rose periodically, to fall again; it varied--naturally; but for years everything had pointed to the fact that the peace of the world was in danger. The obvious beginnings of this European tension date back several years: to the time of Edward VII. On the one hand England's dread of the gigantic growth of Germany; on the other hand Berlin's politics, which had become a terror to the dwellers by the Thames; the belief that the idea of acquiring the dominion of the world had taken root in Berlin. These fears, partly due merely to envy and jealousy, but partly due also to a positive anxiety concerning existence; these fears led to the encircling policy of Edward VII., and thus was started the great drive against Germany. It is well known that Edward VII. made an attempt to exercise a direct influence on the Emperor Francis Joseph to induce him to secede from the Alliance and join the Powers encircling Germany. It is likewise known that the Emperor Francis Joseph rejected the proposal, and that this decided the fate of Austria-Hungary. From that day we were no longer the independent masters of our destiny. Our fate was linked to that of Germany; without being conscious of it, we were carried away by Germany through the Alliance. I do not mean absolutely to deny that, during the years preceding war, it would still have been possible for Germany to avert it if she had eradicated from European public opinion all suspicion respecting her dream of world dominion, for far be it from me to assert that the Western Powers were eager for war. On the contrary, it is my firm conviction that the leading statesmen of the Western Powers viewed the situation as such, that if they did not succeed in defeating Germany, the unavoidable result would be a German world domination. I mention the Western Powers, for I believe that a strong military party in Russia, which had as chief the Grand Duke Nicholas, thought otherwise, and began this war with satisfaction. The terrible tragedy of this, the greatest misfortune of all time--and such is this war--lies in the fact that nobody responsible willed it; it arose out of a situation created first by a Serbian assassin and then by some Russian generals keen on war, while the events that ensued took the monarchs and statesmen completely by surprise. The Entente group of Powers is as much to blame as we are. As regards this, however, a very considerable difference must be made between the enemy states. In 1914 neither France nor England desired war. France had always cherished the thought of revenge, but, judging from all indications, she had no intention of fighting in 1914; but, on the contrary--as she did fifty years ago--left the decisive moment for entering into war to the future. The war came quite as a surprise to France. England, in spite of her anti-German policy, wished to remain neutral and only changed her mind owing to the invasion of Belgium. In Russia the Tsar did not know what he wanted, and the military party urged unceasingly for war. As a matter of fact, Russia began military operations without a declaration of war. The states that followed after--Italy and Roumania--entered into the war for purposes of conquest, Roumania in particular. Italy also, of course, but owing to her geographical position, and being exposed to pressure from England, she was less able to remain neutral than Roumania. But the war would never have broken out had it not been that the growing suspicion of the Entente as to Germany's plans had already brought the situation to boiling point. The spirit and demeanour of Germany, the speeches of the Emperor William, the behaviour of the Prussians throughout the world--whether in the case of a general at Potsdam or a _commis voyageur_ out in East Africa--these Prussian manners inflicting themselves upon the world, the ceaseless boasting of their own power and the clattering of swords, roused throughout the whole world a feeling of antipathy and alarm and effected that moral coalition against Germany which in this war has found such terribly practical expression. On the other hand, I am fairly convinced that German, or rather Prussian tendencies have been misunderstood by the world, and that the leading German statesmen never had any intention of acquiring world dominion. They wished to retain Germany's place in the sun, her rank among the first Powers of the world; it was undoubtedly her right, but the real and alleged continuous German provocation and the ever-growing fears of the Entente in consequence created just that fatal competition in armaments and that coalition policy which burst like a terrible thunderstorm into war. It was only on the basis of these European fears that the French plans of revenge developed into action. England would never have drawn the sword merely for the conquest of Alsace-Lorraine; but the French plan of revenge was admirably adapted to suit the policy inaugurated by King Edward, which was derived not from French but from English motives. Out of this dread of attack and defence arose that mad fever for armaments which was characteristic of pre-war times. The race to possess more soldiers and more guns than one's neighbour was carried to an absurd extreme. The armaments which the nations had to bear had become so cumbersome as to be unbearable, and for long it had been obvious to everyone that the course entered upon could no longer be pursued, and that two possibilities alone remained--either a voluntary and general disarmament, or war. A slight attempt at the first alternative was made in 1912 through negotiations between Germany and England respecting naval disarmament, but never got beyond the first stage. England was no readier for peace, and no more disposed to make advances than was Germany, but she was cleverer and succeeded in conveying to the world that she was the Power endangered by Germany's plans for expansion. I recollect a very telling illustration of the German and British points of view, given to me by a prominent politician from a neutral state. This gentleman was crossing the Atlantic on an American steamer, and among the other travellers were a well-known German industrial magnate and an Englishman. The German was a great talker and preferred addressing as large an audience as possible, expatiating on the "uprising" of Germany, on the irrepressible desire for expansion to be found in the German people, on the necessity of impregnating the world with German culture, and on the progress made in all these endeavours. He discoursed on the rising prosperity of German trade in different parts of the world; he enumerated the towns where the German flag was flying; he pointed out with emphasis how "Made in Germany" was the term that must and would conquer the world, and did not fail to assert that all these grand projects were built on solid foundations upheld by military support. Such was the German. When my informant turned to the silent, quietly smiling Englishman and asked what he had to say to it, he simply answered: "There is no need for me to say anything, for I know that the world belongs to us." Such was the Englishman. This merely illustrates a certain frame of mind. It is a snapshot, showing how the German and the English mentality was reflected in the brain of a neutral statesman; but it is symptomatic, because thousands have felt the same, and because this impression of the German spirit contributed so largely to the catastrophe. The Aehrenthal policy, contrary to what we were accustomed to on the Ballplatz, pursued ambitious plans for expansion with the greatest strength and energy, thereby adding to the suspicions of the world regarding us. For the belief gained credence that the Vienna policy was an offshoot of that of Berlin, and that the same line of action would be adopted in Vienna as in Berlin, and the general feeling of anxiety rose higher. Blacker and blacker grew the clouds; closer and closer the meshes of the net; misfortune was on the way. 2 I was in Constantinople shortly before the outbreak of war, and while there had a lengthy discussion of the political situation with the Markgraf Pallavicini, our most efficient and far-seeing ambassador there. He looked upon the situation as being extremely grave. Aided by his experience of a decade of political observations, he was able to put his finger on the pulse of Europe, and his diagnosis was as follows: that if a rapid change in the entire course of events did not intervene, we were making straight for war. He explained to me that he considered the only possibility of evading a war with Russia lay in our definitely renouncing all claims to influence in the Balkans and leaving the field to Russia. Pallavicini was quite clear in his own mind that such a course would mean our resigning the status of a Great Power; but apparently to him even so bitter a proceeding as that was preferable to the war which he saw was impending. Shortly afterwards I repeated this conversation to the Archduke and heir, Franz Ferdinand, and saw that he was deeply impressed by the pessimistic views of Pallavicini, of whom, like everyone else, he had a very high opinion. The Archduke promised to discuss the question as soon as possible with the Emperor. I never saw him again. That was the last conversation I had with him, and I do not know whether he ever carried out his intention of discussing the matter with the monarch. The two Balkan wars were as summer lightning before the coming European thunderstorm. It was obvious to anyone acquainted with Balkan conditions that the peace there had produced no definite result, and the Peace of Bucharest in 1913, so enthusiastically acclaimed by Roumania, carried the germ of death at its birth. Bulgaria was humiliated and reduced; Roumania and, above all, Serbia, enlarged out of all proportion, were arrogant to a degree that baffles description. Albania, as the apple of discord between Austria-Hungary and Italy, was a factor that gave no promise of relief, but only of fresh wars. In order to understand the excessive hatred prevailing between the separate nations, one must have lived in the Balkans. When this hatred came to an outburst in the world war the most terrible scenes were enacted, and as an example it was notorious that the Roumanians tore their Bulgarian prisoners to pieces with their teeth, and that the Bulgarians, on their part, tortured the Roumanian prisoners to death in the most shocking manner. The brutality of the Serbians in the war can best be described by our own troops. The Emperor Francis Joseph clearly foresaw that the peace after the second Balkan war was merely a respite to draw breath before a new war. Prior to my departure for Bucharest in 1913 I was received in audience by the aged emperor, who said to me: "The Peace of Bucharest is untenable, and we are faced by a new war. God grant that it may be confined to the Balkans." Serbia, which had been enlarged to double its size, was far from being satisfied; but, on the contrary, was more than ever ambitious of becoming a Great Power. Apparently the situation was still quiet. In fact, a few weeks before the catastrophe at Sarajevo the prevailing state of affairs showed almost an improvement in the relations between Vienna and Belgrade. But it was the calm before the storm. On June 28 the veil was rent asunder, and from one moment to the next a catastrophe threatened the world. The stone had started rolling. At that time I was ambassador to Roumania. I was therefore only able from a distance to watch developments in Vienna and Berlin. Subsequently, however, I discussed events in those critical days with numerous leading personalities, and from all that I heard have been able to form a definite and clear view of the proceedings. I have no doubt whatever that Berchtold, even in his dreams, had never thought of a world war of such dimensions as it assumed; that he, above all, was persuaded that England would remain neutral; and the German Ambassador, Tschirsky, confirmed him in the conviction that a war against France and Russia would inevitably end in victory. I believe that the state of mind in which Count Berchtold addressed the ultimatum to Serbia was such that he said to himself, either--and this is the most favourable view--Serbia will accept the ultimatum, which would mean a great diplomatic success; or she will refuse it, and then, thanks to Germany's help, the victorious war against Russia and France will effect the birth of a new and vastly stronger Monarchy. It cannot for a moment be denied that this argument contained a series of errors; but it must be stated that, according to my convictions, Count Berchtold did not intend to incite war by the ultimatum, but hoped to the very last to gain the victory by the pen, and that in the German promises he saw a guarantee against a war in which the participators and the chances of victory were equally erroneously estimated. Berchtold could not have entertained any doubt that a Serbian war would bring a Russian one in its train. At any rate, the reports sent by my brother, who was a business man in Petersburg, left him in no doubt on the matter. Serbia's acceptance of the ultimatum was only partial, and the Serbian war broke out. Russia armed and joined in. But at this moment extremely important events took place. On July 30, at midday, Tschirsky spoke in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and communicated to Berchtold the contents of a telegram received from Lichnowsky. This important telegram contained the following: He (Lichnowsky) had just returned from seeing Grey, who was very grave, but perfectly collected, though pointing out that the situation was becoming more and more complicated. Sassonoff had intimated that after the declaration of war he was no longer in a position to negotiate direct with Austria-Hungary, and requested England to resume proceedings, the temporary cessation of hostilities to be taken for granted. Grey proposed a negotiation between four, as it appeared possible to him (Grey) that Austria-Hungary, after occupying Belgrade, would state her terms. To this Grey added a private comment, calling Lichnowsky's attention to the fact that a war between Russia and Austria-Hungary would facilitate England's neutrality, but that the conditions would inevitably change in the event of Germany and France being involved. Public opinion in England, which after the assassination was very favourable to Austria, was now beginning to fluctuate, as it was difficult to understand Austria's obstinacy. Lichnowsky also added that Grey had told the Italian Ambassador that he thought Austria would receive every satisfaction on accepting negotiation. In any case the Serbians would be punished. Even without a war Austria would receive a guarantee for the future. Such were the contents of the communication from London sent by Tschirsky, to which Bethmann added that he urgently requested the Vienna Cabinet to accept the negotiation. On receiving this information, Berchtold conveyed the news to the Emperor. His position was this: that Russia was already at war with the Monarchy on the evening of the same day on which the order for general mobilisation was to be submitted to the Emperor, and it appeared doubtful to him whether a postponement of their own mobilisation would be possible in view of the Russian attack. He had also to take into consideration the different parties prevailing in Russia, and no guarantee was obtainable that those who were in favour of negotiation would gain the day. Any postponement of mobilisation might in this case lead to incalculable military consequences. Obviously hostilities had begun without the knowledge and against the wishes of the Tsar; if they were also to be carried on against his wish, then Austria-Hungary would be too late. I have never discussed this phase with Berchtold, but the material placed at my disposal leaves no doubt that he felt bound to inquire into this side of the question and then leave the decision to the Emperor Francis Joseph. On the following day, July 31, therefore, Tschirsky, at the Ballplatz, communicated the contents of a telegram from King George to Prince Henry of Prussia. It ran as follows:-- "Thanks for telegram. So pleased to hear of William's efforts to concert with Nicky to maintain peace. Indeed, I am earnestly desirous that such an irreparable disaster as a European war should be averted. My Government is doing its utmost, suggesting to Russia and France to suspend further military preparations if Austria will consent to be satisfied with occupation of Belgrade and the neighbouring Serbian territory as a hostage for satisfactory settlement of her demands, other countries meanwhile suspending their war preparations. Trust William will use his great influence to induce Austria to accept this proposal, thus proving that Germany and England are working together to prevent what would be an international catastrophe. Pray assure William I am doing and shall continue to do all that lies in my power to preserve peace of Europe. GEORGE." Both the telegrams cited were received in Vienna on July 31, subject to certain military precautions, a proceeding that did not satisfy London. In London, as in Berlin, an effort was made to confine the conflict to Serbia. Berchtold did the same. In Russia there was a strong party working hard to enforce war at any price. The Russian invasion was an accomplished fact, and in Vienna it was thought unwise to stop mobilisation at the last moment for fear of being too late with defence. Some ambassadors did not keep to the instructions from their Governments; they communicated messages correctly enough, but if their personal opinion differed they made no secret of it, and it certainly weighed in the balance. This added to the insecurity and confusion. Berchtold vacillated, torn hither and thither by different influences. It was a question of hours merely; but they passed by and were not made use of, and disaster was the result. Russia had created strained conditions which brought on the world war. Some months after the outbreak of war I had a long conversation on all these questions with the Hungarian Prime Minister, Count Stephen Tisza. He was decidedly opposed to the severe ultimatum, as he foresaw a war and did not wish for it. It is one of the most widely spread errors to stigmatise Tisza to-day as one of the instigators of the war. He was opposed to it, not from a general pacifist tendency, but because, in his opinion, an efficiently pursued policy of alliance would in a few years considerably strengthen the powers of the Monarchy. He particularly returned to the subject of Bulgaria, which then was still neutral and whose support he had hoped to gain before we went to war. I also obtained from Tisza several details concerning the activities of the German Government as displayed by the German Ambassador immediately preceding the war. I purposely made a distinction between the German Government and the German diplomat, as I was under the impression that Herr von Tschirsky had taken various steps without being instructed so to do, and when I previously have alluded to the fact that not all the ambassadors made use of the language enjoined by their Governments, I had Herr von Tschirsky specially in my mind; his whole temperament and feelings led him to interfere in our affairs with a certain vehemence and not always in the most tactful way, thus rousing the Monarchy out of its lethargy. There is no doubt whatever that all Herr von Tschirsky's private speeches at this time were attuned to the tone of "Now or Never," and it is certain that the German Ambassador declared his opinion to be "that at the present moment Germany was prepared to support our point of view with all her moral and military power, but whether this would prove to be the case in future if we accepted the Serbian rebuff appears to me doubtful." I believe that Tschirsky in particular was firmly persuaded that in the very near future Germany would have to go through a war against France and Russia, and he considered that the year 1914 would be more favourable than a later date. For this reason, because first of all he did not believe in the fighting capacity of either Russia or France, and secondly because--and this is a very important point--he was convinced that he could bring the Monarchy into this war, while it appeared doubtful to him that the aged and peace-loving Emperor Francis Joseph would draw the sword for Germany on any other occasion where the action would centre less round him, he wished to make use of the Serbian episode so as to be sure of Austria-Hungary in the deciding struggle. That, however, was his policy, and not Bethmann's. This, I repeat, is the impression produced on me by lengthy conversations with Count Tisza--an impression which has been confirmed from other sources. I am persuaded, however, that Tschirsky, in behaving as he did, widely overstretched his prescribed sphere of activity. Iswolsky was not the only one of his kind. I conclude this to be so, since Tschirsky, as intimated in a former dispatch, was never in a position to make an official declaration urging for war, but appears only to have spoken after the manner of diplomatic representatives when anxious to adapt the policy of their Government to their own point of view. Undoubtedly Tschirsky transmitted his instructions correctly and loyally, nor did he keep back or secrete anything. An ambassador attains more or less according to the energy expended by him in carrying out the instructions of his Government; and the private opinion of the ambassador is, under certain circumstances, not easy to distinguish from his official one. At all events, the latter will be influenced by the former, and Tschirsky's private opinion aimed at a more vigorous policy. In complete ignorance of impending events, I had arrived at Steiermark a few days before the ultimatum in order to establish my family there for the summer. While there I received a message from Berchtold to return to my post as quickly as possible. I obeyed at once, but before leaving had one more audience with the Emperor Francis Joseph at Ischl. I found the Emperor extremely depressed. He alluded quite briefly to the coming events, and merely asked me if, in case of a war, I could guarantee Roumania's neutrality. I answered in the affirmative, so long as King Carol was alive; beyond that any guarantee was impossible. 3 Certain extremely important details relating to the period immediately preceding the outbreak of war can only be attributed to the influence of the group represented by Tschirsky. It is incomprehensible why we granted to our then allies, Italy and Roumania, facilities for playing the part of seceders by presenting them with an ultimatum before action was completed, instead of winning them over and involving them also. I am no accurate judge of the events in Rome, but King Carol in Roumania had certainly tried everything to induce Serbia to yield. In all probability he would not have succeeded, as Serbia had no idea of renouncing her plans for a Greater Serbia; but presumably an anxious feeling would have arisen between Bucharest and Belgrade, which would strongly have influenced further Roumanian policy in our favour. Bucharest has made enormous capital out of the diplomatic proceedings. Before the first decisive Cabinet Council Baron Fasciotti, the Italian Ambassador, harangued all the members in this spirit, and declared that the situation in Roumania and Italy was similar, and in each case there was no reason for co-operation, as neither Rome nor Bucharest had previously come to an understanding regarding the ultimatum. His efforts were crowned with success. On August 1, 1914, I sent the following telegram to Berchtold: "The Prime Minister has just notified me the result of the Cabinet Council. After a warm appeal from the King to bring the treaty into force, the Cabinet Council, with one exception, declared that no party could undertake the responsibility of such action. "The Cabinet Council has resolved that _as Roumania was neither notified nor consulted concerning the Austro-Hungarian action in Belgrade no casus foederis exists_. The Cabinet Council further resolved that military preparations for the safety of the frontier be undertaken, which would be an advantage for the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, as several hundred miles of its frontiers would thereby be covered. "The Prime Minister added that he had already given orders to strengthen all military posts, after which by degrees general mobilisation would follow. "The Government intends only to publish a short communiqué relating to the military measures taken for the safety of the country." Secondly, it appears incomprehensible why the ultimatum was drawn up as it was. It was not so much a manifestation of Berchtold's wish for war, as of other influences, above all that of Tschirsky. In 1870 Bismarck also desired war, but the Ems telegram was of quite a different character. In the present case it appears incomprehensible why a Note should have been selected which by its wording gave umbrage to many who hitherto were favourably disposed towards us. Had we, before the ultimatum and after the assassination, secretly and confidentially furnished proofs to the Great Powers who were not inimical to us, and especially to England, that trouble was impending over a political murder staged at Belgrade, we should have evoked a very different frame of mind in those Governments. Instead, we flung the ultimatum at them and at the whole of Europe. It was feared probably at the Ballplatz that any communication to the Powers would result in their intervention in the form of a new conference of ambassadors, and that stagnation would ensue. But in the year 1914 the case was very different from former days--before the ultimatum right was so undoubtedly on our side. At all events, the Tschirsky group dreaded such an insipid solution, and had insisted, therefore, on drastic action. In 1870 Bismarck was the attacking party, and he succeeded in interchanging the parts. We also succeeded, but in an opposite sense. 4 Then came our greatest disaster: the German entry into Belgium. Had England remained neutral we should not have lost the war. In his book, "Ursachen und Ausbruck des Krieges," page 172, Jagow tells how on August 4, towards the close of the Reichstag session, the English Ambassador appeared there and again asked whether Germany would respect Belgium's neutrality. At that time German troops were already on Belgian soil. On hearing that, the Ambassador retired, but, returning in a few hours, demanded a declaration, to be handed in before midnight, that the further advance of the German troops into Belgium would cease, otherwise he was instructed to ask for his passport and England would then protect Belgium. Germany refused, and the consequence was a declaration of war by England. That England on the same day sent word to Belgium that she would resist with her utmost strength any violation of her neutrality is fully in accordance with the steps taken at Berlin by the English Ambassador. Two days before, on August 2, the English Cabinet certainly gave France the assurance that, in addition to the protection of Belgian neutrality, she had demanded that there should be no naval action against France. The contradiction between both points of view is clearly visible. It appears to me, however, that the only explanation is that on August 4 England no longer adhered to her standpoint of August 2, for the German acceptance of the English ultimatum on the evening of August 4 had wrested from England the moral possibility of making further claims. If England, on August 4, had sought a pretext for war, she would have put forward, besides the Belgian demand, also that referring to the abstention from naval action. But she did not do so, and confined her ultimatum to the Belgian question, thereby tying her own hands in the event of Germany accepting the ultimatum. _On the night of August 4, between the hours of nine and midnight, the decision as to whether England would remain neutral or no lay with Germany._ Germany kept to her resolve to violate Belgian neutrality in spite of the certainty of the English declaration of war resulting therefrom. That was the first fateful victory of the militarists over the diplomats in this war. The former were naturally the motive power. The German military plan was to overrun France and then make a furious onslaught on Russia. This plan was shattered on the Marne. In more respects than one, German policy foundered on the heritage left by Bismarck. Not only was the conquest of Alsace-Lorraine a lasting obstacle to friendly relations with France, perpetually forcing the latter into the arms of every anti-German coalition, but Bismarck's heritage became Germany's curse, because the Germans, though desirous of following in his footsteps, had no one sufficiently competent to lead them therein. Bismarck created the German Empire out of Düppel, Königgrätz and Sedan. His policy was one of "blood and iron"--and for fifty years that policy of violence and violent means had been engrained in the mind of every German schoolboy as the gospel of diplomatic art--but Bismarck was not able to bequeath to the German people his genial efficiency, wisdom and prudence in the use of his violent means. Bismarck carefully prepared the wars of 1866 and 1870, and struck when he held good cards in his hand. The Germany of William II. had no desire for war, but one day plunged headlong into it, and during the first week had already created political situations which were beyond her power to cope with. Belgium and Luxembourg were treated on the Bismarckian principle of "Might before Right," and the world rose against Germany. I say world, because England's power extended over the world. At the beginning of the war England stood at "order arms." It would have been entirely true to her traditional policy to allow Germany to fight against France and Russia and mutually weaken each other, then at a given moment to intervene and enjoin peace. England was forced to join in by Germany threatening to establish herself in Belgium. How far the German invasion of Belgium can morally be extenuated owing to a French purpose to do likewise has still not been made clear--but this argument does not apply to Luxembourg, and the breach of right remains the same whether the country where it occurs be large or small. The invasion of Belgium and Luxembourg was a stroke of the Bismarckian policy of violence, not carried out by politicians but by generals who were devoid of Bismarck's power of calculating the devastating consequences. Later on, during the course of the war, the German Supreme Command made repeated use of violent means, which were more detrimental than useful to us, though subsequently these means were morally justifiable and comprehensible; in fact, were directly forced on us, seeing that Germany was fighting for her existence, and her adversaries, who would not come to an understanding, left her no choice of means. The use of noxious gas, aerial attacks on open towns and the U-boat warfare were means used in desperation against a merciless enemy, who left women and children to die of starvation and declared day by day that Germany must be annihilated. When war was declared, that murderous element was lacking, and it was only the entry into neutral territory that fostered an atmosphere of such terrible hatred and vengeance and stamped the struggle as a war of annihilation. England's policy concerning Napoleon III. was more of a diplomatic than a military nature, and everything tends to show that in the present case England originally had no intention of joining in the conflagration, but was content to see Germany weakened by her own confederates. So far as I am in a position to review the situation no blame for the wrongly estimated English attitude can be attached to our ambassadors in London. Their predictions and warnings were correct, and the final decision respecting the previously mentioned English ultimatum was taken in Berlin and not in London. Moreover, the German Foreign Office would never voluntarily have consented to the acts of violence, but the military party, who cared neither for diplomatic reports nor political complications, carried everything before them. It will always be particularly difficult in a war to define the limits of military and political spheres of action. The activities of both encroach to so great an extent on each other as to form one whole, and very naturally in a war precedence is given to military needs. Nevertheless, the complete displacement of politicians into subordinate positions which was effected in Germany and thereby made manifest the fact that the German Supreme Military Command had possessed itself of all State power of command, was a misfortune. Had the politicians at Berlin obtained a hearing there would never have been any invasion of Belgium, nor yet the ruthless U-boat warfare, the abstention from which would in both cases have saved the life of the Central Powers. From the very first day the Emperor William was as a prisoner in the hands of his generals. The blind faith in the invincibility of the army was, like so much else, an heirloom from Bismarck, and the "Prussian lieutenant, inimitable save in Germany," became her doom. The entire German people believed in victory and in an Emperor who flung himself into the arms of his generals and took upon himself a responsibility far surpassing the normal limit of what was bearable. Thus the Emperor William allowed his generals full liberty of action, and, to begin with, their tactics seemed to be successful. The first battle of the Marne was a godsend for the Entente in their direst need. But, later, when the war long since had assumed a totally different character, when the troops were made stationary by the war of position and fresh enemies were constantly rising up against us, when Italy, Roumania, and finally America appeared on the scene, then did the German generals achieve miracles of strategy. Hindenburg and Ludendorff became gods in the eyes of the German people; the whole of Germany looked up to them and hoped for victory through them alone. They were more powerful than the Emperor, and he, therefore, less than ever in a position to oppose them. Both the generals drew the wellnigh unlimited measure of their power direct from the Entente, for the latter left the Germans in no doubt that they must either conquer or die. The terrified and suffering people clung, therefore, to those who, as they believed, alone could give them victory. 5 Anglo-German competition, the increasing decadence of the Monarchy, and the consequent growing lust of conquest evinced by our neighbours had prepared the soil for war. Serbia, by the assassination, brought about an acute state of tension, and Russia profited thereby to fling herself on the Central Powers. That appears to me to be briefly an objective history of the beginning of the war. Faults, errors and omissions from the most varied sources may occur in it, but can neither alter nor affect the real nature of the case. The victorious Entente gives a different interpretation of it. They maintain that Germany let loose the war, and the terrible peace of Versailles is the product of that conception, for it serves as punishment. A neutral court of justice, as proposed by Germany, was refused. Their own witnesses and their own judges suffice for them. They are judge and prosecutor in one. In Dr. Bauer, the German-Austrian Secretary of State, they have certainly secured an important witness for their view of the case. In the winter of 1918 the latter openly declared that "three Austro-Hungarian counts and one general had started the war."[1] Were that true, then Germany would also have to bear a vast amount of blame. For the four "guilty ones" could not have incited to war without being sure of having Germany at their back, and were it true, there could only have been a question of some plot laid by the Austro-Hungarian and the German Governments, in which case Germany, being the vastly superior military element, would undoubtedly have assumed the rôle of leader. Bauer's statement shows that they who inflicted the punitive peace were right. 6 While the war was going on, a separate peace on our side that would have delivered up Germany would have been treachery. But had attempts at peace failed owing to the claims put forward by Germany, we should have been morally justified in breaking away from them, as we were united together in a war of defence and not in a war of conquest. Although the German military party both dreamed and talked incessantly of conquest, which doubtless gave rise to a misunderstanding of the situation, that was by no means the exclusive reason why peace could not be attained. It simply was because on no consideration could the Entente be induced to pardon Germany. I have already mentioned this in my speech of December 11, 1918,[2] in which I discoursed on politics in the world war: "Ludendorff is exactly like the statesmen of France and England. None of them wishes to compromise, they only look for victory: in that respect there is no difference between them." As long as I was in office the Entente would never come to an agreement with Germany _inter pares_, thereby directly forcing us to assume the part of a war of defence. Had we succeeded in what we so often attempted to do, namely to make the Entente pronounce the saving word; and had we ever been able to make the Entente state that they were ready to conclude a _status quo_ peace with Germany, we would have been relieved of our moral obligations. Against this may be quoted: "_Salus rei publicas supreme lex_"--in order to save the Monarchy Germany would have to be given up, and therefore the other question must be inquired into as to whether the "physical possibility" of a separate peace really did exist. I also mentioned this matter in the aforesaid speech, and expressly stated then, and withdraw nothing, that after the entry of England, then of Italy, Roumania, and finally of America into the war, I considered a victory peace on our side to be a Utopian idea. But up to the last moment of my official activities, I cherished the hope of a _peace of understanding_ from month to month, from week to week, even from day to day, and believed that the possibility would arise of obtaining such a peace of understanding, however great the sacrifices. Just as little as anyone else could I foresee the end which practically has arrived, nor yet the present state of affairs. A catastrophe of such magnitude and such dimensions was never what I feared. This is confirmed in the published report of my aforesaid speech, where I say: "A victory peace was out of the question; we are therefore compelled to effect a peace with sacrifice." The Imperial offer to cede Galicia to Poland, and, indirectly, to Germany, arose out of this train of thought, as did all the peace proposals to the Entente, which always clearly intimated that we were ready for _endurable_ sacrifices. It had always been obvious that the Entente would tear the Monarchy in shreds, both in the event of a peace of understanding and of a separate peace. It was quite in keeping with the terms of the Pact of London of April 26, 1915. The resolutions passed at that congress which prepared for Italy's entry into the war, determined the further course of the war, for they included the division of the Monarchy, and forced us, therefore, into a desperate war of defence. I believe that London and Paris, at times when the fortune of war was on our side, both regretted the resolutions that had been adopted, as they prevented the dwellers on both the Seine and the Thames from making any temporarily desired advances to us. As far back as 1915 we received vague news of the contents of this strictly secret London agreement; but only in February, 1917, did we obtain the authentic whole, when the Russian revolutionary Government published a protocol referring to it, which subsequently was reproduced in our papers. I add this protocol to the appendix of the book,[3] as, in spite of its being so eminently important, it has not received adequate attention on the part of the public. According to the settlements, which were binding on the four States--England, France, Russia, and Italy--the last-named was awarded the Trentino, the whole of South Tyrol as far as the Brenner Pass, Trieste, Gorizia, Gradisca, the whole of Istria with a number of islands, also Dalmatia. In the course of the war the Entente had further made binding promises to the Roumanians and Serbians, hence the need for the dissolution of the Monarchy. Having made these statements, I wish to explain why a separate peace was a sheer impossibility for us. In other words, what were the reasons that prevented us from ending the war and becoming neutral--reasons which only left one possibility open to us: to change our adversary, and instead of fighting the Entente, together with Germany, to join the Entente and with her fight against Germany? It must, above all, be kept in mind that up to the last days that I held office the Eastern front was manned by Austro-Hungarian and German troops all mixed together, and this entire army was under the Imperial German Command. We had no army of our own in the East--not in the true sense of the word, as it had been merged into the German army. That was a consequence of our military inferiority. Again and again we resorted to German aid. We called repeatedly for help in Serbia, Roumania, Russia, and Italy, and were compelled to purchase it by giving up certain things. Our notorious inferiority was only in very slight degree the fault of the individual soldier; rather did it emanate from the general state of Austro-Hungarian affairs. We entered the war badly equipped and sadly lacking in artillery; the various Ministers of War and the Parliaments were to blame in that respect. The Hungarian Parliament neglected the army for years because their national claims were not attended to, and in Austria the Social Democrats had always been opposed to any measures of defence, scenting therein plans for attack and not defence. Our General Staff was in part very bad. There were, of course, exceptions, but they only prove the rule. What was chiefly wanting was contact with the troops. These gentlemen sat with their backs turned and gave their orders. Hardly ever did they see the men at the front or where the bullets whistled. During the war the troops learned to _hate_ the General Staff. It was very different in the German army. The German General Staffs exacted much, but they also achieved much; above all, they exposed themselves freely and set an example. Ludendorff, sword in hand, took Liége, accompanied by a couple of men! In Austria archdukes were put into leading posts for which they were quite unsuited. Some of them were utterly incompetent; the Archdukes Friedrich, Eugen, and Joseph formed three exceptions. The first of these in particular very rightly looked upon his post not as that of a leader of operations, but as a connecting link between us and Germany, and between the army and the Emperor Francis Joseph. He always acted correctly and with eminent tact, and overcame many difficulties. What was left of our independence was lost after Luck. To return, therefore, to the plan developed above: a separate peace that would have contained an order for our troops on the Eastern front to lay down their arms or to march back would immediately have led to conflict at the front. Following on the violent opposition that such an order would naturally have aroused in the German leaders, orders from Vienna and counter-orders from Berlin would have led to a state of complete disorganisation, even to anarchy. Humanly speaking, it was out of the question to look for a peaceful and bloodless unravelment at the front. I state this in order to explain my firm conviction that the idea that such a separating of the two armies could have been carried out in mutual agreement is based on utterly erroneous premises, and also to prove that we have here the first factor showing that we would not have ended the war by a separate peace, but would, on the contrary, have been entangled in a new one. But what would have been enacted at the front would also, and in aggravated fashion, have been repeated throughout the entire country: a civil war would have been inevitable. I must here explain a second misunderstanding, resulting also from my speech of December 11, which is due to my statement that "if we came out Germany could not carry on the war." I admit that this statement is not clearly expressed, and was interpreted as though I had intended to say that if we came out the immediate collapse of Germany was a foregone conclusion. I did not intend to say that, nor did I say or mean it. I meant to say that our secession from Germany would render impossible a victorious ending of the war, or even a lasting successful continuance of the war; that Germany through this would be faced by the alternative of either submitting to the dictates of the Entente or of bringing up her supremest fighting powers and suppressing the Monarchy, preparing for her the same fate as Roumania met with. I meant to say that Austria-Hungary, if she allowed the Entente troops to enter, would prove such a terrible danger to Germany that she would be compelled to use every means to forestall us and paralyse the move. Whoever imagines that the German military leaders would not have seized the latter eventuality knows them but badly, and has a poor opinion of their spirit. In order to be able to form an objective judgment of this train of thought one should be able to enter into the spirit of the situation. In April, 1916, when I sent in my resignation for other reasons, Germany's confidence in victory was stronger than ever. The Eastern front was free: Russia and Roumania were out of action. The troops were bound westward, and no one who knew the situation as it was then can repudiate my assertion that the German military leaders believed themselves then to be nearer than ever to a victory peace; that they were persuaded they would take both Paris and Calais and force the Entente to its knees. It is out of the question that at such a moment and under such conditions they could have replied to the falling away of Austria-Hungary otherwise than by violence. All who will not admit the argument, I would refer to a fact which it would be difficult to evade. Six months afterwards, when there was already clear evidence of the German collapse, when Andrassy declared a separate peace, the _Germans, as a matter of fact, threw troops into the Tyrol_. If they, when utterly exhausted, defeated, and ruined, with revolution at their back, still held firmly to this decision and endeavoured to make a battlefield on Austrian territory, how much more would they have done that six months earlier, when they still stood full of proud defiance and their generals dreamed of victory and triumph? What I, secondly, also would maintain is that the immediate consequence of a separate peace would have been the conversion of Austria-Hungary into a theatre of war. The Tyrol, as well as Bohemia, would have become fields of battle. If it be maintained now that the great exhaustion from the war that prevailed throughout the Monarchy before April, 1917, had caused the entire population of the former Monarchy to rally round the Minister who had concluded the separate peace, it is a conscious or unconscious untruth. Certainly the Czechs were decidedly against Germany, and it would not have been reasons of political alliance that would have prevented them from agreeing. But I would like to know what the Czech people would have said if Bohemia had been turned into a theatre of war and exposed to all the sufferings endured by this and all other peoples, and when to it had been added the devastation of the fatherland, for, let there be no doubt about it, the troops advancing with flying colours from Saxony would have made their way to Prague and penetrated even farther. We had no military forces in Bohemia; we should not have been able to check the advance, and quicker than either we or the Entente could have sent troops worth mentioning to Bohemia, the Germans, drawing troops from their wellnigh inexhaustible reserves, would have marched either against us or against the Entente on our territory. The German-Austrian public would not have been in agreement with such a Minister; the German Nationalists and the German _bourgeoisie_ have no say in the matter. On October 28 the German Nationalists published their own particular point of view in the following manner: "The members of the German Nationalist parties were highly indignant at the way in which Count Andrassy answered Wilson's Note. Count Andrassy came from Hungary, and neither came to any agreement with the Imperial German Government nor with the representatives of the Executive Committee before drawing up the Note. Although the peace negotiations were most warmly welcomed and considered most necessary, still the one-sided action of Count Andrassy in dispatching the Note to Wilson without previous arrangement with the German Empire has roused the greatest indignation in the German parties. A few days ago a delegation from the German Executive Committee was in Berlin and was favourably received by the German Imperial Government in the matter of providing for German-Austria. Although German soldiers fought by the side of ours in the Alps and the Carpathians, the alliance has now been violated by this effort to approach Wilson without the consent of the German Empire, as is expressly stated in the Note. Besides which, no previous agreement with the representatives of the German Executive Committee was sought for. They were ignored and the answer was sent to Wilson. The German Nationalist parties strongly protest against such an _unqualifiable act_ and will insist in the German Executive Committee that German-Austria's right of self-determination be unconditionally upheld and peace be secured in concert with the German Empire." Neither would the German-Austrian Social Democrats have been a party to such a movement. A conscious and intended misrepresentation of fact lies before us if it be maintained to-day that either the National Assembly or the Austrian Social Democrats would have approved of and supported such policy. I again have in mind the Andrassy days. On October 30 the National Assembly took up its position for action. Dr. Sylvester drew up the report and pointed out the following: "It was, however, neither necessary nor desirable to make the attempt in such a way as to create an incurable rupture between German-Austria and the German Empire that would endanger the future of our people. The German-Austrian National Assembly asserts that the Note of October 27 from the Royal and Imperial Minister for Foreign Affairs was drawn up and dispatched to President Wilson without in any way coming to an agreement with the representatives of the German-Austrian people. The National Assembly protests all the more insistently against this proceeding as the nation to which the present Minister for Foreign Affairs belongs has expressly refused any joint dealings. The National Assembly states that it and its organs alone have the right to represent the German-Austrian people in all matters relating to foreign affairs and particularly in all peace negotiations." The protest met with no opposition in the National Assembly. Afterwards the chairman, Dr. Ellenbogen, the Social Democrat, spoke as follows: "Instead of now telling the German Emperor that his remaining in office is the greatest obstacle to peace" (loud applause from the Social Democrats), "and if there ever were an object in Curtius's famous leap, it would be comprehensible now were the German Emperor to copy it to save his people, this coalition now seizes the present moment to break away from Germany and in doing so attacks German democracy in the rear. Those gentlemen arrived too late to gain any profit from the peace. What now remains is the _bare and shameful breach of faith_, the thanks of the House of Austria, so styled by a celebrated German poet." (Applause from the Social Democrats and the German Radicals.) It was the attack on the separate peace that furnished the exceptional opportunity for Social Democrats and German Radicals to unite in common applause, probably the first instance of such a thing in all these years of war. If that could happen at a moment when it already was obvious that there was no longer a possibility of making a peace of understanding together with Germany--what would have happened, I ask, at a time when this was by no means so clear to the great majority of the population; at a time when it was still far from certain, or, at least, not to be proved mathematically, that we in time and together with Germany might still be able to conclude a peace of understanding? Disbandment at the front, where all would be fighting against all, civil war in the interior--such would have been the result of a separate peace. And all that in order finally to impose on us the resolutions passed in London! For never--as I shall presently show--had the Entente given up their decision, as they were bound to Italy, and Italy would allow of no change. Such a policy would have been as suicide from the sheer fear of death. In 1917 I once discussed the whole question with the late Dr. Victor Adler, and pointed out to him the probabilities ensuing from a separate peace. Dr. Adler replied: "For God's sake, do not plunge us into a war with Germany!" After the entry of Bavarian troops into the Tyrol (Adler was then a secretary in the Foreign Affairs department) he reminded me of our conversation, and added: "The catastrophe we spoke of then has arrived. The Tyrol will become a theatre of war." Everyone in Austria wished for peace. No one wanted a new war--and a separate peace would have brought about not peace, but a new war with Germany. In Hungary, Stephen Tisza ruled with practically unlimited powers; he was far more powerful than the entire Wekerle Ministry put together. As applied to Hungary, a separate peace would also have meant the carrying out of the Entente aims; that is, the loss of the largest and richest territories in the north and south of Czecho-Slovakia, Roumania and Serbia. Is there anyone who can honestly maintain that the Hungarians in 1917 would have agreed to these sacrifices without putting up the bitterest resistance? Everyone who knows the circumstances must admit that in this case Tisza would have had the whole of Hungary behind him in a fierce attack on Vienna. Soon after I took office I had a long and very serious conversation with him on the German and the peace questions. Tisza pointed out that the Germans were difficult to deal with; they were arrogant and despotic; yet without them we could not bring the war to an end. The proposal to cede Hungarian territory (Transylvania) and also the plan to enforce an internal Hungarian reform in favour of the subject nationalities were matters that were not capable of discussion. The congress in London in 1915 had adopted resolutions that were quite mad and never could be realised, and the desire for destruction prevailing in the Entente could only be suppressed by force. In all circumstances, we must keep our place by the side of Germany. In Hungary are many different currents of feeling--but the moment that Vienna prepared to sacrifice any part of Hungary, the whole country would rise as one man against such action. In that respect there was no difference between him--Tisza--and Karolyi. Tisza alluded to Karolyi's attitude before the Roumanian declaration of war, referred to the attitude of Parliament, and said that if peace were to be made behind Hungary's back she would separate from Austria and act independently. I replied that there was no question either of separating from Germany or of ceding any Hungarian territory, but that we must be quite clear as to what we had to guard should we be carried further through the German lust of conquest. Thereupon Tisza pointed out that the situation was different. It was not known for certain what had been determined at the conference in London (the protocol had not then been published), but that Hungarian territory was promised to Roumania was just as certain as that the Entente was planning to intervene in Hungarian internal affairs, and both contingencies were equally unacceptable. Were the Entente to give Hungary a guarantee for the _status quo ante_ and to desist from any internal interference it would alter the situation. Until then he must declare against any attempt at peace. The conversation as it proceeded became more animated, owing particularly to my accusing him of viewing all politics from a Hungarian point of view, which he did not deny, though he maintained that the dispute was a mere platonic one, as the Entente peace terms appeared to be such that Austria would be left with much less than Hungary. I was also first to state the terms under which we could make peace; then only would it be seen whether extreme pressure brought to bear on Germany were advisable or not. There was no sense in Germany's advocating peace if she intended to continue fighting. For Germany was fighting above all for the integrity of the Monarchy, which would be lost the moment Germany laid down her arms. Whatever German politicians and generals said was of little consequence. As long as England remained bent on satisfying her Allies with our territory, Germany was the only protection against these plans. Tisza had no desire for conquest beyond a frontier protection from Roumania, and he was decidedly opposed to the dismemberment of new states (Poland); that would be to weaken not to strengthen Hungary. After a lengthy discussion we agreed to bind ourselves to the following policy: (1) So long, as the determination made at the conference in London, i.e. the destruction of the Monarchy, continues to be the Entente's objective, we must fight on in the certain hope of crushing that spirit of destruction. (2) But as our war is purely a defensive war, it will on no account be carried on for purposes of conquest. (3) Any semblance of the weakening of our allied relations must be avoided. (4) No concession of Hungarian territory may take place without the knowledge of the Prime Minister. (5) Should the Austrian Ministry agree with the Foreign Minister respecting a cession of Austrian territory, the Hungarian Prime Minister will naturally acquiesce. When the conference in London and the destruction of the Monarchy came into question, Tisza was entirely in the right, and that he otherwise to the end adhered to his standpoint is proved on the occasion of his last visit to the Southern Slavs, which he undertook at the request of the Emperor immediately before the collapse, and when in the most marked manner he showed himself to be opposed to the aspirations of the Southern Slavs. Whoever attempts to judge in objective fashion must not, when looking back from to-day, relegate all that has since happened to former discernible facts, but should consider that, in spite of all pessimism and all fears, the hopes of a reasonable peace of understanding, even though involving sacrifices, still existed, and that it was impossible to plunge the Monarchy into a catastrophe at once for fear of its coming later. If the situation is described to-day as though the inhabitants of the Monarchy, and especially the Social Democrats, were favourably disposed for any eventuality, even for a separate peace, I must again most emphatically repudiate it. I bear in mind that Social Democracy without doubt was the party most strongly in favour of peace, and also that Social Democracy in Germany, as with us, repeatedly stated that there were certain limits to its desire for peace. The German Social Democrats never agreed that Alsace-Lorraine ought to be given up, and never have our Social Democrats voted for ceding Trieste, Bozen and Meran. This would in any case have been the price of peace--and also the price of a separate peace--for, as I have already pointed out, at the conference in London, which dates back to 1915, binding obligations had been entered into for the partition of the Monarchy, while all that had been promised to Italy. The fall of the Monarchy was quite inevitable, whether through the separation from Germany or through the vacillation in the Entente ranks--for the claims of the Italians, the Roumanians, the Serbians, and the Czechs had all been granted. In any case the Monarchy would have fallen and German-Austria have arisen as she has done now; and I doubt whether the part played by that country during the proceedings would have recommended it to the special protection of the Entente. It is a very great mistake, whether conscious or unconscious, to believe and to maintain that the population of German-Austria, and especially the present leaders of Social Democracy, are devoid of any strong national feeling. I refer to the part played by the Austrian Social Democracy in the question of union. It was the motive power in the union with Germany, and the papers repeated daily that no material advantages which the Entente could offer to Austria could alter the decision. How, therefore, can this same Social Democracy, whose entire political views and aims are subordinate to the desire for a union with Germany--how can this Social Democracy demand a policy which, without doubt, must lead not only to a separation from Germany, but to a fratricidal war with the German nation? And why condemn the upholding of allied relations when Andrassy was abused for doing the opposite? But what was the situation in March, 1918, shortly before my resignation? Germany stood at the height of her success. I do not pretend to say that her success was real. In this connection that is of no moment; but the Germans were persuaded that they were quite near a victorious end, that after leaving the Eastern front they would throw themselves on to the Western front, and that the war would end before America had time to come in. Their reckoning was at fault, as we all know to-day. But for the German generals the will to victory was the leading spirit, and all decisions arrived at by Germany against the defection of Austria-Hungary proceeded from that dominant influence. As already mentioned, I stated in my speech of December 11, on foreign policy, that neither the Entente nor Germany would conclude a peace of renunciation. Since then I have had opportunity to speak with several men of the Entente, and consequent on the views that I obtained, I feel I must formulate my previous opinion in still stronger terms. I came to the firm conclusion that the Entente--England above all--from the summer of 1917 at any rate, had formed an unbending resolve to shatter Germany. From that time onwards England, with the obstinacy which is her chief characteristic, appears to have been determined not to treat further with Germany, nor to sheathe her sword until Germany lay crushed to earth. It makes no difference in the matter that the German military party--though for other reasons--from a total misconception of their chances of victory, steadily refused a peace involving sacrifice at a time when it might have been possible. This is an historical fact, but as an upholder of truth I must distinctly state that I doubt whether concessions would have changed the fate of Germany. _We_ could have gone over to the enemy--in 1917 and also in 1918; we could have fought against Germany with the Entente on Austro-Hungarian soil, and would doubtless have hastened Germany's collapse; but the wounds which Austria-Hungary would have received in the fray would not have been less serious than those from which she is now suffering: she would have perished in the fight against Germany, as she has as good as perished in her fight allied with Germany. _Austria-Hungary's watch had run down._ Among the few statesmen who in 1914 wished for war--like Tschirsky, for instance--there can have been none who after a few months had not altered and regretted his views. They, too, had not thought of a world war. I believe to-day, nevertheless, that even without the war the fall of the Monarchy would have happened, and that the assassination in Serbia was the first step. The Archduke Heir Apparent was the victim of Greater Serbia's aspirations; but these aspirations, which led to the breaking away of our Southern Slav provinces, would not have been suppressed, but, on the contrary, would have largely increased and asserted themselves, and would have strengthened the centrifugal tendencies of other peoples within the Monarchy. Lightning at night reveals the country for a second, and the same effect was produced by the shots fired at Sarajevo. It became obvious that the signal for the fall of the Monarchy had been given. The bells of Sarajevo, which began to toll half an hour after the murder, sounded the death knell of the Monarchy. The feeling among the Austrian people, and especially at Vienna, was very general that the outrage at Sarajevo was a matter of more importance than the murder of an Imperial prince and his wife, and that it was the alarm signal for the ruin of the Habsburg Empire. I have been told that during the period between the assassination and the war, warlike demonstrations were daily occurrences in the Viennese restaurants and people's parks; patriotic and anti-Serbian songs were sung, and Berchtold was scoffed at because he could not "exert himself to take any energetic steps." This must not be taken as an excuse for any eventual mistakes on the part of the leaders of the nation, for a leading statesman ought not to allow himself to be influenced by the man in the street. It is only to prove that the spirit developed in 1914 appears to have been very general. And it may perhaps be permitted to add this comment: how many of those who then clamoured for war and revenge and demanded "energy," would, now that the experiment has totally failed, severely criticise and condemn Berchtold's "criminal behaviour"? It is, of course, impossible to say in what manner the fall of the Monarchy would have occurred had war been averted. Certainly in a less terrible fashion than was the case through the war. Probably much more slowly, and doubtless without dragging the whole world into the whirlpool. We were bound to die. We were at liberty to choose the manner of our death, and we chose the most terrible. Without knowing it, we lost our independence at the outbreak of war. We were transformed from a subject into an object. This unfortunate war once started, we were powerless to end it. At the conference in London the death sentence had been passed on the Empire of the Habsburgs and a separate peace would have been no easier a form of death than that involved in holding out at the side of our Allies. FOOTNOTES: [1] Supposed to be the Counts Berchtold, Tisza and Stürgkh and General Conrad von Hohendorf. [2] See Appendix, p. 325. [3] See page 275. CHAPTER II KONOPISCHT 1 Konopischt has become the cradle of manifold legends. The lord of the castle was the first victim of the terrible world conflagration, and the part that he played before the war has been the subject of much and partly erroneous commentary. The Archduke and heir to the throne was a man of a very peculiar nature. The main feature of his character was a great lack of balance. He knew no middle course and was just as eager to hate as to love. He was unbalanced in everything; he did nothing like other people, and what he did was done in superhuman dimensions. His passion for buying and collecting antiquities was proverbial and fabulous. A first-rate shot, sport was for him a question of murdering _en masse_, and the number of game shot by him reached hundreds of thousands. A few years before his death he shot his 5,000th stag. His ability as a good shot was phenomenal. When in India, during his voyage round the world, and while staying with a certain Maharajah, an Indian marksman gave an exhibition of his skill. Coins were thrown into the air which the man hit with bullets. The Archduke tried the same and beat the Indian. Once when I was staying with him at Eckartsau he made a _coup double_ at a stag and a hare as they ran; he had knocked over a fleeing stag, and when, startled by the shot, a hare jumped up, he killed it with the second bullet. He scorned all modern appliances for shooting, such as telescopic sights or automatic rifles; he invariably used a short double-barrelled rifle, and his exceptionally keen sight rendered glasses unnecessary. The artistic work of laying out parks and gardens became in latter years his dominating passion. He knew every tree and every bush at Konopischt, and loved his flowers above everything. He was his own gardener. Every bed and every group was designed according to his exact orders. He knew the conditions essential to the life of each individual plant, the quality of the soil required; and even the smallest spot to be laid out or altered was done according to his minute instructions. But here, too, everything was carried out on the same gigantic lines, and the sums spent on that park must have been enormous. Few people had the varied artistic knowledge possessed by the Archduke; no dealer could palm off on him any modern article as an antique, and he had just as good taste as understanding. On the other hand, music to him was simply a disagreeable noise, and he had an unspeakable contempt for poets. He could not bear Wagner, and Goethe left him quite cold. His lack of any talent for languages was peculiar. He spoke French tolerably, but otherwise no other language, though he had a smattering of Italian and Czech. For years--indeed, to the end of his life--he struggled with the greatest energy to learn Hungarian. He had a priest living permanently in the house to give him Hungarian lessons. This priest accompanied him on his travels, and at St. Moritz, for instance, Franz Ferdinand had a Hungarian lesson every day; but, in spite of this, he continued to suffer from the feeling that he would never be able to learn the language, and he vented his annoyance at this on the entire Hungarian people. "Their very language makes me feel antipathy for them," was a remark I constantly heard him make. His judgment of people was not a well-balanced one; he could either love or hate, and unfortunately the number of those included in the latter category was considerably the greater. There is no doubt about it that there was a very hard strain in Franz Ferdinand's mentality, and those who only knew him slightly felt that this hardness of character was the most notable feature in him and his great unpopularity can doubtless be attributed to this cause. The public never knew the splendid qualities of the Archduke, and misjudged him accordingly. Apparently he was not always like that. He suffered in his youth from severe lung trouble, and for long was given up by the doctors. He often spoke to me of that time and all that he had gone through, and referred with intense bitterness to the people who were only waiting day by day to put him altogether on one side. As long as he was looked upon as the heir to the throne, and people reckoned on him for the future, he was the centre of all possible attention; but when he fell ill and his case was considered hopeless, the world fluctuated from hour to hour and paid homage to his younger brother Otto. I do not for a moment doubt that there was a great deal of truth in what the late Archduke told me; and no one knowing the ways of the world can deny the wretched, servile egotism that is almost always at the bottom of the homage paid to those in high places. More deeply than in the hearts of others was this resentment implanted in the heart of Franz Ferdinand, and he never forgave the world what he suffered and went through in those distressful months. It was chiefly the ostensible vacillation of the then Minister for Foreign Affairs, Count Goluchowski, that had so deeply hurt the Archduke, who had always imagined that Goluchowski was deeply attached to him. According to Franz Ferdinand's account, Goluchowski is supposed to have said to the Emperor Francis Joseph that the Archduke Otto ought now to be given the retinue and household suitable for the heir to the throne as he--Franz Ferdinand--"was in any case lost." It was not so much the fact as the manner in which Goluchowski tried "to bury him while still living" that vexed and hurt him whom a long illness had made irritable. But besides Goluchowski, there were numberless others whose behaviour at that time he took greatly amiss, and his unparalleled contempt of the world which, when I knew him, was one of his most characteristic features, appears--partly, at any rate--to date from his experiences during that illness. In connection with politics, too, this bitterness exercised a lasting influence on his entire mental outlook. I have been told by an authentic witness that the Archduke, when suffering and combating his terrible disease, saw one day an article in a Hungarian paper which, in brutal and derisive tones, spoke of the Archduke's expectations of future government as laid aside, and gloated openly, with malicious delight, over the probable event. The Archduke, who while reading the article had turned ashen grey with rage and indignation, remained silent for a moment and then made the following characteristic remark: "Now I must get better. I shall live from now only for my health. I must get better in order to show them that their joy is premature." And though this may not have been the only reason for his violent antipathy to everything Hungarian, there is no doubt that the episode influenced his mind considerably. The Archduke was a "good hater"; he did not easily forget, and woe betide those upon whom he vented his hatred. On the other hand, though but few knew it, he had an uncommonly warm corner in his heart; he was an ideal husband, the best of fathers, and a faithful friend. But the number of those he despised was incomparably greater than those who gained his affection, and he himself was in no doubt whatever as to his being the most unpopular person in the Monarchy. But there was a certain grandeur in this very contempt of popularity. He never could bring himself to make any advances to newspapers or other organs that are in the habit of influencing public opinion either favourably or unfavourably. He was too proud to sue for popularity, and too great a despiser of men to attach any importance to their judgment. The Archduke's antipathy to Hungary runs like a scarlet thread through the political chain of his thoughts. I have been told that at the time when the Crown Prince Rudolf was frequently in Hungary shooting, the Archduke was often with him, and that the Hungarian gentlemen took a pleasure in teasing and ridiculing the young Archduke in the presence and to the delight of the considerably older Crown Prince. Ready as I am to believe that the Crown Prince Rudolf enjoyed the jokes--and little do I doubt that there were men there who would act in such fashion so as to curry favour with the Crown Prince--I still think that these unpleasant incidents in his youth weighed less in the balance with Franz Ferdinand than the already-mentioned occurrences during his illness. Apart from his personal antipathies, which he transferred from a few Hungarians to the entire nation, there were also various far-reaching and well-founded political reasons which strengthened the Archduke in his antagonistic relations with Hungary. Franz Ferdinand possessed an exceptionally fine political _flair_, and this enabled him to see that Hungarian policy was a vital danger to the existence of the whole Habsburg Empire. His desire to overthrow the predominance of the Magyars and to help the nationalities to obtain their rights was always in his thoughts, and influenced his judgment on all political questions. He was the steady representative of the Roumanians, the Slovaks, and other nationalities living in Hungary, and went so far in that respect that he would have treated every question at once from an anti-Magyar point of view without inquiring into it in an objective and expert manner. These tendencies of his were no secret in Hungary, and the result was a strong reaction among the Magyar magnates, which he again took as purely personal antagonism to himself, and as the years went on existing differences increased automatically, until finally, under the Tisza régime, they led to direct hostility. The Archduke's antipathy to party leaders in Hungary was even stronger than that he felt for Tisza, and he showed it particularly to one of the most prominent figures of that time. I do not know for certain what took place between them; I only know that several years before the catastrophe the gentleman in question was received in audience at the Belvedere, and that the interview came to a very unsatisfactory end. The Archduke told me that his visitor arrived bringing a whole library with him in order to put forward legal proofs that the Magyar's standpoint was the right one. He, the Archduke, snapped his fingers at their laws, and said so. It came to a violent scene, and the gentleman, pale as death, tottered from the room. Certain it is that Ministers and other officials rarely waited on the Archduke without beating hearts. He was capable of flying out at people and terrifying them to such a degree that they lost their heads completely. He often took their fright to be obstinacy and passive resistance, and it irritated him all the more. On the other hand, it was extremely easy to get on with him if one knew him well and did not stand in awe of him. I had many scenes with him and often lost my temper, too; but there was never any lasting ill-feeling. Once when at Konopischt we had a scene one evening after dinner because, he said, I always worked in opposition to him and rewarded his friendship by treachery. I broke off the conversation, remarking that, if he could say such things, any further serious conversation would be impossible, and I also stated my intention of leaving the next morning. We separated without saying good night to each other. Quite early next morning--I was still in bed--he appeared in my room and asked me to forget what he had said the previous evening, that he had not meant it seriously, and thus completely disarmed my still prevailing vexation. A despiser of men, with his wits sharpened by his own experiences, he never allowed himself to be fooled by servile cringing and flattery. He listened to people, but how often have I heard him say: "He is no good; he is a toady." Such people never found favour with him, as he always mistrusted them at the outset. He was protected more than others in such high spheres from the poison of servility that attacks all monarchs. His two best friends, and the men to whom--after his own nearest relations--he was most attached, were his brother-in-law Albrecht von Würtemberg and the Prince Karl of Schwarzenberg. The former, a man of charming personality, great intelligence, and equally efficient in political as in military matters, lived on a footing of true brotherly unity with Franz Ferdinand, and also, naturally, on terms of perfect equality. Karl of Schwarzenberg was the most sincere, honourable and straightforward character I have ever encountered; a man who concealed the truth from no one. Rich, independent, and devoid of personal ambition, it was quite immaterial to him whether the Archduke was pleased with what he asserted or no. He was his _friend_, and considered it his duty to be honest and open--and if necessary, disagreeable. The Archduke understood, appreciated, and valued this attitude. I do not think there are many monarchs or heirs to the throne who would have suffered, as the Archduke did, Schwarzenberg's sayings and doings. Franz Ferdinand was on very bad terms with Aehrenthal, who easily became abrupt and repellent. Still, there was another reason why two such hard millstones could not grind together. I do not believe that the many reproaches launched against Aehrenthal by the Archduke were consequent on political differences; it was more Aehrenthal's manner that invariably irritated the Archduke. I had occasion to read some of Aehrenthal's letters to Franz Ferdinand which, perhaps unintentionally, had a slight ironical flavour which made the Archduke feel he was not being taken seriously. He was particularly sensitive in this respect. When Aehrenthal fell ill the Archduke made unkind remarks about the dying man, and there was great and general indignation at the want of feeling shown by him. He represented the Emperor at the first part of the funeral service, and afterwards received me at the Belvedere. We were standing in the courtyard when the procession, with the hearse, passed on the way to the station. The Archduke disappeared quickly into a cottage close by, the windows of which looked on to the road, and there, concealed behind the window curtain, he watched the procession pass. He said not a word, but his eyes were full of tears. When he saw that I noticed his emotion he turned away angrily, vexed at having given proof of his weakness. It was just like him. He would rather be considered hard and heartless than soft and weak, and nothing was more repugnant to him than the idea that he had aroused suspicion of striving to enact a touching scene. I have no doubt that at that moment he was suffering the torture of self-reproach, and probably suffered the more through being so reserved and unable to give free play to his feelings. The Archduke could be extremely gay, and possessed an exceptionally strong sense of humour. In his happiest years he could laugh like any youth, and carried his audience with him by his unaffected merriment. Some years ago a German prince, who was unable to distinguish between the numerous archdukes, came to Vienna. A dinner was given in his honour at the Hofburg, where he was seated next to Franz Ferdinand. Part of the programme was that he was to have gone the next morning with the Archduke to shoot in the neighbourhood. The German prince, who mistook the Archduke Franz Ferdinand for someone else, said to him during dinner: "I am to go out shooting to-morrow, and I hear it is to be with that tiresome Franz Ferdinand; I hope the plan will be changed." As far as I know, the expedition did not take place; but I never heard whether the prince discovered his mistake. The Archduke, however, laughed heartily for days at the episode. The Archduke invariably spoke of his nephew, the present Emperor Charles, with great affection. The relations between the two were, however, always marked by the absolute subordination of the nephew to the uncle. In all political discussions, too, the Archduke Charles was always the listener, absorbing the precepts expounded by Franz Ferdinand. Charles's marriage met with the full approval of his uncle. The Duchess of Hohenberg, too, entertained the warmest affection for the young couple. The Archduke was a firm partisan of the Great-Austria programme. His idea was to convert the Monarchy into numerous more or less independent National States, having in Vienna a common central organisation for all important and absolutely necessary affairs--in other words to substitute Federalisation for Dualism. Now that, after terrible military and revolutionary struggles, the development of the former Monarchy has been accomplished in a national spirit, there cannot be many to contend that the plan is Utopian. At that time, however, it had many opponents who strongly advised against dissecting the State in order to erect in its place something new and "presumably better," and the Emperor Francis Joseph was far too conservative and far too old to agree to his nephew's plans. This direct refusal of the idea cherished by the Archduke offended him greatly, and he complained often in bitter terms that the Emperor turned a deaf ear to him as though he were the "lowest serving man at Schönbrunn." The Archduke lacked the knowledge of how to deal with people. He neither could nor would control himself, and, charming though he could be when his natural heartiness was allowed free scope, just as little could he conceal his anger and ill-humour. Thus it came about that the relations between him and the aged Emperor grew more and more strained. There were doubtless faults on both sides. The standpoint of the old Emperor, that as long as he lived no one else should interfere, was in direct opposition to that of the Archduke, who held that he would one day have to suffer for the present faults in the administration, and anyone acquainted with life at court will know that such differences between the highest individuals are quickly raked together and exaggerated. At every court there are men who seek to gain their master's favour by pouring oil on the flames, and who, by gossip and stories of all kinds, add to the antipathy that prevails. Thus it was in this case, and, instead of being drawn closer together, the two became more and more estranged. The Archduke had but few friends, and under the old monarch practically none at all. That was one of the reasons for the advances he made to the Emperor William. In reality, they were men of such a different type that there could be no question of friendship in the true sense of the word, or any real understanding between him and the Emperor William, and the question was never mooted practically. The only point common to both their characters was a strongly defined autocratic trait. The Archduke had no sympathy with the speeches of the Emperor William, nor yet with his obvious desire for popularity, which the Archduke could not understand. The Emperor William, on his part, undoubtedly grew more attached to the Archduke during his latter years than he had been originally. Franz Ferdinand was not on such good terms with the Crown Prince of Germany. They spent some weeks together at St. Moritz in Switzerland, without learning to know each other any better; but this can readily be explained by the difference in age and also by the much more serious views of life held by the Archduke. The isolation and retirement in which the Archduke lived, and the regrettably restricted intercourse he had with other circles, gave rise to the circulation of some true, besides numerous false, rumours. One of these rumours, which is still obstinately kept up, was to the effect that the Archduke was a fanatic for war and looked upon war as a necessary aid to the realisation of his plans for the future. Nothing could be more untrue, and, although the Archduke never openly admitted it to me, I am convinced that he had an instinctive feeling that the Monarchy would never be able to bear the terrible test of strength of a war, and the fact is that, instead of working to encourage war, his activities lay all in the opposite direction. I recollect an extremely symptomatic episode: I do not remember the exact date, but it was some time before the death of the Archduke. One of the well-known Balkan turmoils threw the Monarchy into a state of agitation, and the question whether to mobilise or not became the order of the day. I chanced to be in Vienna, where I had an interview with Berchtold who spoke of the situation with much concern and complained that the Archduke was acting in a warlike spirit. I offered to draw the Archduke's attention to the danger of the proceeding, and put myself in telegraphic communication with him. I arranged to join his train that same day when he passed through Wessely on his way to Konopischt. I only had the short time between the two stations for my conversation. I therefore at once took the bull by the horns and told him of the rumours current about him in Vienna and of the danger of promoting a conflict with Russia by too strong action in the Balkans. I did not meet with the slightest opposition from the Archduke, and in his usual expeditious way he wrote, while still in the train, a telegram to Berchtold in which he expressed his perfect agreement in maintaining a friendly attitude and repudiated all the reports of his having been opposed to it. It is a fact that certain of the military party, who were anxious for war, made use of the Archduke, or rather misused him, in order to carry on a military propaganda in his name and thus gave rise to so wrongful an estimate of him. Several of these men died a hero's death in the war; others have disappeared and are forgotten. Conrad, Chief of the General Staff, was never among those who misused the Archduke. He could never have done such a thing. He carried out himself what he considered necessary and did it openly and in face of everybody. In connection with these reports about the Archduke there is one remarkable detail that is worthy of note. He told me himself how a fortune-teller once predicted that "he would one day let loose a world war." Although to a certain extent this prophecy flattered him, containing as it did the unspoken recognition that the world would have to reckon on him as a powerful factor, still he emphatically pointed out how mad such a prophecy was. It was fulfilled, however, later, though very differently from what was meant originally, and never was prince more innocent of causing blood to flow than the unhappy victim of Sarajevo. The Archduke suffered most terribly under the conditions resulting from his unequal marriage. The sincere and true love he felt for his wife kept alive in him the wish to raise her to his rank and privileges, and the constant obstacles that he encountered at all court ceremonies embittered and angered him inexpressibly. The Archduke was firmly resolved that when he came to the throne he would give to his wife, not the title of Empress, but a position which, though without the title, would bestow upon her the highest rank. His argument was that wherever he was she would be the mistress of the house, and as such was entitled to the highest position, "therefore she will take precedence of all the archduchesses." Never did the Archduke show the slightest wish to alter the succession and put his son in place of the Archduke Charles. On the contrary, he was resolved that his first official act on coming to the throne would be to publish a solemn declaration containing his intention, in order to counteract the ever-recurring false and biassed statements. As regards his children, for whom he did everything that a loving father's heart could devise, his greatest wish was to see them become wealthy, independent private individuals, and able to enjoy life without any material cares. His plan was to secure the title of Duke of Hohenberg for his eldest son. It was, therefore, in harmony with this intention that the Emperor Charles conferred the title on the youth. One fine quality in the Archduke was his fearlessness. He was quite clear that the danger of an attempt to take his life would always be present, and he often spoke quite simply and openly of such a possibility. A year before the outbreak of war he informed me that the Freemasons had resolved to kill him. He even gave me the name of the town where the resolution was passed--it has escaped my memory now--and mentioned the names of several Austrian and Hungarian politicians who must have been in the secret. He also told me that when he went to the coronation in Spain he was to have made the journey with a Russian Grand Duke, but shortly before the train started the news came that the Grand Duke had been murdered on the way. He did not deny that it was with mixed feelings that he stepped into his compartment. When at St. Moritz news was sent him that two Turkish anarchists had arrived in Switzerland intending to murder him, that every effort was being made to capture them, but that so far no trace of them had been discovered, and he was advised to be on his guard. The Archduke showed me the telegram at the time. He laid it aside without the slightest sign of fear, saying that such events, when announced beforehand, seldom were carried out. The Duchess suffered all the more in her fears for his life, and I think that in imagination the poor lady often went through the catastrophe of which she and her husband were the victims. Another praiseworthy feature in the Archduke was that, out of consideration for his wife's anxiety, he tolerated the constant presence of a detective, which not only bored him terribly but in his opinion was absurd. He was afraid that if the fact became known it would be imputed to timidity on his part, and he conceded the point solely with the view of calming his wife's fears. But he anxiously concealed all his good qualities and took an obstinate pleasure in being hard and disagreeable. I will not endeavour here to excuse certain traits in his character. His strongly pronounced egotism cannot be denied any more than the hardness of character, which made him insensible to the sufferings of all who were not closely connected with him. He also made himself hated by his severe financial proceedings and his inexorable judgment on any subordinate whom he suspected of the slightest dishonesty. In this connection there are hundreds of anecdotes, some true, some false. These petty traits in his character injured him in the eyes of the great public, while the really great and manly qualities he possessed were unknown to them, and were not weighed in the balance in his favour. For those who knew him well his great and good qualities outweighed the bad ones a hundredfold. The Emperor was always very perturbed concerning the Archduke's plans for the future. There was a stern trait also in the old monarch's character, and in the interests of the Monarchy he feared the impetuosity and obstinacy of his nephew. Nevertheless, he often took a very magnanimous view of the matter. For instance, Count Stürgkh, the murdered Prime Minister, gave me details respecting my nomination to the Herrenhaus which are very characteristic of the old monarch. It was Franz Ferdinand's wish that I should be in the Herrenhaus, as he was anxious for me to be one of a delegation and also to profit by my extensive training in the province of foreign policy. I must mention here that it had been impressed on the Emperor on all sides that the Archduke's friends and trusted men were working against him; a version of affairs which to a certain degree he obviously believed, owing to his numerous disputes with Franz Ferdinand. On Stürgkh mentioning my name as a candidate for the Herrenhaus, the Emperor hesitated a moment and then said: "Ah, yes. That is the man who is to be Minister for Foreign Affairs when I am dead. Let him go to the Herrenhaus that he may learn a little more." Political discussions with the Emperor Francis Joseph were often very difficult, as he kept strictly to the Government department in question and only discussed what referred thereto. While I was ambassador the Emperor would discourse to me on Roumania and the Balkans, but on nothing else. Meanwhile, the different questions were often so closely interwoven that it was impossible to separate them. I remember at one audience where I submitted to the Emperor the Roumanian plans for a closer connection with the Monarchy--plans which I shall allude to in a later chapter--and in doing so I was naturally bound to state what the Roumanians proposed respecting the closer connection with Hungary, and also what changes would be necessitated thereby in the Hungarian administration. The Emperor at once broke off the conversation, saying that it was a matter of Hungarian internal policy. The old Emperor was almost invariably kind and friendly, and to the very last his knowledge of the smallest details was astonishing. He never spoke of the different Roumanian Ministers as the Minister of Agriculture, of Trade, or whatever it might be, but mentioned them all by name and never made a mistake. I saw him for the last time in October, 1916, after my definite return from Roumania, and found him then quite clear and sound mentally, though failing in bodily health. The Emperor Francis Joseph was a "Grand Seigneur" in the true sense of the word. He was an Emperor and remained always unapproachable. Everyone left his presence feeling he had stood before an Emperor. His dignity in representing the monarchical idea was unsurpassed by any sovereign in Europe. He was borne to his grave at a time of great military successes for the Central Powers. He lies now in the Imperial vault, and a century seems to have elapsed since his death; the world is changed. Day by day streams of people pass by the little church, but no one probably gives a thought to him who lies in peace and forgotten, and yet he, through many long years, embodied Austria, and his person was a common centre for the State that so rapidly was falling asunder. He is now at rest, free from all care and sorrow; he saw his wife, his son, his friends all die, but Fate spared him the sight of his expiring Empire. * * * * * [Illustration: THE ARCHDUKE FRANZ FERDINAND _Photo: Pietzner, Vienna._] Franz Ferdinand's character held many sharply defined corners and edges; judging him objectively, no one can deny his great faults. Though the circumstances of his death were so tragic, it may well be that for him it was a blessing. It is hardly conceivable that, once on the throne, the Archduke would have been able to carry out his plans. The structure of the Monarchy which he was so anxious to strengthen and support was already so rotten that it could not have stood any great innovations, and if not the war, then probably the Revolution, would have shattered it. On the other hand, there seems to be no doubt that the Archduke, with all the vehemence and impulsiveness of his character, would have made the attempt to rebuild the entire structure of the Monarchy. It is futile to comment on the chances of his success, but according to human foresight the experiment would not have succeeded, and he would have succumbed beneath the ruins of the falling Monarchy. It is also futile to conjecture how the Archduke would have acted had he lived to see the war and the upheaval. I think that in two respects his attitude would have differed from that taken. In the first place, he never would have agreed to our army being under German control. It would not have been consistent with his strongly developed autocratic tendencies, and he was too clever politically not to see that we should thereby lose all political freedom of action. In the second place, he would not, like the Emperor Charles, have yielded to revolution. He would have gathered his faithful followers round him and would have fallen fighting, sword in hand. He would have fallen as did his greatest and most dangerous enemy, Stephen Tisza. But he died the death of a hero on the field of honour, valiantly and in harness. The golden rays of the martyr's crown surrounded his dying head. Many there were who breathed more freely on hearing the news of his death. At the court in Vienna and in society at Budapest there was more joy than sorrow, the former having rightly foreseen that he would have dealt hardly with them. None of them could guess that the fall of the strong man would carry them all with it and engulf them in a world catastrophe. Franz Ferdinand will remain portrayed in history as a man who either loved or hated. But his tragic end at the side of his wife, who would not allow death to separate them, throws a mild and conciliatory light on the whole life of this extraordinary man, whose warm heart to the very last was devoted to his Fatherland and duty. 2 There was a widely-spread but entirely wrongful idea in the Monarchy that the Archduke had drawn up a programme of his future activities. This was not the case. He had very definite and pronounced ideas for the reorganisation of the Monarchy, but the ideas never developed into a concrete plan--they were more like the outline of a programme that never was completed in detail. The Archduke was in touch with experts from the different departments; he expounded the fundamental views of his future programme to prominent military and political officials, receiving from them hints on how to materialise these views; but a really finished and thought-out programme was never actually produced. The ground lines of his programme were, as already mentioned, the abolition of the dualism and the reorganisation of the Monarchy to form a federative state. He was not clear himself into how many states the Habsburg Monarchy should be converted, but the principle was the rebuilding of the Monarchy on a national basis. Having always in view that prosperity depended on the weakening of the Magyar influence, the Archduke was in favour of a strong preference for the different nationalities living in Hungary, the Roumanians in particular. Not until my return to Bucharest and following on my reports did the Archduke conceive the plan of ceding Transylvania to Roumania and thus adding Greater Roumania to the Habsburg Empire. His idea was to make of Austria separate German, Czech, Southern Slav and Polish states, which in some respects would be autonomous; in others, would be dependent on Vienna as the centre. But, so far as I know, his programme was never quite clearly defined, and was subject to various modifications. The Archduke had a great dislike for the Germans, especially the northern Bohemians, who were partisans of the Pan-Germanic tendencies, and he never forgave the attitude of the Deputy Schönerer. He had a decided preference for all Germans in the Alpine countries, and generally his views were very similar to those of the Christian Socialists. His political ideal was Lueger. When Lueger was lying ill the Archduke said to me: "If God will only spare this man, no better Prime Minister could be found." Franz Ferdinand had a keen desire for a more centralised army. He was a violent opponent of the endeavours of the Magyars whose aim was an independent Hungarian army, and the question of rank, word of command, and other incidental matters could never be settled as long as he lived, because he violently resisted all Hungarian advances. The Archduke had a special fondness for the navy. His frequent visits to Brioni brought him into close touch with our navy. He was always anxious to transform the Austrian Navy into one worthy of a Great Power. In regard to foreign policy, the Archduke was always in favour of a Triple Alliance of the three Emperors. The chief motive of this idea must have been that, in the three then apparently so powerful monarchs at Petersburg, Berlin and Vienna, he saw the strongest support against revolution, and wished thereby to build up a strong barrier against disorganisation. He saw great danger to the friendly relations between Russia and ourselves in the rivalry between Vienna and Petersburg in the Balkans, and contrary to the reports that have been spread about him, he was rather a partisan than an opposer of Serbia. He was in favour of the Serbians because he felt assured that the petty agrarian policy of the Magyars was responsible for the constant annoyance of the Serbians. He favoured meeting Serbia half-way, because he considered that the Serbian question was a source of discord between Vienna and Petersburg. Another reason was that he was no friend of King Ferdinand of Bulgaria, who constantly pursued an anti-Serbian policy. I believe that if those who were responsible for the organisation of the assassination of the Archduke had known what little justification there was for supposing him to be the man they thought him, they would have desisted. Franz Ferdinand had a very pronounced feeling that in spite of all alliances the Monarchy must remain independent. He was opposed to any closer combine with Germany, not wishing to be bound to Germany more than to Russia, and the plan that was formulated later as "Central Europe" was always far removed from his wishes and endeavours. His plans for the future were not worked out, not complete, but they were sound. This, however, is not sufficient to enable one to say that they could have been successfully carried out. In certain circumstances more harm than good will result from energy devoid of the necessary calm prudence, wisdom and, above all, patience. CHAPTER III WILLIAM II 1 The Emperor William has been for so long the centre of historic events, so much has been written about him, that apparently he should be known to all the world; and yet I believe he has often been misrepresented. It is well known that the scarlet thread running through the whole character of William II. was his firm conviction that he was the "elect of God," and that the dynasty was inextricably bound to the German people. Bismarck also believed in the dynastic fidelity of the Germans. It seems to me that there is just as little dynastic as republican spirit in nations--just as little in the Germans as in others. There is merely a feeling of content or discontent which manifests itself either for or against the dynasty and the form of government. Bismarck himself was a proof of the justice of this argument. As he himself always maintained, he was thoroughly dynastic--but only during the lifetime of the Emperor William I. He had no love for William II., who had treated him badly, and made no secret of his feelings. He hung the picture of the "young man" in the scullery and wrote a book about him which, owing to its contents, could not be published. The Monarchists who derive benefit from their attachment to the reigning monarch deceive themselves as to their true feelings. They are Monarchists because they consider that form of government the most satisfactory one. The Republicans, who apparently glorify the majesty of the people, really mean themselves. But in the long run a people will always recognise that form of government which soonest can give it order, work, prosperity and contentment. In ninety-nine per cent. of the population the patriotism and enthusiasm for one or other form of government is nothing but a matter of material considerations. They prefer a good king to a bad republic, and vice versa; the form of government is the means to the end, but the end is the contentment of the people governed. Nor has the liberty of those governed anything to do with the form of government. Monarchical England is just as free as Republican America, and the Bolshevists have demonstrated _ad oculus_ to the whole world that the proletariat exercises the greatest tyranny. The war that was lost swept away the monarchs, but the Republics will only be maintained if they can convince the people that they are more successful in satisfying the masses than the monarchs were, a proof which--it seems to me--the German-Austrian Republic, at any rate, has hitherto failed to give. The conviction that these questionable statements not only are false but also objectionable and criminal errors; that the Divine Will has placed the monarch at his post and keeps him there--this conviction was systematically imprinted in the German people, and formed an integral part of the views attributed to the Emperor. All his pretensions are based on this; they all breathe the same idea. Every individual, however, is the product of his birth, his education and his experience. In judging William II. it must be borne in mind that from his youth upwards he was deceived and shown a world which never existed. All monarchs should be taught that their people do not love them; that they are quite indifferent to them; that it is not love that makes them follow them and look up to them, but merely curiosity; that they do not acclaim them from enthusiasm, but for their own amusement, and would as soon hiss at them as cheer them. The loyalty of subjects can never be depended on; it is not their intention to be loyal, but only contented; they only tolerate the monarchs as long as they themselves are contented, or as long as they have not enough strength to abolish them. That is the truth, a knowledge of which would prevent monarchs from arriving at unavoidably false conclusions. The Emperor William is an example of this. I do not think there is another ruler who had better intentions than he had. He lived only for his calling--as he viewed it. All his thoughts and longings were centred round Germany. His relations, pleasures and amusements were all subservient to the one idea of making and keeping the German people great and happy, and if good will were sufficient to achieve great things William II. would have achieved them. From the very beginning he was misunderstood. He made statements and gestures intended not only to win his listeners but the whole world, which had just the contrary effect. But he never was conscious of the practical effect of his actions, because he was systematically misled, not only by those in his immediate presence, but by the entire German people. How many millions, who to-day fling curses at him, could not bow low enough when he appeared on the horizon in all his splendour; how many felt overjoyed if the Imperial glance fell on them!--and none of them realise that they themselves are to blame for having shown the Emperor a world which never existed, and driven him into a course which he otherwise would never have taken. It certainly cannot be denied that the whole nature of the Emperor was peculiarly susceptible to this characteristically German attitude, and that monarchs less talented, less keen, less ready, and above all, less impregnated with the idea of self-sufficiency, are not so exposed to the poison of popularity as he was. I once had the opportunity of studying the Emperor William in a very important phase of his life. I met him at the house of a friend in the celebrated days of November, 1908, when great demonstrations against the Emperor occurred in the Reichstag, and when the then Imperial Chancellor, Prince Bülow, exposed him. Although he did not allude to the matter to us with whom he was not familiar, the powerful impression made upon him by these events in Berlin was very obvious, and I felt that in William II. I saw a man who, for the first time in his life, with horror-stricken eyes, looked upon the world as it really was. He saw brutal reality in close proximity. For the first time in his life, perhaps, he felt his position on his throne to be a little insecure. He forgot his lesson too quickly. Had the overwhelming impression which prevailed for several days been a lasting one it might perhaps have induced him to descend from the clouds to which his courtiers and his people had raised him, and once more feel firm ground beneath his feet. On the other hand, had the German people often treated the German Emperor as they did then it might have cured him. A remarkable incident which occurred on this occasion is characteristic of the way in which the Emperor was treated by many of the gentlemen of his suite. I had opportunity, while waiting at a German station restaurant for the arrival of the next train, to watch and study the excitement of the population at the events in Berlin, which bore signs of a revolutionary character. The densely crowded restaurant re-echoed with discussion and criticisms of the Emperor, when suddenly one of the men stood up on a table and delivered a fiery speech against the head of the Government. With the impression of this scene fresh in my mind, I described it to the members of the Emperor's suite, who were just as disagreeably affected by the episode, and it was suggested that nothing should be said about it to the Emperor. One of them, however, protested most energetically and declared that, on the contrary, every detail should be told to the Emperor, and, so far as I know, he himself probably undertook this disagreeable task. This case is characteristic of the desire to keep all unpleasantness from the Emperor and to spare him even the most well-founded criticisms; to praise and exalt him, but never to show that he was being blamed. This systematic putting forward of the Emperor's divine attributes, which in reality was neither due to love of his personality nor any other dynastic cause, but to the purely egotistical wish not to get into disfavour themselves or expose themselves to unpleasantness; this unwholesome state must in the long run act on mind and body as an enervating poison. I readily believe that the Emperor William, unaccustomed to so great an extent to all criticism, did not make it easy for those about him to be open and frank. It was, nevertheless, true that the enervating atmosphere by which he was surrounded was the cause of all the evil at his court. In his youth the Emperor William did not always adhere strictly to the laws of the Constitution; he subsequently cured himself of this failing and never acted independently of his counsellors. At the time when I had official dealings with him he might have served as a model of constitutional conduct. In the case of so young and inexperienced a man as the Emperor Charles it was doubly necessary to uphold the principle of ministerial responsibility to the fullest extent. As according to our Constitution the Emperor is not responsible to the law, it was of the greatest importance to carry out the principle that he could undertake no administrative act without the cognisance and sanction of the responsible Ministers, and the Emperor Francis Joseph adhered to this principle as though it were gospel. The Emperor Charles, though full of good intentions, was devoid of all political training and experience, and ought to have been brought up to understand the principles of the Constitution. This, however, had never been taken into consideration. After my resignation in April, 1918, a deputation from the Constitutional and Central Party in the Herrenhaus waited on the Prime Minister, Dr. von Seidler, and pointed out the importance of a severely constitutional régime, whereupon Dr. von Seidler declared that he took upon himself the full responsibility of the "letter incident." This was quite preposterous. Dr. von Seidler could not be responsible for events that had occurred a year before--at a time when he was not Minister--apart from its being an established fact that during his tenure of office he was not aware of what had happened, and not until after my resignation did he learn the Imperial views on the situation. He might just as well have accepted responsibility for the Seven Years War or for the battle of Königgrätz. In 1917 and '18, when I had certain official dealings with the Emperor William, his horror of an unpleasant discussion was so great that it was a matter of extreme difficulty to impart the necessary information to him. I recollect how once, at the cost of the consideration due to an Emperor, I was compelled to extract a direct statement from him. I was with the Emperor Charles on the Eastern front, but left him at Lemberg and, joining the Emperor William in his train, travelled with him for a couple of hours. I had certain things to submit to him, none of which was of an unpleasant nature. I do not know why it was, but it was obvious that the Emperor was expecting to hear some disagreeable statements, and offered a passive resistance to the request for a private interview. He invited me to breakfast with him in his dining-car, where he sat in the company of ten other gentlemen, and there was no possibility of beginning the desired conversation. Breakfast had been over some time, but the Emperor made no sign of moving. I was several times obliged to request him to grant me a private interview before he rose from the table, and even then he took with him an official from the Foreign Ministry to be present at our conversation as though to have some protection against anticipated troubles. The Emperor William was never rude to strangers, though he often was so to his own people. With regard to the Emperor Charles, the situation was very different. He was never anything but friendly; in fact I never saw him angry or vexed. There was no need for any special courage in making an unpleasant statement to him, as there was no danger of receiving a violent answer or any other disagreeable consequences. And yet the desire to believe only what was agreeable and to put from him anything disagreeable was very strong in the Emperor Charles, and neither criticism nor blame made any lasting impression on him. But in his case, too, the atmosphere that surrounded him rendered it impossible to convince him of the brutal realities prevailing. On one occasion, when I returned from the front, I had a long conversation with him. I reproached him for some act of administration and asserted that not only on me but on the whole Monarchy his action had made a most unfavourable impression. I told him in the course of the conversation that he must remember how, when he came to the throne, the whole Monarchy had looked to him with great hopes, but that now he had already lost 80 per cent. of his popularity. The interview ended without incident; the Emperor preserved, as usual, a friendly demeanour, though my remarks must have affected him unpleasantly. Some hours later we passed through a town where not only the station but all buildings were black with people, standing even on the roofs, waving handkerchiefs and loudly welcoming the Imperial train as it passed through. The same scenes were repeated again and again at other stations that we passed. The Emperor turned to me with a smile and a look that showed me he was firmly convinced everything I had told him as to his dwindling popularity was false, the living picture before our eyes proving the contrary. When I was at Brest-Litovsk disturbances began in Vienna owing to the lack of food. In view of the whole situation, we did not know what dimensions they would assume, and it was considered that they were of a threatening nature. When discussing the situation with the Emperor, he remarked with a smile: "The only person who has nothing to fear is myself. If it happens again I will go out among the people and you will see the welcome they will give me." Some few months later this same Emperor disappeared silently and utterly out of the picture, and among all the thousands who had acclaimed him, and whose enthusiasm he had thought genuine, not one would have lifted a little finger on his behalf. I have witnessed scenes of enthusiasm which would have deceived the boldest and most sceptical judge of the populace. I saw the Emperor and the Empress surrounded by weeping women and men wellnigh smothered in a rain of flowers; I saw the people on their knees with uplifted hands, as though worshipping a Divinity; and I cannot wonder that the objects of such enthusiastic homage should have taken dross for pure gold in the firm belief that they _personally_ were beloved of the people, even as children love their own parents. It is easy to understand that after such scenes the Emperor and Empress looked upon all the criticism of themselves and the discontent among the people as idle talk, and held firmly to the belief that grave disturbances might occur elsewhere but not in their own country. Any simple citizen who has held for a time a higher position experiences something of the kind, though in a lesser degree. I could mention names of many men who could not bow low enough as long as I was in power, but after my resignation would cross the street to avoid a bow, fearing that Imperial disfavour might react on them. But years before his rise the simple citizen has an opportunity of learning to know the world, and, if he be a man of normal temperament, will feel the same contempt for the servility shown during his time in office as for the behaviour he meets with afterwards. Monarchs are without training in the school of life, and therefore usually make a false estimate of the psychology of humanity. But in this tragi-comedy it is they who are led astray. It is less easy, however, to understand that responsible advisers, who are bound to distinguish between reality and comedy, should also allow themselves to be deceived and draw false political conclusions from such events. In 1918 the Emperor, accompanied by the Prime Minister, Dr. von Seidler, went to the South Slav provinces to investigate matters there. He found, of course, the same welcome there as everywhere, curiosity brought the people out to see him; pressure from the authorities on the one hand, and hope of Imperial favours on the other, brought about ovations similar to those in the undoubtedly dynastic provinces. And not only the Emperor, but von Seidler returned in triumph, firmly convinced that everything stated in Parliament or written in the papers respecting the separatist tendencies of the South Slavs was pure invention and nonsense, and that they would never agree to a separation from the Habsburg Empire. The objects of these demonstrations of enthusiasm and dynastic loyalty were deceived by them, but I repeat that those who were to blame were not the monarchs, but those who were the instigators and organisers of such scenes and who omitted to enlighten the monarchs on the matter. But any such explanation could only be effectual if all those in the immediate neighbourhood of the ruler concurred in a similar reckless disregard of truth. For if one out of ten people declares such scenes to be not genuine and the others contradict him and assert that the demonstrations of the "love of the people" are overwhelming, the monarch will always be more inclined to listen to the many pleasant rather than to the few unpleasant counsels. Willingly or unwillingly, all monarchs try, very humanly, to resist awakening out of this hypnotic complacency. Naturally, there were men in the entourage of the German Emperor whose pride kept them from making too large an offering to the throne, but as a rule their suffering in the Byzantine atmosphere of Germany was greater than their enjoyment. I always considered that the greatest sycophants were not those living at court, but generals, admirals, professors, officials, representatives of the people and men of learning--people whom the Emperor met infrequently. During the second half of the war, however, the leading men around the Kaiser were not Byzantine--Ludendorff certainly was not. His whole nature was devoid of Byzantine characteristics. Energetic, brave, sure of himself and his aims, he brooked no opposition and was not fastidious in his choice of language. To him it was a matter of indifference whether he was confronted by his Emperor or anyone else--he spoke unrestrainedly to all who came in his way. The numerous burgomasters, town councillors, professors of the universities, deputies--in short, men of the people and of science--had for years prostrated themselves before the Emperor William; a word from him intoxicated them--but how many of them are there now amongst those who condemn the former régime with its abuses and, above all, the Emperor himself! His political advisers experienced great difficulty in their business dealings with the Emperor William during the war, as he was generally at Headquarters and seldom in Berlin. The Emperor Charles's absence from Vienna was also at times most inconvenient. In the summer of 1917, for instance, he was at Reichenau, which necessitated a two hours' motor drive; I had to go there twice or three times a week, thus losing five or six hours which had to be made good by prolonged night work. On no account would he come to Vienna, in spite of the efforts made by his advisers to persuade him to do so. From certain remarks the Emperor let fall I gathered that the reason of this persistent refusal was anxiety concerning the health of the children. He himself was so entirely free from pretensions that it cannot have been a question of his own comfort that prevented his coming. The Emperor's desire to restore the Archduke Joseph Ferdinand to a post of command was for me a source of much unpleasantness. The Archduke is said to have been to blame for the Luck failure. I cannot judge whether wrongly--as the Emperor maintained--or rightly; but the fact remains that the public no longer had confidence in him. Quite accidentally I learnt that his reinstatement was imminent. As a matter of fact, this purely military proceeding in no way concerned me, but I had to reckon with the feeling of the populace, who were in no mood for further burdens, and also with the fact that, since Conrad had gone, none of those in the Emperor's entourage showed the slightest disposition to acquaint him with the truth. The only general who, to my personal knowledge, was in the habit of speaking frankly to the Emperor, was Alvis Schonburg, and he was at this time somewhere on the Italian front. I therefore told the Emperor that the reinstatement was an impossibility, giving as my reason the fact that the Archduke had forfeited the confidence of the country, and that no mother could be expected to give up her son to serve under a general whom everyone held to be guilty of the Luck catastrophe. The Emperor insisted that this view was unjust, and that the Archduke was not culpable. I replied that, even so, the Archduke would have to submit. Everyone had lost confidence in him, and the most strenuous exertions of the people could neither be expected nor obtained if the command were handed to generals who were unanimously regarded as unworthy of the confidence placed in them. My efforts were vain. I then adopted another course. I sent an official from the Department of Foreign Affairs to the Archduke with the request that he would resign voluntarily. It must be admitted that Joseph Ferdinand took both a loyal and a dignified attitude, as he himself notified the Emperor that he would relinquish his command at the front. A short correspondence followed between the Archduke and myself, which on his side was couched in an indignant and not over-polite tone; this, however, I did not take amiss, as my interference had been successful in preventing his resuming the command. His subsequent appointment as Chief of the Air Force was made without my knowledge; but this was of no importance when compared to the previous plans. * * * * * There is no doubt that the Byzantine atmosphere of Berlin took a more objectionable form than ever was the case in Vienna. The very idea of high dignitaries kissing the Emperor's hand, as they did in Berlin, would have been impossible in Vienna. I never heard of anyone, even among the keenest sycophants, who demeaned themselves by such an act, which in Berlin, as I know from personal observation, was an everyday occurrence. For instance, after a trip on the _Meteor_, during the "Kiel Week," the Emperor presented two German officials with scarf-pins as a souvenir. He handed the pins to them himself, and great was my surprise to see them kiss his hand as they thanked him. Many foreigners were in the habit of coming for the Kiel Week: Americans, French, and English. The Emperor paid them much attention, and they nearly always succumbed to the charm of his personality. Apparently William II. had a preference for America; on the subject of his feelings regarding England it is difficult to express an opinion. My impression always was that the Emperor resented the scant sympathy shown him in England; he strove to make himself beloved, and the failure of his efforts caused him a certain annoyance. He was quite aware that the extent of his popularity in England would proportionately influence Anglo-German relations, and his desire to find favour in England did not proceed from personal vanity, but from political interests. King Edward was known to be one of the best judges of men in all Europe, and his interest in foreign policy was predominant. He would have been an ideal ambassador. There was never a very good understanding between uncle and nephew. When the nephew was already Emperor, and his much older uncle still only a prince, the difference in their positions was characterised by the satirical Kiderlen-Waechter in the following terms: "The Prince of Wales cannot forgive his nephew, eighteen years younger than himself, for making a more brilliant career than has fallen to his lot." Personal sympathy and personal differences in leading circles are capable of influencing the world's history. Politics are, and always will be, made by men, and individual personal relations will always play a certain part in their development. Who can to-day assert that the course of the world might not have been different had the monarchs of Germany and England been more alike in temperament? The encircling policy of King Edward was not brought into play until he was persuaded that an understanding with the Emperor William was impossible. The difficulty the Emperor experienced in adapting himself to the ideas and views of others increased as the years went by, a state of things largely the fault of his entourage. The atmosphere in which he lived would have killed the hardiest plant. Whatever the Emperor said or did, whether it was right or wrong, was received with enthusiastic praise and admiration. Dozens of people were always at hand to laud him to the skies. For instance, a book was published during the war entitled, "Der Kaiser im Felde," by Dr. Bogdan Kriegen. The Emperor presented me with a copy when at Kreuznach in May, 1917, and wrote a suitable inscription inside. The book contained an accurate account of all the Emperor had done during the campaign--but it was entirely superficial matter; where he had driven to, where breakfasted, with whom he had spoken, the jokes he had made, what clothes he wore, the shining light in his eyes, etc., etc. It also recorded his speeches to the troops; dull and uninteresting words that he addressed to individual soldiers, and much more in the same strain. The whole book is impregnated and permeated with boundless admiration and unqualified praise. The Emperor gave me the book when I was leaving, and I read it through when in the train. I was asked a few weeks later by a German officer what I thought of the book. I replied that it was trash and could only harm the Emperor, and that it should be confiscated. The officer shared my opinion, but said that the Emperor had been assured on all sides that the book was a splendid work and helped to fire the spirit of the army; he therefore had it widely distributed. Once, at a dinner at Count Hertling's, I called his attention to the book and advised him to suppress it, as such a production could only be detrimental to the Emperor. The old gentleman was very angry, and declared: "That was always the way; people who wished to ingratiate themselves with the Emperor invariably presented him with such things." A professor from the University had warmly praised the book to me, but he went on to say: "The Emperor had, of course, no time to read such stuff and repudiate the flattery; neither had he himself found time to read it, but would make a point of doing so now." I did not know much of that professor, but he certainly was not in frequent touch with the Emperor, nor was the author of the book. In this instance, as in many others, I concluded that many of the members of the Emperor's suite were far from being in sympathy with such tendencies. The court was not the principal offender, but was carried away by the current of sycophancy. During my period of office Prince Hohenlohe, the ambassador, had numerous interviews with the Emperor William, and invariably spoke most freely and openly to him, and yet always was on the best footing with him. This was, of course, an easier matter for a foreign ambassador than for a German of the Empire, but it proves that the Emperor accepted it when done in proper form. In his own country the Emperor was either glorified and exalted to the skies or else scorned and scoffed at by a minority of the Press in a prejudicial manner. In the latter case it bore so evidently the stamp of personal enmity that it was discredited _a priori_. Had there existed earnest papers and organs that would, in dignified fashion, have discussed and criticised the Emperor's faults and failings, while recognising all his great and good qualities, it would have been much more satisfactory. Had there been more books written about him showing that the real man is quite different from what he is made to appear to be; that he is full of the best intentions and inspired with a passionate love of Germany; that in a true and profound religious sense he often wrestles with himself and his God, asking himself if he has chosen the right way; that his love for his people is far more genuine than that of many of the Germans for him; that he never has deceived them, but was constantly deceived by them--such literature would have been more efficacious and, above all, nearer the truth. Undoubtedly the German Emperor's gifts and talents were above the average, and had he been an ordinary mortal would certainly have become a very competent officer, architect, engineer, or politician. But for lack of criticism he lost his bearings, and it caused his undoing. According to all the records the Emperor William I. was of a very different nature. Yet Bismarck often had a hard task in dealing with him, though Bismarck's loyalty and subservience to the dynastic idea made him curb his characteristically ruthless frankness. But William I. was a self-made man. When he came to the throne and began to govern his kingdom was tottering. Assisted by the very capable men he was able to find and to retain, he upheld it, and by means of Königgrätz and Sedan created the great German Empire. William II. came to the throne when Germany had reached the zenith of her power. He had not acquired what he possessed by his own work, as his grandfather had; it came to him without any effort on his part; a fact which had a great and far from favourable influence on his whole mental development. The Emperor William was an entertaining and interesting _causeur_. One could listen to him for hours without wearying. Emperors usually enjoy the privilege of finding a ready audience, but even had the Emperor William been an ordinary citizen he would always have spoken to a crowded house. He could discourse on art, science, politics, music, religion, and astronomy in a most animated manner. What he said was not always quite correct; indeed, he often lost himself in very questionable conclusions; but the fault of boring others, the greatest of social faults, was not his. Although the Emperor was always very powerful in speech and gesture, still, during the war he was much less independent in his actions than is usually assumed, and, in my opinion, this is one of the principal reasons that gave rise to a mistaken understanding of all the Emperor's administrative activities. Far more than the public imagine he was a driven rather than a driving factor, and if the Entente to-day claims the right of being prosecutor and judge combined in order to bring the Emperor to his trial, it is unjust and an error, as, both preceding and during the war, the Emperor William never played the part attributed to him by the Entente. The unfortunate man has gone through much, and more is, perhaps, in store for him. He has been carried too high and cannot escape a terrible fall. Fate seems to have chosen him to expiate a sin which, if it exists at all, is not so much his as that of his country and his times. The Byzantine atmosphere in Germany was the ruin of Emperor William; it enveloped him and clung to him like a creeper to a tree; a vast crowd of flatterers and fortune-seekers who deserted him in the hour of trial. The Emperor William was merely a particularly distinctive representative of his class. All modern monarchs suffer from the disease; but it was more highly developed in the Emperor William and, therefore, more obvious than in others. Accustomed from his youth to the subtle poison of flattery, at the head of one of the greatest and mightiest states in the world, possessing almost unlimited power, he succumbed to the fatal lot that awaits men who feel the earth recede from under their feet, and who begin to believe in their Divine semblance. He is expiating a crime which was not of his making. He can take with him in his solitude the consolation that his only desire was for the best. And notwithstanding all that is said and written about William II. in these days, the beautiful words of the text may be applied to him: "Peace on earth to men of goodwill."[4] In his retirement from the world his good conscience will be his most precious possession. Perhaps in the evening of his days William II. will acknowledge that there is neither happiness nor unhappiness in mortal life, but only a difference in the strength to endure one's fate. 2 War was never in William II.'s programme. I am not able to say where, in his own mind, he had fixed the limits he proposed for Germany and whether it was justifiable to reproach him with having gone too far in his ambition for the Fatherland. He certainly never thought of a _unified_ German world dominion; he was not so simple as to think he could achieve that without a war, but his plan undoubtedly was permanently to establish Germany among the first Powers of the world. I know for certain that the Emperor's ideal plan was to come to a world agreement with England and, in a certain sense, to divide the world with her. In this projected division of the world a certain part was to be played by Russia and Japan, but he paid little heed to the other states, especially to France, convinced that they were all nations of declining power. To maintain that William intentionally prepared and started this war is in direct opposition to his long years of peaceful government. Helfferich, in his work "Die Vorgeschichte des Weltkrieges," speaks of the Emperor's attitude during the Balkan troubles, and says: A telegram sent by William II. at that time to the Imperial Chancellor explains the attitude of the German Emperor in this critical position for German politics, being similar to the situation in July, 1914. The contents of the telegram are as follows: "The Alliance with Austria-Hungary compels us to take action should Austria-Hungary be attacked by Russia. In that case France would also be involved, and in those circumstances England would not long remain quiescent. The present prevailing questions of dispute cannot be compared with that danger. It cannot be the intention of the Alliance that we, the life interest of our ally not being endangered, should enter upon a life-and-death conflict for a caprice of that ally. Should it become evident that the other side intend to attack, the danger must then be faced." This calm and decided standpoint which alone could maintain peace was also the German policy observed in further developments. It was upheld when confronted by strong pressure from Russia, as also against other tendencies and a certain transitory ill-feeling in Vienna. Whether such feeling did exist in Vienna or not I cannot say, but I believe the account is correct. It has already been mentioned that all the warlike speeches flung into the world by the Emperor were due to a mistaken understanding of their effect. I allow that the Emperor wished to create a sensation, even to terrify people, but he also wished to act on the principle of _si vis pacem para bellum_, and by emphasising the military power of Germany he endeavoured to prevent the many envious enemies of his Empire from declaring war on him. It cannot be denied that this attitude was often both unfortunate and mistaken, and that it contributed to the outbreak of war; but it is asserted that the Emperor was devoid of the _dolus_ of making war; that he said and did things by which he unintentionally stirred up war. Had there been men in Germany ready to point out to the Emperor the injurious effects of his behaviour and to make him feel the growing mistrust of him throughout the world, had there been not one or two but dozens of such men, it would assuredly have made an impression on the Emperor. It is quite true that of all the inhabitants of the earth, the German is the one the least capable of adapting himself to the mentality of other people, and, as a matter of fact, there were perhaps but few in the immediate entourage of the Emperor who recognised the growing anxiety of the world. Perhaps many of those who so continuously extolled the Emperor were really honestly of opinion that his behaviour was quite correct. It is, nevertheless, impossible not to believe that among the many clever German politicians of the last decade there were some who had a clear grasp of the situation, and the fact remains that, in order to spare the Emperor and themselves, they had not the courage to be harsh with him and tell him the truth to his face. These are not reproaches, but reminiscences which should not be superfluous at a time when the Emperor is to be made the scapegoat of the whole world. Certainly, the Emperor, being such as he is, the experiment would not have passed off without there being opposition to encounter and overcome. The first among his subjects to attempt the task of enlightening the Emperor would have been looked upon with the greatest surprise; hence no one would undertake it. Had there, however, been men who, regardless of themselves, would have undertaken to do it, it would certainly have succeeded, as not only was the Emperor full of good intentions, but he was also impressionable, and consistent purposefulness on a basis of fearless honesty would have impressed him. Besides, the Emperor was a thoroughly kind and good man. It was a genuine pleasure for him to be able to do good, neither did he hate his enemies. In the summer of 1917 he spoke to me about the fate of the deposed Tsar and of his desire to help him and subsequently bring him to Germany, a desire due not to dynastic but to human motives. He stated repeatedly that he had no desire for revenge, but "only to succour his fallen adversary." I firmly believe that the Emperor clearly saw the clouds grow blacker and blacker on the political horizon, but he was sincerely and honestly persuaded that it was not through any fault of his that they had accumulated, that they were caused by envy and jealousy, and that there was no other way of keeping the threatening war danger at bay than by an ostentatious attitude of strength and fearlessness. "Germany's power and might must daily be proclaimed to the world, for as long as they fear us they will do us no harm"--that was the doctrine that obtained on the Spree. And the echo came back from the world, "This continued boasting of German power and the perpetual attempts at intimidation prove that Germany seeks to tyrannise the world." When war broke out the Emperor was firmly convinced that a war of defence was being forced on him, which conviction was shared by the great majority of the German people. I draw these conclusions solely from my knowledge of the Emperor and his entourage and from other information obtained indirectly. As I have already mentioned, I had not had the slightest connection with Berlin for some years previous to the war, and certainly not for two years after it broke out. In the winter of 1917, when I met the Emperor again in my capacity as Minister for Foreign Affairs, I thought he had aged, but was still full of his former vivacity. In spite of marked demonstrations of the certainty of victory, I believe that William II. even then had begun to doubt the result of the war and that his earnest wish was to bring it to an honourable end. When in the course of one of our first conversations I urged him to spare no sacrifice to bring it to an end, he interrupted me, exclaiming: "What would you have me do? Nobody longs for peace more intensely than I do. But every day we are told that the others will not hear a word about peace until Germany has been crushed." It was a true answer, for all statements made by England culminated in the one sentence _Germanium esse delendam_. I endeavoured, nevertheless, to induce the Emperor to consent to the sacrifice of Alsace-Lorraine, persuaded that if France had obtained all that she looked upon in the light of a national idea she would not be inclined to continue the war. I think that, had the Emperor been positively certain that it would have ended the war, and had he not been afraid that so distressing an offer would have been considered unbearable by Germany, he would personally have agreed to it. But he was dominated by the fear that a peace involving such a loss, and after the sacrifices already made, would have driven the German people to despair. Whether he was justified in this fear or not cannot now be confirmed. In 1917, and 1918 as well, the belief in a victorious end was still so strong in Germany that it is at least doubtful whether the German people would have consented to give up Alsace-Lorraine. All the parties in the Reichstag were opposed to it, including the Social Democrats. A German official of high standing said to me in the spring of 1918: "I had two sons; one of them fell on the field of battle, but I would rather part with the other one too than give up Alsace-Lorraine," and many were of the same opinion. In the course of the year and a half when I had frequent opportunities of meeting the Emperor, his frame of mind had naturally gone through many different phases. Following on any great military success, and after the collapse of Russia and Roumania, his generals were always able to enrol him on their programme of victory, and it is quite a mistake to imagine that William II. unceasingly clung to the idea of "Peace above all." He wavered, was sometimes pessimistic, sometimes optimistic, and his peace aims changed in like manner. Humanly speaking, it is very comprehensible that the varying situation in the theatre of war must have influenced the individual mind, and everyone in Europe experienced such fluctuations. Early in September, 1917, he wrote to the Emperor Charles on the subject of an impending attack on the Italian front, and in this letter was the following passage: "I trust that the possibility of a common offensive of our allied armies will raise the spirits of your Foreign Minister. In my opinion, and in view of the general situation, there is no reason to be anything but confident." Other letters and statements prove the Emperor's fluctuating frame of mind. He, as well as the diplomats in the Wilhelmstrasse, made use, with regard to the "war-weary Austria-Hungary," of such tactics as demonstrated a pronounced certainty of victory in order to strengthen our powers of resistance. * * * * * The Archduke Friedrich deserves the greatest praise for having kept up the friendly relations between Vienna and Berlin. It was not always easy to settle the delicate questions relating to the conduct of the war without giving offence. The honest and straightforward nature of the Archduke and his ever friendly and modest behaviour saved many a difficult situation. After our collapse and overthrow, and when the Imperial family could be abused with impunity, certain newspapers took a delight in covering the Archduke Friedrich with contumely. It left him quite indifferent. The Prince is a distinguished character, of faultless integrity and always ready to put down abuse. He prevented many disasters, and it was not his fault if he did not succeed every time. When I saw the Crown Prince Wilhelm again after several years, in the summer of 1917, I found him very tired of war and most anxious for peace. I had gone to the French front on purpose to meet him and to try if it were possible through him to exercise some conciliatory pressure, above all, on the military leaders. A long conversation that I had with him showed me very clearly that he--if he had ever been of warlike nature--was then a pronounced pacifist. _Extract from my Diary._ "On the Western front, 1917. We drove to the Camp des Romains, but in detachments in order not to attract the attention of the enemy artillery to our cars, for in some places the road was visible to the enemy. I drove together with Bethmann. When discussing the military leaders, he remarked: 'The generals will probably throw hand grenades at me when they see me.' "An enemy flier cruised high up in the clouds over our heads. He circled around, paying little heed to the shrapnel bursting on all sides. The firing ceased, and the human bird soared into unapproachable heights. The artillery fire a long way off sounded like distant thunder. "The French lines are not more than a couple of hundred metres distant from the camp. A shot fell here and there and a shell was heard to whistle; otherwise all was quiet. It was still early. The firing usually begins at ten and ceases at noon--interval for lunch--and begins again in the afternoon. "Poincaré's villa is visible on the horizon in the green landscape. A gun has been brought to bear on the house--they mean to destroy it before leaving--they call this the extreme unction. "The daily artillery duel began on our return drive, and kept up an incessant roar. "_St. Mihiel._ "We stopped at St. Mihiel, where many French people still remain. They were detained as hostages to prevent the town from being fired at. People were standing about in the streets watching the cars go by. "I spoke to an old woman, who sat by herself on her house-steps. She said: 'This disaster can never be made good, and it cannot well be worse than it is now. It is quite the same to me what happens. I do not belong here; my only son has been killed and my house is burnt. Nothing is left me but my hatred of the Germans, and I bequeath that to France.' And she gazed past me into vacancy. She spoke quite without passion, but was terribly sad. "This terrible hatred! Generations will go to their graves before the flood of hatred is abated. Would a settlement, a peace of understanding, be possible with this spirit of the nations? Will it not end by one of them being felled to earth and annihilated? "_St. Privat._ "We passed through St. Privat on our way to Metz. Monuments that tell the tale of 1870 stand along the road. Everywhere the soil is historic, soaked in blood. Every spot, every stone, is reminiscent of past great times. It was here that the seed was sown that brought forth the plan of revenge that is being fought for now. "Bethmann seemed to divine my thoughts. 'Yes,' he said, 'that sacrifice would be easier for Germany to bear than to part with Alsace-Lorraine, which would close one of the most brilliant episodes in her history.' "_Sedan._ "On the way to the Crown Prince's quarters. There stands the little house where the historic meeting between Napoleon III. and Bismarck took place. The woman who lived there at the time died only a few weeks ago. For the second time she saw the Germans arrive, bringing a Moltke but no Bismarck with them, a detail, however, that cannot deeply have interested the old lady. "_With the Crown Prince._ "A pretty little house outside the town. I found a message from the Crown Prince asking me to proceed there immediately, where I had almost an hour's private conversation with him before supper. "I do not know if the Crown Prince ever was of a warlike disposition, as people say, but he is so no longer. He longs for peace, but does not know how to secure it. He spoke very quietly and sensibly. He was also in favour of territorial sacrifices, but seemed to think that Germany would not allow it. The great difficulty lay in the contrast between the actual military situation, the confident expectations of the generals, and the fears entertained by the military laymen. Besides, it is not only Alsace-Lorraine. The suppression of German militarism spoken of in London means the one-sided disarmament of Germany. Can an army far advanced on enemy soil whose generals are confident of final victory, can a people still undefeated tolerate that? "I advised the Crown Prince to speak to his father on the question of abdication, in which he fully agreed. I then invited him to come to Vienna on behalf of the Emperor, which he promised to do as soon as he could get leave." On my return the Emperor wrote him a letter, drawn up by me, which contained the following passage: My Minister for Foreign Affairs has informed me of the interesting conversation he had the honour to have with you, and it has been a great pleasure to me to hear all your statements, which so exactly reflect my own views of the situation. Notwithstanding the superhuman exertions of our troops, the situation throughout the country demands that a stop be put to the war before winter, in Germany as well as here. Turkey will not be with us much longer, and with her we shall also lose Bulgaria; we two will then be alone, and next spring will bring America and a still stronger Entente. From other sources there are distinct signs that we could win over France if Germany could make up her mind to certain territorial sacrifices in Alsace-Lorraine. With France secured to us we are the conquerors, and Germany will obtain elsewhere ample compensation. But I cannot allow Germany to be the only one to make a sacrifice. I too will take the lion's share of sacrifice, and have informed His Majesty your father that under the above conditions I am prepared not only to dispense with the whole of Poland, but to cede Galicia to her and to assist in combining that state with Germany, who would thus acquire a state in the East while yielding up a portion of her soil in the West. In 1915, at the request of Germany and in the interests of our Alliance, we offered the Trentino to faithless Italy without asking for compensation in order to avert war. Germany is now in a similar situation, though with far better prospects. You, as heir to the German Imperial crown, are privileged to have a say in the matter, and I know that His Majesty your father entirely shares this view respecting your co-operation. I beg of you, therefore, in this decisive hour for Germany and Austria-Hungary, to consider the whole situation and to unite your efforts with mine to bring the war to a rapid and honourable end. If Germany persists in her standpoint of refusal and thus wrecks the hope of a possible peace the situation in Austria-Hungary will become extremely critical. I should be very glad to have a talk with you as soon as possible, and your promise conveyed through Count Czernin soon to pay us a visit gives me the greatest pleasure. The Crown Prince's answer was very friendly and full of anxiety to help, though it was also obvious that the German military leaders had succeeded in nipping his efforts in the bud. When I met Ludendorff some time afterwards in Berlin this was fully confirmed by the words he flung at me: "What have you been doing to our Crown Prince? He had turned very slack, but we have stiffened him up again." The game remained the same. The last war period in Germany was controlled by one will only, and that was Ludendorff's. His thoughts were centred on fighting, his soul on victory. FOOTNOTES: [4] This is a literal rendering of the famous text from the German. CHAPTER IV ROUMANIA 1 My appointment as ambassador to Bucharest in the autumn of 1913 came as a complete surprise to me, and was much against my wishes. The initiative in the matter came from the Archduke Franz Ferdinand. I had never had any doubt that sooner or later the Archduke would take part in politics, but it took me by surprise that he should do so in the Emperor Francis Joseph's lifetime. A great difference of opinion prevailed then in Vienna on the Roumanian question, a pro-Roumanian spirit fighting against an anti-Roumanian one. The head of the former party was the Archduke Franz, and with him, though in less marked degree, was Berchtold. Tisza was the leader on the other side, and carried with him almost the entire Hungarian Parliament. The pro-Roumanians wished Roumania to be more closely linked to the Monarchy; the others, to replace that alliance by one with Bulgaria; but both were unanimous in seeking for a clear knowledge of how matters stood with the alliance, and whether we had a friend or a foe on the other side of the Carpathians. My predecessor, Karl Fürstenberg, had sent in a very clear and correct report on the subject, but he shared the fate of so many ambassadors: his word was not believed. The actual task assigned to me was, first of all to find out whether this alliance was of any practical value, and if I thought not to suggest ways and means of justifying its existence. I must mention in this connection that my appointment as ambassador to Bucharest had raised a perfect storm in the Hungarian Parliament. The reason for this widely spread indignation in Hungary at my selection for the post was owing to a pamphlet I had written some years previously, in which I certainly had attacked the Magyar policy somewhat vehemently. I maintained the standpoint that a policy of suppression of the nations was not tenable in the long run, and that no future was in store for Hungary unless she definitely abolished that policy and allowed the nations equal rights. This pamphlet gave serious displeasure in Budapest, and representatives in the Hungarian Parliament were afraid I should introduce that policy in Roumania, which, following the spirit of the pamphlet, was directed against the official policy of Vienna and Budapest. It was at this period that I made Tisza's acquaintance. I had a long and very frank conversation with him on the whole subject, and explained to him that I must uphold the standpoint I put forward in my pamphlet, as it tallied with my convictions, but that I clearly saw that from the moment I accepted the post of ambassador I was bound to consider myself as a part of the great state machinery, and loyally support the policy emanating from the Ballplatz. I still maintain that my standpoint is perfectly justifiable. A unified policy would be utterly impossible if every subordinate official were to publish his own views, whether right or wrong, and I for my part would never, as Minister, have tolerated an ambassador who attempted to pursue an independent policy of his own. Tisza begged me to give my word of honour that I would make no attempt to introduce a policy opposed to that of Vienna and Budapest, to which I readily agreed, provided that the Archduke was agreeable to such decision. I then had a conversation with the latter, and found that he quite agreed with my action, his argument being that as long as he was the heir to the throne he would never attempt to introduce a policy opposed to that of the Emperor; consequently he would not expect it from me either. But should he come to the throne he would certainly make an effort to carry out his own views, in which case I should no longer be at Bucharest, but probably in some post where I would be in a position to support his efforts. The Archduke begged me for the sake of my friendship for him to accept the post, which I finally decided to do after I obtained a promise from Berchtold that, at the end of two years as the longest term, he would put no obstacle in the way of my retirement. The Archduke Franz drew his pro-Roumanian proclivities from a very unreliable source. He hardly knew Roumania at all. So far as I know, he had only once been in the country, and paid a short visit to King Carol at Sinaia; but the friendly welcome accorded to himself and his wife by the old King and Queen entirely took his warm heart by storm, and he mistook King Carol for Roumania. This is again a proof how greatly the individual relations of great personalities can influence the policy of nations. The royal couple met the Archduke at the station; the Queen embraced and kissed the duchess and, placing her at her right side, drove with her to the castle. In short, it was the first time that the Duchess of Hohenberg had been treated as enjoying equal privileges with her husband. During his short stay in Roumania the Archduke had the pleasure of seeing his wife treated as his equal and not as a person of slight importance, always relegated to the background. At the court balls in Vienna the duchess was always obliged to walk behind all the archduchesses, and never had any gentleman allotted to her whose arm she could take. In Roumania she was _his wife_, and etiquette was not concerned with her birth. The Archduke valued this proof of friendly tactfulness on the part of the King very highly, and always afterwards Roumania, in his eyes, was endowed with a special charm. Besides which he very correctly estimated that a change in certain political relations would effect a closer alliance between Roumania and ourselves. He felt, rather than knew, that the Transylvanian question lay like a huge obstacle between Vienna and Bucharest, and that this obstacle once removed would alter the entire situation. To find out the real condition of the alliance was my first task, and it was not difficult, as the first lengthy conferences I had with King Carol left no doubt in my mind that the old King himself considered the alliance very unsafe. King Carol was an exceptionally clever man, very cautious and deliberate, and it was not easy to make him talk if he intended to be silent. The question of the vitality of the alliance was settled by my suggesting to the King that the alliance should receive pragmatic sanction, i.e. be ratified by the Parliaments at Vienna, Budapest, and Bucharest. The alarm evinced by the King at the suggestion, the very idea that the carefully guarded secret of the existence of an alliance should be divulged, proved to me how totally impossible it would be, in the circumstances, to infuse fresh life into such dead matter. My reports sent to the Ballplatz leave no doubt that I answered this first question by declaring in categorical fashion that the alliance with Roumania was, under the existing conditions, nothing but a scrap of paper. The second question, as to whether there were ways and means of restoring vitality to the alliance, and what they were, was theoretically just as easy to answer as difficult to carry out in practice. As already mentioned, the real obstacle in the way of closer relations between Bucharest and Vienna was the question of Great Roumania; in other words, the Roumanian desire for national union with her "brothers in Transylvania." This was naturally quite opposed to the Hungarian standpoint. It is interesting, as well as characteristic of the then situation, that shortly after my taking up office in Roumania, Nikolai Filippescu (known later as a war fanatic) proposed that Roumania should join with Transylvania and the whole of united Great Roumania enter into relations with the Monarchy similar to the relation of Bavaria to the German Empire. I admit that I welcomed the idea warmly, for if it were launched by a party which justly was held to be antagonistic to the Monarchy there can be no doubt that the moderate element in Roumania would have accepted it with still greater satisfaction. I still believe that had this plan been carried out it would have led to a real linking of Roumania to the Monarchy, that the notification would have met with no opposition, and consequently the outbreak of war would have found us very differently situated. Unfortunately the plan failed at its very first stage owing to Tisza's strong and obstinate resistance. The Emperor Francis Joseph held the same standpoint as Tisza, and it was out of the question to achieve anything by arguing. On the other hand, nobody had any idea then that the great war, and with it the testing of the alliance, was so imminent, and I consoled myself for my unsuccessful efforts in the firm hope that this grand plan, as it seemed to me both then and now, would be realised one day under the Archduke Franz Ferdinand. When I arrived in Roumania a change was proceeding in the Government. Majorescu's Conservative Ministry gave way to the Liberal Ministry of Bratianu. King Carol's policy of government was very peculiar. From the very first his principle was never to proceed with violence or even much energy against injurious tendencies in his own country; but, on the contrary, always to yield to the numerous claims made by extortioners. He knew his people thoroughly, and knew that both parties, Conservatives and Liberals, must alternately have access to the manger until thoroughly satisfied and ready to make room the one for the other. Almost every change in the Government was accomplished in that manner: the Opposition, desirous of coming into power, began with threats and hints at revolution. Some highly unreasonable claim would be put forward and vehemently insisted upon and the people incited to follow it up; the Government would retire, unable to accede to the demands, and the Opposition, once in power, would show no further signs of keeping their promise. The old King was well versed in the game; he allowed the opposition tide to rise to the highest possible limit, when he effected the necessary change of individuals and looked on until the game began again. It is the custom in Roumania, when a new party comes into power, to change the whole personnel, even down to the lowest officials. This arrangement, obviously, has its drawbacks, though on the other hand it cannot be denied that it is a practical one. In this manner the Bratianu Ministry came into office in 1913. Majorescu's Government gave entire satisfaction to the King and the moderate elements in the country. In the eyes of the Roumanians he had just achieved a great diplomatic success by the Peace of Bucharest and the acquisition of the Dobrudsha, when Bratianu came forward with a demand for vast agrarian reforms. These reforms are one of the hobby-horses of Roumanian policy which is always mounted when it is a question of making use of the poor unfortunate peasants, and the manoeuvre invariably succeeds, largely owing to the lack of intelligence prevailing among the peasant population of Roumania, who are constantly made the tools of one or other party, and simply pushed on one side when the object has been obtained. Bratianu also, once he was in office, gave no thought to the fulfilment of his promises, but calmly proceeded on the lines Majorescu had laid down in his time. Still, it was more difficult to arrive at a satisfactory settlement in foreign affairs with Bratianu than it had been with Majorescu, as the former was thoroughly conversant with all West European matters, and at the bottom of his heart was anti-German. One of the distinctions to be made between Liberals and Conservatives was that the Liberals had enjoyed a Parisian education: they spoke no German, only French; while the Conservatives, taking Carp and Majorescu as models, were offshoots of Berlin. As it was impossible to carry out the plan of firmly and definitely linking Roumania to us by a change of Hungarian internal policy, the idea naturally, almost automatically, arose to substitute Bulgaria for Roumania. This idea, which found special favour with Count Tisza, could be carried out, both because, since the Bucharest peace of 1913, it was out of the question to bring Roumania and Bulgaria under one roof, and because an alliance with Sofia would have driven Roumania straight into the enemy camp. But Berchtold, as well as the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, was opposed to this latter eventuality, nor would the Emperor Francis Joseph have approved of such proceedings. Hence no change was made; Roumania was not won, nor was Bulgaria substituted for her, and they were content in Vienna to leave everything to the future. In a social sense the year that I spent in Roumania before the war was not an unpleasant one. The relations of an Austrian-Hungarian Ambassador with the court, as with the numerous _Bojars_, were pleasant and friendly, and nobody could then have imagined what torrents of hatred were so soon to be launched against the Austro-Hungarian frontiers. Social life became less pleasant during the war, as will be seen from the following instance. There lived at Bucharest a certain Lieut.-Colonel Prince Sturdza, who was a noted braggart and brawler and an inveterate enemy of Austria-Hungary. I did not know him personally, and there was no personal reason for him to begin one day to abuse me publicly in the papers as being an advocate of the Monarchy. I naturally took not the slightest notice of his article, whereupon he addressed an open letter to me in the _Adeverul_, in which he informed me that he would box my ears at the first opportunity. I telegraphed to Berchtold and asked the Emperor's permission to challenge this individual, as, being an officer, he was, according to our ideas, entitled to satisfaction. The Emperor sent word that it was out of the question for an ambassador to fight a duel in the country to which he was accredited, and that I was to complain to the Roumanian Government. I accordingly went to Bratianu, who declared that he was totally unable to move in the matter. According to the laws and regulations of the country it was impossible to protect a foreign ambassador against such abuse. If Sturdza carried out his threats he would be arrested. Until then nothing could be done. Upon this I assured Bratianu that if such were the case I would in future arm myself with a revolver, and if he attacked me shoot the man; if one lived in a country where the habits of the Wild West obtained, one must act accordingly. I sent word to the lieutenant-colonel that each day, at one o'clock, I could be found at the Hotel Boulevard, where he would find a bullet awaiting him. The next time I saw the Emperor Francis Joseph he asked for further information concerning the episode, and I told him of my conversation with Bratianu and of my firm intention to be my own helper. The Emperor rejoined: "Naturally you cannot allow yourself to be beaten. You are quite right; if he lays hands on you, shoot him." I afterwards met Sturdza several times in restaurants and drawing-rooms without his attempting to carry out his threats. This man, whose nature was that of a daring adventurer, afterwards deserted to the Russian army, and fought against us at a time when Roumania still was neutral. I then completely lost sight of him. The absolute freedom of the Press in the Balkan States, combined with the brutality of the prevailing customs, produced the most varied results, even going so far as abuse of their own kings. In this connection King Carol gave me many drastic instances. While King Ferdinand was still neutral, one of the comic papers contained a picture of the King taking aim at a hare, while underneath were these words, supposed to come from the hare: "My friend, you have long ears, I have long ears; you are a coward, I am a coward. Wherefore would my brother shoot me?" On the day when war broke out this freedom of the Press was diverted into a different channel and replaced by the severest control and censorship. Roumania is a land of contrasts, both as regards the landscape, the climate, and social conditions. The mountainous north, with the wonderful Carpathians, is one of the most beautiful districts. Then there are the endless, unspeakably monotonous, but fertile plains of Wallachia, leading into the valley of the Danube, which is a very Paradise. In spring particularly, when the Danube each year overflows its banks, the beauty of the landscape baffles description. It is reminiscent of the tropics, with virgin forests standing in the water, and islands covered with luxuriant growth scattered here and there. It is an ideal country for the sportsman. All kinds of birds, herons, ducks, pelicans, and others, are to be met with, besides wolves and wild cats, and days may be spent in rowing and walking in this Paradise without wearying of it. The Roumanians usually care but little for sport, being averse to physical exertion. Whenever they can they leave the country and spend their time in Paris or on the Riviera. This love of travel is so strong in them that a law was passed compelling them to spend a certain portion of the year in their own country or else pay the penalty of a higher tax. The country people, in their sad poverty, form a great contrast to the enormously wealthy _Bojars_. Although very backward in everything relating to culture, the Roumanian peasant is a busy, quiet, and easily satisfied type, unpretentious to a touching degree when compared with the upper classes. Social conditions among the upper ten thousand have been greatly complicated owing to the abolition of nobility, whereby the question of titles plays a part unequalled anywhere else in the world. Almost every Roumanian has a title derived from one or other source; he values it highly, and takes it much amiss when a foreigner betrays his ignorance on the subject. As a rule, it is safer to adopt the plan of addressing everyone as "_Mon prince_." Another matter difficult for a foreigner to grasp is the real status of Roumanian society, owing to the incessant divorce and subsequent remarriages. Nearly every woman has been divorced at least once and married again, the result being, on the one hand, the most complicated questions of relationship, and, on the other, so many breaches of personal relations as to make it the most difficult task to invite twenty Roumanians, particularly ladies, to dinner without giving offence in some quarter. In the days of the old régime it was one of the duties of the younger members of the Embassy to develop their budding diplomatic talents by a clever compilation of the list for such a dinner and a wise avoidance of any dangerous rock ahead. But as the question of rank in Roumania is taken just as seriously as though it were authorised, every lady claims to have first rank--the correct allotment of places at a dinner is really a question for the most efficient diplomatic capacities. There were about a dozen ladies in Bucharest who would actually not accept an invitation unless they were quite sure the place of honour would be given to them. My predecessor cut the Gordian knot of these difficulties by arranging to have dinner served at small separate tables, thus securing several places of honour, but not even by these means could he satisfy the ambition of all. 2 While at Sinaia I received the news of the assassination of the Archduke from Bratianu. I was confined to bed, suffering from influenza, when Bratianu telephoned to ask if I had heard that there had been an accident to the Archduke's train in Bosnia, and that both he and the duchess were killed. Soon after this first alarm came further news, leaving no doubt as to the gravity of the catastrophe. The first impression in Roumania was one of profound and sincere sympathy and genuine consternation. Roumania never expected by means of war to succeed in realising her national ambitions; she only indulged in the hope that a friendly agreement with the Monarchy would lead to the union of all Roumanians, and in that connection Bucharest centred all its hopes in the Archduke and heir to the throne. His death seemed to end the dream of a Greater Roumania, and the genuine grief displayed in all circles in Roumania was the outcome of that feeling. Take Jonescu, on learning the news while in my wife's drawing-room, wept bitterly; and the condolences that I received were not of the usual nature of such messages, but were expressions of the most genuine sorrow. Poklewski, the Russian Ambassador, is said to have remarked very brutally that there was no reason to make so much out of the event, and the general indignation that his words aroused proved how strong was the sympathy felt in the country for the murdered Archduke. When the ultimatum was made known the entire situation changed at once. I never had any illusions respecting the Roumanian psychology, and was quite clear in my own mind that the sincere regret at the Archduke's death was due to egotistical motives and to the fear of being compelled now to abandon the national ambition. The ultimatum and the danger of war threatening on the horizon completely altered the Roumanian attitude, and it was suddenly recognised that Roumania could achieve its object by other means, not by peace, but by war--not _with_, but _against_ the Monarchy. I would never have believed it possible that such a rapid and total change could have occurred practically within a few hours. Genuine and simulated indignation at the tone of the ultimatum was the order of the day, and the universal conclusion arrived at was: _L'Autriche est devenue folle._ Men and women with whom I had been on a perfectly friendly footing for the last year suddenly became bitter enemies. Everywhere I noticed a mixture of indignation and growing eagerness to realise at last their heart's dearest wish. The feeling in certain circles fluctuated for some days. Roumanians had a great respect for Germany's military power, and the year 1870 was still fresh in the memory of many of them. When England, however, joined the ranks of our adversaries their fears vanished, and from that moment it became obvious to the large majority of the Roumanians that the realisation of their aspirations was merely a question of time and of diplomatic efficiency. The wave of hatred and lust of conquest that broke over us in the first stage of the war was much stronger than in later stages, because the Roumanians made the mistake we all have committed of reckoning on too short a duration of the war, and therefore imagined the decision to be nearer at hand than it actually was. After the great German successes in the West, after Görlitz and the downfall of Serbia, certain tendencies pointing to a policy of delay became noticeable among the Roumanians. With the exception of Carp and his little group all were more or less ready at the very first to fling themselves upon us. Like a rock standing in the angry sea of hatred, poor old King Carol was alone with his German sympathies. I had been instructed to read the ultimatum to him the moment it was sent to Belgrade, and never shall I forget the impression it made on the old King when he heard it. He, wise old politician that he was, recognised at once the immeasurable possibilities of such a step, and before I had finished reading the document he interrupted me, exclaiming: "It will be a world war." It was long before he could collect himself and begin to devise ways and means by which a peaceful solution might still be found. I may mention here that a short time previously the Tsar, with Sassonoff, had been in Constanza for a meeting with the Roumanian royal family. The day after the Tsar left I went to Constanza myself to thank the King for having conferred the Grand Cross of one of the Roumanian orders on me, obviously as a proof that the Russian visit had not made him forget our alliance, and he gave me some interesting details of the said visit. Most interesting of all was his account of the conversations with the Russian Minister for Foreign Affairs. On asking whether Sassonoff considered the situation in Europe to be as safe as he (the King) did, Sassonoff answered in the affirmative, "_pourvu que l'Autriche ne touche pas à la Serbie_." I at once, of course, reported this momentous statement to Vienna; but neither by the King nor by myself, nor yet in Vienna, was the train of thought then fully understood. The relations between Serbia and the Monarchy were at that time no worse than usual; indeed, they were rather better, and there was not the slightest intention on our part to injure the Serbians. But the suspicion that Sassonoff already then was aware that the Serbians were planning something against us cannot be got rid of. When the King asked me whether I had reported Sassonoff's important remark to Vienna, I replied that I had done so, and added that this remark was another reason to make me believe that the assassination was a crime long since prepared and carried out under Russian patronage. The crime that was enacted at Debruzin, which made such a sensation at the time, gave rise to suspicions of a Russo-Roumanian attempt at assassination. On February 24, 1914, the Hungarian Correspondence Bureau published the following piece of news: A terrible explosion took place this morning in the official premises of the newly-instituted Greek-Catholic Hungarian bishopric, which are on the second floor of the Ministry of Trade and Commerce in the Franz Deak Street. It occurred in the office of the bishop's representative, the Vicar Michael Jaczkovics, whose secretary, Johann Slapowszky, was also present in the room. Both of them were blown to pieces. The Greek-Catholic bishop, Stephan Miklossy, was in a neighbouring room, but had a most marvellous escape. Alexander Csatth, advocate and solicitor to the bishopric, who was in another room, was mortally wounded by the explosion. In a third room the bishop's servant with his wife were both killed. All the walls in the office premises fell in, and the whole building is very much damaged. The explosion caused such a panic in the house that all the inhabitants took flight and vanished. All the windows of the neighbouring Town Hall in the Verboczy Street were shattered by the concussion. Loose tiles were hurled into the street and many passers-by were injured. The four dead bodies and the wounded were taken to the hospital. The bishop, greatly distressed, left the building and went to a friend's house. The daughter of the Vicar Jaczkovics went out of her mind on hearing of her father's tragic death. The cause of the explosion has not yet been discovered. I soon became involved in the affair when Hungary and Roumania began mutually to blame one another as originators of the outrage. This led to numerous interventions and adjustments, and my task was intensified because a presumed accomplice of the murderer Catarau was arrested in Bucharest, and his extradition to Hungary had to be effected by me. This man, of the name of Mandazescu, was accused of having obtained a false passport for Catarau. Catarau, who was a Roumanian Russian from Bessarabia, vanished completely after the murder and left no trace. News came, now from Serbia, then from Albania, that he had been found, but the rumours were always false. I chanced to hear something about the matter in this way. I was on board a Roumanian vessel bound from Constanza to Constantinople, when I accidentally overheard two Roumanian naval officers talking together. One of them said: "That was on the day when the police brought Catarau on board to help him to get away secretly." Catarau was heard of later at Cairo, which he appears to have reached with the aid of Roumanian friends. It cannot be asserted that the Roumanian Government was implicated in the plot--but the Roumanian authorities certainly were, for in the Balkans, as in Russia, there are many bands like the _Cerna Ruka_, the _Narodna Odbrena_, etc., etc., who carry on their activities alongside the Government. It was a crime committed by some Russian or Roumanian secret society, and the Governments of both countries showed surprisingly little interest in investigating the matter and delivering the culprits up to justice. On June 15 I heard from a reliable source that Catarau had been seen in Bucharest. He walked about the streets quite openly in broad daylight, and no one interfered with him; then he disappeared. To return, however, to my interview with the old King. Filled with alarm, he dispatched that same evening two telegrams, one to Belgrade and one to Petersburg, urging that the ultimatum be accepted without fail. The terrible distress of mind felt by the King when, like a sudden flash of lightning from the clouds, he saw before him a picture of the world war may be accounted for because he felt certain that the conflict between his personal convictions and his people's attitude would suddenly be known to all. The poor old King fought the fight to the best of his ability, but it killed him. King Carol's death was caused by the war. The last weeks of his life were a torture to him; each message that I had to deliver he felt as the lash of a whip. I was enjoined to do all I could to secure Roumania's prompt co-operation, according to the terms of the Alliance, and I was even obliged to go so far as to remind him that "a promise given allows of no prevarication: that a treaty is a treaty, and _his honour_ obliged him to unsheathe his sword." I recollect one particularly painful scene, where the King, weeping bitterly, flung himself across his writing-table and with trembling hands tried to wrench from his neck his order _Pour le Mérite_. I can affirm without any exaggeration that I could see him wasting away under the ceaseless moral blows dealt to him, and that the mental torment he went through undoubtedly shortened his life. Queen Elizabeth was well aware of all, but she never took my action amiss; she understood that I had to deliver the messages, but that it was not I who composed them. Queen Elizabeth was a good, clever and touchingly simple woman, not a _poet qui court après l'esprit_, but a woman who looked at the world through conciliatory and poetical glasses. She was a good conversationalist, and there was always a poetic charm in all she did. There hung on the staircase a most beautiful sea picture, which I greatly admired while the Queen talked to me about the sea, about her little villa at Constanza, which, built on the extreme end of the quay, seems almost to lie in the sea. She spoke, too, of her travels and impressions when on the high seas, and as she spoke the great longing for all that is good and beautiful made itself felt, and this is what she said to me: "The sea lives. If there could be found any symbol of eternity it would be the sea, endless in greatness and everlasting in movement. The day is dull and stormy. One after another the glassy billows come rolling in and break with a roar on the rocky shore. The small white crests of the waves look as if covered with snow. And the sea breathes and draws its breath with the ebb and flow of the tide. The tide is the driving power that forces the mighty waters from Equator to North Pole. And thus it works, day and night, year by year, century by century. It takes no heed of the perishable beings who call themselves lords of the world, who live only for a day, coming and going and vanishing almost as they come. The sea remains to work. It works for all, for men, for animals, for plants, for without the sea there could be no organic life in the world. The sea is like a great filter, which alone can produce the change of matter that is necessary for life. In the course of a century numberless rivers carry earth to the sea. Each river carries without ceasing its burden of earth and sand to the ocean; and the sea receives the load which is carried by the current far out to sea, and slowly and by degrees in the course of time the sea dissolves or crushes all it has received. No matter to the sea if the process lasts a thousand years or more--it may even last for ages, who can tell? "But one day, quite suddenly, the sea begins to wander. Once there was sea everywhere, and all continents are born from the sea. One day land arose out of the sea. The birth was of a revolutionary nature, there were earthquakes, volcanic craters, falling cities and dying men--but new land was there. Or else it moves slowly, invisibly, a metre or two in a century, and returns to the land it used to possess. Thus it restores the soil it stole from it, but cleaner, refined and full of vitality to live and to create. Such is the sea and its work." These are the words of the old half-blind Queen, who can never look upon the beloved picture again, but she told me how she always idolised the sea, and how her grand nephews and nieces shared her feelings, and how she grew young again with them when she told them tales of olden times. One could listen to her for hours without growing weary, and always there was some beautiful thought or word to carry away and think over. Doubtless such knowledge would be more correct were it taken from some geological work. But Carmen Sylva's words invariably seemed to strike some poetic chord; that is what made her so attractive. She loved to discourse on politics, which for her meant King Carol. He was her all in all. After his death, when it was said that all states in the world were losing in the terrible war, she remarked: "Roumania has already lost her most precious possession." She never spoke of her own poems and writings. In politics her one thought besides King Carol was Albania. She was deeply attached to the Princess of Wied, and showed her strong interest in the country where she lived. Talking about the Wieds one day afforded me an opportunity of seeing the King vexed with his wife; it was the only time I ever noticed it. It was when we were at Sinaia, and I was, as often occurred, sitting with the King. The Queen came into the room, which she was otherwise not in the habit of entering, bringing with her a telegram from the Princess of Wied in which she asked for something--I cannot now remember what--for Albania. The King refused, but the Queen insisted, until he at last told her very crossly to leave him in peace, as he had other things to think of than Albania. After King Carol's death she lost all her vital energy, and the change in the political situation troubled her. She was very fond of her nephew Ferdinand--hers was a truly loving heart--and she trembled lest he should commit some act of treachery. I remember once how, through her tears, she said to me: "Calm my fears. Tell me that he will never be guilty of such an act." I was unable to reassure her, but a kind Fate spared her from hearing the declaration of war. Later, not long before her death, the old Queen was threatened with total blindness. She was anxious to put herself in the hands of a French oculist for an operation for cataract, who would naturally be obliged to travel through the Monarchy in order to reach Bucharest. At her desire I mentioned the matter in Vienna, and the Emperor Francis Joseph at once gave the requisite permission for the journey. After a successful operation, the Queen sent a short autograph poem to one of my children, adding that it was her _first_ letter on recovering her sight. At the same time she was again very uneasy concerning politics. I wrote her the following letter: Your Majesty,--My warmest thanks for the beautiful little poem you have sent to my boy. That it was granted to me to contribute something towards the recovery of your sight is in itself a sufficient reward, and no thanks are needed. That Your Majesty has addressed the first written lines to my children delights and touches me. Meanwhile Your Majesty must not be troubled regarding politics. It is of no avail. For the moment Roumania will retain the policy of the late King, and God alone knows what the future will bring forth. We are all like dust in this terrible hurricane sweeping through the world. We are tossed helplessly hither and thither and know not whether we are to face disaster or success. The point is not whether we live or die, but how it is done. In that respect King Carol set an example to us all. I hope King Ferdinand may never forget that, together with the throne, his uncle bequeathed to him a political creed, a creed of honour and loyalty, and I am persuaded that Your Majesty is the best guardian of the bequest. Your Majesty's grateful and devoted CZERNIN. When I said that King Carol fought the fight to the best of his ability, I intended to convey that no one could expect him to be different from what he always was. The King never possessed in any special degree either energy, strength of action, or adventurous courage, and at the time I knew him, as an old man, he had none of those attributes. He was a clever diplomat, a conciliatory power, a safe mediator, and one who avoided trouble, but not of a nature to risk all and weather the storm. That was known to all, and no one, therefore, could think that the King would try to put himself on our side against the clearly expressed views of all Roumania. My idea is that if he had been differently constituted he could successfully have risked the experiment. The King possessed in Carp a man of quite unusual, even reckless, activity and energy, and from the first moment he placed himself and his activities at the King's disposal. If the King, without asking, had ordered mobilisation, Carp's great energy would have certainly carried it through. But, in the military situation as it was then, the Roumanian army would have been forced to the rear of the Russian, and in all probability the first result of the battlefields would have changed the situation entirely, and the blood that was shed mutually in victorious battles would have brought forth the unity that the spirit of our alliance never succeeded in evolving. But the King was not a man of such calibre. He could not change his nature, and what he did do entirely concurred with his methods from the time he ascended the throne. As long as the King lived there was the positive assurance that Roumania would not side against us, for he would have prevented any mobilisation against us with the same firm wisdom which had always enabled him to avert any agitation in the land. He would then have seen that the Roumanians are not a warlike people like the Bulgarians, and that Roumania had not the slightest intention of risking anything in the campaign. A policy of procrastination in the wise hands of the King would have delayed hostilities against us indefinitely. Immediately after the outbreak of war Bratianu began his game, which consisted of entrenching the Roumanian Government firmly and willingly in a position between the two groups of Powers, and bandying favours about from one to the other, reaping equal profits from each, until the moment when the stronger of the two should be recognised as such and the weaker then attacked. Even from 1914-16 Roumania was never really neutral. She always favoured our enemies, and as far as lay in her power hindered all our actions. The transport of horses and ammunition to Turkey in the summer of 1915 that was exacted from us was an important episode. Turkey was then in great danger, and was asking anxiously for munitions. Had the Roumanian Government adopted the standpoint not to favour any of the belligerent Powers it would have been a perfectly correct attitude, viewed from a neutral standpoint, but she never did adopt such standpoint, as is shown by her allowing the Serbians to receive transports of Russian ammunition via the Danube, thus showing great partiality. When all attempts failed, the munitions were transmitted, partially at any rate, through other means. At that time, too, Russian soldiers were allowed in Roumania and were not molested, whereas ours were invariably interned. Two Austrian airmen once landed by mistake in Roumania, and were, of course, interned immediately. The one was a cadet of the name of Berthold and a pilot whose name I have forgotten. From their prison they appealed to me to help them, and I sent word that they must endeavour to obtain permission to pay me a visit. A few days later the cadet appeared, escorted by a Roumanian officer as guard. This officer, not being allowed without special permission to set foot on Austro-Hungarian soil, was obliged to remain in the street outside the house. I had the gates closed, put the cadet into one of my cars, sent him out through the back entrance, and had him driven to Giurgui, where he got across the Danube, and in two hours was again at liberty. After a lengthy and futile wait the officer departed. His protests came too late. The unfortunate pilot who was left behind was not allowed to come to the Embassy. One night, however, he made his escape through the window and arrived. I kept him concealed for some time, and he eventually crossed the frontier safely and got away by rail to Hungary. Bratianu reproached me later for what I had done, but I told him it was in consequence of his not having strictly adhered to his neutrality. Had our soldiers been left unmolested, as in the case of the Russians, I should not have been compelled to act as I had done. Bratianu can never seriously have doubted that the Central Powers would succumb, and his sympathies were always with the Entente, not only on account of his bringing up, but also because of that political speculation. During the course of subsequent events there were times when Bratianu to a certain extent seemed to vacillate, especially at the time of our great offensive against Russia. The break through at Görlitz and the irresistible advance into the interior of Russia had an astounding effect in Roumania. Bratianu, who obviously knew very little about strategy, could simply not understand that the Russian millions, whom he imagined to be in a fair way to Vienna and Berlin, should suddenly begin to rush back and a fortress like Warsaw be demolished like a house of cards. He was evidently very anxious then and must have had many a disturbed night. On the other hand, those who to begin with, though not for, still were not against Austria began to raise their heads and breathe more freely. The victory of the Central Powers appeared on the horizon like a fresh event. That was the historic moment when Roumania might have been coerced into active co-operation, but not the Bratianu Ministry. Bratianu himself would never in any case have ranged himself on our side, but if we could have made up our minds then to instal a Majorescu or a Marghiloman Ministry in office, we could have had the Roumanian army with us. In connection with this were several concrete proposals. In order to carry out the plan we should have been compelled to make territorial concessions in Hungary to a Majorescu Ministry--Majorescu demanded it as a primary condition to his undertaking the conduct of affairs, and this proposal failed owing to Hungary's obstinate resistance. It is a terrible but a just punishment that poor Hungary, who contributed so much to our definite defeat, should be the one to suffer the most from the consequences thereof, and that the Roumanians, so despised and persecuted by Hungary, should gain the greatest triumphs on her plains. One of the many reproaches that have been brought against me recently is to the effect that I, as ambassador at Bucharest, should have resigned if my proposals were not accepted in Vienna. These reproaches are dictated by quite mistaken ideas of competency and responsibility. It is the duty of a subordinate official to describe the situation as he sees it and to make such proposals as he considers right, but the responsibility for the policy is with the Minister for Foreign Affairs, and it would lead to the most impossible and absurd state of things if every ambassador whose proposals were rejected were to draw the conclusion that his resignation was a necessary consequence thereof. If officials were to resign because they did not agree with the view of their chief, it would mean that almost all of them would send in their resignations. Espionage and counter-espionage have greatly flourished during the war. In that connection Russia showed great activity in Roumania. In October, 1914, an event occurred which was very unfortunate for me. I drove from Bucharest to Sinaia, carrying certain political documents with me in a dispatch-case, which, by mistake, was fastened on behind instead of being laid in the car. On the way the case was unstrapped and stolen. I made every effort to get it back, and eventually recovered it after a search of three weeks, involving much expense. It was found at last in some peasant's barn, but nothing had apparently been abstracted save the cigarettes that were in it. Nevertheless, after the occupation of Bucharest copies and photographs of all my papers were found in Bratianu's house. After the loss of the dispatch-case I at once tendered my resignation in Vienna, but it was not accepted by the Emperor. The Red Book on Roumania, published by Burian, which contains a summary of my most important reports, gives a very clear picture of the several phases of that period and the approaching danger of war. The several defeats that Roumania suffered justified the fears of all those who warned her against premature intervention. In order to render the situation quite clear, it must here be explained that during the time immediately preceding Roumania's entry into war there were really only two parties in the country: the one was hostile to us and wished for an immediate declaration of war, and the other was the "friendly" one that did not consider the situation ripe for action and advised waiting until we were weakened still more. During the time of our successes the "friendly" party carried the day. Queen Marie, I believe, belonged to the latter. From the beginning of the war, she was always in favour of "fighting by the side of England," as she always looked upon herself as an Englishwoman, but, at the last moment at any rate, she appears to have thought the time for action premature. A few days before the declaration of war she invited me to a farewell lunch, which was somewhat remarkable, as we both knew that in a very few days we should be enemies. After lunch I took the opportunity of telling her that I _likewise_ was aware of the situation, but that "the Bulgarians would be in Bucharest before the Roumanians reached Budapest." She entered into the conversation very calmly, being of a very frank nature and not afraid of hearing the truth. A few days later a letter was opened at the censor's office from a lady-in-waiting who had been present at the lunch. It was evidently not intended for our eyes; it contained a description of the _déjeuner fort embêtant_, with some unflattering remarks about me. Queen Marie never lost her hope in a final victory. She did not perhaps agree with Bratianu in all his tactics, but a declaration of war on us was always an item on her programme. Even in the distressing days of their disastrous defeat she always kept her head above water. One of the Queen's friends told me afterwards that when our armies, from south, north and west, were nearing Bucharest, when day and night the earth shook with the ceaseless thunder of the guns, the Queen quietly went on with her preparations for departure, and was firmly persuaded that she would return as "Empress of all the Roumanians." I have been told that after the taking of Bucharest Bratianu collapsed altogether, and it was Queen Marie who comforted and encouraged him. Her English blood always asserted itself. After we had occupied Wallachia, I received absolutely reliable information from England, according to which she had telegraphed to King George from Jassy, recommending "her little but courageous people" to his further protection. After the Peace of Bucharest strong pressure was brought to bear on me to effect the abdication of the King and Queen. It would not in any way have altered the situation, as the Entente would naturally have reinstated them when victory was gained; but I opposed all such efforts, not for the above reason, which I could not foresee, but from other motives, to be mentioned later, although I was perfectly certain that Queen Marie would always remain our enemy. The declaration of war created a very uncomfortable situation for all Austro-Hungarians and Germans. I came across several friends in the Austro-Hungarian colony who had been beaten by the Roumanian soldiers with the butt-ends of their rifles on their way to prison. I saw wild scenes of panic and flight that were both grotesque and revolting, and the cruel sport lasted for days. In Vienna all subjects of an enemy state were exempt from deportation. In my capacity as Minister I ordered reprisals on Roumanian citizens, as there were no other means to relieve the fate of our poor refugees. As soon as the neutral Powers notified that the treatment had become more humane, they were set free. If we showed ourselves at the windows or in the garden of the Embassy the crowd scoffed and jeered at us, and at the station, when we left, a young official whom I asked for information simply turned his back on me. A year and a half later I was again in Bucharest. The tide of victory had carried us far, and we came to make peace. We were again subjects of interest to the crowds in the streets, but in very different fashion. A tremendous ovation awaited us when we appeared in the theatre, and I could not show myself in the street without having a crowd of admirers in my wake. Before all this occurred, and when war was first declared, the members of the Embassy, together with about 150 persons belonging to the Austro-Hungarian colony, including many children, were interned, and spent ten very unpleasant days, as we were not sure whether we should be released or not. We had occasion during that time to witness three Zeppelin raids over Bucharest, which, seen in the wonderful moonlight, cloudless nights under the tropical sky, made an unforgettable impression on us. I find the following noted in my diary: "_Bucharest, August, 1916._ "The Roumanians have declared war on my wife and daughter too. A deputation composed of two officials from the Ministry for Foreign Affairs, in frock-coats and top hats, appeared last night at eleven o'clock in my villa at Sinaia. My wife was roused out of her sleep, and by the light of a single candle--more is forbidden on account of the Zeppelin raids--they informed her that Roumania had declared war on us. "As the speaker put it, '_Vous avez déclaré la guerre_.' He then read the whole declaration of war aloud to them both. Bratianu sent word to me that he would have a special train sent to take my wife and daughter and the whole personnel of the Embassy to Bucharest. "_Bucharest, September, 1916._ "The Roumanians really expected a Zeppelin attack at once. So far it has not occurred, and they begin to feel more at ease, and say that it is too far for the Zeppelins to come all the way from Germany. They seem not to be aware that Mackensen has Zeppelins in Bulgaria. But who can tell whether they really will come? "_Bucharest, September, 1916._ "Last night a Zeppelin did come. About three o'clock we were roused by the shrill police whistles giving the alarm. The telephone notified us that a Zeppelin had crossed the Danube, and all the church bells began to peal. Suddenly darkness and silence reigned, and the whole town, like some great angry animal, sullen and morose, prepared for the enemy attack. Nowhere was there light or sound. The town, with a wonderful starry firmament overhead, waited in expectation. Fifteen, twenty minutes went by, when suddenly a shot was fired and, as though it were a signal, firing broke out in every direction. The anti-aircraft guns fired incessantly, and the police, too, did their best, firing in the air. But what were they firing at? There was absolutely nothing to be seen. The searchlights then came into play. Sweeping the heavens from east to west, from north to south, they searched the firmament, but could not find the Zeppelin. Was it really there, or was the whole thing due to excited Roumanian nerves? "Suddenly a sound was heard: the noise of the propeller overhead. It sounded so near in the clear, starry night, we felt we must be able to see it. But the noise died away in the direction of Colbroceni. Then we heard the first bomb. Like a gust of wind it whistled through the air, followed by a crash and an explosion. A second and third came quickly after. The firing became fiercer, but they can see nothing and seem to aim at where the sound comes from. The searchlights sway backwards and forwards. Now one of them has caught the airship, which looks like a small golden cigar. Both the gondolas can be seen quite distinctly, and the searchlight keeps it well in view, and now a second one has caught it. It looks as though this air cruiser is hanging motionless in the sky, brilliantly lit up by the searchlights right and left. Then the guns begin in good earnest. Shrapnel bursts all around, a wonderful display of fireworks, but it is impossible to say if the aim is good and if the monster is in danger. Smaller and smaller grows the Zeppelin, climbing rapidly higher and higher, until suddenly the miniature cigar disappears. Still the searchlights sweep the skies, hoping to find their prey again. "Suddenly utter silence reigns. Have they gone? Is the attack over? Has one been hit? Forced to land? The minutes go by. We are all now on the balcony--the women, too--watching the scene. Again comes the well-known sound--once heard never forgotten--as though the wind were getting up, then a dull thud and explosion. This time it is farther away towards the forts. Again the firing breaks out, and machine-guns bark at the friendly moon; searchlights career across the heavens, but find nothing. Again there falls a bomb--much nearer this time--and again comes the noise of the propellers louder and louder. Shrapnel bursts just over the Embassy, and the Zeppelin is over our heads. We hear the noise very distinctly, but can see nothing. Again a sudden silence everywhere, which has a curious effect after the terrible noise. Time passes, but nothing more is heard. The first rays of dawn are seen in the east; the stars slowly pale. "A child is heard to cry somewhere, far away: strange how clearly it sounds in the silent night. There is a feeling as though the terrified town hardly dared breathe or move for fear the monster might return. And how many more such nights are there in prospect? In the calm of this fairylike dawn, slowly rising, the crying of the child strikes a note of discord, infinitely sad. But the crying of the child--does it not find an echo among the millions whom this terrible war has driven to desperation? "The sun rises like a blood-red ball. For some hours the Roumanians can take to sleep and gather fresh strength, but they know now that the Zeppelin's visit will not be the last. "_Bucharest, September, 1916._ "The Press is indignant about the nocturnal attack. Bucharest is certainly a fortress, but it should be known that the guns are no longer in the forts. It was stated in the _Adeverul_ that the heroic resistance put up in defence was most successful. That the airship, badly damaged, was brought down near Bucharest, and that a commission started off at once to make sure whether it was an aeroplane or a Zeppelin! "_Bucharest, September, 1916._ "The Zeppelin returned again this evening and took us by surprise. It seemed to come from the other side of Plojest, and the sentries on the Danube must have missed it. Towards morning the night watch at the Embassy whose duty it is to see that there is no light in the house saw a huge mass descending slowly over the Embassy till it almost touched the roof. It hovered there a few minutes, making observations. No one noticed it until suddenly the engines started again, and it dropped the first bomb close to the Embassy. A direct hit was made on the house of the Ambassador Jresnea Crecianu, and twenty gendarmes who were there were killed. The royal palace was also damaged. The Government is apparently not satisfied with the anti-aircraft forces, but concludes that practice will make them perfect. Opportunity for practice will certainly not be lacking. "Our departure is being delayed by every sort of pretext. One moment it seems as though we should reach home via Bulgaria. This idea suited Bratianu extremely well, as the Bulgarian willingness to grant permission was a guarantee that they had no plans of attack. But he reckoned in this without his host. E. and W. are greatly alarmed because the Roumanians intend to detain them, and will probably hang them as spies. I have told them, 'Either we all stay here or we all start together. No one will be given up.' That appears to have somewhat quieted their fears. "As might be expected, these nocturnal visits had disagreeable consequences for us. The Roumanians apparently thought that it was not a question of Zeppelins, but of Austro-Hungarian airships, and that my presence in the town would afford a certain protection against the attacks; after the first one they declared that for every Roumanian killed ten Austrians or Bulgarians would be executed, and the hostile treatment to which we were subjected grew worse and worse. The food was cut down and was terribly bad, and finally the water supply was cut off. With the tropical temperature that prevailed and the overcrowding of a house that normally was destined to hold twenty, and now housed 170, persons, the conditions within the space of twenty-four hours became unbearable and the atmosphere so bad that several people fell ill with fever, and neither doctor nor medicine was obtainable. Thanks to the energetic intervention of the Dutch Ambassador, Herr von Vredenburch, who had undertaken the charge of our State interests, it was finally possible to alter the conditions and to avert the outbreak of an epidemic." * * * * * It was just about that time that our Military Attaché, Lieut.-Colonel Baron Randa, made a telling remark. One of our Roumanian slave-drivers was in the habit of paying us a daily visit and talking in the bombastic fashion the Roumanians adopted when boasting of their impending victories. The word "Mackensen" occurred in Randa's answer. The Roumanian was surprised to hear the name, unknown to him, and said: "Qu'est-ce que c'est que ce Mackensen? Je connais beaucoup d'Allemands, mais je n'ai jamais fait la connaissance de M. Mackensen." "Eh bien," replied Randa, patting him on the shoulder, "vous la ferez cette connaissance, je vous en guarantie." Three months after that Mackensen had occupied all Wallachia and had his headquarters at Bucharest. By that time, therefore, his name must have been more familiar to our Roumanian friend. At last we set off for home via Russia and had a very interesting journey lasting three weeks, via Kieff, Petersburg, Sweden, and Germany. To spend three weeks in a train would seem very wearisome to many; but as everything in this life is a matter of habit we soon grew so accustomed to it that when we arrived in Vienna there were many of us who could not sleep the first few nights in a proper bed, as we missed the shaking of the train. Meanwhile, we had every comfort on the special train, and variety as well, especially when, on Bratianu's orders, we were detained at a little station called Baratinskaja, near Kieff. The reason of this was never properly explained, but it was probably owing to difficulties over the departure of the Roumanian Ambassador in Sofia and to the wish to treat us as hostages. The journey right through the enemy country was remarkable. Fierce battles were just then being fought in Galicia, and day and night we passed endless trains conveying gay and smiling soldiers to the front, and others returning full of pale, bandaged wounded men, whose groans we heard as we passed them. We were greeted everywhere in friendly fashion by the population, and there was not a trace of the hatred we had experienced in Roumania. Everything that we saw bore evidence of the strictest order and discipline. None of us could think it possible that the Empire was on the eve of a revolution, and when the Emperor Francis Joseph questioned me on my return as to whether I had reason to believe that a revolution would occur, I discountenanced the idea most emphatically. This did not please the old Emperor. He said afterwards to one of his suite: "Czernin has given a correct account of Roumania, but he must have been asleep when he passed through Russia." 3 The development of Roumanian affairs during the war occurs in three phases, the first of which was in King Carol's reign. Then neutrality was guaranteed. On the other hand, it was not possible during those months to secure Roumania's co-operation because we, in the first period of the war, were so unfavourably situated in a military sense that public opinion in Roumania would not voluntarily have consented to a war at our side, and, as already mentioned, such forcible action would not have met with the King's approval. In the second phase of the war, dating from King Carol's death to our defeat at Luck, conditions were quite different. In this second phase were included the greatest military successes the Central Powers ever obtained. The downfall of Serbia and the conquest of the whole of Poland occurred during this period, and, I repeat, in those months we could have secured the active co-operation of Roumania. Nevertheless, I must make it clearly understood here that if the political preliminaries for intervention on the part of Roumania were not undertaken, the fault must not be ascribed to the then Minister of Foreign Affairs, but to the _vis major_ which opposed the project under the form of a Hungarian veto. As previously stated, Majorescu, as well as Marghiloman, would only have given his consent to co-operation if Roumania had been given a slice of the Hungarian state. Thanks to the attitude of absolute refusal observed at the Ballplatz, the territory in question was never definitely decided on, but the idea probably was Transylvania and a portion of the Bukovina. I cannot say whether Count Burian, if he had escaped other influences, would have adopted the plan, but certain it is that however ready and willing he was to act he would never have carried out the plan against the Hungarian Parliament. According to the Constitution, the Hungarian Parliament is sovereign in the Hungarian State, and without the use of armed means Hungary could never have been induced to cede any part of her territory. It is obvious, however, that it would have been impossible during the world war to have stirred up an armed conflict between Vienna and Budapest. My then German colleague, von dem Busche, entirely agreed with me that Hungary ought to make some territorial sacrifices in order to encourage Roumania's intervention. I firmly believe that then, and similarly before the Italian declaration of war, a certain pressure was brought to bear direct on Vienna by Berlin to this end--a pressure which merely contributed to strengthen and intensify Tisza's opposition. For Germany, the question was far simpler; she had drawn payment for her great gains from a foreign source. The cession of the Bukovina might possibly have been effected, as Stürgkh did not object, but that alone would not have satisfied Roumania. It was quite clear that the opposition to the ceding of Transylvania originated in Hungary. But this opposition was not specially Tisza's, for whichever of the Hungarian politicians might have been at the head of the Cabinet he would have adopted the same standpoint. I sent at that time a confidential messenger to Tisza enjoining him to explain the situation and begging him in my name to make the concession. Tisza treated the messenger with great reserve, and wrote me a letter stating once for all that the voluntary cession of Hungarian territory was out of the question; "whoever attempts to seize even one square metre of Hungarian soil will be shot." There was nothing to be done. And still I think that this was one of the most important phases of the war, which, had it been properly managed, might have influenced the final result. The military advance on the flank of the Russian army would have been, in the opinion of our military chiefs, an advantage not to be despised, and through it the clever break through at Görlitz would have had some results; but as it was, Görlitz was a strategical trial of strength without any lasting effect. The repellent attitude adopted by Hungary may be accounted for in two ways: the Hungarians, to begin with, were averse to giving up any of their own territory, and, secondly, they did not believe--even to the very last--that Roumania would remain permanently neutral or that sooner or later we would be forced to fight _against_ Roumania unless we in good time carried her with us. In this connection Tisza always maintained his optimism, and to the very last moment held to the belief that Roumania would not dare take it upon herself to attack us. This is the only reason that explains why the Roumanians surprised us so much by their invasion of Transylvania and by being able to carry off so much rich booty. I would have been able to take much better care of the many Austrians and Hungarians living in Roumania--whose fate was terrible after the declaration of war, which took them also by surprise--if I had been permitted to draw their attention more openly and generally to the coming catastrophe; but in several of his letters Tisza implored me not to create a panic, "which would bring incalculable consequences with it." As I neither did, nor could, know how far this secrecy was in agreement with our military counter-preparations, I was bound to observe it. Apparently, Burian believed my reports to a certain extent; at any rate, for some time before the declaration of war he ordered all the secret documents and the available money to be conveyed to Vienna, and entrusted to Holland the care of our citizens; but Tisza told me long after that he considered my reports of too pessimistic a tendency, and was afraid to give orders for the _superfluous_ evacuation of Transylvania. After the unexpected invasion, the waves of panic and rage ran high in the Hungarian Parliament. The severest criticism was heaped upon me, as no one doubted that the lack of preparation was due to my false reports. Here Tisza was again himself when, in a loud voice, he shouted out that it was untrue; my reports were correct; I had warned them in time and no blame could be attached to me; he thus took upon himself the just blame. Fear was unknown to him, and he never tried to shield himself behind anyone. When I arrived back in Vienna after a journey of some weeks in Russia, and only then heard of the incident, I took the opportunity to thank Tisza for the honourable and loyal manner in which he had defended my cause. He replied with the ironical smile characteristic of him that it was simply a matter of course. But for an Austro-Hungarian official it was by no means such a matter of course. We have had so many cowards on the Ministerial benches, so many men who were brave when dealing with their subordinates, toadied to their superiors, and were intimidated by strong opposition, that a man like Tisza, who was such a contrast to these others, has a most refreshing and invigorating effect. The Roumanians attempted several times to make the maintenance of their _neutrality_ contingent on territorial concessions. I was always opposed to this, and at the Ballplatz they were of the same opinion. The Roumanians would have appropriated these concessions and simply attacked us later to obtain more. On the other hand, it seemed to me that to gain _military co-operation_ a cession of territory would be quite in order, since, once in the field, the Roumanians could not draw back and their fate would be permanently bound up with ours. Finally, the third phase comprises the comparatively short period between our defeat at Luck and the outbreak of the war in Roumania, and was simply the death throes of neutrality. War was in the air and could be foreseen with certainty. As was to be expected, the inefficient diplomacy displayed in the preparations for the world war brought down severe criticism of our diplomatic abilities, and if the intention at the Ballplatz was to bring about a war, it cannot be denied that the preparations for it were most inadequate. Criticism was not directed towards the Ballplatz only, but entered into further matters, such as the qualifications of the individual representatives in foreign countries. I remember an article in one of the most widely-read Viennese papers, which drew a comparison between the "excellent" ambassador at Sofia and almost all of the others; that is, all those whose posts were in countries that either refused their co-operation or even already were in the field against us. In order to prevent any misunderstanding, I wish to state here that in my opinion our then ambassador to Sofia, Count Tarnowski, was one of the best and most competent diplomats in Austria-Hungary, but that the point of view from which such praise was awarded to him was in itself totally false. Had Count Tarnowski been in Paris, London or Rome, these states, in spite of his undeniable capabilities, would not have adopted a different attitude; while, on the other hand, there are numbers of distinguished members of the diplomatic corps who would have carried out his task at Sofia just as well as Count Tarnowski. In other words, I consider it is making an unwarrantable demand to expect that a representative in a foreign land should have a leading influence on the policy of the state to which he is accredited. What may be demanded of a diplomatic representative is a correct estimate of the situation. The ambassador must know what the Government of the state where he is will do. A false diagnosis is discreditable. But it is impossible for a representative, whoever he may be, to obtain such power over a foreign state as to be able to guide the policy of that state into the course desired by him. The policy of a state will invariably be subservient to such objects as the Government of that period deem vital, and will always be influenced by factors which are quite outside the range of the foreign representative. In what manner a diplomatic representative obtains his information is his own affair. He should endeavour to establish intercourse, not only with a certain class of society, but also with the Press, and also keep in touch with other classes of the population. One of the reproaches made to the "old régime" was the assumed preference for aristocrats in diplomacy. This was quite a mistake. No preference was shown for the aristocracy, but it lay in the nature of the career that wealth and social polish were assets in the exercise of its duties. An attaché had no salary. He was, therefore, expected to have a tolerably good income at home in order to be able to live conformably to his rank when abroad. This system arose out of necessity, and was also due to the unwillingness of the authorities to raise salaries in the Ministry for Foreign Affairs. The consequence was that only sons of wealthy parents could adopt such a career. I once told some delegates who interviewed me in connection with the subject that a change of the system depended entirely on themselves and their increased munificence. A certain amount of social polish was just as necessary for diplomats of the old régime as was the requisite allowance for their household and a knowledge of foreign languages. So long as courts exist in Europe, the court will always be the centre of all social life, and diplomats must have the entrée to such circles. A young man who does not know whether to eat with his fork or his knife would play a sorry part there--his social training is not an indifferent matter. Preference is, therefore, not given to the aristocracy, but to young men of wealth familiar with European society etiquette. That does not mean that a diplomat is to consider it his duty only to show himself at all the parties and fêtes given by the upper ten thousand, but it is one of his duties, as at such places he might gain information unobtainable elsewhere. A diplomat must be in touch with all sources from which he can glean information. Individual capabilities and zeal will naturally play a great part; but the means that a Government places at the disposition of its foreign missions are also of the highest importance. There are people in the East--I do not know whether to say in contradistinction to the West--who are not immune to the influence of gold. In Roumania, for instance, Russia, before the war, had completely undermined the whole country and had lavished millions long before the war in the hope of an understanding with that country. Most of the newspapers were financed by Russians, and numbers of the leading politicians were bound by Russian interests, whereas neither Germany nor Austria-Hungary had made any such preparations. Thus it happened that, on the outbreak of war, Russia was greatly in advance of the Central Powers, an advance that was all the more difficult to overtake as from the first day of war Russia opened still wider the floodgates of her gold and inundated Roumania with roubles. If the fact that the scanty preparation for war is a proof of how little the Central Powers reckoned on such a contingency it may on the other hand explain away much apparent inactivity on the part of their representatives. Karl Fürstenberg, my predecessor at Bucharest, whose estimate of the situation was a just one, demanded to have more funds at his disposal, which was refused at Vienna on the plea that there was no money. After the war began the Ministry stinted us no longer, but it was too late then for much to be done. Whether official Russia, four weeks in advance, had really counted on the assassination of the Archduke and the outbreak of a war ensuing therefrom remains an open question. I will not go so far as to assert it for a fact, but one thing is certain, that Russia within a measurable space of time had prepared for war as being inevitable and had endeavoured to secure Roumania's co-operation. When the Tsar was at Constanza a month before the tragedy at Sarajevo, his Minister for Foreign Affairs, Sassonoff, paid a visit to Bucharest. When there, he and Bratianu went on a walking tour together to Transylvania. I did not hear of this tactless excursion until it was over, but I shared Berchtold's surprise at such a proceeding on the part of both Ministers. I once, in 1914, overheard by chance a conversation between two Russians. It was at the Hotel Capsa, known later as a resort for anti-Austrians. They were sitting at the table next to mine in the restaurant and were speaking French quite freely and openly. They appeared to be on good terms with the Russian Ambassador and were discussing the impending visit of the Tsar to Constanza. I discovered later that they were officers in mufti. They agreed that the Emperor Francis Joseph could not live very much longer, and that when his death occurred and a new ruler came to the throne It would be a favourable moment for Russia to declare war on us. They were evidently exponents of the "loyal" tendency that aimed at declaring war on us without a preceding murder; and I readily believe that the majority of the men in Petersburg who were eager for war held the same view. CHAPTER V THE U-BOAT WARFARE 1 My appointment as Minister for Foreign Affairs was thought by many to indicate that the Emperor Charles was carrying out the political wishes of his uncle, Ferdinand. Although it had been the Archduke's intention to have made me his Minister for Foreign Affairs, my appointment to the post by the Emperor Charles had nothing to do with that plan. It was due, above all, to his strong desire to get rid of Count Burian and to the lack of other candidates whom he considered suitable. The Red Book that was published by Count Burian after the outbreak of war with Roumania may have attracted the Emperor's attention to me. Although the Emperor, while still Archduke, was for several years my nearest neighbour in Bohemia--he was stationed at Brandeis, on the Elbe--we never became more closely acquainted. In all those years he was not more than once or twice at my house, and they were visits of no political significance. It was not until the first winter of the war, when I went from Roumania to the Headquarters at Teschen, that the then Archduke invited me to make the return journey with him. During this railway journey that lasted several hours politics formed the chief subject of conversation, though chiefly concerning Roumania and the Balkan questions. In any case I was never one of those who were in the Archduke's confidence, and my call to the Ballplatz came as a complete surprise. At my first audience, too, we conversed at great length on Roumania and on the question whether the war with Bucharest could have been averted or not. The Emperor was then still under the influence of our first peace offer so curtly rejected by the Entente. At the German Headquarters at Pless, where I arrived a few days later, I found the prevailing atmosphere largely influenced by the Entente's answer. Hindenburg and Ludendorff, who were apparently opposed to Burian's _démarche_ for peace, merely remarked to me that a definite victory presented a possibility of ending the war, and the Emperor William said that he had offered his hand in peace but that the Entente had given him a slap in the face, and there was nothing for it now but war to the uttermost. It was at this time that the question of the unrestricted U-boat warfare began to be mooted. At first it was the German Navy only, and Tirpitz in particular, who untiringly advocated the plan. Hohenlohe,[5] who, thanks to his excellent connections, was always very well informed, wrote, several weeks before the fateful decision was taken, that the German Navy was determined and bent on that aim. Bethmann and Zimmermann were both decidedly against it. It was entirely in keeping with the prudent wisdom of the former not to risk such experiments; Bethmann was an absolutely dependable, honourable and capable partner, but the unbounded growth of the military autocracy must be imputed to his natural tendency to conciliate. He was powerless against Ludendorff and little by little was turned aside by him. My first visit to Berlin afforded me the opportunity of thoroughly discussing the U-boat question with the Imperial Chancellor, and we were quite agreed in our disapproval of that method of warfare. At all events, Bethmann pointed out that such essentially military matters should in the first instance be left to military decision, as they alone were able to form a correct estimate of the result, and these reflections made me fear from the very first that all reasonable political scruples would be upset by military arguments. On this my first visit to Berlin, when this question naturally was the dominating one, the Chancellor explained to me how difficult his position was, because the military leaders, both on land and at sea, declared that if the unrestricted U-boat warfare were not carried out they would not be able to guarantee the Western front. They thus brought an iron pressure to bear on him, for how could he, the Chancellor, undertake to guarantee that the Western front could hold out? As a matter of fact, the danger of introducing the unrestricted U-boat campaign became greater and greater, and the reports sent by Hohenlohe left no doubt as to the further development of affairs in Berlin. On January 12 he reported as follows: The question of the extension of the U-boat warfare, as Your Excellency is aware from the last discussions in Berlin, becomes daily more acute. On the one hand, all leading military and naval authorities insist on making use of this means as speedily as possible, as they declare it will end the war much more rapidly; on the other hand, all statesmen have grave fears as to what effect it will have on America and other neutrals. The Supreme Military Command declares that a new offensive on a very large scale is imminent in the West and that the armies which are to resist this attack will not be able to understand why the navy should not do all that lies in its power to prevent, or at any rate to decrease, the reserves and ammunition being sent to our adversaries. The absence of co-operation on the part of the navy in the terrible battles the troops on the Western front will again have to face will have a most _injurious_ effect on their _moral_. The objections put forward as to the effect the proceeding might have on America are met in military circles by the assumption that America will take good care not to go to war; that she, in fact, would not be able to do so. The unfortunate failure of the United States military machine in the conflict with Mexico clearly proves what is to be expected from America in that respect. Even a possible breaking off relations with America does not necessarily signify war. Meanwhile all the leading naval authorities reassert that they may be relied on, even though they are not considered capable of crushing England, at least to be able, _before_ America can come in, so to weaken the British Island Empire that only one desire will be left to English politicians, that of seating themselves with us at the Conference table. To this the Chancellor asked who would give him a guarantee that the navy was right and in what position should we find ourselves in case the admirals were mistaken, whereupon the Admiralty promptly asked what sort of position the Chancellor expected to find when autumn arrived without having made a proper use of the U-boats and we found ourselves, through exhaustion, compelled to _beg_ for peace. And thus the scales went up and down, weighing the chances for or against the U-boat war, and there was no possibility of positively determining which decision was the right one. Doubtless the German Government in the near future will be constrained to take up a definite standpoint respecting the question, and it is obvious--whatever the decision may be--that we also shall be largely involved. Nevertheless, it appears to me that when the German Government does approach us in that connection we should act with all possible reserve. As the matter now stands, a positive decision as to which course is the right one is not possible. I have, therefore, thought it inadvisable to take side definitely with either party and thus remove much of the responsibility from the German Government and render it possible for them to lay it upon us. The Imperial and Royal Ambassador, G. HOHENLOHE, M.P. The concluding passage of the above cited report had already been anticipated by me in a telegraphic communication in which I begged the ambassador with all possible energy to urge the political arguments opposed to the unrestricted U-boat warfare, which is proved by a telegram from Hohenlohe on January 13 as follows: Reply to yesterday's telegram No. 15. In accordance with the telegram mentioned, and after discussing it with Baron Flotow, I went to the Secretary of State--not being able to see the Chancellor to-day--and in conformity with Your Excellency's intentions called his attention to the fact that we should participate in the results of the U-boat war just as much as Germany and that, therefore, the German Government is bound to listen to us also. All the leading German statesmen know that Your Excellency, during your stay here, expressed _yourself as opposed to the movement_, but that I had come once more as Your Excellency's representative to repeat the _warning against too hasty action_. I further emphasised all the arguments against the U-boat warfare, but will not trouble Your Excellency with a repetition of them, nor yet with the counter-arguments, already known to Your Excellency, that were put forward by the Secretary. I gave a brief summary of both these standpoints in my yesterday's report No. 6 P. Herr Zimmermann, however, laid special stress on the fact that the information he was receiving convinced him more and more that America, especially after the Entente's answer to Mr. Wilson, which was in the nature of an insult, would very probably not allow it to come to a breach with the Central Powers. I did all I possibly could to impress upon him the responsibility Germany was taking for herself and for us by her decision in this question, pointing out very particularly that before any decision was arrived at our opinion from a nautical-technical standpoint must also be heard, in which the Secretary of State fully concurred. I have the feeling that the idea of carrying out the U-boat warfare is more and more favourably received, and Your Excellency had the same impression also when in Berlin. The last word as to the final attitude to be adopted by the German Government will no doubt come from the military side. In conformity with the instructions received, _I will nevertheless uphold with all firmness the political arguments against the U-boat warfare_. Baron Flotow will have occasion to meet the Secretary of State this afternoon. I had sent Baron Flotow, a Chief of Department, to Berlin at the same time, in order that he might support all Hohenlohe's efforts and spare no pains to induce Germany to desist from her purpose. Flotow sent me the following report on January 15: After a two-days' stay in Berlin my impression is that the question of the unrestricted U-boat warfare has again been brought to the front by the leading men in the German Empire. This question--according to Herr Zimmermann--under conditions of the greatest secrecy where the public is concerned, is now under debate between the heads of the Army and Navy and the Foreign Office; they insist on a decision. For if the unrestricted U-boat warfare is to be opened it must be at a time when, in view of the vast impending Anglo-French offensive on the Western front, it will make itself felt. The Secretary of State mentioned the month of February. I wish in the following account to summarise the reasons put forward by the Germans for the justification of the unrestricted U-boat warfare: Time is against us and favours the Entente; if, therefore, the Entente can keep up the desire for war there will be still less prospect of our obtaining a peace on our own terms. The enemy's last Note to Wilson is again a striking example of their war energy. It will be impossible for the Central Powers to continue the war after 1917 with any prospect of success. Peace must, therefore, unless it finally has to be proposed by the enemy, be secured in the course of this year, which means that we must enforce it. The military situation is unfavourable owing to the impending Anglo-French offensive, which, it is presumed, will open with great force, as in the case of the last offensive on the Somme. To meet the attack, troops will have to be withdrawn from other fronts. Consequently, an offensive against Russia with intent to bring that enemy to his knees, which perhaps a year ago would have been possible, can no longer be reckoned on. If, therefore, the possibility of enforcing a decision in the East becomes less and less, an effort must be made to bring it about in the West, and to do it at a time when the unrestricted U-boat warfare would affect the coming Anglo-French offensive by impeding the transport of troops and munitions sailing under a neutral flag. In estimating the effect on England of the unrestricted U-boat warfare, there will be not only the question of hindering the transport of provisions, but also of curtailing the traffic to such a degree as would render it impossible for the English to continue the war. In Italy and in France this will be felt no less severely. The neutrals, too, will be made to suffer, which, however, might serve as a pretext to bring about peace. America will hardly push matters further than breaking off diplomatic relations; we need not, therefore, count for certain on a war with the United States. It must not be overlooked that the United States--as was the case in regard to Mexico--are not well prepared for war, that their one anxiety is Japan. Japan would not allow a European war with America to pass unheeded. But even if America were to enter the war it would be three to four months before she could be ready, and in that space of time peace must have been secured in Europe. According to the estimate of certain experts (among others, some Dutch corn merchants), England has only provisions sufficient for six weeks, or three months at the outside. It would be possible to carry on the U-boat warfare on England from fifteen bases in the North Sea, so _that the passage of a large vessel through to England would be hardly conceivable_. Traffic in the Channel, even if not entirely stopped, would be very limited, as travelling conditions in France exclude the possibility of suitable connection. And if the unrestricted U-boat warfare once were started, the terror caused by it (the sinking of the vessels without warning) would have such an effect that most vessels would not dare to put to sea. The above already hints at the rejoinder to be put forward to the arguments advanced by us against the opening of the unrestricted U-boat warfare, and also combats the view that the corn supply from the Argentine is not at the present moment so important for the United States as would be a prompt opening of the U-boat campaign, which would mean a general stoppage of all traffic. The fact that America would not be ready for war before the end of three months does not exclude the possibility that it might even be as long as six or eight months, and that she therefore might join in the European war at a time when, without playing our last card, it might be possible to end it in a manner that we could accept. It must not be forgotten, however, that in America we have to do with an Anglo-Saxon race, which--once it had decided on war--will enter on it with energy and tenacity, as England did, who, though unprepared for war as to military matters, can confront to-day the Germans with an army of millions that commands respect. I cannot with certainty make any statement as to the Japanese danger to America at a time when Japan is bound up with Russia and England through profitable treaties and Germany is shut out from that part of the world. Among other things I referred to the great hopes entertained of the Zeppelins as an efficient weapon of war. Herr Zimmermann said to me: "Believe me, our fears are no less than yours; they have given me many sleepless nights. There is no positive certainty as to the result; we can only make our calculations. We have not yet arrived at any decision. Show me a way to obtain a reasonable peace and I would be the first to reject the idea of the U-boat warfare. As matters now stand, both I and several others have almost been converted to it." But whether, in the event of the ruthless U-boat warfare being decided on, it would be notified in some way, has not yet been decided. Zimmermann told me he was considering the advisability of approaching Wilson, and, while referring to the contemptuous attitude of the Entente in the peace question, give the President an explanation of the behaviour of the German Government, and request him, for the safety of the life and property of American citizens, to indicate the steamers and shipping lines by which traffic between America and other neutrals could be maintained. _Vienna, January 15, 1917._ FLOTOW, M.P. On January 20 Zimmermann and Admiral Holtzendorff arrived in Vienna, and a council was held, presided over by the Emperor. Besides the three above-mentioned, Count Tisza, Count Clam-Martinic, Admiral Haus and I were also present. Holtzendorff expounded his reasons, which I recapitulate below. With the exception of Admiral Haus, no one gave unqualified consent. All the arguments which appear in the official documents and ministerial protocols were advanced but did not make the slightest impression on the German representatives. The Emperor, who took no part in the debate, finally declared that he would decide later. Under his auspices a further conference was held in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs at 2 o'clock; the report is as follows: Report of a conference held January 20, 1917, in the Imperial and Royal Ministry of Home and Foreign Affairs. Members: Dr. Zimmermann, Secretary of State of the German Foreign Affairs Department; Admiral von Holtzendorff, Chief of the German Naval Staff; Count Czernin, Imperial and Royal Minister for Foreign Affairs; Count Tisza, Royal Hungarian Prime Minister; Count Clam-Martinic, Imperial and Royal Prime Minister; Admiral Haus, the German naval attaché in Vienna; Baron von Freyburg, the Imperial and Royal naval attaché in Berlin; Count B. Colloredo-Mannsfeld. On January 20 a discussion took place in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on the question of establishing unrestricted U-boat warfare. As evidenced by Admiral v. Holtzendorff's statements, the German naval authorities hold the standpoint that there exists an absolute necessity for the quickest possible inauguration of an unrestricted U-boat campaign. The arguments employed in support of this thesis are known from the reports of the Imperial and Royal Ambassador in Berlin (report of 12/1/17 Nr. 6/P, and telegram of 13/1 Nr. 22), and may be summarised in the following sentences: Lack of time, decreasing human material in the Central Powers, progressive deterioration of the harvest, impending Anglo-French offensive on the Western front with improved and increased means for fighting, and the necessity arising therefrom to prevent or at least check the reinforcements required for such undertaking, the impossibility of obtaining a decision on land, the necessity of raising the _moral_ of the troops by ruthlessly obtained results and the use of every available means in war, certainty of the success of an unrestricted U-boat warfare in view of provisions in England only being sufficient for two to three months, as well as the stoppage of the munitions output and industrial production owing to the lack of raw material, the impossibility of supplying coal to France and Italy, etc., etc. Concerning the carrying out of the plan, the German Navy owns at present for that purpose 120 U-boats of the latest type. In view of the great success achieved by the U-boats at the beginning of the war, when there were only 19 of an antiquated type, the present increased numbers of the vessels offer a safe guarantee of success. February 1 is suggested on the part of the Germans as the date on which to start the unrestricted U-boat warfare and also to announce the blockade of the English coast and the west coast of France. Every vessel disobeying the order will be torpedoed without warning. In this manner it is hoped to bring England to reason within four months, and it must here be added that Admiral von Holtzendorff _expressis verbis_ guaranteed the results. As regards the attitude to be taken by the neutrals, leading German circles, although aware of the danger, hold optimistic views. It is not thought that either the Scandinavian countries or Holland will interfere with us, although, in view of the possibility of such happening, military precautions have been taken. The measures taken on the Dutch and Danish frontiers will, in the opinion of the Germans, hold those countries in check, and the possibility of sharing the fate of Roumania will frighten them. Indeed, it is expected that there will be a complete stoppage of all neutral shipping, which in the matter of supplies for England amounts to 39 per cent. of the cargo space. Meanwhile concessions will be granted to the neutrals by fixing a time limit for the withdrawal of such of their vessels as may be at sea on the opening day of the U-boat warfare. With regard to America, the Germans are determined, if at all possible, to prevent the United States from attacking the Central Powers by adopting a friendly attitude towards America (acting upon the proposals made at the time of the _Lusitania_ incident), but they are prepared for and await with calmness whatever attitude America may adopt. The Germans are, nevertheless, of the opinion that the United States will not go so far as making a breach with the Central Powers. If that should occur, America would be too late and could only come into action after England had been beaten. America is not prepared for war, which was clearly shown at the time of the Mexican crisis; she lives in fear of Japan and has to fight against agricultural and social difficulties. Besides which, Mr. Wilson is a pacifist, and the Germans presume that after his election he will adopt a still more decided tendency that way, for his election will not be due to the anti-German Eastern States, but to the co-operation of the Central and Western States that are opposed to war, and to the Irish and Germans. These considerations, together with the Entente's insulting answer to President Wilson's peace proposal, do not point to the probability of America plunging readily into war. These, in brief, are the points of view on which the German demand for the immediate start of the unrestricted U-boat warfare is based, and which caused the Imperial Chancellor and the Foreign Affairs Department to revise their hitherto objective views. Both the Austrian Minister for Foreign Affairs and the Hungarian Prime Minister pointed out what disastrous consequences would ensue from America's intervention, in a military, moral, agricultural and financial sense, and great doubt was expressed of the success of a blockade of England. Count Czernin held that the Germans overlooked the possibility of lowering the consumption in England, taking into consideration the fact that since the war consumption in the countries of the Central Powers had been reduced by half. Further, Count Czernin referred to the very vague and by no means convincing data of the German naval authorities. It was also debated whether a continuation of the U-boat war to the present extent (the destruction on an average of 400,000 tons per month) would not be more likely to achieve the desired end, and if it were not more advisable not to play our last and best card until all other means had been tried. The possibility of being able to start a ruthless U-boat warfare hung like a Damocles' sword over the heads of our adversaries, and would perhaps be a more effectual means of ending the war than the reckless use of the U-boat as a weapon of war, carrying with it the danger of an attack by the neutrals. If the effect expected by Germany was not realised, which was within the bounds of possibility, we must be prepared to see the desire for war in the enemy greatly intensified. However that may be, the vanishing of the desire for peace must be accepted as an established fact. Finally, it was pointed out that the arguments recently put forward by the Germans show a complete _novum_, namely, the danger on the Western front in view of the great Anglo-French offensive that is expected. Whereas formerly it was always said that the attacks of the enemy would be repulsed, it is now considered necessary to relieve the land army by recklessly bringing the navy into the line of action. If these fears are justified, then most certainly should all other considerations be put on one side and the risk ensuing from the ruthless employment of the U-boats be accepted. Both Count Czernin and Count Tisza expressed their grave doubts in this connection. To meet the case, the Hungarian Prime Minister pointed out the necessity of immediately starting propagandist activities in the neutral countries and particularly in America, by which the Central Powers' political methods and aims would be presented to them in a proper light; and then later, after introducing unrestricted U-boat warfare, it would be seen that no other choice was left to the peaceful tendencies of the Quadruple Alliance as the means for a speedy ending of the struggle between the nations. The leaders of the foreign policy agreed to take the necessary steps in that direction, and remarked that certain arrangements had already been made. Admiral Haus agreed _unreservedly_ with the arguments of the German Navy, as he declared that _no great anxiety need be felt_ as to the likelihood of America's joining in with military force, and finally pointed out that, on the part of the Entente, a ruthless torpedoing of hospital and transport ships had been practised for some time past in the Adriatic. The Admiral urged that this fact be properly recognised and dealt with, to which the Foreign Affairs leaders on both sides gave their consent. The Austrian Minister for Foreign Affairs, in conclusion, said that the definite decision to be taken must be left to the conclusions arrived at by both sovereigns, whereupon the 26th inst. was fixed for a meeting to be held for that purpose. After the general discussion, I had a private talk with the Emperor, and found that he still had the same aversion to that means of warfare and the same fears as to the result. We knew, however, that Germany had definitely made up her mind to start the campaign in any case, and that all our arguments would be of no practical value. It remained to be decided whether we should join them or not. Owing to the small number of our U-boats, our holding aside would not have had any great effect on the final issue of the experiment, and for a moment I entertained the idea of proposing to the Emperor that we should separate from Germany on that one point, although I was aware that it might lead to the ending of our alliance. But the difficulty was that the U-boat effort would also have to be carried on in the Mediterranean in order that it should not lose its effect in the North Sea. If the Mediterranean remained exempt, the transports would take that route and proceed by land via Italy, France, and Dover, and thus render the northern U-boat warfare of no effect. But in order to carry it on in the Mediterranean, Germany would need our support in the Adriatic from Trieste, Pola, and Cattaro. If we allowed her at those places it involved us in the campaign, and if we refused to let our few U-boats go out, it would be attacking Germany in the rear and we should become embroiled with her, which would lead to the definite severance of the Alliance. This was again one of those instances that prove that when a strong and a weak nation concert in war, the weak one cannot desist unless it changes sides entirely and enters into war with its former ally. None who were in the Government would hear of that, and with a heavy heart we gave our consent. Bulgaria, who was not affected by this phase of the war, and had kept up diplomatic relations with America, was differently situated, being able to stand aside without paralysing the German plans. Apart from this, I was already persuaded then that Bulgaria's not joining in would make a bad impression on the outside world, and would not help her in any way. Although her relations with America were maintained up to the last, they did not, as a matter of fact, make her fate easier. Had we been able to make Germany desist from the unrestricted U-boat warfare, the advantage would have been very great; whether we joined in or not was a matter of indifference viewed from the standpoint of our treatment by the Entente, as is proved by the instance of Bulgaria. As soon as America had declared war on Germany, a conflict with us was inevitable in any case, as Austro-Hungarian troops and artillery were then on the Western front facing Americans. We were compelled to go to war with America, seeing that Germany was already at war with her. It was not possible, therefore, for us to remain in a state of even nominally peaceful relations with America, such as existed between her and Bulgaria to the very end of the war. It is not quite clear when Germany really recognised the fact that the unrestricted U-boat warfare had no effect, and was thus a terrible mistake. To the public, as well as to the Allied Cabinets, the German military authorities continued to profess the greatest optimism, and when I left my post in April, 1918, the standpoint held in Berlin was still that England would be defeated by the naval war. Writing on December 14, 1917, Hohenlohe reported that in competent German circles the feeling was thoroughly optimistic. I, however, certainly perceived definite signs of doubt beginning in some German minds, and Ludendorff in replying to the reproaches I made to him said: "Everything is risky in war; it is impossible before an operation to be sure of the results. I admit that the time limit was a mistake, but the final result will show that I was right." In order to exculpate themselves all the leaders in Germany declared that America would, in any case, have gone to war, and that the U-boat had merely given the last impetus. Whether this is quite true appears doubtful; it cannot either be asserted or denied positively. The world has become used to looking upon Hindenburg and Ludendorff as one; they belonged together. Together they rose to highest power, to be forcibly separated in their fall. In all business transactions Ludendorff was in the foreground. He was a great speaker, but always in a sharp tone, suggestive of the Prussian military system. It usually aroused a scene, but he seemed to take nothing amiss, and his anger vanished as rapidly as it broke out. Hindenburg's retiring modesty made him attractive. Once when we were speaking of the photographers who besieged every conference in Berlin, the old gentleman remarked: "I have lived to be seventy, and nobody ever thought there was anything wonderful about me; now they seem all at once to have discovered that I have such an interesting head." He was much more staid and quiet than Ludendorff, nor was he so sensitive to public opinion as the latter. I remember once how Ludendorff, when I exhorted him to yield on the peace question, rejoined with vigour: "The German people wishes for no peace of renunciation, and I do not intend to end by being pelted with stones. The dynasty would never survive such a peace." The dynasty has departed, the stones have been thrown, and the peace of renunciation has become a reality, and is certainly more terrible than the gloomiest pessimist could ever have believed! 2 The rupture between America and Germany occurred on February 3, 1917. The Ambassador, Count Tarnowski, remained in Washington, but was not received by Wilson, and had intercourse with Lansing only. I still hoped to maintain these semi-official relations with America, in case America, in breaking off relations with Germany, might be content with that and not declare war on her. The German Government would have preferred our breaking off diplomatic relations simultaneously with them. On February 12 Count Wedel called on me, and his request and my settlement of it appear in the following telegram to Hohenlohe: _Vienna, Feb. 12, 1917._ To notify Your Excellency. Count Wedel has been instructed to submit to me the following three requests from his Government: (1) Count Tarnowski is not to hand over his credentials until the situation between Germany and America is clear. (2) Count Tarnowski must protest to Mr. Wilson against his having tried to make the neutrals turn against Germany. (3) On the outbreak of war with Germany Count Tarnowski must be recalled. I have refused the first two items and accepted the last. As we should not have been able to prevent Germany from beginning the U-boat warfare, the only alternative for us was to use all means in our power to maintain our relations with America, and thus enable us later to play the part of mediator, although this could only be for that period during which America, having broken off relations, had not yet declared war. My answer of March 5, 1917, to America's request for an explanation of our standpoint was sent with the object of preventing America from breaking off relations with us, and also to keep from the public the knowledge of our divergence from Germany. This will be found noted in the appendix.[6] It met with success so far that America continued diplomatic relations with us until April 9, 1917. [Illustration: COUNT TISZA. _Photo: Stanley's Press Agency._] I had a very lively correspondence with Stephen Tisza in consequence of my answer. I received the following letter on March 3: DEAR FRIEND,--In the interests of the cause I can only greatly regret that I had no opportunity of appreciating the definite sense of our _aide-mémoire_ before it was dispatched. Apart from other less important matters, I cannot conceal my painful surprise that we repeatedly and expressly admit having given a promise in our _Ancona_ Note. I am afraid that we have placed ourselves in a very awkward position with Wilson, which so easily could have been avoided, as it was not in accordance with my views that we had given a promise. An expression of opinion is not a promise. Without wishing to detract from its moral value, it has nevertheless a different legal character, and from the point of view of a third person has no legal authority in favour of that person as a promise. By unnecessarily having admitted that we gave the Americans a promise we admit the existence of obligations on our side to them. In spite of the fine and clever argument in our Note, it will be easy for the Americans to prove that our present procedure cannot be reconciled with the previous statement; if the statement was a promise, then the American Government has the right to look for the fulfilment of it, and we will then be in an awkward predicament. I remarked in my notification that I would prefer to omit the admission that we had made any promise; there would have been the possibility of recurring to it. By placing this weapon in their hands we have exposed ourselves to the danger of a checkmate, and I very much fear that we shall greatly regret it. Naturally this remains between us. But I was constrained to pour out my heart to you and justify my request that the text of all such important State documents which involve such far-reaching consequences may be sent to me in time for me to study and comment on them. Believe me, it is really in the interest of the cause and in every respect can only be for the best. In sincere friendship, your devoted TISZA. _Enclosure._ It may be presumed with some semblance of truth that the peace wave in America is progressing, and that President Wilson, influenced thereby, may perhaps be able at any rate to postpone a decision of a warlike nature. Even though I may be wrong in my presumption, it lies in our interests to avoid for as long as possible the rupture of our diplomatic relations with America. Therefore the answer to the American _aide-mémoire_, to be dispatched as late as possible, should be so composed as to give it the appearance of a meritorious handling of the theme put forward on the American side without falling into the trap of the question put forward in the _aide-mémoire_. If we answer yes, then President Wilson will hardly be able to avoid a breach with the Monarchy. If we give a negative answer we shall abandon Germany and the standpoint we took up on January 31. The handle wherewith to grasp evasion of a clear answer is provided by the _aide-mémoire_ itself, as it identifies our statements in the _Ancona_ and _Persia_ question with the attitude of the German Note of May 4, 1916. We should, therefore, be quite consistent if we, as we did in our Note of December 14, 1915, were to declare that we should be governed by our own ideas of justice. In our correspondence with the American Government respecting the _Ancona_, _Persia_ and _Petrolite_ questions we treated the concrete case always without going deeper into the individual principles of legal questions. In our Note of December 29, 1915, which contains the expression of opinion cited in the _aide-mémoire_ (it may also be noted that our expression of opinion was no pledge, as we had promised nothing nor taken any obligation upon ourselves), the Austrian Government distinctly stated that they would refer later to the difficult international questions connected with the U-boat warfare. Present war conditions did not appear suited to such a discussion. In consequence, however, of the dealings of our enemies, events have occurred and a state of things been brought about which, on our side also, renders a more intense application of the U-boat question unavoidable. Our merchantmen in the Adriatic, whenever attainable, were constantly torpedoed without warning by the enemy. Our adversaries have thus adopted the standard of the most aggravated and unrestricted U-boat warfare without the neutrals offering any resistance. The Entente when laying their minefields displayed the same ruthlessness towards free shipping and the lives of neutrals. Mines are considered as a recognised weapon for the definite protection of the home coast and ports, also as a means of blockading an enemy port. But the use made of them as an aggressive factor in this war is quite a new feature, for vast areas of open sea on the route of the world's traffic were converted into minefields impassable for the neutrals except at the greatest danger of their lives. There is no question but that that is a far greater check to the freedom of movement and a greater obstacle to neutral interests than establishing the unrestricted U-boat warfare within a limited and clearly marked-out zone, leaving open channels for neutral shipping, and by other measures giving due consideration to the interests of the neutrals. Just at the moment when the President's appeal to the entire belligerent world coincided with the spontaneous statement of our group, in which we gave a solemn proof of our willingness to conclude a just peace and one acceptable by our enemies, a fresh and larger minefield was laid down in the North Sea on the route of the world's traffic, and, casting ridicule on the noble initiative of the United States, a war of destruction against our groups of Powers was announced by the Entente. We urge the great aims that inspired the action of the American Government: the quickest possible cessation of the fearful slaughter of men and the founding of an honourable, lasting and blessed peace by combating with the greatest energy our enemies' furious war for conquest. The course we pursue leads to the common aims of ourselves and the American Government, and we cannot give up the hope of finding understanding in the people and the Government of the United States. TISZA. I answered as follows: _March 5._ DEAR FRIEND,--I cannot agree with you. After the first _Ancona_ Note you veered round and declared in a second Note that "we agreed with the German standpoint in the main"--that was an obvious yielding and contained a hidden promise. I do not think that any legal wiles will dupe the Americans, and if we were to deny the promise it would not advance us any further. But, secondly and principally, it is altogether impossible with words to make the Americans desist from war if they wish it; either they will make straight for war and then no Notes will avail, or they will seek a pretext to escape the war danger and will find it in our Note. So much for the merits of the matter. What you demand is technically impossible. The Note was not easy to compile. I had to alter it entirely as time went on; His Majesty then wished to see it, made some alterations and sanctioned it. Meanwhile Penfield[7] importuned me and telegraphed even a week ago to America to reassure his people; the Germans, too, had to be won over for that particular passage. You know how ready I am to discuss important matters with you, but _ultra posse nemo tenetur_--it was physically impossible to upset everything again and to expect His Majesty to alter his views. In true friendship, your CZERNIN. I thereupon, on March 14, received the following answer from Tisza: DEAR FRIEND,--I also note with genuine pleasure the success of your American _aide-mémoire_ (meaning thereby America's resolve not to break off relations with us). But it does not alter my opinion that it was a pity to admit that a pledge had been given. It may be requited at a later stage of the controversy, and it would have been easy not to broach the subject for the moment. Do you think me very obstinate? I have not suppressed the final word in our retrospective controversy so that you should not think me better than I am. Au revoir, in true friendship, your TISZA. Tisza was strongly opposed to the U-boat warfare, and only tolerated it from reasons of _vis major_, because we could not prevent the German military leaders from adopting the measure, and because he, and I too, were convinced that "not joining in" would have been of no advantage to us. Not until very much later--in fact, not until after the war--did I learn from a reliable source that Germany, with an incomprehensible misunderstanding of the situation, had restricted the building of more U-boats during the war. The Secretary of State, Capelle, was approached by competent naval technical experts, who told him that, by stopping the building of all other vessels, a fivefold number of U-boats could be built. Capelle rejected the proposal on the pretext "that nobody would know what to do with so many U-boats when the war was at an end." Germany had, as mentioned, 100 submarines; had she possessed 500, she might have achieved her aims. I only heard this in the winter of 1918, but it was from a source from which I invariably gleaned correct information. Seldom has any military action called forth such indignation as the sinking, without warning, of enemy ships. And yet the observer who judges from an objective point of view must admit that the waging war on women and children was not begun by us, but by our enemies when they enforced the blockade. Millions have perished in the domains of the Central Powers through the blockade, and chiefly the poorest and weakest people--the greater part women and children--were the victims. If, to meet the argument, it be asserted that the Central Powers were as a besieged fortress, and that in 1870 the Germans starved Paris in similar fashion, there is certainly some truth in the argument. But it is just as true--as stated in the Note of March 5--that in a war on land no regard is ever paid to civilians who venture into the war zone, and that no reason is apparent why a war at sea should be subject to different moral conditions. When a town or village is within the range of battle, the fact has never prevented the artillery from acting in spite of the danger to the women and children. But in the present instance, the non-combatants of the enemy States who are in danger can easily escape it by not undertaking a sea voyage. Since the débâcle in the winter of 1918, I have thoroughly discussed the matter with English friends of long standing, and found that their standpoint was--that it was not the U-boat warfare in itself that had roused the greatest indignation, but the cruel nature of the proceedings so opposed to international law. Also, the torpedoing of hospital ships by the Germans, and the firing on passengers seeking to escape, and so on. These accounts are flatly contradicted by the Germans, who, on their part, have terrible tales to tell of English brutality, as instanced by the _Baralong_ episode. There have, of course, been individual cases of shameful brutality in all the armies; but that such deeds were sanctioned or ordered by the German or English Supreme Commands I do not believe. An inquiry by an international, but neutral, court would be the only means of bringing light to bear on the matter. Atrocities such as mentioned are highly to be condemned, no matter who the perpetrators are; but in itself, the U-boat warfare was an allowable means of defence. The blockade is now admitted to be a permissible and necessary proceeding; the unrestricted U-boat warfare is stigmatised as a crime against international law. That is the sentence passed by might but not by right. In days to come history will judge otherwise. FOOTNOTES: [5] The Ambassador, Gottfried, Prince Hohenlohe-Schillingsfurst. [6] See p. 279. [7] Mr. Penfield, American Ambassador to Vienna. CHAPTER VI ATTEMPTS AT PEACE 1 The constitutional procedure which prevails in every parliamentary state is ordered so that the minister is responsible to a body of representatives. He is obliged to account for what he has done. His action is subject to the judgment and criticism of the body of representatives. If the majority of that body are against the minister, he must go. The control of foreign policy in the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy was in the hands of the delegations. Besides which, however, there existed in the Hungarian Constitution a regulation to the effect that the Hungarian Prime Minister was responsible to the country for the foreign policy, and, consequently, the "foreign policy of the Monarchy had to be carried out, in conjunction, by the then Minister for Foreign Affairs in office and the Prime Minister." It depended entirely on the personality of the Hungarian Prime Minister how he observed the regulation. Under Burian's régime it had become the custom for all telegrams and news, even of the most secret nature, to be communicated at once to Count Tisza, who then brought his influence to bear on all decisions and tactical events. Tisza possessed a most extraordinary capacity for work. He always found time to occupy himself very thoroughly with foreign policy, notwithstanding his own numerous departmental duties, and it was necessary, therefore, to gain his consent to every step taken. The control of our foreign policy was, therefore, twofold--both by the delegation and the Prime Minister. Great as was my esteem and respect for Count Tisza and close the friendship between us, still his constant supervision and intervention put boundless difficulties in the way of the discharge of business. It was not easy, even in normal times, to contend with, on top of all the existing difficulties that confront a Minister for Foreign Affairs; in war, it became an impossibility. The unqualified presumption behind such twofold government would have been that the Hungarian Prime Minister should consider all questions from the standpoint of the entire Monarchy, and not from that of the Magyar centre, a presumption which Tisza ignored like all other Hungarians. He did not deny it. He has often told me that he knew no patriotism save the Hungarian, but that it was in the interests of Hungary to keep together with Austria; therefore, he saw most things with a crooked vision. Never would he have ceded one single square metre of Hungarian territory; but he raised no objection to the projected cession of Galicia. He would rather have let the whole world be ruined than give up Transylvania; but he took no interest whatever in the Tyrol. Apart from that, he applied different rules for Austria than for Hungary. He would not allow of the slightest alteration in Hungary's internal conditions, as they must not be effected through external pressure. When I, forced thereto by the distress due to lack of provisions, yielded to Ukrainian wishes and notified the Austrian Ministry of the Ukrainian desire to divide Galicia in two, Tisza was fully in accordance therewith. He went even further. He opposed any expansion of the Monarchy as it might weaken Hungary's influence. All his life he was an opponent of the Austro-Polish solution, and a mortal enemy of the tripartist project; he intended that Poland at most should rank as an Austrian province, but would prefer to make her over to Germany. He did not even wish Roumania to be joined with Hungary, as that would weaken the Magyar influence in Hungary. He looked upon it as out of the question to grant the Serbians access to the sea, because he wanted the Serbian agricultural products when he was in need of them; nor would he leave an open door for the Serbian pigs, as he did not wish the price of the Hungarian to be lowered. Tisza went still further. He was a great stickler for equality in making appointments to foreign diplomatic posts, but I could not pay much heed to that. If I considered the Austrian X better fitted for the post of ambassador than the Hungarian Y, I selected him in spite of eventual disagreement. This trait in the Hungarian, though legally well founded, was unbearable and not to be maintained in war, and led to various disputes between Tisza and myself; and now that he is dead, these scenes leave me only a feeling of the deepest regret for many a hasty word that escaped me. We afterwards made a compromise. Tisza promised never to interfere except in cases of the greatest urgency, and I promised to take no important step without his approval. Soon after this arrangement he was dismissed by the Emperor for very different reasons. I greatly regretted his dismissal, in spite of the difficulties he had caused me. To begin with, the Magyar-central standpoint was not a speciality of Tisza's; all Magyar politicians upheld it. Secondly, Tisza had one great point in his favour: he had no wish to prolong the war for the purpose of conquest; he wished for a rectification of the Roumanian frontier and nothing beyond that. If it had come to peace negotiations, he would have supported me in taking as a basis the _status quo ante_. His support--and that was the third reason--was of great value, for he was a man who knew how to fight. He had become hard and old on the battlefield of parliamentary controversy. He stood in awe of nothing and nobody--and he was true as gold. Fourthly, this upright man was one of the few who openly told the Emperor the truth, and the Emperor made use of this, as we all did. I was, therefore, convinced beforehand that a change would not improve the situation for me. Esterhazy, who succeeded Tisza, certainly never put obstacles in the way of my policy. At the same time, I missed the strong hand that had kept order in Hungary, and the stern voice that warned the Emperor, and I did not place the same reliance on Wekerle as on Tisza, perhaps because I was not on the same terms of friendship with him as with Tisza. Although I had many disputes with Tisza, it is one of the dearest reminiscences of my time of office that, up to the death of this remarkable man, our friendship remained unchanged. For many years Hungary and Stephen Tisza were as one. Tisza was a man whose brave and manly character, stern and resolute nature, fearlessness and integrity raised him high above the average man. He was a thorough man, with brilliant qualities and great faults; a man whose like is rare in Europe, in spite of those faults. Great bodies cast long shadows; and he was great, and modelled out of the stuff from which the heroes of old were made--heroes who understood how to fight and die. How often did I reproach him with his unhappy "_puszta_" patriotism, that was digging a grave for him and all of us. It was impossible to change him; he was obstinate and unbending, and his greatest fault was that, all his life, he was under the ban of a petty ecclesiastical policy. Not a single square metre would he yield either to Roumania in her day, nor to the Czechs or the Southern Slavs. The career of this wonderful man contains a terrible tragedy. He fought and strove like none other for his people and his country; for years he filled the breach and protected his people and his Hungary with his powerful personality, and yet it was his obstinate, unyielding policy that was one of the chief reasons of Hungary's fall; the Hungary he so dearly loved; the fall that he saw when he died, killed by the accursed hand of some cowardly assassin. Tisza once told me, with a laugh, that someone had said to him that his greatest fault was that he had come into the world as a Hungarian. I consider this a most pertinent remark. As a human being and as a man, he was prominent; but all the prejudices and faults of the Magyar way of thinking spoilt him. Hungary and her Constitution--dualism--were one of our misfortunes in the war. Had the Archduke Franz Ferdinand had no other plan but that of doing away with dualism, he would on that account alone have merited love and admiration. In Aehrenthal's and Berchtold's time Hungarian policy settled the Serbian disputes; it made an alliance with Roumania an impossibility; it accomplished the food blockade in Austria during the war; prevented all internal reforms; and, finally, at the last moment, through Karolyi's petty shortsighted selfishness, the front was beaten. This severe judgment on Hungary's influence on the war remains true, in spite of the undoubtedly splendid deeds of the Magyar troops. The Hungarian is of a strong, courageous, and manly disposition; therefore, almost always an excellent soldier; but, unfortunately, in the course of the last fifty years, Hungarian policy has done more injury than the Hungarian soldier possibly could make good in the war. Once, during the war, a Hungarian met my reproaches with the rejoinder that we could be quite sure about the Hungarians, they were so firmly linked to Austria. "Yes," said I; "Hungary is firmly linked to us, but like a stone a drowning man has tied round his own neck." If we had not lost the war a fight to the death with the Magyars would have been inevitable, because it is impossible to conceive that any sensible European _consortium_ would consent to be brought into partnership with Magyar aspirations and plans for dominion. But, of course, during the war an open fight with Budapest was impossible. Whether the nations that once composed the Habsburg Empire will ever be reunited is an open question; should it come to pass, may a kind fate preserve us from a return of dualism. 2 On December 26, 1916--four days after entering upon office--I received a letter from Tisza in which he imparted to me his views on the tactics to be observed: All the European neutrals feel that they are more seriously threatened by England than by us. The events in Greece, Roumania, etc., as well as England's commercial tyranny, act in our favour, and the difference of our attitude to the peace plans as compared with that of the Entente--if consistently and cleverly carried out--will secure neutral sympathy for our group of Powers. From this point of view I see that the chief danger will be that our necessarily cautious attitude as regards revealing our war aims may give rise to the idea that we are merely trifling with a plan for peace for tactical reasons and do not really earnestly desire peace. We must therefore furnish our representatives accredited to neutrals (the most important being Spain and Holland) with the necessary instructions, so that they may be able to account for our cautious attitude and explain the reasons that keep us from making a premature or one-sided announcement of our conditions. An announcement of the conditions on both sides would expose the belligerent parties in both camps to unfavourable criticism and might easily make the situation more strained; _a one-sided announcement of the war aims would simply afford the leader of the belligerent enemy group the opportunity of undoing everything_. It is therefore in the interests of peace that a communication of the peace terms should only be made mutually and confidentially, but we might be able to give the individual neutral various hints concerning it, to show that our war aims coincide with the lasting interests of humanity and the peace of the world, that our chief aim, _the prevention of Russian world dominion on land and of the English at sea_, is in the interests of the entire world, and that our peace terms would not include anything that would endanger the future peace of the world or could be objected to on the neutral side. I offer these views for your consideration, and remain in truest friendship, your devoted TISZA. My predecessor, Burian, shortly before he left, had drawn up a peace proposal together with Bethmann. The Entente's scornful refusal is still fresh in everyone's memory. Since hostilities have ceased and there have been opportunities of talking to members of the Entente, I have often heard the reproach made that the offer of peace could not have been accepted by the Entente, as it was couched in the terms of a conqueror who "grants" peace terms to the enemy. Although I will not attempt to deny that the tone of the peace proposal was very arrogant--an impression which must have been enhanced by Tisza's speeches in the Hungarian Parliament--I think, nevertheless, that even had it been differently worded it had small prospect of success. However that may be, the stern refusal on the part of the Entente only strengthened the situation for the war-keen military party, who, with increased vehemence, maintained the point that all talk of peace was a mistake, and that the fighting must go on to the end. In the winter of 1917, Italy made a slight advance. What territorial concessions was the Monarchy prepared to make? This did not proceed from the Italian Government, but was a step taken by a private individual which was communicated to me through a friendly Government. It is extremely difficult to judge of the true value of such a step. A Government can make use of a private individual to take the first step--it will probably do so when intercourse is desired; but it may also be that a private person, without instructions from, or the knowledge of, his Government, might do the same. Instances of the latter occurred frequently during my term of office. I always held the standpoint that any such tentative steps for peace, even when a ministerial source could not be proved _a priori_, should be treated with prudence, but in a friendly spirit. In the above-mentioned case, however, the fact was that Italy neither could separate from her Allies, nor did she wish to do so. Had that been her purpose, it would have involved her in a conflict with England, whose aim in war was the conquest of Germany and not any Italian aspirations. A separate peace with Italy--her separation from her Allies--was entirely out of the question, but a general peace would have been possible if the Western Powers could have come to an understanding with Germany. The only object gained by that appeal would have been to confirm the extent of our exhaustion from the war. Had I answered that I was ready to give up this or that province, it would have been interpreted as a conclusive symptom of our increasing weakness, and would not have brought peace any nearer, but rather kept it at a greater distance. I answered, therefore, in friendly tone that the Monarchy did not aim at conquests, and that I was ready to negotiate on the basis of pre-war conditions of possession. No answer was sent. After the downfall I was told by a person, certainly not competent to judge, that my tactics had been mistaken, as Italy would have separated from her Allies and concluded a separate peace. Further accounts given in this chapter prove the injustice of the reproof. But it is easy now to confirm the impression that there was not a single moment while the war lasted when Italy ever thought of leaving her Allies. An extraordinary incident occurred at the end of February, 1917. A person came to me on February 26 who was in a position to give credentials showing him to be a recognised representative of a neutral Power, and informed me on behalf of his Government that he had been instructed to let me know that our enemies--or at least one of them--were ready to conclude peace with us, and that the conditions would be favourable for us. In particular, there was to be no question of separating Hungary or Bohemia from the Empire. I was asked, if agreeable to the proposition, to communicate my conditions through the same agency, my attention being called, however, to the proviso that _these proposals made by the enemy Government would become null and void from the moment that another Government friendly to us or to the hostile country heard of the step_. The bearer of this message knew nothing beyond its contents. The final sentence made it obvious that one of the enemy Powers was anxious to negotiate unknown to the others. I did not for a moment doubt that it was a question of Russia, and my authority confirmed my conviction by stating distinctly that he could not say so positively. I answered at once by telegram on February 27 through the agency of the intervening neutral Power that Austria-Hungary was, of course, ready to put an end to further bloodshed, and did not look for any gains from the peace, because, as stated several times, we were engaged in a war of defence only. But I drew attention to the rather obscure sense of the application, not being able to understand whether the State applying to us wished for peace _with us only_, or with the entire _group of Powers_, and I was constrained to emphasise the fact that we did not intend to separate from our Allies. I was ready, however, to offer my services as mediator if, as presumed, the State making the advance was ready to conclude peace with our entire group of Powers. I would guarantee secrecy, as I, first of all, considered it superfluous to notify our Allies. The moment for that would only be when the situation was made clear. This was followed on March 9 by a reply accepting, though not giving a direct answer to the point of whether the proposal was for a peace with us alone or together with our Allies. In order to have it made clear as quickly as possible, and not to lose further time, I answered at once requesting the hostile Power to send a confidential person to a neutral country, whither I also would send a delegate, adding that I hoped that the meeting would have a favourable result. I never received any answer to this second telegram. A week later, on March 16, the Tsar abdicated. Obviously, it was a last attempt on his part to save the situation which, had it occurred a few weeks earlier, would not only have altered the fate of Russia, but that of the whole world. The Russian Revolution placed us in an entirely new situation. After all, there was no doubt that the East presented an obvious possibility of concluding peace, and all our efforts were turned in that direction, for we were anxious to seize the first available moment to make peace with the Russian Revolutionary Party, a peace which the Tsar, faced by his coming downfall, had not been able to achieve. If the spring of 1917 was noted for the beginning of the unrestricted U-boat warfare and all the hopes centred on its success and the altered situation anticipated on the part of the Germans, the summer of the same year proved that the proceeding did not fulfil all expectations, though causing great anxiety to England. At that time there were great fears in England as to whether, and how, the U-boat could be paralysed. No one in London knew whether the new means to counteract it would suffice before they had been tried, and it was only in the course of the summer that the success of the anti-submarine weapons and the convoy principle was confirmed. In the early summer of 1917 very favourable news was received relative to English and French conditions. Information was sent from Madrid, which was always a reliable source, that some Spanish officers returning to Madrid from England reported that the situation there during the last few weeks had become very much worse, and that there was no longer any confidence in victory. The authorities seized all the provisions that arrived for the troops and the munition workers; potatoes and flour were not to be obtained by the poorer classes; the majority of sailors fit for service had been enrolled in the navy, so that only inefficient crews were left in the merchant service, and they were difficult to secure, owing to their dread of U-boats, and, therefore, many British merchantmen were lying idle, as there was no one to man them. This was the tenor of the Spanish reports coming from different sources. Similar accounts, though in slightly different form, came from France. It was stated that in Paris great war-weariness was noticeable. All hope of definite victory was as good as given up; an end must certainly come before the beginning of winter, and many of the leading authorities were convinced that, if war were carried on into the winter, the result would be as in Russia--a revolution. At the same time, news came from Constantinople that one of the enemy Powers in that quarter had made advances for a separate peace. The Turkish Government replied that they would not separate from their Allies, but were prepared to discuss a general peace on a basis of non-annexation. Talaat Pasha notified me at once of the request and his answer. Thereupon nothing more was heard from the enemy Power. At the same time news came from Roumania evincing great anxiety concerning the increasing break-up in Russia, and acknowledging that she considered the game was lost. The revolution and the collapse of the army in Russia still continued. Taken altogether, the outlook presented a more hopeful picture for us, and justified the views of those who had always held that a little more "endurance"--to use a word since become ominous--would lead to a decision. During a war every Minister of Foreign Affairs must attach an important and adequately estimated significance to confidential reports. The hermetic isolation which during the world war divided Europe into two separate worlds made this doubly urgent. But it is inevitable in regard to confidential reports that they must be accepted, for various reasons, with a certain amount of scepticism. Those persons who write and talk, not from any material, but from political interests, from political devotion and sympathy, are, from the nature of the case, above suspicion of reporting, for their own personal reasons, more optimistically than is justified. But they are apt to be deceived. Nations, too, are subject to feelings, and the feelings of the masses must not be taken as expressing the tendencies of the leading influences. France was tired of war, but how far the leading statesmen were influenced by that condition, not to be compared to our own war-weariness, was not proved. In persons who make this _métier_ their profession, the wish is often present, alongside the comprehensible mistakes they make, to give pleasure and satisfaction by their reports, and not run any risk of losing a lucrative post. I think it will be always well to estimate confidential reports, no matter from what source they proceed, as being 50 per cent. less optimistic than they appear. The more pessimistic opinion that prevailed in Vienna, compared with Berlin, was due, first and foremost, to the reliance placed on news coming from the enemy countries. Berlin, too, was quite certain that we were losing time, although Bethmann once thought fit in the Reichstag to assert the contrary; but the German military leaders and the politicians looked at the situation _among our opponents_ differently from us. When the Emperor William was at Laxenburg in the summer of 1917 he related to me some instances of the rapidly increasing food trouble in England, and was genuinely surprised when I replied that, though I was convinced that the U-boats were causing great distress, there was no question of a famine. I told the Emperor that the great problem was whether the U-boats would actually interfere with the transport of American troops, as the German military authorities asserted, or not, but counselled him not to accept as very serious facts a few passing incidents that might have occurred. After the beginning of the unrestricted U-boat warfare, I repeat that many grave fears were entertained in England. It is a well-known fact. But it was a question of fears, not actualities. A person who knew how matters stood, and who came to me from a neutral country in the summer of 1917, said: "If the half only of the fears entertained in England be realised, then the war will be over in the autumn"; but a wide difference existed between London's fears and Berlin's hopes on the one hand, and subsequent events on the other, which had not been taken into account by German opinion. However that may be, I consider there is no doubt that, in spite of the announced intervention of America, the summer of 1917 represented a more hopeful phase for us. We were carried along by the tide, and it was essential to make the most of the situation. Germany must be brought to see that peace must be made, in case the peace wave became stronger. I resolved, therefore, to propose to the Emperor that he should make the first sacrifice and prove to Berlin that it was not only by words that he sought for peace. I asked him to authorise me to state in Berlin that, in the event of Germany coming to an agreement with France on the Alsace-Lorraine question, Austria would be ready to cede Galicia to Poland, which was about to be reorganised, and to make efforts to ensure that this Great-Polish State should be attached to Germany--not _incorporated_, but, say, some form of personal union. The Emperor and I went to Kreuznach, where I first of all made the proposal to Bethmann and Zimmermann, and subsequently, in the presence of the Emperor Charles and Bethmann, laid it before the Emperor William. It was not accepted unconditionally, nor yet refused, and the conference terminated with a request from the Germans for consideration of the question. In making this proposal, I was fully aware of all that it involved. If Germany accepted the offer, and we in our consequent negotiations with the Entente did not secure any noteworthy alterations in the Pact of London, we could count on war only. In that case, we should have to satisfy not only Italy, Roumania, and Serbia, but would also lose the hoped-for compensation in the annexation of Poland. The Emperor Charles saw the situation very clearly, but resolved at once, nevertheless, to take the proposed step. I, however, thoroughly believed then--though wrongly--that in the circumstances London and Paris would have been able to effect an amendment in the Pact of London. It was not until much later that a definite refusal of our offer was sent by Germany. In April, before a decision had been arrived at, I sent a report to the Emperor Charles explaining the situation to him, and requesting that he would submit it to the Emperor William. The report was as follows:-- Will Your Majesty permit me, with the frankness granted me from the first day of my appointment, to submit to Your Majesty my responsible opinion of the situation? It is quite obvious that our military strength is coming to an end. To enter into lengthy details in this connection would be to take up Your Majesty's time needlessly. I allude only to the decrease in raw materials for the production of munitions, to the thoroughly exhausted human material, and, above all, to the dull despair that pervades all classes owing to under-nourishment and renders impossible any further endurance of the sufferings from the war. Though I trust we shall succeed in holding out during the next few months and carry out a successful defence, I am nevertheless quite convinced that another winter campaign would be absolutely out of the question; in other words, that in the late summer or in the autumn an end must be put to the war at all costs. Without a doubt, it will be most important to begin peace negotiations at a moment when the enemy has not yet grasped the fact of our waning strength. If we approach the Entente at a moment when disturbances in the interior of the Empire reveal the coming breakdown every step will have been in vain, and the Entente will agree to no terms except such as would mean the absolute destruction of the Central Powers. To begin at the right time is, therefore, of extreme importance. I cannot here ignore the subject on which lies the crux of the whole argument. That is, the danger of revolution which is rising on the horizon of all Europe and which, supported by England, is demonstrating a new mode of fighting. Five monarchs have been dethroned in this war, and the amazing facility with which the strongest Monarchy in the world was overthrown may help to make us feel anxious and call to our memory the saying: _exempla trahunt_. Let it not be said that in Germany or Austria-Hungary the conditions are different; let it not be contested that the firmly rooted monarchist tendencies in Berlin and Vienna exclude the possibility of such an event. This war has opened a new era in the history of the world; it is without example and without precedent. The world is no longer what it was three years ago, and it will be vain to seek in the history of the world a parallel to the happenings that have now become daily occurrences. The statesman who is neither blind nor deaf must be aware how the dull despair of the population increases day by day; he is bound to hear the sullen grumbling of the great masses, and if he be conscious of his own responsibility he must pay due regard to that factor. Your Majesty has seen the secret reports from the governor of the town. Two things are obvious. The Russian Revolution affects our Slavs more than it does the Germans, and the responsibility for the continuation of the war is a far greater one for the Monarch whose country is only united through the dynasty than for the one where the people themselves are fighting for their national independence. Your Majesty knows that the burden laid upon the population has assumed proportions that are unbearable; Your Majesty knows that the bow is strained to such a point that any day it may be expected to snap. But should serious disturbances occur, either here or in Germany, it will be impossible to conceal the fact from the Entente, and from that moment all further efforts to secure peace will be defeated. I do not think that the internal situation in Germany is widely different from what it is here. I am only afraid that the military circles in Berlin are deceiving themselves in certain matters. I am firmly convinced that Germany, too, like ourselves, has reached the limit of her strength, and the responsible political leaders in Berlin do not seek to deny it. I am firmly persuaded that, if Germany were to attempt to embark on another winter campaign, there would be an upheaval in the interior of the country which, to my mind, would be far worse than a peace concluded by the Monarchs. If the Monarchs of the Central Powers are not able to conclude peace within the next few months, it will be done for them by their people, and then will the tide of revolution sweep away all that for which our sons and brothers fought and died. I do not wish to make any _oratio pro domo_, but I beg Your Majesty graciously to remember that I, the only one to predict the Roumanian war two years before, spoke to deaf ears, and that when I, two months before the war broke out, prophesied almost the very day when it would begin, nobody would believe me. I am just as convinced of my present diagnosis as I was of the former one, and I cannot too insistently urge you not to estimate too lightly the dangers that I see ahead. Without a doubt, the American declaration of war has greatly aggravated the situation. It may be many months before America can throw any noteworthy forces into the field, but the moral fact, the fact that the Entente has the hope of fresh forces, brings the situation to an unfavourable stage for us, because our enemies have more time before them than we have and can afford to wait longer than we, unfortunately, are able to do. It cannot yet be said what course events will take in Russia. I hope--and this is the vital point of my whole argument--that Russia has lost her motive power for a long time to come, perhaps for ever, and that this important factor will be made use of. I expect, nevertheless, that a Franco-English, probably also an Italian, offensive will be launched at the first opportunity, though I hope and trust that we shall be able to repulse both attacks. If this succeeds--and I reckon it can be done in two or three months--we must then, before America takes any further military action to our disadvantage, make a more comprehensive and detailed peace proposal and not shrink from the probably great and heavy sacrifices we may have to make. Germany places great hopes on the U-boat warfare. I consider such hopes are deceptive. I do not for a moment disparage the fabulous deeds of the German sea heroes; I admit admiringly that the tonnage sunk per month is phenomenal, but I assert that the success anticipated and predicted by the Germans has not been achieved. Your Majesty will remember that Admiral Holtzendorff, when last in Vienna, told us positively that the unrestricted U-boat warfare would bring England to her knees within six months. Your Majesty will also remember how we combated the prediction and declared that, though we did not doubt the U-boat campaign would seriously affect England, yet the looked-for success would be discounted by the anticipated entry of America into the war. It is now two and a half months (almost half the time stated) since the U-boat warfare started, and all the information that we get from England is to the effect that the downfall of this, our most powerful and most dangerous adversary, is not to be thought of. If, in, spite of many scruples, Your Majesty yielded to Germany's wish and consented to allow the Austro-Hungarian Navy to take part in the U-boat warfare, it was not because we were converted by the German arguments, but because Your Majesty deemed it to be absolutely necessary to act with Germany in loyal concert in all quarters and because we were firmly persuaded that Germany, unfortunately, would never desist from her resolve to begin the unrestricted U-boat warfare. To-day, however, in Germany the most enthusiastic advocates of the U-boat warfare are beginning to see that this means to victory will not be decisive, and I trust that the mistaken idea that England within a few months will be forced to sue for peace will lose ground in Berlin too. Nothing is more dangerous in politics than to believe the things one wishes to believe; nothing is more fatal than the principle not to wish to see the truth and to fall a prey to Utopian illusions from which sooner or later a terrible awakening will follow. England, the motive power in the war, will not be compelled to lay down her arms in a few months' time, but perhaps--and here I concede a limited success to the U-boat scheme--perhaps England in a few months will ask herself whether it is wise and sensible to continue this war _à l'outrance_, or whether it would not be more statesmanlike to set foot upon the golden bridges the Central Powers must build for her, and then the moment will have come for great and painful sacrifices on the part of the Central Powers. Your Majesty has rejected the repeated attempts of our enemies to separate us from our Allies, in which step I took the responsibility because Your Majesty is incapable of any dishonourable action. But at the same time, Your Majesty instructed me to notify the statesmen of the German Empire that our strength is at an end, and that after the close of the summer Germany must not reckon on us any longer. I carried out these commands and the German statesmen left me in no doubt that for Germany, too, another winter campaign would be impossible. In this one sentence may be summed up all that I have to say: We can still wait some weeks and try if there is any possibility of dealing with Paris or Petersburg. If that does not succeed, then we must--and at the right time--play our last card and make the extreme proposals I have already hinted at. Your Majesty has proved that you have no selfish plans and that you do not expect from your German Ally sacrifices that Your Majesty would not be ready to make yourself. More than that cannot be expected. Your Majesty, nevertheless, owes it to God and to your peoples to make every effort to avert the catastrophe of a collapse of the Monarchy; it is your sacred duty to God and to your peoples to defend those peoples, the dynastic principle and your throne with all the means in your power and to your very last breath. On May 11 there came the following official answer from the Imperial Chancellor, which was sent by the German Emperor to the Emperor Charles, and then to me:-- In accordance with Your Majesty's commands I beg most humbly to submit the following in answer to the enclosed _exposé_ from the Imperial and Royal Minister for Foreign Affairs of 12th ult. Since the _exposé_ was drawn up, the French and English on the Western front have carried out the predicted great offensive on a wide front, ruthlessly sacrificing masses of men and an enormous quantity of war material. The German army checked the advance of the numerically superior enemy; further attacks, as we have every reason to believe, will also be shattered by the heroism of the men and the iron will of their leaders. Judging from all our experiences hitherto in the war, we may consider the situation of the Allied armies on the Isonzo with the same confidence. The Eastern front has been greatly reduced owing to the political upheaval in Russia. There can be no question of an offensive on a large scale on the part of Russia. A further easing of the situation would release more men even if it were considered necessary to have a strong barrier on the Russian frontier to guard against local disturbances owing to the revolutionary movement. With the additional forces, the conditions in the West would become more favourable for us. The withdrawal of men would also provide more troops for the Austrian-Hungarian Monarchy for the successful carrying out of the fighting on the Italian front until the end of the war is reached. In both Allied Monarchies there is an ample supply of raw material for the manufacture of munitions. Our situation as regards provisions is such that with the greatest economy we can hold out until the new harvest. The same applies to Austria-Hungary, especially if her share of the supplies from Roumania are taken into consideration. The deeds of our navy rank beside the successes of the army. When Admiral von Holtzendorff was permitted to lay before His Apostolic Majesty the plans for the U-boat warfare, the prospects of success for this stringent measure had been thoroughly tested here and the expected military advantages weighed against the political risk. We did not conceal from ourselves that the infliction of a blockade of the coasts of England and France would bring about the entry into war of the United States and, consequently, a falling off of other neutral states. We were fully aware that our enemies would thus gain a moral and economic renewal of strength, but we were, and still are, convinced that the disadvantages of the U-boat warfare are far surpassed by its advantages. The largest share in the world struggle which began in the East has now been transferred to the West in ever increasing dimensions, where English tenacity and endurance promote and strengthen the resistance of our enemies by varied means. A definite and favourable result for us could only be achieved by a determined attack on the vital spot in the hostile forces; that is, England. The success obtained and the effect already produced by the U-boat warfare far exceed all calculations and expectations. The latest statements of leading men in England concerning the increasing difficulty in obtaining provisions and the stoppage of supplies, as well as corresponding comments in the Press, not only include urgent appeals to the people to put forth their utmost strength, but bear also the stamp of grave anxiety and testify to the distress that England is suffering. The Secretary of State, Helfferich, at a meeting of the Head Committee of the Reichstag on the 28th ult., gave a detailed account of the effects of the U-boat warfare on England. The review was published in the _Norddeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung_ of the 1st inst. I beg herewith to refer to the enclosed.[8] According to the latest news the Food Controller, Lord Rhondda, owing to the inadequate supply of corn, has been compelled to specify a new allotment of cargo space. This is already so restricted that more room for corn can only be secured by hindering the conduct of the war in other ways. Apart from abandoning overseas traffic, vessels could only be released by cutting down such imports as absorbed much space. England requires not only great transport facilities for provisions but also for the import of ore to keep up war industries, and also pit props to enable the coal output to be kept at a high level. In the case of the ore needed for England and the wood available in the country, it is not possible to restrict the cargo space in these two instances. Already, after three months of the U-boat warfare, it is a fact that the shortage of cargo space caused by the U-boats reduces the living conditions of the population to an unbearable extent, and paralyses all war industries, so much so that the hope of defeating Germany by superior stores of munitions and a greater number of guns has had to be given up. The lack of transport facilities will also prevent the larger output of war industries in America making up for the lesser output in England. The speed with which the U-boat warfare has destroyed vessels excludes the possibility of building new vessels to furnish adequate cargo space. More vessels have been destroyed in a month of U-boat warfare than the English dockyards have turned out in the last year. Even the thousand much-talked-of American wooden vessels, if they were there, would only cover the losses of four months. But they will not come before it is too late. English experts on the subject have already said quite openly that there are only two ways of counteracting the effect of the U-boats: either to build vessels quicker than the Germans destroy them, or else to destroy the U-boats quicker than the Germans can build them. The first has proved to be impossible, and the U-boat losses are far less than the new vessels building. England will also have to reckon on a progressive rise in the loss of tonnage. The effects of the U-boat warfare on the people's provisions and on all private and Government activities will be felt more and more. I anticipate, therefore, the final results of the U-boat warfare with the greatest confidence. According to secret but reliable information, the Prime Minister Ribot recently stated to the Italian Ambassador in Paris that France was faced with exhaustion. This opinion was expressed before the beginning of the last Franco-English offensive. Since then, France has sacrificed life to a terrible extent by keeping up the intensity of the fighting until the offensive ceased. The French nation is certainly doing marvellous things in this war, but the Government cannot sustain the enormous burden after it reaches a certain limit. A reaction in the temper of France, which is kept up by artificial means, is inevitable. As regards our own internal situation, I do not under-estimate the difficulties presented by the inevitable results of the severe fighting and the exclusion from the seas. But I firmly believe that we shall succeed in overcoming these difficulties without permanently endangering the nation's strength and general welfare, without any further crises and without menace to Government organisation. Although we are justified in viewing the total situation in a favourable light, I am nevertheless in complete agreement with Count Czernin in pursuing the aim of bringing about as speedily as possible an honourable and, in the interests of the Empire and of our Allies, just peace. I also share his opinion that the important factor of the weakening of Russia must be exploited, and that a fresh tentative offer for peace must be put forward at a time when both political and military initiative are still in our hands. Count Czernin estimates a suitable time will be in two or three months, when the enemy offensive will be at an end. As a matter of fact, in view of the French and English expectations of the decisive success for their offensive, and the Entente not having lost all hopes of Russia resuming her activities, any too pronounced preparations for peace would not only be doomed to failure, but would put new life into the enemy by revealing the hopeless exhaustion of the Central Powers' forces. At the present moment a general peace could only be bought by our submission to the will of the enemy. A peace of that nature would not be tolerated by the people and would lead to fatal dangers for the Monarchy. It appears to me that quiet determination and caution as regards the outer world are more than ever an imperative necessity. The development of affairs in Russia has hitherto been favourable for us. Party disputes are kept more and more within the narrow limits of peace and war questions by political, economic and social exigencies, and the impression grows every day that the party which makes for peace with the Central Powers will be the one to remain in power. It is our solemn duty carefully to follow and encourage the process of development and disruption in Russia and to sound the country, not with too obvious haste, but yet with sufficient expert skill to lead to practical peace negotiations. The probability is that Russia will avoid any appearance of treachery towards her Allies, and will endeavour to find a method which will practically lead to a state of peace between herself and the Central Powers, but outwardly will have the appearance of the union of both parties as a prelude to the general peace. As in July, 1914, we entered regardlessly into a loyal alliance with Austria-Hungary, in like manner when the world war is at an end will a basis be found for terms which will guarantee a prosperous peace to the two closely united Monarchies. This optimistic reply of Bethmann's was obviously not only based on the idea of infusing more confidence in the future in us, but was also the true expression of a more favourable atmosphere prevailing, as Berlin naturally received the same reports from the enemy countries as we did. I received about that time a letter from Tisza which contained the following passage:-- The varied information received from the enemy countries leaves no doubt that the war is drawing to a close. It is now above all essential to keep a steady nerve and play the game to the end with _sangfroid_. Let there be no signs of weakness. It is not from a love of humanity in general that our enemies have become more peacefully inclined, but because they realise that we cannot be crushed. I beg of you no longer to give vent to the sentiments in your report of April 12. A pessimistic tendency evinced now by the leader of our foreign affairs would ruin everything. I know that you are prudent, but I beg you to use your influence so that both His Majesty and his entourage may show a confident front to the world. And again, no one will have anything to say to us if they cease to believe in our powers of resistance--and are not persuaded that our Alliance rests on a solid foundation. It was evident that the only right tactics were to make the supremest efforts at the front and throughout the country, on the one hand, in order to hold the situation a little longer, and, on the other, to persuade the enemy that, in spite of the favourable situation, we were prepared for peace without conquest. To appoint Hebel to the German military Commission to carry out this last procedure seemed devoid of sense. Neither did I expect to gain much from recent intervention in the Wilhelmstrasse, and endeavoured therefore to put myself in direct touch with the German Reichstag. One of my political friends who had numerous and excellent connections with the German Reichstag put himself into communication with different leaders in Berlin and explained to them the situation in the Monarchy. It was understood that this gentleman was not acting for the Ministry, but presenting his own impressions and views. He was enjoined to be very cautious, as any indiscretion might have incalculable consequences. If the Entente were to imagine that we were thinking of ending the war, not for love of peace but because we simply could not hold out any longer, all efforts would have been vain. In that respect, Tisza was perfectly right. It was, therefore, absolutely necessary that the person to whom this delicate mission had been entrusted should act in such a manner as would keep it a secret from the Entente, a manner devoid of weakness and uniting confidence with reasonable war aims, but also in a manner which would enable the Ministry eventually to disavow the advances. My friend undertook the task with just as great zeal as efficiency and, in brief, this is what he told the Berlin leaders, Erzberger[9] and Südekum in particular. As far as he could judge, we had now reached a turning point. The next few weeks would decide whether it was to be peace or war _à l'outrance_. France was tired and not anxious for America's entry into the war if it was not to be the latter. If Germany forced the Entente to continue the war the situation would be very grave. Neither Austria-Hungary nor Turkey could do more. Germany, by herself, could not bring the war to a successful end. Austria-Hungary's position was obvious to the whole world. She was ready to make peace without annexations and without war compensation, and to devote all her energies to preventing the recurrence of a war. (Austria-Hungary's standpoint was that a universal, equal, but extensive disarmament on sea and on land offered the only means to restore the financial situation in Europe after the war.) Germany must publicly notify her position just as clearly as Austria-Hungary had done and must declare the following: (1) No annexations, no indemnities. (2) Particularly the unconditional and total release of Belgium (politically and economically). (3) All territories occupied by Germany and Austria-Hungary to be evacuated as soon as both those States had had their territories restored to them (including the German colonies). (4) Germany, as well as Austria-Hungary, to work for a general disarmament and guarantee that no further war be possible. Such declaration to be a joint one from the German Government and the Reichstag, and to be made public. The peace resolution of July 19, 1917, was the result of this step. The Imperial Chancellor Bethmann was the first victim. The Supreme Military Command, by whom he always had been persecuted, now trying to secure his dismissal, declared such resolution to be unacceptable. When Bethmann had gone and Michaelis had been appointed, they were satisfied. Although the resolution in itself was satisfactory, it had one fault at the start. It was no secret that everyone connected with Pan-Germanism, especially the German generals, disagreed with the decision, and would not accept the resolution as coming from the entire country. Certainly the great majority in Germany, counting them per head, supported the resolution but the leading men, together with a considerable following, were opposed to it. The "Starvation Peace," the "Peace of Renunciation," and the "Scheidemann Peace" were the subjects of articles in the papers expressing the greatest disapproval of the resolution. Neither did the German Government take up any decided attitude. On July 19 the Imperial Chancellor Michaelis made a speech approving the resolution, but adding "as I understand it." The Imperial Chancellor wrote a letter to me in August confirming his very optimistic views of the situation, and defining Germany's views regarding Belgium. The phrase, "as I understand it," above alluded to in his approval of the resolution, was explained in his letter, at any rate, as to the Belgium question: "As Germany wishes to reserve to herself the right to exercise a far-reaching military and economic influence on Belgium." He wrote as follows:-- _Berlin, August 17, 1917._ DEAR COUNT CZERNIN,--According to our agreement, I take the liberty briefly to lay before you my views of our discussions of the 14th and 15th inst., and would be extremely grateful if Your Excellency would be so kind as to advise me of your views on my activities. The internal economic and political situation in Germany justifies me in the firm belief that Germany herself would be able to stand a fourth year of war. The bread-corn harvest promises better than we thought five or six weeks ago, and will be better than that of the previous year. The potato harvest promises a considerably higher yield than in 1916-17. Fodder is estimated to be much less than last year; by observing a unified and well-thought-out economic plan for Germany herself and the occupied territories, including Roumania, we shall be in a position to hold out with regard to fodder, as was also possible in the very dry year 1915. There is no doubt that the political situation is grave. The people are suffering from the war, and the longing for peace is very great; however, there is no trace of any general and really morbid exhaustion, and when food is controlled any work done will be no worse than it was last year. This economic and political prospect can only be altered if the condition of the Allies, or of the neutrals, under pressure from the Entente, should become very much worse. It would be a change for the worse for us if our Allies or the neutral states, contrary to our expectations and hopes, were to experience such shortage as would cause them to turn to us. To a certain extent, this is already the case; a further increase of their claims would greatly prejudice our economic position and in certain cases endanger it. It must be admitted that the situation in the fourth year of war in general is more difficult than in the third year. The most earnest endeavours, therefore, will be made to bring about a peace as soon as possible. Nevertheless, our genuine desire for peace must not lead us to come forward with a fresh peace proposal. That, in my opinion, would be a great tactical error. Our _démarche_ for peace last December found sympathy in the neutral states, but it was answered by our adversaries raising their demands. A fresh step of the kind would be put down to our weakness and would prolong the war; any peace advances must come now from the enemy. The leading motive in my foreign policy will always be the watchful care of our Alliance with Austria-Hungary that the storm of war has made still stronger, and a trusting, friendly and loyal co-operation with the leading men of the Allied Monarchy. If the spirit of the Alliance--and in this I know Your Excellency agrees--remains on the same high level as heretofore, even our enemies would see that it was impossible for one of the Allies to agree to any separate negotiations offered to him, unless he states beforehand that the discussion would only be entered into if the object were a general peace. If this were clearly laid down there could be no reason why one of the Allies should not listen to such proposal from the enemy and with him discuss preparations for peace. At present no decided line of action can be specified for such a proceeding. Your Excellency was good enough to ask me whether the reinstatement of the _status quo_ would be a suitable basis on which to start negotiations. My standpoint in this matter is as follows: I have already stated in the Reichstag that Germany is not striving for any great changes in power after the war, and is ready to negotiate provided the enemy does not demand the cession of any German territory; with such a conception of the term "reinstatement of the _status quo_," that form would be a very suitable basis for negotiations. This would not exclude the desired possibility of retaining the present frontiers, and by negotiating bring former enemy economic territory into close economic and military conjunction with Germany--this would refer to Courland, Lithuania and Poland--and thus secure Germany's frontiers and give a guarantee for her vital needs on the continent and overseas. Germany is ready to evacuate the occupied French territory, but must reserve to herself the right, _by means of the peace negotiations, to the economic exploitation of the territory of Longwy and Briey_, if not through direct incorporation, by a legal grant to exploit. We are not in a position to cede to France any noteworthy districts in Alsace-Lorraine. I should wish to have a free hand in the negotiations in the matter of _connecting Belgium with Germany in a military and economic sense_. The terms that I read out, taken from notes at the Kreuznach negotiations--the military control of Belgium until the conclusion of a defensive and offensive Alliance with Germany, the acquisition of Liége (or a long-term rental thereof)--were the maximum claims of the Supreme Military and Naval Command. The Supreme Military Command agrees with me that these terms or similar ones can only be secured if peace can be enforced on England. But we are of opinion that a vast amount of economic and military influence must be brought to bear in Belgium in the matter of the negotiations and would perhaps not meet with much resistance, because Belgium, from economic distress, will come to see that her being joined to Germany is the best guarantee for a prosperous future. As regards Poland, I note that the confidential hint from Your Excellency to give up Galicia and enrol it in the new Polish State is subject to the ceding of portions of Alsace-Lorraine to France, which was to be as a counter-sacrifice, but must be considered as out of the question. The development of Poland as an independent State must be carried out in the sense of the proclamation of November 5, 1916. Whether this development will prove to be an actual advantage for Germany or will become a great danger for the future will be tested later. There are already many signs of danger, and what is particularly to be feared is that the Austro-Hungarian Government cannot notify us now during the war of her complete indifference to Poland and leave us a free hand in the administration of the whole state. It will also remain to be seen whether, in view of the danger caused to Germany and also to her relations with Austria-Hungary through Poland's unwillingness to accept the situation, it would not be more desirable politically for Germany, while retaining the frontier territory as being necessary for military protection, to grant to Poland full right of self-determination, also with the possibility of being joined to Russia. The question of the annexation of Roumania, according to the Kreuznach debate of May 1, must be treated further and solved in connection with the questions that are of interest to Germany respecting Courland, Lithuania and Poland. It was a special pleasure to me to meet you, dear Count Czernin, here in Berlin and to discuss openly and frankly with you the questions that occupy us at present. I hope in days to come there may be an opportunity for a further exchange of thoughts enabling us to solve problems that may arise, and carry them out in full agreement. With the expression of my highest esteem, I remain your very devoted MICHAELIS. I replied to the Chancellor that I welcomed, as a matter of course, the agreement to maintain complete frankness, but remarked that I could not share his optimism. I explained that the increasing war-weariness, both in Germany and in Austria-Hungary, rendered it imperative to secure peace in good time, that is, before any revolutionary signs appeared, for any beginning of disturbances would spoil the chance of peace. The German point of view in the case of Belgium seemed to me quite mistaken, as neither the Entente nor Belgium would ever consent to the terms. I could not, therefore, conceal from him that his point of view was a serious obstacle to peace; that it was also in direct opposition to the Reichstag view, and I failed to understand it. I then spoke of the necessity of coming to an understanding as to the minimum of the war aims in which an important part is played by the question whether and how we can achieve a voluntary and peaceable annexation of Poland and Roumania by the Central Powers. I finally again pointed out that I interpreted the views of the German Reichstag as demanding a peace without annexation or indemnity, and that it would be out of the question for the German Government to ignore the unanimous decision of the Reichstag. It was not a question of whether we _wished_ to go on fighting, but whether we _could_, and it was my duty to impress upon him in time that we were bound to end the war. Dr. Michaelis was more given to Pan-Germanism than his predecessor. It was astonishing to what degree the Pan-Germans misunderstood the situation. They disliked me so intensely that they avoided me, and I had very few dealings with them. They were not to be converted. I remember one instance, when a representative of that Party called on me in Vienna to explain to me the conditions under which his group was prepared to conclude peace: the annexation of Belgium, of a part of east France (Longwy and Briey), of Courland and Lithuania, the cession of the English Fleet to Germany, and I forget how many milliards in war indemnity, etc. I received this gentleman in the presence of the Ambassador von Wiesner, and we both agreed that it was purely a case for a doctor. There was a wide breach between the Imperial Chancellor Michaelis's ideas and our own. It was impossible to bridge it over. Soon after he left office to make way for the statesmanlike Count Hertling. About this time very far-reaching events were being enacted behind the scenes which had a very pronounced influence on the course of affairs. Acts of great indiscretion and interference occurred on the part of persons who, without being in any important position, had access to diplomatic affairs. There is no object here in mentioning names, especially as the responsible political leaders themselves only heard the details of what had happened much later, and then in a very unsatisfactory way--at a time when the pacifist tendencies of the Entente were slackening.[10] It was impossible then to see clearly in such a labyrinth of confused and contradictory facts. The truth is that in the spring or early summer of 1917 leading statesmen in the countries of the Allies and of the Entente gathered the impression that the existence of the Quadruple Alliance was at an end. At the very moment when it was of the utmost importance to maintain secrecy concerning the conditions of our Alliance the impression prevailed, and, naturally, the Entente welcomed the first signs of disruption in the Quadruple Alliance. I do not know if the opportunity will ever occur of throwing a clear light on all the proceedings of those days. To explain the further development it will suffice to confirm what follows here. This is what happened. In the spring of 1917 connecting links were established with Paris and London. The first impressions received were that the Western Powers were ready to make use of us as a bridge to Germany and to a general peace. At a somewhat later stage the wind veered and the Entente endeavoured to make a separate peace with us. Several important details only came to my knowledge later, some at the time of my resignation in the spring of 1918, and some not until the collapse in the winter of 1918-19. There was no lack of voices to blame me for a supposed double policy, which the public also suspected, and to accuse me of having made different statements to Berlin from those I made in Paris. These charges were brought by personal enemies who deliberately slandered me, which tales were repeated by others who knew nothing about the affair. The fact is that when I heard of the episode I immediately _possessed myself of documents proving that not only did I know nothing whatever about the matter_, but could not possibly have known. Astronomical causes sometimes give rise to disturbances in the universe, the reason of which cannot be understood by the observer. I felt in the same way, without being able to prove anything definite, from certain signs that I noticed, that in those worlds on the other side of the trenches events were happening that were inexplicable to me. I felt the effect, but could not discover the cause. In the spirit of the Entente, now more favourably disposed for peace, an undertone was distinctly audible. There was anxiety and a greater inclination for peace than formerly, but again probably only in view of the alleged laxity of our Alliance conditions and the hopes of the downfall of the Quadruple Alliance. A friend of mine, a subject of a neutral state, wrote to me from Paris in the summer and told me he had heard from a reliable source that apparently at the Quai d'Orsay they expected the Monarchy to separate from Germany, which, as a matter of course, would alter the entire military situation. Soon afterwards very secret information was received from a neutral country that a Bulgarian group was negotiating with the Entente behind the back and without the knowledge of Radoslawoff. As soon as suspicion of a breach in the Alliance had been aroused in our Allies, the Bulgarian party hastened to forestall the event. We felt as safe about Radoslawoff as about Talaat Pasha; but in both countries other forces were at work. The suspicions aroused in our friends concerning our plans were a further disadvantage, certainly only of a technical nature, but yet not to be underestimated. Our various agents worked splendidly, but it lay in the nature of the case that their dealings were more protracted than those carried out by the Foreign Minister himself. According to the course taken by the conversations, they were obliged to seek fresh instructions; they were more tied, and therefore forced to assume a more halting attitude than a responsible leader would have to do. In the summer of 1917, therefore, I suggested going to Switzerland myself, where negotiations were proceeding. But my journey could not have been kept secret, and if an effort had been made to do so it would have been all the more certain to arouse suspicion, owing to the mistrust already awakened. But not in Berlin. I believe I still held the confidence of the leading men in Berlin sufficiently to avert that. I should have explained the situation to the Imperial Chancellor, and that would have sufficed. In Turkey and Bulgaria the case was different. One party in Bulgaria favoured the Entente. If Bulgaria was under the impression that our group was falling asunder she would have staked everything to try and save herself by a separate peace. In Constantinople, too, there was an Entente group. Talaat and Enver were as reliable as they were strong. But a journey undertaken by me to Switzerland in the conditions described might prove to be the alarm signal for a general _sauve qui peut_. But the very suggestion that the two Balkan countries would act as they supposed we should do would have sufficed to destroy any attempt at peace in Paris and London. The willingness to prepare for peace on the part of the enemy declined visibly during the summer. It was evident from many trifling signs, separately of small import, collectively of much. In the summer of 1917, too, the first horror of the U-boat warfare began to grow less. It was seen by the enemy that it could not accomplish what he had first feared, and that again put life into the desire for a final military victory. These two facts together probably contributed to fan back the peace wind blowing from the West. Among other things, the Armand-Revertera negotiations were proceeding the whole time. It is not yet the moment to speak of the negotiations which in the spring of 1918, together with the letters of the Emperor to Prince Sixtus, created such a sensation. But this much must be stated: that Revertera in the negotiations proved himself to be an equally correct as efficient agent who acted exactly according to the instructions he received from the Ballplatz. Our various attempts to take up the threads of peace when emanating from the Ballplatz were always intended for our entire group of Powers. Naturally, it was not in the interests of the Entente to _prevent_ us from separating from Germany, and when the impression was produced in London and Paris unofficially that we were giving Germany up, we ourselves thus used _sabotage_ in the striving for a general peace; for it would, of course, have been pleasing to the Entente to see Germany, her chief enemy, isolated. There was a twofold and terrible mistake in thus trifling with the idea of a separate peace. First of all, it could not release us from the terms of the Pact of London, and yet it spoiled the atmosphere for negotiating a general peace. At the time when these events were being enacted, I presumed, but only knew for certain later, that Italy, in any case, would claim the promises made to her. In the spring of 1917 Ribot and Lloyd George conferred with Orlando on the subject, when at St. Jean de Maurienne, and endeavoured to modify the terms in case of our separating from Germany. Orlando refused, and insisted on his view that, even in the event of a separate peace, we should still have to yield up Trieste and the Tyrol as far as the Brenner Pass to Italy, and thus have to pay an impossible price. And secondly, these separatist tactics would break up our forces, and had already begun to do so. When a person starts running away in a fight he but too easily drags others with him. I do not doubt that the Bulgarian negotiations, opened with the purpose of taking soundings, were connected with the foregoing events. The effect of this well-meant but secret and dilettante policy was that we suggested to the Entente a willingness to separate from our Allies, and lost our position in the struggle for a separate peace. For we saw that in separating from Germany we could not escape being crippled; that, therefore, a separate peace was impossible, and that we had dealt a death-blow at the still intact Quadruple Alliance. Later I had information from England relating to the official view of the situation there, which differed very much from the optimistic confidential reports, and proved that the desire for peace was not so strong. It will easily be understood that for us the English policy was always the most interesting. England's entry into the war had made the situation so dangerous that an understanding arrived at with her--that is, an understanding between England and Germany through our intervention--would have put an end to the war. This information was to the effect that England was less than ever inclined to confer with Germany until the two cardinal points had been guaranteed--the cession of Alsace-Lorraine and the abolition of German militarism. The former was a French claim, and England must and would support France in this to her very utmost; the second claim was necessary in the interests of the future peace of the world. Germany's military strength was always estimated very highly in England, but the army's deeds in this war had surpassed all expectations. The military successes had encouraged the growth of the military spirit. The peace resolution passed in the Reichstag proved nothing, or at any rate, not enough, for the Reichstag is not the real exponent of the Empire in the outside world; it became paralysed through an unofficial collateral Government, the generals, who possessed the greater power. Certain statements made by General Ludendorff--so the Entente said--proved that Germany did not wish for an honourable peace of understanding. Besides this the Wilhelmstrasse did not associate itself with the majority in the Reichstag. The war was not being waged against the German nation, but against its militarism, and to conclude peace with the latter would be impossible. It appeared, further, that in no circumstances would England restore Germany's colonies. So far as the Monarchy was concerned, England appeared to be ready to conclude a separate peace with her, though subject to the promises made to her own Allies. According to the latter there was much territory to be given up to Italy, Serbia and Roumania. But in exchange we might reckon on a sort of annexation of newly made states like Poland. This information left no doubt that England was not then thinking of making advances to Germany; the fear of Prussian militarism was at the bottom of her reasons for refusing. My impression was that, through a more favourable continuous development, a settlement and understanding might be feasible on the territorial but not on the military questions. On the contrary, the stronger Germany's military power proved itself to be, the more did the Entente fear that their enemy's power of defence would be invincible unless it was broken then. Not only the period preceding war and the outbreak of war, but the actual course of the war has been full of many and disturbing misunderstandings. For long it was not understood here what England meant by the term militarism. It was pointed out that the English Navy was jealously defending the dominion of the seas, that France and Russia stood ready armed for the attack, and that Germany was only in a similar position to any other state; that every state strengthened and equipped its defensive forces as thoroughly as possible. By the term "Prussian militarism" England did not only mean the strength of the German army. She understood it to be a combination of a warlike spirit bent on oppressing others, and supported by the best and strongest army in the world. The first would have been innocuous without the second; and the splendid German army was in England's eyes the instrument of a domineering and conquest-loving autocrat. According to England's view, Germany was exactly the counterpart of France under Bonaparte--if for Napoleon be substituted a many-headed being called "Emperor, Crown Prince, Hindenburg, Ludendorff"--and just as little as England would treat with Napoleon would she have any dealings with the individual who to her was the personification of the lust for conquest and the policy of violence. The notion of the existence of German militarism seems to be quite justified, although the Emperor and the Crown Prince played the smallest part in it. But it seems to me an altogether wrong conception that militarism is a speciality of Germany. The negotiations at Versailles must now have convinced the general public that it is not only on the banks of the Spree that militarism reigns. Germany in former days was never able to understand that on the enemy continent, by the side of morally unjustified envy, fear and anxiety as to Germany's plans practically reigned, and that the talk about the "hard" and "German" peace, about "victory and triumph" was like throwing oil on the flames of their fears; that in England and France, too, at one time, there was a current of feeling urging for a peace of settlement, and that such expressions as the foregoing were highly detrimental to all pacifist tendencies. In my opinion the air raids on England may be ranked in the same category as these expressions. They were carried out with the greatest heroism by the German fliers, but no other object was gained but to irritate and anger England and rouse to the utmost resistance all who otherwise had pacifist tendencies. I said this to Ludendorff when he called on me at the Ballplatz in the summer of 1917, but it made not the slightest impression on him. The _démarche_ for peace made by the Pope and our reply have been published in the European Press. We accepted the noble proposals made by the Holy Father. I have therefore nothing to add on that matter. In the early part of the summer of 1917 the Socialist Conference at Stockholm had become a practical question. I issued passports to the representatives of our Social Democrats, and had several difficulties to overcome in connection therewith. My own standpoint is made clear by the following letter to Tisza. (_Not dated._) DEAR FRIEND,--I hear that you do not approve of the delegation of Socialists for Stockholm. To begin with, it is not a delegation. The men came to me of their own accord and applied for permission to travel, which I granted. Adler, Ellenbogen and Seitz were there, Renner as well. The two first are capable men, and I value them in spite of the differences that exist between us. The two last are not well known to me. But all are genuinely desirous of peace, and Adler in particular does not wish the downfall of the Empire. If they secure peace it will be a socialistic one, and the Emperor will have to pay out of his own pocket; I am sure too, dear friend, that if it is not possible to end the war, the Emperor will have to pay still more; you may be sure of that. Or, as may be expected, if they do not secure peace, then my prediction was all the more correct, for then I shall have proved to them that it is not the inefficiency of the Diplomatic Service but the conditions surrounding it that must be blamed for the war not coming to an end. If I had refused to grant permission for them to travel, they would have continued to the last declaring that, if they had been allowed to proceed, they would have secured peace. Everyone is indignant with me here, particularly in the Herrenhaus. They even go so far that they imagine I had tried to "buy" the Socialists by promising to lower the Customs dues if they returned with peace. I do not want the dues, as you know, but that has no connection with Stockholm, "Sozie" and peace. I was at an Austrian Cabinet Council lately and gave the death-blow to the Customs dues--but I felt rather like Daniel in the lions' den when I did it; N. and E. in particular were very indignant. The only one who entirely shares my standpoint beside Trnka is the Prime Minister Clam. Consequently, this contention that they have been deprived of the octroi owing to my love for the "Sozies" angers them still more, but the contention is false. You, my dear friend, are doubly wrong. In the first place, we shall be forced to have Socialist policy after the war whether it is welcome or not, and I consider it extremely important to prepare the Social Democrats for it. Socialist policy is the valve we are bound to open in order to let off the superfluous steam, otherwise the boiler will burst. In the second place, none of us Ministers can take upon ourselves the false pretence of using _sabotage_ with regard to peace. The nations may perhaps tolerate the tortures of war for a while, but only if they understand and have the conviction that it cannot be otherwise--that a _vis major_ predominates; in other words, that peace can fail owing to circumstances, but not owing to the ill will or stupidity of the Ministers. The German-Bohemian Deputy, K.H. Wolf, made a scene when the speech from the throne was read in the "Burg"; he declared that we were mad and would have to account for it to the delegation, and made many other equally pleasant remarks, but he had also come to a wrong conclusion about the Customs dues and Stockholm. You are quite right in saying that it is no concern of Germany's what we do in the interior. But they have not attempted the slightest interference with the dues. If they are afraid of an anti-German rate of exchange and, therefore, are in favour of the dues, we are to a certain extent to blame. The Berlin people are always afraid of treachery. When a vessel answers the starboard helm it means she turns to the right, and in order to check this movement the steersman must put the helm to larboard as the only way to keep a straight course--he must hold out. Such is the case of statecraft in Vienna--it is always carried out of the course of the Alliance. It is possible to turn and steer the Entente course if thought feasible; but then courage would be needed to make the turn fully. Nothing is more stupid than trifling with treachery and not carrying it out; we lose all ground in Berlin and gain nothing either in London or Paris. But why should I write all this--_you_ share my opinions; I do not need to convert you. We will talk about Stockholm again.--In true friendship, your old CZERNIN. As a matter of fact, Tisza in this instance allowed himself to be quite converted, and raised no objections as to the Hungarian Social Democrats. The negative result of the Stockholm Congress is known. As already mentioned, it is at present still impossible to discuss in detail the various negotiations and attempts at peace. Besides the negotiations between Revertera and Armand, other tentative efforts were made. For instance, the interviews already alluded to between the Ambassador Mennsdorff and General Smuts, which were referred to in the English Parliament. I do not consider it right to say more about the matter here. But I can and will repeat the point of view which was at the bottom of all our peace efforts since the summer of 1917, and which finally wrecked them all. The last report cited reflected the views of the Entente quite correctly. With Germany there was at present no possibility of intercourse. France insisted on the restoration of Alsace-Lorraine, and the entire Entente demanded the abolition of German militarism. Neither would Germany be allowed to retain her colonies. But Germany was not yet "ripe" for this demand to be made. In the opinion of the Entente, therefore, any debate on the subject would be useless. For us the case was different. The impression prevailed that we could conclude a separate peace providing we were ready to make sacrifices. The London terms had created a situation which must be accepted. Concessions to Roumania, the cession of Trieste and the Trentino, as well as the German South Tyrol, to Italy, and concessions to the Southern Slav state would be unavoidable, besides reforms in the Monarchy on a federal basis. Our answer was that a one-sided concession of Austro-Hungarian and German territory in that form was, naturally, not possible. But still we thought that, under certain premises in the territorial questions, an agreement might perhaps not meet with insurmountable difficulties. As a matter of course, however, the Entente were not in a position to make terms such as could only be laid down by the victor to the vanquished, as we were anything but beaten, but, in spite of that, we did not cling so firmly to the frontier posts in the Monarchy. It might be thought, therefore, that, the Entente being willing, a settlement of the various interests would be possible; but proposals such as the giving up of Trieste, Bozen, and Meran were impossible, as was also the suggestion to make peace behind Germany's back. I referred to the military situation and the impossibility of anyone accepting these views of the Entente. I was full of confidence in the future, and even if that were not the case I could not conclude a peace in the present situation which the Entente could not dictate in other terms, even if we were beaten. To lose Trieste and access to the Adriatic was a totally unacceptable condition, just as much as the unconditional surrender of Alsace-Lorraine. Neutral statesmen agreed with my views that the Entente demands were not couched in the terms of a peace of understanding, but of victory. Opinion in neutral countries was quite clear on the subject. But in England especially there were various currents of thought; not everyone shared Lloyd George's views. The main point was, however, to lead up to a debate which would tend to clear up many matters, and I seized the idea eagerly. The greatest difficulty, I was assured by some, lay in the Entente's assertion that Germany had shown remarkable military strength, but yet had not been adequately prepared for war; she had not had sufficient stores either of raw materials or provisions, and had not built sufficient U-boats. The Entente's idea was that if peace were made now, Germany might perhaps accept even unfavourable conditions, but it would only be to gain time and make use of the peace to draw breath before beginning a fresh war. She would make up for loss of time and "hit out again." The Entente, therefore, considered the preliminary condition of any peace, or even of a discussion of terms, to be the certainty of the abolition of German militarism. I replied that nobody wished for more war, and that I agreed with the Entente that a guarantee in that connection must be secured, but that a one-sided disarmament and disbanding of men by Austria-Hungary and Germany was an impossibility. It might be imagined what it would be like if one fine day an army, far advanced in the enemy country, full of confidence and hope and certain of victory, had to lay down arms and disappear. No one could accept such a proposal. Meanwhile, a general disarmament of all the Powers was both possible and necessary. Disarmament, the establishment of courts of arbitration under international control: that, according to my idea, would present an acceptable basis. I mentioned my fears that the Entente rulers in this, as in the territorial question, would not mete out the same measure to themselves as they intended for us, and unless I had some guarantee in the matter I should not be in a position to carry the plan through here and with our Allies; anyhow, it would be worth a trial. Long and frequent were the debates on the Central European question, which was the Entente's terror, as it implied an unlimited increase in Germany's power. In Paris and London it would presumably be preferred that the Monarchy should be made independent of Germany, and any further advances to Berlin on the part of Vienna checked. We rejoined that to us this was not a new Entente standpoint, but that the mutilation caused by the resolutions of the Pact of London forced us to investigate the matter. Apart from the question of honour and duty to the Alliance, as matters now stood, Germany was fighting almost more for us than for herself. If Germany to-day, and we knew it, concluded peace, she would lose Alsace-Lorraine and her military superiority on land; but we, with our territory, would have to pay the Italians, Serbians, and Roumanians for their part in the war. I heard it said on many sides that there were men in the Entente who readily understood this point of view, but that the Entente nations would do what they had intended. Italy had based her entry into the war on promises from London. Roumania also had been given very solid assurances, and heroic Serbia must be compensated by Bosnia and Herzegovina. Many, both in Paris and London, regretted the situation that had arisen through the conference in London, but a treaty is a treaty, and neither London nor Paris could forsake their Allies. Meanwhile, it was thought likely in Entente circles that both the new Serbian and Polish states, probably Roumania as well, would have certain relations with the Monarchy. Further details respecting such relations were still unknown. Our reply was: we would not give up Galicia to Poland, Transylvania and the Bukovina to Roumania, and Bosnia together with Herzegovina to Serbia, in return for a vague promise of the closer relations of those states with the pitiful remains left to us of the Monarchy. We were not impelled thereto by dynastic interests. I myself had persuaded the Emperor to sacrifice Galicia to Poland; but in Transylvania there lived so many Germans and Magyars who simply could not be made a present of, and above all the concessions, to Italy! I once asked a neutral statesman if he could understand what was meant by making Austria voluntarily give up the arch-German Tyrol as far as the Brenner Pass. The storm that would be let loose by such a peace would uproot more than merely the Minister who had made the peace. I told my visitor that there were certain sacrifices which on no conditions could be expected of any living being. I would not give up German Tyrol, not even though we were still more unfavourably situated. I reminded him of a picture that represented wolves chasing a sledge. One by one the driver threw out fur, coat, and whatever else he had to the pack to check them and save himself--but he could not throw his own child to them: rather would he suffer to the last gasp. That was how I felt about Trieste and the German Tyrol. We were not in the position of the man in the sledge, for, thank God, we had our arms and could beat off the wolves; but even in the extremest emergency, never would I accept a peace that deprived us of Bozen and Meran. My listener did not disagree with my argument, but could see no end to the war in that way. England was ready to carry on the war for another ten years and, in any case, would crush Germany. Not the German people, for whom no hatred was felt--always the same repetition of that deceptive argument--but German militarism. England was in a condition of constraint. Repeatedly it had been said that if Germany were not defeated in this war she would continue with still more extensive armaments. That was the firm belief in London; she would then, in a few years, have not 100, but 1,000, U-boats, and then England would be lost. Then England was also fighting for her own existence, and her will was iron. She knew the task would be a hard one, but it would not crush her. In London they cite again the example of the wars of Napoleon, and conclude with: "What man has done man can do again." This fear of Prussian militarism was noticeable on all occasions, and the suggestion constantly was put forward that if we were to declare ourselves satisfied with a general disarmament, that in itself would be a great advantage and an important step towards peace. My speech on October 2, 1917, at Budapest, on the necessity of securing a reorganised world was prompted by the argument that militarism was the greatest obstacle in the way of any advance in that direction. At Budapest on that occasion I was addressing an audience of party leaders. I had to take into consideration that too pacifist a tone would have an effect at home and abroad contrary to my purpose. At home the lesser powers of resistance would be still further paralysed, and abroad it would be taken as the end of our capacity for fighting, and would further check all friendly intentions. The passage in my speech relating to the securing of a new world organisation is as follows:-- The great French statesman, Talleyrand, is supposed to have said: words are merely to conceal thoughts. It may be that it was true respecting the diplomacy of his century, but I cannot imagine a maxim less suited to the present day. The millions who are fighting, whether in the trenches or behind the lines, wish to know why and wherefore they are fighting. They have a right to know why peace, which all the world is longing for, has not yet been made. When I entered upon office I seized the first opportunity openly to state that we should commit no violence, but that we should tolerate none, and that we were ready to enter into peace negotiations as soon as our enemies accepted the point of view of a peace of understanding. I think I have thus clearly explained, though on broad lines only, the peace idea of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. Many at home and also in friendly countries abroad have reproached me for speaking so openly. The arguments of the said critical gentlemen have only confirmed my belief in the justness of my views. I take nothing back of what I said, convinced as I am that the great majority of people here and in Austria approve my attitude. Following on these introductory remarks, I feel called upon to-day to tell the public how the Imperial and Royal Government will deal with the further development of the utterly distorted European conditions. Our programme for the reconstruction of the world organisation, preferably to be called the building of a new world organisation, is given in our answer to the peace Note of the Holy Father. It, therefore, only remains for me to-day to complete the programme and, above all, to state what were the considerations that decided us to accept the principles that overthrow the former system. It will come as a surprise to many, and perhaps appear incomprehensible, that the Central Powers, and especially Austria-Hungary, should be willing to desist from future military armament, as it is only their military power that has protected them through these trying years against vastly superior forces. Not only has the war created new factors and conditions, but it has also led to new conceptions which have shattered the foundations of former European policy. Among many other political theses, the one which held that Austria-Hungary was an expiring state has vanished. The dogma of the impending collapse of the Monarchy was what made our position in Europe more difficult and caused all the misunderstanding concerning our vital needs. But having shown ourselves in this war to be thoroughly sound and, at any rate, of equal standing, it follows that we can reckon now on a proper understanding of our vital needs in Europe and that no hopes are left of being able to beat us down by force of arms. Until the moment had arrived when this could be proved, we could not do without the protection of armaments nor expose ourselves to unfavourable treatment in the matters vital to us produced by the legend of our impending collapse. But from that moment, we have been in the position simultaneously with our enemies to lay down arms and settle our difficulties peacefully and by arbitration. This being recognised by the world affords us the possibility of not only accepting the plan of disarmament and a court of arbitration, but, as you, gentlemen, are aware, of working with all our energy for its realisation, as we have for some time past. After this war Europe must without doubt be placed on a new political basis, the permanency of which can be guaranteed. This basis will, I believe, be of a fourfold nature: In the first place, it must furnish a guarantee that there shall be no war of revenge on any side; we must make sure that we can bequeath to our children's children the knowledge that they will be spared the horrors of a time similar to that which we have undergone. No shifting of power in the belligerent states can achieve that. The only manner by which it can be attained is international disarmament throughout the world and acceptance of the principle of arbitration. It is needless to say that these measures for disarmament must not be confined to one separate state or to a single group of Powers, and that they apply equally to land, water and air. War as a factor in policy must be combated. A general, uniform and progressive disarmament of all states in the world must be established on an international basis and under international control, and the defensive forces limited to the utmost. I am well aware that this object will be difficult to achieve and that the path that leads thereto is long and thorny and full of difficulties. And yet I am firmly convinced it is a path that must be trodden and will be trodden, no matter whether it is approved of individuals or not. It is a great mistake to imagine that after such a war the world can begin from where it left off in 1914. A catastrophe such as this war does not pass by and leave no trace, and the most terrible misfortune that could happen to us would be if the race for armaments were to continue after the conclusion of peace, for it would mean the economic ruin of all states. Before the war began the military burdens to be borne were heavy--though we specially note that Austria-Hungary was far from being on a high level of military preparedness when we were surprised by the outbreak of war, and it was only during the war that she resumed her armaments--but after this war an open competition in armaments would render state burdens all round simply intolerable. In order to keep a high standard of armaments in open competition all the states would have to secure a tenfold supply of everything--ten times the artillery, munition factories, vessels and U-boats of former days, and also many more soldiers to work the machinery. The annual military budget of all the Great Powers would comprise many milliards--it would be impossible with all the other burdens which the belligerent states will have to bear after peace is concluded. This expense, I repeat, would mean the ruin of the nations. To return, however, to the relatively limited armaments in existence previous to 1914 would be quite impossible for any individual state, which would be so far behind that its military strength would not count. The expense incurred would be futile. But were it possible to return to the relatively low level of armaments in 1914, that in itself would signify an international lowering of armaments. But then there would be no sense in not going further and practically disarming altogether. There is but one egress from this narrow defile: the absolute international disarmament of the world. There is no longer any object in such colossal fleets if the states of the world guarantee the freedom of the seas, and armies must be reduced to the lowest limit requisite for the maintenance of order in the interior. This will only be possible on an international basis; that is, under international control. Every state will have to cede some of its independence to ensure a world peace. The present generation will probably not live to see this great pacifist movement fully completed. It cannot be carried out rapidly, but I consider it our duty to put ourselves at the head of the movement and do all that lies in human power to hasten its achievement. The conclusion of peace will establish the fundamental principles. If the first principle be laid down as the compulsory international arbitration system as well as general disarmament on land, the second one must be that of the freedom of the high seas and disarmament at sea. I purposely say the high seas, as I do not extend the idea to straits or channels, and I readily allow that special rules and regulations must be laid down for the connecting sea routes. If these first two factors have been settled and assured, any reason for territorial adjustments on the plea of ensuring national safety is done away with, and this forms the third fundamental principle of the new international basis. This idea is the gist of the beautiful and sublime Note that His Holiness the Pope addressed to the whole world. We have not gone to war to make conquests, and we have no aggressive plans. If the international disarmament that we so heartily are longing for be adopted by our present enemies and becomes a fact, then we are in no need of assurances of territorial safety; in that case, we can give up the idea of expanding the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, provided, of course, that the enemy has entirely evacuated our own territory. The fourth principle to enforce in order to ensure a free and peaceful development of the world after the hard times we have experienced is the free economic participation by everyone and the unconditional avoidance of an economic war; a war of that nature must be excluded from all future contingencies. Before we conclude peace we must have the positive assurance that our present enemies have given up that idea. Those, my honourable friends, are the principles of the new world organisation as it presents itself to me, and they are all based on general disarmament. Germany, in her answer to the Papal Note, has also positively recognised the idea of a general disarmament. Our present enemies have likewise, partly at any rate, adopted these principles. I differ from Lloyd George in most points, but agree thoroughly on one--that there nevermore should be a war of revenge. The impression made by my speech on the Entente surpassed the most pessimistic expectations. In order not to approach too closely the subject of their own disarmament, my propositions were said to be hypocritical and a peace trap. This needs no comment. Had the Entente replied that I must obtain the support of and secure a guarantee from Germany that she would disarm, it would have been an opportunity for me, with the help of the nations, to exercise the greatest possible pressure on Germany's leaders. But the sword was knocked out of my hand by the Entente themselves, for the retort came from Berlin: Here is the proof that the Entente rejects our offer of disarmament as they reject everything coming from us. There is only one way out of it--a fight to the end and then victory. Again did the Entente force the peoples of the Central Powers to side unconditionally with the generals. Never in the whole term of my office did I receive so many letters as after my speech--both for and against, with both sides equally impetuous. "Death sentences" from Germany were showered on me; scorn and contempt alternated with genuine sympathy and agreement. In the autumn of 1917 the peace movement diminished visibly. The U-boat fiasco was very obvious. England saw that she was able to overcome the danger. The German military leaders still spoke of the positively expected successes of their submarines, but the tenor of their predictions became very different. There was no longer any talk of the downfall of England within a few months. A new winter campaign was almost a certainty, and yet the Germans insisted that though mistakes occurred in the term fixed, this was not so respecting the ultimate effect of the U-boats and that England would collapse. The U-boat warfare had achieved this amount of success, that the Western front remained intact, though it would otherwise have fallen. The military situation underwent a change in the autumn. The end of the war in the East was within sight, and the possibility of being able to fling the enormous masses of troops from the East into the line in the West, and at last break through there, greatly improved the situation. It was not on the sea that the U-boat campaign had brought about a decision, but it enabled a final decision on land to be made; such was the new military opinion. Paris and Calais could not be taken. In these different phases of military hopes and expectation we floated like a boat on a stormy sea. In order to land in the haven of peace, we needed a military wave to carry us nearer to the land; then only could we unfurl the sail of understanding that would help us to reach the saving shores. As long as the enemy persisted only in dealing with the crushed and depopulated Central Powers all was in vain. I never believed in the success of the U-boat warfare. I believed in a break-through on the Western front, and during the winter of 1917-1918 lived in the hope that by such means we might break the obstinate love of destruction in our enemies. As long as our adversaries' peace terms remained the same peace was impossible, as was also the bringing of any outside pressure to bear on Germany, for it was true that "the German army was fighting more to support Austria-Hungary than it was for its own existence." Threatening and breathing disaster, the decisions of the Pact of London confronted us. They forced us always to take up arms again, and drove us back into the field. * * * * * At the time of writing these lines, in June, 1919, Austria has long ceased to exist. There is only left now a small, impoverished, wretched land called German-Austria, a country without army or money; helpless, starving, and wellnigh in despair. This country has been told of the peace terms at St. Germain. It has been told it must give up the Tyrol as to be handed over to Italy. And defenceless and helpless as it is, it sends up a cry of despair and frantic grief. One voice only is heard--such peace is impossible! How could an Austrian Government accept the dictates of London at a time when our armies stood far advanced in enemy country, unvanquished and unbroken, when we had for Ally the strongest land Power in the world, and when the greatest generals of the war so firmly believed in the break-through and in final victory? To demand that in 1917 or 1918 I should have accepted peace terms which in 1919 were rejected by the whole of the German-Austrian people is sheer madness. But it may be there is method in such madness. The method of using every means to discredit the "old régime." * * * * * In the beginning of August, 1917, an effort was made at a _rapprochement_ between England and Germany which, unfortunately, almost immediately broke down. At the suggestion of England a neutral Power had sounded Germany with regard to Belgium. Germany replied that she was ready for direct verbal negotiations with England on the Belgian question. In transmitting this favourable answer, Germany did not entrust it to the same neutral Power that had brought the message, but for some unknown reason confided it to a trusted messenger from another neutral country. This latter appears to have been guilty of some indiscreet dealings, and when rumours of the affair reached Paris it caused some anxiety. It was probably thought there that England was more interested in the Belgian than in the Alsace-Lorraine question. The messenger sent from Berlin thought that his task had failed, and sent word to Berlin that, owing to his errand having been made known, the opinion among the Entente was that every step taken by Germany was condemned beforehand to failure. The Government which had employed the messenger took up the case on its own initiative, and transmitted the German reply to London. No answer was ever received from England. This is the account as given to me _post festum_ by Berlin, and doubtless reflects Berlin's views. Whether the incident in detail was exactly as described, or whether many more hitherto unknown events took place, has not been proved. During the war all happenings on the other side of the trenches were looked upon with dim and gloomy eyes as through a veil, and, according to news received by me later, it was not clear whether England had sent an answer. Whether it was dispatched and held up on the way, or what became of it I never knew. It is said never to have reached Berlin. A warlike speech by Asquith on September 27 appears to be connected with this unsuccessful attempt, and served to calm the Allies. It appears extremely doubtful to me, however, whether this advance would have led to anything, had the occasion been more favourable. The previously mentioned letter of the Imperial Chancellor Michaelis dates from those August days, a letter referring to Belgian projects which were very far removed from the English ideas on the subject. And even if it had been possible to settle the Belgian question, there would have been that of Alsace-Lorraine, which linked France and England together, and, first and foremost, the question of disarmament. The chasm that divided the two camps would have grown so wide that no bridge could possibly have spanned it. Not until January, 1918, did I learn the English version. According to that, the Germans are said to have taken the first steps, and the English were not disinclined to listen, but heard nothing further. It was stated in _Vorwärts_ that the suggestion was made at the instigation of the Cabinet Council, but that subsequently military influence gained the upper hand. The episode did not tend to improve the frame of mind of the leading men in England. In the early summer of 1917 conditions seemed favourable for peace and the hope of arriving at an understanding, though still far distant, was not exactly a Utopian dream. How far the hope of splitting our group and the failure of the U-boat warfare may have contributed to stiffen the desire for war in the Entente countries cannot definitely be stated. Both factors had a share in it. Before we came to a deadlock in the negotiations, the position was such that even in case of a separate peace we should have been compelled to accept the terms of the conference of London. Whether the Entente would have abandoned that basis if we had not veered from the straight course, and by unofficial cross-purposes become caught in the toils of separatist desires, but had quickly and consistently carried out our task, is not proved, and never will be. After the débâcle in the winter of 1918-19 it was intimated to me as a fact that when Clemenceau came into power a peace of understanding with Germany became out of the question. His standpoint was that Germany must be definitely vanquished and crushed. Our negotiations, however, had begun under Briand, and Clemenceau only came into power when the peace negotiations had become entangled and were beginning to falter. With regard to Austria-Hungary, both France and England would have welcomed a separate peace on our part, even during Clemenceau's period of office; but in that case we should have had to accept the terms of the London conference. Such was the peace question then. How it would have developed if no misleading policy had come into being naturally cannot be stated. I am not putting forward suppositions but confirming facts. And the fact remains that the failure of the U-boat campaign on the one hand, and a policy carried on behind the backs of the responsible men on the other hand, were the reasons why the favourable moment passed and the peace efforts were checked. And I herewith repeat that this fact does not in itself prove that peace negotiations would not also have failed later if the two reasons mentioned above had not existed. It became quite clear in the autumn that the war would have to continue. In my speeches to delegations I endeavoured to leave no doubt that we were faithful to our Allies. When I said "I see no difference between Strassburg and Trieste," I said it chiefly for Sofia and Constantinople, for the overthrow of the Quadruple Alliance was the greatest danger. I still hoped to be able to prop the trembling foundations of the Alliance policy, and either to secure a general peace in the East, where the military opposition was giving way, or to see it draw nearer through the anticipated German break-through on the Western front. Several months after my dismissal in the summer of 1918 I spoke in the Herrenhaus on foreign policy, and warned everyone present against trying to undermine the Quadruple Alliance. When I declared that "honour, duty to the Alliance, and the call for self-preservation compel us to fight by the side of Germany," I was misunderstood. It did not seem as though the public realised that the moment the Entente thought the Quadruple Alliance was about to break up, from that moment our cause was lost. Had the public no knowledge of the London agreement? Did they not know that a separate peace would hand us over totally defenceless to those cruel conditions? Did they not realise that the German army was the shield that afforded us the last and only possibility of escaping the fate of being broken up? My successor steered the same course as I had done, doubtless from the same reasons of honour and the call for self-preservation. I have no particulars as to what occurred in the summer of 1918. Afterwards events followed in rapid succession. First came our terrible defeat in Italy, then the Entente break-through on the Western front, and finally the Bulgarian secession, which had gradually been approaching since the summer of 1917. 3 As is the case in all countries, among the Entente during the war there were many and varied currents of thought. When Clemenceau came into office the definite destruction of Germany was the dominant war aim. To those who neither see nor hear the secret information which a Foreign Minister naturally has at his disposal, it may appear as though the Entente, in the question of crushing Germany's military strength, had sometimes been ready to make concessions. I think that this may have been the case in the spring of 1917, but not later, when any such hope was deceptive. Lansdowne in particular spoke and wrote in a somewhat friendly tone, but Lloyd George was the determining influence in England. When sounding England on different occasions, I endeavoured to discover by what means the dissolution of the military power in Germany was to be or could be guaranteed--and I invariably came to an _impasse_. It was never explained how England intended to carry out the proposal. The truth is that there is no way of disarming a strong and determined people except by defeating them, but such an aim was not to be openly admitted to us in the preliminary dealings. The delegates could not suggest any suitable mode of discussion, and no other proposals could lead to a decision. Lansdowne, and perhaps Asquith as well, would have been content with a parliamentary régime which would have deprived the Emperor of power and given it to the Reichstag. Not so Lloyd George; at least, not later. The English Prime Minister's well-known speech, "A disarmament treaty with Germany would be a treaty between a fox and many geese," conveyed what he really thought. After my Budapest speech, which was treated with such scorn and contempt in the Press and by public opinion on the other side of the Channel, word was sent to me from an English source that it was said the "Czernin scheme" might settle the question. But again it was not Lloyd George who said that. Owing to the extreme distrust that Clemenceau, the English Prime Minister, and with them the great majority in France and England, had of Germany's intentions, no measure could be devised that would have given London and Paris a sufficient guarantee for a future peaceful policy. From the summer of 1917, no matter what Germany had proposed, Lloyd George would always have rejected it as inadequate. In consequence of this it was quite immaterial later to the course of the war that Germany not only did nothing whatever to allay English fears, but, on the contrary, poured oil in the fire and fanned the flames. Germany, the leading military Power in the war, never for one moment thought of agreeing to disarmament under international control. After my speech in Budapest I was received in Berlin not in an unfriendly manner, but with a sort of pity, as some poor insane person might be treated. The subject was avoided as much as possible. Erzberger alone told me of his complete agreement with me. Had Germany been victorious her militarism would have increased enormously. In the summer of 1917 I spoke to several generals of high standing on the Western front, who unanimously declared that after the war armaments must be maintained, but on a very much greater scale. They compared this war with the first Punic War. It would be continued and its continuation be prepared for; in short, the tactics of Versailles. The standard of violence must be planted, and would be the banner of the generals, the Pan-Germans, the Fatherland Party, etc. etc. They thought as little about a reconciliation of the nations after the war as did the Supreme Council of Four at Versailles, and Emperor, Government and Reichstag floundered helplessly in this torrent of violent purpose. The military spirit flourished on the Spree as it is doing now on the Seine and the Thames. Lloyd George and Unter den Linden in Berlin. The only difference between Foch and Ludendorff is that the one is a Frenchman and the other a German; as men they are as like as two peas. The Entente is victorious, and many millions are delighted and declare that the policy of Might is justified. The future only can show whether this is not a terrible mistake. The lives of hundreds of thousands of young, hopeful men who have fallen might have been saved if in 1917 peace had been made possible for us. The triumph of victory cannot call them back to life again. It appears to me that the Entente has conquered too much, too thoroughly. The madness of expiring militarism, in spite of all its orgies, has perhaps celebrated its last triumph at Versailles. Postscript. Taking it altogether, the real historical truth concerning the peace movement is that, in general, neither the Entente nor the ruling, all-powerful military party in Germany wished for a peace of understanding. They both wished to be victorious and to enforce a peace of violence on the defeated adversary. The leading men in Germany--Ludendorff above all--never had a genuine intention of releasing Belgium in an economic and political sense; neither would they agree to any sacrifices. They wished to conquer in the East and the West, and their arbitrary tendencies counteracted the pacifist leaning of the Entente as soon as there were the slightest indications of it. On the other hand, the leading men in the Entente--Clemenceau from the first and Lloyd George later--were firmly resolved to crush Germany, and therefore profited by the continuous German threats to suppress all pacifist movements in their own countries, always ready to prove that a peace of understanding with Berlin would be a "pact between the fox and the geese." Thanks to the attitude of the leading Ministers in Germany, the Entente was fully persuaded that an understanding with Germany was quite out of the question, and insisted obstinately on peace terms which could not be accepted by a Germany still unbeaten. This closes the _circular vitiosus_ which paralysed all negotiating activities. _We_ were wedged in between these two movements and unable to strike out for ourselves, because the Entente, bound by their promises to their Allies, had already disposed of us by the Pact of London and the undertakings to Roumania and Serbia. We therefore _could_ not exercise extreme pressure on Germany, as we were unable to effect the annulment of those treaties. In the early summer of 1917 the possibility of an understanding _seemed_ to show itself on the horizon, but it was wrecked by the previously mentioned events. FOOTNOTES: [8] Helfferich's _exposé_ is reproduced in the Appendix. (See p. 288.) [9] At this time I did not know that my secret report to the Emperor was handed over to Herr Erzberger and not kept secret by him. (Later it was made public through the revelations of Count Wedel.) [10] The disclosures made by Count Wedel and Helfferich concerning Erzberger are only a link in the chain. CHAPTER VII WILSON Through the dwindling away of the inclination for peace in the enemy camp we were faced in the autumn of 1917 by the prospect either of concluding separate peace and accepting the many complicated consequences of a war with Germany and the ensuing mutilation of the Monarchy under the terms of the Pact of London, or else fighting on and, aided by our Allies, breaking the will for destruction of our enemies. If Russia was the one to let loose war, it was Italy who perpetually stood in the way of a peace of understanding, insisting upon obtaining under all circumstances the whole of the Austrian territory promised to her in 1915. The Entente during the war assigned the several parts to be enacted. France was to shed the most blood; England, besides her fabulous military action, to finance the war, together with America, and diplomatic affairs to be in Italy's hands. Far too little is known as yet, and will only later be public knowledge, as to the extent to which Italian diplomacy dominated affairs during the war. Our victories in Italy would only have changed the situation if the defeats that were suffered had led to an Italian revolution and a complete overthrow of the régime existing there. In other words, the Royal Government would not be influenced in its attitude by our victories. Even had our armies advanced much farther than they did, it would have held to its standpoint in the expectation that, perhaps not Italy herself, but her Allies, would secure final victory. Such was the situation in the autumn of 1917 when Wilson came forward with his Fourteen Points. The advantage of the Wilson programme in the eyes of the whole world was its violent contrast to the terms of the Pact of London. The right of self-determination for the nations had been utterly ignored in London by the allotment of German Tyrol to Italy. Wilson forbade this and declared that nations could not be treated against their will and moved hither and thither like the pieces in a game of chess. Wilson said that every solution of a territorial question arising out of this war must be arrived at in the interests and in favour of the peoples concerned, and not as a mere balancing or compromise of claims from rival sources; and further, that all clearly stated national claims would receive the utmost satisfaction that could be afforded them, without admitting new factors or the perpetuation of old disputes or oppositions, which in all probability would soon again disturb the peace of Europe and the whole world. A general peace, established on such a basis could be discussed--and more in the same strain. The publication of this clear and absolutely acceptable programme seemed from day to day to render possible a peaceful solution of the world conflict. In the eyes of millions of people this programme opened up a world of hope. A new star had risen on the other side of the ocean, and all eyes were turned in that direction. A mighty man had come forward and with one powerful act had upset the London resolutions and, in so doing, had reopened the gates for a peace of understanding. From the first moment the main question was, so it seemed, what hopes were there of Wilson's programme being carried out in London, Paris and, above all, in Rome? Secret information sent to me from the Entente countries seemed to suggest that the Fourteen Points were decidedly not drawn up in agreement with England, France and Italy. On the other hand I was, and still am, fully persuaded that Wilson had spoken honestly and sincerely and, as a matter of fact, believed that his programme could be carried out. Wilson's great miscalculation was his mistaken estimate of the actual distribution of power in the Entente on the one hand, and his surprising ignorance of national relationships in Europe, and especially in Austria-Hungary, on the other hand, which would greatly weaken his position and his influence on his Allies. There would be no difficulty in the Entente's cleverly introducing Wilson into the international labyrinth and there bewildering him with wrong directions, so that he could not find his way out again. To begin with, therefore, Wilson's theory brought us not a step further. The '67 settlement was proposed by a leading German-Magyar magnate in Austria-Hungary. Fifty years ago nationalism was much less developed than it is now. Nations were still sleeping--the Czechs, Slovaks and Southern Slavs, the Roumanians and Ruthenians had barely awakened to national life. Fifty years ago it was possible to distinguish between what was deceptive and what gave promise of lasting. The union between Italians and Germans only took effect with the coming of--or was perhaps the first sign of--the world-movement. At all events it was in the second half of the last century that we came within the radius of international politics. The world's racial problems found a centre in Austria-Hungary, whose affairs, therefore, became very prominent. A chemist can enclose in his retorts different substances and observe how, following the eternal laws of nature, the processes of nature take place. In a similar way during past decades the effect of unsolved racial antagonisms might have been studied within the Habsburg Monarchy and the inevitable explosion anticipated, instead of its being allowed to culminate in the world war. In putting forward his Fourteen Points Mr. Wilson obviously felt the necessity of settling the world problem of nationality and recognised that the Habsburg Monarchy, once arranged and settled, could serve as a model to the world, as hitherto it had afforded a terrifying example. But to begin with, he overlooked the fact that in the settling of national questions there must be neither adversary nor ally, as those reflect passing differences, whereas the problem of nationality is a permanent one. He also ignored the fact that what applies to the Czechs applies also to Ireland, that the Armenians as well as the Ukrainians desire to live their own national life, and that the coloured peoples of Africa and India are human beings with the same rights as white people. He also failed to see that good will and the desire for justice are far from being sufficient in themselves to solve the problem of nationality. Thus it was that under his patronage, and presumably on the basis of the Fourteen Points, the question of nationality was not solved but simply turned round where not actually left untouched. If Germans and Magyars had hitherto been the dominating races they would now become the oppressed. By the terms settled at Versailles they were to be handed over to states of other nationality. Ten years hence, perhaps sooner, both groups of Powers as they exist at present will have fallen. Other constellations will have appeared and become dominant. The explosive power of unsolved questions will continue to take effect and within a measurable space of time again blow up the world. Mr. Wilson, who evidently was acquainted with the programme of the Pact of London, though not attaching sufficient importance to the national difficulties, probably hoped to be able to effect a compromise between the Italian policy of conquest and his own ideal policy. In this connection, however, no bridge existed between Rome and Washington. Conquests are made by right of the conqueror--such was Clemenceau's and Orlando's policy--or else the world is ruled on the principles of national justice, as Wilson wished it to be. This ideal, however, will not be attained--no ideal is attainable; but it will be brought very much nearer. Might or Right, the one alone can conquer. But Czechs, Poles and others cannot be freed while at the same time Tyrolese-Germans, Alsatian-Germans and Transylvanian-Hungarians are handed over to foreign states. It cannot be done from the point of view of justice or with any hope of its being permanent. Versailles and St. Germain have proved that it can be done by might, and as a temporary measure. The solution of the question of nationality was the point round which all Franz Ferdinand's political interests were centred during his lifetime. Whether he would have succeeded is another question, but he certainly did try. The Emperor Charles, too, was not averse to the movement. The Emperor Francis Joseph was too old and too conservative to make the experiment. His idea was _quieta non movere_. Without powerful help from outside any attempt during the war against the German-Magyar opposition would not have been feasible. Therefore, when Wilson came forward with his Fourteen Points, and in spite of the scepticism with which the message from Washington was received by the German public and here too, I at once resolved to take up the thread. I repeat that I never doubted the honourable and sincere intentions entertained by Wilson--nor do I doubt them now--but my doubts as to his powers of carrying them out were from the first very pronounced. It was obvious that Wilson, when conducting the war, was much stronger than when he took part in the Peace Conference. As long as fighting proceeded Wilson was master of the world. He had only to call back his troops from the European theatre of war and the Entente would be placed in a most difficult position. It has always been incomprehensible to me why the President of the United States did not have recourse to this strong pressure during this time in order to preserve his own war aims. The secret information that I received soon after the publication of the Fourteen Points led me to fear that Wilson, not understanding the situation, would fail to take any practical measures to secure respect for the regulations he had laid down, and that he underestimated France's, and particularly Italy's, opposition. The logical and practical consequences of the Wilson programme would have been the public annulment of the Pact of London; it must have been so for us to understand the principles on which we could enter upon peace negotiations. Nothing of that nature occurred, and the gap between Wilson's and Orlando's ideas of peace remained open. On January 24, 1918, in the Committee of the Austrian Delegation, I spoke publicly on the subject of the Fourteen Points and declared them to be--in so far as they applied to us and not to our Allies--a suitable basis for negotiations. Almost simultaneously we took steps to enlighten ourselves on the problem of how in a practical way the fourteen theoretical ideas of Wilson could be carried out. The negotiations were then by no means hopeless. Meanwhile the Brest negotiations were proceeding. Although that episode, which represented a victory for German militarism, cannot have been very encouraging for Wilson, he was wise enough to recognise that we were in an awkward position and that the charge brought against Germany that she was making hidden annexations did not apply to Vienna. On February 12--thus, _after_ the conclusion of the Brest peace--the President, in his speech to Congress, said: Count Czernin appears to have a clear understanding of the peace foundations and does not obscure their sense. He sees that an independent Poland composed of all the undeniably Polish inhabitants, the one bordering on the other, is a matter for European settlement and must be granted; further, that Belgium must be evacuated and restored, no matter what sacrifices and concessions it may involve; also that national desires must be satisfied, even in his own Empire, in the common interests of Europe and humanity. Though he is silent on certain matters more closely connected with the interests of his Allies than with Austria-Hungary, that is only natural, because he feels compelled under the circumstances to defer to Germany and Turkey. Recognising and agreeing with the important principles in question and the necessity of converting them into action, he naturally feels that Austria-Hungary, more easily than Germany, can concur with the war aims as expressed by the United States. He would probably have gone even further had he not been constrained to consider the Austro-Hungarian Alliance and the country's dependence on Germany. In the same speech the President goes on to say: Count Czernin's answer referring mainly to my speech of January 8 is couched in very friendly terms. He sees in my statements a sufficiently encouraging approach to the views of his own Government to justify his belief that they afford a basis for a thorough discussion by both Governments of the aims. And again: I must say Count Hertling's answer is very undecided and most confusing, full of equivocal sentences, and it is difficult to say what it aims at. It certainly is written in a very different tone from that of Count Czernin's speech and obviously with a very different object in view. There can be no doubt that when the head of a State at war with us speaks in such friendly terms of the Minister for Foreign Affairs, he has the best intentions of coming to an understanding. My efforts in this connection were interrupted by my dismissal. In these last weeks during which I remained in office the Emperor had definitely lost faith in me. This was not due to the Wilson question, nor yet was it the direct consequence of my general policy. A difference of opinion between certain persons in the Emperor's entourage and myself was the real reason. The situation became so strained as to make it unbearable. The forces that conspired against me convinced me that it would be impossible for me to gain my objective which, being of a very difficult nature, could not be obtained unless the Emperor gave me his full confidence. In spite of all the rumours and stories spread about me I do not intend to go into details unless I should be compelled to do so by accounts derived from reliable sources. I am still convinced to this day that morally I was perfectly right. I was wrong as to form, because I was neither clever nor patient enough to _bend_ the opposition, but would have _broken_ it, by reducing the situation to a case of "either--or". CHAPTER VIII IMPRESSIONS AND REFLECTIONS 1 In the autumn of 1917 I had a visit from a subject of a neutral state, who is a pronounced upholder of general disarmament and world pacifism. We began, of course, to discuss the theme of free competition in armaments, of militarism, which in England prevails on the sea and in Germany on land, and my visitor entered upon the various possibilities likely to occur when the war was at an end. He had no faith in the destruction of England, nor had I; but he thought it possible that France and Italy might collapse. The French and Italians could not possibly bear any heavier burdens than already were laid on them; in Paris and Rome, he thought, revolution was not far distant, and a fresh phase of the war would then ensue. England and America would continue to fight on alone, for ten, perhaps even twenty, years. England was not to be considered just a little island, but comprised Australia, India, Canada, and the sea. "_L'Angleterre est imbattable_," he repeated, and America likewise. On the other hand, the German army was also invincible. The secession of France and Italy would greatly hinder the cruel blockade, for the resources of those two countries--once they were conquered by the Central Powers--were very vast, and in that case he could not see any end to the war. Finally, the world would collapse from the general state of exhaustion. My visitor cited the fable in which two goats met on a narrow bridge; neither would give way to the other, and they fought until they both fell into the water and were drowned. The victory of one group as in previous wars, he continued, where the conqueror gleaned a rich harvest of gains and the vanquished had to bear all the losses, was out of the question in this present war. _Tout le monde perdra, et à la fin il n'y aura que des vaincus._ I often recalled that interview later. Much that was false and yet, as it seemed to me, much that was true lay in my friend's words. France and Italy did not break down; the end of the war came quicker than he thought; and the invincible Germany was defeated. And still I think that the conclusions he arrived at came very near the truth. The conquerors' finances are in a very precarious state, particularly in Italy and France; unrest prevails; wages are exorbitant; discontent is general; the phantom of Bolshevism leers at them; and they live in the hope that the defeated Central Powers will have to pay, and they will thus be saved. It was set forth in the peace terms, but _ultra posse nemo tenetur_, and the future will show to what extent the Central Powers can fulfil the conditions dictated to them. Since the opening of the Peace Congress at Versailles continuous war in Europe has been seen: Russians against the whole world, Czechs against Hungarians, Roumanians against Hungarians, Poles against Ukrainians, Southern Slavs against Germans, Communists against Socialists. Three-fourths of Europe is turned into a witch's cauldron where everything is concocted except work and production, and it is futile to ask how this self-lacerated Europe will be able to find the war expenses laid upon her. According to human reckoning, the conquerors cannot extract even approximate compensation for their losses from the defeated states, and their victory will terminate with a considerable deficit. If that be the case, then my visitor will be right--there will only be the vanquished. If our plan in 1917, namely, Germany to cede Alsace-Lorraine to France in exchange for the annexation of all Poland, together with Galicia, and all states to disarm; if that plan had been accepted in Berlin and sanctioned by the Entente--unless the _non possumus_ in Berlin and opposition in Rome to a change in the Pact of London had hindered any action--it seems to me the advantage would not only have been on the side of the Central Powers. Pyrrhus also conquered at Asculum. * * * * * My visitor was astonished at Vienna. The psychology of no city that he had seen during the war could compare with that of Vienna. An amazing apathy prevailed. In Paris there was a passionate demand for Alsace-Lorraine; in Berlin the contrary was demanded just as eagerly; in England the destruction of Germany was the objective; in Sofia the conquest of the Dobrudsha; in Rome they clamoured for all possible and impossible things; in Vienna nothing at all was demanded. In Cracow they called for a Great Poland; in Budapest for an unmolested Hungary; in Prague for a united Czech State; and in Innsbruck the descendants of Andreas Hofer were fighting as they did in his day for their sacred land, Tyrol. In Vienna they asked only for peace and quiet. Old men and children would fight the arch-enemy in Tyrol, but if the Italians were to enter Vienna and bring bread with them they would be received with shouts of enthusiasm. And yet Berlin and Innsbruck were just as hungry as Vienna. _C'est une ville sans âme._ My visitor compared the Viennese to a pretty, gay, and frivolous woman, whose aim in life is pleasure and only pleasure. She must dance, sing, and enjoy life, and will do so under any circumstances--_sans âme_. This pleasure-loving good nature of the Viennese has its admirable points. For instance, all enemy aliens were better treated in Vienna than anywhere else. Not the slightest trace of enmity was shown to those who were the first to attack and then starve the city. Stronger than anything else in Vienna was the desire for sensation, pleasure, and a gay life. My friend once saw a piece acted at one of the theatres in Vienna called, I believe, _Der Junge Medardus_. The scene is laid during the occupation of Vienna by Napoleon. Viennese citizens condemned to death for intriguing with the enemy are led away by the French. In a most thrilling scene weeping women and children bid them farewell. A vast crowd witnesses the affair. A boy suddenly rushes in shouting: "Napoleon is coming." The crowd hurries away to see him, and cries of "Long live Napoleon" are heard in the distance. Such was Vienna a hundred years ago, and it is still the same. _Une ville sans âme._ I pass on the criticism without comment. 2 In different circles which justly and unjustly intervened in politics during my time of office, the plan was suggested of driving a wedge between North and South Germany, and converting the latter to the peaceful policy of Vienna in contradistinction to Prussian militarism. The plan was a faulty one from the very first. To begin with, as already stated, the most pronounced obstacle to peace was not only the Prussian spirit, but the Entente programme for our disruption, which a closer connection with Bavaria and Saxony would not have altered. Secondly, Austria-Hungary, obviously falling more and more to pieces, formed no point of attraction for Munich and Dresden, who, though not Prussian, yet were German to the very backbone. The vague and irresponsible plan of returning to the conditions of the period before 1866 was an anachronism. Thirdly and chiefly, all experiments were dangerous which might create the impression in the Entente that the Quadruple Alliance was about to be dissolved. In a policy of that nature executive ability was of supreme importance, and that was exactly what was usually lacking. The plan was not without good features. The appointment of the Bavarian Count Hertling to be Imperial Chancellor was not due to Viennese influence, though a source of the greatest pleasure to us, and the fact of making a choice that satisfied Vienna played a great part with the Emperor William. Two Bavarians, Hertling and Kühlmann, had taken over the leadership of the German Empire, and they, apart from their great personal qualities, presented a certain natural counter-balance to Prussian hegemony through their Bavarian origin; but only so far as it was still possible in general administration which then was in a disturbed state. But farther they could not go without causing injury. Count Hertling and I were on very good terms. This wise and clear-sighted old man, whose only fault was that he was too old and physically incapable of offering resistance, would have saved Germany, if she possibly could have been saved, in 1917. In the rushing torrent that whirled her away to her fall, he found no pillar to which he could cling. Latterly his sight began to fail and give way. He suffered from fatigue, and the conferences and councils lasting often for hours and hours were beyond his strength. CHAPTER IX POLAND 1 By letters patent November 5, 1916, both the Emperors declared Poland's existence as a Kingdom. When I came into office, I found the situation to be that the Poles were annoyed with my predecessor because, they declared, Germany had wanted to cede the newly created kingdom of Poland to us, and Count Burian had rejected the offer. Apparently there is some misunderstanding in this version of the case, as Burian says it is not correctly rendered. There were three reasons that made the handling of the Polish question one of the greatest difficulty. The first was the totally different views of the case held by competent individuals of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. While the Austrian Ministry was in favour of the so-called Austro-Polish solution, Count Tisza was strongly opposed to it. His standpoint was that the political structure of the Monarchy ought not to undergo any change through the annexation of Poland, and that Poland eventually might be joined to the Monarchy as an Austrian province, but never as a partner in a tripartite Monarchy. A letter that he wrote to me from Budapest on February 22, 1917, was characteristic of his train of thought. It was as follows: YOUR EXCELLENCY,--Far be it from me to raise a discussion on questions which to-day are without actual value and most probably will not assume any when peace is signed. On the other hand, I wish to avoid the danger that might arise from mistaken conclusions drawn from the fact that I accepted without protest certain statements that appeared in the correspondence of our diplomatic representatives. Guided exclusively by this consideration, I beg to draw the attention of Your Excellency to the fact that the so-called Austro-Polish solution of the Polish question has repeatedly (as in telegram Nr. 63 from Herr von Ugron) been referred to as the "tripartite solution." With reference to this appellation I am compelled to point out the fact that in the first period of the war, at a time when the Austro-Polish solution was in the foreground, all competent circles in the Monarchy were agreed that the annexation of Poland to the Monarchy must on no account affect its _dualistic structure_. This principle was distinctly recognised by the then leaders in the Ministry for Foreign Affairs, as also by both Prime Ministers; it was also recognised and sanctioned by His late Majesty the Emperor and King Francis Joseph. I trust I may assume that this view is shared by Your Excellency; in any case, and to avoid misunderstanding, I must state that the Royal Hungarian Government considers this to be the ground-pillar of its entire political system, from which, in no circumstances, would it be in a position to deviate. It would, in our opinion, be fatal for the whole Monarchy. The uncertainty of the situation lies in the Austrian State, where the German element, after the separation of Galicia, would be in a very unsafe position, confronted by powerful tendencies that easily might gain the upper hand should a relatively small number of the Germans, whether from social-democratic, political-reactionary or doctrinary reasons, separate from the other German parties. The establishment of the new Polish element as a third factor with Austria-Hungary in our constitutional organism would represent an element so unsafe, and would be combined with such risks for the further development of the policy of the Habsburg Great Power, that, in view of the position of the Monarchy as such, I should feel the greatest anxiety lest the new and unreliable Russian-Polish element, so different from us in many respects, should play too predominant a part. The firm retention of dualism, according to which half the political influence on general subjects rests with Hungary, and _the Hungarian and German element in common furnish a safe majority_ in the delegation, alone can secure for the dynasty and the two States under its sceptre an adequate guarantee for the future. There is no other factor in the Monarchy whose every vital interest is so bound up in the dynasty and in the position of the Monarchy as a Great Power, as Hungary. The few people whose clear perception of that fact may have become dulled during the last peaceful decade must have been brought to a keener realisation of it by the present war. The preservation of the Danube Monarchy as a vigorous and active Great Power is in the truest sense of the word a vital condition for the existence of the Hungarian State. It was fatal for all of us that this willing people, endowed with so many administrative qualities, ready to sacrifice themselves for all State and national aims, have for centuries past not been able to devote themselves to the common cause. The striving for a solution of the world racial problem and the necessity of combining the responsibilities of a Great Power with the independence of the Hungarian State have caused heavy trials and century-long friction and fighting. Hungary's longing for independence did not take the form of efforts for dissolution. The great leaders in our struggle for liberty did not attack the continuance of the Habsburg Empire as a Great Power. And even during the bitter trials of the struggle they never followed any further aim than to obtain from the Crown a guarantee for their chartered rights. Hungary, free and independent, wished to remain under the sceptre of the Habsburgs; she did not wish to come under any foreign rule, but to be a free nation governed by her own king and her own laws and not subordinate to any other ruler. This principle was repeatedly put forward in solemn form (in the years 1723 and 1791), and finally, in the agreement of 1867, a solution was found which endowed it with life and ensured its being carried out in a manner favourable for the position of a great nation. In the period of preparation for the agreement of 1867 Hungary was a poor and, comparatively speaking, small part of the then Monarchy, and the great statesmen of Hungary based their administrative plan on dualism and equality as being the only possible way for ensuring that Hungarian independence, recognised and appealed to on many occasions, should materialise in a framework of modern constitutional practice. A political structure for the Monarchy which would make it possible for Hungary to be outvoted on the most important questions of State affairs, and therefore subject to a foreign will, would again have nullified all that had been achieved after so much striving and suffering, so much futile waste of strength for the benefit of us all, which even in this war, too, would have brought its blessings. All those, therefore, who have always stood up firmly and loyally for the agreement of 1867 must put their whole strength into resisting any tripartite experiments. I would very much regret if, in connection with this question, differences of opinion should occur among the present responsible leaders of the Monarchy. In view of this I considered it unnecessary to give publicity to a question that is not pressing. At all events, in dealing with the Poles, all expressions must be avoided which, in the improbable, although not impossible, event of a resumption of the Austro-Polish solution, might awaken expectations in them which could only lead to the most complicated consequences. The more moderate Poles had made up their minds that the dualistic structure of the Monarchy would have to remain intact, and that the annexation of Poland by way of a junction with the Austrian State, with far-reaching autonomy to follow, would have to be the consequence. It would therefore be extremely imprudent and injurious to awaken fresh aspirations, the realisation of which seems very doubtful, not only from a Hungarian point of view but from that which concerns the future of the Monarchy. I beg Your Excellency to accept the expression of my highest esteem. TISZA. _Budapest, February 22, 1917._ The question as to what was to be Poland's future position with regard to the Monarchy remained still unsolved. I continued to press the point that Poland should be annexed as an independent state. Tisza wanted it to be a province. When the Emperor dismissed him, although he was favoured by the majority of the Parliament, it did not alter the situation in regard to the Polish question, as Wekerle, in this as in almost all other questions, had to adopt Tisza's views; otherwise, he would have been in the minority. The actual reason of Tisza's dismissal was not the question of electoral reforms, as his successors could only act according to Tisza's instructions. For, as leader of the majority, which he continued to be even after his dismissal, no electoral reforms could be carried out in opposition to his will. Tisza thought that the Emperor meditated putting in a coalition majority against him, which he considered quite logical, though not agreeable. The next difficulty was the attitude of the Germans towards Poland. At the occupation of Poland we were already unfairly treated, and the Germans had appropriated the greater part of the country. Always and everywhere, they were the stronger on the battlefield, and the consequence was that they claimed the lion's share of all the successes gained. This was in reality quite natural, but it greatly added to all diplomatic and political activities, which were invariably prejudiced and hindered by military facts. When I entered upon office, Germany's standpoint was that she had a far superior right to Poland, and that the simplest solution would be for us to evacuate the territory we had occupied. It was, of course, obvious that I could not accept such a proposal, and we held firmly to the point that under no circumstances would our troops leave Lublin. After much controversy, the Germans agreed, _tant bien que mal_, to this solution. The further development of the affair showed that the German standpoint went through many changes. In general, it fluctuated between two extremes: either Poland must unite herself to Germany--the German-Polish solution, or else vast portions of her territory must be ceded to Germany to be called frontier adjustments, and what remained would be either for us or for Poland herself. Neither solution could be accepted by us. The first one for this reason, that the Polish question being in the foreground made that of Galicia very acute, as it would have been quite impossible to retain Galicia in the Monarchy when separated from the rest of Poland. We were obliged to oppose the German-Polish solution, not from any desire for conquest, but to prevent the sacrifice of Galicia for no purpose. The second German suggestion was just as impossible to carry out, because Poland, crippled beyond recognition by the frontier readjustment, even though united with Galicia, would have been so unsatisfactory a factor that there would never have been any prospect of harmonious dealings with her. The third difficulty was presented by the Poles themselves, as they naturally wished to secure the greatest possible profit out of their release by the Central Powers, even though it did not contribute much to their future happiness so far as military support was concerned. There were many different parties among them: first of all, one for the Entente; a second, Bilinski's party; above all, one for the Central Powers, especially when we gained military successes. On the whole, Polish policy was to show their hand as little as possible to any particular group, and in the end range themselves on the side of the conquerors. It must be admitted that these tactics were successful. In addition to these difficulties, there prevailed almost always in Polish political circles a certain nervous excitement, which made it extremely difficult to enter into any calm and essential negotiations. At the very beginning, misunderstandings occurred between the Polish leaders and myself with regard to what I proposed to do; misunderstandings which, toward the end of my term of office, developed into the most bitter enmity towards me on the part of the Poles. On February 10, 1917, a whole year before Brest-Litovsk, I received the news from Warsaw that Herr von Bilinski, apparently misunderstanding my standpoint, evolved from the facts, considered that hopes represented promises, and in so doing raised Polish expectations to an unwarranted degree. I telegraphed thereupon to our representative as follows: _February 16, 1917._ I have informed Herr von Bilinski, together with other Poles, that it is impossible in the present unsettled European situation to make, on the whole, any plans for the future of Poland. I have told them that I sympathise with the Austro-Polish solution longed for by all our Poles, but that I am not in the position to say whether this solution will be attainable, though I am equally unable to foretell the opposite. Finally, I have also declared that our whole policy where Poland is concerned can only consist in our leaving a door open for all future transactions. I added that our representative must quote my direct orders in settling the matter. In January, 1917, a conference was held respecting the Polish question: a conference which aimed at laying down a broad line of action for the policy to be adopted. I first of all referred to the circumstances connected with the previously-mentioned German request for us to evacuate Lublin, and explained my reasons for not agreeing to the demand. I pointed out that it did not seem probable to me that the war would end with a dictated peace on our side, and that, with reference to Poland, we should not be able to solve the Polish question without the co-operation of the Entente, and that there was not much object so long as the war lasted in endeavouring to secure _faits accomplis_. The main point was that we remain in the country, and on the conclusion of peace enter into negotiations with the Entente and the Allies to secure a solution of the Austro-Polish question. That should be the gist of our policy. Count Tisza spoke after me and agreed with me that we must not yield to the German demand for our evacuation of Lublin. As regards the future, the Hungarian Prime Minister stated that he had always held the view that we should cede to Germany our claim to Poland in exchange for economic and financial compensation; but that, at the present time, he did not feel so confident about it. The conditions then prevailing were unbearable, chiefly owing to the variableness of German policy, and he, Count Tisza, returned to his former, oft-repeated opinion that we should strive as soon as possible to withdraw with honour out of the affair; impose no conditions that would lead to further friction, but the surrendering to Germany of our share in Poland in exchange for economic compensation. The Austrian Prime Minister, Count Clam, opposed this from the Austrian point of view, which supported the union of all the Poles under the Habsburg sceptre as being the one and only desirable solution. The feeling during the debate was that the door must be closed against the Austro-Polish proposals, and that, in view of the impossibility of an immediate definite solution, we must adhere firmly to the policy that rendered possible the union of all the Poles under the Habsburg rule. After Germany's refusal of the proposal to accept Galicia as compensation for Alsace-Lorraine, this programme was adhered to through various phases and vicissitudes until the ever-increasing German desire for frontier readjustment created a situation which made the achievement of the Austro-Polish project very doubtful. Unless we could secure a Poland which, thanks to the unanimity of the great majority of all Poles, would willingly and cheerfully join the Monarchy, the Austro-Polish solution would not have been a happy one, as in that case we should only have increased the number of discontented elements in the Monarchy, already very high, by adding fresh ones to them. As it proved impossible to break the resistance put up by General Ludendorff, the idea presented itself at a later stage to strive for the annexation of Roumania instead of Poland. It was a return to the original idea of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the union of Roumania with Transylvania, closely linked to the Monarchy. In that case we should have lost Galicia to Poland, but a certain compensation would have been conceded to us in Roumania with her corn and oil springs, and for the Monarchy, as for the Poles, it appeared better to unite the latter collectively with Germany rather than to divide them, as suggested in the Vienna-Berlin dispute. The plan for the annexation of Roumania presented wellnigh insurmountable internal difficulties. Owing to her geographical position, Roumania ought naturally to be annexed to Hungary. Tisza, who was not in favour of the plan, would, nevertheless, have agreed to it if the annexed country had been administered from Budapest and in the Magyar spirit, which meant that it would be incorporated in Hungary. This, for obvious reasons, would involve the failure of the plan, for the Roumanians would gain no advantage from the annexation if it was to be at the sacrifice of their national independence. On the other hand, the Austrian Ministry raised quite justifiable objections to the suggestion of a future combination that would add a rich and vast country to Hungary, while Austria would be reduced in proportion, and compensation in one or other form was demanded. Another, but tentative, plan was to make over Bosnia and the Herzegovina definitely by way of compensation to Austria. All these ideas and plans, however, were of a transitory nature, evoked by the constantly recurring difficulties in Berlin and Warsaw, and they invariably fell through when it was seen that the obstacles arising from dualism were not to be overcome. The original Austro-Polish solution was taken up again, although it was impossible to extort from the Germans a definite statement as to a reasonable western frontier for Poland. In the very last term of my office the Roumanian plan again came up, partly owing to the bitter feelings of the Poles on the Cholm question, and partly owing to the claims made by Germany, which rendered the Austro-Polish solution impossible. Simultaneously with these efforts, a plan for the future organisation of the Monarchy was being considered. The Emperor adhered to the correct standpoint, as I still consider it to be, that the structure of the Monarchy, after an endurable issue from the war, would have to be altered, and reconstruction on a far more pronounced national basis be necessary. As applied to the Poles, this project would entail the dividing of East and West Galicia, and an independent position for the Ruthenian Poles. When at Brest-Litovsk, under the pressure of the hunger riots that were beginning, I refused to agree to the Ukrainian demands, but consented to submit the question of the division of Galicia to the Austrian Crown Council. I was impelled thereto by the conviction that we were adhering strictly to the programme as it had been planned for the Monarchy. I will give fuller details respecting this question in the next chapter, but will merely relate the following incident as an example to show the degree of hostile persecution to which I was exposed. The rumour was spread on all sides that the Emperor had told the Poles that "I had concluded peace with the Ukraine without his knowledge and against his will." It is quite out of the question that the Emperor can have made such a statement, as the peace conditions at Kieff were a result of a council convoked _ad hoc_, where--as the protocol proves--the Emperor and Dr. von Seidler were responsible for the terms. The great indignation of the Poles at my conduct at Brest-Litovsk was quite unfounded. I never promised the Poles that they were to have the Cholm district, and never alluded to any definite frontiers. Had I done so the capable political leaders in Poland would never have listened to me, as they knew very well that the frontiers, only in a very slight degree, depended on the decisions at Vienna. If we lost the war we had nothing more to say in the matter; if a peace of agreement was concluded, then Berlin would be the strongest side, having occupied the largest portion of the country; the question would then have to be decided at the general Conference. I always told the Polish leaders that I hoped to secure a Poland thoroughly satisfied, also with respect to her frontier claims, and there were times when we seemed to be very near the accomplishment of such an aim; but I never concealed the fact that there were many influences at work restricting my wishes and keeping them very much subdued. The partition of Galicia was an internal Austrian question. Dr. von Seidler took up the matter most warmly, and at the Council expressed the hope of being able to carry out these measures by parliamentary procedure and against the opposition of the Poles. I will allude to this question also in my next chapter. Closely connected with the Polish question was the so-called Central-European project. For obvious and very comprehensible reasons Germany was keenly interested in a scheme for closer union. I was always full of the idea of turning these important concessions to account at the right moment as compensation for prospective German sacrifices, and thus promoting a peace of understanding. During the first period of my official activity, I still hoped to secure a revision of the Pact of London. I hoped, as already mentioned, that the Entente would not keep to the resolution adopted for the mutilation of the Monarchy, and I did not, therefore, approach the Central-European question closer; had I raised it, it would greatly have complicated our position with regard to Paris and London. When I was compelled later to admit that the Entente kept firmly to the decision that we were to be divided in any case, and that any change in their purpose would only be effected, if at all, by military force, I endeavoured to work out the Central-European plan in detail, and to reserve the concessions ready to be made to Germany until the right moment had arrived to make the offer. In this connection it seemed to me that the Customs Union was unfeasible, at any rate at first; but on the other hand, a new and closer commercial treaty would be desirable, and a closer union of the armies would offer no danger; it was hoped greatly to reduce them after the war. I was convinced that a peace of understanding would bring about disarmament, and that the importance of military settlements would be influenced thereby. Also, that the conclusion of peace would bring with it different relations between all states, and that, therefore, the political and military decisions to be determined in the settlement with Germany were not of such importance as those relating to economic questions. The drawing up of this programme was met, however, by the most violent opposition on the part of the Emperor. He was particularly opposed to all military _rapprochement_. When the attempt to approach the question failed through the resistance from the crown, I arranged on my own initiative for a debate on the economic question. The Emperor then wrote me a letter in which he forbade any further dealings in the matter. I answered his letter by a business report, pointing out the necessity of continuing the negotiations. The question then became a sore point between the Emperor and myself. He did not give his permission for further negotiations, but I continued them notwithstanding. The Emperor knew of it, but did not make further allusion to the matter. The vast claims put forward by the Germans made the negotiations extremely difficult, and with long intervals and at a very slow pace they dragged on until I left office. Afterwards the Emperor went with Burian to the German Headquarters. Following that, the Salzburg negotiations were proceeded with and, apparently, at greater speed. CHAPTER X BREST-LITOVSK 1 In the summer of 1917 we received information which seemed to suggest a likelihood of realising the contemplated peace with Russia. A report dated June 13, 1917, which came to me from a neutral country, ran as follows: The Russian Press, bourgeois and socialistic, reveals the following state of affairs: At the front and at home bitter differences of opinion are rife as to the offensive against the Central Powers demanded by the Allies and now also energetically advocated by Kerenski in speeches throughout the country. The Bolsheviks, as also the Socialists under the leadership of Lenin, with their Press, are taking a definite stand against any such offensive. But a great part of the Mensheviks as well, _i.e._ Tscheidse's party, to which the present Ministers Tseretelli and Skobeleff belong, is likewise opposed to the offensive, and the lack of unanimity on this question is threatening the unity of the party, which has only been maintained with difficulty up to now. A section of the Mensheviks, styled Internationalists from their trying to re-establish the old _Internationale_, also called _Zimmerwalder_ or _Kienthaler_, and led by Trotski, or, more properly, Bronstein, who has returned from America, with Larin, Martow, Martynoz, etc., returned from Switzerland, are on this point, as with regard to the entry of Menshevik Social Democrats into the Provisional Government, decidedly opposed to the majority of the party. And for this reason Leo Deutsch, one of the founders of the Marxian Social Democracy, has publicly withdrawn from the party, as being too little patriotic for his views and not insisting on final victory. He is, with Georgei Plechanow, one of the chief supporters of the Russian "Social Patriots," which group is termed, after their Press organ, the "Echinstvo" group, but is of no importance either as regards numbers or influence. Thus it comes about that the official organ of the Mensheviks, the _Rabocaja Gazeta_, is forced to take up an intermediate position, and publishes, for instance, frequent articles against the offensive. There is then the Social Revolutionary party, represented in the Cabinet by the Minister of Agriculture, Tschernow. This is, perhaps, the strongest of all the Russian parties, having succeeded in leading the whole of the peasant movement into its course--at the Pan-Russian Congress the great majority of the peasants' deputies were Social Revolutionaries, and no Social Democrat was elected to the executive committee of the Peasants' Deputies' Council. A section of this party, and, it would seem, the greater and more influential portion, is definitely opposed to any offensive. This is plainly stated in the leading organs of the party, _Delo Naroda_ and _Zemlja i Wolja_. Only a small and apparently uninfluential portion, grouped round the organ _Volja Naroda_, faces the bourgeois Press with unconditional demands for an offensive to relieve the Allies, as does the Plechanow group. Kerenski's party, the Trudoviks, as also the related People's Socialists, represented in the Cabinet by the Minister of Food, Peschechonow, are still undecided whether to follow Kerenski here or not. Verbal information, and utterances in the Russian Press, as, for instance, the _Retch_, assert that Kerenski's health gives grounds for fearing a fatal catastrophe in a short time. The official organ of the Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies' Council, the _Isvestia_, on the other hand, frequently asserts with great emphasis that an offensive must unquestionably be made. It is characteristic that a speech made by the Minister of Agriculture, Tschernow, to the Peasants' Congress, was interpreted as meaning that he was opposed to the offensive, so that he was obliged to justify himself to his colleagues in the Ministry and deny that such had been his meaning. While, then, people at home are seriously divided on the question of an offensive, the men at the front appear but little inclined to undertake any offensive. This is stated by all parties in the Russian Press, the symptoms being regarded either with satisfaction or with regret. The infantry in particular are against the offensive; the only enthusiasm is to be found among the officers, in the cavalry or a part of it, and the artillery. It is characteristic also that the Cossacks are in favour of war. These, at any rate, have an ulterior motive, in that they hope by success at the front to be able ultimately to overthrow the revolutionary régime. For there is this to be borne in mind: that while most of the Russian peasants have no landed property exceeding five deshatin, and three millions have no land at all, every Cossack owns forty deshatin, an unfair distinction which is constantly being referred to in all discussion of the land question. This is a sufficient ground for the isolated position of the Cossacks in the Revolution, and it was for this reason also that they were formerly always among the most loyal supporters of the Tsar. Extremely characteristic of the feeling at the front are the following details: At the sitting on May 30 of the Pan-Russian Congress, Officers' Delegates, a representative of the officers of the 3rd Elizabethengrad Hussars is stated, according to the _Retch_ of May 1, to have given, in a speech for the offensive, the following characteristic statement: "You all know to what extremes the disorder at the front has reached. The infantry cut the wires connecting them with their batteries and declare that the soldiers will not remain _more than one month_ at the front, but will go home." It is very instructive also to read the report of a delegate from the front, who had accompanied the French and English majority Socialists at the front. This report was printed in the _Rabocaja Gazeta_, May 18 and 19--this is the organ of the Mensheviks, i.e. that of Tscheidse, Tseretelli and Skobeleff. These Entente Socialists at the front were told with all possible distinctness that the Russian army could not and would not fight for the imperialistic aims of England and France. The state of the transport, provisions and forage supplies, as also the danger to the achievements of the Revolution by further war, demanded a speedy cessation of hostilities. The English and French Socialist delegates were said to be not altogether pleased at this state of feeling at the front. And it was further demanded of them that they should undertake to make known the result of their experience in Russia on the Western front, i.e. in France. There was some very plain speaking, too, with regard to America: representatives from the Russian front spoke openly of America's policy of exploitation towards Europe and the Allies. It was urged then that an international Socialist conference should be convened at the earliest possible moment, and supported by the English and French majority Socialists. At one of the meetings at the front, the French and English Socialists were given the following reply: "Tell your comrades that we await definite declarations from your Governments and peoples renouncing conquest and indemnities. We will shed no drop of blood for Imperialists, whether they be Russians, Germans or English. We await the speediest agreement between the workers of all countries for the termination of the war, which is a thing shameful in itself, and will, if continued, prove disastrous to the Russian Revolution. We will not conclude any separate peace, but tell your people to let us know their aims as soon as possible." According to the report, the French Socialists were altogether converted to this point of view. This also appears to be the case, from the statements with regard to the attitude of Cachin and Moutet at the French Socialist Congress. The English, on the other hand, were immovable, with the exception of Sanders, who inclined somewhat toward the Russian point of view. Private information reaching the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in this country states that shots were fired at M. Thomas, the Minister of Munitions, in the course of one of his war speeches at the Russian front. The disorganisation at the front is described by an officer or soldier at the front in the same organ, the _Rabocaja Gazeta_ for May 26, as follows: "The passionate desire for peace, peace of whatever kind, aye, even a peace costing the loss of ten governments (i.e. districts), is growing ever more plainly evident. Men dream of it passionately, even though it is not yet spoken of at meetings and in revolutions, even though all conscious elements of the army fight against this party that long for peace." And to paralyse this, there can be but one way: let the soldiers see the democracy fighting emphatically for peace and the end of the war. The Pan-Russian Congress of Workers' and Soldiers' Delegates' Councils and the Army Organisation at the front in St. Petersburg June 1-14 took for its first point in the order of the day the following: "The War, questions of defence and the struggle for peace." At this time the Government would doubtless have to give a declaration with regard to the answer already received at the beginning of June from the Allies as to their war aims. This congress will also probably decide definitely upon the nomination for the Stockholm Conference and appoint delegates. Point 4 deals with the question of nationality. An open conflict had broken out between the Petersburg Workers' and Soldiers' Deputy Councils and the Ukrainian Soldiers' Congress, sitting at Kieff, on account of the formation of an Ukrainian army. The appointment of an "Ukrainian Army General Committee" further aggravated the conflict. With regard to the increasing internal confusion, the growing seriousness of the nationality dispute, the further troubles in connection with agricultural and industrial questions, a detailed report dealing separately with these heads will be forwarded later. Towards the end of November I wrote to one of my friends the following letter, which I have given _in extenso_, as it shows faithfully my estimate of the situation at the time: _Vienna, November 17, 1917._ MY DEAR FRIEND,--After many days, full of trouble, annoyance and toil, I write to you once more in order to answer your very noteworthy observations; to be in contact with you again turns my thoughts into other channels, and enables me, for the time at least, to forget the wretchedness of every day. You have heard, you say, that matters are not going so well between the Emperor and myself, and you are sorry for this. I am sorry myself, if for no other reason than that it increases the friction of the daily working machine to an insupportable degree. As soon as a thing of this sort leaks out--and it does so fast enough--all enemies, male and female, rush in with renewed strength, making for the vulnerable point, in the hope of securing my overthrow. These good people are like carrion vultures--I myself am the carrion--they can scent from afar that there is something for them to do, and come flying to the spot. And the lies they invent and the intrigues they contrive, with a view to increasing existing differences--really, they are worthy of admiration. You ask, who are these inveterate enemies of mine? Well, first of all, those whom you yourself conjecture. And, secondly, the enemies whom every Minister has, the numbers of those who would fain be in his place. Finally, a crowd of political mountebanks from the Jockey Club, who are disgusted because they had hoped for some personal advantage through my influence, and I have ignored them. No. 3 is a comfortingly negligible quantity, No. 2 are dangerous, but No. 1 are deadly. In any case, then, my days are numbered. Heaven be thanked, relief is not far off. If only I could now settle things with Russia quickly, and thus perhaps secure the possibility of a peace all round. All reports from Russia seem to point to the fact that the Government there is determined on peace, and peace as speedily as possible. But the Germans are now full of confidence. If they can throw their massed forces against the West, they have no doubt of being able to break through, take Paris and Calais, and directly threaten England. Such a success, however, could only lead to peace if Germany could be persuaded to renounce all plans of conquest. I at any rate cannot believe that the Entente, after losing Paris and Calais, would refuse to treat for peace as _inter pares_--it would at least be necessary to make every endeavour in that direction. Up to now Hindenburg has done all that he promised, so much we must admit, and the whole of Germany believes in his forthcoming success in the West--always taking for granted, of course, the freeing of the Eastern front; that is to say, peace with Russia. The Russian peace, then, _may_ prove the first step on the way to the peace of the world. I have during the last few days received reliable information about the Bolsheviks. Their leaders are almost all of them Jews, with altogether fantastic ideas, and I do not envy the country that is governed by them. From our point of view, however, the most interesting thing about them is that they are anxious to make peace, and in this respect they do not seem likely to change, for they cannot carry on the war. In the Ministry here, three groups are represented: one declines to take Lenin seriously, regarding him as an ephemeral personage, the second does not take this view at all, but is nevertheless unwilling to treat with a revolutionary of this sort, and the third consists, as far as I am aware, of myself alone, and I _will_ treat with him, despite the possibly ephemeral character of his position and the certainty of revolution. The briefer Lenin's period of power the more need to act speedily, for no subsequent Russian Government will recommence the war--and I cannot take a Russian Metternich as my partner when there is none to be had. The Germans are hesitating--they do not altogether like the idea of having any dealings with Lenin, possibly also from the reasons already mentioned; they are inconsistent in this, as is often the case. The German military party--which, as everyone knows, holds the reins of policy in Germany entirely--have, as far as I can see, done all they could to overthrow Kerenski and set up "something else" in his place. Now, the something else is there, and is ready to make peace; obviously, then, one must act, even though the party concerned is not such as one would have chosen for oneself. It is impossible to get any exact information about these Bolsheviks; that is to say, there is plenty of information available, but it is contradictory. The way they begin is this: everything in the least reminiscent of work, wealth, and culture must be destroyed, and the bourgeoisie exterminated. Freedom and equality seem no longer to have any place on their programme; only a bestial suppression of all but the proletariat itself. The Russian bourgeois class, too, seems almost as stupid and cowardly as our own, and its members let themselves be slaughtered like sheep. True, this Russian Bolshevism is a peril to Europe, and if we had the power, besides securing a tolerable peace for ourselves, to force other countries into a state of law and order, then it would be better to have nothing to do with such people as these, but to march on Petersburg and arrange matters there. But we have not the power; peace at the earliest possible moment is necessary for our own salvation, and we cannot obtain peace unless the Germans get to Paris--and they cannot get to Paris unless their Eastern front is freed. That is the circle complete. All this the German military leaders themselves maintain, and it is altogether illogical of them now apparently to object to Lenin on personal grounds. I was unable to finish this letter yesterday, and now add this to-day. Yesterday another attempt was made, from a quarter which you will guess, to point out to me the advantage of a separate peace. I spoke to the Emperor about it, and told him that this would simply be shooting oneself for fear of death; that I could not take such a step myself, but would be willing to resign under some pretext or other, when he would certainly find men ready to make the attempt. The conference of London has determined on a division of the Monarchy, and no separate peace on our part would avail to alter that. The Roumanians, Serbians and Italians are to receive enormous compensation, we are to lose Trieste, and the remainder is to be broken up into separate states--Czechish, Polish, Hungarian and German. There will be very slight contact between these new states; in other words, a separate peace would mean that the Monarchy, having first been mutilated, would then be hacked to pieces. But until we arrive at this result, we must fight on, and that, moreover, _against_ Germany, which will, of course, make peace with Russia at once and occupy the Monarchy. The German generals will not be so foolish as to wait until the Entente has invaded Germany through Austria, but will take care to make _Austria itself the theatre of war_. So that instead of bringing the war to an end, we should be merely changing one opponent for another and delivering up provinces hitherto spared--such as Bohemia and Tyrol--to the fury of battle, only to be wrecked completely in the end. On the other hand, we might perhaps, in a few months' time, secure peace all round, with Germany as well--a tolerable peace of mutual understanding--always provided the German offensive turns out successful. The Emperor was more silent then. Among his entourage, one pulls this way, another that--and we gain nothing in that manner among the Entente, while we are constantly losing the confidence of Berlin. If a man wishes to go over to the enemy, then let him do it--_le remède sera pire que le mal_--but to be for ever dallying with the idea of treachery and adopting the pose without carrying it out in reality--this I cannot regard as prudent policy. I believe we could arrive at a tolerable peace of understanding; we should lose something to Italy, and should, of course, gain nothing in exchange. Furthermore, we should have to alter the entire structure of the Monarchy--after the fashion of the _fédération Danubienne_ proposed in France--and I am certainly rather at a loss to see how this can be done in face of the Germans and Hungarians. But I hope we may survive the war, and I hope also that they will ultimately revise the conditions of the London conference. Let but old Hindenburg once make his entry into Paris, and then the Entente _must_ utter the decisive word that they are willing to treat. But when that moment comes, I am firmly determined to do the utmost possible, to appeal publicly to the _peoples_ of the Central Powers and ask them if they prefer to fight on for conquest or if they will have peace. To settle with Russia as speedily as possible, then break through the determination of the Entente to exterminate us, and then to make peace--even at a loss--that is my plan and the hope for which I live. Naturally, after the capture of Paris, all "leading" men--with the exception of the Emperor Karl--will demand a "good" peace, and that we shall never get in any case. The odium of having "spoiled the peace" I will take upon myself. So, I hope, we may come out of it at last, albeit rather mauled. But the old days will never return. A new order will be born in throes and convulsions. I said so publicly some time back, in my Budapest speech, and it was received with disapproval practically on all sides. This has made a long letter after all, and it is late. _Lebe wohl_, and let me hear from you again soon.--In friendship as of old, yours (Signed) CZERNIN. With regard to the peace negotiations in Brest-Litovsk, I will leave my diary to speak for itself. Despite many erroneous views that may appear in the following notes, and various unimportant details, I have not abbreviated it at all, since it gives, in its present form, what I believe will be a clear picture of the development. "_December 19, 1917._--Departure from Vienna, Wednesday, 19th. "Four o'clock, Nordbahnhof. Found the party already assembled there: Gratz and Wiesner, Colloredo, Gautsch and Andrian, also Lieut. Field-Marshal Csicserics, and Major Fleck, Baden. "I took the opportunity on the journey to give Csicserics an idea of my intentions and the tactics to be pursued. I told him that in my opinion Russia would propose a _general_ peace, and that we must of course accept this proposal. I hoped that the first steps for a general peace would be taken at Brest, and not given up for a long time. Should the Entente not accept, then at least the way would be open for a separate peace. After that I had long discussions with Gratz and Wiesner, which took up more or less the whole day. "_December 20, 1917._--Arrived at Brest a few minutes past five. At the station were the Chief of Staff, General Hoffmann, with some ten of his suite, also the emissary Rosenberg and Merey with my party. I greeted them on the platform, and after a few words Merey went into the train with me to tell me what had happened during the past few days. On the whole, Merey takes a not unfavourable view of the situation, and believes that, unless something unforeseen crops up, we should succeed within a reasonable time in arranging matters satisfactorily. "At six o'clock I went to pay my visit to General Hoffmann; he gave me some interesting details as to the mentality of the Russian delegates, and the nature of the armistice he had so fortunately concluded. I had the impression that the General combined expert knowledge and energy with a good deal of calm and ability, but also not a little Prussian brutality, whereby he had succeeded in persuading the Russians, despite opposition at first, to agree to very favourable terms of truce. A little later, as arranged, Prince Leopold of Bavaria came in, and I had some talk with him on matters of no importance. "We then went to dinner, all together, including the whole staff of nearly 100 persons. The dinner presented one of the most remarkable pictures ever seen. The Prince of Bavaria presided. Next to the Prince sat the leader of the Russian delegation, a Jew called Joffe, recently liberated from Siberia; then came the generals and the other delegates. Apart from this Joffe, the most striking personality in the delegation is the brother-in-law of the Russian Foreign Minister, Trotski, a man named Kameneff, who, likewise liberated from prison during the Revolution, now plays a prominent part. The third delegate is Madame Bizenko, a woman with a comprehensive past. Her husband is a minor official; she herself took an early part in the revolutionary movement. Twelve years ago she murdered General Sacharow, the governor of some Russian city, who had been condemned to death by the Socialists for his energy. She appeared before the general with a petition, holding a revolver under her petticoat. When the general began to read she fired four bullets into his body, killing him on the spot. She was sent to Siberia, where she lived for twelve years, at first in solitary confinement, afterwards under somewhat easier conditions; she also owes her freedom to the Revolution. This remarkable woman learned French and German in Siberia well enough to read them, though she cannot speak them, not knowing how the words should be pronounced. She is the type of the educated Russian proletariat. Extremely quiet and reserved, with a curious determined set of the mouth, and eyes that flare up passionately at times. All that is taking place around her here she seems to regard with indifference. Only when mention is made of the great principles of the International Revolution does she suddenly awake, her whole expression alters; she reminds one of a beast of prey seeing its victim at hand and preparing to fall upon it and rend it. "After dinner I had my first long conversation with Hr. Joffe. His whole theory is based on the idea of establishing the right of self-determination of peoples on the broadest basis throughout the world, and trusting to the peoples thus freed to continue in mutual love. Joffe does not deny that the process would involve civil war throughout the world to begin with, but he believes that such a war, as realising the ideals of humanity, would be justified, and its end worth all it would cost. I contented myself with telling him that he must let Russia give proof that Bolshevism was the way to a happier age; when he had shown this to be so, the rest of the world would be won over to his ideals. But until his theory had been proved by example he would hardly succeed in convincing people generally to adopt his views. We were ready to conclude a general peace without indemnities or annexations, and were thoroughly agreed to leave the development of affairs in Russia thereafter to the judgment of the Russian Government itself. We should also be willing to learn something from Russia, and if his revolution succeeded he would force Europe to follow him, whether we would or not. But meanwhile there was a great deal of scepticism about, and I pointed out to him that we should not ourselves undertake any imitation of the Russian methods, and did not wish for any interference with our own internal affairs: this we must strictly forbid. If he persisted in endeavouring to carry out this Utopian plan of grafting his ideas on ourselves, he had better go back home by the next train, for there could be no question of making peace. Hr. Joffe looked at me in astonishment with his soft eyes, was silent for a while, and then, in a kindly, almost imploring tone that I shall never forget, he said: 'Still, I hope we may yet be able to raise the revolution in your country too.' "We shall hardly need any assistance from the good Joffe, I fancy, in bringing about a revolution among ourselves; the people will manage that, if the Entente persist in refusing to come to terms. "They are strange creatures, these Bolsheviks. They talk of freedom and the reconciliation of the peoples of the world, of peace and unity, and withal they are said to be the most cruel tyrants history has ever known. They are simply exterminating the bourgeoisie, and their arguments are machine guns and the gallows. My talk to-day with Joffe has shown me that these people are not honest, and in falsity surpass all that cunning diplomacy has been accused of, for to oppress decent citizens in this fashion and then talk at the same time of the universal blessing of freedom--it is sheer lying. "_December 21, 1917._--I went with all my party to lunch at noon with the Prince of Bavaria. He lives in a little bit of a palace half an hour by car from Brest. He seems to be much occupied with military matters, and is very busy. "I spent the first night in the train, and while we were at breakfast our people moved in with the luggage to our residence. We are in a small house, where I live with all the Austro-Hungarian party, quite close to the officers' casino, and there is every comfort that could be wished for here. I spent the afternoon at work with my people, and in the evening there was a meeting of the delegates of the three Powers. This evening I had the first talk with Kühlmann alone, and at once declared positively that the Russians would propose a _general_ peace, and that we must accept it. Kühlmann is half disposed to take my view himself; the formula, of course, will be 'no party to demand annexations or indemnities'; then, if the Entente agree, we shall have an end of all this suffering. But, alas! it is hardly likely that they will. "_December 22, 1917._--The forenoon was devoted to the first discussion among the Allies, the principles just referred to as discussed with Kühlmann being then academically laid down. In the afternoon the first plenary sitting took place, the proceedings being opened by the Prince of Bavaria and then led by Dr. Kühlmann. It was decided that the Powers should take it in turns to preside, in order of the Latin alphabet as to their names, i.e. Allemagne, Autriche, etc. Dr. Kühlmann requested Hr. Joffe to tell us the principles on which he considered a future peace should be based, and the Russian delegate then went through the six main tenets already familiar from the newspapers. The proposal was noted, and we undertook to give a reply as early as possible after having discussed the matter among ourselves. These, then, were the proceedings of the first brief sitting of the peace congress. "_December 23, 1917._--Kühlmann and I prepared our answer early. It will be generally known from the newspaper reports. It cost us much heavy work to get it done. Kühlmann is personally an advocate of general peace, but fears the influence of the military party, who do not wish to make peace until definitely victorious. But at last it is done. Then there were further difficulties with the Turks. They declared that they must insist on one thing, to wit, that the Russian troops should be withdrawn from the Caucasus immediately on the conclusion of peace, a proposal to which the Germans would not agree, as this would obviously mean that they would have to evacuate Poland, Courland, and Lithuania at the same time, to which Germany would never consent. After a hard struggle and repeated efforts, we at last succeeded in persuading the Turks to give up this demand. The second Turkish objection was that Russia had not sufficiently clearly declared its intention of refraining from all interference in internal affairs. But the Turkish Foreign Minister agreed that internal affairs in Austria-Hungary were an even more perilous sphere for Russian intrigues than were the Turkish; if I had no hesitation in accepting, he also could be content. "The Bulgarians, who are represented by Popow, the Minister of Justice, as their chief, and some of whom cannot speak German at all, some hardly any French, did not get any proper idea of the whole proceedings until later on, and postponed their decision until the 24th. "_December 24, 1917._--Morning and afternoon, long conferences with the Bulgarians, in the course of which Kühlmann and I on the one hand and the Bulgarian representatives on the other, were engaged with considerable heat. The Bulgarian delegates demanded that a clause should be inserted exempting Bulgaria from the no-annexation principle, and providing that the taking over by Bulgaria of Roumanian and Serbian territory should not be regarded as annexation. Such a clause would, of course, have rendered all our efforts null and void, and could not under any circumstances be agreed to. The discussion was attended with considerable excitement at times, and the Bulgarian delegates even threatened to withdraw altogether if we did not give way. Kühlmann and my humble self remained perfectly firm, and told them we had no objection to their withdrawing if they pleased; they could also, if they pleased, send their own answer separately to the proposal, but no further alteration would be made in the draft which we, Kühlmann and I, had drawn up. As no settlement could be arrived at, the plenary sitting was postponed to the 25th, and the Bulgarian delegates wired to Sofia for fresh instructions. "The Bulgarians received a negative reply, and presumably the snub we had expected. They were very dejected, and made no further difficulty about agreeing to the common action. So the matter is settled as far as that goes. "In the afternoon I had more trouble with the Germans. The German military party 'fear' that the Entente may, perhaps, be inclined to agree to a general peace, and could not think of ending the war in this 'unprofitable' fashion. It is intolerable to have to listen to such twaddle. "If the great victories which the German generals are hoping for on the Western front should be realised, there will be no bounds to their demands, and the difficulty of all negotiations will be still further increased. "_December 25, 1917._--The plenary sitting took place to-day, when we gave the Russians our answer to their peace proposals. I was presiding, and delivered the answer, and Joffe replied. _The general offer of peace is thus to be made, and we must await the result._ In order to lose no time, however, the negotiations on matters concerning Russia are being continued meanwhile. We have thus made a good step forward, and _perhaps_ got over the worst. It is impossible to say whether yesterday may not have been a decisive turning point in the history of the world. "_December 26, 1917._--The special negotiations began at 9 A.M. The programme drawn up by Kühlmann, chiefly questions of economical matters and representation, were dealt with so rapidly and smoothly that by 11 o'clock the sitting terminated, for lack of further matter to discuss. This is perhaps a good omen. Our people are using to-day to enter the results of the discussion in a report of proceedings, as the sitting is to be continued to-morrow, when territorial questions will be brought up. "_December 26, 1917._--I have been out for a long walk alone. "On the way back, I met an old Jew. He was sitting in the gutter, weeping bitterly. He did not beg, did not even look at me, only wept and wept, and could not speak at first for sobs. And then he told me his story--Russian, Polish, and German, all mixed together. "Well, he had a store--heaven knows where, but somewhere in the war zone. First came the Cossacks. They took all he had--his goats and his clothes, and everything in the place--and then they beat him. Then the Russians retired, beat him again, _en passant_ as it were, and then came the Germans. They fired his house with their guns, pulled off his boots, and beat him. Then he entered the service of the Germans, carrying water and wood, and received his food and beatings in return. But to-day he had got into trouble with them in some incomprehensible fashion; no food after that, only the beatings; and was thrown into the street. "The beatings he referred to as something altogether natural. They were for him the natural accompaniment to any sort of action--but he could not live on beatings alone. "I gave him what I had on me--money and cigars--told him the number of my house, and said he could come to-morrow, when I could get him a pass to go off somewhere where there were no Germans and no Russians, and try to get him a place of some sort where he would be fed and not beaten. He took the money and cigars thankfully enough; the story of the railway pass and the place he did not seem to believe. Railway travelling was for soldiers, and an existence without beatings seemed an incredible idea. "He kept on thanking me till I was out of sight, waving his hand, and thanking me in his German-Russian gibberish. "A terrible thing is war. Terrible at all times, but worst of all in one's own country. We at home suffer hunger and cold, but at least we have been spared up to now the presence of the enemy hordes. "This is a curious place--melancholy, yet with a beauty of its own. An endless flat, with just a slight swelling of the ground, like an ocean set fast, wave behind wave as far as the eye can see. And all things grey, dead grey, to where this dead sea meets the grey horizon. Clouds race across the sky, the wind lashing them on. "This evening, before supper, Hoffmann informed the Russians of the German plans with regard to the outer provinces. The position is this: As long as the war in the West continues, the Germans cannot evacuate Courland and Lithuania, since, apart from the fact that they must be held as security for the general peace negotiations, these countries form part of the German munition establishment. The railway material, the factories, and, most of all, the grain are indispensable as long as the war lasts. That they cannot now withdraw from there at once is clear enough. If peace is signed, then the self-determination of the people in the occupied territory will decide. But here arises the great difficulty: how this right of self-determination is to be exercised. "The Russians naturally do not want the vote to be taken while the German bayonets are still in the country, and the Germans reply that the unexampled terrorism of the Bolsheviks would falsify any election result, since the 'bourgeois,' according to Bolshevist ideas, are not human beings at all. My idea of having the proceedings controlled by a _neutral_ Power was not altogether acceptable to anyone. During the war no neutral Power would undertake the task, and the German occupation could not be allowed to last until the ultimate end. In point of fact, both sides are afraid of terrorisation by the opposing party, and each wishes to apply the same itself. "_December 26, 1917._--There is no hurry apparently in this place. Now it is the Turks who are not ready, now the Bulgarians, then it is the Russians' turn--and the sitting is again postponed or broken off almost as soon as commenced. "I am reading some memoirs from the French Revolution. A most appropriate reading at the present time, in view of what is happening in Russia and may perhaps come throughout Europe. There were no Bolsheviks then, but men who tyrannised the world under the battle-cry of freedom were to be found in Paris then as well as now in St. Petersburg. Charlotte Corday said: 'It was not a man, but a wild beast I killed.' These Bolsheviks in their turn will disappear, and who can say if there will be a Corday ready for Trotski? "Joffe told me about the Tsar and his family, and the state of things said to exist there. He spoke with great respect of Nicolai Nicolaievitch as a thorough man, full of energy and courage, one to be respected even as an enemy. The Tsar, on the other hand, he considered cowardly, false, and despicable. It was a proof of the incapacity of the bourgeois that they had tolerated such a Tsar. Monarchs were all of them more or less degenerate; he could not understand how anyone could accept a form of government which involved the risk of having a degenerate ruler. I answered him as to this, that a monarchy had first of all one advantage, that there was at least one place in the state beyond the sphere of personal ambition and intrigues, and as to degeneration, that was often a matter of opinion: there were also degenerates to be found among the uncrowned rulers of states. Joffe considered that there would be no such risk when the people could choose for themselves. I pointed out that Hr. Lenin, for instance, had not been 'chosen,' and I considered it doubtful whether an impartial election would have brought him into power. Possibly there might be some in Russia who would consider him also degenerate. "_December 27, 1917._--The Russians are in despair, and some of them even talked of withdrawing altogether. They had thought the Germans would renounce all occupied territory without further parley, or hand it over to the Bolsheviks. Long sittings between the Russians, Kühlmann, and myself, part of the time with Hoffmann. I drew up the following:-- "1. As long as general peace is not yet declared, we cannot give up the occupied areas; they form part of our great munition works (factories, railways, sites with buildings, etc.). "2. After the general peace, a plebiscite in Poland, Courland, and Lithuania is to decide the fate of the people there; as to the form in which the vote is to be taken, this remains to be further discussed, in order that the Russians may have surety that no coercion is used. Apparently, this suits neither party. Situation much worse. "_Afternoon._--Matters still getting worse. Furious wire from Hindenburg about "renunciation" of everything; Ludendorff telephoning every minute; more furious outbursts, Hoffmann very excited, Kühlmann true to his name and 'cool' as ever. The Russians declare they cannot accept the vague formulas of the Germans with regard to freedom of choice. "I told Kühlmann and Hoffmann I would go as far as possible with them; but should their endeavours fail, then I would enter into separate negotiations with the Russians, since Berlin and Petersburg were really both opposed to an uninfluenced vote. Austria-Hungary, on the other hand, desired nothing but final peace. Kühlmann understands my position, and says he himself would rather _go_ than let it fail. Asked me to give him my point of view in writing, as it 'would strengthen his position.' Have done so. He has telegraphed it to the Kaiser. "_Evening._--Kühlmann believes matters will be settled--or broken off altogether--by to-morrow. "_December 28, 1917._--General feeling, dull. Fresh outbursts of violence from Kreuznach. But at noon a wire from Bussche: Hertling had spoken with the Kaiser, who is perfectly satisfied. Kühlmann said to me: 'The Kaiser is the only sensible man in the whole of Germany.' "We have at last agreed about the form of the committee; that is, a committee _ad hoc_ is to be formed in Brest, to work out a plan for the evacuation and voting in detail. _Tant bien que mal_, a provisional expedient. All home to report; next sitting to be held January 5, 1918. "Russians again somewhat more cheerful. "This evening at dinner I rose to express thanks on the part of the Russians and the four Allies to Prince Leopold. He answered at once, and very neatly, but told me immediately afterwards that I had taken him by surprise. As a matter of fact, I had been taken by surprise myself; no notice had been given; it was only during the dinner itself that the Germans asked me to speak. "Left at 10 P.M. for Vienna. "From the 29th to the morning of the 3rd I was in Vienna. Two long audiences with the Emperor gave me the opportunity of telling him what had passed at Brest. He fully approves, of course, the point of view that peace must be made, if at all possible. "I have dispatched a trustworthy agent to the outer provinces in order to ascertain the exact state of feeling there. He reports that _all_ are against the Bolsheviks except the Bolsheviks themselves. The entire body of citizens, peasants--in a word, everyone with any possessions at all--trembles at the thought of these red robbers, and wishes to go over to Germany. The terrorism of Lenin is said to be indescribable, and in Petersburg all are absolutely _longing_ for the entry of the German troops to deliver them. "_January 3, 1918._--Return to Brest. "On the way, at 6 P.M., I received, at a station, the following telegram, in code, from Baron Gautsch, who had remained at Brest: "'Russian delegation received following telegram from Petersburg this morning: To General Hoffmann. For the representatives of the German, Austro-Hungarian, Bulgarian and Turkish delegations. The Government of the Russian Republic considers it necessary to carry on the further negotiations on neutral ground, and proposes removing to Stockholm. Regarding attitude to the proposals as formulated by the German and Austro-Hungarian delegation in Points 1 and 2, the Government of the Russian Republic and the Pan-Russian Central Executive Committee of the Councils of Workers', Soldiers' and Peasants' Deputies consider, in entire agreement with the view expressed by our delegation, that the proposals are contrary to the principle of national self-determination, even in the restricted form in which it appears in Point 3 of the reply given by the Four Powers on the 12th ult. President of the Russian Delegation, A. Joffe." Major Brinkmann has communicated this by telephone to the German delegation, already on the way here. Herr von Kühlmann has sent a telephone message in return that he is continuing the journey, and will arrive at Brest this evening.' "I also went on of course, considering this manoeuvre on the part of the Russians as rather in the nature of bluffing. If they do not come, then we can treat with the Ukrainians, who should be in Brest by now. "In Vienna I saw, among politicians, Baernreither, Hauser, Wekerle, Seidler, and some few others. The opinion of almost all may be summed up as follows: 'Peace _must_ be arranged, but a separate peace without Germany is _impossible_.' "No one has told me how I am to manage it if neither Germany nor Russia will listen to reason. "_January 4, 1918._--Fearful snowstorm in the night; the heating apparatus in the train was frozen, and the journey consequently far from pleasant. On awaking early at Brest the trains of the Bulgarians and Turks were standing on adjacent sidings. Weather magnificent now: cold, and the air as at St. Moritz. I went across to Kühlmann, had breakfast with him, and talked over events in Berlin. There seems to have been desperate excitement there. Kühlmann suggested to Ludendorff that he should come to Brest himself and take part in the negotiations. After long discussion, however, it appeared that Ludendorff himself was not quite clear as to what he wanted, and declared spontaneously that he considered it superfluous for him to go to Brest; he would, at best, 'only spoil things if he did.' Heaven grant the man such gleams of insight again, and often! It seems as if the whole trouble is more due to feeling against Kühlmann than to anything in the questions at issue; people do not want the world to have the impression that the peace was gained by 'adroit diplomacy,' but by military success alone. General Hoffmann appears to have been received with marked favour by the Kaiser, and both he and Kühlmann declare themselves well satisfied with the results of their journey. "We talked over the reply to the Petersburg telegram, declining a conference in Stockholm, and further tactics to be followed in case of need. We agreed that if the Russians did not come, we must declare the armistice at an end, and chance what the Petersburgers would say to that. On this point Kühlmann and I were entirely agreed. Nevertheless, the feeling, both in our party and in that of the Germans, was not a little depressed. Certainly, if the Russians do break off negotiations, it will place us in a very unpleasant position. The only way to save the situation is by acting quickly and energetically with the Ukrainian delegation, and we therefore commenced this work on the afternoon of the same day. There is thus at least a hope that we may be able to arrive at positive results with them within reasonable time. "In the evening, after dinner, came a wire from Petersburg announcing the arrival of the delegation, including the Foreign Minister, Trotski. It was interesting to see the delight of all the Germans at the news; not until this sudden and violent outbreak of satisfaction was it fully apparent how seriously they had been affected by the thought that the Russians would not come. Undoubtedly this is a great step forward, and we all feel that peace is really now on the way. "_January 5, 1918._--At seven this morning a few of us went out shooting with Prince Leopold of Bavaria. We went for a distance of 20 to 30 kilometres by train, and then in open automobiles to a magnificent primeval forest extending over two to three hundred square kilometres. Weather very cold, but fine, much snow, and pleasant company. From the point of view of sport, it was poorer than one could have expected. One of the Prince's aides stuck a pig, another shot two hares, and that was all. Back at 6 P.M. "_January 6, 1918._--To-day we had the first discussions with the Ukrainian delegates, all of whom were present except the leader. The Ukrainians are very different from the Russian delegates. Far less revolutionary, and with far more interest in their own country, less in the progress of Socialism generally. They do not really care about Russia at all, but think only of the Ukraine, and their efforts are solely directed towards attaining their own independence as soon as possible. Whether that independence is to be complete and international, or only as within the bounds of a Russian federative state, they do not seem quite to know themselves. Evidently, the very intelligent Ukrainian delegates intended to use us as a springboard from which they themselves could spring upon the Bolsheviks. Their idea was that we should acknowledge their independence, and then, with this as a _fait accompli_, they could face the Bolsheviks and force them to recognise their equal standing and treat with them on that basis. Our line of policy, however, must be either to bring over the Ukrainians to our peace basis, or else to drive a wedge between them and the Petersburgers. As to their desire for independence, we declared ourselves willing to recognise this, provided the Ukrainians on their part would agree to the following three points: 1. The negotiations to be concluded at Brest-Litovsk and not at Stockholm. 2. Recognition of the former political frontier between Austria-Hungary and Ukraine. 3. Non-interference of any one state in the internal affairs of another. Characteristically enough, no answer has yet been received to this proposal! "_January 7, 1918._--This forenoon, all the Russians arrived, under the leadership of Trotski. They at once sent a message asking to be excused for not appearing at meals with the rest for the future. At other times also we see nothing of them. The wind seems to be in a very different quarter now from what it was. The German officer who accompanied the Russian delegation from Dunaburg, Captain Baron Lamezan, gave us some interesting details as to this. In the first place, he declared that the trenches in front of Dunaburg are entirely deserted, and save for an outpost or so there were no Russians there at all; also, that at many stations delegates were waiting for the deputation to pass, in order to demand that peace should be made. Trotski had throughout answered them with polite and careful speeches, but grew ever more and more depressed. Baron Lamezan had the impression that the Russians were altogether desperate now, having no choice save between going back with a bad peace or with no peace at all; in either case with the same result: that they would be swept away. Kühlmann said: 'Ils n'ont que le choix à quelle sauce ils se feront manger.' I answered: 'Tout comme chez nous.' "A wire has just come in reporting demonstrations in Budapest against Germany. The windows of the German Consulate were broken, a clear indication of the state of feeling which would arise if the peace were to be lost through our demands. "_January 8, 1918._--The Turkish Grand Vizier, Talaat Pasha, arrived during the night, and has just been to call on me. He seems emphatically in favour of making peace; but I fancy he would like, in case of any conflict arising with Germany, to push me into the foreground and keep out of the way himself. Talaat Pasha is one of the cleverest heads among the Turks, and perhaps the most energetic man of them all. "Before the Revolution he was a minor official in the telegraph service, and was on the revolutionary committee. In his official capacity, he got hold of a telegram from the Government which showed him that the revolutionary movement would be discovered and the game be lost unless immediate action were taken. He suppressed the message, warned the revolutionary committee, and persuaded them to start their work at once. The coup succeeded, the Sultan was deposed, and Talaat was made Minister of the Interior. With iron energy he then turned his attention to the suppression of the opposing movement. Later, he became Grand Vizier, and impersonated, together with Enver Pasha, the will and power of Turkey. "This afternoon, first a meeting of the five heads of the allied delegations and the Russian. Afterwards, plenary sitting. "The sitting postponed again, as the Ukrainians are still not ready with their preparations. Late in the evening I had a conversation with Kühlmann and Hoffmann, in which we agreed fairly well as to tactics. I said again that I was ready to stand by them and hold to their demands as far as ever possible, but in the event of Germany's breaking off the negotiations with Russia I must reserve the right to act with a free hand. Both appeared to understand my point of view, especially Kühlmann, who, if he alone should decide, would certainly not allow the negotiations to prove fruitless. As to details, we agreed to demand continuation of the negotiations at Brest-Litovsk in the form of an ultimatum. "_January 9, 1918._--Acting on the principle that attack is the best defence, we had determined not to let the Russian Foreign Minister speak at all, but to go at him at once with our ultimatum. "Trotski had prepared a long speech, and the effect of our attack was such that he at once appealed for adjournment, urging that the altered state of affairs called for new resolutions. The removal of the conference to Stockholm would have meant the end of matters for us, for it would have been utterly impossible to keep the Bolsheviks of all countries from putting in an appearance there, and the very thing we had endeavoured with the utmost of our power to avoid from the start--to have the reins torn from our hands and these elements take the lead--would infallibly have taken place. We must now wait to see what to-morrow brings: either a victory or the final termination of the negotiations. "Adler said to me in Vienna: 'You will certainly get on all right with Trotski,' and when I asked him why he thought so, he answered: 'Well, you and I get on quite well together, you know.' "I think, after all, the clever old man failed to appreciate the situation there. These Bolsheviks have no longer anything in common with Adler; they are brutal tyrants, autocrats of the worst kind, a disgrace to the name of freedom. "Trotski is undoubtedly an interesting, clever fellow, and a very dangerous adversary. He is quite exceptionally gifted as a speaker, with a swiftness and adroitness in retort which I have rarely seen, and has, moreover, all the insolent boldness of his race. "_January 10, 1918._--The sitting has just taken place. Trotski made a great and, in its way, really fine speech, calculated for the whole of Europe, in which he gave way entirely. He accepts, he says, the German-Austria 'ultimatum,' and will remain in Brest-Litovsk, as he will not give us the satisfaction of being able to blame Russia for the continuance of the war. "Following on Trotski's speech, the Committee was at once formed to deal with the difficult questions of territory. I insisted on being on the Committee myself, wishing to follow throughout the progress of these important negotiations. This was not an easy matter really, as the questions involved, strictly speaking, concern only Courland and Lithuania, i.e., they are not our business, but Germany's alone. "In the evening I had another long talk with Kühlmann and Hoffmann, in the course of which the General and the Secretary of State came to high words between themselves. Hoffmann, elated at the success of our ultimatum to Russia, wished to go on in the same fashion and 'give the Russians another touch of the whip.' Kühlmann and I took the opposite view, and insisted that proceedings should be commenced quietly, confining ourselves to the matters in hand, clearing up point by point as we went on, and putting all doubtful questions aside. Once we had got so far, in clearing up things generally, we could then take that which remained together, and possibly get telegraphic instructions from the two Emperors for dealing therewith. This is undoubtedly the surest way to avoid disaster and a fresh breach. "A new conflict has cropped up with the Ukrainians. They now demand recognition of their independence, and declare they will leave if this is not conceded. "Adler told me at Vienna that Trotski had his library, by which he set great store, somewhere in Vienna, with a Herr Bauer, I fancy. I told Trotski that I would arrange to have the books forwarded to him, if he cared about it. I then recommended to his consideration certain prisoners of war, as L. K. and W., all of whom are said to have been very badly treated. Trotski noted the point, declared that he was strongly opposed to ill-treatment of prisoners of war, and promised to look into the matter; he wished to point out, however, that in so doing he was not in the least influenced by the thought of his library; he would in any case have considered my request. He would be glad to have the books. "_January 11, 1918._--Forenoon and afternoon, long sittings of the Committee on territorial questions. Our side is represented by Kühlmann, Hoffmann, Rosenberg, and a secretary, in addition to myself, Csicserics, Wiesner, and Colloredo. The Russians are all present, but without the Ukrainians. I told Kühlmann that I only proposed to attend as a second, seeing that the German interests were incomparably more affected than our own. I only interpose now and again. "Trotski made a tactical blunder this afternoon. In a speech rising to violence, he declared that we were playing false; we aimed at annexations, and were simply trying to cover them with the cloak of self-determination. He would never agree to this, and would rather break off altogether than continue in that way. If we were honest, we should allow representatives from Poland, Courland, and Lithuania to come to Brest, and there express their views without being influenced in any way by ourselves. Now it should here be noted that from the commencement of the negotiations it has been a point of conflict whether the legislative bodies at present existing in the occupied territories are justified in speaking in the name of their respective peoples, or not. We affirm that they are; the Russians maintain they are not. We at once accepted Trotski's proposal, that representatives of these countries should be called, but added that, when we agreed to accept their testimony, then their judgment if in our favour should be taken as valid. "It was characteristic to see how gladly Trotski would have taken back what he had said. But he kept his countenance, fell in with the new situation at once, and requested that the sitting be adjourned for twenty-four hours, as our reply was of such far-reaching importance that he must confer with his colleagues on the matter. I hope Trotski will make no difficulty now. If the Poles could be called, it would be an advantage. The awkward thing about it is that Germany, too, would rather be without them, knowing the anti-Prussian feeling that exists among the Poles. "_January 12, 1918._--Radek has had a scene with the German chauffeur, which led to something more. General Hoffmann had placed cars at the disposal of the Russians in case they cared to drive out. On this occasion it happened that the chauffeur was not there at the proper time, and Radek flew into a rage with the man and abused him violently. The chauffeur complained, and Hoffmann took his part. Trotski seems to consider Hoffmann's action correct, and has _forbidden_ the entire delegation to go out any more. That settled them. And serve them right. "No one ventured to protest. They have indeed a holy fear of Trotski. At the sittings, too, none of them dare to speak while he is there. "_January 12, 1918._--Hoffmann has made his unfortunate speech. He has been working at it for days, and was very proud of the result. Kühlmann and I did not conceal from him that he gained nothing by it beyond exciting the people at home against us. This made a certain impression on him, but it was soon effaced by Ludendorff's congratulations, which followed promptly. Anyhow, it has rendered the situation more difficult, and there was certainly no need for that. "_January 15, 1918._--I had a letter to-day from one of our mayors at home, calling my attention to the fact that disaster due to lack of foodstuffs is now imminent. "I immediately telegraphed the Emperor as follows: "'I have just received a letter from Statthalter N.N. which justifies all the fears I have constantly repeated to Your Majesty, and shows that in the question of food supply we are on the very verge of a catastrophe. The situation _arising out of the carelessness and incapacity of the Ministers_ is terrible, and I fear it is already too late to check the total collapse which is to be expected in the next few weeks. My informant writes: "Only small quantities are now being received from Hungary, from Roumania only 10,000 wagons of maize; this gives then a decrease of at least 30,000 wagons of grain, without which we must infallibly perish. On learning the state of affairs, I went to the Prime Minister to speak with him about it. I told him, as is the case, that in a few weeks our war industries, our railway traffic, would be at a standstill, the provisioning of the army would be impossible, it must break down, and that would mean the collapse of Austria and therewith also of Hungary. To each of these points he answered yes, that is so, and added that all was being done to alter the state of affairs, especially as regards the Hungarian deliveries. But no one, not even His Majesty, has been able to get anything done. We can only hope that some _deus ex machina_ may intervene to save us from the worst.'" "To this I added: "'I can find no words to describe properly the apathetic attitude of Seidler. How often and how earnestly have I not implored Your Majesty to intervene forcibly for once and _compel_ Seidler, on the one hand, and Hadik, on the other, to set these things in order. Even from here I have written entreating Your Majesty to act while there was yet time. But all in vain.' "I then pointed out that the only way of meeting the situation would be to secure temporary assistance from Germany, and then to requisition by force the stocks that were doubtless still available in Hungary; finally, I begged the Emperor to inform the Austrian Prime Minister of my telegram. "_January 16, 1918._--Despairing appeals from Vienna for food supplies. Would I apply at once to Berlin for aid, otherwise disaster imminent. I replied to General Landwehr as follows: "'Dr. Kühlmann is telegraphing to Berlin, but has little hope of success. The only hope now is for His Majesty to do as I have advised, and send an urgent wire at once to Kaiser Wilhelm. On my return I propose to put before His Majesty my point of view, that it is impossible to carry on the foreign policy if the food question at home is allowed to come to such a state as now. "'Only a few weeks back your Excellency declared most positively that we could hold out till the new harvest.' "At the same time I wired the Emperor: "'Telegrams arriving show the situation becoming critical for us. Regarding question of food, we can only avoid collapse on two conditions: first, that Germany helps us temporarily, second, that we use this respite to set in order our machinery of food supply, which is at present beneath contempt, and to gain possession of the stocks still existing in Hungary. "'I have just explained the entire situation to Dr. Kühlmann, and he is telegraphing to Berlin. He, however, is not at all sanguine, as Germany is itself in straitened circumstances. I think the only way to secure any success from this step would be for Your Majesty to send at once, through military means, a Hughes telegram to Kaiser Wilhelm direct, urgently entreating him to intervene himself, and by securing us a supply of grain prevent the outbreak of revolution, which would otherwise be inevitable. I must, however, emphatically point out that the commencement of unrest among our people at home will have rendered conclusion of peace here absolutely impossible. As soon as the Russian representatives perceive that we ourselves are on the point of revolution, they will not make peace at all, since their entire speculation is based on this factor.' "_January 17, 1918._--Bad news from Vienna and environs: serious strike movement, due to the reduction of the flour rations and the tardy progress of the Brest negotiations. The weakness of the Vienna Ministry seems to be past all understanding. "I have telegraphed to Vienna that I hope in time to secure some supplies from the Ukraine, if only we can manage to keep matters quiet at home for the next few weeks, and I have begged the gentlemen in question to do their utmost not to wreck the peace here. On the same day, in the evening, I telegraphed to Dr. von Seidler, the Prime Minister: "'I very greatly regret my inability to counteract the effect of all the errors made by those entrusted with the food resources. "'Germany declares categorically that it is unable to help us, having insufficient for itself. "'Had your Excellency or your department called attention to the state of things _in time_, it might still have been possible to procure supplies from Roumania. As things are now, I can see no other way than that of brute force, by requisitioning Hungarian grain for the time being, and forwarding it to Austria, until the Roumanian, and it is to be hoped also Ukrainian, supplies can come to hand.' [Illustration: GENERAL HOFFMANN (on right) WITH MAJ. BRINKMANN] "_January 20, 1918._--The negotiations have now come to this: that Trotski declares his intention of laying the German proposals before Petersburg, though he cannot accept them himself; he undertakes, in any case, to return here. As to calling in representatives from the outer provinces, he will only do this provided he is allowed to choose them. We cannot agree to this. With the Ukrainians, who, despite their youth, are showing themselves quite sufficiently grown to profit by the situation, negotiations are proceeding but slowly. First they demanded East Galicia for the new 'Ukrainia.' This could not be entertained for a moment. Then they grew more modest, but since the outbreak of trouble at home among ourselves they realise our position, and know that we _must_ make peace in order to get corn. Now they demand a separate position for East Galicia. The question will have to be decided in Vienna, and the Austrian Ministry will have the final word. "Seidler and Landwehr again declare by telegram that without supplies of grain from Ukraine the catastrophe is imminent. There _are_ supplies in the Ukraine; if we can get them, the worst may be avoided. "The position now is this: Without help from outside, we shall, according to Seidler, have thousands perishing in a few weeks. Germany and Hungary are no longer sending anything. All messages state that there is a great surplus in Ukraine. The question is only whether we can get it in time. I hope we may. But if we do not make peace _soon_, then the troubles at home will be repeated, and each demonstration in Vienna will render peace here most costly to obtain, for Messrs. Sewrjuk and Lewicky can read the degree of our state of famine at home from these troubles as by a thermometer. If only the people who create these disturbances know how they are by that very fact increasing the difficulty of procuring supplies from Ukraine! And we were all but finished! "The question of East Galicia I will leave to the Austrian Ministry; it must be decided in Vienna. I cannot, and dare not, look on and see hundreds of thousands starve for the sake of retaining the sympathy of the Poles, so long as there is a possibility of help. "_January 21, 1918._--Back to Vienna. The impression of the troubles here is even greater than I thought, and the effect disastrous. The Ukrainians no longer treat with us: they _dictate_! "On the way, reading through old reports, I came upon the notes relating to the discussions with Michaelis on August 1. According to these, Under-Secretary of State von Stumm said at the time: "'The Foreign Ministry was in communication with the Ukrainians, and the separatist movement in Ukrainia was very strong. In furtherance of their movement, the Ukrainians demanded the assurance that they should be allowed to unite with the Government of Cholm, and with the areas of East Galicia occupied by Ukrainians. So long as Galicia belongs to Austria, the demand for East Galicia cannot be conceded. It would be another matter if Galicia were united with Poland; then a cession of East Galicia might be possible.' "It would seem that the unpleasant case had long since been prejudged by the Germans. "On January 22 the Council was held which was to determine the issue of the Ukrainian question. The Emperor opened the proceedings, and then called on me to speak. I described first of all the difficulties that lay in the way of a peace with Petersburg, which will be apparent from the foregoing entries in this diary. I expressed my doubt as to whether our group would succeed in concluding general peace with Petersburg. I then sketched the course of the negotiations with the Ukrainians. I reported that the Ukrainians had originally demanded the cession of East Galicia, but that I had refused this. With regard to the Ruthenian districts of Hungary also they had made demands which had been refused by me. At present, they demanded the division of Galicia into two parts, and the formation of an independent Austrian province from East Galicia and Bukovina. I pointed out the serious consequences which the acceptance of the Ukrainian demands would have upon the further development of the Austro-Polish question. The concessions made by the Ukrainians on their part were to consist in the inclusion in the peace treaty of a commercial agreement which should enable us to cover our immediate needs in the matter of grain supplies. Furthermore, Austria-Hungary would insist on full reciprocity for the Poles resident in Ukraine. "I pointed out emphatically that I considered it my duty to state the position of the peace negotiations; that the decision could not lie with me, but with the Ministry as a whole, in particular with the Austrian Prime Minister. The Austrian Government would have to decide whether these sacrifices could be made or not, and here I could leave them in no doubt that if we declined the Ukrainian demands we should probably come to no result with that country, and should thus be compelled to return from Brest-Litovsk without having achieved any peace settlement at all. "When I had finished, the Prime Minister, Dr. von Seidler, rose to speak. He pointed out first of all the necessity of an immediate peace, and then discussed the question of establishing a Ukrainian crown land, especially from the parliamentary point of view. Seidler believed that despite the active opposition which was to be expected from the Poles, he would still have a majority of two-thirds in the House for the acceptance of the bill on the subject. He was not blind to the fact that arrangement would give rise to violent parliamentary conflicts, but repeated his hope that a two-thirds majority could be obtained despite the opposition of the Polish Delegation. After Seidler came the Hungarian Prime Minister, Dr. Wekerle. He was particularly pleased to note that no concessions had been made to the Ukrainians with regard to the Ruthenians resident in Hungary. A clear division of the nationalities in Hungary was impracticable. The Hungarian Ruthenians were also at too low a stage of culture to enable them to be given national independence. Dr. Wekerle also laid stress on the danger, alike in Austria, of allowing any interference from without; the risk of any such proceeding would be very great, we should find ourselves on a downward grade by so doing, and we must hold firmly to the principle that no interference in the affairs of the Monarchy from without could be tolerated. In summing up, however, Wekerle opposed the point of view of the Austrian Prime Minister. "I then rose again to speak, and declared that I was perfectly aware of the eminent importance and perilous aspects of this step. It was true that it would bring us on to a down-grade, but from all appearances, we had been in that position already for a long time, owing to the war, and could not say how far it might lead us. I put the positive question to Dr. Wekerle, what was a responsible leader of our foreign policy to do when the Austrian Prime Minister and both the Ministers of Food unanimously declared that the Hungarian supplies would only suffice to help us over the next two months, after which time a collapse would be absolutely unavoidable, unless we could secure assistance from somewhere in the way of corn? On being interrupted here by a dissentient observation from Dr. Wekerle, I told him that if he, Wekerle, could bring corn into Austria I should be the first to support his point of view, and that with pleasure, but so long as he stood by his categorical denial, and insisted on his inability to help us, we were in the position of a man on the third floor of a burning house who jumps out of the window to save himself. A man in such a situation would not stop to think whether he risked breaking his legs or not; he would prefer the risk of death to the certainty of the same. If the position really were as stated, that in a couple of months we should be altogether without food supplies, then we must take the consequences of such a position. Dr. von Seidler here once more took up the discussion, and declared himself entirely in agreement with my remarks. "During the further course of the debate, the probability of a definitive failure of the Austro-Polish solution in connection with the Ukrainian peace was discussed, and the question was raised as to what new constellation would arise out of such failure. Sektionschef Dr. Gratz then took up this question. Dr. Gratz pointed out that the Austro-Polish solution must fail even without acceptance of the Ukrainian demands, since the German postulates rendered solution impossible. The Germans demanded, apart from quite enormous territorial reductions of Congress-Poland, the restriction of Polish industry, part possession of the Polish railways and State domains, as well as the imposition of part of the costs of war upon the Poles. We could not attach ourselves to a Poland thus weakened, hardly, indeed, capable of living at all, and necessarily highly dissatisfied with its position. Dr. Gratz maintained that it would be wiser to come back to the programme already discussed in general form; the project, by which United Poland should be left to Germany, and the attachment of Roumania to the Monarchy in consequence. Dr. Gratz went at length into the details of this point of view. The Emperor then summed up the essence of the opinions expressed to-day as indicating that it was primarily necessary to make peace with Petersburg and the Ukrainians, and that negotiations should be entered upon with Ukrainia as to the division of Galicia. The question as to whether the Austro-Polish solution should be definitely allowed to drop was not finally settled, but shelved for the time being. "In conclusion, Dr. Burian, the Minister of Finance, rose to speak, and pointed out, as Dr. Wekerle had done, the danger of the Austrian standpoint. Burian declared that, while the war might doubtless change the internal structure of the Monarchy, such alteration must be made from within, not from without, if it were to be of any benefit to the Monarchy at all. He further pointed out that if the Austrian principle of the division of Galicia were to be carried through, the _form_ of so doing would be of great importance. Baron Burian advised that a clause referring to this should be inserted, not in the instrument of peace itself, but in a secret annexe. This form was, in his, Burian's, view, the only possible means of diminishing the serious consequences of the steps which the Austrian Government wished to take." Thus the notes in my diary relative to this Council. The Austrian Government was thus not only agreed as to the proposed arrangement with the Ukraine; it was indeed at the direct wish of the Government, by its instigation and on its responsibility, that it was brought about. "_January 28, 1918._--Reached Brest this evening. "_January 29, 1918._--Trotski arrived. "_January 30, 1918._--The first plenary session has been held. There is no doubt that the revolutionary happenings in Austria and in Germany have enormously raised the hopes of the Petersburgers for a general convulsion, and it seems to me altogether out of the question now to come to any peace terms with the Russians. It is evident among the Russians themselves that they positively expect the outbreak of a world-revolution within the next few weeks, and their tactics now are simply to gain time and wait for this to happen. The conference was not marked by any particular event, only pin-pricks between Kühlmann and Trotski. To-day is the first sitting of the Committee on territorial questions, where I am to preside, and deal with our territorial affairs. "The only interesting point about the new constellation seems to be that the relations between Petersburg and Kieff are considerably worse than before, and the Kieff Committee is no longer recognised at all by the Bolsheviks as independent. "_February 1, 1918._--Sitting of the Territorial Committee, I myself presiding, with the Petersburg Russians. My plan is to play the Petersburgers and the Ukrainians one against the other, and manage at least to make peace with one of the two parties. I have still some slight hope that a peace with one may so affect the other that possibly peace with both may be attained. "As was to be expected, Trotski replied to my question, whether he admitted that the Ukrainians should treat with us alone on questions dealing with their frontiers, with an emphatic denial. I then, after some exchange of words, proposed that the sitting be adjourned, and a plenary sitting convened, in order that the matter might be dealt with by the Kieff and Petersburg parties together. "_February 2, 1918._--I have tried to get the Ukrainians to talk over things openly with the Russians, and succeeded almost too well. The insults hurled by the Ukrainians to-day against the Russians were simply grotesque, and showed what a gulf is fixed between these two Governments, and that it is not our fault that we have not been able to bring them together under one hat on the question of peace. Trotski was so upset it was painful to see. Perfectly pale, he stared fixedly before him, drawing nervously on his blotting paper. Heavy drops of sweat trickled down his forehead. Evidently he felt deeply the disgrace of being abused by his fellow-citizens in the presence of the enemy. "The two brothers Richthofen were here a little while ago. The elder has shot down some sixty, the younger 'only' some thirty enemy airmen. The elder's face is like that of a young and pretty girl. He told me 'how the thing is done.' It is very simple. Only get as near to the enemy as possible, from behind, and then keep on shooting, when the other man would fall. The one thing needful was to 'get over your own fright,' and not be shy of getting quite close to your opponent.--Modern heroes. "Two charming stories were told about these two brothers. The English had put a price on the head of the elder Richthofen. When he learned of this, he sent down broadsheets informing them that to make matters easier for them, he would from the following day have his machine painted bright red. Next morning, going to the shed, he found all the machines there painted bright red. One for all and all for one. "The other story is this: Richthofen and an English airman were circling round each other and firing furiously. They came closer and closer, and soon they could distinctly see each other's faces. Suddenly something went wrong with Richthofen's machine-gun, and he could not shoot. The Englishman looked across in surprise, and seeing what was wrong, waved his hand, turned and flew off. Fair play! I should like to meet that Englishman, only to tell him that he is greater, to my mind, than the heroes of old. "_February 3, 1918._--Started for Berlin. Kühlmann, Hoffmann, Colloredo. "_February 4, 1918._--Arrived Berlin. Nothing this afternoon, as the Germans are holding council among themselves. "_February 5, 1918._--Sitting all day. I had several violent passages of arms with Ludendorff. Matters seemed to be clearing up, though this is not yet altogether done. Apart from deciding on our tactics for Brest, we have at last to set down _in writing_ that we are only obliged to fight for the pre-war possessions of Germany. Ludendorff was violently opposed to this, and said, 'If Germany makes peace without profit, then Germany has lost the war.' "The controversy was growing more and more heated, when Hertling nudged me and whispered: 'Leave him alone, we two will manage it together without him.' "I am now going to work out the draft at once and send it in to Hertling. "Supper this evening at Höhenlohe. "_February 6, 1918._--Arrived Brest this evening. Wiesner has been at it untiringly and done excellent work; the situation, too, is easier now. The leader of the Austrian Ruthenians, Nikolay Wassilko, arrived yesterday, and albeit evidently excited by the part his Russian-Ukrainian comrades are playing at Brest, speaks nationally, far more chauvinistically than when I thought I knew him in Vienna, and we have at last agreed on the minimum of the Ukrainian demands. I gave as my advice in Berlin that we should try to finish with the Ukrainians as soon as possible. I could then in the name of Germany commence negotiations with Trotski, and try if I could not get speech with him privately, and find out whether any agreement were possible or not. It is Gratz's idea. After some opposition we agreed. "_February 7, 1918._--My conversation with Trotski took place. I took Gratz with me; he has far exceeded all my expectations of him. I began by telling Trotski that a breach of the regulations and a resumption of hostilities were imminent, and wished to know if this could not be avoided before the fatal step were definitely taken. I therefore begged Herr Trotski to inform me openly and without reserve what conditions he would accept. Trotski then declared very frankly and clearly that he was not so simple as we appeared to think, that he knew well enough force was the strongest of all arguments, and that the Central Powers were quite capable of taking away the Russian provinces. He had several times tried to bridge a way for Kühlmann during the conference, telling him it was not a question of the right of self-determination of the peoples in the occupied districts, but of sheer brutal annexation, and that he must give way to force. He would never relinquish his principles, and would never give his consent to this interpretation of the right of self-determination. The Germans must say straight out what were the boundaries they demanded, and he would then make clear to all Europe that it was a brutal annexation and nothing else, but that Russia was too weak to oppose it. Only the Moon Sound Islands seemed to be more than he could swallow. Secondly, and this is very characteristic, Trotski said he could never agree to our making peace with the Ukraine, since the Ukraine was no longer in the hands of its Rada, but in the hands of his troops. It was a part of Russia, and to make peace with it would be interfering in the internal affairs of Russia itself. The fact of the matter seems to be that about nineteen days ago the Russian troops really did enter Kieff, but were subsequently driven out, the Rada once more coming into power as before. Whether Trotski was unaware of this latter development or purposely concealed the truth I cannot say for certain, but it seems as if the former were the case. "The last hope of coming to an understanding with Petersburg has vanished. An appeal from the Petersburg Government to the German soldiers has been discovered in Berlin, inciting them to revolt, to murder the Kaiser and their generals, and unite with the soviets. Following on this came a telegram from Kaiser Wilhelm to Kühlmann ordering him to terminate negotiations at once, by demanding, besides Courland and Lithuania, also the unoccupied territories of Livonia and Esthonia--all without regard to the right of self-determination of the peoples concerned. "The dastardly behaviour of these Bolsheviks renders negotiation impossible. I cannot blame Germany for being incensed at such proceedings, but the instructions from Berlin are hardly likely to be carried out. We do not want to drag in Livonia and Esthonia. "_February 8, 1918._--This evening the peace with Ukraine is to be signed. The first peace in this terrible war. I wonder if the Rada is still really sitting at Kieff? Wassilko showed me a Hughes message dated 6th inst. from Kieff to the Ukrainian delegation here, and Trotski has declined my suggestion to dispatch an officer of the Austrian General Staff to the spot, in order to bring back reliable information. Evidently, then, his assertion that the Bolsheviks were already masters of Kieff was only a ruse. Gratz informs me, by the way, that Trotski, with whom he spoke early this morning, is much depressed at our intention of concluding peace with Ukraine to-day after all. This confirms me in my purpose of having it signed. Gratz has convened a meeting with the Petersburgers for to-morrow; this will clear matters up, and show us whether any agreement is possible, or if we must break off altogether. In any case, there can be no doubt that the intermezzo at Brest is rapidly nearing its end." After conclusion of peace with Ukraine, I received the following telegram from the Emperor: "'_Court train, February 9, 1918._ "'Deeply moved and rejoiced to learn of the conclusion of peace with Ukraine. I thank you, dear Count Czernin, from my heart for your persevering and successful endeavours. "'You have thereby given me the happiest day of my hitherto far from happy reign, and I pray God Almighty that He may further continue to aid you on your difficult path--to the benefit of the Monarchy and of our peoples. KARL.' "_February 11, 1918._--Trotski declines to sign. The war is over, but there is no peace. "The disastrous effects of the troubles in Vienna will be seen clearly from the following message from Herr von Skrzynski, dated Montreux, February 12, 1918. Skrzynski writes: "'I learn from a reliable source that France has issued the following notification: We were already quite disposed to enter into discussion with Austria. Now we are asking ourselves whether Austria is still sound enough for the part it was intended to give her. One is afraid of basing an entire policy upon a state which is perhaps already threatened with the fate of Russia.' And Skrzynski adds: 'During the last few days I have heard as follows: It has been decided to wait for a while.'" Our position, then, during the negotiations with Petersburg was as follows: We could not induce Germany to resign the idea of Courland and Lithuania. We had not the physical force to do so. The pressure exerted by the Supreme Army Command on the one hand and the shifty tactics of the Russians made this impossible. We had then to choose between leaving Germany to itself, and signing a separate peace, or acting together with our three Allies and finishing with a peace including the covert annexation of the Russian outer provinces. The former alternative involved the serious risk of making a breach in the Quadruple Alliance, where some dissension was already apparent. The Alliance could no longer stand such experiments. We were faced with the final military efforts now, and the unity of the Allies must not in any case be further shaken. On the other hand, the danger that Wilson, the only statesman in the world ready to consider the idea of a peace on mutual understanding, might from the conclusion of such a peace obtain an erroneous impression as to our intentions. I hoped then, and I was not deceived, that this eminently clever man would see through the situation and recognise that we were forced to act under pressure of circumstances. His speeches delivered after the peace at Brest confirmed my anticipation. The peace with Ukraine was made under pressure of imminent famine. And it bears the characteristic marks of such a birth. That is true. But it is no less true that despite the fact of our having obtained far less from Ukraine than we had hoped, we should, without these supplies, have been unable to carry on at all until the new harvest. Statistics show that during the spring and summer of 1918 42,000 wagon-loads were received from the Ukraine. It would have been impossible to procure these supplies from anywhere else. Millions of human beings were thus saved from death by starvation--and let those who sit in judgment on the peace terms bear this in mind. It is also beyond doubt that with the great stocks available in Ukraine, an incomparably greater quantity could have been brought into Austria if the collecting and transport apparatus had worked differently. The Secretary of State for Food Supplies has, at my request, in May, 1919, furnished me with the following statistical data for publication: Brief survey of the organisation of corn imports from Ukraine (on terms of the Brest-Litovsk Peace) and the results of same: When, after great efforts, a suitable agreement had been arrived at with Germany as to the apportionment of the Ukrainian supplies, a mission was dispatched to Kieff, in which not only Government officials but also the best qualified and most experienced experts which the Government could procure were represented. Germany and Hungary had also sent experts, among them being persons with many years of experience in the Russian grain business, and had been in the employ of both German and Entente grain houses (as, for instance, the former representative of the leading French corn merchants, the house of Louis Dreyfuss). The official mission arrived at Kieff by the middle of March, and commenced work at once. A comparatively short time sufficed to show that the work would present quite extraordinary difficulties. The Ukrainian Government, which had declared at Brest-Litovsk that very great quantities, probably about one million tons, of surplus foodstuffs were ready for export, had in the meantime been replaced by another Ministry. The Cabinet then in power evinced no particular inclination, or at any rate no hurry, to fulfil obligations on this scale, but was more disposed to point out that it would be altogether impossible, for various reasons, to do so. Moreover, the Peace of Brest had provided for a regular exchange system, bartering load by load of one article against another. But neither Germany nor Austria-Hungary was even approximately in a position to furnish the goods (textiles especially were demanded) required in exchange. We had then to endeavour to obtain the supplies on credit, and the Ukrainian Government agreed, after long and far from easy negotiations, to provide _credit valuta_ (against vouchers for mark and krone in Berlin and Vienna). The arrangements for this were finally made, and the two Central Powers drew in all 643 million karbowanez. The Rouble Syndicate, however, which had been formed under the leadership of the principal banks in Berlin, Vienna and Budapest, was during the first few months only able to exert a very slight activity. Even the formation of this syndicate was a matter of great difficulty, and in particular a great deal of time was lost; and even then the apparatus proved very awkward to work with. Anyhow, it had only procured comparatively small sums of roubles, so that the purchasing organisation in Ukraine, especially at first, suffered from a chronic lack of means of payment. But, in any case, a better arrangement of the money question would only have improved matters in a few of the best supplied districts, for the principal obstacle was simply _the lack of supplies_. The fact that Kieff and Odessa were themselves continually in danger of a food crisis is the best indication as to the state of things. In the Ukraine, the effects of four years of war, with the resulting confusion, and of the destruction wrought by the Bolsheviks (November, 1917, to March, 1918) were conspicuously apparent; cultivation and harvesting had suffered everywhere, but where supplies had existed they had been partly destroyed, partly carried off by the Bolsheviks on their way northward. Still, the harvest had given certain stocks available in the country, though these were not extensive, and the organisation of a purchasing system was now commenced. The free buying in Ukraine which we and Germany had originally contemplated could not be carried out in fact, since the Ukrainian Government declared that it would itself set up this organisation, and maintained this intention with the greatest stubbornness. But the authority in the country had been destroyed by the Revolution, and then by the Bolshevist invasion; the peasantry turned Radical, and the estates were occupied by revolutionaries and cut up. The power of the Government, then, in respect of collecting supplies of grain, was altogether inadequate; on the other hand, however, it was still sufficient (as some actual instances proved) to place serious, indeed insuperable, obstacles in our way. It was necessary, therefore, to co-operate with the Government--that is, to come to a compromise with it. After weeks of negotiation this was at last achieved, by strong diplomatic pressure, and, accordingly, the agreement of April 23, 1918, was signed. This provided for the establishment of a German-Austro-Hungarian Economical Central Commission; practically speaking, a great firm of corn merchants, in which the Central Powers appointed a number of their most experienced men, familiar, through years of activity in the business, with Russian grain affairs. But while this establishment was still in progress the people in Vienna (influenced by the occurrences on the Emperor's journey to North Bohemia) had lost patience; military leaders thought it no longer advisable to continue watching the operations of a _civil_ commercial undertaking in Ukraine while that country was occupied by the military, and so finally the General Staff elicited a decree from the Emperor providing that the procuring of grain should be entrusted to Austro-Hungarian army units in the districts occupied by them. To carry out this plan a general, who had up to that time been occupied in Roumania, was dispatched to Odessa, and now commenced independent military proceedings from there. For payment kronen were used, drawn from Vienna. The War Grain Transactions department was empowered, by Imperial instructions to the Government, to place 100 million kronen at the disposal of the War Ministry, and this amount was actually set aside by the finance section of that department. This military action and its execution very seriously affected the civil action during its establishment, and also greatly impaired the value of our credit in the Ukraine by offering kronen notes to such an extent at the time. Moreover, the kronen notes thus set in circulation in Ukraine were smuggled into Sweden, and coming thus into the Scandinavian and Dutch markets undoubtedly contributed to the well-known fall in the value of the krone which took place there some months later. The Austro-Hungarian military action was received with great disapproval by the _Germans_, and when in a time of the greatest scarcity among ourselves (mid-May) we were obliged to ask Germany for temporary assistance, this was granted only on condition that independent military action on the part of Austria-Hungary should be suppressed and the whole leadership in Ukraine be entrusted to Germany. It was then hoped that increased supplies might be procured, especially from Bessarabia, where the Germans have established a collecting organisation, to the demand of which the Roumanian Government had agreed. This hope, however, also proved vain, and in June and July the Ukraine was still further engaged. The country was, in fact, almost devoid of any considerable supplies, and in addition to this the collecting system never really worked properly at all, as the arrangement for maximum prices was frequently upset by overbidding on the part of our own military section. Meantime everything had been made ready for getting in the harvest of 1918. The collecting organisation had become more firmly established and extended, the necessary personal requirements were fully complied with, and _it would doubtless have been possible to bring great quantities out of the country_. But first of all the demands of the Ukrainian cities had to be met, and there was in many cases a state of real famine there; then came the Ukrainian and finally the very considerable contingents of German and Austro-Hungarian armies of occupation. Not until supplies for these groups had been assured would the Ukrainian Government allow any export of grain, and to this we were forced to agree. It was at once evident that the degree of cultivation throughout the whole country had seriously declined--owing to the entire uncertainty of property and rights after the agrarian revolution. The local authorities, affected by this state of things, were little inclined to agree to export, and it actually came to local embargoes, one district prohibiting the transfer of its stocks to any other, exactly as we had experienced with ourselves. In particular, however, the agitation of the Entente agents (which had been frequently perceptible before), under the impression of the German military defeats, was most seriously felt. The position of the Government which the Germans had set up at Kieff was unusually weak. Moreover, the ever-active Bolshevik elements throughout the whole country were now working with increasing success against our organisation. All this rendered the work more difficult in September and October--and then came the collapse. The difficulties of transport, too, were enormous; supplies had either to be sent to the Black Sea, across it and up the Danube, or straight through Galicia. For this we often lacked sufficient wagons, and in the Ukraine also coal; there were, in addition, often instances of resistance on the part of the local railways, incited by the Bolsheviks, and much more of the same sort. However great the lack of supplies in Ukraine itself, however much the limitations of our Russian means of payment may have contributed to the fact that the hopes entertained on the signing of peace at Brest-Litovsk were far from being realised, we may nevertheless maintain that _all that was humanly possible_ was done to overcome the unprecedented difficulties encountered. And in particular, by calling in the aid of the most capable and experienced firms of grain merchants, the forces available were utilised to the utmost degree. Finally it should perhaps be pointed out that the import organisation--apart from the before-mentioned interference of the military department and consequent fluctuations of the system--was largely upset by very extensive smuggling operations, carried on more particularly from Galicia. As such smuggling avoided the high export duty, the maximum prices appointed by the Ukrainian Government were constantly being overbid. This smuggling was also in many cases assisted by elements from Vienna; altogether the nervousness prevailing in many leading circles in Vienna, and frequently criticising our own organisation in public, or upsetting arrangements before they could come into operation, did a great deal of damage. It should also be mentioned that Germany likewise carried on a great deal of unofficially assisted smuggling, with ill effects on the official import organisation, and led to similar conditions on our own side. Despite all obstacles, the machinery established, as will be seen from the following survey, nevertheless succeeded in getting not inconsiderable quantities of foodstuffs into the states concerned, amounting in all to about 42,000 wagons, though unfortunately the quantities delivered did not come up to the original expectations. SURVEY OF THE IMPORTS FROM UKRAINE DATING FROM COMMENCEMENT OF IMPORTATION (SPRING, 1918) TO NOVEMBER, 1918. I. Foodstuffs obtained by the War Grain Transactions Department (corn, cereal products, leguminous fruits, fodder, seeds): Total imported for the contracting states (Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria and Turkey) 113,421 tons Of which Austria-Hungary received 57,382 " Grain and flour amounting to 46,225 " II. Articles obtained by the Austrian Central Purchasing Company: Of which Austria-Hungary Total received: Butter, fat, bacon 3,329,403 kg. 2,170,437 kg. Oil, edible oils 1,802,847 " 977,105 " Cheese, curds 420,818 " 325,103 " Fish, preserved fish, herrings 1,213,961 " 473,561 " Cattle 105,542 head 55,421 head (36,834,885 kg.) (19,505,760 kg.) Horses 98,976 head 40,027 head (31,625,172 kg.) (13,165,725 kg.) Salted meat 2,927,439 " 1,571,569 " Eggs 75,200 boxes 32,433 boxes Sugar 66,809,969 kg. 24,973,443 kg. Various foodstuffs 27,385,095 " 7,836,287 " ------------- ------------- Total 172,349,556 " 61,528,220 " and 75,200 boxes and 32,433 boxes eggs eggs (Total, 30,757 wagons) (Total, 13,037 wagons) The goods imported under II. represent a value of roughly 450 _million kronen_. The quantities _smuggled_ unofficially into the states concerned are estimated at about 15,000 wagons (about half the official imports). So ended this phase, a phase which seemed important while we were living through it, but which was yet nothing but a phase of no great importance after all, since it produced no lasting effect. The waves of war have passed over the Peace of Brest-Litovsk, washing it away as completely as a castle of sand on the shore is destroyed by the incoming tide. Long after I was reproached by the Polish element in the Herrenhaus, who asserted that I had proved my incapability by my own confession that the Peace of Brest had not withstood the test of subsequent events. But should I have shown more capability by asserting, after the collapse of the Central Powers, that the peace still existed? The term "bread peace" (_Brotfrieden_) was not coined by me, but by Burgemeister Weisskirchner on the occasion of my reception by the Gemeinderat of Vienna at the Nordbahnhof. The millions whose lives were saved by those 42,000 wagon-loads of food may repeat the words without a sneer. CHAPTER XI THE PEACE OF BUCHAREST At Brest-Litovsk rumours had already spread that Roumania did not intend to continue the war. These rumours assumed a very definite character after peace was concluded with the Ukraine. That peace, as well as Trotski's attitude, left no doubt in Bucharest that Roumania could no longer reckon on further co-operation on the part of Russia and gave rise to the idea in some circles that she would turn back. I say in _some_ circles, for there was one group which, to the very last moment, was all for war. While at Brest-Litovsk I began to get into touch with the leaders of the Hungarian Parliament in order to come to an agreement on the peace aims relating to Roumania. It was evident that, as regards Roumania, a peace without annexations would be more difficult to bring about than with any other state, because the treacherous attack by the Roumanians on the whole of Hungary had raised the desire for a better strategical frontier. As might be expected, I met with violent opposition from Hungary, where, under the name of strategical frontier rectifications, as a matter of fact greater annexations were desired. The first person with whom I dealt was Stephen Tisza, who, at great trouble, was brought to modify his original standpoint and finally was led so far as to admit that the fundamental ideas for peace were capable of acceptance. On February 27, 1918, he handed me a _pro-memoria_ with the request to show it to the Emperor, in which he explained his already more conciliatory point of view, though, nevertheless, he very distinctly showed his disapproval of my intentions. The _pro-memoria_ reads as follows: Unfortunately, Roumania can withdraw from the war not as much exhausted as justice and the justified interests of the Monarchy could wish. The loss of the Dobrudsha will be made good by territorial gains in Bessarabia, while the frontier rectifications demanded by us are out of all proportion with Roumania's guilt and with her military situation. Our peace terms are so mild that they are as a generous gift offered to vanquished Roumania and are _not at all to be made a subject for negotiations_. In no case are these negotiations to assume the character of trading or bargaining. If Roumania refuses to conclude peace on the basis laid down by us our answer can only be a resumption of hostilities. I consider it highly probable that the Roumanian Government will run that risk to prove her necessity in the eyes of the Western Powers and her own population. But it is just as probable that after breaking off negotiations she will just as quickly turn back and give way before our superior forces. At the worst a short campaign would result in the total collapse of Roumania. In all human probability it is almost certain that the development of affairs will take a course similar to the last phase in the peace with Northern Russia, and will lead to an easy and complete success for the Central Powers. That we lay down the frontier rectification as _conditio sine qua non_ forms a justifiable measure to protect an important interest for the Monarchy of a purely defensive nature. It is energetically demanded by the entire patriotic public opinion of Hungary. It appears out of the question that a Minister of Foreign Affairs, had he taken up another attitude in the matter, would have been able to remain in the Delegation. And, besides, the procedure--to which the greatest importance must be attached--is absolutely necessary in order not to compromise the chances of a general peace. It is obvious from the public statements of leading statesmen of the Western Powers that they will not be prevailed upon to agree to an acceptable peace, as they do not believe in our capacity and firm resolve to carry it out. Whatever confirms their views in this respect widens the distance between us and peace; the only way to bring us really nearer to peace is to adopt an attitude that will lead them to think differently. This must constitute the line of action in our resolves and undertakings. In connection with the Roumanian peace, it is evident that to yield on the frontier question--even for fear of a breakdown in the negotiations--must have a deplorable effect on the opinion our enemies have of us. It would certainly be right not to take advantage of Roumania's desperate situation, but to grant her reasonable peace terms in accordance with the principles embodied in our statements. But if we do not act with adequate firmness on that reasonable basis we shall encourage the Western Powers in the belief that it is not necessary to conclude a peace with us on the basis of the integrity of our territory and sovereignty, and fierce and bitter fighting may be looked for to teach them otherwise. TISZA. _February 27, 1916._ Andrassy and Wekerle were also opposed to a milder treatment of Roumania, and thus the whole Hungarian Parliament were of one accord on the question. I am not sure what standpoint Karolyi held, and I do not know if at that period the "tiger soul" which he at one time displayed to Roumania, or the pacifist soul which he laid later at the feet of General Franchet d'Esperey, dominated. Thus at Brest-Litovsk, when the Roumanian peace appeared on the horizon, I took up the standpoint that the party desirous of peace negotiations must be supported. The episode of the Roumanian peace must not be taken out of the great picture of the war. Like the Peace of Brest-Litovsk, the Roumanian peace was necessary from a military point of view, because it seemed desirable to release troops in the East as quickly as possible and transfer them to the Western front. It was urgently desired and repeatedly demanded that we should come to a final settlement with Roumania as soon as possible. In order to secure a speedy result I had already, from Brest-Litovsk, advised the Emperor to send word privately to King Ferdinand that he could reckon on an honourable peace should he wish to enter into negotiations. The Emperor took my advice, and Colonel Randa had one or two interviews with a member of the immediate entourage of the King. But the German opinion was that King Ferdinand must be "punished for his treachery" and no negotiations entered into with him. For this reason, and to avoid fruitless controversy, I first imparted to Herr von Kühlmann the accomplished fact and informed him that we had put ourselves secretly into communication with King Ferdinand. This event was quite in accordance with the standard of equality in our Federation, by which every member was privileged to act according to the best of his ability and was merely bound to inform the friendly Powers of the proceedings. It was not our duty to apply to Germany for permission to take such a step. There was a three-fold reason why I did not share Germany's opinion on this question. In the first place, my point of view was that it was not our duty to mete out divine justice and to inflict punishment, but, on the contrary, to end the war as quickly as possible. Therefore my duty was to seize every means possible to prevent a continuance of the war. I must mention here that the idea prevailing in many circles that the Roumanians were quite at the end of their strength, and were compelled to accept all the conditions, is entirely false. The Roumanians held very strong positions, the _moral_ in the army was excellent, and in the last great attack on Maracesci, Mackensen's troops had suffered very severely. This success turned the Roumanians' heads, and there were many leading men in the ranks of the Roumanian army who sided entirely with those who wished to carry on the war _à l'outrance_. They did not count so much on an actual victory, but were upheld by the hope that for some time to come they could maintain the defensive and that, meanwhile, the decisive successes of their Allies on the West would secure victory for them. They were probably afraid, too, that a peace concluded with us would place them in permanent disgrace with the Entente--that they would lose the friendship of the Entente, fail to gain ours, and find themselves between two stools. The second reason which decided me to insist on negotiating with the King was that, from a dynastic point of view, I considered it most unwise to dethrone a foreign king. There was already then a certain fall in the value of kings on the European market, and I was afraid it might develop into a panic if we put more kings off their thrones. The third reason was that, in order to conclude peace, we must have a competent representative in Roumania. If we were to depose the King we should divide Roumania into two camps and would, at the best, only be able to conclude a transitory peace with that party which accepted the dethronement of the King. A rapid and properly-secured peace could only be concluded with the legitimate head in Roumania. In the introductory interviews which Colonel Randa had on February 4 and 5 with the confidential envoy from the King of Roumania, the envoy asked whether all the Quadruple Alliance Powers were acting in the step in question, and whether the occupied territory in Roumania would be released. I was notified of this inquiry of the King, and replied that I was persuaded that no refusal need be expected from the other Central Powers should he, with the object of securing an honourable peace, address them accordingly. As to the question of territorial possessions, I stated that, for the present, I was not able to express any opinion on the matter, as it would have to be a subject for the introductory negotiations. The view held by the German military leaders in agreement with Hungarian politicians that Roumania should be treated differently from, and in a much sterner manner than, any other state was, if the question is considered from the point of view of retribution, quite justified. Roumania's actions with regard to us were far more treacherous than those of Italy. Italy, owing to her geographical position and to the fact of her being totally dependent on the Western Powers--a blockade by whom might finally have forced her to submit to their demands--would have found it very difficult to remain neutral in this world war. Roumania was not only perfectly independent, but was amply provided for through her rich granaries. Apart from the fact that Roumania alone was to blame for allowing things to go so far that Russia was enabled finally to send her an ultimatum and so force her into war, it must be admitted that Roumania was far less likely to be influenced by the Entente than Italy. But neither would the Russian ultimatum have taken effect if Roumania had not consciously and willingly placed herself in a position in regard to military and political matters that gave her into Russia's power. Bratianu said to me in one of our last interviews: "Russia is exactly like a blackcock dancing before the hens." In admitting the truth of this appropriate comparison, it must be added that the female of the simile, longing to be embraced, directly provoked violence. For two years Bratianu had stirred up public opinion against us in his own country. Had he not done so, and had he not finally bared his Russian frontier of all troops, the Russian ultimatum would have had no effect. In Roumania the Avarescu Ministry was in power. On February 24 Kühlmann and I had our first interview alone with Avarescu at the castle of Prince Stirbey, at Buftia. At this interview, which was very short, the sole topic was the Dobrudsha question. The frontier rectifications, as they stood on the Austro-Hungarian programme, were barely alluded to, and the economic questions, which later played a rather important part, were only hinted at. Avarescu's standpoint was that the cession of the Dobrudsha was an impossibility, and the interview ended with a _non possumus_ from the Roumanian general, which was equivalent to breaking off negotiations. As regards the Dobrudsha question, our position was one of constraint. The so-called "old" Dobrudsha, the portion that Roumania in 1913 had wrested from Bulgaria, had been promised to the Bulgarians by a treaty in the time of the Emperor Francis Joseph as a reward for their co-operation, and the area that lies between that frontier and the Constanza-Carnavoda railway line was vehemently demanded by the Bulgarians. They went much further in their aspirations: they demanded the whole of the Dobrudsha, including the mouth of the Danube, and the great and numerous disputes that occurred later in this connection show how insistently and obstinately the Bulgarians held to their demands. At the same time, as there was a danger that the Bulgars, thoroughly disappointed in their aspirations, might secede from us, it became absolutely impossible to hand over the Dobrudsha to the Roumanians. All that could be effected was to secure for the Roumanians free access to Constanza, and, further, to find a way out of the difficulty existing between Turkey and Bulgaria in connection with the Dobrudsha. In order not to break off entirely all discussion, I suggested to Avarescu that he should arrange for his King to meet me. My plan was to make it clear to the King that it would be possible for him now to conclude a peace, though involving certain losses, but still a peace that would enable him to keep his crown. On the other hand, by continuing the war, he could not count on forbearance on the part of the Central Powers. I trusted that this move on my part would enable him to continue the peace negotiations. I met the King on February 27 at a little station in the occupied district of Moldavia. We arrived at Focsani at noon and continued by motor to the lines, where Colonel Ressel and a few Roumanian officers were waiting to receive me. We drove past positions on both sides in a powerful German car that had been placed at my disposal, and proceeded as far as the railway station of Padureni. A saloon carriage in the train had been reserved for me there, and we set off for Rasaciuni, arriving there at 5 o'clock. The Roumanian royal train arrived a few minutes later, and I at once went across to the King. Incidentally my interview with King Ferdinand lasted twenty minutes. As the King did not begin the conversation I had to do so, and said that I had not come to sue for peace but purely as the bearer of a message from the Emperor Charles, who, in spite of Roumania's treachery, would show indulgence and consideration if King Ferdinand would _at once_ conclude peace under the conditions mutually agreed on by the Quadruple Alliance Powers. Should the King not consent, then a continuance of the war would be unavoidable and would put an end to Roumania and the dynasty. Our military superiority was already very considerable, and now that our front would be set free from the Baltic to the Black Sea, it would be an easy matter for us, in a very short space of time, to increase our strength still more. We were aware that Roumania would very soon have no more munitions and, were hostilities to continue, in six weeks the kingdom and dynasty would have ceased to exist. The King did not oppose anything but thought the conditions terribly hard. Without the Dobrudsha Roumania would hardly be able to draw breath. At any rate, there could be further parley as to ceding "old" Dobrudsha again. I said to the King that if he complained about hard conditions I could only ask what would his conditions have been if his troops had reached Budapest? Meanwhile, I was ready to guarantee that Roumania would not be cut off from the sea, but would have free access to Constanza. Here the King again complained of the hard conditions enforced on him, and declared he would never be able to find a Ministry who would accept them. I rejoined that the forming of a Cabinet was Roumania's internal business, but my private opinion was that a Marghiloman Cabinet, in order to save Roumania, would agree to the conditions laid down. I could only repeat that no change could be made in the peace terms laid before the King by the Quadruple Alliance. If the King did not accept them, we should have, in a month's time, a far better peace than the one which the Roumanians might consider themselves lucky to get to-day. We were ready to give our diplomatic support to Roumania that she might obtain Bessarabia, and she would, therefore, gain far more than she would lose. The King replied that Bessarabia was nothing to him, that it was steeped in Bolshevism, and the Dobrudsha could not be given up; anyhow, it was only under the very greatest pressure that he had decided to enter into the war against the Central Powers. He began again, however, to speak of the promised access to the sea, which apparently made the cession of the Dobrudsha somewhat easier. We then entered into details, and I reproached the King for the dreadful treatment of our people interned in Roumania, which he said he regretted. Finally, I requested that he would give me a clear and decided answer within forty-eight hours as to whether he would negotiate on the basis of our proposals or not. The result of the interview was the appointment of the Marghiloman Ministry and the continuation of the negotiations. Before Marghiloman consented to form a Cabinet, he approached me to learn the exact terms. He declared himself to be in agreement with the first and hardest of the conditions--the cession of the Dobrudsha, because he was quicker than the King in seeing that in consequence of our binding obligation to Bulgaria in this connection, it could not be otherwise. As to our territorial demands, I told Marghiloman that I laid chief stress on entering into friendly and lasting relations with Roumania after peace was concluded, and, therefore, desired to reduce the demands in such measure as Roumania, on her part, would consider bearable. On the other hand, he, Marghiloman, must understand that I was bound to consider the Hungarian aspirations to a certain degree, Marghiloman, who was an old and tried parliamentarian, fully saw in what a constrained position I was placed. We finally agreed that the cession of the populated districts and towns like Turn-Saverin and Okna should not take place, and, altogether the original claims were reduced to about half. Marghiloman said he accepted the compromise. My desire to enter into a lasting economic union with Roumania played an important part in the negotiations. It was clear to me that this demand was in Austrian, but not in Hungarian interests; but I still think that, even so, it was my duty, although joint Minister for both countries, to work for Austria, as the shortage of provisions made the opening of the Roumanian granaries very desirable. As was to be expected, this clause in the negotiations met with the most violent opposition in Hungary, and it was at first impossible to see a way out of the difficulty. I never took back my demand, however, and was firmly resolved that peace should not be signed if my plan was not realised. I was dismissed from office in the middle of the negotiations, and my successor did not attach the same importance to that particular item as I did. On the German side there was at once evidence of that insatiable appetite which we had already noticed at Brest-Litovsk. The Germans wished to have a species of war indemnity by compelling Roumania to cede her petroleum springs, her railways and harbours to German companies, and placing the permanent control of her finances in German hands. I opposed these demands in the most decided manner from the very first, as I was convinced that such terms would preclude all possibility of any friendly relations in future. I went so far as to ask the Emperor Charles to telegraph direct to the Emperor William in that connection, which met with a certain amount of success. In the end the German claims were reduced by about fifty per cent., and accepted by Marghiloman in the milder form. With regard to the petroleum question, a ninety years' lease was agreed on. In the matter of the corn supply, Roumania was to bind herself to deliver her agricultural produce to the Central Powers for a certain number of years. The plan for Germany to be in the permanent control of Roumanian finances was not carried out. In the question of price, the Roumanian views held good. The most impossible of the German demands, namely, the occupation of Roumania for five to six years after the conclusion of peace, gave rise to great difficulties. This was the point that was most persistently and energetically insisted on by the German Supreme Military Command, and it was only with great trouble and after lengthy explanations and discussions that we settled the matter on the following lines: That on the conclusion of peace the entire legislative and executive power of the Roumanian Government would be restored in principle, and that we should content ourselves with exercising a certain control through a limited number of agents, this control not to be continued after the general peace was made. I cannot say positively whether this standpoint was adhered to by my successor or not, but certain it is that Marghiloman only undertook office on condition that I gave him a guarantee that the plan would be supported by me. As already mentioned, the question of the Dobrudsha had prepared great difficulties for us in two respects. First of all there was the relinquishing of their claim which, for the Roumanians, was the hardest term of all, and imparted to the peace the character of a peace of violence; and secondly, the matter had precipitated a dispute between Turkey and Bulgaria. The Bulgarians' view was that the entire Dobrudsha, including the mouth of the Danube, must be promised to them, and they insisted on their point with an obstinacy which I have seldom, if ever, come across. They went so far as to declare that neither the present Government nor any other would be able to return to Sofia, and allowed it clearly to be seen that by refusing their claims we could never again count on Bulgaria. The Turks, on the other hand, protested with equal vehemence that the Dobrudsha had been conquered by two Turkish army corps, that it was a moral injustice that the gains chiefly won by Turkish forces should be given exclusively to the Bulgarians, and that they would never consent to Bulgaria receiving the whole of the Dobrudsha unless compensation was given to them. By way of compensation, they asked not only for that stretch of land which they had ceded to Bulgaria on their entry into the war (Adrianople), but also a considerable area beyond. In the numerous conferences at which the question was discussed, Kühlmann and I played the part of honest mediators who were making every effort to reconcile the two so divergent standpoints. We both saw clearly that the falling off of the Bulgars or Turks might be the result if a compromise was not effected. Finally, after much trouble, we succeeded in drawing up a programme acceptable to both sides. It took this form: That "old" Dobrudsha should at once be given back to Bulgaria, and the other parts of the area to be handed over as a possession to the combined Central Powers, and a definite decision agreed upon later. Neither Turkey nor Bulgaria was quite satisfied with the decision, nor yet averse to it; but, in the circumstances, it was the only possible way of building a bridge between the Turks and the Bulgars. Just as England and France secured the entry into the war of Italy through the Treaty of London, so did the Emperor Francis Joseph and Burian, as well as the Government in Berlin, give binding promises to the Bulgars to secure their co-operation, and these promises proved later to be the greatest obstacles to a peace of understanding. Nevertheless, no sensible person can deny that it is natural that a state engaged in a life-and-death struggle should seek an ally without first asking whether the keeping of a promise later will give rise to important or minor difficulties. The fireman extinguishing flames in a burning house does not first ask whether the water he pumps on it has damaged anything. When Roumania attacked us in the rear the danger was very great, the house was in flames, and the first act of my predecessor was naturally, and properly, to avert the great danger. There was no lack of promises, and the Dobrudsha was assigned to the Bulgarians. Whether and in what degree the Turks had a right, through promises, to the territory they, on their part, had ceded to the Bulgars I do not know. But they certainly had a moral right to it. On the occasion of the Roumanian peace in the spring of 1918, too severe a test of the loyalty of Bulgars and Turks to the alliance was dangerous. For some time past the former had been dealing in secret with the Entente. The alliance with Turkey rested mainly on Talaat and Enver. Talaat told me in Bucharest, however, quite positively that he would be forced to send in his resignation if he were to return empty-handed, and in that case the secession of Turkey would be very probable. We tried then at Bucharest to steer our way through the many shoals; not mortally to offend the Roumanians, to observe as for as possible the character of a peace of understanding, and yet to keep both Turks and Bulgars on our side. The cession of the Dobrudsha was a terribly hard demand to make on the Roumanians, and was only rendered bearable for them when Kühlmann and I, with the greatest difficulty and against the most violent opposition from the Bulgarians, obtained for them free access to the Black Sea. When later, in one breath, we were reproached with having enforced a peace of violence on the Roumanians and with not having treated the Bulgarian claims and wishes with sufficient consideration--the answer to the charge is obvious. _Because_ we were compelled to consider both Bulgaria and Turkey we were forced to demand the Dobrudsha from the Roumanians and treat them with greater severity than we should have done otherwise, in order finally to gain the Turks and the Bulgars for our negotiation plans. Judged according to the Versailles standard, the Peace of Bucharest would be a peace of understanding, both as regards form and contents. The Central Powers' mediators, both at Versailles and St. Germain, would have been glad had they been treated in the same way as the Marghiloman Ministry was treated. The Roumanians lost the Dobrudsha, but acquired safe and guaranteed access to the sea; they lost a district of sparsely populated mountainous country to us, and through us they acquired Bessarabia. They gained far more than they lost. CHAPTER XII FINAL REFLECTIONS The farther the world war progressed, the more did it lose the character of the work of individual men. It assumed rather the character of a cosmic event, taking more and more from the effectiveness of the most powerful individuals. All settlements on which coalitions were based were connected with certain war aims by the Cabinets, such as the promises of compensation given to their own people, the hopes of gain from the final victory. The encouragement of intense and boundless hatred, the increasing crude brutality of the world all tended to create a situation making each individual like a small stone which, breaking away from an avalanche of stones, hurls itself downwards without a leader and without goal, and is no longer capable of being guided by anyone. The Council of Four at Versailles tried for some time to make the world believe that they possessed the power to rebuild Europe according to their own ideas. According to their own ideas! That signified, to begin with, four utterly different ideas, for four different worlds were comprised in Rome, Paris, London, and Washington. And the four representatives--"the Big Four," as they were called--were each individually the slave of his programme, his pledges, and his people. Those responsible for the Paris negotiations _in camera_, which lasted for many months, and were a breeding ground for European anarchy, had their own good reasons for secrecy; there was no end to the disputes, for which no outlet could be found. Here, Wilson had been scoffed at and cursed because he deserted his programme; certainly, there is not the slightest similarity between the Fourteen Points and the Peace of Versailles and St. Germain, but it is forgotten now that Wilson no longer had the power to enforce his will against the three others. We do not know what occurred behind those closed doors, but we can imagine it, and Wilson probably fought weeks and months for his programme. He could have broken off proceedings and left! He certainly could have done so, but would the chaos have been any less; would it have been any better for the world if the only one who was not solely imbued with the lust of conquest had thrown down his arms? But Clemenceau, too, the direct opposite of Wilson, was not quite open in his dealings. Undoubtedly this old man, who now at the close of his life was able to satisfy his hatred of the Germans of 1870, gloried in the triumph; but, apart from that, if he had tried to conclude a "Wilson peace," all the private citizens of France, great and small, would have risen against him, for they had been told for the last five years: _Que les boches payeront tout_. What he did, he enjoyed doing; but he was forced to do it or France would have dismissed him. And Italy? From Milan to Naples is heard the subterraneous rumbling of approaching revolution; the only means the Government have adopted to check the upheaval is to drown the revolution in a sea of national interests. I believe that in 1917, when the general discontent was much less and finances were much better, the Italian Government might much more probably have accepted Wilson's standpoint than after final victory. Then they could not do it. At Versailles they were the slaves of their promises. And does anyone believe that Lloyd George would have had the power at Versailles to extend the Wilson principle of the right of self-determination to Ireland and the Dominions? Naturally, he did not wish to do otherwise than he did; but that is not the question here, but rather that neither could have acted very differently even had he wished to do so. It seems to me that the historical moment is the year 1917 when Wilson lost his power, which was swallowed up in Imperialism, and when the President of the United States neglected to force his programme on his Allies. Then power was still in his hands, as the American troops were so eagerly looked for; but later, when victory came, he no longer held it. And thus there came about what is now a fact. A dictated peace of the most terrible nature was concluded and a foundation laid for a continuance of unimaginable disturbances, complications and wars. In spite of all the apparent power of victorious armies, in spite of all the claims of the Council of Four, a world has expired at Versailles--the world of militarism. Solely bent on exterminating Prussian militarism, the Entente have gained so complete a victory that all fences and barriers have been pulled down and they can give themselves up unchecked to a torrent of violence, vengeance and passion. And the Entente are so swallowed up by their revengeful paroxysm of destruction that they do not appear to see that, while they imagine they still rule and command, they are even now but instruments in a world revolution. The Entente, who would not allow the war to end and kept up the blockade for months after the cessation of hostilities, has made Bolshevism a danger to the world. War is its father, famine its mother, despair its godfather. The poison of Bolshevism will course in the veins of Europe for many a long year. Versailles is not the end of the war, it is only a phase of it. The war goes on, though in another form. I think that the coming generation will not call the great drama of the last five years the world-war, but the world-revolution, which it will realise began with the world-war. Neither at Versailles nor St. Germain has any lasting work been done. The germs of decomposition and death lie in this peace. The paroxysms that shattered Europe are not yet over; as, after a terrible earthquake, the subterraneous rumblings may still be heard. Again and again we shall see the earth open, now here, now there, and shoot up flames into the heavens; again and again there will be expressions of elementary nature and elementary force that will spread devastation through the land--until everything has been swept away that reminds us of the madness of the war and the French peace. Slowly but with unspeakable suffering a new world will be born. Coming generations will look back to our times as to a long and very bad dream, but day follows the darkest night. Generations have been laid in their graves, murdered, famished, and a prey to disease. Millions, with hatred and murder in their hearts, have died in their efforts to devastate and destroy. But other generations will arise and with them a new spirit: They will rebuild what war and revolution have pulled down. Spring comes always after winter. Resurrection follows after death; it is the eternal law in life. Well for those who will be called upon to serve as soldiers in the ranks of whoever comes to build the new world. _June, 1919._ APPENDIX 1 =Resolutions of the London Conference, of April 26, 1915=[11] On February 28, 1917, the _Isvestia_ published the following text of this agreement: "The Italian Ambassador in London, Marchese Imperiali, acting on the instructions of his Government, has the honour to convey to the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Sir Edward Grey, the French Ambassador in London, M. Cambon, and the Russian Ambassador in London, Count Benckendorff, the following notable points: §1. A _Military Convention_ shall be concluded without delay between the General Staffs of France, Great Britain, Russia and Italy. This convention to determine the minimum of forces to be directed by Russia against Austria-Hungary in case that country should turn all its forces against Italy, provided Russia decides to concentrate chiefly against Germany. The Military Convention referred to shall also settle questions bearing upon an armistice, in so far as these by their nature come within the scope of the Army Command. §2. Italy on her part undertakes to carry on war with all the means at her disposal, together with France, Great Britain and Russia, against all countries at war with them. §3. The naval forces of France and Great Britain are to render Italy undiminished, active assistance until the _destruction of the Austrian fleet_, or until the moment peace is concluded. A _Naval Convention_ shall be concluded without delay between France, Great Britain and Italy. §4. At the coming conclusion of peace Italy is to receive: the district of the _Trentino; the whole of South Tyrol as far as its natural geographical boundary, thereby understood the Brenner; the city and district of Trieste; the provinces of Goerz and Gradisca, the whole of Istria_ as far as Quarnero, including Volosca and the Istrian islands of Cherso and Lussin, also the smaller islands of Plavnica, Unie, Canidolo, Palazzoli, as well as the island of St. Peter de Nembi, Astinello and Cruica, with the neighbouring islands. Note: 1. By way of supplement to §4, the frontier shall be drawn through the following-points: From the peak of the Umbrail in a northerly direction as far as the Stilfserjoch, and thence along the watershed of the Ratische Alps as far as the sources of the rivers Etsch and Eisack, then over the Reschen-Scheideck, the Brenner and the Oetztaler and Zillertaler Alps; the frontier line then to turn southwards, cutting the Toblach range, and proceeding as far as the present frontier of Grein, drawn towards the Alps; following this it will run to the heights of Tarvis, then, however, pursuing a course along the watershed of the Julian Alps, over the heights of Predil, Mangart and Triglav group, and the passes of Podbrda, Podlaneskan and Idria. From there the frontier continues in a south-easterly direction to the Schneeberg, so that the basin of the River Save, with its sources, shall not fall within the Italian territory. From the Schneeberg the frontier proceeds towards the coast, enclosing Castua, Matuglie and Volosca in the Italian possessions. §5. Similarly, Italy is to receive the province of Dalmatia in its present form, including Lissarik and Trebinje in the north, and all possessions as far as a line drawn from the coast at Cape Blanca eastward to the watershed in the south, so as to include in the Italian possessions all valleys on the course of the rivers debouching at Sebenico, such as Cikola, Kerke and Budisnica, with all those situate on their sources. Similarly also, Italy is promised _all the islands lying north and west of the Dalmatian coast_, beginning with the islands of Premuda, Selve, Ulbo, Skerda Maon, Pago and Puntadura, etc., in the north; as far as Malarda in the south, adding also the islands of St. Andrae, Busi, Lissa, Lessina, Torzola, Curzola, Cazza and Lagosta, with all rocks and islets thereto pertaining, as well as Pelagosa, but not to include the islands of Great and Lesser Zirona, Pua, Solta and Brazza. The following are to be _neutralised_: (1) The entire coast from Cape Blanca in the north as far as the southern end of the peninsula of Sabbioncello, and in the south including the whole of the mentioned peninsula in the neutralised area; (2) a part of the coast beginning from a point situate 10 versts south of the cape of Alt-Ragusa, as far as the river Wojusa in the south, so as to include within the boundaries of the neutralised zone _the whole of the Bay of Cattaro_ with its ports, Antivari, Dulcigno, San Giovanni di Medua and Durazzo; this not to affect the declarations of the contracting parties in April and May, 1909, as to the rights of _Montenegro_. In consideration, however, of the fact that these rights were only admitted as applying to the present possessions of Montenegro, they shall not be so extended as to embrace any lands or ports which may in the future be ceded to Montenegro. In the same way, no part of the coast at present belonging to Montenegro shall be subject to future neutralisation. The restrictions in the case of the port of Antivari, agreed by Montenegro itself in 1909, remain in force. (3) Finally, the islands not accorded to Italy. Note: 3. The following lands in the Adriatic Sea are accorded by the Powers of the Quadruple Alliance to the territories of _Croatia, Serbia and Montenegro_: In the north of the Adriatic, _the entire coast, commencing from the Bay of Volosca_ on the frontier of Istria as far as the _northern frontier_ of Dalmatia, including the whole of the coast-line now belonging to Hungary, the entire coast of Croatia, the port of Fiume and the small harbours of Novi and Carlopago, as also the islands of Velia, Pervicchio, Gregorio, Goli and Arbe. In the south of the Adriatic, where Serbia and Austrian interests lie, the entire coast from Cape Planca as far as the river Drina, with the principal ports of _Spaluto, Ragusa, Cattaro, Antivari, Dulcigno and San Giovanni di Medua_, and with the islands of Greater Zirona, Pua, Solta, Brazza, Jaklian and Calamotta. The port of Durazzo can be accorded to an independent Mohammedan State of Albania. §6. Italy to be given full possession of _Valona, the Island of Sasseno_, and a sufficiently extensive territory to protect it in military respects, approximately from the River Vojusa in the north and east to the boundary of the Chimara district in the south. §7. Italy, receiving the Trentino according to §4, Dalmatia and the islands of the Adriatic according to §5, as well as Valona, is not to oppose the possible wishes of France, Great Britain and Russia in case of the establishment of a small autonomous neutralised state in Albania, as to _division of the northern and southern frontier belts of Albania between Montenegro, Serbia and Greece_. The southern strip of coast from the frontier of the Italian district of Valona as far as Cape Stiloa to be subject to neutralisation. Italy has the prospect of _right to determine the foreign policy of Albania_; in any case, Italy undertakes to assent to the cession of a sufficient territory to Albania to make the frontiers of the latter on the west of the Ochrida Lake coincide with the frontiers of Greece and Serbia. §8. Italy to have full possession of all the _islands of the Dodecanessus_ which it occupies at present. §9. France, Great Britain and Russia accept in principle the fact of _Italy's interest in maintaining political equilibrium_ in the Mediterranean, as also Italy's right, in case of any _division of Turkey, to a like portion with themselves_ in the basin of the Mediterranean, and that in the part adjacent to the _province of Adalia_, where Italy has already acquired particular rights, and developed particular interests, to be noted in the Italo-British Convention. The zone then falling to the possession of Italy will in due time be determined according to the vital interests of France and Great Britain. Similarly, the interests of Italy are also to be considered in case the territorial integrity of Asiatic Turkey should be maintained by the Powers for a further period, and only a limitation between the spheres of interest be made. Should, in such case, any areas of Asiatic Turkey be occupied by France, Great Britain and Russia during the present war, then the entire area contiguous to Italy, and further defined below, shall be granted to Italy, together with the right to occupy the same. §10. In Lybia, Italy is to be granted all rights and claims hitherto conceded to the Sultan on the basis of the Treaty of Lausanne. §11. Italy to receive such part of the war contribution as shall be commensurate with her sacrifices and efforts. §12. Italy subscribes to the declaration issued by France, England and Russia whereby _Arabia and the holy cities of the Mohammedans_ are to be granted to _an independent Mohammedan Power_. §13. In case of any extension of the French and English colonial possessions in Africa at the expense of Germany, France and Great Britain acknowledge in principle the right of Italy to demand certain compensation in respect of extension of Italian possessions in Eritrea, Somaliland, in Lybia, and the colonial areas contiguous to the colonies of France and England. §14. England undertakes to facilitate the immediate realisation of _a loan of not less than 50 million pounds sterling_ in the English market on favourable conditions. §15. France, England and Russia undertake to support Italy in _preventing the representatives of the Holy See from taking any diplomatic steps whatever in connection with the conclusion of a peace_, or the regulation of questions connected with the present war. §16. The present treaty to be _kept secret_. As regards Italy's agreement to the declaration of September 5, 1914, this declaration will be made public as soon as war is declared by Italy or against Italy. The foregoing points having been duly noted, the respective authorised representatives of France, Great Britain and Russia, together with the representative of Italy similarly authorised by his Government for this purpose, are agreed: France, Great Britain and Russia declare their full agreement with the foregoing notable points, as set before them by the Italian Government. With regard to §§1, 2 and 3, referring to the agreement upon military and naval undertakings of all four Powers, _Italy undertakes to commence active operations at the earliest possible date_, and in any case not later than one month after the signing of the present document by the contracting parties. The present agreement, in four copies, signed in London on the 26th April, 1915, and sealed, by Sir Edward Grey, Cambon, Marchese Imperiali, Graf Benckendorff." After the entry of Roumania into the war (September, 1916) this programme was further extended. 2 =Note from Count Czernin to the American Government, dated March 5, 1917= From the _aide-mémoire_ of the American Ambassador in Vienna, dated February 18 of this year, the Imperial and Royal Ministry for Foreign Affairs understands that the Washington Cabinet entertains some doubt, in view of the statements issued by the Imperial and Royal Government on February 10 and January 11 of this year, as to what attitude Austria-Hungary contemplates adopting for the future with regard to submarine warfare, and whether the assurance given by the Austrian Government to the Washington Cabinet in the course of the proceedings with regard to the case of the vessels _Ancona_ and _Persia_ might not be taken as altered or withdrawn by the statements mentioned. The Austrian Government is most willing to meet the desire of the United States Government that this doubt should be removed by a clear and final declaration. It should here be permitted first of all to touch very briefly on the methods adopted by the Allied Powers in marine warfare, since these form the starting-point of the aggravated submarine warfare put into practice by Austria-Hungary and her allies, besides throwing a clear light upon the attitude hitherto adopted by the Austrian Government in the questions arising therefrom. When Great Britain entered upon the war with the Central Powers, but a few years had elapsed since the memorable time when Great Britain itself, together with the remaining states, had commenced at the Hague to lay the foundations of a modern code of law for marine warfare. Shortly after that the English Government had brought about a meeting of representatives of the principal naval Powers, assembling in London, in order further to carry forward the work commenced at the Hague, presumably in a spirit of reasonable compromise between the interests of belligerents and those of neutrals. The unexpected success of these endeavours, which aimed at nothing less than concerted establishment of legal standards calculated to maintain the freedom of the seas and the interests of neutrals even in time of war, was not to be long enjoyed by the peoples concerned. Hardly had the United Kingdom decided to take part in the war than it also began to break through the barriers with which it was confronted by the standards of international law. While the Central Powers immediately on the outbreak of war had announced their intention of observing the Declaration of London, which also bore the signature of the British representative, England discarded the most important points in that Declaration. In the endeavour to cut off the Central Powers from all supplies by sea, England gradually extended the list of contraband until it included everything now required by human beings for the maintenance of life. Great Britain then placed all the coasts of the North Sea--an important transit-way also for the maritime trade of Austria-Hungary--under the obstruction of a so-called "blockade," in order to prevent the entry into Germany of all goods not yet inscribed on the contraband list, as also to bar all neutral traffic with those coasts, and prevent any export from the same. That this method of proceeding stands in the most lurid contradiction to the standards of blockade law arrived at and established by international congress has already been admitted by the President of the United States in words which will live in the history of the law of nations. By this illegally preventing export of goods from the Central Powers Great Britain thought to be able to shut down the innumerable factories and industries which had been set up by industrious and highly-developed peoples in the heart of Europe; and to bring the workers to idleness and thence to want and revolt. And when Austria-Hungary's southern neighbour joined the ranks of the enemies of the Central Powers her first step was to declare a blockade of all the coasts of her opponent--following the example, of course, of her Allies--in disregard of the legal precepts which Italy had shortly before helped to lay down. Austria-Hungary did not fail to point out to the neutral Powers at once that this blockade was void of all legal validity. For two years the Central Powers have hesitated. Not until then, and after long and mature consideration for and against, did they proceed to answer in like measure and close with their adversaries at sea. As the only belligerents who had done everything to secure the observance of the agreement which should provide for freedom of the seas to neutrals, it was sorely against their wishes to bow to the need of the moment and attack that freedom; but they took that step in order to fulfil their urgent duty to their peoples and with the conviction that the step in question must lead towards the freedom of the seas in the end. The declarations made by the Central Powers on the last day of January of this year are only apparently directed against the rights of neutrals; as a matter of fact, they are working toward the restitution of those rights which the enemy has constantly infringed and would, if victorious, annihilate for ever. The submarines, then, which circle round England's shores, announce to all peoples using and needing the sea--and who does not need it?--that the day is not far off when the flags of all nations shall wave over the seas in newly acquired freedom. It may doubtless be hoped that this announcement will find echo wherever neutral peoples live, and that it will be understood in particular by the great people of the United States of America, whose most famous representative has in the course of the war spoken up with ardent words for the freedom of the seas as the highway of all nations. If the people and the government of the Union will bear in mind that the "blockade" established by Great Britain is intended not only to force the Central Powers to submission by starvation but ultimately to secure undisputed mastery of the sea for itself, and thereby ensure its supremacy over all other nations, while on the other hand the blockading of England and its Allies only serves to render possible _a peace with honour_ for these Powers and to guarantee to all peoples the freedom of navigation and maritime trade, thus ensuring their safe existence, then the question as to which of the two belligerent parties has right on its side is already decided. Though the Central Powers are far from wishing to seek for further allies in their struggle, they nevertheless feel justified in claiming that neutrals should appreciate their endeavours to bring to life again the principles of international law and the equal rights of nations. Proceeding now to answer the questions set forth in the memorandum of February 18 of this year, already referred to, the Austrian Government would first of all remark that in the exchange of Notes in the cases of the _Ancona_ and _Persia_ this Government restricted itself to consideration of the concrete questions which had up to then arisen, without setting forth the legal position in point of principle. In the Note of December 29, 1915, however, regarding the _Ancona_ case it reserved the right to bring up the intricate questions of international law connected with the submarine warfare for discussion at a later date. In reverting now to this point, and taking up the question as to sinking of enemy ships, with which the memorandum is concerned, for brief consideration, it is with the hope that it may be made clear to the American Government that the Austrian Government now as heretofore _holds immovably by the assurance already given_, and with the endeavour to avoid any misunderstanding between the Monarchy and the American Union by clearing up the most important question arising out of the submarine warfare--most important as it rests on the dictates of humanity. First and foremost the Austrian Government wishes to point out that the thesis advanced by the American Government and adopted in many learned works--to the effect that enemy merchant vessels, save in the event of attempted flight or resistance, should not be destroyed without provision for the safety of those on board--is also, in the opinion of the Austrian Government itself, the kernel, so to speak, of the whole matter. Regarded from a higher point of view, this theory can at any rate be considered in connection with possible circumstances, and its application be more closely defined; from the dictates of humanity, which the Austrian Government and the Washington Cabinet have equally adopted as their guide, we can lay down the general principle that, in exercising the right to destroy enemy merchant shipping, loss of life should be avoided as far as possible. This necessitates a warning on the part of the belligerent before exercising the right of destruction. And he can here adopt the method indicated by the theory of the Union Government referred to, according to which _the commander of the warship himself issues a warning to the vessel about to be sunk_, so that crew and passengers can be brought into safety at the last moment; or, on the other hand, the Government of the belligerent state can, when it is considered an imperative necessity of war, give warning, with complete effect, _before the sailing of the vessel_ to be sunk; or, finally, such Government can, when preparing comprehensive measures against the enemy traffic at sea, have recourse to _a general warning applicable to all enemy vessels concerned_. That the principle as to providing for the safety of persons on board is liable to exceptions has been admitted by the Union Government itself. The Austrian Government believes, however, that destruction without warning is not only justifiable in cases of attempted escape or resistance. It would seem, to take one instance only, that the character of the vessel itself should be taken into consideration; thus merchant ships or other private craft, placed in the service of war operations, whether as transports or guardships, or with a military crew or weapons on board for the purpose of any kind of hostilities, should doubtless, according to general law, be liable to destruction without notice. The Austrian Government need not go into the question of how far a belligerent is released from any obligation as to provision for safety of human life when his opponent sinks enemy merchant vessels without such previous warning, as in the well-known cases, previously referred to, of the _Elektra_, _Dubrovnik_, _Zagreb_, etc., since, in this respect, despite its evident right, the Austrian Government itself has never returned like for like. Throughout the entire course of the war Austro-Hungarian warships have not destroyed a single enemy merchant vessel without previous warning, though this may have been of a general character. The theory of the Union Government, frequently referred to, also admits of several interpretations; the question arises, for instance, whether, as has frequently been maintained, only armed resistance can be held to justify destruction of ship and persons on board, or whether the same applies to resistance of another sort, as, for example, when the crew purposely refrain from getting the passengers into the boats (the case of the _Ancona_), or when the passengers themselves decline to enter the boats. In the opinion of the Austrian Government cases such as those last should also justify destruction of the vessel without responsibility for the lives of those on board, as otherwise it would be in the power of anyone on the vessel to deprive the belligerent of his right to sink the ship. For the rest it should also be borne in mind that there is no unanimity of opinion really as to when the destruction of enemy merchant tonnage is justifiable at all. The obligation as to issuing a warning immediately before sinking a vessel will, in the view of the Austrian Government on the one hand, involve hardships otherwise avoidable, while, on the other, it may in certain circumstances be calculated to prejudice the rightful interests of the belligerent. In the first place it cannot be denied that saving lives _at sea_ is nearly always a matter of blind uncertainty, since the only alternatives are to leave them on board a vessel exposed to the operations of the enemy, or to take them off in small boats to face the dangers of the elements. It is, therefore, far more in accordance with the dictates of humanity _to restrain people from venturing upon vessels thus endangered by warning them beforehand_. For the rest, however, the Austrian Government is not convinced, despite careful consideration of all legal questions concerned, that the subjects of neutral countries have any claim to immunity when travelling on board enemy ships. The principle that neutrals shall also in time of war enjoy the freedom of the seas extends only to neutral vessels, not to neutral persons on board enemy ships, since the belligerents are admittedly justified in hampering enemy traffic at sea as far as lies in their power. Granted the necessary military power, they can, if deemed necessary to their ends, forbid enemy merchant vessels to sail the sea, on pain of instant destruction, as long as they make their purpose known beforehand so that all, whether enemy or neutral, _are enabled to avoid risking their lives_. But even where there is doubt as to the justification of such proceeding, and possible reprisals threatened by the opposing side, the question would remain one to be decided between the belligerents themselves alone, they being admittedly allowed the right of making the high seas a field for their military operations, of suppressing any interruption of such operations and supremely determining what measures are to be taken against enemy ships. The neutrals have in such case no legitimate claims beyond that of demanding that due notice be given them of measures contemplated against the enemy, in order that they may refrain from entrusting their persons or goods to enemy vessels. The Austrian Government may presumably take it for granted that the Washington Cabinet agrees with the foregoing views, which the Austrian Government is fully convinced are altogether unassailable. To deny the correctness of these views would imply--and this the Union Government can hardly intend--that neutrals have the right of interfering in the military operations of the belligerents; indeed, ultimately to constitute themselves the judges as to what methods may or may not be employed against an enemy. It would also seem a crying injustice for a neutral Government, in order merely to secure for its subjects the right of passage on enemy ships when they might just as well, or indeed with far greater safety, travel by neutral vessels, to grasp at the arm of a belligerent Power, fighting perhaps for its very existence. Not to mention the fact that it would open the way for all kinds of abuses if a belligerent were forced to lay down arms at the bidding of any neutral whom it might please to make use of enemy ships for business or pleasure. No doubt has ever been raised as to the fact that subjects of neutral states are themselves responsible for any harm they may incur _by their presence in any territory on land where military operations are in progress_. Obviously, there is no ground for establishing another standard for naval warfare, particularly since the second Peace Conference expressed the wish that, pending the agreement of rules for naval warfare, the rules observed in warfare upon land should be applied as far as possible at sea. From the foregoing it appears that the rule as to warning being given to the vessel itself before such vessel is sunk is subject to exceptions of various kinds under certain circumstances, as, for instance, the cases cited by the Union Government of flight and resistance, the vessel may be sunk without any warning; in others warning should be given before the vessel sails. The Austrian Government may then assert that it is essentially in agreement with the Union Government as to the protection of neutrals against risk of life, whatever may be the attitude of the Washington Cabinet towards some of the separate questions here raised. The Austrian Government has not only put into practice throughout the war the views it holds in this respect, but has gone even farther, regulating its actions with the strictest care according to the theory advanced by the Washington Cabinet, although its assurance as published only stated that was "essentially in agreement" with the Union Government's views. The Austrian Government would be extremely satisfied if the Washington Cabinet should be inclined to assist it in its endeavours, which are inspired by the warmest feelings of humanity, to save American citizens from risk at sea by instructing and warning its subjects in this direction. Then, as regards the circular verbal note of February 10 of this year concerning the treatment of armed enemy merchant vessels, the Austrian Government must in any case declare itself to be, as indicated in the foregoing, of the opinion that the arming of trading ships, even when only for the purpose of avoiding capture, is not justified in modern international law. The rules provide that a warship is to approach an enemy merchant vessel in a peaceable manner; it is required to stop the vessel by means of certain signals, to interview the captain, examine the ship's papers, enter the particulars in due form and, where necessary, make an inventory, etc. But in order to comply with these requirements it must obviously be understood that the warship has full assurance that the merchant vessel will likewise observe a peaceable demeanour throughout. And it is clear that no such assurance can exist when the merchant vessel is so armed as to be capable of offering resistance to a warship. A warship can hardly be expected to act in such a manner under the guns of an enemy, whatever may be the purpose for which the guns were placed on board. Not to speak of the fact that the merchant vessels of the Entente Powers, despite all assurances to the contrary, have been proved to be armed for offensive purposes, and make use of their armament for such purposes. It would also be to disregard the rights of humanity if the crew of a warship were expected to surrender to the guns of an enemy without resistance on their own part. No State can regard its duty to humanity as less valid in respect of men defending their country than in respect of the subjects of a foreign Power. The Austrian Government is therefore of opinion that its former assurance to the Washington Cabinet could not be held to apply to armed merchant vessels, since these, according to the legal standards prevailing, whereby hostilities are restricted to organised military forces, must be regarded as privateers (freebooters) which are liable to immediate destruction. History shows us that, according to the _general_ law of nations, merchant vessels have never been justified in resisting the exercise by warships of the right of taking prizes. But even if a standard to this effect could be shown to exist, it would not mean that the vessels had the right to provide themselves with guns. It should also be borne in mind that the arming of merchant ships must necessarily alter the whole conduct of warfare at sea, and that such alteration cannot correspond to the views of those who seek to regulate maritime warfare according to the principles of humanity. As a matter of fact, since the practice of privateering was discontinued, until a few years back no Power has ever thought of arming merchant vessels. Throughout the whole proceedings of the second Peace Conference, which was occupied with all questions of the laws of warfare at sea, not a single word was ever said about the arming of merchant ships. Only on one occasion was a casual observation made with any bearing on this question, and it is characteristic that it should have been by a British naval officer of superior rank, who impartially declared: "Lorsqu'un navire de guerre se propose d'arrêter et de visiter un vaisseau marchand, le commandant, avant de mettre une embarcation à la mer, fera tirer un coup de canon. Le coup de canon est la meilleure garantie que l'on puisse donner. _Les navires de commerce n'ont pas de canons à bord._" (When a warship intends to stop and board a merchant vessel the commander, before sending a boat, will fire a gun. The firing of a gun is the best guarantee that can be given. _Merchant vessels do not carry guns._) Nevertheless, Austria-Hungary has in this regard also held by its assurance; in the circular verbal note referred to neutrals were cautioned beforehand against entrusting their persons or their goods on board any armed ship; moreover, the measures announced were not put into execution at once, but a delay was granted in order to enable neutrals already on board armed ships to leave the same. And, finally, the Austro-Hungarian warships are instructed, even in case of encountering armed enemy merchant vessels, to give warning and to provide for the safety of those on board, provided it seems possible to do so in the circumstances. The statement of the American Ambassador, to the effect that the armed British steamers _Secondo_ and _Welsh Prince_ were sunk without warning by Austrian submarines, is based on error. The Austrian Government has in the meantime received information that no Austro-Hungarian warships were at all concerned in the sinking of these vessels. The Austrian Government has, as in the circular verbal note already referred to--reverting now to the question of aggravated submarine warfare referred to in the memorandum--also in its declaration of January 31 of this year issued a warning to neutrals with corresponding time limit; indeed, _the whole of the declaration itself is, from its nature, nothing more or less than a warning to the effect that no merchant vessel may pass the area of sea expressly defined therein_. Nevertheless, the Austrian warships have been instructed as far as possible to warn such merchant vessels as may be encountered in the area concerned and provide for the safety of passengers and crew. And the Austrian Government is in the possession of numerous reports stating that the crews and passengers of vessels destroyed in these waters have been saved. But the Austrian Government cannot accept any responsibility for possible loss of human life which may after all occur in connection with the destruction of armed vessels or vessels encountered in prohibited areas. Also it may be noted that the Austro-Hungarian submarines operate only in the Adriatic and Mediterranean Seas, and there is thus hardly any question as to any action affecting American interests on the part of Austro-Hungarian warships. After all that has been said in the preamble to this Memorandum, it need hardly be said that the declaration of the waters in question as a prohibited area is in no way intended as a measure aiming at the destruction of human life, or even to endangering the same, but that its object--apart from the higher aims of _relieving humanity from further suffering by shortening the war_, is only to place Great Britain and its Allies, who have--without establishing any legally effective blockade of the coasts of the Central Powers--hindered traffic by sea between neutrals and these Powers in a like position of isolation, and render them amenable to a peace with some guarantee of permanency. That Austria-Hungary here makes use of other methods of war than her opponents is due mainly to circumstances beyond human control. But the Austrian Government is conscious of having done all in its power to avoid loss of human life. _The object aimed at in the blockading of the Western Powers would be most swiftly and certainly attained if not a single human life were lost or endangered in those waters._ To sum up, the Austrian Government may point out that the assurance given to the Washington Cabinet in the case of the _Ancona_, and renewed in the case of the _Persia_, is neither withdrawn nor qualified by its statements of February 10, 1916, and January 31, 1917. Within the limits of this assurance the Austrian Government will, together with its Allies, continue its endeavours to secure to the peoples of the world a share in the blessings of peace. If in the pursuit of this aim--which it may take for granted has the full sympathy of the Washington Cabinet itself--it should find itself compelled to impose restrictions on neutral traffic by sea in certain areas, it will not need so much to point to the behaviour of its opponents in this respect, which appears by no means an example to be followed, but rather to the fact that Austria-Hungary, through the persistence and hatred of its enemies, who are determined upon its destruction, is brought to a state of self-defence in so desperate extreme as is unsurpassed in the history of the world. The Austrian Government is encouraged by the knowledge that the struggle now being carried on by Austria-Hungary tends not only toward the preservation of its own vital interests, but also towards the realisation of the idea of equal rights for all states; and in this last and hardest phase of the war, which unfortunately calls for sacrifices on the part of friends as well, it regards it as of supreme importance to confirm in word and deed the fact that it is guided equally by the laws of humanity and by the dictates of respect for the dignity and interests of neutral peoples. 3 =Speech by Dr. Helfferich, Secretary of State, on the Submarine Warfare= The _Norddeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung_ of May 1, 1917, gives the following speech by Dr. Helfferich, Secretary of State, on the economic effects of the submarine warfare delivered in the principal committee of the Reichstag on April 28. The speech is here given verbatim, with the exception of portions containing confidential statements: "In the sitting of yesterday a member rightly pointed out that the technical and economic results of the submarine warfare have been estimated with caution. In technical respects the caution observed in estimating the results is plain; the sinkings have, during the first month, exceeded by nearly a quarter, in the second by nearly half, the estimated 600,000 tons, and for the present month also we may fairly cherish the best expectations. The technical success guarantees the economic success with almost mathematical exactitude. True, the economic results cannot be so easily expressed numerically and set down in a few big figures as the technical result in the amount of tonnage sunk. The economic effects of the submarine warfare are expressed in many different spheres covering a wide area, where the enemy seeks to render visibility still more difficult by resorting, so to speak, to statistical smoke-screens. "The English statistics to-day are most interesting, one might almost say, in what they wisely refrain from mentioning. The Secretary of State for the Navy pointed out yesterday how rapidly the pride of the British public had faded. The English are now suppressing our reports on the successes of our submarines and our statements as to submarine losses; they dare not make public the amount of tonnage sunk, but mystify the public with shipping statistics which have given rise to general annoyance in the English Press itself. The English Government lets its people go on calmly trusting to the myth that instead of six U-boats sunk there are a hundred at the bottom of the sea. It conceals from the world also the true course of the entries and departures of tonnage in British ports since the commencement of unrestricted submarine warfare. And more than all, the English Government has since February suppressed most strictly all figures tending to throw light on the position of the grain market. In the case of the coal exports, the country of destination is not published. The monthly trade report, which is usually issued with admirable promptness by the tenth of the next month or thereabouts, was for February delayed and incomplete; and for March it has not yet appeared at all. It is to be regretted that this sudden withdrawal of information makes it more difficult for us to estimate the effect of our submarine operations, but there is a gratifying side to the question after all. It is not to be supposed that England should suddenly become reticent in order to avoid revealing its strength. "For the rest, what can be seen is still sufficient to give us an idea. "I will commence with the tonnage. You are aware that in the first two months of the unrestricted submarine warfare more than 1,600,000 tons were sunk, of which probably considerably over one million tons sailed under the British flag. "The estimates as to the quantity of English tonnage at present available are somewhat divergent; in any case, whether we take the higher or the lower figures, a loss of more than a million tons in two months is a thing that England cannot endure for long. And to replace it, even approximately, by new building, is out of the question. In the year 1914 England's newly-built ships gave a tonnage increment of 1,600,000; in 1915 it was 650,000 tons, in 1916 only 580,000, despite all efforts. And the normal loss of the British merchant fleet in peace time amounts to between 700,000 and 800,000 tons. It is hopeless to think of maintaining equilibrium by urging on the building of new vessels. "The attempts which are made to enlist the neutral tonnage in British service by a system of rewards and punishments may here and there, to the ultimate disadvantage of the neutrals themselves, have met with some success, but even so, the neutrals must consider the need for preserving a merchant fleet themselves for peace time, so that there is a narrow limit to what can be attained in this manner. Even in January of this year about 30 per cent. of the shipping entries into British ports were under foreign flags. I have heard estimates brought up to 80 per cent. in order to terrify the neutrals; if but 50 per cent. of this be correct it means a decrease in British shipping traffic of roughly one-sixth. Counting tonnage sunk and tonnage frightened off, the arrivals at British ports have been reduced, at a low estimate, by one-fourth, and probably by as much as one-third, as against January. In January arrivals amounted to 2.2 million net tons. I may supplement the incomplete English statistics by the information that in March the arrivals were only 1.5 to 1.6 million tons net, and leave it to Mr. Carson to refute this. The 1.5 to 1.6 million tons represent, compared with the average entries in peace time, amounting to 4.2 millions, not quite 40 per cent. This low rate will be further progressively reduced. Lloyd George at the beginning of the war reckoned on the last milliard. Those days are now past. Then he based his plans on munitions. England has here, with the aid of America, achieved extraordinary results. But the Somme and Arras showed that, even with those enormous resources, England was not able to beat us. Now, in his greeting to the American Allies, Lloyd George cries out: 'Ships, ships, and yet more ships.' And this time he is on the right tack; it is on ships that the fate of the British world-empire will depend. "The Americans, too, have understood this. They propose to build a thousand wooden vessels of 3,000 tons. But before these can be brought into action they will, I confidently hope, have nothing left to save. "I base this confidence upon the indications which are visible, despite the English policy of suppression and concealment. "Take the total British trade. The figures for March are still not yet available, but those for February tell us enough. "British imports amounted in January of this year to 90 million pounds sterling, in February to only 70 million; the exports have gone down from 46 to 37 millions sterling--imports and exports together showing a decline of over 20 per cent. in the first month of the submarine warfare. And again, the rise in prices all round has, since the commencement of the U-boat war, continued at a more rapid rate, so that the decline in the import quantity from one month to another may fairly be estimated at 25 per cent. The figures for imports and exports, then, confirm my supposition as to the decrease of tonnage in the traffic with British ports. "The British Government has endeavoured, by the strictest measures rigorously prohibiting import of less important articles, to ward off the decline in the quantity of vital necessaries imported. The attempt can only partially succeed. "In 1916, out of a total import quantity of 42 million tons, about 31 millions fall to three important groups alone, viz., foodstuffs and luxuries, timber, and iron ore; all other goods, including important war materials, such as other ores and metals, petroleum, cotton and wool, rubber, only 11 million tons, or roughly one-fourth. A decline of one-fourth, then, as brought about by the first month of unrestricted submarine warfare, must affect articles indispensable to life and to the purposes of war. "The decline in the imports in February, 1917, as against February, 1916, appears as follows: "Wool 17 per cent., cotton 27 per cent., flax 38 per cent., hemp 48 per cent., jute 74 per cent., woollen materials 83 per cent., copper and copper ore 49 per cent., iron and steel 59 per cent. As to the imports of iron ore I will give more detailed figures: "Coffee 66 per cent., tea 41 per cent., raw sugar 10 per cent., refined sugar 90 per cent., bacon 17 per cent., butter 21 per cent., lard 21 per cent., eggs 39 per cent., timber 42 per cent. "The only increases worth noting are in the case of leather, hides, rubber and tin. "As regards the group in which we are most interested, the various sorts of grain, no figures for quantities have been given from February onwards. "The mere juxtaposition of two comparable values naturally gives no complete idea of the facts. It should be borne in mind that the commencement of the unrestricted U-boat campaign came at a time when the economical position of England was not normal, but greatly weakened already by two and a half years of war. A correct judgment will, then, only be possible when we take into consideration the entire development of the imports during the course of the war. "I will here give only the most important figures. "In the case of iron ore, England has up to now maintained its position better than in other respects. "Imports amounted in 1913 to 7.4 million tons. "In 1916 to 6.9 million tons. "January, 1913, 689,000 tons; February, 1913, 658,000 tons. "January, 1916, 526,000 tons; February, 1916, 404,000 tons. "January, 1917, 512,000 tons; February, 1917, 508,000 tons. "Here again comparison with the peace year 1913 shows for the months of January and February a not inconsiderable decrease, though the imports, especially in February, 1917, were in excess of those for the same month in 1916. "Timber imports, 1913, 10.1 million loads. " " 1916, 5.9 " " " February, 1913, 406,000 loads. " " 1916, 286,000 " " " 1917, 167,000 " "As regards mining timber especially, the import of which fell from 3.5 million loads in 1913 to 2.0 million in 1916, we have here December, 1916, and January, 1917, with 102,000 and 107,000 loads as the lowest import figures given since the beginning of 1913; a statement for the import of mining timber is missing for February. "Before turning to the import of foodstuffs a word may be said as to the export of coal. "The total export of coal has decreased from 78 million tons in 1913 to 461/2 million tons in 1915; in 1916 only about 42 million tons were exported. In December, 1916, the export quantity fell for the first time below 3 million tons, having remained between 3.2 and 3.9 million tons during the months from January to November, 1916. In January, 1917, a figure of 3.5 million tons was again reached; it is the more significant, therefore, that the coal export, which from the nature of the case exhibits only slight fluctuations from month to month, falls again in February, 1917, to 2.9 million tons (as against 3.4 million tons in February of the year before), thus almost reaching once more to the lowest point hitherto recorded--that of December, 1916. And it should be remembered that here, as in the case of all other exports, sunk transports are included in the English statistics. "Details as to the destination of exported coal have since the beginning of this year been withheld. England is presumably desirous of saving the French and Italians the further distress of reading for the future in black and white the calamitous decline in their coal supply. The serious nature of this decline, even up to the end of 1916, may be seen from the following figures: "England's coal export to France amounted in December, 1916, to only 1,128,000 tons, as against 1,269,000 tons in January of the same year; the exports to Italy in December, 1916, amounted only to 278,000 tons, as against 431,000 tons in January, and roughly 800,000 tons monthly average for the peace year 1913. "As to the further development since the end of February, I am able to give some interesting details. Scotland's coal export in the first week of April was 103,000 tons, as against 194,000 tons the previous year; from the beginning of the year 1,783,000 tons, as against 2,486,000 tons the previous year. From this it is easy to see how the operations of the U-boats are striking at the root of railway and war industries in the countries allied with England. "Lloyd George, in a great speech made on January 22 of this year, showed the English how they could protect themselves against the effects of submarine warfare by increased production in their own country. The practicability and effectiveness of his counsels are more than doubtful. He makes no attempt, however, to instruct his Allies how they are to protect themselves against the throttling of the coal supply. "I come now to the most important point: _the position of England with regard to its food supply_. "First of all I would give a few brief figures by way of calling to mind the degree to which England is dependent upon supplies of foodstuffs from overseas. "The proportion of imports in total British consumption averaged during the last years of peace as follows: "Bread-corn, close on 80 per cent. "Fodder-grain (barley, oats, maize), which can be utilised as substitutes for, and to supplement, the bread-corn, 50 per cent.; meat, over 40 per cent.; butter, 60-65 per cent. The sugar consumption, failing any home production at all, must be entirely covered by imports from abroad. "I would further point out that our U-boats, inasmuch as concerns the food situation in England, are operating under quite exceptionally favourable conditions; the world's record harvest of 1915 has been followed by the world's worst harvest of 1916, representing a loss of 45-50 million tons of bread and fodder-grain. The countries hardest hit are those most favourably situated, from the English point of view, in North America. The effects are now--the rich stocks from the former harvest having been consumed--becoming more evident every day and everywhere. The Argentine has put an embargo on exports of grain. As to the condition of affairs in the United States, this may be seen from the following figures: "The Department of Agriculture estimates the stocks of wheat still in the hands of the farmer on March 1, 1917, at 101 million bushels, or little over 21/2 million tons. The stocks for the previous year on that date amounted to 241 million bushels. Never during the whole of the time I have followed these figures back have the stocks been so low or even nearly so. The same applies to stocks of maize. Against a supply of 1,138,000 bushels on March 1, 1916, we have for this year only 789,000 bushels. "The extraordinary scarcity of supplies is nearing the panic limit. The movement of prices during the last few weeks is simply fantastic. Maize, which was noted in Chicago at the beginning of January, 1917, at 95 cents, rose by the end of April to 127 cents, and by April 25 had risen further to 148 cents. Wheat in New York, which stood at 871/4 cents in July, 1914, and by the beginning of 1917 had already risen to 1911/2 cents, rose at the beginning of April to 229 cents, and was noted at no less than 281 on April 2. This is three and a half times the peace figure! In German currency at normal peace time exchange, these 281 cents represent about 440 marks per ton, or, at present rate of exchange for dollars, about 580 marks per ton. "That, then, is the state of affairs in the country which is to help England in the war of starvation criminally begun by itself! "In England no figures are now made public as to imports and stocks of grain. I can, however, state as follows: "On the last date for which stocks were noted, January 13, 1917, England's visible stocks of wheat amounted to 5.3 million quarters, as against 6.3 and 5.9 million quarters in the two previous years. From January to May and June there is, as a rule, a marked decline in the stocks, and even in normal years the imports during these months do not cover the consumption. In June, 1914 and 1915, the visible stocks amounted only to about 2 million quarters, representing the requirements for scarcely three weeks. "We have no reason to believe that matters have developed more favourably during the present year. This is borne out by the import figures for January--as published. The imports of bread-corn and fodder-grain--I take them altogether, as in the English regulations for eking out supplies--amounted only to 12.6 million quarters, as against 19.8 and 19.2 in the two previous years. "For February the English statistics show an increase in the import value of unstated import quantity of all grain of 50 per cent., as against February, 1916. This gives, taking the distribution among the various sorts of grain as similar to that of January, and reckoning with the rise in prices since, about the same import quantity as in the previous year. But in view of the great decrease in American grain shipments and the small quantity which can have come from India and Australia the statement is hardly credible. We may take it that March has brought a further decline, and that to-day, when we are nearing the time of the three-week stocks, the English supplies are lower than in the previous years. "The English themselves acknowledge this. Lloyd George stated in February that the English grain supplies were lower than ever within the memory of man. A high official in the English Ministry of Agriculture, Sir Ailwyn Fellowes, speaking in April at an agricultural congress, added that owing to the submarine warfare, which was an extremely serious peril to England, the state of affairs had grown far worse even than then. "Captain Bathurst, of the British Food Controller's Department (_Kriegsernährungsamt_), stated briefly on April 19 that the then consumption of breadstuffs was 50 per cent. in excess of the present _and prospective_ supplies. It would be necessary to reduce the consumption of bread by fully a third in order to make ends meet. "Shortly before, Mr. Wallhead, a delegate from Manchester, at a conference of the Independent Labour Party in Leeds had stated that, according to his information, England would in six to eight weeks be in a complete state of famine. "The crisis in which England is placed--and we can fairly call it a crisis now--is further aggravated by the fact that the supplies of other important foodstuffs have likewise taken an unfavourable turn. "The import of meat in February, 1917, shows the lowest figures for many years, with the single exception of September, 1914. "The marked falling off in the butter imports--February, 1917, showing only half as much as in the previous year--is not nearly counterbalanced by the margarine which England is making every effort to introduce. "The import of lard also, most of which comes from the United States, shows a decline, owing to the poor American crops of fodder-stuffs. The price of lard in Chicago has risen from 151/2 cents at the beginning of January, 1917, to 211/2 cents on April 25, and the price of pigs in the same time from 9.80 to 16.50 dollars. "Most serious of all, however, is the shortage of potatoes, which at present is simply catastrophic. The English crop was the worst for a generation past. The imports are altogether insignificant. Captain Bathurst stated on April 19 that in about four weeks the supplies of potatoes in the country would be entirely exhausted. "The full seriousness of the case now stares English statesmen in the face. Up to now they have believed it possible to exorcise the danger by voluntary economies. Now they find themselves compelled to have recourse to compulsory measures. I believe it is too late." The Secretary of State then gives a detailed account of the measures taken up to date in England for dealing with the food question, and thereafter continues: "On March 22 again the English food dictator, Lord Devonport, stated in the House of Lords that a great reduction in the consumption of bread would be necessary, but that it would be _a national disaster_ if England should have to resort to compulsion. "His representative, Bathurst, stated at the same time: 'We do not wish to introduce _so un-English a system_. In the first place, because we believe that the patriotism of the people can be trusted to assist us in our endeavours towards economy, and, further, because, as we can see from the example of Germany, the compulsory system promises no success; finally, because such a system would necessitate a too complicated administrative machinery and too numerous staffs of men and women whose services could be better employed elsewhere.' "Meantime the English Government has, on receipt of the latest reports, decided to adopt this un-English system which has proved a failure in Germany, declaring now that the entire organisation for the purpose is in readiness. "I have still something further to say about the vigorous steps now being taken in England to further the progress of agriculture in the country itself. I refrain from going into this, however, as the measures in question cannot come to anything by next harvest time, nor can they affect that harvest at all. The winter deficiency can hardly be balanced, even with the greatest exertions, by the spring. Not until the 1918 crop, if then, can any success be attained. And between then and now lies a long road, a road of suffering for England, and for all countries dependent upon imports for their food supply. "Everything points to the likelihood that the universal failure of the harvest in 1916 will be followed by a like universal failure in 1917. In the United States the official reports of acreage under crops are worse than ever, showing 63.4, against 78.3 the previous year. The winter wheat is estimated at only 430 million bushels, as against 492 million bushels for the previous year and 650 million bushels for 1915. "The prospects, then, for the next year's harvest are poor indeed, and offer no hope of salvation to our enemies. "As to our own outlook, this is well known to those present: short, but safe--for we can manage by ourselves. And to-day we can say that the war of starvation, that crime against humanity, has turned against those who commenced it. We hold the enemy in an iron grip. No one can save them from their fate. Not even the apostles of humanity across the great ocean, who are now commencing to protect the smaller nations by a blockade of our neutral neighbours through prohibition of exports, and seeking thus to drive them, under the lash of starvation, into entering into the war against us. "Our enemies are feeling the grip of the fist that holds them by the neck. They are trying to force a decision. England, mistress of the seas, is seeking to attain its end by land, and driving her sons by hundreds of thousands to death and mutilation. Is this the England that was to have sat at ease upon its island till we were starved into submission, that could wait till their big brother across the Atlantic arrived on the scene with ships and million armies, standing fast in crushing superiority until the last annihilating battle? "No, gentlemen, our enemies have no longer time to wait. Time is on our side now. True, the test imposed upon us by the turn of the world's history is enormous. What our troops are doing to help, what our young men in blue are doing, stands far above all comparison. But they will attain their end. For us at home, too, it is hard; not so hard by far as for them out there, yet hard enough. Those at home must do their part as well. If we remain true to ourselves, keeping our own house in order, maintaining internal unity, then we have won existence and the future for our Fatherland. Everything is at stake. The German people is called upon now, in these weeks heavy with impending decision, to show that it is worthy of continued existence." 4 =Speech by Count Czernin to the Austrian Delegation, January 24, 1918.= "Gentlemen, it is my duty to give you a true picture of the peace negotiations, to set forth the various phases of the results obtained up to now, and to draw therefrom such conclusions as are true, logical and justifiable. "First of all it seems to me that those who consider the progress of the negotiations too slow cannot have even an approximate idea of the difficulties which we naturally had to encounter at every step. I will in my remarks take the liberty of setting forth these difficulties, but would like first to point out a cardinal difference existing between the peace negotiations in Brest-Litovsk and all others which have ever taken place in the history of the world. Never, so far as I am aware, have peace negotiations been conducted with open windows. It would be impossible that negotiations of the depth and extent of the present could from the start proceed smoothly and without opposition. We are faced with nothing less than the task of building up a new world, of restoring all that the most merciless of all wars has destroyed and cast down. In all the peace negotiations we know of the various phases have been conducted more or less behind closed doors, the results being first declared to the world when the whole was completed. All history books tell us, and indeed it is obvious enough, that the toilsome path of such peace negotiations leads constantly over hill and dale, the prospects appearing often more or less favourable day by day. But when the separate phases themselves, the details of each day's proceedings, are telegraphed all over the world at the time, it is again obvious that nervousness prevailing throughout the world must act like an electric current and excite public opinion accordingly. We were fully aware of the disadvantage of this method of proceeding. Nevertheless we at once agreed to the wish of the Russian Government in respect of this publicity, desiring to meet them as far as possible, and also because we had nothing to conceal on our part, and because it would have made an unfavourable impression if we had stood firmly by the methods hitherto pursued, of secrecy until completion. _But the complete publicity in the negotiations makes it insistent that the great public, the country behind, and above all the leaders, must keep cool._ The match must be played out in cold blood, and the end will be satisfactory if the peoples of the Monarchy support their representatives at the conference. "It should be stated beforehand that the basis on which Austria-Hungary treats with the various newly-constituted Russian states is that of 'no indemnities and no annexations.' That is the programme which a year ago, shortly after my appointment as Minister, I put before those who wished to talk of peace, and which I repeated to the Russian leaders on the occasion of their first offers of peace. And I have not deviated from that programme. Those who believe that I am to be turned from the way which I have set myself to follow are poor psychologists. I have never left the public in the slightest doubt as to which way I intended to go, and I have never allowed myself to be turned aside so much as a hair's breadth from that way, either to right or left. And I have since become far from a favourite of the Pan-Germans and of those in the Monarchy who follow the Pan-German ideas. I have at the same time been hooted as an inveterate partisan of war by those whose programme is peace at any price, as innumerable letters have informed me. Neither has ever disturbed me; on the contrary, the double insults have been my only comfort in this serious time. I declare now once again that I ask not a single kreuzer, not a single square metre of land from Russia, and that if Russia, as appears to be the case, takes the same point of view, then peace must result. Those who wish for peace at any price might entertain some doubt as to my 'no-annexation' intentions towards Russia if I did not tell them to their faces with the same complete frankness that I shall never assent to the conclusion of a peace going beyond the lines just laid down. If the Russian delegates demand any surrender of territory on our part, or any war indemnity, then I shall continue the war, despite the fact that I am as anxious for peace as they, or I would resign if I could not attain the end I seek. "This once said, and emphatically asserted, that there is no ground for the pessimistic anticipation of the peace falling through, since the negotiating committees are agreed on the basis of no annexations or indemnities--and nothing but new instructions from the various Russian Governments, or their disappearance, could shift that basis--I then pass to the two great difficulties in which are contained the reasons why the negotiations have not proceeded as quickly as we all wished. "The first difficulty is this: that we are not dealing with _a single_ Russian peace delegation, but with various newly-formed Russian states, whose spheres of action are as yet by no means definitely fixed or explained among themselves. We have to reckon with the following: firstly, the Russia which is administered from St. Petersburg; secondly, our new neighbour proper, the great State of Ukraine; thirdly, Finland; and, fourthly, the Caucasus. "With the first two of these states we are treating directly; that is to say, face to face; with the two others it was at first in a more or less indirect fashion, as they had not sent any representative to Brest-Litovsk. We have then four Russian parties, and four separate Powers on our own side to meet them. The case of the Caucasus, with which we ourselves have, of course, no direct questions to settle, but which, on the other hand, is in conflict with Turkey, will serve to show the extent of the matter to be debated. "The point in which we ourselves are most directly interested is that of the great newly-established state upon our frontiers, Ukraine. In the course of the proceedings we have already got well ahead with this delegation. We are agreed upon the aforementioned basis of no indemnities and no annexations, and have in the main arrived at a settlement on the point that trade relations are to be re-established with the new republic, as also on the manner of so doing. But this very case of the Ukraine illustrates one of the prevailing difficulties. While the Ukraine Republic takes up the position of being entirely autonomous and justified in treating independently with ourselves, the Russian delegation insists that the boundaries between their territory and that of the Ukraine are not yet definitely fixed, and that Petersburg is therefore able to claim the right of taking part in our deliberations with the Ukraine, which claim is not admitted by the members of the Ukraine delegation themselves. This unsettled state of affairs in the internal conditions of Russia, however, gave rise to very serious delays. We have got over these difficulties, and I hope that in a few days' time we shall be able once more to resume negotiations. "As to the position to-day, I cannot say what this may be. I received yesterday from my representative at Brest-Litovsk the following two telegrams: "'Herr Joffe has this evening, in his capacity as President of the Russian Delegation, issued a circular letter to the delegations of the four allied Powers in which he states that the Workers' and Peasants' Government of the Ukrainian Republic has decided to send two delegates to Brest-Litovsk with instructions to take part in the peace negotiations on behalf of the central committee of the workers', soldiers' and peasants' councils of Pan-Ukraine, but also to form a supplementary part of the _Russian_ delegation itself. Herr Joffe adds with regard to this that the Russian delegation is prepared to receive these Ukrainian representatives among themselves. The above statement is supplemented by a copy of a "declaration" dated from Kharkov, addressed to the President of the Russian Peace Delegation at Brest, and emanating from the Workers' and Peasants' Government of the Ukrainian Republic, proclaiming that the Central Rada at Kiev only represents the propertied classes, and is consequently incapable of acting on behalf of the entire Ukrainian people. The Ukrainian Workers' and Peasants' Government declares that it cannot acknowledge any decisions arrived at by the delegates of the Central Rada at Kiev without its participation, but has nevertheless decided to send representatives to Brest-Litovsk, there to participate as a supplementary fraction of the Russian Delegation, which they recognise as the accredited representatives of the Federative Government of Russia.' "Furthermore: 'The German translation of the Russian original text of the communication received yesterday evening from Herr Joffe regarding the delegates of the Ukrainian Government at Kharkov and the two appendices thereto runs as follows: "'To the President of the Austro-Hungarian Peace Delegation. "'Sir,--In forwarding you herewith a copy of a declaration received by me from the delegates of the Workers' and Peasants' Government of the Ukrainian Republic, W.M. Schachrai and J.G. Medwjedew, and their mandates, I have the honour to inform you that the Russian Delegation, in full agreement with its frequently repeated acknowledgment of the right of self-determination among all peoples--including naturally the Ukrainian--sees nothing to hinder the participation of the representatives of the Workers' and Peasants' Government of the Ukrainian Republic in the peace negotiations, and receives them, according to their wish, among the personnel of the Russian Peace Delegation, as accredited representatives of the Workers' and Peasants' Government of the Ukrainian Republic. In bringing this to your knowledge, I beg you, sir, to accept the expression of my most sincere respect.--The President of the Russian Peace Delegation: A. JOFFE.' "'Appendix 1. To the President of the Peace Delegation of the Russian Republic. Declaration. "'We, the representatives of the Workers' and Peasants' Government of the Ukrainian Republic, People's Commissary for Military Affairs, W.M. Schachrai, and the President of the Pan-Ukrainian Central Executive Committee of the Council of the Workers', Soldiers' and Peasants' Deputation, J.G. Medwjedew, delegated to proceed to Brest-Litovsk for the purpose of conducting peace negotiations with the representatives of Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria and Turkey, in full agreement with the representatives of the Workers' and Peasants' Government of the Russian Federative Republic, thereby understood the Council of People's Commissaries, hereby declare as follows: The General Secretariat of the Ukrainian Central Rada can in no case be acknowledged as representing the entire Ukrainian people. In the name of the Ukrainian workers, soldiers and peasants, we declare categorically that all resolutions formed by the General Secretariat without our assent will not be accepted by the Ukrainian people, cannot be carried out, and can in no case be realised. "'In full agreement with the Council of People's Commissaries, and thus also with the Delegation of the Russian Workers' and Peasants' Government, we shall for the future undertake the conduct of the peace negotiations with the Delegation of the four Powers, together with the Russian Peace Delegation. "'And we now bring to the knowledge of the President the following resolution, passed by the Central Executive Committee of the Pan-Ukrainian Council of Workers', Soldiers' and Peasants' Deputies, on the 30th December, 1917/12th January, 1918: "'The Central Committee has decided: To delegate Comrade Medwjedew, President of the Central Executive Committee, and People's Secretary Satonski and Commissary Schachrai, to take part in the peace negotiations, instructing them at the same time to declare categorically that all attempts of the Ukrainian Central Rada to act in the name of the Ukrainian people are to be regarded as _arbitrary steps_ on the part of the bourgeois group of the Ukrainian population, against the will and interests of the working classes of the Ukraine, and that no resolutions formed by the Central Rada will be acknowledged either by the Ukrainian Soviet Government or by the Ukrainian people; that the Ukrainian Workers' and Peasants' Government regards the Council of People's Commissaries as representatives of the Pan-Russian Soviet Government, and as accordingly entitled to act on behalf of the entire Russian Federation; and that the delegation of the Ukrainian Workers' and Peasants' Government, sent out for the purpose of exposing the arbitrary steps of the Ukrainian Central Rada, will act together with and in full agreement with the Pan-Russian Delegation. "'Herewith: The mandate issued by the People's Secretariat of the Ukrainian Workers' and Peasants' Republic, 30th December, 1917. "'Note: People's Secretary for Enlightenment of the People, Wladimir Petrowitch Satonski, was taken ill on the way, and did not therefore arrive with us. "'January, 1918. "'The President of the Central Executive Committee of the Ukrainian Council of Workers', Soldiers' and Peasants' Deputies, E. Medwjedew. "'The People's Commissary for Military Affairs, Schachrai. "'A true copy of the original. "'The Secretary of the Peace Delegation, Leo Karachou.' "Appendix 2. "'On the resolution of the Central Executive Committee of the Council of Workers', Peasants' and Soldiers' Deputies of Ukraina, the People's Secretariat of the Ukrainian Republic hereby appoints, in the name of the Workers' and Peasants' Government of Ukraina, the President of the Central Executive Committee of the Council of Workers', Soldiers' and Peasants' Deputies of Ukraina, Jesim Gregoriewitch Medwjedew, the People's Secretary for Military Affairs, Wasili Matwjejewitch Schachrai, and the People's Secretary for Enlightenment of the People, Wladimir Petrowitch Satonski, in the name of the Ukrainian People's Republic, to take part in the negotiations with the Governments of Germany, Austria-Hungary, Turkey and Bulgaria as to the terms of peace between the mentioned states and the Russian Federative Republic. With this end in view the mentioned deputies, Jesim Gregoriewitch Medwjedew, Wasili Matwjejewitch Schachrai and Wladimir Petrowitch Satonski are empowered, in all cases where they deem it necessary, to issue declarations and to sign documents in the name of the Workers' and Peasants' Government of the Ukrainian Republic. The accredited representatives of the Ukrainian Workers' and Peasants' Government are bound to act throughout in accordance with the actions of the accredited representatives of the Workers' and Peasants' Government of the Russian Federative Republic, whereby is understood the Council of People's Commissaries. "'In the name of the Workers' and Peasants' Government of the Ukrainian People's Republic, the People's Secretary for International Affairs, for Internal Affairs, Military Affairs, Justice, Works, Commissariat. "'The Manager of the Secretariat. "'Kharkov, 30th December, 1917/12th January, 1918. "'In accordance with the copy. "'The President of the Russian Peace Delegation, A. Joffe.' "This is at any rate a new difficulty, since we cannot and will not interfere in the internal affairs of Russia. "This once disposed of, however, there will be no further difficulties to encounter here; we shall, in agreement with the Ukrainian Republic determine that _the old boundaries between Austria-Hungary and the former Russia will also be maintained as between ourselves and the Ukraine._ =Poland= "As regards Poland, the frontiers of which, by the way, have not yet been exactly determined, _we want nothing at all from this new state_. Free and uninfluenced, the population of Poland shall choose its own fate. For my part I attach no great weight to the _form_ of the people's vote in this respect; _the more surely it expresses the general wish of the people, the better I shall be pleased_. For I desire only the _voluntary_ attachment of Poland; only in the express _wish_ of Poland itself toward that end can I see any guarantee for lasting harmony. It is my unalterable conviction that _the Polish question must not be allowed to delay the signing of peace by a single day_. If, after peace is arrived at, Poland should wish to approach us, we will not reject its advances--_the Polish question must not and shall not endanger the peace itself_. "I should have been glad if _the Polish Government had been able to take part in the negotiations_, since in my opinion Poland is _an independent state_. The Petersburg Government, however, takes the attitude that the present Polish Government is not entitled to speak in the name of the country, and does not acknowledge it as competent to represent the country, and we therefore gave way on this point in order to avoid possible conflict. The question is certainly one of importance, but it is more important still in my opinion _to set aside all difficulties likely to delay the negotiations_. =German-Russian Differences as to the Occupied Areas= "The second difficulty to be reckoned with, and one which has been most widely echoed in the Press, is the _difference of opinion between our German allies and the Petersburg Government_ anent the interpretation of _the right of self-determination among the Russian peoples_; that is to say, in the areas occupied by German troops. Germany maintains that it _does not aim at any annexation of territory by force_ from Russia, but, briefly stated, the difference of opinion is a double one. "In the first place, Germany rightly maintains that _the numerous expressions of desire for independence_ on the part of _legislative corporations, communal representations_, etc., in the occupied areas should be taken as the _provisional_ basis for the will of the people, to be _later_ tested by _plebiscite on a broader foundation_, a point of view which the Russian Government at first was indisposed to agree to, as it did not consider the existing administrations in Courland and Lithuania entitled to speak for those provinces any more than in the case of Poland. "In the second place, Russia demands that this plebiscite shall take place _after all German troops and officials have been withdrawn from the occupied provinces_, while Germany, in reply to this, points out that if this principle were carried to its utmost limits it would create a vacuum, which could not fail to bring about at once a state of complete anarchy and the utmost misery. It should here be noted that everything in these provinces which to-day renders possible the life of a state at all is _German property_. Railways, posts and telegraphs, the entire industry, and moreover the entire administrative machinery, police, law courts, all are in German hands. The sudden withdrawal of all this apparatus would, in fact, create a condition of things which seems _practically impossible to maintain_. "In both cases it is a question of finding a _middle way_, which moreover _must be found_. "_The differences between these two points of view are in my opinion not great enough to justify failure of the negotiations_. "But such negotiations cannot be settled from one day to another; they take time. "_If once we have attained peace with Russia, then in my opinion the general peace cannot be long delayed_, despite all efforts on the part of the Western Entente statesmen. I have learned that some are unable to understand why I stated in my first speech after the resumption of negotiations that it was not now a question at Brest of a general peace, but of a _separate peace with Russia_. This was the necessary recognition of a plain fact, which Herr Trotski also has admitted without reserve, and it was necessary, since the negotiations would have been on a different footing--that is to say, _in a more limited sphere_--if treating with Russia alone than if it were a case of treating for a general peace. "Though I have no illusions in the direction of expecting the fruit of general peace to ripen in a single night, I am nevertheless convinced that the fruit _has begun to ripen_, and that it is now only a question of holding out whether we are to obtain a general honourable peace or not. =Wilson's Message= "I have recently been confirmed in this view by the offer of peace put forward by the President of the United States of America to the whole world. This is _an offer of peace_, for in fourteen points Mr. Wilson sets forth the principles upon which he seeks to establish a general peace. Obviously, an offer of this nature cannot be expected to furnish a scheme acceptable in every detail. If that were the case, then negotiations would be superfluous altogether, and peace could be arrived at by a simple acceptance, a single assent. This, of course, is not so. "_But I have no hesitation in declaring that these last proposals on the part of President Wilson seem to me considerably nearer the Austro-Hungarian point of view_, and that there are among his proposals some which we can even agree to _with great pleasure_. "If I may now be allowed to go further into these proposals, I must, to begin with, point out two things: "So far as the proposals are concerned with _our Allies_--mention is made of the German possession of _Belgium_ and of the _Turkish Empire_--I declare that, in fulfilment of our duty to our Allies, I am firmly determined _to hold out in defence of our Allies to the very last. The pre-war possessions of our Allies we will defend equally with our own_. This standpoint is that of all four Allies in complete reciprocity with ourselves. "In the second place, I have to point out that I must _politely but definitely decline_ to consider the Point dealing with our internal Government. We have in Austria _a parliament elected by general, equal, direct and secret ballot_. There is not a more democratic parliament in the world, and this parliament, together with the other constitutionally admissible factors, has the sole right to decide upon matters of _Austrian internal affairs_. I speak of _Austria_ only, because I do not refer to _Hungarian_ internal affairs in the _Austrian Delegation_. I should not consider it constitutional to do so. _And we do not interfere in American affairs; but, on the other hand, we do not wish for any foreign guidance from any state whatever._ Having said this, I may be permitted, with regard to the remaining Points, to state as follows: "As to the Point dealing with the abolition of 'secret diplomacy' and the introduction of full openness in the negotiations, I have nothing to say. From my point of view I have _no objection to such public negotiations so long as full reciprocity_ is the basis of the same, though I do entertain _considerable doubt_ as to whether, all things considered, _it is the quickest and most practical method_ of arriving at a result. Diplomatic negotiations are simply a matter of business. But it might easily be imagined that in the case, for instance, of commercial treaties between one country and another it would not be advisable _to publish incomplete results beforehand_ to the world. In such negotiations both parties naturally commence by setting their demands as high as possible in order to climb down gradually, using this or that expressed demand as matter for _compensation in_ other ways until finally an _equilibrium of the opposing interests is arrived at_, a point which must necessarily be reached if agreement is to be come to at all. If such negotiations were to be carried on with full publicity, nothing could prevent the general public from passionately defending every separate clause involved, regarding any concession as a defeat, even when such clauses had only been advanced _for tactical reasons_. And when the public takes up any such point with particular fervour, ultimate agreement may be thereby rendered impossible or the final agreement may, if arrived at, be regarded as in itself _a defeat_, possibly by both sides. And this would not conduce to peaceable relations thereafter; it would, on the contrary, _increase the friction_ between the states concerned. And as in the case of commercial treaties, so also with _political_ negotiations, which deal with political matters. "If the abolition of secret diplomacy is to mean that _no secret compacts are to be made_, that no agreements are to be entered upon without the public knowledge, then I have no objection to the introduction of this principle. As to how it is to be realised and adherence thereto ensured, I confess I have no idea at all. Granted that the governments of two countries are agreed, they will always be able to make a secret compact without the public being aware of the fact. These, however, are minor points. I am not one to stick by formalities, and _a question of more or less formal nature will never prevent me from coming to a sensible arrangement_. "Point 1, then, is one that can be discussed. "Point 2 is concerned with the _freedom of the seas_. In this postulate the President speaks from the hearts of all, and I can here _fully and completely share America's desire_, the more so as the President adds the words, 'outside territorial waters'--that is to say, we are to understand the freedom of _the open sea_, and there is thus, of course, no question of any interference by force in the sovereign rights of our faithful _Turkish_ Allies. Their standpoint in this respect will be ours. "Point 3, which is definitely directed against any _future economic war_, is so right, so sensible, and has so often been craved by ourselves that I have here again nothing to remark. "Point 4, which demands _general disarmament_, sets forth in particularly clear and lucid form the necessity of reducing after this present war the free competition in armaments to a footing sufficient for the _internal security_ of states. Mr. Wilson states this frankly and openly. In my speech at Budapest some months back I ventured to express the same idea; it forms _part of my political creed_, and I am most happy to find any other voice uttering the same thought. "As regards the _Russian clause_, we are already showing in deeds that we are endeavouring to bring about friendly relations with our neighbours there. "With regard to _Italy, Serbia, Roumania and Montenegro_, I can only repeat my statement already made in the Hungarian Delegation. "I am not disposed to effect any insurance on the war ventures of our enemies. "I am not disposed to make any one-sided concessions to our enemies, who still obstinately adhere to the standpoint of fighting on until the final victory; to prejudice permanently the Monarchy by such concessions, which would give the enemy the invaluable advantage of being able to carry on the war indefinitely without risk. (_Applause._) "Let Mr. Wilson use the great influence he undoubtedly possesses among his Allies to persuade them on their part to declare _on what conditions they are willing to treat_; he will then have rendered the enormous service of having set on foot the _general peace negotiations_. I am here replying openly and freely to Mr. Wilson, and I will speak as openly and freely to any who wish to speak for themselves, but it must necessarily be understood that _time, and the continuation of the war, cannot but affect the situations here concerned_. "I have already said this once before; Italy is a striking example. Italy had the opportunity before the war of making great territorial acquisitions without firing a shot. It declined this and entered into the war; it has lost hundreds of thousands of lives, milliards in war expenses and values destroyed; it has brought want and misery upon its own population, and all this _only to lose for ever an advantage which it might have won_. "Finally, as regards Point 13, it is an open secret that we are adherents to the idea of establishing 'an independent Polish State to include the areas undoubtedly occupied by Polish inhabitants.' On this point also we shall, I think, soon agree with Mr. Wilson. And if the President crowns his proposals with the idea of a universal _League of Nations_ he will hardly meet with any opposition thereto on the part of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. "As will be seen from this comparison of my views with those of Mr. Wilson, we are not only _agreed in essentials as to the great principles_ for rearrangement of the world after this war, but _our ideas as to several concrete questions bearing on the peace are closely allied_. "The differences remaining do not appear to me so great but that a discussion of these points might lead to a clearer understanding and bring us closer still. "The situation, then, seems to be this: Austria-Hungary on the one hand, and the United States of America on the other, are the two Great Powers in the hostile groups of states whose interests are least opposed one to the other. It seems reasonable, then, to suppose that _an exchange of opinion between these two Powers might form the natural starting point for a conciliatory discussion_ between all those states which have not yet entered upon peace negotiations. (_Applause._) So much for Wilson's proposals. =Petersburg and the Ukraine= "And now, gentlemen, I hasten to conclude. But this conclusion is perhaps the most important of all I have to say; I am endeavouring to bring about peace between the Ukraine and Petersburg. "The conclusion of peace with Petersburg alters nothing in our definitive situation. Austro-Hungarian troops are nowhere opposed to the Petersburg Government--we have the Ukrainian against us--and it is impossible to export anything from Petersburg, since they have nothing there themselves but _revolution and anarchy, goods which the Bolshevists, no doubt, would be glad to export, but which I must politely decline to receive_. "In spite of this, I wish to make peace with Petersburg as well, since this, like any other cessation of hostilities, brings us nearer to the _general peace_. "It is otherwise with Ukraine. For the Ukraine has supplies of provisions which they will export if we can agree on commercial terms. The question of food is to-day a matter of anxiety throughout the world; among our opponents, and also in the neutral countries, it is a burning question. I wish to profit by the conclusion of peace with those Russian states which have food to export, in order to help our own population. _We could and would hold out without this assistance._ But I know my duty, and my duty bids me do all that can be done to lighten the burden of our suffering people, and I will not, therefore, from any hysterical nervousness about getting to final peace a few days or a few weeks earlier, throw away this possible advantage to our people. Such a peace takes time and cannot be concluded in a day. For such a peace must definitely state whether, what and how the Russian party will deliver to us, for the reason that the Ukraine on its part wishes to close the business not after, but at the signing of peace. "I have already mentioned that the unsettled conditions in this newly established state occasion great difficulty and naturally considerable delay in the negotiations. =Appeal to the Country= "_If you fall on me from behind, if you force me to come to terms at once in headlong fashion, we shall gain no economic advantage at all_, and our people will then be forced to renounce the alleviation which they should have gained from the peace. "A surgeon conducting a difficult operation with a crowd behind him standing watch in hand may very likely complete the operation in record time, but in all probability the patient would not thank him for the manner in which it had been carried out. "If you give our present opponents the impression that we must have _peace at once, and at any price_, we shall not get so much as a single measure of grain, and the result will be more or less platonic. It is no longer by any means a question principally of terminating the war on the Ukrainian front; neither we nor the Ukrainians themselves intend to continue the war now that we are agreed upon the no-annexation basis. It is a question--I repeat it once again--not of 'imperialistic' annexation plans and ideas, but of securing for our population at last the merited reward of their endurance, and procuring them those supplies of food for which they are waiting. Our partners in the deal are good business men and are closely watching to see _whether you are forcing me to act or not_. "_If you wish to ruin the peace_, if you are anxious to renounce the supply of grain, then it would be logical enough to force my hand by speeches and resolutions, strikes and demonstrations, but not otherwise. And there is not an atom of truth in the idea that we are now at such a pass that we must prefer a bad peace without economic gain rather than a good peace with economic advantages to-morrow. "The difficulties in the matter of food of late are not due solely to lack of actual provisions; it is the crises in coal, transport and organisation which are increasing. _When you at home get up strikes you are moving in a vicious circle; the strikes increase and aggravate the crises concerned and hinder the supplies of food and coal._ You are cutting your own throats in so doing, and all who believe that peace is accelerated thereby are terribly mistaken. "It is believed that men in the country have been circulating rumours to the effect that the Government is instigating the strikes. I leave to these men themselves to choose whether they are to appear as _criminal slanderers or as fools_. "If you had a Government desirous of concluding a peace different from that desired by the majority of the population, if you had a Government seeking to prolong the war for purposes of conquest, one might understand a conflict between the Government and the country. _But since the Government desires precisely the same as the majority of the people--that is to say, the speedy settlement of an honourable peace without annexationist aims--then it is madness to attack that Government from behind, to interfere with its freedom of action and hamper its movements._ Those who do so are fighting, not against the Government, they are fighting blindly against the people they pretend to serve and against themselves. "As for yourselves, gentlemen, it is not only your right, but your duty, to choose between the following alternatives: either you trust me to proceed with the peace negotiations, and in that case you must help me, or you do not trust me, and in that case you must depose me. I am confident that I have the support of the majority of the Hungarian delegation. The Hungarian Committee has given me a vote of confidence. If there is any doubt as to the same here, then the matter is clear enough. The question of a vote of confidence must be brought up and put to the vote; if I then have the majority against me I shall at once take the consequences. No one of those who are anxious to secure my removal will be more pleased than myself; indeed far less so. Nothing induces me now to retain my office but the sense of duty, which constrains me to remain as long as I have the confidence of the Emperor and the majority of the delegations. A soldier with any sense of decency does not desert. But no Minister for Foreign Affairs could conduct negotiations of this importance unless he knows, and all the world as well, that he is endowed with the confidence of the majority among the constitutional representative bodies. There can be no half measures here. You have this confidence or you have not. You must assist me or depose me; there is no other way. I have no more to say." 5 =Report of the Peace Negotiations at Brest-Litovsk= The Austro-Hungarian Government entered upon the peace negotiations at Brest-Litovsk with the object of arriving as quickly as possible at a peace compact which, if it did not, as we hoped, lead to a general peace, should at least secure order in the East. The draft of a preliminary peace was sent to Brest containing the following points: 1. Cessation of hostilities; if general peace should not be concluded, then neither of the present contracting parties to afford any support to the enemies of the other. 2. No surrender of territory; Poland, Lithuania and Courland retaining the right of determining their own destiny for the future. 3. No indemnity for costs of war or damages due to military operations. 4. Cessation of economic war and reparation of damages sustained by private persons through the economic war. 5. Resumption of commercial intercourse and the same provisionally on the basis of the old commercial treaty and twenty years' preference subject to restriction in respect of any Customs union with neighbouring countries. 6. Mutual assistance in raw materials and industrial articles. A further point was contemplated, dealing with the evacuation of the occupied areas, but the formulation of this had to be postponed until after consultation with the German Supreme Military Command, whose co-operation was here required owing to the mingling of German and Austro-Hungarian troops on the Russian front. The Army Command has indicated a period of at least six months as necessary for the evacuation. In discussing this draft with the German delegates two points in particular were found to present great difficulty. One was that of evacuation. The German Army Command declared categorically that no evacuation of the occupied districts could be thought of until after conclusion of the general peace. The second difficulty arose in connection with the question as to treatment of the occupied districts. Germany insisted that in the peace treaty with Russia it should be simply stated that Russia had conceded to the peoples within its territory the right of self-determination, and that the nations in question had already availed themselves of that right. The plain standpoint laid down in our draft we were unable to carry through, although it was shared by the other Allies. However, in formulating the answer sent on December 25, 1916, to the Russian peace proposals a compromise was, after persistent efforts on our part, ultimately arrived at which at least prevented the full adoption of the divergent German point of view on these two points. In the matter of evacuation the Germans agreed that the withdrawal of certain bodies of troops before the general peace might be discussed. In the matter of annexations a satisfactory manner of formulating this was found, making it applicable only in the event of general peace. Had the Entente then been disposed to make peace the principle of "no annexations" would have succeeded throughout. Even allowing for the conciliatory form given through our endeavours to this answer by the four Powers to the Russian proposals, the German Headquarters evinced extreme indignation. Several highly outspoken telegrams from the German Supreme Command to the German delegates prove this. The head of the German Delegation came near to being recalled on this account, and if this had been done it is likely that German foreign policy would have been placed in the hands of a firm adherent of the sternest military views. As this, however, could only have had an unfavourable effect on the further progress of the negotiations, we were obliged to do all in our power to retain Herr Kühlmann. With this end in view he was informed and invited to advise Berlin that if Germany persisted in its harsh policy Austria-Hungary would be compelled to conclude a separate peace with Russia. This declaration on the part of the Minister for Foreign Affairs did not fail to create a certain impression in Berlin, and was largely responsible for the fact that Kühlmann was able to remain. Kühlmann's difficult position and his desire to strengthen it rendered the discussion of the territorial questions, which were first officially touched upon on December 27, but had been already taken up in private meetings with the Russian delegates, a particularly awkward matter. Germany insisted that the then Russian front was not to be evacuated until six months after the general peace. Russia was disposed to agree to this, but demanded on the other hand that the fate of Poland was not to be decided until after evacuation. Against this the Germans were inclined to give up its original standpoint to the effect that the populations of occupied territories had already availed themselves of the right of self-determination conceded, and allow a new inquiry to be made among the population, but insisted that this should be done during the occupation. No solution could be arrived at on this point, though Austria-Hungary made repeated efforts at mediation. The negotiations had arrived at this stage when they were first interrupted on December 29. On resuming the negotiations on January 6 the situation was little changed. Kühlmann's position was at any rate somewhat firmer than before, albeit only at the cost of some concessions to the German military party. In these circumstances the negotiations, in which Trotski now took part as spokesman for the Russians, led only to altogether fruitless theoretical discussions and the right of self-determination, which could not bring about any lessening of the distance between the two firmly maintained points of view. In order to get the proceedings out of this deadlock further endeavours were made on the part of Austria to arrive at a compromise between the German and Russian standpoints, the more so as it was generally, and especially in the case of Poland, desirable to solve the territorial question on the basis of complete self-determination. Our proposals to the German delegates were to the effect that the Russian standpoint should so far be met as to allow the plebiscite demanded by the Russians, this to be taken, as the Germans insisted should be the case, during the German occupation, but with extensive guarantees for free expression of the will of the people. On this point we had long discussions with the German delegates, based on detailed drafts prepared by us. Our endeavours here, however, were again unsuccessful. Circumstances arising at the time in our own country were responsible for this, as also for the result of the negotiations which had in the meantime been commenced with the Ukrainian delegates. These last had, at the first discussion, declined to treat with any Polish representatives, and demanded the concession of the entire Cholm territory, and, in a more guarded fashion, the cession of Eastern Galicia and the Ukrainian part of North-Eastern Hungary, and in consequence of which the negotiations were on the point of being broken off. At this stage a food crisis broke out in Austria to an extent of which the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was hitherto unaware, threatening Vienna in particular with the danger of being in a few days devoid of flour altogether. Almost immediately after this came a strike movement of threatening proportions. These events at home weakened the position of the Foreign Minister both as regards his attitude towards the German Allies and towards the opposing parties in the negotiations--with both of which he was then in conflict--and this, at a most critical moment, to a degree that can hardly be appreciated from a distance. He was required to exert pressure upon Germany, and was now forced, not merely to ask, but to entreat Germany's aid in sending supplies of food, or Vienna would within a few days be in the throes of a catastrophe. With the enemy, on the other hand, he was forced, owing to the situation at home, to strive for a settlement of peace that should be favourable to Austria, in spite of the fact that our food situation and our labour troubles were well known to that enemy. This complete alteration of the position changed the whole basis and tactics of the Foreign Minister's proceedings. He had to obtain the supplies of grain asked for from Germany and thus to diminish political pressure on that country; but at the same time he had to persuade the Soviet delegates to continue negotiations, and finally to arrive at a settlement of peace under the most acceptable conditions possible with the Ukraine, which would put an end to the still serious difficulties of the food situation. In these circumstances it was impossible now to work on the German delegates by talking of Austria-Hungary's concluding a separate peace with Russia, as this would have imperilled the chance of food supplies from Germany--the more so as the representative of the German Army Command had declared that it was immaterial whether Austria-Hungary made peace or not. Germany would in any case march on Petersburg if the Russian Government did not give way. On the other hand, however, the Foreign Minister prevailed on the leader of the Russian delegation to postpone the carrying out of the intentions of his Government--to the effect that the Russian delegation, owing to lack of good faith on the part of German-Austro-Hungarian negotiators, should be recalled. At the same time the negotiations with the Ukrainian delegation were continued. By means of lengthy and wearisome conferences we succeeded in bringing their demands to a footing which might just possibly be acceptable, and gaining their agreement to a clause whereby Ukraine undertook to deliver at least 1,000,000 tons of grain by August, 1918. As to the demand for the Cholm territory, which we had wished to have relegated to the negotiations with Poland, the Ukrainian delegates refused to give way on this point, and were evidently supported by General Hoffmann. Altogether the German military party seemed much inclined to support Ukrainian demands and extremely indisposed to accede to Polish claims, so that we were unable to obtain the admission of Polish representatives to the proceedings, though we had frequently asked for this. A further difficulty in the way of this was the fact that Trotski himself was unwilling to recognise the Polish party as having equal rights here. The only result obtainable was that the Ukrainians should restrict their claims on the Cholm territory to those parts inhabited by Ukrainian majority and accept a revision of the frontier line, as yet only roughly laid down, according to the finding of a mixed commission and the wishes of the population, i.e. the principle of national boundaries under international protection. The Ukrainian delegates renounced all territorial claims against the Monarchy, but demanded from us on the other hand a guarantee as to the autonomous development of their co-nationals in Galicia. With regard to these two weighty concessions, the Foreign Minister declared that they could only be granted on the condition that the Ukraine fulfilled the obligation it had undertaken as to delivery of grain, the deliveries being made at the appointed times; he further demanded that the obligations on both sides should be reciprocal, i.e. that the failure of one party to comply therewith should release the other. The formulation of these points, which met with the greatest difficulties on the part of Ukraine, was postponed to a later date. At this stage of the proceedings a new pause occurred to give the separate delegates time to advise their Governments as to the results hitherto attained and receive their final instructions. The Foreign Minister returned to Vienna and reported the state of the negotiations to the proper quarters. In the course of these deliberations his policy of concluding peace with Russia and Ukraine on the basis of the concessions proposed was agreed to. Another question dealt with at the same time was whether the Monarchy should, in case of extreme necessity, conclude a separate peace with Russia if the negotiations with that state should threaten to come to nothing on account of Germany's demands. This question was, after full consideration of all grounds to the contrary, answered _in thesi_ in the affirmative, as the state of affairs at home apparently left no alternative. On resuming the negotiations at Brest-Litovsk further endeavours were made to persuade Germany to give way somewhat by pointing out what would be the consequence of its obstinate attitude. In the course of the deliberations on this point with Herr Kühlmann we succeeded after great difficulty in obtaining the agreement of the German delegates to a final attempt at compromise, to be undertaken by the Foreign Minister. The proposals for this compromise were based on the following considerations: For months past conflicting views had been expressed as to: 1. Whether in the territories where constitutional alterations were to be made owing to the war the right of self-determination should be taken as already exercised, or whether a plebiscite should be taken first; 2. Whether such plebiscite, if taken, should be addressed to a constituent body or in the form of a referendum to the people direct; 3. Whether this should be done before or after evacuation; and 4. In what manner it was to be organised (by general franchise, by a vote of the nobles, etc.). It would be advisable, and would also be in accordance with the principles adopted by Russia, to leave the decision on all these points to the people themselves, and deliver them over to the "temporary self-administrative body," which should, also according to the Russian proposal (Kameneff), be introduced at once. The whole of the peace negotiations could then be concentrated upon a single point: the question as to the composition of this temporary body. Here, however, a compromise could be arrived at, as Russia could agree that the already existent bodies set in the foreground by Germany should be allowed to express a part of the will of the people, Germany agreeing that these bodies should, during the occupation, be supplemented by elements appointed, according to the Russian principles, by free election. On February 7, immediately after Herr Kühlmann had agreed to mediation on this basis, the Foreign Minister saw the leader of the Russian delegation, Trotski, and had a series of conversations with him. The idea of compromise on the lines just set forth was little to Trotski's taste, and he declared that he would in any case protest against the handling of the self-determination question by the Four Powers. On the other hand, the discussion did lead to some result, in that a new basis for disposing of the difficulties which had arisen was now found. There was to be no further continuance of the conflict as to whether the territorial alterations involved by the peace should be termed "annexations," as the Russian delegates wished, or "exercise of the right of self-determination," as Germany wished; the territorial alterations were to be simply noted in the peace treaty ("Russia notes that ..."). Trotski, however, made his acquiescence to the conclusion of such a compact subject to two conditions: one being that the Moon Sound Islands and the Baltic ports should remain with Russia; the other that Germany and Austria-Hungary should not conclude any separate peace with the Ukrainian People's Republic, whose Government was then seriously threatened by the Bolsheviks and, according to some reports, already overthrown by them. The Foreign Minister was now anxious to arrive at a compromise on this question also, in which he had to a certain degree the support of Herr von Kühlmann, while General Hoffmann most vehemently opposed any further concession. All these negotiations for a compromise failed to achieve their end owing to the fact that Herr Kühlmann was forced by the German Supreme Army Command to act promptly. Ludendorff declared that the negotiations with Russia must be concluded within three days, and when a telegram from Petersburg was picked up in Berlin calling on the German Army to rise in revolt Herr von Kühlmann was strictly ordered not to be content with the cessions already agreed to, but to demand the further cession of the unoccupied territories of Livonia and Esthonia. Under such pressure the leader of the German delegation had not the power to compromise. We then arrived at the signing of the treaty with Ukraine, which had, after much trouble, been brought to an end meanwhile. It thus appeared as if the efforts of the Foreign Minister had proved fruitless. Nevertheless he continued his discussions with Trotski, but these still led to no result, owing to the fact that Trotski, despite repeated questioning, persisted in leaving everything vague till the last moment as to whether he would, in the present circumstances, conclude any peace with the Four Powers at all or not. Not until the plenary session of February 10 was this cleared up; Russia declared for a cessation of hostilities, but signed no treaty of peace. The situation created by this declaration offered no occasion for further taking up the idea of a separate peace with Russia, since peace seemed to have come _via facta_ already. At a meeting on February 10 of the diplomatic and military delegates of Germany and Austria-Hungary to discuss the question of what was now to be done it was agreed unanimously, save for a single dissentient, that the situation arising out of Trotski's declarations must be accepted. The one dissentient vote--that of General Hoffmann--was to the effect that Trotski's statement should be answered by declaring the Armistice at an end, marching on Petersburg, and supporting the Ukraine openly against Russia. In the ceremonial final sitting, on February 11, Herr von Kühlmann adopted the attitude expressed by the majority of the peace delegations, and set forth the same in a most impressive speech. Nevertheless, a few days later, as General Hoffmann had said, Germany declared the Armistice at an end, ordered the German troops to march on Petersburg, and brought about the situation which led to the signing of the peace treaty. Austria-Hungary declared that we took no part in this action. 6 =Report of the Peace Negotiations at Bucharest= The possibility of entering upon peace negotiations with Roumania was considered as soon as negotiations with the Russian delegations at Brest-Litovsk had commenced. In order to prevent Roumania itself from taking part in these negotiations Germany gave the Roumanian Government to understand that it would not treat with the present King and the present Government at all. This step, however, was only intended to enable separate negotiations to be entered upon with Roumania, as Germany feared that the participation of Roumania in the Brest negotiations would imperil the chances of peace. Roumania's idea seemed then to be to carry on the war and gain the upper hand. At the end of January, therefore, Austria-Hungary took the initiative in order to bring about negotiations with Roumania. The Emperor sent Colonel Randa, the former Military Attaché to the Roumanian Government, to the King of Roumania, assuring him of his willingness to grant Roumania honourable terms of peace. In connection with the peace negotiations a demand was raised in Hungarian quarters for a rectification of the frontier line, so as to prevent, or at any rate render difficult, any repetition of the invasion by Roumania in 1916 over the Siebenbürgen, despite opposition on the part of the Minister for Foreign Affairs. The strategical frontier drawn up by the Army Command, which, by the way, was influenced by considerations not conducive to peace, followed a line involving the cession to Hungary of Turnu-Severin, Sinaia and several valuable petroleum districts in Moldavia. Public opinion in Hungary voiced even further demands. The Hungarian Government was of opinion that the Parliament would offer the greatest hindrances to any peace not complying with the general desire in this respect, and leading Hungarian statesmen, even some among the Opposition parties, declared the rectification of the frontier to be a condition of peace _sine qua non_. Wekerle and Tisza in particular took this view. Despite this serious difference of opinion, the Foreign Minister, in entire agreement with the Emperor, even before the commencement of the negotiations in the middle of February, took up the position that demands connected with the frontier line should not offer any obstacle to the conclusion of peace. The rectification of the frontier should only seriously be insisted on as far as could be done on the basis of a loyal and, for the future, amicable relations with Roumania. Hungary regarded this lenient attitude on the part of the Foreign Minister with increasing disapproval. We pointed out that a frontier line conceding cities and petroleum districts to Hungary would be unfortunate in every respect. From the point of view of internal politics, because the number of non-Hungarian inhabitants would be thereby increased; from the military point of view, because it would give rise to frontier conflicts with unreliable Roumanian factions; and, finally, from the point of view of foreign policy, because it would mean annexations and the transference of population this way and that, rendering friendly relations with Roumania an impossibility. Nevertheless, it would be necessary for a time to hold fast by the frontier line as originally conceived, so that the point could be used to bring about the establishment in Roumania of a régime amicably disposed toward the Central Powers. The Foreign Minister was particularly anxious to see a Marghiloman Cabinet formed, inaugurating a policy friendly to ourselves. He believed that with such a Cabinet it would be easier to arrive at a peace of mutual understanding, and was also resolved to render possible such a peace by extensive concessions, especially by giving his diplomatic support in the Bessarabian question. He informed Marghiloman also in writing that he would be prepared to grant important concessions to a Cabinet of which he, Marghiloman, was the head, in particular as regards the cession of inhabited places such as Turnu-Severin and Ocna, on which points he was willing to give way. When the Marghiloman Cabinet was formed the Austro-Hungarian demands in respect of the frontier line would, despite active opposition on the part of the Hungarian Government, be reduced almost by half. The negotiations with Roumania were particularly difficult in regard to the question of two places, Azuga and Busteni. On March 24 Count Czernin prepared to terminate these negotiations, declaring that he was ready to renounce all claim to Azuga and Busteni and halve his demands as to the much-debated Lotru district, provided Marghiloman were willing to arrange the frontier question on this basis. Marghiloman declared himself satisfied with this compromise. On the next day, however, it was nevertheless rejected by the Hungarian Government, and not until after further telegraphic communication with the Emperor and Wekerle was the assent of all competent authorities obtained. This had, indeed, been widely considered in Hungarian circles as an impossibility. Another Austro-Hungarian demand which played some part in the Bucharest negotiations was in connection with the plan of an economical alliance between Austria-Hungary and Roumania. This was of especial interest to the Austrian Government, whereas the frontier question, albeit in some degree affecting Austria as well, was a matter of indifference to this Government, which, as a matter of fact, did not sympathise with the demands at all. The plan for an economical alliance, however, met with opposition in Hungary. Immediately before the commencement of the Bucharest negotiations an attempt was made to overcome this opposition on the part of the Hungarian Government and secure its adherence to the idea of an economical alliance with Roumania--at any rate, conditionally upon the conclusion of a customs alliance with Germany as planned. It proved impossible, however, at the time to obtain this assent. The Hungarian Government reserved the right of considering the question later on, and on March 8 instructed their representatives at Bucharest that they must dissent from the plan, as the future economical alliance with Germany was a matter beyond present consideration. Consequently this question could play no part at first in the peace negotiations, and all that could be done was to sound the leading Roumanian personages in a purely private manner as to the attitude they would adopt towards such a proposal. The idea was, generally speaking, well received by Roumania, and the prevalent opinion was that such an alliance would be distinctly advisable from Roumania's point of view. A further attempt was therefore made, during the pause in the peace negotiations in the East, to overcome the opposition of the Hungarian Government; these deliberations were, however, not concluded when the Minister for Foreign Affairs resigned his office. Germany had, even before the commencement of negotiations in Bucharest, considered the question of imposing on Roumania, when treating for peace, a series of obligations especially in connection with the economical relations amounting to a kind of indirect war indemnity. It was also contemplated that the occupation of Wallachia should be maintained for five or six years after the conclusion of peace. Roumania should then give up its petroleum districts, its railways, harbours and domains to German companies as their property, and submit itself to a permanent financial control. Austria-Hungary opposed these demands from the first on the grounds that no friendly relations could ever be expected to exist with a Roumania which had been economically plundered to such a complete extent; and Austria-Hungary was obliged to maintain amicable relations with Roumania. This standpoint was most emphatically set forth, and not without some success, on February 5 at a conference with the Reichskansler. In the middle of February the Emperor sent a personal message to the German Emperor cautioning him against this plan, which might prove an obstacle in the way of peace. Roumania was not advised of these demands until comparatively late in the negotiations, after the appointment of Marghiloman. Until then the questions involved gave rise to constant discussion between Germany and Austria-Hungary, the latter throughout endeavouring to reduce the German demands, not only with a view to arriving at a peace of mutual understanding, but also because, if Germany gained a footing in Roumania on the terms originally contemplated, Austro-Hungarian economical interests must inevitably suffer thereby. The demands originally formulated with regard to the Roumanian railways and domains were then relinquished by Germany, and the plan of a cession of the Roumanian harbours was altered so as to amount to the establishment of a Roumanian-German-Austro-Hungarian harbour company, which, however, eventually came to nothing. The petroleum question, too, was reduced from a cession to a ninety years' tenure of the state petroleum districts and the formation of a monopoly trading company for petroleum under German management. Finally, an economic arrangement was prepared which should secure the agricultural products of Roumania to the Central Powers for a series of years. The idea of a permanent German control of the Roumanian finances was also relinquished owing to Austro-Hungarian opposition. The negotiations with Marghiloman and his representatives on these questions made a very lengthy business. In the economic questions especially there was great difference of opinion on the subject of prices, which was not disposed of until the last moment before the drawing up of the treaty on March 28, and then only by adopting the Roumanian standpoint. On the petroleum question, where the differences were particularly acute, agreement was finally arrived at, in face of the extreme views of the German economical representative on the one hand and the Roumanian Foreign Minister, Arion, on the other, by a compromise, according to which further negotiations were to be held in particular with regard to the trade monopoly for petroleum, and the original draft was only to apply when such negotiations failed to lead to any result. The German demands as to extension of the period of occupation for five to six years after the general peace likewise played a great part at several stages of the negotiations, and were from the first stoutly opposed by Austria-Hungary. We endeavoured to bring about an arrangement by which, on the conclusion of peace, Roumania should have all legislative and executive power restored, being subject only to a certain right of control in respect of a limited number of points, but not beyond the general peace. In support of this proposal the Foreign Minister pointed out in particular that the establishment of a Roumanian Ministry amicably disposed towards ourselves would be an impossibility (the Averescu Ministry was then still in power) if we were to hold Roumania permanently under our yoke. We should far rather use every endeavour to obtain what could be obtained from Roumania through the medium of such politicians in that country as were disposed to follow a policy of friendly relations with the Central Powers. The main object of our policy to get such men into power in Roumania, and enable them to remain in the Government, would be rendered unattainable if too severe measures were adopted. We might gain something thereby for a few years, but it would mean losing everything in the future. And we succeeded also in convincing the German Secretary of State, Kühlmann, of the inadvisability of the demands in respect of occupation, which were particularly voiced by the German Army Council. As a matter of fact, after the retirement of Averescu, Marghiloman declared that these demands would make it impossible for him to form a Cabinet at all. And when he had been informed, from German sources, that the German Supreme Army Command insisted on these terms, he only agreed to form a Cabinet on the assurance of the Austrian Foreign Minister that a solution of the occupation problem would be found. In this question also we did ultimately succeed in coming to agreement with Roumania. One of the decisive points in the conclusion of peace with Roumania was, finally, the cession of the Dobrudsha, on which Bulgaria insisted with such violence that it was impossible to avoid it. The ultimatum which preceded the preliminary Treaty of Buftea had also to be altered chiefly on the Dobrudsha question, as Bulgaria was already talking of the ingratitude of the Central Powers, of how Bulgaria had been disillusioned, and of the evil effects this disillusionment would have on the subsequent conduct of the war. All that Count Czernin could do was to obtain a guarantee that Roumania, in case of cession of the Dobrudsha, should at least be granted a sure way to the harbour of Kustendje. In the main the Dobrudsha question was decided at Buftea. When, later, Bulgaria expressed a desire to interpret the wording of the preliminary treaty by which the Dobrudsha "as far as the Danube" was to be given up in such a sense as to embrace the whole of the territory up to the northernmost branch (the Kilia branch) of the Danube, this demand was most emphatically opposed both by Germany and Austria-Hungary, and it was distinctly laid down in the peace treaty that only the Dobrudsha as far as the St. George's branch was to be ceded. This decision again led to bad feeling in Bulgaria, but was unavoidable, as further demands here would probably have upset the preliminary peace again. The proceedings had reached this stage when Count Czernin resigned his office. 7 =Wilson's Fourteen Points= I. Open covenants of peace openly arrived at, after which there shall be no private international understandings of any kind, but diplomacy shall proceed always frankly and in the public view. II. Absolute freedom of navigation upon the seas outside territorial waters alike in peace and in war except as the seas may be closed in whole or in part by international action for the enforcement of international covenants. III. The removal, so far as possible, of all economic barriers and the establishment of an equality of trade conditions among all the nations consenting to the peace and associating themselves for its maintenance. IV. Adequate guarantees given and taken that national armaments will be reduced to the lowest point consistent with domestic safety. V. A free, open-minded, and absolutely impartial adjustment of all colonial claims based upon a strict observance of the principle that in determining all such questions of sovereignty the interests of the populations concerned must have equal weight with the equitable claims of the Government whose title is to be determined. VI. The evacuation of all Russian territory, and such a settlement of all questions affecting Russia as will secure the best and freest co-operation of the other nations of the world in obtaining for her an unhampered and unembarrassed opportunity for the independent determination of her own political development and national policy, and assure her of a sincere welcome into the society of free nations under institutions of her own choosing; and more than a welcome assistance also of every kind that she may need and may herself desire. The treatment accorded Russia by her sister nations in the months to come will be the acid test of their good will, of their comprehension of her needs as distinguished from their own interests, and of their intelligent and unselfish sympathy. VII. Belgium, the whole world will agree, must be evacuated and restored without any attempt to limit the sovereignty which she enjoys in common with all other free nations. No other single act will serve as this will serve to restore confidence among the nations in the laws which they have themselves set and determined for the government of their relations with one another. Without this healing act the whole structure and validity of international law is for ever impaired. VIII. All French territory should be freed, and the invaded portions restored, and the wrong done to France by Prussia in 1871 in the matter of Alsace-Lorraine, which has unsettled the peace of the world for nearly 50 years, should be righted in order that peace may once more be made secure in the interests of all. IX. A readjustment of the frontiers of Italy should be effected along clearly recognisable lines of nationality. X. The peoples of Austria-Hungary, whose place among the nations we wish to see safeguarded and assured, should be accorded the first opportunity of autonomous development. XI. Roumania, Serbia, and Montenegro should be evacuated, occupied territories restored, Serbia accorded free and secure access to the sea, and the relations of the several Balkan States to one another determined by friendly counsel along historically established lines of allegiance and nationality, and international guarantees of the political and economic independence and territorial integrity of the several Balkan States should be entered into. XII. The Turkish portions of the present Ottoman Empire should be assured a secure sovereignty, but the other nationalities which are now under Turkish rule should be assured an undoubted security of life and an absolutely unmolested opportunity of autonomous development, and the Dardanelles should be permanently opened as a free passage to the ships and commerce of all nations under international guarantees. XIII. An independent Polish State should be erected which should include the territories inhabited by indisputably Polish populations, which should be assured a free and secure access to the sea, and whose political and economic independence and territorial integrity should be guaranteed by international covenant. XIV. A general association of nations must be formed under specific covenants for the purpose of affording mutual guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity to great and small States alike. 8 =Ottokar Czernin on Austria's Policy During the War= _Speech delivered December 11, 1918_ GENTLEMEN,--In rising now to speak of our policy during the war it is my hope that I may thereby help to bring the truth to light. We are living in a time of excitement. After four years of war, the bloodiest and most determined war the world has ever seen, and in the midst of the greatest revolution ever known, this excitement is only too easily understood. But the result of this excitement is that all those rumours which go flying about, mingling truth and falsehood together, end by misleading the public. It is unquestionably necessary to arrive at a clear understanding. The public has a right to know what has really happened, it has the right to know why we did not succeed in attaining the peace we had so longed for, it has a right to know whether, and if so where, any neglect can be pointed out, or whether it was the overwhelming power of circumstances which has led our policy to take the course it did. The new arrangement of relations between ourselves and Germany will make an end of all secret proceedings. The day will come then when, fortunately, all that has hitherto been hidden will be made clear. As, however, I do not know when all this will be made public, I am grateful for the opportunity of lifting the veil to-day from certain hitherto unknown events. In treating of this theme I will refrain from touching upon those constitutional factors which once counted for so much, but which do so no longer. I do so because it seems to me unfair to import into the discussion persons who are now paying heavily for what they may have done and who are unable to defend themselves. And I must pay this honourable tribute to the Austro-Hungarian Press, that it has on the whole sought to spare the former Emperor as far as possible. There are, of course, exceptions--_exceptiones firmant regulam_. There are in Vienna, as everywhere else, men who find it more agreeable to attack, the less if those whom they are attacking are able to defend themselves. But, believe me, gentlemen, those who think thus are not the bravest, not the best, nor the most reliable; and we may be glad that they form so insignificant a minority. But, to come to the point. Before passing on to a consideration of the various phases of the work for peace, I should like to point out two things: firstly, that since the entry of Italy and Roumania into the war, and especially since the entry of America, a "victorious peace" on our part has been a Utopian idea, a Utopia which, unfortunately, was throughout cherished by the German military party; and, secondly, that we have never received any offer of peace from the Entente. On several occasions peace feelers were put forward between representatives of the Entente and our own; unfortunately, however, these never led to any concrete conditions. We often had the impression that we might conclude a separate peace without Germany, but we were never told the concrete conditions upon which Germany, on its part, could make peace; and, in particular, we were never informed that Germany would be allowed to retain its possessions as before the war, in consequence of which we were left in the position of having to fight a war of defence for Germany. We were compelled by our treaty to a common defence of the pre-war possessions, and since the Entente never declared its willingness to treat with a Germany which wished for no annexations, since the Entente constantly declared its intention of annihilating Germany, we were forced to defend Germany, and our position in Berlin was rendered unspeakably more difficult. We ourselves, also, were never given any assurance that we should be allowed to retain our former possessions; but in our case the desire for peace was so strong that we would have made territorial concessions if we had been able thereby to secure general peace. This, however, was not the case. Take Italy, for instance, which was primarily at war with ourselves and not with Germany. If we had offered Italy concessions however great, if we had offered all that Italy has now taken possession of, even then it could not have made peace, being bound by duty to its Allies and by circumstances not to make peace until England and France made peace with Germany. When, then, peace by sacrifice was the only peace attainable, obviously, as a matter of principle, there were two ways of reaching that end. One, a general peace, i.e. including Germany, and the other, a separate peace. Of the overwhelming difficulties attending the former course I will speak later; at present a few words on the question of separate peace. I myself would never have made a separate peace. I have never, not even in the hour of disillusionment--I may say of despair at my inability to lead the policy of Berlin into wiser channels--even in such hours, I say, I have never forgotten that our alliance with the German Empire was no ordinary alliance, no such alliance as may be contracted by two Emperors or two Governments, and can easily be broken, but an alliance of blood, a blood-brotherhood between the ten million Austro-Germans and the seventy million of the Empire, which could not be broken. And I have never forgotten that the military party in power at that time in Germany were not the German people, and that we had allied ourselves with the German people, and not with a few leading men. But I will not deny that in the moments when I saw my policy could not be realised I did ventilate the idea of suggesting to the Emperor the appointment, in my stead, of one of those men who saw salvation in a separation from Germany. But again and again I relinquished this idea, being firmly convinced that separate peace was a sheer impossibility. The Monarchy lay like a great block between Germany and the Balkans. Germany had great masses of troops there from which it could not be cut off, it was procuring oil and grain from the Balkans; if we were to interpose between it and the Balkans we should be striking at its most sensitive vital nerve. Moreover, the Entente would naturally have demanded first of all that we joined in the blockade, and finally our secession would automatically have involved also that of Bulgaria and Turkey. Had we withdrawn, Germany would have been unable to carry on the war. In such a situation there can be no possibility of doubt but that the German Army Command would have flung several divisions against Bohemia and the Tyrol, meting out to us the same fate which had previously befallen Roumania. The Monarchy, Bohemia in particular, would at once have become a scene of war. But even this is not all. Internally, such a step would at once have led to civil war. The Germans of Austria would never have turned against their brothers, and the Hungarians--Tisza's Hungarians--would never have lent their aid to such a policy. _We had begun the war in common, and we could not end it save in common._ For us there was no way out of the war; we could only choose between fighting with Germany against the Entente, or fighting with the Entente against Germany until Germany herself gave way. A slight foretaste of what would have happened was given us through the separatist steps taken by Andrassy at the last moment. This utterly defeated, already annihilated and prostrate Germany had yet the power to fling troops toward the Tyrol, and had not the revolution overwhelmed all Germany like a conflagration, smothering the war itself, I am not sure but that the Tyrol might at the last moment have been harried by war. And, gentlemen, I have more to say. The experiment of separate peace would not only have involved us in a civil war, not only brought the war into our own country, but even then the final outcome would have been much the same. The dissolution of the Monarchy into its component national parts was postulated throughout by the Entente. I need only refer to the Conference of London. But whether the State be dissolved by way of reward to the people or by way of punishment to the State makes little difference; the effect is the same. In this case also a "German Austria" would have arisen, and in such a development it would have been hard for the German-Austrian people to take up an attitude which rendered them allies of the Entente. In my own case, as Minister of the Imperial and Royal Government, it was my duty also to consider dynastic interests, and I never lost sight of that obligation. But I believe that in this respect also the end would have been the same. In particular the dissolution of the Monarchy into its national elements by legal means, against the opposition of the Germans and Hungarians, would have been a complete impossibility. And the Germans in Austria would never have forgiven the Crown if it had entered upon a war with Germany; the Emperor would have been constantly encountering the powerful Republican tendencies of the Czechs, and he would have been in constant conflict with the King of Serbia over the South-Slav question, an ally being naturally nearer to the Entente than the Habsburgers. And, finally, the Hungarians would never have forgiven the Emperor if he had freely conceded extensive territories to Bohemia and to the South-Slav state; I believe, then, that in this confusion the Crown would have fallen, as it has done in fact. _A separate peace was a sheer impossibility._ There remained the second way: to make peace jointly with Germany. Before going into the difficulties which rendered this way impossible I must briefly point out wherein lay our great dependence upon Germany. First of all, in military respects. Again and again we were forced to rely on aid from Germany. In Roumania, in Italy, in Serbia, and in Russia we were victorious with the Germans beside us. We were in the position of a poor relation living by the grace of a rich kinsman. But it is impossible to play the mendicant and the political adviser at the same time, particularly when the other party is a Prussian officer. In the second place, we were dependent upon Germany owing to the state of our food supply. Again and again we were here also forced to beg for help from Germany, because the complete disorganisation of our own administration had brought us to the most desperate straits. We were forced to this by the hunger blockade established, on the one hand, by Hungary, and on the other by the official authorities and their central depots. I remember how, when I myself was in the midst of a violent conflict with the German delegates at Brest-Litovsk, I received orders from Vienna to bow the knee to Berlin and beg for food. You can imagine, gentlemen, for yourselves how such a state of things must weaken a Minister's hands. And, thirdly, our dependence was due to the state of our finances. In order to keep up our credit we were drawing a hundred million marks a month from Germany, a sum which during the course of the war has grown to over four milliards; and this money was as urgently needed as were the German divisions and the German bread. And, despite this position of dependence, the only way to arrive at peace was by leading Germany into our own political course; that is to say, persuading Germany to conclude a peace involving sacrifice. _The situation all through was simply this: that any momentary military success might enable us to propose terms of peace which, while entailing considerable loss to ourselves, had just a chance of being accepted by the enemy._ The German military party, on the other hand, increased their demands with every victory, and it was more hopeless than ever, after their great successes, to persuade them to adopt a policy of renunciation. I think, by the way, that there was a single moment in the history of this war when such an action would have had some prospect of success. I refer to the famous battle of Görlitz. Then, with the Russian army in flight, the Russian forts falling like houses of cards, many among our enemies changed their point of view. I was at that time still our representative in Roumania. Majorescu was then not disinclined to side with us actively, and the Roumanian army moved forward toward Bessarabia, could have been hot on the heels of the flying Russians, and might, according to all human calculations, have brought about a complete débâcle. It is not unlikely that the collapse which later took place in Russia might have come about then, and after a success of that nature, with no "America" as yet on the horizon, we might perhaps have brought the war to an end. Two things, however, were required: in the first place, the Roumanians demanded, as the price of their co-operation, a rectification of the Hungarian frontier, and this first condition was flatly refused by Hungary; the second condition, which naturally then did not come into question at all, would have been that we should even then, after such a success, have proved strong enough to bear a peace with sacrifice. We were not called upon to agree to this, but the second requirement would undoubtedly have been refused by Germany, just as the first had been by Hungary. I do not positively assert that peace would have been possible in this or any other case, but I do positively maintain that during my period of office _such a peace by sacrifice was the utmost we and Germany could have attained_. The future will show what superhuman efforts we have made to induce Germany to give way. That all proved fruitless was not the fault of the German people, nor was it, in my opinion, the fault of the German Emperor, but that of the leaders of the German military party, which had attained such enormous power in the country. Everyone in Wilhelmstrasse, from Bethmann to Kühlmann, wanted peace; but they could not get it simply because the military party got rid of everyone who ventured to act otherwise than as they wished. This also applies to Bethmann and Kühlmann. The Pan-Germanists, under the leadership of the military party, could not understand that it was possible to die through being victorious, that victories are worthless when they do not lead to peace, that territories held in an iron grasp as "security" are valueless securities as long as the opposing party cannot be forced to redeem them. There were various shades of this Pan-Germanism. One section demanded the annexation of parts of Belgium and France, with an indemnity of milliards; others were less exorbitant, but all were agreed that peace could only be concluded with an extension of German possessions. It was the easiest thing in the world to get on well with the German military party so long as one believed in their fantastic ideas and took a victorious peace for granted, dividing up the world thereafter at will. But if anyone attempted to look at things from the point of view of the real situation, and ventured to reckon with the possibility of a less satisfactory termination of the war, the obstacles then encountered were not easily surmounted. We all of us remember those speeches in which constant reference was always made to a "stern peace," a "German peace," a "victorious peace." For us, then, the possibility of a more favourable peace--I mean a peace based on mutual understanding--I have never believed in the possibility of a victorious peace--would only have been acute in the case of Poland and the Austro-Polish question. But I cannot sufficiently emphasise the fact that the Austro-Polish solution never was an obstacle in the way of peace and could never have been so. There was only the idea that Austrian Poland and the former Russian Poland might be united and attached to the Monarchy. It was never suggested that such a step should be enforced against the will of Poland itself or against the will of the Entente. There was a time when it looked as if not only Poland but also certain sections among the Entente were not disinclined to agree to such a solution. But to return to the German military party. This had attained a degree of power in the State rarely equalled in history, and the rarity of the phenomenon was only exceeded by the suddenness of its terrible collapse. The most striking personality in this group was General Ludendorff. Ludendorff was a great man, a man of genius, in conception, a man of indomitable energy and great gifts. But this man required a political brake, so to speak, a political element in the Wilhelmstrasse capable of balancing his influence, and this was never found. It must fairly be admitted that the German generals achieved the gigantic, and there was a time when they were looked up to by the people almost as gods. It may be true that all great strategists are much alike; they look to victory always and to nothing else. Moltke himself, perhaps, was nothing more, but he had a Bismarck to maintain equilibrium. We had no such Bismarck, and when all is said and done it was not the fault of Ludendorff, or it is at any rate an excuse for him, that he was the only supremely powerful character in the whole of Germany, and that in consequence the entire policy of the country was directed into military channels. Ludendorff was a great patriot, desiring nothing for himself, but seeking only the happiness of his country; a military genius, a hard man, utterly fearless--and for all that a misfortune in that he looked at the whole world through Potsdam glasses, with an altogether erroneous judgment, wrecking every attempt at peace which was not a peace by victory. Those very people who worshipped Ludendorff when he spoke of a victorious peace stone him now for that very thing; Ludendorff was exactly like the statesmen of England and France, who all rejected compromise and declared for victory alone; in this respect there was no difference between them. The peace of mutual understanding which I wished for was rejected on the Thames and on the Seine just as by Ludendorff himself. I have said this already. According to the treaty it was our undoubted duty to carry on a defensive war to the utmost and reciprocally to defend the integrity of the State. It is therefore perfectly obvious that I could never publicly express any other view, that I was throughout forced to declare that we were fighting for Alsace-Lorraine just as we were for Trentino, that I could not relinquish German territory to the Entente so long as I lacked the power to persuade Germany herself to such a step. But, as I will show, the most strenuous endeavours were made in this latter direction. And I may here in parenthesis remark that our military men throughout refrained from committing the error of the German generals, and interfering in politics themselves. It is undoubtedly to the credit of our Emperor that whenever any tendency to such interference appeared he quashed it at once. But in particular I should point out that the Archduke Frederick confined his activity solely to the task of bringing about peace. He has rendered most valuable service in this, as also in his endeavours to arrive at favourable relations with Germany. Very shortly after taking up office I had some discussions with the German Government which left those gentlemen perfectly aware of the serious nature of the situation. In April, 1917--eighteen months ago--I sent the following report to the Emperor Charles, which he forwarded to the Emperor William with the remark that he was entirely of my opinion. [This report is already printed in these pages. See p. 146.] This led to a reply from the German Government, dated May 9, again expressing the utmost confidence in the success of the submarine campaign, declaring, it is true, their willingness in principle to take steps towards peace, but reprehending any such steps as might be calculated to give an impression of weakness. As to any territorial sacrifice on the part of Germany, this was not to be thought of. As will be seen from this report, however, we did not confine ourselves to words alone. In 1917 we declared in Berlin that the Emperor Charles was prepared to permit the union of Galicia with Poland, and to do all that could be done to attach that State to Germany in the event of Germany making any sacrifices in the West in order to secure peace. But we were met with a _non possumus_ and the German answer that territorial concessions to France were out of the question. The whole of Galicia was here involved, but I was firmly assured that if the plan succeeded Germany would protect the rights of the Ukraine; and consideration for the Ukrainians would certainly not have restrained me had it been a question of the highest value--of peace itself. When I perceived that the likelihood of converting Berlin to our views steadily diminished I had recourse to other means. The journey of the Socialist leaders to Stockholm will be remembered. It is true that the Socialists were not "sent" by me; they went to Stockholm of their own initiative and on their own responsibility, but it is none the less true that I could have refused them their passes if I had shared the views of the Entente Governments and of numerous gentlemen in our own country. Certainly, I was at the time very sceptical as to the outcome, as I already saw that the Entente would refuse passes to their Socialists, and consequently there could be nothing but a "rump" parliament in the end. But despite all the reproaches which I had to bear, and the argument that the peace-bringing Socialists would have an enormous power in the State to the detriment of the monarchical principle itself, I never for a moment hesitated to take that step, and I have never regretted it in itself, only that it did not succeed. It is encouraging to me now to read again many of the letters then received criticising most brutally my so-called "Socialistic proceedings" and to find that the same gentlemen who were then so incensed at my policy are now adherents of a line of criticism which maintains that I am too "narrow-minded" in my choice of new means towards peace. It will be remembered how, in the early autumn of 1917, the majority of the German Reichstag had a hard fight against the numerically weaker but, from their relation to the German Army Command, extremely powerful minority on the question of the reply to the Papal Note. Here again I was no idle spectator. One of my friends, at my instigation, had several conversations with Südekum and Erzberger, and encouraged them, by my description of our own position, to pass the well known peace resolution. It was owing to this description of the state of affairs here that the two gentlemen mentioned were enabled to carry the Reichstag's resolution in favour of a peace by mutual understanding--the resolution which met with such disdain and scorn from the Pan-Germans and other elements. I hoped then, for a moment, to have gained a lasting and powerful alliance in the German Reichstag against the German military plans of conquest. And now, gentlemen, I should like to say a few words on the subject of that unfortunate submarine campaign which was undoubtedly the beginning of the end, and to set forth the reasons which in this case, as in many other instances, forced us to adopt tactics not in accordance with our own convictions. Shortly after my appointment as Minister the idea of unrestricted submarine warfare began to take form in German minds. The principal advocate of this plan was Admiral Tirpitz. To the credit of the former _Reichskansler_, Bethmann-Hollweg, be it said that he was long opposed to the idea, and used all means and every argument to dissuade others from adopting so perilous a proceeding. In the end he was forced to give way, as was the case with all politicians who came in conflict with the all-powerful military party. Admiral Holtzendorff came to us at that time, and the question was debated from every point of view in long conferences lasting for hours. My then ministerial colleagues, Tisza and Clam, as well as myself were entirely in agreement with Emperor Charles in rejecting the proposal, and the only one who then voted unreservedly in favour of it was Admiral Haus. It should here be noted that the principal German argument at that time was not the prospect of starving England into submission, but the suggestion that the Western front could not be held unless the American munition transports were sunk--that is to say, the case for the submarine campaign was then based chiefly on a point of _technical military importance_ and nothing else. I myself earnestly considered the question then of separating ourselves from Germany on this point; with the small number of U-boats at our disposal it would have made but little difference had we on our part refrained. But another point had here to be considered. If the submarine campaign was to succeed in the northern waters it must be carried out at the same time in the Mediterranean. With this latter water unaffected the transports would have been sent via Italy, France and Dover to England, and the northern U-boat campaign would have been paralysed. But in order to carry on submarine war in the Adriatic we should have to give the Germans access to our bases, such as Pola, Cattaro and Trieste, and by so doing we were _de facto_ partaking in the submarine campaign ourselves. If we did not do it, then we were attacking Germany in the rear by hindering their submarine campaign--that is to say, it would bring us into direct conflict with Germany. Therefore, albeit sorely against our will, we agreed, not convinced by argument, but unable to act otherwise. And now, gentlemen, I hasten to conclude. I have but a few words to say as to the present. From time to time reports have appeared in the papers to the effect that certain gentlemen were preparing disturbances in Switzerland, and I myself have been mentioned as one of them. I am doubtful whether there is any truth at all in these reports; as for myself, I have not been outside this country for the last nine months. As, however, my contradiction on this head itself appears to have given rise to further misunderstandings, I will give you my point of view here briefly and, as I hope, clearly enough. I am most strongly opposed to any attempt at revolt. I am convinced that any such attempt could only lead to civil war--a thing no one would wish to see. I am therefore of opinion that the Republican Government must be maintained untouched until the German-Austrian people as a whole has taken its decision. But this can only be decided by the German people. Neither the Republic nor the Monarchy is in itself a dogma of democracy. The Kingdom of England is as democratic as republican Switzerland. I know no country where men enjoy so great freedom as in England. But it is a dogma of democracy that the people itself must determine in what manner it will be governed, and I therefore repeat that the final word can only be spoken by the constitutional representative body. I believe that I am here entirely at one with the present Government. There are two methods of ascertaining the will of the people: either each candidate for the representative body stands for election on a monarchical or a republican platform, in which case the majority of the body itself will express the decision; or the question of Monarchy or Republic can be decided by a plebiscite. It is matter of common knowledge that I myself have had so serious conflicts with the ex-Kaiser that any co-operation between us is for all time an impossibility. No one can, therefore, suspect me of wishing on personal grounds to revert to the old régime. But I am not one to juggle with the idea of democracy, and its nature demands that the people itself should decide. I believe that the majority of German-Austria is against the old régime, and when it has expressed itself to this effect the furtherance of democracy is sufficiently assured. And with this, gentlemen, I have finished what I proposed to set before you. I vainly endeavoured to make peace together with Germany, but I was not unsuccessful in my endeavours to save the German-Austrians from ultimately coming to armed conflict with Germany. I can say this, and without exaggeration, that I have defended the German alliance as if it had been my own child, and I do not know what would have happened had I not done so. Andrassy's "extra turn" at the last moment showed the great mass of the public how present a danger was that of war with Germany. Had the same experiment been made six months before it would have been war with Germany; would have made Austria a scene of war. There are evil times in store for the German people, but a people of many millions cannot perish and will not perish. The day will come when the wounds of this war begin to close and heal, and when that day comes a better future will dawn. The Austrian armies went forth in the hour of war to save Austria. They have not availed to save it. But if out of this ocean of blood and suffering a better, freer and nobler world arise, then they will not have died in vain, all those we loved who now lie buried in cold alien earth; they died for the happiness, the peace and the future of the generations to come. FOOTNOTES: [11] Translated from the German text given by Count Czernin, no English text being available. INDEX Adler, Dr. Victor, a discussion with, 27 and the Socialist Congress at Stockholm, 168 and Trotski, 234, 235 Adrianople, cession of, 268 Aehrenthal, Franz Ferdinand and, 40 policy of expansion, 5 Air-raids on England, cause of, 16 their effect, 167 Albania, and the Peace of Bucharest, 6 Queen Elizabeth of Roumania and, 92 Albrecht von Würtemberg, 39 Alsace-Lorraine, Bethmann on, 74 cession of, demanded by Entente, 165 conquest of, a curse to Germany, 15 Emperor Charles's offer to Germany, 75 France insists on restoration of, 170 Germany and, 71, 158, 159 Ambassadors and their duties, 97, 110 America and the U-boat campaign, 116, 119, 120 enters the war, 17, 148 rupture with Germany, 127 shipbuilding programme of, 291 unpreparedness for war, 122 (_Cf._ United States) American Government, Count Czernin's Note to, 279 _et seq._ Andrassy, Count, and Roumanian peace negotiations, 260 declares a separate peace, 24, 25 German Nationalist view of his action, 25 Andrian at Nordbahnhof, 219 Anti-Roumanian party and its leader, 77 Arbitration, courts of, 171, 176, 177 Arion, Roumanian Foreign Minister, 322 Armaments, pre-war fever for, 3 Armand-Revertera negotiations, the, 164, 169 Asquith, a warlike speech by, 181 Austria-Hungary, a rejected proposal decides fate of, 2 and Albania, 6 and cession of Galicia, 145 and question of separate peace, 27, 164, 170 and the U-boat campaign, 124, 125, 149, 334 ceases to exist, 179 consequences of a separate peace, 24 death-blow to Customs dues, 168 declaration on submarine warfare, 279 democratic Parliament of, 306 enemy's secret negotiations for peace, 141, 162 food troubles and strikes in, 238, 239, 241, 314 her army merged into German army, 21 her position before and after the ultimatum, 13 heroism of her armies, 336 impossibility of a separate peace for, 19, 21 _et seq._ maritime trade obstructed by blockade, 280 mobilisation and its difficulties, 8, 9 obstinate attitude after Sarajevo tragedy, 8 parlous position of, in 1917, 188 peace negotiations with Roumania, 259, 318 peace terms to, 179 policy during war, Count Czernin on, 325 racial problems in, 190 separatist tactics in, 164 Social Democracy in, 21, 31 terms on which she could make peace, 29 the Archdukes, 22 views on a "tripartite solution" of Polish question, 201 Austrian Delegation, Count Czernin's speech to, 298 _et seq._ Austrian Government and the Ukrainian question, 242, 245 Austrian Navy, the, Franz Ferdinand and, 50 Austrian Ruthenians, leader of, 247 Austro-Hungarian demands at Bucharest negotiations, 319 Austro-Hungarian army, General Staff of, 22 inferiority of, 21 Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, the, and foreign policy, 134 peace idea of, 174 Austro-Polish question, the, and the Ukrainian demands, 242 no bar to peace, 331 solution of, 200 _et seq._ Avarescu, interview with, 263 retirement of, 323 =B= Baernreither, his views of a separate peace, 230 Balkan Wars, the, 6 Balkans, the, troubles in: attitude of German Emperor, 68 _Baralong_ episode, the, 133 Bathurst, Captain, and consumption of breadstuffs, 295 on an "un-English" system, 296 Bauer, Dr., German-Austrian Secretary of State, 18 Bauer, Herr, houses Trotski's library, 235 Bavarian troops enter into the Tyrol, 27 Belgian neutrality violated by Germany, 14 Belgian question, the, Germany ready for negotiations with England on, 180 Belgium, England's promise to, 14 German entry into, 14 Germany's views regarding, 157, 158 Belgium, invasion of, changes England's policy, 2 Benckendorff, Count, at London Conference, 275 Benedict XV, Pope, Austria's answer to peace Note of, 175 German reply to, 333 proposals for peace by, 167, 177 Berchtold, Count, and Franz Ferdinand, 43, 44 and the Roumanian question, 77 criticised by pro-war party at Vienna, 33 ultimatum to Serbia, 7 vacillation of, 10 Berlin, Byzantine atmosphere of, 62, 66 the English Ambassador demands his passport, 14 Bessarabia, Bolshevism in, 265 Bethmann-Hollweg, and Austria's willingness to cede Galicia, 146 and the Supreme Military Command, 156 draws up a peace proposal, 139 opposes U-boat warfare, 115, 334 optimistic view of U-boat campaign, 151 _et seq._ replies to author's _exposé_, 150 requests Vienna Cabinet to accept negotiations, 8 visits Western front, 73 Bilinski, Herr von, and the future of Poland, 205 Bismarck, Prince, and the invincibility of the army, 17 and William II., 52 dealings with William I., 65 heritage of, becomes Germany's curse, 15 his policy of "blood and iron," 15 Bizenko, Madame, murders General Sacharow, 220 Blockade, enemies feeling the grip of, 297 of Germany, 280 why established by Great Britain, 281 Bohemia as a possible theatre of war: author's reflections on, 24 Bolsheviks and the Kieff Committee, 245 Bolsheviks, dastardly behaviour of, 249 destruction wrought in Ukraine, 252 enter Kieff, 248, 249 Bolshevism, Czernin on, 216, 221 in Bessarabia, 265 in Russia, 211, 216, 229 terrorism of, 226 the Entente and, 273 Bosnia, as compensation to Austria, 207 Bozen, proposals for cession of, 170, 173 Bratianu, a tactless proceeding by, 112 apprises author of Sarajevo tragedy, 86 collapse of, 99 Ministry of, 88 on Russia, 263 reproaches author, 96 "Bread peace," origin of the term, 257 Brest-Litovsk, a dejected Jew at, 225 a victory for German militarism, 193 answer to Russian peace proposals, 224 arrival of Trotski at, 232 conflict with Ukrainians at, 235 episode of Roumanian peace, 260 evacuation of occupied areas: difficulties of, 312 first peace concluded at, 249 frontier question, 208 further Ukrainian representation at, 300 heated discussions at, 228 object of negotiations at, 305 peace negotiations at, 218 _et seq._, 311 Russians threaten to withdraw from, 227 territorial questions at, 235, 236, 245 Ukrainian delegation and their claims, 208, 231, 314 Briand, peace negotiations with, 182 Brinkmann, Major, transmits Petersburg information to German delegation, 230 British losses by submarines, 290 trade, and result of submarine warfare, 291 Bronstein and Bolshevism, 211 _Brotfrieden_ ("Bread peace"), 257 Bucharest, fall of, 99 report of peace negotiations at, 318 Zeppelin attacks on, 101 et seq. Bucharest, Peace of, 6, 82, 100, 258 _et seq._, 270 Budapest, author's address to party leaders at, 174 demonstrations against Germany in, 233 Buftea, Treaty of, 323 Bulgaria, a dispute with Turkey, 268 and the Dobrudsha question, 263, 323 her relations with America, 125 humiliation of, 6 negotiations with the Entente, 162, 163, 269 question of her neutrality, 10 secession of, 183 Bulgarian representatives at Brest, 223 Bülow, Prince, exposes William II., 54 Burian, Count, 106, 200 and the division of Galicia, 244 draws up a peace proposal, 139 his Red Book on Roumania, 98, 114 succeeded by author, 114 visits German headquarters, 210 Busche, von dem, and territorial concessions, 107 =C= Cachin, his attitude at French Socialist Congress, 214 Cambon, M., attends the London Conference, 275 Capelle and U-boats, 132 Carmen Sylva (_see_ Elizabeth, Queen of Roumania) Carol, King, a fulfilled prophecy of, 88 and Serbia, 12 last days of, 90 peculiar policy of Government of, 81 tactfulness of, 79 Tsar's visit to, 88 urges acceptance of ultimatum, 90 visited by Franz Ferdinand, 79 Carp, 82, 87, 94 Catarau, and the crime at Debruzin, 89 Central-European question, the, 209 the terror of the Entente, 172 Central Powers and the Bratianu Ministry, 97 enemy blockade of, 132 favourable news in 1917, 143 why they adopted submarine warfare, 281 _et seq._ Charles VIII., Emperor, and Franz Ferdinand, 41 and problem of nationality, 192 and the principle of ministerial responsibility, 56 and the Ukrainian question, 244 apprised by author of critical condition of food supply, 237, 239 cautions the Kaiser, 321 communicates with King Ferdinand on Roumanian peace, 260 confers a title on eldest son of Franz Ferdinand, 45 correspondence with Prince Sixtus, 164 frequent absences from Vienna, 61 his ever friendly demeanour, 57, 58 invites Crown Prince to Vienna, 75 opposes U-boat warfare, 334 reinstates Archduke Joseph Ferdinand, 61 rejoices at peace with Ukraine, 249 submits author's _exposé_ to William II., 146, 332 suggests sacrifices for ending World War, 75 visits South Slav provinces, 59 Clam-Martinic, Count, and the customs question, 168 and U-boat campaign, 121 attends conference on Polish question, 206 opposes submarine warfare, 334 Clemenceau, M., and Germany, 182 and the Peace of Versailles, 272 dominant war aim of, 184, 186 Colloredo-Mannsfield, Count, at Brest-Litovsk, 236 attends conference on U-boat question, 121 meets author, 219 Compulsory international arbitration, 171, 176, 177 Conrad, Chief of the General Staff, 44 Constantinople, an Entente group in, 163 Corday, Charlotte, cited, 227 Cossacks, the, 212 Courland demanded by Germany, 249 Crecianu, Ambassador Jresnea, house damaged in Zeppelin attack on Bucharest, 103 Csatth, Alexander, mortally wounded, 89 Csicserics, Lieut. Field-Marshal, 219 at Brest-Litovsk, 236 Czechs, the, attitude of, regarding a separate peace, 24 Czernin, Count Ottokar, a candid chat with Franz Ferdinand, 43 a hostile Power's desire for peace, 141 a scene at Konopischt, 39 abused by a braggart and brawler, 83 acquaints Emperor of food shortage, 237, 239 activities for peace with Roumania, 258 _et seq._ ambassador to Roumania, 7 an appeal for confidence, 310 and American intervention, 123 and the reinstatement of Archduke Joseph Ferdinand, 61 and the Ukrainian question (_see_ Ukrainian) answers explanation of an American request, 128 appeals to Germany for food, 238, 239, 329 appointed Ambassador to Bucharest, 77 apprises Berchtold of decision of Cabinet Council, 12 attends conference on U-boat warfare, 121 avoided by Pan-Germans, 160 becomes Minister for Foreign Affairs, 114 breakfasts with Kühlmann, 230 confers with Tisza, 27, 28 conflicts with the Kaiser, 335 conversation with Trotski, 248 converses with Crown Prince, 74 criticises Michaelis, 160 decorated by King Carol, 88 disapproves of U-boat warfare, 115 dismissal of, 183, 194, 266 extracts bearing on a trip to Western front, 72 friction with the Emperor, 210, 215 his hopes of a peace of understanding, 20 _et seq._, 174, 209, 217, 331, 333 imparts peace terms to Marghiloman, 266 informs Emperor of proceedings at Brest, 229 interviews King Ferdinand, 264 issues passports for Stockholm Conference, 168, 333 journeys to Brest-Litovsk, 218 learns of the assassination of Franz Ferdinand, 86 loss of a dispatch-case, 98 loyalty to Germany, 327 lunches with Prince of Bavaria, 222 meets the Emperor William II., 54 misunderstandings resulting from a speech by, 19, 23 nominated to the Herrenhaus, 46 note to American Government, 279 obtains a direct statement from William II., 57 on a separate peace, 327 on Austria's policy during war, 325 on Bolshevism, 216, 221 on President Wilson's programme, 192 on U-boat warfare, 148, 179, 334 passages of arms with Ludendorff, 247 peace programme of, 299 persecution of, 208 Polish leaders and, 205 President Wilson on, 193 private talk with the Emperor, 124 sends in his resignation, 23 sets interned prisoners at liberty, 95, 96 speech to Austrian Delegation, 298 _et seq._ threatens a separate peace with Russia, 228 unfounded charges against, 162 urges sacrifice of Alsace-Lorraine, 71 William II.'s gift to, 64 with Emperor Charles visits Eastern front, 57 =D= Danube Monarchy, the, a vital condition for existence of Hungarian State, 202 dangers of a political structure for, 202 Debruzin, sensational crime at, 88 Declaration of London, the, 280 D'Esperey, General Franchet, and Karolyi, 260 Deutsch, Leo, and the Marxian Social Democrats, 211 Devonport, Lord, on the food question, 296 Disarmament, negotiations respecting, 4 international, 171, 176, 177, 308 question of, 181 Divorces in Roumania, 85 Dobrudsha, the, acquisition of, 82 assigned to Bulgaria, 268, 269 cession of, at peace with Roumania, 323 King Ferdinand and, 265 Marghiloman's view on, 266 question discussed with Avarescu, 263 Turkish attitude concerning, 268 Dualism, the curse of, 137 =E= East Galicia, cession of, demanded by Ukrainians, 240 _et seq._ "Echinstvo" group, the, 211 Edward VII., King, and Emperor Francis Joseph, 1, 2 and William II., 63 encircling policy of, 1, 63 Elizabeth, Queen of Roumania, a word-picture by, 91 an operation for cataract, 93 her devotion to King Carol, 92 Ellenbogen, Dr., and Socialist Conference at Stockholm, 168 plain speaking by, 26 England, an effort at _rapprochement_ with Germany and its failure, 180 and dissolution of military power in Germany, 184 and the elder Richthofen, 246 attitude of, at beginning of World War, 15, 16 blockade of, by U-boats, 142, 151 bread shortage in, 295 declares war on Germany, 14 discards Declaration of London, 280 distress in, from U-boat warfare, 145 distrust of Germany's intentions in, 185 dread of gigantic growth of Germany in, 1 Flotow's tribute to, 120 food supply of, 293 freedom in, 335 her desire to remain neutral at opening of war, 2 negotiates with Germany on naval disarmament, 4 public opinion in, after Sarajevo tragedy, 8 refusal to restore German colonies, 166, 170 shortage of potatoes in, 296 the Pacifist party in, 167 "unbending resolve" of, to shatter Germany, 31, 32, 71 English mentality, a typical instance of, 4 English Socialists, 214 Entente, the, adheres to Pact of London, 209, 217 and arming of merchant vessels, 286 and Italy, 27 and the trial of William II., 66 answers President Wilson, 118, 120 as instruments in a world revolution, 273 Austria pressed to join, 2 demands abolition of German militarism, 165, 170, 171, 173 desire of final military victory, 164 exterminates Prussian militarism, 273 impression on, of author's speech at Budapest, 178 mine-laying by, 130 peace proposals to, 19, 20 rejects first peace offer, 115 suspicious of Germany's plans, 3 their "unbending resolve" to shatter Germany, 31, 326 views as to peace, 170 Enver Pasha, his influence in Turkey, 233, 269 Erzberger, Herr, agrees with "Czernin scheme", 185, 333 and author's secret report to the Emperor, 155 (note) Espionage in Roumania, 97 Esterhazy succeeds Tisza, 136 Esthonia demanded by Germany, 249, 317 Eugen, Archduke, 22 Europe after the war, 175 European tension, beginnings of, 1 =F= Fasciotti, Baron, and Austro-Hungarian action in Belgrade, 12 Fellowes, Sir Ailwyn, admits success of U-boats, 295 Ferdinand, King of Roumania, author's interview with, 264 German opinion of, 260 Queen Elizabeth's fondness for, 93 Ferdinand of Bulgaria, King, anti-Serbian policy of, 51 Filippescu, Nikolai, a proposal by, 80 Fleck, Major, at Nordbahnhof, 219 Flotow, Baron, interview with Hohenlohe, 117 reports on German attitude on U-boat warfare, 118 Fourteen Points, Wilson's, 190 _et seq._, 271, 305, 306, 323 _et seq._ France, and Austria: effect of Vienna troubles, 250 Bethmann's tribute to, 153 distrust of Germany's intentions in, 185 insists on restoration of Alsace-Lorraine, 170 opening of war a surprise to, 2 the Pacifist party in, 167 Francis Joseph, Emperor, a tribute to, 47 advised to accept negotiations, 8 and Franz Ferdinand, 42, 46 and the principle of ministerial responsibility, 56 author's audience with, 12 death of, 48 gives audience to author, 47 King Edward VII. and, 1, 2 on the Peace of Bucharest, 6 opposes Filippescu's scheme, 81 Franz Ferdinand, Archduke, a fortune-teller's prediction concerning, 44 anti-Magyar point of view of, 38, 50 antipathy to Hungary, 35, 37, 38 as gardener, 35 as husband and father, 44, 45 dislike for the Germans of, 50 false rumours concerning, 43 fearlessness of, 45 friendships of, 39 Goluchowski and, 36 Great-Austrian programme of, 41, 49 his high opinion of Pallavicini, 5 his sense of humour, 41 makes advances to the Kaiser, 42 marriage of, 41, 44 mentality of, 35 personality of, 34 pro-Roumanian proclivities of, 77, 78, 79 tragic end of, 49 (_see also_ Sarajevo tragedy) views on foreign policy of, 51 Freedom of the seas, 177 attacked by Entente, 280, 281 neutrals and, 284 President Wilson on, 281, 307 French Socialistic Congress, 214 Freyburg, Baron von, attends conference on U-boat question, 121 Friedrich, Archduke, a tribute to, 22 tact of, 72 Frontier rectifications, Hungary and, 258, 266, 319, 330 Fürstenberg, Karl, a request of, refused at Vienna, 112 report on Roumanian question by, 77 =G= Galicia, proposed cession of, 20, 75, 145, 159, 173, 332 partition of, 209 Tisza and, 135 Gas attacks, reason for Germany's use of, 16 Gautsch, Baron, a code telegram from, 229 at Nordbahnhof, 219 George, Lloyd, admits grave state of grain supplies, 295 and the Peace of Versailles, 272 author in agreement with, 177-8 confers with Orlando, 164 Dr. Helfferich's allusions to, 290 his desire to crush Germany, 186 influence of, 184 on disarmament, 184 George V., King, his telegram to Prince Henry of Prussia, 9 German army, the General Staff, 22 German-Austria, 179 population of, 31 German Empire, the, creation of, 15, 66 German Government, _versus_ German Diplomacy, 10 German mentality, a typical instance of, 4 military party refuse peace, 32 German Nationalists and Count Andrassy, 25, 26 German policy founders on heritage left by Bismarck, 15 German-Russian differences as to occupied areas, 304 German Supreme Command and evacuation question, 312 Germans and a friendly attitude towards America, 122 at Brest conference, 224 attitude of, towards Poland, 203 inferior mentality of, 69 "insatiable appetite" of, 267 Lenin and, 216 oppose peace negotiations with Roumania, 260 refuse to renounce occupied territory, 226 the dynastic fidelity of, 52 Germany, a moral coalition against, 3 advocates unrestricted U-boat warfare, 115 _et seq._ and Alsace-Lorraine, 71 and Austro-Hungarian military action in Ukraine, 254 answers the Papal Note, 177 blind faith in invincibility of her army, 17 blockade of, and her retaliatory measures, 16 confident of victory, 23, 71 culpability of, in matter of peace, 185 decides on U-boat campaign, 124 declares Armistice with Russia at an end, 318 disillusionment of, 31 dissatisfaction in, over peace resolution in Reichstag, 156 England declares war on, 14 evil times in store for, 336 her dream of a victorious peace, 326, 331 her hopes of food shortage in England, 145 Michaelis on internal economic and political situation in, 157 military party of, 19, 327, 330, 331 negotiations respecting naval disarmament, 4 post-war intentions of, 185 restricts building of U-boats, 131 revolution in, 328 rupture with America, 127 unsuccessful effort at _rapprochement_, 180 violates neutrality of Belgium, 14 Goluchowski, Count, vacillation of, 36 Görlitz, battle of, 96, 107, 329 Gratz, Dr., a good suggestion by, 248 author's discussion with, 219 on Austro-Polish solution of Polish question, 244 Great-Roumania, question of, 80 Great War, the, psychology of various cities, 197 (_See_ World War) Grey, Sir Edward, an interview with Lichnowsky, 7 at London Conference, 275 proposes negotiations, 8 =H= Habsburgs, Empire of, the Treaty of London and, 21, 29, 33 Hadik, apathetic attitude of, 238 Hague Convention, the, 280 Haus, Admiral, favours submarine warfare, 334 in Vienna, 121 Hauser, and the question of separate peace, 230 Hebel, appointment for, 154 Helfferich, Dr., disclosures by, 161 (note) on attitude of William II. during Balkan troubles, 68 speech on submarine warfare, 151, 288 _et seq._ Henry of Prussia, Prince, a telegram from King George to, 9 Hertling, Count, advised to suppress "Der Kaiser im Felde," 64 becomes Imperial Chancellor, 198 President Wilson on, 193 succeeds Michaelis, 161 Herzegovina as compensation to Austria, 207 Hindenburg, Field-Marshal, modesty of, 126 popularity of, in Germany, 17 Hoffmann, General, an unfortunate speech by, 237 and plans for outer provinces, 226 high words with Kühlmann, 235 received by the Kaiser, 230 receives a telegram from Petersburg, 229 visited by author, 219 Hohenberg, Duchess of, 41 welcomed in Roumania, 79 Hohendorf, General Conrad von, and his responsibility for the war, 18 (note) Hohenlohe, Prince, and settlement of Wedel's request, 127 free speech with William II., 65 report on U-boat campaign, 116, 126 Holtzendorff, Admiral, and submarine campaign, 149 arrives in Vienna, 121 guarantees results of U-boat campaign, 122, 334 Hungarian Ruthenians, Wekerle on, 243 Social Democrats, 168 Hungary and cession of her territory, 106 and Roumanian intervention, 77, 106, 107 and the alliance with Roumania, 77 _et seq._ demands of, at Bucharest, 319 frontier rectification question, 258, 266, 319, 330 her influence on the war, 138 indignation in, at author's appointment to Bucharest, 77 "just punishment" of, 97 opposes economical alliance with Roumania, 266, 320 question of a separate peace, 27 repellent attitude of, 107 struggle for liberty in, 202 why her army was neglected, 22 =I= Imperiali, Marchese, points submitted to London Conference by, 275 International arbitration (_see_ Arbitration) International disarmament, 171, 176, 177 International law, Germany's breach of, in adoption of U-boat warfare, 280, 281 Internationalists, Russian, 211 Ischl, an audience with Emperor Francis Joseph at, 12 Iswolsky, 11 Italy, Allied defeat in, 183 and Albania, 6 and the Peace of Versailles, 272 Czernin on, 308 declares a blockade, 281 points submitted to London Conference, 275 stands in way of a peace of understanding, 188 ultimatum to, 12 why she entered the war, 3 =J= Jaczkovics, Vicar Michael, tragic death of, 89 Jagow, Herr von, a frank disclosure by, 14 Joffe, Herr, a circular letter to Allies, 300 conversation with, at Brest, 220 criticisms on the Tsar, 227 Jonescu, Take, and the Sarajevo tragedy, 86 Joseph Ferdinand, Archduke, 22 appointed Chief of Air Force, 62 reinstatement of, 61 relinquishes his command, 62 the Luck episode, 61 =K= Kameneff at Brest, 220, 316 Karachou, Leo, secretary of Peace Delegation, 303 Karl, Emperor, peace proposals to the Entente, 20 Karl of Schwarzenberg, Prince, Franz Ferdinand and, 39, 40 Karolyi and Roumanian peace negotiations, 260 his attitude before the Roumanian declaration of war, 28 Kerenski and the offensive against Central Powers, 211 newspaper report of condition of his health, 212 Kiderlen-Waechter, a satirical remark by, 63 Kieff, a mission to, 251 entered by Bolsheviks, 248, 249 in danger of a food crisis, 252 peace conditions at, 208 Kieff Committee and the Bolsheviks, 245 Kiel Week, the, 62 _Kienthaler_ (Internationalists), 211 Konopischt and its history, 34 _et seq._ Kreuznach, a conference at, 145 Kriegen, Dr. Bogdan, a fulsome work by, 64 Kühlmann, Dr., and the food shortage, 238, 239 author's talk with, 222 difficult position of, 313 high words with Hoffman, 235 his influence, 198, 199 informed of Roumanian peace overtures, 260 on the Kaiser, 228 returns to Brest, 230 =L= Lamezan, Captain Baron, at Brest-Litovsk, 233 Landwehr, General, and the food shortage, 238, 240 Lansdowne, Lord, conciliatory attitude of, 184 Larin and Menshevik Socialists, 211 League of Nations, the, 308 Lenin, author on, 216 opposed to offensive against Central Powers, 211 Leopold of Bavaria, Prince, a day's shooting with, 231 chats with author, 219 Lewicky, M., 240 Lichnowsky interviews Sir Edward Grey, 7 Liége taken by Ludendorff, 22 Lithuania, Germany and, 249 Livonia demanded by Germany, 249, 317 London, Declaration of, discarded by England, 280 London, Pact of, 20, 170, 172, 179, 328 desired amendments to, 146 text of, 21, 275 _et seq._ Lublin, German demand for evacuation of, 204, 205, 206 Luck episode, the, 22, 106 Archduke Joseph Ferdinand and, 61 Ludendorff and Belgium, 186 and the Polish question, 207 candid admission by, 247 compared with enemy statesmen, 19 confident of success of U-boat warfare, 126 congratulates Hoffmann, 237 displays "a gleam of insight", 230 dominating influence of, 79, 115, 126 German hero-worship of, 17 his independent nature, 60 how he captured Liége, 22 personality of, 331 Lueger and Franz Ferdinand, 50 Luxembourg, German invasion of, 16 =M= Mackensen, a fleet of Zeppelins at Bucharest, 101 failure at Maracesci, 261 headquarters at Bucharest, 105 Magyars, the, and Franz Ferdinand, 38, 50 author and, 78 Majorescu and Austria's policy, 330 and territorial concessions, 97, 206 forms a Ministry, 81 Mandazescu, arrest and extradition of, 89 Maracesci, attack on, 261 Marghiloman and co-operation of Roumania, 106 forms a Cabinet, 266, 320 Marie, Queen of Roumania, English sympathies of, 98, 99 Marne, the, first battle of, 17 Martow and the Menshevik party, 211 Martynoz, and the Russian Internationalists, 211 Medwjedew, J.G., Ukrainian delegate to Brest, 301 Mennsdorff, Ambassador, interviews General Smuts, 169 Menshevik party, the, 211 Meran, the Entente's proposals regarding, 170, 173 Merchant vessels, arming of, author on, 285 Merey meets Czernin at Brest, 219 Michaelis, Dr., appointed Imperial Chancellor, 156 defines Germany's views regarding Belgium, 157 on peace proposals, 157 Pan-Germanism of, 160 "Might before Right," Bismarckian principle of, 15 Miklossy, Bishop Stephan, marvellous escape of, 89 Militarism, German faith in, 17 England's idea of German, 166 Monarchists _v._ Republicans, 52 Monarchs, hypnotic complacency of, 58 _et seq._ Moutet, attitude of, at French Socialist conference, 214 =N= Nationality, problem of, 190 Franz Ferdinand and, 191 Naval disarmament, negotiations on, 4 Nicholas, Grand Duke, and the military party in Russia, 2 Nicolai, Tsar, Joffe on, 227 North Sea, the, blockade of, 280 Noxious gas, why used by Germany, 16 =O= Odessa, in danger of a food crisis, 252 Orlando confers with Ribot and Lloyd George, 164 Otto, Archduke, brother of Franz Ferdinand, 36 =P= Pallavicini, Markgraf, discusses the political situation with author, 5 Pan-Germans, 330 conditions on which they would conclude peace, 160 Pan-Russian Congress, the, 212, 213, 214 Papal Note, the, 167, 177 Austria's reply to, 175 German reply to, 333 Paris, negotiations _in camera_ at, 271 Peace by sacrifice, 327 Peace Congress at Brest-Litovsk, 218 _et seq._ Peace movement, real historical truth concerning, 186 Peace negotiations, Count Czernin on, 298 _et seq._ deadlock in, 182 the Pope's proposals, 167, 175, 177, 333 Peace resolution, a, and its consequences, 156 Penfield, Mr., American Ambassador to Vienna, 131 People's Socialists, the, 212 Peschechonow, Minister of Food, 212 Petersburg and the Ukraine, 309 Plechanow, Georgei, and the Russian Social Patriots, 211 Poklewski, Russian Ambassador to Roumania, 86 Poland, a conference on question of, 205 becomes a kingdom, 200 conquest of, 106 Count Czernin on, 304 Emperor Charles's offer regarding, 75 future position of, 203 German standpoint on, 203 Michaelis on, 159 re-organisation of, 145 the German demands, 244 unrepresented at Brest, and the reason, 304, 315 Poles, the, and Brest-Litovsk negotiations, 208 party divisions among, 204 Polish question, and the Central-European project, 209 difficulties of, 200 Popow, Bulgarian Minister of Justice, 223 Pro-Roumanian party and its head, 77 Prussian militarism, England's idea of, 166 extermination of, 273 fear of, 174 (_See also_ German military party) =Q= Quadruple Alliance, the, dissension in, 250 Germany as shield of, 183 peace terms to Roumania, 262 =R= Radek, a scene with a chauffeur, 237 Radoslawoff, ignorant of negotiations with Entente, 162 Randa, Lieut.-Col. Baron, a telling remark by, 104 and Roumanian peace overtures, 260, 262, 319 Reichstag, the, a peace resolution passed in, 156 demands peace without annexation, 156, 160 Renner and the Stockholm Congress, 168 Republicans _v._ Monarchists, 52 Ressel, Colonel, 264 Revertera negotiates for peace, 164, 169 Revolution, danger of, 147 Rhondda, Lord, British Food Controller, 151 Ribot confers with Orlando, 164 statement by, 152 Richthofen brothers, the, 246 Rosenberg meets author at Brest, 219 Roumania, 77 _et seq._ a change of Government in, 81 a land of contrasts, 84 affairs in, after Sarajevo tragedy, 86 and the Peace of Bucharest, 6 author's negotiations for peace, 258 between two stools, 261 declares war, 100, 279 espionage in, 97 freedom of the Press in, 84 Germany and, 262, 267 her treachery to Central Powers, 262 how news of Sarajevo tragedy was received in, 86 Marghiloman forms a Cabinet, 266 negotiations for peace, 318 out of action, 23 peace concluded with, 323 question of annexations of, 159, 207 question of her neutrality, 12, 95 Russian gold in, 111 social conditions in, 85 ultimatum to, 12, 262 why she entered the war, 3 Roumanian invasion of Transylvania, 108 Roumanians, mistaken views of strength of, 261 their love of travel, 85 Rudolf, Crown Prince, and Franz Ferdinand, 37 Russia, a contemplated peace with, 211 abdication of the Tsar, 142 an appeal to German soldiers, 249 begins military operations without a declaration of war, 3 Bolshevism in, 211, 216, 229 declares for cessation of hostilities, 318 differences of opinion in, as to continuance of war, 211 _et seq._ enters the war, 7 Francis Joseph's inquiry as to a possible revolution in, 105 her responsibility for Great War, 10 incites German army to revolt, 317 negotiations for peace, 298 out of action, 23 peace treaty signed, 318 prepared for war, 112 the military party in, 2, 9 ultimatum to Roumania, 262 Russian Revolution, the, 142, 147, 211 _et seq._ Russians, their fear of Trotski, 237 Ruthenian districts of Hungary, Ukrainian demands, 242 =S= Sacharow, General, murder of, 220 St. Mihiel, author at, 73 St. Privat, reminiscences of, 74 Salzburg negotiations, the, 210 Sarajevo, the tragedy of, 6, 49 sounds death knell of the Monarchy, 32 Sassonoff, a momentous statement by, 88 attitude of, after declaration of war, 8 visits Bucharest, 112 Satonski, Wladimir Petrowitch, 302 Schachrai, W.M., at Brest, 301 Schonburg, Alvis, and the Emperor Charles, 61 Schönerer, Deputy, Franz Ferdinand and, 50 Secret diplomacy, abolition of: author's views, 306-7 Sedan, a house with a history at, 74 Seidler, Dr. von, a _faux pas_ by, 56 and the food shortage, 240 and the partition of Galicia, 209 and the Ukrainian question, 208, 242, 243 apathetic attitude of, 238, 239 author's meeting with, 230 visits South Slav provinces, 59 Seitz, and the Stockholm Conference, 168 Serbia, arrogance of, 6 ultimatum to, 7 Sewrjuk, M., 240 Sixtus, Prince, letters from Emperor Charles to, 164 Skobeleff and the Mensheviks, 211 Skrzynski, Herr von, 250 Slapowszky, Johann, tragic death of, 89 Slav provinces, a visit by the Emperor to, 59 Smuts, General, interview with Mennsdorff, 170 Social Democrats and the question of peace, 26, 30 and the Stockholm Conference, 168, 333 Hungarian, 243 opposed to sacrifice of Alsace-Lorraine, 71 "Social Patriots," Russian, 211 Social Revolutionary Party, the, 212 Socialists and offensive against Central Powers, 211 Spanish reports of war-weariness in England and France, 143 Stirbey, Prince, 263 Stockholm, a Socialist Conference at, 168, 333 Russians ask for a conference at, 229 Stockholm Congress, negative result of, 169 Strikes and their danger, 310 Stumm, von, on Ukrainian claims, 241 Sturdza, Lieut.-Col., extraordinary behaviour of, 83 Stürgkh, Count, 18 (note) recollections of, 46 Submarine warfare, author's note to American Government on, 279 Czernin on, 334 destruction without warning justified, 283 enemy losses in, 290 enemy's "statistical smoke-screens" as to, 289 question of safety of passengers and crew, 282 speech by Dr. Helfferich on, 288 why adopted by Central Powers, 281 _et seq._ (_See also_ U-boats) Südekum, Herr, and Austria-Hungary's peace proposals, 155, 333 Supreme Military and Naval Command, conditions of, for peace negotiations, 159 Switzerland, reported disturbances in: author's disclaimer, 335 Sycophancy in high places, 58, 60, 62, 63, 64 Sylvester, Dr., and the German-Austrian National Assembly, 26 =T= Talaat Pasha arrives at Brest, 233 influence of, 143 threatens to resign, 269 Talleyrand, a dictum of, 174 Tarnowski, Count, author's opinion of, 110 German Ambassador to Washington, 127 Thomas, M., war speech on Russian front, 214 Tisza, Count Stephen, 18 (note) a characteristic letter from, 200 advocates unrestricted U-boat warfare, 115, 334 and American intervention, 123 and author's appointment to Bucharest, 78 and cession of Hungarian territory, 135 and control of foreign policy, 134 and the Stockholm Conference, 168 assassination of, 137 at a U-boat campaign conference, 121 author's conference with, 27, 28 defends Count Czernin, 108 dismissal of, 136, 203 Franz Ferdinand and, 38 his influence in Hungary, 27 leads anti-Roumanian party, 77 lively correspondence with author, 128 on dangers of pessimism, 154 on the Treaty of London, 28 opposes annexation of Roumania, 207 opposes the war, 10 opposes U-boat warfare, 131, 334 peace proposal of, 139 _pro-memoria_ of, on Roumanian peace negotiations, 258 question of frontier rectifications, 319 refuses cession of Hungarian territory, 107 speech at conference on Polish question, 206 tribute to, 137 views regarding Poland, 200 visits the Southern Slavs, 30 Transylvania, 173 opposition to cession of, 107 proposed cession of, 28, 50 Roumanian invasion of, 108 Trentino, the, offered to Italy, 75 Trieste, Entente proposals regarding, 170, 173 "Tripartite solution" of Polish question, Tisza on, 201 Trnka and the Customs dues, 168 Trotski, a tactical blunder by, 236 accepts the German-Austria ultimatum, 235 and the Internationalist party, 211 arrives at Brest, 232 declines to sign, 250 his brother-in-law Kameneff, 220 his library, 235, 236 negotiations with, 247 opposed to ill-treatment of war prisoners, 236 ultimatum to, 234 Trudoviks, the, 212 Tscheidse, and the Mensheviks, 211, 213 Tschernow, speaks at Peasants' Congress, 212 Tschirsky, Herr von, a momentous communication to Berchtold, 7 and a telegram from King George, 9 his desire for war, 32 untactful diplomacy of, 10 Tseretelli and the Menshevik party, 211 Turkey, a dispute with Bulgaria, 268 asks for munitions, 95 how the Sultan was deposed, 233 probable secession of, 269 Turkish Grand Vizier arrives at Brest, 233 Turks, a reported advance by a hostile Power for a separate peace, 143 at Brest Conference, 223 Tyrol, the, German troops in, 24 =U= U-boat warfare, 114 _et seq._ a conference in Vienna on, 121 "a terrible mistake", 126 and America's entry into the war, 126 and why adopted by Germany, 16 Czernin on, 148 political arguments against, 117, 118 what it achieved, 178 (_See also_ Submarine warfare) Ugron, Herr von, and the "tripartite" solution of Polish question, 201 Ukraine and Petersburg, 309 Bolshevik destruction in, 252 food supplies from, 251 _et seq._, 315 military action in, and the consequences, 253 peace concluded with, 249 revolution in, 253 survey of imports from, 255 treaty signed, 317 Ukrainian Army General Committee appointed, 214 delegates at Brest, 231, 300 Workers' and Peasants' Government, a declaration from, 301 Ukrainians and their demands, 208, 240, 314 dictatorial attitude of, 241 negotiations with, 315 United States, the, scarcity of supplies in, 294 (_See also_ America) =V= Versailles, opening of Peace Congress at, 196 the Council of Four at, 271 the Peace of, 18, 19, 271 terrible nature of, 273 triumph of Entente at, 186 Vienna, a council in, 121 differences of opinion in, 77 disastrous effects of troubles in, 250 disturbances in, 58 food shortage and strikes in, 238, 239, 241, 314 politicians' views on peace proposals, 230 psychology of, 197 warlike demonstrations at, after Sarajevo tragedy, 33 Vredenburch, Herr von, Dutch Ambassador to Roumania, 104 =W= Wales, Prince of (_see_ Edward VII., King) Wallachia, occupation of, 99, 105 Wallhead, Mr., 295 Washington Cabinet, and Austria-Hungary's attitude to submarine warfare, 279 Wassilko, Nikolay, leader of Austrian Ruthenians, 247, 249 Wedel, Count, calls on Count Czernin, 127 disclosures of, 161 (note) revelations of, 155 (note) Weisskirchner, Burgemeister, coins the term "bread peace," 257 Wekerle, Dr., and the Polish question, 203 author and, 136, 230 on the Ukrainian question, 242 standpoint of, on Roumanian peace negotiations, 260, 319 Western front, an Entente break-through on, 183 Western Powers, the, and Germany's ambitions, 2 Wiesner, Ambassador, von, and a Pan-German, 161 at Brest-Litovsk, 236 author discusses Russian peace with, 219 Wilhelm, Crown Prince, and Franz Ferdinand, 43 anxious for peace, 72 author's conversation with, 74 his quarters at Sedan, 74 William I. and Bismarck, 65 William II., Emperor, and Bismarck, 52 and Franz Ferdinand, 42 and the German Supreme Military Command, 17 as _causeur_, 66 as the "elect of God," 52, 53 cause of his ruin, 62 _et seq._ demonstrations against, in the Reichstag, 54 desires to help deposed Tsar, 70 difficulties of his political advisers, 60 fails to find favour in England, 63 his projected division of the world, 67 impending trial of: author's protest, 66 informed of serious nature of situation for Allies, 332 instructions to Kühlmann, 249 long years of peaceful government, 68 longs for peace, 70 on food troubles in England, 145 on impending attack on Italian front, 71 presents author with "Der Kaiser im Felde," 64 Prince Hohenlohe and, 65 question of his abdication, 75 the Press and, 65 warlike speeches of, 68 Wilson, President, advantages of his "Fourteen Points," 188 as master of the world, 192 author on his Message, 305 Count Andrassy's Note to, 25 Count Czernin on, 192 Entente's reply to his peace proposal, 118, 120, 123 his Fourteen Points and the Peace of Versailles, 271 on the freedom of the seas, 281 ready to consider peace, 250 reopens hopes of a peace of understanding, 189 speech to Congress, 193 text of the Fourteen Points, 323 Wolf, K.H., a scene in the "Burg," 169 World-domination, Germany's dream of, 1, 2 World organization, a new, principles of, 174 _et seq._ World War, the, an important phase of, 107 attempts at peace, 134 _et seq._ author's impressions and reflections on, 195 _et seq._, 271 _et seq._ by whom started, 18 (note) causes of, 3 President Wilson and, 188 _et seq._ questions of responsibility for outbreak of, 2 World War, the, U-boat warfare in, 114 _et seq._ (_see also_ Submarine warfare and U-boat) violent measures adopted by Germany in, 16 =Z= Zeppelin raids on Bucharest, 100 Zimmermann, Herr, and author's peace proposals, 146 opposes unrestricted U-boat warfare, 115, 120 _Zimmerwalder_ (Russian Internationalists), 211 PRINTED BY CASSELL & COMPANY, LIMITED, LA BELLE SAUVAGE, LONDON, E.C. 4 * * * * * +------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Typographical errors corrected in text: | | | | Table of Contents: Appendix is listed as 257, changed to 275 | | Page 47: 'and and in doing so' replaced with 'and in doing so' | | Page 81: 'to made room' replaced with 'to make room' | | Page 107: session replaced with cession | | Page 196: perdera replaced with perdra | | Page 201: Nr 63 replaced with Nr. 63 | | Page 251: official replaced with officials | | Page 286: 'Les navir' replaced with 'Les navires' | | Page 293: persumably replaced with presumably | | Page 333: Sudekum replaced with Südekum | | Page 334: 'would have have been' replaced with 'would have been' | | Page 343: Gouluchowski replaced with Goluchowski | | Page 344: Gorlitz replaced with Görlitz | | Page 346: Lubin replaced with Lublin | | | | The surname Colloredo-Mannsfield/Colloredo-Mannsfeld appears | | once each way, on page 121, and in the index | +------------------------------------------------------------------+ * * * * *