The Merchant of Berlin Part 23

Like the Austrians, the Cossacks entered houses with wanton arrogance, and, under the pretext of being Russian safeguards, they stole, and robbed, and ill-treated in the rudest manner those who opposed their demands. They had even managed to reduce their robbery and extortion to a kind of system, and to value the human person after a new fas.h.i.+on. It was a sort of mercantile transaction, and the Cossacks were the brokers in this new-fas.h.i.+oned business. Stealthily and unheard, they slipped into houses, fell upon the unsuspecting women and children, and dragged them out, not to capture them as the Romans did the Sabine women, but to hold them as so much merchandise, to be redeemed by their friends and relatives at high and often enormous ransoms.

But the Cossacks drew but small profit from this hunt after n.o.ble human game. They were only servants, acting under orders from their officers. These latter divided the booty, throwing to the Cossacks a small reward for their skill in robbing.

Thus, for some days, Berlin was not only subjugated by the enemy, but a prey to robbers and slave-dealers, and moans and lamentations were heard in every house. All the more merrily did the enemy's soldiers carouse and enjoy themselves, laugh and joke. For them Berlin was nothing more than an orange to be squeezed dry, whose life-blood was to be drawn out to add new zest to their own draught of life.

The young Russian officers were sitting together in the large room of their barracks. They were drinking and making merry, and striking their gla.s.ses noisily together; draining them to the health of the popular, handsome, and brilliant comrade who had just entered their circle, and who was no other than he whom Gotzkowsky's daughter, in the sorrow of her heart, was mourning as dead!--no one else than the Russian colonel, Count Feodor von Brenda.

He had been right, therefore, in trusting to Fortune. Fortune had favored him, as she always does those who boldly venture all to win all, and who sport with danger as with a toy. Indeed, it was an original and piquant adventure which the Russian colonel had experienced, the more piquant because it had threatened him with death, and at one moment his life had been in extreme danger. It had delighted him for once to experience all the horrors of death, the palpitation, the despair of a condemned culprit; to acquire in his own person a knowledge of the great and overpowering feelings, which he had read so much about in books, and which he had not felt in reality even in the midst of battle. But yet this bold playing with death had, toward the last, lost a little of its charm, and a moment arrived when his courage failed him, and his daring spirit was overpowered by his awed physical nature. There was not, as there is in battle, the excitement which conquers the fear of death, and drunk with victory, mocks one to his face; there was not the wild delight which possesses the soldier in the midst of a shower of b.a.l.l.s, and makes him, as it were, rush toward eternity with a shout. No, indeed! It was something quite different which Colonel von Brenda, otherwise so brave and valiant, now felt.

When the Austrian soldiers had p.r.o.nounced his sentence of death, when they formed a ring around him at the Gens-d'Armes Market, and loaded their pieces for his execution, then the haughty Russian colonel felt a sudden change take place; his blood curdled in his veins, and he felt as if thousands of small worms were creeping through them, gliding slowly, horribly to his heart. At length, in the very despair which oppressed him, he found strength to cast his incubus from his breast, and with a voice loud and powerful as thunder to cry out for help and succor. His voice was heard; it reached the ear of General Bachmann, who came in person to set free the wild young officer, the favorite of his empress, from the hands of the Austrians.

This adventure, which had terminated so famously, Count Brenda now related to his friends and comrades. To be sure, the general had punished the mad freak with an arrest of four-and-twenty hours. But after undergoing this punishment, he was more than ever the hero of the day, the idol of his comrades, who now celebrated his release from arrest with loud rejoicing and the cracking of champagne bottles.

After they had laughed and joked to their satisfaction, they resorted to the dice.

"And what stake shall we play for?" asked Feodor, as he cast a look of ill-concealed contempt on his young companions, who so little understood the art of drinking the cup of pleasure with decency, and rolled about on their seats with lolling tongues and leering eyes.

Feodor alone had preserved the power of his mind; his brain alone was unclouded by the fumes of champagne, and that which had made the others mad had only served to make him sad and gloomy. The drunkenness of his comrades had sobered him, and, feeling satiated with all the so-called joys and delights of life, he asked himself, with a smile of contempt, whether the stammering, staggering fellows, who sat next to him, were fit and suitable companions and a.s.sociates of a man who had made pleasure a study, and who considered enjoyment as a philosophical problem, difficult of solution.

"And for what stake shall we play?" he asked again, as with a powerful grip he woke his neighbor, Lieutenant von Matusch, out of the half sleep which had crept over him.

"For our share of the booty!" stammered the lieutenant.

Feodor looked at him with surprise. "What booty? Have we, then, become robbers and plunderers, that you speak of booty?"

His comrades burst into a wild laugh.

"Just listen to the sentimental dreamer, the cosmopolite," cried Major von Fritsch. "He looks upon it as dishonorable to take booty. I for my part maintain that there is no greater pleasure, and certainly none which is more profitable. Fill your gla.s.ses, friends, and let us drink to our hunting. 'Hurrah! hurrah for human game!'"

They struck their gla.s.ses together, and emptied them amidst an uproar of laughter.

"Colonel, you shall have your share of the booty!" said Lieutenant von Matusch, laying his heavy, shaky hand on Feodor's shoulder. "We never intended to cheat you out of your portion, but you were not here, and therefore up to this time you could have no share in it."

As Feodor pressed him with questions, he related how they had formed a compact, and pledged themselves to have their booty and captives in common.

"We have caught more than a dozen head, and they have ransomed themselves handsomely," cried Major von Fritsch. "We have just sent out ten of our men again on the chase."

"Oh! I hope they will bring in just such another handsome young girl as they did yesterday," cried Matusch, rubbing his hands with delight.

"Ah, that was a pleasant evening! She offered us treasures, diamonds, and money; she promised us thousands if we would only release her at once! She wept like a Madonna, and wrung her snow-white hands, and all that only made her prettier still."

Colonel Feodor looked at him in anger. In contact with such coa.r.s.e and debauched companions his more refined self rose powerful within him, and his originally n.o.ble nature turned with loathing from this barren waste of vulgarity and infamy.

"I hope," said he, warmly, "that you have behaved as becomes n.o.ble gentlemen."

Matusch shrugged his shoulders and laughed. "I do not know what you call so, colonel. She was very pretty, and she pleased me. I promised to set her free to-day, for the ransom agreed on, and I have kept my word."

As he spoke thus, he burst into a loud laugh, in which his friends joined with glee.

But Feodor von Brenda did not laugh. An inexplicable, prophetic dread overpowered him. What if this young girl, described to him with so much gusto, and who had been so shamefully ill-treated, should prove to be his Elise, his beloved!

At this thought, anger and distress took possession of him, and he never loved Elise more ardently and truly than he did at this moment when he trembled for her. "And was there no one," cried he, with flas.h.i.+ng eyes, "no one knightly and manly enough to take her part?

How! even you, Major von Fritsch, allowed this thing to happen?"

"I was obliged to do so," replied the major. "We have made a law among ourselves, which we have all sworn to obey. It is established that the dice shall determine to which of the officers the booty shall belong; and he who throws the highest number becomes the owner of the person.

He has to negotiate about the ransom. This, however, of course is divided among his comrades."

"But if the person is poor?" asked Feodor, indignantly, "if she cannot pay?"

"Then she belongs to him who has won her; he must decide on her fate.

He is--"

The major stopped suddenly. The other officers raised themselves in their seats, and listened with breathless attention.

"I think I hear the signal," whispered the major. He had not deceived himself. A shrill, piercing whistle sounded a second time. The officers sprang from their seats, and broke into a loud cry of triumph:

"Our Cossacks are coming. They have caught something! Come, come, let us throw the dice."

With fierce eagerness, they all rushed to the table, and stretched out their hands for the bones. Immediately a deep, expectant silence ensued. Nothing was heard but the rattling of the dice, and the monotonous calling of the numbers thrown. Feodor alone remained at his place, lost in deep thought, and his tortured heart kept asking itself the question, "Could it be her whom the barbarians had captured and ill-used?" This question burnt in his brain like a red-hot dagger, upsetting his reason, and driving him almost mad with anger and grief.

Still the rattling of the noisy dice went on--the calling of the numbers. No one took notice of the young man, who, in desperate distress, his clinched fist pressed against his breast, paced up and down the farther end of the room, uttering broken words of anger and grief. No one, as has been said, noticed him, nor did any one remark that at this moment the door in the background of the hall was opened, and six Cossacks entered, bearing a litter on their shoulders.

Feodor von Brenda saw them, and, with deep compa.s.sion, he regarded the veiled, inanimate figure lying on the litter, which was set down by the Cossacks.

"Colonel von Brenda," cried Major von Fritsch at this moment, "it is your turn."

"Oh, he is too sentimental!" laughed out Matusch. "Is not that the fact, colonel?"

Feodor remained musing and pensive. "It is a woman," said he to himself--"perhaps a young and handsome woman like Elise. How if I should try to save her? I have luck at the dice. Well, I will try."

And with a firm step he approached the table. "Give me the bones,"

cried he. "I will throw with you for my share of the booty."

The dice rattled and tumbled merrily on the table.

"Eighteen spots!"

"The highest throw!"

"Colonel von Brenda has won!"

"The woman is mine!" cried Feodor, his countenance beaming with joy.

His comrades looked at him with astonishment. "A woman! How do you know beforehand that it is a woman?"

Feodor pointed silently to the back part of the room. There stood the Cossacks, next to the litter, waiting in solemn silence to be noticed.

"A woman! Yes, by Heavens! it is a woman," cried the officers. And, with boisterous laughter, they rushed toward the Cossacks.

"And where did you pick her up?" asked Major von Fritsch.

"Don't know," answered one of the Cossacks. "We crept along a wall, and when we had climbed to the top, we saw a garden. We got down slowly and carefully, and waited behind the trees, to see if any one would come down the long avenue. We did not have long to wait before this lady came by herself. We rushed on her, and all her struggles, of course, went for nothing. Luckily for her and us, she fainted, for if she had cried out, some one, perhaps, might have come, and then we would have been obliged to gag her."